The Polaris Protocol (10 page)

T
he digital recorder ended for the third time and I dropped it on the bed, turning away from Jennifer and rubbing my eyes. I was still not seeing the smoking gun that would get the Taskforce chasing after her brother. But I knew she wouldn’t want to hear that.

She said, “What’s that look? Can’t you see they’re talking about national security issues? This isn’t about drugs.”

I dropped my hands, waited a beat, then said, “Jennifer, I don’t know what they’re talking about. That fat-ass guy just blathers on about freedom of information and a bunch of computer crap.”

“He talked about our Global Positioning System. One of the most sacrosanct things the United States controls.”

“He
mentioned
GPS. He didn’t talk about it. He also mentioned Wall Street and WikiLeaks. This isn’t enough to act. What do you want me to do, call Kurt for a fishing expedition? I’m probably in enough trouble for coming down here in the first place.”

Colonel Kurt Hale was the commander of the Taskforce, and while we’d known each other for close to fifteen years, he
was
in command. Make no mistake, he was a close friend, but he was still my boss. He cut me more slack than most, but this was asking for a poke in the eye.

Jennifer was quiet. I almost saw the smoke coming off of her brain as she tried to come up with something that would persuade me to call Kurt. Finally, she whispered, “But Jack’s going to get killed.”

I softened my tone, seeing the hell she was going through. “Jennifer, I know he’s in real danger. I believe you. It’s just that we’re not a hostage-rescue force. That’s not what we do. We don’t even have any authority to operate in Mexico. You want Omega for a hit, and we don’t even have a target.”

The Taskforce called every stage of an operation a letter from the Greek alphabet, starting with Alpha for the introduction of forces. Omega meant we had authority from the Oversight Council—our own extralegal body of wise men hand-picked by the president—to execute operations on foreign soil. Operations that often had repercussions extending way beyond the action itself, possibly with second- and third-order effects that were worse than the problem we were trying to prevent. Which is why we answered to the council instead of ourselves. Why we couldn’t go hot-rodding after her brother.

I moved to the window and cracked the curtain, wishing we’d spent some time searching the Internet instead of pulling over at the first hotel we could find, in this case a La Quinta Inn. Best described as “clean and serviceable,” it didn’t have a whole lot of ambience.

Out in the parking lot I saw two black and white police cars pull up, both older models looking like they’d been borrowed from the set of
CHiPs
. Something about them seemed odd, but I didn’t focus like I should have. Instead I turned back to Jennifer.

She was standing in the same place, her eyes slightly unfocused as she went through probabilities in her head. Torturing herself.

I went to her and said, “Look, we can’t assault the place, but we aren’t helpless. Kurt has the ear of the most powerful people in the world. We can get him to move on this. Get some official help.”

She drew some hope from that and nodded, wiping her eyes. I had just started to say something else when I heard footsteps on the concrete balcony outside our room. A lot of footsteps. My instinct went into the red zone, but it was too little, too late.

The door splintered inward from the force of a metal police battering ram. Five uniformed men piled into the room, guns drawn. I pushed Jennifer to the floor and shot my hands in the air, shouting, “Don’t fire! Don’t fire!”

Two of the men covered down on Jennifer while three moved to me. The man with the battering ram turned around and covered the exit to the room. All were Hispanic, and as with the police cars outside, something seemed odd. By the time they’d closed on me, it clicked what it was: Their uniforms were mismatched. Some had name tags, some didn’t. Some had patches on their shoulders, others didn’t.

I shouted, “Jennifer, they’re fake!” and exploded, trapping the pistol of the first man and rotating his arm in a vicious circle, forcing him to fling himself over the torque or have his wrist shatter. He thumped the floor and I hammered him in the temple, ripping the gun out of his hand. I launched up from the floor and drove my fist under the chin of the next man like a piston, hearing his jaw crack as his head popped backward. I whirled to the third man.

He pointed a pistol at my chest and shouted, “Stop! Stop right now.”

One of the men who had gone to Jennifer was on the floor, rubbing his face. The other had her hair in his hand and a knife to her throat.

Keeping his own weapon on me, in accented English, the third man continued. “Drop the gun. You cannot beat us both. You shoot me, she dies. You shoot him,
you
die. Neither has to happen. If we wanted you dead, we could have just started shooting.”

