The Savage Dead (7 page)

C
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5

Juan Perez's apartment was in a three-story brownstone in Arlington. Tess Compton got there after nearly two hours of slogging her way through late evening traffic. The trunk of her Honda Accord was loaded with new clothes, new luggage, three new bikinis, the kind of things a bride would bring on her honeymoon, which was the cover story she and Paul Godwin had worked out for their seven-day cruise to Cozumel.

She checked herself in the driver's side window of her car, and decided she looked okay. Good enough for government work, as her daddy used to say. Tess had been shopping all day—her first day off in ten days—and she was exhausted. It would have been nice to go home and take a shower, get some of this capital grime off her, but there was no time for that. Juan had said he wanted to meet with her before she left for Galveston in the morning, and as she was catching a plane at five a.m., it was now or never.

Juan buzzed her up and she let herself in the front door. She found him sitting on his couch, files and photographs spread out in front of him on the coffee table. He had a bottle of Victoria beer on the table—no coaster, of course—most of it gone.

He did like his beer, but it hadn't gone to his waist. Probably never would, either. Not a man like Juan Perez. He was a legend. At forty-four, he still looked like he could pass for twenty-eight. It was his Hispanic blood, she decided, that made him age so gracefully. He was still every bit as handsome as any man she'd ever seen outside of the movies, and though he stood only five foot nine, the same height as Tess when she wore heels, he still had the lithe athleticism of the Special Forces operator he'd been throughout his twenties. Ordinarily, on his days off, and there weren't many of those, he wore polo shirts tucked into khaki slacks, with leather shoes and a belt as black as his hair. But today he was in old blue jeans, ratty at the cuffs, white gym socks, and a faded gray T-shirt that hung on him in all the right ways. The change in his look, she knew, was because of the sling he had to wear after the botched assassination attempt at the hotel two weeks earlier. It hadn't seemed to slow him down, though. He was still turning in sixteen-hour days, still working late into the night on intelligence data from his contacts in Mexico and Texas. In fact, if it weren't for the dark rings under his eyes and the weariness she had started to see in his expression lately, certainly since San Antonio, she'd believe he was bulletproof. In the two years she'd been fortunate enough to work for him, she'd come to think of him that way. The invincible Juan Perez.

“How's the arm?” she said without sitting down.

“It's okay. Itches a lot.” He motioned to the couch beside him. “Here, sit down. I want to show you something.”

“You want another beer first?”

“You want one?”

“No,” she said. “If I have a beer now I'll fall asleep. I'm exhausted.”

“What are you exhausted for? I thought I gave you the day off.”

“You did. I've been shopping.” He looked confused, like what she'd said had made no sense at all. “Have you been to Penn Quarter lately? Shopping isn't easy.”

He said nothing for a moment, as though seriously considering her question, and then shrugged. “Okay, sit down.”

What a frustrating man, she thought.

She'd met Juan five years earlier, when she was completing her seventeen-week Special Agent Training course at the academy. A crack shot since her early teens, she was mesmerized by his skill on the weapons range, and when she learned he was former Delta Force, she went into fan girl mode. After her graduation, in a sort of schoolgirl crush that embarrassed her now, but that he, thank God, had never brought up, she e-mailed him several times, asking to be considered for his team.

His response at the time had crushed her. He told her that he didn't take on rookies, even talented ones like her, and that she needed some experience under her belt before she could expect to be taken as a serious contender. Looking back, she realized how practical he had been. Juan was always practical. Now that she knew him as well as she did, she found he could sometimes be a pain in the ass he was so practical.

Crushed, but not deterred, she'd kept tabs on him, and when his team was tasked with protecting a federal judge who was testifying before a Senate select committee, she managed to get herself assigned to the same detail. A man, a Montana survivalist by the name of Wayne Hodges, had come out of the crowd of protestors and tried to slosh a Mason jar full of pig's blood on the judge. Hodges was a big man, much bigger than Tess, but she'd managed to take him to the ground quickly, even made it look easy. She even kept the pig's blood from spilling. Juan was impressed. An offer to join his team followed. And a year later, she was his second in command.

