In Desperation

55

Near Phoenix, Arizona

Angel gazed upon the girl in the trunk.

So this was the famous face that had stared at him from newscasts. He took his time appraising her, the way a collector assesses art.

She exuded fear.

But he saw something more. A mixture of courage, defiance and, despite her ordeal, the polish of a privileged middle-class American life that was a universe away from the barrio he had known at her age.

Bound with silver tape, gagged with a blue bandanna, packaged in jeans and a pink embroidered T-shirt, this was the prize in his final job, his ticket out of narco world before someone put him in his grave.

He lowered the trunk with consideration, closing it gently with a snap.

“Let’s go,” he said to Limon-Rocha and Tecaza.

Angel sat in the rear seat of the car among their luggage and the equipment he required for finishing the job. Tecaza, behind the wheel, found him in the rearview mirror.

“Where are we going?”

“Head for Phoenix.”

“What are the next steps for the operation?” Limon-Rocha asked.

Angel looked away, preferring not to talk about a job. Instead he reflected on the landscape and how he’d escaped capture; how he’d traveled by using his youth to persuade strangers to give him a ride.

“I beg you. My mother is dying. I have no money.”

The incident on the bus had been a close one but Angel was confident in his training, proud of his survival skills. He didn’t know about these two ex-soldiers, who’d had their own narrow escape from FBI, as he’d seen on a news report he’d watched on a TV in a diner at a small-town gas station.

Assassinations in the U.S. were always a problem.

Unlike jobs in Mexico, they had no guarantee of support from dirty cops on the payroll, and now, because this one was high-profile, they were more exposed. Everyone’s picture was shown in the press. Angel shrugged.

They still held the most vital piece: the girl.

He considered her again.

She did not come from the drug world like most of his targets. Yet in the moments he’d studied her, he’d found something about her he resented. As a top sicario for the cartel he had enjoyed the world in luxury, but looking upon the girl, this innocent from a wealthier class, took him back to what he had come from.

Angel could smell the dump, taste the despair of the tumbledown shack his family had lived in, feel the shame of other kids laughing at his drunken father picking through the trash.

No, Angel would have no trouble completing this job. It was just a matter of choosing a method, a thought that gave rise to a familiar worry.

Will she haunt me like the others haunt me?

Angel’s cell phone rang and he fished it out of his backpack. The phone was a special design costing about $35,000 and stolen from the U.S. military. The cartel had obtained ten through a black market source. The phone’s signals were scrambled, encrypted, then scrambled and encrypted repeatedly. For now, the calls were untraceable.

The instant Angel answered, Thirty said, “Did you find them?”

“Yes.”

“And did you inspect the asset?”

“Yes. It looks good.”

“There’s been a twist.”

“What is it?”

“The man with our property has finally contacted us. He wants to make your job easier for you.”

“How?”

“He wants to meet, to exchange our property for the seized asset. As we’d planned, he feels pressured to come to us. We will arrange it. One of the soldiers will know the locations. Are they present?”

Angel glanced at them in the front of the car.

“Yes.”

“Put the older one on.”

“Ruiz, for you.”

Angel passed up his phone and watched several moments of nods punctuated with, “ Si, si. I know it. We will.” When Ruiz returned the phone, Angel asked a question of Thirty.

“How do we know our contact won’t bring problems wearing badges with him. They are getting closer.”

“We possess the asset-that’s our strength. His weakness is his greed. We know that he needs the asset and our property. If he involves other parties, he will not achieve his goal.”

“It’s dangerous for us.”

“There is no other way. We have arranged shipment of the special material for you to ensure that he will surrender all of our property. It is all in place, waiting for you.”

“All right.”

“We are not happy about the close calls we’ve had. This attention creates difficulties. But we must use it to our advantage. We must not back down. This is a time of intense interest. It is precisely the time to tell the world that if you fuck with us, you die. The arrogance of the dirty American cops and the sniveling messenger, to steal from the Norte Cartel, the cartel Zartosa built upon the graves of his family, is an insult. We are at war. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Zartosa’s orders are to kill them all.”