Border War Read online

  “Very good, Pablo. At least you are thinking. Now you can proceed with more knowledge. I want the business with this American company to continue. This is not a business deal I should have to babysit. Understand?”

  “Yes, Don Herrera.”

  Herrera smiled as he hung up. He was gratified that Pablo knew his role in life.

  Herrera was called an industrialist by the media, but his various positions were much more complicated than that. He sat on the board of Pemex, the state-owned petroleum company, which had more than $400 billion in assets. In fact, Herrera was involved in a number of businesses, including a role in both the Gulf and Juárez cartels. Although on the face of it they appeared to be competing entities, he had found there was room to control people in both organizations. He and others were working tirelessly to establish a détente between all the cartels and control the violence that was spreading in Mexico. For now each cartel viewed the frightening murder rate as a sort of cleansing and believed that Mexico would be more competitive once the process was completed.

  His liaison with the cartels was as important as his liaison with the government. Especially since, at present, the Mexican government was merely an impotent referee in any squabbles between the powerful cartels.

  Herrera’s net worth was roughly the same as the Mexican government’s liquid assets. He just didn’t flaunt it. Much. Places like this were a retreat. He lived much of his life in regular mansions near the big cities, with the only obvious sign of his wealth being the extraordinary security measures at each location.

  He looked forward to staying at his various mansions because he had a literal harem spread across seven different properties. Herrera paid one German woman nearly $300,000 a year. She then managed to negotiate one week a month off and all of December as vacation. She also got free air travel in a private jet each week. She even had a 401(k). No one complained about wages and benefits like that.

  He looked down at the pretty face of the young girl massaging his bare feet and said, “That’s enough for now, my dear.” He couldn’t help but watch her walk out of the room, her spectacular body swaying like a ship on rough seas.

  Herrera stood up and stretched, enjoying the tingling in his feet as he stepped toward his balcony and took in the aroma of the thousand heirloom tulips that had been planted for him in special climate-controlled boxes beneath his private quarters because he liked the way they smelled.

  He took one more breath of fresh mountain air, then turned back to his office. He tried to keep up with the more important American news shows and recorded them on his DVR. It was just another aspect of his job, and even though he would prefer to retire with one of the girls from the hacienda, now he had to catch up on what his least favorite of American commentators was saying that might slow his business and make life complicated.

  The American commentator, Ted Dempsey, seemed to have sources in every field and was not shy about expressing his opinion on any subject. He criticized his own government constantly, and Herrera agreed with much of what he said. But recently the infuriating man was pointing out the flaws in Mexico and how they could be fixed. Herrera didn’t care for that at all.

  Ted Dempsey had become far more than a nuisance. Sometimes, it seemed as if Dempsey were describing Herrera on his show, as he talked about escalating border violence, a lost war on drugs, and what now was unchecked illegal immigration. The fool Dempsey actually thought that the U.S. could still secure its borders.

  Herrera would’ve thought that September 11 would have taught the Americans that security was an illusion. And why was the man so concerned about violence in Mexico? It was none of his business.

  Tonight’s show was twice as bad as usual because Dempsey had on his favorite guest, Senator Elizabeth Ramos, the good-looking Latina. She’d been born in Texas, but with her dark hair and high cheekbones she was clearly of Mexican descent. But Herrera had to hand it her, she knew her material: illegal immigration, terrorism, drugs, and strengthening the U.S. military. Just about every subject Herrera wanted her to ignore.

  The dapper, professional Dempsey said, “The drug cartels are responsible for the deaths of about seventy thousand Mexican citizens since 2006. The Mexican people don’t know which way to turn—they’re caught in a spiral of violence and corruption that most Americans can’t even imagine. The Mexicans returned the long-ruling PRI to power. Their new president has offered no new ideas and may bargain a truce with the cartels. Will Mexico remain a democracy? Or will it slide into dictatorship? Or an oligarchy, like Russia after the fall of Communism? Or outright anarchy? Not pleasant possibilities for either Mexico or America.”

  The pretty senator said, “At least then we wouldn’t have opposition to better border security.”

  Herrera’s fist clenched involuntarily as he listened to the debate start. These people shouldn’t worry about Mexico when they had their own problems north of the border. It was maddening to hear this trash. He had to get control of himself.

  He wished he could say either one of them was an idiot, but it was clear they were both intelligent and well educated. Usually, he had Pablo Piña handle anything with the Americans. After all, Piña was based next to the border in Juárez. He could do dirty work or send messages, but Herrera hated to waste resources on nothing more than a nuisance. He was a patient man. He never would’ve reached this position without patience. He would never have the new business ventures in the U.S. without patience and intelligence.

  Herrera listened to a few more minutes of the show before he mashed the remote in disgust. There was a gentle knock at his door, and a smile spread across his face when the young blonde dressed in silky, erotic lederhosen lingerie with tall, tight leather boots and almost nothing else smiled then said, “Guten Abend, Herr Herrera.”

  FIVE

  Tom Eriksen was surprised when he opened the front door of his little apartment and his former girlfriend Trudy Martin stepped through to give him a big hug and a kiss on the lips. Not that he didn’t appreciate her exaggerated feminine form against him, or the intensity of the kiss, it was just that he didn’t expect it.

