Pandora's Temple (3 page)

“So how much is it going to take to bring you out of retirement?”

“I wasn’t aware I’d retired.”

“How much, McCracken?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

McCracken sized the man up, from his perfectly tailored suit to professionally styled hair with not a strand out of place. “You been to the Vietnam Memorial lately, Hank?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“There are some names missing, the names of many of the men I served with in Vietnam who never came back. That’s my fee. I pull this off, I want their names up there on the Wall where they belong. I want you to take care of it.”

Folsom’s eyes moved to McCracken’s ring, simple black letters on gold. “D-S. Stands for Dead Simple, right?”

McCracken didn’t respond.

“What’s it mean?”

“I think you know.”

“Because killing came so easy. You still worthy of the nickname ‘McCrackenballs’?”

“You want my services or my autograph, Hank?”

Folsom leaned forward. “How many times did they ask you to go after Bin Laden?”

“Not a one.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“You heard wrong.”

Folsom came up just short of a smile. “I heard there was a reason why the SEALs encountered so little resistance. I heard the bodies of eight pretty bad hombres were hauled out after the fact, all dead before the SEALs dropped in. Word is it was you and that big Indian friend of yours.”

“His name is Johnny Wareagle.”

Folsom said nothing.

“SEALs got Bin Laden, Hank. It’s nice to fantasize about things being bigger than they really were, but that raid was big enough all on its own. Weird thing is that when I was in, I never got or wanted credit for anything. Now that I’m out, I get more than I deserve and still don’t want any.”

“You’re not out,” Folsom told him.

“Figure of speech. What they say when nobody calls you in anymore.”

Across the table, Folsom suddenly looked older and more confident. “I called. And I’ll see what I can do about getting those names added to the Wall.”

“Is that what you call nonnegotiable?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Better. Now give me your word.”

“Why?”

“Because a man’s word means something, even in your world where lying rules the day.”

“Used to be your world too.”

McCracken’s black eyes hardened even more. “It was never mine, Hank.” He leaned forward, almost face-to-face with Folsom before the man from the State Department could register he’d moved at all. “Now tell me more about the job.”

“Mexico,” Folsom nodded. He leaned back in his chair to again lengthen the distance between them. “Gun-loving Juárez, specifically. Place is like the Old West. You’ll be going up against a hundred guns in a walled fortress.”

McCracken rose, jarring the table just enough to send the rest of his watery ginger ale sloshing around amid the melting ice cubes. “Send me the specs and the satellite recon.”

“That’s it?” Folsom asked.

“Not quite. I don’t like working for somebody I can’t trust.” Folsom opened his mouth to respond, but McCracken rolled right over his words. “You’re not from State. State doesn’t work with people like me. It’s not in their job description. Too busy covering their own asses. Politics, Hank, something you clearly don’t give a shit about.”

“All right, you got me. I’m Homeland Security,” Folsom told him.

“Ah, the new catchall . . .”

“You’re right about the tools at State, McCracken. But we, on the other hand, get shit done. Being Homeland gives us a license to do pretty much anything we want.”

“Including going outside the system to call in a dinosaur like me?”

Folsom tried to hold McCracken’s stare. “Just answer me one question. Your phone doesn’t ring until I call, it leaves me wondering.”

“That’s not a question.”

Folsom didn’t hesitate. “The question is, do you still have it or not . . . McCrackenballs?”

McCracken smiled tightly. “Let me put it this way, Hank: when this is over, you may want to revise that thesis of yours.”

“What’s eating you, boss?” Sal Belamo asked, as McCracken steered the SUV toward the compound’s gates after the guards finally waved him through.

“Folsom asked me if I still had it.”

“Any doubt in your mind about that?”

“Two years is a long time, Sal.”

“You’re not saying you’re scared.”

“Nope, but I was: scared that the call wouldn’t come again after the phone stopped ringing two years ago.”

Belamo gazed around him. “Well, we can safely say that concern’s been put to rest.”

