Cartel (18 page)

The SAC sounded strange, like he was testifying al-ready. Peterson guessed he was getting warmed up before he had to give a statement to the suits from OPR. "I didn't know what he was planning," Peterson said, "but come on, Bob, we both know extraordinary renditions happen from time to time, and headquarters tends to give them...tacit ap-proval."

"I don't know anything about that," Stockwell said. "And if you knew about any renditions coming out of this division it was your responsibility to come to me so that I could..."

"Could what, Bob?"

"Take appropriate action."

Peterson decided not to press the issue. The SAC was full of shit, but there was no way to prove it. No paper was cut on renditions. Thus there were no official requests and no official approvals. They were done off the books, and when a case agent filed a DEA Form 6, a Report of Investi-gation, to document an arrest made by rendition, the report always said that the defendant was apprehended on the U.S. side of the border and that the information about the defendant's whereabouts came from an anonymous tip.

Staring across Greene's desk at the SAC, Peterson was once again struck by how strange the man sounded. Stock-well was fond of cursing. Like a lot of desk jockeys he thought it made him sound tough. Now he was speaking in pure bureaucratese. Something he normally didn't do, espe-cially not one-on-one. Unless...

"Bob, are you recording this conversation?" Peterson asked.

Stockwell rubbed a hand across his face. "Why would you ask that?"

"Are you?"

Stockwell tried a hard stare, but he couldn't quite pull it off. The street agents didn't call him Bobby Socks for noth-ing. "No, I'm not recording it," he finally said in a voice that was a notch or two higher than normal. "Should I be?"

Peterson knew when he was being lied to, and he was being lied to right now, by his boss. He shook his head. "No reason I can think of."

"Scott Greene's reckless disregard for the law and DEA policy got three agents killed."

"Four crooked Mexican police officers killed our agents," Peterson said. "And that's who we should be going after. Not Scott Greene."

Stockwell shook his head. "No one is going after Scott Greene, but he has to be held accountable for his actions. Just like everyone else."

"The U.S. attorney's office indicted Sergeant Felix Ortiz for his participation in the abduction, torture, and murder of a DEA agent. What did DOJ expect? That would be the end of it? That we'd be happy with a tick mark in the indicted column? Case closed, move onto the next one? No, because that's not how we do things at DEA." He jabbed a finger out the window. "Those dope dealers out there need to know that we won't stop, that we will keep coming, that we will go to the ends of the earth and do whatever it takes to catch them and drag them back to an American prison for killing one of our agents. Because that's how we protect the rest of our agents."

"There are procedures," Stockwell said in a precise and moderated voice. "You know them as well as I do. When pursuing international fugitives we work through Main Jus-tice and the State Department in order to coordinate with our foreign partners."

"Are you fucking kidding me," Peterson said. "Foreign partners? Is that what we're calling Mexico now? Our for-eign partner? It's a narco-state run by gangsters. You think the Mexican government was ever going to turn over Felix Ortiz to us? There was only one way to get our hands on him and that was to go in and take him. So that's exactly what Scott did." Peterson hesitated for a second before plunging ahead. "Then you let two spooks snatch him right out of our holding cell."

"The agents from OPR aren't coming here to talk about how Ortiz got out of our custody. They're coming here to talk about the illegal way he got into our custody. So I sug-gest you focus on that."

"It'll be a short interview then because, like I said, I had no idea what Scott was planning."

"Would you agree that Special Agent Greene has a problem with authority?"

"You're talking about Afghanistan?"

Stockwell nodded. "DOD almost threw us out of the country because of that stunt he pulled."

"It wasn't a stunt," Peterson said. "He raided the big-gest heroin processing plant in the country and made the largest heroin seizure in DEA history."

"He didn't clear the raid with the military."

"Because the military was protecting the plant."

"That was never proven."

"An entire platoon of Marines was assigned to guard that plant because it belonged to a warlord who happened to be on our side that week. The only reason the Marines didn't shoot down Greene and his entire team was because the pla-toon commander thought the helicopters were carrying their relief."

