The Warrior Code (26 page)

‘How did you know?’

Zeb shrugged. ‘I wasn’t sure. I spotted them following us after our raid, but then they dropped away. I thought nothing of them. They came ahead at the intersection and slowed when there was no traffic ahead.’

Garcia’s team operated on a ‘no mobiles’ policy for every operation. The team deposited their mobile phones at a secure location and used encrypted radio communication. They had realized the hard way that mobiles could be tapped into. And could be used to relay information to the cartels.

He knew his team didn’t have a mole.

Zeb read his thoughts. ‘They kept watch on us during and after the raid. That’s how they got to us so quickly.’

They started switching vehicles after each raid.

Three more raids later, Broker and Zeb spotted another jigsaw piece.

At each of the safe houses they had discovered tunnels from bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, any random room, leading to alleys and in some cases to even the neighboring homes.

Broker scratched his jaw. The stubble on his chin turned gold as it caught the sun. ‘This is Sinaloa territory.’

Garcia nodded. Zeb stood silently beside him. He knew where Broker was going with this.

‘So he won’t have that many safe houses. The Sinaloas will know if he has many, and they’ll catch him sooner or later. We have discovered seven safe houses. Today’s raid was on the first of those seven houses, and we missed him again.’

Garcia snapped his fingers. ‘Of course. We can try to steer him to where we want.’

They hadn’t posted any men at the previous safe houses since keeping the operation secure was paramount, and there was no way of knowing how many cops were on Zubia’s payroll.

That changed.

They raided a couple of empty safe houses yet again, fully knowing the drug lord wasn’t in them, and then conspicuously posted men at the houses. Garcia boasted at his station that there was no place Zubia could escape; it was just a matter of time till he was caught.

They spent a week conducting raids randomly across the city: hotels, apartments similar to the safe houses, known strongholds of his gang. They went in at any time in the day or night, Garcia’s men going in hard every time, and the sight of the masked SEMAR men became common in the city.

Zeb and his two men left Garcia the middle of that week, drove out of town fifty miles away, left the highway, went through villages and entered a smaller village three hours away from Culiacán Rosales.

They left the village behind and followed a dirt track, which after half a mile turned into tarmac and had street lighting. In the distance they could see a gleaming structure that was surrounded by thick foliage, just the one road leading to it.

Zubia’s mansion.

They left the road and took their SUV through the thick undergrowth, and green swallowed them. They concealed their ride, armed themselves, took a last look and set off.

Half a mile away from the walled entrance, Zeb signaled, and they took shelter in a thick copse of trees, and Broker unloaded his gadget.

It was a drone, but unlike any available commercially.

It was a square frame with four tilt rotors on the corners, reinforced by diagonal bars, and hosted a dizzying array of kit. Cameras, GPS transponders, thermal imagers, infrared thermography, LIDAR – light detection and ranging – radar detectors, water detectors, battery packs; Zeb stopped paying attention after a while.

‘Does it fly?’

Broker closed his eyes and told himself, ‘Ignore him. He can’t even work a phone.’

They spray painted the drone to match the surrounding foliage and set it off late at night.

Four hours later they had a good picture of the mansion.

‘Twenty men. Ten outside patrolling the walled perimeter, ten inside. Three women, one who’s Zubia’s mistress and the other two are help.’

Zeb relayed the information to Garcia.

He listened to Garcia, nodded just once, and hung up.

‘We have a go. In three days. As long as we get a sighting of him.’

They spent the two days mapping everything that the drone saw and made their plans. On the second day they had their first sighting of Zubia.

He was in the back garden on a radio for just a minute before he hustled back inside the house.

Delivery vans came twice a day to the gates, were inspected, and only then allowed through.

On that day Broker confirmed the tunnel.

‘That’s why I have these two babies.’ Broker chortled as he patted the LIDAR and the infrared thermography devices.

The LIDAR device on the drone fired laser pulses to the earth and captured the reflection and response time. It used these parameters, among others, to build detailed maps of the surface. The infrared thermography camera created thermal maps of the surface and could
see
beneath the surface up to eighty feet deep.

