The Last Line (28 page)

As the team collected information, they began hammering out a plan. Clearly, the overwatch group was part of an OP keeping an eye on the Perez house. An attack on the Perez place would bring those twelve running, or at least alert them so that when the strike force came out the front door they would be gunned down in the street. Somehow, both cartel groups had to be neutralized—and at close to the same moment, to avoid having the Perez group kill their prisoner and to avoid having the strike force trapped by the opposition's overwatch gunmen.

Six men to take on eighteen in two locations, three to one. The odds might be even worse than that, since there could be people in those houses who weren't packing cell phones, and there was that portion of the Perez house interior that was blocked.

The odds weren't looking real good.

They had an equalizer, however, a force multiplier, in the MMMR gear. Traditionally in hostage rescue takedowns, the hardest part about the assault was figuring out just where the hostages were being held, where the defenders were, and how many defenders were close enough to harm the hostages once the shooting started. The MMMR showed them all of that, and more, by rendering the walls of the Perez house all but invisible.

One of Marcetti's men, Staff Sergeant Rogers, was in the process of unpacking and assembling a second force multiplier—a Barrett M-107CQ, broken down into pieces and carried in a foam-padded aluminum case. A second man was unpacking the ammunition.

“Okay,” Teller said. He indicated the Cellmap screen data. “Taking down the Tangos in the Perez house should be pretty straightforward. But we can't hit the second house from here.”

That house, now identified as Hotel Two, “Hotel” for “hostage,” was on the same side of the street as the Vicente house, and separated from it by two intervening houses. Microwave radiation could pass through brick walls—even a single thickness of concrete blocks—but two or more such barriers tended to block them off.

Marcetti used his ballpoint to indicate a path on the Cellmap screen. “It looks like we could take the team up to the roof of Hotel One back here,” he said, “and that would keep it out of Hotel Two's line of sight, at least until we're on the roof. The rooftop is flat. We have what looks like a ventilator there … and this over here might be a trapdoor leading down.”

“The through-wall shows a stairway underneath,” Procario said. “It'll be a bottleneck, though.”

“Hey, better going down than going up,” Marcetti replied. “And with a sniper able to interdict the hallway next to the stairs, we're in, no worries.”

Hostage rescue and building close-assault teams always preferred to come in through the roof if at all possible if there was more than one floor in the target structure. In a firefight in a stairwell, it was
always
better to be the guy up on top, able to drop grenades down the stairs at the guys below.

“The rooftop trapdoor will be locked.”

“Breaching charge, shotgun, or a bolt cutter, whichever seems right for the job.”

“So how about Hotel Two? We don't have the numbers for two separate assaults.”

“No,” Marcetti said, “but we have claymores.
That
ought to even the odds a bit.”

“That'll do,” Procario agreed. “So … one sniper. If he works without a spotter, one man to plant the claymore. He could either come back here and be the spotter or join the assault.”

“Better yet,” Teller said, “our extra man plants the claymore, then works his way south along here—sticking to the shadows in front of the houses. Crosses the street somewhere around here, out of sight of Hotel Two … then works his way back north up the west side of the street to here. That looks like a fence, doesn't it? He would then have a line of sight to the front of Hotel Two, could set off the claymore when necessary, and provide covering fire for our E&E. And that leaves five for the actual assault team.”

“Are you volunteering for claymore duty?”

“Actually,” Teller said, “no. I'm going to be on the assault team.”

“Ex
cuse
me?” Marcetti shook his head. “You know better than that, Chris.”

“I brought you in on this op. I'm going in with you.”

Marcetti indicated the other four men in the room, all of them clad in black combat utilities, with combat vests, weapons, and night-vision devices already laid out and ready on the bed. They were listening with a range of expressions running from openly amused to carefully neutral. “The five of us have been training as a team for months. We know
exactly
how we're all going to move, react, and fire. All it takes is one guy to turn left instead of right, and you have a friendly fire casualty—or, worse, the mission is compromised.”

“I know all that. But
you
should know that the hostage over there is … someone I know. Someone I care about, a
lot.
I'm going in with you guys.”

“That makes it worse. If you have an emotional attachment, it can cloud your judgment. I don't need that fucking grief in a CQB.”

CQB—close-quarters battle. It was the most difficult, most challenging form of combat, a firefight where your opponent might well be hidden just around that next corner or emerging from a closed door at your back. Hostage rescue units trained as teams endlessly until each team member knew where every other team member was at every moment, could
feel
his presence even when he was out of sight.

“How about this?” Teller asked. “That hostage over there isn't going to be trusting
anybody
right now. She was handed over to the Tangos by CISEN. If you go in there without me, you might have to fight her to get her out.”

Teller felt Marcetti's cold stare at that one and knew just how thin an excuse it was. Jackie was well trained and highly experienced; she would know what was happening the instant a team of black-clad commandos burst into her room shouting, “Stay down! Americans!” She wasn't about to confuse Marcetti's team with more Mexican drug lords, and she absolutely was
not
the sort of person to go into hysterics at the wrong moment.

Hell, even if she had been, there was always the field-ready expedient of knocking her unconscious and hauling her out over someone's shoulder.

That stare dragged on for an uncomfortable number of seconds. Then Marcetti threw up his hands. “Okay. You're in. But you will stay out of our way, and you will do exactly what you're told, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“And I'm OIC, understand me?”

“You're the officer in charge.
Sir.
”

Marcetti sighed. “I'm probably going to regret this…”

“I can handle the claymore, boss,” one of the ISA men said.

“Okay, Patterson.” Marcetti looked at Procario. “You qualified to play sniper?”

“Former marine,” Procario told him. “Expert rifleman. Scored two-forty-five out of two-fifty on my last qual. Distinguished Marksman Medal, McDougal Trophy,
and
President's Hundred.”

