Hunt the Jackal

Chapter Nine

Crocker climbed the wooden steps two at a time up to the second floor, entered the open door to his right, and saw Lane standing with his back to him speaking on an encrypted phone-which he indentified immediately from the configuration of the instrument and the key on top.

Lane, seeing Crocker, waved him away and snapped his fingers at Karen Steele, who was leaning on the edge of a metal desk talking to a guy with buzz-cut dark hair, who Crocker assumed was Bob Marion.

“Sorry, guy,” she said, hurrying over to Crocker and holding up a hand to push him back, “you’re not allowed in here.”

“The hell I’m not. I need to talk to Lane,” Crocker answered, shoving her hand off his chest.

“You can’t!”

Crocker quickly glanced at the clock on the wall. Another fifteen minutes had passed. He said, “Lane, if we’re going to launch this mission tonight, we need to start making plans.”

Lane covered the receiver and shouted, “I know that. Don’t you think I fucking know that?”

“Then hurry up. I want to rescue these women while they’re still alive.”

He knew enough not to take it personally. Tempers frayed sometimes when type A personalities were keyed up and on edge. The important thing was that they were all fighting for the same cause and had a lot at stake.

Fight in people was a positive, not a negative, Crocker reminded himself. It produced good results when directed intelligently, which was what he hoped was going to happen now, as they all sat in the living room-he, Davis, Mancini, Akil, Suárez, Lane, Nieves, Karen Steele, and the wiry guy with the smirk on his face and buzz cut whom he still hadn’t been introduced to but assumed was Bob Marion-listening to the sheriff of Yavapai County, Arizona, describe how a tip phoned into Crime Stoppers led them to an airstrip outside Flagstaff and a flight piloted by a man named Joss Clemson that terminated in Guadalajara.

Karen Steele explained that from the beginning she and other cartel specialists had suspected Los Zetas, in part because of the group’s global ambitions and diversity. Los Zetas, unlike the other leading cartels, were involved in satellite businesses, including the theft of petroleum from the state-owned oil company, PEMEX, software and product piracy, prostitution, human smuggling, extortion, money laundering, assassination for hire, auto theft, and robbery. A July 25, 2011, White House executive order named them a transnational crime threat to U.S. national security.

Sheriff Higgins cut in to add that the cartel had become a major crime threat in over a thousand cities and towns in the United States. He related how a colleague of his, who was the police chief of Champaign, Illinois, had recently arrested three Zetas members in connection with a murder in a downtown garage. Subsequent to that, the chief started receiving calls on his cell and home phones warning him to release the men and threatening his wife and children.

“They knew the address of his wife’s place of work and where his boys went to school,” said Sheriff Higgins. “They’re scared of no one.”

Next, Steele explained that Los Zetas had evolved from a local Mafia to a quasipolitical organization with international ambitions. They had created alliances with other national criminal groups like Los Kaibiles in Guatemala, as well as the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba, and were known to cooperate with terrorists like Hezbollah.

“If they’re such a threat, why haven’t we been more aggressive in going after them?” Mancini asked.

“They make a lot of money,” Lane answered.

“What does that mean?”

“Their money-laundering activities provide a huge stream of income for major U.S. banks.”

Crocker’s stomach started to turn. The unethical activities of U.S. financial companies and banks, and the fact that they often operated against the interests of the U.S. government and the American people, formed a subject that he didn’t understand that well, but he knew enough to know it stank. Massive greed of that sort disgusted him.

Steele introduced the man with the short black hair. He was Bob Marion, a former CIA analyst who now worked as a high-level security consultant for several large multinational companies. His specialty, he said, was the Mexican cartels and their financial activities.

As coffee was served, Marion explained that since a number of Zetas leaders had been killed and arrested in 2011 and 2012, including two of its founders, Heriberto Lazcano, a.k.a. El Bronce, and Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, a.k.a. Z-40, some individual cell leaders had become more ambitious and started to advance their own agendas.

One of these, a man named Ivan Jouma, was particularly pernicious, and even articulated a pseudoideological and quasimythical justification for his group’s existence. “He orders extreme, symbolic violence to deal with his enemies,” Marion remarked. “And projects a Robin Hood-type image to the poor by donating food and medical care and funding and building schools.”

“In other words, he’s building a popular following,” Lane interjected.

“He’s extremely active right now,” Bob Marion continued, “and looking for ways to add to his growing legend. He’s also the man who we believe kidnapped Lisa and Olivia Clark and is holding them hostage.”

“Why?”

“To bolster his image as a Mexican nationalist and folk figure with a quality that’s known as duende.”

“What’s duende?” Crocker asked.

“The ability to attract people through personal magnetism.”

Crocker didn’t give a shit about his charm. “Tell me about his background.”

“His father was a Syrian immigrant and small landowner. His mother, a Sonoran Indian from the west coast. He was raised by his mother’s family and recruited into the Mexican Army’s elite Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales-GAFE-at the age of nineteen. We know that he was a member of a GAFE unit that received urban warfare training from our Special Forces. He deserted with Lieutenant Osiel Cárdenas Guillén in 1999 to provide security for the Gulf cartel. And split from the Gulf cartel in 2010 to join Los Zetas. For the last three years, he’s been running his own cell within that organization, and is considered aggressive and ambitious.”

