Oath to Defend (6 page)

13

Barak initiated the assassination of the rival cartel leader’s brother and the borrowed commando leader from the east. His men were scheduled to arrive in the tequila distributor’s van at 12:30, a little after the birthday party started. They would enter from the loading dock and kill everyone in their way. When they reached the private salon, they would kill everyone else.

He’d been driven to the Camino Real Hotel, across the street from the restaurant, to supervise the hit. His tenth-floor room looked down on the small restaurant, and he could see the loading dock where his men would arrive. Given the veiled threat if this failed, he had decided his personal attention was required. If something did go wrong, Allah forbid, it would be easier for him to escape in Tijuana than from the villa. But he would not fail. He would kill the brother of the Architect himself if he had to.

He watched the invited guests begin arriving at noon. Some were family, a mother, a wife, four children, plus a few friends. Spawn of the devil, he thought, as Americans were fond of saying. For him, they were no doubt Catholic believers
,
infidels
, who would die, along with the Architect’s brother and Los Zetas hit man. So be it.

He had watched others arrive, too, men he knew were associates and cartel members, given the lack of concern they were showing that any danger might threaten them. Considering the number of cartel men standing beside their black SUVs in front of the restaurant and more likely inside, their confidence was reasonable. It was also why they were vulnerable. Twenty men could not stop his two men once they were inside. They had the element of surprise on their side.

At one o’clock, the delivery van the cartel had supplied him pulled up to the loading dock. His two men, dressed in company uniforms, got out of the van and opened the back, where cases of tequila were stacked. He watched as a restaurant employee and cartel guard approached to sign for the delivery. Both were quickly, silently shot and shoved into the van behind the cases of tequila.

When his men raced inside, Barak couldn’t hear the automatic fire from their MP5s, but the guards lingering outside heard. Pulling out their weapons, they rushed in, and Barak saw muzzle flashes flickering in the restaurant’s front windows. Then there was no movement, not even on the street outside. Tijuana was used to cartel violence. He was not surprised no one rushed up to help.

Five minutes later, however, Barak felt a cold chill of apprehension as he watched two cartel men stumble out the restaurant’s front door and collapse on the sidewalk. If they had survived, then the Architect’s brother might also have survived. That was something he could not let happen.

He grabbed his tactical weapons bag and ran to the elevator. If he could get across the street fast enough, before the survivors could regroup, then he might have enough time to finish the job.

When he stepped out of the elevator in the lobby, it seemed to him that no one had noticed the destruction taking place in the restaurant across the street. He crossed the lobby at a fast walk. As he crossed the street, he heard moaning coming from the two men he had seen from his room. He shot them both in the head as he walked by.

Inside the restaurant, he smelled death even before he saw the first group of bloody bodies on the floor outside the banquet room. The cartel’s men had been shot as they tried to enter, and blood splatter covered the walls around the door. He went inside the private room. Pools of blood were everywhere, like mud puddles on a rainy day. Shards of crystal and china covered the bodies of men who tried to crawl under the tables, but most of the bodies were still slumped in the chairs and booths where they’d been shot.

Barak saw the bodies of his two men lying in front of the head table. There was a pile of bodies just beyond them. Stepping around the dead on his way through the room, he looked for the Architect’s brother.

Lying on his back next to an overdressed, bloody woman, the man once thought to be one of the smartest drug smugglers in Mexico had a line of bleeding bullet holes across his chest. His eyes were open, and his mouth still moved in a silent plea for help.

Barak leaned down and shot him twice in the head. The Architect’s brother was no better, no worse, than the man who ordered his death. He didn’t deserve to suffer any more than any other person who wasn’t an American. Americans deserved to suffer, Barak told himself, but not this man.

He walked quickly out of the banquet room and through the kitchen, where he saw that the restaurant staff had died at their work stations. When he reached the loading dock, he heard the police sirens. He had planned to leave by taxi from the hotel, but now he thought better of it. His men had been told to leave the delivery van’s keys in the ignition. He was pleased to see they had obeyed. He stepped up into the cab and started the engine. Driving carefully down the alley to the Avenue of the Heroes half a block away, he pulled into southbound traffic. He opened the cell phone he’d been given.

“I’m leaving now, Felipe. Tell your boss the good news. He alone is El Supremo in Tijuana. See you in five minutes.”

“And your men, señor?”

“They are in Paradise, as Allah promised. Tell Saleem it’s time for him to keep his promise.”

