Bitter Tide

by Jack Hardin

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The air shook around them, pulsing with sonic fury.

  Mark froze. “What was that?”

  Ellie turned wide-eyed toward the compound. “An explosion.”

  “Oh, no.”

  They had spent the last two minutes searching the woods around the tunnel opening and found little. Mark had discovered a single boot print. That was it. Ellie had found nothing.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  At that moment three agents appeared from the trees and called in Ellie and Mark’s location. Ellie drew up. “What happened?” she asked.

  “We don’t know.”

  Ellie pointed back to the stump. “There’s the opening. See what you can find. And expand your search perimeter,” she yelled as she and Mark ran back toward the compound. They came out of the woods near the road and rounded the wall of the compound, entering through the front gate. A light gray cloud was dissipating high in the sky. Agents were scrambling furiously like terrified ants, and someone was screaming like a banshee in the medic van. Ellie pulled up at the south end of the house where the kitchen had been. The foundation lay bare in a ten foot radius, a large hole in the center of the concrete. The roof in that area was gone, and what was left of an exterior wall lay sagging into the rubble, propped up only by the other end. Ellie could see right into the living room and down the hall, rubble and debris littered everywhere.

  Mark muttered something unintelligible, and he followed Ellie around to the rear of the home where they found Garrett sitting on the ground, thirty feet off the rubble, his head drooping between his legs, his arms lanced with tiny cuts, and flecks of wood lay strewn through his disheveled, dusty hair.

  Ellie raced up to him, kneeled down. “Garrett. Are you all right?”

  He looked up slowly. “Yeah.” A long cut was bleeding under his eye.

  “What happened?” Mark said.

  “They rigged the place. The blast came from...from the kitchen.”

  Jet ran up and, after silently assessing Garrett, said, “Sir, we just loaded Agent Riggs into a medic van. They’re heading out now. Emergency services has been called in.” His face was grave.

  “How is he?” Garrett asked warily.

  “A long piece of timber got him underneath his vest, and it’s lodged in deep. It’s pretty bad.”

  Garrett nodded and looked back at the ground. He put his hands in the dirt, shifted his weight, and grimaced as he stood up.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Ellie asked.

  “Yeah. Fine. Anyone else?” he asked Jet.

  Jet touched his ear mic, listening. “Team leaders just reported in. Other than Agent Riggs, we’ve got one with severe burns on his forearm and neck and another with a broken tibia. We’re lucky that, besides you three at the other end of the house, the rest of the team was out searching the area. What about the detainees?” Jet asked.

  Garrett shook his head, pointed his chin toward where the kitchen had been. “What do you think?” He pointed to a spot at the other end of the house. The bottom half of a leg, a mangled tennis shoe still attached, lay red and skinless. “We’ll only find pieces,” he said.

  Jet removed his helmet, ran a frustrated hand through his short white hair, and cursed. He threw his helmet down, and it skittered across the hard-packed dirt. “I need everyone to move away from the structures and back toward the vehicles,” he yelled across the yard. “We’ll need to bring in Bomb Squad and have them search.”

  They all gave the smoldering rubble a wide berth and followed Jet back to the front.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Andrés pulled the inconspicuous Malibu into the circular drive and waited. He didn’t honk. He had learned that lesson the very first week he came to work for Ringo. Honking was disrespectful, in Ringo’s opinion. You pulled up, you waited. You waited no matter how long it took.

  In this instance Andrés waited less than five minutes, and while he did he turned on his Spotify playlist and sent it via Bluetooth through the car’s speakers. The artist of choice was Eminem. Andrés leaned his head against the headrest. He closed his eyes. His cousin Francisco had loved this song, “Not Afraid.” It had been his theme song, and he, like the song, said he would break out of the cage one day. The cage that was Ciudad Juárez. That one day when he made enough of his own money, he would get out. But now that day would never come for Francisco. Not after he’d gotten gunned down in the street, murdered by a rival cartel, the individual names of the murderers never to be found out.

  Andrés missed his family. His missed his madre.

  The door opened, and Andrés sat up and quickly turned off the music. Ringo got in and shut the door. “Andrés. Thank you for picking me up.”

  “Of course, Jefe.” He pulled away from the house, down the driveway, and out onto the main road running through the community of mansions. He pulled an envelope from the visor above his head, handed it to Ringo.

  Ringo took it and rested his hand on his knee. “He got away?” Ringo finally said.

  “Yes,” Andrés replied.

  “How?”

  “A tunnel from what I understand.”

  “You tell Aldrich I want to meet with him. Yesterday. He has a lot of explaining to do. The wrong people could have gotten hurt. Or worse. It’s unacceptable.”

  “I will tell him when we speak next,” Andrés said. “He said he was going dark for the next several days. He also said that he was having problems with the detonator and had intended to do it the day before but that the timing worked out better anyway, at least in his opinion.”

  Ringo clenched his teeth, and a muscle stood out along his jawline.

  “It was foolish, Jefe. The timing.”

  “Yes.” He changed the topic. “What is Yolanda reporting?”

