Sinaloa was Mexico’s largest criminal enterprise. It was a drug-trafficking, money-laundering, and organized crime behemoth believed to rival the Moscow mafia in its size and scope. Both groups had tentacles deep inside the United States, Europe, and Asia.
But the Suburban wasn’t from any cartel.
Inside the vehicle, two men sat quietly, one driving, the other in the backseat. They hadn’t spoken since departing Mexico City two hours before.
“We’re five klicks out,” said Pete Bond, glancing in the rearview mirror at Dewey.
Dewey didn’t look up. His eyes were focused on the window and the passing countryside.
“Hey, Dewey?”
Dewey gradually moved his eyes away from the window and toward Bond. He remained silent.
“I need you briefed up,” continued Bond.
“Sure,” said Dewey. “Take me through it.”
Bond was Central Intelligence Agency; a senior officer inside the National Clandestine Service’s Political Activities Division. He was dressed in clothing that could only be described as ostentatious: black Lanvin slacks, white Givenchy button-down, gold chains, Prada shoes. His hair was long, black, and slicked back. He had a mustache. Bond’s get-up was highly planned, in case they were stopped along the way. He looked like a high-level capo inside, or affiliated with, Sinaloa, come to pay a visit to the refinery.
Dewey had on jeans, a black synthetic shirt that clung to his chest, arms, shoulders, and torso, a flak jacket, and a Lycra ski cap. His face was camouflage black.
Across his lap was an unusual-looking assault rifle: HK MR762A1-SD. Dewey had selected the gun based on his experience as a Delta fighting cartel gunmen. It was a stealthy, very powerful piece of killing hardware, a gun that could silently take out a guard from two hundred yards without being seen or heard, then, a minute later, could be used to mow down a dozen of that guard’s colleagues after they discovered the corpse on the ground and went to guns.
The refinery was located in remote territory several hours south of Mexico City, technically part of the sprawling city of Iguala but twenty miles from the city’s decaying urban edge. The roads leading to the refinery were bordered by squalor. Shacks were scattered every hundred feet or so. Old steel oil barrels tossed flames into the sky from gasoline fires. Front yards were overrun by chickens and mongrel dogs.
The refinery was situated at the end of a weed-covered, mile-long dirt road. A hundred years ago, the road led to a sugarcane mill, but the buildings had long since been boarded up, abandoned, then burned to the ground by vandals. Now the site was occupied by a neat-looking corrugated steel warehouse. Inside, a small state-of-the-art cocaine and heroin refinery turned out street-ready narcotics that left in semitrucks bound for the United States.
For the Sinaloa cartel, the refinery was neither important nor valuable. It was one of more than one hundred such coke fabs that dotted the Mexican countryside. Portable, tremendously profitable, totally expendable.
Bond was a highly trained operator, but his true métier was in-theater intelligence acquisition, synthesis, analysis, and strategy. The operation was his design.
Dewey was there to execute that design.
“Beneath the seat,” said Bond, “grab the scans.”
Dewey reached down and found a manila folder, placing it on his lap. He took his SOG combat blade from his vest and triggered a small light built into the hilt. He put it in his mouth and aimed it at the photographs inside the folder.
“Those are fresh off NGA SAT an hour ago,” said Bond.
NGA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, was a key CIA operations support agency, providing real-time imagery of areas of operation, looking primarily for signs of unexpected enemy manpower.
Several of the photos were taken during daytime. They showed a rectangular warehouse, along with a few semitrucks backed up to a loading dock. There were also night shots, from the sky, using advanced holographic-imaging technology. They looked like X-rays. One of the photos displayed a close-up of the side of the building; a red circle had been stenciled around a door.
Dewey finished looking at the photos and tossed them on the seat.
“You’ll approach on foot in a northeast pattern, coming at the building through a side door. The location is on the scan. Eliminate anyone you see, then hit me up on commo. I’ll get down there, we’ll set munitions, then split. We’ll detonate it remotely. We should be able to fly Air America out of Acapulco. SEAL Team 4 is prepared to exfiltrate if things get nasty.”
Dewey stared out the Suburban’s back window. As hard as he tried to listen, Bond’s words sounded like they were coming from a thousand miles away. As hard as he tried to concentrate, he couldn’t.
“Cartels your first desk?” asked Dewey, willing himself back to the present.
“Second,” said Bond. “I spent five years in Russia.”
“Doing what?”
“I was part of a team that was trying to destabilize Putin before he got elected. Obviously it didn’t work too well.”
Dewey closed his eyes and pictured Jessica. It was the afternoon she was killed. She was on a horse, riding in Argentina. He was riding behind her. For some reason, this was the image that popped into his head as he stared out at the moonlit Iguala countryside.
It had been almost precisely six months to the day since she was killed. He and Jessica would’ve been married. The first bump of a child might’ve appeared on her stomach by now.
He shut his eyes for several moments, then opened them, steeling himself against the sadness he knew would soon come on like a fever.
“I heard you spent some time chasing down the North Valley cartel,” said Bond, referring to one of South America’s most notorious cartels, a group that was now largely gone.
“Yeah,” said Dewey, meeting Bond’s eyes, forcing himself back to the present, to the Suburban, to Bond’s words, to Iguala.
“What was the biggest coke fab you hit?”
Dewey stared at Bond in the mirror. He remained silent.
Stop thinking about her.
“I don’t remember,” said Dewey. “They all sorta blend in.”
“I studied how North Valley was taken down. You were right in the middle of it.”
“If I was, I didn’t realize it,” said Dewey.
Dewey looked at Bond in the rearview mirror.
“Can I ask you something?” said Dewey.
“Sure.”
“And not have it leave here?”
“It stays between us.”
“You know someone at the Agency named Gant?” asked Dewey.
Bond’s eyes flashed in the rearview.
“The new deputy director,” he said. “Yeah. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
Bond paused.
“Steer clear of him,” he said. “I don’t trust him. Politicians are bad enough, but the guys who get them elected? They’re assholes.”
Bond slowed the Suburban.
“We’re here,” he said as he pulled on a set of thermal night optics, killed the lights, and banked left into the driveway, accelerating down an empty dirt road. After a minute, he came to a stop.
Dewey reached to the seat next to him. He lifted a half-moon-shaped mag and slammed it into the gun. He opened the door and climbed out. He reached to his ear.
“Commo check.”
“Roger,” said Bond. “See you in a few.”
Dewey started a quick-paced run off the driveway, into a low field of brush and dry scrub grass.
He had night optics, but he kept them strapped to his weapons belt, preferring to let the moon guide him. After several minutes of running, he came to a crest of a hill and for the first time saw the lights of the refinery, just a few hundred feet down a steep slope.
Dewey paused, catching his breath. He checked his weapon one last time. He skulked down the hill toward the near side entrance, raising the rifle as he moved.
At the bottom of the hill, he moved to the side door that had been circled on the scans. He felt his heart racing. He could barely breathe. His hand reached out to grab the door handle. He felt paralyzed, watching as his hand reached for the door. In the dim light, he could see what he already knew was happening, the trembling of his hand as it reached out for the handle. Dewey stared for more than a minute at the warehouse. The minute became two, then three. Yet still he didn’t move.