Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) (31 page)

They progressed only another few miles before the glare of sunlight reflecting off distant objects caught her attention. Metal rooftops? It was too soon to have reached the edge of the federal district. A small village or a cluster of rough
ramadas
? Maybe another hacienda. Maybe a place where she could get help, use a phone, hunker down until military guards from the embassy could come for her.

“Feel like taking a break, boy?” she asked the horse, patting his muscular neck.

If there was no phone and the people seemed friendly, she might ask for a little food and a place to rest until the sun went down. Better to be moving under cover of darkness anyway. Whoever lived here could, at least, verify that she was heading in the right direction.

Twenty minutes later she’d ridden close enough to see what looked like an enclave of single-story buildings at the bottom of the gully—two or three acres enclosed within industrial-strength chain link fencing. At strategic points, halogen lights mounted on high posts flashed down on the area, even though it was the middle of the day.

A warehouse? A commercial facility of some sort?

Mercy dismounted and crouched beside a boulder. From her hillside vantage point she estimated the fence reached at least ten feet high. It was topped with razor-sharp coils of barbed wire. A single gate opened onto a dirt road that led away to the east. Within the compound five rusting house trailers squatted, along with two long, corrugated metal Quonset huts, a loudly throbbing electric generator, and several trucks.

Mercy wiped sweaty grit from her forehead and beneath her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. She stared down into the arroyo, confused. What the hell was this? A guard stood at the gate. Two more walked the perimeter.

A prison?

Or a storage depot for something of value.

This part of Mexico clung to the southern edge of the ancient silver territories. But she hadn’t seen any mines.
No
, she thought. This was most likely a warehouse or military installation. But why here? Why so far from a major highway? And why were the men not in uniform?

“Any ideas, horse?” she murmured.

The stallion huffed and shifted his hooves in the dirt.

A distant rumble snagged Mercy’s attention. It gradually grew louder. She looked up into the cloudless sky, half expecting an airplane to pass over. A moment later a puff of red dust rose from behind a low butte. As the puff came closer, she saw it was caused by a large truck, bumping and swaying over the pitted road.

The guards inside the compound suddenly came alert, shouting at one another, taking positions with weapons. Just before the truck reached the gate, it honked three times, and the gate swung open.

A really bad feeling crowded out Mercy’s earlier hopes for help. She held her breath. Somehow she knew.

Dear God…no.

The closed-bed truck bore no identifying marks and looked very different from any of Sebastian’s cattle vans. It stopped directly in front of the largest of the huts that reminded her of airplane hangars.

As Mercy watched, heart in her throat, two men carrying rifles left the cab of the truck and walked around to the back. They unlocked the rear end, swung open the doors and waved their weapons.

A sad parade of women, children, and men—all in shackles—jumped or were pulled down from the cargo bay. They filed docilely into the hut.

Mercy hugged the boulder beside her and tried to remember how to breathe. Her chest ached with the effort. The heat of the desert air seared her lungs. Tears stung her eyes. This was indeed a warehouse. A warehouse for human beings. A way station between their former lives and a hellish enslaved future. No way could these be paying customers journeying toward a guided border crossing. They wouldn’t be wearing leg irons.

She recalled the stench of death from the cattle truck, and gagged. Holding a hand over her mouth she held back the sound of her choking. She gasped for air, eyes closed, still squatting on the ground. Eventually she got a grip on herself. Righteous anger finally swept away all other emotions.

Her first impulse was to gallop down the hill, Winchester blazing. The avenging angel. She'd force the guards to release their prisoners. But one woman alone, no matter how badly she wanted to help, stood no chance against five armed men. Even she knew that. And there were very possibly more. Who knew how many guards might be sleeping or working in the buildings?

All right,
she thought, reaching for a more practical solution.
Make note of the location. Get to a phone and call the authorities.
Not all of the police in Mexico could be crooked. They’d have to respond. She’d inform the American Embassy too, and the newspapers. She'd blow their filthy business wide open! And she didn’t need Lucius Clay to do it.

“I want my horse back.”

Mercy’s breath caught in her throat at the sound of his voice, coming out of nowhere. She looked around and up into Sebastian Hidalgo’s dark, dark eyes. How had he snuck up on her without her hearing him? He straddled a sleek black quarter horse, which stood squarely between her and the Winchester, still strapped to her mount.

Figures.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“You’re not hard to track.”

She glared at him. Sebastian had wrapped a kerchief round his neck, a makeshift bandage for the cuts from the wire. He seemed to have recovered his strength.
Too bad,
she thought.

“You disgust me. What would Maria say if she saw this?”

“Quiet,” he said. “They’ll hear you. The canyon amplifies every little sound.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “Like I care if your goons hear me.”

“They aren’t mine.” He glared at her, his eyes smoldering, but not with passion. “I told you before.”

She huffed at him. “Spare me.”

“Neither are those trailers or anything else down there.”

She was still trying to figure out how to get past him to her rifle.

“We need to talk. Sit down,” he ordered.

She stood up from her crouch, propping her fists on her hips in defiance.

“I said, sit. Or I’ll jump you like I did in the shed. You don’t want two hundred pounds of man on a sore body, again.”

She sat. “There is nothing you can say that will make me believe you're not part of this filthy business.”

Still on his horse, Sebastian shook his head. “You just don’t listen, do you?”

“You don’t deserve my attention.”

