Hunt the Jackal (13 page)

Crocker sensed that she was telling the truth.

“Does she know where the American women are now?” he asked.

Suárez translated. Claudia shook her head and said something.

“She doesn’t,” Suárez said. “She says El Chacal owns houses, apartments, and properties all over the country.”

“Does she have any way of getting in touch with people who do know?”

Claudia shook her head vigorously and said something in Spanish.

“No,” Suárez said.

“Does she have any idea who betrayed us?”

She thought about it, then nodded.

“Who?”

“Señor Marion,” she said.

“Bob Marion, the security consultant?”

“Jes.”

It seemed like a stab in the dark, but it was all they had and the clock was ticking.

Jenson said, “Let’s head back into the city. I’ll see if my people can locate Marion. He works for Global Banking and Investments downtown.”

Crocker struggled to stay awake as the sandy-haired CIA officer spun the vehicle onto an
autopista
and sped into town. All he saw were cars flashing by and patches of blue sky.

He dreamt he was standing on a rock casting a line into a river. Three minutes later, he opened his eyes and saw that they were passing a silver bus.

“This Marion guy was at the safe house when the raid was discussed?” Akil asked from the backseat.

“He was the dark-haired guy with the two-day growth and the smug look on his face,” Mancini answered.

Crocker tried to focus. He remembered that there had been something about Marion he hadn’t liked.

Five minutes later Jenson removed the buds from his ears and reported, “He’s attending a cocktail party in the Emiliano Zapata Room of the Hotel Demetria, which is near the university, downtown.”

“Marion?” Crocker asked.

“Yeah, Marion.”

“Where’s that exactly?” the driver asked.

“Twenty-two nineteen Avenida de la Paz. I’ll punch it in the GPS.”

Crocker slipped in and out of consciousness, but on some subconscious level his mind was busy trying to catch up with the events of the day. He absorbed information and processed new situations faster than most people. The image of the four heads on the coffee table kept reappearing.

He was jarred awake as the Range Rover hit a speed bump and lurched left.

“Sorry,” the driver muttered.

Outside he saw a beautiful, idyllic afternoon with sidewalks jammed full of determined-looking businesspeople and shoppers. Claudia sat leaning against the opposite door with her son in her lap.

The CIA officer pulled to the curb in front of a sleek hotel tower with a fountain out front. Atlas stood in the middle holding a metal globe on his back.

“Who’s going up?” Jenson asked.

“I’ll go with Suárez,” Crocker said, glancing at this watch. The deadline was eight hours away.

“Not dressed like that.”

They compared sizes and exchanged clothes. Crocker got Jenson’s black pants and pullover. Suárez wore the driver’s polo and chinos.

“That’s better,” Jenson concluded. “Grab him and take him down to the parking lot. We’ll meet you there.”

They entered the modern black-marble lobby wearing their same blood-covered black boots.

“High class,” Suárez whispered.

“Looks more like a modern art museum than a hotel.”

The clerk at the front desk turned his nose up at them like they smelled bad. “Twelfth floor,” he said. “But invitation only.”

They rode up alone, watching footage of masked Mexican soldiers roaming the grounds of the FBI compound on the elevator TV. It had the effect of a flashback from a bad dream.

Two burly guys in black suits stopped them at the double doors to the Emiliano Zapata Room.

“We’re from the U.S. embassy,” Suárez said in Spanish. “We have an important message to deliver to someone inside.”

One of the guards looked them over and asked, “What’s the VIPs name?”

“Señor Bob Marion.”

“Wait here.”

Crocker pushed past as one guard consulted a guest list on a table by the door and another turned to greet a short man in a gray suit.

“¡Que cosa!”
the guard shouted.

Crocker quickly scanned the high-ceilinged room. There were no people in the center. Instead, large ceramic objects were displayed on tables. One of them looked like a huge gourd. People crowded under columned corridors on all four sides of the room. In the far left corner of the center space a jazz quartet played “A Night in Tunisia” by Dizzy Gillespie, which was one of Crocker’s favorite jazz tunes. To his right, he caught a glimpse of a woman with red lipstick throwing her head back and laughing. She stood next to a potted tree.

