Scorched Earth

3

"The White Warriors? In Sonora, Mexico?"

Gadgets looked out the window of the office. He stared at the lights of San Diego as if he expected the explanation to the mystery to rise from the darkness in flashing neon script.

Four floors beneath the men of Able Team, cars sped through the warm summer night. Strollers walked arm in arm on the sidewalks, passing the high-rise federal prison without a thought.

After capturing the Ochoa gunmen and the Coral family, Able Team and the officers of the Drug Enforcement Agency had escorted the group of prisoners a few miles north to San Diego. They questioned them in the high-security interrogation room of the prison.

The truck belonging to the Mexicans went to the federal impound garage to be searched. Only minutes later, DEA technicians had found heroin concealed in the frame of the four-wheel-drive truck driven by the gunmen. They quickly weighed and tested the Mexican white death, then telephoned the interrogating officers with the results: two hundred kilos, seventy-five-percent purity.

"And in Coral's truck we found toolboxes full of Mexican fifty-peso gold pieces. Each coin is ounces. We counted five hundred, four hundred pounds by weight. Over two hundred thousand dollars in 99.95-percent gold."

Even before the call had come, Coral knew he faced a lifetime in the concrete hell of a penitentiary. Only through complete cooperation could he ever hope to be a father to his children again, to sleep with his wife, to know the simple pleasures of freedom.

Coral had answered all their questions. Throughout the afternoon and into the night, Coral talked. He told his story, the story of the Ochoas family, and the story of the destruction of the Ochoa empire.

Now Able Team attempted to make sense of the interrogations. Overwhelmed by thousands of names and places, Gadgets stared into space, thinking. Finally the Wizard snapped out of his trance. He shook his head as if trying to wake himself from a dream, a bad dream.

"Everything clicked until he mentioned the White Warriors. I can believe that a gang of ultrahard-core psycho killers with military weapons and high-tech commando gear totally demoralized and wasted the Ochoa gang. But the White Warriors taking over the Mexican heroin trade? Mucho muy loco..."

Contrary to the report of the informer, Coral did not desert Don Ochoa in a time of crisis. He remained loyal to the end. He left only after Don Ochoa admitted defeat.

In the first weeks of the war, the White Warriors disrupted the Ochoa empire with terrorism. In that time of assassination and atrocity, no Ochoa employee worked without fear. Assassins murdered entire families of opium farmers. Couriers disappeared. Chemists found all their laboratory technicians executed. On isolated stretches of Mexican highway, drivers died in their flaming trucks. The bloodletting was unceasing and unrelenting.

When the Ochoa mobilized their army of gang soldiers to protect the growing, refining, and transport operations, the Warriors escalated to the second phase of their campaign. The loyalty and bravery of the Ochoa soldiers were like sand in the wind against the military weapons and lightning-strike tactics of the White Warriors.

Utilizing massive fire superiority, including machine guns, rockets and radio-triggered claymore mines, the Warriors annihilated squads of Ochoa soldiers in bloody ambushes. Light planes dropped canisters of napalm on strongholds.

To shock and demoralize the faithful soldiers of Don Ochoa, Warrior assassins infiltrated family compounds and hacked defenseless children and women apart, leaving grotesque puzzles of limbs and heads for the fathers to reassemble for burial.

Finally, the aged patriarch released all the surviving soldiers and employees of the gang from their oaths of loyalty. A chartered jetliner carried Don Ochoa into exile in the South Pacific with what remained of his family and his wealth.

After the victory, the White Warriors granted amnesty to the soldiers and employees of their former opponent. The new gang lords needed the farmers and soldiers and technicians to maintain the flow of heroin to the hungry north. Many were eager to march to the drumbeat of the new commanders.

Even though the Warriors offered him a high post in their organization, Coral refused.

"I will not torture. I will not murder campesinos. I will not murder children," he had said.

Coral took his family and drove for the United States border. But the DEA captured him before he could gain the sanctuary of the world's second largest Mexican city, Los Angeles.

"What about the rest of his story?" Lyons asked his partners.

Gadgets continued talking. "I can believe that the new gang had military weapons and high-class communication equipment. Money can buy anything."

"What about his refusing to work for the new gang?" Lyons asked.

Blancanales nodded. "It checks out against the information on file. He's a killer. He admits it. But none of the information in the DEA files mentions a civilian murder. He never killed anyone but gangsters. He never committed atrocities."

"Cops don't count?" Lyons snapped. As an ex-LAPD detective, he had gut-level hatred of cop killers. Coral had started his career as a gang gunman after killing two Mexican officers.

"I don't know if he's telling the truth," Blancanales added, "but he said those two hijacked his load of marijuana. They pistol-whipped him and dragged him off the highway to shoot him. He fought, and they got killed."

"I was in there," Lyons said, pointing toward the interrogation room. "I didn't hear that."

"This was one of the stories he told me in Spanish on the way from San Ysidro. Coral said, 'It's finally over,' and we started talking..."

"You informed him of his rights?" Lyons demanded.

"They read him his rights while they had him spread-eagled against the truck. But what does that matter? You think the Feds will subpoena my testimony?"

"Totally impossible," Gadgets said with a laugh. "You weren't even there."

"We never are," Lyons added with a smile.

Blancanales laughed with his partners. "Coral told me that all he ever wanted out of the smuggling operation was money for a ranch. But after he killed the two cops, it was down, down, down. Only the Ochoas could protect him from prosecution. Only the Ochoas paid him enough money so that he could send his kids to school and have a better life. He made the best of a bad situation."

