Authors: David DeBatto
As they expected, they were thoroughly searched at the front gate, asked to walk through a metal detector, and scanned with
a hand-held scanner on the other side, as well as patted down, two men in black suits doing the patting while three more with
MAC-10 machine pistols stood watch nearby. Hoolie paid the cab driver fifty dollars to wait outside the gate, where he got
in line with a number of other cabbies and chauffeurs leaning against their limousines. MacKenzie thought the man who patted
her down spent more time than he needed to searching her. She’d found a black silk dress with a slit up the side at a shop
on Avenida Juarez. Hoolie was dressed in a charcoal gray suit and black shirt, his hair gelled to perfection.
“Éste no tendrá el culo tan apretado cuando Leon se acaba con él,”
the man who frisked MacKenzie said.
“Espero que él ahorre algo para nosotros,”
his friend replied.
“What’d they say?” MacKenzie asked as they walked down the long driveway toward the music, the path lit by a string of Chinese
paper lanterns.
“The first one said he couldn’t understand what a hot chick like you was doing with a loser like me, and the second one agreed
with him,” Hoolie lied.
The grounds were illuminated by colored lights and torches, including a large ring of lights in the middle of the west lawn
that served as a helicopter landing pad. A white Sikorsky S-92 was parked at the far end of the lawn, while a Cobra gunship
patrolled overhead. Hoolie told MacKenzie the band was playing conjunto/Tejano music, a musical form indigenous to the Rio
Grande Valley developed by and for migrant farm workers and as authentic an American art form as the blues.
“My old man is old school—all he likes is mariachi,” Vasquez told MacKenzie. “He thinks conjunto is for the lower classes.
This song they’re playing right now is by a group called Las Panteras. They’re maybe the biggest group in the borderland.
They sing about the
narcotraficantes
like they were Robin Hoods, just because guys who make billions of dollars selling drugs occasionally build a soccer field
or a library for their communities, like that makes them heroes.”
When they rounded the corner of the house where the band was set up by the pool, Hoolie’s mouth dropped.
“What is it?” MacKenzie asked.
“Remember when I said the band was playing a Las Panteras song?” he said. “That’s them. They’re the band. That’s Las Panteras.”
“Voy a hacer que usted me ame esta noche,”
they sang,
“abra su corazón…”
Perhaps as many as three hundred people circled the dance floor or milled about the pool with drinks in their hands. There
were a dozen food stations forming a semicircle beyond the pool, with ice sculptures and large floral arrangements on the
tables, where massive amounts of food were elegantly displayed, and a half dozen well-stocked open bars, one with a fountain
pumping margaritas from the mouth of a large ice dolphin. A tin horse-watering trough the size of a small boat was filled
with ice and cold beer, with stainless steel pans full of lime wedges pressed into the ice at either end. Platoons of waiters
in white shirts, black pants, and brocaded Mexican vests circled bearing trays of canapés and grilled shrimp and Thai chicken
skewers and other hors d’oeuvres or to freshen drinks. A phalanx of bodyguards stood watch as well, young men in Hawaiian
shirts and earpieces or walkie-talkies, some of them openly bearing machine guns or wearing shoulder holsters. The male guests
at the party were dressed in expensive suits and shirts but no ties, save the occasional string tie or bolo, gold chains still
the favored bling accessory, topped by white or black cowboy hats. The women wore chandelier earrings and cocktail dresses
of minimal coverage if they wore anything at all—in the pool, a dozen young women cavorted topless. Half of the women at the
party were Latina, the other half Anglo, the men about 90 percent Mexican. Vasquez and MacKenzie circulated but didn’t see
Theresa Davidova anywhere in the crowd. Josh Truitt had supplied them with a photograph.
“Let’s check in the house,” Vasquez shouted over the music.
Another hundred people filled the mansion. Guests milled about the kitchen or smoked by the fireplace, where the head of an
enormous black bull was stuffed and mounted on a plaque above the mantel. Original paintings by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
hung on the walls, the furniture Spanish mission style, the couches rich coffee-colored leather, the floor made of Valencia
tile and terra cotta. A large rec room three steps down had been converted into a small strip club, where dancers writhed
to loud hip-hop music beneath colored lights and strobes and fog machines, some girls giving lap dances that went well beyond
any lap dances Vasquez had ever seen before. The bar doubled as a cocaine station where guests could either snort the drug
in powdered form or smoke it as crack. A number of other drugs were evidently available as well, an old man serving as a kind
of bartender/pharmacist in attendance to assist people with their selections.