In the dim, atmospheric light he saw Bob Marion standing with his back to her, leaning one hand on the side of the planter. He wore a dark-gray suit and a blue shirt open at the collar. His other hand held a cocktail.

Crocker glanced over his shoulder to see if the guards were following him—they weren’t so far—then crossed the room.

Marion stood conversing with a tall, thin woman in a tight dress.

Crocker approached and said, “Excuse me, Bob. We met at Lane’s house a couple nights ago.”

Marion looked perplexed. “Oh, yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Marion seemed to sense that something was wrong. But before he could slip away, Crocker grabbed him by the forearm. He had the SIG Sauer hidden under the back of his black pullover.

“Bob, I need to talk to you in private,” Crocker said.

Marion maintained his cool. “Now?” he asked, trying to shake free. “This is a little awkward. This lady and I are discussing something important.”

Crocker wouldn’t let go. “It can’t wait.”

“Really, we have to do this now?”

Crocker tightened his grip on Marion’s arm.

“Give me a minute and I’ll meet you in the lobby,” Marion offered.

Crocker escorted him to a door in the corner, pushed it open, and punched the call button for the service elevator.

Marion started to struggle. “I don’t know what you think you’re—”

When the elevator door opened, Crocker shoved him inside, so that he stumbled backward and hit his head on the back wall of the car.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Marion groaned, holding himself up by the brass rail.

Crocker pushed the button for the basement, then pulled Marion up by the front of his suit. “I’m a little fucking upset. First, me and my men were ambushed when we got to the house in Puerto del Hiero. And when we returned to the FBI safe house, we found Lane, Steele, and two others dead with their heads cut off.”

“What?”

Crocker clocked him hard in the solar plexus.

Marion doubled over and groaned, “Maria.”

“You mean Claudia. She’s with us now, and she says it was you.”

“No.”

The elevator door opened into the badly lit basement. Crocker tried to quickly get his bearings, when Marion pushed him and bolted. But Crocker managed to stick his right foot out and trip him from behind, causing Marion to fall face-first to the concrete floor. Crocker picked him up by the back of his suit and saw blood dripping from his nose onto the front of his blue shirt.

“You’ll pay for this,” Marion growled.

“No, you will,” Crocker said, holding the SIG Sauer 226 to Marion’s head. With his left, he removed the walkie-talkie from his back pocket and spoke into it. “I’m in the basement, by the service dock, and I’ve got Marion with me.”

Seconds later the black Range Rover screeched to a stop in front of them and the back door opened. Crocker shoved Marion inside.

“What have we got here?” Max Jenson asked, leaning over the passenger seat.

Crocker: “Wait. Where’s Suárez?”

Mancini: “He’s meeting us out front.”

“Okay,” Crocker instructed. “Then find a deserted place to park.”

The CIA driver found an empty parking lot behind an office building under construction two blocks away. The workers had either quit early or had taken the day off.

The SUV sat in the shade with Mancini, Akil, and Suárez crowded in back and Crocker, Marion, Claudia, and her son on the middle bench. Marion held a handkerchief to his bleeding nose.

Jenson grabbed him by the front of his jacket and pulled him up against the back of the passenger seat. “Where’s the fucking Jackal?” he shouted. “Where’s he holding the Clark women?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit!” Jenson reached out and grabbed Marion by his wounded nose as Claudia covered her son’s eyes. “You can make this easy or real, real hard on yourself. Your choice.”

“Okay. Okay. Let go!”

Jenson loosened his grip.

“I don’t have contact with the Jackal or his men,” Marion explained. “Never have. But I think I see what happened.”

“What?”

“Ivan Jouma is a client.”

“You mean of Global Banking and Investments?” Jenson asked.

“Yes. We help him locate investment opportunities.”

“The fuck you do!” Jenson screamed, his neck and face turning red with anger. “You help him launder drug money, through Guatemalan cutouts into U.S. banks.”

“I know nothing about that.”

Jenson slammed Marion in the chest so that he rebounded hard against the back of the seat. “Don’t give me bullshit, or your financial doublespeak! You work for the enemy and were pretending to help the FBI. When you heard that these brave men were going to raid the house where Lisa and Olivia Clark were being held, you called the Jackal and warned him. Didn’t you?”

