Foreign Agent

CHAPTER 27

The room wasn’t much, but it didn’t need to be. Sacha Baseyev was only passing through.

There was bottled water in the fridge, along with a few beers. Not enough, though, to get drunk and do something stupid. Probably a smart move on the owner’s part. His wasn’t the kind of business you wanted to draw attention to.

Dinner had been dropped off by a heavyset Mexican in a white cowboy hat. He didn’t speak.

The food came from the restaurant down the street. It tasted like baby goat. Baseyev ate a few bites, then set it aside. He didn’t have much of an appetite.

A doctor came by and gave him a physical. The old man reeked of tequila. He listened to his heart and lungs, took his blood pressure, and had him blow into a spirometer.

He had him walk from one end of the room to the other, do a set of deep knee bends, some push-ups. He then asked a series of questions in very bad English. Baseyev lied in response.

The doctor wrote everything down in a small blue notebook.

When he was done, the doc patted Baseyev on the shoulder and made the sign of the cross over him. He had passed.

A couple of hours later the Mexican in the cowboy hat came back and motioned for Baseyev to follow him. He had a truck outside. They climbed in.

The man drove him to an old machinist’s shop. They entered from the back and only turned on a couple of lights. It was after-hours and they were the only ones there.

In the main work area, a collection of scuba equipment had been laid out on a stained table. Nearby was an old television set and an even older VCR.

The man in the cowboy hat pointed to a folding chair. Baseyev took a seat. The man turned on the TV, inserted a VHS tape into the dusty machine, and pushed Play.

The screen sputtered to life with a scuba demonstration video that looked like it had been filmed in the 1980s. Baseyev attempted to explain that he didn’t need to watch the video, but the man in the hat was quite insistent. Apparently, his organization had standards.

The video ran for forty-five useless minutes. When it was complete, the man in the hat had Baseyev assemble the scuba equipment and put it all on.

He pantomimed for Baseyev to demonstrate his familiarity with the gear, that he understood how to purge his mask and clear his ears. Baseyev did as instructed.

He then removed a tailor’s tape and measured him, entering the numbers into a text message on his cell phone and sending them off. And with that, they were done.

The man in the cowboy hat took Baseyev back to his room and dropped him off, all without uttering a single word.

That was fine with Baseyev. He wasn’t paying for conversation. In fact, the less anyone spoke to him, the better.

The man in the hat had pointed at his watch, indicating what time he would be back, and then motioned for Baseyev to get some sleep.

Sleep sounded like a good idea. He was going to need his strength for what lay ahead.

Removing his clothes, he stretched out on the bed. He had cracked the window to get some air in the room. Now, from off in the distance, he could hear the low rumble of thunder.

There had been a chance of storms in the forecast, but he had hoped they would slow before they arrived over this part of Mexico. There had already been too much rain. If the next storm was big enough, it might shut things down altogether.

His mind raced as he lay there on the bed — something he didn’t usually let it do. He could feel the walls closing in on him, the air being squeezed from his body. Claustrophobia.

The more he tried to get his thoughts under control, the more they raced.

Getting up, he retrieved one of the pills he had brought and snapped it in half. Just enough to help him sleep.

Opening up a bottle of water, he swallowed it and lay back down. Still the same problem.

He had never spoken of his claustrophobia. It wasn’t anyone’s business. Professionally, it had never been a problem.

Personally, it was another thick, white ribbon of scar tissue that he carried from that horrific day in Beslan. He knew it was all in his mind — that it was a toxic by-product of being crammed into the gymnasium, in the heat, with all of those people. Then the fire. Then the stampede. Losing his sister, Dasha. His best friend, Grigori.

It was his psyche, what little he understood of it, looking for a way out. A way to protect itself, to protect him, from the trauma.

He had learned to deal with it, like everything else. Things were what they were. He could either adapt and overcome, or wither and die. He was too angry to die. There was far too much that still needed doing. His veins needed to flow with ice water.

He had survived, while his family, friends, and teachers had died. He had a responsibility — an obligation to persevere.

The sedative eventually took hold and quieted his mind enough for him to fall asleep, but only fitfully.

When the knock came upon his door, he felt worse than if he hadn’t gotten any sleep at all. The man in the cowboy hat brought him tamales, with a large cup of coffee, and indicated that he’d be back at the bottom of the hour.

Baseyev knew it was important to eat. Setting the coffee aside, he focused on the food.

