Allies

by Wolf Riedel

  Garza smiled. “Bravo. You did well,” he said. He spoke quickly in Spanish to one of his officers who promptly left the room.

  “I’m having my people come in for a briefing,” he continued, “and I’ll give you a quick rundown of what’s going on before they come in.

  “The first thing you need to know—and it gives me some shame to say this—is that the PFP generally does not do criminal investigations; that’s more the job of what used to be the Policía Judicial Federal which was reformed in 2002 as the Agencia Federal de Investigación; a bit like your FBI. The PJF was disbanded because it became corrupted by the cartels. Unfortunately the AFI are very much going the same way. There are around seven thousand AFI officers. About fifteen hundred are under investigation for corruption and almost five hundred have already been charged. In large part, many of them have come under the influence of the Sinaloa cartel.

  “The comandante here is very reluctant to involve them in any investigations or operations and often comes to me when he wants police involvement.”

  Mark nodded his understanding but deep down had trouble comprehending how things could get that bad.

  “Two days ago,” continued Garza, “a patrol from the 10th received a tip from one of their informants that indicated that the Zumas had a very large armory in the compound that is on the map. The 10th was already aware that there was something going on there because there had on two occasions at night been suspicious men armed with rifles patrolling the neighborhood in two pickup trucks.”

  “Could the tip be from a rival organization wanting you people to take out the competition?” asked Sage.

  “We don’t think so,” said Garza. “The area is mainly a stronghold for the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas. If they suspected that this was an armory then they would take it out themselves if for no other purpose than to get the weapons and ammunition for themselves. The informant is a citizen from the barrio who wants the Zumas and their guns and drugs out.” Garza shrugged. “The worst case scenario is that the informant has been turned and wants to set up an ambush against us but we don’t see why the Zumas want to start a war with the army right now. They’re trying to gain a foothold in Reynosa.

  “So the plan is simple. We go in. The army, as you say will set up a cordon and will also do the initial entry. My men will storm in behind them and clean out the place. With luck we will hold a joint press conference here tomorrow to show the good people of Reynosa that we are doing our job and more importantly for you, we will have some prisoners to interrogate and a whole new stock of weapons to look at to see if any come from your people in Florida.”

  Garza nodded with a smile at them and turned his attention to his police officers who were starting to file into the conference room.

  Mark led Sal and Sage from the room and into the foyer. Another briefing in Spanish wasn’t going to make them any smarter. He made a mental note to himself to get serious about language training.

  “Where are we going to fit in?” asked Sal.

  Mark shrugged. “I presume in a vehicle on the perimeter until all the excitement is over,” he said. “The important thing is we get a chance to see whether or not any more AR-15s show up that have gone through Lewis’s hands. On top of that we need to add any and all AR-15 serial numbers to the ones we already got here to see if we can trace them through dealers to any other strawman purchasers in Florida.”

  “It’s nice they didn’t even bother to try to obliterate the serial numbers,” said Sal. “Makes things a bit easier.”

  Sage was about to say something when her cell phone rang.

  “I’ll hold that thought,” she said taking a few steps away from Mark and Sal. She answered her phone, “Baumgartner.”

  Mark watched as Sage wandered up and down the hall in deep conversation while he and Sal cooled their heels. Sal had taken a quick look outside and returned saying, “It’s a bit muggy out there. We’re better off in here for the time being.”

  Mark merely nodded. There was something about Sage that told him the call was not routine. He was impatient for her to finish up and tell them what was going on.

  “So how do you think things are going with Mabel and Kristin?” asked Sal.

  “What?” said Mark breaking out of his reverie.

  “I said, how do you think things are going with Mabel and Kristin?” Sal repeated.

  “All right I guess,” he replied. “It’s me she hates and not Kristin.”

  “Roxy tells me that’s definitely true, but it’s Kristin that Mabel needles and prods constantly,” Sal said popping a stick of gum in his mouth. “That can’t be good for her either.”

  Mark wished that Sal would lay off. He well knew how Mabel’s attitude bothered Kristin and that there was little he could do to help her. Being away from home while Mabel was visiting might make things easier for him but deep down he knew that Kristin would be alone fending off one whining assault after another. Out of the corner of his eye he watched with some relief as Sage flipped her phone closed and strode back over to them.

  Mark raised his eyebrows in an unspoken inquiry.

  “That was Whitlock,” she said. While they were here in Mexico, her partner continued to work the case in Tampa.

  “Must have something from the look of you,” said Sal.

  “Yup,” she replied. “We got an ID on the other burned body they found in Ocala. A young missing runaway by the name of Naliaka Steele. Reported missing two years ago at age twelve. Fifth time she ran away. Missing Persons gathered DNA the last time but didn’t do much more. When the DNA hit came back Ben went to interview the mama and some of her friends and found that she’d been hanging with some of the local street hoods. They figure she was groomed into becoming one of their string of hookers. He ran the names through Gangs and Drugs and found almost all of those folks are now part of MQ-27.”

  “So the link with MQ-27 is getting even stronger,” stated Sal.

  “Even more than you think. Word is that Herrera, besides running the bar also had a leading role in running MQ-27’s prostitute operations.”

