Target America

11

Antonio Castañeda was thirty-seven years old and a former member of the Mexican Special Forces. Trained by American Green Berets in the midnineties, he knew a great deal about military operations and the Mexican Army that hunted him. He also knew a thing or two about explosives, and you didn’t need to be Alberto Einstein to know the explosion in Puerto Paloma the night before had been a hell of a lot bigger than anything a footlocker full of C4 could’ve produced. This meant he’d been lied to by the Chechen dogs who had paid to use his tunnel, and he was more than a little sore in the ass about it.

To look at him, however, you would not have guessed he had anything at all unpleasant on his mind. Castañeda was sitting on a white leather sofa in his villa on the west coast of Mexico, sipping tequila and scratching his German shepherd between the ears while a beautiful Mexican woman with long black hair stood behind him massaging his shoulders. He was not a particularly handsome man. His face was heavily pockmarked, and his dark eyes bulged slightly in their sockets. He had recently finished eating dinner with a thirty-four-year-old Chechen member of the RSMB named Marko Dudaev, and they were now relaxing in the living room.

There was a young lady massaging Dudaev as well. She was the other woman’s younger sister, and they looked very much alike.

“Her name is Tanya,” Castañeda said across the thick white marble coffee table. “I’m sorry she doesn’t speak any English.”

Dudaev smiled up at her, his blue eyes glassy from the tequila he was not yet accustomed to drinking. He had never tasted alcohol or smoked marijuana before coming to Mexico, as it was forbidden within Islam, but, as with any religion, some Muslims were more easily led astray than others. “I’m sure we’ll manage,” he said with a playful wink at Tanya, his own English heavily accented. “They say love is an international language.”

Castañeda chortled. “Allow me to thank you for the deposit that was made to the account yesterday.” He was referring to a bank account in the Cayman Islands. “Your people are very punctual when it comes to payment.”

“We try hard to be,” Dudaev said, still gazing up at Tanya, who could not have been a day over nineteen. “It is important to be punctual in business.”

Tanya smiled down at him as she stood kneading the knotted muscles in his neck and shoulders, her touch strong and deft.

“It is, sí,” Castañeda said with a nod, taking a sip from his tequila. “Honesty is important as well, would you not agree?”

“Of course,” Dudaev remarked, obviously enchanted by the young lady with the silky black hair. He took a stiff belt from his own glass, marveling at the feel of being drunk. It was as though he were floating on a cloud without a single care in the world.

“Bueno,” Castañeda said, setting his glass down on the table as he remarked casually to Tanya, “Prepárate, corazón.”

Tanya gave him a knowing wink as he sat back to extend his arms across the back of the sofa. He told the shepherd to go outside, and it trotted out the open door toward the pool, where a number of other women and a half dozen security personnel lounged around. As the dog slipped out, one of the security men got up to close the sliding glass door.

Then Castañeda clapped his hands, rubbing the palms together. “Yes, I agree that honesty is a very important part of business. So, amigo, why didn’t you tell me your people were smuggling nuclear weapons into los Estados Unidos? Why did you lie and tell me the bombs were made from C4?”

Dudaev straightened up in the recliner, Tanya’s hands still working his shoulders. Castañeda’s people had been talking about the detonation in Spanish all day, but Dudaev hadn’t understood a word of it. Castañeda had ordered him kept in the dark until there could be some kind of confirmation by his people in the North. Now that Castañeda had received the necessary verification, it was time to get to the bottom of things, time to try to determine whether there was a way to extricate himself from the deadly trap the Chechens had put him in.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Dudaev said, his expression marked by a trace of fear. “I don’t know about nuclear weapons.”

Castañeda smiled, saying to the girl, “Ahora, corazón.” Now, sweetheart.

Tanya ran the fingers of one hand through Dudaev’s short-cropped hair while reaching nonchalantly into the small of her back to produce a pearl-handled straight razor, and then gracefully slipping the blade beneath his chin and jerking back his head to expose the jugular vein.

Dudaev let out a sharp, startled cry, grabbing the arms of the leather recliner, his entire body going ramrod stiff.

“Keep still now,” Castañeda said to him quietly, signaling for the woman behind him to come around the sofa. “Lorena is going to make an exposition.”

