The Contractors Page 18

  “What happened with Phil?” Piper asked.

  I told her, very briefly. Then we were both silent.

  “You should have listened to me,” Eva said.

  After a few moments, Piper touched my arm and spoke one word: “Marfa.”

  I nodded. A long drive, but we’d be away from Keith McCluskey’s crew of Paynelowe DEA contractors. In Marfa, the witness had a good chance of staying alive and being able to attest to the fact that we weren’t involved in the slaying of the two thugs at the warehouse. If we took her to the Dallas Police, Sinclair would know within minutes. Also, Marfa represented our best opportunity to collect the bounty money.

  Eva swore and kicked the back of the seat. Then she was still.

  Marfa was west by southwest of the Dallas area, more or less a straight shot on the interstate until Midland, a nine-or ten-hour trip.

  After we cleared the county line, I pointed the Tahoe south, the long way.

  Hopefully, the safe way.

  For a moment, I debated dropping Eva off on a corner and heading north, just disappearing, leaving behind all our problems—the DA in Dallas, Sinclair, the trial in Marfa.

  But problems had a way of catching up with you no matter where you went, and running away meant forfeiting the chance for a big cash payout, money I desperately needed for my father.

  Both Piper and Eva had fallen asleep, the adrenaline crash and rhythm of tires on the highway like a tranquilizer.

  We were on US Interstate 35, the NAFTA superhighway that ran from one end of the country to the other, Laredo in the south, to Duluth, Minnesota, near the Canadian border. One-third of the illicit narcotics consumed in America will have at one point been on I-35, and Piper and I had spent a lot of time patrolling there, working on various drug interdiction programs.

  Because of the trafficking activity, and because the highway was the main drag leading away from the largest unsecured border in the world, we needed to get away from I-35 as soon as possible.

  Interstate 35 was one big cop-shop, as were all the interstates leading out of Dallas. It was full of Texas highway patrol cars, undercover Homeland Security agents, DEA flimflammers, roving teams from immigration control, and at least three covert CIA operations that I knew about. Then there were all of the local jurisdictions, the sheriffs and Barney Fife types for the towns and counties that straddled the highway.

  My plan—and it wasn’t much of one—was to exit the interstate at Waxahachie, about thirty miles south of Dallas, and head southwest in the general direction of the Hill Country, zigzagging our way toward the badlands of the Big Bend area.

  The opposition would be looking for us on the major highways, the shortest routes; therefore, the smaller the road the better.

  At the very least, the narrow, indirect farm-to-market highways were going to be less susceptible to Uncle Sam’s various electronic surveillance methods.

  Three miles north of Waxahachie, the disposable phone rang, the one Piper had gotten from the Cheyenne, with the number nobody knew.

  It buzzed, twice, and then was silent. Piper jerked awake and looked at the screen. Caller ID didn’t pick up anything. “What going on?”

  “Turn it off.” I handed her the phone, exited at a Love’s truck stop.

  “There’s no number.” She pressed a button on the device.

  “The cell tower on top of the Cheyenne,” I said. “They’re pinging the SIM cards that were on around the time of the attack.”

  Tuesday afternoon about one. The truck stop was crowded.

  The Tahoe had a half tank, and I didn’t want to wait for an opening, so I stopped by the side of the building near the car washes. Away from any cameras.

  “I need money,” I said.

  Piper handed me a wad of bills.

  “Give me the phone too.”

  Eva stirred in the backseat, eyes slowly opening.

  I pulled a ball cap from the console and opened the door. “You two make nice while I’m gone.”

  My windbreaker was in the backseat. My T-shirt was untucked, covering the Glock in my waistband. Most of the blood and grime had been wiped away from my skin.

  I stuck the cap on, kept my head low, and entered the building.

  The place was a hive of activity. Dozens of travelers scurried about.

  One half of the structure was devoted to several fast-food restaurants. The other half was a retail operation only slightly less stocked than the average Walmart.

