A Touch of Greed (13 page)

Garza sliced a piece of apple, jabbed it with the point of the knife, then extended his arm to offer Hector the slice. The apple was just inches from Hector’s face and he reached for the slice as if reaching for a rattlesnake’s fangs.

Garza snapped back the knife with a quick pull as Hector grabbed the slice.

“Thank you,” Hector said, cautiously taking a bite of the apple slice.

Garza looked out the window overlooking his wilting flowers. A soldier absently stepped on one of his geraniums. Garza opened the window and screamed, “Puta! Watch where you are walking.”

The soldier searched his path and found the damaged flower. He cowered, mumbling apologies.

Garza returned his attention to his visitor who was taking everything in with anxious eyes.

“Hector, is there something else?”

Hector looked at his hands on his lap. “The Zutons are honing in on my piracy business,” Hector explained. “I used to make five hundred dollars a week, but now I’m forced to pay fifty percent of my profit to them. Some weeks they don’t believe my sales figures and I actually lose money.”

Garza stared.

“It’s getting crazy out there,” Hector said. “I say the wrong thing and I could turn up dead. I was wondering if you were needing some . . . uh . . . help?”

“You want to be on my payroll?”

“Mr. Garza, you are a very powerful man. It would be a comfort to know I was under your umbrella.”

Garza considered the request. Hector was fairly unreliable and mostly paranoid. For him to be sitting here was either an act of desperation or sheer stupidity.

Garza wiped a hand over his face. “Okay, Hector, let me consider your situation.”

Hector sat there for a moment seemingly uncertain what to do. From behind him, Victor slipped a steel wire around his neck and pulled it taut. Hector grabbed franticly at the wire, his eyes shocked open, his legs pushing upward, getting to his feet to alleviate the pressure. But Victor was too strong. The wire dug into Hector’s skin with such force, a red line appeared where the wire was imbedded into his neck. Hector only fought and kicked for a few seconds before the lack of oxygen had him unconscious.  

Hector’s head dropped forward, then his entire body slipped to the floor. Victor kept up the pressure until Garza said, “Enough, he is dead.”

Victor let go of the wire, then checked for a pulse. He looked up at Garza and shook his head.

“Good.” Garza pointed to a couple of towels sitting on the counter. “Now, clean it up quick. I don’t want a big mess in here.”

Chapter 15

Nick took the elevator to the basement of the Homeland Security Office and made his way to the detention cells. He tapped the bandage on his ear to make sure it was still in place while passing the three cells to his right, full of Mexican nationals who would be deported sometime soon. The very last cell on the left was reserved for individuals who required special attention, or the necessity to remain separated from the current detainees.

A Homeland Security agent stood guard outside the cell and opened the door when Nick approached. Sitting alone on a cot was Greg Chapin. The man was hunched over, elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands together. When he spotted Nick, he jumped to his feet with an eager expression.

Nick sat on the cot and motioned Chapin to sit next to him.

Chapin sat. He looked at the burn marks on the side of Nick’s face. “What happened?” he asked.

Nick felt his bandage, knowing he and Matt were fortunate to leave the scene with just scrapes. He looked over at the agent who stared at him anxiously.

“She’s dead,” Nick said.

Chapin’s reaction was delayed, as if the words needed to absorb into his bloodstream before they took effect. He stood and ambled toward the closed cell bars. He grasped a couple of bars and fell into them, his head pressed against the cold steel, his breathing labored.

Nick pulled a legal-sized sheet of paper from his back pocket and smoothed out the creases. He waited as Chapin struggled to gain his composure. The agent let go of the bars and wiped his eyes. He turned to see Nick holding the sheet of paper.

“What’s that?” Chapin asked with a husky voice.

Nick held up the paper. “This is your only chance to keep the rest of your family safe.”

Chapin seemed to understand. “WITSEC?”

Nick nodded.

Chapin seemed surprised. “You would offer it to me?”

“Only if you want to be part of the solution.”

“But, he’ll get to me,” Chapin’s eyes were pleading for hope. “Even in Witness Protection, he’ll get to me.”

