Target America

2

Dressed in their assault gear, Federal Agent Christopher Hitch and a dozen other ICE agents (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) stood in the dark over the tunnel on the US side of the border. Twelve men had been all that Hitch could muster on short notice after a Mexican informant had tipped him off about the tunnel, saying that a special shipment of some kind was coming across at midnight. He would have preferred double the manpower, but the limited window had given him less than an hour to put together a tactical crew. The local sheriff had arrived with a couple of young deputies, but local law enforcement wasn’t good for much more than securing the scene.

The sheriff hitched his trousers up over his ample belly and stood with the heel of his hand resting on the pearl-handled butt of his revolver. “I advise you to wait, Agent Hicks.”

“The name’s Hitch.”

“My mistake.” The sheriff spat a gooey wad of tobacco juice onto the ground. “My advice is to get the authorities across the border in Chihuahua to secure the other end of this poop shoot before you fellas even think about goin’ down there. My daddy was a tunnel rat in Cu Chi back in ’68. He told some pretty gory tales about what can happen to a man down there in the dirty dark.”

Hitch was unimpressed. “Yeah, well, this isn’t Vietnam, Sheriff, and I’m not giving the Mexican police a chance to warn these guys.” He turned to his men. “Lock and load. I’ll be the first man down.” He primed his MP5 and switched on the flashlight mounted within the fore stock.

“Now, let’s think about this a minute,” the sheriff cautioned. “You people don’t even have night vision, for Jesus’s sake! Why don’t we just hide out up here and wait ’til the buggers come up? My God, man, you people could be walkin’ into an ambush down there!”

Hitch was beginning to wonder if the sheriff might be on Antonio Castañeda’s payroll. There were rumors the drug lord had made him a lucrative offer through an intermediary. “I’ll be counting on you to look after things up here, Sheriff. You can handle that much, I assume?”

The sheriff nodded. “Oh, we can handle it, but if you men get into trouble down there, you’re on your own, and I mean it. My boys aren’t trained for this kinda thing, and I’m too damn fat to be dangling myself over a bottomless pit in the middle of the night.”

“No one’s asking you to do anything above your pay grade, Sheriff.”

Nettled, the sheriff turned to his deputies, shaking his head and gesturing. “Let’s stand over here outta the way, men. We don’t wanna knock nobody down the mine shaft.”

Hitch mounted the ladder, descending with the other ICE agents lining up to follow after him. “Keep six feet between each man.”

Standing well back from the mouth of the shaft, one of the sheriff’s deputies shifted his weight uncomfortably. “How deep would you say that thing is, Sheriff?”

“Gotta be a hundred feet or more,” the sheriff said. “I aimed my Streamlight straight down and couldn’t hardly see the bottom.”

The deputy let out a low whistle. “You wouldn’t get me down there, not unless you dropped a grenade down it first.”

The sheriff frowned. “That would kindly spoil the surprise there, Jeff.”

The second deputy stood biting his thumbnail, looking around nervously. He’d been on the Castañeda payroll for the better part of eight months now, and he was more than a little worried that the tunnel’s discovery could lead to him being ratted out by any captured Mexicans. “Um, Sheriff, do you care if I smoke?”

“No, Landry,” the sheriff said sardonically. “Why don’t ya build yourself a nice big bonfire yonder; let every drug smuggler in Mexico know we’re out here. Hey, you wanna use the flare gun in my trunk — or do ya think that might be a little obvious?”

Landry cringed, realizing the sheriff must already be suspicious of him. “I asked first, didn’t I?”

“That, ya did, son. That, ya did.”

Agent Hitch was mindful of his footing as he descended the ladder, but the rungs were slippery against the hard rubber of his Vibram boot soles. Twice his foot slipped off, forcing him to grab onto the rung with the crook of his arm. The bulk of his gear made the going awkward, and he hoped the men above were having less trouble. Anyone who fell would take every man below him all the way to the bottom.

After what felt like an eternity, he saw a dim light below, and his heart began to race. If the lights were on down there, someone was using the tunnel. He whispered up a warning about the light and continued down. Hitch arrived at the bottom a minute later and stepped from the ladder onto terra firma: a concrete landing with space enough to stack large quantities of product off to the side. A pile of nylon straps and cargo hooks told him that the smugglers were using a winch to pull the drugs to the surface.

Looking south, the tunnel curved slightly to the east, reducing visibility to about eighty feet. An incandescent lightbulb burned every twenty feet or so, screwed into sockets attached to a long wire that must have been strung the length of the passage. Within two minutes, the rest of the ICE agents were on the ground and gathered tightly together at the foot of the ladder.

