Extreme Faction (15 page)

He was a block from his meeting place now. There was a large hedge to his right that skirted the sidewalk for an entire block. Birds chirped and fluttered within the thick bushes. One flew out quickly and nearly hit his head. He jumped back swiftly.

The flowers were gone. There was only a small strip of grass along the sidewalk, where dogs had urinated and defecated and the nasty odor rose up to tinge at Kreuzberg's sensitive olfactory nerves.

Just fifty meters now and ten minutes for his driver to show up. His driver was always on time or early. He expected nothing less of his people.

He had kept an eye out for the two men following him, but they had disappeared. Perhaps he had been too concerned. He relaxed a little.

When he was almost to his meeting place, he noticed a man approaching straight away. He had seemingly appeared from nowhere. He wasn't dressed as shabbily as the other two men, but he was dark like them.

Kreuzberg slowed his pace.

The man continued toward him, not even looking at him.

Kreuzberg tensed up again as the man was nearly upon him. But he was looking behind Kreuzberg.

A bell rang from behind, and Kreuzberg jumped to the side, turning quickly as the bicycle nearly hit him.

He didn't feel a thing when the man reached out to help him from getting hit by the bike. The man simply smiled, turned, and continued on down the sidewalk.

Kreuzberg felt silly. He brushed his suit and straightened it out over his hips. He even laughed slightly out loud. Why did they allow those bicycles on the sidewalks anyway?

In a moment he reached the spot where he would wait the last few minutes for his driver. But something was wrong. He felt a piercing pain under his left arm. Was it his heart? Had the man and the bicycle scared him that much?

The pain spread out and seemed to be invading his entire body. Now he started sweating. His breathing became labored. He was barely able to catch his breath. People walked by him, staring. He started to loosen his tie. His neck felt hot, like it would blow up.

He couldn't breathe. He grasped his neck with both hands, as if he were being strangled by invisible hands and he was struggling to remove the ghost's strong fingers.

Then his knees buckled. He hit the pavement with a thud. Now a young couple stopped and seemed to be saying something to him. He peered up at them with teary eyes, as if begging for help.

He twitched uncontrollably on the ground. But by now he could no longer feel anything. It was as if the world were spinning around at a hundred times its normal rotation, and he was at the center rising up a torrid, swirling tornado.

In a moment he lay still.

A silver Mercedes pulled up to the curb and the driver rushed quickly through the crowd. He peered down at his boss lying on the cold, hard cement, his eyes glazed over in horrid hope, looking up to the cloudy sky to God.

STATE OF CHIHUAHUA, MEXICO

Baskale had driven all night through some of the most treacherous terrain in northern Mexico, on dirt roads that never should have been built and were rarely maintained. The last fifteen miles had been without a road. The Chevy Suburban had held up well with its wide desert tires, laboring only occasionally when the sand became deeper and looser. Despite his best efforts, Baskale knew he was over an hour late. He had stayed too long at the drug dealer's house. He had driven with great determination, but he didn't want to crack even one bomblet open. One tiny fissure, one brief whiff, and they would all die. His mission was far too important to die that way, in some snake-infested desert.

The sun was inching up toward the horizon to the east, as the four men stood at the southern bank of the Rio Grande, staring across to the other side. They would have to cross in daylight now.

With binoculars, Baskale could finally see movement and then three quick flashes of light from a flashlight. He looked at one of his men and slapped him across the head when he didn't return the signal. The man finally flashed back twice.

In a moment they could hear a boat motor. Then, in the increasing light, a tan form headed in a straight line from the other side. As the boat got closer, it slowed and its wake settled down. At the last minute the boat turned upstream and the driver let it drift toward the shore, keeping the sputtering motor just above idle to keep up with the current.

The boat was a large, deep-hull fishing craft. Black lettering on the side read, ‘Rio Grande Excursions.' The driver was a Mexican in his late fifties. His unshaven face was weathered with deep crevices; his long, scraggly hair speckled with gray. He had spent most of his adult life running drugs and people across the river. He didn't ask questions. He just took the jobs for cash. U.S. dollars.

