In Desperation (18 page)

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

D
eath was never far from Rosalina.

The sound of power tools and the smell of fresh-cut wood when she passed by the coffin maker's shop was a chorus to her grief as she hurried through the barrio market to her meeting.

Today, Rosalina was taking a stand against the narcos.

No mas,
she promised her dead child,
no more blood
.

Rosalina's world had ended six months ago with the murder of Ivette, her twenty-two-year-old daughter.

Ivette was an aid worker killed in a drug gang's attack at the clinic where she had worked with her younger sister, Claudia. Rosalina and her husband, Ruben, believed Ivette was targeted because she and Claudia were outspoken against the
narcotraficantes.

After her death, Rosalina and Ruben sent Claudia to live with a cousin in the country. The gangs had sent Ruben a message: they would spare pursuing Claudia through their network, if Rosalina and Ruben stole documents for them from the U.S. Consulate where they worked at night as cleaners.

Ruben agreed to comply—
“we need to be free of them”
—but Rosalina wanted to refuse. The gangsters
were cowards. Thugs. She hated them and was proud that her daughters had inherited her moral backbone.

“Look at what they've taken from us, Ruben,” she told him. “We will never be free of them unless we fight back. And I will fight back, even if it kills me.”

For Rosalina, the tipping point was not stealing the documents but being forced to harbor a
sicario—in her home
—so he could go off and kill. The final outrage:
he'd slept in Ivette's bed
.

Now, she was taking a stand in Ivette's memory.

She was fighting back.

Not long after the
sicario
had left, Rosalina gathered her things, rushed to the local grocery and used the public phone to make a call. Then she caught a crosstown bus. Now, walking through the market, Rosalina tightened her grip on her bag. It held documents she would pass to the one person who could help.

 

Isabel Luna was almost trotting through the crowded market when she was stopped by the voice at her back.

“Hold on.”

She turned to Arturo Castillo, the chief photographer with
El Heraldo,
who was failing to keep up with her.

“Come on, Arturo, we're late. I don't want to lose this one.”

Solid leads to
El Heraldo
's newsroom were rare these days, so when Isabel received one from a female caller claiming to have documented information on “something big” involving a cartel, she took action. She took the usual precautions in not going by herself to meet the source, in case the cartels were attempting to lure her. While traveling in pairs or small groups was no guarantee against any attack, the practice was to never travel alone and always leave details with your news desk.

In Juarez, many people went about their daily lives in trepidation, never knowing if that person staring at them
was part of something suspicious, or if they should fear that car behind them.

Journalists tried not to be conspicuous. Arturo kept his cameras out of sight using a small bag, not the obvious bulging camera bag and certainly nothing around his neck.

Not for this assignment, anyway.

“Where are we going, exactly?” he asked Isabel. “There, ahead.”

She pointed with her chin, then led him past the stands and overturned wooden crates tilted to display tomatoes, bananas, potatoes, carrots, zucchini, cabbage, corn. Isabel searched the crowd and the vendors—farmers in jeans wearing straw hats or ball caps, women wearing aprons over print dresses—until she came to the vendor selling large baskets, stacked in columns reaching to the green awning.

Standing alone near it was a woman in her forties. She was wearing a white shirt over jeans, a brown-and-white sweater, and was holding a large canvas bag with a blue-and-white square pattern.

Isabel approached her and used the identifying phrase.

“Are you waiting for Isabel?”

“Sí.”

“I am Isabel. We spoke,” she said, discreetly showing her ID. “And this is my friend Arturo. He works with me.”

Arturo gave her a small smile.

The woman assessed them. She read and trusted the work of the people at
El Heraldo
. “I am Rosalina.” She glanced around, comfortable in the noise and activity of the busy market. “I will talk to you right here, and quickly.”

Isabel nodded and listened as Arturo kept an eye on their area.

Because of the din, there was no risk of anyone
overhearing Rosalina as she related her family's tragedy and current situation. Isabel listened without taking notes, nodding, saying little, asking an occasional question.

