The Last Line (32 page)
Authors: Anthony Shaffer
A few feet ahead, Cameche stepped into the hall just ahead of the running gunman, between the fugitive and the stairs, his own H&K raised.
“¡Alto!
Drop it!”
The gunman dropped his pistolâits slide was locked open over an empty chamberâand raised his hands.
“¡No fuego!
Don't shoot!”
Teller came up behind him, spun him around to face the wall, kicked his feet apart, and roughly searched him for weapons. He had none. As Cameche grabbed the man's collar and rammed his face against the plaster, Teller used a plastic zip-strip to bind his wrists behind his back.
“Patterson is dead,” Procario's voice said over the tactical channel. “You have five ⦠no, six, repeat
six
Tangos, M-16s and one AK, all coming in through the front door.”
The shock of having lost a team member was like a heavy slam to the gut. The op had gone seriously sour. Jackie was okayâhe
prayed
she was okayâbut one of their team members was dead, and the rest of them, minus Procario, were trapped on the upper floor of Hotel One.
Not
good â¦
Teller grabbed the prisoner's collar and shoved him into the second bedroom, tripped him, forced him down onto the floor. The woman, Maria Perez, lay on the bed, her wrists zip-stripped behind her, her eyes very wide. Standard operating procedure for a hostage rescue: Anyone you didn't know, even an unarmed civilian, was handcuffed or zip-stripped, both to keep them from wandering around in a firefight and to keep them from grabbing a weapon and becoming combatants.
“X-ray, Fox One,” Marcetti said. His voice sounded taut with pain. “See what you can do about our friends on the stairs.”
“Copy. Target acquired.”
MARIA PEREZ HOUSE
LA CALLE SUR 145
DISTRICTO IZTACALCO
2322 HOURS, LOCAL TIME
Carlos Mora Barquin reached the first-floor stairs at the back of the house and looked up. He couldn't see anyone up there, but he heard the thud of booted feet, heard someone speaking in English. He slapped Julio Mazariegos on the shoulder and pointed. Go!
The
yanqui
commando outside had been a nasty surprise, as had the claymore outside of the safehouse. That mine had shredded three of his boys before they'd made it out the door, and the commando had killed two more. Jorge had been killed by a sniper after firing his RPG.
Mora's training with the Guatemalan Kaibiles had given him a keen understanding of close-quarters tactics, of fire and movement. He'd been to this house several times, learning the location of each room, wall, and corridor. It was a small house, with the upstairs smaller than the first floorâjust two bedrooms on the second floor plus several closets and a bathroom at the front of the house, and with a ladder going up to the roof. The attackers would be toward the front of the house, in the first bedroom ⦠about
there â¦
Circling his arm rapidly, he sent the rest of his men up toward the second floor.
VICENTE HOUSE
LA CALLE SUR 145
DISTRICTO IZTACALCO
2322 HOURS, LOCAL TIME
The stairway leading from the first floor to the second was toward the back of the house, and that presented Procario with a nasty problem. The angle, shooting down from the third floor of the Vicente house, was such that his shots had to pierce Hotel One's front wall, at least one interior wall, and the floor in order to reach the line of men now ascending the stairs. The BMG round had tremendous penetrating power, but he wasn't sure that after going through the concrete at the front, it would have the power to punch through the floor as well, especially since there were twelve-inch vertical joists supporting the floorboards at two-foot intervals.
He picked the first man in line, now halfway up the steps, tracked him ⦠drew breath ⦠held â¦
squeezed
 â¦
MARIA PEREZ HOUSE
LA CALLE SUR 145
DISTRICTO IZTACALCO
2322 HOURS, LOCAL TIME
A loud crack snapped through the house, splinters flew from the banister beside the steps, and Julio yelped. “I'm hit!”
“Keep moving,
'mano
!” Mora yelled. “You move, they can't hit you!”
That wasn't entirely true, but he needed to keep his people from breaking. Even the ex-soldiers among them didn't have that much training, and charging up the stairs inside a darkened house was a tough thing to ask even of elite Fuerzos Especiales. That last round had punched down through the floor, and that made the rush even more unnerving.
