Power and Empire

17

John Clark’s voice crackled over the radio immediately after Caruso repeated Naldo Cantu’s address. “We’ve got about twenty minutes if we’re lucky with traffic,” Clark said. “Everyone jump. I want to see what kind of intel we can grab before they get there.”

“Copy that,” Ryan said. The rest of the team confirmed they’d heard the transmission and were immediately en route.

Interstate 35 was a stone’s throw away from the FBI field office, around which he and the others were strategically parked so as to be close enough to pick up Caruso’s transmissions. His signal was garbled but readable. I-35 ran directly from Dallas to Red Oak, roughly eighteen miles away, which meant Ryan and the rest of The Campus could reach their objective in a relatively short time — as long as the evening traffic didn’t snarl. But the same held true for Special Agent Callahan and her task force. It would take a few minutes for the raid team to hit the head and gear up. Judging from the tone of her voice, this lady didn’t seem like the kind to mess around. She wouldn’t be far behind.

“You gonna try and get there sometime today or what, Jack?” Ding asked from the passenger seat.

Ryan accelerated south on the freeway. Traffic was heavy but moving, and going close to the speed limit.

Midas spoke next. He was behind the wheel in the car with Clark now, and his impatience at the traffic was evident in his voice. “They’ll be able to use lights and sirens to get through this shit. Caruso sure as hell better stall.”

Adara defended her boyfriend. “Dom will do what he can,” she said. “He’ll definitely let us know when they’re on the road.”

Ryan sped past a highway patrolman doing ninety. Mercifully, the trooper had already pulled over another vehicle.

It was dark and beginning to sprinkle by the time Ryan took the exit to Farm Road 644. Midweek traffic was light on the farm-to-market road, even at rush hour, and he poured on the speed, feeling the Avenger’s engine open up with a throaty roar. He’d been nearest to the interstate when Dom gave the address, so he felt certain Midas’s and Adara’s vehicles were somewhere behind him.

“Watch these wet roads, ’mano,” Chavez said as Ryan drifted around a corner, a mile away from their target residence now, according to the GPS on his phone.

“Nag, nag, nag,” Ryan said, and punched the gas.

Chavez flipped him off and hung on to the side handle.

A minute later Ryan slowed, driving past a white frame house set back off the road about five hundred feet. Barbed-wire fencing, meant to keep in cattle, ran in front of the property and a heavy gate made of rusted drilling pipe blocked the entry. The porch light was visible through the trees. Ryan took the first left past the target address. He was surprised to find Clark’s pickup truck already parked in the tall Johnson grass along the gravel road. He and Midas were nowhere to be seen.

“How the hell did you get here first?” Ryan said into his mic.

“Superior navigation, kid,” Clark said.

“Position?” Ryan asked.

“You guys are late,” Midas said. “We’re already moving up to the house.”

Clark suddenly gasped over the radio, whispering, “Midas, get up here. Everyone else stand by.”

John Clark had seen great evil in his life. He was no stranger to misery. He’d experienced unspeakable sadness and unbearable pain — in Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and hot spots around the world — but the worst of it, the incident that gutted him, had happened right here in the good old USA. Admiral James Greer had known the whole story, but he’d taken the secrets with him when he passed away. Sandy knew most of it, and she’d probably guessed the rest, though they never talked about it. Clark was able to suppress the memories for the most part — Pam Madden’s brutal murder and the vengeance he’d meted out against the pimps and drug dealers who’d done it. He dreamed of her sometimes still, not in a longing way as someone might pine for a lost love, but because he was so incredibly sorry that he’d not been there to save her. He was a former SEAL when they’d met, already entrenched in the ways of warfare and mayhem, but it was Pam’s death that pushed him into the instrument that he’d become. Knowing her, watching her turn her life around, and then seeing that life snuffed out, had changed him forever — and left a mark on his soul that could not be erased.

