Cartel (3 page)

After a few seconds Ortiz opened his eyes.

"I was Mike Cassidy's supervisor," Scott said. "You're a documented DEA confidential source. I've read your file. I know you speak English."

"I'm a police officer," Ortiz said in English. "A federal police officer. La Policia Federal. You have no authority to arrest me."

"If you're convicted of conspiracy to murder a federal agent, you'll be sentenced to death," Scott said. "Once we cross the border, we have to turn you over to the U.S. mar-shal. I won't be able to help you. If you have something to say...about the murder of Mike Cassidy, now's the time to say it."

"Like what?" Ortiz said.

"Anything. Anything that might mitigate..." Scott turned to Garza for help.

"Mitigar," Garza said.

"Mitigar your situation," Scott finished.

Ortiz gave Scott an oily smile and flashed his silver tooth again. "I have nothing to say to you, gringo, except to tell you that you have no idea yet how bad you fucked up. You're going to regret this, I can promise you that. This is not the United States. This is Mexico."

Garza lurched toward Ortiz and jerked his arm up as if to smack the Mexican cop again and laughed when Ortiz flinched.

"Break. Break," Kat said over the radio, her tone urgent. "Scott, we have company."

Scott tried to look through the back windshield, but it was covered with thick desert dust. He keyed his micro-phone. "What do you see?"

"Two SUVs about a mile back but closing."

Scott glanced at the speedometer again. Still on eighty-five. If the SUVs were catching up they had to be doing at least a hundred miles an hour. "Can you tell who they are?"

"Got to be federales," Kat said.

Scott saw Ortiz grin. He ignored the Mexican and asked Hitch, "How far to the border?"

Hitch glanced at the GPS in the dash. "Twelve miles."

"We have to outrun them."

"Sure thing, boss."

"Hit the back wiper."

Hitch flicked on the back windshield wiper and squirted cleaning fluid onto the glass. The fluid turned the dust into mud and the wiper smeared it across the window.

"I can't see shit," Scott said. He rolled down the passen-ger window and grabbed his Steiner binoculars, then stuck his head out and focused the binoculars on the traffic behind them. At twelve-times magnification he saw the two SUVs. They were gaining. Maybe three-quarters of a mile now. A pair of black Chevrolet Suburbans with limo tint. Yet even at that distance, he could see clearly enough through the windshield of the lead vehicle to tell that the driver was black and the passenger was white. Which meant they were probably Americans.

Scott pulled his head back into the Tahoe and rolled up the window. He keyed the mic. "They're not federales."

"Who is it then?" Hitch asked.

Before Scott could answer, Kat asked the same thing. "Who are they?"

"I don't know," Scott said into the radio in answer to both questions.

Then he heard rotors beating the air behind them.

"We picked up a helicopter," Kat said.

Oh, shit. "What kind?" Scott asked. He was hoping it was an old Bell 47 or a Robinson. Something they could maybe outrun.

"Black Hawk," Kat said.

Hitch glanced at Scott. "Do the Mexicans even have Black Hawks?"

"Only the ones we gave them," Scott said. He keyed the radio and asked Kat, "You sure it's with the SUVs?"

"I'm sure," she said.

Hitch looked scared. "Shit, boss, what do we do?"

Garza was trying to see through the muddy back win-dow. "Who the fuck are those guys?"

"You think it's Mexican military?" Hitch asked.

"I don't think so," Scott said. "How far to Highway Two?"

"Half-mile."

Scott had twenty seconds to make a crucial decision. He made it in five. He keyed his radio. "Diego, Miller, listen up. We're going to split up at Highway Two. Miller, you go east to El Capullo. Diego, take two west to the World Trade Bridge. We'll keep going north on eighty-five and cross the Juarez Bridge."

"Roger that," Diego said.

"You sure about this?" Miller asked.

"We can outrun the SUVs, not the Black Hawk," Scott said into his microphone. "But it can't follow us all."

"Ten-four," Miller acknowledged.

Seconds later, when they hit the intersection of High-way 85 and Highway 2, Hitch kept driving straight. Scott checked his sideview mirror and saw the two trailing Tahoes veer right onto the exit ramp, then split at the next fork, with Diego, Jackson, and Cajun circling left to go toward the World Trade Bridge, and Miller, Lundy, and Kat continuing to veer right in the direction of the El Capullo Bridge.