If they could just reach the landing at the top of the steps â¦
FOX ONE
MARIA PEREZ HOUSE
LA CALLE SUR 145
DISTRICTO IZTACALCO
2322 HOURS, LOCAL TIME
Teller was waiting as the head of the first Tango in line appeared above the steps. The hallway was dark, but through his NVDs the man was brightly lit. The red aim-dot from Teller's laser sights rippled across the man's upper chest, and then Teller tapped a three-round burst into the target, knocking him backward.
Schmidt and Cameche each tossed grenades at the same momentâone M-67 and one M-84. The flashbang went off first, filling the stairway with a sun-bright flare of raw light, the fragmentation grenade detonating an instant later with a shrill bang.
Screams sounded from the darkness downstairs. Marcetti yelled,
“Go! Go!”
and Teller advanced to the top of the stairs, H&K at the ready.
Three bodies lay at the bottom of the steps, entangled in splatters of blood, two of them still moving. Teller loosed two more bursts into the tangle, silencing the screams; a fourth body lay motionless halfway down the steps.
“You have two Tangos downstairs,” Procario's voice said over the tactical channel. “They're moving back down the main hall ⦠they're moving into the living room, the big room at the front of the house.”
Confident that no one was waiting down there in the darkness to pop them as they came down the stairs, Teller led the way down the blast-broken steps, picking his way over the first body, and across a gap where two steps had been partially torn away by the frag grenade.
“Tangos are preparing to engage,” Procario said. “Hold your position.”
As he came off the stairs, Teller could see the entrance to the living room twenty feet ahead. He dropped into a crouch, weapon aimed at the opening.
A loud crack sounded from the living room, and someone screamed. “One Tango down,” Procario reported, and then a second BMG shot rattled windows. “Two Tangos down,” and then an explosion hurled bits of furniture into the hallway. “Second one had a grenade,” Procario added. “Tangos neutralized.”
“Let's go,” Marcetti asked. “Watch out for snipers.
Their
snipers.”
“According to Cellmap, Hotel Two is empty,” Procario said. “You're good to egress.”
That was comforting, but the team didn't relax. There was always the chance that someone
without
a cell phone had remained behind with a rifle.
Holding the prisoner's bound arms, Cameche steered their captive out the front door, with Teller and Dominique close behind. No shots were fired, but sirens shrilled and growled in the distance, coming closer. As Teller stepped out onto the street, he glanced up and saw a yellow glow flickering inside the upstairs front bedroomâthe fire started by the flashbang. In this neighborhood, a house fire could be a serious danger to the entire block.
Teller didn't know if those were fire sirens approaching or police, called in by reports of a running gun battle on Calle Sur 145, but either way the assault team needed to get clear, and quickly. The local authorities would not take kindly to Americans shooting Mexican citizens, no matter what the provocation.
Schmidt and Rogers found Patterson's body sprawled in the street and picked it up between them.
No man left behind.
“The Perez woman,” Dominique told Teller. “She ⦠she tried to help me.”
“Hey, March?” Teller said. “I think we can let the woman go.”
Marcetti nodded. “Do it.”
Cameche cut the zip-strip binding Perez's wrists.
“Sorry about your house, Miss Perez,” Teller said. “But you're free to go.”
“¡Por favor, no!”
she cried. Tears were streaming down her cheeks as the words tumbled out. She shifted to English. “Please, please, let me come with you! If ⦠if
they
know that I survived, they will think I helped you! You ⦠have no idea what these people can do, what they
will
do!”
“We have a pretty good idea, Señorita Perez,” Marcetti said. “We
do
know that you're the niece of Jaime Perez, and the girlfriend of Juan Escalante, however. We're going to want you to answer some questions for us.”
“Anything!” she replied. “Absolutely anything! I ⦠I am
sick
of this life.”
Together, they hurried down the street to the Vicente house.
Fifteen minutes later, they were crowded into the upstairs bedroom. The street outside was crowded with fire trucks and emergency vehicles; rotating light bars sent waves of red and blue and white light across the faces of the nearby buildings. Police were cordoning off the bodies in the street as firefighters played streams of water into the bedroom of the Perez house.
