Ortega didn’t know whether to be relieved or furious. “You took them!”
“I didn’t take anyone. I invited her to come along, and she accepted.”
“She’d never do that! She’s been trained.”
“Trained? That’s funny. All I had to do was tell her you’d been abducted by the same people who killed Alice Downly. The second she heard that, she packed her bags, grabbed the kids, and jumped right in the car. Why would she do that, Mike? Do you share state secrets with your wife?”
Ortega looked down at the table top. “You son of a bitch.”
“That’s damn stupid, putting your old lady at risk. Where do you think we are, Disneyland?”
“Why did you take my family?”
“I know somebody within the CIA had Downly killed,” Crosswhite said. “Or at the very least, they turned their heads while Serrano had her killed. She wanted US Special Forces to operate south of the border, like they did in Colombia. She wouldn’t go along with CIA plans to put Serrano into power, so somebody had her whacked — that, or they set her up for Serrano to do it.
“And it would have worked, except Vaught fucked it up by chasing the sniper and placing Serrano at the scene. That’s when Fields was sent down here to clean up the mess. But then there was a major quake, and everything went to shit. How am I doing so far?”
Ortega simply stared.
Crosswhite sat back, keeping the pistol ready. “The look on your face tells me I’m pretty goddamn close. I took your wife, Mikey, because I need you to fill in the blanks.”
Ortega bared his teeth. “You didn’t have to drag my family into this, you bastard!”
“Your ambition dragged your family into this. What else do you think put them in my path? You used them for cover after accepting this post because you thought it would get you a cushy assignment up in DC. So don’t pawn this shit off on me. Admit it: you were complicit to the Downly hit.”
Ortega’s eyes drifted again, and this time Crosswhite caught it. “You piece of shit!” he snarled, getting to his feet.
“I wasn’t complicit!” Ortega blurted. “I wasn’t! I didn’t know a goddamn thing about it until afterward. I swear to God! It was my job to help Fields clean up the mess that Vaught made — that’s all!”
Crosswhite put the muzzle of the pistol to Ortega’s head. “Who sent that fucking sniper down here? Tell me now, or I’ll blow your brains all over the wall!”
“Pope! Okay? Are you happy? It was Pope!”
“Gimme the sniper’s name!”
“Rhett Hancock! His name’s Rhett Hancock!”
The name meant nothing to Crosswhite. “Tell me more.”
“Pope hired him through a back channel. The crazy bastard doesn’t even know he’s working for the CIA. He thinks he’s working for Serrano. Now Fields has orders to kill him — after Hancock kills Vaught. That’s all I know!”
Crosswhite began to pace the kitchen slowly, realizing that the ATRU had become even more dangerous than he’d previously thought. “Here’s what you’re gonna do, asshole: you’re gonna arrange a meeting with Serrano and draw him into the open for me.”
Ortega was aghast. “Me?! I don’t have that kind of influence. Are you crazy?”
“You’ll contact Serrano,” Crosswhite went on. “You’ll tell him Fields has gone rogue; that Pope can’t control him. You tell him Fields is moving to take him out and that you have to meet with him as soon as possible to put together a plan.”
Ortega thought it over. “I want to talk to my wife before I do anything.”
“No. You don’t talk to your wife until after you’ve done what I need you to do.”
“Why? What harm can it do?”
“It can do a lot of harm,” Crosswhite said. “Right now, your wife has no idea she’s a prisoner. She thinks Serrano’s people are hunting her and the kids. If I let you talk to her, you’ll ruin everything with that big mouth of yours, and I’ll be forced to treat her like a prisoner. I’ll have to lock her and the kids in a concrete room until this is over. Is that what you want, dumb fuck?”
Ortega slouched back, brooding over his predicament. “Swear to me they’re okay.”
“What good would that do?” Crosswhite was disgusted by the sight of the man sitting before him. “Sit up in the chair like a man. Have some self-respect and stop feeling sorry for yourself. It’s no wonder Fields is sending somebody to kill you.”
Ortega sneered. “I’ve read your file, asshole. The only reason you’re not rotting in prison for murder is because Pope saved your hide. Now here you are judging him and me both. You’re a fucking hypocrite.”
Crosswhite stared at him, wanting to slug him with the pistol, but there was a measure of truth to what Ortega had said. “Yeah, well, no soy una moneda de oro para caerle bien a todo el mundo.” This was a Mexican phrase meaning, I’m not a gold coin to be liked by everyone.
Ortega chortled scornfully. “Speaking of gold, Fields knows about that, too. You and your thieving buddy Shannon are—”
Crosswhite kicked him over in the chair. “Not only is Shannon dead, you piece of shit, he’s worth fifty of you!” He kicked Ortega in the rump. “Get your ass off the floor! You got a phone call to make before Fields’s people show up and put a bullet in your head.”
58
Sid Dupree was smoking pot and watching television in the back room of Señor Sid’s Jet Ski Rental when he heard the door open and a customer enter the shop. He set aside the pipe and stepped out to see a fellow gringo flipping the Closed sign around. “What the hell you think you’re doin’, fella?”
The gringo turned to face him, a small backpack over one shoulder, his chiseled visage set. “I heard once that an American can buy things here he can’t get anywhere else in Mexico. That still true?”
Dupree stepped out from behind the counter. “Depends who you heard it from.” He was very tan with a shaved head, in his early sixties, and in good shape.
“A man named Steelyard.”
Dupree’s face split into a grin. “How is the old bastard?”
“He’s dead,” the gringo said.
The grin disappeared. “What happened?”
The gringo told the story, and when he was finished, Dupree stood looking sad. “Well, if a man’s gotta go, I suppose that’s the way to go, goddamnit.”
“I agree,” the gringo said. “Can you help me or not? I ain’t here to waste your time or mine.”
“What do you need?”
“Somethin’ to shoot and somethin’ to drive.”
“That ain’t gonna be cheap.”
“Important things never are.”
“This way.” Dupree led the gringo out back to an open yard cluttered with old Jet Skis, broken sailboards, and a couple of beat-up Winnebago campers. Five or six dogs lounged about in the sand, and there were at least ten cats sunning themselves.
“Sorry about the smell,” Dupree said, referring to the heavy odor of dog and cat feces. “Keeps people from nosin’ around.”
He led the gringo behind one of the Winnebagos to where an old sky-blue VW Beetle sat rusting away on four flat tires. “It’s gonna take a little bit of work,” he said, ducking into the camper. An air compressor kicked on a few seconds later, and Dupree remerged with an air hose. “We gotta roll this piece of shit outta the way.”
It took a few minutes to inflate the tires, and then both men rolled the VW forward. Dupree grabbed a rusty shovel and dug down through about two feet of sand until the shovel hit something made of metal. After some more digging, he uncovered a steel footlocker. He pried off the lid to reveal a cache of weapons: AK-47s, M4s, MP5s, an M40A5 sniper rifle, and assorted pistols.