Halon-Seven (40 page)

The main concern for Cyrus was a disparity in the files. One psych profile indicated that Alvares was a tightly wound sociopath who was quick to exact punishment on anyone who got in his way. But another report described the man as a calculating tactician, skilled at manipulation and savvy when it came to business. The two reports couldn’t be more diametrically opposed. Cyrus needed to know which personality he would be facing when he made his approach.

Reading through a number of the included reports, Cyrus began to form his own picture of Bola Alvares. It seemed likely that a portion of each report was accurate. The truth between two opposing stories was often found in middle. As long as the man wasn’t completely bipolar, Cyrus was confident he’d be able to work a more accurate profile of his own.

The Alvares cartel was known to be bloodthirsty and savage. Cartel enforcers were responsible for the mutilations and dismemberments of rival gang members. If Alvares was the crafty businessman indicated by one of the FBI profiles, his brutal and fearsome acts were theater, used to promote his reputation. A form of intimidation. Theater, but dangerous just the same.

But if the alternate profile was accurate, the man was nothing short of a sociopath with little impulse control. Not only did Alvares have a reputation for personally killing his rivals, but he was said to do it using their own weapons. If there was truth to the tale, it was believed that Alvares took his rival’s weapon as a trophy after the kill.

Despite the contradicting personal profiles, both reports agreed on Alvares’s rise to power. He’d started out as a street thug some twenty years back. An aggressive and brutal nature had helped him rise through the ranks of a local gang until he ran the outfit. After that he amassed more power, until he masterminded a small coup and ousted some mid-level drug lord, south of the border. From there, he quickly expanded his power base. After destroying a rival Mexican drug gang, he began spreading his reach through the southwestern United States. It hadn’t taken long for Alvares to become
the
name in Mexican-American drug trafficking.

If Alvares got his hands on the teleportation technology, he would drown the United States in illegal narcotics. It would be a disaster. No one would be able to stop him.

The first step was to find out which members of Alvares’s organization knew about Meridian. Step two was to make sure none of them ever shared that information. Anyone with knowledge of Meridian was a threat, and that threat had to be eliminated. Cyrus wasn’t fooling himself. This would be wet work. It was one of the reasons he’d left the Coalition. But as a part of that outfit, he’d only ever had someone’s word that what he was doing was the only solution to a problem. In this case, he knew for a fact this was the only way to eliminate the threat to his people.

It wasn’t that his conscience had a problem with the work at hand. More generally, it was disappointment that the life he’d left behind wasn’t dead and buried after all.

The next file had exactly what he needed: a list of Alvares’s lieutenants. It was the key to discovering who knew about Meridian. In less than two minutes, Cyrus had the list memorized, including pertinent information relating to the organization’s hierarchy. Next was a record of Alvares’s movements over the past six months. This log would allow him to locate Bolo Alvares. It showed everywhere the man had been and how long he had spent there. People were creatures of habit. Even drug lords.

The last folder contained pamphlets detailing the different vehicles known to frequent each of Alvares’s residences. The FBI and DEA used the information to help monitor and track the vast fleet of vehicles Alvares and his people used. Some of the information was important, some not at all. Cyrus memorized every bit of it. He would be walking into the proverbial lion’s den. The more information he had, the better prepared he would be for whatever he faced. He had a plan, but, as they say, no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

Almost ready to leave, Cyrus pulled up the left sleeve of his jacket and looked at his wrist. After studying his skin for a moment, he fished a small tube of superglue from his jacket pocket. He dabbed a bit of glue on the skin of his left wrist and blew on it to help the glue set. Once satisfied, he returned the tube to his pocket and pulled his sleeve back into place. He gathered up the files and headed for the library exit. Turning right when he reached the sidewalk, Cyrus became increasingly aware of his surroundings. The nagging tingle that had begun to pull at his senses when he’d arrived in D.C., only an hour before, had grown into an annoying irritation. He’d spent years avoiding situations that might land him on the radar of the Coalition. A confrontation with Alvares was virtually guaranteed to put him squarely in their spotlight.

He scanned the crowded street once more but still found nothing suspicious.