She glanced over the paperwork in front of him. Working for Juan, she'd become something of an expert herself on the cartels, though of course her knowledge was only parroting his far deeper knowledge. He'd actually lived this stuff while down in Mexico. He'd fought these people on their home ground, in their own streets and alleys and living rooms. Juan Perez was their boogeyman.

But what she saw surprised her. The shooter from the Washington Hilton Hotel had been a low-level soldier with the Juarez Cartel, and his knowledge of the cartel's hierarchy hadn't gone above his boss's boss. They learned nothing of substance from him. This stuff, though, these pictures, she recognized several high-ranking members of the Porra Cartel. Cooperation among the cartels was unheard of, even when it was for their mutual survival, so seeing information on the Porra Cartel meant there was a third column in this game.

She pointed to one of the pictures, which showed a handsome man she knew as Ramon Medina playing tennis on a court lined by bougainvillea.

“Why are we looking at this stuff ?” she said. “I thought we were focusing on the Juarez and Gulf cartels.”

He shook his head. He looked troubled. “I am. For the shooting at the hotel. This, though,” he said, pointing to the pictures, “I think this is something different.”

He handed her a police report, a Charge and Disposition Report written by a detective with the San Antonio Police Department's Narcotics Unit, though the detective's name and badge number had been censored. That meant the detective was probably on loan to one of the major drug task forces in the South Texas area, most likely HIDTA, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force, made up of officers and detectives from twenty-eight different local, county, state, and federal agencies and charged with multi-jurisdictional authority to cover nearly all of South Texas. They'd worked with some of the HIDTA guys when they were figuring out how to handle the threat on Senator Sutton's life in San Antonio. There was a chance, she thought, that she knew the author of this report.

She quickly scanned the fourteen-page packet.

It began, as so many of these reports often did, with an alert beat cop. While on routine patrol on San Antonio's west side, the cop had seen a yellow panel van pulling away from a warehouse he knew to be abandoned. Thinking it was either a stolen vehicle or thieves scavenging the building for copper, he'd pulled them over. The driver was an American citizen, the passenger from Ciudad Juarez. Both were dressed in ostrich skin boots and pressed jeans and western-style shirts, like they were ready go out to the Tejano clubs. The officer separated them, questioned them, and got conflicting stories. He got some cover officers out with him and searched the van.

And found a rolled-up tarp containing the remains of at least two, but possibly three, dead bodies. The bodies had been burned and most of what was left had sort of melted together. SAPD's Homicide Unit locked the scene down and their Crime Scene Unit searched the warehouse. They found bloodstains on the pavement outside the back door, and more bloodstains inside, on the warehouse's main floor, but nothing else. The men in the van were arrested and questioned, but said nothing.

No surprise there.

Tess turned back to the front of the report and skimmed it again. Finally, she tossed it onto the table. “Okay, so what am I missing? It's a murder case, possibly cartel related because of the suspect from Ciudad Juarez. What else is there?”

Juan handed her a manila folder marked with the seal of the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office. Inside were three autopsy reports. Skimming the first one, her eyes went wide.

“Traces of flesh-eating bacteria?” she said.

Juan nodded. “The samples were sent to the CDC in Atlanta for confirmation, but the tests are going to come back positive. My contacts in San Antonio are sure of that.”

“Okay,” she said. Then she shook her head. “No, I'm still missing something. I can see from those photographs over there that you're looking at the Porra Cartel for this. I assume that's why the task force in San Antonio sent this stuff to you.”

“That's right.”

“Okay. I still don't get it.”

“That's because you're not asking the right question. Look at this setup. What's wrong with it?”

She glanced over everything again.

And then it hit her.

“The bodies. They were moving the bodies. Business as usual, they would have left the bodies in the abandoned warehouse. It probably would have taken a week or more for somebody to discover them. There had to be a reason they were taking such a chance moving the bodies.” She whistled. “My God, they knew that bacteria was in them.”