  “Only good things. Mr. Armstrong has become...what is the word?” It came to him. “Amenable. I am not sure if it had anything to do with the picture we gave him of his children getting on the school bus, but he has not been griping as much.”

  Ringo adjusted his fedora. “He’s a smart man and has built a good business for himself. In time he may come to see that we have done a good thing for him. He’s going to make it a long way in the distillery business.”

  Ten minutes later Andrés pulled up to a small brick building occupied by separate organizations. On the right was the local chapter of the American Heart Association and on the left was the Harry Miles Cancer Research Center.

  “After this, do you want to get some shrimp for lunch?” Ringo asked.

  “Sure, Jefe. You know I am always good for shrimp.”

  Ringo stepped into the warm, humid afternoon air, cooled slightly by a breeze blowing across the massive Caloosahatchee River just beyond. Ringo took the door on the left and was greeted warmly before he made it to the receptionist’s desk.

  “Well, there he is. It’s always so good to see you.” The plump lady had a sweet face and graying hair that curled naturally at the ends. She wore pearls and a shade of lipstick that complemented her complexion. She was classy. Ringo liked classy.

  He offered up a charming grin. “That’s because I help pay your salary. Hello, Margaret.”

  “You should pay for my dinner one of these days.”

  He handed her the envelope.

  She took it and stared at it for a while before looking up at him. “You don’t know how many lives you’re changing,” she said softly. “How many you’ve changed already.”

  “And I don’t need to.”

  “You need to take it easy,” she said. “With all these businesses you have running, you need to take time for a rest. Don’t overdo it.”

  “You keep on sounding like my mother and you’ll have to wait a long time for that dinner.” He winked down on her.

  “Don’t tease me now,” she blushed.

  He looked at the envelope. “There’s a little extra in there this time.”

  “More? How...can—I’m sorry,” she said quickl
y. “It’s not my business. You just do so much.”

  He couldn’t tell her the truth, so he said, “I’ve cashed out of some investments that came due.”

  “Molly isn’t here. I’m sure she would want to thank you in person, as always.”

  “No need. Maybe next time. Give her my hellos.”

  “Of course.”

  “And as usual—”

  “We keep your name out of it all.”

  He smiled. “You found it under the doormat.”

  “You should come see me someday when you don’t have anything to drop off.”

  “One day I will. That’s a promise.”

  “Don’t break my heart now,” she smiled.

  “I’ll see you again in a couple weeks, Margaret. You’re getting away from this storm, right?”

  “Leaving in an hour.”

  He nodded approvingly. “Be good.” He walked back out to the car and, as Andrés pulled away, said, “You and Chewy both need to get out of here and head north. That storm is getting bigger. I know you don’t get a lot of hurricanes in Juárez, so I’ll tell you that they’re nothing to mess around with.” He turned and looked out the window, looking past the tint but not really looking at anything.

  “We will.” Andrés could see that Ringo was more contemplative than before he had gone in to drop off the gift. He always was when he came out of there. Andrés knew what he had done, what he had given them. Andrés had gotten the cashier's check himself. He kept his eyes on the road and turned south onto McGregor Boulevard. “You are a good man, Ringo. There are no men in Mexico who work in drugs and then go do what you do. Not unless they are seeking more power. It is honorable.”

  Ringo didn’t answer, just continued staring thoughtfully out the window, an uneasiness crawling through him. One he couldn’t quite pin down.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Ellie hated paperwork more than anything. She couldn’t think of what might be worse. Cleaning Porta Potties perhaps, but right now she was thinking that even that wouldn’t be so bad.

  The raid had ended with one suspect getting two of his fingers blasted off by a close range shot from Ellie’s rifle. Forensics had later shown that the man had been high on mushrooms when the raid occurred, and after the medics got him back to the van to care for his hand he started bellowing about the ostrich that was munching on his hands and kept letting off horrific screams as though someone were eating him alive. But the reason forensics had been brought in for this particular individual was that, as he was screaming and as the medics were trying to hold him down, he had managed to unholster one of their sidearms and blew his brains out.

  And then there was the explosion that left seven dead, and with Eli and Curtis escaping there was no one to question, no one to put pressure on. So the pressure was coming from inside. She had spent all morning in the conference room with a team from the DEA’s Inspection Division, answering questions about the raid and her decision making process. It was standard procedure, but the team from Virginia may as well have told Ellie that they thought she had set the bomb herself. They were just doing their jobs, being objective, but that didn't mean she had to like the way they went about it. In addition, it all meant hours of reports, thousands of words.

  By everyone’s standards the raid had been fully unsuccessful. They ended up with three wounded agents, one still in critical condition, seven prisoners that had been ripped tooth to toenail, and another who had executed himself with an agency-issued firearm, because of, you know, the ostriches. The explosive used in the blast had been identified as Semtex, a hard to acquire explosive that was still available on some parts of the black market. Early on, Muammar Gaddafi, the deposed leader of Libya, had kept storehouses of Semtex and then in the late 1970s sold tons of it to the Irish Republican Army, among other worldwide factions. After his death the remainder was broken up and pressed into the unpredictable hands of the black market. It appeared that Oswald and Smith had not only escaped but had literally cleared the bases, setting the explosives in an attempt to ensure that no one was left to squeal on them. They had gotten lucky. Eli Oswald had just batted a thousand.

