by Wolf Riedel
He shook his head again and sat back down on the edge of the planter with the weight of the world on his shoulder.
Damn, Sandy, he thought. This isn’t going to work out well. What the hell are we doing.
CHAPTER 38
Puente Internacional Ignacio Zaragoza, Matamoros, Mexico
Friday 16 Mar 1310 hrs EDT
The southernmost of the three bridges connecting Brownsville Texas and Matamoros went by many names: the Veterans International Bridge or simply Veterans Bridge, the Los Tomates Bridge or, in Mexico, the Puente Internacional Ignazio Zaragoza, named after the Mexican General who defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla on May 5th, 1862 and whose victory was still being celebrated on both sides of the border as the Cinco de Mayo.
Mark, Sal and Sage had picked up a rental car and made their way from Brownsville International Airport over to US 77 and then took the short hop across the Rio Grande to the Mexican border crossing where, as instructed, they had pulled up next to a black with white doors Policia Federal Preventiva pickup truck positioned just in front of and to the left of the main border crossing check point.
The back of the truck contained three individuals clad in gray fatigues, gray baseball caps and blue/black ballistic vests calmly sitting in the day’s heat; in the case of one, a polished black combat boot nonchalantly dangled over the tailgate. Each cradled a German G3 assault rifle.
Mark addressed himself to a fourth policeman sitting in the co-driver’s seat of the pickup; the traditional seat for the man in charge of any military vehicle.
“Inspector Jefe Garza?” he asked
The cop removed his mirrored sunglasses and asked in response, “Señor Winters?”
“Si” Mark replied.
“Follow us.” The cop exchanged a few words with his driver and the pickup’s roof rack lights began to flash as the truck pulled across several lanes of traffic to the far right check point where it drove through waving Mark on to follow him.
It was a short drive past a complex of long, red tile-roofed buildings—commercial truck inspection stations on the right, passenger car stations on the left—before turning into a parking lot behind what appeared to be the complex’s main administration buildings. A dozen or so black and white PFP pickups and sedans were scattered in the parking lot.
Mark pulled into an empty parking space next to the pickup and exited the car. The heat hit him harder than at the airport. The high was just over eighty degrees but with almost a hundred percent humidity it was more like a hundred and five degrees. He instantly regretted wearing a tie and jacket today. He took a quick view around. Everything was scrubby trees and sparse coarse grass. Behind him a small lagoon, green with algae split the north and southbound lanes of the road leading to the city. To the east and west, the customs plaza was separated from the town by a cinder block wall which was unable to hide the tiny, tightly-packed, brilliantly-colored casas that lay beyond.
“Maybe it’s air-conditioned inside,” said Sal wiping his brow and quickly setting off for the doorway that had just swallowed their guide.
As Mark and Sage trailed behind he looked up to the roof where a small enclosure emitted a very air conditioning unit type of growling noise.
“I’m starting to understand siestas more now,” she whispered to Sal.
Mercifully the air conditioner was working albeit not optimally. It was cooler inside but not cold by any stretch of the imagination.
Mark found himself in a small foyer before a long counter behind which several police officers—minus tactical vests—were working at computers or just standing around. To their right was a hallway leading to several offices. In front of the counter stood Sal next to their guide and a short, somewhat heavy-set individual in seersucker slacks with a holstered automatic at his hip and a white short-sleeved shirt. Mark made an immediate note that from here on in the jacket stayed in the car.
“Chief Warrant Officer Winters and Detective Baumgartner, I presume,” said their host as he stepped forward toward Sage with an outstretched hand.
“Un placer,” he said as he took her hand in both of his. “Inspector Jefe Jesús Murillo Garza,” he introduced himself to her. “My friends call me Chuy.”
“Mucho gusto,” she replied. “Please call me Sage.”
He turned to Mark and took his hand in turn. “Chief Warrant Officer,” he said
“Mark,” said Winters. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I presume you’ve already met Staff Sergeant Sal Watts.”
Garza and Sal both nodded.
Mark continued. “I wish to thank you for making the time to meet with us today.”
“No thanks needed,” Garza replied. “From what I understand from Snyder is that you are working at shutting down a conduit for illegal weapons coming into my country. I should be thanking you for coming here. But enough pleasantries for now. We should head into Matamoros and talk.”
Garza motioned Mark to the door and stopped with an afterthought. “Have you eaten yet?” he asked.
“Not yet,” replied Mark.
“Good,” replied Garza. There’s a fine restaurant right outside our headquarters. We can go there first.”
He again made a move to the door and then again stopped with another afterthought.
“You have pistols with you, yes?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Mark.
“We have papers here for you but we need to add the pistols’ model type and serial number on them.” He turned back to the counter where three papers were set out. Mark checked out the forms and filled out his name, address and the details of his M11 while Sage and Sal did the same. The forms were in triplicate and the officer behind the counter signed his own name with a flourish and much rubber stamping before handing each of them the second copy.
“We’ll be driving semi-tactical; a pickup leading, one in the middle and one at the end. I’ll go second and your car goes fourth,” said Garza handing Mark a slip of paper. “Here’s the address in case you become separated. Do you have a GPS with Mexican maps.”
