The Execution (5 page)

CHAPTER 7

W
hen she arrived at the hospital, Cecilia Garza found a number of local police milling around in the lobby. There were more of them up in the wing where the injured witness was situated.

She had sent two PF officers with the witness, for protection, and was glad she did when, as she was approaching the nursing station, she spotted the chief of the Nuevo Laredo police, Juan Ramos. He was a neatly dressed man who could have passed for an American businessman: light skinned, clean-shaven, with sandy razor-cut hair. Unlike most Mexican police commanders, who favored starched uniforms with lots of gold braid, Chief Ramos wore a dark suit, a white shirt, and a necktie. The only sign he was a cop was the bulge under his coat where he kept his pistol. She had seen it earlier in his holster, a .45-caliber 1911 auto, all black, no pearl handle, nothing showy about it. A businesslike weapon.

“Comandante,” he said, “I am afraid we got off on the wrong foot.”

She glared at him. For a moment she considered ignoring him altogether. “We might have gotten along better if I hadn’t gotten there in time to find you contemplating executing a wounded prisoner.”

Ramos frowned thoughtfully. “I hear what you are saying,” he said. “I understand what you think you saw. But I can assure you, we have strict protocols when securing and arresting
narcotraficantes
. I could show you our training manual. It is very specific.”

Garza studied his face. Ramos looked most sincere. She suspected that by this point he might well have convinced himself that what he was saying was true. The worst kind of liars, she had found, were the ones who could convince themselves of their own falsehoods.

“I do not have time to argue the point,” she said.

He sighed, playing the Mr. Sincerity thing to the hilt. “Look, you and I both know what a difficult situation we are in here. Everyone in this town feels it, myself especially. I’m sure you breeze in from Mexico City with your team of incorruptibles and you look at me and think, ‘Well, there’s another scumbag in the Zetas’ front pocket.’ Am I right?”

She stared stonily at him and didn’t reply.

“But I do my best. We all do. I take no money from them, ever, and do my best to offer security to the people of Nuevo Laredo. Sometimes I get up in the morning and hate myself for not being able to do more. But my best is all I have to offer here.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward her. “I want to help you. God knows these monsters are a plague on this city. Nothing would relieve me more than to be rid of them.”

“Come right to the point, Chief. I have very little time.”

“The witness is still alive. I know you’re here to interview him. Just let me sit in with you. Perhaps I can add something to his information. Or, if you like, I won’t speak.” He took off his coat, folded it neatly on the counter of the admissions desk, then took off his gun and handed it butt first toward Sergeant Chavez, who stood next to Garza. Then the chief held up his hands. “Harmless as a baby, see?”

“And, of course, you would like to know what information this dying man might share.”

“The crime did occur in my jurisdiction, Comandante.”

Garza frowned. Still, Chief Ramos was a source of potential communication with the Zetas. If she did learn something, it might be fruitful to let them know she was onto them.

He continued, “There are things I know. Connections I can make. Just let me help you.”

Garza shrugged, as though the point didn’t matter to her. “All right, Chief. But you will remain silent. Not one word. If you speak, I’ll arrest you on federal charges of witness intimidation. Understood?”

The chief made like he was locking his lips, then tossing away the key.

“Lead on, O Comandante,” he said.

THE WITNESS LAY ON THE BED,
pale and looking weak. His upper chest and shoulder were now covered with a thick gauze bandage. Tubes connected him to the monitors. He had received two blood transfusions, but it would not be enough. Nor was surgery an option. He had lain out in the plaza too long.

The young farmhand looked up at Garza. His faraway eyes sparked to something, perhaps her appearance. Her beauty was a useful tool. And this young man had been on his way to America: perhaps he was a born dreamer.

“What is your name?” she said.

“Manuel,” he whispered. “Manuel Pastor.”

“Where are you from, Manuel?”

“El Salvador.” His breathing was slow and labored and he winced each time he drew in air.

“They have given you medicine for the pain?” she said.

The young man—barely more than a boy—nodded. She studied his eyes. He appeared coherent enough for questioning.

“Do you know why these people did this to you?” she said.

The boy shook his head. “I paid a coyote to take me to the United States. We were in a truck. The truck stopped. Then some men burst in, dragged us out. I was hit on the head. Next thing I know, I’m lying on a pile of dead bodies in the back of this open truck. I tried to get out, but . . .” He raised his left hand, showing where the zip ties had left their mark on his wrist.

“Who ran the coyotes? Were they Sinaloa?”

