Border Crossed - Chapter 13

Taylor stepped over Matthews’ body, a dark stain still slowly spreading across the man’s shirt, and looked out the window. Ruiz and the military seemed to have things well in hand. The firefight had ended, and the Mexican soldiers were rounding up the few cartel members that remained alive, cuffing them and shoving them to the ground as they waited for transport.

Whitaker, who apparently finished with the guys she’d been exchanging bullets with, burst through the door behind him, weapon raised, only to pull up short as she saw Taylor and no hostiles. Looking down at Matthews, she grimaced.

“There goes our lead,” she said.

“Yeah, I know. He didn’t leave me a lot of choices.”

“Yeah, I figured. Still, it leaves us in a tight place.”

Downstairs, they could hear the thudding of boots as Ruiz and the soldiers burst into the main house, probably looking for anyone else they might be able to capture and any information they could gather on the cartel. They didn’t care about stolen classified material, but they cared a lot about the cartels and the violence of their operations.

Watching out the window, Taylor saw two soldiers escorting the man in the fancy suit who’d climbed out of the helicopter, throwing him to his knees alongside the rest of the survivors. That would be a feather in Ruiz’s cap.

Behind him, Whitaker started digging through drawers, under the bed, and anywhere else she might find something useful. Taylor wasn’t confident that Matthews would just leave a slip of paper lying around that said ‘Mole’ and give them the name they needed.

For the next twenty minutes, Taylor, Whitaker, and a handful of officers Ruiz loaned them dug through half the rooms in the upstairs wing where they found Matthews. While there was obvious contraband and even intel that Ruiz found interesting, so far, there was nothing helpful for Taylor and Whitaker.

In a side bedroom, smaller than the rest, two doors from where he found Matthews, Taylor spotted a nondescript black backpack tucked inside a closet, with clothes and a larger suitcase. Over the last twenty minutes, and watching the cartel guys walking around, including the fancy-dressed man from the chopper, Taylor had gotten a sense of their style. These guys were fancy; even their gunmen wore khakis, loafers, and silk shirts. This … this wasn’t flash. He’d seen its like before, though. In a dozen colors and a dozen styles, but all sharing the same qualities. Sturdy, light, and portable. Guys in the teams, guys in his ODA, and Taylor himself had carried bags just like them when they weren’t in the field. Go bags they could grab and dash out the door with.

This was Matthews’ bag. Taylor was sure of it.

“Got something,” he called out as he set the bag on the dresser in the room.

Whitaker and Ruiz came into the room just as Taylor unzipped it and pulled out a rugged laptop, the laptop was the type designed to withstand being thrown around and treated roughly. Ruiz’s leg was bandaged and he was limping along using a crutch.

“Shouldn’t you be in an ambulance headed to a hospital somewhere?” Taylor said.

“And let someone else get the credit for this? Are you out of your mind?” Ruiz said, still sounding a bit pained, but not too much. “Besides, it was a through and through, just got meat. They want me to go get it cleaned out and stitched, but it can wait for a few hours. I want to make sure we get everything we can and no one screws this up. If we play this right, I might be able to shut Vargas down not just here, but in Sonora too. You guys might have done me a big favor. This is going to get me promoted.”

“It’s your life,” Taylor said, turning, setting the laptop on the dresser next to the backpack and booting it up.

For a moment, he hoped it would just open to the desktop, maybe with a document opened on it saying, ‘Here’s my evil plan,’ but he wasn’t that lucky. Matthews was far from a tech guy, and Taylor doubted he’d put any serious encryption on it, but he knew enough that the password field blinked at Taylor after it finished booting up.

“We’re going to have to haul this back to the techs in El Paso, aren’t we?” Taylor asked.

It wasn’t a long way away, but the raid wouldn’t be a secret for long, and eventually, the mole would learn that Matthews was dead. As soon as that happened, they’d lose him. The guy would shut everything down and play by the book for a while, maybe even a long while, until he felt safe enough that any investigation was over. Then he’d go right back to finding someone else to buy whatever he could push out the back door.

“The rest of my team should be arriving now to tear this place apart, and I have a few computer guys, just in case we found any here. I could have them take a look at it for you,” Ruiz said.

