Derek did not carry a gun. If he needed a weapon he would simply take one from the people attacking him and use it to kill them.
It was how he’d handled things in the past when he was on assignment in the Middle East working for the United States government. It was how he would handle things today, if necessary.
He noticed that the two thugs were both packing. That could work out well for him later.
The man frisking him pulled out the Ziploc bag of gray powder that Colonel Byrne had in his pocket. “What’s this?”
“It’s for my coffee.”
The guy grunted. “Alright.” He handed Derek back the plastic bag and announced to his associates, “He’s clean.”
The driver led the way, and the two brutes followed closely behind Derek. The warehouse smelled of long-accumulated dust and grease and was lit only by two narrow, grimy windows set in the wall nearly twenty feet above the oil-stained concrete floor. A thin fringe of dirty light crawled in beneath each of the three garage doors, but didn’t offer much relief at all from the warehouse’s consuming shadows.
Dead industrial machines languished in the center of the room. In the dingy light Derek wasn’t able to make out what they might have been used for. Textiles, he thought, but he couldn’t be sure.
The driver grabbed a sliding metal door and yanked it to the side to reveal a room illuminated only by several dozen candles. All the flames leaned to the side as the rush of air from the opening door swept over them, then flickered their way back to normal.
A statue of Christ nailed to the cross hung on the wall.
Three more men, all Hispanic, stood inside the room. Two had AK-47s in hand and slings of ammo draped across their chests. They flanked the third man, who was dressed in an immaculate, flawless white suit and carried no visible weapon.
A chair sat beside him. A small table with a carafe and two cups waited in the corner.
“Colonel,” he said. “Hola.”
“Hello, Jesús.”
Jesús Garcia, head of the Los Zetas, one of the most powerful Mexican cartels operating here in the States, gestured toward the chair. Some of the cartels in El Salvador or Colombia are more established, but the ones in Mexico are quickly becoming one of the biggest threats to Americans, and Colonel Byrne knew better than to take this meeting lightly.
“Have a seat, my friend,” Jesús said.
Derek knew it was a power play. There was only one chair. Sitting would put him at a lower level than the rest of the men, make it easier for them to loom over him.
He’d only met Jesús twice before, but said, “Let’s both stand. That way we can look each other in the eye. Like friends do.”
That brought a smile and a small laugh. “Sí, sí, claro. Of course.”
For years, the US government has referred to its efforts against controlled substances as the War on Drugs. And now, the cartels have reached the levels of military sophistication to make that statement truer than ever.
They far outgun the police, even the SWAT teams, of nearly every major US city. They have better body armor, heavier artillery, and their communication systems are rivaled only by the US military.
When threatened, the cartels have gone as far as targeting US police officers and their families with sniper attacks. In some cities they have their own SWAT uniforms, they know the response times and routes, and they can respond before the actual SWAT team. They use high-capacity magazines and body armor and they’re not going to quit or walk away until they have what they’re after.
They also have high-explosive grenades and use standardized assault rifles and shotguns of the same design to make it easier to train and to exchange ammo and clips in gunfights. They’re starting to use rounds designed to go through body armor and armored vehicles.
Some cartels even use small remote-controlled planes and submarines to transport their drugs to the states.
Hezbollah has been bringing people across the US border, in cooperation with the cartels, for the last decade. Derek knew this, knew that this connection was one that the US government was reluctant to publicly acknowledge but that existed nevertheless.
He also knew that in Mexico, law enforcement and the military were so infiltrated by the cartels that there really was no way of stopping them apart from US military intervention. But the US hasn’t made a practice of deploying troops to Mexico because the cartels influence the judges, and if Americans are caught in that country, there’s a law that they must be tried by a Mexican court rather than shipped back to the US for their trials, and US soldiers definitely did not want to be tried by a corrupt Mexican court.
Jesús asked Derek, “And how is Mr. Becker?”
“As far as I know he’s hanging in there.”
“But, as I understand, he hasn’t served you as well as you’d hoped?”
“We’re adapting.”
“As you always do.”
“As I always do.”
Derek couldn’t help but wonder if Jesús was the person masterminding the project. It would make sense — he had the money, the resources, the manpower, and the motivation to get behind it. But there was something about it that just didn’t fit.
Maybe it was only a gut feeling, but whatever it was, it was there, and he held back from making too many assumptions.
Derek needed to feel things out, see where they led. As they say, discretion is the better part of valor, and he would do his best to discern the truth without being too blatant about it or coming across as unnecessarily intrusive.
On the other hand, there was something to be said about simply being direct, so he decided to play things by ear.
“I was told we were going to discuss the delivery of the merchandise.”
Jesús gave him a half grin. “Right to the point. Yes, and that is one of the things I like about you. Coffee first?”
Decorum dictated that he accept the offer. “Certainly.”
A few moments later the coffee was poured and Derek had mixed in the powder that he carried with him.
Jesús took a sip of his own coffee and watched the colonel curiously. “The first two times we met, you added that same powder to your coffee. It isn’t creamer, is it?”
“No.”
“And it’s not some kind of drug.”
“No, it’s not.”
“May I ask you, then, what it is you take in your coffee?”
The colonel dipped his spoon into the cup and gently swirled it. “Dust.”
“Dust?”
“Yes. Ground up from a mummy.”
The room was silent. Candles licked at the stale air. No one moved. At last Jesús laughed heartily. “Mummy dust?”
“Yes.”
He looked at Derek slyly out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t believe you.”
“In the 1700s and 1800s it was quite common in Europe to eat mummies. They believed it served as a remedy for many common maladies, and also that it granted them long life. I do it as a tribute to them and as a reminder of the brevity and transient nature of our lives.”
He took another sip and saw one of the men with the assault rifles swallow uneasily.
“In a way, this dust is a bit like rattlesnake venom.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You can drink rattlesnake venom. Your stomach can digest it, but you wouldn’t want an open sore in your mouth while you’re drinking it. Or, let a snake pierce your skin with its fangs and inject the venom into your bloodstream, well, that’s when you’re in trouble. It’s the same with the mummy dust.”
“You can digest it but you wouldn’t want to get it into your bloodstream.”
“You absolutely would not. The chemicals they used to embalm the mummies. The germs. Not a pleasant way to go.” He dabbed the coffee from his lips. “It took me years, actually, to find legitimate mummies that could be ground up, but finally I stumbled across a private collector in Germany who was able to supply me with what I needed.”