“No!”

“You lie to me, and I’ll break every bone in your body, then throw you in a secret Polish prison for the rest of your life where you’ll rot to death. I’ll grab your wife and I’ll sell her to the Russian mob.”

“I don’t have a wife.”

Jenson reared back his fist as though he was about to clock him.

Marion held up his hands and pleaded, “All right. All right. Maybe I made a mistake. But I didn’t call Jouma or any of his people. Legally, I’m not allowed to have any direct contact with them.”

“Then what did you do?” Jenson screamed.

“I told an associate.”

“You mentioned the impending raid to someone else who works at GBI?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Do I need to tell you that?”

“Hell, yes.”

“All right…Tony Alvarez.”

“You sure about that?” Jenson asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ll wager your life on it?”

“I will.”

Crocker asked, “You got your cell phone with you?”

Marion nodded. “I do.”

“Call him. Find out where he is.”

“Tell him you have some more information but think your cell phone is tapped and need to see him in person,” Jenson added.

As Marion made the call, Crocker checked his watch. Less than eight hours remained until the midnight deadline, and the minutes were ticking away.

A medium-height guy in a fancy suit, no tie, stood in front of a shiny thirty-six-story office building on Avenida Hidalgo, which was about a quarter mile away from the FBI safe house where Lane and the others had been brutally executed. He looked pleased with himself, listening to his iPad and looking down at his Sony Ericsson Black Diamond, then up at two tight-suited
señoritas
strolling past on stacked heels.

When he smiled, they smiled back.

“That’s him,” Marion said, pointing.

Crocker thought he seemed like a typical banker—bland looking, self-important, expensively dressed.

The CIA driver braked the Range Rover in the bus lane, and Suárez and Crocker got out, grabbed the guy by the front of his suit, and threw him into the front passenger seat.

By the time Crocker slid back in, Jenson already had his hand around Alvarez’s throat and was choking him so hard he couldn’t speak.

So Crocker said, “Max, ease up. Let him talk.”

Alvarez coughed, looked deeply offended, and feigned innocence at first. But when Jenson explained who he was, and how he was so pissed off he was going to order the men in the SUV to beat Alvarez to a bloody pulp and then throw his useless body into a secret Polish prison for the rest of his life, Alvarez started to talk.

He admitted that he had called one of the Jackal’s associates and told him about the upcoming raid.

“Where is he now?” Jenson asked, showing remarkable restraint this time, Crocker thought, because he wanted to punch Alvarez in the face himself.

“I don’t know,” Alvarez said. “I really don’t. And I don’t think it’s fair to hold me accountable for what happened, because I had nothing to do with that. I was simply passing information on to a client.”

Without warning, Jenson reared his right fist back and smacked Alvarez in the mouth so hard that his head slammed against the passenger-side window.

“I really don’t like you,” Jenson said, grabbing him by the neck and getting ready to smack him again as Claudia shielded her son’s eyes. “You’ve got five minutes to find out where the Jackal is and where he’s holding the Clark women before I tell these men to take you to the top of the building and push you off.”

“I thought I told you—”

“Five minutes!” Jenson shouted.

Alvarez started scrolling through programmed numbers on his Sony Ericsson and making calls. He nodded and stammered as Jenson measured time on his watch.

“Four minutes, forty-five seconds!” Jenson shouted.

“Okay. Okay,” Alvarez said, holding up his hand and listening, bloody slobber oozing out the corner of his mouth.

“Five!”

“Okay. Okay. I got it!” Alvarez exclaimed as he pointed to the phone.

In a quaking voice, he informed them that the Clark women were being held on a ranch near Tapachula. But his source couldn’t confirm that the Jackal was with them.

“Where’s the fucking Jackal?” Jenson shouted so loud that Crocker’s eardrums hurt.

“No one knows for sure. He’s probably with the women.”

“Forget the Jackal,” Crocker interjected. “Where’s Tapachula?”

“In the southern state of Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border,” Jenson answered.

“Get us there! Now!”

