David Lindsey - The Rules of Silence

“They finally got them all. Except one. ”Macias was dressed, as always, in cool, limp linen. “It's in the bedroom. We put our best stuff in there. It's got boosters, little things the size of a button on either side of the room. Good reception. Filters so the sweepers can't pick them up.”

Luquin looked away, across the river and the valley toward the roof of Titus's house. He was chasing thoughts, and at the moment he was replaying one of Titus's remarks that had particularly stung with insolence.

“Hunt my ass all the way to Patagonia! ”Luquin snorted, mocking Titus's voice. “Patagonia, shit. What does he think? How does he feel this morning, huh? He's going to think he woke up in fucking Colombia!”

He stopped suddenly and looked at Macias. “And those two, they're gone? You got them out of here?”

“As soon as they were sure the woman was dead, they called us, and my boys picked them up and drove them to the airstrip. They'll cross the border in another hour, near Lajitas. The two guys who did Thrush are already in Oaxaca.”

Luquin nodded his approval. A killing well done. He looked at his watch. “In another half hour I should hear from Cavatino.”

“We saw a county sheriff's car going into Cain's place, so he probably knows about the woman by now.”

“Welcome to Colombia.”

Macias would be glad when it was over. When Luquin had come to him with this job and had spent two days explaining it to him, Macias had agreed to do it provided a reconnoitering trip to Austin satisfied him that his people could handle the logistics of such an operation.

After ten days in Austin, he had called Luquin and agreed to do it. But he'd wanted the complete authority to pull the plug on the operation if he thought it was about to be compromised. Luquin had balked at Macias having the last word, but he couldn't do it without Macias's U.S. and Mexican connections. Ultimately he had agreed. The deal was on.

Macias had leased the house on Las Ramitas. He had a team of three cars and six men, as well as a surveillance van with three technicians. The surveillance team was from Juarez, men out of the drug trade. The four teams were strictly compartmentalized. They never associated and never communicated except by secure radio and cell phones.

Macias knew that there were two things that had given him the edge in this enterprise. First, the fact that there was no precedent for it. What has not been done before is difficult to anticipate. That was one of the great lessons of the World Trade Center event. Innovation was difficult for the American intelligence community. The old ways of doing things were hard to change in the sprawling bureaucracy of a powerful government.

The second thing that had given him an edge was getting everyone in place in absolute secrecy. He believed he had done that successfully.

But he was nervous. There was an adverse correlative to what the crime world had learned from the September disaster in New York: The U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies had undergone, and were still undergoing, severe internal analysis. They were beginning to make changes. It was only reasonable for someone in Macias's position to assume that many of those changes would remain unknown, until they proved deadly to people like Luquin and Macias.

Nevertheless, this particular operation had an added incentive. If the extortion scheme worked, Macias also got a percentage of the take, not just a fee. For this kind of money he would sweat a little more than he would normally, maybe even a little more than seemed to make good sense. The size of the payoff actually encouraged risk taking.

While Macias was running all of this over in his mind, Luquin had been brooding, too. He was still furious about the way Titus had talked to him; it was the sort of effrontery that would corrode his concentration until he did something to correct the indignity.

Luquin flipped his cigarette away and then leaned forward and had a last sip from his cafecita, his thick fingers holding the little handle of the white demitasse cup between his forefinger and thumb, his other fingers fanned outward delicately. He smacked his lips at the rich brew as he put down the cup and sat back in his chair. He stared at Macias from behind his sunglasses.

“I've been thinking, ”he said, and at that moment Macias's phone rang. Luquin lifted his head in permission, and Macias answered it. He listened, then snapped the phone closed.

“This should be interesting, ”he said, and he reached over to the computer and tapped in an address string.

The two men listened as Titus Cain told his wife in a flat, lifeless voice that he was going to go ahead and have the rest of the ransom money processed and sent to Cavatino. If that's what it took to get this nightmare over with, he said, then that's what he was going to do. He'd had enough. There was a brief conversation between the two of them, and then it was over.

Luquin sat at the table as if hypnotized, bending forward, listening to a recording coming in over one of the laptops. When it was finished, he said, “Play it again, ”and Macias snapped his fingers over the keys, and they listened to it again.

“Son of a bitch, ”Luquin said quietly as the recording ended the second time. He stood. “This is getting damned close, Jorge, ”he said. “Damned close.”

“Another twenty-four hours, ”Macias said, punching a key to get out of the file.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe sooner, ”Macias said, punching another few keys to check his messages. And it couldn't be soon enough.

Macias checked several more files, getting routine hourly postings from each of his teams. Nothing happening. When he looked up at Luquin again, he was surprised to see him stewing, staring at Macias.

“I want to go ahead with Cain's wife, ”Luquin said. “She will be my going-away gift to him. When the last of the money clears Cavatino, I want you to do her. Then we'll see if he feels like following my ass to Patagonia.”

Inwardly, Macias cringed. None of these operations was worth a single dollar to him if he didn't get out of them alive and well. But two bodies were never enough for Luquin. He wanted two bodies before he could even take a shit. This wouldn't be the first time Luquin had put undue pressure on an operation simply because he wanted someone else to die. And things were going so well. Machismo. It was going to get the son of a bitch killed one of these days.

Macias was about to say that he would begin putting it together when his computer pinged, and he turned to see an incoming message from Elias Loza. He glanced at Luquin and decided to wait until later to open the file.

By the time Burden got down the hill to Cielo Canyon Road, he was soaking in sweat. His shoes were full of rocks and twigs, and cedar needles had gotten into his shirt and had worked their way into his skin in a dozen itchy places. He beeped his van crew and waited a couple of minutes in the woods that crowded up to the edge of the road. When they pulled up, he was inside in seconds.

Gil Norlin had gotten a rental house not half a mile from where Titus lived, a small frame bungalow built in the fifties and tucked into the woods. There weren't many of these kinds of houses left in this high-dollar part of the city, where seclusion was a large part of the real estate appeal. Probably the absentee owners of the property were asking an exorbitant price for what they had and were willing to sit on it until somebody coughed it up. Which they would, sooner or later. But the place was a dump. The small rooms were bare, empty, smelling of insecticide, and crawling with roaches.

The three-member van crew had already eaten lunch and left him a few slices of pizza in the kitchen. He took one of the delivery boxes with the last of two cold wedges of pizza littered with jelled cheese, leathery pepperoni, and flaccid olives and opened an RC. Tired, he sat on the floor in the kitchen, his back against the wall. He'd eaten only a few bites of the cold pizza and washed it down with the RC when he heard the front door open.