His hands shook with pent-up rage when he peered through the window into Naldo Cantu’s house and saw the girls. There were three of them curled into fetal positions and chained by their ankles to filthy mattresses on metal army cots. Two wore short baby-doll nightgowns; another wore nothing but a gray T-shirt and bore obvious track marks. She’d been there awhile. All three of the girls had ugly burns on their arms and legs. An overturned garbage can beside one of the cots revealed several used condoms, some syringes, and a wad of candy wrappers — probably all the girls had had to eat. He could make out two Hispanic men lounging on the couch in the adjacent room watching television and drinking beer. He didn’t have a view of the entire room, so there was a possibility of more men inside.

Memories of Pamela Madden and the men Clark had killed coursed through his veins. He fought the urge to rush in and shoot these men in the face. He didn’t care how many there were.

Caruso’s voice in his ear startled him — not an easy thing to do to John Clark.

“I’m not very familiar with Dallas. Any guess on our ETA?”

Callahan gave a muffled response that Clark couldn’t hear. There was the sound of car doors slamming, then Dom said, “I hear you… traffic like this we’ll be lucky to get there in twenty-five.”

Clark nodded at this new information. The girls would be safe soon enough, but he wanted to get his pound of flesh. Prison was too cushy for men like these. Clark backed away from the window and into the live oaks that surrounded the house. Midas met him there.

“How do you want to do this?” the former Delta soldier asked. “Drag them out and beat the hell out of them until they talk… then beat them some more after they talk?”

“You got a look inside?”

Midas gave a somber nod. “Through the living room window,” he said. “I counted three males, two on the couch, one in a recliner. Two handguns on the coffee table, but no long guns that I saw. I could only see one female through the open door from my vantage point, but she looked in pretty bad shape.”

“She is,” Clark said. “I counted three girls. Not sure about the other rooms.” He shook his head to clear it, willing himself to calm down and think. Rage would only blind him. In situations like this, he needed to be calculating and calm. He didn’t completely rule out killing an enemy inside the United States, but he’d try to avoid it if possible. These men had crucial intelligence. If he had to wait and let Caruso get it, then—

The sound of a screen door slamming pulled him out of his thoughts. There was laughter, and then someone said, “Cerveza…”

Gravel crunched. A car door slammed.

Midas smiled in the darkness. “Somebody’s going on a beer run!”

Clark spoke in a hoarse whisper, giving orders as he moved back toward the fence. “Jack, move to the east end of the road. Adara, you set up to the west.” Clark checked his watch. “Whichever way this guy turns, let him get down the road far enough they can’t see him from the house, then box him in. Cautious but quick. Keep in mind, we have about eighteen minutes to do what we need to do before we have to exfil.”

Ninety seconds later, Ryan pulled the Dodge in front of a blue Subaru WRX and stepped on the brakes. The driver, a skinny Hispanic male, attempted to go around him, but Ryan put his foot on the gas and nosed the Dodge into the much lighter vehicle, shoving it back into Adara’s waiting pickup truck. The skinny kid’s eyes flew wide and he raised his hands as Ryan, Chavez, and Adara bailed out of their vehicles. All of them wore black balaclavas and pointed their pistols at his face.

“Damn it,” Sherman said as she yanked open the door while Chavez and Ryan covered her. “I was hoping you’d fight.”

They had him bagged and gagged and trussed in the back of Adara’s pickup by the time Midas and Clark rolled up with their lights off. Clark lowered his window and motioned for everyone to follow him back around the corner, just in case Special Agent Callahan and her crew showed up sooner than they thought they would.

The skinny kid said his name was Flaco. He started slinging snot and sobbing the moment Clark dragged him out of the truck and ripped the bag off his head. Clark shoved him into the ditch on the side of the road. He knelt there, pleading for his life. The sharp odor of urine filled the night air. It wasn’t surprising. If John Clark threw him in a ditch and pointed a gun at him, Ryan was pretty sure he’d lose control of his bladder, too.

Clark wore a balaclava as well, but there was enough hatred burning out of his eyes to make his intentions clear. He gave Flaco a brutal kick to the ribs, knocking him over, and then stepped on his neck.

“Okay, asshole,” Clark said. “You have exactly one chance to stop me from turning your head into bits of skull and goo. Answer my questions as I ask them to you. Don’t pause. Don’t beg for mercy. Just answer the questions. Do. You. Understand?” Clark bore down with the boot at each word, grinding the man’s face into the ground and muffling his reply.