"I don't like splitting up," Garza said.

Scott didn't answer. He held his breath and wondered which way their pursuers would go.

"Scott, you got one SUV on you," Kat said. "The oth-er...turned west. Going after you, Diego."

"Where's the helicopter?" Scott asked.

The radio broke squelch, but for a long few seconds Kat didn't respond. Then she said, "He's coming after us."

"Whoever they are," Scott said into his microphone, "they must figure that we're taking Ortiz back by the shortest route."

"And that means us," Kat said.

Ortiz laughed. "I told you, you were going to regret this."

Garza reached over and banged Ortiz's head against the window. "Callate la boca." Shut your mouth.

As they had approached the highway intersection, Hitch had backed off the gas. They were down to seventy now. The traffic was getting heavier as they got closer to Nuevo Laredo. In the sideview mirror Scott saw the black Suburban a quarter-mile back and closing fast. "Punch it," he told Hitch.

Hitch jammed the accelerator to the floor and the Tahoe leaped forward.

"How far?" Scott asked.

Hitch glanced at the GPS. "Seven miles."

"You won't leave Mexico alive," Ortiz croaked from the back seat.

Garza pulled his Glock pistol and jammed the muzzle against Ortiz's temple. "You'll die first, asshole."

Scott turned to tell Garza to put his gun away, but be-fore he could open his mouth Hitch swung onto the shoulder to pass a eighteen-wheel truck. "Try not to kill us before we get to the bridge, Hitch."

"Working on it, boss," Hitch said as he pulled back into the northbound lane, then swung into the oncoming lane to pass an overloaded pickup truck that was only doing about fifty. They barely made it back in time to avoid going head on into an old Ford station wagon.

"Good job, Hitch," Garza said.

Hitch didn't take his eyes off the road. He just nodded.

Checking the sideview mirror again, Scott saw that de-spite Hitch's best stunt driving, the black Suburban had man-aged to pull even closer. Scott keyed his mic. "Jackson, Kat, give me a sit-rep."

Jackson answered first. "Twelve minutes out, still got our shadow."

Nothing from Kat.

"Kat, do you read me?" Scott said.

It was Lundy who answered. "Boss, we got trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

When Lundy keyed the microphone again, Scott heard all three agents in the vehicle shouting at once. The words were too jumbled for him to make out. Then the shouting stopped and he heard Lundy say, "Oh, shit."

On a desolate stretch of Mexican Federal Highway 2, a mile and a half from the border crossing at El Capullo, Kat, Mil-ler, and Lundy ran into a roadblock. Two squad cars from the Policia Federal-the Mexican Federal Police-were stretched nose to nose across the highway. Four uniformed officers stood behind the cars aiming weapons at the ap-proaching DEA Tahoe. Kat could see that two of the feder-ales were armed with M-16s, most likely supplied by the U.S. government. The other two had pistols.

Miller coasted to a stop twenty yards from the police cars. He smacked the steering wheel with his open hands. "Shit."

Fifty yards behind the Tahoe, the Black Hawk helicop-ter-another gift from the United States-dropped into a hover fifty feet above the ground, its powerful rotor wash kicking up a cloud of sand and debris that pelted the DEA agents' vehicle.

"What the fuck are we supposed to do now?" Miller asked.

Lundy, who was sitting in the front passenger seat with his wounded and bloody leg propped up on the dashboard, said, "We're cops. They're cops. We're on the same side."

Miller shook his head. "We're not even close to being on the same side."

"We kidnapped one of their colleagues," Kat said as she slung the strap of her M-6 carbine over her head, getting it into combat position in case she needed it.

"But we don't have him," Lundy said.

His voice was high and tight, Kat noticed. He was really scared. So was she.

One of the federales held a microphone to his lips and spoke into it, his voice booming out of the police car's public address speaker, but the helicopter behind the agents was so loud that Kat couldn't understand what the man was saying.

"I'll get out and see if I can talk to them," Miller said. "Maybe we can straighten this out before it becomes some big international incident." He smiled at Kat and Lundy as he reached for the door handle. "How much cash you guys got on you?"

As soon as Miller opened the door, Kat saw a bright yel-low flash in front of one of the cops aiming an M-16. Then the Tahoe's windshield exploded.

