Highway to Vengeance: A Thomas Highway Thriller (15 page)

“So sneaking up under the cover of darkness
isn’t an option.”

She shook her head. “Not unless you’re
looking to get caught before you get there.”

“What about the ocean?” I said. “How far is
it from the house?”

“Half a mile,” she said. “With the area
in-between just as bare as the other three directions.”

“So what you’re telling me is there’s no way
in.”

“Not through the front door.”

“But since you said you could get me close
to Montoya, I’m guessing there’s another option.”

Chris flashed me a predatory smile. “Indeed
there is,” she said.

“Tell me.”

Chris started talking.

Ten minutes later she was done.

After she fell quiet, I took about the same
amount of time thinking about what I’d just been told, searching
for any obvious flaws. I couldn’t find a single one.

“Any questions?” she asked.

“Only one,” I said. “How do I get out?”

“Same way you go in, just reverse it. Take
the boat back to the launching point and drive out the same way we
go in.”

“What about getting back to the States?”

“Just go back over at San Ysidro like you
were coming back home after a long night in TJ.”

“They won’t shut the border down or
something?”

Chris laughed. “Because of a murder in
Mexico? Not a chance. It’s a daily occurrence down here. Nobody
will bat an eye.”

“Even if it’s the head of a drug
cartel?”

“Don’t get me wrong, there will be heat, but
they won’t be looking at the border for the killer; they’ll figure
it was a rival cartel that carried out the hit. They’ll never
suspect an American citizen came down from the US and murdered
their leader. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Besides,
unless you completely fuck things up, they won’t have a description
to go by, so even if they do turn up security at the border, you’ll
be fine.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Trust me,” Chris said. “Getting yourself
back over the border is the least of your worries. If you can get
yourself out of Montoya’s compound alive, the rest is a piece of
cake.”

I still wasn’t completely convinced, but I
was just going to have to trust her. It wasn’t like I had any good
alternatives, except bailing out of the operation completely. And
there was no way in hell I was going to do that. So I let it go and
moved on to more important things.

“What kind of hardware do you have for me?”
I said.

“Two 10mm Glock 29 handguns, a H&K
MP5/10 with a retractable stock, six pounds of C4 molded into two
separate charges, each with an electronic timer, a breaching-charge
and detonator, six extra 10-round clips for the Glock and six extra
30-round clips for the MP5/10. In addition to the weapons, I’ve six
lancets full of a powerful tranquilizer, a dozen zip-ties, a pair
of night-vision goggles, a full-body wetsuit, a diving watch with
nylon face cover, and a waterproof backpack to carry everything
while you’re in the water. All the items were purchased
separately—either legitimately or through the black market—so they
can’t be tracked, and they’re all in a duffel bag in the trunk of
my car, ready to go.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

An hour later we were driving on a
single-lane road along the coast, a hundred miles south of the
border. I’d spent the entire drive locked up in my own head, trying
to get my tired mind around the idea that this whole ordeal was
about to come to a close, one way or another.

“Are you all right?” Chris said.

“I think so.”

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Nothing serious,” I said. “It just seems so
easy, that’s all.”

“These things usually are,” Chris said. “At
least, when they allow us professionals to do the work.”

“Then why doesn’t it happen all the
time?”

“Who says it doesn’t?”

I turned towards her. Her lips were turned
up in a little mischievous grin. For a second I thought she was
messing with me but then I realized what it signified. Pride.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

“How often are we talking about here?”

“I can’t get into specifics.”

“Then speak in generalities.”

Chris offered a half-hearted shrug. “You
ever read something in the paper or see something in the news and
think to yourself, ‘something just doesn’t feel right with that
story?’”

“Yeah,” I said. “All the time.”

“Well, chances are, we were behind it.”

I let my gaze linger on her for another
moment. Again, I wasn’t sure if she was just messing with me, but I
figured why bother worrying about it. Finally I decided it didn’t
really matter much in the long-run anyway. Might as well stick with
stuff that had some direct impact on the upcoming operation.

“You mind if I ask you something?” I
said.

“Not at all,” Chris said.

“How do you know so much about Montoya’s
evacuation procedures?”

“He thinks I work for him.”

“No shit?” I said. “In what capacity?”

“Low-level security. Counter-intelligence,
mostly. I’m in just deep enough to find out what I need to know if
I’m real careful.”

“How’d you score that position?”

“It was easy, actually,” she said. “I just
told Montoya who I used to work for.”

“And who was that?”

“The FBI.”

“And that worked?”

Chris laughed. “Seems counter-intuitive,
doesn’t it? But these cartels are always looking to add ex-federal
agents to their payroll.”

“Seriously?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Chris said. “It’s how
they stay ahead of the curve. They throw tons of money at former
intelligence guys—four, five times what they made with whatever
government agency they used to work for—to get them to come over to
the dark side. It works more often than you can imagine.”

“Un-fucking-believable.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty screwed up.”

“But aren’t the cartels worried about
someone turning on them? Or acting as a mole?”

“Not in the least,” Chris said. “They let
you know up front what will happen if you fuck with them in any
way. You’ll be tortured and killed in the most heinous manner
possible, along with whatever members of your family they can get
their hands on. And with the sources they have—in both the Mexican
and American governments—more often than not they know when someone
is playing for the other side. It’s just not worth the risk for
most people.”

“But it is for you,” I said.

She nodded.

“Why?”

“I have my reasons,” she said. “Personal
ones.”

“Care to articulate them?” I said.

“Not really,” she said.

I waited a few seconds to see if she was
going to continue on but she kept her eyes on the road so I changed
the subject.

“Is this the sort of stuff you did with the
FBI? Undercover work?”

“For the most part,” Chris said. “I bumped
around a bit, ran point on a few operations, but mostly worked the
drug beat down here in Mexico.”