Again, Theresa Davidova was nowhere to be found. Hoolie suggested searching upstairs, though a trio of bodyguards at the bottom
of the sweeping staircase were stopping anyone from going up. Mack took Hoolie’s arm in hers, moving to the patio, overlooking
the pool scene below, Hoolie turning to eye the house for any kind of fire escape or other means of accessing the upper floors.
“A dónde usted piensa ir?”
a man in an embroidered red silk shirt asked them. “You look like maybe you’re lost, amigo.” He was young, good-looking,
with a mustache and sideburns, his hair combed straight back.
“We’re looking for a friend of ours,” Vasquez said. “A woman named Theresa Davidova. We were supposed to meet her here.”
“I’m looking for a friend, too,” the man said. “My dog, Oso. He’s a Chihuahua but he’s old. He wanders off sometimes.”
“I had a dog named Oso, too,” Vasquez said. “This is my friend Mila.”
“Galiano Diega,” the man in the red shirt said. “How do you like the party? Wes said you’ve never been to one of these before.”
“I was at a frat party in college that made this look like a three-year-old’s Chuck E Cheese party,” Vasquez said.
“The hardcore stuff is happening down by the spa. I think maybe you need a party favor,” Diega said, slipping something heavy
into Vasquez’s coat pocket. When he reached in, he felt a small automatic pistol, a .30-caliber Beretta, he guessed, though
he didn’t take it out to examine it. “I was here two days ago and managed to stash these,” Diega said. “Would you like some
gum? Compliments of Peggy Romano.”
He held out a small box, which he slid open to reveal two pieces of gum, which didn’t look all that appetizing considering
that they’d already been chewed. Vasquez took one and MacKenzie the other, recognizing them as suboral nanotransmitters developed
by DARPA, each resembling a wad of gum concealing a two-way radio, made entirely of plastics that wouldn’t trigger metal detectors
or show up on X-rays. To transmit, you simply spoke normally, and with a little practice, using a minimal ventriloquist technique,
agents could speak to each other or to their controllers without moving their lips. To listen, you clenched the device between
your teeth, the vibrations transferring sound to the ear along the jawbone. If you got caught, all you had to do was swallow
your gum.
“How’s our girl doing?” Vasquez heard DeLuca’s voice ask, as soon as he activated his transmitter.
“Your girl is right here, so don’t talk about me in the third person,” MacKenzie said.
“Nice dress,” DeLuca said. “We’ve got you on UAV cam.”
“It’s the Kevlar push-up bra that creates the effect,” MacKenzie said. “Don’t look down my dress. No sign of Theresa yet,
but there are other places to look. What’s going on?”
“Just sitting around the motor home,” DeLuca said. “Vogel’s man will fill you in there.”
“This is big,” Diega told Vasquez and MacKenzie. “Bigger than anybody knew, and we don’t have the numbers to do anything but
watch. The big Sikorsky at the end of the lawn belongs to Cipriano Cabrera. The Cobra overhead is flying cover for him.”
“That looked like Mexican Air Force to me,” Vasquez said.
“It is,” Diega said. “I couldn’t believe the people he brought with him. He had the heads of the Fuentes family, Oscar Quintero,
Pedro Meraz, Henry Zaragosa, the new head of the Felix family, I don’t know his name—it’s like the who’s who of the Mexican
drug lords. Diega Murillo from Colombia. Plus the mayor, a man from the president’s office, a bishop—I never saw anything
like it. And they all came here to meet somebody.”
“Who?” Vasquez asked.
“I don’t know, but I heard it’s some new business partner,” Diega said.
“A G5 landed on Lev’s private airstrip about ten minutes ago,” DeLuca said. “Whoever was in it is choppering in now.”
MacKenzie, Vasquez, and Diega watched from the patio as a large black Eurocopter Twinstar landed in the circle of lights on
the lawn. As the rotors spun down, a door in the side of the luxury helicopter lowered to the ground. Two bodyguards exited
first, followed by a man in a black turtleneck, his hair thinning on top. He had a blonde girl on one arm and a black girl
on the other, and he was followed by two more bodyguards, one carrying a pair of briefcases, the other carrying an AK-47.
