him, and Nate stepped to the far side of the rack in time to see the man taking cover behind a pile of boxes, his scattergun aimed at the end of the row. Nate glanced over to see Hernando appearing from around the end, squinting to see the smuggler in the gloom.
Nate extended his gun and yelled, “Drop it!” The shotgunner blinked in surprise and raised the scattergun. Nate squeezed the HK’s trigger twice and two 165-grain hollow-points smashed into the man’s chest, dropping him where he crouched.
Hernando ran up and kicked the shotgun away as the sirens finally echoed off the buildings as cars pulled up. “I got mine on the other side. You?” he asked.
“Number three’s sleeping off a kiss from my boot up front. The other two probably lit out for the front.” Nate clambered down the rack, sliding the last several feet.
“Cuff him, and I’ll clear the store.” Running from rack to rack, he reached the set of double doors, which now sported several bullet holes and a spiderwebbed Plexiglas window. “Carter? Juan?” he called out.
“In here!” Carter replied.
Still keeping his pistol ready, Nate eased the door open, not wanting to walk into another ambush. The storefront looked like a war zone, with damaged cardboard display racks lying on their sides amid fluttering car- parts bro-chures. A black puddle of oil slowly grew from rows of blasted, leaking containers. As Nate walked forward, he heard Carter’s voice counting steadily.
“One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-five.” Pause.
“One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-five—come on, dammit, breathe! Where’s the damn medics?”
Nate ran through the racks to the far side of the store, where the damage was even worse. The counter had taken so many bullets and shotgun blasts that it had broken in two, the pieces leaning against each other. An overhead fan lazily stirred the smoky air. Nate spotted two bodies right away, one behind the counter, the other near the door, brought down while trying to make a break for it.
Seeing his two remaining men on the floor in the center of the room, however, chilled Nate’s heart. Agent Juan Menendez lay unmoving, his side a soaked mass of blood.
Next to him, his partner leaned over and performed chest compressions, stopping after every fifth pump to breathe into his partner’s mouth.
“We need those medics in here now!” Nate shouted over his shoulder as he ran to them. “Stay on mouth-to- mouth—I’ve got this.” Locking his arms, he began chest compressions, leaning in to drive the wounded man’s breastbone down and manually keep his heart pumping blood. “Come on, Juan, you still haven’t given me that damn barbeque recipe yet, and I ain’t lettin’ you go until I get it!”
The two agents continued CPR until the medics arrived a few minutes later, but Nate knew it was a lost cause. Juan had shown no response to their ministrations, and even electric shocks directly to the heart had done nothing. In the end, the agent was taken out in an ambulance with the lights flashing on its way to the hospital, but Nate was pretty sure they would call it on the way. He put his hand on Carter’s shoulder. “Sorry, man.”
“There’s still a chance—they might save him at the hospital….”
“Yeah, he might pull through—Juan’s a tough old bastard.” What else could he say? he wondered. “Come on, we better get back and clean up the rest of this mess.”
He helped the shaken Carter through the ruined shop and into the back room, where apparent chaos was unfolding. Uniformed El Paso police officers were everywhere, cordoning off the area, taking pictures and trying to keep some semblance of order. “Aw, Jesus Christ.” Nate shook his head as he surveyed the scene.
“Nate, over here!” George, who was being pulled out on a guerney, was holding on to the side of the garage door while the medic tried to dislodge his hands. “I didn’t want to leave until you’d secured the scene,” the big man said.
“Okay, I’m here now, so settle down, George, and let them take you to get checked out.” He made sure his partner was on the way to the hospital, then turned to the rest of the men and women on the scene, holding up his badge. “Everyone listen up! I’m Customs and Border Protection Agent Nathaniel Spencer, and this is my crime scene, so would all of you please clear out so our guys can process it, thank you very much!”
The police officers filed out, grumbling at missing out on the bust. Nate and Hernando made sure all of them were gone, then turned to the half-loaded truck.
