Mickey’s marines were the scouts and protectors as the señora went about her bloody rampage of revenge on the men who had taken her husband’s life and violated his rest. Almost every night, Beth shed her natural sparkling personality and went on the prowl to exterminate another target. When the sun set, her mourning dress became a black commando outfit. Her dead husband’s private armory provided the weaponry.
They watched her work with a quiet, growing pride. They were all tough men, most had known her for several years, and none had suspected that this Jekyll and Hyde existed. The colonel had never talked about his American bride’s past. Now their own eyes gave irrefutable proof that the señora knew exactly what she was doing.
The commandant of the Policía Estatal de Yucatán, the state police based in the capital of Mérida, was at a loss to explain what was happening in the drug world. The peninsula had long been divided into zones of control by the various cartels in a live-and-let-live arrangement. There was plenty of money to go around, as long as a proper share filtered up to the real chieftains. In recent days, the show of equitable sharing had been destroyed. This morning, he had gotten the news that the second of the Beltran brothers had also been murdered — that coming on the heels of a lawyer for the Villareal Organization being gutted like a catfish. The two cartels were heading for war, and he couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t even investigate it! Neither side would talk to cops. That wasn’t totally true, for the deadly crime boss Maxim Guerrera was demanding to know why his people were dying when he was paying so much in protection money to the police.
The government in Mexico City also wanted answers, and all the commandant had was another unexplained dead druggie almost every morning.
The señora had chosen an interesting job for what she wanted to be her final outing for a while. Two marines in an old SUV took her over to the coast and south to a quiet inlet. A warm wind caressed the dunes and the waving high grass provided concealment in the darkness. Tonight, all three of them carried Fire Snakes, the Mexican-made FX-05 assault rifles fitted with thirty-round box magazines.
From their vantage point, the raiders had a clear view of a busy pier on which men were loading packets of cocaine from a covered truck into a sharp-bowed, high-performance Cigarette boat tied at the pilings. Four powerful Mercury outboards hung on the stern. Beth actually smiled. She knew this sort of vessel well. Her first real job in the Coast Guard was stopping these speedy drug runners by shooting them from a helicopter out over the Gulf of Mexico. She knew their strong point was speed, while their weak point was the fact that they were just flimsy boats. On an ordinary mission of yesteryear, she would just take out the motors with a couple of shots, and the classy vessels, worth half a million dollars when empty, turned into a drifting fiberglass hulks filled with drugs. Tonight, she wanted more. She wanted to poke the bosses themselves with a branding iron.
The laborers worked beneath a pair of large lights on the pier, unafraid of being seen. The coke was stowed neatly in waterproof containers inside the hull, so the cargo would arrive nice and dry somewhere along the Gulf coast in the U.S.
“Jamie, you take the truck. Leo, you do the boat, and start by shredding those motors. I take the center.” Her voice betrayed no excitement. She checked the automatic rifle. “On a three count, boys. Uno… dos… tres!”
The Fire Snakes erupted in three-and four-round bursts that hit with extraordinary effect. The fiberglass boat was ripped beneath the repeated impacts of the military-grade rounds, and the fast engines were reduced to junk. The truck bucked and jumped, and gasoline spewed onto the wooden pier. While the marines changed magazines, the señora stood with the Fire Snake at her hip. Her boys would do the machinery; she would do the men.
Beth walked steadily toward the pier, giving the surprised workers and crew time to respond, and they went for their guns. She kept moving forward, the sand pulling at her boots, until they opened fire. Her marines were screaming for her to get down. Instead, she started working calmly as bullets zipped around her and splatted in the sand and grass and water. The drug workers toppled like bowling pins as she nailed them with head shots and chest wounds, changed magazines, and swept the deck. She screamed with rage as her rifle barked and she moved inexorably closer to the targets. With a final two-shot burst, she hit the gasoline refueling drums and the pier caught fire. She reloaded and emptied another full clip on automatic into the inferno.
Elizabeth Ledford Castillo stopped moving as the bright cloud bloomed and finished the devastation. She dropped her rifle into the dirt, and for the first time, the marines hurrying up to her saw the señora cry. She fell to her knees in the sand, sobbing, and her entire body shook. Leo gathered all three rifles, and Jamie scooped her into his arms. It was over, and they took her home.
The following day was Sunday, and after church Beth was driven to the airport. The blond hair was neatly brushed and glowing again, her skin was smooth and tanned, and her cornflower-blue eyes showed no sadness. She was actually feeling pretty good by the time she boarded the plane to embark on her trip to Washington.
9
They formed a conversation triangle on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. Marty Atkins was seated at the top, with Kyle Swanson and Luke Gibson flanking him, standing a few steps below. No tourists were around, but the security detail remained alert.
“Where in hell have you been?” Gibson snarled at Swanson.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m here now.” Swanson had flown in from England only two hours ago, just in time for a quick visit home to clean up and put on some old jeans and a sweatshirt.
“I would like to know that, too.” Atkins didn’t look nearly as miffed as Gibson. “Going out of contact for several days is not cool when a mission is starting.”
“Okay. I stopped in London to take care of some Excalibur Enterprises business. Got to protect my cover, boss. Sir Jeff said to tell you hello.”
Gibson, in jeans and a black hoodie, started to say something, but Atkins shushed him.
“Won’t happen again, Luke,” Swanson said. “I’ve decided to take you on as a partner. If we’re going to work together, you need to know everything. If Marty trusts you, then so will I.”
That caught Gibson totally by surprise, and the anger drained away, replaced by a boyish grin of satisfaction. “You won’t regret it, Kyle.”
Jesus, thought Swanson. Toss this guy a bone and he rolls over to get his tummy scratched.
Atkins bowed his head and shook it. “All righty, then. If you two are now past the kissy-kissy stage, let’s get to work. I’ve got something for you.”
The snipers stopped talking as Atkins opened a folder. “About twelve hours ago, the police in Paris found the body of an American attorney in her hotel room. She had been beaten to death and left on the floor, rolled up in a plastic shower curtain.”
“And?” Gibson crossed his arms.
“The murderer took no precautions. The cops found prints all over the place, then found him on video security footage and talked to the staff. In one part of the video, he’s seen flipping the bird at the camera. No doubt, the killer was Nicky Marks.”
“He wasn’t even trying to hide?” Swanson wondered about that.
“Not at all.” Atkins passed the brief report to Gibson, who scanned it quickly.
“He knows that every cop in the world is after him and he’s taunting us all,” said Gibson.