Cartel (34 page)

Both children screamed and clutched at their mother.

Scott lunged forward, but the man behind him was ready for it and wrapped his arm around Scott's neck and dug his pis-tol into Scott's ear. "Easy there, tiger," he whispered.

Jones smiled. "I understand you've already met Capitán Delgado."

"Let her go," Scott shouted at the fat Mexican cop.

Delgado smiled. Then, laying on his accent even thicker, sounding almost like a cartoon caricature of a Mexican, like Speedy Gonzales, he said, "No, señor, I don't think I will let her go." He untangled his fingers from Victoria's blond hair, then stroked it. "In fact, your wife is very pretty, so I think I'll hold on to her for a little while."

Jones cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "As I said, this is not a negotiation, and I am in a bit of a hurry. So, Agent Greene, I want you to give me the flash drive right now, or you will live just long enough to see a bullet go through your wife's head, then your son's, then your daugh-ter's."

Captain Delgado pressed his pistol harder into Victoria's neck. She winced at the pain and cried out, "Scott."

"It's hanging around my neck," Scott said.

Jones looked at him for a moment, then nodded at the man behind Scott. The man released the chokehold and backed his pistol out of Scott's ear. Jones also glanced at Captain Delgado, who rather reluctantly let go of Victoria.

Scott felt the pistol dig into his spine. He pulled the flash drive from around his neck and tossed it to Jones, who caught it by the lanyard. He held the drive up at eye level. "All this trouble," he said, "for what's on this piece of plas-tic." He looked at Scott. "What's it weigh do you think, an ounce, maybe less? And what did it cost the Chinese to manufacture it in one of their child labor factories, fifty cents? But how many people have died for it?"

"You should know," Scott said. "You killed most of them. Or had it done. I doubt you have the balls to actually do it yourself."

Jones smiled and lowered the flash drive. "Agent Greene, unless I am terribly mistaken about you, and I don't think I am, you are much too smart to have seriously be-lieved you were going to get out of this alive."

"No, I didn't," Scott said. "That's why I saved a copy and attached it to two emails." He glanced at his watch. "In fifty-two minutes, those emails will go out, one to The Washington Post, the other to The New York Times. Unless we all walk out of here." It was a lie, but a lie told with con-viction was hard to distinguish from the truth. He just hoped he was telling this one with enough conviction.

"You see," Jones said, still smiling, "I knew I was right about you. And I admire your determination and resource-fulness. But you don't fully understand the dynamics of the situation you're in. And that's my fault. So let me explain. First, I have no way of knowing how many copies of this video you or anyone else has made." Jones dangled the flash drive for emphasis. "Second, I don't even know if this is the only copy that Deputy Attorney General Oscar Ramirez had. Third, and most important, I have absolutely no doubt that one day, probably one day soon, this video will show up on YouTube or Facebook or Twitter, and then it will be all over the cable news networks."

Scott raised his hands in an all-encompassing gesture. "Then why all this?"

Jones dangled the flash drive again to emphasize his point. "Because I've never seen it. I just want to know what all the fuss is about."

Not knowing what to say to that, Scott just stared at Jones.

"And," Jones said, "because I needed you."

"Me?" Scott said. "Why?"

"I can manage the video coming out. Reporters who think they're on to a big story are the easiest people in the world to control. But what I can't manage is you on TV or in front of a Congressional committee."

Now Scott understood. "Because I'm the provenance."

"Exactly," Jones said. "The proof that the video is ex-actly what it appears to be, an illegal pact, an unholy alliance, if you will, between the most powerful country on the planet and the world's richest drug cartel. But without you, it's just a leaked undercover video, showing a sincere, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to convince the leader of the Sinaloa cartel that he was dealing with a rogue element of the U.S. government in order to trick him into delivering tons of cocaine into the hands of American law enforcement."

"How did you find out the video even existed?" Scott asked. Jones liked to hear himself talk, so Scott wanted to keep him talking. If nothing else, it would buy him a few more seconds to think of something to do.

Jones shoved the flash drive into the pocket of his suit coat. Then he gestured toward Benny with his pistol. "It was your friend, Officer Alvarez, who tipped us off."

Scott turned to Benny. She stared back at him, her eyes wide with confusion. "I swear I didn't tell them anything."

