Abigail Benning said that she could hack the phone’s SIM card of the recipient of Ibarra’s last call, and find a location.
But curiosity and impulsivity got the better of Avery.
He picked up the phone and dialed the number.
There was no risk. If this caller was the Viper, then she already knew they were compromised anyway, because she’d been on the phone with Ibarra when the surveillance was blown, right before Ibarra bolted.
Avery wanted to know for sure, though. He wanted to hear her voice.
A woman answered on the third ring.
“Que pasó?”
“Viper,” Avery answered in English. “It’s over.”
There was silence for several seconds, and Avery wondered if the call was disconnected. But then he heard heavy breathing and finally recognition.
“Carnivore.”
She ended the call.
“It’s her.”
Twenty seconds later, Benning reported that the phone had just vanished from Stingray’s grid, indicating that the phone was turned off. Her attempt to remotely hijack the cell phone tower and turn the phone back on didn’t work, but she still had the general area the phone was in, based on the base station to which it had connected when it received the call from Ibarra’s phone. This data was relayed to Tijuana Airport, and the drones went into the sky.
The Viper screamed, breaking even Mirsad Sidran’s stoic shroud. Outside the Gulfstream, the Zetas surely heard it too, because Carlos and another man jumped out of their truck, looked at the Gulfstream, and then exchanged looks.
She removed the phone’s battery and SIM card and threw the phone against the cabin’s floor. It bounced along, end over end, until coming to a stop ten feet away, and then she hurled the battery after it and snapped the SIM card in half.
“Perhaps it would be prudent to pay Carlos for the fuel and fly out of here,” Sidran said. “We are compromised, and are quickly losing control of the situation.”
“Never. I will not turn back now. We can still make it over the border. You can go back with the plane if you want to, but I’m going forward.”
Trujillo scooped up his Uzi off the table. Glaring at Sidran, he told the Viper, “I’m with you.”
Sidran sighed. He wasn’t going to argue further. He’d have to go along, but he suspected it would quickly become necessary to execute Kashani’s contingency plan. A pity, he thought, that all of this had been for nothing.
“Hey, it looks like somebody wants to talk to you,” the pilot’s voice called out from the cockpit.
The Viper stepped away from Sidran. She bent over to peer through a window, and saw Carlos approaching the aircraft. He held his hands out to the side, palms facing out.
“Cover me, Benito.”
Carrying the VSS, the Viper opened the cabin door, stepped out, and descended the stairs toward Carlos.
“Did you speak to Arturo yet?” she said. “A price was agreed.”
“Don’t you know what’s fucking happening? The federales took Arturo, and your man too, you stupid cunt. If the gringos are involved, you can bet they’ll be here shortly. Everything is fucked now. The deal is off, senorita.”
Movement caught the Viper’s eye, and three more men emerged from the nearby garage. They carried AK-47s.
And she understood. The cartel was going to hold her here and turn her over to the Americans. She tightened her grip around the VSS, which she held at her right side along her leg. The approaching Zetas already had their weapons shouldered, and she wouldn’t be able to get the VSS into firing position fast enough.
But the Viper had absolute faith in her men.
So she waited until she heard the crack of Trujillo’s Uzi open up from the cabin behind her, and she saw one of the Mexicans drop. The other two immediately shifted their aim off the Viper and onto the Gulfstream, and, with lightning fast movement, she snapped up the VSS into target acquisition, aligned her sights over one of the Mexicans, and squeezed the trigger as Trujillo simultaneously put four more bullets through the other Mexican’s chest.
Both men hit the ground, dead.
The shots echoed loudly across the expanse of open desert.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Carlos lunged for the Viper, reaching out for her rifle. She stepped back and to the left, raised the VSS, and smashed the wood stock into the back of Carlos’ skull. He stumbled forward, landed on his face, and rolled over onto his back. Holding his bleeding head, he stared up at the Viper. She stood over him, blocking out the sun, and aimed the VSS at his face.
Four more Zetas appeared from the garage, but they stopped short when they saw the Viper holding Carlos at gunpoint. Trujillo covered them with his Uzi.
“Tell them to lower their weapons now, Carlos, or everyone dies.”
Carlos hesitated, and then shouted the order in Spanish, and his men set their rifles down and stepped back. They relaxed when the Viper allowed Carlos onto his feet, and then lowered her own weapon. She stepped forward and reached into Carlos’s pants pocket to retrieve his cell phone. She powered the phone down and hurled it into the desert.
“I still need to get over the border, Carlos, and I’m still willing to hold up my end of the bargain. You’ll receive the agreed one hundred thousand, in addition to keeping your life. How does that sound to you?”
He didn’t need to think it over.
“Let’s go.”
TWENTY
Inside the command and maintenance trailer parked at the military section of Tijuana International’s Old Airport Terminal, Avery looked over the shoulder of the drone pilot to view the monitor displaying the crystal clear live feed from one of the unmanned aerial vehicles. With Padilla and the DEA agents present, the tiny trailer was overcrowded, and Avery tried to keep a respectful distance from the drone operators, to stay out of their way and give them room to breathe. Just standing there in the air conditioned trailer, he sweated and could feel the collective heat emanating from the closely packed bodies.
Contreras’s UAVs were the older, unarmed RQ-1 reconnaissance variant of the Predator, equipped with a tracking pod running NSA’s GILGAMESH geo-location system capable of tracking and finding SIM cards, in addition to collecting data from computers and phones within range. Despite the removal of the battery from the Viper’s cell, a small chip in the phone continued to function and broadcast its location, revealing that the phone had been stationary since the phone call.
Avery was kitted up; his ModGear vest loaded with ammunition and equipment, his Glock holstered at this side with spare magazines. He’d left his M4 behind in one of the DEA Forerunners parked ten feet from the trailer.
Aguilar and his troops lingered outside, chatting amongst themselves, eager for something to do, but not anticipating being called to action. It looked like it’d be the Mexicans’ show now. A couple hundred feet away, the GAFE troops were likewise standing by in their Blackhawk helicopters. The DEA Aviation Division’s own UH-1 Hueys were prepped to fly, too, just in case.
Thirty-five minutes after Abigail Benning triangulated the location of the Viper’s phone, the Predators were buzzing over the cartel’s desert airstrip. The drones arrived in time to catch the Gulfstream prepare for takeoff after refueling, but there was no sighting of the Viper, unless she was already aboard the plane or staying inside one of the airfield’s small structures. With the helicopter-borne GAFE element unable to arrive on target in time, the Gulfstream was to be intercepted shortly after takeoff by Mexican Air Force F-5 fighters and forced to land.
Padilla then gave the GAFE team the green light to hit the airfield, against Avery’s protestations that he and Aguilar’s crew go in, but Avery knew it was an argument he wouldn’t win. Padilla would have a hard time explaining to his superiors why he allowed a foreign strike team to deploy against a cartel target on Mexican soil. The GAFE commander likewise refused to allow Avery and the Colombians to accompany his team.