Rancho Buena Fortuna

by Bill King

Upon arrival, they would walk through those plans on the ground but, since they would not arrive in Madera for another four hours, she decided to spend a little more time familiarizing herself with their escape route.

  The Federal Reserve Bank building in San Francisco is located on Mission Street in the Financial District, a couple of blocks from the waterfront. More importantly, it was also only a two-minute walk to the Embarcadero metro station.

  She found the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency website on her iPad and opened the Muni Metro Map, which listed all the stations in the metro area’s subway system. She then launched the Google Maps app and started comparing stations on the muni map with their actual location on a broader map of the city. Her goal was for them to get as far away from the bank as quickly as they could.

  All six metro lines passed through the Embarcadero station, which was perfect for them. The last thing they wanted was to have to wait ten minutes for the right train to come along because they would need to take advantage of the first few minutes of chaos to get as far away from the bank as quickly as possible, before the shock wore off and the police could seize control of the situation. That meant they only had a few minutes head start, at most.

  They would hop on the first southbound train available and take it to the Van Ness station, four stops away. Their ultimate destination was the Balboa Park station, which is served by the J, K, and M lines. If they were already on one of those three lines, they would simply continue on to Balboa Park. If they were on the L, N, or T lines, however, they would get off at Van Ness, four stations away from the scene of the explosion, and wait a few minutes for whichever train for Balboa Park arrived first.

  A vehicle and driver would be waiting for them at Balboa Park to take them on US highway 101 to Foster City, twenty minutes away. There, they would switch vehicles and take the San Mateo Bridge across the bay to Hayward, where they would pick up interstate 580 eastbound.

  If all went well, Isabela and her team would board a private plane at the municipal airport in Tracy less than two hours after the explosion at the Fed building. Their destination would be the small municipal airport in Seguin, Texas, just a couple of hours north of the Rancho.

  Assuming everything went according to plan, that is.

  ◆◆◆

  It was mid-afternoon and Chucho was sitting on the hillside overlooking the Rancho’s sprawling hacienda. He had stopped by to check on his man, whom he had left to keep an eye on the place in hopes of getting a photograph of one of the two men he had seen a few weeks earlier. They had taken a few pictures of Graciela, but neither of the older men had made an appearance thus far. It was becoming obvious that neither of them probably actually lived on the property.

  They were sitting on the downslope of the hill, about ten feet from the crest, so as not to cast a silhouette that would be visible from the house across the river. After a while, Chucho stood up and climbed to the top of the hill, where he could better see the old barn.

  There, by the side of the old structure, he saw a young man who appeared to be taking a break. The man walked over to a nearby tree and stopped. Judging by his fumbling hands in front of his trousers, Chucho figured that he was relieving himself. When he was finished, he zipped up his fly and turned back toward the barn, stopping briefly to pull a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, take one and light it.

  Chucho carefully began to make his way down the hillside toward the man, sliding feet first on his rear end, trying to stay low and be as quiet as possible. All the while, he was kicking up small clouds of dust as he skidded down the hill. He recognized this as an opportunity to find out the information he sought without hanging out on the hill for weeks on end. He would simply snatch this man and take him to a place where, without fear of interruption, he could apply his unique form of persuasiveness to learn about the hacienda and its owner.

  The man was just finishing his cigarette when Chucho approached him, his pistol in his hand.

  “Buenos tardes,” said Chucho, surprising the man, who reflexively tried to reach for the gun that was tucked into his belt at the small of his back. “Don’t be stupid, my friend. That pistol won’t do you any good if you’re dead before you reach it.” There was an unmistakably menacing tone to his voice.

  The man slowly raised his hands above his head. His eyes clearly showed fear. Chucho could smell fear and this man reeked of it.

  “Now, turn around.”

  When the man did so, Chucho carefully approached him and removed the pistol that had been tucked inside a holster at the small of the man’s back.

