Border War Read online

  Haben looked at him with cold brown eyes and said, “Laying low eats into profits. But you may be right in this situation.” The executive looked out his front window onto the wide expanse of the open Texas prairie and Mexico not far beyond. “Now that you handled DiMetti so well, we should be able to convince his wife he was killed by the police. That should keep her quiet. Then, at least, his threat will be neutralized.” He looked back at Cash and said, “I need you to take care of any loose ends on this deal. Is that understood?”

  “Clearly understood, sir.” Cash didn’t like his boss’s tone or what he might have to do, but this was the job he had signed on for.

  * * *

  The room was plain, bright, and typical of a government office. Piles of old magazines were stacked in one corner, and shelves full of out-of-date statute books crowded the far wall. A single wobbly table with four chairs filled the center of the room.

  The overhead fluorescent lights of the Border Patrol office hurt Tom Eriksen’s eyes as he sat there hoping to appear calm. In fact, he had shit calm out two hours ago in the men’s room. Now he was close to complete confusion. He’d never been in a firefight before. Most cops never have to fire their guns during their entire careers, and even fewer FBI agents get into shootouts. He’d been in fights and didn’t back down from trouble, but the aftermath was a bitch.

  It’d been a night of shocks. Seeing his partner so still on the ground next to him had shocked him almost as much as when he popped up a few seconds later to assess the situation. As a veteran of four shootings, John knew to lie flat when he had expended all of his ammunition.

  Right now the administrators had him and John in separate rooms like criminals they were trying to break so they could compare their stories. No one had been rude to him, though. In fact, the Border Patrol agents had appreciated his efforts at stopping the man who killed one of their comrades—the doctor hadn’t been able to save him. Eriksen had already heard that the young agent was married and left behind two children. The reporters always seemed to skip over such facts and to focus instead on whether the agents involved had justification in shooting.

  Eriksen’s immediate supervisor, Mike Zara, waddled into the room, his face a deeper red than normal and his pinched face showing his irritation. The senior FBI man said, “I just love being called out in the middle of the night for foolishness like this.”

  “I don’t think I’d call a dead Border Patrol agent foolish.”

  Zara didn’t say anything. Instead he looked at his BlackBerry, then changed his focus back to Eriksen and asked, “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  “You make it sound like I’m under arrest.”

  “If I had my way, you might be.”

  Now Eriksen took a moment to assess his supervisor. The word around the Bureau in West Texas was that Zara couldn’t be trusted with an operational squad so he’d been put over a dozen agents who were all out on task forces. He wasn’t known for backing up his agents.

  Eriksen said, “Why would you want me to be arrested?”

  “We found the two coyotes you shot.”

  “So? They fired first.”

  “We’ll never know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because their bodies are on the Mexican side of the border where they died.”

  FOUR

  Surveillance from inside a car had to be the worst. Even a classy car like this. Fortunately, the cool night air had taken the edge off the unpleasant task. El Paso’s climate was mild three months a year. Tonight it was an even seventy as the heat of the day dissipated.

  It was just after nine at night when Cash realized he was dead tired. He wasn’t sure if it was his years or the way he had lived them that had turned him into an old man. He tried to stay at his fighting weight of 185 and told people he was six feet tall, even though he was only five eleven, but the late nights and hard partying had taken their toll. Maybe his boss saw it, too, and that was why he had assigned a stooge named Ari to help him out on his project. Maybe not so much a stooge as a thug. He’d been contracted and didn’t have an official position with the corporation. Ari was an Israeli with just a slight accent and claimed to have been a member of the Mossad. Every Israeli Cash had ever met claimed to be a former Mossad agent. But that didn’t mean Ari wasn’t tough. Mr. Haben said Ari usually didn’t do the dirty work, but Cash had the sense that he enjoyed it.

  He looked through the windshield of his Cadillac CTS at the cute young woman from Chicago who was now the widow of Vinnie DiMetti. Her bleached blond hair dripped into her face as she tossed a bag into the garbage can in front of the pleasant-looking three-bedroom, two-bath house in the suburban El Paso community known as Canutillo.

  Ari said, “She’s got some nice curves, doesn’t she?”

  Cash chose not to answer.

  “Ari thinks he would have fun with someone like her.”

  He hated the way this guy always spoke in the third person. Cash said, “This is business. If she doesn’t cause any more trouble, we’ve got nothing more to do with her.”

  A sly smile swept across Ari’s face and he raised his eyebrows. “Ari hopes she causes some more trouble.”

  The stocky little guy gave Cash the creeps. But he had heard Ari could handle himself in a tight situation, so he wouldn’t come down too hard on the jerk right now. With any luck they’d never have to talk to Carol DiMetti about work again. He’d listened carefully to any hint of anger or threat when he told her about Vinnie catching a bullet from one of the Border Patrol agents. Just like he had planned, she had seen it on the news as well. He did notice that she didn’t seem all that broken up about her dimwitted husband ending up dead. The news had no details about the dead coyotes since they had wound up in Mexico, but he had explained the whole situation to her. He knew not to push too hard just yet. He’d come by and casually speak to her again in the next few days, once he got rid of Ari.

