The Debriefing

Seven

The hospital was indeed a hospital but not a military facility and it wasn’t located in the United States but in the small town of San Bernardo, Chihuahua, many kilometers from the border.

One wing had been transformed into a virtual movie set, complete with props like the flags and the Humvee, which was owned by Santos himself. It had been painted in authentic US military camouflage, an easy task, thanks to YouTube. Santos’s production even featured extras: two of his crew were playing the army soldiers.

Headlining the cast were Eddie and Tiffany, a couple with mob connections from — appropriately — Los Angeles. (When they’d met several weeks ago, Tiffany had told him her hot tub overlooked the famous Hollywood sign.)

The point of this elaborate fiction was quite simple: to trick Matt Wright into giving up information vital to the future of the cartel.

A few months ago Juan Carlos Cardozo had come to his chief enforcer with a problem.

Carlos was a soft-spoken, kind-eyed man, a Latino Mr. Rogers. He explained to Santos that he’d learned Matt Wright was running a confidential informant, who was spying on the cartel.

Santos was to remedy the situation.

Santos got to work immediately, with his typically methodical approach. The obvious — kidnapping and torturing Wright for the name — wouldn’t work. He knew it could take time to extract the information, and as soon as Matt Wright went missing, Wright’s superiors would warn the informant, who would flee; Santos would then never learn the extent of the betrayal — and, just as disappointing, would not have a head to leave in the Serrantino town square as a message.

Santos decided to become a magician, an illusionist. He would cleverly get Wright to give up the name voluntarily.

How, how...

Sitting in his garden and sipping a glass of goat milk, with Boppo purring at his feet, Santos had slowly crafted a plan.

He would leak information to El Paso PD about a factory in Chihuahua that the cartel was thinking of outfitting as a drug way station. The police would do what they always did: send a team to check it out and install surveillance gear. It was Matt Wright’s territory; he had a personal interest in bringing down the cartel (Santos had killed a partner of his) and would insist on being in the forefront.

When Wright and the other team members arrived at the factory, Santos’s men would open fire — not trying to hit them but to separate them and isolate Wright. As soon as he was alone, one of Santos’s men would pitch stun grenades attached to Remifentanil canisters. This gas — a favorite of the Russian army — would knock the cop out. He’d be driven to the fake army hospital. Eddie and Tiffany — the fake agents — would meet with Wright in his hospital bed and tell him that Boyd was dead, the victim of an assassination. They’d suggest that Wright himself was a suspect in betraying his own team. This would motivate him to give up the name of anyone who might have sold them out.

Matt would naturally mention the CI he’d been running as a possible suspect. And Santos and the Cardozos would have a name.

Then, time for the razor...

Santos hadn’t counted on catching a second fish in the operation, of all persons: Wright’s brother, Tony. But no matter, that didn’t affect the outcome. Eddie and Tiffany got the answer: the CI was Elena Velasquez, a street artist and prostitute working outside a restaurant near the Cardozos’ headquarters in downtown Serrantino. Santos was impressed; it was a clever idea. Elena could learn any manner of good information about the cartel, given that profession.

Santos now withdrew from his pocket four envelopes of cash and distributed the money to the cast.

“Thanks,” Eddie said.

Tiffany gave him another flirty smile as she slipped the money into her briefcase.

“You’ll stay here until we have Elena. We might need some more information out of Wright.”

“We wanted to get out tonight,” Eddie said.

“Oh, it won’t be long. We’re going to pay her a visit right now.”

The town of Serrantino was about an hour from San Bernardo, and Santos and Garcia, with two shooters in the back seat, were nearly there. Accompanying them was a second SUV, with three more of his crew.

They entered the town, a picturesque place two hundred years old, and drove straight to the restaurant where Wright had said Elena Velasquez worked.

Santos pulled to the curb and he looked ahead. Yes, there she was!

Elena was in her thirties, attractive in a harsh way — the look of una puta. She was sitting outside the restaurant and offering to sketch portraits of tourists and lovers walking doe-eyed arm in arm. Surely slipping the solitary men her phone number on a card.

Matt Wright and his brother were no longer needed. Santos could now give the order that his men could kill the cops, and dump their bodies in Sinaloa — blaming that cartel for the men’s deaths. He texted a coded message to one of his lieutenants in San Bernardo to do just this and another to Eddie and Tiffany, thanking them again and telling them that they were free to leave.

Then he instructed his men to check the surrounding streets and sat back, screwing a brushed steel silencer onto his Sig Sauer, while he debated the most efficient way to get Elena Velasquez to tell what she knew. He’d initially thought razors, but several other techniques came immediately to mind. Even more painful. He was just in one of those moods.