“Not if we get to him first.”

“But how? It’s not like he gave me any information. We had a one-way relationship. I gave him info and he kept my daughter alive.”

Nick wanted to ask how that worked out for him, but he had to corral Chapin’s attention and get him to focus.

“You’re still a law enforcement official with investigative skills,” Nick reminded him. “He must have said something, anything which gave you insight to who was on his team here in the States. You have your suspicions.”

Chapin must have known his daughter wouldn’t survive. He seemed to be on the road to acceptance as he paced around the tight quarters in his cell, head down, mulling over something to himself.

“Don’t be selfish,” Nick said. “Think of your wife and son. They deserve to be protected.”

Nick didn’t want to push too hard, but he needed help and this was his best opportunity.

Chapin seemed lost.

“Listen,” Nick said, “every minute you waste beating yourself up over the past, you’re putting Kevin and Linda at risk.”

Chapin wheeled with surprise on his face. Nick held up the paperwork to show how he’d known their names. The Border Patrol agent was tormented and dropped down on the cot next to Nick, the burden appearing too heavy for him. He gazed out the cell bars with a distant stare.

“I did hear something once,” Chapin murmured. “One of Garza’s men uttered a name when I was relaying intel to him. The man said, ‘Just like Sandoval.’ I don’t know who or what Sandoval is, but Garza wasn’t pleased at the slip.”

Nick waited for any other insights from the beaten man, but after a few minutes Chapin placed his hands over his eyes and began to sob. Nick got up and motioned the guard to open the cell door. Once the door was shut behind him, he looked back at Chapin and wondered how many more Chapins were out there. Garza’s tentacles had reached over the border and into the heart of Arizona’s law enforcement. Nick would have to be smart about his moves. He was going to do everything he could to prevent Matt from getting in his SUV and storming Garza’s complex with a gun in each hand.

Nick left the basement with one word on his mind. Sandoval.

* * *

CIA Director Ken Morris still had a half-eaten bagel from breakfast on his desk while he conducted three online conversations with some of his finest Mexican contacts. None of them could help track the name of the undercover agent currently operating within one of the cartels.

He took a sip of six-hour-old coffee and hit the enter key to send the latest update to President Merrick, stating there has been no progress in the ability to discover who the agent was.

One thing was for sure, the agent had quit sending messages forty-eight hours earlier and frightened many into believing the man had turned. The President was willing to throw more money at the independent contractor and Ken was willing to endorse that philosophy, but he knew deep down it signaled a new sense of desperation.

At the same time he was struggling with a cryptic message left on the CIA website the night before. A series of letters were left anonymously and his tech team could only track the message to somewhere in Mexico. Even as his team worked on the message, Ken still played with them on a yellow legal pad, switching the letters around to make sense of them.

The letters were: nvloaads.

His cell phone buzzed. Walt Jackson. He snapped the phone into the docking station on his desk and pushed the speaker button.

“Hey, Walt,” Ken said.

“You sound dejected.”

“Yeah, well, lately that’s my normal tone. What have you got?”

“I’ve got an olive branch,” Walt said.

Ken dropped his pencil on the legal pad and leaned back in his chair. “You know, Walt, it’s never been personal.”

“I know.”

“It’s just . . . well, I feel responsible to keep our department secure. I have a lot of mouths to feed over here. You understand, right?”

“Of course,” Walt said. “We’re no different over here.”

Ken squeezed the back of his neck. “Walt, I am truly sorry about your losses. I’ve been on the phone nonstop pressing my contacts for a name down there and it’s just not coming. Whoever is embedded with the cartels is remarkably stealthy.”

“Or dead.”

“Or that,” Ken said, picking up his pencil and tapping the eraser on the legal pad. “Do you have anything?”

“Just one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Does the name Sandoval mean anything to you?”

Ken shrugged. “Boy, off the top of my head I’ve got nothing, but I can run it by the analysts and see what they come up with.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

Ken wrote the word, ‘Sandoval,’ on the legal pad. “Are Nick and Matt still thinking about storming over the border?”

“It’s a miracle Matt hasn’t gone already.”

