Cartel (30 page)

Then the helicopter swept in over the rooftops, nose down and moving fast. When it reached the plaza the pilot pulled the nose up and pivoted to expose the open doorway. The Black Hawk slid toward them sideways like a crab, then stopped and hovered just a hundred yards away. The ma-chine gun in the doorway opened fire and bullets started chewing up the fountain and the pavement.

Benny returned fire with short bursts.

Scott stood with the tube braced on his shoulder and the fingers of his right hand resting on the rubberized trigger bar on top. His one shot had to be a bullseye. He remembered the soldier in Afghanistan telling him that the LAW didn't have a proximity fuse. Nothing but a direct hit would set off the explosive charge. Worse, the rocket left a contrail of smoke pointing right back at the shooter. "Stick and move," the soldier had said. "Fire the rocket, drop the tube, and run."

Scott lined up the front and rear sights with the helicop-ter, setting the red crosshairs of the reticle on the center of the fuselage, just behind the troop compartment. Then he squeezed the trigger bar.

Marcus had his ass planted on the steel deck of the troop compartment, his feet braced wide apart, firing the M-249 in aggressive ten-round bursts, blowing up chunks of concrete and stone. He was catching some return fire from the Mexi-can cop, but he ignored it. Big sky, little bullet, he'd always heard, and so far what he had heard had been right.

Of the thousands of rounds that had been fired at him in the far-flung shit spots of the world, not one of them had ever hit him. He glanced at the blood still seeping from his hand. But that had been a fragment, so it didn't count. He was still a virgin and wanted to keep it that way.

Then the DEA agent stood up and Marcus saw a bright flash and an eruption of flame and smoke as a small, dark object with a halo of fire around it streaked toward him, trailing a streamer of dirty brown smoke.

He knew exactly what it was. "Oh, shit."

* * * *

There was a loud whoosh as the M-72 LAW rocket's motor ignited, and Scott felt the heat from the exhaust jet on his back. The rocket tore across the hundred yards of open air between the fountain and the helicopter in less than two seconds, pulling a tail of fire and smoke. It hit the Black Hawk almost exactly where Scott had aimed it, to the rear and just above the open troop door.

It was nearly impossible to distinguish between the det-onation of the rocket and the explosion of the helicopter. The two were an almost simultaneous blinding double flash, followed immediately by a sonic boom. The flaming wreck of the Black Hawk lurched sideways in the air, burning pieces falling off, the rotor shattering and spinning away. Then the entire fiery hulk fell out of the sky and crashed onto the street that bordered the plaza.

Benny stared at the wreckage and crossed herself. "Jesús Cristo."

Scott dropped the empty tube. "I'm pretty sure I got it that time."

The burning debris ignited a nearby building. Everyone was running. There were sirens approaching.

"We need to go," Scott said.

Benny tossed her empty M-4 into the fountain and they walked away.

On the street circling the plaza, Scott found an early 1990s Oldsmobile trapped in a long line of empty cars. All around the plaza people had abandoned their cars and run to escape the gunfire. The driver's door was open, the keys were in the ignition, the motor was running. And the driver was gone.

Scott climbed behind the wheel. Benny got in beside him. Working the steering wheel and the gearshift back and forth, Scott squeezed the Oldsmobile out from the line of deserted cars, bounced it over the curb, and drove away across the empty plaza.

* * * *

Standing on the roof of the Suburban and looking through a pair of ten-power binoculars, Gavin stared across the river at the drab, shit-brown skyline of Nuevo Laredo and at a column of greasy black smoke rising from some-where near downtown, where, a few minutes ago, there had been an explosion. He could hear sirens wailing all over the city.

"Well?" Jones demanded. He was standing outside the passenger door smoking a cigarette. The torn wrapper of a Milky Way bar lay at his feet. The two of them were still stuck on the U.S. side of the World Trade Bridge, waiting for the ATF search team to finish clearing the bridge after the bomb threat. But since the explosion, all the ATF agents and CBP officers on the bridge had stopped working and were staring at the rising column of smoke on the other side of the river.

Gavin kept his eyes pressed to the binoculars. "That had to be the Black Hawk."