The inside of the compound jibed perfectly with the satellite reconnaissance photos Folsom had provided. It reminded McCracken of a typical Spanish mission, not unlike the famed Alamo in San Antonio, with an inner courtyard and a nest of buildings located beyond a walled façade that in olden times would have provided an extra layer of defense from attack. A lavish fountain left over from an earlier era was centered in the courtyard, beautifully restored but no longer functional. The sun burned high in a cloudless sky, flooding the compound with blistering hot light that reflected off the cream-colored array of buildings. The air smelled of scorched dirt mixed with stale perspiration that hung in the air like haze, the combination acrid enough to make McCracken want to hold his breath.

Trays of freshly grilled chicken, fish, and beef smelling of chili powder, pepper, and oregano sharp enough to reach the SUV’s now open windows, meanwhile, had been laid out on tables covered by open-sided tent. McCracken could see plates of sliced tomatoes and bowls of freshly made guacamole placed in another section not far from ice chests packed with bottled water. Many of Morales’s uniformed guards had lined up to fill their plates. Folsom had told McCracken that many of the men on Morales’s payroll were former Zetas, veterans of the Mexican Special Forces originally charged with bringing down the very forces they were now serving.

“Two years, Sal,” McCracken repeated, angling the Mercedes toward a parking slot squeezed amid military vehicles that included ancient American-issue Jeeps.

“Took a break that long from the ring once,” Belamo related. “Knocked a guy out in the first round when I came back.”

“You weren’t sixty at the time.”

“You’re still fifty-nine, boss.”

McCracken couldn’t judge the prowess of Morales’s troops one way or another by what he saw, but their eyes showed no worry or suspicion or wariness of any kind. If they held any expectation of a pending attack, there was no evidence of it. Instead, men clad in sweat-soaked uniforms who’d already gotten their lunches lounged leisurely, their weapons resting nearby but in some cases not even within reach. The bulk of the personnel clung to the cooler shade cast by the walled façade while others, likely those lower on the totem pole, stuck to the thinner patches provided by an old yellow school bus with rust spreading upward from its decaying rocker panels. Morales himself, arguably the world’s most infamous drug dealer, held court upon a covered veranda, enclosed by four gunmen and seated in what looked like a rocking chair next to a younger dark-haired beauty who could have been an actress.

McCracken and Sal Belamo climbed out of the SUV into the scorching heat, the sensation worsened by the sudden loss of air-conditioning in favor of stagnant air that was almost too heavy to breathe. The sky above was an endless blue ribbon, fostering an illusion that the sun itself was vibrating madly.

McCracken and Belamo submitted to the thorough, wholly anticipated pat-down, which turned up nothing. Then six more guards escorted them to the veranda and beckoned for them to continue up the three stairs for an audience with the man who many said was the most powerful in Mexico.

“So I understand you want to get our business done early, Mr. Franks,” Morales said, rising in the semblance of a greeting.

“I happened to be in the area,” McCracken told him, “with time on my hands.”

“We had an arrangement.”

“We still do. Only the schedule has changed. But if you wish to rethink that arrangement . . .”

Morales sat back down next to the much younger woman who flinched when he settled in alongside her, filling out the entire width of the chair. He was overweight, hardly resembling the most common shots circulated of him from younger days by the US intelligence community. Withdrawing to a life of isolation wrought by his many enemies had clearly left Morales with a taste for too much food and wine to accompany his vast power in the region. Judging by the thick blotches of perspiration dotting the cartel leader’s shirt, McCracken doubted any of the buildings here were even equipped with air-conditioning.

Morales’s hair was thinning in contrast to the thick mustache drooping over his upper lip. He was dressed casually in linen slacks and a near matching shirt unbuttoned all the way down to the start of the belly that protruded over his belt. A light sheen of perspiration coated his face, and he breathed noisily through his mouth.

He took the dark-haired woman’s right hand in his while he stroked her hair with the left. “This is my wife, Elena. But she has borne me no children. Such a disappointment.”

With that, he bent one of the woman’s fingers back until McCracken heard a snap. He flinched as the woman gasped and bit down the pain, slumping in her chair.

