A buzzer sounded and Chizek pushed a new set of numbers into the remote and the front door unlocked. Eight of his men came through the door, all smiles and looking for praise.
“Nice work,” Chizek said, giving Carlos Grider a fist bump.
“Edgar took the shot,” Carlos said, as he opened the fridge and handed out beers to the crew.
“Good job, Edgar,” Chizek said, over the sound of Joe Perry’s lead guitar. “Carlos, I need you to be ready for the delivery. The rest of you go scout the perimeter and make sure we remain alone.”
When the men left, Chizek glanced at the clock. “It’s nine thirty. They’re supposed to be here in a half hour.”
Carlos sat on a stool by the window and glowed in the aftermath of his accomplishment. He drank his beer while Chizek lined up another shot.
“How much will it cost me to repair the damage?” Chizek said.
“To the motel?” Carlos asked.
Chizek looked up. “What else did you damage along the way?”
Carlos gave an impish grin and shrugged. “Nothing else, I guess.”
Chizek tried a combination, hitting the three-ball into the eight-ball, but missed the mark. The balls scattered around the table, but didn’t fall in a pocket.
George Thorogood and the Destroyers were now playing “Bad to the Bone,” while Chizek strutted around the table, prowling his next shot and bobbing his round head to the beat of the drums.
“You did good, Carlos,” Chizek said. “We’ll have to get you a nice little bonus once this job is completed.”
“I like the sound of that,” Carlos said, raising his beer bottle up in a mock toast.
Chizek was mentally preparing for a special package. Garza had told him it was a volatile piece of merchandise, not the typical drug shipment. He’d hinted about its explosive nature, so Chizek didn’t have to guess it was a bomb. What bothered him the most was that Garza had paid him five hundred thousand dollars up front for the transfer. Ten times the going rate. It made him wonder how much Garza was making on the deal.
Chizek was lining up his next shot when the music overhead came to an abrupt halt. It left the cavernous room in barren silence. From the darkness came three figures, all dressed in black, with black ski masks covering their faces. They approached the pool table with a calm, unfettered stride. They didn’t wave any weapons. The one on the left had a pistol tucked into his waist, the one on the right had a black bag.
“How the fuck did you get in here?” Chizek snapped.
The one in the middle took off his ski mask.
A beer bottle crashed to the cement floor and echoed throughout the room. Carlos’s eyes widened in terror as he saw the man’s face. “No. . no, this can’t be. You can’t be. .”
Chizek gritted his teeth and glanced outside.
“They’re all dead,” Nick Bracco said.
Chizek gripped his pool stick and whacked Carlos on the side of the head. The guy went down fast; his arms covered his face as Chizek kept swinging the stick and connecting.
Bracco came over and yanked the pool stick from Chizek, getting between the two men.
“It’s not his fault,” Bracco said, throwing the pool stick into the darkness. He pointed to the guy with the black bag removing his mask as well. “That was all Stevie’s doing. He shot a hologram image against the curtain to make it look like we were inside the motel room. He blasted a recorded argument to go with it.”
The third guy removed his mask and Chizek recognized him as Bracco’s partner. The sharpshooter who had messed up his bar. The guy stood with his gun tucked into his waistband, almost daring Chizek to make a wrong move.
“Then Matt here shot his truck with a GPS device wrapped in an adhesive glue-ball,” Bracco added. “You surround yourself with suck-ups and it gives you a false sense of your intelligence.”
Chizek looked at the wall clock. Almost ten. Garza and his men would be arriving soon. He smiled at Bracco. “You have no idea how fucked you are.”
The FBI agent seemed to nod at that. “Yeah,” he said. “I think I know.”
Walt was still pacing with the phone in his hand, his long strides taking him around his office in just three or four seconds. With every minute that passed, he wondered the prudence of his strategy. Was he feeding his best agents to the wolves by letting them operate alone in the hostile environment of Denton, Arizona? Just a couple of miles from Mexico’s deadliest assassin.
His phone chirped.
FBI Agent Ron Mantle was calling from the Arizona barricade.
“What’s up, Ron?”
“We’ve got reports of an explosion at the Denton Motel. You know anything about that?”
Boy, was that a great question. That’s where Nick’s team was staying, but he had no idea whether they were there at the time. “I don’t,” Walt said.
“Well, you want us to head down there early?”
Walt looked at the clock on the wall. They were inside of two hours from Nick’s time limit. “Listen, Ron, how far are you from Denton?”
“Forty miles.”
“Okay, take one team down there with you. Drive an undercover car. No markings. Drive the speed limit.”
“All right,” Mantle said. “What about the rest of the crew?”
Walt chewed on his fingernail, then spit out a sliver. “Tell them to wait until the deadline.”
“Got it.”
“And, Ron.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t cross the border, no matter what. You understand?”
“Whatever you say.”
Walt pressed the end button not sure if what he’d said was right or wrong. He’d lost sight of that line long ago. Now it was a matter of survival. How many lives could he save while keeping his team alive? He’d finally felt the weight of his decisions and dropped down into his chair; every limb was exhausted.
He leaned back and placed the phone to his forehead. “Please, guys. Just tell me what’s going on.”
Nick moved around the room, examining the contents, looking for something to tell him he was on the right track. His heart was running a little quick and he took a deep breath while searching for clues.
The guy who Chizek smacked was holding the side of his face, blood trickling between his fingers. Nick gestured to Stevie and he pulled something from his bag to take care of the guy’s wounds.
Bracco kept lurking around the pool table, his eyes darting left and right.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Chizek said, suddenly looking smug about the security of his facility.
“I won’t know until I find it,” Nick said.
“Well, the Border Patrol was just here a while back,” Chizek said. “They spent two days, scrutinizing every inch of this place. They had dogs and guys with black bags like him and you want to know what they found?” Chizek made a circle with his index finger and thumb. “Zilch.”
Nick kept looking. “Yeah, well, maybe you were tipped off ahead of time. Maybe the Border Patrol agents weren’t searching where they should’ve.”
Chizek chuckled. “Agent Bracco, you’re wasting your time as a government employee. You should be a fiction writer.”
The room was still while Bracco got on his knees and examined something on the floor near the base of the pool table. Something about the table bothered him. It sat on a wooden platform which served no purpose. The floor was cement, so there was no need to protect it from scrapes or scratches. He squeezed his finger under the platform and felt a crack in the cement. Maybe a forced break, maybe not.
He looked up to see Chizek acting casual, like he was having a cup of coffee with friends. Matt just kept staring at the guy, dying for him to do something stupid.
“He okay?” Bracco asked Stevie, working on Chizek’s henchman.
