Redback kr-4 Read online

  Redback

  ( Kirk Russell - 4 )

  Kirk Russell

  Redback

  Kirk Russell

  I

  Group 5

  (June 1989)

  ONE

  Baja California, Mexico

  I n the summer heat, glare, and dust of Tijuana, Marquez picked up their informant, Billy Takado, and drove east across the desert plain toward the dry folds of the Sierra de Juarez and a meeting with the most violent cartel in Mexico. On a pass high in the Juarez he pulled over. He retrieved the satellite phone from the trunk and as he waited for it to connect studied the thin road below where it left the mountains and ran through the pueblo, and out through fields of alfalfa and pale green maize to the abandoned bull ring across the valley. The bull ring was a dark ellipse in afternoon shadow. The bull ring was where the meeting would go down.

  When one of his squad, Sheryl Javits, answered, Marquez said, ‘We’re close. Tell them we’ll come through the pueblo in about twenty minutes.’

  Mexican Federal Judicial Police, the Mex Feds, were backing them up today. From her desk at the Drug Enforcement Administration Field Office in Los Angeles, Sheryl was coordinating. Marquez stowed the phone and tried to get Billy talking again as he got back in the car. Somewhere along the climb up the pass Takado had gone quiet.

  They drove the potholed road through the pueblo past a whitewashed church and cinderblock buildings with corrugated tin roofs, and on through air rich with the sweet heavy smell of alfalfa. When they reached the bull ring two armed cartel guards waited beside a jeep parked near rusted entry gates. The guards watched the Cadillac, with its show pipes, candy paint, and trick wheels, roll through the dust and stop.

  Marquez got out first. He wore snakeskin boots, black jeans, and a white linen shirt with gold-colored threads woven through it. The back of the shirt was damp with sweat after the long drive. He wore a heavy Rolex and wrap-around Ray-Bans. Billy wore clothes the Salazar brothers knew him by, Hawaiian shirt, gray cotton slacks, and sandals.

  As the guards approached, Billy said quietly, ‘I know the one on the right. He’s a cop in Tijuana.’

  That was who patted them down, jabbing fingers hard into armpits and groin before leading them into the bull ring where Marquez took in a thousand splintered and sun-silvered wood seats and ground hard as stone. He watched the guards take up positions and then looked past them to the rim of the arena and the bright blue sky over the mountains. When he heard a car he looked back at the gates. A black Mercedes sedan with tinted windows pulled up. Dust cleared and as the right rear door opened, Marquez felt both fear and exhilaration.

  Special Agent John Marquez was thirty-one with eight years in at the DEA. He was young to be supervisor of a squad, but his career so far was a string of successes. His squad, Group 5, worked Baja traffic. In the last six months they’d focused strictly on the Tijuana-based Salazar Cartel. A week ago things started coming together and now were moving so fast Marquez didn’t feel enough in control. Yet he wanted to keep it happening. In just a few days they had bumped up from the low level management to this meeting.

  His hope was that Luis, the younger Salazar brother, would get out of the car. Luis was the one to connect with. The older brother, Miguel, was an unstable sociopath, and Luis’s ambitions were more than enough. Luis wanted to wipe out the competitors, control Baja, and then keep expanding Salazar business in the US. He wanted the great cocaine cities of the east coast, New York, Miami, Washington, and Boston.

  Neither brother got out of the car. Instead, it was someone Marquez had never seen before, a tall man, tanned and sure of himself. Looked like he was early forties, dark-haired, possibly European, possibly Spanish, and with a posture and stride Marquez knew he would remember. This could be the money man they’d heard whispers about, the financier. He wore a coat in the heat and made eye contact with Marquez as he walked toward them. But it didn’t feel right, and when he reached them he shook Marquez’s hand without giving his name. He stared at Billy as he pulled papers from his coat.

  He handed the papers to Marquez, saying, ‘You’re going to carry a message back to the DEA from the Salazars.’ As Marquez read the papers the man turned to Takado and asked in a quiet almost gentle voice, ‘Did you really think I’d forget?’

