Shadow of Death (9 page)

CHAPTER 25

Puerto Arista, Pacific Coast
Saturday

The convoy crossed into Sinaloa territory near Buenavista and removed the yellow flags from their side mirrors. They arrived at their next scheduled “toll,” where several Sinaloa enforcers waited by their pickup trucks. They wore ratty jeans and were shirtless to show off their gang tats, scars, and muscles. Most of them wore multiple heavy gold or silver chains, most with giant crosses—the irony of “religion” lost on them. A few of them carried assault rifles.

One of them approached the lead car and recognized Felix from the previous trip. Felix handed him a thick envelope. The man took it and shoved it in his waistband, then leaned close and sneered at Felix.

“Jefe says to take your money and let you pass, so I let you pass. And I’ll let you pass through again to go home. But if I ever see you drive through here again, I’m going to cut your throat and pull out your tongue like a necktie.” He spit on the ground and walked away, his eyes never leaving Felix.

The vehicles moved forward again and headed to the coast. An hour later they were in Arista on the Pacific Ocean. The three vehicles drove to a nondescript warehousing district near a small pier. Arista wasn’t a major shipping center, by any means—just a tiny town with nice beaches. They were simply to wait for the arrival of the ship that would transfer their cargo. A commercial fishing trawler,
El Pescador Feliz
, was still a day away. With its large stern deck, the trawler would be large enough to ship the EMP and small enough to go unnoticed as it traveled north to the California coast.

Felix spoke with his contacts at the warehouse, and they opened the rusty garage doors so the truck could be backed in for the overnight wait. Watching the four Arabs screaming at each other as they tried to back up the tractor-trailer was a cross between comedic entertainment and outrage.

Marco was getting antsy watching them jockey the tractor-trailer back and forth in an attempt to line up the vehicle with the doors. “These idiots are going to wipe out the whole building. Should I go drive it for them?”

Felix shook his head. “No, let them figure it out. Whatever they’re shipping, it’s their problem. El Gato told me to stay out of it.” He took out a cigarette and handed the pack to Marco, who took one and then held the Zippo for his boss. They smoked and watched in silence as the four Arabs eventually backed the truck into the garage. When they finished, they got out and continued to argue with each other.

The one in charge, Hamid, walked to Felix and pulled out a ratty piece of paper. The paper contained phonetic pronunciations from Arabic to Spanish. He held it up to Felix, who pulled out his own piece of paper.

Marco watched and listened as the two men butchered each other’s languages. “Mañana” sounded nothing like “tomorrow” to the Arab, and they went round and round, each showing his frustration with the other’s lack of communicative skills. Finally, Marco walked over and pointed to his watch, then made a gesture of the hands going round and round to signify twenty-four hours. The Arabs all began talking at once, clearly upset that the boat wasn’t ready yet. Marco told them to go fuck themselves in Spanish, and watched with great enjoyment as the men checked their sheet for a translation that didn’t appear.

Felix called over a couple of young boys and told them to bring cold beers and food, and asked about a nearby hotel. It was late on Friday and they were hungry for dinner. The boys were more than happy to help for a few pesos. Hamid and his men had to wait with the trucks in the dirty warehouse, and when food and beer arrived, the four men made a great show about not drinking alcohol. Felix had the boy go fetch a few bottles of water, which ended the drama. Hamid and his men then began ranting about the food, which Felix didn’t understand, but he ended the conversation by leaning in close and saying in Spanish, “Eat it or starve. I don’t give a shit.”

Felix and his men walked to the small hotel the boy had recommended and checked in. They would eat, drink, and stay in comfortable beds. Guarding the truck was not his responsibility. His only remaining task was to see the cargo moved to the ship, and then to return to El Gato with news of their departure—mission completed. The six Zetas sat in a back corner of the hotel’s restaurant and ate and drank late into the night.

The four Arabs sat in the dirty, hot warehouse, arguing about whether the food was
halal
. One of the men tasted a tiny piece of the meat in one of the wraps and made a questioning face. It was very spicy, but he wasn’t sure what it was. What if it was pork? Their argument continued for a few minutes until Hamid, who was starving, announced that all the food was
halal
and they could eat it. The men exchanged worried glances, but were also starving. They ate in total silence, praying as they ate from wrappers that announced “
Mejor Barbacoa de Cerdo
”
—
Arista’s best pork barbeque.

