Damage Control (35 page)

Ernesto Palma hadn’t anticipated so many people awaiting his arrival at the small military airfield on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez. There must have been thirty soldiers there, all in uniform, and all from
La Justicia
. Palma had long suspected that his commanders were likewise on Hernandez’s payroll, but the fact that this many soldiers had been mobilized removed all doubt. He wondered if the president himself had been informed, if only to begin preparing his denials if things went badly.

Hernandez’s Learjet had made tremendously good time, covering the distance in just under two hours. Palma had no idea how much a jet like that cost, but it was a lot of money. The fact that Hernandez even had one gave context to what all he was trying to protect.

As he climbed down the stairway from the jet, the lack of military bearing among the gathered soldiers bothered him. He waited at the bottom of the stairs for Sergeants Nazario and Sanchez. He pulled them aside.

“I want you to relieve the soldiers’ current unit non-commissioned officers of their commands, and assemble the troops for formation in twenty minutes,” Palma said. “Any questions on that?”

Nazario said, “No, sir. No questions at all.” He snapped a regulation salute, spun on his heel, and headed off to do his job.

Of all the tasks faced by soldiers every day, none was as demoralizing or soul-stealing as idle time. Vigorous firefights raised morale, while awaiting orders merely built a sense of dread.

Palma believed that the solution lay in vigorous training in military things, even if the training was nothing more than standing formation and marching. Such basic military drills also gave Palma some idea of the mettle and competence of these troops who were newly under his command. The task that lay ahead for them fell outside the normal bounds of military activity, so he needed to know that these men could be flexible under fire, and that they would perform their duties without question.

That was a tall order, given the fact that Palma had no idea when his prey would come into range. He was utterly shocked, then, when his phone rang so soon.

“Palma,” he said, bringing the phone to his ear.

“It’s that bitch Maria Elizondo,” Hernandez growled.

Palma recognized the name, but it took a few seconds to process the significance.

“She betrayed me, Ernesto. I gave her everything, and she
betrayed
me.”

Palma waited for more. When it didn’t come, he said, “What would you like me to do?”

Hernandez gave him the address.

Palma wrote it into the notebook he pulled from his shirt pocket. “I presume you want me to kill her?”

“Absolutely not,” Hernandez said. “You are not to hurt her, merely take her into custody. Bring her to me. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Palma closed his eyes against an image of the last traitor on whom Hernandez had taken his revenge. He remembered his disgust as the man’s flayed skin hung from his waist like bloody drapes, the muscle and nerves of his upper body fully exposed and relentlessly tormented. By Hernandez’s account at the time, that traitor was on his third day in the hacienda’s torture chamber.

“And what about the Yankees?” Palma asked.

“What about them?”

“If your intelligence is right, they will be coming to join her. I believe we should surround the house and wait until—”

“No,” Hernandez said. “Get her and bring her to me now.”

The line went dead.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
EIGHT

T
ristan wasn’t much of a runner, even on a paved track wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Loaded down with the flopping and rattling gear that felt like it doubled his weight, every step hurt. How these old guys did it so easily was beyond him. The fact that Scorpion could do it didn’t surprise him so much, he supposed, because he had that wiry athletic look about him that suggested he jogged a lot just to keep in shape, but that the Big Guy could jog with so little effort was pretty incredible.

And as shitty as flip-flops were for hiking in the jungle, they truly sucked when running for your life.

“Keep it up, Kid,” Big Guy urged from behind. “Forward motion is what’s keeping us alive now.”

Tristan didn’t have the spare breath to offer up an answer. He just forced himself to keep up with Scorpion.

God, would it ever stop? He didn’t know how long they’d been at this, but he’d run far past the stage of

Tough it out, you can do this
, and was now in the stage where every additional step was a forceful command from his brain.