"Don't judge her too harshly," Jones said. "She's telling the truth, as far as she knows it."

Looking back at Jones, Scott said, "What do you mean?"

"I don't know if you are aware of this, but she has a...fiduciary relationship with Humberto Larios and Los Zetas."

"She told me," Scott said, feeling suddenly protective of Benny.

"Good," Jones said. "That makes it easier to explain. So you see, when Officer Alvarez called Señor Larios and told him about the video, we..." He nodded to the G.I. Joe stand-ing beside him. "Really it was my associate here and his technical team, but in the royal sense it was we, were moni-toring Señor Larios' telephones on behalf of our client, Señor Gutierrez, and so we informed our client about the existence of the video and who had it."

"Mike Cassidy," Scott said.

Jones nodded. "Yes."

A long moment of silence hung in the air. Jones looked smug, seemingly pleased with himself for being magnani-mous enough to fill in some of the missing pieces for the condemned.

Then a new voice cut the silence. "I wondered how that fat fuck found out about the video." And Humberto Larios stepped in through a small side door to Scott's right. Larios wore jeans and a tan guayabera shirt and carried an M-16 ri-fle.

Five Los Zetas gunmen carrying M-16s followed Humberto Larios through the side door. The last two dragged Father Rodrigo and a little girl with them. The girl wore the pleated skirt and white blouse of a school uniform. She looked un-hurt but terrified.

"Rosalita!" Benny screamed.

The girl saw her mother and tried to run to her, but the gunman held her back. She started crying. So did Benny.

Rodrigo looked worse. Much worse. He'd been beaten bloody. His black priest's shirt hung loose from his pants, and his Roman collar was twisted and pulled half off. Still, his face betrayed no emotion.

Behind Scott, the church's front door banged open. The American at his back looked over his shoulder to assess this new threat, but his pistol remained steady, jammed against Scott's spine. Scott turned his head just enough to see the silhouetted figures of two more men step into the church, both carrying rifles with the distinctive shape of M-16s.

The man behind Scott muttered, "Shit."

When Scott turned back, he saw Larios grinning like a jackal.

For several long seconds, nothing happened. Nothing except that the smug look slid off Jones's face. Replaced by shock. Then by fear.

Scott laughed.

Everyone stared at him.

He just kept laughing.

The American behind him pressed his pistol deeper into Scott's back.

Humberto Larios nodded at Scott. "Hey, gringo, what's wrong with you? What the fuck is so funny?" Larios had a smile on his face, the kind of smile a card player wears when he knows he has the winning hand.

Scott pointed at Jones. "He is. Sixty seconds ago he thought he had won. Now look at him."

Larios stared at Jones. Then he laughed too.

Scott spun to his left. The man behind him wasn't ready and took a second too long to react. Scott knocked the pistol aside and knuckle punched the man in the throat. Then kicked the man's legs out from under him. They both fell. The pistol went off. Scott felt the bullet rip past his ear. They crashed onto the hard stone floor. Scott landed on top and heard a rib snap. The man screamed. Scott slammed his el-bow into the man's nose. He heard it crack and felt cartilage splinter. The man screamed again.

Gunshots exploded behind Scott. None hit him, so he ignored them. He twisted the pistol from the man's hand. It was a Beretta M-9, standard U.S. military issue, meaning the man was probably a contractor. Scott shoved the muzzle un-der the man's chin and pulled the trigger. There was a muf-fled POP as blood and brains exploded from the top of his skull. Scott rolled away. And kept rolling until he was under the first pew.

More gunfire erupted inside the small church. The steady pop of pistols and the earsplitting shriek of M-16s.

Scott saw Benny on the floor, fighting the man who had been holding her at gunpoint, trying to wrestle the pistol away from him. Scott shot him in the head. Benny yanked the gun from his hand, another Beretta M-9, and slid under the first pew beside Scott. "Gracias," she said.

Scott nodded and scanned what he could see of the church from under the pew. Victoria was sprawled on top of Jake and Samantha in front of the altar, shielding them with her body. The children were screaming and covering their ears with their hands.

Jones and G.I. Joe were crouched behind the heavy wooden altar, firing over Scott's family at Larios and his men. Scott fired a couple of shots at the two Americans but his angle was bad. He missed and they ignored him.