“Sure,” Taylor said.

Technically, this was their scene and anything found here was theirs. Taylor and Whitaker were there as guests and had no ability to do anything on Mexican soil. If Ruiz wanted to just keep the laptop, he could. But, they had a lot of goodwill with the captain right now, and he’d been stand-up so far, so Taylor decided to trust him.

Ruiz yelled something out the door in Spanish and a minute later one of his officers came into the room. More Spanish sent the laptop off with the new arrival to, Taylor assumed, wherever his techs were squirreled away.

With their part of the search over, Taylor, Whitaker, and a crutch-bound Ruiz headed outside. Ruiz found a chair on the patio in front of the villa with the least number of bullet holes, and carefully lowered himself into it, presumably satisfied with directing the investigation from there.

Outside, there were three vans, four or five police cruisers, and even an armored car jammed in the compound courtyard and out the wide driveway gates. They made it outside just in time to see most of the survivors being loaded into one of the vans with metal mesh over the windows, although Taylor couldn’t help but notice that the Vargas lieutenant was being loaded into a squad car.

“Keeping that one for yourself,” Taylor said, pointing at the car.

“Hell, yes. If anyone gets anything out of him, it’s going to be me.”

That was a difference Taylor could appreciate between the Mexican and US ways of handling cases. He knew Whitaker wouldn’t agree, citing all kinds of studies and reasons why a more systematized and professional process was better, allowing agents, interrogators, and whatever else to specialize and become good at their job, but he’d seen too many things slip through the cracks to believe the US system was some paragon of efficiency.

There was something to be said for a man taking personal charge of a case and walking it through the system to make sure what needed to happen, happened. They shot the shit with Ruiz for maybe thirty more minutes as bodies were rolled into a larger freezer truck to head to whatever Juarez had for a coroner, with the occasional interruption for Ruiz to yell at one of his men who seemed about ready to overlook some fine point or another.

Eventually, a man in a grey jumpsuit came wandering up to the patio, holding Matthews’ laptop under his arm.

“Anything?” Taylor asked.

The man looked to Ruiz and, when the captain nodded, said, “Yes.”

Taylor didn’t know if the guy was a jerk, or just didn’t speak much English, but either way, he handed the laptop to Taylor, who took it and handed it to Whitaker. She was better at this than he was.

Balancing it on a railing, she opened it up and, as promised, it was on the desktop, no lock screen in sight.

“Here’s hoping that was his only security,” Whitaker said as she started moving her finger along the touchpad, opening folders and windows.

“Probably is. Matthews was never a computer guy.”

After digging through files and not seeing much, she opened an application Taylor wasn’t familiar with and confirmed Taylor’s assertion that Matthews wasn’t a computer guy.

“Why would you have a secure, end-to-end encrypted mail program and just leave it logged in?”

“I told you,” Taylor said. “This is good for us, though, right?”

“Yep,” she said, and got quiet for a moment, other than the odd ‘hmm.’ “Well, our inside man is smarter than Matthews. Looking at these headers, he’s covering his tracks well. There’s still a chance our computer guy can track him down using what we have here, but I’m not seeing anything obvious.”

“How about any new information that helps us now?” Taylor prodded.

“Patience. Patience. We do this step by step, or stuff gets missed,” she said, pointedly ignoring the eye roll Taylor gave her in response. “Yep, Matthews has all his messages on here. Our mystery guy is very straight to the point and I’m not seeing much to ID him in the messages, but I do see a problem. Matthews got a response this morning about a new shipment. It’s scheduled to ship out of Galveston and destined for Vera Cruz. I guess the border got a little too hot for anything else.”

“More stealth parts?” Taylor asked.

“Ummm … no. He isn’t super specific, really dances around the point, but this sounds like a weapons system of some kind.”

Taylor moved to look over her shoulder. She wasn’t wrong about the inside man. Every response from him was as few words as possible, and often just times, dates, yes or no. Matthews’ side of the conversation was, at least, more verbose. Taylor didn’t follow it completely, but he did recognize a few abbreviations.