Northbound traffic was jammed up on the Mexican side of the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge. Three of the four lanes that went through the exit booth were open. The far right lane was closed and blocked off with bright orange rubber traffic cones. Hatch had to stop twenty cars back from the booth in the outside left lane.

Scott checked the sideview mirror. The black Suburban was four cars behind them. The passenger stepped out. He was a tall white man in his mid- to late-forties. Definitely American, with a buzz cut, dark aviator sunglasses, and a tight-fitting olive-drab T-shirt tucked into khaki 5.11 cargo pants. All of which tagged him as having spent a lot of time in the U.S. military. Scott couldn't tell for sure if the man was armed, but he assumed he was. "We have to go, Hitch."

Hitch gestured to the stack of idling cars in front of them. "How?"

Scott pointed to the empty lane. "Take that one."

"It's closed."

"We're sitting ducks here," Scott said as he checked the mirror again. The man with the buzz cut was walking toward them, slowly, like a cop approaching a suspect car during a felony traffic stop. Scott turned in his seat and looked through the dirty rear window. The second man, the driver, was black and just as definitely American. He was in his mid-thirties and had lots of muscle packed under his tight-fitting olive-drab T-shirt, also tucked into a pair of 5.11s. He was out of the Suburban and cautiously approaching the Ta-hoe on foot. "Drive," Scott shouted and pointed to the far right lane. "Now."

Hitch turned the wheel hard right, but the lane next to them was backed up just as bad as their lane.

"Ram somebody if you have to," Scott said, "but get us the fuck across that bridge."

Hitch bumped the car next to them, an old Buick sedan. The driver laid on his horn and cursed at them in Spanish through his open window. Scott didn't understand the words but he understood the hand gestures and the tone.

"Punch it," he told Hitch.

Hitch goosed the motor and with a grinding shriek of metal on metal, the powerful SUV shoved the Buick out of the way. But there was still a third lane of traffic, also backed up to a standstill. A couple of the drivers in that lane, though, seeing the determination of the Tahoe's driver, moved out of the way before Hitch slammed into them. Then they were clear and into the empty far right lane.

Scott checked the mirror. Both Americans were scram-bling back to the Suburban. "Keep going," Scott said.

Hitch plowed over the orange cones and blew through the booth. As they shot past the small Mexican customs and immigration office just off the bridge to the right, Scott saw two uniformed Mexican officials, police of some kind, storm out the door and chase after them, but by then it was too late. The DEA agents were on the bridge headed north. Scott checked the mirror again and saw the black Suburban racing after them. "They're still with us."

Hitch mashed the accelerator to the floor.

The Suburban tried to pass, but Hitch swerved toward the bigger, heavier vehicle and the driver had brake to avoid a collision.

"Good move," Scott said as he tracked the Suburban in the side mirror.

Then the other driver veered away to gain some dis-tance. He cut back hard and slammed the Suburban's left front bumper into the back fender of the Tahoe. Cops called the move a P.I.T., a precision immobilization technique, and the intent was to force the fleeing car into a tailspin that end-ed in a crash. But Hitch knew the technique and knew how to escape it. Instead of turning into the spin, he counter-steered and kept pressure on the Suburban's front end until he forced it off the Tahoe's back fender. Then he cut to the right and rammed the Suburban and sent it spinning into the concrete railing.

"Fucking-A good driving, man," Garza shouted from the back seat. Hitch smiled but kept his eyes glued to the bridge.

When they reached the midpoint of the bridge, where Nuevo Laredo's Luis Donaldo Colosio Boulevard became Laredo's San Dario Avenue, Scott looked back and saw the Suburban again. Both front fenders were bashed up, but it was still chasing them.

On the north side of the bridge, the four travel lanes fanned out into twelve numbered lanes that funneled into a covered inspection plaza manned by U.S. Customs and Bor-der Protection officers. Lane twelve, the far right lane, was labeled OFFICIAL USE ONLY. That was their only chance. Scott pointed at the booth, but he didn't need to. Hitch was already racing toward it.

The CBP officers saw them coming. Two officers rushed out of the plaza with drawn pistols just as three steel posts shot up from the pavement in front of the booth. The retractable posts were an emergency measure designed to stop vehicles from crashing through the lane. A third CBP officer joined the other two. He was armed with an M-16 and took up a kneeling firing position behind one of the steel posts. The three officers took aim at the racing Tahoe.