KILLER DATE (SCANDALS) (13 page)

“And…?”  Jenny couldn’t keep from interrupting.  “Is she okay?”

“She wasn’t there,” Tulsa told her.  “The phone was inside an empty moving van.  He found the driver in the restaurant having dinner and got him to open the trailer.  Someone must have planted her phone in there to pull us off track.  Sorry.”

Jenny sunk back down on her chair.

“That was a great piece of detective work…and a lotta luck.”  Brady commented as he finished off his sandwich and opened the tab on a can of Coke.

“If the truck had gone to Memphis or Little Rock
, I probably couldn’t have gotten someone there so quickly,” Tulsa admitted.  “Unlike Roger, I don’t have a hook-up in every city in the southwest U.S.”

“
So…what have you got, Brady?” Christopher asked.

Brady
raised his eyebrows and leaned back against one of the built-in bookcases.  “I made it to my morning meeting today, and caught my boss up on the whole cartel war.  She agrees that there’s a shit-storm coming to south Texas.”

“That’s good…right?”  Jenny said excitedly.

“Not for you, but it’s good for Austin.  That means we don’t have to spend any more money tracking them down,” Brady explained, almost apologetically.  “Terry…my boss, told me that with those two cartel cousins dead and the son in the hospital, it’s moving the epicenter out of our area.  I’m sorry Jenny…I just came by to tell you that and to wish you the best in finding your sister.”

The news h
it me like a truck.  He was so into it just a few hours ago at the hospital, and I thought that meant that the APD would take over the case.

Jenny
’s mouth fell open and her eyes widened in panic.  “So you’re off the case…period….just like that?  Give me this Terry’s phone number…surely she doesn’t understand that Angie is an innocent victim in all this.”

Brady shook his head.  “It’s strictly a financial decision.  We’ve had massive budget cuts, and she can’t support going forward with a case that is
so far out of our area, even though she certainly understands and sympathizes with your situation.”

Jenny’s shock turned to anger.
  “If Angie was someone prominent, the mayor’s daughter or son, I’ll bet they’d find the money.”

“I’m sorry…I really am.” 
Brady’s apology was genuine, but it was clear his hands were tied.  He pulled a card out of his shirt pocket, scratched out the printed number and wrote another number above it, then pushed it across the table toward Jenny.  She leaned forward to retrieve the card.  “Here’s her number,” he continued.  “The last four numbers are the only thing that’s different from mine.   Jenny, keep in mind that she doesn’t have input to the budget; she’s just told what her limits are.  Chasing these guys would put her way over those limits…both financially and with manpower.  Most importantly, it would be out of our jurisdiction, and our authority would be compromised.  It would put our men at high risk.”

I hadn’t considered that angle.  But surely, they could help in some way. 
“Really Brady…give us a week…or even a few days.”

“
You know…Terry is a pretty nice lady, but she’s just one gear in the machine on 8th street.  At best, I’m a drop of oil on the axle.  I’m not in a position to make things happen. I just try and stay out of the way when the machine is turned on.”  Brady nodded toward Nick.  “The Feds can help you a whole lot more than I can. This kind of stuff…chasing bad guys across county lines…is in their wheel house, not mine.”

Brady
looked around the table for a moment.  He headed toward the door, then stopped and turned.  “If you need a fast search warrant in Austin or help getting special treatment at the Crime Lab…give me a call.  I’ll find a way to get it done for you.  Good luck y’all.  Thanks for lunch.”  He exited, quietly pulling the door shut behind him.

We sat in stunned silence for a moment.  Somehow, we’d expected
the APD to swoop in and save the day.  Clearly, there would be no swooping or saving.  Simultaneously, we switched our focus to Nick who suddenly had an intense interest in the chips left on his plate.  But with the heat from our gazes burning a hole in him, he was finally compelled to look up.