Rosalina explained how her daughter's killers threatened her surviving daughter in an extortion bid to force her and her husband to steal U.S. government documents and harbor a
sicario
“for something large.”

“We overheard the gang members talking when they dropped off a school backpack at our home with items and the completed documents for the
sicario.
We know this young man was posing as a student when he entered.”

“Which school?”

“Azure, in El Paso. I think this
sicario
is being sent on a very big and very bad job in the U.S.” Rosalina opened her bag and pulled out a smaller bag with a large brown envelope. “The cartel does not know but I made copies of everything and I made notes. It is all in here for you. We know
El Heraldo
is the most courageous newspaper in all Juarez, and I am counting on you, in the memory of my beautiful daughter Ivette, to do the right thing through your connections and stop him and his cartel.”

Isabel did not look at the documents in the market.

It was not the appropriate place.

Luna had to trust her instincts about Rosalina, had to trust what she heard in her voice. She saw the pain etched in her face, and her hands, scarred from solvents and nearly arthritic now from years of scrubbing toilets in office buildings.

Isabel looked into Rosalina's eyes that were brimming with anguish and burning with the same fire that burned in her own heart—the righteous fire that raged to cleanse Juarez of the poison that flowed through its streets, carrying the evil that was destroying a generation.

United by death, the two women hugged.

“I give you my word, I will do all I can,” Isabel said.

Mesa Mirage, Phoenix, Arizona

S
omething was up.

When Jack Gannon called Melody Lyon at WPA headquarters, her voice carried an uneasy undertone. She was cool to his updates on Tilly's abduction until he abruptly shifted the conversation.

“What's going on there, Mel?”

As a journalist, Lyon never shied from a tough question.

“All right, here it is. Jack, do you have anything to do with this kidnapping?”

“Me?” Gannon struggled to keep his voice low.

“Even after the fact? Like maybe your sister and her boyfriend got caught up in a bad drug deal or debt, and they asked you to help them before it went wrong with the kidnapping? We need to know.”

“What is this? Are you serious?”

A moment passed.

“Mel, didn't you hear what I was telling you? The cartel behind Tilly's kidnapping hired a P.I. firm to get info on Cora in order to pressure Lyle.”

Another moment passed.

“What's going on, Melody?”

“FBI agents from the New York Division just left our office. They grilled people here individually, Jack—me,
George Wilson, Al Delaney, Carter O'Neill, Beland, the people who handle your copy.”

“On what?”

“Your character, your habits. They wanted to know if we thought you could be involved. They're likely going to talk to the staff at your old paper, the
Buffalo Sentinel,
too.”

“I don't believe this.”

“Jack, tell me the truth. Are you involved?”

“You really have to ask? You of all people know what I've been through to get here. Now you think it's possible that I've got the inclination, time and stupidity to be a drug dealer?”

“But your sister…”

“My sister and I have been estranged for over twenty years. I was twelve when I last saw her, Mel. Twelve. She's a stranger. I am getting to know her and getting used to the fact I have a niece. Hell, a few days ago I believed I had no living relatives. Under the circumstances, this is a bit of a challenge.”

“I understand that, but I need your answer, Jack.”

“Is someone there with you? Are you recording this for the FBI? Well, my answer is no, goddamn it! No, I am not involved. Christ, you're the one who assigned me to Juarez. Then, out of the freaking blue, my long-lost sister, who apparently had been watching my bylines over these years, calls me for help. I told you all of this.”

A long silence passed before Lyon exhaled slowly.

“I believe you. But listen, if this ever comes back on you, it comes back on the WPA. And the damage to you and to this organization would be monumental.”

“This is not about me or the WPA, Mel. It's about a kidnapped child and we're wasting time.”

“Agreed. Let's go over the status of things again.”

Lyon updated him on how the WPA was continually filing everything it could on the case from its bureaus in Phoenix, California, Texas, Washington, D.C., and
Mexico. Gannon went back to telling her about his tip on how the cartel had hired a private detective agency to locate Cora's home and that he was working to determine the location of a contact number he'd obtained.

