Edge of Battle

Ariadna was carrying a weapon, her standard SIG Sauer P220 .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol—but everyone but Kelsey was surprised as they watched cheerful, friendly, smiling Janice Perkins go through security: she was carrying no less than three guns, including a remarkably small Heckler & Koch .40 caliber UMP submachine gun on a shoulder rig under her coat.

“Sheesh, I never would’ve guessed,” Jason remarked. “Wonder how well armed your bodyguards would be?”

“Janice is my bodyguard,” Kelsey said. “She can take dictation, type eighty words a minute, can make any computer turn cartwheels, and can put thirty rounds inside a twelve-inch diameter target at sixty feet on full auto. She’s also an attorney. She was a JAG in the U.S. Marines before joining the Bureau.”

They took an elevator down one level to a detention facility, checked their weapons in with the jailers, then entered an interrogation room, with a long metal table bolted to the floor, several chairs, and two walls with one- way mirrors on them. Coffee and sandwiches were brought in, which Richter, Vega, and DeLaine hungrily devoured. A few moments later there was a knock on the door, and an agent brought in an older white male, with several days’ growth of gray facial hair and unkempt gray hair, wearing an orange prisoner’s jumpsuit. The agent made sure the inspection shutter on the door was closed, removed the prisoner’s handcuffs, and closed the door behind him on his way out.

Special Agent in Charge Pierce went over and shook the man’s hand. “Welcome, Paul,” she greeted him. “Hope you don’t mind the masquerade. We have too many folks in this facility that might recognize you.”

“No problem at all, ma’am,” the man replied.

Pierce turned to the others in the room. “Paul Purdy, this is FBI Director DeLaine, her assistant Special Agent Perkins, Major Jason Richter of the U.S. Army, and his deputy Dr. Ariadna Vega. Folks, this is…”

“Paul Purdy? The U.S. Border Patrol agent who was reported killed by those terrorists near Blythe?” Kelsey asked. She stepped forward and shook his hand. “Glad to see you’re really alive, Agent Purdy.”

“No one more’n me, Miss Director,” Purdy said in a rather “aw-shucks” down-home southwestern country twang—not Texas, not southern California, but somewhere in between. Kelsey was immediately certain Purdy had adopted the accent to make anyone he encountered underestimate him—she had to be careful, she reminded herself, not to do that.

“What happened?”

“They shot me in the back as I was helpin’ the migrants we caught out of my patrol truck,” Purdy said. “Like an idiot, I didn’t have a shock plate on the back of my vest, like I do in front, and the bullet knocked the wind outta me. I landed face-down in a ditch, and I guess they left me for dead. I came to in the hospital.”

“And you announced to the world that he was killed?” Jason asked. “Why? To keep his family safe?”

“Paul was a BORTAC agent and used to do some undercover work in his early years in the Border Patrol, and his Spanish is very good—we thought about having him go undercover again,” Pierce said.

“BORTAC?”

“Border Patrol Tactical units,” Pierce explained. “The top one percent of the Border Patrol, chosen to undergo special training in covert surveillance, high-risk captures, hazardous warrant service, assault, and special weapons. They put members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Teams, U.S. Marshals Special Ops Group, and most big-city SWAT units to shame sometimes. Purdy was one of the Border Patrol’s top BORTAC agents in the early years of the program.”

“My family’s pretty small and spread out, and I’m definitely not made of money—the terrorists should have bigger fish to fry, Major,” Purdy said. “I’m not one for hidin’ out, either—if they want to get to me, let ’em come. I’ll be ready for ’em next time.” Jason smiled at the guy’s tenacity—he was ready to take on the Consortium all by himself. Purdy looked at Richter and Vega. “You the people trying to use those big robot things on the border, aren’t you?”

“That’s right, Agent Purdy,” Ariadna replied.

Purdy reached out and shook both their hands. “Thank God we’re finally getting some firepower to back up our patrol forces,” he said. “Every swingin’ dick on the wire is dead meat otherwise.”

