Ramos and Corvo stood on either side of the bulletin board and Ramos conducted the meeting. By using a yardstick as a pointer he delineated the boundaries of the ranch and identified what he called the population center-a large, walled compound that included a hacienda, ranch house and adjoining bunker-type building. He then circled the breeding corrals and barn located about a mile from the population center along the perimeter of the ranch that fronted Val Verde Highway. He also pointed out the EnviroBreed compound across the highway.
Next, Ramos tacked up another blowup, this one detailing about a quarter of the ranch-ranging from the population center to the breeding center/EnviroBreed compound area. This shot was close enough that tiny figures could be seen on the roofs of the bunker building. In the scrubland behind the buildings there were black figures against the light brown and green earth. The bulls. Bosch wondered which one of them was El Temblar. He could hear one of the militia officers translating the meeting for a group of the guardsmen gathered around him.
“Okay, these photos are about thirty hours old,” Ramos said. “We had NASA do a fly-over in a U-thirty-four. We also had them shoot heat resonance strips and that’s where this gets good. The reds you see are the hot spots.”
He tacked a new blowup next to the other. This was a computer-generated graphic that had red squares-the buildings-against a sea of blues and greens. There were small dots of red outside the square and Bosch assumed these were the bulls.
“These photos were taken at the same second yesterday,” Ramos said. “By jumping back and forth between the graphic and the live shot we can pinpoint certain anomalies. These squares become the buildings and most of these smaller red blotches become the bulls.”
He used the yardstick to refer back and forth between the two blowups. Bosch realized that there were more red spots on the graphic than there were bulls on the photo.
“Now these marks do not correspond with animals on the photo,” Ramos said. “What they do correspond with is the feed boxes.”
With Corvo’s help they pinned up two more enlargements. These were the closest shots so far. Bosch could clearly make out the tin roof of a small shed. There was a black steer standing near it. In the corresponding graphic, both the steer and the shed were bright red.
“These basically are little shelters to keep rain off the hay and feed for the livestock. NASA says these shelters would emit some residual heat that the resonance photos would pick up. But NASA said it clearly would not be what we are seeing here. So, what we think this means is that these feed boxes are decoys. We think they are exhaust vents for an underground complex. We believe there is some kind of entrance somewhere in the population center structures that leads to the underground lab back here.”
He let it sink in for a few moments. Nobody asked any questions.
“Also,” he said, “there is a-we have information from a confidential informant that there is a tunnel system. We believe it runs from the breeding center here to this complex-a business called EnviroBreed-here. We believe it has allowed Zorrillo to circumvent surveillance and is one of the possible means of moving product from the ranch to the border.”
Ramos went on to detail the raid. The plan was to strike at midnight. The Mexican militia would have a two-part responsibility. A single unmarked car would be sent to the ranch gate, swerving as if driven by a drunk on the gravel road. Using this ruse, the three guardsmen in the car would take custody of the two gate sentries. After that, half of the remaining militia would move down the ranch road to the population center while the other half would advance to the EnviroBreed compound, surround it and await developments on the ranch.
“The success of the operation largely relies on the two men on the gate being taken before issuing a warning to the PC,” Corvo said. His first words during the briefing. “If we fail that, we lose the element of surprise.”
After the ground attack was underway, the three air squads would come. The two transport craft would put down on the north and east sides of the PC to drop the CLET team. The CLETs would perform initial entry to all structures. The third helicopter, the Lynx, would remain airborne and act as a flying command post.
Lastly, Ramos said, the ranch had two rovers, two-man Jeep patrols. Ramos said they followed no set patrol or pattern and they would be impossible to pinpoint until the raid began.
“They are the wild cards,” Ramos said. “That is what we have a mobile air command for. They warn us when the Jeeps are spotted coming in or the Lynx will just take them out.”
Ramos was pacing back and forth in front of the bulletin board, swinging the yardstick. Bosch could tell he liked this, the feeling of being in charge of something. Maybe it made up for Vietnam or Iraq.
“Okay, gentlemen, I’ve got a few more things here,” Ramos said as he pinned another photo up. “Our target is the ranch. We have search warrants for drugs. If we find manufacturing apparatus we are gold. If we find narcotics we are gold. But the thing we really want is this man here.”
The photo was a blowup from the mug book Bosch had looked at that morning.
“This is our main man,” Ramos said. “Humberto Zorrillo. The pope of Mexicali. If we don’t get him, this whole operation goes down the tubes. He’s the mastermind. He’s the one we want.
“It might interest you to know that in addition to his activities related to narcotics, he is a suspect in the killing of two L.A. cops, not to mention a couple other killings up there in the last month or so. This is a man who doesn’t think twice about it. If he doesn’t do it himself, he has plenty of people working for him who will. He’s dangerous. Anybody we encounter on the ranch has to be considered armed and dangerous. Questions?”
One of the militia asked a question in Spanish.
“Good question,” Ramos replied. “We are not going into EnviroBreed initially because of two reasons. One, our prime target is the ranch and we would have to initially deploy more resources to EnviroBreed if we were to make simultaneous entry to the compound and the ranch. Secondly, our CI indicates the tunnel on that side may be rigged. Booby-trapped. We don’t want to chance it. When we get the ranch secured, we’ll go in then or we’ll follow the tunnel over.”
He waited for more questions. There were none. The men in front of him were shifting their weight from foot to foot or chewing their nails or flicking their thumbs on their knees. The adrenaline rush was just beginning to kick. Bosch had seen it before, in Vietnam and since. So he approached his own rising excitement with an uneasy sense of dread.
“All right then!” Ramos yelled. “I want everybody locked and loaded in one hour. At midnight we jam!”
The gathering broke up with some adolescent howls from the younger agents. Bosch moved toward Ramos as he was taking the photos off the board.
“Sounds like a plan, man.”
“Yeah. Just hope it goes down close to the way we said it. They never go down exactly right.”
“Right. Corvo told me you’ve got another plan. The one to get Zorrillo across the border.”
“Yeah, we’ve got something cooked up.”
“You gonna tell me?”
He turned around from the board, all the photos in a nice stack in his hands.
“Yeah, I’ll tell you. You’ll like this, Bosch, since it will get him up to L.A. to face trial on your guys. What’s going to happen is that after the little fuck is captured he will resist arrest and injure himself. Probably facial injuries and they are going to look worse than they really are. But we will want to get him immediate medical attention. The DEA will offer the use of one of the helicopters. The commander of the militia unit will gratefully accept. But, you see, the pilot will become confused and mistake the lights of Imperial County Memorial Hospital on the other side of the border with the Mexicali General Clinic, which is just on this side of the border. When the chopper lands at the wrong hospital and Zorrillo gets off on the wrong side of the border, he will be subject to arrest and the American justice system. Tough break for him. We might have to put a notice of reprimand in the pilot’s personnel file.”