“Yeah, I think so. That looks Navy, I think, but I seem to remember something like that,” he said, pointing at one of the acronyms. “A tracking system, if I remember correctly. There was a girl I knew who worked in intel who would talk when she drank. I never paid much attention, but it rings a bell.”

“Okay, we need to get this to our people and have them start working on this. If there is something like that, it’s going to be a big deal.”

“Wait,” Taylor said. “This shipment is in like two days. There’s no way anyone will be able to track anything before that happens. A port is a big place and this might be as small as a circuit board. We need more, and once word of Matthews’ death gets out, we’re going to be screwed. There won’t be another shipment after this one, that’s for sure. Our best bet is to find out the details of this shipment and catch them in the act. Right?”

“How, exactly, are you proposing we do that?” Whitaker asked.

“I have an idea,” Taylor said, turning to Ruiz. “Ruiz, buddy, pal … Do you think there’s any way we can talk to your fancy prisoner, the one in the squad car, for just a few minutes?”

“I need him good for my interrogation,” Ruiz said, eyeing Taylor cautiously.

“I promise I won’t leave a mark on him and I won’t ask him a thing about the Vargas Cartel, or at least, not specifically about the cartel. I only want to know about what Matthews was up to. Just … give me a little leeway with what I’m going to do.”

Considering it for a moment, Ruiz called out to one of his men in Spanish, pointing at Taylor and then to the other car. Assuming that was permission, especially as the officer started walking toward the patrol car, Taylor headed to meet him there, leaving Whitaker to continue digging through the laptop.

Jerking the car door open, Taylor said, “On your feet, prick.”

The man’s eyes widened as Taylor grabbed his collar, hauling him from the car and slamming him against the door.

“We’re going to have a chat.”

Taylor had seen an empty shed across the compound and now dragged the man toward it. Ruiz’s officer was following them and Taylor could see the man glance back several times at Ruiz, who must be concerned about what Taylor was going to do. Most of the FBI supervisors Taylor had worked with, aside from Whitaker, wouldn’t have the stomach to let him try something like this, but he hoped Ruiz continued to be the practical guy he’d shown himself to be so far. Pulling the shed door open, which mostly contained gardening supplies and things to repair damage to the gravel drive, he gave him a hard push forcing him inside. Taylor followed close on his heels, shoving the man against the wall and waving for Ruiz’s officer to close the door behind them.

“You had Matthews doing more than guarding the secret of your tunnel. What do you know about his supplier? The guy bringing in all the stuff we found in your warehouse?”

“Fuck you, puta,” the man said, his lip curling.

Taylor drove a fist into his gut. The man doubled over, retching.

“Let’s try again. The supplier.”

Gasping, the man shook his head. Taylor grabbed his pinky and bent it back hard, stopping just before the point of snapping it, and pushed him to his knees. He could see the officer getting a little antsy by the door. He was pushing this a little far, but he needed the man to talk.

“I left a trail of your guys dead across the border. Do you think I’d hesitate to mess you up? Last warning, and then I start removing parts.”

“Matthews never told us details,” the man said. “Only that he had a contact who could get things from the Americans. We did not know who.”

“But you were still going to kill him once you got what you needed.”

“It hadn’t been decided yet. He failed … but without knowing who his man was, we had little choice but to keep him.”

“What were you doing with all of that?”

“Selling it,” the man said, looking up at Taylor like he was an idiot. “What do you think we were doing with it?”

“Selling it to who?”

“Whoever. Whoever wanted it.”

Taylor considered this. It made more sense and explained why they had the stuff in the first place. Even stealthed, the border had a lot of eyes on it, and a drone like that wouldn’t go undetected for long, so using it for their drug smuggling had always been a questionable guess as to what they were doing with it. Middle-manning it to other countries or terrorists … that made a lot more sense.

Releasing him, Taylor took a few steps back and said to the officer, “You can have him back now.”

The cartel man in the nice suit glared daggers at him as Taylor walked out of the shed, leaving him to the officer. Not that Taylor cared. This guy was going into a Mexican prison for the rest of his life, which was a far cry from being in an American one.

