Damage Control (34 page)

“I can’t speak to that personally,” Sjogren said. “But my guy in Justice says it’s a sure thing.”

“And what’s your level of confidence in him?”

Sjogren laughed. “What the hell do you want from me, Trev? You hire me for my sources, and I give you what I’ve got. You want two-hundred-percent certainty, you need to hire somebody else.”

Munro forgave the attitude because the underlying message was spot-on. “Maria Elizondo,” he said, repeating the name aloud to make sure he had it right.

“That’s it,” Sjogren said. “Now it’s my turn to go to sleep.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
SEVEN

J
onathan hated flying. Airplanes were orders of magnitude better than boats, but given all the years of parachute jumps, fast-roping, and landings-cum-crashes in bullet-riddled aircraft, he worried that he’d made God grow weary of pulling his ass out of trouble.

Now he was in a single-engine airplane that had been officially out of gas for the last ten minutes, flying fifty feet above the rooftops in the dark, hoping that they’d be able to trick the laws of physics one more time. Jonathan forced himself not to dwell on the depressing details, and instead scoured his map of Ciudad Juarez for a suitable place to land the Cessna.

Airfields were out because they would be guarded, which left them with the option of landing on a field somewhere, or maybe on a highway. Either of those scenarios would alert the authorities, but at least Jonathan and his team would have a head start and some tactical flexibility. Problem was, they’d already crossed into Ciudad Juarez, and the urban landscape provided precious few fields. Exactly zero, in fact, by Jonathan’s reckoning.

It had become clear quite some time ago that a soft landing was not in their future—perhaps it had never been—and to prepare, they’d secured all their weapons, and tied down as many potential projectiles as possible.

“How flexible is the fifteen hundred feet of landing space?” he asked Boxers. Jonathan tried to keep his voice low so as not to spin Tristan up. The kid had good ears though, and issued a dreadful groan.

“Depends on how much of the airplane you want to be left when we’re done,” Boxers said. “Nose-first, we don’t need any space at all.”

Tristan said, “Oh, shit,” and Boxers laughed.

“That’s not as helpful as you might think, Big Guy,” Jonathan said. It was a quirk of Boxers’ personality that his lighthearted banter ran inversely proportional to the seriousness of the moment.

“Okay, serious answer,” Boxers said. “If I can slow it to nearly stall speed and we don’t care about breaking some stuff underneath, then five, six hundred feet should do.” The engine coughed. “It’d be good to decide quickly, though.”

A solution materialized in Jonathan’s head. He triangulated between where they were and where they wanted to be. “Does this beast have five miles left in her?” he asked.

“She’s got what she’s got,” Boxers said. “Give me a strategy.”

Jonathan glanced at the compass on the control panel and verified that they were traveling north. “Okay, the north–south streets are pretty narrow, but the east–west streets are wide. This Elizondo chick lives about five miles northeast of our current position. She lives on Calle de Oro, one of the wider streets.”

Boxers grinned beneath his night vision array. “You telling me you want to park in the driveway?”

“At the curb, actually.”

The engine coughed again.

“Sure,” Boxers said. “Why the hell not? We’ve done crazier shit than that.” He banked the plane slightly to the right. “I’m gonna have trouble reading street signs from up here, though.”

Below them, the city was mostly bathed in darkness, save for the rows of streetlights.

“You can line up with any of these. We’re still fifteen, sixteen blocks south, but better to get lined up than be forced to crash into buildings.”

“I thought we were going to be able to land the airplane,” Tristan said from the back.

“I already told you,” Boxers quipped. “Landings are mandatory. They’re just not all created equal.”

“Make sure your seat belt is tight,” Jonathan said. “And when I tell you, press yourself as far back into the seat as possible. Let the ratchet in your shoulder strap go as tight as possible.”

“Should I take the vest off?”

“Negative,” Jonathan said. “If we hit really hard, that vest will distribute the impact from the belt. Might save your collarbone.” He had no idea if that was really true, but it sounded right. “And lock your jaw tight. It’ll keep you from biting through your tongue.”