“Yup,” Mark replied.
“Good. Vamonos.”
The drive would have been short had they gone directly but to Mark it appeared that they were taking a random route as part of their security procedures. The vehicles stayed tight and Mark took his lead from Garza whose driver kept the inspector’s Ford Expedition on the bumper of the lead pickup. Like the pickups, the SUV was black with white doors bearing the PFP’s crest. Sal had managed to program the GPS even before they had left the custom’s compound and it was clear that they were heading into the central part of town near the Presidencia Municipal Matamoros. Most of the roads they followed were narrow, with single storey shops and homes directly on the narrow sidewalks; there was no front lawn culture in this city. The odd park or empty lot or street corner sprouted scraggly trees. Occasionally the road became a divided one where palms were planted on the median.
Within a block of the city’s main plaza they stopped and then turned to enter a substantial but narrow steel gate set at street level in one of the few multi-storey houses in the area. An armed policeman with a G3 and tactical vest was the only indication that they were at a police headquarters. No sign or street entrance showed that the colonial style yellow building with a balcony and a wrought iron railing around its entire second storey served a public purpose.
Inside, there was a courtyard converted to parking. A dozen cars, black and whites and unmarked took up maybe half the space. There was room in the open and under overhangs from the building for maybe a dozen more.
Mark backed the rental into a spot beside Garza’s SUV and popped the trunk.
“Anyone else want to leave their jacket’s in the car?” he asked.
“You bet,” said Sal. “I’ll get our laptops while it’s open.”
Sage merely nodded and handed Sal her jacket.
“Get mine too, please” she said.
Garza walked up to the car.
“We’r
e up there,” he said pointing to an ornate wrought iron stairway leading to the upper level, “but we’ll head outside for a meal first.” He led the way into a large foyer to the side of the building. An expansive marble floor and multi-colored tile walls spoke of old-world opulence, The three G3 armed police that manned a desk at the doors spoke of modern world security.
“Looks like a nice place you have here,” said Mark as he followed Garza.
“It’s very temporary,” replied Garza. “We’re a very new force slapped together a few years ago from the Federal Highway Police, the Fiscal Police, the Immigration Police, 3a brigada de policía militar—the army’s 3rd Military Police Brigade—and some additional military people. I came over from the 3rd myself. Since the President declared war on the cartels last year we’re undergoing another large reorganization and expansion. We have several new facilities being built in the area but for the time being this is our home.”
The foyer led outside; not onto the street but onto a pedestrian mall that ran at right angles to the street that they had come in on. Maybe twenty feet wide the mall sported wrought iron lamp posts running down its center interspersed by low, flowering bushes. With the exception of the PFP’s building, all the rest along the way had shops or restaurants directly on the street. Garza pointed the way to a restaurant several store fronts over on the other side of the mall. The restaurant’s entire front end, as well as one side, was open to the street. Tables and chairs spilled out onto the walkway.
“The owner is a former paratrooper who has adopted us as his favorite customers,” said Garza. “We get treated well here. The carna asada a la tampiqueña is particularly good here.”
Mark felt his Blackberry vibrate in his pocket.
“Excuse me a minute,” he said to Garza and turning to Sal, “Order me one of those and a Modelo Especial, please.”
He pulled the phone out of his pocket and pressed Send while maneuvering amongst the tables and stepping through the restaurant’s side entry to an empty table.
“Winters,” he answered.
“Mark,” came the voice at the other end of the line. “It’s Richter. I’ve got some answers for you. Do you have a moment?”
“Sure, Sir. Are you still in Kandahar?” he asked.
“FOB LAGMAN. I’ve just finished meeting with the CO and the CSM of the PRT here and we had a little time to talk about your boy Fletcher.”
Mark hauled his pen and a notebook out of his pocket.
“Go ahead, Sir.”
“None of the current senior staff were here when Fletcher was but there were some records that helped. I can confirm he was sent here from NMCB-22 and was assigned to the Zabul PRT from September ’05 to end September ’06. There wasn’t anything remarkable about his tour here other than he was sent down to PB POWDER from the beginning of June to late September last summer to supervise several construction jobs that they had Afghan contractors doing down there. The guy he was working for down there was a Master Sergeant Connor McLean from 5th SFG at Fort Campbell. What’s interesting about that is the ODA that’s there right now came out to join TF 31 last July so he would have been with them for two to three months.”
“Any way you can contact them?” Mark asked.
“Funny you should ask. We’re heading down that way with first light tomorrow. We’ll be stopping in at FOB SWEENEY first but should be at POWDER on Sunday. I’ll see if we can work Fletcher into the conversation. What’s your interest in this guy anyway?”
“He went AWOL after he got back from Afghanistan and his blood and prints were found in an abandoned fishing trawler just off New Orleans,” said Mark. “The trawler was involved in drug and gun smuggling.”
“Gotcha. I’ll keep the questions subtle. The ODA we’re visiting here have their own problems. Were the drugs on the boat from Afghanistan?” Richter asked.
“I doubt it but don’t rule it out,” said Mark. “The drugs are probably Mexican and South American coming into the US while the guns are ours heading to Mexico.”