“That's what it seems like to me, too.”

“So what does this mean? Do you think there's a cartel out there experimenting with a flesh-eating bacteria?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. But that doesn't really seem consistent with anything I've seen the cartels do. It's not their style, you know?”

“I wouldn't put terrorism past them.”

“No, me either.”

“So . . . what then? They got into some flesh-eating bacteria at that warehouse and their friends burned them and then decided to take the bodies somewhere to dump them?”

“I don't know,” he said. “That sounds more likely than the first option, but that's still not saying much.”

“No, it isn't.”

He picked up a small stack of black–and-white photographs, surveillance photographs from the looks of them, and started tossing them onto the table like he was dealing cards. From the sag of his shoulders and the set of his mouth she knew he had been through these photographs hundreds of times and was frustrated with himself for not spotting what his gut told him should be there.

She picked up the photographs. The first three showed Mexican Federal troops wearing hoods and carrying machine guns, standing like proud hunters over a roomful of seized guns and cash.

But the next few photographs showed Ramon Medina, the head of the Porra Cartel, and a half dozen of his highest-ranking lieutenants. Many of the faces were familiar to her, though their names, in most cases, eluded her. It was hard to keep track, as those in favor came and went like rumors. A man could be a chief lieutenant one day, and a severed head in a duffel bag the next.

But Ramon Medina was a constant. He had ruled the Porra Cartel with an iron fist for almost twenty years. And these pictures, Tess realized, covered a good part of that career, for in the span of six or seven photographs she could see his transformation from street-hardened thug to Mexican aristocrat. Here was a photo of him as a young man, wearing a bloodstained white T-shirt and jeans, his hair a mess, his eyes crazy with rage as he screamed at three badly beaten men tied to chairs. Here was another of Medina, arm in arm with a
narcocorrido
band. Another was the one she'd seen earlier of Medina playing tennis on a court surrounded by bougainvillea. Then there was still another of him dressed in a tailored suit, taking a beer from a young girl. And another, of him—

“Wait a minute,” Juan said. He reached forward and snatched up the photo of Medina taking the beer from the young girl.

He sat there, staring at it, his face inscrutable.

“What is it?” she asked.

He shook his head. “My God, it can't be her.”

“What?” She leaned over his shoulder, careful not to put her weight on his wounded arm, and looked at the picture. She didn't see anything strange about the picture.

Juan pointed at the girl. She had long dark hair that spilled like a wave over her bare shoulders and a bubbly, effervescent smile. She had the beer outstretched, offering it to Medina, her expression that of a seventeen-year-old girl in the midst of a terrible crush.

“Do you see her?” he said.

“Yeah, but . . .”

“Think, Tess. Remember, from the Washington Hilton? Think. Right before the shooting. Remember when Paul Godwin asked us if we needed anything else from him?”

She thought back to that night, playing the moment again in her memory. She saw Paul, clueless as ever, on his iPhone, like usual, asking if he had to stick around or if Juan was done with him. He had turned. There had been a woman there in a black evening gown, holding out a martini in each hand, a smile on her face that was more like an invitation than anything else.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

“Get Paul Godwin on the phone,” he said. “Right now. I want to know who this woman is.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I think you're right.”

She dialed Godwin's number. “How do you think all this fits together?” she asked.

“No idea,” he said. “At this point, I have no idea.”

C
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PTER
6

At eleven a.m. the following morning, Pilar Soledad was in a taxicab pulling up to Pier 23 at the Galveston Cruise Ship Terminal. Because she was traveling under her Monica Rivas persona, she was dressed in a yellow tank top, white shorts, and strappy silver sandals. She accented the look with silver hoop earrings, Gucci sunglasses, and silver bangles on her wrists. It was a nice look for her, breezy, summery, and showed off her legs. As Pilar, she would have pulled her hair back in a no-nonsense, efficient ponytail, but as Monica she had to pay closer attention to such things, and today her long black hair was in curly waves that she'd taken extra time that morning to get just right.