The boy shrugged. “I don’t know nothing about that. I just paid a man.”

“So you don’t work for the Zetas or the Sinaloas?”

The boy looked at her without any apparent comprehension. If the boy was faking, he was doing a hell of a job of it.

A nurse tried to enter, but Garza asked for another minute. Once they gave this man morphine, his intelligence would be lost, perhaps forever.

She leaned closer to the young man. “More medication is on the way, but I have just a few more important questions. Can you respond?”

He blinked his assent, rather than nodding.

“Thank you, Manuel. So you were in the back of this truck. Then you arrived at the plaza. What happened next?”

“There were two others . . . also alive. They were both with me all the way from El Salvador. I don’t know their names or nothing . . .” His eyes clouded. “Then they dragged everybody off the truck. There was a fat man. I did not know what the sound was at first. I thought it was a machine. But no. This man was chopping heads off.”

“With what? A machete?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. I never seen nothing like it. It was like . . . one of those things you dig holes with. For fence posts. Except there was just this one big heavy blade on the bottom.” He pantomimed lifting something in the air with his left arm, but didn’t get it very high before wincing in pain.

“Any other information you can give me? I want to catch these men. Who was in charge? Did you see the man in charge, Manuel? Was it this fat man?”

The young man’s eyes were full of tears now. He shook his head.

“You saw the man in charge,” said Garza, pushing.

“Dark eyes.”

“Was he tall? Short?”

“Baseball. A hat.”

“A baseball cap? But he was Mexican. Yes?”

“There was another. A boy.”

“A boy?”

Manuel pointed to his wound.

“A boy did this? A teenager?”

“The one in charge . . . he made him do it.”

Garza nodded. Manuel was fading fast. “Is that why he failed? With the tool?”

Manuel blinked several times, loosening the tears in his eyes. It meant yes.

Garza had seen enough. She turned back to Chief Ramos. “Get the nurse.”

Garza looked back at Manuel, leaning even closer. She wanted Manuel to feel her presence here at the end. “Anything else you can tell me? Anything else you want to say?”

“They . . . they call him something. The man in the cap. Chupa . . .”

Garza could have finished the word for him, but she wanted to hear it herself. She leaned even closer, the name coming on Manuel’s foul breath.

“Chuparosa.”

Garza heard stirring behind her. Despite her order, Chief Ramos had not left the room yet.

Garza said, “You’re certain?”

“Chuparosa . . .” said Manuel, closing his eyes, his head sinking further back into the pillow.

Chief Ramos said, “I will get the nurse.” He left the room quickly, and Garza could hear him shouting, “Nurse! Nurse!”

Alone for a moment, Garza laid her hand atop Manuel’s hot forehead. She stroked his hair until the nurse entered.

“Thank you,” Garza whispered into Manuel’s ear. She stood, watching the nurse’s ministrations for a few moments, said a little prayer for the young man from El Salvador, then opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

Chief Ramos was nowhere to be seen. Apparently the health crisis was too much for him to bear.

GARZA WALKED THE HALL OF THE HOSPITAL,
thinking about Manuel’s ride in that truck.

All those men. Beheaded and set in the town plaza. It was an obscenity, and yet one the Mexican people were tragically growing used to. And like all obscenities, the more times it was used, the more it lost some of its power to shock and offend. How would they top this? What was the next disgraceful step?

And how could she head it off?

Down a stairwell, she strode out the rear entrance of the hospital. She did not go to her vehicle, continuing on to a blue panel truck parked at the back of the lot, its side emblazoned with a logo that read
CERVEZA DOS EQUIS
.

The rear door opened as she reached it. She stepped inside, and it closed.

Two technicians sat on opposite sides of the truck, facing matching computer screens. The cargo space was crammed full of modern communications gear, much of it provided to the PF by United States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

“You get it?” she said.

By way of reply, the technician pressed the play button on the screen. A voice came out of a pair of speakers. She immediately recognized it as that of the police chief of Nuevo Laredo, Juan Ramos.

“The witness knew nothing.” Ramos’s voice was flattened by the poor cell phone reception. “Your man failed to finish the job in the plaza. That is dangerous.”

“That is being addressed.” To Garza’s ears, the voice was soft, calm, almost pleasant. “But of course he knew nothing. Did you think anything would have been discussed in his presence? He was in the back of a truck.”

Ramos said, “No, I thought you would want assurance . . . and that is what I am calling to offer you.”

“And where are you calling from?”

“I am still at the hospital—”

There was a beep. Interruption of signal.