"How the fuck could that have happened?" Jones said. "Aren't those things armored?"

Gavin lowered the binoculars and looked down at Jones. "Doesn't mean you can't shoot them down. They didn't call the movie Black Hawk Down for nothing."

Jones stood rigid for several seconds. Then he started kicking the shit out of the side of the Suburban and shouting "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" It was the first real outburst of emotion Gavin had seen from the CIA man.

Gavin's own emotions were running pretty close to the surface too. Those were his men onboard that helicopter. Not friends. He wasn't going to spill tears over them. He'd lost plenty of men and seen plenty more die, but the men in that helicopter worked for him, and so he was responsible for them, for everything they did and everything they failed to do. Just like the U.S. Army Officer's Guidebook said. And he still couldn't reach Ground Two by radio or cell phone.

Jones's hissy fit died as suddenly as it had begun. One second he was kicking and shouting, the next he was stand-ing rigid and lighting another cigarette. But Gavin could see that the CIA man's hands were trembling.

Gavin climbed down from the top of the Suburban. "I sure hope you have a backup plan."

Jones nodded and took a long drag on his cigarette. Then he dropped it and crushed it under his foot. "Yes, I do."

"Mind sharing it?"

Jones pulled open the passenger door. "I'll tell you on the way."

Gavin pointed to the black smoke on the other side of the river. "I hope it doesn't require a lot of assets."

"It doesn't," Jones said as he climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door.

"And you think this one will work, this new plan of yours?" Gavin said once he was behind the steering wheel. "Because this son of a bitch has taken everything we've thrown at him and thrown it right back at us."

The CIA man didn't look at Gavin. He just stared straight ahead through the windshield at the bridge. "You sound like you admire him."

"I respect him."

Jones turned to him. "Don't."

"Maybe that's your problem," Gavin said. "If you gave him more respect, you might be able to figure out a way to beat him."

"Oh, I'm going to beat Agent Greene. You can count on that."

"How?"

Jones turned back to face the windshield and the bridge. "By doing what I should have done as soon as I found out he had a copy of that video."

Gavin turned the ignition and cranked the Suburban's motor. "And what's that?"

"Drive."

Gavin shifted the Suburban into gear, spun the wheel over, and U-turned out of the stalled bridge traffic.

The prepaid cell phone rang. Scott glanced at Benny. He was driving the stolen Oldsmobile south on Avenida Emiliano Zapata, heading away from the river and away from the cha-os downtown. Benny pulled the phone from her pocket and looked at the screen. Her face lit up and she turned to Scott. "It's tío."

Scott slewed the Oldsmobile to the curb as the phone rang again and Benny answered it.

* * * *

Humberto Larios handed the priest's cell phone to the little girl sitting beside him on the big leather sofa. Tenta-tively, the terrified girl pressed the phone to her ear. "Mamá?" she said.

Larios could hear the excited voice of the policia on the other end of the call saying something to her daughter when he yanked the phone away from the little girl and held it to his own ear. Benetta Alvarez was still speaking, "...come and get you right now. Do you understand?"

Larios didn't say anything. He just let the silence and the tension build.

"Rosalita?" Alvarez said, her tone urgent. "Are you still there?"

"She's still here," Larios said and smiled as he heard the sharp intake of terrified breath on the other end.

"No," Alvarez said in a soft voice, almost to herself.

"She's my guest," Larios said. "Your uncle too."

"If you hurt either of them," Alvarez shouted, "I swear to God I'll kill you."

* * * *

Scott watched Benny's face change in an instant from joy to horror. She gasped and said, "No," softly, almost to herself. Then the person on the other end said something to her that scared her even more. But Benny recovered quickly and shouted into the phone in machine-gun Spanish, way too fast for Scott to understand any of it. When she looked at him he saw tears in her eyes.

* * * *

"Is the gringo with you?" Larios said into the phone.

Alvarez's voice came back flat and scared. "Yes."

"Does he have the video?"

"Yes."

"Shoot him."

"What?"

"Shoot him," Larios said. "Shoot him right now. I want to hear the bullet shatter his skull."

Nothing. No response. Just the static of the open line and the sound of traffic.

