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10
It was 4:30
A.M
. and Juan Perez was parked in the street in front of the McAllen Produce Terminal just west of downtown San Antonio. Already trucks were moving into the lot and it was filling up with men going into work. The traffic didn't concern him, though. In fact, he was glad for it. A lot of vehicles coming and going made for good cover.
He was in a white '98 Toyota pickup he'd borrowed from his local contact in the FBI. It fit right in with all the other battered pickups coming and going. So far nobody had looked twice at him, but if they had they would have seen a man in jeans, boots, and a shabby, loose-fitting flannel shirt, somebody who looked just like every other guy out here going to work. His target was actually a meatpacking facility halfway down the block. After his conversation with Tess the night before she left for the cruise, he'd been thinking a lot about Ramon Medina and the Porra Cartel. They were big along the Texas border, especially around Ciudad Juarez, and he'd seen some intelligence that they were trying to expand operations, but even with that they were hardly the major players. Still, they'd managed to put themselves center stage with the flesh-eating bacteria the SAPD had intercepted the week before. It was a potential game changer if ever there was one. The recovered samples had been sent to the CDC and tested, and the news was bad. Juan had the full report in the file resting in his lap, but it hadn't taken much of a read to figure out they were dealing with a major league bad bug. The stuff was highly resilient and dangerous enough to kill just about anything with which it came in contact. Its potential as a WMD device put it up on everybody's radar; but Juan had been able to make a case that the Porra Cartel's involvement demonstrated a direct link to the assassination attempt on Senator Sutton, and so Mr. Crouch, Juan's point of contact in the White House, had agreed to let him take point on the investigation, even over the objections of the FBI and the Justice Department. Everybody wanted a piece of the case, it seemed, but the White House had spoken, and now it was Juan's case to make or break.
He'd tried his contacts in the South Texas High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force to see if they could locate properties tied to the Porra Cartel, but while they'd been enthusiastic, they'd been little help. Juan was actually kind of shocked to learn that most of the task force's efforts were focused on street-level interdiction, small-time distributors and dealers. They occasionally went after mid-level dealers who got too big for their britches, but that was about it. They had no active interdiction program to deal with the tens of thousands of commercial motor vehicles rolling through San Antonio every day. They had no forensic accountants doing background work on local businesses. They, really, had nothing much to show for their efforts. South Texas HIDTA was the kind of outfit that splashed it all over the news every time they busted a million-dollar load, but not the kind that made any real impact on drug trafficking. Worse still, they had completely ignored any sort of counterintelligence efforts. They'd done nothing to explore soft spots within their own unit, or to develop a deep understanding of the key players for the other side. And, of course, they'd done nothing to understand the long-range goals of the specific cartels. They were, not to put too fine a point on it, street cops messing with street-level players. And that meant he had to go to the FBI. It made him feel like a beggar with his hat in his hand doing it, and they'd made sure he knew his place, but in the end the FBI had come through with some good information. They'd found that the Cavazos Meatpacking Company was staying afloat on a wave of cash currency and managed to trace at least some of that cash back to a holding corporation in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, known to be a front for the Porra Cartel. Their information jibed with the report Juan had received from the CDC geeksâthat the bacteria would remain at its most viable and virulent level when it had a constant supply of meat to feed onâand so he'd come here, to this dark, badly paved road in the laborers' district of San Antonio, to do a little counterintelligence of his own.
He glanced at his watch: 4:37
A.M
. Christ, he'd been at this since eight o'clock the previous evening. He was exhausted. And his injured arm, while finally free of the sling he'd been forced to wear, was nonetheless tender. It ached no matter how he held it. He was thinking about walking around the corner of the deserted building across the street to piss when he saw a shiny black Suburban turn the corner and glide up to the front loading docks of the Cavazos Meatpacking Company.
He sat up.
There was no need for binoculars. Even in the dark, he could see well enough the three men coming out of the building to meet the Suburban at the dock.
