Drone (38 page)

But that had been a long time ago, and Eleazar was a different person now, one of Bravo’s most trusted lieutenants. He’d done terrible things for Bravo, things for which he’d often prayed for forgiveness, but the guilt always remained. He could never quite get the feeling that the blood on his hands had been washed off even though the blood he’d shed had been, well, necessary, hadn’t it?

As soon as Bravo had said he wanted a beer, a familiar verse came back
to Eleazar:
Y David dijo con vehemencia: ¡Quién me diera a beber del agua del pozo de Belén que está junto a la puerta!

Eleazar remembered that the verse was from 2 Samuel 23:15. And didn’t his father always say,
God always makes a way of escape?

There was no question in Eleazar’s mind that God was opening a door for true forgiveness for him, if he would just have the courage to step through it. Just like Victor Bravo, King David was hiding in his wilderness stronghold in the midst of his enemies when he longed for a drink from a faraway well. And wasn’t Eleazar, son of Dodo, one of the three mighty men who fetched it for him?

“I’ll get you some beer,
hermano
. Leave it to me,” Eleazar said.

Victor’s eyes narrowed.

“No. It’s too dangerous. You might get killed.”

“I’d rather die trying to steal a cold beer than wait for a hot rocket to fly up my ass,” Eleazar answered cheerfully. Everybody in the room laughed, including Victor.

“Okay, then. Get me some beer. We’ll keep our asses locked up tight until you get back.”

The other men howled with delight and stared at Victor hopefully. He laughed again, reading their minds. “Get enough for them, too!”

Eleazar threw a sloppy salute and scrambled away with a grin plastered across his face. Moments later, he leaped on an ancient moped and gunned the lawn-mower-size engine, scrambling out of the walled compound and onto the dirt path that wound through the jungle back toward Peto. Eleazar hoped his cell phone still carried a charge.

—

Three hours passed. The heat of the day rose like a tide from hell, wrapping the compound in a shroud of suffocating humidity. The sentry stood underneath the stone portico of the abandoned mission. It kept the sentry out of the sun, but it didn’t help him cool off. He wished he was inside
the sanctuary where it was cooler. Bravo and the others were enjoying their afternoon siesta, snoring in hammocks slung between the columns.

The sentry checked his canteen. Empty. He’d drained it an hour ago. But if he came off the wall to refill it, he’d be shot for abandoning his post. He’d just have to tough it out a few more hours and then he could get a drink of water and even get some shut-eye, too.

The sentry heard the whine of a truck engine approaching through the trees. He needed to check it out, but he was under strict orders to stay under cover if at all possible, just in case there was overhead surveillance. He stayed underneath the roof line and raised his binoculars. What he saw made him laugh.

That
pendejo
Eleazar.

A big beer delivery truck came lumbering out of the trees, rolling slowly over the deeply rutted dirt road. The logo on the side of the beer truck was a giant Mayan head, drawn in the traditional style, tilted back and chugging down a cold bottle of Sol
.
A local pop radio station blared inside the cab.

The sentry raced down the wooden ladder and ran across the compound to unlock the front gate. He could already taste the cold beer splashing in the back of his throat.

The truck stopped on the other side of the locked gate. Eleazar grinned inside the air-conditioned cab. He was gesturing
Hurry up!
through the cold windshield that was fogging up against the warm, damp air outside.

The young sentry unbolted the iron gate and swung it open on its rusty hinges. He jumped up on the truck’s running board on the driver’s side as Eleazar pulled in.

The sentry tapped on the cool glass. Eleazar rolled the window down. The truck’s refrigeration unit roared overhead.

“Where did you steal this from,
hermano
?”

“Back in Peto. It was at the Super Willy’s across from the
zócalo
. I don’t think they’ll miss it, do you?” Eleazar beamed with pride.

“If they do, too bad for them!”

Eleazar stopped the truck in the middle of the compound, several feet from the church. He leaned on the horn.

“What are you doing?” the sentry asked.

“Waking those lazy asses up. Time to drink some beer.”

“Let them sleep! More beer for us.”