Antonio Vicente stood in the hallway, hands on hips, managing to look furious and terrified at the same time. “You no should do this!” he cried in broken English. “If the drug lords, they suspect you have been here, in my house, my life is not worth a single peso!”
“We got them all, Señor Vicente,” Marcetti said. He was sitting on the bed with his shirt off, allowing Rogers to apply gauze pads and medical tape to his bloody shoulder. The bullet had gone clean through, breaking his clavicle, scapula, and one rib, but first aid measures had stopped the bleeding, and the wound was not otherwise serious. “No one knows you helped us.”
“The police outside, they are talking to my neighbors. If they come here and searchâ”
“They will need a federal search warrant,” Procario said, interrupting. As in the United States, the police needed a warrant to enter a citizen's home. “By the time they obtain one, we will be long gone.”
“If you want to come with us, Señor Vicente,” Teller said, “I'm sure we can find room for one more.”
“No. No ⦠I will stay here. Mexico is my country.”
“How about it, March?” Teller asked. “We're not going to be needing our walking-around cash, are we?”
“That's a thought. Jackie? The case is over there, by the table. Give it to Señor Vicente, please.”
Inside the briefcase were almost one million pesosâover $75,000âin bills of various denominations. The money had been issued to Teller and Procario by the Agency, money to survive in the streets, if necessary, to bribe officials, or to tracelessly hire vehicles. They'd spent some of it to rent cars and hotel rooms while they were in Mexico, but most of it was still there.
Vicente stared at the money, uncomprehending, at first. “
Ese ⦠ese es por m�
”
“You've been a good friend, Señor Vicente,” Marcetti said. “And you've been of incredible help, both to us and to your country.”
“Just one thing,” Teller said. “I urge you to move, and quickly. If you won't come with us, then sell the house and move someplace else. The man who first told us about youâ”
“Señor de la Cruz?”
“Yes. He ⦠is not to be trusted.”
“But ⦠he is National Security. Like your CIA, no?”
“Like our CIA, yes,” Procario told him. “But he arranged to have our friend Jackie here kidnapped. And he probably arranged to have that army here tonight, to ambush us. The whole thing tonight was a trap.”
“
Dios mio
⦔
“Chances are, he won't bother you,” Marcetti said. “But it's better to be safe.”
“Gracias,”
Vicente said, closing the briefcase.
“Mil gracias, por los todos.”
After Vicente had left, Dominique looked at Teller. “Just how dirty do you think de la Cruz is, anyway?” she asked. “I couldn't tell if he was behind killing Ed and having me picked up, or if maybe cartel thugs forced him.”
“I think he's
dirty
dirty,” Teller said. “He was trying to plant misinformation from the beginningâal Qaeda smuggling nukes to attack Mexico, remember? Then it was
his
suggestion to put Escalante under surveillance, and him who introduced us to Vicente.”
“He ordered me and Ed out of the country,” Dominique said.
“Yeahâand you were picked up by a motorcycle almost at once, weren't you? The bomb was meant to kill you, but when he found out you were alive, he showed up with a couple of cartel bully-boys to make you disappear.”
“I checked at the hospital,” Procario said. “There was no visitor's log, but the charge nurse told me there were three CISEN officers in to see you, including de la Cruz. She identified his file photo and said he'd been the one to order you held after you were treated, and
then
he ordered you released so you could go with him. And later he told us he didn't know where you were.”
“Shit,” Marcetti said. “De la Cruz told you about Vicente? That means the cartels know about him, too. He's dead. I'm surprised they didn't attack the house tonight.”
“They probably didn't attack because we were the prime targets,” Teller said. “And if he gets out of town fast, he should be okay. That's why I lit a fire under him.”
“We might talk to someone at the U.S. Embassy,” Procario said. “They might be able to help him. Maybe grant him asylum.”
“Good thought,” Marcetti said. “Neither the Zetas nor the Sinaloans are particularly forgiving in nature.”