  And yet, those reasons weren’t the biggest failure of all, in Ellie’s opinion. Letting Oswald and his buddy escape was bad all right, but it didn’t touch the fact that they hadn’t located Dawson Montgomery, and no one remained to tell them where he was, whether he was still alive. That fact alone, accompanied by the image of that open box on Jean Oglesby's counter, had left Ellie with very little sleep last night.

  Ellie’s desk phone rang. She typed out a few more words and grabbed up the receiver. “Hey, Garrett.”

  “Ellie, can you put a pause on what you’re doing for a minute? Come see me in my office.” His voice was strained.

  “Sure. Give me a minute.” She returned the phone to its cradle and clicked away at the keyboard, finishing her paragraph. She saved the internal document, shut the lid to her laptop, and walked across the room.

  Before she could knock on Garrett’s glass office door, he motioned for her to come in. “Have a seat.” His face was taut. A tiny butterfly bandage clung to his upper cheek where he had gotten nicked in the blast the day before.

  “What’s up?” she asked. “You don’t look so good.”

  “Ah, I’ll be all right. Listen, we need to have a hard chat.”

  Ellie shifted in her chair. “Okay. Let’s have it.”

  “You’ve done a hell of a job since you’ve come on my team. It’s been what, nearly three months?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I invited you over here on a whim because I was frustrated that we weren't getting the right people locked up. But as you also know I haven’t been given much of a budget to do that. Then I ended up pulling Mark off his primary directive and putting him with you.”

  “What are you trying to say, Garrett?”

  He tried to smile, failed, and then said. “I’ve got to let you go. For now,” he added quickly.

  His words scraped against her. “Like, leave the agency?”

  “Yes.”

  “What for?”

  “Honestly? Ellie, the casualties have mounted so high I can’t talk my way around them.”

  “But this is the line of work we’re in, Garrett. I haven’t stepped out of line. Not once.”

  “I know you haven't. But think about it. We’ve got two dead Mexicans and five wounded from when you were escorting Victor Calderon back to prison. Then we’ve got Special Agent Sanchez getting shot in the arm when we raided the stash house over at Ridgeside. And then,” he tossed out his hands.

  “The compound.”

  He nodded.

  “But why me?” Ellie asked. “The raid was executed properly. By everyone involved. We couldn't have known about the Semtex. Bringing dogs in on a raid like that isn’t standard. To search for drugs, sure, but not explosives. Who would have known that Oswald would be the kind of guy willing to nuke his own people? On top of that, the shootout at the barn and the raids on the stash house and the compound were all because of what I brought to the table.”

  He threw his hands out. “You’re preaching to the choir, old friend. But you’re the one who shot those men at the barn, and,” he paused briefly, “that makes you an easy target. There’s just too much politics involved right now. You know as well as I do that raiding a stash house here and there gives up enough kilos to hold up in front of the camera. That looks good for the higher ups. All these deaths? Not so much. I have to answer for them, and my superiors have to answer for them. You know as well as I do that it gets really hard to explain away almost ten deaths in three months. Had we actually come away with someone we could lock up and question, that might be one thing. But Oswald’s gone, Smith is gone, and,” he tossed his hands out, “who even knows about the Montgomery guy? He’s not even part of our MO anyway.”

  “Unbelievable,” Ellie said. She knew how these things went. Someone had to take the fall. Why not her? Administrat
ively, she was on the fringes; part time, a contractor. She sighed. “Okay. When?” She already knew the answer.

  Garrett folded his arms. “As soon as you’re done with your reports,” he said flatly.

  “That will be this afternoon.”

  He stared at her blankly, sighed.

  “Garrett. I’ve been around the block enough to know that it’s politics that drowns out good people and good decisions. You know that all we’ve done these last few months will be for nothing unless we can go the final push. If we don’t, the wrong people will just surge into the hole we made and fill the vacuum.”

  “I know.”

  “What about Mark? Will you keep him on it?”

  “Where I can, yes. He’ll need to wrap up loose ends.”

  The office door opened, and a lady in a gray pantsuit entered, clutching a leather notepad holder, her black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, her face impassive. Sheila Davis with the Inspection Division. Sheila and her team had flown down from Virginia before the sun came up this morning, and Ellie had spent half the morning with her all the while feeling a little like a lamb to the slaughter.

  Garrett motioned for Sheila to take a chair. She shook her head. “Miss O’Conner, thank you for your time earlier this morning. I’m sure we’ll have additional questions for you, so please leave a good phone number with SAIC Cage here.”

  Without replying, Ellie asked, “Do you know the FBI’s plan? I brought this case forward. Can you at least give me that?”

  “Of course,” Sheila said. “From what I understand they have a local team working on it and are bringing in support personnel after this hurricane passes. It’s set to make landfall here late tomorrow night, so there isn’t much they can do for putting feet on the ground until it passes.”

  “After the storm passes? You're kidding, right?” She came to her feet. “This isn’t just a missing person. He’s going to be in awful shape. Please tell me they’re not dragging their feet trying to locate him.”