Ramos said, “Hello? Hello?”

The line was dead. The technician turned off the playback.

“The call went to a cell phone, Comandante,” the tech said. “Probably a burner. But we traced it to the cell tower. Telmex tower T-421.” He pulled up a map, zoomed in on a tiny village. “Nacimiento de los Negros. That is where the other phone’s signal was captured.”

As she had for Manuel, Garza said a brief prayer for Chief Ramos. He would need it.

In the three long years she had been tracking this killer, this was the first time she had heard his voice.

The Hummingbird. The assassin they called Chuparosa.

She checked her watch. She had so little time before her flight, and yet she was finally so close.

She pulled out her phone and called Chavez. “We’re rolling. Right now.”

CHAPTER 8

Late August

Manhattan

M
idblock on Broome Street off the Bowery, Fisk turned in to the door under a black canopy with white cursive lettering that read
PENCE
.

This had been one of their places. His and Gersten’s. He liked the mix of upscale club and old-school downtown gin joint, with brass rails and banquettes with cracked leather upholstery. She had liked the fact that there was not one television screen on its walls; Gersten believed that sports bars should be sports bars, but that a real bar should be free of distractions. It was also a cop place, for those in the know, as well as a neighborhood spot, with a good flow of regulars that kept things steady and fresh.

As he walked in now, a sign reading
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
! was tacked to the unmanned hostess’s podium. Instead of the regulars and low-rent boozers, the place was filled with lawyers in suits and hipsters in thickly framed eyeglasses. The daily specials were chalked on a blackboard in pastel lettering: veggie sliders, broccoli rabe pot stickers, chicken and gorgonzola panini bites. The barmaid, when he made it to the sticky brass rail, wore a tank top tied up under her breasts, showing off the tattoo of the sun around her taut, bejeweled navel.

“What’s funny?” she asked him, in greeting.

Fisk was smiling but he wasn’t laughing. He was thinking about how much Gersten would have hated this, how she would have grabbed his hand and led him out of there.

But through the filter of reminiscence, he could see enough of the old in the new. The scarred oak bar, the spidery crack in the corner of the mirror.

“Jack, neat,” he ordered.

The barmaid slid a cocktail napkin down on the bar in front of him, leaning over a bit so he could get a good shot of cleavage with his drink. “We have a beer back special, five dollars.”

“Just a water,” Fisk said. “But make the Jack a double.”

“Bad day?” she said breezily, wiping the bar clean around his napkin. “Or good day?”

“Long day,” he said.

She went off to pour his drink, and he looked around for an empty table. The barmaid might as well have worn a sign reading, “Will Flirt for Tips.” Fisk had zero interest right now. He spotted an empty high-top and retreated to it as soon as his drink came, sitting facing the door.

The first sip of Old No. 7 hit his throat with a warm hello. The end of the day had officially been reached. And what a day it had been.

The terror trial of Magnus Jenssen had ended as it must: with a guilty verdict. Jenssen had all but admitted his guilt from the beginning, but pled not guilty just to gum up the courts and roll the dice and maybe luck into some sort of acquittal on procedural grounds. It didn’t happen. Neither did the trial afford Jenssen much of an opportunity to air his anti-American screed.

Fisk had avoided the trial altogether. The government’s case was so exceptionally strong that Fisk’s testimony was not needed. Gersten’s murder was included in the charges, yet Jenssen was spared the death penalty due to a pretrial agreement with prosecutors in which his cooperation—he divulged his methods and detailed the participation of his accomplices—was taken into consideration.

Today was the sentencing. Fisk had been invited to make a victim’s statement and declined. Gersten’s mother went full Staten Island Grieving Cop’s Mother on him: it had been a rough several months for Mrs. Gersten, and as much as Krina might have wanted him to get close to her, the woman’s finger-wagging left him cold. She had slumped, nearly lifeless herself, as the bailiffs finally removed her from the courtroom.

He had sat in the back of the courtroom looking at the back of Magnus Jenssen’s blond head. Jenssen never once turned to look behind him, so Fisk had not seen his blue eyes. Fisk had expected him to turn. Not wanted it, or needed it, but expected it. And now that it hadn’t happened, he felt a tug of disappointment. He had managed to give Jenssen very little emotional consideration, reserving all his thought for Gersten.