“Okay! Okay! You've got the job.”

“Uh-oh,” Teller said. He was looking again at the MMMR screen, where one of the men from the living room was trudging up the stairs to the second floor. “Looks like we might have some trouble here.”

MARIA PEREZ HOUSE

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2250 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

Dominique heard the second man enter the room. It was Loudmouth, as she'd named him, the bigmouthed, vulgar one that liked to taunt her about what he was going to do to her. Of them all, he was the one who always managed to make her blood run cold. The others were bad, although the Perez woman was decent enough. At least she saw to it that Dominique got to eat once in a while—and use the rest room. Loudmouth, though, was terrifying.

“So, how's our girlfriend?” he boomed. The floorboards creaked beneath his shoes as he walked closer. A sudden, sharp crack sounded as he slapped her butt. Even through her jeans, the blow stung. “Ready for a little action?”

His voice was slurred, his Spanish sloppy and imprecise.
God, he's drunk,
she thought.
Not good …

“C'mon, Renaldo,” the other voice said. “You heard the orders. Hands off the merchandise until the Skull says differently.”

“Well, I don't know about you, but I'm tired of waiting for Mr. Skull.” The hand on her hip was caressing now, rough and insistent. “He won't be here until tomorrow morning. I think we have a perfect right to sample the goods, don't you?”

“You stick it in, he's going to cut it off, you know that?”

“And who's going to tell him? You?”

“Her, maybe.”

“Ah. Just my word against hers, right?” Another stinging crack brought tears to her eyes beneath the blindfold. “And you never know, right? She might like a little rough loving! And if not, she might have a real good idea of what I'd do to her if she does tell.”

Dominique heard a chilling click, and then she felt a cold blade pressing against her cheek. “How about it, girl? Are you going to … cooperate? Be a good girl?”

Dominique managed a nod. They already knew she understood Spanish, and at this point resistance would just result in her being hurt more. If she played along, she might buy some time.

“Good,” Loudmouth said. “Let's see what we have here.”

She felt him fumble with the rope tying her ankles to her wrists, felt the sharp snick of a blade, and the rope parted. She was still tied hand and foot, but at least she could stretch out her legs. Incongruously, it felt wonderful.

Rough hands rolled her over onto her back. She tensed, expecting the worst.

A phone chirped.

Dominique felt the man's hands leave her and heard his curt
“Aló? Sí.”
A moment passed, and he said,
“Pero … no. Intiendo. Sí, señor. ¡Sí, gracias! ¡Con mucho gusto! ¡Sí,
mil
gracias!”

The man's demeanor felt changed. She sensed him turn away.
“Nada va a pasar a esta mujer,”
he told the other man.
“Absolutamente nada.”

Nothing is to happen to this woman.

“What was that about?” the guard asked, still in Spanish.

“Orders,” Loudmouth said. “Very
special
orders.”

Dominique heard him stalk from the room.

Reprieve.

She drew a long, relieved breath and worked at stretching her stiff knees.

VICENTE HOUSE

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2254 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

“That,” Procario said, “was fucking brilliant!”

On the laptop display, the male target fondling the woman on the bed had just turned away abruptly and was now going back down the stairs.

“It was also damned risky,” Marcetti said. “What if the bastard knew the voice?”

Teller flipped his cell phone shut. “I figured that having ‘Juan Escalante' call him would be quite a surprise. He also sounded pretty drunk.”

Moments before, they'd engaged yet a third force multiplier, keying in through the satellite network to turn one of the cell phones in that upstairs bedroom into an open microphone. They'd heard the phone's owner, Renaldo Pascua Sosa, speaking with the guard in slurred, drunken tones and then asking if Jackie was going to cooperate with him. With Pascua's phone number on the screen, Teller had pulled out his own phone and keyed in the number, identifying himself as Juan Escalante.

In curt, rough Spanish, Teller had told him that he wanted nothing to happen to the “package,” and that Maria would tell him if it did. He'd then told the man that he, Escalante, was trusting Pascua with an important task: delivering the package to another safe house, which would be identified later. If he did, and the woman was not harmed in any way, Escalante would pay Pascua one million pesos—about $75,000.

Even for a narcoterrorist, that was a fairly substantial chunk of change. Pascua's rap sheet identified him as a street-level soldier with the Sinaloa Cartel, a deserter from the Mexican Army. Bank records showed just under half a million pesos in Banamex, a bank in Mexico City, which suggested that a million pesos would grab his attention.

“If they're all drinking,” Procario pointed out, “someone else may get ideas.”

“Right now, we have Pascua protecting Jackie for us. We need to get in there and take those bastards down before things unravel.”

“You also need a new phone,” Procario said.

“Why?”

“You just connected to an infected cell phone.” He indicated the Cellmap image, where a new blue dot had just winked on across the street from the Perez house and three houses south from Hotel Two.

“Hell with it,” Teller said. “Let's get in harness and get on over there.”

MARIA PEREZ HOUSE

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2258 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

Maria Perez sat on the edge of her bed, her cell phone pressed to her ear. “Juan, I wish you would come here.”

“I can't, beloved. Not tonight. I'll be there with Mr. Morales in the morning.”

“The men here … I'm afraid for the young woman's safety!”

“It's not important. Just so long as she is still alive when we get there.”

“Juan … I hate this. I don't want to be a part of it!”

“There's nothing that can be done about it. It's out of my hands. That woman is going to be our insurance that the Americans don't interfere with our operations here, or in the north. If she gets hurt along the way, well, that's just the way it is, understand?”

“Juan … one of the men here, Pascua. He's been talking about cutting off her fingers and her ears! You can't let him do that!”

“What is that woman to you, Maria?”