Larios grabbed a handful of the little girl's hair and twisted it hard. He let her scream into the phone. Then he held the mouthpiece an inch from his lips. "Shoot the grin-go," he said. "Or the next sound you hear will be me chop-ping off your daughter's head."

* * * *

Benny's face was a mask of pain as tears spilled down her cheeks. Scott switched off the Oldsmobile's motor. "Who is it?" he asked, sure it wasn't her uncle.

She didn't answer him, just moved the phone to her left hand and shifted a little in her seat.

"What's wrong?" he said.

She sobbed and a gout of snot erupted from her nose.

"Benny," he said, "tell me what's wrong."

When she didn't, or couldn't, answer, he reached for her. She shifted in her seat again, and for a moment he thought she was leaning into him so he could wrap his arms around her to comfort her.

But she wasn't.

She was pulling out her pistol.

And aiming it at his face.

He froze.

The muzzle of the Glock was a black hole, and just like the black holes in space, it sucked in everything, including life, and nothing could escape it.

"I'm sorry," Benny said, the words mangled by another sob.

Scott forced himself to look past the gun and focus on Benny's face.

"They have my daughter," she said.

"Who has her?"

Benny lowered the phone. But not the pistol. The end of the barrel trembled slightly. Scott could hear a man's voice shouting in Spanish from the phone.

"Who has your daughter?" Scott said.

Benny wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Los Zetas."

Scott nodded at the phone in her left hand, now resting on the cracked vinyl seat. "And they want the video."

She sniffed and nodded.

"And what else?"

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

The voice on the phone had gone quiet.

Scott stared at Benny's right index finger. It was curled around the Glock's trigger. The knuckle on the end was white with strain. She probably had two or three pounds of pressure on the trigger already. All the slack was gone. An-other two pounds and maybe a quarter of an inch of travel and the pistol would fire a 9mm bullet straight into his face.

Her finger tightened on the trigger.

Scott didn't think. He just acted. Thinking slowed you down. And in this situation, being slow meant being dead.

He slapped the side of the pistol with his left hand a fraction of a second before a blinding flash exploded from the muzzle and seared the right side of his face and neck. The blast deafened him. The window behind him shattered. His vision was nothing but swirling colors. He grabbed Ben-ny and pulled her close, his hands searching hers for the gun. But her hands were empty. The gun was gone. He felt her crying. Somewhere beyond the ringing in his head he heard a man's voice shouting in Spanish. The voice on the phone.

Scott blinked his eyes until they cleared enough so that he could see Benny's face and the tears streaming down her cheeks. He hugged her tight and felt a long shuddering sob rack her body. Then he saw the Glock lying on the seat next to them and the prepaid cell phone on the floor. The man had stopped talking.

He pointed to the phone and drew a finger across his throat. Benny picked up the phone and pressed it to her ear. "Lo hice," she said. I did it. She hesitated, then said, "Esta muerto." He's dead. She jabbed the END button and cut off the call.

* * * *

Jones knocked on the front door. Gavin stood on the walkway a few feet behind him. Like an obedient guard dog. A woman opened the door. She had blond hair and a trim, athletic figure. Her green eyes were red from crying and her face was puffy. She looked at them but didn't say anything. Jones heard a TV news channel playing in the background. He held up a set of credentials. "Mrs. Greene, we're with the Justice Department. We need you to come with us."

* * * *

"It's my fault Michael is dead," Benny said in a choked voice. She was crying again, and Scott wasn't sure what to do, put his arm around her...or shoot her. So he decided not to do anything.

He had parked the stolen Oldsmobile behind a closed-down mechanic shop off Boulevard Anahuac. They stood across the hood from each other, at opposite front fenders. He was on the driver's side and kept glancing at the blown-out window. If he'd been half a second slower, it would have been the back of his head that had gotten blown out.

Scott understood why she'd done it. Los Zetas, one of the most violent criminal gangs in the world, was holding her daughter hostage and would kill her, horribly and painfully, if Benny didn't do what she was told. And what she had been told was to kill him. Since then, she had apologized several times for trying to shoot him in the face. She was desperate, terrified for her daughter. He said he understood. Still, he was pretty shaken up. It had been that close.