“
So, since the city has bugged out, what are the Feds going to do for us?” I asked, emboldened by Jenny’s obvious disappointment.  Plus, I didn’t have the first clue on what we could do without some major help from someone who knew about these cartels.  Even Christopher didn’t want to jump into the deep end on this one.  “We’re burning daylight…remember?”

He cleared his throat and took another drink of water. 
“Take the city’s budget restrictions and multiply them by ten.  You know how every time someone gets a hair up their ass in Washington, they shut the government down.  They play their stupid games and don’t give a shit who gets hurt.  They don’t mind spending millions on flying to Europe or Hawaii or for a fucking golf game, and yet they told us to stay home and stop chasing the bad guys…because they cut off our funding.  It took us months to catch back up.  Thank your Senator, Congressman or POTUS himself.”

“POTUS?
” Liberty interrupted.

“President…of the United
States,” he explained.  “With all the budget-fucking, he’s done something far worse to us.”

“What could be worse than taking money away?”  I asked.

Nick wiped his mouth and dropped the wadded up napkin on his plate.  “Any of you football fans?”

“I like the Texans,” Christopher admitted.

“My dad has season tickets to the Cowboys’ games,” Dallas added.

“What
the heck does that have to do with bringing Angie back?”  Jenny looked at us all like we had lost our minds.

“A lot
, I’m afraid.  We…the DEA, play a lot of defense, and we used to have the resources to play man-to-man.  But as the shutdowns and budget cuts hit us, we were forced to play more zone defense.  The bad guys are quick learners.  It didn’t take them long to figure out how to play their game between the zones.”

Christopher spoke up.  “Nick
, what’s your point?”

“We don’t have the manpower
to deal with the people-side of the drug trade.  They’ve got us standing down on any issue involving captives, killings and family feuds.  We’re all about the actual drugs…not the people who fill the orders, but the output.  Every month they remind us that all we need is one good drug heist to fill the wide screen, high-def TVs of clueless Americans while they’re eating dinner.  It’s all a big show…make the audience believe the government is working hard to protect them, when it’s all bullshit.”

“Smok
e and mirrors,” I muttered.  “A grand illusion on a national level.”

“That’s
baloney.  Are you telling me that because my sister has been taken by the drug cartels that she’s not a DEA problem?  Fudge!  She was forced into helping them change their identity, for God’s sake.  How can that not be a DEA problem?”  Jenny was on the verge of hysteria.

“
What I’m telling you is that Brady was…well, sort of right.  It’s the FBI that handles this sort of thing.”

“So, w
ho do we call?”  I asked.  “Let’s get them here.”

“
They don’t move that fast.  I put a call into them on the drive over, and they said they’d be in touch with me within twenty-four to seventy-two hours.  It’s hard to say. I’ll keep bugging them, but with all the terrorist threats, a runaway turned possible kidnapping isn’t high on their priority list.”

“Twenty-
four to seventy-two hours?  You’re kidding, right?” I sputtered.

Jenny stared at Nick in horror. 
“
Possible
kidnapping?  What would it take, her head in a box?”

Nick must have realized how harsh he had sounded because he tried to soften his tone.  “
Some committee will have to look at their workload and figure out where it fits.  It just takes time.”

Jenny slumped back in her chair. 
Her voice was barely a whisper.  “But she doesn’t have time.  They have no reason to keep her alive.”

“Do
es the FBI know everything you know about the cartels, the heart attack, the sons and who’s in and who’s out?  How about the tattoo removal?  Do they know anything like we…you already know?” Killeen asked.

“I
don’t know how much they know.  I told them, but I have no idea if the person I talked to was taking notes or passed anything along.  This is the first time I’ve turned anything like this over to them, but my guess is that it’s going to take some time to get them up to speed…and I don’t know what assets they can bring in on short notice.”  Nick shrugged.  “We used to handle it all, but now the drugs and drug traffic is in our house, and the abduction of U.S. citizens is in their house. No overlap and everyone stays away from the edges…smaller footprint, budget wise…ya know what I mean?”

A pall of silence settled on the room as we worked through this new information.  It didn’t take a genius to see that Angela was fucked.  I glanced over at Jenny and saw that she had also reached that conclusion.

