John Gilstrap - Damage Control

He crossed through the kitchen to his den, which doubled as a home office on the occasions when he just couldn’t bring himself to make the drive from Reston to Langley, and laid his briefcase on the floor at the edge of his desk.

The curtains and blinds were closed throughout the house, as they would remain until this terrible business in Mexico was resolved. Munro had received no specific intel that Hernandez had dispatched hit squads to the United States, but the man certainly had the resources to do so, and the temperament to make it happen. For the next few days, his would be the life of an undercover operator, reminding him of his early years with the Clandestine Service. He would stay away from windows, avoid prolonged exposure out in the open, and drive different routes to work, traveling at unpredictable hours.

The point wasn’t to be bulletproof, but rather to make it as difficult as possible for the bad guys to execute whatever plan they might have. Evasion, then, combined with the protection that Sjogren’s people provided, should give him an edge until this mess stabilized.

Should. Far from a guarantee, but perhaps that’s the way things should be. He was in charge of an operation that hadn’t gone well, and now pipers needed to be paid.

As Munro reentered the kitchen, he turned on the broiler on the wall oven and then walked to the refrigerator to retrieve the filet mignon that he had set in there this morning to allow it to defrost. As he lifted it, he knew from touch alone that the six-ounce filet was ready to cook. It was exactly six ounces, too-306 calories-specially cut and packaged by the butcher at the Whole Foods up the street. Throw in a cup of corn at 183 calories, and he had a healthy meal that wouldn’t add an ounce to the reading on the scale. He hadn’t exceeded his budget of 1,750 calories a single time in the past ten years.

Discipline and precision.

He’d just removed the steak from its plastic wrapping when his BlackBerry buzzed on his hip-a phone call, number blocked. He answered it. “Mr. Abrams. Do you have a name for me, or are you just calling to pester?”

“As much friggin’ fun as it is to pull your chain, Trev, I’m looking forward to the moment when I don’t have to chat you up at all anymore.”

“At last,” Munro said. “We have found common ground. Do you have a name or not?”

“Nope, no name,” Sjogren said. “But I do have a plan.”

Munro’s heart skipped a beat. Finally, some progress.

Sjogren continued, “My guy at the AG’s office says that they’re smuggling the snitch out of Mexico in the next day or two.”

“Through where?”

“He doesn’t know specifically, but somewhere in Ciudad Juarez.”

Munro’s bubble of hope burst. “That’s hardly helpful,” he said. He pulled a package of corn from the freezer, then pulled a measuring cup from the cabinet over the stove.

“I think it’s more helpful than you recognize,” Sjogren countered. “The only reason my guy knows what he knows is because the FBI is pulling strings from a really high level to grease the skids for this thing. What he told me was that the snitch isn’t coming alone. Specifically, she’s coming in with three fugitives. Does that ring any bells for you?”

Munro sighed. Everything with this man was such a tug-of-war. Why couldn’t he just “Did you say three fugitives?”

“There you go, Trev,” Sjogren said with a laugh. “Now you’re catching on. Care to guess what the names of the fugitives are?”

Hope bloomed again. Much larger than before. “Don’t toy with me, Mr. Abrams.”

“I got a Tristan Wagner, a Leon Harris, and a Richard Lerner.”

Munro coughed out a laugh before he could stop it. “I don’t understand how you can know the names of the fugitives and not know the names of the informer,” he said. “We need to know them all if we’re going to stop them.”

“No, we don’t,” Sjogren argued. “All we need to do is find your commando buddies and follow them. They’ll take us to the snitch. Then all we have to do is take them all out.”

“You say that as if it’s a simple thing to do. Have you any idea where Harris and his friends are?”

“Actually, I do. They had a bit of a firefight. They won, of course. But they couldn’t have gotten very far because the Mexican Army is out in force, looking for them. They even know what vehicle to look for. I’ve already talked with the Army commander down there, and he’s ordering his troops to sight and follow.”

“We can’t let them get through,” Munro said. The true ramifications of this new discovery hit him in a rush, eliciting an audible gasp. “My God, this means they know everything. We know they’ve connected the dots to the cathedral, and because they’re hooking up with this informer, that means they’ve connected it back to the drugs and Hernandez.”

“That’s the way I see it,” Sjogren said. “But there’s light at the end of that tunnel, too, if you look hard enough for it. Apparently, they need this guy’s testimony to make any kind of case. Otherwise, they’d be all over Hernandez, and after that, they’d be all over you.”

“You need to get a name,” Munro pressed. “We cannot wait for Harris to hook up with the informer. We need to take the informer out first.”

“I don’t think anybody disagrees with you, Sport, but weren’t you listening? We don’t know who the hell she is. Your butt buddy’s got himself a hell of an operation down there. I imagine it could be any one of hundreds of people. It’s not like they’re salt-of-the-earth types like me and you.”

Munro pulled the phone away from his ear and let it dangle by his side for a few seconds while he collected his thoughts. Part of having a disciplined mind was the ability to control the flow of information. This situation was at the proverbial tipping point, equally capable of going well for him or turning into a complete catastrophe. Progress one way or the other would be entirely dependent on the decisions he made in the next few minutes.

And then the decisions to be made after those. And after those. On and on for God only knew how long it would take. Munro needed to embrace this as a siege, not a As a bell rang in his head, Munro brought the phone back to his ear.

“-did you go? For God’s sake, Trev-”

“I’m here,” Munro said. “I had to put you down so I could think. Tell me where this shootout was. The one the Harris and his team won.”

“A few hours north of the exchange site,” Sjogren said. “North and east. I don’t have a name of the town. Hell, I don’t even know if there is a town. That’s still pretty remote country.”

“So they were still in the jungles?”

“Oh, hell yeah.”

“And who was killed in the shootout?”

“What, you want names?”

Munro rolled his eyes. “Heaven forbid,” he said. “We all know that names are beyond you.”

“Hey, screw you, Trev.”

“Of course I don’t need names. I don’t know these people. But who were they? Bystanders? Local cops? Army?”

“Oh, they were definitely Army. Why does that matter?”

This is what happened when you’re forced to deal with people of inferior intellect. You had to explain everything. “It matters because Harris knows he’s being looked for. He knows that the Army is involved, and he may very well know that they will recognize his vehicle.”

“How would he know that?”

“I would assume, were I he, that the group who spotted them would have called it in on the radio. Isn’t that in fact how your Army friends know the identity of the vehicle?”

Sjogren’s response was more guttural than verbal. Having some of his shit fed back to him apparently disagreed with him.