After finishing half of the meal, he wiped down the room and the tiny attached bathroom. Whether anyone would ever know he had been here or not, he didn’t like to leave a trail.

He finished his food just as the man returned. Grabbing his coffee, a bottle of water, and the few possessions he had on his person, he followed him downstairs and out to his truck.

It was dark, but Baseyev could see that the ground was soaked. In the few hours he’d been asleep, it had rained — a lot. Despite the chilly air, he began to perspire.

The drive took more than three hours. They headed north toward Laredo and the Mexican border with Texas. Their destination was a region called Llanos Esteparios Noreste.

The area was home to Lake Venustiano Carranza and the Salado and Sabinas Hidalgo Rivers, as well as the Camarón and Galameses creeks. It was also home to the only known entrance of an extensive natural cave system that burrowed beneath the Rio Grande and stretched just across the border into the United States. It was accessed via a man-made tunnel on a privately held ranch.

Driving up to a service gate, the man in the hat hopped out, removed the chain, and drove his truck through. After he locked the gate behind him, they continued on.

It took twenty minutes on a dirt road that seemed to stretch forever, before they saw what they were looking for.

The clustered ranch outbuildings were made from cinder blocks and corrugated metal. The man in the hat parked in front of the widest one, but only long enough to activate the large overhead door and drive inside.

An old Jeep CJ7 was already parked there. Baseyev’s guide was in the process of unloading all of the equipment.

The greatest risk Baseyev faced, besides decompression sickness or drowning, was getting lost in the cave system. Hence the guide.

Most of the system was flooded. Because of the narrow passages they would have to navigate, they would be carrying their diving cylinders “sidemount”-style, along their hips, as opposed to on their backs. And the cylinders would be smaller than what open-water scuba divers normally used. They would have to be judicious with how much breathing gas they consumed.

That had been one of Baseyev’s biggest concerns. If there had been too much rain and the “dry” portions of the cave system had filled up with water, they wouldn’t have enough breathing gas to make the trip.

Once all of the gear was stacked on a flatbed cart, the man in the hat removed a set of keys and opened a door on the other side of the garage-like space.

The man-made tunnel hairpinned back and forth and was lined with bare bulbs covered with wire baskets. It was a no frills venture, the money having been spent on excavating the tunnel and navigating the cave system.

The ranch, and thereby the cave system, belonged to Los Zetas — commandos who had deserted the Mexican army to become enforcers for the Gulf Cartel. Eventually, they established their own criminal syndicate. The U.S. government considered them to be the most technologically advanced, sophisticated, and dangerous cartel operating in Mexico.

When the previous owner of the ranch had stumbled upon the caves, he figured Los Zetas would jump at the chance to use them to run drugs. But being underwater with so many tight passages made it ineffective for moving drugs. That didn’t mean, though, that Los Zetas didn’t have other ideas.

They were smart enough to realize that certain people would pay big money for a sure-thing entry into the United States — especially people who considered being smuggled overland by a coyote too fraught with risk. Baseyev was one of those people.

He could have used his Lufthansa alias, but he didn’t want any record of his having entered the United States. Not with what he had planned. It was too risky. In order to not leave a trail, he had to do it this way. He had no choice.

At the bottom of the tunnel was a ramp that dropped into a pool of crystal-clear water and disappeared beneath the far wall of the cave. Baseyev could feel his heart rate beginning to increase.

The guide, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen years old, tossed him a dry suit and told him to get dressed. Baseyev popped one of his pills and washed it down with the rest of his water.

As he got ready, his guide unrolled a waterproof map and walked him through the route they were going to take. They confirmed hand signals and went through a host of final checklist items, including the triple-checking of their gear.

With everything ready, the guide spoke a few words to the man in the hat, turned on his primary light, and stepped forward into the water.

Baseyev followed as the man in the hat took the flatbed cart and returned back up the tunnel.

Taking several deep breaths to saturate his lungs, he put the regulator in his mouth and dropped below the surface.

The moment he did, the claustrophobia began to wrap its ice-cold arms around his chest and squeeze. He told himself to focus on what lay ahead — on the United States and what he would achieve.

As he scissored his legs through the water, his heart began to pump, his body began to warm, and the sedative moved through his bloodstream. Slowly, his panic started to recede.

As it did, his mind cleared, and he began to contemplate how to handle his guide once they were safely on the other side.