“Well, let’s see what we got,” Nate said. Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, he grabbed a crowbar and pried open a large crate. The stenciled lettering on the side claimed it contained a pair of automatic transmissions. Clearing out the packing material, he saw two shiny metal casings, as promised. He pushed one to see how heavy it was. The round metal housing shifted easily under his hand. “Looks like they’re importing something more than metal here.”
He scrounged up a wrench from the warehouse and unscrewed bolts until the housing came apart. Instead of the gears, clutches and bands that would have been inside a normal transmission, this one was filled with dozens of bags of white powder. “Hey, Carter, Hernando, take a look at this.” The other two agents walked over. “Must be five kilos in here easy, and more in the rest, I’ll bet. We got ’em dead to rights.”
Hernando smiled and nodded, while Carter just looked numb. They all glanced up as more footsteps approached, and several other agents came in, including the crime-lab group.
One of the agents, a tall, bony redhead, took off his mirrored sunglasses and surveyed the scene. “Heard something about a war breaking out over here, and look who we find—Shootin’ Spencer.”
“Aw, Billy, don’t be so sad—after all, you did arrive just in time to help clean up,” Nate said. He held up a plastic bag full of white powder. “And you certainly can’t argue with these results.”
Billy Travis—the department’s hotshot until Nate had arrived eighteen months earlier—snorted. “Maybe, but I could have done the same job without sending two agents to the hospital.”
Carter started at his words, but it was Nate who carefully set the bag down and strode toward Travis. He was intercepted by Hernando, who put a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, big guy, it’s not worth it.”
Nate shrugged him off and walked up to the other agent, pinning him with his gaze. “You best take that cork out of your ass and shove it in your mouth, ’cause if you ever accuse me of being sloppy on a bust again, we’re gonna have more than just words about it.”
Travis looked around for support, but Hernando and Carter studiously ignored him, and the rest of the team busied themselves with processing the scene. “You’re a goddamn hot dog, and everyone knows it, Spencer. It’s only a matter of time before you really fuck up, and I hope to hell I’m there to see it,” he snarled.
“Well, son, you do what you gotta do, and in the meantime, I’ll be busy doing my job. By the way, if you want to see what twenty kilos of coke looks like—you know, to refresh your memory—they’re in the truck there.”
Turning away from the other agent, Nate headed outside to cool off. He pulled a battered cheroot from his pocket and lit up, jetting the pungent smoke out of his nostrils.
Standing by the front of the truck, he climbed on the external gas tank and peered into the cab. He shoved aside a layer of fast-food bags and empty soda bottles, looking for anything interesting. He found a clipboard with the bills of lading on them, no doubt forged, and which should match the numbers on the boxes in the back. He bagged it and was about to jump down and give the board to a tech when a soft beeping sound caught his attention.
Leaning back in, he cocked his ear, trying to pinpoint where the noise was coming from. Running a hand between the seat cushions, he was rewarded with the feel of smooth plastic and withdrew a small handheld device.
“Looks like our smuggler got himself an e-mail,” he muttered. Nate bagged that, as well, and walked back inside the warehouse, finding one of the techs he trusted, a short, stocky brunette named Claire.
“Do me a favor. Give me all the e-mails on this when you have a chance—and don’t let the walking asshole over there get wind of it, okay?” he said with a wink.
Claire nodded, and Nate turned to help with the rest of the crime scene, throwing Travis a cheery false smile as he did so. He had a feeling that the e-mails would take him further up the smuggling chain—and while he loved to bust the bad guys, it would be even sweeter to throw that in Travis’s face, as well.
Kate Cochran, the director of Room 59, stared straight into the muzzle of a sleek SIG Sauer P-229 9 mm pistol.
“Just stay cool and do as they say. He’s bluffing, trying to rattle you.” She sucked in a breath and waited, unable to do anything else. “Keep it together and stick to the plan.”