They had come here a few times before they ever became a couple, with that feeling hanging in the air between them, a pregnant feeling of anticipation and longing as their attraction gathered steam. She would sit at the bar, and Fisk would stand next to her, talking close, she swinging her leg into his, little bumps of camaraderie and flirtation; spying is not the “great game,” flirting is. Gersten never wore perfume, but he still had a bottle of the shampoo she kept at his place, and for a while he uncapped it every morning, never to use it, only to inhale the scent. Now it stood in the wire basket that hung from his showerhead along with his own Head & Shoulders and his razor, his focal point every morning and every postworkout shower.

Would he and Gersten have married? Had kids? Moved to Staten Island (if she’d had her way) or Brooklyn (if he’d had his)? What color would the door to their house have been? Or would it all have come crashing down in time, the way of most relationships? He wasn’t an easy guy to love.

It was easy to go on loving someone who wasn’t there anymore. But he knew this in his bones: she had been The One. It would have taken another cop, and a tough one at that, to put up with him.

He sat facing the door, as most cops do, but his gaze was far away. It had been a long time since anyone had snuck up on him, even without meaning to.

“Hey, whoa. Easy. I come in peace.”

Fisk must have looked startled and angry. He recognized the sandy-haired man standing at his table. He looked like he could have been a computer programmer, probably a science fiction buff: pale skinned, plain faced, wincing.

“Dave Link,” said Fisk, making him. “Sorry, man. Weird moment.”

“Not a problem,” said Link. “Good to see you, Fisk.”

Link had two identical drinks in his hands. Whiskey, neat. Fisk looked down at his own glass. To his surprise, it was empty.

Link set one down in front of Fisk. “Compliments of the Central Intelligence Agency,” he said. “May I?”

Fisk nodded to the empty seat. Link sat, turning the chair so that he was facing half toward the bar, with the back wall at his shoulder. “Thanks,” said Fisk, raising the fresh drink from the tabletop to toast him, but not drinking it yet.

“Here’s to the light of day,” said Link. “And that piece of shit Jenssen never seeing it again.”

Now Fisk had to drink. And so he did. “Didn’t see you at the sentencing.”

Link winced after the first swallow. “Wasn’t there. Heard you were.”

Fisk nodded.

“It’s a tough damn thing, just sitting there. Watching. Especially for guys like us.”

Spies like us, thought Fisk. Here was the CIA agent trying to flatter him, to sympathize. But for what reason?

“Great work on those other Swedes up north. Tough outcome, but that’s what happens when you poke the hive, huh?”

The surviving would-be terrorist had been born with the name Nils Olaf Bengtson, but had changed it to Khalid Muhammad upon his conversion to Islam. Bengtson had been a model soldier, serving as a first sergeant in the Rapid Reaction Battalion of the Swedish Army, but became embittered after being turned down for promotion to flag sergeant. After becoming Muhammad, he was thrown out of the Swedish army for refusing to keep his beard trimmed to regulation length. His descent from there was swift, apparently hastened by certain psychological issues.

“It should have gone much cleaner,” said Fisk. He knew how people—other Intel cops, especially—looked at him now. Gersten had died, and so had the three agents up near the Canadian border. Good people had gone down around him. Cops are, like baseball players and gamblers, some of the most superstitious people out there.

No one said this to his face, of course. But he was a cop, too: he knew. Though a pure odds player might go the other way, thinking all Fisk’s bad luck had run its course, instead everyone felt he had the mark on him. He was radioactive now.

“And all the shit you had to go through,” Link said. “No witnesses, all that. Reconstructing it. That had to wear you down.”

Fisk took another drink. “Little bit.”

“Gotta stick to your story. I don’t mean it that way. I just mean you gotta tell that same story fifty goddamn times before anyone believes you.”

The CIA agent saw that he had misplayed that. Fisk’s body language was telling him to fuck off.

“Hey,” said Link. “That came out wrong. Look, I got into it myself once. A little dust-up in Fallujah. Took down an insurgent and one of our own translators who flipped on me. Entrenching tool. Saving my own life cost me two months of inquests, affidavits, all that muck. No time for the act of it, the killing, to get digested. That shit sticks to your soul.”

Fisk nodded like maybe Link should change the subject now. The barmaid breezed by, eyes wide in a
Want another?
expression. Fisk needed to slow down. He ordered a Peroni. Link asked for two.

“On me,” he said, as she went away. “I guess with tits like that she doesn’t have to be friendly.” Link trying to worm his way back into Fisk’s good graces. Fisk wanted to ask him to what he owed this honor, but instead chose to watch Link work for whatever he wanted.