Two of Baskale's men held the boat fore and aft, while a third waited back at the Suburban. Insurance.

Baskale stepped down the bank.

“I get my money up front,” the Mexican said, his voice echoing across the river and back.

Baskale reached inside his jacket, felt the 9mm pistol, and then slid an envelope from his inside pocket and tossed it to the Mexican.

Holding the wheel with his knees, the Mexican flipped through the money quickly. It appeared to be all there. Besides, he would never consider quibbling with dangerous men. It was bad for business, and he knew it could get him killed. He smiled and slipped the money inside his shirt.

“Let's cross then,” the Mexican said, grinning through tobacco-stained teeth.

Baskale nodded his head to his man up the bank. The truck slowly backed down the hill toward the river, its brake lights flashing on and off every few feet. When the truck was six feet from the shore, Baskale halted the truck with a waving hand.

In just a few minutes, the four men opened the back of the Suburban, hauled the weapon out gently, and set it smoothly into the boat's flat bottom. The wooden planks creaked as the full weight settled in, and the pilot thought for a moment it would crash through to the metal hull. But it held. They would have to take two trips across the river, though. The boat was too small to handle the weight of the five hundred pound bomb, plus five adults.

They crossed the river. Baskale, his strongest man, and the Mexican.

Water sprayed over the bow when the boat hit swirling back currents, and Baskale wondered how deep the river was. He hoped they would not hit a rock and tip over.

On the other side Baskale had a dilemma. He had only himself and his strongest man to lift the bomb from the boat.

“You'll have to help us,” Baskale told the Mexican.

The Mexican looked at him skeptically. “I don't know what that is,” he said, barely above the sputtering boat motor. “I don't want to know. My money was for hauling people and equipment across the Rio Grande. Nothing about lifting. I have a bad back.” The man tried on a grin.

Baskale quickly pulled out his 9mm and slapped the bolt back, chambering a round. “Your back could get worse. Hollow points do a terrible number on flesh and bone.” He waved the gun for the Mexican to help lift.

With the boat slamming against the shore from the river's current, and with only three men lifting, it was difficult to hoist the heavy carton over the side of the boat. The large man on one end stumbled and nearly dropped it. Baskale gasped. He wasn't sure how stable the bomblets were. They had been extremely careful with it up to this point. On the long ocean trip, he had insisted they pack Styrofoam around the edges to keep it from sliding in heavy seas. In the back of the Suburban, they had laid it on foam rubber and packed sleeping bags and clothes around it. That had done two things. Kept it safe from the bumpy ride, and made it look like American tourists camping their way across northern Mexico. Now, when they were this close, having reached America, he couldn't allow it to be damaged.

They set the carton on the soft sand and slid it away from the water.

The Mexican went back across for the other two men and the gear from the back of the Suburban. In a few minutes, they were back on the Texas side, the gear on the ground next to the bomb.

Baskale was gone. Then there was the sound of a vehicle approaching through the scrub brush. It was a Suburban, nearly identical to the one they had just abandoned. Only this one was a GMC and light tan, like the Texas sand itself. Backing down the embankment, Baskale stopped a few feet from the weapon. The men hurried to load the truck. They were getting good at this.

The Mexican, sitting at the boat console, reached for the throttle to crank the motor.

“Just a moment,” Baskale said, pulling the bow into the sand. “You can have the other truck if you wish.” He nodded across the river.

“Are you serious?” the Mexican asked, his eyes wide.

“Of course. It's worth a lot of money. Low miles. It would be good for your business. The keys are in it. Go take a look.”

The Mexican was overwhelmed. He powered the boat in reverse, swung the bow around, and pushed the throttle forward to full speed.

By now the Suburban was full, the men inside ready to leave. Baskale stepped to the driver's side and one of his men handed him a small transmitter.

Across the river, the Mexican had driven the boat into the sand, beaching it, and was now climbing into the back end to check it out.

Baskale got behind the wheel and cranked over the engine. He looked into his rearview mirror and could just make out the man scurrying around inside the truck on the opposite bank. He pointed the transmitter over his shoulder and pressed the button.

