“But Pope does not want me taking over the narcotics trade. Won’t that pose a problem?”
“Pope wants to tell the president he’s stabilized the border for the long term. With Ruvalcaba dead, you’ll be the only man left who can make that happen. No one else has the power or influence to prevent another drug war. Pope will have no choice but to accept that reality and appoint Mariana as chief of station.”
Seeing the logic, Castañeda winked at Mariana. “It would appear we are at last true partners.”
She smiled in spite of herself, recognizing that, yes, she now needed Castañeda as badly as he needed her. “It would appear.”
“And you, Mr. Cochran, what is your interest in Mexico? Since you are obviously not here as a representative of Mr. Pope.”
Gil shrugged. “Some people are inclined to pull an injured man outta the street; others stand and watch. I’ve never just stood by. And I’ve never had any fucking use for those who do.”
“I thank you for that,” Castañeda said. “My country has a bloody history. Too many good men — those who would not stand by to watch — have been gunned down like dogs in that very same street you speak of. This unfortunate aspect of our culture has allowed men like me to thrive for the last hundred years, since the revolution.”
Gil was surprised by Castañeda’s self-deprecating remark. “Men like you?”
“I was once a soldier like yourself. I used to believe in the cause of my country. But the infection of corruption is too deep for any one man to cure. The people must demand the cure from our government. Until they do, men like me will continue to prosper. It is much the same in your country, no?”
“It’s getting worse,” Gil conceded, avoiding a political discussion.
“But you will continue to honor the truce,” Mariana said to Castañeda. “You will not take action against civilians on either side of the border, and you will make public examples of the men who do. Otherwise I will have to withdraw the support of the CIA — along with its protection.”
He cocked an eyebrow, glancing at Gil. “I used to believe she was so soft and delicate.”
“Blood hardens everybody,” Gil said. “Can you supply me with a good man?”
“I can do better than that,” Castañeda said confidently. “I can supply you with a man who has trained at Fort Bragg with your Green Berets.”
“Okay,” Gil said chuckling.
Castañeda smiled curiously. “That is funny?”
Gil smiled. “A Green Beret will do in a pinch.”
Castañeda laughed, getting the joke. “His name is Poncho, and you will be able to trust him with your life.”
77
Night was falling as Hancock briefed his security team on the west side of town. His wounds from the night before were stitched and dressed, but the deep gash on his inner thigh was still suppurating, and the sutures threatened to tear if he lowered into a crouch.
“Remember,” he said, “we don’t have to kill them all. We just have to break their spirit. They’ll try to isolate me like they did last night, so it won’t be possible for me to take more than one shot from any position. Your job is to keep them off me long enough for me to displace. Once we’ve got them confused and disorganized, that’s when the rest of our people will attack from the east.”
“What do we do about Serrano being dead?” someone asked.
“Fuck Serrano!” Hancock stepped into the fellow’s face. “Ruvalcaba has plans to kill Castañeda and take over business in the whole damn country. That’s who we work for! Understood?”
The man nodded and took a step back, glancing at his compatriots, who looked at him askance.
For Hancock, the issue had become even more personal since the night before. Not only could Vaught still identify him, but in the process of almost killing him, he’d damn near forced the sniper to castrate himself on a broken beer bottle. That was too close for comfort, and Hancock planned to even the score.
There was no way to penetrate the center of town — yet. Police presence was too heavy, so he selected a pharmacy on a corner four blocks from el centro and set up on the roof. Putting his eye to the scope, he watched from three hundred yards as police trucks crisscrossed the intersection at irregular intervals.
“No one’s on foot,” he mumbled. The police were either hiding inside the buildings or maintaining a cruising speed high enough to make themselves hard to hit at a distance. With the city on lockdown, there was no civilian traffic, so it was safe for them to ignore the traffic lights.
The sound of a distant gun battle erupted to the south. The shots trailed off after a few seconds, and Hancock wondered dully who’d gotten the better part of the exchange.
Light from a streetlamp glinted off a glass door as a police officer stepped from a coffee shop. Hancock squeezed the trigger on instinct. The door shattered a third of a second later, and the officer was blown in half at the waist.
“Time to move!” he hissed to the two men lying prone just behind him, getting up as quickly as he could without tearing his stitches.
Sergeant Cuevas sprang from a table inside the coffee shop and ran to the door where the lieutenant lay blasted open on the sidewalk. The glass was blown toward the lieutenant, which meant the shot had come from the west.
Crosswhite and Vaught were already up and priming their weapons, moving past him out the door.
“He’s displacing!” Crosswhite shouted. “Let’s move!”
Vaught, Sergeant Cuevas, and two other officers loaded into an armored truck. Crosswhite took three more in another, and both trucks sped off down the street in the direction of the shot.
Chief Diego remained in the coffee shop, now their command post, alerting all patrol units by radio that the sniper’s attack had begun.
Sergeant Cuevas floored the accelerator. “He must have fired from the roof of the pharmacy.”
Vaught sat beside him on the passenger side, while the two officers in back aimed their rifles over the top of the cab.
Four narcos darted in front of the pharmacy, blazing away with AK-47s, but the bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the windshield. The men fumbled to reload, and the cops in the back opened up with their FX-05s, killing one narco and wounding another in the leg.
Cuevas braked hard and cut the wheel left, tromping the accelerator to pursue the fleeing men around the corner, running over the wounded narco and killing him.
Vaught let out with a guttural “Hooah!”
Crosswhite, in the truck right behind them, cut the wheel right to circle around the pharmacy in the opposite direction. A car sped out of the alley just in front of him, and he rammed it aside with the heavily armored truck. The officers in back fired directly down into the car, killing everyone inside. A second car sped out of the alley and slipped around behind them. Crosswhite caught a glimpse of the gringo sniper’s face in the backseat and shifted into reverse, jamming the pedal to the floor and throwing his arm over the back of the seat to see where he was going.
The car sped away around a corner, and he cut the wheel to spin the truck back around. He grabbed the radio and barked out a description of the car — a midnight-blue Dodge Charger — and that it was headed in Vaught’s direction.
Vaught answered that they’d already spotted the car and were in pursuit.
Crosswhite shifted into drive, and a flaming Molotov cocktail impacted the windshield, engulfing the front of the truck and obscuring his vision. He turned on the wipers and pressed the washer fluid button, but the reservoir was empty. The wiper blades quickly melted from the heat of the flaming gasoline and smeared the glass with melting rubber.