  As the kiss ended he took a step away and said, “Trudy, what are you doing here?”

  “What a silly question.”

  “I don’t think it’s silly.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be here? I’m your girlfriend, aren’t I?”

  Eriksen took a second to consider that statement and, looking in this girl’s beautiful eyes, wondered if he should refute it, but that wasn’t part of his personality. “I thought you broke up with me two weeks ago.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you told me we were through and you were tired of being ignored for police work.” He looked up and scratched his chin for dramatic effect. “Oh yeah, you said I was too cheap, and your parting shot involved me being too immature to ever commit to a relationship.” He looked her in the eye again and said, “I’m pretty sure I got all that right. Now what’s changed?”

  “I saw the news and was worried about you, baby.”

  He eyed his Kardashian-loving, reality-show-junkie ex-girlfriend and suddenly realized why she had appeared. He controlled his temper and said calmly, “I’m not allowed to speak to the media, and the whole thing is just about over.”

  “Not according to Ted Dempsey. He says you guys are heroes. He’s been talking about it on his show for the last few days.”

  “Talking about what?”

  “You and your HSI buddy and the whole border. He says he’s gonna come down and do a show in a few weeks right here on the border. You’re gonna be famous.”

  “Trudy, I promise I’m not gonna be famous. I also promise I’m not going to become mature enough to commit to a relationship and I’m not going to start ignoring police work. You walked out on me for all the right reasons. You should keep your dignity and leave right now.” He wasn’t much for being tough on friends and loved ones, and the puppy-dog look on her face cut into him as bad a
s anyone had in the past week. He wanted nothing more than the chance to hold a beautiful girl like Trudy, but he wanted to do it for the right reasons. His mother kept telling him the right girl was out there for him, but he was starting to have his doubts.

  * * *

  John Houghton sat at his scarred wooden desk inside the Homeland Security Investigations office near the main port of entry on the border. The office was a typical federal workplace with dull paint, thin carpet, and an air conditioner that smelled like mold. Every desk had a phone, but in today’s world no agents answered them. If a call was important, it came to your cell.

  He had been reassigned to an ordinary HSI squad, which focused on money laundering. No one in the Department of Homeland Security had questioned his version of the events, and aside from a standard three-day administrative leave to make sure he wasn’t traumatized, he’d come right back to the job he bitched about but loved. It also strengthened his faith in the DHS. So far, since the merger, they’d acted like a bunch of dickheads toward the former Customs agents. There was a strong bias toward the immigration side of the agency, which felt its mission far outweighed anything the U.S. Customs Service once claimed as its turf. But for some reason they had backed him up on the shooting. He wished he could say the same thing about his friend Tom Eriksen. The FBI still had him on leave, and his supervisor, Mike Zara, didn’t seem interested in letting him come back to work anytime soon. It was a shame to waste such a hard-charging, smart young man. But that’s what the FBI was famous for. They could be awfully harsh in their policy judgments.

  John had spent his week off either drunk or pestering his wife to move back into the house. The two activities overlapped several times and gave his estranged wife a reason to stop talking to him. Now he was popping Xanax and had used a few Ambien to sleep. It was getting harder to deal with his everyday life.

  Using what little pull he had, John had at least gotten Tom Eriksen transferred to a new unit. It wasn’t necessarily operational, but that’s why the FBI was willing to risk letting Eriksen come back.

  He had managed to dodge most of the coverage of the shooting on TV except for the Ted Dempsey show. That son of a gun could get fixated on an issue like a bloodhound on the trail of a wounded deer.

  John looked up and noticed the show happened to be on TV now. Senator Elizabeth Ramos was being interviewed again. Immigration was her big cause, and she didn’t even acknowledge the shooting except to say the U.S. government shouldn’t waste resources investigating something like that.

  The senator’s other pet peeve was the lack of focus in the war on terror. It didn’t seem to matter who the president was, if nothing happened, the whole threat of terror faded from everyone’s minds. With the economy in the dumper, all anyone cared about was jobs. But John knew it would only take one truckload of dynamite driven into a government building or a teaspoon of anthrax in the air-conditioning system of a major mall and the whole country would be interested in the topic of terrorism again.

  This young, good-looking senator had realized that a politician can never go wrong harping about undocumented aliens and terrorism. Who would ever come out in favor of those issues?

  John had to get Eriksen back to work before he started to feel sorry for himself or think he did something wrong. It happened all too often in law enforcement.

  * * *

  Pablo Piña liked his role as thug for Don Herrera. He enjoyed the respect he felt from the local residents and even enjoyed occasionally killing a rival or cop who wouldn’t do as he was told. But being a father was his favorite job, and he smiled at his six-year-old daughter as she scampered out of the room to play with her cousins in the estate’s backyard. He appreciated this office he had set up in his twenty-four-room hacienda because where his desk sat, he had a round panel of windows installed so he could look into the sprawling rear yard and watch his children play. One acre right next to the house had been designated a sanctuary for the children where they were never to see men with guns or hear rough language. It held two giant swing sets, a trampoline, a pool, and a full soccer field. Beyond the kids’ area his men patrolled day and night, and there were always two men on the roof with Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles that could kill a target more than a mile away.