CHAPTER 26

CIA HQ
Saturday

Darren Davis walked into Dex’s office with coffee. “How’s it going?”

Dex took the coffee with two hands, like he’d been presented with a precious artifact. “Thanks, boss. Team’s ashore.”

“Everything going okay?”

“Fine. Go home. I’ll call you tomorrow when it’s closer to zero hour. They made it up river into the lagoon without incident, and humped it into the woods. Pretty swampy terrain.”

“They check in?”

“Yeah. ‘Bats, rats, and gnats’ was the last sit-rep. Sounds like they’re having fun.”

“You’d be surprised what these guys think of as fun. Frogmen probably love being up to their ass in swamp water. I think they’re amphibian.”

“Apo definitely got the better of the deal.”

Darren nodded. “
He
check in?”

“Yes. Just a quick burst to let me know he was inside.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“If he’s smart? Eating, drinking, and sleeping. Go on. I’m watching. Anything important happens, I’ll wake you up.”

Darren walked over to Dex’s couch. “Tell you what—I’ll close my eyes for a couple and you won’t have to pick up the phone to call me.” He laid down across the couch, wrinkling his Brooks Brothers suit, and was asleep in under a few minutes. Like the rest of the folks who worked in CIA and the military, Darren was trained to grab sleep when it was available, because sometimes it just wasn’t.

Dex leaned back in his chair and sipped his coffee, his eyes constantly on the little dots that were west of Gato’s mansion.

***

The team had made their daytime camp in the driest area they could find among the cypress trees. Using pine needles for a camp floor, they set up a perimeter and took turns on scout patrol while the others tried to sleep or at least relax and grab some chow. The shade of the trees helped with the heat, but it was still humid and steamy in the woods.

Pete McCoy, their best “cook,” went from SEAL to SEAL to collect the ingredients for his recipe. “Ripper, you got a number four?” Ripper tossed him his “meal four,” which consisted of cheese tortellini as the main course. He collected two fives, the beef ravioli in meat sauce, and a number seven, the meatballs in marinara. Mixing everything together, he added some premixed spices he kept in his combat pack. The guys watched nonchalantly until he started mixing in mushrooms he had been collecting from the forest.

“Yo, man! You gonna kill us? That shit’s probably poisonous, dude,” said Jon quietly.

“Relax, bro, they’re morel mushrooms.”

“Looks nasty, man.”

“Are you doubting my culinary wizardry?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

Jon shook his head. “Okay, I yield to the great chef. You’re the only guy I know that can mix up a bunch of Meals Rejected by Ethiopians and turn them into something edible. But if we all start hallucinating, it’s gonna be bad.”

Moose rolled over and looked at the concoction Pete was mixing in a small pan. “Hey. You sure you ain’t going to kill us or get us high?”

“Hundred percent, skipper. Morels. Look nasty, taste great. And this shit needs the flavor.”

Moose rolled back over and closed his eyes, and Pete lit his small Sterno to heat the MRE banquet he was working on. Ripper spoke quietly. “Pete eats it first. If he dies, then we only eat a small portion.”

The men ate and spent the day being invisible. They hunkered down, kept watch, and listened for any intruders. In the distance, occasional farmers could be seen in the fields, but no one ever got anywhere close to their location. The men were restless, waiting for nightfall and the beginning of the
real
operation.

CHAPTER 27

Arista

Rafael sat outside the small hotel where the Zetas were holed up keeping watch from the tailgate of an old pickup truck. He smoked a cigarette and drank a cold Bohemia beer, his Uzi across his lap, right out in the open. The gang tats on his face screamed Sinaloa, and no local cop was going to say a word to him.

He’d been sitting there all morning, and it was hot and boring. While he
did
expect to be relieved, he was surprised when not one, but five cars and trucks pulled up next to his old pickup truck. Doors began opening all at once and the gangbangers piled out of the vehicles brandishing a wide assortment of weapons.

Rafael flicked his cigarette and put down his beer, then hopped down and walked hastily to Diego, one of the local bosses. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Got a call from the big boss.” The “big boss” meant Joaquin Salazar, who was now in charge after the capture of El Chapo.

“Yeah? Jefe called you himself?” Rafael meant no disrespect by the question, but he was shocked that Salazar would call directly to the sleepy little town of Arista.

“Yeah. No shit, huh? Some shit’s going down, bro. Fucking Marines heading to Occidente.”

Rafael had to process that for a minute. “Occidente? In Tabasco? They going after El Gato?”