"The situation over there has always been complicated," Stockwell said. "We have to make deals and we have to compromise. That's why every operation has to be cleared through the International Enforcement Division and coordi-nated with DOD. We're not an agency of cowboys anymore. We don't kick down every door we come across just because there's an ounce of coke on the other side."

"This morning when I looked at my badge it still said Drug Enforcement Administration, not Department of De-fense."

The SAC leaned back in his chair. "Greene is missing and we have to find him."

"So you can throw him under the bus?"

"You're mandatory in six months."

Peterson nodded. "And that means I'm the only one in this room not bucking to cap my career by landing a chief's job at headquarters."

"Scott Greene broke the law in two countries."

"The op went sideways on him," Peterson said. "He'll have to answer for that. But he's not responsible for the deaths of those agents."

"You need to get out ahead of this, Glenn. If you know where he is..."

"I have no idea where he is."

Stockwell stared at him for a long moment. "With or without your help, we're going to bring him in. His cell phone has gone dark, but I have alerts on his credit and debit cards. We'll know within ten minutes if he tries to use them."

"Sounds like you have everything covered."

"Have you spoken to him?"

"No," Peterson said without hesitation. Thirty years of carrying a badge and a gun and dozens of brushes with death had proved to him the truth behind the old adage, He who hesitates is lost. Maybe Stockwell knew he had talked to Greene, but maybe he was just fishing. Either way, he wasn't getting any help from his ASAC in railroading a good agent.

"Do you really want to bet your pension on Scott Greene?"

"Are you threatening me? Is that really where you want to go with this?"

"It's not a threat," Stockwell said. "It's simple reality. Because when the music stops, somebody always gets left without a chair. I know that somebody isn't going to be me. And I'd rather it not be you."

Peterson opened his mouth to tell his boss to fuck off, but before he could get the words out someone knocked on the door.

"Come in," Stockwell said in a hurry.

The door opened and the two suits from OPR walked in.

Scott and Benny got off the bus at the Gateway to the Americas Bridge, along with most of the other passengers. As the door hissed closed behind them and the bus rumbled away, they walked across Avenida 15 de Junio with their fellow passengers, but instead of continuing straight to the bridge with everybody else, Scott and Benny stopped at the edge of the fan-shaped service plaza at the foot of the bridge. The plaza was crowded with people, most of them headed north.

The bridge itself was a thousand feet long, with four traffic lanes and two pedestrian walkways. Scott had heard or read somewhere that it was actually the fourth bridge built at that location, the first three having been destroyed by floods. Right now the Rio Grande was little more than a wide creek. You could wade across it, which is exactly what a few thousand people did every day.

Benny nodded at a bank of payphones. "I need to check on Rosalita and make sure Maria can pick her up after school."

Scott pointed toward a cash exchange booth, a cambio, on the other side of the service plaza. "Don't those exchang-es usually have an ATM?"

"Yes," Benny said.

"You check on your daughter, and I'll get us some cash. We'll meet by the bridge."

"Okay."

"Be careful," he said.

"You too."

Then they walked away in opposite directions.

* * * *

The cash exchange was a fortified booth, big enough for two people, maybe three if they were good friends, but Scott could see through the bulletproof window that there was on-ly one person working inside, a serious-looking man in his twenties wearing some kind of uniform shirt.

Beside the window was an ATM. Scott fished his wallet out and shoved his debit card into the slot. He selected the English option and punched in his PIN. Then he chose WITHDRAW and U.S. dollars as the currency. A series of fast cash options came up. He pressed the button for a hundred dollars. Nothing happened.

He waited. Still nothing happened. His eyes wandered. He saw a security camera behind a pane of dark glass, the lens aimed at his face. Then a message flashed on the ATM screen: INVALID TRANSACTION. The screen cycled back to its initial greeting and instructions, in Spanish, and the ATM kept his debit card. "Son of a bitch," he said.

