Cartel (22 page)

And now that he knew, now that he was surrounded by dope and money, he had to leave it all behind. There wasn't time to call it in and wait. He had to get the video to Glenn Peterson. The best he could do was tell Peterson about the warehouse when they met. Maybe the ASAC could put to-gether a team and hit this place this afternoon, before Los Zetas had a chance to move everything back across the bor-der.

He heard a metallic click behind him. Turning, he saw Benny had flicked open a folding knife and was slicing off the shrink-wrap from a stack of money the size of a concrete block. "What are you doing?" he said.

She closed the knife and picked up a banded brick of cash. "We need money for a cab," she said as she strolled past him. "Let's get out of here before somebody grows a pair of balls big enough to come check out all the noise."

At the door they unloaded their rifles and tossed them away. They kept the pistols. Scott tucked the Glock into the back of his waistband and covered it with his shirt. He touched the flash drive hanging around his neck. Then he checked his watch. It was 12:20 p.m. In less than half an hour he was going to dump this whole pile of shit into Glenn Peterson's lap and let him deal with it. That's why ASACs got paid the big bucks.

Humberto Larios was in a bad mood. His mood was the re-sult of anxiety. A feeling he was not used to. Sitting in an overstuffed leather recliner in one of his villa's five dens, Larios was staring at his giant TV screen and flipping chan-nels. Sports, history, cooking, gardening, movies-they all looked the same to him. He glanced at the encrypted cell phone lying on the end table at his elbow. The time display was visible, so he knew that the telephone's battery had not run down. Maybe he should call somebody just to make sure the phone was getting a signal. But he knew the signal was fine. The signal wasn't the problem. The problem was that the person whose call he was waiting for hadn't called.

So he kept switching the channels on his television.

Then he saw her face flash across the screen as he thumbed past a news channel. He flipped back and there she was. Benetta Alvarez. On TV. A newscaster was talking, but the volume was too low for Larios to hear. He jabbed the button that turned up the sound.

According to the newscaster, an American Drug En-forcement agent who had recently gone missing was be-lieved to be in the company of a Policia Federal officer named Benetta Alvarez, who, according to a policia spokesman, was also missing. Another photo appeared on the television screen, side by side with Alvarez. The photo, again according the newscaster, was of the American agent, Scott Greene, who was under internal investigation by the DEA. The extent of the relationship between Alvarez and Greene was not clear, but authorities in both countries sus-pected the two fugitive law enforcement officers were to-gether somewhere near the border.

Larios picked up his phone and dialed a number.

Five minutes later, Miguel Sanchez, a thick-necked, bar-rel-chested man in his forties, stood in front of Larios, more or less at military attention. Sanchez's brush cut left his mangled left ear exposed. The missing part of the ear had ei-ther been shot off, cut off, or bitten off. Larios had never gotten the full story. A jagged scar ran under Sanchez's left eye and across his cheek.

Larios's right-hand man and an original Zeta, Sanchez had been a second sergeant in the Army's Special Forces Airmobile Group and had deserted with Arturo Guzman De-cena, the man famously known by his radio call sign, "Z-1."

It was Guzman who, with promises of wealth and pow-er, had convinced an initial cadre of thirty Airmobile Group soldiers, including Sanchez, to desert from the Army and form a paramilitary unit of mercenaries to work for the Gulf Cartel. That unit had become known as Los Zetas, the plural of the Spanish word for the letter Z, in honor of its leader, Arturo Guzman.

Los Zetas eventually split from the Gulf Cartel and formed an independent group. Now they were the second largest and second most powerful cartel in Mexico and had surpassed all of the others in violence and sheer terror. And they were at war with the Sinaloa cartel.

"Find Benetta Alvarez," Larios told Sanchez.

"La policia?" the ex-soldier asked.

Larios nodded. "She has a video with her. On a flash drive. I need the video and any copies. She is probably with an American DEA agent."

"What about after I get the video?"

"I won't need her anymore," Larios said. "Or the Ameri-can." He paused for a few seconds, then added, "Send a message."