She took her phone out of her purse and checked the schedule for the senator's flight. They were on time, due at Hobby International Airport in ten minutes. Pilar was scheduled to board the
Gulf Queen
right at noon, and assuming that it would take a minimum of two hours, but probably closer to four, for the senator and her party to get from the airport down to Galveston, and then through the customs line at the Cruise Ship Terminal, she figured she would have just enough time to get herself aboard and get what she needed to do done. It'd be close, but she could make it.

She tossed her phone back into her purse and glanced out the window at the
Gulf Queen
. At 256,000 tons, beautiful and gleaming white in the Texas summer sun, it towered above the terminal's facade. Besides its 2,400 staterooms and room for 6,400 passengers, the
Gulf Queen
featured twenty-one decks, two casinos, dining rooms, dance halls, cafés, pools and playgrounds, theaters, and even a shopping mall and a skating rink. She was more than the floating hotel the Caribbean Royalty Cruise Line billed her as. She was practically a city unto herself.

Which was kind of a shame, Pilar thought. Because in three days she was going to be nothing more than a plague ship.

Up ahead, terminal employees were helping buses and taxis to unload a lot of smiling, yet still somehow anxious-looking American passengers. That anxiousness, that chronic inability to relax, Pilar realized, was a fundamental part of the American cultural identity. It followed them around like the hum of a live electrical wire.

She glanced toward the front of the cab and caught the driver, a white-haired, fat white man with bad teeth and a sunburned face and neck, staring at her legs in the rearview mirror.

She bristled. The man had been leering at her since he picked her up at the airport and a part of her wanted to kick in the few front teeth he had left just to show him where he stood in life. Instead, she took the big floppy hat she'd brought and draped it over her bare knee.

Realizing he was caught, the man said, “This is you up here, ma'am.”

She nodded. A few years ago she'd watched as three of Ramon's soldiers tied a rival cartel member's hands behind his back, sat him on a sidewalk in front of a garbage Dumpster, and cut his head off with a chainsaw. She remembered the way the blade had made its first bite into the man's throat, the way he'd thrown his head back against the metal Dumpster, and the way disbelief and fear had colored his pale face.

It wasn't hard to imagine this pig's face on that doomed man.

It wasn't hard at all.

The driver stopped the cab and popped the trunk and opened her door for her. She let him hold the door, but made as though she didn't see his outstretched hand. Frowning now, no doubt thinking she was just another one of those stuck-up Mexican nationals with too much money and not enough humility, the cabbie tossed her bags on a porter's handcart. Pilar said nothing. Instead—and she was kind of enjoying this—she took out a conspicuously large sheaf of bills and carelessly rolled off five twenties for him. “That should cover the ride and your gratuity, I believe,” she said.

He looked at the bills with a mixture of greed and distaste. He'd figured out that he was being dismissed as a simple hireling, as though she had the power to buy and sell him, and she could tell how it galled him.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said through gritted teeth.

“That'll be all.” She turned to walk away, and with a lilt in her voice said, “Thank you.”

Behind her sunglasses, her eyes were blazing with mischief.

Sometimes it could be so much fun to be a bitch.

The porter was a different story. He was younger, Hispanic, with a quick, alert gaze that Pilar knew well. As the cabbie pulled away, he made a show of asking for her boarding papers and scanning them with a barcode gun.

“Solo las dos bolsas, señora?”
he said, abruptly switching to Spanish.

Excellent, she thought. Ramon had promised his best people to support her on this, and this young man here had just identified himself to her with the code that everything was right on schedule. Definitely a good sign.

“Sí,”
she answered back, using the prearranged signal.
“Es solo un corto viaje.”