  “Good, good,” said Chucho, his tone of voice now relaxed and conversational. “So, tell me, who are you and what are you doing here?”

  The man was not sure what to make of the situation. He was pretty certain that Chucho wasn’t with law enforcement, which meant that he was probably part of the criminal element that infested this stretch of the border like maggots on a corpse.

  “My name is Miguel Lopez Salazar and I work at the Rancho across the river.” He turned his body slighting and pointed in the direction of the hacienda.

  “You don’t look like a ranch hand. You look much too soft for that.” Perspiration beaded on the man’s upper lip and his shirt collar was now drenched in sweat.

  “I’m a computer technician,” said the man, a nervous smile on his face. “I make sure the Rancho’s computer systems work at all times.”

  Chucho was silent for a moment as he mulled over what the man had said. His eyes stared intently at the man’s eyes, looking for any sign of panic. Right now, it appeared to be just fear. The man was evidently just a simple coward.

  “Who is the owner of the property?”

  For the first time, the look in the man’s eyes changed briefly before returning to the panicked look. He’s worried now, thought Chucho, or maybe the frightened boy act was just that, an act designed to lure him into overconfidence.

  “I don’t know. I’ve only worked here for about a month.”

  Chucho sensed the man was lying.

  “Who is in charge? Is it the woman I have seen in the back yard?”

  “She is no one to be trifled with,” the man said, a look of fear still in his eyes. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out of here now and never come back.” The man’s language had changed one hundred percent, but the fright was still evident in his voice.

  Chucho glanced up at the corner of the barn and noticed the camera. He silently cursed. They’re probably watching the whole thing, he thought to himself. This guy must believe his people are on the way to save him.

  “Let’s go,” said Chucho, motioning with his pistol in the direction of the hill several hundred yards away. The man stood his ground. He clearly had no intention of going anywhere with Chucho.

  Chucho shot the man in the right shoulder, causing him to grab the wounded shoulder with his left hand and scream in pain as he doubled over at the waist. Blood was oozing out, creating an ever-growing dark red circle spreading across his light blue shirt.

  “Let’s go…now,” said Chucho in a low growl, much like a rabid dog.

  He pulled out his cell phone. The man on the hill, who had heard the sound of the gunshot and had circled around to get a better view of the barn, answered on the first ring.

  “You better get off the hill for the time being,” said Chucho. “This place is probably going to get pretty crowded in the next few minutes. Meet me at the truck…rápido.”

  Three minutes later, they all climbed into the beat up old pickup truck and drove away as fast as they could, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake. Chucho sat in the back seat with the wounded man to make sure he didn’t try anything foolish.

  Twenty minutes passed before they reached an old abandoned gas station along the lightly traveled road. The only paint remaining on the building was in the form of flakes. All the glass windows were broken from somebody throwing something through them. They parked the truck in the rear
of the dilapidated old building, out of sight from the road. The old shack looked like it might collapse with even the slightest gust of wind.

  By now, the wounded man had lost a lot of blood and was starting to fade in and out of consciousness.

  “A doctor,” the man said faintly. “Get me to a doctor.”

  Chucho looked at the man and conjured up his most sympathetic expression.

  “I will, I will, but first I need some information.”

  “Please. Please. I need a doctor.”

  Chucho grabbed the man’s wounded shoulder and inserted his thumb into the entry wound. He gave it a sharp twist, causing the man to scream in agony.

  “Tell me about the young woman.”

  “Her name is Graciela. She is the person El Indio put in charge of the Rancho.”

  Chucho was taken aback. Of course, he knew of El Indio, but only by reputation. He always assumed that the man was simply a myth, a legend. Kind of like a Chupacabra or, for North Americans, Bigfoot. He never imagined that he could actually be real.

  “Who is El Indio? What is his real name?”

  “I don’t know,” the man said, struggling to remain conscious. “Just El Indio. Please, get me to a doctor.”