“Yeah, man. And those fuckers inside just lost their passport.”

Rafael smiled, showing a few cheap silver caps. “No shit, eh? We just going to take them out?”

“That’s it. They in their rooms?”

“I’m not sure if they’re in their rooms or downstairs, but they haven’t been outside all day. Been sitting here. It’s been quiet.”

Diego nodded and started walking toward the hotel, followed by the entourage of eighteen very dangerous-looking individuals.

“Not gonna be quiet much longer.”

***

“Felix! Come take a look! We got a problem!”

Felix and Marco got up from the small table of the downstairs cantina and walked to the window. The instant they saw the heavily armed crew walking toward them, they dropped their beers and sprinted upstairs to their second-floor room and began pulling out their weapons.

“What the fuck?” screamed Marco as he pulled the charging handle of his MP5 and flicked the gun from safe to fire.

Felix hit the speed dial on his phone for El Gato and cursed as it rang and rang. The rest of his men stumbled through the door taking up positions in the small hallway that looked down the wide stairwell at the end of the hall.

El Gato finally answered. “Yes?”

“
Fucking Sinaloa, man! They’re coming! We’ve been fucked!
”

“What? Slow down! What’s going on?”

The men could hear the door smashing open down below on the first floor, and the few hotel patrons screamed for mercy and ran out into the street. There was screaming and plenty of threats, and the hotel’s front desk employee quickly screamed “second floor.”

“They’re coming!” screamed one of Felix’s men.

“Sinaloas! They sent a fucking crew! We can’t get out!” The first blast of a shotgun out in the hallway was deafening, and Felix jammed the phone in his pocket without hanging up. El Gato listened, stunned, as he heard gunfire and chaos on the phone.

The six of them were moving quickly around the open hallway that looked down on the stairs. It was hard to acquire a target with the attackers moving so fast. The first couple of shots had been fired blindly at Felix’s men as the Sinaloas moved to take up positions at the other end of the hallway.

Felix kicked in a door and took cover in a room as he peered down the hallway. At the end of the stairs, a head peered up over the edge of the top stair and Felix took a shot. He missed, and the intruder returned automatic weapon fire that riddled the walls with bullets. One of the light fixtures outside the door exploded into a shower of glass and rained down outside Felix’s door.

One of Felix’s men ran across the hallway to take up a position on the other side. He kicked the door, but it was dead-bolted from the inside and didn’t open. A barrage of heavy gunfire hit the man, who spun around twice, spraying the hallway walls with blood as he was cut down.

“Hector!” screamed Felix. “Shit. We’re so fucked!” He looked back into the room. There was a window at the back. Better to risk a broken leg than to die where he was. He took a few shots blindly down the hall and screamed at his men to shoot. They stuck their weapons out from behind doorways and fired blindly, not hitting anyone. Felix quietly slipped inside his room and ran to the window. He peered over the sill and saw he was facing an empty back alley. He quietly opened the window and climbed outside, hanging from the sill, and then dropped to the gravel road below. He landed with a roll, and shoved his back against the wall. He wanted to tell Marco to come, too, but it was too risky. They’d have to cover his escape. He moved swiftly and quietly down the alley, hiding behind trash bins as he went.

Inside, his men kept returning fire, but the Sinaloas had them outgunned. Every time they fired a shot, fifty were returned. Marco stuck his gun out and pulled the trigger until he emptied the twenty-five-round magazine. At the click of the empty weapon, a fusillade of fire was returned, one of the rounds hitting his own weapon and knocking it out of his hand.

“Felix!” he screamed as he fell back inside the room. There was no answer.

One of his men across the hall leaned out to take a shot and was hit right in the face, dead before he hit the floor.

Marco saw the man’s head explode only a few feet away. “Felix!” he screamed again. He wondered if his boss had been hit. “Shit!” he screamed, and decided to check on Felix himself. He ran out of his room down the hall without a weapon toward the door Felix had kicked in. A shotgun blast took him right off his feet and he landed on his back as the last gurgle left his lungs.

The remaining three Zetas kept up their fire, now panicking. With Marco dead and Felix not responding, they were starting to come apart at the seams, screaming at each other hysterically. The Sinaloas began moving closer, taking one room at a time as they leapfrogged down the hall.

From down below on the street, Felix heard the gunfire becoming steadier and started running as fast as he could toward the warehouse, where he knew he would find the truck.