He kept on talking as if he hadn’t heard her. “My father and President Juarez were very dear, old friends. Papa was Emilio’s Minister of the Interior. He mounted a program almost ten years ago to clear out the drug cartels.”

Sebastian stopped talking long enough to swallow. She could see by the way his eyes filled up that the wounds in his throat still hurt him.

“A bomb in my father’s car took his life and that of his driver. Like so many other good Mexican men and women who want peace for our country and healthy lives for their children, my father was slaughtered by greedy crime lords.”

Mercy sat absolutely still—stunned, confused. “I don't get you at all. So you avenge his death by giving work to the same kinds of men who planted that bomb in your father’s car? That's totally twisted.”

“Listen, will you? I’m telling you the truth. The things you see here and at my ranch—they have nothing to do with me. I’m working undercover at the request of my president. I told you that. Our mission is called
Operation Armadillo
. President Juarez is dedicated to stopping arms trafficking into Mexico from the US. Slavery and drugs are also on his agenda, but we’re starting with the guns.”

“Go on,” she said warily.

“Emilio is a good man. And brave. The
criminales
think of him merely as a pest, no longer a serious threat now that he’s stopped aggressively hunting them down. He’s keeping a low profile. They would have assassinated him long ago if he'd announced his true intentions.”

She stared at him, still unconvinced. “I’ve seen the newspapers, the things President Juarez says about you and your kind. He
hates
you.”

“He doesn’t hate me.” Sebastian's full lips quirked up at one corner. “Mercy, he’s Maria’s godfather.”

She blinked up at him, the sun hot and brilliant behind him, throwing him into dark silhouette, still astride the horse his men must have brought him. “You’re saying that your reputation, the arrests, your thugs—they’re all a lie? A ruse?”

“Mostly. I have been forced to hire men I wouldn’t have allowed on my property years ago. But they create a certain image. The right one for my purposes.” He shrugged.

“So you had nothing to do with the stranded truckload of people?”

“Nothing.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Then why did you send your men after me?”

“To keep you out of harm’s way. I told you that, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“Maria doesn’t know about any of this?”

“Nor will she until it’s all over, for her own protection.”

Mercy shook her head. “But you’ve had men
killed
. It was in the newspapers. Two of them American DEA agents. Don’t tell me their deaths were faked.”

“They weren’t.” His expression was grim. “The two agents you’re talking about, Castro and D’Petro, were taking bribes from arms and drug dealers. Turning a blind eye to shipments crossing out of and into the U.S. They got greedy and were found out.”

“If you knew what they were doing, you could have had them arrested instead of killed,” she argued.

“I didn’t kill them. They were shot in a firefight with other DEA agents. I just took credit for it.”

Mercy bit down on her bottom lip. Her loyalties, once so solidly placed, were shifting with confusing speed. But she wasn’t yet comfortable trusting Sebastian Hidalgo as an ally.

“Let’s get out of here before we’re seen,” he said.

“No.” She turned toward the compound below. “If what you’re telling me is true, and you really do have nothing to do with what’s going on down there—”

“Not in the way you think.”

Mercy’s stomach clenched. More than anything she wanted to trust Sebastian, wanted him to be on her side. But he kept on hedging. She felt sure he was holding something important back from her. “Explain what you're going to do about that place down there.” He just looked at her. “Sebastian, I'm not leaving here until you do.”

He released a long, exasperated breath. “That stockade and four others like it will be raided as part of a massive sting five days from now. The cartel that runs the slave trafficking is also using their compounds as storage and distribution centers for weapons. So we’ll be destroying a valuable arms smuggling business while we’re kicking the legs out from under a gang of slave traders.”

“Why not act sooner? Like now.”

“Because that’s when my sources say the cartel’s boss will show up. In five days. We want him, not just his hired guns. Any prisoners still here will be freed then.” He shifted impatiently in his saddle. “Mount up. We’re going back to the ranch—What the hell?”

Mercy shot to her feet at the sudden clamor in the valley below. “What’s happening down there?”

38

At first the voices sounded like nothing more than two people arguing. Loudly. Heatedly. Then more shouts erupted, echoing up through the arroyo, louder and louder, interspersed with high-pitched shrieks of outrage.

A blood-curdling female scream reverberated against the metal walls of one of the Quonset huts.

Sebastian’s eyes hardened. “Bastards.”

“Oh God,” Mercy whispered. “They’re raping her.” There was absolutely no doubt in her mind. She made a grab for his rifle.

He swung it out of her reach. “Don’t be a fool! You can’t help her.”

“Give me the damn gun, Sebastian!”

“Mount up,” he ordered. “You’re not being rational. We’re getting out of here. Now!”

“I’m sick of waiting for others to act.” She dodged around him and his mount, to the horse she'd stolen from him. She unbuckled the Winchester.

At another terrified scream. Sebastian grimaced then cursed in Spanish. “All right. But I’m going with you. Maybe we can at least distract them enough to let her get free. You do know how to shoot?”

“They call me Dead-Eye.” At least her father did. When they shot skeet. She’d been twelve years old. And he was teasing. But she hadn’t been bad.

              Sebastian pulled out his cell phone and rattled off orders to whoever was on the other end. He flipped it closed. “They’ll do to
you
what they’re doing to
her
—” he nodded toward the compound “—if you give them the chance. Don’t give it to them.”

“Right.”

“Do you have a strategy for this two-person suicide mission?” he asked.

“We go in on horseback. Gives us more leverage.”