  “What do ya figure? He substituted some girl of roughly the same age and size as Megan in the car fire?” asked Sal. “Who the hell was he trying to fool? He must have known we’d eventually be able to rule Naliaka’s body out as being that of Megan.”

  “Unless he was planning that the fire would destroy any identifiable evidence?” Mark speculated and then almost immediately dismissed it. “Nah,” he said. “The fire wasn’t that big or hot. He should have known.”

  “Maybe it’s simpler than that,” Sage said. “Maybe he just wasn’t the sharpest knife in the MQ-27 drawer and that’s why he’s dead now. He tried to keep her for himself and in doing that he pissed off his own bosses who had him hit.”

  Mark nodded. “Makes sense,” he said. “That leaves the question of with Herrera dead, where is Megan?”

  CHAPTER 44

  Wauchula, Florida

  Monday 19 Mar 07 0130 hrs EDT

  Meraz’s guys had been briefed by Tuffy and had figured there’d be no problem being ready to make the grab that night. Tuffy had little confidence in them but eventually he’d agreed that the go-time would be at one thirty Monday morning. Tuffy took time to make his final preparations and was ready Sunday night. He’d even had time to arrange having someone standing by at the garage between three and four in the morning to take his old car off his hands and give him a replacement.

  The drive to Wauchula had been uneventful. By midnight he was parked in the same spot as the last time he’d been there and walked his mind through the plan. There’d be nothing fancy about this hit. Get in. Do it. Get out. Keep it simple.

  Around twelve thirty the last light had gone out in the house. He’d marked a four foot high by six foot wide window with the sill a mere two and one half feet off the ground as the master bedroom and the most probable place where he would find his target. All that remained was the security light that basked the entire front y
ard in a bright glow. The backyard, on the other hand, was in darkness and unilluminated. There was a chance that the light by the back door might be on a motion sensor but as best as Tuffy had been able to tell, it wasn’t. If he was wrong he was prepared to act quickly.

  His tools were simple tonight. He had a .40 caliber Smith and Wesson 4006 with three spare eleven round magazines. He had been told by Meraz that it was sanitized. It didn’t matter how sanitized it was, it was going into the Bay as he drove back into Tampa. He’d disassembled it completely and polished every piece of it with bleach to destroy any prints or DNA. He’d re-oiled it and from there on handled it only with latex gloves. His clothes were covered in a disposable—i.e. burnable—paper coverall which could be easily destroyed together with the gloves, balaclava and new sneakers that he wore. His only other equipment was a sheathed hunting knife, a fireman’s Halligan tool for taking any door or window, a Mag-Lite with three fresh D cell batteries and a half dozen zip ties in case he felt comfortable enough to leave any of the rest of the family alive. The Halligan and the knife would join the pistol in the Bay.

  With twenty minutes to go, Tuffy had left his car, crossed the road and made his way through coarse stubble of the field behind Noda’s house. He had approached to within ten yards of the house without any motion sensors being tripped and had hunkered down amongst the bushes that bordered the field. He sat quietly; the cacophony of chirping crickets easily drowning out any rustling sounds from the coverall or his breathing. Patiently he had waited out the remaining time and promptly at one thirty he rose up and strode directly to the back window, the Halligan in his left hand and the pistol in his right. Even in the dark he could tell that it was a simple double-paned slider and whatever screen it would have had at one time was missing. Inside, bathed in the LED glow of two alarm clocks, a land line phone and radio he could see the bed on the opposite side of the room with two figures reclined under the sheets. There were two night tables, one on either side of the bed. Closet doors were to the right. There were two passage doors, one on the same side as the closet doors was presumably an ensuite bathroom. The other, to the left of the bed presumably led to the hallway.

  He gently put sideways pressure on the glass to see if the fates had been kind.

  They had been.

  Tuffy gently set down the Halligan and took out the flashlight. Juggling the light and pistol in his right hand he quickly slid the window sideways, transferred the light to his left hand and hit its switch. Both figures in the bed struggled to sit up; the one on the left, the male, moved quickly. The slower one on the right Tuffy recognized as most probably being the woman he had observed dropping off the kids and going into the school.

  Two shots hit the male in the left side and spun him back against the headboard. One more shot went into the head before Noda was able to properly assess what was happening. He never cleared the bed.

  The female screamed and froze. Tuffy estimated he had the opportunity to let her live and levered himself through the window. Even if he let her live, he would have to immobilize her so that she wouldn’t be able to raise the alarm. As he struggled through the window with the light and pistol hindering his entry, she finally reacted and leaped from the bed. Ignoring the closer bathroom door she tried to run around the bed for the door to the hall. Tuffy presumed she was going to try to protect her children. This put her right in Tuffy’s path and he backhanded her with the pistol, spinning her senseless to the floor.

  Tuffy took a glance at Noda to ensure that he was still down and then went to hogtie Noda’s wife with two zip ties, one around the ankles and one around her wrists but so that the two were interlocked hog-tying her by buckling her feet to her wrists behind her back.

  He looked more closely at Noda and noted that the head shot had entered the right eye and blown away the better part of the right rear of his skull. He was definitely dead.