“Don’t be such a greedy pig. We’re socialists now, remember?” Eleazar leaned on the horn again. A few bleary-eyed comrades stumbled out into the bright light. Their faces lit up when they saw the truck.

“Let me in the back,” the sentry begged.

“Not yet.”

“Give me the key or I’ll bust it open.”

“Just wait. Trust me.” Eleazar finally saw Victor emerge into the shadow of the front portico. He stood there, smiling, clasping his hands together and shaking them like a rattle by his head, the universal sign of approval.

“Fuck you, Eleazar. I want some beer,” the sentry said.

“Just wait a minute, will you?”

Victor ambled out into the harsh sunlight, making his way toward the truck.

The sentry dropped down onto the ground and headed for the back of the truck.

The first Bravo out of the church was just a few feet away from the truck now, licking his lips. But Victor was still too far away.

The thirsty sentry swung the back door open. He saw the muzzle flash from the suppressed end of a pistol. The hollow-point slug punched a small hole into his forehead, but the subsequent intracranial shock wave blew out the back of his skull and all of its contents while he was still on his feet. His corpse was knocked to the ground by the first soldier out of the truck.

Eleazar felt more than heard the squad of
Marinas
scramble out of his
vehicle. Seconds later, they fanned out around the compound. Eleazar remained locked in the truck as ordered.

An eight-bladed Draganflyer X8 surveillance rotocopter zoomed over the compound. The drone was flown by another squad of
Marinas
that had followed Eleazar’s truck from Peto a half mile back.

The
Marinas
had told Eleazar to stay in the truck no matter what, out of concern for his safety, but as he watched Victor Bravo race unnoticed back into the church, Eleazar feared Victor would get to the escape tunnel and seal the entrance before the
Marinas
could reach him.

Eleazar couldn’t let the Devil get away. How else could he pay his debt to God?

Eleazar grabbed his pistol out of the glove box, leaped from the cab, and tore after him. An AK-47 opened up. Bullets clawed him from his groin to his belly.

Eleazar clutched his stomach. His hands were full of intestines, pink and wet with blood, like an offering.

Eleazar’s wobbly legs gave way. His eyes dimmed.

He felt himself falling into the darkness, afraid that God wouldn’t catch him.

45

Los Pinos, Mexico D.F.

Victor Bravo was dead.

Hernán drained his third glass of whiskey. He was worried.

Without cartel muscle behind them, the fragile web of Barraza alliances—strung together by fear and corruption—would quickly melt away. And then the mice would come out to play with their machetes, seeking revenge.

Hernán could run. He had a chalet in Switzerland, a flat in Paris, and a fat bankroll stashed in Paraguay. Life could be good.

His other option was to answer the damn phone. The one flashing Victor Bravo’s number, even though Victor was dead. Answer it, even if it was a mouse calling him.

“Yes?”

“Señor Barraza, I know you were a friend of Victor’s.”

“What do you want?”

“He was a friend of mine, too. My name is Ali Abdi. We need to talk.”

Ali understood Hernán’s situation perfectly. Offered the use of his trained men, fiercely loyal to him. “You know what they’re capable of doing.”

“Houston?”

“Of course.”

Hernán was intrigued. “Your services in exchange for what?”

Ali explained. The terms were acceptable. More than acceptable. Hernán agreed. They worked out a plan.

No need to leave Mexico after all.

Hernán smiled.

Poured himself another whiskey. Time to call in favors from his friends in Caracas and Havana. Start the plan rolling
ahora
.

He drained his glass.

Fuck the mice.

—

Two days later, one of the big media conglomerates began running a Victor Bravo memorial piece, extolling his virtues as an advocate for the poor, his charitable work among the
campesinos
, and the vast array of clinics, orphanages, and education centers he’d built around the country over the last two decades. The show featured glowing interviews with grateful farmers, Indians, admiring
telenovela
stars, and several staged “man-on-the-street” encounters, and all of it was scored with popular folk music that had been written about him over the years. The media conglomerate—a big supporter of the Barraza campaign during the last election—had already put it together even before the death of Victor Bravo. With orders from Hernán, they released it to any television station or cable satellite programmer that wanted to run it free of charge.

