Kirk Russell - Redback

Holsten, tall spare SAC with his sterile view of the world, laid it out and Marquez riding shotgun, lean and young still, but with far more experience in the field than Holsten, listened knowing

that something else had happened to him. He knew as he crossed the border into Tijuana that morning that he was severing his connection with the DEA.

Holsten nosed over to the curb a half block from Starbucks, still wanting his coffee. On the sidewalk before they went in Holsten turned with his lips pursed and shook his head, lamenting, ‘KZ Nuts, the warehouse in Calexico, these are significant busts. You made them happen and it was a very big deal. You saw the Salazar organization developing before anyone else. If you hadn’t gotten scared after Takado was shot and lost your sense of purpose and gone after Miguel Salazar you’d be in a different place. But in our organization there’s no room for those kinds of flaws. I’m guessing you’d rather quit than go through the Internal Affairs investigation, the hearings, the whole show.’

‘I’ll resign, but between you and me you made a poor decision telling me to wait at that pass with Takado’s body. It showed a critical lack of experience, but fortunately for you experience in what we really do isn’t required in the upper levels of management. So I think you’ll be fine.’

He could see how angry that made Holsten and Marquez found it didn’t make him feel any better. He waited outside in the sunlight as Holsten went into Starbucks and ordered. When Holsten came out and they were back in the car Holsten said, ‘I took a cheap shot at you and you took one back. That’s fair, and right now you may not believe it, you may never believe it, but I’m very sorry to lose you. That’s probably why I’m so angry with you. No one I’ve ever known has shown as much promise. No one else in the LA Field Office could have made that KZ bust happen. Between us we’ll work up a good reason about why you’re moving on and I’ll write a strong recommendation letter. I’ll write it this afternoon and we’ll bury what happened in Tijuana and I’m sorry about the call I made after Takado’s murder. Leave your gun in El Paso before you cross the border with Green and Hidalgo and leave your badge there when you get back. I’ll mail you a letter of recommendation.’ Holsten turned, offered his hand and said, ‘You are the best talent I have ever seen. I wish you all the luck in the world with your next career.’

In an El Paso motel Marquez dreamed a memory of childhood. The day was bright and blue and cold. He sat in a chair in an elementary school office that smelled of warm spoiled milk and carbon paper. Through a window he watched an American flag snap back and forth on a pole, and beyond the flag in the far distance he saw snow on the mountains. Behind the counter a typewriter clacked and stopped and a large woman in a blue suit led him into the principal’s office and pointed to a chair. Marquez sat down. His ear stung from where he’d been hit. His right cheek was raw and he had a lump in his throat because he didn’t start the fight. They ganged up on him but the school principal squatted down in front of him now to tell him that wasn’t true.

‘You don’t belong here. You don’t fit and your parents aren’t fit for our community. We were forced to let you go to school, but your family won’t last here and we don’t want you to stay. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re in my office today because you started a fight.’

‘I didn’t-’

‘I want you to get in another fight. Today I’m going to suspend you, but next time I’ll expel you. Do you know what expel means, son? It means I’ll get rid of you.’

Marquez kept the subsequent fights after school and off the school yard, but it didn’t matter. The family moved anyway. They were always moving. ‘We’re nomads following the Great Dope Route,’ his father had said. ‘Like Marco Polo,’ and his mother would giggle, though they had nowhere and no one, and now he was leaving again, leaving the DEA and all of his friends, everything he was connected to. He tossed in the bed and sweated. He pushed the covers back, dozed, dismissed the childhood dream, and much later that morning crossed from El Paso into Juarez with Hidalgo and Green.

They drove over the concrete trench that had once been a river and now was lined with fences. In Juarez dust and litter swirled in wind as they followed Viguerra’s lieutenants to a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. Inside the warehouse, Viguerra broke from his lieutenants and greeted them.

‘You’ll ride with me,’ he told Marquez. ‘We’re inviting ourselves to a meeting at a big hacienda.’ His eyes lit with sudden humor. ‘A cartel meeting where one of the things they’re voting on is raising the price on my head.’ He tapped his sidearm. ‘I’ll be voting.’ He winked at Hidalgo and Green. ‘If anyone asks, you must say you are American water inspectors making sure that none of the river that used to flow to Mexico still does. You are here to check for leaks. All of the local people will understand.’

Last time they met Viguerra told Marquez, that yes, it was true, that officially he was of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police, but that he thought of himself as a soldier, not a policeman. ‘I think like a soldier and we are in a war, a guerilla war where we are not the ones in power. The drug cartels are the powerful ones. They have control but with the people’s help I fight them as if from the jungle.’

An hour after reaching the warehouse Hidalgo, Marquez, and Green climbed into the Vietnam-era Huey copter that Viguerra intended to use in the assault. In the seats around them were Viguerra’s ‘troops.’ They flew south staying low and flanking dry hills. Outside a military encampment the helicopters landed and unloaded most of the men and equipment, then sat with rotors still running as Viguerra walked among his men before they loaded into jeeps and two troop carriers. Marquez rode with Viguerra and Hidalgo and Green rode in a troop carrier.

‘It’s an hour from here,’ Viguerra said.

The assault began at dusk with the cutting of phone and electrical lines and the sniper shooting of two cartel guards in the gatehouse. Two helicopters rose from hills behind the hacienda and with heavy machine gun fire pinned down the guards inside the courtyard gates, then fired rockets into the cars parked there. When the thick wooden courtyard gates blew off their hinges, return fire flashed from the house. Windows shattered. Roofing tiles slaked off and fell three stories on to men fighting below as the helicopters poured fire into the house.

Viguerra’s men fought their way into the lower floors and the return fire died down to sporadic shooting from the upper floors, clearing fire likely as Viguerra’s men moved in and up. Then in seconds everything changed as a missile struck the lead helicopter. It spun, rolled to the right, then dove into the vineyard below the house. A second helicopter went down and the third was burning as it raked through the air above Marquez. Its tail snapped on landing and Marquez left Viguerra and ran down to try to help the men inside get out.

They burned before he got there but he was near the helicopter, sheltered by it when the blast came. The concussive roar enveloped and deafened him. He felt it from the inside out. Splintered rafters, shards of roof tile, and chunks of adobe rained down into the fields around him. A widening billow of gray-black smoke rose from where the house had been and it took him a moment before he could accept what he saw, that the house was gone. He watched a length of the adobe wall surrounding the outer courtyard slide down the slope and topple over.