"Pass out the handkerchiefs, Politician. This scum is a cop-killing dope soldier who got paid in gold," Lyons snapped. "Why didn't he come north and make a better life for himself in the land of opportunity? Half the Mexicans in the U.S. are illegal. They get phony papers and presto, a new life. Nobody held a gun to his head and told him he had to work in the dope business."

"It wasn't the gold. Not at first," Blancanales continued. "Think of it from his viewpoint. One, if he gets deported and the federalesrecognize him, he goes straight into a Mexican prison, for life. Two, if he works in the United States, what does an illegal alien fugitive with a grade-three education do for a living? He digs ditches, he washes dishes. All the time watching for la migra— the Immigration and Naturalization Service — at the door. Or he could be a bodyguard for a gangster. Did you know that he's got two teenage daughters at the University of California? He never could have done that digging ditches."

"You make the shit sound like a working man's hero," Lyons grunted.

"He's bad from the hair down, all right," Blancanales conceded. "But I think he'll cooperate with the Agency."

"Cooperate?" Gadgets asked, incredulous. "El Pistolero in there's a one-man data bank. Too bad the printout's all past tense."

"Past tense?" Lyons asked.

"Yeah, the Ochoa gang is history. From what he says."

Lyons laughed cynically. "Forget the Ochoas! Now we have the White Warriors organizing a billion-dollar dope operation in Sonora. That's only driving distance from the border."

Blancanales shook his head. "Only a name. Doesn't mean there's any connection with the White Warriors down in El Salvador and Guatemala."

Gadgets laughed. "They own Central America. Why do they want Sonora? It's a desert."

"Heroin," Lyons insisted. "Sonora and Sinaloa and Chihuahua ship billions of dollars of heroin into the U.S. every year. A billion dollars buys armies and helicopters and jets."

"Man, give it up!" Gadgets refused to accept Lyons's reasoning. "Some local gang thought they'd be bad and take a bad-ass name they read in the papers all the time. Doesn't mean a thing. Besides..." Gadgets laughed "... the scenario you're painting is so scary, I don't even want to think about it."

Lyons pressed his argument. "But what if it is them? What if the Fascist International isn't satisfied with a few hundred million a year in foreign aid? Heroin means billions a year, without having to endure Congressional debates or worry about human rights."

"A paranoid nightmare!"

"Remember the army of Unomundo?" Lyons continued.

"I don't want to hear it!" Gadgets told his partner. "If that crazy had a billion dollars, he'd buy an armored division. He'd buy an air force. He'd open up a Dachau franchise. High tech S.S. Just talking about it makes me shake."

Lyons turned to Blancanales. "You trust Coral enough to take him south?"

"You want to investigate the new gang?"

Lyons nodded. "If it's local scum, we'll leave it for the DEA and the Mexican federales. If it's the same White Warriors we already know about, we'll do them."

Gadgets laughed. "Now, that's confidence. Us three go up against a gang that's just wasted the biggest, most organized dope syndicate in Mexico. How about if I put in a call for the 101st Airborne to even up the odds? Maybe we can park the U.S.S. Missourioffshore for fire support."

"Nothing serious," Lyons suggested. "Just a look-see. Try to make an identification. If it's them, we come back and plan our next move. If we take Coral south, with his contacts, we can get it done quickly. If you trust him, Pol."

"If the Agency will go along with this," Blancanales began, thinking as he spoke. "They want information from him. To get his long-term cooperation, they plan to offer him a new identity under the Protected Witness Program. If we take him south for a safe and discreet investigation, that goes along with their plans. That's more information for the Agency. If they keep his family and his gold, we can trust him. That's all he cares about."

"And revenge," Lyons added. "This will be a chance..."

"Yeah," Gadgets agreed. "Pay-back on the psycho killers. He'll be hep to that."

"Agency cooperation," Blancanales added. "That will be the central point. Coral will go along. He doesn't have a choice. But the Agency will need persuasion."

Lyons shook his head. "I don't want them to know anything about what we're doing."

Blancanales sighed. "Lyons, he's their prisoner. If we want him to escort us on a reconnaissance mission south, we'll need their agreement."

"Once we get there, we're on our own," Lyons stressed. "Free agents."

"Standard operating procedure," Gadgets agreed. "We need no shadows."

Lyons gave Blancanales the nod. "Go to it, Mr. Politician. Promise them anything. But get us what we want."

"Might take a few days." Blancanales glanced at his watch. "It's after midnight in Washington. Might have to talk about it all day tomorrow."

"And maybe we'll have to get an Act of Congress," Lyons added. "Just get it."

With a quick salute, Blancanales left the office.

His partners heard him speak with agents in the corridor. Then they heard Blancanales enter another office. Gadgets turned to Lyons.

"Just a look-see? Easy to say, but if we go, I'm taking everything I got and two or three nukes, too."

Lyons nodded. "Standard operating procedure. Places we go, we always seem..."

"To kill people," Gadgets finished.

"It's kill or be killed. We've got enemies out there, Wiz."

Gadgets smiled nervously. "We've got enemies out there we've never even met. Hell, we've got enemies out there we don't even know about yet."

"We know about Los Blancos."

"And they know about us. So I'm packing up. I'm checking my list. I'm checking it twice... because..."

The office door flew open. Blancanales rushed in. "I didn't even ask them. They asked me if we'd go south. To confirm Coral's statements. At dawn, with Senor Coral in an Agency Lear jet!"

Gadgets finished his jingle: "Able Team is going... downsouth."