Both vehicles are holding to schedule. Alpha is only two hours from its destination, and Beta collected its cargo and left the lagoon twenty-three minutes ago, its crew chief phoning in on arrival there and again on departure. The Beta is moving at a snail’s pace on what the screener knows is a difficult and circuitous backcountry trail that terminates at a junction road, but once the Beta arrives at that junction its progress will speed up and it will easily make the Irapuato delivery on schedule.
But now the Beta stops moving.
The screener looks at his wristwatch and enters the time on a clipboard form. An unscheduled stop by a company vehicle on business is always a matter for immediate attention. A flat tire or engine trouble can throw a delivery far off schedule, and a crew chief is obliged to call the screener about any such problem at once so that the company can dispatch speedy assistance if required and inform the awaiting party of the delay—and to dispel any worry about a hijacking. However, a crew chief isn’t required to call if he’s making an unscheduled stop shorter than three minutes, as for a roadside piss. The screener shifts his attention by turns from the unmoving blip to his wristwatch to the data sheet, which tells him the Beta vehicle is a new Dodge Ram pickup with less than four thousand miles on the odometer when it left the capital early this morning. When the third minute elapses he calls the crew chief’s satellite phone. He lets it buzz and buzz without an answer for almost a full minute before he picks upanother phone and calls the tracking manager to notify him of the stalled truck and its lack of response.
The manager says to keep trying to connect with the crew and to advise him right away if he makes contact or if the Beta resumes movement without having replied. Then the manager makes a phone call of his own. Within minutes of receiving it, a fire team of five armed men in a Ford F-250 truck races out of Ciudad Victoria, almost a hundred miles from the Ram’s location but the company’s nearest station to it.
Two hours later the fire team leader phones the tracking manager from the scene of the attack and tells him of the shot-up truck, the slaughtered crew, the stolen cargo. The hijackers must’ve made it back to the main highway before the fire team exited from it because the team spotted no vehicles on the dirt road. The manager tells the team leader to hold on while he relays the finding to the Director.
Awakened by the call, the Director, Rodrigo Wolfe—whose standing order is that he be notified without delay of any hijack, never mind the hour—listens to the manager’s report without interrupting him, not even on hearing that the ambushed crew was that of his young cousin Alberto Delmonte. He commends the manager for his prompt action and concise account and instructs him to tell the fire team at the scene to convey the bodies to the Nuestra Señora del Cielo medical clinic in Mexico City and to have the Ram towed to the nearest junkyard and converted to scrap. The manager knows that the medical clinic is owned by the company and it will see to the proper but covert disposition of the deceased.
Tell the fire team to say nothing about the hijacking, not to anyone, Rodrigo adds. And tell the screener nothing other than he was right to call you and everything has been taken care of.
Using a different phone, Rodrigo then calls his brother Mateo, the chief of security, and tells him what’s happened.
You notified the Zetas? Mateo asks.
Not yet. They’re going to be unhappy.
Has to be an inside job, Mateo says. Somebody tipped the hijackers to the transfer. Somebody of ours or somebody with Charlie, but somebody who knew about tonight’s run and who’s familiar with the trail to Boca Larga.
Rodrigo sighs and says, The only people of ours who knew those things are you and me, Alberto and his crew, the tracking manager, and the screener. Neither the screener nor the manager knew what the load was. But as you know, Alberto always told his crew what they were carrying.
Yeah. Showed he trusts them, he always said. Makes them even more loyal. Can’t say I entirely agreed with him, but I let him run his crew his own way.
On the Texas side, Rodrigo says, the only ones who knew about the run are Charlie Fortune and the delivery crew. At least that’s the way he’s always operated. I’ll find out if he did anything different this time. Still, the odds are that the inside guy is one of ours.
Either somebody in Alberto’s crew, Mateo says, or somebody who used to work the Boca Larga run in the past and who found out about Alberto’s run tonight. Whoever he is, you think he tipped the Zetas? They steal their own buy, and when we tell them it’s been ripped they act all pissed and demand their money back?
No. Scheme like that’s beneath them. There are a lot easier ways for them to get money than by risking a breach with their best supplier of weapons. For damn sure, though, it was a professional crew. The fire team said the vehicle was shot to hell, every man in it with multiple wounds and every pistol still in its holster, that’s how quick and hard they got hit. Automatic weapons, 5.56 black-tip rounds, diagonal enfilade from both sides. Fast and slick. They did the hit, ripped the cargo, got the fuck out. And as far as the Zetas are concerned, I can tell you that they’re not going to want their money back, they’re going to want what they paid for. We either recover that cargo for them very damn soon or order a replacement of it from Charlie and eat the cost.
Yeah, that’s how it’s looking, Mateo says. I’ll start nosing around about the other pickup crews right away. There can’t be too many guys among them who’ve worked Boca Larga before Alberto’s crew took it over. If the tip to the hijackers was from one of our guys, I’ll know his name before the sun comes up. On the off chance he’s a Texan, Charlie will root him out pretty fast, too. We find the insider, we’ll find out who did the hijack, I’ll run their asses down and get the goods back. If they still got them.
There’s a plan. Get on it. I’ll call Charlie.
Charlie Fortune Wolfe awakens to the vibration of the cell phone under the corner of his pillow. The riverside night is still and clammy, ringing with frogs, the screened windows are black under the dense overhang of trees. The red numerals of the bedside clock radio read 1:46. He sees that the caller is his cousin Rodrigo Wolfe.
“Rigo. What is it?”
Rodrigo tells him, speaking in English.
“Alberto?” Charlie says. “Ah, Jesus . . .”
In response to Rigo’s question, Charlie tells him the only ones who knew about the run’s cargo or schedule were himself and the crew.
“Who’s the chief on it?”
“Eddie Gato.”
“I still haven’t met him,” Rodrigo says. “Frank and Rudy I know, but Eddie not at all. Alberto mentioned him many times. Close cousin, right?”
“Right. Been working with me three years and been my Boca Larga man since last year. I broke him in on that run myself. Listen, Rigo, I know what you’re wondering, so I’ll tell you right now—Eddie wouldn’t sell us. Neither would any of his crew. Those guys have been with me for years. And there couldn’t have been anything odd about the transfer or Eddie would’ve clued me, but he called in an all clear after the drop. If somebody’d been holding a gun on him, he would’ve used a different code