Benito Juarez International Airport, Mexico City
Judy taxied to a stop inside a private hangar just as Tamar rolled up in a beater Chevy Impala with rusted Durango plates and a scorpion sticker plastered across the rear window.
“Perfect,” Pearce said. He’d trained his people to steal old cars. No GPS or OnStar systems to track them.
Judy piled into the backseat, wiping the greasy fast-food wrappers and crushed beer cans onto the filthy carpet with a sweep of her arm. Pearce tossed a mil-spec first-aid kit and a duffel bag loaded with rifles and ammo next to her. Within minutes they were on Avenue 602 heading east out of town, Tamar behind the wheel. Pearce was glued to the tablet while Judy watched Mexico City slide past through the grimy windshield. The car had no air-conditioning. It was going to be a long, hot ride.
Forty minutes outside of Mexico City, Tamar turned onto a rutted dirt track leading back into farm country. Against her instincts, she had to slow down as the rocks thudded sharply against the car’s undercarriage. No telling what damage they were doing. They had to roll their windows up against the clouds of dust they were throwing up.
All three of them wore ear mics, linked to one another. Pearce had other channels open, including Ian’s.
“In a hundred meters, pull off to the right,” Pearce said. “Let’s get a visual.” The air force satellite Ian had access to was only a signals intelligence unit. It couldn’t provide video surveillance.
Tamar pulled over and killed the engine. A small berm gave them some cover from the small farm thirty meters off of the road. Udi’s signal had been flashing from there since Ian had found it earlier that morning.
They unloaded quietly and scoped out the ramshackle farm. The house was barely more than a shack. In the front, a couple of goats chewed on grass and a half dozen chickens wandered around a tractor that hadn’t moved since the Carter administration. Off the near side of the house, five huge sows shouldered against one another in a muddy pen, grunting as they fed greedily from a trough, fat stinging flies buzzing in their flicking ears. Otherwise, no other sounds or movement.
“There.” Pearce pointed at a dirt bike dropped in the grass.
Three yards from the bike, a body.
Tamar gasped.
“Not Udi. Too young. Let’s move.”
Pearce carried a short-stock M-4 carbine. Tamar gripped her Mini-Uzi. Judy hauled the medical kit.
The three of them crouch-walked past the motorcycle. Key still in the ignition. Smell of gas. They reached the body. A teenage boy, fourteen, maybe fifteen. Single gunshot to the side of his head. “He tumbled off the back and the bike kept rolling,” Pearce whispered in his mic.
Judy felt for a pulse. Knew there wouldn’t be one. “Dead awhile.” She shooed the flies off of the boy’s head wound.
“Wait here,” Pearce said to Judy. He nodded at Tamar, gave her a hand signal. Tamar sped around back, keeping low to the ground, as Pearce approached the front door.
“Another body back here,” Tamar whispered. “Probably the boy’s mother. Throat cut.”
“Bastards,” Ian hissed in Pearce’s ear.
Pearce reached the porch. The door was shut, but a front window was open.
“In position,” Tamar said.
“Hold,” Pearce replied. He pulled a four-inch-long Black Hornet Nano helicopter drone from his pocket and activated the flight software on his iPhone. The half-ounce surveillance drone featured a small camera. No telling what or who might be waiting inside. Pearce powered up the unit and tossed it through the window. Forty seconds later, the Norwegian-built drone had circumnavigated the two-room shack. No trip wires, no bad guys.
“All clear,” Pearce said. “But stay frosty. Go.”
Pearce and Tamar burst into the two-room shack at the same time. They cleared the shack.
Cigarette butts on the plywood floor, ashtrays overflowing on the card table. Dirty dishes in the filthy washtub. Christ on the bedroom wall staring down at the unmade bed tangled with bloody sheets.
Pearce pocketed the Hornet.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
Tamar’s eyes posed the obvious question.
Pearce checked his tablet. The transponder signal still flashed. It was only accurate to ten meters. “Better check outside,” he said.
He stepped off of the porch into the blinding sun, heading for the far side of the house. Clothes already sticky with sweat. Tamar took the opposite tack and headed for the animals. Judy was still crouched low by the boy, shooing flies. She’d covered his lifeless face with a square of gauze from the medical kit.
Pearce checked the side of the shack. A rabbit cage with three fat rabbits and a rusty rake leaning against the wall. Farther back, an outhouse. Flies. Stink.
A bad kind of stink.
Pistol up, Pearce opened the door. A corpse. Pants down around his ankles. Bled out. Pearce didn’t have to raise the slumped head.
Tamar screamed.
Pearce bolted toward her. She stood near the pig trough, clutching her horrified face in her hands.
It was Udi.
Pearce recognized the mop of hair and the thick hands, but not much else. The pigs had gutted him. Had devoured his face.
Tamar howled, crazed with rage. Her Uzi split the air, slugs slapping the huge pig bellies. The swine screamed as if possessed, charging and slipping through the mud and gore, dropping one by one, as 9mm rounds sliced through their spinal cords and brain stems.
Tamar stopped firing, pirouetted, arms flailing. The Uzi sailed through the air as she spilled into the grass, her shoulder painted red.
A shot rang out. The bullet
Judy ran full throttle toward Tamar, despite Troy screaming in her ear, “Down, down, down!” until she dropped by her friend’s side with the med kit. She began unzipping it when a geyser of dirt leaped up between them.
“Let’s go!” Pearce shouted as he grabbed Tamar’s shirt collar and dragged her toward the tractor, Judy close behind.
Pearce lay Tamar behind the shelter of the big rear steel wheel where Judy could safely work on her. Pearce crouched behind the small front wheel. Another rifle crack. A round spanged against the tractor.
“Status!” Ian shouted.
Judy tore open the med kit and ripped open bandages.
“Tamar’s hit. Judy and I are under cover.”
“I’m calling in support—”
“Stand down, Ian. I need that guy alive.”
“But Troy—”
“That’s an order.” Pearce tapped his earpiece, cutting Ian off. He pulled his Glock from his holster and handed it to Judy. “Take this.” And he added, “Just in case.”
Another bullet hit the tractor. The steel fender rang like a church bell.
Judy shook her head as she applied pressure bandages to Tamar’s shoulder wound. “Forget it. Just go!”
Pearce glanced through the tractor. Two hundred yards away, sunlight winked off of a scope. A man stood in the bed of a pickup truck using the roof as a rifle bench. Too close for comfort, especially with a scope.
Judy was right.
