Marked police cars with uniformed officers waited across the highway, on the dirt field behind the Gamma Tijuana de Fiesta Inn. Like the assault unit, these officers were equipped with body armor over their gray fatigues, and submachine guns.
Avery and Aguilar, each wearing different clothing now to decrease the chances of anyone recognizing them from earlier, were seated at a table in Roots, directly east of the target, from where they had a clear line of sight through the tinted windows and across the narrow sidewalk into the café’s terrace seating area, about thirty-five feet away.
Aguilar ordered a torta and rice, to make them look natural and not like suspicious dickheads sitting there for no reason. Avery’s Glock was holstered beneath a blue windbreaker, and Aguilar’s Beretta was at his hip, concealed by his half-open jacket, with the safety off and 9mm Parabellum chambered.
At 1:13PM, two Mexican men arrived at Café de la Flor and took a table under the terrace. They sipped their water, and didn’t even pretend to peruse the menu. They were all business. Their eyes stayed on the entrance to the café and the pedestrians on the exterior sidewalk ten feet away. From their body language and sense of purpose, and the clothing layered to easily conceal their firearms, they practically screamed cartel gunmen.
The tables beneath the terrace continued to fill up over the next fifteen minutes, and there were more wait staff on the floor now, seating patrons, re-filling glasses, and balancing plates as they made their way to and from the kitchen. The other diners who noticed them knew better than to look at them.
Ten feet from the cartel men, a family of five, including two unruly adolescent children, ordered their meals. Behind them sat a couple in their twenties who couldn’t take their eyes off each other, and to the left of them was a table of three middle aged men in business attire speaking animatedly about real estate development, each fighting to get a word in over the others. Near Contreras and his partner, a group of elderly Mexicans sat down.
Scents and smells emanating from the grill filled the air. As the terrace became more populated, the noise level picked up. Everyone’s conversations blended together in the ears of the surveillance team.
Contreras did a check on his miniature directional mike, making sure it worked as advertised, and was able to discern and separate the young couple’s conversation as they debated whether they should wait for their meal or go straight to her apartment, or his car.
Six minutes later, outside, a Federal Police officer in plainclothes reported the arrival of a Lincoln MKS in the parking lot. When a man climbed out of the rear passenger seat, the cop recognized Arturo Silva on sight.
Silva was accompanied by two other men, bodyguard types. One followed Silva into the café while the other remained behind the wheel of the MKS with the engine running. He was backed into the parking spot, so that he could accelerate forward and quickly get out, while also being able to keep eyes on the entrance to the café and the sidewalk.
At their table in Roots, Avery and Aguilar listened to the radio updates filtering in through their earbuds. They watched Silva emerge from the café interior under the terrace. Silva quietly acknowledged the pair of cartel men already present, and then took another table with his bodyguard.
Avery exchanged looks with Aguilar.
Both men were thinking the same thing; five tangos on site and no sign of the Viper agent.
They’d also caught a good glimpse of Silva’s friends. Avery and Aguilar, both being military men, determined from the Mexicans’ straight backs, confident poises, trim physiques, and intent gazes that they too were likely military, which meant Los Zetas. Like typical cartel shooters, they looked like they were ready for a fight, which, combined with the number of civilians about, was bad news. These guys shot first at the slightest provocation and asked no questions.
Four minutes later, another update came in from one of the DEA watchers. A vehicle had just pulled into the south side parking lot outside Subway. Two men got out and walked north.
In Roots, Aguilar stood up. Patting down his pockets, he announced to Avery, without overdoing it, while expressing the appropriate frustration, that he’d left his phone in the car. The comment was for the benefit of anyone amongst the other patrons who might be watching.
Aguilar went out the door and turned left, going south down the sidewalk between the two restaurants. Walking casually, but purposefully, eyes up and straight ahead, he passed the two new arrivals as they went through the entrance of Café de la Flora. He assessed one of the men as being another Zeta soldier, but, even though he caught barely a two second glance at the man’s face, he easily recognized the taller, older bearded man from the dossiers Daniel provided.
Once out of earshot of the two men, Aguilar tilted his head to speak into his throat mike and confirm the presence of Carlo Ibarra. Aguilar used Ibarra’s tan jacket and graying beard as an identifier for the other members of the team.
Aguilar returned to Avery’s table in Roots ten seconds later.
Thirty-feet away, across the sidewalk, in Café de la Flora, Ibarra’s back was to Avery and Aguilar, and their view was partially obscured by other patrons, but they still had clear line of sight on Arturo Silva, who sat across from Ibarra, facing him. They could easily read Silva’s facial expressions and body language as he gesticulated. He was all business, and Ibarra kept interrupting, shaking his head and gesturing with his hands, obviously on edge and disagreeing about something.
In the surveillance van, Slayton and Padilla listened to the audio feed from the Contreras’s parabolic mike. Ibarra and Silva used vague terms, no specific mention of the Viper or SA-24, but they discussed business, talking about prices and making a delivery to California. To any innocent person seated nearby and overhearing snippets of the conversation, they could have been talking about anything.
Finally, after another fifteen minutes, Arturo Silva and Carlo Ibarra seemed to reach an agreement, though the latter didn’t appear quite as pleased as his Mexican host did. Instead, Ibarra’s face showed a look of resignation.
Both men pulled out their cell phones and placed calls; Ibarra to the Viper, informing her of the agreed price, while Silva called Carlos, who was still watching the Colombian Gulfstream sitting on the desert airstrip, to notify him that the deal was going through and that their client was to be given safe transit over the border.
From the Geo Cell’s surveillance van, Abigail Benning’s team registered both numbers on Stingray, and then went to work to trace the locations of the numbers they’d called.
At Tijuana International Airport’s military section, Contreras’s agents were standing by with un-armed Predator reconnaissance drones to deploy if and when Benning gave them the coordinates.
Then, the unexpected happened, as it invariably did when something was going just too smoothly. An overworked and overstressed waitress with an overloaded tray of food and drinks carefully maneuvered through the packed floor space of Café de la Flora’s terrace seating, navigating the narrow aisles between the closely packed tables.
As the family of five stood up from their table, preparing to leave, a six year old boy giggled, abruptly and excitedly turned, and ran directly into the waitress’s path. They collided. The serving tray, balanced in one hand, tilted. The waitress brought up her other hand to save the tray as dishes and glasses slid along the inclined surface. She managed to save the tray itself, but not all of its contents. A full pitcher of water went through the air, overturned, and hit the table where the pair of undercover DEA agents was seated, while a bowl of chips flipped in midair, hit the floor, and scattered.