Kirk Russell - Redback

Then men emerged from the ground like ants into the orchard. Armed men, cartel men, and that meant a tunnel, an escape route and he realized the house had been booby-trapped for a raid. It was why Viguerra and his men met so little resistance.

Shooting started in the fields, but the cartel gunmen outnumbered Viguerra’s men and the shooting quickly died. There were shouts, vehicle engines starting. Marquez climbed back to where he’d last seen Viguerra and the jeep with the keys in it, but not Viguerra. For ten minutes he searched and when he didn’t find him he drove the jeep back out to the road. Someone shot at him as he drove the perimeter of the orchard trying to find Hidalgo and Green.

S even or eight cars and pickups were pulled over and a small crowd had gathered near a concrete power pole. He slowed to a stop and as he got out of the jeep he watched a man turn a young boy’s head away so he couldn’t see what the crowd was looking at. He worked his way in, asking as he did what vehicles anyone had seen coming out the hacienda road. Then he got a view.

Ramon Green and a young judicial police officer were chained back to back against the pole, heads bowed in death, intestines pulled out, flung like rope in the dirt. He knew what he was seeing, but still had to touch Green to be sure. He took Green’s wedding ring off and knelt there. Brian Hidalgo wasn’t found until the next morning. Many regular federales were part of the search and it was federales who told Marquez Viguerra was decapitated, his head left on a stake along the highway shoulder, and federales who drove Marquez miles out a road following a dry creek to an abandoned adobe house. Inside the house they showed him Hidalgo’s body, and then he sat for a long time outside on a rock near the dry creek.

Later in the afternoon, a Mex Fed contemporary of Viguerra told Marquez, ‘I’ve seen these kinds of wounds before. This is a man who works for the one you asked about. They brought your agent here to question him. This man who does this is not a Mexican. This is not something that a Mexican would do. You need to understand that.’

Marquez spent days getting debriefed by agents in the El Paso Field Office. Holsten and Boyer flew out. He spent hours with Holsten reconstructing the events, then handed over his badge

and flew home to LA.

Three days later, Marquez broke the lease on his apartment and crossed back into Mexico and began to hunt Stoval and the man who worked for him whose name he’d learned was Kline. He communicated half a dozen times with Kerry Anderson, who helped him and passed on information. He didn’t talk with anyone else other than Sheryl. In August he picked up a message from her telling him she had applied for a transfer to headquarters in Virginia and it looked like she was going. He didn’t call her back but he wished her luck.

Near Guadalajara he picked up a lead on Stoval’s man and followed that south to Mexico City, and when that went nowhere he went much farther south into jungle villages where he heard this Kline was often seen. He searched for six weeks before backing away from the jungle. Late one afternoon, sitting with a beer outside a bar along a dirt road, he was approached by an American who did not identify himself but told Marquez he needed to hide or fly home.

‘Why is that?’

‘Because the men you’re looking for are looking for you. Come here, let me show you something.’ He led Marquez to the cracked side mirror of a pickup truck and turned the mirror so Marquez could see himself. ‘Look at yourself.’

Marquez turned away instead and from behind him the man said, ‘I’m your only friend here and I’m warning you, don’t stay here tonight. They know you’re in the area. Questions are getting asked about you, not just here but in the States. Information is being traded. You’re being branded a rogue so your government can disown you. Stoval has a contact within the CIA that he provides information about the Salinas government in return for information he needs. He knows you’re no longer with the DEA and one of his men extracted personal information about you from one of the DEA agents killed here. Are you hearing me?’

‘Yeah, I’m listening.’

‘They’re hunting you. They’re asking more questions.’ The man tapped his chest. ‘If I found you, believe they can.’

‘Who asked you to find me?’

‘I’ll give you his initials. KA. Does that make sense?’ Marquez nodded and the man offered his hand. ‘Fly home, Marquez.’

Emrahain Stoval walked out along the General-Guisan- Quai. He did not mind the tourists as many did and liked the reflection of light off the water at this hour. He liked the smell of the air. He liked Zurich. It was a walking city and walking helped him think. He pondered this John Marquez, former DEA agent. Marquez had eluded them for months. He should be dead by now. According to one source Marquez was an embarrassment to the DEA and incompetent, but Stoval, who judged the DEA incompetent, had concluded that Marquez was just the opposite.

Mexican police officers who had taken his bribe money had promised that it would not take long to find him, but after months of nothing they talked as if they were pursuing a ghost. But now there was new information that Marquez was back in the north, not far from El Paso or possibly in El Paso. Taking him in Mexico was better, but he couldn’t count on that any longer, and he didn’t see sending the same people in the same way again. It just wasn’t getting done.

Stoval guessed that he probably knew more about this John Marquez than his former employer, the DEA, ever had. He’d read the account of the Kenyan police of the young man who without any real help tracked down the elephant poachers who’d raped and murdered his wife. Marquez had done that with next to no resources. The relentlessness impressed him.

He read a San Francisco Examiner article printed from microfiche. Daring Rescue Off Alcatraz Seventeen year old John Marquez jumped from the stern of a Blue amp; Gold ferry yesterday afternoon to rescue a father and daughter whose small sailboat had capsized near Alcatraz. Captain Tom Marks said he left the dock in Tiburon at 3:00 bound for Pier 35 in San Francisco with a full load of passengers and that neither he nor his crew saw the capsized boat and struggling pair in the water. ‘It was very choppy,’ Marks reported, ‘and we had fog coming in. I don’t know how he spotted them and not many people would jump in the water in those conditions. He must be a helluva swimmer. He’s lucky to be alive.’ But not as lucky as Warren Dorland, 45, of Novato, and his eleven year old daughter, Bailey Dorland, who according to the Coast Guard was saved by Marquez’s prompt response. ‘The tide was running out through the Gate and the girl had lost grip of the overturned boat hull. With the fog coming in we would have had a very difficult time finding her.’ Marquez, who will be recommended for a heroism award, was unavailable for comment. His older sister, Darcey Marquez, told reporters that despite being treated for mild hypothermia and released last night, her brother had left on a trip with friends this morning. She said the rescue didn’t surprise her. ‘That’s just John,’ she told reporters. For a grateful family last night it was much more.

He researched family. Marquez had none other than a sister. She’d been located in Alaska and Marquez lived in a cabinlike house on the side of a mountain in the San Francisco area. He’d inherited that and had some minor savings but no real wealth or prospects. Sooner or later, he would abandon his search and go home, but would he ever really give up? That, and if he didn’t take Marquez out cleanly, Miguel Salazar would do it crudely and the DEA would react.