  My shopping list: new disposable phones, over-the-counter pep pills, a case of bottled water, and a five-gallon gas can.

  In the restaurant, I ordered three double cheeseburgers, fries, and Cokes. In the restroom, I dumped the cell, after pondering whether I should turn it back on and drop it in the back of a random vehicle outside. Why risk a SWAT team descending on some unsuspecting citizen?

  At the register I paid for five gallons of gas as well as all of the other items. Outside, I filled the can with unleaded, keeping my face away from the cameras mounted underneath the canopy.

  Ten minutes after leaving, I loaded everything but the burgers in the back of our SUV and hopped into the front seat.

  “Lunch time.” I plopped the food down on the console. “Anything happen while I was gone?”

  Piper was leafing through a glossy folder with a montage of children’s pictures on the cover, yet another charity’s brochure that promised to “make things better for only a few cents per day.” Pamphlets like this ended up stashed all over the apartment and the Tahoe.

  “Why are we on this road?” Eva pointed to the south. “This is the highway to Laredo.”

  Piper put the folder on the floor. She grabbed a sack and unwrapped a sandwich.

  I took a big bite of my cheeseburger. Instantly felt better.

  “I cannot go to Laredo,” Eva said. “Nowhere near the border.”

  “We’re going to Marfa.” I took a big swig of Coke. Felt even better.

  Sugar and fat: best endorphin triggers ever.

  “You don’t understand.” She shook her head.

  “Yeah, we do.” Piper spoke with a mouthful of burger. “Cartel bad, border dangerous. Yadda yadda.”

  “We’re taking the long way to get there in one piece.” I took another bite. “Go a direct route and they’ll find us in two hours.”

  “When will we arrive?” Eva said.

  “We’ll hole up for a bit to throw them off.” I shrugged. “Two, maybe three days.”

  Eva nodded. Then she said, “Will you uncuff me so I can eat?”

  “You promise not to try anything?” Piper held up the key.

  Eva nodded, and we believed her.

  - CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR -

  Sinclair steered the elderly Crown Victoria around a bus on the freeway. The panicky feeling of events crashing out of control was worse now, a rumble in his gut that competed with the pain from the bullet wound.

  Goddam Phil DeGroot and his goddam mouse gun. A little .22 derringer or some shit like that. Where the hell did he have that thing hidden, anyway?

  With one hand, Sinclair touched the bandage that covered the tiny hole on the side of his abdomen, really just a graze.

  He hoped he’d killed them both, as was his original plan. But he didn’t know.

  Some new players had arrived on the scene, three large men with baseball bats and guns. Sinclair had barely made it to the Ford, dripping blood.

  He’d fired three times. He was pretty sure a round had clipped old Phil in the side of the noggin. Hopefully one had hit his whiny wife, too.

  It had been a long time since he’d used a piece for anything other than show. Been even longer since he’d worked the streets.

  As he drove, he glanced at Myrna’s cell phone. The device had been in his pocket when everything went to shit. It was a complicated model, a large screen above a typewriter keyboard. He wondered how it worked.

  The cluster of buildings that formed downtown appeared to the left, including the tower with the
big green ball that had been in the opening credits of the TV show Dallas. Signs for a number of exits for other highways loomed ahead.

  Interstate 30, west to Fort Worth.

  Interstate 35, south to Waco.

  Sinclair adjusted the sun visor.

  Jon Cantrell would most likely take the witness toward Marfa by the fastest route, in this case Interstate 30 to the west.

  The exits got closer, and Sinclair debated his move. Finally, at the last instant, he cut across two lanes of traffic and headed south on Interstate 35.

  Horns honked behind him. Tires screeched.

  Call it a hunch, but that seemed like the smart play at the moment.

  Interstate 30 was the shortest route, the expected choice. Therefore, a guy on the run who was reasonably smart, as was Jon, would take the other highway.

  Sinclair nodded once, giving himself tentative approval for his snap decision. Something visceral in the back of his head told him that Jon Cantrell would eventually take the back roads, too, a thought to keep in mind.

