“Know this now,” Pope said, pointing a finger at Fields. “No one ever touches Gil Shannon. Is that understood?”
“Completely,” Fields replied easily. “That was a poor choice of words. But my point stands. He’s too principled for what you have in mind for the ATRU. You’re selecting targets that won’t be defined well enough by his standards.”
“Gil’s a specialist,” Pope said. “I have no intention of using him as a general-purpose operator. That’s what men like Chance Vaught will be for, and the other men I’m recruiting. Speaking of which, I want you to activate one of our people in Europe — someone out of Berlin. I want Blickensderfer dead as soon as possible. If Gil ends up shagging Lena Deiss for more than a few days — and I have to assume that to be a strong possibility — Blickensderfer might move against him.”
“I’ll see to it,” Fields said. “And what happens if Shannon disapproves?”
“Gil will have nothing to complain about. He’s got the girl, and he doesn’t have to pull the trigger. If he has any complaints after the fact, they won’t be of any concern to me.”
“If you say so,” Fields remarked. “Now, what about Hancock?”
Pope rocked back in his chair, scratching at his neck. “That’s a serious problem. We have to neutralize him before the Mexican government can make a positive ID. If they can prove one of our own people pulled the trigger on Downly, they’ll throw this entire incident right back in our faces.”
“Will the president clear the ATRU to handle this?”
Pope nodded. “He already has. I told him I want Vaught, so Vaught officially belongs to me.”
“Then that takes care of that, but there’s something else.”
“Yes?”
“Mariana Mederos flew down to Guadalajara early this morning and then flew back to Texas a few hours later. I have no idea what she was doing down there. Did you send her?”
“She must have gone down to meet with Crosswhite.”
“About what?”
Pope chortled. “Kids pass notes in class when the teacher’s back is turned. A good teacher learns to tolerate a certain amount of it. They’re both patriots. Crosswhite is probably just looking out for Paolina. I can’t blame him.”
“Do you want Ortega to look into it?”
“No,” Pope said. “Don’t use Ortega any more than necessary. Crosswhite already had to punch his lights out. Next time he might kill him, and I don’t need the hassle of replacing the Mexico chief of station in the middle of this mess.”
When Fields was gone, Pope’s Japanese American assistant, Midori Kagawa, came into the room. She was in her early thirties, with shoulder-length black hair and a round face. Aside from being a genius in her own right, Midori was the single person in Pope’s life that he trusted absolutely. “Should I have him watched?” she asked. “He obviously has doubts.”
“Fields doubts everyone and everything,” Pope said. “That’s why he’s still in the game. But, yes, you’d better begin your electronic intrusion. Be extremely careful. Fields is nobody’s fool.”
“What about Mariana Mederos?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Pope was staring out the window. “Something happened between her and Crosswhite down in Cuba, something that brought them closer together. I have no idea what it was, but it’s been intriguing me for a while now.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Midori said.
He looked at her. “You mean sex?” He shook his head. “No, whatever happened, it was nothing as trivial as sex. We’ll have to keep an eye on that relationship. Despite what I said to Fields, it could become a thorn in my side if I’m not careful. Mederos and Crosswhite are both too damn smart for my own good.”
19
By seven o’clock that afternoon, Crosswhite was back on the ground in Mexico City. During the flight, he’d received a coded text message from Paolina letting him know that she was leaving for Toluca, but his phone had been turned off, so the message was already an hour old by the time he landed. He was able to exchange another coded message with her before leaving the airport, verifying that she was okay and that they would meet in Toluca.
He was sitting in his Jeep at a stoplight on the outskirts of Mexico City when the vehicle began to vibrate as though it had broken a motor mount. “What the hell is this now?” he wondered aloud.
A few seconds later, chunks of concrete began falling off the aging office building across the street, and the traffic light started bobbing up and down on its metal arm.
A man hawking bottled water in the street stood outside Crosswhite’s open window.
“Terremoto!” he said. Earthquake!
Crosswhite got out of the Jeep to feel the earth trembling underfoot. He’d been in Los Angeles during the quake of ’94, and he could already tell this one was shaping up to be somewhere along those lines. He had to get on his knees, as there was no way to keep standing with the vibrations. He knew that Mexico City was built on an ancient lake bed of mostly sand, and that soil liquefaction would exacerbate the quake’s effects to the extreme. The shaking became more intense, and all at once, the ten-story office building collapsed as if in a controlled demolition.
Cracks appeared in the asphalt, and the power to the streetlights failed. Crosswhite’s first reaction was wanting to hide under the Jeep until the shocks passed, but he forced himself to get back in the vehicle and got the windows up just as a billowing gray cloud of dust engulfed everything.
Within two minutes, the earth grew still, but Crosswhite knew there would be aftershocks, believing the quake to have easily been a 6 or 7 magnitude. The city’s last major quake, in 1985, had registered 8.1 on the Richter scale. That one had killed at least twenty thousand people. This one wasn’t as strong, but Crosswhite knew that it had been plenty powerful enough to bring the city to a halt. It would be months before everything would be back to normal.
He took out his phone to call Paolina, but there was no signal. “Shit!” He threw the phone down on the seat beside him.
By the time the dust began to clear enough for him to see, sirens were wailing. A fire engine roared past with klaxons honking as the emergency services machine came to life.
Getting to Toluca in a hurry would now be easier said than done, but he had a four-wheel drive and a full tank of gas. Crosswhite shifted into drive and sped off down the road, knowing the police would be too busy to worry about enforcing traffic laws.
20
Vaught and Paolina were in a taxi cab headed south for Toluca when the earthquake hit. The taxi was just entering a tunnel that ran beneath a circular intersection when a portion of the tunnel collapsed, blocking the exit with large chunks of concrete. The result was a thirty-car pileup at fifty miles an hour. The taxi was smashed, and Paolina’s head hit the window, knocking her unconscious. Three-year-old Valencia was tossed into the front seat, where she bounced off the dashboard and bloodied her nose. Vaught slammed into the back of the driver’s seat but took no damage. Meanwhile, the cabby was pinned behind the wheel with a pair of broken legs.
Vaught kicked open the door and got out, taking a look up and down the line of crashed traffic. A propane truck exploded ten cars ahead, and he ducked back inside, covering the unconscious Paolina with his body as the roiling black-orange cloud of fire swept across the ceiling of the tunnel. Valencia shrieked from the front seat, and injured motorists fled past the taxi, some of them in flames. Two more cars caught fire and exploded, threatening to engulf the entire tunnel.