Of course not.

They weren’t onto him yet, but he knew that wouldn’t last for long. He was about to bring heat down on Alvares. By the time he was finished, Cyrus knew there would be no hiding from his old employers.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Thursday, 4:55 pm (5:55 pm Colorado Time)

The afternoon had passed quickly for Cyrus. He’d teleported to Miami and collected a small satchel containing the gear Nathan arranged for him. Next, he rented a small two-seater Bell helicopter from an airfield just outside of Santa Barbara. The flight to Las Vegas took almost two and a half hours, but it was still faster than driving. Upon landing, he took a cab to the nearest low-rent used car dealership he could find. There he purchased an old, red Ford F150. It was a 4x4 that was jacked up on aftermarket suspension. He paid cash and drove it off the lot within minutes of making his selection. The salesman was more than happy to cut corners on the paperwork for a customer paying cash.

A few blocks from the car dealership, Cyrus pulled the truck into an empty parking lot behind a boarded up service station. Looking around to ensure he was alone, he triggered the hood release and hopped from the truck. He took the satchel with him and leaned under the hood. A few minutes of work with a Leatherman multi-tool and he was finished. Pulling an old Smith and Wesson 357 Magnum out of the bag, he double checked its load before sliding it into the back of his jeans. He made sure his t-shirt covered the gun. Last, he took a small device out of the bag. He flipped a switch on it before placing it inside the heel of his boot.

Once the satchel was empty, he stuffed it behind the truck’s bench seat and climbed back behind the wheel. Then he pulled out onto the road and headed for the city limits. Fifteen minutes later, he was clear of Las Vegas and following a road that was virtually free of traffic. The four lane highway stretched out across the desert, disappearing with the endless sand and scrub at the horizon.

It took almost twenty minutes before Cyrus reached the entrance to an opulent upscale neighborhood, built squarely in the middle of nowhere. The housing development seemed a modern oasis springing from the middle of the open desert. A very plush, exclusive oasis, judging by the homes he passed as he turned into the neighborhood. Each home was two or three stories and extremely ornate in design. Every one of them was a mansion in its own right.

The neighborhood was laid out in ten-acre plots. Each lot an immaculate patch of green grass and thick plush foliage—not the sort of greenery common to homes of the region. The homeowners paid a high premium to maintain that level of gardening and lawn care. Most yards of Las Vegas homes tended to be covered with more gravel than grass. What was the point of trying to grow a lawn in the desert? Only the ultra-rich or the extremely foolish would fight nature in such a way. As Cyrus passed another sprawling estate covered in green grass and towering leafy trees, he considered that perhaps it required homeowners to be both ultra-rich and extremely foolish.

Nearing the back of the subdivision, his destination came into view. It was a double lot taking up the end of the cul-de-sac. This was the Alvares estate. The entire twenty-acre property was surrounded by a ten-foot-high security fence, lined on the inside by an expertly manicured hedge, which afforded those inside the grounds a fortifiable level of privacy.

About a hundred yards up the road, before he reached the gates leading to the Alvares estate, Cyrus saw a high aerial antenna set on the edge of a neighboring property. The top of the pole held a series of electronic devices. Several of them looked like weather sensors, the sort of high-end meteorological kits that people set up in their yards to transmit weather data to their computer or smartphones twenty-four hours a day. But Cyrus knew better. Some of the gear at the top of that pole was for evaluating weather conditions, but some of it was courtesy of a combined FBI/DEA task force that had been surveilling Alvares for the better part of the last three years. Cyrus knew the equipment contained several cameras that were filming and shooting still photos of people and cars approaching and leaving the Alvares estate.

As he drove past the surveillance station, he was careful to shield his face from the cameras. Showing up on the day’s surveillance logs would lead to a lot of questions he didn’t want asked. Luckily, thanks to the photos provided by Agent Shaw, Cyrus knew where the cameras were hidden. And, even if he didn’t have the inside knowledge, it wouldn’t have been difficult to guess. There was a high probability that Alvares was well aware of the surveillance as well. Such was the nature of drug enforcement at this level.