The line was quiet for a moment.
“Just thinking out loud here,” said Richter. “Lewis was a reservist too, and with the Special Forces. Do you know if he ever served with Lesperance and his ODA? Tell you what. I’ll have someone at SOCCENT track that down for you if you haven’t got someone on it already.”
“Appreciate it,” said Mark. “We’re on the road ourselves here. Matamoros Mexico. Just sitting down for lunch with the Federales.” He looked over to his table just as the waiter was setting down his beer.
“Don’t let me keep you. We’re gonna have a team meeting here in a few minutes and then racking out for the drive south tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 39
W Spruce St., Tampa, Fl
Saturday 17 Mar 07 1400 hrs EDT
“Wake up, sleepy head,” Sandy’s voice drifted through the gossamer tendrils of a pleasant dream. Tuffy groaned as Sandy’s moist breath nuzzled into his neck; the memories of the dream fled beyond his grasp, vanished.
“What time is it?” he croaked through a dry throat. It was obviously bright outside but that didn’t tell him anything. Dawn had been breaking as he had come back to the house with the girl. He’d gone to bed shortly thereafter.
The snatch had gone far easier than he’d thought it would; no guards had been up when he had gone in through a first storey window. He had used a glass cutter and suction cup to remove a piece of window glass and thus gain access to the windows locking mechanism. It had been his first time doing this and the system had worked well.
The hall had been empty as he had silently made his way along and up the stairs, carefully treading as close to the wall as possible to minimize the risk of squeaky boards. He’d marked her room’s location in his mind on his prior observations of the place. Entry had been easy too. While the room had been locked with a deadbolt, it was a deadbolt that was thrown from the outside. A glance down the hall showed several other rooms similarly secured while only two rooms—probably for staff—had deadbolts with the keyed side on the hall side of the door.
Quieting the girl had also gone well. He had expected that she would probably be docile anyway. By now she would have been conditioned to be quiet, especially in the presence of someone exerting authority, even one wearing a balaclava to hide his face like he was. To be sure he had questioned Sandy on how they could efficiently drug her. She’d suggested an inhalation anesthetic and had quickly discarded halothane and even chloroform as too complex to use. She’d ended up suggesting an old stand-by—a diethyl ether-soaked gauze and a drop bottle—but cautioned him about its high flammability. She’d managed to rustle up a small bottle’s worth of it from one of the labs at the college.
Slinging the tiny, subdued girl over his shoulder he’d made his way back to the window and eight minutes after having arrived, he was on the road back to Sandy’s house in MacFarlane.
Sandy had moved out of her room and into that of her father’s. Her old room, like all those in the house, already had security bars. A padlock on the window and a hasp and padlock on the door had turned the small room into a cell as secure as her previous one in the whorehouse had been.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Sleeping again,” Sandy said. “There’s been no vomiting or spasms so I think she’ll be fine. I told you it wouldn’t take much.”
Tuffy nodded and swung his legs out of the bed and onto the floor as he sat up. The room’s ceiling fan was turning gently, stirring up the air.
Not hot at all but kind of sticky, thought Tuffy as he looked down at his glistening skin. At home with his family he’d slept in his skivvies—you’d never know who’d come into the room—but since taking up with Sandy he’d turned to sleeping in the raw like she did.
“I’m making myself some quesadillas. Want some?” she asked over her shoulder as she walked out of the bedroom.
“Yeah,” he replied. “I’m gonna grab a shower first.”
The house was an older one wi
th just one bathroom with a simple soaker tub and shower head. He stepped in, drew the curtain, turned on the taps and fiddled with them until he coaxed the water to the optimal temperature. He pulled the doohickey on the spigot and was rewarded by an initial blast of cold water on his head before the warm water rolled over him. He stood for a few minutes, one hand braced against the shower wall, the other holding a squeeze bottle of Axe Recovery lime shower gel.
That went better than I fuckin’ figured it would, he thought as he felt some of the week’s tension drain out of him to swirl down the drain with the water. He still wasn’t too sure about the long term practicality of this arrangement. Sandy had brought him around to some of the logistics. She had for some time had access to her father’s PNC bank account pin numbers and could therefore do online banking with his account. That meant his disability payments and any other checks could continue to be deposited to his account and she could pay utilities and other expenses online and also make cash withdrawals at ATMs. She’d looked into how to transfer the deed to the house and the title to the car and figured that eventually they’d use one of the raza’s mouthpieces to help put some forged documents through the system.
The Lewis girl was still an issue, but so far so good. She’s Sandy’s problem now. If push comes to shove I can still get rid of her and make Sandy understand. Deep down he knew he was rationalizing but what could he do?
Sandy’s voice cut through the noise of the shower.
“Phone, hon,” she called. “It’s Gordo.”
There had been ample time to finish both the shower and lunch before taking the quick drive down to the W Grace St house for his meeting with Luis Meraz.
“We’re going to have to stop meeting like this,” said Meraz as Tuffy walked through the door.
Tuffy smiled at the old joke and nodded his reply.
“I’m serious,” said Meraz. “This place is used for all kinds of street business but what you do for us is special. You and I should have a less obvious and more private place to discuss matters.”