Nick rolled his chair back and stood. “Guys…look…my hands are tied,” he held both palms up as if to protect himself from the disappointed glares.  “Don’t kill the messenger.  I’ll stop in at the bureau and ping a few people that owe me…alright?  Christopher, call me later and let me know where you’re at on this.”  For a split second his gaze rested on Jenny, and he sighed, obviously feeling as frustrated as the rest of us.  “I’ll find my way out.” 

A tear rolled quietly down
Jenny’s cheek and fell, unnoticed by her, onto her blouse.  Okay, so she didn’t want me as a lover…I still felt obligated to help her. After all, she had hired us to find her sister…and that’s what we would do.

“
Big deal…we can do this without help from those alphabet wimps.  We just need to make a plan and get our asses to Del Rio.  Right now.”  I pulled a yellow legal pad and a pen toward me and looked around the room, waiting for the first idea. Legally, I wasn’t sure what kind of rights we had as a private agency, but a good brain-storming session couldn’t hurt.

Jenny gave me a grateful smile
and also reached for a legal pad. 

Of course, the focus was on
Christopher since he was the only one of us who had a license to carry a gun and the experience to know how to use it…something that would likely come in handy to any plan that involved well-armed drug cartel dudes.  He went to the mini-fridge that was built into the bottom of a bookshelf and took out a bottle of water, then returned to his chair.  We waited as he screwed off the lid and took a drink.  When he spoke, he was speaking for us all.

“
You heard the man…we’re burning daylight.  Let’s go bring Angela home.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Tulsa, can you pull up a satellite picture of the Del Rio area?”  Christopher pushed a button and a large white projection screen lowered from behind some molding at the end of the room. 

“You got it.”  Tulsa
turned on the projector and her laptop.  Once the wireless connection had been made, she began to click away on her keyboard.  A few seconds later, a road map of west Texas appeared.  She tapped on the mousepad and the image changed from a street map to a birds-eye view that showed the actual topography. 

Kil
leen lowered the ceiling lights with the dimmer on the wall by the door and Christopher focused a laser pointer on an area toward the bottom and moved it in a circle.  “Blow that up…the light area right there.”

The image enlarged until the area filled the screen.

“
What are we looking for?” I asked.  It appeared to be totally deserted and devoid of life, sort of like the surface of the moon except for a few scrub oaks and mesquite trees dotted around.  It looked inhospitable to both man and beast.

“My sources
tell me that’s the Veracruz cartel’s compound. The nearest public road is about a mile away toward the northeast here,” he said pointing to the road running north and east of the rock quarry itself.

“I assume there’s a fence around it,” Dallas said.

“Probably…go ahead, Tulsa, and get a ground view.”

She clicked a few buttons, but no image came up on the screen.  “No luck,” she told them.  “The Google car must not have gone down that road.  It’s not exactly close to a city…or even a house.”

“Well, I’m sure they have a substantial fence. Drug dealers don’t like surprises.”  Christopher exhaled and shook his head.  “Neither do I.  We can’t go in there without having more information about this place.”

“It’s not like we can just drive up and knock on their door,” Killeen pointed out.

“We don’t even know how old these satellite photos are.”  Tulsa flipped the screen back to the overhead view.  “They could have added all kinds of security since then.”

“Drones!”
  Dallas stated.

“Drones?
  Christopher echoed.

“Drones,” I ag
reed.  “We need a drone.”

“Where do you ge
t drones?” Christopher asked.

“
Almost everyone but Costco sells them.  I’ll bet there’s even a drones.com.”

“We don’t have time to go shopping,” Jenny cried.

“Lucky for you, we don’t have to,” Dallas assured her.  “I know a guy.”

“A guy?  A
drone guy?”  I would have guessed Dallas to be least likely to know a drone guy. Tulsa maybe.

