And that was something I could definitely use.
46
The safe house was a three-bedroom ranch-style house close to the top of the hill in El Cerrito. It was pretty much what I expected. Someone with a more generous predisposition might use the terms minimalist, vintage, or functional to describe it. I’m thinking it came out of the gulag section at Home Depot. I wasn’t exactly expecting Four Seasons–level comfort, but I felt bad for Tess and Alex, more so since I didn’t know how long we’d need to keep them holed up here. The place was just grim.
Still, its living room faced west and afforded a pretty decent view of the city’s skyline and the ocean beyond, especially now, with the sun melting into the horizon. Tenants who weren’t here for the reasons we were would probably find it inspiring or uplifting. I didn’t. I was just standing there, alone, somberly taking in the passing of another day, thinking about Mexico, about Michelle, and about how pulling that trigger had somehow created some kind of cosmic ripple that, five years later, had sent a similar bullet ripping into her.
“Nice view.”
Tess sidled up next to me, looking out, her hand brushing up against my back before snaking around my waist.
“Only the best is good enough for my gal, you know that.”
She smirked. “You spoil me, kind sir.”
I glanced back toward the bedrooms. I could hear Jules and the new guy, Cal Matsuoka, chatting quietly in the kitchen.
“How’s Alex?”
“Not great. He’s still shaken up about what happened,” she told me, her tone dejected. “Moving here wasn’t great for him either.” She cast her eyes across the room. “I don’t know what to tell him anymore.”
I nodded. “We’ll figure some way out of this.”
She shrugged and looked out, her eyes lackluster and failing to mask the frustration and unease that were engulfing her.
“What happens after you get these guys—the ones who got the bikers and the deputy? What happens then? How do we know whoever sent them won’t just send others after us?” She turned to face me, and she really looked spooked. “How do we know it’s ever going to end?”
This was the moment to look squarely into her eyes and say something heroically reassuring and supremely confident like, Don’t worry, we’ll get them. But Tess knew me better than that, and she knew the world didn’t really work like that. The thing is, standing there beside her, I couldn’t imagine not getting these guys. I was going to see to it that they were out of our lives for good. So I actually did say, “We’ll get them. Them, and whoever’s behind them.” And to her credit, she didn’t scoff or even show any hint of doubting it. She just nodded, and her face tightened up with resolve.
She looked out at the sunset again.
“Tell me what happened,” she said. “The guy you shot. The scientist. Tell me about it.”
I’d given her a quick summary of the Eagles’ ties to Navarro and—in broad, intentionally vague strokes—told her how it all linked back to the mission in Mexico. I’d never told her about it, just like I hadn’t told Michelle at the time. And this time around, I hadn’t gone into detail because I didn’t want her to know the whole story.
“Talk to me, Sean,” she pressed, reading my hesitation. “Tell me what happened.”
And something shifted inside me, and I decided I didn’t want to make the same mistake I’d made with Michelle. I should have told her, just like I should have told Tess about this, too, ages ago.
I looked out, the sun no more than a golden sliver getting swallowed up by a ravenous sea, and I could still see those events unfurling in my mind’s eye, like it was yesterday, although you never know, do you? The mind plays tricks. I’ve found that some memories people remember so vividly, the ones we’re sure we know so precisely, are sometimes not as accurate as we think. Over time, the mind massages the truth. It distorts and adjusts and adds in small increments, making it hard to tell what actually happened from what didn’t. But in this case, I think my memory was razor sharp.
I’d have been happier if it wasn’t.
It wasn’t easy to get to him.
Navarro’s lab was in the middle of nowhere, high up in the lawless and impenetrable Sierra Madre Occidental, a volcanic range of tall mountains that were cleaved by steep gorges, ravines, and plunging canyons known as barrancas, some of which were deeper than the Grand Canyon. Neither the Aztec emperors nor the Spanish conquistadors had ever been able to impose their authority on the violent and fiercely independent villagers who lived in the Sierra’s folds, and the Mexican government hadn’t fared any better. The mountains, rife with marijuana and poppy fields, were controlled by regional strongmen and warring drug mafias. Gangs of armed bandits and renegades still roamed around the wild hinterland on horses and mules, like they did a hundred years ago and more. Navarro had chosen his compound’s location well.
We didn’t have that much to go on. McKinnon’s position had been pinpointed by homing in on the signal of the cell phone during his call. After that, the mission had been planned hastily, and in the interest of not alerting any bought-and-paid-for Mexican law enforcement personnel in Navarro’s pay, we put together the intel we needed ourselves using one of the Air Force’s Predator drones, without involving the local authorities.
The plan was for us to be choppered in, but the landscape around our target wasn’t doing us any favors. The compound sat on a high mesa, and the terrain around it was too hostile and inhospitable for a ground infiltration. Given its high altitude setting and its commanding allaround views, chopper approaches were also highly vulnerable to detection. The best we could do was land about three miles away and cover the rest of the journey on foot over rough terrain that, we knew, was home to scorpions, rattlesnakes, mountain lions, bears, and weird, mythical mutant cougar-like beasts called onzas to boot.
A cakewalk.
We hit the ground about three hours before sunrise, figuring that would give us enough time to get to the compound under cover of dark - ness, get McKinnon out, and make it back to the chopper by dawn. We moved fast and sleek across steep, rocky slopes and rushing creeks, through pine forests and thickets of oak saplings, juniper, and cactus. There were eight of us in the strike team: me, Munro, a couple of DEA combat troops, and four Special Forces soldiers. We knew we were venturing into a well-guarded compound, so we were armed to the teeth: Heckler and Koch UMPs with sound suppressors, silenced Glocks, Bowie knives, body armor, night vision goggles. We were also wearing head-mounted video minicams that were sending a live feed back to the DEA’s field office inside the embassy in Mexico City, and we had a Predator flying overhead, giving us real-time visuals via the drone’s operators at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. The plan, obviously, was not to engage. We were meant to sneak in and get our man out before they knew we were even there.
Didn’t happen.
Munro and I made it through the sleepy security without too much trouble. There was only one guard we couldn’t get around stealthily, and Munro had used his knife to put him down. We found McKinnon where he said he’d be, in his lab. He looked like he was in his late fifties and was of average height, a bit on the skinny side, with a silvery goatee and clear blue eyes that were shot through with intelligence. He was wearing a white straw cowboy hat with a silver scorpion clipped onto it and a snapbutton Western shirt, and he had a battered old leather satchel on the counter beside him. He seemed scared and thrilled in equal parts to see us there, and was all raring to go. But there was a wrinkle.