Boxers being Boxers, he flew a few blocks farther north before finishing the turn and lining up with an east–west boulevard. According to Jonathan’s GPS, they’d lined up with Calle Norte Americano. That put Maria Elizondo’s house four blocks north and three quarters of a mile east of their current location. Every additional second in the air brought them that much closer.

The engine noise pitched down dramatically, startling Jonathan.

“That’s me,” Boxers said, defusing the concern. “I want to get this baby slowed down.” When he lowered the wing flaps, the aircraft slowed even more. To Jonathan, it felt like a walking pace, but he knew that they had no choice. At this low altitude, when the engine died, they would fall like a rock, with virtually no opportunity to react. There’d be nothing they could do about the speed of the fall, but the lower their forward speed when it happened, the more survivable the crash would be.

Now that they were close, Jonathan realized the limitations of his GPS map. While the map images were pristine, the real street was dotted with vehicles, and the occasional trash can, and all manner of urban stuff that you’d never encounter on an airfield. Any kind of obstruction was a huge hazard, but there was something else that posed special hazards.

“Those are power lines, aren’t they?” he asked, noting the strings of wire that connected the poles.

“Yup.”

“Can you avoid them?”

“I’m gonna try.”

As they chugged along as nearly stall speed, Boxers brought the aircraft lower and lower. On either side, the occasional building was actually taller than they were high, and this was not a city of skyscrapers. Up ahead, a car pulled onto the boulevard from a side street, and then careened onto the sidewalk when the driver saw the looming aircraft.

“That guy just got religion,” Boxers said through a smile.

Again, Jonathan chose to concentrate on his map. “We’re closing to within a half mile.”

As if on cue, the Cessna’s engine died. No cough this time, no warning at all. Just a sudden silence where there’d been the steady drone of the engine and the rush of the propeller.

The Cessna became a brick with wings, falling with all the grace of an anvil.

“Brace!” Boxers yelled. He pulled back hard on the yoke, but there just wasn’t enough speed for the control surfaces to do their job.

Jonathan pressed himself into his seat, locked his jaw, and waited for it. They hit flat and they hit hard. A jolt of pain as old back injuries reawakened, and Jonathan smelled blood in his sinuses. His belts held, though, and the aircraft stayed upright, even as the landing gear bent and broke beneath them. He more sensed than felt the wheel pylon on the starboard side penetrate the underside of the fuselage and jut through like a giant spike. The fact that he was realizing these things meant that he hadn’t been skewered. He didn’t hear a scream of agony, so he had to assume that Tristan was okay as well.

He’d know soon enough, one way or the other.

Within seconds, a gray-white cloud filled the interior, but Jonathan’s initial burst of fear dimmed in seconds when he recognized the smell of steam, not smoke.

Then they were still. Total elapsed time from engine failure to dead stop: probably less than five seconds. They listed to the right, but there was no flicker of fire. Chalk up one advantage to running out of fuel.

“Tristan!” Jonathan yelled. “Are you okay?” He turned in his seat to see the kid’s wide eyes.

“Holy shit,” he said.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know.”

It was a fair enough answer. It’d take a minute to take inventory.

“I’m fine, too,” Boxers said. “Thanks for asking.”

“You don’t get hurt,” Jonathan said. “You make dents.” As he spoke, he thumbed the release on his seat belt and shrugged free. “Gather your weapons and let’s get the hell out of here.”

“Hey, Boss,” Boxers said, pointing out the front windscreen. “We’re attracting locals.”

Of course they were. A plane crashes in the street in the middle of the night, people are going to be curious. Jonathan assessed the threat as low—these people were running to help, not to do harm—but among them, someone was calling the police, and that wouldn’t help them a bit.

“What’s your status, Tristan?” Jonathan said. “Hurt or unhurt?”

“Bruised,” he said. “But I don’t think I’m bleeding, and I don’t think anything’s broken.”

“Then grab your shit and get that door open.”

“There’s a big post sticking up through the floor,” Tristan said.

“That’s the landing gear. Go around it.”

As he spoke, Jonathan clipped his M27 to its sling, checked his left thigh to make sure that the MP7 was where it belonged, and his right hip to say hello to his Colt. To his left, Boxers had already reassembled his arsenal and was waiting for Jonathan to move out of the way so that he could get out.

