Dead Six

illegals—technically I suppose I was an illegal, too, even if I was an American citizen—kept walking. They were talking, laughing; a few had ear pieces in and were listening to radios or iPods. I had the impression that most of them had done this before. Pulling the night-vision monocular from a pocket, I pressed it to my eye and scanned the horizon.

Vehicles at the border. Damn it, Guillermo. Staying low, I moved off to the side. Thousands of people walk across this border every day, and I have to blunder into a section that was actually covered by La Migra. We were in a natural gully with rocky hills surrounding us. It looked like it would be one heck of a climb. I sighed. Apparently I would be taking the high road.

Twenty minutes of hard scrambling later, I was on the top of the rocky hillside. The terrain up here was horrible, but I was certain that I wouldn’t run into any more inconveniences. Only a crazy person or somebody who really wanted to avoid getting spotted was going to take this path into Arizona.

Somebody was coming.

Give me a break. I settled myself into a depression in the rock beneath some prickly pear and scanned through my monocular. Three men were on the steep hillside above, moving through the shadows. They were dressed similar to me, each carrying a heavy pack, and were having a tough time moving through the thick brush and cacti. Probably drug runners. I stayed hidden. Most mules were unarmed, just regular Joses roped into carrying the packages in exchange for passage, but in every group there was usually one actual bad dude with a gun.

I watched them pass. Two of them had long tubes strapped to their packs. They paused just past me at the lip of the hill and examined the trucks parked below. One of them pointed and spoke. It wasn’t in Spanish. My ears perked up. I recognized the language. No way. I crawled forward slightly, careful to not shift any of the rocks. Scorpions crawled under my body. The man said something else before turning toward the border and continuing on.

What the hell were Chechens doing crossing the American border?

Guillermo hadn’t been kidding. It was getting crazy around here. I refocused the monocular and took a closer look. Those tubes looked suspicious.

Oh, wow.

I pulled my STI 9mm from my holster, the Silencerco suppressor from my pocket, and began screwing them together. Not in my country, assholes.

A few hours later, I stood inside a gas-station phone booth in a town north of Nogales, Arizona. It was close to three in the morning and the little desert town was utterly silent. A stray dog watched me from under the gas station’s neon sign. Loud insects buzzed around the glass.

“Sheriff’s Department.”

“Listen to me very carefully,” I said, adding a Mexican accent to my voice. “There are three dead men on the American side of the border, just north of Santa Vasquez.”

“Okay, and who is this?” The deputy sounded almost bored. Apparently multiple dead bodies were not that strange of an occurrence on the border.

“I’m the man that killed them.”

“Wait, what?” That got his attention.

“The men were crossing the border. They were Chechen terrorists.” I was careful not to touch anything in the booth in a way that would leave fingerprints. My rough clothes were splattered with dried blood.

“Chechens, like from Chechnya?”

“Yes. Write this down.” I rattled off the GPS coordinates. “That’s where you’ll find the bodies. There’s a missile hidden under some rocks ten meters east of the bodies.”

“A missile?”

“Look, I’m just a coyote,” I lied, “but I don’t want guys like that shooting down airliners, you know what I mean. I’m calling because one of them talked before he died. There will be a second group crossing the border in the same area just before dawn.”

“Sir, I need—” I hung up the phone and quickly walked to the still running Ford Explorer. The last Chechen had talked all right, encouraged by some expedient use of my Greco knife. There had been a vehicle waiting for them, but I didn’t feel the need to tell the deputy about where I had left the driver’s body. Besides, I had needed a ride.

I had dealt with people like them before, bloodthirsty fanatics who just plain liked to kill innocent people. The average American had no idea what was waiting for them out in the world, and there was some serious badness crawling across the country’s soft white underbelly. At first I had assumed that it was just random chance that had allowed me to bump into those men, but I had a sneaky suspicion that Guillermo might have put me on that particular path for a reason, and probably saved him some work, the sneaky bastard.

Warning the cops about the second group of Chechens would count as my good deed for the day. Never hurts to put a check in the positive-karma box. I wiped some of the dried gore from my hands with a rag as I drove north. That third terrorist had been pretty tough, but everybody talks eventually. In the back seat was the second portable Russian surface-to-air missile launcher. I figured it might come in handy.

Flagstaff was my next stop. If my attempt on Eddie failed, then I knew he would kill my family purely out of spite. They deserved a warning. And there was only one person I could think of who might be clever enough to reach them all without Eddie’s goons finding out.

Too bad he was an FBI agent. I bet you thought your family reunions were awkward.

LORENZO

Flagstaff, Arizona

June 25, 2008

My brother’s house was in the suburbs. It had been easy enough to find with the address written in Eddie’s folder. The sun had been coming up by the time I found the place, so I had just done a quick drive-by. I had no way of knowing if or how Eddie was monitoring them, so I didn’t want to risk a visit during the daytime. Plus, I looked like I was here to pick fruit, smelled horrible, and was still splattered with at least a pint of Chechen.

I checked into a cheap motel, cleaned up, shaved, and slept until sundown. My dreams were strange and featured those dancing hippos from the old Disney movie until they were violently torn apart by an alligator with an effeminate English accent. I woke in a foul mood. Jill still hadn’t called back, and frankly that was really beginning to gnaw at me. I called in an update to Reaper before leaving for Bob’s place. At least he was sounding healthier, eager for revenge, and was ready to fly out as soon as I needed him.

There was another Ford Explorer in the motel parking lot. Using my Leatherman, I swapped license plates then headed back to the suburbs.

Bob had a great security system. It took me almost three whole minutes to figure out how to circumvent it after I’d climbed over the back fence. Luckily he didn’t have a dog. He was allergic to them.

It didn’t seem right to break into my own brother’s house, and it certainly wasn’t the best way to make an impression, especially considering that I hadn’t seen him for years and he had no idea what I actually did for a living. But I couldn’t risk just knocking on the door in case Eddie was watching the place. The last thing I wanted to do was contact him at work while he was surrounded by other Feds. I’ve got an aversion to cops. Nothing personal, mind you, just that our philosophies on life tended to diverge rather abruptly.

It was nearing midnight as I crept through the house. There were kids’ toys scattered across the carpet and dozens of pictures on the wall. The kitchen was empty, and there were crayon drawings held onto the fridge with magnets. It was a really nice house. Clean, organized, but with that little bit of chaos that healthy kids always managed to bring. It reminded me a bit of Gideon’s house, and that thought brought back memories. Gideon Lorenzo had been a good man to take me in. Compared to how I’d grown up, their house had seemed so warm, and I never had to worry about being hit with randomly thrown beer bottles.