? ? ?
Ryan and Chavez moved their rented Dodge to a cracked asphalt parking lot behind an abandoned warehouse three blocks from Chicas Peligrosas. John Clark and the others had scattered to various locations in the area. The GSM mic broadcast on a cell signal, so there was no need for them to congregate any closer and risk being caught by responding officers.
Chavez gave Ryan a nod during a lull in the conversation. “I guess this Feng character is a big deal after all. Sorry I doubted you, Jack.”
Ryan raised an eyebrow, grinning. “Wait,” he said. “You doubted me?”
Feng started talking again. It sounded like he was about to break down in tears.
“. . . Seriously,” he said. “You have to promise to keep me safe.”
“I can do that,” Agent Callahan said. “But why should I?”
Chavez grimaced and mouthed, “Heartless. I like her.”
Feng insisted he be taken somewhere else before he would talk. Callahan continued to play hardass, reminding him of the trouble he was in for sanctioning child prostitution.
Clark’s voice came over the radio, sounding strained and fatigued. “Dom,” he said, “I assume you have your FBI credentials.”
“I don’t leave home without ’em, boss,” Caruso said.
Officially on special “unspecified duty” away from his assigned field office, Dominic Caruso maintained his commission as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This often made him the only member of The Campus who could legally carry a weapon in all fifty states and U.S. territories—not that any of them let a little thing like that stop them from packing. Many of the things they did overseas were, in point of fact, against the law. It was the way of counterintelligence work. The fact that one’s government sanctioned an action in no way made that action legal in another country, no matter how moral or right it might be.
Clark continued. “The human trafficking is bad enough, but there’s more going on here than that. Eddie Feng is a piece of shit, but he knows something—as evidenced by Jack’s earlier discovery about the Beijing subway bombing. We need to find out what that something is. Dom, I’ll get Gerry to pull a few strings with the Bureau so you can insinuate yourself into Special Agent Callahan’s investigation. Stick with her and find out what she knows. The rest of us will back off a bit and do more research into the unholy union between the Sun Yee On triad and the Tres Equis men.”
“Copy that,” Caruso said. “I’ll follow at a discreet distance when they come out, and then introduce myself to Special Agent Callahan in an hour or so.”
“That should give me enough time,” Clark said. “I’ll let you know.”
Over the radio, Feng’s voice changed from whining to demanding. “If you don’t get me out of here, I’m going to have to ask for a lawyer.”
“You do that,” Callahan said. “We’ll see then what kind of protection you get.”
“Look.” Feng was sobbing again. “I was bluffing about a lawyer. Just put me in solitary. These animals would kill me five minutes after I go into general population. I swear, I’ll give you everything I’ve got.”
The voice of a male agent came across now. “Including whatever code you’re using?”
“Yes.” Sniff, sniff.
“And what all the numbers mean in your data?”
“Yes!”
“And who they correspond to?”
“If I know.”
“How about Coronet?” the male voice asked. “Who or what is that?”
“What is wrong with you people?” Feng spoke so quietly now that the GSM mic barely picked up his words. “I said I’d tell you, but you have to get me out of here.”
“So tell,” Callahan said. “Show some good faith.”
“Okay,” Feng whispered. “This guy, Coronet. I think he’s some kind of spy.”
? ? ?
The man with La Santa Muerte tattooed on his neck sat down the street from Chicas Peligrosas in his 1994 S-10 pickup. He ground his teeth, discolored from years of smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. The man’s name was Javier Goya, but everyone called him Moco. At twenty-nine, he’d spent more than a third of his life behind bars—and he’d decided after he got out the last time, he wasn’t going back. His leg bounced on the floorboard, rocking the little truck and drawing a look from Gusano, the man who sat beside him.
“You got the need, the need for weed,” Gusano said.
“Shut up, cabrón,” Moco said, knowing his partner was right. Gusano had once eaten a worm on a bet, earning his name—and Moco thought him just about as smart as one of the slimy creatures.
Moco pounded his fist against the steering wheel, causing dust to rain down from the headliner of the S-10 pickup. He had to be the luckiest son of a bitch in the world.
The tat—a skulled female figure with scythe and beckoning bony fingers—was a prison job he’d gotten while incarcerated in Huntsville’s Eastham Unit. The guy running the block had suggested the design—as long as Moco was ready for what went along with it—and sent him to another guy who worked in the kitchen. This other guy was a crazy old Mexican artist from Reynosa who used ink from the soot of burned baby oil mixed with pages from the Bible.
That ink must have been some potent shit, because La Santa Muerte had protected Moco well over the years—if you didn’t count the nickel he did in Darrington for selling a tiny bit of black-tar heroin to an undercover cop in Bridgeport, Texas. The state was serious about punishing drug crimes. But nobody shanked him while he was inside, and that was saying something in a place as bloody as Darrington.
La Santa Muerte was sure as hell looking out for him today. At first he’d been pissed that his truck had broken down, but if the alternator had not gone out he and Gusano would have been inside Chicas Peligrosas when the Feds showed up—which meant they would have tried to put him back inside, which in turn meant he would have shot it out and very likely ended up dead. But that hadn’t happened, thanks to La Santa Muerte.
Now he watched as his friends were frog-marched one by one out the front door of the strip club, hands cuffed behind their backs, and stuffed into waiting cop cars. A tall Hispanic and a pissed-looking redhead, both wearing FBI raid jackets, came out last, flanking that asshole Eddie Feng. Moco had never trusted that guy. He was always snooping around, paying good money for girls who weren’t worth a dime bag, and asking questions about things that were none of his business. One way or another he was behind this.
Moco used his cell phone to snap photos of as many of the cops as he could, paying special attention to the ones in the FBI jackets. The curly-haired bitch was in charge. He could tell by the way she carried herself, all haughty and nose in the air. Goya hated girls like that—and so did his boss. Oh, yeah, the patrón would be most interested in this one. Moco grinned at the thought of what they’d do to her.
The boss had some very special methods to deal with bitches who got in the way of his operation.
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