“How long were you with them?”

“I put in ten years of dutiful service
fighting the so-called war on drugs before I got sick of the
political bullshit and bailed,” Chris said.

“And what about the guys you work for now?
How’d you hook up with them?”

She shrugged. “I just sort of fell into it,
actually. After I left the Bureau, I did some freelance work for a
couple different private corporations—intelligence-gathering,
mostly. Then the Towers fell, and a short time later, one of the
guys I’d previously done a job for came to me with an offer. After
he spelled out what his organization did, I jumped at the chance.
And now, here I am, seven years later, still going strong.”

“I take it you like what you do now?”

“I fucking love it,” Chris said. “I finally
feel like I’m making a difference, instead of just padding some
government agency’s statistics so some damn politician can use them
to get re-elected.”

“It really was that bad, huh?”

“It was a fucking joke. Just like all the
rest of the official intelligence agencies nowadays, it’s become a
bureaucracy, too politicized to get anything meaningful done.” She
barked out a humorless laugh. “Listen to me, yapping away on my
soapbox. Pardon me while I step off.”

“No worries,” I said. “I’m the one that
brought it up.”

The car fell silent. It was starting to get
a little stuffy, so I rolled down the window. The smell of the
ocean wafted in, transporting me back home, which got me wondering
if I’d ever see home again. I immediately rolled the window back
up.

“What about you?” Chris said. “You used to
be a Navy SEAL, right?”

I nodded and prepared my stock answer for
the inevitable question about BUD/S training. But Chris caught me
off-guard.

“What compelled you to be a SEAL in the
first place?” she said.

I had no stock answer for that question. In
fact, I hadn’t ever talked about my reasons for becoming a SEAL
with anyone except for Josie and I wasn’t certain I wanted to get
into it now. Trying to buy myself a little time to think, I glanced
out the side window and caught a glimpse of the moon reflecting off
the ocean before disappearing behind a bank of fast-moving
clouds.

After a few seconds of silent contemplation,
I couldn’t come up with a compelling reason not to talk about it,
so I dove in with both feet.

“I decided to become a SEAL after 9/11,” I
said. “I’d graduated from college in June of ’01 with a business
degree and was working for a tech company down in San Diego. But
after the Towers fell, trying to come up with a new set of features
for the next-generation cell phone seemed a bit pointless.”

“So you just quit your job and joined the
Navy?”

“Not quite,” I said. “I didn’t decide to
enlist until a couple days later, after the details of United
Flight 93 came out.”

Chris gave me a crooked look but didn’t say
anything.

“I knew someone on that flight,” I said, my
voice trailing off slightly.

“Really?”

I nodded, stared blindly into the night
beyond. “He was a friend of my wife’s from back home. They went to
high school together. I hung out with him a couple times a year. He
was a real cool guy, heavy into sports, just like me. When I found
out he was on that plane, it really hit home. It was crushing. I
mean, it’s one thing to know that a couple of thousand people died
on that day, but for some reason, it hurts a hell of a lot more
when you knew one of them.”

“I know how you feel,” Chris said. “I knew
quite a few people working out of the World Trade Center when the
planes hit. Three of them didn’t make it. It’s one of the reasons I
jumped at the opportunity to work for these guys; to make sure
something like that never happens again.”

We hit a patch of traffic and slowed down to
a crawl. A couple minutes later we passed an accident that was
blocking the right lane and the traffic broke up.

“It’s kind of fucked up, if you think about
it,” I said once we’d gotten back up to speed.

“What’s that?”

“Just the idea that in order to take action,
we have to experience something personally. I mean, if I wouldn’t
have known anyone that was killed on 9/11, would I have joined the
Navy and became a SEAL? No way. The thought would have never even
entered my mind. But as soon as I found out that someone I actually
knew died I was down at the recruiting office within hours.”

It was awkward opening myself up to what
amounted to a complete stranger, but now that I’d started talking,
I felt the sudden urge to keep going, to get it all off my chest,
once and for all, everything that I’d kept bottled up over the last
week. Maybe part of me realized that it might be my last
opportunity to do so.

“It’s the same thing with my wife’s death,”
I continued. “If I had been watching the news and heard about
someone that was killed in a hit-and-run accident, and there was a
good chance that there was foul play involved, would I have done
anything about it? Of course not. I just would have felt bad for a
couple of minutes, then gotten on with my life.”

“It’s a survival mechanism,” Chris said.
“Thousands of people are killed every day. If you tried to do
something about everything that happened, it would drive you crazy.
So you set up a circle of influence, and you tell yourself that as
long as something doesn’t happen to one of the people within that
circle, you’ll just let it go. It’s the only way to remain
sane.”

“Still, it makes me wonder what kind of a
person I am that I’m only willing to take action after something
affects me personally.”

“A better person than most,” Chris said.
“There are very few people that would take action, even in your
circumstances. You’re being way too hard on yourself, beating
yourself up because you only decided to join the Navy after you
found out someone you knew was killed on 9/11. Well, think about
the millions of other people out there who knew someone that was
killed during 9/11. How many of them did anything after finding
out?”

“Not many.”

“You’re right,” Chris said. “Not many at
all. And this situation with your wife? How many people would have
taken action knowing what you knew? True action; not just telling
the cops what you knew and then sitting back while they whittled
away on the case, hoping for a break that would allow them to
maybe
arrest someone and
maybe
put them in jail for a
few years if everything broke perfectly. Again, not many. Too many
people in this world want something but are afraid to do anything
about it. They just sit around and hope and wish and pray instead
of going out and making it happen.”

“I guess.”

“I’m serious,” Chris said. “The last thing
you should be doing is doubting yourself. You’re doing a great
thing right now. A necessary thing. You’re making the world a
better place, one scumbag at a time.”