L
isa Clark
checked her hair and makeup in the oval mirror, telling herself that the ordeal would soon be over and she’d be reunited with her husband, son, and daughter. Excitement coursed through her body and lit her skin and eyes from within.

That glow had been missing for days. Seeing it now, her confidence grew. But she also had doubts, fears, and questions that she struggled to hold back.

“What do you think,
Señora?
” the young woman with the brush in one hand and a can of hair spray in the other asked.

“Are you going to do my daughter’s hair, too?”

“Oh, yes.” The woman nodded. “The
señorita,
she bery beautiful. She bery nice girl.”

“Thank you.”

“Jou should be bery proud.”

“I am.”

Lisa stood, buttoned the white blouse, and then stepped into the blue skirt and zipped it up on the side. As before, the clothes fit perfectly. Waiting for her on the bed were a jacket and a string of pearls. Black high heels rested on the floor.

She’d been through this routine hundreds of times before, preparing herself to face the public. The fact that she was going to look good pleased her.

Lisa wiped a smudge of lipstick from her front teeth, smiled into the mirror, then turned to the armed man standing near the door. “I’m ready if the
jefe
is,” she announced.

“Him not yet,
Señora
. But he will come soon.”

It took nearly an hour to squeeze through rush-hour Guadalajara traffic and reach the airport. Crocker and the three remaining members of Black Cell waited in a small room for the CIA Gulfstream IV to arrive, while Jenson paced and ranted into his cell phone, “Where’s the fucking aircraft?…Make goddamn sure there’s someone to meet us at the airport.…Alert our people there.…I want the exact location of the ranch.…We’re going to need weapons and equipment.”

Crocker was more interested in what the female CIA officer who was with them was trying to do: confirm the information that had been given to them by Alvarez.

Forty minutes later, when the aircraft taxied to the tarmac in front of them, she still hadn’t been successful.

“It’s the best we’ve got,” Jenson said, glancing at his watch.

As soon as Crocker hit the seat, he fell asleep and dreamt he was watching Holly kneel on a white tile floor and wash a baby boy in a bathtub. The baby’s skin glowed, lighting the room pink. When he burped, gray smoke poured out of his mouth and he started to cry.

Holly looked back at Crocker.

He picked the baby up and held him to his chest, but the smoke kept coming.

“Holly?” he asked. “Holly, what’s going on?”

She didn’t answer and he couldn’t find her through the gathering smoke.

“Holly…”

Two hours later, when the wheels hit the tarmac, he awoke, feeling anxious about Holly and not immediately understanding why.

The reason became apparent the moment he glanced at the new Suunto watch Holly had given him recently after the last one had been destroyed in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. This was the Core Lava Red model with all the bells and whistles, including altimeter, barometer, and a compass with weather information. It looked cool as hell, too.

It showed 2108 hours on the 15th.

Yesterday had been Holly’s forty-second birthday and he’d forgotten to call. This wasn’t the first time he’d failed to reach her on a wedding anniversary or birthday. A voice in his head reminded him of all the long absences, hardships, and funerals she’d had to endure because of him. It told him he didn’t deserve her.

Maybe the voice was right.

Outside the oval window, low buildings, lights, and semitropical foliage passed. The landscape looked flat and wild.

He heard Max Jenson growl something from behind him and remembered that the CIA station chief had accompanied them. Crocker picked out some of the words Jenson was growling into his cell phone, including “Mexican government” and “permissions.”

The plane came to a stop in front of a low military-style building guarded by armed men in camouflage uniforms with black balaclavas over their faces. The door opened and they passed through the florid air and entered an air-conditioned room. Jenson behind him shouted into a cell phone, “Over my dead body we’re letting them do this. You understand me? No goddamn way!”

If Jenson was saying he wasn’t going to allow the Mexican government to get involved, Crocker couldn’t agree more, not after what had happened in Guadalajara.

A tense young bearded CIA officer named Becker greeted them and pointed to a tray of sandwiches, bottles of water, and cans of soda that sat on a cabinet along the wall. “You probably want to refuel now, because we’re going to have to move fast.”

“What the fuck are we waiting for?” Jenson growled.

“The recon team should be arriving soon with photos of the ranch and other surveillance.”

