The Cartel Enforcers (The Bill Dix Detective Series Book 2) (13 page)

“Well that just stinks. He’s probably the sickest human being I have ever come across, but I have to admit I understand how he became who he is. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get anything useful from him, and it’s really pissing me off.” Dix began gnawing at his fingernails again.

“It’s okay, we have some strong leads to work as it is, let’s beat feet and leave him to the wolves,” replied Petersen.

The foul taste of defeat in Dix’s mouth was unbearable. He was slightly stunned because no one had beaten him before. Ever. He decided to go back and tell Felipe that he was a wicked and disturbed human being, but not before he tried one last time to get a name that would help the investigation.

As Dix walked into the holding cell he yelled, “Shit! Petersen get medics in here!” Felipe was choking and flopping on the floor near the bench of the holding cell. He’d managed to contort his body and wrap the belly chains from his waist up and around his neck. He must have twisted over and over while trying to suffocate himself to death. Dix worked frantically to try to untangle Felipe from the belly chains, but they were wrapped tightly and his contorting and thrashing body made it impossible and dangerous to grab a hold of the chains.

Two deputies ran into the holding cell and tried to help. Felipe grinned, and as the deputies were preoccupied with trying to help him, he disarmed one of them. Felipe managed to fire one round before the deputies could disarm him. The bullet travelled through Felipe’s abdomen and lodged into his liver. Dark blood immediately poured from the entry wound. Felipe appeared at peace as he knew the round was in his liver based on the darkness of the blood. It meant he would not survive and would not be held to answer for his murderous life.

The deputies broadcast over the radio that a shot was fired, but the situation was stable. They continued to ask for emergency medics. Dix sat next to Felipe and watched as he shivered while he was dying. Felipe began to laugh. Petersen got in the room and made eye contact with Dix. Dix shook his head indicating to Petersen that Felipe was not going to survive. Petersen shook his head and left the holding cell. Again Dix found himself alone with Felipe.

“Man why’d you do that?” Dix asked as he shook his head, “You seemed so confident earlier.”

Gasping for air Felipe coarsely said, “I had no more moves, I was calm because I had accepted that fact.”

“We have nothing to help us on this case. Please tell me how to stop this madness,” Dix pleaded with Felipe.

Felipe felt in his bones that he was close to death. He remembered the first person he killed, the look on his face. He recalled loving only two people in his life, his brother and his wife. Anger caused him to spit some blood on the holding cell wall in disgust. The image of catching his brother having sex with his wife disgusted him. The fact she left him for Jose had embarrassed him. The incident had split the family in two. Jose and Felipe became mortal enemies. Felipe had been in the U.S. for several days on a tip of Jose’s whereabouts so he could kill Jose himself. He knew his affairs were in order, but decided he would leave one giant present for all the bastards he was leaving on Earth.

Felipe pulled Dix down closer to his mouth and managed to say, “Jose. Check,” he coughed up blood, “Phone. My brother…come for money.” His grip on Dix’s shoulder fell away and he died. On his face was a twisted smile.

Dix closed Felipe’s eyes and pushed himself up from the holding cell floor. He walked outside as the medics pushed by him to frantically work on a lifeless body. Dix made eye contact with Petersen, Sullivan, and Romero who were in the hallway and motioned for them to meet up.
We’ve got our work cut out for us now
, he thought.

Chapter 23

The safe house containing Pedro Munguia, medical staff, and four special agents assigned to protect him was located in Ocotillo Wells, California. It was a tiny town literally in the middle of nowhere. The outside of the home appeared run down and was designed to be “just another house” on the street. On the inside, however, the home was a state of the art well fortified stronghold. Agents had access to high grade weapons and a safe room in a steel bunker-type basement in case someone tried to come knocking down the door looking for a precious target. The house itself, and the surrounding neighborhood, had surveillance feeds into the safe house that could be monitored by the agents. Over the years, the home had been used to hide a wide variety of people… some good, some bad. Today, the home was being used to hide and hopefully protect a confidential informant with a death wish.

One of the four agents on the protection detail noticed it was quiet in the home and he didn’t like it. He decided to make his security checks around the home, he checked on Pedro, and saw no activity on the surveillance cameras. His partner, a seasoned veteran and the team leader, was currently playing a video game. The two remaining agents were fast asleep.

The charge nurse advised the roaming agent that Pedro was stable and based on the medications he was on, would be sleeping most of the day. Satisfied everything appeared to be on the up and up, the agent walked back to where the team leader was sitting and began to tell him everything was code four (nothing to report). As he spoke, he noticed a minivan barreling through the city streets toward the safe house.

“Boss we may have company,” he said while pointing at the surveillance camera screens.

The team leader looked up and could see a minivan make an aggressive turn right for the safe house. He pointed at the camera as two more minivans were right behind the first one. He estimated they had about four minutes until shit was about to get real.

He yelled down the hall to the sleeping agents to get them up and smashed the panic button. The safe house erupted with bustling activity as the agents grabbed their assault rifles and donned their flak jackets. Medical staff attempted to move Pedro to the steel reinforced basement.

Quickly, the team leader began barking out orders and set his team in defensive positions to protect the house. An open line of communication automatically began with a dispatch center as soon as the panic button was activated. Over the speaker system a dispatcher attempted to establish contact with the team leader.

“Smith, Smith, report your status,” asked the dispatcher with concern.

The seasoned agent chuckled. “Don’t worry ‘Cake Lady,’ I hear ya. We’ve got three in bound minivans to our location, we need reinforcements ASAP.”

