But why she had come to find the American, she had no idea. The man had one foot in the grave. He wasn’t strong enough to help her escape her fate, yet she followed her instincts to find him. She’d come to see where they had him. And even from where she stood, cowering in the shadows, she heard what they were doing to him. And it made her sick.
One voice stood out from the rest. And the sound of his cruelty raised the hair on her neck.
“Do it. Now!”
With the help of another man, Ramon Guerrero followed orders and grabbed the head of the naked prisoner. He shoved the man’s face into a tub of filthy water. With his hands in shackles, Garrett Wheeler bucked to break free, sloshing water to the stone floor. When he stopped struggling, and the last bubbles erupted to break the surface of the water, Guerrero looked over his shoulder at the man who had given the order.
Miguel Rosas, number two man to the head of the Pérez cartel, had a reputation for brutality, with the body count to prove it. The Pérez cartel was a splinter group making a name and expanding its reach. And Rosas had played a big part in the Pérez family’s growing reign of terror in the country. Guerrero had no appreciation for the politics within the organization. He was only a soldier within its ranks, only wanting to carve out his piece of the pie. A manageable piece.
Guerrero had transported the drugged American to a heavily guarded villa outside Guadalajara, Mexico. Being allowed to remain with Wheeler had been a good sign that powerful men had taken notice and trusted him to get the job done. Participating in the interrogation was another good sign. He didn’t care if Wheeler died, but it made no sense to kill him before they got him to talk.
Finally, Rosas nodded, and the prisoner was yanked from the water. A loud, guttural gasp reverberated off the walls, but when Wheeler said nothing, his reprieve was short-lived.
“Again,” Rosas demanded.
“No,” the bound man gagged as his head was shoved back under the murky water. This time, when he was brought up, Rosas stepped closer and looked down at the gasping man.
“You make this harder than it needs to be. Who have you come to kill? And why are you here, in my country?” When Rosas spoke, his voice echoed. “Tell us what we need to know, and your misery will be over. Are you not hungry? Would it not feel good to sleep?”
Wheeler had not been allowed to rest after the drug had worn off. He’d been forced to stand naked in his cell and had been drenched with water every time he could no longer open his eyes. And he’d not been given food or drink. A local doctor had been on call to keep the American alive as the torture escalated.
And still, Wheeler had not told them anything.
Guerrero grabbed the American’s hair and yanked his head back. The man’s jaw fell slack as he panted for air, his chest heaving.
Mustering his contempt, he glared at Rosas. “Go to . . . hell.”
“Very well. You leave me no choice.”
In Spanish, Rosas gave an order, and the American was hung by his arms, suspended in chains from a massive wooden beam, and his body was doused with water. When an electrical generator was powered up, Guerrero knew what would come next.
Garrett Wheeler would be taken to the edge of death by electrocution. The American flinched when he saw one of Rosas’s men touch two metal paddles together. A loud pop erupted, and a spark of electricity cast an eerie light into the murky cell.
The American narrowed his eyes and glared at his tormentor, Rosas. When Wheeler tensed his jaw, he didn’t say a word, mustering what little defiance he had left. All that changed after the order was given. When the paddles sparked, volts of electricity shot through the American’s body, making him jerk like a macabre puppet. Smoke drifted in the stale air, and the smell of burning skin and hair hit Guerrero’s nostrils.
With a dismissive wave of his hand, Rosas eventually ordered his men to stop. Wheeler’s body collapsed, still rippling with spasms. After he grunted in pain and fell unconscious, Rosas walked toward Guerrero and stood at his shoulder, speaking in a low voice.
“You do not approve of my methods. I can see it in your eyes.”
Guerrero kept his dislike for Rosas in check. Looking into the man’s eyes reminded him of the time he had confronted a rabid dog, an animal he would never turn his back on. With a man like Rosas, he had to tread carefully. One wrong word could ruin everything he had hoped to gain, or worse, put him in the crosshairs of a man he would rather not cross paths with again.
“It is not my place to approve or disapprove.” Guerrero avoided looking at the man standing next to him.
“It is good that you know your place,” Rosas said.
If the man had not looked so smug, Guerrero might have kept his mouth shut. But when Rosas ordered one of his men to awaken the American with a bucketful of water, Guerrero said what was on his mind. He could not help himself.
“It’s just that this American, Garrett Wheeler, has many secrets worthy of your efforts. My sources tell me he is the leader of a very influential U.S. agency sent to spy on us. And who knows what someone would pay for a man like this.”
“Yes, I know what you reported, but Pérez believes this American might be a diversion for a bigger assault on the cartels. The United States would do anything to stop the violence in our country.”
“What are you saying?”
“What if the CIA or this agency Wheeler works for is planning to assassinate the leaders of the cartels, pick them off one by one, making it look like a drug war? Pérez doesn’t care about what happens to the other cartels, but having advance information is very important.”
“And I suppose if the competition is eliminated, that would not be a bad thing.”
“Yes, of course.” Rosas smiled. “So as you can see, our job here is very important.”
Before Guerrero replied, the man looked over his shoulder at the waking prisoner hanging in chains. He ordered his men to hit him with the paddles again. Wheeler’s body jerked with another jolt of electricity. He cried out, unable to hold back.
In reflex, Guerrero grimaced and noticed that Miguel Rosas was watching him. With the American dangling and jerking like a caught fish, Rosas only smiled at Guerrero, displaying a strange cruelty that caused the hair on the back of Guerrero’s neck to stand.
At that moment, he knew that Miguel Rosas was a man who truly enjoyed his work.
Outside Guadalajara, Mexico
“We lost his signal, sir,” his man reported as he knelt by him in the dark.
Following a burst transmitter signal, Hank Lewis and his team had crossed the border into Mexico and were positioned on a nearby ridge overlooking a large hacienda near Guadalajara. The estate was located on the northern shore of Laguna de Chapala, where his team was conducting a covert surveillance operation for the Sentinels, tracking an operative under deep cover who was being held prisoner inside.
As to who their operative was—or the purpose of their mission—Hank had no clue.
His team had been monitoring thermal imagery, tracking the movements of the men inside the compound, when he got the bad news about the transmitter. The device sent a burst of data at regular intervals via satellite, transmitting coordinates for his team to follow once an hour, but it also served a secondary purpose. It recorded the operative’s vitals to make sure the unlucky bastard was still alive. From what Hank had been told, the transmitter had been implanted under the skin of their target.
The tracking device was damned small, an upgraded, high-tech version of the ones used to track the migratory patterns of wildlife. And unless someone knew what to look for, the transmission frequency was very hard to trace since it wasn’t a constant signal. This version passed a bug sweep without a problem for the same reason. It only powered up once an hour, long enough to gather vitals, compress the data, and transmit it. That also meant the battery power would be minimal, which translated into a tracking device that could be injected under the skin with a hypodermic needle. A perfect piece of technology for this mission, until it failed.