“I hate to tell you this, but we’ve just been reassigned,” Jason said. “My team’s been taken off the project— just regular Border Patrol units and a few National Guard out there now, although they are better armed and have better surveillance equipment now.”

“That’s just because your gadgets scare the livin’ shit out of everyone, especially those pasty-faced pencil- pushers in Washington.” He paused, looked at Kelsey in embarrassment, then decided he really meant it and shrugged. “No offense, ma’am.”

“I think you well deserve to speak your mind, Agent Purdy,” Kelsey said.

“Tell the major and Director DeLaine who you think attacked you, Paul,” Pierce prompted the rough-looking Border Patrol veteran.

“Russians,” the old guy said simply. Kelsey’s mouth dropped open in surprise; Jason nodded knowingly. “Expert, well-trained, and stone-cold killers. They popped my partners and the other migrants as casually as if they were squashin’ cucarachas.”

“Are you sure, Agent Purdy?” Kelsey asked.

“Sure I’m sure, ma’am. I spent four years in Air Force intelligence before I joined the Border Patrol, two of ’em in West Germany. I spoke with plenty of Russians—I learned to speak it pretty well, if I do say so myself. Another one of the terrorists yelled at the one speakin’ Russian, telling him in Spanish to quit talkin’ Russian.”

“You were right, Jason,” Kelsey said. “It’s got to be the Consortium, trying to infiltrate back into the country —except this time they’re sneaking across the border instead of using fake passports.”

“There’s no ‘trying’ about it, ma’am—I’d say they had at least a dozen, maybe two dozen, inside Ernesto Fuerza’s truck, fully armed and equipped like front-line infantry,” Purdy said. “They mowed down their targets as easy as waterin’ the lawn. Who knows how many more of those trucks made it across? We only nab one out of ten pollos on a good day. If ten more trucks like that one made it across that night, they’d have an entire company of shock troops or Spetznaz—Russian special ops forces—in the country right now. I didn’t see anyone come out of Flores’s truck except Hispanics and one other…”

“Fuerza was there?” Ariadna Vega interrupted incredulously. “Ernesto Fuerza? Are you sure, Agent Purdy?”

“Sure am, Dr. Vega,” Purdy said. “The one smuggler I’ve never been able to nab—I’m not sure if I could hold him either, since every civil rights and immigrant rights attorney in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico would sign on to represent him. The Hispanic community thinks he’s Mexico’s Fidel Castro or Yasser Arafat and will eventually lead them to a pan-American homeland, free of persecution. To me he’s just another coyote. I personally recovered dozens of kilos of drugs during one bust, but he got away…”

“He says he’s not a drug smuggler anymore,” Ariadna said.

“Once a drug smuggler, always a drug smuggler,” Purdy said. “The money is just too good to ignore. I wouldn’t make the mistake of giving him the benefit of the doubt if I were you. And now that he’s been seen traveling with a bunch of Russian commandos, I’d say he might be into infiltrating terrorists and guns into the U.S. too. I’d love to put that bastard away for good.” Purdy smiled at Ariadna’s grim expression. “Sorry to burst your bubble, Doc, but Fuerza is a serious bad guy. I don’t think he’s the freedom fighter everyone makes him out to be.”

“He has done some remarkable, important things for the migrant community, Agent Purdy,” Ariadna said. “I’m not questioning your knowledge and experience, but I’m pointing out that the good he’s done can’t all be discounted.”

“Oh yes it can, missy,” Purdy said. “First of all, the ‘good’ you’re talking about—helping foreigners sneak into the country illegally—is against the law. Maybe we should be changing the law to make it easier for workers to come to this country legally, but until it is changed, Fuerza is breaking the laws that I swore to uphold, and I’m going to stop him.

“Second: maybe back whenever he supposedly renounced his evil days of drug smuggling and switched to migrant smuggling he did it because he really did want to help his fellow Mexicans find a better life in America. But that was then. These days, he takes on any client and any cargo as long as they got the cash. It looks to me like he brought in terrorists with serious heavy weaponry—and those terrorists used a bunch of migrants as human shields to gun down my buddies.”