Crocker said, “I don’t mean any disrespect.”
Lane exhaled again. “Not a problem.” He tossed the partially smoked cigarette and crushed it with the heel of his shoe. “This is my operation. My team has spent many hours piecing together shards of information from a myriad of human and electronic sources, analyzing them, and drawing up a plan. In a little while, some people are going to arrive, and we’re going to brief you on everything A to Z.”
“That’s not necessary,” Crocker said. “We trust you.”
“No. You and your men are about to undertake a very dangerous operation and I think we owe you that.”
“All we need to know are the logistics of the operation. How many people we’re going up against, how they’re armed, where the hostages are being held; details like that. How good is your intel?”
Lane pulled an NEC Terrain out of his back pocket and scrolled through his messages. “I’ve been working the border area for years, assisting local police departments, ICE, border patrol, and the DEA. It’s a losing battle. The only way we can be effective is to get inside the cartels and close to the guys calling the shots. And that involves enormous risks.”
“You know someone close to the people who executed the kidnapping?” Crocker asked, stretching the muscles in his lower back.
“Yes, we have a source,” Lane whispered back.
Crocker got excited. This was what he wanted to hear. “Who are they, the kidnappers?”
“Members of a very dangerous narcoterrorist group called Los Zetas.”
“Nieves told me about them. But…why?”
“Why did they kidnap Lisa and Olivia Clark?” Lane asked back.
Crocker nodded. “Yeah.”
“It has to do with a power struggle they’re involved in with the Sinaloa cartel,” Lane answered. “We don’t know if all the Zetas are behind it. But according to our source, this particular leader, the guy who executed this, is trying to show the power and range of his particular cell, while also earning brownie points with the Mexican people by giving the United States a black eye. Senator Clark isn’t a very popular figure here, because of his pronouncements on drug trafficking and immigration.”
“I get that. Where specifically are they being held?”
“Specifically, a house, or estate, two miles northeast.”
Someone was tapping on the glass door behind them. They turned in unison and saw Nieves pointing at his open mouth and waving them inside.
“I think he’s trying to tell us that dinner has arrived,” Lane said.
“Then what?” Crocker asked.
“Then we wait for our asset. She’s scheduled to arrive soon,” Lane said, sliding open the door and waiting for Crocker to enter first. “She knows the entire layout of the estate, numbers of guards, the location of the rooms where the women are being held, everything.”
Crocker stopped halfway. “She?” he asked. “Your source is a woman?”
“That’s correct,” Lane answered. “You have a problem with that?”
Crocker shook his head. “Not at all.”
The truth was that he worried throughout dinner. He’d been burned by a female source several years ago in Algeria, when he was sent to intercept a shipment of weapons to a group of Islamic terrorists. Instead of expressing his concerns, he decided to wait until he could pull Lane aside and ask him if he had other information-like electronic intercepts-that could back up what his source was telling him.
Five minutes into the chicken mole, black beans, and rice, Lane was summoned upstairs by Karen.
Crocker watched Akil admire her as she climbed the stairs.
“I like the way she wears that pistol,” cracked Akil.
“She can probably kick your ass,” Davis responded.
“She will, too, if you piss her off,” said Nieves as he licked spicy chocolate sauce from the side of his mouth. “Karen’s a black belt in karate and a former female motocross champ.”
Crocker had raced motorcycles as a teenager and had thought about turning pro before he joined the navy.
“Bring it on,” Akil said, washing down the beef tacos he had ordered with bottled water.
Nieves: “She’s not into guys.”
Akiclass="underline" “She will be when she meets me.”
Nieves laughed loudly.
The flat-screen TV on the wall to the left of where they were seated was tuned to CNN International. When a picture of Lisa Clark appeared on the screen, Mancini grabbed the remote and turned up the sound.
The men grew quiet. A Mexican female correspondent named Carmen Aristegui was being interviewed by Christiane Amanpour. She said the kidnapping was a huge embarrassment to newly elected president Enrique Peña Nieto. One of the Mexican president’s campaign promises had been to prioritize the reduction of violence. He also pledged that he did not support the involvement of armed U.S. agents in Mexico-a practice encouraged by the previous Felipe Calderón administration, which had waged a much-publicized and maligned war on drug traffickers.
“Dumb,” Akil groaned.
Artistegui, who spoke as though she was an expert on Mexico, said that many Mexican political watchers theorized that the kidnapping was the work of President Peña Nieto’s political rivals. She reported that the president was personally heading an all-out effort to locate the kidnappers and their victims. According to an unnamed source close to the president, his security advisors believed that Lisa and Olivia Clark were being held somewhere in the state of Chihuahua, which bordered the United States.
The city of Chihuahua was something like six hundred miles northeast of where they were now.
“Is that correct?” Mancini asked.
Crocker: “No. Her information is wrong.”
“How come journalists never get it right?” Davis asked, lifting a bottle of Dos Equis.
“Because they listen to the experts, and the experts never know what the fuck they’re talking about,” Akil answered.
“And the people who do know generally keep their mouths shut,” Nieves added.
A harried Senator Clark appeared on the screen. He was being interviewed in a Capitol Hill corridor and looked like he hadn’t slept soundly in days. When he was asked about the kidnapper’s demands to release the forty drug cartel associates from U.S. jails, Clark said, “I love my wife and daughter immensely and ask the people holding them to please let them go. They are good, loving people. As far as the kidnapper’s demands, I support our government’s policy.”
It was U.S. policy never to negotiate with or give in to the demands of criminals or terrorists.
Crocker put his plate down on the glass coffee table and pulled Nieves into the kitchen.
“We need to get moving,” he said, looking at his watch, which showed that it was 2100 hours and approximately twenty-seven hours from the kidnappers’ deadline.
Nieves finished chewing and swallowed. “What did Lane tell you?”
“He said we’re going to launch before dawn, and we’re waiting for this Mexican woman who knows where the Clarks are being held. She’s their source, which is fine, but in the meantime, we have some things to take care of, like getting armed.”
Nieves knitted his thick black eyebrows together and said, “I don’t know anything about her. I believe she’s being run by that redhead you met, Karen Steele, and this other guy named Bob Marion. You’ll have to ask Lane about that.”
“You’ve never met her?” Crocker asked.
“The asset? No. It’s not that they don’t trust me. But it’s FBI SOP in a situation like this to keep the circle small.”
“What about gear and weapons?” Crocker continued. “Lane said we’re supposed to move later tonight.”
“I’ve got a shitload of stuff stored in the garage,” Nieves answered. “SIG Sauers, HK45CTs, MP7s, HK416s, M79s, Teflon vests, explosives.”