Wincing at the pain in his arm, Juan reached over for the wand and receiver for his Krentz-Orbiter Directional Receiver. It was out of date and clunky, but nonetheless effective. It utilized a single forward microphone ringed by buffers that eliminated side noise, which in effect amplified the range of the microphone to as far as half a mile.
He wasn't anywhere near that range now, only a few hundred yards, in fact, and as soon as he turned the device on, he heard the voices from the loading dock coming in loud and clear.
There were five men there, speaking in Spanish.
With his free hand, Juan copied down the things they said on a yellow legal pad. He was careful to copy it out in Spanish, using their exact words whenever possible, so as not to miss anything. If they were talking in code, it wouldn't survive on-the-fly translation.
But it didn't take him long to realize they weren't using code. One of the men that had gotten out of the Suburban, a young guy dressed in black jeans, white shirt, and black blazer who appeared to be the one in charge, asked about a second truck and if they had drivers ready to move out. One of the men who had come from inside the building told him no, that the men had heard what was in the barrels and what it could do and none of them wanted anything to do with it.
The young guy got angry. He jammed his finger into the man's chest and told him to find somebody to drive it out of here in the next five minutes or he'd be doing it himself.
The man's two friends looked on without saying anything. They looked too scared to speak. Juan didn't recognize this young guy in the black blazer, but whoever he was these others were clearly afraid of him.
I'll find somebody, the man said at last.
Good, the younger man answered. I want that van in Nuevo Laredo by ten a.m.
Nuevo Laredo, Juan thought. Why on earth would they be going there? The Porra Cartel didn't have interests there. They operated out of Juarez, six hundred and fifty miles to the west. Nuevo Laredo was controlled by the Zetas. In fact, they had a stranglehold on Nuevo Laredo not even the Mexican Army had been able to break.
And then it hit him.
He looked down at the CDC report on the passenger seat and it all made sense. Back in 2003, Nuevo Laredo, which sat directly across the border from the Texas city of Laredo, was solidly in the hands of the Gulf Cartel. Los Zetas were the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, its street fighters. At the end of Vicente Fox's presidency, the Sinaloa Cartel tried to take Nuevo Laredo from the Gulf Cartel. Los Zetas attacked and in four months of savage fighting cleared the Sinaloa Cartel from Nuevo Laredo, which they dominated from that point on. Then, in 2010, Los Zetas broke with the Gulf Cartel. The fighting escalated across all of northeast Mexico, and eventually culminated in the 2012 Nuevo Laredo Massacre that left more than seven thousand soldiers and civilians dead. Los Zetas emerged from that fight on top, gaining total control over the Mexican entryway to the I-35 corridor, the most lucrative drug trade route in the world.
To outsiders, the constantly shifting allegiances of the cartels were harder to follow than a soap opera, but to Juan the problem seemed simple enough. The Porra Cartel, which had proven itself to be lean and hungry these last ten years, was looking to take over control of the Texas border. It already dominated in Ciudad Juarez. If they succeeded in releasing this flesh-eating virus of theirs in Nuevo Laredo, they stood a chance of taking over that door to the U.S. as well. Literally nothing would stand in their way to becoming the most powerful drug smuggling operation in the world. Never mind that millions would die to make it happen. The Mexican Drug War had already claimed more than a million lives. What were a few million more?
Juan traded the eavesdropping microphone for his cell and called Detective Jason Rowe, a former San Antonio Police SWAT officer and his contact with the South Texas HIDTA Unit. As it rang, he stepped out of the truck and started walking toward the Cavazos Meatpacking Company. He was tucking the back of his flannel shirt out of the way of his Sig Sauer P229 pistol when Rowe's voice came over the line.
“Where are you?” Rowe said.
“About to go into the Cavazos building. Listen, something's happening. They're moving out of here. How far out are you?”
“I'm on the way to roll call, Juan. Wait a minute, did you say you're going into the Cavazos building?”
Juan broke into a trot. “Yeah.”
“You can't do that, Juan. You don't even have a warrant, do you?”
“I'm going in exigent circumstances. This won't wait. I need you here right now.”