Scott did have an excellent angle on Captain Delgado, although the corrupt Mexican police commander was already dead. He had caught a high-velocity bullet in the forehead, no doubt a .223 from one of Larios' men, and it had peeled back the top of his head like a PEZ dispenser.

Rodrigo and Rosalita were nowhere to be seen.

Behind Scott and Benny, from just inside the front door, the two Los Zetas who had been last to the party were firing their M-16s, the supersonic bullets cracking the air overhead and splintering the altar.

Jones and his pet G.I. were outnumbered eight to two and taking massive fire from two directions. They had no chance. In seconds the fight would be over. Scott was al-ready wondering what would come next. He didn't imagine that he stood in any higher regard with Larios than he had with Jones. In the end, dead was still dead, and it really did-n't matter if the bullet came from the CIA or from Los Zetas.

Then G.I. Joe lobbed something toward the front door. It was round and dark and about the size of a baseball. A piece of the thing sprang away from the main body as it arced through the air. Scott knew what it was. He'd seen plenty of them in Afghanistan, mostly hooked onto the vests and web gear of soldiers and Marines. It was an M-67 frag-mentation grenade. And in a gunfight, it could be a game changer.

The hand grenade fell short of the two gunmen-probably just as G.I. Joe had intended, since he looked like the kind of guy who practiced tossing hand grenades in front of a mirror-and landed on the stone floor between the pews. It bounced once, then skittering down the aisle until it exploded. The blast flattened the two Zetas and blew the big wooden door and a chunk of façade into the street.

An eerie silence followed the explosion. Then someone started screaming. At least one Zeta had survived the blast long enough to feel the pain of his mangled body.

Movement near the altar caught Scott's eye. He turned just in time to see G.I. Joe tossing a second hand grenade through the air, this one arcing toward the right side of the church, where Larios and his other gunmen were crouched. As the grenade reached the apex of its arc, one of the Zetas actually tried to shoot it out of the air. He missed.

Larios and the others ran.

Scott scrambled out from under the pew firing the Beretta at Jones and his partner and managed to pancake himself on top of his wife and children just as the second hand grenade exploded. Something stung Scott's forehead. He reached up and felt a piece of metal, hot and jagged, em-bedded in his skin. He yanked it out. His fingertips and the metal shard were bloody. Looking at his family, he could see that Jake and Samantha were screaming and Victoria was crying, but the shrill buzz inside his head drowned out all other sounds.

Jones stood up behind the altar and aimed his pistol at Scott. Scott didn't have a chance and he knew it. His gun was down at his side, way too far out of position to be of any use, and he remembered what one of his DEA Academy firearms instructors used to say: You can't outdraw your op-ponent's trigger pull.

Then a bullet slammed into the altar and fragments ex-ploded in Jones's face. The CIA man ducked just as another bullet struck the altar. Scott glanced over his shoulder and saw Benny firing. Then he raised his own pistol and turned back, ready to finally put a bullet into Jones, but the son of a bitch was already gone.

A Los Zetas gunman staggered out of the smoke and dust from the second hand grenade explosion, blinking his eyes and shaking his head but still clutching his M-16. Scott shot him twice in the chest.

"We're getting out of here," Scott shouted into Victo-ria's ear, although he could barely hear his own words. Then he hauled Samantha up and hugged her to his chest. Victoria picked up Jake. "Stick close to me," Scott yelled. He looked for Benny. She was on her feet, pistol in her hands. "Follow us," he shouted.

"I have to find Rosalita," Benny said.

Scott read her lips more than he heard her. Then he scanned the ruined church, searching for any sign of Benny's daughter, and for a way out. He worked his jaw and felt his ears pop. It brought some of his hearing back.

"Scott!" Victoria screamed.

He glanced at her and saw she was pointing. He fol-lowed her finger and saw a cartel gunman rising up from the rubble the second hand grenade had left behind. The man lifted his M-16. Scott turned to shield his daughter first. Then raised his pistol, but he was too late. And so was the cartel gunman. Because before either of them could squeeze off a shot, a bright flash erupted behind the gunman and Scott heard, or more accurately, he felt, the deep boom of a large-caliber handgun. The man flopped face first onto the floor.