“I thought I told you-”
“Five minutes!” Jenson shouted.
Alvarez started scrolling through programmed numbers on his Sony Ericsson and making calls. He nodded and stammered as Jenson measured time on his watch.
“Four minutes, forty-five seconds!” Jenson shouted.
“Okay. Okay,” Alvarez said, holding up his hand and listening, bloody slobber oozing out the corner of his mouth.
“Five!”
“Okay. Okay. I got it!” Alvarez exclaimed as he pointed to the phone.
In a quaking voice, he informed them that the Clark women were being held on a ranch near Tapachula. But his source couldn’t confirm that the Jackal was with them.
“Where’s the fucking Jackal?” Jenson shouted so loud that Crocker’s eardrums hurt.
“No one knows for sure. He’s probably with the women.”
“Forget the Jackal,” Crocker interjected. “Where’s Tapachula?”
“In the southern state of Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border,” Jenson answered.
“Get us there! Now!”
Chapter Thirteen
If Jesus was a Jew, how come he has a Mexican first name?
– Billy Connolly
Lisa Clark checked her hair and makeup in the oval mirror, telling herself that the ordeal would soon be over and she’d be reunited with her husband, son, and daughter. Excitement coursed through her body and lit her skin and eyes from within.
That glow had been missing for days. Seeing it now, her confidence grew. But she also had doubts, fears, and questions that she struggled to hold back.
“What do you think, Señora?” the young woman with the brush in one hand and a can of hair spray in the other asked.
“Are you going to do my daughter’s hair, too?”
“Oh, yes.” The woman nodded. “The señorita, she bery beautiful. She bery nice girl.”
“Thank you.”
“Jou should be bery proud.”
“I am.”
Lisa stood, buttoned the white blouse, and then stepped into the blue skirt and zipped it up on the side. As before, the clothes fit perfectly. Waiting for her on the bed were a jacket and a string of pearls. Black high heels rested on the floor.
She’d been through this routine hundreds of times before, preparing herself to face the public. The fact that she was going to look good pleased her.
Lisa wiped a smudge of lipstick from her front teeth, smiled into the mirror, then turned to the armed man standing near the door. “I’m ready if the jefe is,” she announced.
“Him not yet, Señora. But he will come soon.”
It took nearly an hour to squeeze through rush-hour Guadalajara traffic and reach the airport. Crocker and the three remaining members of Black Cell waited in a small room for the CIA Gulfstream IV to arrive, while Jenson paced and ranted into his cell phone, “Where’s the fucking aircraft?…Make goddamn sure there’s someone to meet us at the airport…Alert our people there…I want the exact location of the ranch…We’re going to need weapons and equipment.”
Crocker was more interested in what the female CIA officer who was with them was trying to do: confirm the information that had been given to them by Alvarez.
Forty minutes later, when the aircraft taxied to the tarmac in front of them, she still hadn’t been successful.
“It’s the best we’ve got,” Jenson said, glancing at his watch.
As soon as Crocker hit the seat, he fell asleep and dreamt he was watching Holly kneel on a white tile floor and wash a baby boy in a bathtub. The baby’s skin glowed, lighting the room pink. When he burped, gray smoke poured out of his mouth and he started to cry.
Holly looked back at Crocker.
He picked the baby up and held him to his chest, but the smoke kept coming.
“Holly?” he asked. “Holly, what’s going on?”
She didn’t answer and he couldn’t find her through the gathering smoke.
“Holly…”
Two hours later, when the wheels hit the tarmac, he awoke, feeling anxious about Holly and not immediately understanding why.
The reason became apparent the moment he glanced at the new Suunto watch Holly had given him recently after the last one had been destroyed in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. This was the Core Lava Red model with all the bells and whistles, including altimeter, barometer, and a compass with weather information. It looked cool as hell, too.
It showed 2108 hours on the 15th.
Yesterday had been Holly’s forty-second birthday and he’d forgotten to call. This wasn’t the first time he’d failed to reach her on a wedding anniversary or birthday. A voice in his head reminded him of all the long absences, hardships, and funerals she’d had to endure because of him. It told him he didn’t deserve her.
Maybe the voice was right.
Outside the oval window, low buildings, lights, and semitropical foliage passed. The landscape looked flat and wild.
He heard Max Jenson growl something from behind him and remembered that the CIA station chief had accompanied them. Crocker picked out some of the words Jenson was growling into his cell phone, including “Mexican government” and “permissions.”
The plane came to a stop in front of a low military-style building guarded by armed men in camouflage uniforms with black balaclavas over their faces. The door opened and they passed through the florid air and entered an air-conditioned room. Jenson behind him shouted into a cell phone, “Over my dead body we’re letting them do this. You understand me? No goddamn way!”
If Jenson was saying he wasn’t going to allow the Mexican government to get involved, Crocker couldn’t agree more, not after what had happened in Guadalajara.
A tense young bearded CIA officer named Becker greeted them and pointed to a tray of sandwiches, bottles of water, and cans of soda that sat on a cabinet along the wall. “You probably want to refuel now, because we’re going to have to move fast.”
“What the fuck are we waiting for?” Jenson growled.
“The recon team should be arriving soon with photos of the ranch and other surveillance.”
“Should be?”
“Will be, sir.”
“Tell ’em to fucking hurry!” Jenson shouted with his hand over the phone. “We’ve got the lives of two American women on the line. We screw this up and we’ll all be fired.”
The tension, unsettled sleep, and guilt about missing Holly’s birthday had drained Crocker’s appetite. So he popped a can of Pepsi and looked out the windows of the temporary structure to the masked men standing guard outside.
Becker sidled up to him and said, “I might be able to find you a yogurt or some energy bars, if you don’t want a sandwich.”
“I’m fine. Who are they?” he asked, pointing to the men outside.
“Mexican soldiers from the GAFE. Army special forces.”
“Can we trust them?”
Becker shrugged. “Can you trust anyone connected to this government? I’ve got body armor and all kinds of ordnance in the next room, when you’re ready.”
“Mancini’s the guy you want to talk to about that,” Crocker said, pointing to Mancini, who was wolfing down a roast beef sandwich. Crocker’s three men sat in folding chairs in a corner of the room eating quietly.
Crocker knew what they were doing-preparing themselves mentally for the mission ahead. He needed to find the time to do that, too.
First he walked over to Mancini and told him about Becker and the ordnance. As the two men exited, Becker looked back at Crocker and said, “Your CO requested that you call him.”
“Now?”
“As soon as you can. I set up a secure phone in the office across the hall.”
He didn’t like it-the confusion, the uncertainty, the fact that they were still relying on Mexican officials.
The office was barely large enough to accommodate a metal desk and chair. Sutter picked up in his office on the second ring, even though it was an hour ahead, 2214 in Virginia Beach.