  Although not a religious man, Chucho’s thoughts turned to cautionary parables like Lot’s wife and Icarus and the sun. El Indio. He should have listened to El Coronel’s warnings. Mierda.

  The man was desperate and knew he would die soon without medical attention. Chucho figured he may as well finish what he had started.

  “What is the barn used for?” he asked the dying man. “I’ve noticed people coming and going from there in the middle of the night. What is it?”

  The man was now beyond panic. He knew death was in the wings if he did not get help soon.

  “I don’t know for sure,” the man said, struggling now to get the words out. “There are Venezuelans who spend a few days at the Rancho, then disappear into the American side of the border. About a week or so days later, they return, always in the early hours of the morning. I swear, that’s all I know. Please, take me to a doctor. I can’t hold out much longer.”

  Chucho exhaled slowly. Venezuelans? Disappearing into the United States for a week or so, and then sneaking back across the border into Mexico. Why? Then it hit him. The Federal Reserve Bank bombings.

  “Hijo da puta,” he muttered, pulling the cell phone from his shirt pocket and making a quick call.

  He returned his attention to the bleeding man.

  “A doctor should be here in about five minutes,” he said, resting his hand on the man’s uninjured shoulder. “You’ll be fine. I’ll stay here with you until he arrives.”

  He motioned for his man, who was still sitting in the driver’s seat, to come around and open the rear door. The wounded man offered no resistance as the two men dragged him from the back seat of the pickup truck and propped him up against the side of the old gas station, making sure that he was comfortable.

  “While we’re waiting for the ambulance, tell me more about these Venezuelans.”

  After about five minutes, once he figured he had learned enough, Chucho took out his gun and shot the man in the forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 24

  FORTUNATELY FOR CORTEZ, HE was able to catch a ride to Laredo with a DEA buddy of his, Tim Jackson, who was flying back home from a scheduled monthly meeting in Houston. The Laredo office is under the command of the DEA’s Houston Division.

  By the time Cortez and Jackson arrived at the Border Patrol’s Laredo offices, it was just past noon and Frank Diaz was sitting in his office with the sheriffs of Jim Hogg and Webb Counties, along with Bobby Janak of the Laredo FBI.

  “Oh, good, there you guys are,” said Diaz, interrupting the conversation. “We just started about a minute ago, so you haven’t really missed anything.”

  Cortez and Jackson found a couple of empty chairs and sat down.

  “How long can you stay this time, Pete?” asked Janak, who was wearing a hand-pressed pair of tan khaki trousers and a blue polo shirt sporting the FBI logo.

  “Gonçalves said he’d give me three days, tops, and then I’m off this case for good. Fortunately, Tim had an extra seat on his plane, so I was able to catch a ride before the ASAC changed his mind.”

  “Well then, let’s not waste any time,” said Janak. “We’re putting on a full court press to catch this guy. In fact, we released his photo to the news media about an hour ago.”

  “Any reports so far?”

  “About four or five already, but the word is only just now starting to get out,” said Diaz, holding a used paper coffee cup below his lips and spitting into it.

  He had never picked up the smoking habit but had been dipping snuff since he was about ten. He slid the cup away about an arm’s length so that he didn’t have to look at it. Cortez, who was sitting just to his right, wordlessly slid the nasty-looking cup back in front of Diaz.

  “We’ve got an informal pool on who rats him out first, a concerned citizen or one of his competitors,” said the sheriff from Jim Hogg, still sporting a high-and-tight haircut from his days in the Marines. “All the smart money is on it being one of his competitors, though.”

  The two sheriffs each nodded sagely.

  “I don’t want to belabor the obvious, but didn’t he just kill all of them?” asked Cortez.

  “Yeah, but these guys are like cockroaches,” said the Webb County Sheriff matter-of-factly. “You kill one and ten more just like him pop up to take his place”

  “Have any of ya’ll ever heard of this guy, Chucho, before last month?” Janak asked. Everyone in the office shook their heads from side to side.