The abandoned truck blew up in a ball of flames.

As the new GMC Suburban with the four men headed over the ridge, Baskale imagined the Mexican still flying through the air somewhere across the river, floating up toward his fool's heaven.

●

Leaning against the front of a dirty Ford Ranger 4x4, Steve Nelsen lowered the binoculars and looked across the hood at Ricardo Garcia, his assistant. Officially, they were supposed to be partners, but Nelsen had made it known that he worked with no one. He was in charge.

Nelsen had gotten the name of a possible contact from Aziz, the Cypriot, after a little persuasion. Aziz had overheard the name while crossing the Pacific. It meant nothing to him, he had said. But it was another story with Garcia, who had worked northern Mexico for three years as a DEA agent. As soon as Aziz said the name, Kukulcan, Garcia knew the man wasn't talking about the Mayan serpent god of the same name. Kukulcan, alias Miguel Blanca, thought of himself as a big-time drug dealer from northeast Chihuahua. He had a hacienda north of La Perla he had named the Presidio. But the place was nothing like a fortress. It was more like an oasis in a desert. An aberration of the contrasting terrain of cactus and dirt and scrub brush. The man himself, Garcia had said, was nothing more than a puppet for higher-level drug concerns. The old DEA and the Federalis had not been able to stick anything on him, yet they knew they could if they watched more carefully. They were afraid to take him out, knowing someone more powerful would rise in his place. Someone with more brains and more weapons.

The sun was rising quickly, and Nelsen wondered why there was no movement around the place. Had they been seen moving in? He didn't think so.

He stepped back to his driver's door, reached in, pulled out a small hand-held radio, and whispered into it. “Move in.”

Garcia hopped into the pickup and checked his gun, a 9mm Beretta. He chambered a round, but left the safety on.

Nelsen started the truck and they headed down the dirt drive toward the house.

“Are you ready, Dick?” Nelsen asked Garcia.

That was all he could take. Garcia pointed his Beretta at Nelsen. “I think I'm gonna fucking kill you right now,” Garcia said.

Nelsen didn't flinch. “Go ahead. Put me out of my misery. Get me out of this hell hole. What the hell's your problem?”

“Dick. Nobody calls me Dick. You understand?”

“Sensitive bastard, aren't you?”

Garcia turned the gun toward the dashboard. “Ricardo was my father's name. He died when I was nine. He... Just call me Garcia.”

“No problem.”

Nelsen stopped the truck nearly fifty yards from the front of the house and left the engine running.

By now the Federalis had worked their way into position surrounding the place, their M-16s with thirty-round magazines, cocked, poised and aimed at the house.

Nelsen had parked off to the side of two vehicles, blocking their passage up the driveway. There was an older Mercedes, dented slightly and dirty, and a 4x4 Ford Bronco with tremendous tires.

The Federalis moved forward, closer, crouched low behind yucca and sage.

Nelsen and Garcia in the Ford Ranger were to be the decoy, something for those inside to focus their attention on. The two of them waited and watched.

Four Federalis moved toward the front door. They screamed who they were, and then burst through the front door. When they went inside, others took up closer positions at the door, their weapons aimed and ready to fire, and even more were around back waiting for any movement out the rear doors.

In a few moments the team leader appeared at the front door and waved for the Americans to approach.

On their way to the hacienda, Nelsen felt his gun under his left arm, but left it in its holster.

At the door the team leader smiled, his camo paint cracking at the corners of his eyes. “Someone was here,” he said.

Nelsen hurried inside. Immediately, he knew the Kurds had been there. One man sat at a table, a bullet hole in his forehead and a shocked look in his open eyes. Further inside, a man lay in his underwear in a bloody pool on a tile bathroom floor. The blood was still wet, but not frothy. In a back bedroom there was a naked woman curled against a window in a heap, a bullet to her temple, one to her left breast, and several holes in the wall behind her.

Garcia met Nelsen in the bedroom. “You don't think this was a drug deal gone bad?”

Nelsen shook his head. “No. Do you?”