I did as he asked, kicking myself for not paying more attention. For letting Jennifer’s pain supersede my survival instincts.

He said, “We are going to handcuff you both and leave here one at a time. Act like you are being arrested. She goes first. If she says anything outside the door to anyone who has come to watch, you die. You go second. If you say anything outside the door, she dies. Understood?”

I nodded my head. He turned to Jennifer, and she did the same. My hands were cuffed behind my back and our Taskforce phones, Jennifer’s tablet, and the digital recorder were shoved into Jennifer’s bag. I watched her being led out of the room, a man on each side. Shortly, it was my turn. The leader picked up Jennifer’s purse and nodded.

We went down the stairs and I hung my head like I’d seen on numerous episodes of
Cops
. Sure enough, there was a small crowd, all pointing and whispering. None moved near us. My heart sank when I saw only one police car. I’d expected them to transport us together, but Jennifer was already gone.

We pulled out of the parking lot without lights, ignoring the crowds. We drove for two blocks, then circled behind a grocery store, the police car stopping adjacent to another sedan, both screened by the loading docks used for large trucks. A gun was placed to my head and I was jerked out, a man on each arm. As if I could do something with my hands cuffed behind me.

They opened the trunk of the sedan, and in the dim glow of the exterior lighting I saw it was already occupied, feeling a small measure of relief. I was unceremoniously crammed into it and knew instantly the body wasn’t Jennifer’s. It was a man who stank as if he hadn’t bathed in a week.

And he was weeping uncontrollably.

E
duardo looked out the window across his estate, surveying the lights twinkling in the ghetto of Juárez. He hated it here. Hated having to live in this dump and longed to get back to Mexico City. Back to the land of the rich. But earning
plaza
boss came with a price, and he’d been entrusted with the fight for Juárez by Sinaloa, so here he would stay. At least until he could clean up the mess.

Behind him, Carlos said, “This will work. Things are coming together very well.”

“Well? You let a woman escape from your grasp. Here, in the heart of Juárez. It’s absolutely shameful. I look incompetent, and we still don’t know who took the reporter.”

Carlos began to fawn. “You don’t look incompetent. She had help. We couldn’t predict that. Nobody even knows she was here. Nobody knows of her escape, and I’m working to rectify the situation. I was able to set up a screen on the north side of the border after she fled our net.” He gave a shallow smile. “The Americans spend so much time checking vehicles that it worked in our favor. She didn’t cross with any speed. We followed them to where they’re staying, and it’s still close enough to the border to be useful. I hope to hear some news soon, and we will learn who they are. Of greater concern is the traitor in the ranks. My plan will work.”

“You really think he is part of my circle? I cannot believe that.”

“There’s one way to find out. You already have a meeting planned. Let it be known that we’re moving forward with Mr. Fawkes. Tell them he’s flying down tomorrow or the next day. Give out a flight number. Then we simply check all outgoing calls before anyone is allowed to leave.”

“Is he flying down?”

“No. Not yet, but that’s not the point. We need to set a trap with false information. You don’t want Los Zetas to know anything real.”

“What makes you think the traitor will call from here?”

“Tell them they are to remain here overnight. Give them some excuse. He’ll call. I guarantee he’ll call if he thinks he’ll miss getting the information out.”

Eduardo turned from the window and said, “Okay. That’s easy enough. What of this Mr. Fawkes? Surely you know who he is by now.”

Carlos said, “Yes. He checked out. He’s Arthur Booth, a midlevel computer technician working for Boeing. I believe he can do what he says. He was almost giddy on the phone today. He’s completed the task and wants to pass what he calls the POLARIS protocol. All we need to do is meet him now.”

“What is this protocol?”

“I’m not really sure. He said he’d explain it when we met, but what I do know is that it will affect the navigation systems of the surveillance drones on the border.”

“So you don’t even know what it does? How it works?”

“My meeting with Booth in El Paso was just to establish the connection. We didn’t discuss the specifics of the protocol. The point was to get him on our side, and it apparently worked.”

Eduardo’s lips split into a sinister grin. “Okay, Carlos. I’ll let you hold the keys for now. Call the men.”

Two hours later, sitting in the conference room with Eduardo and the other men of the inner circle, Carlos felt his phone vibrate. He spoke briefly, then held up a hand. When Eduardo nodded, he said, “Things are looking up.”

