Rancho Buena Fortuna

by Bill King

  “Damn,” said Cortez, finding a deserted alcove and sitting down. “There’s a notorious Sicario—hitman—who goes by the name Thirty-Five. Legend has it that he’s a Brazilian or an Argentine, but nobody really knows for sure. He’s been tied to more than a hundred assassinations over the years, but his work pace seems to have slowed down lately. Probably replacing quantity with quality. Rumor has it that his minimum charge is two million per target.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Yeah, and that’s the absolute minimum. He probably charged a heck of a lot more for this one, given the location and the stakes involved.”

  Cortez was pissed. Not for Chucho—the little scumbag had gotten exactly what he deserved—but because now they would no longer be able to squeeze him for more information.

  “Well, whoever pulled this off is a flippin’ magician,” said Janak. “They had the entire building on lockdown within minutes after one of the deputy sheriffs went into the restroom with Chucho. They tore the entire building apart. They found a cleaning man tied up and gagged in one of the supply storage rooms down the hall. That’s probably how the killer escaped.”

  “Did they happen to catch his face on any of the security cameras?”

  “Unfortunately, no. They have footage of a cleaning man—most likely our killer—going off shift, but his face was covered by a baseball hat pulled down low.”

  Cortez grunted and stood up. He began walking across the lobby to the long row of glass doors that led out to the back terrace.

  “How did they even know we had him, Bobby? We never released it to the press. Besides, whoever did this was waiting for him in the men’s room, beyond the security checkpoint. How did he know when and where to be? This was definitely an inside job.”

  “Man, I hate to even think that’s possible,” he said, a tone of angst in his voice. “I just can’t believe that one of our own would sell out to the cartels.”

  “Yeah, but those scumbags knew,” said Cortez. “They clearly had inside information. The question is, did we give it to them wittingly or unwittingly?”

  ◆◆◆

  After getting off the phone with Janak, Cortez called Gonçalves to give him the news about Chucho.

  “Yeah, I just heard about it not more than a couple of minutes ago,” said the ASAC. “I was going to give you a call to let you know, but you beat me to it.”

  “Bad news travels fast, that’s for sure.”

  “Speaking of which, I just got off the phone with the NCTC in Washington.” The NCTC is the National Counterterrorism Center.

  “Anything you can tell me about over the phone?” asked Cortez.

  “No, nothing that won’t keep overnight. I know it’s a Sunday, but how about we meet for breakfast somewhere tomorrow? There are still a few things I need to check on first.”

  ◆◆◆

  It was well past nine the following morning—a Sunday—when Cortez walked through the doors of the small restaurant in Rice Village. It was only about five minutes from his condo in the Montrose neighborhood.

  Most of the tables were already occupied by Millennials, many of them in jogging attire, enjoying a light breakfast before setting out on their day’s activities. Gonçalves, dressed in blue jeans and a dark blue and orange Astros World Series tee-shirt, was already seated at a small table over by the window, waiting for Cortez to arrive. He was reading the sports page of the Houston Post and, as he was turning the page, he glanced up and noticed Cortez standing by the front entrance, his eyes scanning the restaurant looking for him.

  “Pete, over here,” he called out, raising his right hand casually in the air.

  Cortez strolled across the restaurant and sat down at the table. A young waiter, sporting a man-bun, followed him over and Pete ordered some coffee.

  “So, what is it that you couldn’t tell me over the phone last night, boss?”

  Gonçalves looked around to see if anyone might overhear them.

  “According to the NCTC, Interpol has been receiving a lot of chatter about a nuclear device that went missing from a Russian military base about a month ago,” said Gonçalves, pausing to take a sip from his cup of coffee. “Rumors are that it eventually made its way to France, where it was reportedly loaded onto a cargo ship in Marseilles bound for Mexico.”

  “So, what does this have to do with us? Why don’t we just have the Navy interdict the vessel at sea and confiscate the device.”

  “Unfortunately, the ship has already docked in Veracruz…five days ago.”

  Cortez said nothing, his mouth agape, just staring at Gonçalves for a few moments.

  “Well, I’ve got to admit, that’s first-rate police work on the part of the Europeans.”

  Gonçalves smirked, then said, “Now that it’s in the western hemisphere, what do you think the odds are that it’s not headed our way?”

  “Mierda.”

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 32

  “ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY SURE about that?” asked the stern looking woman in the dark blue summer dress with white polka dots. She did not look pleased. “Absolutely sure?”

  “Yes ma’am,” said the technician, a chubby man in his early forties whose heavy-framed glasses made him look like a nerd trying to be fashionable. He swiveled his chair ninety degrees to face her and leaned back. “There’s no doubt about it. There’s a bug in the communications software at the Laredo Border Patrol headquarters and it’s inconceivable that whoever installed it also doesn’t now have access to all electronic communications passing through the building.”

  “Jeez Louise, Myron,” said the woman in a thick Alabama accent. She was seated next to him, nervously fidgeting with the silver cross and chain she wore around her neck. She mulled over the consequences of what she had just heard.