  As soon as he looked up at his chief adviser and enforcer, a wiry man with a quiet intelligence, Piña lost all good humor. He snapped, “Manny, I hear this so-called doctor is in El Paso.”

  Manny just nodded.

  Piña spoke Spanish with an aristocratic flair even though he had been raised on the streets of Ciudad Juárez. He had lived a life as hard as anyone in Mexico. He’d killed his first man at thirteen, using just a knife strapped to a long pole. He pretended he was striking a lance into a dragon as the knife plunged into the man’s chest. Piña drove him back into the wall of a small shop and pinned him there while others watched. It was a warning of what would come from the young man as he forged a name in the ruthless world of crime in Mexico.

  Piña had even slipped across the border and killed four people, four different times in four different American cities. But as he got older and mellowed, he learned the value of education, and to set an example for his growing brood, he had continually taken courses and brought in tutors to help him with his language and math skills. He even had a manners coach who taught him how to act in certain situations so he was presentable at any party, even ones thrown by the governor, who called frequently.

  Now those courses helped him when he had to deal with Don Herrera, who trusted him to run Juárez and the businesses associated with the area. Although Piña claimed to be afraid of no man, he always excluded Herrera when he said it. He also worked hard to show the powerful man that he was cultured and not just a killer from the barrio. But he held an old-style, hard-core grudge. Once he had it in his mind that someone had crossed him or insulted his family, Piña would never let a slight go. This was the sort of grudge that no amount of education could ease. It was personal. Dr. Luis Martinez had failed in the only job that he ever really needed to accomplish: to save Piña’s seventeen-year-old son after he’d overdosed on a combination of prescription pills and cocaine. The doctor had failed, and now Piña’s son was in the small family cemetery that held his father, his mother, and his one-year-old daughter who died of leukemia thirteen years ago.

  Piña snapped back to reality, looked at Manny, and said, “Can you and a few boys cross the border and deal with this puto and his wife?”

  “It won’t help business at all. We’ve already ruined his life.”

  “He ruined mine.”

  Manny said, “He tried to save Pablito, but the boy was too far gone.”

  Now Piña dropped his voice, his warning that he was on the edge of saying or doing something less sophisticated than his recent education would predict. “This is not an argument. Do it.”

  Manny had worked for his boss for sixteen years and knew when to keep his mouth shut. All he said was, “Yes, boss.”

  “What do you need from me?”

  “Just give me a few days to locate him and build the right team.” After a short pause he added, “Can I look for Enrique while I’m across the border? Martinez may know where he is.”

  Piña just nodded. He wasn’t worried about U.S. retribution and what the authorities might have on him. Enrique, the computer whiz, might manage to hurt Piña’s American partners, but not him. It was one less thing to weigh on his mind. With six daughters and one son, he had plenty to worry about. Plus he had his employees who depended on his business sense and his ruthless reputation for security. Of all the murders in Ciudad Juárez, only one was one of his employees—and twenty-six men died because of it. Two had their heads chopped off and planted on spikes at the edge of the city. It was this kind of attitude that kept his people safe in the long run.

  He knew Manny was hesitant because the killing would have to take place in the U.S., and the soft norteamericanos frowned on murder. But for something like this he would
take the heat.

  * * *

  Not long after Eriksen had shown Trudy the door, he was sitting on his porch, trying to gain some perspective and relax as he read the online copy of the Harvard Crimson on his iPad. He heard a vehicle screech into the driveway in front of the main house, then a second vehicle roar up as well. After some doors slammed he could hear shouting and obscenities from the front of the house. It was the middle of the day in the middle of the week. The family in the main house worked hard, and no one ever came home before six in the evening.

  Wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes, Eriksen wandered down the extended driveway until he saw the family’s oldest son, Marty, standing behind his brand-new Camaro as if avoiding someone. As Eriksen came around the corner of the house he saw three burly men dressed in construction clothes standing next to a Ford F-250 diesel pickup truck pulled onto the front yard. One man started to move toward Marty, and Eriksen called out, “Hold on, what’s the problem here?” He had no weapon and technically no authority whatsoever while he was on suspension, but since he’d been a little kid there was something about bullies and mismatched fights that kept him from minding his own business.

  The man at the front of the truck turned and glared at Eriksen. The sign on the side of the truck said LOPEZ BUILDING SUPPLY. All three men had brown or light hair, and none appeared to be Hispanic. Eriksen couldn’t help asking, “Which one of you is Mr. Lopez?”

  The man at the front of the truck said, “We all are. We’re brothers, you moron.” He had the typical Texas drawl Eriksen had become used to.

  Eriksen crept closer to Marty, who was clearly shaken by the confrontation. “Okay, Mr. Lopez, what’s the problem?”

  “Just who in the hell are you?”

  “I’m the family adviser. And if you don’t dial it back a few notches I’m gonna advise Marty to call 911.”

  Now the thick, six-foot-two man gave a chuckle and said, “You don’t want the police involved.”