“You can tell him yourself,” Calderon replied. “We celebrate tonight. My boss wants to meet you. You have done him a great favor.”

“Get me out of here safely, and you will have done me a great favor.”

“No problem. The police here are our friends.”

14

When their Gulfstream landed in Tijuana, where the sultry night air was heavy with the smells of burned jet fuel and pollution, it was met by two black Suburbans and men wearing blue and black fatigues.

“Mike, keep our guys here,” Drake said, as he climbed down the ladder. “No use showing them what we bring to the party before we know if there’s a party.” He walked toward an agent walking toward him.

The agent extended his right hand. “Drake, I’m Special Agent Cooper. Welcome to Tijuana. Have your men join us and we’ll talk.”

“I told them to stay in the plane until I know if we’re staying.”

“Oh, you’ll be staying, all right. Washington pulled in some favors Mexico owes us. They’ve agreed to raid the villa.”

“Do we get to join you?”

“Only two of you as advisors, and no guns. They want to be able to take full credit if the raid is successful. My men will be armed, but Mexico’s go in first.”

Drake nodded. “Fine, but I want to be right behind you. I’ll go tell my guys.” He turned and went back to the Gulfstream.

Back in the forward cabin, he sat across from his friend. “Only two of us get to go,” he said loud enough for the others to hear. “No guns. And we’re only allowed to observe. Mike, you still have those Glock 30’s and ankle holsters?”

“Sure do. I thought we might need them.”

“Are they here in the cabin or stowed with our luggage?”

“In the back, I’ll get them.”

As Casey stood up, Drake turned to Gonzalez. “Roberto, you can monitor us on the team radios. Let me know if you hear anything hinky from any of the Mexican army around us. The DEA might trust them, but we don’t have to. We’ll be too far away for you to get to us in time if we need help, but stay with the plane. I don’t want anything missing when we get back.”

“You want a vest?” Mike asked when he returned with the Glocks. “The radios are in the vest pockets.”

“Only way to dress for a party like this,” Drake said as he strapped his Glock on his right ankle and pulled on the bulletproof vest. “Now let’s go see if we can find our terrorist.”

Special Agent Cooper stood beside his SUV talking with a Mexican army officer. “Gentlemen,” he said, nodding at Drake and Casey, “this is Major Rafael Castillo, head of Mexico’s war on the cartels in this region. He will lead the raid tonight.”

Major Castillo did not look like a Mexican commando. Tall, with blue eyes and a light complexion, he looked more like a California beach boy than a soldier. Those blue eyes, however, showed the toughness required to fight the cartels in Mexico.

“Gentlemen,” he said in almost unaccented English as they shook hands, “Special Agent Cooper has worked with me before and assures me you will not get in my way. Make it so. We know of the villa you have identified. It is owned by a man we have been watching. He has no connection to the cartels that we have found. He is connected, however, to many of our politicians from Baja Mexico. For that reason, we will be very careful tonight. We will also be very careful because an important cartel member and his family were assassinated at a birthday party this afternoon. The cartels will have blood in their eyes for anyone moving against them. You are welcome to observe, but that is all I can allow you to do. Is that understood?”

“It’s your call, Major,” Drake said. “The man we’re after is a danger to both of us, but he’s here in your country. We appreciate you being willing to take him on. We won’t get in your way.”

“Good. My two Black Hawks will be here soon. You’ll ride in the second one,” Major Castillo said as he turned and walked toward a nearby hangar, where soldiers were mustering.

“Castillo’s good,” Special Agent Cooper told them. “He attended college at Texas A&M, ROTC, then enlisted in the Marines. He has dual citizenship, but came back home to fight the cartels. He’s a good leader, but he doesn’t exactly have crack troops to lead. So keep your heads down. What he said about a cartel leader getting whacked is troubling. When the cartels are at war, it’s worse than anything the
Godfather
movies ever portrayed.”

“Does this assassination have anything to do with our guy?” Drake asked. “Barak had a working relationship with the cartels, and if our intel is correct, he just arrived in Tijuana.”

“Who knows. All the police here say is that the brother of the Architect—the former head of the cartel—was assassinated by two black Muslims with prison tattoos. Who the hell knows how they’re involved. An opposing cartel could be trying to throw us off. Make us think this was some outside group that did this.”

Drake looked at Casey, who knew enough to keep silent. If Barak was here using his men to carry out a hit, it made sense if he wanted the protection of the cartels for awhile. Or he was joining in their smuggling enterprise as he had before.