“
Yeah.  His name is Jared, and he was in some of my classes.  He wants to be a patent attorney, but electronics are his hobby.  Most of what he told me about them was way over my head, but I remember him saying that his drones have longer lasting batteries.  He makes them all from scratch, so none of the components have serial numbers.”

“So they can’t be traced?” I suggested.

“Sounds like a supplier for a terrorist group.” Christopher looked skeptical.  “Is he legit?”

“Straight as an arrow,” Dallas assured him.  “He’s just a genius geek.”

‘But is it legal?” Killeen asked.

“Probably not…”  Christopher was
always the voice of reason.

Jenny looked around the room, pausing on each of our faces.  “Neither is kidnapping…and killing people.  We’ve got to try it.”

“I agree with Jenny,” I said, siding with her on principle.  “This could be life and death…who gives a shit about whether or not it’s legal?  The APD and DEA don’t give a flying fuck.”

Christopher considered the options for a moment,
then nodded.  “But who’s going to fly this thing?  Is your friend available?”

“No worries.”  Dallas’ smile was confident.  “
I was his test pilot last summer.  It’s easy.  I need a tablet with a cell phone, and we’re good to go.  There’s a Go-Pro camera attached to the drone, so the tablet quality needs to be pretty good.  It even has night vision.”

“
I think my laptop can handle that,” Tulsa told him, a little sarcastically.

Dallas took hi
s phone out, searched his contacts, then placed a call.  He stood and walked to the corner of the room to have a conversation.  We all waited, almost holding our breaths.  None of us had a plan B.  We tried to eavesdrop, but until Dallas turned around and was smiling, we had no idea how the discussion had gone.

“We’
ve got a drone!” Dallas announced.

The chime of the doorbell
echoed through the house.  None of us moved because we knew Gerald or John would answer the door.  We heard the clunk of boots on the tile floors, and Nick stepped into the conference room.  He was probably the last person we expected to see.

“
Still here?”

“We’re putting together a plan,” Christopher kept his answer vague.

“Cool, then I’m here to help.”

Our expressions must have reflected our confusion.  “So, what happened to change your mind in the last half hour?”  I had to ask.  I knew everyone was wondering the same thing.

Nick looked at Jenny.  “I have a sister, and I know I’d do anything to protect her.”  His half-smile was almost apologetic.  “I can’t do anything in an official capacity, but I’ve got over two months of vacation saved up…and I decided I might take a trip to Del Rio.  I called in and told my boss I’m taking a few days off.  End of story.”

Christopher reached out and shook his hand.  “Glad to have you on board.  I have to admit that getting in the middle of a drug war makes me pretty nervous.”

“Me, too,” Nick admitted, then he laughed.  “I’m just fucking with you.  Those guys are cowardly little pricks who don’t give a shit about how many kids they kill.”  He pulled out a chair and sat down.  “So, what’s the plan?”

Christopher waited until we had all nodded our approval before he started talking.

“We’re going to fly a drone over the compound and figure out how to break in and get Angela out.”

“A drone?
  Where the hell are you getting a drone?”

Dallas repeated his story about Jared and his garage
full of drones.

“You kids don’t have a clue what the fuck you’re
talking about.  These guys have guns…big guns….and they’ll just shoot your drone out of the sky, then track you down.  By the end of the day your bones will be cleaned by the vultures.”

Again we were
silenced by the mental picture that created.

“
Hey, Nick, try not to sugar coat it,” I muttered.

“You need to be realistic,” he cautioned.

“What would you have me…us do?”  Jenny pleaded.  “
Realistically
, we don’t have much time.”

“
The minute they find out she’s worthless to them, she’s dead and you fucking know it.” I had to voice my opinion.  If this was going to be Nick’s attitude, we’d be better off without him.

The room went silent
.  Even Tulsa’s incessant keyboard clicking ceased.

“We have the element of surprise
, Nick,” I continued.  “Look…they’re not going to be expecting us to do anything this quick, and the drone will give us an advantage so we…”

“
Fuck…five seconds and even a bad shot with an automatic rifle and the fucker’s down.  I can’t tell you how many drones we’ve lost on the border in the last twelve months.”

