Border Crossed - Chapter 7

Hours later, Taylor and Whitaker made it back to El Paso, exhausted when they finally got to their hotel. Unfortunately for them, that didn’t mean an end to their evening.

They both wanted to go home, but they couldn’t until they found Sullivan’s leak. Taylor had spent most of the drive back trying to convince Whitaker he was right, but she was still skeptical. He got it. Like most career law enforcement, she had a blind spot when it came to their own. He would have thought she’d have given that up after seeing so many people from her side of the line go bad, but she hadn’t. At least she’d accepted that Taylor had a sense about these things and let him take the lead, no matter how skeptical she was.

“I think we should start by going through records and logs to see if any other agency made recordings or had inadvertent intercepts,” Whitaker said, pulling out her laptop and sitting down on one of the beds. “That will take a day or so, and yes, I know it’s less likely to turn up anything than just going at each of the task force members, questioning everyone, but you know how people get in these things. The moment any kind of internal investigation starts, the walls start going up, resentment starts to build, and everything becomes that much harder. Doubly for us, since we’re still outsiders in their group.”

“Fine,” Taylor said, almost grunting the reply. “We can spend a day seeing if we find anything. We can even go through and narrow the suspects down to the most likely two or three people and start with them. Happy?”

“Yes. I’m glad to see you’ve grown,” Whitaker teased.

She wasn’t wrong. Several years ago, when they’d started working together, he would have just charged in like a bull in a china shop. Although he still preferred a more direct approach, he’d learned as much from her as she had from him. He accepted there were times that maybe, just maybe, there was a benefit to being more diplomatic.

While Whitaker booted up her laptop, Taylor went to stand by the window, watching the city which was more or less asleep this late at night. D.C. was no New York, but it wasn’t this quiet after ten. He was just thinking about whether he’d somehow become a city boy after the last several years of living in the Capitol when something caught his attention. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he’d come to trust his subconscious over the years and knew it did a better job of picking up things that were out of place than his conscious mind did. He’d gotten into the habit of continually scanning the area around him, not exactly focusing on anything, but letting his unconscious mind do the heavy lifting.

After a moment he caught what had triggered him. In a parking lot across the street, a group of men were walking away from two old beat-up cars. That, in and of itself, might not have been notable, since groups of men and old beat-up cars were common in border towns, even large ones like El Paso. But there was something about their hurried pace and how bunched up they were that had really drawn his attention. For a moment, that was all that was notable, and Taylor settled for tracking them as they crossed the street into the motel parking lot. Then one of the men swept back his jacket, revealing the grip of a handgun tucked into his waistband. They could be criminals looking for a room or there to rob the place, but Taylor never assumed his luck was that good.

“Whitaker,” he said, stepping back from the window and flicking off the light. “Six men, armed and moving fast, heading this way through the parking lot.”

They’d been in this position before, and Whitaker was a professional. She slid her laptop aside and stood up, pulling her weapon and holster from the end table where she’d set them down.

“How long do we have?” she asked.

“Half a minute, tops. They are just splitting up, three heading to the east stairwell, three heading to the west,” Taylor said as he backpedaled, putting his shoulder into the dresser and pushing it until it was flush against the desk, giving him enough room to crouch behind it.

Whitaker looked around the room for a moment, realized there wasn’t really any other good cover, and backed up into the bathroom. She crouched down so she was below normal height and leaned out, aiming her weapon at the door.

Now, they could only wait. If the men were coming for them, they’d be there any moment. It didn’t take long.

The door exploded inward, wood splintering as it was kicked open. Two figures appeared in the doorway, the first a broad-shouldered man who had smashed through the door. Right behind him was a thinner, younger man, eyes wide in surprise at the sight of Taylor and Whitaker ready for them. Before either could react, Whitaker and Taylor opened fire from their positions. Whitaker’s shot caught the first man in the neck, blood spraying as he collapsed backward into his partner. Taylor put two rounds into the second man’s chest, knocking him to the ground on top of the first.

The other men must have been just outside the door and witnessed what happened to their friends, because instead of charging in like the first pair, a hand appeared for just a moment, followed by a small, round object bouncing across the room.

Grenade.

Taylor reacted on instinct, grabbing Whitaker and tackling her off her feet into the bathtub behind her, his weight smashing her into the hard porcelain. The grenade exploded just as they landed. There was a deafening boom and the door frame splintered sending shards of wood and shrapnel ripping through the main room.

Protected only by the partial cover of the tub and the tiled bathroom walls, debris rained down over them, their ears ringing from the blast.

“We can’t stay in here,” Taylor half-yelled into Whitaker’s ear.

Taylor pushed himself up and grabbed Whitaker’s arm, pulling her behind him. If these guys were smart, they’d follow up after the explosion, quick and aggressive. If they were amateurs, they’d be hanging outside the room, waiting to see if anyone came out. Taylor was hoping for the second scenario, but he needed to move as if it was the first.