“Sure,” Ken said, swirling a circle around the eight mysterious letters. He noticed something peculiar about the series of letters he’d just written on his pad. He drew a line from the first letter of his jumbled message to the ‘n,’ in Sandoval. Then he took the second letter from the message and drew a line to the ‘v’ in Sandoval. He did this six more times until it became clear the letters matched the exact letters in the word ‘Sandoval.’

“You still there?” Walt asked.

Ken grinned, circling ‘Sandoval’ over and over, pressing the pencil tip so hard, it broke in two. “Walt,” he said. “I think I have something for you.”   

Chapter 16

Garza was watering his flowers when his phone rang. He looked down at the name on his display and frowned. Julio was behind him throwing a tennis ball against the side of the building, so he handed the hose to his son and instructed him to finish watering.

Garza walked to the back of the complex and pushed the talk button on his phone.

“Yes,” he said, in a tired voice.

“Mr. Garza, are you prepared to transfer the device?”

“Yes, Sadeem,” Garza said.

“Very well. I shall meet you at your complex tomorrow night.”

Garza sighed. He found Victor eating a burrito on the back patio and sat next to him at the table. “No,” Garza said. “I don’t want you bringing that thing here. We’ll meet out in the desert. I’ll have a car meet you in town at Guedo’s Taco Shop at three. You’ll follow them to our meeting place.”

“If that is your wish. There is one other thing,” Sadeem said. “My people want me to travel with the package until it arrives into the United States. They are concerned about the stability of the device.”

Garza tugged at his hair. “This is not what we had agreed upon.”

“This material is simply much too sensitive to be left to inexperienced transporters. I am doing this for your safety as well.”

Garza could feel his pulse quickening. His expression must’ve seemed extreme because Victor had put the burrito down and was staring at his boss.

“No,” Garza snapped. “You will not be going with the package.”

There was a pause. After a few seconds, Sadeem said, “Very well. I will come by first thing in the morning to pick up my briefcase.”

The words hung there in the air and Garza recognized them for what they were. A bluff. Sadeem was in no position to call off his assault. He would have to find another method to cross the border with a nuclear device and Garza doubted he’d be able to find a substitute within a reasonable time frame. Yet, the man kept quiet and let it stew in Garza’s belly. In his mind, Garza had already spent the money and Sadeem seemed to know that. Returning the briefcase would be like returning a winning lottery ticket.

Finally, Garza said, “I do not trust you.”

“There is no need for trust. This is a business transaction. You either accept the offer or you do not. Would you like a few minutes to talk it over with your people?”

Another insult. As if Garza needed permission to make such a decision on his own.

“Okay,” Garza said. “We will bring you. But you will not be allowed to see our entry point.”

“As you wish,” Sadeem said. “As long as I am with the material.”

Garza hung up the phone and slammed it onto the table. Victor’s burrito jumped up a few inches.

“I have a bad feeling about this Sadeem character,” Garza seethed. “He insists on coming with us while we bring the nuclear device across the border. This is not how I planned things.”

“Then don’t do it,” Victor said.

Garza squeezed his eyes shut. “I must.”

“Why?”

“Because, Victor. I am simply too greedy.”

* * *

Nick, Matt and Stevie were in Roger Decker’s office contemplating their next move, while Tommy slept on the couch still battling jet lag from his cross-continental flight. Stevie sat behind Decker’s desk, his fingers scurrying across the computer keypad while he searched for a connection with the word, “Sandoval.”

Matt leaned back in a chair, writing notes on a legal pad as Nick paced.

“You’re sure there’s not one Sandoval with any law enforcement in the Tucson PD?” Nick asked Stevie.

Stevie placed his index finger on the computer screen to mark his place. “How many times do I need to say no?” Then he resumed reading something on the screen.

Nick felt a buzz in his pocket and pulled his phone out to see a text message from Julie.

“How are things going?” she asked.

Nick messaged, “Great. Getting closer every hour. How’s Thomas?”

“He misses you.”

“Love you guys.” Nick sent the final message, then returned to pacing. He would call before bedtime as usual.