Against All Enemies

“Oh, let me see if I can find my purse. Oh, all I have are these big guns and extra magazines.”

He smirked.

She shook her head and gritted her teeth. Eight years in Army Intelligence and four years as a seasoned CIA field officer had led her to this: sitting in a car and taking machismo crap from a broken-down and corrupt Federal Police inspector. The miscarriage, the divorce, the alienation of her brothers and sisters …and for what? This? She turned to Gomez and burned him with her glare.

They listened to the other units over the radio, and within ten minutes rolled down a street lined with pink, white, and purple apartment buildings, the alley between them festooned with laundry. A few lanky boys of ten or twelve stood in the doorways, watching them and making calls on their cell phones. They were the cartel’s spotters, and Gomez marked them, too.

At the end of the street, near the next intersection, three bodies blocked the road. Vega yanked a pair of binoculars from the center console and dialed to focus.

They were all young males, two lying prone amid blood pools, the third facing up with a hand clutching his heart. They were dressed in dark jeans and T-shirts, and if they’d been wearing any jewelry, it’d already been stolen. Two police cruisers were parked about twenty meters away, the officers crouching down behind their doors. Gomez parked behind one cruiser and widened his eyes. “Say nothing.”

They got out, and Vega’s gaze swept across the rooftops, where at least a half-dozen men were just sitting up there, watching, a few talking on more cell phones. She clutched her rifle a bit tighter, and her mouth went dry.

A van rolled up behind them, and out came two more officers with a pair of bomb-sniffing dogs. As they shifted by, Gomez’s cell phone rang, and he drifted to the back of the truck to take the call. What Vega noted, though, was that the old man carried two phones; this was not the phone he’d used to call her cell, thereby giving her his number. This was a second phone. Interesting.

She couldn’t hear what he was saying over the shouting from the officers ahead. The canine team moved in slowly, and once they swept the area and the bodies, one man gave a wave and a shout. All clear.

He took a sniper’s round from the rooftop to their left, and most of his head came off.

Just like that. Without warning. Broad daylight. Civilians watching from the balconies of the apartments.

And as the others screamed to get down, the second canine officer was shot in the neck, the round hammering him from the back and exploding from beneath his chin.

A new wave of automatic-weapons fire came in from AK-47s that ripped through the bodies in the street and cut into the dogs, both of which fell while Vega crawled forward on her chest, keeping tight to the truck’s front wheel. She lifted her rifle and returned fire at the rooftops, her bead spraying along the ledge and chiseling away at the stucco.

“Hold your fire!” cried Gomez. “Hold your fire!”

And then …nothing. A few shouts, the stench of gunpowder everywhere now, and the heat of the asphalt rising in waves up into Vega’s face.

Brakes squealed, stealing her attention. At the next cross street sat a white pickup truck missing its tailgate, and from one of the back alleys came three men armed with rifles — AR-15s and one AK-47. They ran toward the truck and leapt onto the flatbed. Several of the officers ahead opened fire, but the truck was already hightailing it away. As a matter of fact, the rounds from those officers seemed perfunctory at best — not a single one struck the truck.

Vega bolted to her feet and ran around to the passenger’s side, where Gomez was hunkered down and shaking his head.

“Come on!” she urged him. “Come on!”

“I’ll call for the backup. Other units will pursue them.”

“We go now!” she cried.

His eyes widened, and his voice lifted sharply: “What did I tell you?”

She inhaled, bit back a curse, then rose and spun toward one of the rooftops, where the sniper who’d killed the two canine cops had her dead in his sights.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, a second before the killer disappeared behind the rooftop parapet.

She blinked. Breathed.

And was back in the moment.

“He’s right there,” she shouted. “Up there!”

The other officers remained behind their car doors, shaking their heads and gesturing for her to get down, take cover.

She went back to Gomez and crouched down beside him. “We’re letting him get away.”

“The other units will find him. Just wait. We didn’t come here to fight them. We came here to investigate the crime scene. Now shut up.”

Vega closed her eyes, and it hit her — right there and then. She was going about this all wrong. She needed to get close to this guy, gain his trust, not turn him into the enemy she already presumed he was. She needed to be his daughter, allow him to teach her about the city, and as he grew to like her, perhaps even respect her, he’d lower his guard enough for her to strike.

But her ego had gotten in the way, her exacting nature, and she’d admittedly screwed up.

They remained there for another two, maybe three, minutes, and then, finally, the officers up front began to slowly move toward the bodies, even as residents in the apartments came back out onto their balconies to watch the show.

“Is she your new partner?” one of the officers asked Gomez.

“Yes,” he answered curtly.

“She’ll be dead by the end of the week.”

Gomez looked at Vega. “Let’s hope not.”

She gulped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it would be like this …”

Gomez cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe you should pick up a newspaper.”

Club Monarch

Juarez, Mexico

Dante Corrales was in the mood to kill someone. Three of his sicarios had been gunned down in Delicias, and Inspector Gomez had called to say that he was worried. The Federal Police were watching him more closely now and had assigned to him a female inspector who was probably working with the president’s office. She couldn’t be trusted, and he had to be much more careful now that he was being watched.

Moreover, an American had checked into the hotel, a Mr. Scott Howard, and Ignacio had learned that the guy was scouting properties for his businesses. Corrales didn’t quite believe that and was having the man followed, but thus far his story had checked out.

While Raul and Pablo were making a large cash delivery to a contact they simply referred to as “the banker,” Corrales was headed over to the Monarch for lunch and cervezas. En route, his phone rang: Ballesteros calling from Bogota. What the hell did that fat bastard want now?

“Dante, you know the FARC guys hit me again? I’m going to need some more help.”

“Okay, okay. You can talk to them when they get there.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Have you heard about Puerto Rico?”

“What now?”

“Haven’t you been watching the news?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“The FBI pulled off another inside operation. Over one hundred police arrested. Do you know what that’s going to do to me? We counted on them. That’s a whole shipping route I’ve lost in a single day. Do you know what this means?”

“Shut the fuck up and stop crying, you fat old fuck! The boss will be there soon. Stop fucking crying!”

With that, Corrales hung up, cursed, and pulled into the club’s parking lot.

There were only two strippers onstage, day workers who’d had children and weren’t shy about revealing their