They’d been running a kind of a zigzag pattern, a block or two east followed by a left turn that would take them a block or two north, followed by a right-hand turn and another block or two east. He’d long ago lost track of how many such turns they’d made, and he’d now stopped even paying attention to his surroundings. They just ran. He found himself focusing on the distance between his toes and the heels of Scorpion’s boots. If the distance opened up, which was happening more and more now, then he’d throw another log onto the fire and push himself a little harder.

Hey, if living wasn’t a strong enough motivation to give a little more, then what was?

His lungs screamed, and sweat poured into his eyes from the soaked tendrils of his hair.

He’d heard athletes on television talk about some transitional phase where running triggers endorphins or whatever and then running is like the greatest high there is.

What utter bullshit.

If there was anything good about this much discomfort, it was the fact that it displaced a lot of fear. Through the thrumming of the blood in his ears, he could still hear a growing chorus of sirens, but they didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

After ambushes, shoot-outs, and now a plane crash, maybe it was safe to assume that the worst was already behind them.

The instant Captain Palma heard over the radio that a plane had crashed, he knew that it was Harris and Lerner. The reports spoke of three armed soldiers who had all survived, and were moving east.

That put them on a direct path into the trap he had set for them. This time, they would not escape alive. He’d ordered his men to shoot at first sight.

He’d also decided to ignore his orders from Felix Hernandez. The man was acting out of anger, not out of reason, and decisions made as such were always the wrong ones. He’d be able to extract his revenge against Maria Elizondo in his own time, but Palma was not going to ruin his tactical advantage to serve a personal vendetta.

Or, more truthfully, maybe his own personal vendetta had taken precedence over that of Hernandez. Harris, Lerner, and the Wagner boy had caused too much trouble in his life these past two days to be allowed to escape yet again. Whatever their real identities—and Palma suspected strongly that they were American Special Forces—these soldiers were very good, and luck seemed to be running on their side.

By staking out Maria Elizondo’s house, Palma had set up the perfect ambush. He’d chosen the one spot on earth where his prey had to go. He felt like a cat watching a mousetrap.

While the police and the rest of the local Army forces closed in on the crash site and scoured the streets for these three who had been so evasive, he needed only wait until they came to him.

Rising from his own place of concealment behind a parked car directly across the wide street from Maria’s house, he surveyed the concealment of his troops. Even knowing where they were, he could see no sign of them. The streets were empty this time of night, as they should be, and despite the reasonably bright glow of the streetlights, he could see no shadows, no sign of an errant foot sticking out from behind a vehicle or a wall.

The street looked perfectly normal. He’d even stashed their Sandcats two blocks away so that his prey would not be spooked by their presence.

While he recognized that radio reports were never completely reliable, by all accounts, Harris and his team were unhurt. If they moved quickly, they could easily reach Elizondo’s house in the next ten or fifteen minutes.

If Palma’s men did their jobs correctly, the invaders should all be dead in the next eleven or sixteen minutes.

He lowered himself behind his concealment and waited once more.

The kid’s stamina surprised Jonathan. He’d been able to keep up for most of the run. Now that Tristan was struggling hard to keep up, Jonathan was even more impressed with his heart. The kid was working his ass off, and he wasn’t complaining about it.

Jonathan’s GPS showed them to be less than a quarter mile away now—just a few blocks, actually—and if their intel was correct, the Elizondo chick would be waiting for them when they arrived. From there, it would be a ride to wherever the hell these tunnels were, and then they’d be back in nearly friendly territory. If their covers were still intact, Jonathan and Boxers would be absorbed back into obscurity while Leon Harris and Richard Lerner disappeared forever. Those aliases had had a good run. It was time to shelve them anyway.

Tristan’s future would be up to whatever Gail and Wolverine turned up. Under the circumstances, he didn’t think the charges against the kid could have any legs in the United States. As long as the idiot in the White House didn’t force some crazy extradition controversy, everything should work out fine.

Good God it was hot. Unreasonably hot, given the time of day. If he didn’t follow his own advice and hydrate soon, he was going to start cramping up.

Their current trajectory through these residential neighborhoods was going to bring them up behind the Elizondo residence. According to the maps, the street that ran behind her place was narrower and therefore presumably darker and less populated.