Sanchez didn't salute anymore. He'd finally broken him-self of that habit. He just said, "Sí, señor." Then he did an about-face and marched out.

The taxi dropped them off at the Radisson Hotel. Benny handed the driver a hundred dollar bill.

"I don't have enough change," the driver complained.

"Keep it," Benny said.

Scott climbed out of the cab. Benny followed him. As the taxi pulled away, Scott said, "You gave him a seventy dollar tip."

She patted the bulge of hundreds in her front pocket. "I have nine thousand and nine hundred more."

Scott looked up at the glass façade of the high-rise ho-tel. He was almost done. The video would be out of his hands in a few minutes. Then what? What about his career? Did he even have a career? Four agents had been murdered on his watch. Three of them because of decisions he had made. Their surviving family members would need help, with insurance benefits, with counseling services, with funeral arrangements. Then there was Benny and her daughter. He had promised to get them out of Mexico, for good. He was going to keep that promise.

"What are you looking at?" Benny asked.

He glanced at her and smiled. "My life going up in smoke."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing."

They walked in through the revolving door, crossed the grand lobby, and got into an empty elevator car. Scott punched the button for the seventh floor. As the elevator doors closed, Benny asked, "What's he going to do with it?"

"The video?"

She nodded.

"Get it to somebody important."

"Who?" Benny asked.

"I don't know."

"Do you trust him?"

"We went through a lot of doors together," Scott said. "So, yeah, I trust him."

In the mirrored surface of the elevator door, Scott saw Benny nod. Then she said, "But how do you know you can trust the person he gives the video to? How do you know that person won't..." She snapped her fingers trying to recall a word. "Put it in the ground."

"Bury it," Scott said.

"Yes, bury it."

"I don't. Not for sure. Because I don't know how high up this thing goes. They still may put me in front of a firing squad." Her shocked expression showed that she took his words literally. "I'm exaggerating," he said. "What I mean is-"

The bell dinged and the door opened on the seventh floor. They stepped into the elevator lobby. To their left ran the central hallway. A brass sign on the wall indicated the range of room numbers in each direction. The elevator door closed behind them.

"What I mean is that this is a big deal," Scott said. "A huge deal. Like Watergate. The CIA isn't the government. It's just a small part of the government. They're supposed to advise the president, not set policy for the United States. And they don't get to break the law to pursue their own agenda."

"Didn't you do the same thing?"

"By going after Ortiz in Mexico?"

Benny nodded.

Scott hesitated. "That was different."

"How?"

"I was trying to put a murderer in prison." Scott pulled the flash drive from under his shirt. "This is a CIA official and the deputy attorney general of Mexico having drinks with the biggest drug trafficker in Mexico and promising to protect his dope shipments to the United States."

"Won't the CIA come after you?"

He shook his head. "It's not the whole agency. It can't be. And once this goes public, the people who are involved won't have time to come after you or me. This video is going to kick off a category five shit storm, and they'll be too busy running for cover to worry about us."

She looked skeptical.

"Trust me," he said. "It might be rough at first, but in the end everything is going to be all right."

"What about my daughter?"

"Once I put this flash drive in Glenn's hands, you and I will be out of it, at least for a while, and we can figure out the best way to bring your daughter across the border and get you two back together."

Benny smiled a little at that.

"So let's get this over with," Scott said. Then he led the way down the hall to room 718.

They found the door to Glenn's room ajar, held open by the security latch. They could hear the television playing and the shower running.

"Maybe he's in the shower," Scott said as he slipped the Glock out from the small of his back. "And left the door open for us."

"Then why are you pulling a gun?" Benny said as her own pistol appeared in her hand.

Scott knocked on the door. "In case he's not in the shower."

No one answered the knock.

Nudging the door open a few more inches, Scott called out, "Glenn?"

Nothing except the TV and the running water.

Scott pushed the door open the rest of the way, until it bumped against the wall. He knew better than to leave enough room behind a door for someone to hide behind. He stepped into the room. Benny followed him.