I
bumped along in the blackness of the trunk, having given up trying to find out who the man with me was. All he did was beg me not to talk, then began weeping again. Clearly, he was convinced we were going to die. I wasn’t so sure he was wrong, so I spent the time trying to prevent that outcome.

I had been to a multitude of defeating-restraints courses during my time in the military, and after all the instruction one thing stood out: Prior planning beats MacGyver shit every day. Almost all handcuffs operate with a universal key in order to allow any officer to free a suspect, be it for health and safety reasons or just for convenience, and I, like many operators I worked with, had taken to carrying one in my wallet.

In over twenty years I had never, ever used it, and Jennifer had made fun of the habit on more than one occasion. Now I was wishing I’d forced her to do the same.

I wormed around, digging my wallet out of my pants pocket and then losing it for an instant in the bouncing. I scooted my ass backward, sweeping my hands until it connected with the leather. Working by feel, I opened it and dug my fingers in until I hit the pocket for business cards. This was where it became critical, and my lack of planning was causing issues.

I’d simply buried the key at the base of the pocket, surrounded by a bunch of business cards I always carried that supported my job as an intrepid archeological explorer. If I dumped all the cards and shook the wallet to get the key, I’d give away that I was up to no good. When they opened the trunk they’d see a confetti playground and know something was awry.

Why didn’t you go the distance? Tape the damn thing to the license or a single card?
It was like buying a fire extinguisher for your house, then storing it in the attic.

I cradled the wallet and squeezed its sides, then began shaking, using one hand to keep the cards in. If the key was set right, I knew it would fall, because it had done so numerous embarrassing times in the past, usually at the airport with a twentysomething TSA agent grinning lasciviously at Jennifer over the implications. But that would be pure luck, and with mine, it was probably trapped at the base underneath the cards.

The car went over a speed bump hard enough to bounce both of us into the roof of the trunk, causing me to lose the wallet again. I slapped the metal, sweeping aside detritus that had accumulated in the trunk. The car stopped just as I closed my left hand over it. I began shaking it and heard the doors open. When they slammed shut, the key fell into my hand. I rolled over onto my back and shoved the wallet into my pocket just as the lid opened.

I was jerked out, seeing a sign for a sleazy roadside motel called the Traveler’s Inn.

Uh-oh. Jack’s motel. Not good.

The man was pulled out behind me, and for the first time I saw he was Hispanic and about sixty, wearing cheap rubber sandals and a stained white T-shirt. When he saw the location, he began to wail until he was cuffed in the head.

We were led straight to room number twelve, with one of the men opening the door using a key from his pocket. We got inside and the men pushed me into a corner, sitting me on my haunches with one of the guys standing over me. The door was shut, and the captors began speaking in Spanish. The older man began to wail again as he was shoved to his knees.

The leader of the group began a lengthy soliloquy in Spanish, none of which I understood, but I could tell the man on his knees did. He became catatonic, not even flinching when a large bowie knife was produced, the blade about twelve inches long.

I felt the sweat break out on my neck and began working the key into the lock, an almost impossible task without being able to see the cuffs. Like everyone else, the guard in front of me had his eyes focused on the older man, watching the snot roll down his face as he blubbered.

The bowie knife came down, and as much as I had seen in the world, it still didn’t register as real until both carotid arteries had been slit and the blood began to spray from the damage. I involuntarily flinched, trying to sink into the corner of the room. I heard the gurgles as the knife bit deeper; attempting to sever the head from the body. The knife was stopped momentarily by the spine, and I closed my eyes, focusing on the task of staying alive. I felt the key sink into the hole and gently worked it left and right, trying to seat the pins correctly. Trying to calm the raging adrenaline flowing through me from the fear. I would only get one shot.

I heard the leader shout in Spanish and opened my eyes to see the bowie knife begin cutting the hands off the corpse. One flopped free, held only by a tendon. The man chopped at the floor like he was slicing garlic, and the hand separated. He worked on the other one, sawing through tendon and bone. They placed both hands on the chest of the corpse, then faced me.
My turn.

In English, the leader said, “This man was an informant and met a traitor’s fate. You are involved in his actions, and we wanted you to see what happens to those who oppose us.”

Feeling bile in my throat at my helplessness, I simply nodded.

The leader flicked his eyes at the person guarding me, and he placed his hands on my head, pushing it into the wall, exposing my neck. The leader said, “We want to know why you were in Mexico. We want to know what you were doing.”