“Don Antonio,” Dudaev said. “Please. This isn’t necessary. We can—”

Tanya pressed the razor into his flesh to shut him up, increasing her grip on the turf of his hair. He gasped, increasing his own grip on the arms of the recliner.

The other woman, Lorena, also held a straight razor. She knelt with it between Dudaev’s legs and began to carefully cut away the crotch of his khaki trousers. Dudaev shivered, a cold sweat breaking out across his chest as she worked the blade with a surgical dexterity, first cutting away the heavy material of his trousers, and then the thin white cotton of his boxer briefs to fully expose his uncircumcised penis and scrotum without so much as nicking him. Both organs were an unbecoming reddish-purple, shrunken to their minimum as if Dudaev had just come from the pool.

Lorena tossed the swatches of cloth aside and sat back on her haunches, awaiting Castañeda’s instructions.

Castañeda smiled, sitting forward to take up his drink again. “Do I have your attention now, Señor Dudaev?” he asked in a friendly voice.

“Yes, Don Antonio,” croaked the terrified Chechen.

Tanya lessened her grip, though only slightly, so he could speak a bit more clearly.

“Gracias,” he muttered, swallowing hard.

Castañeda took a sip from the glass, setting it aside once more. “It is important for you to listen very carefully now. There is no time for games. You will tell me what you know about the bombs your people have smuggled into the United States. If not, Lorena will cut out your heuvos one by one, and Tanya will feed them to you.” He stood up from the sofa, stepping around the marble table, adjusting the tuck of his black silk shirt as he stood frowning over the shuddering Dudaev.

He put his hands into his pockets, and his overall presence took on an unmistakably menacing air. “Pendejo!” he hissed venomously. “Because of you and your lying friends, I will be hunted to the end of the world! I will be labeled a nuclear terrorist! My government will partner with the gringos, and together they will hunt me down like a rabid dog! Do you understand me? There will be no place on earth for me to hide!”

“Yes, Don Antonio, I understand you very well… but… but, please, I know nothing about nuclear weapons. I can’t imagine what makes you think we have lied to you!”

Castañeda smirked in disgust, turning to lift his drink. “Comienza, Lorena.” Begin.

Lorena took a firm grip on the Chechen’s scrotum, and Tanya pulled back hard on his head, keeping the razor tight against his jugular. Dudaev gasped in pain and then screamed aloud as Lorena sliced out one of his testicles. He reflexively grabbed his groin, but when Tanya depressed the razor hard enough to bite into the flesh of his throat, his bloody hands shot back to the arms of the recliner, his legs quaking uncontrollably as he began to sob. Blood gushed from the incision in his scrotum, running down the front of the recliner to pool on the tile.

Castañeda finished the tequila and tossed aside the glass, which shattered on the floor. Then he snatched the bloody orb from Lorena’s outstretched hand, savagely jamming it down Dudaev’s throat.

“I know you are lying to me!” he shouted into the gagging man’s face. “The fucking bomb went off, you stinking cabrón! It destroyed an entire town!” He pulled his hand from Dudaev’s throat, wiping it off on the Chechen’s white guayabera shirt, and then watched on, grim faced, as the strangling man finally managed to choke down the testicle.

Dudaev sat coughing, suppressing the urge to vomit. “Please!” he begged, his voice trembling. “I don’t know anything. I’m only a legate — an ambassador!”

Castañeda stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “I don’t know what more to tell you, amigo. You only have one huevo left. After that, Lorena will cut out your eyes. And after that…” He sighed and held out his hands in exasperation. “After that, I fear life will become very unpleasant for you.”

Lorena took a bloody grip on his scrotum once more.

“Stop!” Dudaev shouted, gnashing his teeth in agony and self-loathing, knowing he deserved this fate for having strayed from the path; for having spent the last month living in sin. “I will tell you,” he sobbed shamefully. “Please, just no more cutting — for the love of Allah!”

“Okay then, amigo,” Castañeda said softly, patting the Chechen on the shoulder. “No more cutting, I promise. Now tell me what you know.”

After Dudaev spilled his guts about the two Russian-made RA-115s, Castañeda signaled Tanya to cut his throat. He would use the information when the time was right. When he needed to save himself, he would contact the CIA.