"About time you got here, Agent Greene," said the man standing on the far side of the room, next to the sliding glass door that opened onto the balcony. He wore khaki cargo pants, a really tight green T-shirt, and a ball cap. And he was big, like bodybuilder big. He held identical Glock pistols in each hand. "I see you brought your girlfriend, Officer Alva-rez. Did you two stop for a quickie?"

Glenn Peterson was duct-taped to a chair and gagged.

Benny squeezed up beside Scott in the narrow foyer. "Que el infierno?"

Scott shoved Benny through the open bathroom door, then dove to the floor just as the man fired. The bullet missed Scott's face by less than an inch and buried itself in the wall behind him. Scott landed with his pistol extended in both hands, but from his prone position he couldn't see the man because the foot of the bed was in the way. He heard Glenn shouting through the gag. Then he heard another shot and Glenn's shout changed into a wheeze.

Keeping his pistol extended, Scott rolled left until he hit the dresser. He was on his back and had a clear sight picture, though it was upside down. The man was firing. Scott heard bullets thudding against the floor only a foot from his head. The man kept firing, walking the bullets closer. Scott pulled the trigger as fast as he could. One, two, three, four, five, six times, putting all six rounds, or at least most of them, into the target. The man fell back against the glass door and it shattered, spilling him onto the balcony.

Scott scrambled to his feet. "Benny," he shouted, though he kept his eyes on the man he had shot. The two pistols the man had been holding had tumbled onto the balcony with him. He'd let go of them, but they were close. Scott looked over the sights of his pistol and watched the man's hands. He noticed his own hands were shaking.

"I'm here," Benny said. She was behind him. "Who the hell is that?"

"Cover him," Scott said as stepped across the room.

Glenn's chest was heaving as he struggled to breathe. Blood was pumping from a bullet hole in his chest. Scott ripped off the duct tape gag and found a washcloth stuffed inside Glenn's mouth. He yanked it out, and Glenn sucked down a deep gurgling breath. His eyes were wide with fear.

"Hold on, Glenn," Scott said. "Help's on the way." He saw the phone on the nightstand. A call to 911 could get an ambulance here in minutes. There was still time. Laredo Medical Center was five minutes away. One advantage to being in a city as violent as Laredo was that the doctors and staff at the local trauma center knew how to treat gunshot wounds. He reached for the phone.

"Scott," Benny said.

He looked at her. She nodded at Glenn. Scott turned and saw Glenn's head slumped on his chest, mouth slack, eyes open. The blood from the gunshot wound was barely a trickle. Glenn let out a long shuddering final breath.

Scott pressed two fingers against the side of Glenn's neck. He felt nothing.

A telephone rang.

Scott Greene glanced at the hotel phone on the nightstand. The telephone rang again. But not that telephone. The sound was coming from the balcony. Scott stepped through the shattered door and dug a cell phone from the dead man's pocket just as it rang a third time. The caller ID showed BLOCKED. Scott jabbed the ANSWER button and pressed the phone to his ear. He didn't say anything. For several sec-onds he heard only the open line. Then a man's voice said, "Is it done?"

Scott knew the voice. One of the two men who had tak-en Felix Ortiz from the DEA office. The man who had called himself Jones and claimed that he and his pet pit bull were with the State Department. "Yeah, it's done, asshole. And your man's dead. Just like you're going to be. Real soon."

Several seconds ticked by. Then the man said, "You are a resourceful son of a bitch, Agent Greene. I'll grant you that."

"Resourceful enough to find you and put a bullet in your head."

"I wouldn't count on that."

"Really?" Scott said. "Why's that?"

But the line went dead.

Benny was staring at Scott. "Who was that?"

"The guy trying to kill us."

"What did he say?"

"That he's going to keep trying." Scott heard the distant wail of police sirens. He looked at the dead man at his feet, at the two pistols the man had been carrying, at Glenn Peter-son's body. What had been the plan here? The gunman had obviously been expecting him, so why keep Peterson alive? Why gag him and tape him to a chair instead of just killing him and waiting for Scott to show up?

Outside the sirens were closing in.

"We should go," Benny said.

Scott looked back and forth between the two bodies. He was missing something. Something important. The scene was trying to talk to him. He just couldn't hear it over the sound of the sirens.