The tunnel ran from the bathroom in a straight line to the south for a mile and came up in a shed.

Broker shared the images with Clare, who would share them with other agencies involved in the war against drugs.

Zeb and Roger checked out the shed on the third day.

It was a basic structure, four brick-and-mortar walls, a flat roof, and had three holes for windows. A rutted track led from it and disappeared in the jungle.

They watched it from three hundred yards away, and just as Roger started forward, Zeb pulled him back.

A man in a shabby uniform came around the shed, zipped up his pants, hawked and spat. There was nothing shabby about the AK-47 and ammunition belt dangling from his shoulder.

He called out, and another figure stepped into view.

‘Shed probably has a getaway vehicle,’ Zeb murmured.

Garcia joined them that afternoon. He had twenty men with him, many of whom they knew. The men were of a kind Zeb recognized, highly trained, competent and motivated professionals – the most dangerous men to cross.

Broker showed him the images of the tunnel, and Garcia shook his head in disbelief.

‘That track from the shed probably leads to an airstrip that has a getaway plane as well.’ He rapped out orders to one of his men to call it in. It would be checked by the rest of his team in Culiacán Rosales.

He looked enviously at the drone, and Zeb knew what was running through his mind.

Budget constraints, political battles, bureaucracy, justification, traitors, the usual shit people like him have to deal with.

‘It’s yours,’ Zeb told him when the Mexican glanced away from the machine.

Garcia swung back at him, stunned, struggled for words, and saw Broker and Roger give him the thumbs-up.

He reached out and gripped their hands hard. Words weren’t necessary.

Garcia heard their plans silently, made suggestions, and when everything was ready, they broke out food and took naps in turns.

Food and sleep, whenever, wherever, was a rule ingrained in all of them.

At nine p.m. ten teams from Garcia’s unit attacked the seven safe houses in Culiacán Rosales and three other hotels. A diversionary tactic that they hoped would lull Zubia.

Nine thirty p.m. they got a burst of radio and cell phone activity from the mansion.

They attacked the mansion at ten p.m.

Garcia’s men activated a cell phone and radio jammer; five of them formed a sniper cordon around the wall and picked off the gangsters.

Fifteen of them spread out, ran to the perimeter walls, and attached explosive devices.

Most of the drug lords had battering-ram-proof doors installed on their homes. These doors were reinforced with steel and had a wall of water between the steel skins. The water cooled the steel, which otherwise would have grown warm and less resistant to the battering ram.

Battering rams had no place in Garcia’s world.

The explosive devices went off in a flash of sound and smoke, and the men surged in, spread out, and started clearing the house.

They soon got fierce returning fire once the gangsters regrouped, but Broker, watching on his drone, snapped out instructions to Garcia, and the firefight started reshaping in favor of the attackers.

Zeb and Roger were a hundred yards away from the shed.

‘On the move,’ Broker’s voice whispered in their ears.

An average person ran a mile in twelve minutes. Zeb figured Zubia would run the tunnel in ten. He had motivation.

That meant Zeb had five minutes to overcome the guards and confront the gangster.

They spotted the two guards easily. One of them was shouting at his radio; the other was looking around him nervously from the other side of the shed.

Radio-man didn’t feel the shadow that came over him. One moment he was fiddling with his radio, the next second a steel arm wrapped around him and dragged him down.

Zeb looked up, heard Roger’s owl hoot, and headed to the shed.

Four minutes.

It was empty except for a black Jeep in good condition. He broke the driver’s window, disabled the vehicle, and headed to its rear.

The floor was clean swept and had a circular door with a rope handle. He grabbed the rope, pulled and stumbled back as the door swung smoothly on hinges, catching him off balance.

He flashed a red-light flashlight, saw a rope ladder dangling down, plunged down it, and pulled the door shut over his head.

He went ten feet down before hitting ground and saw that the tunnel was smooth concrete, six feet high, three feet across. And dark.

Figures. He probably knows the tunnel blind.

Three minutes.

He held still, strained to listen, and heard vast silence.

