Authors: Michelle Gagnon
Jake took a deep breath. He let his left foot slide out on the next patch of leaves, dropping to his belly in the mud.
A sharp crack from the right, and something wet hit his back. Looking up he saw the guard lurch sideways, a bullet hole near his hairline. Jake grimaced. More rustling, and Syd and Mark emerged side by side through the trees, followed by the rest of the group. Jake was relieved to see Isabela among them. At the sight of the guard’s body she went pale and averted her eyes.
“Took you long enough,” Jake muttered.
Syd jerked her head toward Mark. “He wanted to let them take you all the way into camp, figured that would be the easiest way to find it.”
“Gee, thanks,” Jake said. “I’m glad cooler heads prevailed.”
“We would have gotten you out,” Mark said without looking up. He was patting down the guard’s pockets, relieving him of a hunting knife and ammunition.
“Remind me not to come save you next time.” Jake stood and brushed himself off as best he could. He avoided looking at the guard, too.
“Guess we’re even now,” Mark said. “Not that you really saved.”
Jake opened his mouth to retort, but Syd interrupted. “The camp can’t be far, can we hold off on the arguments? It’s almost dark. We need to find a safe place to regroup.”
“Agreed,” Mark said. “Let’s move out. Follow close. Stay a little off the path, but in sight of it. Decker, you take the rear.”
“I got it,” Maltz interjected.
Mark appeared ready to argue, then thought better of it. Syd led the way, tacking off the path twenty feet, then beating a trail parallel to it. Mark stayed close on her heels.
Jake followed him into the brush. It was harder going off the path. They weren’t using the machete anymore, wary of leaving a trail. He followed in Mark’s wake as carefully as he could, but he swore his brother was intentionally setting branches to snap in his face. He yelped when one hit his cheek, drawing blood.
Mark glanced back and raised an eyebrow. Jake just glowered and motioned for him to keep going. As he watched his brother’s broad back move smoothly through the trees, Jake couldn’t help but remember being in this exact same formation many times before. Throughout their entire childhood, he’d followed Mark. The gullies and sagebrush surrounding their house had been their personal playground, host to endless rounds of cowboys and Indians. At school, he’d taken over as quarterback when Mark graduated and relinquished the position. The only place he hadn’t followed him was into the Navy SEALs.
They’d always been close, much closer than he and Chris ever got. Chris was definitely the odd one out in a family of adrenaline junkies, a nerdy kid who preferred books to BB guns, the school year to summers. Meanwhile Mark and Jake had been nearly inseparable, sharing a bedroom and constantly getting into trouble—nothing serious, but the local cops knew them by sight.
And then Mark left, and everything changed.
Mark suddenly stopped short and held up a closed fist. Jake halted a foot behind him. Finally a signal he recognized: the military gesture for “Freeze.”
Mark dropped to the ground and crawled forward. After a second Jake followed, figuring what the hell, he had chosen to be here. No reason he shouldn’t be privy to whatever Mark had seen. He inched forward, sodden clothes chafing uncomfortably against his skin as he came up alongside Mark and Syd.
They were on the edge of a small cliff. The path the guard had been leading him down transformed into a series of switchbacks that descended at least a half mile to the valley floor. And tucked inside the valley was the prison camp.
Mark scanned it through a pair of binoculars. Jake held out his hand for them. Reluctantly Mark passed them over.
Jake adjusted the focus. His heart sank at what he saw.
Isabela had told them the camp was big, and connected to a military base. But either she hadn’t known, or hadn’t accurately conveyed, the size of the thing. Jake had been picturing something far more ad hoc, similar to the FARC camps in Colombia. The FARC were masters of building temporary bases, leaving a trail of abandoned shelters strewn through the jungle as they played cat and mouse with the Colombian army.
Apparently Los Zetas had no squalms. The prison camp sprawled off into the distance. It was huge, covering a few hundred acres. The tree canopy shielded it somewhat from overhead view. Still, there was simply no way the Mexican army was unaware of its existence, Jake thought. Syd was right: Los Zetas had to be aligned with powerful people in the government.
Syd and Mark edged back from the lip, staying on their bellies. Jake followed. Ten feet away, Mark stood. He walked back into the underbrush, then squatted down. “All right, we’ve got our visual,” he said. “We’ll regroup a few clicks away, then do our recon tonight.”
