“No ID yet. We’re putting the word out. But you know the Cardozos. We’ll never get a name.”
The cartel made the most talkative turn mute.
“Jonny,” Tony muttered.
I thought I was the funny man here, El Paso...
“Any other injuries?”
“No. As soon as Jonny was down, they tossed the grenades and got away.”
Tony said, “Yeah. Why the firebombs?”
Holmes nodded. “There was some supply inside. Oxy and fent. They didn’t want it to fall into anybody’s hands. That’s what happened to you two. The fumes, you know. The other agents on site got you just in time.”
Fentanyl... That explained the disorientation... and giddiness.
And also explained how close he’d come to dying. Gram for gram, fent is the most dangerous drug on the planet.
His face still, Matt said angrily, “The intel was it was unoccupied.”
And a sharp, brave, funny man was now dead, as a result of that error.
“I know,” Holmes said.
Matt continued, “We didn’t just walk in blind. We staged at four hundred yards, then one hundred. No sign of life. Scanned for transmissions. Everything negative. Something’s wrong here...”
Holmes gave no response but glanced into the corridor. “Ah, here we go.” A woman of about thirty-five, attractive in a severe, pulled-back-ponytail way, strode into the room, a computer bag over her shoulder. She, too, had a Justice Department shield but she played with a different team. FBI.
Shea Talbot was with the Foreign Narcotics Operations Task Force in Dallas.
A.k.a. the Cartel Busters.
“How are you feeling?” She glanced at both of them.
Tony said, “Not hurt bad. But still groggy.”
Matt said nothing, maybe digesting Boyd’s death.
Talbot unbuttoned her dark-blue blazer, revealing a thick, starched white blouse. Her skirt was gray. “You were lucky. It doesn’t take much fentanyl to...” Her eyes swept over their faces and she lifted a hand. “Sure. Sorry. You do this for a living.” Yeah, pretty and with captivating eyes but she had rough edges. Women in this business sometimes got that way... because they had to. Tony knew she wouldn’t smile much. On the humor scale Talbot was at one end, Boyd had been on the other.
Tony had been married to his high school sweetheart for nineteen years. Lucy smiled a lot. He’d have to call her. Did she even know he was in the hospital?
Then his thoughts of family vanished and, with a thud in his gut, he thought: FBI? That means only one thing. He thought of Matt’s words.
Something’s wrong here...
Tony grimaced. “The team got set up.”
“Hell,” Matt whispered. “Sure.”
Talbot glanced at Holmes, who delivered the bad news straight: “Looks like somebody told the Cardozos you were on your way and that Jonny Boyd was riding point.”
Tony continued, “So they planned to assassinate him. That’s why the sniper.”
Talbot nodded. “Gunning Boyd down on the streets of El Paso — US territory — no way. That’d go all the way to Washington. But a DEA supervisor killed in action at a drug drop on Mexican soil? Just another death in the drug wars.”
“‘Just another death,’” Matt spat out, though the bitterness wasn’t aimed at her, Tony knew. He turned his intense eyes her way. “Was La Piedra behind it?”
Holmes said, “Likely.”
The chief enforcer for the Cardozo cartel. His nickname meant “the Stone.” Manuel Santos was a sociopathic murderer, known for being utterly emotionless. He never got angry, never raised his voice. Never laughed either, was never joyful. They knew for a fact he’d murdered more than three dozen people, often leaving their heads in public places as reminders of where loyalties should lie.
La Piedra was also a ghost. No one in either Mexican or US law enforcement knew where he slept — or whom he slept with, if he shared a bed with anyone. La Piedra remained invisible, even with a $10 million price on his head, offered by the Americans, and a more modest but still sizable sum posted by the United Mexican States. But every man, woman and child in that battered country knew that no one would ever claim the heavenly sum; if they did, they wouldn’t live long enough to spend a single peso.
Tony knew that Matt had a special hatred of Santos. The man had murdered one of Matt’s first partners, in an undercover set that went bad. The cop had been killed for no reason other than convenience — it was less of an effort to murder him and escape down an alleyway than to walk a few blocks around.
“So,” Talbot said, “this debriefing is about trying to find who set the team up. Were they with El Paso PD or DEA or somebody else?”
Tony couldn’t help but give a faint laugh of curiosity. “Well...” He lifted his hands.
She frowned. “I’m sorry?”
Matt said, “What he’s asking is how are you so sure that Tony or me didn’t sell the team out?”
Opening her computer bag in a matter-of-fact manner and extracting a notebook and digital recorder, Talbot said, “Oh, we’re not sure about that at all. That’s why I’m here.”
Three
The interviews were conducted in different rooms.
Tony wasn’t troubled by this and he was sure that Matt wasn’t either. Every cop who’d run interrogations knew that it was a waste of time to talk to two suspects or witnesses in the same room. They played off each other, adjusting their words to what the other said. More importantly, though, an interrogator had to focus full attention on the subject’s words and body language; anyone else in the room was a distraction.
“Too many broths spoil the cook,” Tony had said. An expression that he himself had coined. Not many fellow officers seemed to get it but Tony thought it was clever.
Matt was more mobile than Tony, who had the sprained ankle, and so Talbot took him from their room into the hallway; she’d return and talk to Tony when she was done. Holmes asked Tony if he wanted coffee or a soda.
“No. I’m good.” Which he wasn’t; he just wanted to keep his gut empty and not add fuel to the Tupperware fire.
Holmes left and Tony lay back in the complicated, comfortable bed. Although he now understood that no metal splinters had shot his way, he took another inventory of his body with his fingers.
Probe here, there.
In one particular place — for the third time.
No, all good.
Goddamn lucky.
He wanted to call Lucy but his phone would be in his jacket, hanging on the back of the door and he didn’t want to torment his ankle. There was no landline.
Another scan of the room. A limp magazine — Time — sat on a table beside a bedpan. He could reach it but had no interest in news that was six months old.
Outside, two soldiers walked by, joking with each other. Full uniforms, despite the heat. Man, that sucked. At EPPD, detectives like Tony and Matt could wear light jackets and T-shirts if they wanted to when the temperature rose to brutal.
The soldiers disappeared out of sight in the direction pointed out by a sign:
He was amused, wondering how far apart the two facilities were. Matt, who’d served in the army, had told him that armed forces planning was not necessarily the smartest.
Tony’s gaze rose and he watched a hawk in the sky. He thought of a line from a play, hawk... lazy circles... What play was it? He’d have to...
Tony woke suddenly from a bizarre and unsettling dream. Heart pounding, disoriented. His flesh was damp.
Where am I?
A moment later he remembered.
And grew sorrowful at the thought of Jonny Boyd’s death.
La Piedra...
Tony and Matt would talk to their captain when he got back to the station. Get together a task force, DEA and the Bureau. Maybe army too. Twist the Mexicans’ arms to cough up information about the enforcer’s likely location, his known associates.