When the Black Hawks flew in low and landed in front of the hangar, Special Agent Cooper led them to the second helicopter and motioned them in.

“Since you are their special guests, they saved the window seats for you,” he said with a smile. “Of course, they’ll probably fly with the cargo doors open.”

Drake returned Cooper’s smile. He and Casey had flown more times in Black Hawks than either of them cared to remember. Flying with the cargo doors open was routine.

The flight south from Tijuana took less than fifteen minutes. They flew down the Guadalupe Valley and landed in a flat area next to a swimming pool below the villa. No sooner had they touched down than gun fire raked both helicopters as the soldiers jumped out and took positions behind the retaining wall around the pool. Major Castillo gave hand signals to his men to move out in three groups and up a slight hill toward the villa. At the same time, Drake and Casey took cover behind the retaining wall and watched the soldiers advance on the villa, firing controlled bursts from their AK 47’s.

Drake frowned. “Mike, there’s no sound from the incoming rounds. What are these guys using?”

“Only thing I know of is the Kalashnikov AK-9,” Casey said, ducking his head as rounds peppered the swimming pool behind them. “Almost no sound, fires 9 mm rounds that can penetrate bulletproof vests.”

“I hope Castillo knows that. If he doesn’t, he’s going to lose a lot of his guys.”

As the soldiers moved in on the villa, the fighting intensified, then suddenly stopped. In the silence, Drake signaled Casey to move to the right end of the retaining wall as he moved to the left end. Either Castillo had won or there would be men moving down to finish them as well.

When he looked up again, the light coming from the veranda revealed Major Castillo turning over a cartel defender with his boot. Satisfied the man was dead, he turned toward Drake and waved.

“Come up and look for your man.”

Walking up the gravel path to the villa, they saw that Castillo’s pincer tactic had caught the cartel men falling back to protect the villa, where they were mowed down in a crossfire. It looked like Castillo had lost several men.

In the villa’s main room, they found two men lying face down at the foot of a staircase and several others that had fallen around the doorway they had defended. Their bodies had been mutilated by the savage fire from the soldiers.

“These two were trying to reach the stairs when we came in,” Castillo said. “We haven’t been upstairs, so I don’t know if anyone is there. Would you like to wait for my men to clear the second floor? Or would you rather go look for yourselves?”

Drake picked up an AK 9 lying next to one of the dead men and headed for the stairs. “We have some experience at this,” he said. “We’ll go look.”

Casey picked up the other AK 9 on the floor and followed Drake up the stairs, at the top of which they moved down each side of the hallway that ran the length of the second floor. There were doors on both sides. The first two rooms they cleared were empty bedrooms, with unmade beds and clothes on the floor. The third room was a den, complete with a massive flat panel TV, a pool table, and a poker table where men had been sitting, judging from cigars left in the ash trays.

Next to the den was a larger bedroom with a balcony. The bed was neatly made, but here, too, they saw a cigar left in an ash tray. There were several magazines and a brochure on a mahogany writing desk. Drake picked up the half-smoked cigar, made sure it was cold, then looked at the magazines. The first was titled
Mallet
,
The International Magazine of Polo
, the second was
Polo America
. The brochure announced a charity polo match in Bend, Oregon. Drake didn’t know anything about polo, but he pocketed the brochure just in case. He doubted the cartel guys cared about polo in Oregon, but if Barak had been in the villa there might be a connection he could look into.

After they finished clearing the second floor, they returned downstairs and found Major Castillo talking to Special Agent Cooper.

“We were able to have a conversation with one of the
sicarios
, or cartel hit men,” the major was saying, “before he unfortunately died. I did not think he was so badly injured, but you know…things happen. He told me the one they call El Verdugo, the Executioner, had been here with his bodyguard and two others he did not know but who were not Mexicans. He said they left in a helicopter, after they got a message we were coming.”

“Damn it!” Cooper said. “I’m so tired of them always being one step ahead of us.”

Castillo smiled sympathetically. “Until we pay our people as much as the cartels do,” he said, “they will always be ahead. But tonight, not all of them got away. We lost a few, but they lost many more.”

Drake tapped the major on the arm. “Did the unfortunate
sicario
describe the ones who weren’t Mexican?” he asked.

“Only that one was older, maybe sixty, and spoke only English. He said he was only here for several days.”

That had to be Barak, Drake thought. Where was he headed now?