I saw the man holding my head pull out a blade. Much smaller than the bowie but lethal nonetheless. He leaned in, showing me the knife, his eyes locked on mine. I rolled to the left, a prehistoric instinct to get away from the danger, a low grunt escaping as I strained to get out of his grasp. I twisted my wrist, and I felt the lock click free.

A small snick that opened up a world of hurt.

I whipped both hands to my front and lashed out with the wrist still clamped, slashing the guard’s face with the teeth of the open handcuff. He screamed and started to roll back, but I trapped him against the wall, grabbed his wrist with the knife, and drove it deep into his eye socket.

The man with the bowie knife shouted and drew his gun. I jerked the dead guard in front of me and used him as primitive body armor, rushing forward, barely registering the weight, the rage of survival adrenaline making me feel superhuman. He fired multiple times in my direction and I felt the rounds impact the corpse. He tried to back up and I threw the body on top of him, then turned to the leader.

He had a look of shock on his face, still with his weapon in its holster. He scrambled to get it free but I was already on him, wrapping one arm around his neck and trapping the weapon with the other. I bent him backward, batted his hand away, and drew his pistol. I jammed it into his chest and pumped two rounds, letting him fall.

I whirled around and raced to the bowie wielder still under the body, now frantically trying to free himself. He raised his pistol and I stomped on his hand, the round going harmlessly into the wall. He screamed something in Spanish and I jabbed the barrel into his forehead.

He shook his head violently from left to right. I held for a second, then softly nodded up and down. And pulled the trigger.

I stood, coming to grips with the carnage, needing to think. I began searching for keys. I found them on the leader and went to the car that had carried me, seeing Jennifer’s purse in the front seat. I pulled out my phone and began dialing, leaving the parking lot with the battered tires of the sedan screeching, heading to the border.

Kurt picked up on the third ring, immediately asking why I was in El Paso and why I had left our mission early. I cut him off.

“Sir, it’s too hard to explain. Jennifer believes there’s a national security threat here on the border, and her brother’s wrapped up in it. I thought she was full of shit, but the cartels have just taken a huge gamble to capture us here, in America. She was correct, and I need a team right fucking now. Where is Knuckles? He should be CONUS with the bird.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Cartels? Capture you? What are you doing? I can’t even get to the Oversight Council until tomorrow. Forget about Knuckles and talk to me.”

I was flying down Interstate 10, headed back to the border bridge, and realized I didn’t have the facts to convince him. There was no way to get Oversight Council approval for operations in Mexico on a timeline that could save Jennifer. It just wasn’t what the Taskforce did. We were slow burn, not crisis management. Unlike in my previous life, we didn’t sit on alert.

I pounded the steering wheel and said, “Sir, is Knuckles in the United States? Is he here with a package in the aircraft?”

Kurt’s voice grew concerned at my shrill tenor, saying, “Yeah, he’s here. In Atlanta. What the hell is going on? You sound like you want a Prairie Fire.”

And his words broke free the best that the United States had to offer.
Prairie Fire
was the code phrase for the potential catastrophic loss of a Taskforce team and was used only under the most extreme circumstances on official missions, when everything else in the United States arsenal had failed. The words had been uttered a single time in the entire existence of the unit, but it was the one thing that Kurt could execute on his own, without Oversight Council approval, because Taskforce lives were not held to the same standard as Taskforce missions. I had never given the phrase serious thought, egotistically figuring that if I had communication and could utter the words, I could solve the problem on my own before the Taskforce could ever break anything free quickly enough to help.

Now I held the phone and savored the words. “I need Knuckles to divert to González airport in Ciudad Juárez. I’ll meet him there. I’m calling a Prairie Fire. I say again, I’m calling a Prairie Fire.”

He said nothing for a moment, and I saw the exit for the bridge. I coasted for a second before he came back on.

“You know what you’re doing, right? You got a real Prairie Fire?”

“Sir, listen to me closely. You and I have been through a lot, but nothing like this. I just saw a man get decapitated in front of me. I’m covered in blood from three dead men in a hotel. Jennifer is in the hands of fucking savages, and if I don’t get some help immediately, she’s going to be slaughtered. Or worse.”

I turned onto the bridge and heard, “You got them. Update me as soon as you can.”