  The border patrol in Laredo had detected an anomaly during a routine monthly update and informed their higher ups in San Antonio, who dispatched a digital forensic examiner from Washington. That was him. The woman was a senior executive with the National Security Agency, detailed to accompany him to Texas to facilitate interagency cooperation. In other words, she was the battering ram in case he ran into any bureaucratic resistance.

  The two had arrived in Laredo the day before, a Saturday, and had spent the last thirty-six hours tracking down the source of the anomaly.

  “Do you think you can you pinpoint when the bug was installed and who did it?” she asked, her left hand wiping the slight perspiration now beading on her upper lip.

  “That’s going to take me a while. Whoever inserted this into the system did a really good job of covering their tracks.”

  “But can you eventually figure it out?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll eventually figure it out, but it’s going to take some time,” he said, taking off his glasses and wiping the sleep from his eyes. “This person is really good, but nobody is that good.”

  “Well, keep working on it, Myron,” she said, rising to her feet and reaching for her purse that she had hung over the back of her chair. “I’ll alert the folks at NSA and the FBI that we have a problem down here and that we’ll follow up with a preliminary damage assessment, hopefully the first thing in the morning when everyone else comes back to work from the weekend.”

  ◆◆◆

  “Jack, it’s Bob Saunders,” said the man on the other end of the telephone. “Have you got a few minutes? I’ve got something important I think you need to know.”

  “Hey, old timer,” said Jack Gonçalves, who was getting ready take his family to the beach for the day. “It’s been a while. Sure, I’ve got a few minutes to spare. What’s up?”

  Bob Saunders was now a senior agent with the Bureau in Washington. He had taken Gonçalves under his wing during his first assignment nearly twenty years earlier. It had been several years since the two had last spoken.

  “I’ve been hearing some disturbing things concerning the Inspection Division’s shooting incident review of your guy,” said Saunders, who had run the B
ureau’s Miami office prior to his current assignment at the headquarters. In Gonçalves’ mind, he was one of the good guys.

  “I haven’t heard much of anything since the last time that pompous prick, Reggie Calhoun, was down here,” he said, leaving no doubt what he thought of the investigation and the man conducting it. “That could be either a good thing or a bad thing, but I’m assuming by your tone that it’s a bad thing.”

  “Reggie Calhoun is the kind of guy you meet for the first time and wonder how in the world he ever got accepted into the FBI,” said Saunders, not mincing any words. “Guys like you and me pick up on that immediately. Unfortunately, you and I are becoming a shrinking minority in the Bureau, especially up here in Washington.”

  “Is this your roundabout way of telling me that Cortez is in real trouble?”

  There was a protracted pause before Saunders spoke again.

  “I’m not sure what your guy said to him, but Calhoun has a colossal burr under his saddle,” he said, his speech cadence picking up. “I’m hearing that he wants to pursue criminal charges.”

  “What criminal charges? It was a clean shooting. His life was in imminent danger and he acted accordingly. Had he not done so, he’d be dead. Calhoun could never make that charge stick. No way.”

  “Oh, I think even Calhoun realizes that,” said Saunders, the exasperation showing in his voice. “That’s why he intends to recommend charges for using an illegal weapon, that old OSS knife that Cortez used to kill the first man. A knife with a seven-inch blade is apparently illegal to carry in Texas, which, as we know, is where the incident occurred.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I wish I was. I’ve known Albert Hennessy long enough to know that, while he might not accept that recommendation, the other members of the review panel might just force his hand.”

  “That’s bull crap!” shouted Gonçalves, causing his wife to peek her head through his open office door to make sure everything was okay. “Besides, that particular restriction on knife blade length was abolished by the Texas legislature last year.”

  “He knows that,” said Saunders. “Your guy already pointed that out to him. Made a big deal of it, too.”

  “So, what’s the problem then?”

  “He’s going to make an issue of the two incidents from the previous year, both of which happened before the new law went into effect on September 1.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Hey, I know it sounds stupid and he could get slapped down, but it’s also possible that he might actually pull it off. I don’t think you want to take that risk.”

  “So, what are you suggesting?”

  “Between you and me?”

  “Yeah, between you and me.”

  “Here’s a phone number for a local cop in Northern Virginia,” said Saunders. “He’s expecting your call. Just remember, whatever you do, don’t mention my name to anyone in the Bureau concerning this. If you need to, just say it came from an anonymous tip.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because your guy, Cortez, reminds me of you…and myself,” said the senior FBI official. “Call him now. You don’t have a lot of time to derail this.”

  ◆◆◆

  Jack Gonçalves’ conversation with DC detective Fred Murphy went even better than he could have ever hoped.

  It turns out that Reggie Calhoun had been stopped late one night in Georgetown by a District of Columbia police officer several months earlier. Calhoun’s slurred speech and demeanor led the arresting officer to suspect that he had been drinking, but Calhoun repeatedly refused to blow into the breathalyzer.

  According to the arresting officer, Calhoun became belligerent, letting the officer know in no uncertain terms that he was a senior FBI official and was in a position to ruin the policeman’s career. The officer wrote out a ticket anyway and noted on it that Calhoun had refused to take a blood-alcohol test, which calls for an automatic one-year suspension of his driving privileges.

