He drove on for another minute, made a right turn as ordered, then said, “There’s a car behind us, the Toyota with the red panel. Two men following. Are they with you?”
The man in the backseat whirled, saw the car, and cursed in Spanish.
“What do we do now?” Moore asked.
“Keep driving.”
“I guess they’re not your friends?”
“Shut up!”
“Look, if you don’t want the car or my money, then what’s the deal here?”
“The deal is you drive.”
Moore’s cell phone began to ring. Shit. It was tucked into his front pocket, and the guy had failed to find it.
“Don’t even think about it,” warned the man.
The ringtone indicated that Fitzpatrick had sent him a text message, and if that message had anything to do with Moore’s passenger, then Fitzpatrick was a day late and a dollar short with his warning.
“Throw that fucking phone out the window.”
Moore reached down into his pocket, set the phone on vibrate by holding down the side button, then threw the phone’s leather slipcase out of the window before the guy could get a good look at it.
“Where are we going?” he asked, sliding the phone back into his pocket.
“No more questions.”
Moore checked the mirror once more, while his abductor stole a look back at the punks following them.
The car tailing them began to accelerate, and the gap narrowed to within two car lengths. The man in the backseat grew more agitated — shifting forward and tossing repeated looks out the rear window. He was panting now, his pistol still trained on Moore’s neck. He’d tucked Moore’s Glock into his waistband. Moore slowed as the light ahead turned red. He glanced around: Wendy’s, Denny’s, McDonald’s, Popeyes, and Starbucks. All five of the food groups. For a moment, he thought he was back in San Diego, with the smog and stench of gasoline and exhaust fumes finding their way inside the air-conditioned car. Bad part of town. Bad guy in the backseat. Just another day on the farm.
“Why are you stopping?” shouted the guy.
Moore gestured with a hand. “Red light!”
“Go, go, go!”
But it was too late. The car behind them rushed up, and the two guys leapt out and began firing.
“No, no, no!” Moore shouted as he hit the gas and squealed away into the intersection, burning rubber and narrowly avoiding a pickup truck whose tailgate was nearly dragging along the ground.
The two clowns behind them were intent on emptying their magazines, the shots thumping into Moore’s trunk as the back window shattered, along with the rear driver’s side, and Moore’s passenger released a strangled cry.
Moore glanced back and wished he hadn’t. The man lay there with gunshot wounds to his head and shoulder.
The man wasn’t moving. Blood pooled onto the seat. Moore cursed.
A quick glance to the rearview mirror showed that the guys had rushed back to their car, jumped in, and were continuing after him. They’d bridged the intersection and were weaving around two small sedans.
Ahead lay another cross street, and farther out, the “better” part of the barrio, with tin roofs held down with nails instead of old truck tires. Moore wasn’t sure where he was now, and had planned to use his smartphone’s GPS to get him to the bar. No time to program that info into the phone now …
But he tugged out the device anyway and thumbed a direct-dial number to Langley. A familiar man’s voice answered on the speakerphone: “Three-two-seven here. What do you need?”
“Get me to the V Bar. Update Fitzpatrick.”
“On it. Hold on …”
Moore checked his rearview mirror once more, while the two fools chasing him swerved in front of a step van, and the driver floored it toward the next intersection.
Just as Moore’s car passed through the intersection, the light turned red behind him.
An old man rode into the street on a bike fitted with baskets fore and aft. The baskets were piled high with blankets and plastic bottles and several backpacks. He was in the crosswalk, along with several pedestrians shifting a few meters behind him.
The idiots tailing Moore could not stop in time.
The man and the bike arced up and over their car like toys flung in the air, and their car’s hood folded in like a taco, but they kept on, the man and bike clattering out of sight behind them, the other pedestrians screaming and running back toward him.
A voice buzzed from the phone’s speaker: “Next left. Make it. Then third light, right turn. I’ll call the local police and see if they can run some interference for you. I’ve got eyes in the sky on your position now. See your tail.”
“Thanks.” Moore jammed his foot harder onto the accelerator as the next light ahead turned yellow. He’d already noticed that in Juárez, red, yellow, and green lights were mere suggestions to drivers. Many only slowed down for red lights, then just blew on through them — even if they weren’t involved in car chases. He made the left turn as instructed.
The street sign read Paseo Triunfo de la República, and the bus stops, billboards, and clean sidewalks of this business district made Moore feel a bit more at ease. Pedestrian traffic was fairly heavy, and he thought the rocket scientists behind him might think twice about pulling any stunts in this area.
He scanned the side streets as he raced by, noting how they were lined on both sides by parked cars. You could travel only in one direction, but there were no signs to indicate that the roads were one-way.
The knuckleheads behind him were gaining, and the passenger slid out onto the windowsill and leveled his pistol.
That was it. Third light. “Three-two-seven? I won’t need you anymore, thanks.”
“Are you sure?”
“Roger that. I’ll check in later.”
Holding his breath, Moore hung the hard right down the next side street and floored it. He gasped as he rocketed down the alley, turned another hard left, careened off a Dumpster, and kept on moving. He was coming up behind the V Bar, which would be on his left-hand side.
He checked his six o’clock — clear for now.
A car shot across the intersection ahead and turned head-on, and with a start he realized it was the punks following him. They’d anticipated his move. They were supposed to be dummies. What was wrong with them? Why had they gone smart? Now they were playing chicken, and Moore had nowhere to go.
He reached into the backseat, tried to grab one of the guns — the guy’s on the floor or the Glock tucked into the dead man’s waistband — but both were still out of reach.
Then he slowed, was about to throw it in reverse, when another car raced up behind him, an older Range Rover with a huge Hispanic male at the wheel — big as a sumo wrestler or Samoan warrior — and Moore’s colleague and fellow JTF team member Fitzpatrick was riding shotgun. Were they the cavalry or the execution squad? Either way, Moore was sandwiched between members of rival cartels with a body in his backseat.
Consequently, he did what his training dictated. He prepared to abandon ship. He threw the car in park, whirled back and seized his Glock, then tossed himself out the door, rolling across the pavement to the cover of two parked cars. The driver’s door turned into a pincushion for small-arms fire.
God helps those who help themselves. Time for Moore to help Moore.
He crawled around to the back of the car, stole another look to the street, and saw that the two men following him were dead, their backs peppered with gunshot wounds.
Since Fitzpatrick was with the rest of the Sinaloas, Moore decided that if he surrendered, his colleague might be able to better control the situation — at least get them all talking instead of shooting. If Moore decided to bolt, he might not only draw their fire but be back to square one: still trying to get a meeting with the boss. Of course, getting the cartel’s attention like this was not what he’d had in mind.