“Should be?”

“Will be, sir.”

“Tell ’em to fucking hurry!” Jenson shouted with his hand over the phone. “We’ve got the lives of two American women on the line. We screw this up and we’ll all be fired.”

The tension, unsettled sleep, and guilt about missing Holly’s birthday had drained Crocker’s appetite. So he popped a can of Pepsi and looked out the windows of the temporary structure to the masked men standing guard outside.

Becker sidled up to him and said, “I might be able to find you a yogurt or some energy bars, if you don’t want a sandwich.”

“I’m fine. Who are they?” he asked, pointing to the men outside.

“Mexican soldiers from the GAFE. Army special forces.”

“Can we trust them?”

Becker shrugged. “Can you trust anyone connected to this government? I’ve got body armor and all kinds of ordnance in the next room, when you’re ready.”

“Mancini’s the guy you want to talk to about that,” Crocker said, pointing to Mancini, who was wolfing down a roast beef sandwich. Crocker’s three men sat in folding chairs in a corner of the room eating quietly.

Crocker knew what they were doing—preparing themselves mentally for the mission ahead. He needed to find the time to do that, too.

First he walked over to Mancini and told him about Becker and the ordnance. As the two men exited, Becker looked back at Crocker and said, “Your CO requested that you call him.”

“Now?”

“As soon as you can. I set up a secure phone in the office across the hall.”

He didn’t like it—the confusion, the uncertainty, the fact that they were still relying on Mexican officials.

The office was barely large enough to accommodate a metal desk and chair. Sutter picked up in his office on the second ring, even though it was an hour ahead, 2214 in Virginia Beach.

“Sir, it’s Crocker,” he said. “Mancini, Akil, Suárez, and I are currently in southern Mexico getting ready to launch a rescue mission.”

“Another one?” Sutter asked.

“It will be our second, sir. We’re with the station chief now.”

“Whatever you do, you’d better execute it soon.”

“We’re waiting for an intel update,” said Crocker.

“I hope it’s more accurate this time.”

“So do I. Someone on the inside warned them back in Guadalajara.”

“All I can say is, I can’t think of anyone better prepared and more capable of rescuing the hostages.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Before I sign off, I got a piece of good news. Davis returned this afternoon and he’s on his way to recovery.”

“I’m very glad to hear that. Please give him my best.”

“I will. I know he misses you guys.”

“We miss him, too.”

“I just wanted to make sure that you’re still alive and not rotting away in some Mexican prison.”

“We came close.”

“Keep doing what you’re there to do. We’ll get you home.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

“Oh, and one more thing. I got a call from the Fairfax County sheriff’s department. They want to talk to you about some break-in. You know anything about that?”

“I’m not sure, sir,” Crocker lied. “But I’ll call them when I return.”

Two guards escorted Lisa down a hallway, into a long room with several doors leading into hallways and other rooms. It featured a tile floor, a large metal candelabra on the ceiling, and high-backed wood-and-leather chairs along the walls. At the end hung a black flag with a red, white, and green map of Mexico in the middle, and a big “Z.”

“Where’s my daughter?” Lisa asked.

The guards led her over to a high-backed chair in front of the flag and indicated for her to sit.

Before she did, she asked, “Is the
jefe
coming?”

Instead of answering, they stepped away and stood to either side of her with their arms crossed.

Facing her about ten feet away was a man with a beard and long hair. He leaned over a video camera on a tripod and adjusted the lens. Black cords snaked from the camera to some kind of electronic receiver at the opposite wall.

About a foot in front of the camera and to either side stood two large professional studio umbrella lamps.

“Hello,” Lisa called. “Do you know if the
jefe
is coming?”

The photographer looked up and smiled at her with a mouthful of large uneven teeth. His face reminded her of the skinny actor from the movie
Y Tu Mamá También
, whose name she couldn’t remember.

“El Chacal? No, Mrs. Clark,” the man answered. “I’m just the camera operator. My name is Nelson. I’m checking to make sure all the cables are properly connected. I should be ready for you in a minute.”

His casual manner, the camera, and the strange flag all started to unnerve her. It wasn’t what she had expected. Her pulse quickened and her mouth turned dry.