When he got back to the porch, Ruiz said, “I thought you were going to talk to him in the car.”

The question didn’t come out with any heat and he hadn’t moved from his spot in the chair, so he couldn’t have been that worried.

“I needed it to look good. Don’t worry, I didn’t leave a scratch on him and didn’t talk to him about anything to do with drugs,” Taylor said, before turning to Whitaker. “The cartel’s just selling all the stuff Matthews gets for them. After the whole tunnel thing fell apart, I think they wanted to get rid of him, but Matthews was smart and never told them who his supplier was.”

“There goes that hope,” Whitaker said.

“No, that’s good. I didn’t think he would, but I needed to be sure. If Matthews didn’t tell them who this guy was, there’s no way they could go behind our backs and let the guy know Matthews is dead. As long as Ruiz keeps this under wraps, doesn’t mention an American was killed in this, we should have a window.”

“I won’t say anything,” Ruiz said.

“A window for what?” Whitaker asked. “When Matthews stops messaging, his contact is going to get suspicious.”

“What if Matthews doesn’t stop messaging? What if Matthews gave him a reason to be at the exchange? Expose himself?”

“What?” Whitaker asked. “That’s risky. If he smells something off, he’ll disappear before we can get him. Wouldn’t it be better to see if our techs can track him first?”

“You just said yourself; once Matthews stops responding, this guy is going to get suspicious and shut everything down. We don’t have time to wait and hope we stumble across something. What do we have to lose? This might be our only shot to find him.”

Whitaker considered Taylor for a long moment, clearly weighing the options. Not that they really had any. This was the only thing Taylor could think of that might work.

“Yeah. Man, it’s thin and if we mess this up, they’re going to blame us for not waiting, but you’re right. We’re going to lose him anyway.”

“You know, you’re becoming more like me every day,” Taylor said, smiling at her.

“Shut up.”

“Fine. So how do we do this?”

Whitaker thought for a moment and said, “Has to be the money, right? I mean, this guy has to be watching the news and knows how crazy things have gotten out here, right? So we have Matthews tell him his clients, which is what he always referred to the cartel guys as, are getting nervous and hesitating about buying anything else. Especially since this isn’t just stealth paneling anymore. A targeting system is a whole new thing. Matthews tells him his clients require him at the exchange to make sure they’re getting the real thing before they’ll pay. I’ve looked at the numbers they’re talking about. This was going to be the big payday, and I bet Matthews was still only with the cartel because he wanted this one last payday. He had to know how thin the ice was out here.”

“I like it,” Taylor said.

“You write it. Matthews was more like you than me.”

Switching places, Taylor started typing out the email, trying to write like he thought Matthews would. He needed just enough panic in it to seed the idea that things had really gone to shit, and the supplier needed to be there. Over his shoulder, Whitaker offered alterations to the wording.

“We should at least call Joe and let him know what we’re doing before we send this,” she said as they finished writing the message.

“And have them micromanage this? Do you think whatever team of FBI super nerds Joe digs up to second guess our work is going to do a better job? Or even do anything other than slow this down? The bridge was a week and a half ago, and I’m betting news of the tunnel starts getting out today or tomorrow. If we want to make this seem like a panicked move and sell it, we need to do it now, not two days from now.”

Whitaker frowned, but said, “Yeah. Fine. Send it.”

They were out on a limb, which she hated, but Taylor knew he was right about this. The little whoosh after hitting send was kind of anticlimactic, considering the importance of what was happening. Closing the lid on the laptop, Taylor turned to Ruiz.

“Do you have any issue with us taking the laptop back with us?” Taylor asked.

“No, that’s fine,” he said, giving a small, dismissive wave. “I’ll have one of my men drive you back across the border immediately. I’ll also try to keep things quiet about your friend, although I’m not sure how long I can do that.”

“Good man,” Taylor said, reaching out to shake Ruiz’s hand. “It’s been a pleasure working with you. Get that leg looked after, and I hope you get your promotion.”

“The pleasure was mine,” Ruiz replied, returning the handshake firmly. “You take care of your business, and if you can arrange more operations like this, you’ll always be welcome in Mexico. You’ve been very good for my career.”