The fact the agent called the dispatcher by her nickname put her at ease a little. “Copy that, we have an eight-man team in-bound, ETA six minutes.”

“That leaves us three minutes to hold down the fort. Once the suspects arrive, I’ll try to give you a body count,” replied Smith to the dispatcher.

“Copy that, we just got the go ahead to scramble two DOJ helicopters to your location, ETA six to seven minutes.” He hoped that would be enough time.

The four-man team was confident in their abilities, but hearing two helicopters were headed their way helped tremendously. He made eye contact with the team members one by one and told them to rely on their training.

“We got this fellas!” said their leader.

In unison the group replied, “Hoo-rah!”

He looked out the large living room window and saw the three minivans stirring up dust as they accelerated. He thought tactically the vans would stop short of the house. The suspects would exit the vans and spread out, then try to use the vans for cover while firing on the house. He was not prepared for what happened next.

Two minivans stopped short right outside the chain link fence surrounding the home. The third minivan picked up speed, jumped the curb, blew right through the fence, and slammed into the side of the house near the family room. The driver jumped out, threw two flash-bang grenades, and started firing rounds in the direction of the dazed protection team.

None of the agents could hear anything due to the flash-bang grenades; so he resorted to sign language to move the team as one. The dispatch center also couldn’t hear a thing, which rendered them useless.

The agents carefully fired rounds in small bursts in an effort to keep the suspects from advancing further into the damaged safe house. They counted six men in each van and the kamikaze driver from the third van. One of the team members picked up movement out of his peripheral vision, spun, and put two unaccounted suspects down.

In a stack formation, the two suspect teams with shields in front began slowly moving toward the house. A loud thump followed by a second thump indicated the suspects had just sent tear gas into the safe house. The agents had to stop firing on the suspects to don their air masks. This allowed the two suspect teams to move quickly and up to the threshold of the house where the van had driven through the family room. The protection team fired on the suspect teams furiously in an effort to prevent them from breaching. Every member of the protection team had been nicked or hit by bullets by this time. If the remaining suspects took the front half of the house, it was likely every member of the four-man team would end up dead. On top of that, their objective and assigned duty to protect Pedro would fail if they allowed that to happen.

The team leader looked to his left just as one of his team members took a round in the neck, killing him instantly. He saw the shooter that had just killed his friend and fired an entire magazine into the man. The suspect was dead before he hit the floor.

As he reloaded his rifle, he was hit in the leg from a bullet and it knocked him to the floor. He tried to push himself back up but couldn’t put any weight on the injured leg. One of the other team members jumped over a couch and came over to the team leader’s aid.

The situation was critical and the remaining members of the protection team were being pushed back and overrun. One of the team members was dead, and another was pinned down and out of ammunition. The team leader lobbed percussion grenades and flash-bangs to disrupt the suspects. He was down, but not out. The remaining team member tried to protect the team leader as the firing stopped briefly because the suspects had been dazed by the flash-bang grenades. It didn’t last long, and within a minute, they could see the suspects were trying to flank them. If they were able to do so, they’d easily take over the house.

Suddenly, the suspects and the protection team members looked up to see two helicopters with dual mounted fifty caliber machine guns materialize out of nowhere. The pilots spun the guns hot and began showering the suspects with hundreds of bullets shredding them and their vehicles to pieces. The trailing DOJ support team skidded just in front of the two suspect minivans. Agents jumped out and began firing on the remaining suspects who’d survived the strafe from the helicopters. Two suspects were left. Instead of surrendering, they tried

to press forward even though they were clearly overmatched now.

Systematically, the remaining suspects were hunted down and killed by the agents. Medics made it to the safe house and began trying to help the injured protection team members. Communication was finally re-established with the dispatch center. Although things were hectic, everyone wanted to know the status of Pedro.

The support teams entered the proper codes to gain access to the safe room in the basement. They found the medical staff working feverishly trying to keep Pedro alive. The charge nurse advised that Pedro had a heart attack almost immediately after being moved down to the basement and they were trying to bring him back to life. What was left of the protection team and the responding support team stood there silently watching helplessly. The men exchanged shocked looks and were in disbelief. They had survived the attempt by the suspects to take over the house, but now a medical issue was putting Pedro in severe danger.

Three minutes later the man some had given their lives to protect was officially pronounced dead. It was a harrowing moment. So many resources had been exhausted to protect Pedro from killers and a medical complication actually killed him. Many of the law enforcement members stood with their heads down and shook their heads in disgust.

Medical staff worked on the team leader’s leg, but he demanded someone get him into contact with Doug Kovach.
There will be hell to pay
, he thought.

Chapter 24

Dix grabbed the nearest conference room and ushered his team inside. He noticed they were exhausted, but they had no time to rest.

“Ok guys, you aren’t going to believe this, but Felipe told me his brother, Jose Calderon, is our target.”

Sullivan jumped in, “Are you kidding me, he told you that?” Romero looked worried and Petersen was shocked.

“He sure did. It’s a dying declaration and supports the other information we have about Jose Calderon,” replied Dix. Based on Felipe’s dying words he told the team that Jose would be coming for the money because it belonged to someone in their family.

“I’ll take Petersen with me and we will get some surveillance teams on
El Diablo
and Jose’s home,” said Romero. He had no idea how this had unraveled so quickly, but he expected a phone call from Calderon any minute. He wrestled with what he would tell Calderon, because he saw an opportunity to take over if Calderon was apprehended or killed.

“Ok, once you have that set up, we need to meet up again and stick together as a team. I’d say you have about an hour to get the teams together, briefed, and put in place. My biggest concern is the warehouse and how to catch Jose with the money,” replied Dix.