“The
jefe
wants me to make a statement,” she said, trying to get a handle on what was going on.

“Yes, he does,
Señora.
Yes.”

“But you don’t expect him to be here.”

“No, I don’t. No,” Nelson answered, shaking his head.

“What about my daughter?”

“I know nothing about her.”

“Do you know if she’s here, in this house?”

Nelson shrugged.

“So I should assume she won’t be here when I make my statement.”

“I guess not,
Señora
. I don’t know.”

“Did El Chacal tell you what he wants me to say?” Lisa asked.

“No. To tell you the truth, I’ve never met him. But I would think he wants you to be honest. You know, speak from the heart,” Nelson said, slapping his chest. “Maybe talk about what this experience has meant to you, how you’ve been treated, what you’ve learned.”

“Okay,” Lisa said, trying to clear her throat. “I was expecting something else.”

“Like a maybe a script,
Señora
?” Nelson asked, smiling. “Or a speech? No, we don’t have a script. This is more like reality TV, you know, improvisation. Why don’t you sit and I’ll adjust the light.”

She did, and almost immediately Nelson switched on the two large lamps. “If these are in your eyes, please tell me.”

“They are,” Lisa replied, shielding her face with her hands as the confidence drained out of her. It was replaced by a queasy panic.

She asked herself,
What if this is some kind of test, and if I don’t say the right things, Olivia and I won’t be released?

A Mexican American CIA agent and another Mexican man wearing a black mask stood on one side of the table with Becker and CIA station chief Max Jenson behind them. The members of Black Cell faced them. The two Kawasaki KLR 650 dirt bikes that the men had ridden in on were visible through the window past Becker’s shoulder.

Jenson stepped forward, leaned his long body on the table, and rubbed his eyes. In the middle of the table sat an olive-green backpack. He pointed at it, then spoke.

“We’re running out of time, but I want to explain a couple things quickly. This man to my right is Gomez. He works for us. I don’t know the identity of the individual on my left, so Gomez will fill us in.”

Gomez jutted out his round chin and scratched under it. He stood about five ten and was built like a wrestler. His face was covered with several days’ growth of beard and he had a haunted look in his eyes. “This man doesn’t have a name or a face,” he announced in a gruff, nasal voice, “because he’s both an important asset and a member of the Mexican government security service.”

“Who is he hiding from, us or them?” Jenson asked.

“Them,” the masked man answered in accented English.

“Good answer.”

Crocker wasn’t sure he trusted any of them, and Jenson seemed to sense that. He looked at Crocker with an expression that asked:
Do you want to go on with this, or not?

Crocker nodded.

“Okay,” Jenson said. “Show us quickly what you found.”

The masked man opened the backpack and turned it over. Two dozen photos, maps, and diagrams spilled onto the table. He selected one that showed a strange, German-looking red clapboard house photographed through the bars of a gate.

“This is Las Lagrimas,” Gomez stated as the masked man handed the photo to Crocker. “
Lagrimas
means ‘tears’ in Spanish.”

“Is that significant?” Jenson grunted.

“Not really. No.”

“Then let’s stick to what these men need to know in order to carry out their mission.”

“Okay.”

“Las Lagrimas is one of six ranches, nine estates, and five apartments owned by Z-Thirteen throughout the country,” Gomez stated.

“What’s Z-Thirteen?” Crocker asked.

“That’s the Zeta designation for El Chacal.”

Jenson groaned, “Let’s not waste time.”

“Las Lagrimas is a cattle and sheep ranch formerly owned by an American rancher named Stanley Klausner, who died mysteriously in ninety-four as a result of what some say was his involvement in the Contra War in Nicaragua. Klausner was born in Germany, which explains the design of the house.”

“Cut to the fucking chase,” Jenson warned.

“The setup is pretty straightforward,” Gomez continued. “A main house, concrete airstrip and hangar, pool and cabanas, stables, and several equipment sheds on approximately five hundred acres. In Klausner’s day, it was an active ranch. All that remain are a few head of cattle, a couple horses, and some avocado and lemon trees. The Jackal uses it as a vacation house.”