Just as they exited the bathroom, a third man appeared in the doorway, timidly leaning in. Amateurs it is, Taylor thought as he squeezed the trigger twice in rapid succession, dropping the assailant where he stood. Keeping low, Taylor hurried to the splintered door frame, pressing his back against the wall beside it.

Whitaker followed close behind, taking up position on the opposite side of the door. Peering through the gaping hole where the door once stood, Taylor spotted another armed man just a few steps down from their room. He angled his pistol through the opening and fired off a single shot, catching the man center mass.

Taylor glanced back at Whitaker with a nod and leaned out again, scanning for the last shooters, although he didn’t assume that more men hadn’t followed the first six. A barrage of gunfire erupted toward him as one of the men outside let loose. Taylor jerked back just in time, the bullets ricocheting off the door frame.

In response, Whitaker blindly fired several rounds out the broken window to provide cover. As soon as her gun clicked empty, Taylor popped back up, sighting in on the attacker as he exposed himself to return fire. Another shot, another assailant down.

Hearing someone running down the eastern stairwell, where he’d just shot the fifth gunman, Taylor moved forward to the railing, gesturing for Whitaker to watch his sides. Sure enough, the last shooter was sprinting across the parking lot back towards the beat-up cars the group had arrived in.

“Stop! FBI!” Taylor called out, aiming his weapon at the fleeing man.

It always felt weird to say that, like he was a character in the movies, but he didn’t particularly want to explain why he’d shot a guy in the back. He also didn’t want to let the guy get away, and the guy had too much of a head start for Taylor to catch him. Thankfully, the shooter made the decision for him.

The man spun around, raising his pistol towards the balcony. Taylor fired a single shot, catching him in the chest. The gunman crumpled to the pavement. Taylor scanned the parking lot, but it seemed like those six were the entirety of their attackers. Taylor had just started to turn to Whitaker when two black and white police cruisers came screeching into the lot, lights flashing.

Holstering his weapon and reaching for his credentials, Taylor said, “Locals.”

“This is going to be a mess,” Whitaker said, following his lead, and then calling out to the police officers, who were now pointing weapons at them. “We’re FBI.”

It took over an hour to get everything settled. Explanations, calls to supervisors, more explanations, and yet more phone calls were needed before they were finally allowed to look over their crime scene. Even in a city with El Paso’s crime rate, six dead in a motel shootout, which included a grenade, was enough to get people out of bed.

Whitaker finally managed to get some agents from the local office to come out and take over the investigation, keeping enough of the local cops on the scene to deal with the quickly growing crowd of spectators. Including several vans from the local news stations, who had their cameras pointed toward the shut-down parking lot.

“Let’s go take a look at the physical evidence and talk to the coroner,” Whitaker said, turning toward the building where the coroner’s van had just pulled up.

“I was there already, I don’t need to rehash the scene,” he said, looking around the parking lot and the police officers gathered along one edge. “I’m going to go talk to some of the locals, see if I can find anyone who recognizes these guys.”

“Why? The coroner will have that for us in a little bit. Once he does his first pass, he’ll be able to check the bodies for IDs and, if they don’t have any, fingerprint them.”

“That takes time, and I don’t know if we need to wait. These guys weren’t pros, and they didn’t look like they just came across the border. I’m betting they’re hired muscle, local boys. Which means they’ve likely done work like this before, enforcing or whatever. Probably had a few run-ins with the cops, who might just recognize them.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll push them to get prints and IDs processed anyway, just in case you strike out.”

“Fine,” Taylor said, turning and walking toward the local cops milling about. “Take pictures of each of them and text them to me.”

The men stopped talking as Taylor walked up, eyeing him up and down warily. It hadn’t taken him long to learn there wasn’t a lot of love lost between locals and feds, which he was counted as, even if he was just a consultant. While it was a pain to deal with, at least he got the better end of the deal since most of the locals knew who got priority in these situations, and would eventually answer his questions.

“Evening, gentlemen,” Taylor said in a friendly tone. “I was hoping some of you might recognize a few of our dead friends over there.”

He nodded towards the sheet-covered bodies lined up near the coroner’s van. The officers glanced at each other but said nothing.

“Look, I know you guys don’t like us, and we’ve screwed up your night with this whole thing, but the faster we can ID these guys, the faster we can get out of here and let you go back to doing your job,” Taylor said more matter-of-factly, dropping the nice guy routine. “I know these guys were hired locally, and I’m hoping you’ve had run-ins with one or two of them before. At least enough to tell me a name.”

“Nope,” a gruff sergeant said, barely sparing a glance toward the building.

“What about you,” Taylor said to one of the younger men in the huddle. “Come across any of our dead friends over there, maybe in bar fights or a domestic?”

This guy, squinting in the direction of the bullet-riddled building, said, “Can’t say I have. But you should talk to Delgado. He works over here more than the rest of us and has been around for a while.”