  Once on the southbound highway, he accelerated to eighty. The old car looked enough like an unmarked police unit that he wouldn’t be bothered by the DPD. Plus, he still had his captain’s badge, the one marked retired. In the trunk, he had a change of clothes and a nice selection of weaponry, a tool for almost any scenario.

  He crossed the Trinity River, a trickle of muddy water set inside a wide channel between two earthen levees. A rumble and sharp stabbing sensation in his gut. He paid no mind to the pain but pulled to the shoulder anyway.

  Traffic whizzed by.

  He stared at the phone, studied the keys and controls. After a few moments, he dialed the main number for Tranquilla and hit a green button.

  The phone rang and rang. Then, Imogene came on the line. She knew about cell devices. She told him what to do. Then she gave him the information he needed. Turns out he had chosen the correct highway.

  He smiled and ended the call.

  Imogene was aces. Good to know that he now had somebody on the inside.

  I yawned, took another sip of watery Coke.

  Piper sat in the front next to me. She was fiddling with one of the new cell phones.

  The cheeseburger sat in my gut like a pound of sand. The fuel it provided was needed, the lethargy not so much.

  The farm-to-market road we were on cut through a swath of cropland as flat as week-old beer. Narrow rows of sorghum and wheat grew in precise order, marred only by the occasional fence line that bisected the terrain like a ragged zipper.

  No traffic or traffic lights for the past few miles. A house here and there amid acres and acres of farmland under a cloudless pewter sky.

  The flatness would change gradually, the fertile fields replaced by rocky soil and then by outcroppings of granite, tufted here and there with cedars and other conifers. Then we’d reach the Hill Country, a broad, elevated plain of small mountains that stretched south into Mexico.

  I turned on the radio, the AM band, and found a classic country station.

  Tammy Wynette, “Stand by Your Man.”

  “I hate that song,” Piper said.

  “Driver’s choice.” I turned up the volume.

  “Should we call Marfa?” She put the cell on the console. “Tell the US Attorney we’re on the way?”

  We’d left Eva uncuffed, after explaining just how unpleasant we could make the journey for her if she chose to interfere.

  “Nah.” I shook my head. “Let’s surprise him.”

  “May I use the phone?” Eva said.

  “I’m thinking that’s a big NO.” Piper adjusted the sun visor.

  “Would you send a message then?” Eva asked. “I need to tell my mother what happened to my sister.”

  I sighed.

  Piper swore and picked up the phone. “What’s the number?”

  - CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE -

  Raul Fuentes-Manzanares smiled at what he saw. Then he sighed because of what he heard.

  Joy and heartache, together. This was the way of Mexico and had been for centuries.

  Raul was CEO of Banco Manzanares Internationale as well as head of the newly formed political consulting company that also bore his family’s name.

  The joy Raul felt came from watching his youngest daughter as she played with the packing paper and shipping boxes.

  She was two years, seven months old and quite possibly the most precious creature God had ever created. She had hair the color of charcoal and a face destined to break hearts, genetic gifts from her beautiful mother. Her creamy skin and emerald-green eyes came from the Manzanares side of the family.

  Raul and his daughter were in the family room of his home in the Garza Garcia section of Monterrey, Mexico, an affluent suburb. The stucco house had belonged to Raul’s father and grandfather before that. It was relatively modest, four bedrooms on a narrow street with a view of the Sierra Madre to the south. For security, the home had a high wall topped with broken glass and twenty-four-hour guards.

  The heartache came from what Raul heard via the cell phone pressed between his shoulder and ear as he wrapped a vase in a piece of newspaper.

  The man on other end of the line was called el Camello, the Camel, for reasons no one could quite remember.

  At the moment, el Camello was very angry, so enraged that he used Raul’s nickname, something only Raul’s closest friends were allowed to do. And el Camello was most definitely not a friend.