“How the hell are you going to find your men?” Jake asked. “It’s a lot bigger than I thought.”
“We’ll find them,” Mark said.
“My father, too,” Isabela interjected.
“Right,” Mark said, meeting her eyes. “We’ll try to find him, too.”
“And then how do we get them out? I saw guard towers, dogs…” Jake turned to Syd. “Even you have to admit, this is crazy. We’re not dealing with a few guys at an outpost here. They probably outnumber us a hundred-to-one. Plus they know the terrain, we don’t.”
For the first time in recent memory, Syd looked hesitant. Not a good sign.
“We need to create a distraction, get some guards out of the camp.” She turned to Maltz. “Kind of like what we did in Syria.”
Maltz was already shaking his head. “Jake’s right, there are too many of them. Won’t work.”
“We could fly in more men,” Kane suggested. “Pull some teams off other jobs.”
“That’d attract too much attention,” Mark argued. “We’re already here. We’ve got surprise on our side.”
“Surprise won’t be enough,” Syd said. Mark started to argue, but she cut him off. “Jake’s right, we go in like this, it’s a suicide mission. And I for one am not in the mood to die. Or to end up in some godforsaken Mexican prison camp.”
They stood in silence for a moment.
“What about the Tyr team?” Syd said after a pause. “We could join forces.”
“Don’t trust ’em,” Decker chimed in.
“Maybe if we had more C4,” Maltz said, thinking aloud.
“Getting in is easy,” Syd said. “It’s getting out that’s the problem.”
As they debated, dusk swept in from the uppermost branches, bringing with it a slight chill. Jake shivered in his wet clothes. Isabela looked as miserable as he felt. He wondered again what the hell he’d been thinking. He should be on a plane home with Kelly right now. Mark seemed dead set on getting himself killed. Beyond that, he’d made it clear that he’d prefer having no help. Now Jake had put the lives of his business partner and some of his best employees at risk.
“We’ve got another problem,” Maltz said after a minute. “Chances are ’ll come looking for the guys we took out.”
“He’s right,” Decker said. “We stashed them pretty good, but still—”
“They’ll find us,” Syd finished. “We should fall back to a safer location to figure out a plan.”
“I think we should stay,” Mark said.
“No way, not all of us. I’m pulling my men,” Syd turned to Jake. “Right?”
Jake nodded. “There were a few motels in that village we passed through, we can book some rooms and try to keep a low profile while we regroup.”
Mark’s face clouded. Before he could say anything, Decker laid a hand on his arm. “She’s right, Riley. You and me can scout the camp. But all of us, together—there are civilians here.”
Mark’s gaze settled on Isabela. “You should head back with them,” he said, sounding defeated. “We’ll gather as much intel on the camp as we can.”
“Here.” Syd handed him a radio with a fat antenna. “Stay in contact and use the satellite encrypted channel to report what you find. Maybe you’ll spot a weakness we can use.”
“We’re leaving?” Isabela interrupted. “What about my father?”
“I’ll get him out,” Mark said. “I promise.”
Isabela looked ready to argue, but before she could speak a siren blared from the camp.
Syd cocked her head to the side. “Far as I’m concerned, that’s our cue to go.”
Kelly sat on a park bench rubbing her leg. All of the walking today had exacerbated her condition. She considered popping a Vicodin, but decided against it. On the off chance that she did find something, she needed to be sharp. Unfortunately, so far she’d had no luck.
An internet search had turned up five foreign-language bookstores in Mexico City. She’d started with the two that focused on European languages. Unfortunately they’d proved fruitless. Neither owner recognized Stefan’s photo.
According to the P.I., the money had arrived in Mexico City almost three years earlier. Even if Stefan had been a regular at the time, they might not remember him. Or maybe some of the bookstores he frequented had closed in the interim.
Still, Kelly dogged on. After all, she mused, it wasn’t like she had anything better to do. The next store was on the eastern side of the city, not far from where they’d spent the past few days. She stopped for lunch in the Zona Rosa before heading back to the grim and dangerous section of town.
Kelly checked her watch: nearly 3:30 p.m. No matter what, she didn’t want to be walking around there after dark. Time to get a move on.