  The fact that Vinnie was a moron made it all the more surprising that he had caused a load more trouble than he should have been capable of. Apparently, he had seen one too many mob movies and thought he was living one himself.

  As Cash watched Carol walk away from the garbage can, she lifted her cell phone to her ear. She didn’t seem too distraught. He just hoped she could keep her mouth shut. For her sake.

  * * *

  It had been eight days since the shooting, and Tom Eriksen was still sulking at his apartment on Sun Trail Drive. The three-room detached building, behind an older house, was cheap as well as private. It had plenty of windows, although at the moment the vast amount of sunshine flooding in did nothing for his mood. All it did was illuminate the fact that he had very little in the way of furnishings not scrounged from his landlord, and his eleven-novel book collection looked feeble. He still basically lived like a college student.

  The family that lived in the house in front of him loved the idea of an FBI agent renting their little apartment. They were part of a three-generation pool-building family that still had Sunday night dinner all together. The oldest son, Marty, had taken Eriksen out for beers a couple of times to show him the town. The twenty-five-year-old laughed at the idea of a family employing twenty members building pools in a place like El Paso. Despite the slowdown in the economy they had made it work with determination and effort. Eriksen respected that.

  The house sat near Sal Berroteran Park, surrounded by bland cookie-cutter houses in developments. Along with a few others, it had been there before developers shoved identical single-family homes into every available space. Eriksen had been lucky to find it.

  He thought about going home to see his folks, but didn’t want to give the impression he was running away or worried that he’d done something wrong. That was the reason he hadn’t hired an attorney, against the advice of virtually everyone he knew in law enforcement. Even John Houghton had consulted an attorney. He said it was the sensible thing to do.

  It wasn’t like Eriksen had wasted his time off. He h
ad caught up on his back issues of financial magazines and a journal of accounting he had subscribed to since his early days in the business school at Harvard. He occasionally caught a whiff of regret from his parents that he had not become an accountant at one of the Big Four firms in either New York or Baltimore. But his dad had also been in public service, even with his engineering degree from MIT. It was as if the whole side of the family were trying to make amends for the actions of one distant relative a hundred and fifty years ago.

  Eriksen had also used his time off to help the elderly couple that lived in the little house next door. The husband had emphysema and had difficulty getting around, so Eriksen gladly drove their ancient Lincoln Town Car to a Firestone store close to downtown. He got a great deal on a decent set of Michelins, and the sweet old woman had made him a different dessert every night. She had even been watching a news story about the shooting when he returned the car, but she made no connection between him and the incident being analyzed on TV.

  Eriksen had been allowed to speak to the man who had helped the fallen Border Patrol agent. Luis Martinez had been a doctor in Mexico when he went to work for a drug cartel, tending to the wounded employees and treating the occasional case of common diarrhea or flu. He said it was a pleasant job with phenomenal pay until he was not able to save the kingpin’s oldest son when he had overdosed on their own product. The drug kingpin, known as the Dark Lord of the Desert, had placed a price on the doctor’s head and forced him to flee.

  Dr. Martinez had been told by someone in the computer manufacturing business that he could work in the U.S. for a company with lots of undocumented employees. He didn’t know the name of the company and had few details, but had jumped at the chance to live.

  The Immigration Service had appreciated his efforts to save their wounded man so much they had put up Dr. Martinez and his wife, Concepción, in an apartment near downtown El Paso with a temporary visa and the promise of a more permanent status if he provided the government with all the information he could remember about the drug cartel.

  Eriksen was happy the doctor and his pretty wife had a chance to straighten out their life.

  Now Eriksen stood from his recliner and tossed his final financial magazine onto the lone table in his living room. The TV caught his attention when the news anchor started talking about the increased danger for federal agents working on the border. The network’s most popular commentator, Ted Dempsey, appeared on the screen talking in his usual calm, direct manner about the need to support Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement personnel risking their lives for the security of the entire nation. The footage running behind Dempsey was of the aftermath of Eriksen’s shooting.

  Dempsey, arguing with a heavyset man with stringy hair, said forcefully, “I don’t care which side of the border the smugglers ended up on, they were on U.S. soil when they shot and killed a young Border Patrol agent with a wife and kids.”

  Eriksen couldn’t keep the smile from forming on his face after hearing the words of support. But just as quickly the smile faded when he saw the footage of protests in Ciudad Juárez over the killing of two Mexican nationals, by U.S. authorities, on what the protesters thought was Mexican soil.

  Juárez and El Paso were the sister cities on the border in this part of the country. Unlike most U.S. and Mexican sister cities, El Paso was much smaller than the sprawling and densely populated Ciudad Juárez.

  Then the news story switched to some do-nothing comedian from Los Angeles who was advocating the extradition of Houghton and Eriksen to Mexico to face charges of murder.

  Before he could curse out loud, a knock at his front door grabbed Eriksen’s attention.