“Yeeesss,” he said, sounding like a deflating tire.

“Who’s the top guy? Cantu?”

It turned out to be harder to get the tattooed gangbanger to shut up than it had been to get his car stopped.

“Cantu is boss of the girls around here,” Flaco said. “But Zambrano is the top guy in Texas. Everybody who runs girls gotta pay him.”

“Zambrano?” Clark said. “Same name as the Cubs pitcher?”

“Same name,” Flaco said. “Different dude. This one’s from Mexico.”

“Where is he?”

Flaco shook his head. “He’s everywhere, man. He moves all the time.”

Clark nodded. “How about Matarife?”

“That dude’s evil as shit, man,” Flaco said.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Clark bore down again.

“Seriously, man,” Flaco whined. “I never been to his house. I been places where he does his stuff, though, and it’s pretty damn sick.”

“Who would know where to find him?”

“On my mother,” Flaco said, “I got no idea.”

Clark looked at his watch. “There’s a Chinese guy been hanging around. What’s his name?”

“Eddie.”

“Another Chinese guy.”

Flaco began to hyperventilate. “Man, since the triad moved in, there’s like a hundred Chinese guys hanging around. I’m not tryin’ to lie to you, man. I swear it. I’m just not sure who you mean.”

“Coronet?”

“Okay, okay,” Flaco said. “I only heard him called that once, but I know who you’re talking about now. Sharp dresser. Likes his girls fresh and young. That dude’s weird. Acts like he’s James Bond or somethin’, but I heard he just sold Christmas cards. His name’s Chen. Vinnie Chen… or Vincent, I think. Hey! He would know where Matarife is.”

“That doesn’t help,” Clark said. “Describe Vincent Chen.”

“Dude, I can do you one better,” Flaco said. “I got his picture on my phone.”

Clark nodded and Ryan retrieved the cell from Flaco’s hip pocket. Fortunately, he’d been facedown when he wet his pants, sparing the phone and Ryan’s hand.

“Password?” Ryan said.

“Eleven-eleven,” Flaco said.

“Want me to do it?” Ryan said, thumb hovering over the touchscreen. “He could have a distress signal preprogrammed.”

Clark scoffed. “Does this look like a guy who plans that far ahead?”

“Right,” Ryan said, and punched in the number. He opened the photos and, after scrolling through some seriously gut-churning pictures of girls that would be enough to put Flaco away for a very long time, he found a photo of a nattily dressed Asian man. Rather than leave a virtual trail by sending the image anywhere, Jack used his phone to take a photo of the screen.

“How about his phone number?” Clark asked.

“It’s in my contacts,” Flaco said. “But he was here a day and a half ago. He dumps his phones every few days and gets a new one.”

“Every few days?”

“See what I mean?” the gangbanger said. “Weird shit for a Christmas card salesman.”

“Where is Chen now?” Clark prodded.

“No idea,” Flaco said.

“Who gets the girls for Cantu?”

Ryan shot a glance at Chavez. This was outside the scope of their mission. They had what they needed on Coronet.

Caruso’s voice came across the radio again.

“Want me to let everyone know we’re less than ten out?”

Callahan’s muffled voice followed. “They’re all behind us,” she said. “Pretty sure they know already.”

Chavez twirled his index finger in the air, reminding everyone that they needed to hurry.

Flaco nodded, unaware of the conversation going on in their earpieces.

“A guy named Parrot.”

Chavez raised both palms to the sky. “Seriously, boss. We need to haul ass.”

Clark nodded. “Okay.” He pressed down on Flaco’s neck with his boot one last time before stepping back. “Dump his body by the gate.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Flaco pleaded. “You don’t have to kill me.”

“We never had this conversation,” Clark said.

Flaco’s head wagged so hard it looked like it might roll off his skinny neck. “Never, man. I swear it.”

Clark hooked a thumb toward the Dodge without another word.

Ryan and Chavez dumped the sobbing gangbanger alongside the road, bound hand and foot and gagged with a piece of tape so he couldn’t warn his buds about the approaching parade of vehicles coming down FM 644.

Ryan kept his lights off and his foot off the brake until they were well over a mile away. He smiled to himself when he heard Callahan’s voice gasp.