It took nearly a half hour for her cab to weave its way through the glut of traffic. The heat wave was holding fast, the sidewalks thronged with people in T-shirts milling in and out of stores. The neighborhoods deteriorated as they drove. Entire blocks were boarded up, gangs of young men hung out on apartment building stoops. Kelly swallowed hard. Maybe this had been a mistake.
The cab pulled up to a lone storefront in the middle of a devastated block. Kelly peered out the window—it was hard to tell if it was even open, it looked just as dingy and abandoned as everything else.
“Espere, por favor,” she said, handing the driver some cash.
He looked around nervously, but nodded.
A tinny bell rang when she opened the door. The interior was dark, books stacked on every available space. A tiny man scurried out of a back room and approached her with a toothy smile. “Sí, señora?” he said hopefully. “Hola. I’m looking for someone.” Kelly dug Stefan’s file photo out of her backpack. The man’s face fell at the realization that she wasn’t a customer after all, but he took it from her and adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose.
“Why are you looking for this man?” he asked, his English formal but succinct.
“His family has been trying to find him,” Kelly said. She’d opted against identifying herself as an FBI agent, figuring that wouldn’t endear her to the locals.
“I see.” He extended his arm out to squint at the photo.
“He might have come in a few years ago,” Kelly said.
“As you can see—” he swept his arm in an arc “—my customer base is small. If it weren’t for the internet…” He shook his head. “I don’t know why I keep the store open anymore.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” Kelly fought to keep the impatience from her voice. “So, do you recognize him?”
He eyed her. “You don’t look like family.”
“I’m a family friend.”
“I doubt that. This man—” he jabbed the photo “—he is not one to make friends.”
Kelly’s heart leaped. “So you do know him?”
“He hasn’t come in for months. But yes, he used to be one of my best customers.” The man sounded regretful. “I ordered the Berlingske Tidende regularly for him, along with some other texts. Then one day, he stopped coming in.” He peered around the store, as if perhaps the reason why lay hidden in its shadows.
“Do you have any idea where I might find him?” she asked.
He sighed. “I do, but it is very dangerous. No place for a lady.”
“Please,” she said. “It’s very important.”
He regarded her for a long moment. “You must promise not to go there alone, or ever at night.”
“Of course,” Kelly lied.
“Very well, then. I could never understand it, since clearly he was a man of some means. One book alone cost nearly four thousand pesos. But from what he said, I gathered that he lived in Bordo Ponienteng the pepenadores.”
“Where’s that?” Kelly asked.
“The city dump.” His nose wrinkled. “Less than a mile away. You can smell it quite plainly when the wind blows from the east. But I must warn you, señora, it is enormous. Finding one man in there will be difficult. And it’s one of the most dangerous places I know.”
Coming from someone living in this neighborhood, Kelly guessed that was saying something. “Gracias, señor.” She reached out to shake his hand. His eyes widened when she handed him a five-hundred-peso note.
“Please, be careful,” he called after her.
Kelly was already out the door, bells tinkling in her wake.
Flores tried to stay calm as he was led along the row of pens. They’d bound his hands in front of him with a zip tie, not something they did to Calderon, but he was probably considered more of a security risk. Other prisoners glanced up from their meal trays as he passed. Some appeared envious, others disinterested. Apparently it wasn’t all that unusual for prisoners to come and go. He scanned each cage in passing for Sock and Kaplan.
Flores wondered what was going on. Had Tyr negotiated his release? Did they even know he was here? What had shaken Calderon so badly?
They reached the end of the row and emerged into some sort of main corridor. The camp was more massive than he’d imagined. There was an exterior fence on his right. Long lines of pens extended into the distance on his left. He counted off twenty rows before the guard ordered him to halt.
They were standing in front of the sort of prefab trailer used by managers at construction sites. The guard stepped forward and rapped twice on the door. After a moment, it swung open and Flores was shoved inside.
He staggered up the steps, knocking his knee hard against the metal. Flores swore as he caught himself. He managed to climb the last step to enter with a shred of his dignity intact.
The inside was sparsely decorated. Sheets of paper were taped to the wall: mainly guards’ schedules, from what he could make out. No windows. An enormous locked cabinet piqued his interest. Weapons cache, maybe? Filing cabinets flanked it on either side.