  Apparently, Raul’s hotheaded brother, Ernesto, had injured an employee of el Camello in Tijuana. Two of El Camello’s spotters in a Camaro had followed Ernesto’s convoy on the Ensenada-Tijuana Highway, a random act. Ernesto had confronted the men. Words were exchanged, followed by gunfire, a round fired into one of the spotter’s knees.

  Such a waste. So unnecessary. So typical of Ernesto.

  Under normal circumstances, this would not have required a call to a man of Raul’s standing, but in this instance, the injured individual was the Camel’s second cousin once removed, on his mother’s side.

  While the Camel made vague threats and insulted Ernesto’s sexual orientation, Raul listened patiently and watched his daughter play.

  Joy and heartache. The sweet and the sour.

  When the Camel’s rants had run their course, Raul placed the vase in a box and told him that of course, he would make a restitution for the injury and disrespect visited upon his family.

  The Camel hung up, and Raul used the house intercom to call his brother, asking for a brief meeting.

  These were strange times in Mexico, as evidenced by Raul Fuentes-Manzanares’s relationship with el Camello and his organization.

  Though neither wanted to admit it, both men needed each other.

  The Manzanares clan needed the Camel’s organization for safety.

  Danger and treachery lurked in each corner of Mexico, a general breakdown in the rule of law and the constraints of civilized society. Kidnappers and other small-time hoods looked to score off wealthy families, petty thieves roamed the streets, drug addicts huddled in every alley.

  El Camello needed the Banco Manzanares because his business generated a large amount of cash. Busloads, often in the literal sense.

  And, if Raul was to be completely honest, the Banco Manzanares and his family had grown to depend on the money provided by the Camel’s patronage of their financial institution.

  The current situation was much like the one his grandfather faced during the bank’s early years, a time that coincided with America’s Prohibition era. There had been many a bootlegger deposit at Banco Manzanares in the 1920s that had been stained by blood or booze.

  But cash was cash, then and now, and business was business. Raul couldn’t count the times as a child his grandfather had told him that “money is green, no matter how black the heart of the man may be.”

  So their respective operations became intertwined, everything connected.

  A ripple on the Camel’s side of the pond affected the tiniest Manz
anares lily on the opposite shore, and vice versa. Also, the Camel—unsophisticated in the ways of finance and the upper echelons of society—had come to rely on Raul for advice and counsel as to managing his business and sudden wealth, much like he would with an older brother or mentor.

  Ernesto Fuentes-Manzanares, who’d flown on a Banco Manzanares jet from Ensenada to Monterrey earlier in the day, entered the room. He patted his niece on the head and wandered to the wet bar in the corner.

  “How was your trip to Washington?” Raul picked up another vase and a piece of newspaper. His tone of voice was clipped.

  Ernesto poured a couple of centimeters of scotch into a plastic Flintstones cup belonging to Raul’s son, one of the few pieces of glassware not already in a box.

  “You are really leaving Mexico?” He stared at the disarray caused by the packing.

  Raul nodded.

  They’d been over this many times. Moving made sense.

  Raul’s wife’s family had relocated to Newport Beach several years before, and Banco Manzanares had almost as many branches in Southern California as it did in Mexico. The bank also had plans to expand to other locations in the southwestern United States, border towns and other areas primed for growth. Much of the funds for the expansion had been provided by the Camel’s business.

  “Senator Stephen McNally,” Ernesto said. “My feeling is he wants to—how do the Americans put it—change the world.”

  Raul stopped wrapping the vase, anger bubbling in his stomach.

  A brother with a hair-trigger temper. A psychopathic crime boss named the Camel.

  And now this—an idealistic politician.

  He put the vase down and shook his head, aware of the irony.

  If noble-minded leaders hadn’t decided to crack down on drug smugglers, forcing them to battle each other, Mexico would be a much safer place today, and he wouldn’t be in business with el Camello. Probably.

  “His chief of staff, Hawkins, the man we’ve been dealing with,” Ernesto said. “He’s better suited to these times and our ways.”

  Raul threaded his way through the mess and poured himself a scotch.

  Neither brother spoke for a few moments.