A face appeared in the window. It was a local, mid-thirties, shirtless and in undershorts, clearly fresh from bed. He was motioning for others to gather around. Someone pulled open the door.

“Scorpion?” Tristan asked. “What do I do? They’re not going to like all the guns.”

In fact, the guns would scare the crap out of them, Jonathan thought. “Let me go first,” he said. He rolled to his left, and climbed around the landing gear pylon.

The Good Samaritan at the door saw only the weapons, and he backed away.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Jonathan said in Spanish. “Thank you for your help, but everybody’s okay.” As he heard his words, he wondered if he’d ever in his life said anything more ridiculous.

“
Son Americanos,
” the man said.
You’re Americans
. Then he turned to the rest of the gathering crowd—maybe fifteen people now—and yelled in Spanish, “They are American soldiers!”

Jonathan didn’t know if that would be interpreted as good news or bad, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. They needed to get moving.

Jonathan climbed out the door into the night and assumed the kind of softly threatening stance that soldiers and cops used to great benefit around the world: feet planted at shoulder width, his rifle slung across his chest with both hands in place, but with the muzzle pointed at nothing, and his finger out of the trigger guard.

“We’re not here to cause you any trouble,” he said.

“American soldiers!” someone yelled.

He still couldn’t read the crowd.

Tristan emerged from the door, his own rifle clipped to his sling, but the muzzle was pointed toward the crowd.

“Get your hands off your weapon,” Jonathan snapped. “Just let it hang.”

From behind them both, Boxers growled, “And keep the damn safety on.”

While Jonathan scanned the crowd for threats that didn’t seem to be materializing, Boxers reached back into the ruined plane and recovered the rucks. He donned one of them, and then took his boss’s place on guard while Jonathan shrugged into his.

“We’re sorry for waking you,” Jonathan said as he’d started moving away from the wreckage and down the street. To Tristan, he said softly, “You stay between us.”

Boxers said, “And keep—”

“
Really?
” Tristan snapped.

The Big Guy rumbled out a chuckle.

Jonathan led the way east, moving cautiously but with purpose toward the thickening crowd. He kept his weapon in that same noncommittal posture, taking care to make eye contact with every person he saw. The trick was to let them know you were watching but not linger long enough to pose a threat. He knew without looking that Boxers was with him, step for step, though moving backward instead of forward.

The crowd fell quiet as the team advanced, its curiosity about the crash no doubt trumped by their sense of impending danger. Just loudly enough to be heard, Jonathan said, “Tristan, I want your hand on my rucksack. I want physical contact, and don’t let go unless I tell you.”

He felt a pull on his shoulder straps. “I’m there,” Tristan said. “This is a lot of people.”

“They’re not threatening us, so we don’t threaten them,” Jonathan replied. “Just keep moving and avoid eye contact.”

You could see the confusion and the unasked questions even in the wash of the yellow streetlights. Every person wanted to know what was going on, yet the presence of the team’s body armor and weapons rendered them all silent. In the distance, Jonathan heard the first siren.

“This is about to get interesting, Boss,” Boxers said. “Any chance we can pick up the pace a little?”

It was a difficult balance. They could walk a little faster, but if they started to run, they could ignite a panic. The people ahead of them would fear that they were running toward them, and the people behind would assume that they were running away from the authorities. Even in a shithole like Ciudad Juárez, people were jingoistic enough to resent lawbreaking by foreigners.

On the other hand, the sirens were drawing nearer, and their arrival would be sure to ignite a shit storm.

Ahead of them, the crowd that had formed a wall of curiosity separated as Jonathan approached, and allowed them to pass through unmolested. They kept their distance, but not by the margins that Jonathan would have thought. It was almost as if they wanted to see the faces of these foreign invaders.

“Thank you,” Jonathan said to one of the gawkers as he stepped out of the way. He made sure to smile, and the gawker smiled back.

In a few more steps, ninety percent of the crowd was behind them.

“Okay,” Jonathan said. “Tristan, let go of my ruck. It’s time to run.”