  The papers were copies of Federal personnel forms, the individual 52s for Jim Osiers, Brian Hidalgo, Sheryl Javits, Ramon Green, and himself, his squad, Group 5. Marquez shuffled through them as he tried to figure a way out of this.

  ‘Tell them this, anyone who works against the Salazars is in danger. So are their families. We will kill your girlfriends, your wives, your children. Do you understand?’

  That was it, meeting blown, meeting over, and with Billy walking stiffly just ahead of Marquez they headed toward the car. They were nearly to the Cadillac when a door of the Mercedes opened behind them. Marquez heard the door fall shut, the footsteps coming and knew from the footfall that whoever it was would catch them.

  He said quietly to Billy, ‘Don’t look back. Don’t look up. Just get in the car. We’re out of here.’

  Marquez slid the key into the ignition before Miguel Salazar rapped on the driver’s window with a gun. Marquez started the engine anyway. That angered Miguel and when Marquez lowered the window Miguel shoved the gun against his temple.

  With the barrel digging into his scalp, Marquez said, ‘Look, I get it; I’m taking the message back.’

  ‘ Llaves. ’

  Marquez turned the car off. He handed Miguel the keys, put his hands on the wheel as ordered, and then watched Miguel walk around the front of the car with the gun’s aim moving from him to Billy. Now Miguel was at Billy’s window cursing, calling Billy a traitor, calling him the shit of a whore as Marquez tried to shut it down, speaking to Miguel in rapid Spanish.

  ‘Not his fault, Miguel. Not his fault. We put him up to it. We forced him. We didn’t leave him any other out.’

  But that was just more bullshit to Miguel Salazar. He looked from Billy to Marquez, eyes bright with hate for this mixed-blood gringo agent and hate for all gringo agents and all people who would get in the way of his family. And maybe it was something he saw in Marquez’s eyes, or respect he didn’t see. Or maybe this was the way it was planned.

  He pushed the barrel of the gun into Billy’s forehead, forcing his head back so Billy had to look up at him. Billy was two-faced, a snitch, a chismoso. He was nothing. He was a mistake. Miguel looked at Marquez, wanted Marquez to understand in a way that he would never forget, that he was powerless, that he could do nothing, that the gringo DEA, the United States of America, the Mexican government, the judicial police, could do nothing. He pulled the trigger and Billy’s head jumped as blood and brains spattered on to the backseats. Before walking away Miguel threw the keys at Marquez and said, ‘Next time you.’

  TWO

  B efore the pueblo, Marquez braked hard and got his gun and the satellite phone out of the trunk. His hands were shaking when he pulled over in front of the adobe church in the pueblo. Billy’s mouth was open, his head slumped against the passenger window, the seat behind him glistening with blood. His bowels had released. Marquez checked the street, rear view mirror, the wooden church door just barely opening, now shutting again. He didn’t know if he was waiting for Mex Feds, or not. But as the church door closed, he pulled away from the curb, deciding the Mex Feds weren’t going to show themselves. They’d have some explanation later.

  He lowered his window, wiped Billy’s blood off the side of his face, his mind racing, his ears still ringing from the gunshot. With the gun in his lap he turned back toward the bull ring. He got halfway there before doing another U-turn and driving into the mountains. At the pass he pulled over where he’d called in last
and asked for Sheryl Javits.

  ‘Miguel Salazar shot Billy. He’s in the passenger seat next to me. He’s dead.’

  ‘John, where are you?’

  ‘Off the side of the road up in the Juarez.’

  ‘Takado is dead?’

  She didn’t seem to get it. Marquez stared at a car approaching and reached for the gun. The car passed as Sheryl went on about the Mex Feds, repeating that she had talked to them all day.

  ‘They picked you up when you crossed the border. They tracked you the whole way. They had officers at the bull ring. Just stay where you are,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you back. I’ve got to talk to Boyer.’

  Marquez knew what Boyer, their ASAC, the Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge, would do. He’d kick the decision upstairs to the SAC, Special Agent-in-Charge, Jay Holsten, who ran the LA Field Office, and Marquez could guess Holsten’s reaction.