Once clear of the cameras, Cyrus dropped his left hand back to a comfortable position in the open driver side window. He drove up to the front gate of the estate without hesitation. Two guards were stationed at the pair of twelve-foot-high wrought iron gates. One guard remained in the small windowed shack beside the gate, while the other approached Cyrus’s truck.

Cyrus explained that he was here to see Adreakay Escobar, and he said that Chad Brewster sent him. The heavyset security guard looked at Cyrus suspiciously but said nothing. The guard backed away from the truck while keeping a close eye on it. Pulling a walkie-talkie from his belt, he spoke quietly into it. There was a response that Cyrus couldn’t make out. This was followed by a short, rapid-fire exchange between the guard and whoever was on the other end of the radio.

Cyrus watched the conversation, but no matter how he strained, he couldn’t make out what was being said. He considered the information he’d been provided. If it was accurate, the man he had asked for, Adreakay Escobar, was not present at the estate. Escobar should be back in Mexico visiting his sick mother. But the lengthy exchange he was witnessing concerned him. If his information wasn’t accurate, things were about to get complicated.

Finally, the guard seemed satisfied. He turned and headed for the guard shack. He spoke briefly with the man stationed there. A moment later, Cyrus heard the door open on the passenger side of the truck. The gate guard climbed in. Cyrus wasn’t entirely surprised to see that the man had a Glock leveled at his gut.

Using broken English, the guard instructed him to drive up to the main house. The gates began to slide open, a section retracting into the fence on each side of the drive. As soon as the gates reached their rest position, Cyrus dropped the gear selector into drive and slowly advanced up the driveway. He followed the two-lane paved road along its winding approach and through a small grove of thick trees, before the main house finally came into view.

The house was three stories tall and fashioned after an Eighteenth Century, Deep South, plantation mansion. There was a deep-set front porch that spanned the entire front of the enormous white-washed façade. A third story veranda overlooked the front of the estate and was supported by a half-dozen enormous white pillars.

At the prompting of the armed passenger, Cyrus parked under the two-story-high portico immediately before the home’s pair of massive French doors. He left the keys in the ignition and climbed down from the truck. Another armed Hispanic man was waiting to lead him to the front door of the house, where he was searched. They took his wallet and the Magnum. His hands were unceremoniously handcuffed behind his back, and he was led into the enormous entryway of the house.

Two armed men escorted Cyrus into a large library, just off the tiled entryway. The room was richly appointed with thick dark carpeting, while the walls were lined with beautiful oak bookcases reaching from the floor to the ten-foot-high ceiling, ringed with ornate molding. But while the woodworking of the bookcases was grand in craftsmanship and artistry, the shelves didn’t hold a single book. Wide shelves were lined with precisely detailed, high quality models of sports cars and exotic aircraft. The room was large, at twenty by thirty. An over-stuffed sofa and a pair of matching chairs sat in a group at one end of the room while a ten-foot-long conference table occupied the center. The other end of the room was dominated by a massive, antique oak desk that stood before a wide bay window overlooking the painstakingly manicured lawns.

The two armed men led Cyrus into the room but offered no explanation. He looked around, taking everything in. Given his current situation, the room’s details might hold the key to his survival. Coming here was a calculated risk. Success was by no means guaranteed. He needed to be at the top of his game.

The toy models lining the bookshelves offered no help at all. There was nothing he could use as a weapon. The same could be said for the large conference table. It was completely empty. The six office chairs surrounding it were equally useless. While the large antique desk should’ve been the best place to find an improvised weapon, its surface held only two items, a small antique desk lamp and a closed laptop computer.

Cyrus looked at the guard standing to his right and the other guard off further to his left. They were both armed with Glock 9mm semi-automatics. All was not lost. They’d confiscated his .357 revolver, but that was to be expected. It was a throw-down gun anyway. With its serial number filed off, it couldn’t be traced. He’d expected it to be taken as soon as he arrived. It would’ve been more conspicuous to arrive unarmed. No, there were plenty of weapons on hand after all. Liberating a sidearm from one of his escorts would prove little trouble. That sorted, it was time for Cyrus to start pushing some buttons.