“
You guys use drones?” Dallas asked.  “I never heard that.”

“
Really?”  Nick asked sarcastically.  “Oh yeah…right…we hand out a press release every week so the bad guys will know what we’re doing.”  Nick shook his head.

“So, what do you suggest?” Liberty asked gently.  “You know these people better than anyone else here.  How can we get in and out of there without getting
…”  She hesitated, not able to voice the worst possible outcome of our little rescue plan.

Nick frowned as he considered the options, then his expression brightened.
  “Maybe we can subcontract out some of this.”

“
To whom?” I asked. 

Nick looked at me l
ike I should have known the answer without asking.  “His son is half-dead in the hospital and his two nephews are in the morgue.”

“
Ricardo Rodriguez?”  Christopher was clearly skeptical.  “Isn’t that the guy you’ve been trying to arrest?  Why would he want to work with us?”

“I think he will.
  No matter how he scores this game, he’s losing and it ain’t over yet.”

“But
he knows you’re DEA, doesn’t he?”

“
Damn it Christopher.  One more time.  I’m not on the clock.  I’m just a guy who likes to travel and vacation on the Rio Grande…like Miami Beach without all the drunks and those crazy Cuban drivers.”

“
Uh…we’re going to go see Ricardo Rodriguez?”  This was definitely outside my comfort zone.  I’ve faced swords, chain saws and guillotine blades on stage…but the thought of a face-to-face with a savage drug lord made me a little nervous.  I saw every episode of
Breaking Bad
, and they were the baddest dudes ever.  “Where’s he at?  Mexico?”

Nick laughed. 
“He probably hasn’t been to Mexico in thirty years.  Things are too hot for him down there.  Besides, his business is here, so he’s here.  Remember all that stuff about keeping friends and enemies close that Sun Tzu wrote in
The Art of War
?  What it means is that it’s better to know where your enemies are so you can keep an eye on them and know what they’re up to.  Plus, you can lull them into thinking that you mean them no harm, then strike a death blow when they least expect it.”

“We’re going to st
rike a death blow to Ricardo?” Christopher asked nervously.

“
Nah…we’re going to buddy up to him, then strike a death blow to his enemy.”

“
We’re going to be a subcontractor for Ricardo…genius…and the end of your DEA career, Nick.” I couldn’t stop the sarcasm.  This job was sounding worse and worse.

Nick’s eyes widened innocently.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.  I’m not here, and I’m not meeting with you guys or with Ricardo.
” 

Christopher
’s eyes narrowed as he considered Nick’s suggestion.  “Are you telling me Ricardo is in Austin?”

“
Not exactly, but close enough…we let him stay in the area in exchange for him not actually doing business in the area…know what I mean?  It’s a trade-off.”  He shrugged.  “Hey, I didn’t send flowers to his house for his losses if that’s what you’re asking.”

“
You have his address?”  Christopher took another swallow of water.

“
His home address…his personal cell phone and his private email address.”

“That’s weird shit,” I muttered.  “Here I thought these guys were supposed to be in jail to keep the drugs off the street.”

“Contacts and intel are the most important things, and sometimes you just have to weigh the benefits and look the other way,” Nick explained.

“
How soon can we leave?”  Jenny asked impatiently. 

“
I’ll see if Ricardo can fit us in this afternoon.”  Nick picked up his phone from the table and stepped out of the room to make his call.

Dallas, too, stood.  “I’m going to run over to Jared’s and pick up the drone.  I’ll meet you back here later, okay?”

Christopher nodded and we all got up to stretch and move around. 

Finally, it looked like we were moving forward. 

Jenny sat quietly on the picnic table located behind the Scandals office building in the parking lot. The early afternoon sun shone down hotly, sending up waves of radiant heat from the blacktop.  She didn’t seem to notice it as she stared at the ground in front of her.  “Why can’t our lives be as organized as that mound of ants by the fence?”