Gone

CHAPTER 91

It looked like the set of a spaghetti Western, or maybe Wile E. Coyote’s stomping grounds, rolling beneath my feet by midnight that night. Below was a wilderness of windswept desert, small buttes, and mesas. All of it was tinged green through the night-vision goggles I was wearing.

I shifted my weight to wake my numb butt, perched on the cold, hard vibrating metal floor of the Black Hawk chopper. It’d taken some favor calling and even more finagling by Emily, but in the end, we were able to go on the raid on one of the supporting Black Hawks with the FBI’s hostage rescue team and some CIA personnel. Emily had emphasized my past personal contact with Perrine and my ability to ID him. I could ID him, all right, and was really looking forward to some more personal contact.

The dozen nap-of-the-earth airborne helicopters in our armada included Black Hawks and Little Birds, two Cobra attack helicopters, and even a twin-bladed Chinook filled with a contingent of first-recon marines. Far above, somewhere among the glittering stars, there was even an AC-130 Spectre gunship bristling with machine guns and mortars and Hellfire missiles to back us up.

Not knowing what to expect, the Pentagon had broken out the entire toolbox. Which couldn’t have made me happier. Perrine and his cartel were for all intents and purposes no different from an enemy army. It was finally time to deal with them as such.

It had been mostly flat desert, but as we flew, the terrain suddenly started to change. From the flat desert floor, low, corrugated hills with more vegetation began to rise. Soon the hills turned into majestic, rugged cliffs and sheer mountain-stream-filled valleys.

“We are coming in, in five,” a voice called over the radio. A minute later, we went past a ridge, and Perrine’s house was there. The Unabomber’s cabin this was not. The satellite images hadn’t done it justice. The dramatically lit, breathtaking French Second Empire mansion looked like a block someone had airlifted from the Champs-Élyssés and plunked down in the middle of the Mexican mountains. Every one of its lights was blazing on its marble steps and columns like it was an opera house on opening night.

There were soccer fields, several barns, something that looked like a racetrack. At the rear of the house were illuminated gardens that tiered down and down to a massive, magnificent, softly lit tiled pool. Beyond the pool was a runway with three corporate jets parked at its end.

No wonder the US government hadn’t told the Mexicans about the raid. How could this opulent palace so boldly exist out here in the middle of nowhere without their knowledge or consent?

The answer was, it couldn’t. Staring down at the compound, I knew the rumor that Perrine was more powerful than the Mexican president was a hundred percent true.