One of the men bumped into a shoddy fuse panel on the wall, and sparks flew, throwing the tunnel into blackness. A few seconds later, the lights came back on by themselves.

“What the fuck did you do?” Hitch hissed.

“Nothing,” the agent answered. “I barely touched the damn thing. There’s no room to move down here.”

Hitch knew they might have just screwed the pooch, but there was nothing to do now but press on. “Okay… shit.” He gripped the MP5. “I’ve got point. Gutierrez, you’re on my six. Be ready to give orders in Spanish when we run into these people. No one fires unless we’re fired upon. Look sharp now! Let’s go.”

They moved out single file down the tunnel.

Up above, the sheriff was leaning against the fender of his cruiser with his arms folded when a semi — tractor trailer came rumbling down the dirt road, gearing down and slowing near the entrance to the property. He stood up straight. “I’d say this is an odd hour for a cattle hauler to show up.” He spit another wad of tobacco juice. “Particularly when there ain’t no cattle here to haul.”

Deputy Landry recognized the yellow rig at once, knowing the driver to be one of Castañeda’s men. “I’ll see what he’s up to.” He set off at a fast trot.

“Hey, wait here!” the sheriff called, unsnapping the strap on his holster.

But Landry kept going.

The sheriff looked at Jeff. “Remind me to hunt us up a replacement for his stupid ass. That boy’s dumber’n shit.”

Jeff grunted, knowing that Landry was on the take, but not wanting to be the one to tell.

Seventy yards away, Landry was waving his arms to stop the rig as it pulled in. He jogged around to the driver’s side, recognizing the driver and grabbing the handhold to haul himself up onto the running board. “You gotta get the hell outta here, amigo. ICE is down there in the tunnel right now! Somebody called the feds and ratted the whole thing out.”

The Castañeda man looked around wildly. Spotting the cruisers and ICE vehicles parked on the far side of the corral for the first time, he grabbed a Tec-9 machine pistol from his lap and sprayed Landry point-blank with a twelve-round burst of 9 mm fire.

Landry flew off the running board, landing flat on his back with his neck and face blown apart. The Castañeda jammed the rig into gear and floored the accelerator, aiming for the cruiser where the sheriff and Deputy Jeff stood gaping.

“Holy Christ!” The sheriff jerked a .357 from its holster, emptying all six rounds at the oncoming tractor trailer. Four of the bullets struck the windshield on the driver’s side, but the rig kept coming.

Jeff drew his 9 mm Beretta and stood firing at the grill of the truck, while the sheriff skirted to the other side of the cruiser, dumping the empty shells from the cylinder as he moved. Jeff jumped aside as the rig zoomed between them and plowed into the cruiser, bashing it easily aside to roar on toward the ICE vehicles.

The sheriff snatched a speed loader from his belt to reload the .357 with six Federal hollow-points, running after the rig as fast as his squat little legs could carry him.

Jeff chased along after the cab on the passenger side, firing the last three rounds from the magazine into the front right tire. The rig crashed into the parked ICE vehicles and came to a halt. Jeff was fumbling to insert a fresh mag into the Beretta when the Castañeda bailed out on the passenger side, landing in the dirt before him to level the Tec-9 on Jeff’s belly, his eyes appearing flat and reptilian in the dim light.

Jeff froze, the fresh mag jammed into the butt of his pistol with the bullets facing backward. “Don’t shoot me!”

The Mexican cut him down and dashed toward the rear of the trailer.

The sheriff was running up the driver’s side toward the cab when he heard the burst of fire that blasted Jeff’s guts open. He jerked to a stop, pivoted on his heel, and waited to see where the Mexican would show his face. Spitting tobacco juice, he called out, “Donde estás, cabrón?” Where are you, asshole?

The Castañeda sprang out from behind the trailer, and both men fired at the same time. The sheriff’s hollow-point round struck the Castañeda right between the eyes to blow out the back of his skull, and the Castañeda’s four-round burst struck the sheriff in the belly, dropping him to his knees.

“Goddamn!” the old man groaned in agony. “What I get for not wearin’ a vest.”

He didn’t have a portable radio on him, and the cruiser was fifty yards away, which may as well have been fifty miles. He was in too much pain to move, bleeding out fast. He swiped at the blood pooling in his shirt and looked at his hand. Even in the night, he could see the blood was very dark, realizing he’d been hit in the liver.

“Must be why it hurts so damn bad.” He rolled onto his back, tossing the .357 aside. “I shoulda taken Castañeda up on that offer,” he muttered. “I coulda been in Tahiti.”