Gannon carefully withheld any mention of his own suspicions about Cora or the allegations Peck and Lomax had made about Donnie Cargo and her troubled past. First, he had to keep pushing Cora for answers.

That was his next step.

After he finished his call he went to Cora's bedroom. A paramedic had just left it, closing the door softly behind him.

“I need to talk to her,” Gannon said.

“Give it time. The sedative is still working on her. She needs to rest.”

Frustrated, Gannon returned to working on his laptop, feeling the eyes of the investigators on him. He didn't care. He needed to check with Adell and Luna.

You do your job, I'll do mine.

 

Cora was in her bed, floating on a cloud of sedation.

Everything was going away. Everything was going to be all right. Her breathing was calm. She saw her ceiling in the soft light through her eyelids, big black wings scraping her face. She was imagining……
her phone ringing…is it ringing now…no, it is not ringing…oh yes it is…no…please…Tilly's calling… Tilly's safe… No…Tilly, accusing her… It's because of you, Mommy…your fault…because of what you did…pictures…memories are swirling…with distortions…ears are pounding…in the rain…it's karma…going to get you…raining in San Francisco… Donnie and Vic…oh shit…what are you doing…there's a man with a gun over there… Donnie, what is it?… Vic says hold this…what…please, no…it's so heavy…Cora…stop the car, Donnie…stop the car…what just happened…running in the rain…crying in the rain…on her knees…in the
rain…stop the rain…her heart is bursting…her pulse is racing…she wants to scream…needs to scream…oh God…what…happened…the hard rain…blood…so much blood…oh God…oh Jesus…her hands…blood all over her hands…what did you do…it won't go away…it'll never go away….

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico / El Paso, Texas

A
rturo Castillo positioned the last document in the high-speed scanner.

Across the newsroom, Isabel Luna worked at her keyboard while talking on the phone to an important source.

After their clandestine meeting with Rosalina in the market, Castillo and Luna had rushed back to
El Heraldo's
offices.

Now Luna, her handset wedged between her left ear and shoulder as she typed, was stressing the urgency of her information to the only Mexican cop she trusted: her stepbrother, First Sergeant Esteban Cruz.

“I'm sending it now.” Luna signaled Arturo that she'd received his last scan. “Nine attachments, including his photo. I'm certain it's him. Stay on the line.”

In the time it took for the attachments to transmit, Isabel explained how her source had obtained the documents before Cruz cut her off.

“Got them,” he said.

Luna and Cruz went through each one together. Isabel blinked at the photograph. He was so young, a face to fit any one of the young men she saw in Juarez every day, yet in her heart she knew him.

“It's him,” she said.

“Are you certain, Isabel?”

“Yes. Based on what I see and based on what I know, this is him. Look at him, posing as a student. He's killed nearly two hundred people. Think of all the suffering, Esteban. Look at the notes. It's the
sicario,
The Tarantula.”

“This photo for the counterfeit passport is the first we've ever seen of him. This could be a big break.”

“My source says he crossed into El Paso—” she glanced at the time “—less than two hours ago, maybe. They'd have a record. He could be on his way to the next killing in the U.S. We have to find him.”

“I'll take care of this.”

“Keep me informed, Esteban.”

 

At his desk, Cruz cupped his hands over his face, peering over his fingertips at the revelation on his computer monitor.

A thousand thoughts streaked through his mind, but with a Herculean effort he deflected the most painful ones to concentrate on his job.

He'd led the investigation into the murders of the two American ex-cops in the desert, Salazar and Johnson. Judging from Isabel's source's documents and based on what Cruz knew from the murders, he agreed.

This was The Tarantula.

And if Salazar and Johnson were tied to the Phoenix kidnapping, as investigators in the U.S. and Mexico believed, then this could mean the cartel has dispatched their
sicario
to finish things there.

To kill the girl.

Or Lyle Galviera.

Or both.

Either way, Cruz had to act fast. How should he put this break into play?
I could take care of it myself. Cross over on police business and find him. I have friends in the U.S. who could help quickly with all I would need. I
could resolve it the narco way. No, stop thinking like that. You're taking things personally and that can be dangerous.