In the reflection from the glass, Scott saw a man step up behind him. It took all of his willpower not to turn around. He couldn't see the man's face clearly, but judging from his actions the man didn't look threatening, just impatient.

Scott pulled his credit card from his wallet. The card had a cash advance option. Scott had never used it, but he had set up the credit card with the same PIN as his debit card. He pushed the card into the slot, went through the same options, and tried to withdraw a hundred dollars. But once again the screen flashed INVALID TRANSACTION and the ATM ate his card.

Scott looked through the dark glass at the camera and wondered if someone was watching him.

* * * *

Humberto Larios, the man known as El Capitán, and the leader of the Los Zetas cartel, which the American DEA called the most violent criminal organization in the world, stood outside the fenced practice ring and watched his torero run a young bull through his paces. The bull, for whom Larios had not yet decided on a name, was a marvelous animal, with a beautiful coat, so black it almost looked blue, covering a thick sheath of rippling muscles, and a head crowned by the start of an excellent set of horns. Oh, this beast was magnifico.

Larios's cell phone rang. The called ID showed a Nuevo Laredo telephone number. Larios didn't recognize it, but fewer than a dozen people knew the number to his cell phone. He punched the ANSWER button. "Yes," he said in Spanish.

"It's me," the voice on the other end of the call said, also in Spanish.

Larios recognized the voice. "Do you have it?"

"Not yet," Benny Alvarez said.

"Where are you?"

"The old bridge. He's about to go across."

"Does he have the video?"

"On a flash drive around his neck."

"Then why haven't you taken it from him?"

"I..."

Larios waited without saying anything.

"Why not let him take it across?" Benny said. "All of the American news channels will show it. Their government will be exposed. Everyone will know."

Larios let out a bark of laughter. "You think that's what will happen?"

"Yes."

"If that video gets across the border, the American gov-ernment will bury it."

"He said he's going to give it to a man he trusts, one of his superiors."

This time Larios shouted into the phone. "They all work for the same government. They will make sure no one ever sees that video."

"But he wants people in the United States to see it, to know what happened."

Larios took a deep breath and got his emotions under control. That was how people made mistakes. Acting on emotion. That's how they got killed or captured. Which is exactly what had happened to his predecessor, Miguel Tre-vino, aka El Coronel, whose code name had been "Z-40." The Infanteria de Marina, the Mexican Marines, had cap-tured him on the border in Nuevo Laredo. Now, Larios, codenamed "Z-50," was determined not to make the same mistake. He made decisions based on logic, not emotion. And it was logic that told him the American government would destroy the video if it could. Which meant he had to get it first.

"Kill the DEA agent and bring me the video," Larios ordered.

"But I can get the video without killing him."

"No, I want him dead. El Gordo blamed the other agent's death on me. I will blame this one on him." Larios laughed. "Then he and I will be even."

"There are hundreds of people here. I can't just-"

"Are you armed?"

"Yes."

"Shoot him in the head and take the video," Larios said. "Then just walk away. No one will stop you."

"I can't."

"Do it," Larios shouted. "Or I will kill you, your daugh-ter, your uncle the priest...even your sister in Cincinnati."

There was a pause. Then in a strained voice Benny said, "Thank you, Maria. I'll call you later." The line clicked and the call was disconnected.

Larios stared at the phone for a few seconds. His pet policia was muy loco. Then he shoved the phone back into his pocket. The torero had stopped his practice and the bull was pacing back and forth, snorting and stamping his front hooves. Larios shouted at the torero, "Get back to work."

Scott was walking toward Benny, no more than ten feet away, when he heard her say into the payphone, "Thank you, Maria. I'll call you later." When she hung up there were tears in her eyes.

"Is everything all right?" he asked.

She glanced away and wiped her face with her hands. Then said, "I thought we were going to meet by the bridge."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing...I miss my daughter."

"They're watching the bridge."

"Who?"

"A black SUV, tinted windows," he said. "At least two Americans inside."

She nodded and wiped more tears from her cheeks.