Gone

CHAPTER 90

After another half hour, it looked like we’d gotten everything we were going to get out of Tomás Neves.

Between dunkings, he told us he had taken Perrine to a San Diego cartel house with a tunnel in its basement that went under the border. The tunnel exited in a tire shop, where a waiting car took Perrine to a plane at the Tijuana Airport.

He claimed that the plane had taken Perrine to an estate in Mexico near Real del Monte, where a party was going to take place. A chatty Salvajes cartel underling with whom he had coordinated Perrine’s transfer had bragged to him that his older brother had been invited to a black-tie function there tonight for what was called a bonus ceremony.

Suitcases of money would be ceremoniously handed out as hookers were brought in by the busload. Neves told us it was common knowledge that nothing made Perrine happier than drinking and carousing with his most efficient and most brutal soldiers.

At first, I thought, What a load of bullshit, but then I thought again. Perrine was amazingly cocky and arrogant. What better way to show how ballsy he was than to start a war with the US and then throw a party for his men.

As Neves was disseminating this information, I was in constant contact with Emily, who was outside, working her phone, firing off everything we learned to the LAPD task force so they could compare it with the flowchart we’d been building on Perrine’s cartel. The cops and agents back at the shop were, in turn, collating everything through FBI, CIA, NSA, and DEA databases.

The first glimmer of hope came when she called into the basement.

“San Diego SWAT just hit the address Neves gave us, Mike. There really is a tunnel. And Mexican authorities confirm that a private plane did leave from the Tijuana Airport this morning at eight a.m.”

We were passing around a box of Pop-Tarts twenty minutes later, gearing up for some more tubby time with Neves, when there was a knock on the sliding-glass door.

“A DEA undercover in Cancún just drove up to a hacienda outside Real del Monte,” Emily said breathlessly as I opened it. “He got a hit on one of the Salvajes cell numbers we have. Not only that, but the CIA just learned that the estate in question used to be owned by Perrine! Word is, they’re taking this as actionable intelligence. We need to get rolling. JSOC is calling a meeting back at the base.”

I left Neves with Diaz and Bassman and raced with Emily back to the SoCal Logistics Airport. After we badged our way through the guard booth, it was obvious some fires had been lit.

It was like someone had dropped a pinball into one of those kinetic mousetrap sculptures. Uniformed soldiers were pouring in and out of the dormitories and hangars. Dozens of bearded Navy SEALs and Delta Force operators clustered in small groups, loading guns and equipment kit bags as soldiers with clipboards did flight prep on the Black Hawk and Little Bird choppers out on the tarmac.

As we walked into the task force’s war room, a video teleconference with Washington and one of the JSOC generals was under way. Beside it in the split screen was a satellite image of a compound with a huge house, a pool, gardens.

Colonel D’Ambrose, sitting at the rear of the room, cracked the door and came out when he saw us.

“They sent up a drone,” he said. “What your contact said is true. There’s an enormous amount of activity going on at the estate. Not only that, CIA is still doing some forensic work on the imaging, but they think they spotted Perrine riding a horse on one of the mountain trails. The Defense Department is in conference right now with the president. We just got word that the president wants Perrine in a body bag. We’re going in tonight under cover of darkness with everything we got.”

“We did it, Mike? We found Perrine?” Emily said as she collapsed in an office chair, rubbing her eyes.

“I don’t give a shit about him, Emily,” I said. “We need to find my family.”