John Gilstrap: Damage Control

“Can’t happen fast enough for me,” Boxers growled.

Jonathan’s earbud popped, startling him. “Scorpion, this is Mother Hen. There’s a problem. A big one.”

Jonathan exchanged looks with Boxers, whose radio carried the same traffic as his. The law of averages mandated that something start going his way. He pressed his transmit button. “Go ahead.”

“SkysEye is picking up heat signatures from people gathered around your first-stage exfil site.”

A big problem indeed. “I need more than that, Mother Hen. What are you telling me?”

From the backseat: “Mother Hen? Who the hell is that?”

“I think I count ten people,” she replied. “Maybe eight, maybe twelve. With the four-minute refresh rate, it’s hard to tell. It looks like they’re setting up an ambush around the vehicles.”

Boxers brought the Toyota to an abrupt halt. “We’re less than half a mile away,” he said, answering Jonathan’s unasked question.

“Less than half a mile from what?” asked Tristan. “What’s happening?” He couldn’t hear the radio traffic, but apparently he could read body language.

It was official now: everything about this mission had come unzipped. And whoever was pulling on the zipper was damn good at his job.

Jonathan said, “Stand by, Mother Hen.” To Tristan, he said, “Stay put. Big Guy, let’s chat outside.”

They exited their respective doors and joined up behind the trunk. “Somebody’s gonna die,” Boxers said. “A trap? Somebody set a trap? Actually, that’s two traps. In less than a half hour. What the hell’s goin’ on, Dig?”

Jonathan’s mind screamed to find an answer. Whatever was going on, the perpetrators had jammed them up big time. Jonathan and Boxers had no legal authority to be where they were in the first place, and they’d just left a field littered with bodies. That in itself wasn’t a big deal, provided they could get out of the country quickly. They’d stashed a Gulfstream G550 corporate jet at the hacienda of Rudolfo Gutierrez for just that purpose, but to use it, they had to get to it, and for that they needed the stashed SUV.

“They knew that we’d need the vehicles,” Jonathan said, “and they knew precisely where we’d stashed them. How is that possible?”

“There’s only one way,” Boxers said. “Somebody sold us out. What do you bet I can talk one of the trap-layers into telling us who?”

“We’re not engaging them.”

Boxers recoiled. “Come again?”

“I said we’re not going to engage. Not with those odds, and not with the PC in tow.”

“Who said I was goin’ to tow him along?”

Jonathan knew that Boxers was just blowing off steam. Their mission began and ended with protecting the PCs and returning them to their homes. This wasn’t the time to pick a fight, even if the fight had been picked for them first.

“We don’t need the vehicles anymore,” Jonathan said. “When we planned this, we thought we were going to have a bunch of PCs. Now we’re down to one, and we’ve already got a vehicle. That’ll be fine.”

Boxers dropped his voice to a whisper. “No, it won’t. Our supplies are all there. Our IDs. Shit, half our ammo. We can’t just leave all of that.”

“We’ll have to,” Jonathan said. There was no sense arguing the point. No way was he going to lead a party this size into a dozen guns. Certainly not when they were already lying in wait. Suicide was not on the agenda.

“I don’t think this piece of shit has enough fuel to get us to Gutierrez’s place,” Boxers said. “And I’m guessing that gas stations will be hard to come by.”

“We can’t use the Gulfstream anymore, either,” Jonathan said. The depth and desperateness of the situation was just beginning to hit him. “If they know about the ransom drop, and they know about the first-stage exfil site, we have to assume that they’ll know about the Gulfstream. We can’t risk it.”

Boxers’ eyes narrowed as he processed the ramifications. “Look, Dig- Scorpion — let me put something on the record here. I am not retiring in Mexico. This place is a cesspool.”

“I agree on both counts,” Jonathan said. “But I’m not dying here, either. We have to figure out another way.”

“It’s a thousand friggin’ miles,” Boxers said.

“So, clearly, we’re not walking. We need to think of something else.” He pressed his mike button. “Mother Hen, Scorpion.”

“I’m here.”

“We’ve got a pretty significant change of plans here.” As he detailed all of the careful planning that now was meaningless, Jonathan tried to shake away the growing sense of dread that blossomed in his belly.

At four-thirty, the food court outside the Cineplex in Tysons Corner Center in Vienna, Virginia looked more like a school cafeteria than a public eating place. Kids by the dozens crammed the tables, jamming their faces with the fried crap that passed for food these days, while talking way too loudly about triumphs and crises that mattered only to them. Perhaps if these urchins spent more time in school instead of enjoying three months of sanctioned truancy every summer, the future wouldn’t look so bleak.

Trevor Munro believed to his core that Hell must surely have a food court.

Munro wasn’t here for the food. He’d already had his meal for the day, lunch in Langley with the DCIA in the director’s private dining room on the sixth floor. It was becoming his regular dining venue now that his star had finally begun to rise again.

This one last thing-the business in Mexico-was the final detail that should earn him his own office on the sixth floor. Like so many triumphs, though, this one would come with its measure of indignity. Pausing at the top of the escalator, he adjusted his tie and patted the wings of his collar with a thumb and a finger, just to make sure that they lay straight. Image mattered.

He found Jerry Sjogren right where he said he’d be, near the movie ticket kiosk. Somewhere in his mid-fifties, Sjogren was thick of middle and mostly gray, with an aura about him that shifted between grandfatherly and predatory, depending on his audience. Munro knew the predatory persona to be the real one, because he understood what the man did for a living.

“You’re late,” Sjogren said when Munro came within earshot. If there was such a thing as a redneck New England accent, Sjogren had one. “Want to grab some lunch?”

“Your time is bought and paid for,” Munro said. Neither man offered to shake the other’s hand. “And no, I don’t want lunch. Let’s walk.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Sjogren joked. “If a restaurant doesn’t have crystal glasses and linen tablecloths, you won’t eat in it.”

Munro led the way to the elevator that would take them down to the first floor of the mall. They waited in silence for the car to arrive, and then for it to disgorge another gaggle of children. As two more kids-a boy and a girl, each maybe fifteen-tried to board with the men, Munro turned on them. “This elevator is closed,” he said. “Use the escalator.”

“Screw you,” the boy replied. Then he got Munro’s glare and he backed off. He and his girlfriend were already walking away when the doors closed.

“Way to keep a low profile there, Trev. Terrorizing children. Make you feel big?”

Sjogren knew damn well that Munro hated the diminutive form of any names-Billy, Bobby, Tommy- but that he particularly hated changes to his own. He chose to ignore the affront. “It’s not about feeling big, Sjogren. It’s about feeling fulfilled. And fulfillment for me comes when I hear a report from my very expensive contractors that they’ve completed the job that I hired them to do.”