Crocker had helped train a group of Mexican paratroopers at Fort Bragg in the mid-nineties. “You have a photo?” he asked.

“Here are two, before and after he was shot in the face during a shootout with the Gulf cartel in late 2010,” Marion answered, sliding them in front of him. “As you can see, he underwent some extensive plastic surgery.”

Crocker first studied the newer picture, which reminded him of a Mexican Mickey Rourke because of the wise-guy sneer and long, stringy hair. The contrast between it and the older photo was considerable. The hungry expression in the eyes and mouth struck him. “Ivan, right?”

“Ivan Jouma, known to most people as El Chacal.”

“I think I might have trained this guy in a fast-roping, rappelling, and climbing course at Fort Bragg, around 1996.”

“That’s possible.”

“Where is he now?” Crocker asked, remembering a charming, hard-charging young man who seemed much more alert than the others, played the guitar and sang, and told stories about his uncle, who he claimed was a sorcerer.

Marion said, “I want to answer your question, but first I need you to excuse me for a minute. I’ll be back.”

Crocker looked at his watch. It was almost 2300. Time was clicking past as they talked.

He walked over to Lane and pointed to his timepiece.

“I know,” Lane said.

“Then what the fuck are we waiting for?”

“You’ll see.”

Ten minutes later, car doors slammed outside and CIA station chief Max Jenson entered with a Hispanic deputy. Jenson was a tall fair-haired man in his late forties who looked as big and strong as a defensive tackle. He leaned on the edge of a table and asked for a quick update, which Lane provided.

Then Marion returned with a short woman who wore a black-and-silver wrestler’s mask. He said, “This is Maria. She and other members of her family have been working for El Chacal for years. Now she’s cooperating with us.”

Ivan Jouma, the Jackal, lay in a lounge chair watching a prerelease DVD of The Lone Ranger starring Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp. What he saw was a working edit without music or sound effects. When Depp first appeared on the screen dressed as a bare-chested Tonto with white-and-black face paint and a black crow on his head, Ivan frowned.

“What the fuck?” he asked in Spanish. “Is he trying to look like a brujo or a nagual? Or is he making a joke?”

“I can’t tell,” the gray-haired doctor answered as he measured Jouma’s blood pressure. He knew that a brujo was an Indian witch doctor and a nagual someone who reputedly had the ability to transform into an animal. But as a man deeply rooted in science, he didn’t believe in either.

“How are the gringas?” Ivan asked.

“The mother became very agitated and had to be sedated, but the younger one is calm.”

“Good-looking ladies. I wonder what they’re worth.”

“How is your appetite, Jefe?” asked the doctor, changing the subject and pressing the skin under Ivan’s right ribs.

“Bad.” Ivan winced.

“Pain?”

“All the time.”

“Energy level?”

“Sucks.”

The doctor stopped, lowered Ivan’s shirt, and checked the results of the latest blood tests, which revealed that the hepatitis C type 1 that his client had been suffering from for years had reached the acute stage.

“What do you think, Doc?” Jouma asked.

The doctor rubbed his chin. In his estimation, the infection caused by the virus now affected eighty-five percent of Jouma’s liver. The oral ribavirin he’d given him and the interferon alphas he had injected twice a week for the last three years were no longer working. The side effects of the interferon included agitation, depression, and flulike symptoms.

Jouma froze the film on a frame of Johnny Depp walking along the top of a moving train. “If you have something to tell me, give it to me like a man,” he ordered. “Don’t be afraid.”

The doctor picked a folder off the cabinet to his right that had Olivia Clark’s name on it. After quickly confirming that the results of the recent blood tests matched the information on her stolen medical chart, he said, “Jefe, I recommend that we go ahead with the procedure.”

Jouma nodded and popped an Altoids peppermint into his dry mouth. “Fine. If that’s your opinion, we do it.”

The doctor cleared his throat. He wanted to clearly explain the risks, which included the body’s rejection of the new organ, infection, depression caused by the very long period of convalescence, and the danger of chemical dependency because of the need for strong painkillers.

There was peril for him, too, because if anything went wrong, he would be blamed and probably killed in a painful manner.

But before he could articulate any of this, Jouma’s private cell phone rang.

He picked it up and barked, “What?” in Spanish.

As the doctor reviewed the results of the Doppler ultrasound, echocardiograms, and blood tests one more time, Jouma listened, frowned, then asked into the phone, “Who told you this? The gringo?” Jouma nodded. “You think we can trust him?”

As the doctor listened to the jefe talk, he considered possible clinics in Mexico and nearby countries where the procedure could be performed.

He saw Jouma glance at his diamond-encrusted Hublot Big Bang chronograph watch, which retailed for over a million dollars.

“Move the merchandise to Tapachula and call the Federales,” Jouma barked into the phone. “Then call that video guy, Nelson. I want to record the señora’s final words, then send them to her stupid husband.”