She nodded. Inwardly, she let out a little sigh of relief. What Ramon promised, he delivered. He'd always told her that, and he'd never failed to follow through on his promises. But it was still good to know that the other parts of the plan were falling into place. She was almost ashamed to admit it, but as she was reading up on the bacteria to be used, and the logistics involved in introducing it into the cruise ship's deli meats and sushi and butter supply, she'd had serious doubts about Ramon's ability to pull the whole thing off. Actually, she'd been feeling more than doubt. If she was honest with herself, she was terrified. But now, with everything coming together, she felt better.

Walking quickly, she made her way to the passenger sign-in and customs registration terminals.

From here on out, she was going to be on a tight schedule.

 

 

Pilar was among the first passengers to board the
Gulf Queen
when the gangway opened at noon.

The ship itself was an extravagant maze of hallways, stairs, and levels leading off in every direction. Crew members in crisp white uniforms were everywhere, smiling and greeting the passengers as they made their bewildered way to their staterooms. But Pilar had memorized the layout and knew exactly where to go. She headed down to Deck 5, found her stateroom, and slipped inside.

On the bed was a monkey made out of twisted and folded towels. She smiled, despite the nervousness that had started to twist her stomach again, and set her carry-on luggage aside. The room was small, consisting of a double bed, a bathroom, a built-in desk, a small couch, and two chairs, all of it crammed into about 200 square feet.

But she didn't pay attention to the cramped quarters. She wasn't going to be spending a whole lot of time in here anyway. What really mattered was under the bed.

She got down on her hands and knees and said a silent prayer what she needed was actually there.

It was.

Secured to the underside of the bed with duct tape she found three nylon gun cases, one large and two smaller ones. She removed them all and put them on the bed. First, she unzipped the largest of the three. Inside was a German-made .40 caliber Heckler & Koch MP5, one of her personal favorites, and enough ammunition to fill the six thirty-round magazines tucked into the case's pockets. One of the other gun cases contained a pair of Glock 22 .40 caliber pistols and three fifteen-round magazines for each gun. Pilar was pleased with the setup. The fact that both the machine gun and the pistols used the same ammunition would give her some added flexibility when things started to get crazy.

Which was another thing.

These weapons were one of the two packages the porter down at the terminal had promised her were in place. The other was the perfringens and lactobacillus bacteria that Ramon's people had introduced into the deli meats and butter supply in the
Gulf Queen
's kitchens. If everything moved according to schedule, and based on what she'd seen so far she saw no reason to believe that it wouldn't, by the early morning hours the first victims of the necrotizing fasciitis would start to turn. The models she'd seen indicated that the rest of the nearly 7,000 passengers and crew would be dead or dying by nightfall of their first full day at sea. And by the time they reached Cozumel, the
Gulf Queen
would be nothing but a nightmare that the Americans would be forced to shoot out of the water.

But before that could happen, Pilar had a lot to do, and that was where the third gun case came in. She opened it and found a credit card–style pass key that was supposed to open every door on the ship; a small plastic envelope containing two remote omnidirectional listening devices that looked a lot like lithium watch batteries, but were in fact sensitive enough to pick up even whispered conversations all the way on the other side of a stateroom; and, of course, the small white paper sack she'd been promised. She took a deep breath that didn't make her feel any easier. This was real. This was actually happening. She'd done major operations for Ramon Medina before, many of them, in fact. She'd killed perhaps as many as a hundred men and maybe a dozen women, simply because he'd asked her to. But this was the biggest thing she'd ever had a hand in, and the idea that it was all coming together left her with a mix of dread and excitement that caused her stomach to turn like it hadn't done since those early days back in Ciudad Juarez. She was about to murder 7,000 men, women, and children in the grisliest display of terror the world had ever seen, and for a second, she nearly ran to the bathroom to vomit from the enormity of it.

She forced herself to calm down. She couldn't function like this, and she was running out of time. Pilar closed her eyes, took in and released a few deep breaths, and then opened her eyes. Calmer now, she put the paper sack into her purse, scooped up her big floppy hat and sunglasses and pass key, then made her way to the senator's stateroom on Deck 7.

It was time to get busy.