  * * *

  Ramón Herrera rarely used his full name, Ramón Jesús Herrera Zapata. It had become too complicated when dealing with norteamericanos who didn’t understand the Hispanic system of paternal and maternal surnames. He liked the sound of the honorific “Don Herrera” when people addressed him. Although he considered himself an industrialist and businessman, much of his income came from the narcotics trade, kidnappings, and siphoning off oil from Pemex, the Mexican government-run oil company.

  Now, wrapped in a silk dressing robe, he slouched further into the leather lounger in his personal office while he sipped from a glass of Maestro Dobel Extra-Añejo tequila, aged and distilled from ten-year-old blue agaves, each bottle numbered and labeled with the name of the ranch where the agave was harvested. The Jalisco, Mexico, bottling plant provided him with whatever he needed as a courtesy to one of the country’s most powerful men.

  As he let the warmth of the tequila seep through his body, a beautiful young girl massaged his feet to ease the stress of the day. Her straight black hair hung to one side, brushing her ample breasts as she stroked his feet as if it were an act of love.

  This hacienda was one of the few places he felt absolutely secure. It was his favorite retreat. Nestled in the mountains near Creel, Chihuahua, the twenty-six-room, multilevel hacienda was almost identical to one he owned outside Loreto, on Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. Both were designed by the famed architect Alberto Kalach.

  The views from each hacienda were entirely different. This one looked out over the beautiful mountains and valleys. The hacienda near Loreto had a vista of the Gulf of California and its calm waters.

  The forty-three-year-old Herrera worked diligently to stay in shape, and the tequila was one of only two vices that affected his health. The other was cigars made for him personally by a master craftsman outside Havana. But he only smoked out on the balcony overlooking the foothills of the mountains.

  The reason he could relax here was the outstanding security. Some said it was even more effective than the security surrounding the president of the United States. Why not? He wielded nearly as much power, and people were much more obvious about wanting to kill him.

  Until the day when the killing finally stopped, he had the narrow mountain road leading to his house protected by fifty Mexican Army combat troops, and the entrance to his hacienda and the surrounding grounds patrolled by thirty private security officers who were loyal only to him, plus a detail of twelve men who would lay down their lives for him at any time. He was never in a room where one of those twelve men was not within shouting distance. Right now one stood just outside the door to his office while he enjoyed this exquisite foot rub by the eighteen-year-old actress he had brought from Mexico City.

  The twelve men each commanded four others, and that sixty-man group made up his personal security force that handled not only his safety but most of the dirty work he needed done. They were, in effect, his Praetorian Guard. They would do anything he asked, kill anyone he wanted, die on his simple command. But he still kept some secrets from these men. Occasionally it was good to have contract help. Sort of a checks-and-balances system.

  His vast wealth was one source of influence, but these dedicated, ruthless men were his real power, and the people who needed to be afraid of them were. Only he knew the exact size of his “security team,” as he liked to call them. They were more like his personal Delta Force. He made sure he chose men who were already connected by bonds like family and former military service, and tied tighter with good pay and benefits most Mexican citizens couldn’t fathom.

  Even though he thought it might be overkill, there was an Oerlikon 35 mm twin cannon antiaircraft artillery site set up on either side of the hacienda that included surface-to-air missiles and radar, covering every direction for two hundred miles. The German manufacturer of the cannons held him hostage on a price until Herrera was able to have one of the executive’s sons “detained” while on vacation in Acapulco. The price became much more reasonable after that.

  His private airfield accommodated anything up to a 727, but he preferred to travel in his personal Learjet. He liked the ability to be anywhere within Mexico in less than three hours.

  His personal cell phone rang, and he sighed as he saw who was calling. The early proto version of the next generation of
iPhones had been a gift from his partner in an American computer company. How he got it was a mystery, but the phone was like something from the future. It always had decent service, and the video and voice were crystal clear. Still, he hated to let the world seep into this quiet time. He let the phone ring three times before he decided to answer, then let it ring twice more to show the caller how insignificant he was.

  Herrera said, “Yes, Pablo.”

  From what sounded like a jungle in Africa with little reception, Herrera heard his man Pablo Piña calling from Ciudad Juárez.

  “Hola, Don Herrera.”

  He hated it when a cheap cell phone degraded communication with his iPhone. “What is it you need, Pablo?” He had started to get frustrated with the man who supposedly ran Juárez, who seemed to have more and more excuses on all aspects of their business. Piña was not part of the enforcement arm of his security force, but Herrera still depended on men like him to do their jobs and expend their own resources to handle different areas of the country. As long as these lieutenants knew their place and did as they were told, Herrera rarely interfered with their day-to-day operations. That gave them a sense of power and responsibility.

  “I just wanted to tell you before you heard it from someone else that there was a shooting on the border last night between El Paso and Juárez. We think our American partners were bringing over some workers.”

  “Did you know about it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?” Herrera smiled at the silence the question caused. People never expected that question when they had nothing to do with the screw-up. In this case, Pablo should know everything that went on in his sphere of influence.

  “This man, Haben, is not as open with me as he is with you. He never gave me a fancy phone like you got.”

  “Why do you think that is the case?”

  “He probably views me as a drug thug and you as a businessman.”