Padilla’s next comments were directed to Avery.
“I’ll be blunt. I realize this is an unusual situation, and there is much at stake, so I’m willing to grant you a certain amount of latitude. Frankly, I do not care what you do with this woman when we find her, but I have authority here. Nobody launches an independent operation within Mexican borders. You will take no action without my explicit consent, and I will not tolerate any interference in Federal Police operations or investigations. My word is final on all operational matters. You might be here unofficially, but that doesn’t mean you are free to do whatever you please.”
Basically, Padilla was going to allow Avery and Aguilar some leeway to operate on Mexican soil, so long as they kept their sights strictly on the Viper and stayed in line, but if anything went wrong, they’d bear the brunt of it.
Under the circumstances, it was a lot better deal than Avery had expected.
But then Padilla had experience fighting a dirty, unconventional enemy, and he likely understood that civilized rules didn’t always apply. There were political considerations, too. The Mexican government didn’t want word getting out that Mexico was being used as a transit point for international terrorists. So if the Viper could be discretely eliminated, then so much the better.
“I can live with that,” Avery said.
NINETEEN
An hour later, after arriving at the Federal Police’s regional ops center, Captain Padilla shared his team’s surveillance photos of the target site, and maps of the surrounding streets.
Located near the airport, in a small outdoor strip mall that included a Subway and Domino’s, Café de la Flor was busy with tourists and popular among locals looking for a quick meal. The café offered outdoor seating beneath a terrace, allowing for quick street access, and was also just minutes’ away from a junction of two major highways near the airport. The mall itself occupied a space of some one thousand by four hundred feet, with parking all around the exterior. A wide outdoor walkway cut through the center of the mall, providing pedestrian access to stores and shops, including Café de la Flor.
Silva’s meeting was set for 1:30PM, giving Padilla’s cops and the DEA agents plenty of time to move their assets into place overnight. In the meantime, Contreras’s informant would update them if Arturo Silva’s schedule changed.
Three hundred feet north of the target, across Alberto Limon Padilla Boulevard, a dual carriageway with a central barrier dividing the eastbound and westbound lanes, was the Gamma Tijuana de Fiesta Inn, where Contreras’s agents and Padilla’s officers had already acquisitioned two connecting rooms to establish their tactical command center. The rooms were on the third floor, on the south side of the main building, overlooking the highway and the target area. Padilla and Contreras planned to discretely move people and equipment into the rooms through the night and early morning.
From what Avery saw so far, the Mexican end of the operation was being kept fairly small and was professionally run. Padilla didn’t involve or brief the regional branch of the State Judicial Police. There often existed rivalry and tension between the Federal and Judicial polices, and it wasn’t always clear which agency had jurisdiction in investigating a particular crime, so the agencies tended to operate unilaterally. Padilla openly brushed off Tijuana’s State Judicial Police by saying half of them worked for the cartels and the other half were the thugs of Tijuana’s corrupt governor, and the other men enjoyed scoffing at the expense of their sister service.
The Federal Police are an aggressive preventive law enforcement agency. Its officers are heavily armed with military-grade weapons and wear SWAT- style fatigues. They have been on the frontlines of the Mexican drug war, with authorization to use preemptive lethal force against the cartel leaders.
For additional back up, Padilla called in a favor to arrange for a GAFE assault element with helicopter support to be on standby at Tijuana Airport, just three minutes away.
If Arturo Silva’s guest was identified as a Viper operative — Avery doubted that Arianna Moreno would personally come this far into the city alone to meet Silva — then Padilla was content to let the DEA and the Colombians have him. His officers had enough on their plate with their own enemies, and Padilla didn’t care to take responsibility for Colombian terrorists. In fact, Padilla cared little for what happened to Moreno. First and foremost, he wanted Arturo Silva.
The objective was to identify Silva’s associate, stay on both subjects, and interdict them somewhere less populated, where there existed lesser risk of potential civilian casualties if the situation escalated. There was a lot that could go wrong if guns were drawn at the mall, and Padilla stressed that he had zero tolerance for so-called collateral damage, especially from what he called overeager, gun slinging American cowboys. Civilian lives, Padilla stressed, were to be protected at all costs. If Silva couldn’t be taken alive, Padilla ordered his officers to kill him on sight.
After the briefing, Avery and Aguilar were delivered to the makeshift command center at the Gamma Tijuana de Fiesta Inn, where they became acquainted with the other American and Mexican agents on the task force.
Meanwhile, Abigail Benning set up her Stingray gear in the back of a DEA surveillance van, which was then positioned a block from the target location. She’d have the IMSI-catcher running so that if either Silva or the Viper agent made a call, she’d know who they were talking to, and then triangulate that person’s location.
That night Avery slept on a small, narrow, uncomfortable cot set up in one of the Federal Police’s suites while the Mexicans worked in shifts overnight to continue running surveillance on the target area and plan tomorrow’s operation. Despite the bits of metal poking and prodding his sides, the blaring TV, and the conversation of the DEA agents and Mexican cops six feet away, Avery managed five hours of blissful, uninterrupted sleep.
Aguilar woke him up at ten, and they ventured out on foot.
The morning was warm, breezy and sunny. They stopped at Subway and ate at a table near the windows offering eyes on Café De la Flora fifty feet away. They took their time eating sandwiches with salty, rubbery meat, and watched people coming in and out of the café, and familiarized themselves with the environment.
The herd of people died out near 11:00AM, and then Avery and Aguilar followed the sidewalk down the narrow gap between Café de la Flora on the west and Roots, a larger bar and restaurant on the east, allowing them to scope out the former’s sidewalk terrace seating. Both establishments were nearly empty now as their respective staffs prepared for the lunch crowd.
“What do you think?” Avery asked as they walked back to the hotel several minutes later.
“It’s a good spot,” Aguilar said. “No one can leave the target without us seeing them, and we’ll have assets positioned to intercept our targets whichever direction they go. There’ll be heavy pedestrian traffic, which is good and bad. It’ll be easier for our watchers to blend in, but it does increase the potential for casualties.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that.” But Avery knew that in Mexico it often came to that. “Padilla’s guys aren’t going to move in on the targets here unless something goes wrong.”
“I have confidence in Padilla’s people. You really don’t need to worry.”
“Sure.” Avery would reserve judgment until he saw Padilla’s men in action for himself. “But the cartel won’t give a fuck if anyone gets in their way. They’ll waste everyone here if they need to.”
By 1:00PM everyone was in position.
Padilla’s assault unit waited in a panel van in the north side parking lot. Undercover agents were scattered around the mall. Contreras sat with a female DEA agent in the café, posing as a couple having lunch. They occupied a corner table under the terrace, and Contreras had a miniature, short range directional microphone concealed beneath the table, transmitting to the DEA surveillance vehicle, where Padilla and Slayton were waiting.