Tonight, that could prove to be a challenge.
Wilkes knew that his agent would likely end up in bed with Rojas this evening, and a part of him felt bad about that. But it came with the job. If a few moments of undesirable disgust for the girl meant bringing down one of the world’s most powerful drug kingpins, and uncovering a highly placed American traitor, so be it. His occupation involved deception and moral ambiguities, and he had learned to live with that a long time ago.
“You been down here before?” asked the DEA escort as they walked down the hallway.
“First time,” replied Wilkes.
The El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) was jointly run by the DEA and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). More than a dozen other agencies were represented there as well. FBI, CIA, NSA, ATF — you name it. There were over three hundred employees in El Paso, all working diligently to counter the Mexican cartels. It was hard work. The drug war against Mexican cartels was a furnace, and each agent stationed here was another coal in the fire.
The DEA man slid his card through the door’s electronic reader, and they both entered the operations center, receiving a few hardened looks from the night crew. The mood inside the room was tense, but Wilkes got the impression that it was routine.
The DEA agent walked to his cluttered desk and sat on the front edge of his black adjustable chair. He scrolled through his messages, then brought up the surveillance schedule to show his CIA guest what was on tap for the night.
A drone flew over the Sierra Madre Mountains. A satellite pass was set up to provide live feed to this center via satellite. Several teams of human surveillance reported in throughout the region. The aerial surveillance video feeds were displayed on screens in the front of the room.
The DEA supervisor introduced Wilkes to his duty section crew. Wilkes asked which screens would show the townhome in Mazatlán where his agent was going to be. One of the DEA men pointed to the right monitor. The imagery was pretty clear but a little jumpy. One of the agents coordinating with the drone operator showed Wilkes how the high-resolution feed was able to toggle between full-color video, infrared, and night vision. The view now showed the front and rooftop patio of an upscale townhouse. A trio of petite, scantily clad women were drinking and dancing under an arbor on the roof. Two men sat at a table, beer bottles in front of them. The narcos.
“This is the drone?”
“Correct. That screen over there is the satellite. We’ll have it for another hour. The NSA folks also have access to their signals intelligence during that timeframe.”
“Got it.”
In Wilkes’s experience, the link was only so good whenever satellite comms were involved. But the sophisticated suite of sensors on board the bird would extract extremely valuable electronic data from the area, and that could drastically improve their situational awareness. The whole trade was going increasingly to cyber. Wilkes, like most from his generation, longed for the good old days of the Cold War. Give him a handheld radio and a 9mm Beretta any day.
Wilkes watched his girl on the monitor. One of the three dancing Latinas, gyrating with each other on the rooftop. The unfortunate object of one Hector Rojas’s affection.
Rojas was a one-time big shot Mexico City accountant — if accountants can be called big shots. He had been scooped up by the Sinaloa cartel and promoted through the ranks when the previous head of cartel finance had been found missing his lower torso after a run-in with a competing enterprise.
Wilkes had arranged for Ines Sanchez to be introduced to Hector Rojas several months ago, at a party in Playa del Carmen. They had hit it off, but Wilkes had made sure that Ines left for the evening without giving him what he was looking for. She had flirted with Rojas over social media for the next few weeks, sending him revealing photographs and hinting that she would like to see him again.
The messages were carefully curated by a team at the CIA that specialized in psychological manipulation. Rojas could have his choice of beautiful local women. But Wilkes and the analysts calculated that the allure of bedding a semi-famous TV star would reel him in.
EPIC intelligence reports on Rojas indicated that he had several mistresses. But he dropped everything whenever Ines sent Rojas a message that she would be coming to town.
The trap was set.
Wilkes watched the girls dancing and felt internal pinpricks of stress increased in magnitude. He told himself to relax. Trent and Max were both in position. Wilkes had gotten the message from Renee. There were more people at the townhome than expected, but Max and Trent could overcome that. Everything would be fine.
A DEA agent at one of the computer terminals across the room snapped his fingers to get his boss’s attention, concentrating on something he was listening to on his headset.
“What is it?” the DEA supervisor asked.
“Boss, something’s up. The NSA folks are picking up some unusual chatter from the narcos.”
“About?”
“Several truckloads of foot soldiers, all moving fast.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Where are they going?”
The DEA man pointed at the video display. “There. The narcos are sending a shitload of guys to that townhouse.”
Wilkes face went white.
Trent Carpenter sat alone in the darkness, looking through the blinds to the cartel townhouse across the street. Performing clandestine street-level surveillance was painstaking, tiresome work. He was perched like an eagle, eyeing its prey from high up, observing everything in silence.
He’d been here for over ten hours. Three plastic one-gallon water jugs lay on the floor next to him. Two were still for drinking. One was now for peeing. As the only surveillance operator with a clear view across the street, he couldn’t risk leaving his post.
A high-res camera stood on a tripod next to him, its imagery uplinked to a satellite one hundred miles above the surface of the earth and then relayed down to Renee’s computers. Max had helped him set it up earlier, along with a few other cool devices that could pick up nearby cell phones and activate their receivers, but Trent wouldn’t touch those toys unless he had to. Renee was doing all that.
On the floor at his feet was his own set of tools. A large black canvas bag filled with weapons and gear. Trent watched the narco security guards on the street, standing outside their pickup trucks, smoking and shooting the shit. Their bosses on the outdoor patio on the roof, dancing with the full-breasted beauties — imports from Mexico City, one of whom was a CIA informant. He fought the urge to lift up his suppressed rifle from the floor and begin picking them off right now.
These were the men that had made money off the death of his brother. Josh, a father, husband, brother, son, and decorated veteran. Now a dead heroin junkie — a statistic in the war on drugs. A deep rage swelled up inside him whenever Trent thought about it. Which was often.
Trent wasn’t completely sure that he trusted this CIA guy, Wilkes. But he trusted Max Fend. Fend was a good dude, and Trent had the feeling that they were both here for the same reason.
Guilt. Or justice. Or some combination of the two. Trent kept thinking that maybe if he had killed or captured enough narcos, or stopped enough drug shipments back when he was here with his special operations team, Josh would still be alive. He knew it was a stupid thought, but that didn’t stop it from popping into his mind.
During Trent’s time as a special operations advisor to the DEA in Mexico, he’d learned the truth about counternarcotics. The big arrests were only temporary wins. And even those were rare occurrences. Normally law enforcement didn’t catch anyone of consequence. Even when they did catch one of the kingpins, if the guy was locked up in Mexico, half the time he still ran his operation from the joint. Those prisons were often nothing more than posh luxury hotels set up as narco penalty boxes. Sometimes the wardens and guards were on the cartel payroll. The guards that didn’t go along with it either quit or were found dead. Suicide, with three bullets in their head. Shit.