The hugely popular show was picked up immediately by the Spanish-language networks in the United States. Local news shows then ran their own follow-up programming, tying together all of the recent events, including the terrible border-crossing situation affecting so many Hispanics in both countries. Like their English-language counterparts, Telemundo, Univision, and the other majors had distinct political agendas that favored a particular point of view slanting against the Myers administration, which was increasingly vilified on these networks because of the new border regulations. What most Anglos didn’t realize was that Spanish-language news shows were the number one rated shows of
any language
in Los Angeles,
Dallas, Phoenix, and Houston. The Victor Bravo mythology—and his death, which was now being characterized as a martyrdom—was spreading like wildfire on both sides of the border.

Bay of Campeche, Mexico

One hundred and seven miles offshore from Veracruz, a PEMEX oil rig, the
Aztec Dream
, was topping off a giant oil tanker with crude pumped directly from the gulf floor. Bill Gordon was the offshore operations engineer (OOE), which made him the senior technical authority on the PEMEX rig. The middle-aged Texan in the burnt orange UT Longhorns ball cap had worked on offshore oil rigs all over the world, including the Persian Gulf, before joining PEMEX.

Bill was finishing up a cigarette in the designated smoking area way up high near the rig office, right next to one of the emergency lifeboats, enjoying a million-dollar ocean view. He flicked the butt off the rail and watched it drift down the two hundred feet or so toward the churning gulf waters below, but he lost sight of it before it hit the waves.

A glint of silver caught his eye and he glanced up. Bill had seen plenty of drones when he worked in the Persian Gulf and easily recognized the one circling overhead. Flying low.

He supported Myers’s most-wanted-list policy wholeheartedly, but kept that opinion to himself, since his Mexican counterparts on the rig were mostly against it. When he saw the Reaper, his heart skipped a beat. He was damn proud to be an American, and that little piece of technology roaring around in front of that four-cylinder turbocharged engine up there was yet another proof of American technological dominance.

What he couldn’t quite understand was why it was flying around his rig. He scanned the water around him, searching for a renegade Zodiac or maybe some frogmen who might be trying to sabotage the vulnerable platform, but he didn’t see anything.

He wondered if the Reaper was on some kind of routine patrol.
Whoever was flying it must have been new on the job, though, because the wings kept wobbling and the plane yawed back and forth, as if it were fighting a stiff crosswind. He guessed it was a training mission for a young pilot stuck in a trailer in Nevada somewhere.

The Reaper circled lower and closer until Bill could see the big American flag on the fuselage and the two antitank missiles slung under its wings. It was close enough that he pulled out his smartphone and zoomed in on the drone with the built-in video camera.

WHOOSH! A missile roared off of its rack in a jet of flame and smoke.

“Shit!”

Bill nearly dropped his phone. He watched the missile track until it slammed into the side of the big oil tanker, just above the water line. The thin steel skin of the tanker erupted under the force of a warhead designed to penetrate heavy tank armor. Flaming oil gushed out into the gulf, forming a fiery slick near the ship and the pumping boom that connected it to the rig.

Bill raced for the door of his office to call it in when he heard another WHOOSH! overhead. It sounded so different from the first one, he instinctively knew it hadn’t been fired at the tanker.

A massive explosion rocked the oil rig. The missile had smashed into the wellhead assembly, the worst possible location. High-pressure oil and gases from deep within the earth’s crust now burst free and caught fire, creating a seventy-foot-tall blowtorch of white-hot flame. Fire quickly spread onto the main deck, fueled by the fine mist of oil clouding the air. New explosions rocked the steel decking under Bill’s feet as gas welding canisters and storage tanks exploded like a chain of firecrackers, throwing shards of jagged steel whistling through the air.

Within moments, the lower decks were enveloped in a cauldron of fire. Men roasting alive screamed as they threw themselves over the rails toward the ocean below. Fire crews grabbed hoses and fire extinguishers, and charged toward the advancing flames, but it was too late. The rig’s
installation manager sounded the alarm. Sirens wailed. The few surviving crew members who weren’t trapped or already dead raced for the bright orange lifeboats hanging in their stanchions, Bill among them, but the sea itself was on fire. Chances were that they would be boiled alive inside the boats like lobsters in a pot.