He bent low and ran toward the opposite end, counting in his mind as he did so.

Hundred feet.

Then a hundred yards. He paused to listen.

Nothing.

Another hundred yards.

He thought he heard panting in the distance.

Fifty yards more and he fell prone and waited.

They had discussed waiting at the top for Zubia.

‘What if he just doubles back and heads back to the house?’ Roger asked dubiously.

They thrashed it out and finally decided on Zeb tackling him in the tunnel. There was nothing like having eyes on the enemy.

The panting now was audible, and as the man grew closer, Zeb made out curses as the gangster ran unevenly.

The runner paused for a moment to catch his breath and then commenced running.

He ran smack into Zeb.

Zeb yanked his legs from under him and, as the man fell, turned on his flashlight.

Luis Zubia’s startled eyes gazed back at him.

Zubia fell with a heavy thud. A clang of metal sounded as he fell on the rifle slung on his back.

Don’t let him reach the rifle.

Zubia kicked out with his legs immediately. One leg caught Zeb on his injured thigh, and he felt the wound open. He ignored it, clubbed the man’s thighs with a hard chop, and felt movement in the air.

Gun. Right hand.

He groined the man with his knee, caught the right hand, gripped the wrist hard and squeezed.

Zubia groaned, and the handgun fell with a clatter. He attempted a head butt, and his head smashed back against the hard ground.

He lay motionless for a second, and then exploded into action as he brought a knife out and stabbed at Zeb. Simultaneously his right hand flashed and swung at Zeb’s throat.

Zeb saw the knife flash in the dull glow of the flashlight, parried the thrust, ducked his head, caught the wrist as it withdrew for another swipe, and broke Zubia’s wrist in a strike.

He caught the right hand, twisted the fingers, and the man’s howl filled the tunnel. It choked off as Zeb slapped him and swiftly taped his mouth.

He ignored the man’s hate-filled eyes, brought his wrists forward roughly, and taped them.

He searched the man’s body, ducked almost in time but not fast enough, and caught the man’s boot against his eyebrow in an explosive kick.

He fell, rolled back up, and the drug lord piled into him like a battering ram.

Zubia’s hands were bound, his mouth was taped, but he attacked with his shoulder, elbows, head, any part of his body.

His knees found Zeb’s thigh and ground into it.

Fire streaked through Zeb. He ignored it and struck back on the man’s shoulder, a blow that would incapacitate any adult. It didn’t slow Zubia. He was fueled by rage.

Need him alive. Need him relatively uninjured.

Zubia punched him in the jaw with his elbow, and Zeb’s head swam for a moment. The gangster attacked him again in the same spot, and the blow fell on Zeb’s throat as he dodged it.

Zeb ignored the man’s legs and knees as they struck him repeatedly like pistons. He could feel wetness spread down his left leg. His groin was a world of hurt. He clenched his teeth.

He’s giving this everything. His survival is at stake. Have to end it soon else either he or I or both get seriously hurt
.

Zeb chopped the man’s neck, and Zubia barely flinched. His face was scrunched tight, his eyes shut, as he repeated blow after blow metronomically on the man beneath him. Zeb struck his ears, and the elbows faltered. Zubia reared and fell back on top of him, all his dead weight aimed at Zeb like a piledriver.

Zeb grunted and for a second his control slipped as a fierce rage swept through him.

He grabbed the gangster and hurled him against the concrete wall, heard the sickening thud, followed it with a double strike on his shoulders and a lightning strike on his sternum.

A howl echoed through the tunnel and then silence fell.

Zeb hauled himself up, caught the man, and dragged him to the foot of the rope ladder.

He climbed slowly, using his arms to drag himself up to give respite to his left leg and groin. He stopped halfway up as sweat rolled down his face and blackness came across him.

He sucked greedily at the cool air when he flung the trapdoor open and was hauled up by Roger.

Roger looked at him as he lay panting, wordlessly slipped down the rope ladder, and saw Zubia slumped against the wall.

The gangster stirred when Roger approached him, and a foot lashed out, but it was a halfhearted effort.