“Everyone is replaceable, eh, Señor Franks?” Morales sneered, seeming to relish the agony he’d caused his wife.

McCracken bit back his anger, keeping his eyes away from the woman who was now choking back sobs. “Men like us aren’t, Señor Morales. And I thought coming early was in both our best interests.”

“And why is that?” Morales asked him.

“It stopped you from the bother of staging a welcome for me.”

“I would have enjoyed making such a gesture, amigo.”

“You and I, Señor Morales, we’re cautious men pursuing mutual interests. You need my network to provide you with new routes to bring your product into the United States and I need exclusive distribution of that product to eliminate my competition in select markets. I imagine we can agree on that much.”

“You wouldn’t be here if we didn’t already,” Morales said, his eyes straying to the briefcase still chained to Belamo’s wrist. “You see that school bus over there?”

“You mean the one your soldiers are sleeping against?”

Morales ignored his remark. “I started my career as a runner using that bus to bring drugs into your country. I would recruit local children and pay them a dollar to play students heading to America on field trips. I keep the bus here as a reminder of my humble roots. And even men like us must never lose sight of how hard we worked to get where we are,
si
?”

“For sure,” McCracken acknowledged, meaning it this time.

Morales’s eyes returned to the briefcase. A woman clad in a tight satin dress laid a heaping plate she had filled from the lunch tables down before him. Another woman who might have been her twin refilled his glass of sangria, making sure just the right amount of floating fruit spilled in. Their moves looked robotic, rehearsed. And the fact that they remained cool amid the scalding heat made them appear like department store mannequins devoid of anything but beauty.

“You have brought your deposit?” Morales asked.

“In exchange for the first shipment to be delivered within the week. That was the deal. A fair exchange.”

“Then let me see it,” Morales said, again angling his gaze for the briefcase cuffed to Sal Belamo’s wrist. “Of course, I could always have one of my men cut your man’s hand off.”

“But that would leave him with only one,” McCracken noted, unruffled. “And then I’d have to take one of yours in return. Also a fair exchange.”

Morales grinned broadly, his threat left hanging. “You are good at math, señor.”

“Just as you are with women.”

The grin vanished.

“Sal,” McCracken signaled.

At that, Belamo pried a small key from his shoe and unlocked the handcuffs from both his wrist and the briefcase. Then he handed the case to Morales who laid it in his lap and eagerly flipped the catches, slowly raising the lid. His breathing quieted, his eyes widened.

“Is this some kind of joke?” Morales asked, clearly dismayed as he spun the open briefcase around to reveal nothing inside but two pistols, a sleek semiautomatic and a long-barreled Magnum revolver.

“Those are very valuable guns, señor,” McCracken said, as Morales’s personal Zeta guards steadied their weapons upon him. “Men have perished under their fire, many with prices on their heads. You’re welcome to the rewards in exchange for the hostages.”

“Who are you?” Morales asked, tossing the briefcase to the veranda floor as he rose again.

“I’m the man doing you a big favor, Morales. Someday you’ll thank me for showing you kidnapping doesn’t pay, at least not when you’re bringing in as much as you are from your drug business. Here,” he said, handing Morales a ruffled piece of paper.

Morales straightened, trying to make sense of the number and letter combinations. “What is this?”

“The latitude and longitude marks denoting the locations of your largest storage facilities. If I don’t leave with the hostages, all four go boom.”

Morales smiled, chuckled, then outright laughed. “You are threatening
me
? You are really
threatening
me? Here in my
home
, in front of my
men
?” His voice gained volume with each syllable. He seemed to be enjoying himself; the challenge, the threat.

“I’m going to let you keep your drugs, against my better judgment, but the four Americans, the college students, leave with me.”

At first it seemed Morales didn’t know how to respond. But then he threw his head back and laughed heartily again, both the women and his guards joining in for good measure. Only his wife, Elena, stayed quiet, too busy swiping the tears of pain from her face.

“Just like that?” Morales said, the veranda’s other occupants stopping their laughter as soon as he stopped his.

“Yup, just like that.”

“And what do I get in return for accepting your gracious offer?”