  He made his way through the hall, looking for the childrens’ rooms but with extreme caution. Out here it was not unknown that children would have guns in their rooms and know how to use them. Finding the kids was not difficult; they were hiding under their beds. Tuffy quickly secured them with zip ties as well. He expected that they’d be found some time tomorrow morning, when no one from the Nola family showed up for work or school.

  The trip back to the car was as uneventful as the trip in. Tuffy had picked up his three spent casings from the bedroom floor and the Halligan from outside the window and made his way back to the car. One by one he pulled off and checked over the coveralls, sneakers, gloves and balaclava for any damage which could have allowed a DNA transfer. There was none and he bundled them all into a paper bag, the gloves last, and put on a fresh pair in their stead. The Halligan, pistol, brass, extra magazines and the flashlight made their way into a second bag. Both went into the trunk.

  A few miles up the road, he pulled into a deserted treeline, took out the bag with the burnables, soaked it with some barbecue starter fluid and set it alight. He waited for the fire to burn out and then used a stick to thoroughly stir the glowing ashes and kicked sand over them before getting back on the road.

  He drove back along State Road 62 over to the I-275 and the crossing over Tampa Bay via the Sunshine Skyway. The region around Tampa had numerous causeways crossing the bays and inter-coastal waterways. Many of those, however, had Department of Transport video monitoring systems, the Skyway having probably the most cameras. Despite the fact that the car would be disposed of, Tuffy did not wish to have any video evidence of a gun dump which might lead police divers to discovering his tools.

  He made his way to one place where he was sure that with a gentle swerve to the side and a strong toss over the curb railing would make his gear would disappear without any evidence being left behind. Immediately after crossing the Skyway he made his way west on State Road 682 and then south on 679 into the cluster of keys that made up the southernmost end of Pinellas County. He paused for a moment in a deserted area just long enough to move the remaining bag from the trunk to the passenger seat.

  Tuffy’s choice for a dump site today was the bridge over a channel connecting Terra Vere with Madeline Key. Sandy had shown him how to access the NOAA online marine charts and he had determined that there were sixteen feet of water over the constantly shifting sands below. Both vehicle and boat traffic was nonexistent at that time of day and he was easily able to open the passenger side window and, coasting along without breaking, steer the car close to the rail and toss the bag across. A look in the rear-view mirror confirmed that it had gone cleanly over the side in the center of the channel.

  It wasn’t until he had changed out his car—the old one definitely going to the chop shop for parts, the tires to be burned—that he finally called Meraz on his TracFone.

  “It’s done,” he said simply.

  “I wish the other thing was,” said Meraz. “Come and see me.”

  It wasn’t until four in the morning that Tuffy had finally rolled into the driveway at Sandy’s house with his new, albeit a used 2005, car.

  The meeting with Meraz had gone quickly. The team that had been sent to Cabello’s had not called in and by the time Tuffy had arrived at Meraz’s house. Meraz had already sent a scout to do a drive by to see what was going on. The scout had reported the place crawling with cops and discretely pulled away.

  Meraz had nothing to offer on what to do next. Neither had Tuffy; he’d leave it to the big dogs to figure out where things went from here.

  Sandy’s house was dark and Tuffy sat in the car under the carport to ponder recent developments.

  Whatever may have happened to Meraz’s crew, Tuffy was isolated from them. They didn’t know who he was and the only link between them and him was the disposable TracFone which would soon be tossed. After making his final report to Meraz he had turned it off and pulled its battery. Tonight he’d be pulling and shredding the SIM card and smashing the phone with his sledge ensuring the memory chips were obliterated, then everything would
go into an garbage bag at a random MacDonald’s.

  The only link to him was Meraz and this didn’t particularly bother him. Even if one of Meraz’s crew talked and was able to finger Meraz, it would end there. Meraz knew the score. Even in the worst case scenario he’d basically do his time and then come back to work. There would be no giving up of Tuffy to make a deal because Tuffy, even as the doer, was at the bottom end of the food chain and you don’t make deals with the big fish to get the little ones. It worked the other way around.

  Basically they’d lay low for a few days to see what shook out. Meraz and Hernandez would need to reboot their strategy. In hindsight, Meraz had said, maybe we should have kept Noda alive but who could have figured the guys would screw up nabbing Cabello. Tuffy figured, but didn’t say, that it was probably 50/50 that they would.

  Tuffy’s problem was more personal and still had to do with Sandy and the girl. Sandy’d decided to call the girl Amber. Sandy had said that if you take away her name and her past life, she’d bit by bit start to identify with the two of them as her family. She said it was a thing called the Stockholm Syndrome.

  Where does she get this shit from, he wondered.

  As he sat in the dark he couldn’t help but acknowledge that his role in this whole thing was entirely reactive and that Sandy was running the whole show. Not only did he realize that but he was prepared leave it that way. In fact, that’s the way he preferred it. To date his contacts with the girl had been minimal and only while wearing his balaclava. He intended to keep it that way. If things started to look like they were going south, well then, he’d have a way of dealing with that too.

  CHAPTER 45

  PB POWDER, Afghanistan

  Monday 19 Mar 07 1340 hrs AFT