“Bottom line is, you took another major threat off the street. With the added bonus of putting the fear of God in people. Fifty bucks says everybody in this place knows what a smoky bomb is.”

A dirty bomb is a radiological weapon that disperses radioactive material via conventional explosives. The explosive blast would cause moderate short-range lethal damage, and the blast wave carrying radioactive material would sicken a wide radius of innocent persons. At least, that was the theory: in fact, no such device had ever been used as a terror weapon. Two attempts at radiological terror had been made, both in Chechnya, both involving cesium-containing bombs, but neither of which was ever detonated.

“Dirty” isotopes emit penetrating gamma rays, which are difficult to shield and handle safely. A so-called smoky bomb uses alpha radiation instead, produced by the radioactive decay of certain isotopes, such as polonium 210. Polonium is unusually common and is used in industries involving static electricity control and ionizing air. Alpha radiation is easily shielded and therefore easier to handle safely. A thin layer of aluminum foil is enough to safeguard its handling. Polonium must be eaten or inhaled to cause harm.

The Swedes had hit upon a way to finely divide and pulverize the polonium into particulate matter for explosive dispersal. The bomb, if detonated, could have killed hundreds. A few breaths were all that was necessary to sicken a victim, perhaps fatally. And the long-term psychological damage to a region such as Manhattan—Times Square was allegedly the Swedes’ intended ground zero—would have been sociologically crippling.

Most first responders, including those in and around New York City, carried only gamma radiation detectors, suitable for dirty bomb fallout, but unable to detect alphas. Pending federal legislation aimed to remedy that.

Fisk looked around at the drinkers filling Pence, people filing in after work, singles, couples. A few breaths of smoky radioactive debris. Ten seconds. An ugly death or a lifetime of illness.

“And how you faring?” asked Link, after the barmaid left their drinks. He had handed her a credit card this time, and she frowned, now needing to make an extra trip back to the table, and tucked the card into her cleavage for safekeeping.

“Good,” said Fisk. “Medically cleared.”

The Swedes had apparently overestimated just how “safe” it was to handle polonium. Fisk had taken the stainless steel container, which was apparently somehow not airtight. About an hour after seeing his prisoner booked into custody, Fisk began throwing up. He had tremors and some localized burns on his hand and hip. His long-term diagnosis was uncertain, depending on the amount of cellular and genetic damage he had suffered. His relatively quick recovery boded well, according to the doctors, but ultimately only time would tell.

Bengtson/Muhammad had not been so lucky. After losing three fingers to frostbite, he started hemorrhaging a few weeks after his arrest due to radiological poisoning and suffered a disabling stroke. He was currently on life support, and his trial had been postponed indefinitely.

Fisk held out his hand. Fairly steady. The tremors had continued long after the exposure, and his therapist, Dr. Flaherty, helped him see that the lingering effects were at least partly psychological. He had come back to Intel two months before but hadn’t yet been returned to full duty, working special projects and generally riding a desk until he was cleared psychologically.

But some days—even in the late-summer heat—Fisk still found himself shivering.

“Thank you,” said Link to the barmaid, who winked and hustled away to the next customer. Link held his credit card to his nose for a moment before returning it to his wallet. “Ambrosia,” he said, with a sigh. Then he ribbed Fisk with his elbow. “Kidding. Sweat and maybe moisturizer. I’ve never been jealous of a credit card before.”

Fisk drank the top inch or more of his Peroni, the Italian beer a nice change of pace after the Jack Daniel’s. “This is the longest sales pitch in history,” he said to Link.

Link shook his head, drinking his own beer, unoffended. “Not a pitch at all. Just an offer. And this isn’t just me, this is a bunch of guys, we think we can pull this off. We like your style, Fisk. We know you’ve been through hell. We’re doing this for you.”

Fisk was skeptical. “Who do I have to kill?” he said.

Link laughed, nodding. “Kill another swig of that beer, and I’ll tell you.”

Fisk did as he was told.

“Jenssen moves to Florence, Colorado, in two days. He’ll be in the supermax there, total isolation, a deep, dark hole from which he will never emerge. Nor will anyone except maybe his lawyer be able to reach him.”

“And?”

“Tomorrow night, there’s a window of time. Maybe as much as an hour. We can put you together with him. One on one.”

Fisk felt icy needles enter his chest—even as he was trying to figure out this guy’s game.

Link added hastily, “I’m not talking anything physical. You want to kick his ass, you’re shit out of luck. Can’t make that happen. But we can do this. The marshals are on board. Jenssen would have no warning.”