  After hanging up with Sheryl, he worked the seatbelt so Billy’s body wouldn’t slide down anymore. He made sure Billy’s door was locked and then stood outside in the late sunlight looking in at Billy as he waited for her call back. He’d pushed Billy to make the meeting happen. Billy had reservations. Billy worried on the ride over.

  ‘Holsten does not want you to move the body. That’s an order, John. You’re to wait there. The Mex Feds are on the way.’

  ‘Tell Boyer and Holsten I’m headed to Tijuana. Ask our agents in Tijuana to drive toward me. I want witnesses when I turn over the car and Billy’s body.’

  ‘You’re going to make it worse.’

  He looked at Billy. Takado just wanted to live his life. He didn’t want to go to jail again. He overplayed his connections with the Salazars and I knew, Marquez thought. I should have seen. I’m sorry, Billy. I’m so sorry.

  ‘You need to stay where you are.’

  Marquez registered that and answered, ‘Tell Holsten that I said it was too dangerous to wait.’

  ‘John, listen to me, you’ve got to stay there. You can’t move the body. The Mex Feds want you to stay where you are.’

  The fuck if he was going to sit here and wait for the guys who’d already burned them once today. He broke the connection and as he pulled back on to the road Billy slid down in the seat. Marquez turned the air conditioner on full and lowered the rear windows halfway.

  Billy Takado lived alone. He didn’t have any children. He didn’t have anybody. He was the son of a Japanese father who’d immigrated to the US and a Mexican mother who lived just long enough to see her son do a five-spot for cocaine trafficking. She missed the next bust and Billy cutting a deal with the DEA.

  When Marquez came out of the mountains he killed the air conditioner and drove with all of the windows down. The wind carried away the smells. It carried dry mesquite, creosote, and sun-baked desert rock. He kept checking the rear view mirror and up ahead the sky purpled with dusk. He ignored the satellite phone’s ring and kept going until he ran into a Mex Fed roadblock. They pointed their guns and when he resisted handcuffs they got angry.

  But they were angry anyway. The big gringo didn’t know what they were up against or what it was to fight the narco trafficantes. Americans only cared about Americans and no one liked the Drug Enforcement Administration with its attitude and agents who couldn’t even speak Spanish and came from a country full of drug users yet complained about drugs.

  The Mex Feds locked him in the back of a car, and then went through the Cadillac. In Tijuana they interrogated him until 3:00 in the morning and barred anyone from the Tijuana DEA office from seeing him. Tonight, on principle, he was a suspect caught trying to escape with a body, presumably to dispose of it, presumably because he worked for the Salazar Cartel. The officers who questioned him promised that whether or not he killed Takado he would do prison time in Mexico for moving Takado’s body. That much was a certainty, and when they became confident that his Spanish was fluent they worked another more elaborate theory.

  At dawn they let him use a toilet and then a sink to wash Billy’s blood off his arms. They returned his badge and gun, but couldn’t find his Rolex or sunglasses, although the captain in charge promised to get them back to him. The captain carefully copied down an address to mail them to. By mid morning the issue between the DEA and the Mexican Federal Judicial Police was reduced to one of miscommunication, a natural problem of working together under difficult conditions.

  That said, the Mex Feds voiced doubt about Agent Marquez’s judgment. Fleeing with Takado’s body suggested a lack of operational capacity. They speculated that Marquez’s general decision making had compromised the undercover operation. It was understood that Marquez was unwelcome now in Mexico as a DEA agent. Additionally, it was agreed that Marquez might need to be questioned again as the Mex Fed investigation progressed. They asked that Agent Sheryl Javits also be reprimanded for accusations she made yesterday and Jay Holsten, head of the LA DEA Field Office, agreed to that, though he wouldn’t think of doing that to her. Nor would he ever send Marquez back to Tijuana. They could bring their questions here.

  A Mex Fed captain explained the conditions of release to Marquez. As he finished, the captain added that the Cadillac would get returned after the Mexican Federal Judicial Police concluded their investigation. They drove Marquez to the San Ysidro Puerta and he walked to US Customs with the copies of the 52s because he had never told them how they came into his possession.