  The police officer was informed unofficially by his sergeant two days later that the entire matter involving Calhoun was being dropped. The officer, sensing that all information concerning the incident would soon mysteriously disappear, downloaded the film from his body camera onto a thumb drive and hid it for safekeeping in his personal safe at home. He gave a second copy to Murphy.

  As it turns out, his hunch was right. All record of that evening was deleted from the system. All except the video from his body camera, that is. Did he want it, the detective asked Gonçalves?

  Five minutes later, the dashcam video of the incident was transmitted to Gonçalves personal laptop at home.

  ◆◆◆

  The next day was Monday and Graciela and Calderón were having breakfast out on the veranda, basking in the early morning tranquility of the river. She had arrived back at the Rancho from her trip to Houston around noontime the day before. A slight breeze was coming in from the west, a pleasant respite before Mother Nature cranked up the furnace. Like the past three days, it was forecast to reach one-hundred-and-five by later that day.

  The two were going over the details for the upcoming operation, the one that would take them past the point of no return. For her, this was just business, nothing more, nothing less. For Fósforo, it was personal, although in an entirely theoretical way. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

  That was the problem with revolutionaries, she often told herself. They were much too committed to ideological goals, which tended to blind them to any realities that didn’t conform to their vision of the world. In that respect, she and the Venezuelan were polar opposites.

  She was interested in money and power, and in that order. She didn’t care much for politics although, when she did, she tended to lean to the left. Tío Memo had always told her that it had more to do with age than with intellectual rigor, that age and the burdens of responsibility would round off the sharp edges of ideological fervor. He tended to lean to the right.

  Not for people like Fósforo, though. He was a man on a mission. A true believer.

  “My people are champing at the bit to finally get started on this mission,” said the Venezuelan, who had barely touched the food on his plate. “Not that the American Federal Reserve bombings haven’t been worthwhile endeavors, but this one—detonating a nuclear device on American soil—is the kind of attack El Movimiento 28 de Júlio was created to carry out. It will strike at the heart of the imperialistic capitalists who have brought such misery to the people who inhabit our planet.”

  Graciela’s time spent living in California had exposed her to such overwrought verbiage. When she was younger, she may have felt the vicarious sense of excitement of upper middle-class students adopting the mantel of workers and farmers and the poor, but not anymore. As Tío Memo had said all along, the burdens of responsibility eventually had sucked the air out of that idealistic party balloon.

  “You can achieve your political goals without killing tens of thousands of people, you know,” she said. “Maybe a demonstration explosion, set off in some uninhabited wasteland in west Texas or Arizona, would accomplish the same objective, without killing thousands of innocent women and children.”

  “I am starting to think that you may not have the stomach for this line of work,” he said, pushing his chair back from the wrought iron table and lighting a cigarette. “No American is truly innocent, not in this struggle. They enjoy the benefits from exploiting the less fortunate. They should also enjoy the consequences.”

  Graciela did not reply, not that she saw any merit to what he had said. She did not. It was just that she was a businesswoman and Calderón was merely an instrument in furthering their business plan, so she said nothing.

  When he had first told her of the plan, Tio Memo explained that he believed the Americans were on the brink of civil war as it was, and that they were simply providing a little extra nudge…and making a tidy little commission for their efforts.

  “It’s already past eight,�
� she said, glancing at the digital clock on her cell phone. “You’d better get moving. You and your team have a lot of work to do before you leave on Thursday.”

  ◆◆◆

  It was now Monday morning and the woman from the NSA had just finished choking down a breakfast burrito she had picked up at a drive-through not far from the CBP building. She was planning to spend the next five minutes simply enjoying her coffee when Myron, the digital forensic examiner, walked into the breakroom and interrupted her solitude.

  “Well, I think I’ve unraveled the mystery,” he said, pulling up a chair next to her and sitting down on it backwards, his arms draped over the back of the chair. He glanced up at the analog clock on the wall, which read eight-fifteen. He was exhausted from having spent all night in front of a computer monitor, trying to unravel the mystery.

  “You look like death warmed over, Myron,” she said, idly stirring her coffee with a black plastic swizzle stick. “Did you get any sleep?”

  “No, not really,” he said, using both hands to rub the sleep from his eyes. “I dozed off at the computer a couple of times but, otherwise, I worked straight through the night.”

  “So, tell me what you found, while I pour you a cup of coffee.” She stood up and walked over to the black Keurig coffee machine. “Dark and strong, right?”

  He nodded his head up and down and attempted to stifle a yawn. She selected a dark roast K-cup from among the thirty or so stored in a blue porcelain bowl next to the machine. She inserted it into the Keurig and set it to twelve ounces, strong.

  “The bug was installed almost six weeks ago, during a routine update by a technician sent down here from Homeland Security in Washington,” he said.

  “I assume we can ferret out the name of this person from Homeland?” She was standing over by the Keurig, waiting for the machine to finish dripping coffee.