Besides, he was obligated to share the intel with the FBI agents working with his team on the murders. He would do that through proper channels, even though it entailed FBI bureaucracy.

He would do the same with his own bureaucracy.

But he was uncomfortable sharing the information. He feared infiltration. The information could be intercepted by someone on the cartel payroll. There was always risk everywhere. No one knew that better than Cruz and his stepsister. For a moment he pictured his father's grave in the cemetery.

Then it became clear to Cruz who he needed to call first.

 

The El Paso Intelligence Center was ensconced on the secured grounds of Fort Bliss in a squat light brick building with beautiful palms at the main entrance.

The EPIC's parking lot offered a view of Juarez, just across the brown shallow water of the Rio Grande. The staff often changed shifts to the echo of gunfire rising from Juarez, a reminder that while U.S. law enforcement went about its work, the cartels went about theirs.

The installation was the nerve center of the U.S. government's war on drugs and global crime. It was operated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, supported by personnel from nearly twenty federal agencies, and a number of state, county and local departments.

Using a network of cutting-edge law enforcement databases, it connected the dots in real time to help track the history of a suspected terrorist detained at an airport, or aid a patrol officer who has just made a routine traffic stop, or anything to help an investigation.

Some three hundred analysts, intelligence experts, federal agents and a spectrum of other specialists examined
a galaxy of information scraps, pulling them together to provide fast tactical support to investigators across the U.S. and around the world.

One of EPIC's best analysts was Javier Valdiz, a DEA intelligence expert. A short time ago, he'd received an urgent query submitted by the FBI's fingerprint lab in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Latent prints collected at an Arizona motel identified Ruiz Limon-Rocha and Alfredo Hector Tecaza as suspects in the kidnapping of Tilly Martin.

Valdiz was coordinating queries related to her abduction when the FBI requested he analyze Limon-Rocha and Tecaza's backgrounds.

Valdiz had to be careful, as EPIC analysts, depending on their level of security clearance, had access to extremely sensitive intelligence, some of it arising from live, undercover operations.

In the case of Ruiz Limon-Rocha, Valdiz's research showed that he had been a sergeant and a member of the Airmobile Special Forces Group in the Mexican military. Research on Alfredo Hector Tecaza revealed that he had been an infantry corporal in the same branch of the military. Further EPIC analysis showed that, one year ago, Limon-Rocha and Tecaza were recruited to join the Norte Cartel by an upper-tier member.

Who brought them on?

Valdiz wondered about that just as his line rang. “Valdiz.”

“Esto es Cruz, cómo es usted, mi amigo?”

“Esteban. Very busy.”

“You may not know, Javi, but I am working on the case of the two American ex-cops south of Juarez. I am not supposed to call you directly.”

“For you, my door is open.”

Before being assigned to EPIC, Valdiz had worked as an undercover agent until a bullet during a gun battle with a cartel put him in a wheelchair. Valdiz would have bled
to death in the desert if the Mexican state cop partnered with him had not risked his life to carry him to safety.

That cop was Esteban Cruz.

“What do you need, Esteban?”

“This is urgent.” Cruz explained quickly, then emailed Valdiz the attachments. “We need to get an alert out. We need to intercept this
sicario.
”

Valdiz read through the information.

“If our guy entered at El Paso and was going to fly to Phoenix, the flight itself is ninety minutes. Then add at least an hour for security screening and check-in,” Valdiz said.

“They might still grab him at the airport.”

“They might. But if he drove, it is a six-or seven-hour drive. We've missed him.”

“Unless he took a train, or a bus.”

“The border guys would have scanned the passport,” Valdiz said. “We can get people to the terminals to check with ticket agents, look at security cameras. We're talking only a few hours. We can do the same at the airport. Hang on.”

Valdiz took care to submit his analysis on Limon-Rocha and Tecaza to his supervisor to approve and forward to the FBI in Phoenix.

Then he turned to another monitor and launched into rapid typing, working on the alert for the
sicario.