  Two of his squad, Ramon Green and Brian Hidalgo, were waiting at Customs. Like Marquez they were fully engaged in the drug war and on the drive back to LA Marquez recounted how it went down. After listening, Green and Hidalgo rationalized Billy Takado’s death, guessing that Takado’s nervousness was because he knew the man who delivered the papers to Marquez might be present. Point being, that Billy Takado like many snitches may have tried to play both sides. Marquez didn’t see it that way and said so as they drove north in traffic. This was on a bright clear June morning in 1989, the same day the world watched a student in China face down a tank in Tiananmen Square.

  THREE

  Marquez’s SAC, Holsten, had the nickname ‘Lockjaw’ for the way he worked his facial muscles when he was angry but restraining himself. Right now, he looked like he was chewing gum as he waited for an answer.

  ‘Agent Javits relayed the order for you to park and wait for the Mex Feds, but you didn’t do that. You ignored the calls made to you and drove nearly all the way back to Tijuana. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Don’t keep giving me this short answer wounded hero crap, Marquez. You’re feeling sorry for yourself, but what happened is you screwed up and I want to know why.’

  Holsten paused.

  ‘What I should do is suspend you. You gave the Mex Feds a way to paint you into the picture and an excuse not to investigate. They’re telling us they don’t want you in the country again in an undercover capacity, so you tell me how you’ll ever run your squad again if you can’t operate undercover in Mexico. Have you got an answer for that?’

  Marquez was quiet a moment, then said, ‘The Mex Feds sent the message yesterday that the Salazar brothers carry more weight with them than we do. They signed off on killing Billy Takado so long as the DEA agent didn’t go down as well.’

  ‘If the newsflash is there’s corruption in Mexican law enforcement, that doesn’t come close to explaining what happened. Where did they get the personnel forms they handed you? Why did you disobey an order? Do you want to know what the Mex Feds think? They think you didn’t stop and wait because you’re on the Salazars’ payroll and you were driving Takado’s body back to Tijuana so it could be thrown in a vat of acid.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘It’s what they’re saying. They believe you had the Fifty-twos, the personnel forms, with you and nothing was given to you in the bull ring.’

  ‘Where were they?’

  ‘They claim they had two officers there who witnessed the shooting but didn’t see anyone hand you papers. They saw Miguel Salazar shoot Taka
do and then you drove off. When they called us we told them you’d reported in and would wait on a pass in the Juarez. But you didn’t wait and we couldn’t get a hold of you, and that doesn’t work in this department.’

  Holsten paused, drew a breath and said, ‘Here’s what I want today. I want the name of everyone who knew about this bull ring meeting, and I want everyone on your squad to voluntarily take a lie detector test over at the FBI office this afternoon. When you get there, ask for Ted Desault. He knows you’re coming.’

  ‘Why is the rest of my squad getting hooked up to a lie box and why at the FBI?’

  Holsten picked up the copies of the 52s off his desk and shook them.

  ‘There’s a leak and we’re going to find out where it is and I don’t give a damn whose feelings get hurt in the process. Javits has already tested. I’m sending her tomorrow to back up Osiers. Since you won’t be visiting Mexico you’ll work leads here while I figure out what to do with your squad. You shouldn’t have driven on with the goddamned body, John, and you should have answered the phone and called in from the village, not the pass. What did I tell you was the most important thing when I hired you?’

  Holsten did his riff on chain-of-command, the glue speech, and it occurred to Marquez that Holsten always referred to Mexican pueblos as villages. Maybe that was about Vietnam where Holsten did three tours. Holsten stood up as he finished, adding, ‘I want the Group Five analyst tested along with the rest of you. I’ve forgotten her name. What’s her name?’

  ‘Rachel Smith.’

  ‘And when you leave the FBI office you come back here and sit with a sketch artist. I want something we can work with on the man in the bull ring.’ Holsten’s tone changed slightly as he asked, ‘Where do you think he’s from? Could he be South African?’