As Jonathan jogged north past yet another cross street, preparing to turn east again at the next corner, his earbud popped and Boxers’ voice said, “Whoa, Boss, hold up.”

Jonathan stopped, and Tristan collided with him. If Jonathan hadn’t grabbed him by the vest, the kid would have fallen to the ground.

“Jesus!” Tristan spat, a little too loud. “What’d you—”

“Quiet,” Jonathan said, looking not at Tristan, but at Boxers, who had taken a knee behind the fender of a parked sedan, his weapon up to his shoulder and trained on a spot down the perpendicular street. Never letting go of Tristan’s vest, Jonathan pivoted him toward a parked car, and pushed him down. “Sit and stay,” he said. He knew the tone would bother the kid, but he didn’t care.

As he bent low and closed the twenty feet that separated him from Boxers, Jonathan keyed his mike and whispered, “Whatcha got?” He approached with his M27 up and ready to shoot. He matched Boxers’ line of fire, but he had no idea what the target was.

Boxers waited till Jonathan was squatted at his shoulder. “Sandcat,” he said, pointing with the muzzle of his rifle.

For a second or two, Jonathan didn’t see it, but then there it was, parallel parked among other vehicles on the residential street.

“I’ve come to dislike Mexican Army vehicles,” Boxers said.

It was hard not to. And seeing one this close to where they were going rang a thousand warning bells in his head. Assuming that the Mexicans treated their Sandcats the same way that Uncle Sam treated his Humvees, these were not take-home vehicles.

That meant that someone had stashed it here to keep it out of sight. Since the Sandcat was a troop transport vehicle, Jonathan had to assume that the transported troops had been deployed somewhere nearby.

And while it was entirely possible that the Mexicans were deployed on a mission that had nothing to do with him, he was going to go with the smart money and assume that he and his team were the targets.

Jonathan turned to where he’d left Tristan, and motioned for him to join them. Following the example that Jonathan had set, the kid approached bent low at the waist, and squatted in close to Jonathan and Boxers.

“What are we doing?” Tristan whispered.

“You’re staying quiet,” Boxers said.

Jonathan softened the message by holding a finger to his lips in a silent
shh
.

Jonathan keyed his mike. “Mother Hen, Scorpion. You there?”

“I heard Big Guy,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

He told her about the vehicle. “I have to assume that we’ve got OPFOR deployed around our target building. What does SkysEye show you?” He knew that she’d recognize the shorthand for opposition force.

“We had a tasking problem,” she said. “So we’re just now getting images. Want to be patched in?”

“Negative,” Jonathan said. “Can’t afford the light wash.” While the SkysEye system and Venice’s bag of toys allowed her to download imagery to be shared in real time on Jonathan’s PDA or even a laptop, here at night in the middle of the street, the glow would be too obvious and could easily give away their position.

While they waited to hear back from Venice, Jonathan pulled a digital night vision monocular from its pouch on his ruck. While Boxers continued to hold his aim on the street, Jonathan rose above their cover and scanned the area for risks. Just beyond the wash of the streetlight that illuminated the Sandcat that Boxers had discovered, he saw another one parked along the curb.

“I’ve got another vehicle,” he whispered. “Shit, and a third.” This one was parked across the road from the second one, on their side of the street.

“See any guards?” Boxers asked. “If I were their commander, I’d have left at least one guy to keep an eye on the trucks.”

In a neighborhood like this, it made even more sense.

His earbud popped. “Scorpion, Mother Hen. I’ve got bad news.”

Of course you do,
Jonathan thought.

“SkysEye’s thermal imagery shows a number of people clustered around the target property. They all seem to be huddled behind some kind of shelter. Vehicles, mostly.”

“Shit,” Boxers spat.

Tristan went on alert. “What?”

“A small setback,” Jonathan told him. Into his radio he said, “Okay, download the photo to my PDA. I’ll find a way to look at it.”