He pointed at an officer standing near the manager’s office. Taylor gave the somewhat helpful junior a nod and headed in Delgado’s direction.

“Excuse me, Officer Delgado?” Taylor interrupted. “I’m hoping you might recognize one of the men killed tonight. Your friends over there said you work this area. There’s a chance these guys are locals and, given their trade, I’m hoping they’ve been in some bar fights or picked up on a domestic.”

He eyed Taylor but said, “Maybe. Let me take a look.”

Taylor handed over his phone with the quick photos of the dead men Whitaker had sent over. Delgado studied each one, finally pausing at the third picture, the one of the guy who’d died in the parking lot trying to run away.

“I know this one. Tuco Salamanca, street thug, worked for some local dealers, and a general idiot. His rap sheet is just petty crimes and intimidation, nothing like this.”

“You’re sure?” Taylor asked, genuinely surprised his plan had worked.

Despite what he said to Whitaker, he was only about twenty percent sure the locals would recognize anyone. He just didn’t want to stand around, twiddling his thumbs while waiting for the coroner to get done.

“Yeah. I’ve arrested him before, a couple of times, and he always was a pain in the ass. Never met a guy who thought about consequences less than Tuco. He’d fight a cop as quick as anyone else.”

“Good, that helps. Thanks, Officer,” he said, taking his phone back and heading toward the motel.

Taylor spotted Whitaker by the coroner’s van, talking to one of the assistants.

“I’ve got a name for one of them,” Taylor said as he approached.

Whitaker looked up, eyebrows raised. “Already? Who?”

“Tuco Salamanca, a local thug, like I said. One of the officers arrested him a few times and recognized him.”

“Okay, good. I still don’t understand why the cartels would hire someone like this instead of using their own people, but at least it’s a place to start.”

“I doubt they were sent by the cartels. We haven’t been here long enough to piss them off, at least not directly, and there hasn’t been enough time since our exposing the tunnel and getting back here for them to set this up. If I had to guess, this has to do with the leak.”

“The leak?”

“Yeah, and I bet this was taken on his, or I guess her, own initiative. If the leak called the cartel and told them they’d just lost their tunnel, and that we were behind it, we’d have to assume the cartel’s first piece of business was to get some kind of revenge on us, even though the damage was already done. I don’t put it beyond those guys to want to get revenge, but putting a hit on feds in the US because of a grudge doesn’t pay, and they have bigger problems to deal with getting the other end of the tunnel cleaned out and saving what they can before the Mexican government shuts it down. But, assuming they were the ones to come for us, it would require the leak to sneak away and call them, for them to decide to come at us, call their people here, their people go out and hire some local thugs, and then send those guys at us. The timeline is very tight, and there wouldn’t be any rush, let alone need to use locals. No, the leak makes a lot more sense.”

“So whoever this is, looked up some local thugs, hired them over the phone to come kill a couple of feds?”

“I doubt the thugs knew who we were, or even that we were armed. Not the way they came at us or the way the one guy ran for it as soon as things turned hairy. If I had to guess, the leak called someone he knew and told them, ‘hey, I need you to send guys to kill these two people.’ Which only requires the leak to know one middleman, not any of the actual locals. Give it a few hours for the middleman to scrape up whoever he could and send them at us. Still tight, but doable.”

“Because with Sullivan assigning us to figure out who the leak is, it meant they needed to move fast, before we could figure anything out.”

“This guy isn’t a planner. He reacts. We’ve seen it in the bombings. If he was a planner, he would have noticed he was inadvertently drawing a circle around the area he was trying to keep hidden. As soon as we were given the job of finding him, he reacted, not considering the danger of what would happen if he failed.”

“Okay. I buy it. So where do we go from here?”

“Well, he made another mistake. Hiring locals, he’s tied himself down, giving us a lead to follow. We might have found him digging through records for evidence or looking into each member of the team, but this … this is a real lead. We follow Salamanca to the middleman, and the middleman to our leak. Done and done.”

“All right, let’s get started then,” Whitaker said, pulling out her phone.

This was what she was good at, digging through law enforcement databases, pulling records. Taylor wasn’t computer illiterate, but he’d spent too many years in the field and this just wasn’t his area of expertise. He could do it, but it would take him five times longer than it would take her to find what they needed. Instead, he waited patiently. This was one of the things that made them work so well together. They each had their own areas of expertise and had no problem letting the other one take the lead.

Within a few minutes, Whitaker looked up from her phone and said, “I’ve got a few names of people he’s been arrested with, and I’ve also got a home address. And a wife.”

“Let’s talk to the wife first,” Taylor said. “She’ll be easier to motivate to talk than someone who’s been through the system, and she’s more likely to know if he talked to anyone tonight. That will be faster than bouncing from accomplice to accomplice, building a web that eventually connects back to whoever is the leak’s contact.”

“Works for me,” she said.