  “Seems to me, then, that we’ve possibly caught this thing in its early stages, which is good for us,” said Jackson, who was the only one in the room not fluent in Spanish. His specialty was Slavic languages. He had only been assigned to the Laredo Sector for a couple of months, having spent the previous four years undercover in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he had contracted a severe case of pneumonia and had to be pulled out before his health killed him. Life is full of ironies, since Laredo was his warm weather reward, right across the bridge from the most violent cartel in Mexico.

  “Well, let’s head on down the hallway to the communications room,” said Diaz, rising from his chair, a cue to everyone that they now would be leaving his office. “We have a conference call set up with the Del Rio Sector.” Del Rio was the border patrol sector just to their north, while the Rio Grande Valley Sector, based out of Edinburg, was just to their south.

  Once the group had settled around the conference table in the operations center, Diaz signaled to one of his agents, a young Hispanic woman in her twenties, to begin the video-teleconference. A moment later, the large monitor mounted on the wall came alive in a split screen, with Del Rio on the left and Edinburg on the right.

  “Okay, folks, let’s get started,” said Diaz, who for the next five minutes laid out, in detail, what they knew about Chucho, along with his plan, with their help, to apprehend him.

  ◆◆◆

  Graciela was sitting in her favorite flower-print wingchair in the study when she heard the nerve-rattling sound of the buzzer from the Bunker go off. Tío Memo had often suggested that she change it to a less jarring sound, but she wanted to be sure she never missed an alert from the operations center.

  “Graciela,” she said after picking up the lime green phone, which was on a point-to-point circuit with the Bunker.

  “Gracie, I think you’re going to want to see this,” said the woman on the other end. She pronounced it GRAW-see. “It’s a live feed from the Laredo Border Patrol, a conference call between them and the Border Patrol sectors in Del Rio and Edinburg. They’re talking about that vato, Chucho.”

  “Feed it on up to me over the green line,” said Graciela, referring to the high-capacity, lead-shielded video cable that ran from the Bunker to her study. Not
even the NSA could tap into that signal, which was absolutely crucial now to prevent them from finding out that she, too, had access to the CBP secure communications.

  Gracie watched for a couple of minutes as Diaz gave his presentation. Then she picked up the fluorescent green phone and said, “Zoom in on the people in the Laredo room and tell me who they are. Is Rhonda there?”

  Rhonda Shaughnessy was the woman Gwen Thompson had recommended during her recent visit to Palo Alto. She had just begun her job as an intelligence analyst at the Rancho a week earlier. Actually, she was the intelligence analyst, although an important part of her job over the next few months would be to build a team of three or four other analysts to take advantage of their newfound information resources.

  Rhonda focused the Laredo screen, which they were intercepting from the outbound signal and, one by one, zeroed in on each person, giving their name and agency affiliation. Finally, she came to Cortez.

  “This one is Pete Cortez, a special agent assigned to the Houston FBI office,” said Rhonda, running her right hand through her long red hair to push it back from her face. “I’ve been able to determine that he is also the unnamed FBI agent involved in the killing of two Mexican nationals a month ago. We’re pretty sure that the third Mexican national, the one who got away, was Chucho.”

  She had made a good choice when she hired Rhonda, thought Graciela. She’d have to remember to put a nice bonus into her numbered Swiss bank account.

  Graciela starred at Cortez’s wavy dark brown hair and blue eyes. He was the only one in the room still wearing a suit jacket, although he had no tie. Kind of a handsome man, she thought to herself.

  “He slit one man’s throat, stole his gun and killed the second man with it, all in a matter of seconds, at least according to the press reports,” Rhonda continued.

  “Well, our friend Chucho may be a wild animal, but it’s possible he may have met his match with this Special Agent Cortez fellow,” said Graciela, her eyes still fixed on the screen in front of her. “However, since Chucho has begun operating as a wild card in our sector, we need to make sure that he doesn’t survive long enough to be captured by the Americans. God only knows what he’s learned about us and our operations.”