Diega identified the two men walking out to greet the visitor as Cipriano Cabrera and Leon Lev.
“Peggy’s got a face recognition program running right now,” DeLuca said. “We’ll let you know who the new guy is as soon as
we learn anything.”
“What’s going on at the spa?” Vasquez asked Diega.
“Spa,” Diega said, “movie studio—take your pick. That’s where Lev makes his films. There’s more money in Internet porn than
there is in drugs these days, so the cartels are diversifying.”
“They’re shooting a movie?”
“Something like that,” Diega said. “Just a party flick. Sometimes they get distributed but sometimes he just gives them to
his guests as souvenirs. Probably nothing too extreme tonight, considering. No barnyard animals. But you can never tell.”
“Wait here,” Vasquez said to MacKenzie. “I’ll go look for Theresa. You keep an eye on the visitor. Where are they meeting?”
“Upstairs,” Diega said. “In the conference room. I tried to get a bug in there but I couldn’t.”
“If you want me to come with you…” MacKenzie said.
“Wait here,” Vasquez said. “I’ll be right back.”
He made his way around the dance floor and headed for the spa, a collection of single-story buildings roofed in red tile,
the walkway lit by flaming torches.
“What am I going to be looking at?” he asked into his transmitter.
“It’s a little hard to tell from bird’s eye, but it looks like about fifty men and maybe twenty or thirty women, out in the
open. I can’t say how many more indoors. Be careful. It’s pretty raw.”
“And watch out for the Serb you met earlier,” Peggy Romano added. “Dushko Lorkovic. We pulled his file—he was one of Mladic’s
top thugs in Srebrenica, probably killed a couple hundred Croats either on his own or using the death squad he commanded.
And two of the previous owners of the bars that Leon Lev bought who refused to sell.”
“This is confirmed or spec?” Vasquez asked.
“One hundred percent confidence,” Romano said. “There’s an open warrant out on him from the International War Crimes Tribunal
at The Hague.”
The spa area was surrounded by an adobe wall, where two men stood guard at a wrought-iron gate. Vasquez walked past them as
if he knew what he was doing, and they let him pass, convinced by the authority of his gait. He heard a rustling in the bushes
to his left, and a low moaning. Beyond that he came to a hot tub, where a young Latina was having sex with three men, while
a fourth man filmed the action. There was a gas-fired pit in the central of the courtyard, and beyond that a large padded
mat, something like the wrestling mats Vasquez had competed on in college, where a circle of people had gathered. When Vasquez
pushed his way toward the center, he saw a young man engaging with what appeared to be identical triplets, a cameraman circling
them. Vasquez realized he probably didn’t have to worry about calling too much attention to himself. Two-thirds of the men
and women were naked, but others were clothed and simply observing. Couples groped each other in the darkened corners, on
couches and in large easy chairs. There was a lap pool and a large pool house where a full-blown orgy was in progress, perhaps
twenty men and fifteen women in various assemblages and combinations, with two cameramen maneuvering through the bodies. Vasquez
looked into various rooms and places and stayed only long enough to satisfy himself that Theresa Davidova was not among the
participants.
When he returned to the patio, Diega was alone.
“Where’s my partner?” Vasquez asked.
“Lev’s man took her,” Diega said. “I couldn’t stop him. He said he’d be right back.”
“What man?” Vasquez asked. “The Serb?”
Diega nodded.
“He said Leon wanted to meet her.”
“DeLuca—where is she?” Vasquez said. “Can you patch me through to her?”
“She’s not transmitting,” DeLuca replied. “The last message we got said she was going toward the back bedroom, down the hall.”
Vasquez moved with as much speed as he could without drawing attention. Toward the back of the house, the music muted now
in the distance, he opened a bedroom door, Diega right behind him, drawing his weapon as he entered, though he knew that if
he fired it, the others would be on him in seconds.
Nothing.
They backed out, trying another door, but the room was again empty. A light shone from under the door at the end of the hall.
They approached silently. Vasquez heard somebody inside speaking a Slavic language, his speech a drunken slur. He opened the
door to see the Serb with his shirt off, unbuckling his belt, while MacKenzie sat on the edge of the bed. Lorkovic held his
arm out to show Vasquez the hunting knife he held in his hand.