“Listen, Juan,” Rowe said, a note of desperation seeping into his voice, “just hang on, okay? Let me get some of the guys together. We'll be there in fifteen minutes, twenty tops.”
“Won't wait that long. It's going down now.”
“What do you mean it won't wait? What are you doing, Juan?”
But Juan couldn't answer. He'd already closed most of the distance to the loading dock. The men were moving inside now, and the young guy turned to check the street behind him. Juan quickly ducked out of sight behind a Dumpster and pulled his pistol.
“What are you doing, Juan? Come on, talk to me, man.”
Juan waited for the men to slip inside the building before answering. “I think we found the first battle in a war,” he said.
“A war? Juan, what in the hellâ”
“I'll tell you when you get here. Just get here.”
“Okay, wait, wait, wait. What is this about a war?”
“You remember that flesh-eating bacteria the CDC told us about? Call Tom Parkes over at the FBI and tell him I found where they're hiding it, but it's going mobile right now. I need your people out here and Tom needs to get us a team equipped to lock down the bacteria.”
Juan was less than ten feet from the loading dock when a young Porra soldier with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and a rifle slung over his shoulder stepped out of the dark alley next to the building.
The man stopped in his tracks, his eyes going wide.
Juan slipped his phone into his shirt pocket and veered toward the man. Before the soldier could react, Juan kicked the side of his knee, causing him to cave forward. Juan caught him, spun him around, and threw his right arm around the man's neck. The man struggled, tried to pull away, but his efforts were too little too late. Still clutching his pistol, Juan hooked his right hand over his left forearm, tightening his hold on the man's neck while simultaneously pushing with his left hand on the back of the man's head. Sleeper holds worked quickly when executed properly, and Juan was an expert. The man sagged to the floor, limp and unconscious. Moving fast, Juan pulled him back into the alley.
He could hear Rowe screaming at him over the phone. Juan pulled it out of his pocket and said, “I'm going in. Get here quick.”
“Wait, goddamn it! You need to do this tactically. Be smart about this. Let us hit it the right way.”
“You SWAT guys can be kind of chickenshit sometimes, you know that?”
“Juan, I'm fucking serious here. Do not goâ”
Juan disconnected without waiting for the rest. He silenced the phone and slid it into his back pocket. If he knew Rowe, and he was pretty sure he did, the man would do everything he told him. And it wouldn't take him fifteen minutes to do it either. He and the entire rest of his unit would be on the way in five. With luck, they might even get there in time to pull his ass out of the fire he was about to start.
Hopefully, he thought.
Then he slipped through the door.
It opened onto a narrow hallway that led around a corner to his left. Juan pressed against the wall and listened. He could hear muffled voices coming from the bowels of the building. The hallway was cold. There was a faint odor of decomposition partially masked by a bleach smell. It was enough to raise the hairs on the back of his neck.
Somebodyâprobably the young guy, Juan figuredâwas barking orders. He sounded upset again. Juan reached into a pocket on the inside of his shirt and removed a pen-shaped digital video recorder. The device looked just like a normal black-and-gold ballpoint pen, but was actually a highly sensitive digital recorder capable of capturing up to forty minutes of video footage. He didn't figure on using even half that.
The hallway ahead turned right, so Juan moved to the left-hand side of the hall and slowly inched his way around the corner, his weapon up and ready. It was an operator's trick called pieing the corner. Doing it correctly maximized both cover and visibility. If anybody stepped into the hallway, he'd see him a fraction of a second before they saw him, and that would be all the time Juan needed.
The hallway went about twenty feet before opening up on either side to what looked like a warehouse floor. Juan could see the shadows of two men just inside the door on the left-hand side of the hall. Armed guards, he thought, almost certainly. That meant he had to hit the room hard and fast, not giving them a chance to react. He had no idea how this was going to turn out, but he did know the rules of engagement. His badge hung from a sturdy beaded chain around his neck. Juan pulled it out and let it rest on his chest. He'd have to identify himself, at least give them the chance to surrender, even though he knew that wasn't going to happen. He was about to step into a gunfight, and he was ready.