Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

“That was the clerk. A woman came around asking about the reporter. Asking direct questions. He had his son follow her because he thought we would want the information of where she’s staying.”

“Who is she? Why was she searching? Did he say?”

“No, but we can find out ourselves. She didn’t go to a hotel. She’s coming across into Juárez.”

14

Waiting to cross the border, Jennifer spent the time pinpointing the last location of Jack’s phone. It was just across the Rio Grande, in the northwestern section of Ciudad Juárez. Googling further on her tablet, she saw the area was called Delicias and had the highest murder rate in the city. An indicator of why the phone was there, and a not-so-subtle reminder of the danger Jack was in. If he was still alive.

She plotted the location in the cheap GPS that came with the rental car and was dismayed to see the Mexican side of the border had no fidelity. The only streets listed in Juárez were the main north-south and east-west corridors. Something she should have expected, since the rental agreement forbade her from taking the car across the border in the first place. The plot appeared in a blank gray field, no roads listed. She would have to navigate there by blind driving.

She crossed the Stanton Street Bridge and passed through the customs facilities without issue, drawing a stare on the US side but nothing on the Mexican side. She felt her gut tighten as she entered Juárez, expecting to see narcos walking the streets with AK-47s proudly displayed or hear the popping of gunfire. Instead, it looked much like the city she had just left. A town of Mexican middle-class people trying to make their way. Families walked with their children, vendors on the street sold vegetables and fruit, and a healthy amount of traffic clogged the roads. It didn’t look like Murder City, but she knew the history of the bloody ground, including the serial killing of women like her over the past decade.

Still on guard, but somewhat relieved, she pulled over and booted up Google Maps on her tablet, happy to see a 3G connection south of the border. She brought up the city and now at least had a map for reference, although it wasn’t tied to the GPS and wouldn’t move as she did.

She started driving east on David Herrera Avenue, keeping an eye on every vehicle around her but seeing nothing suspicious. Mostly old pickup trucks and a few motorcycles. Nothing like the late-model SUVs the narcos supposedly drove.

She penetrated farther east, the buildings becoming more run-down and the town starting to fulfill its nickname. As she left behind the hotels and restaurants, the area became full of utilitarian concrete structures advertising car repair or dollar sales intermixed with one-story cinder-block houses, all unashamedly tinged with graffiti and fenced off from the street. She tried to look at her tablet as she drove but found it impossible without pulling over. The neighborhood was a compact mass of crisscrossing streets, and she lost her orientation. She threw the tablet on the passenger seat and decided to just vector in by the GPS. She glanced into her rearview and caught a glimpse of the same motorcycle she had seen right after she’d crossed the border, the man in the saddle wearing a lime-green full-face helmet from the 1970s.

She turned left blindly, and the motorcycle followed. She felt a trickle of alarm and studied the bike rider. He showed nothing overtly threatening. The bike was an old Honda with a milk crate bungee-corded to the back, holding bags of some sort. She turned right, and the bike continued straight. She relaxed.

Getting paranoid.

She looked at the GPS and saw she was within a quarter mile of the marking. She continued on, following the blind little GPS tag, weaving left and right, at one point backtracking because of the nature of the roads. Eventually, she reached the grid on the GPS, seeing three houses on a slight rise from the street, all of them protected with a healthy amount of fencing that was a cut above the chain-link and makeshift iron of the neighboring houses. Fencing that was custom built, which gave some indication of who owned the houses.

She slowed and used her smartphone for pictures, wishing she had the Taskforce’s ability to rig the car with three-hundred-and-sixty-degree cameras like she had done in the past. She wanted to provide the assault force the greatest fidelity possible when they came to break out her brother. Wanted to believe in the lie that someone was coming to help.

She passed the houses and picked up her pace, now thinking about how to get back to the border crossing. She took a right and stopped at an intersection. She pulled forward and saw the lime-green helmet to her left, sitting fifty feet down the road. Waiting on her.

She felt a bump in her heart rate but did nothing overt. She continued straight, heading east to the Paso del Norte Bridge. She glanced in her rearview mirror and saw the motorcycle fall in behind her.

She took another right to be sure. He remained with her. At the next stop, she studied her tablet but couldn’t pinpoint her position with any certainty. When the bike pulled up behind her, she moved forward, going faster than was allowed on the narrow road.

Continue east. Eventually you’ll hit the bridge road.

She was forced to slow down behind a battered pickup truck and was thinking about passing when the motorcycle broke off, taking a right and driving out of view. She exhaled and slumped in the seat, releasing the tension in her body. The pickup put on its brake lights and stopped. She turned the wheel to pass and glanced into her blind spot, seeing an SUV flying forward. She jerked back to the right to avoid being hit, but it didn’t pass. Instead, she heard tires scream as it skidded to a halt abreast of her car.

The sight collapsed her world like a black hole, causing all thought other than survival to be sucked in. Two years ago she might have panicked, frozen in place as the drama unfolded, but that girl was long gone. Destroyed in a cauldron not of her making.

She had the car in reverse before the SUV had even fully stopped, the engine of her little rental whining in protest as she floored the pedal. She traveled barely five feet before slamming into a dented sedan that had pulled up behind her. She saw the driver fling forward against the steering wheel, and time slowed.

Trapped.

To her front the pickup’s passenger door had opened, and a man was exiting. The rear hatch of the SUV begin to rise, then she saw the motorcycle coming down the sidewalk toward her, the lime-helmeted rider holding a MAC-10 machine pistol in his left hand. He began firing as he came abreast of the pickup, shattering her windshield in a shower of glass.

She flung herself flat in the seat, Pike’s instructions from two years ago on surviving just such an ambush penetrating the chaos. Your vehicle is a weapon.

Still lying flat, she jammed the car into drive, jerked the wheel to the right and floored the gas pedal. She hit the curb and rocketed forward, colliding with brick and ricocheting to the left, the bullets still tearing the air above her head.

She crunched something to her front, the car grinding as the object was flung aside. The lime-helmeted rider appeared on her hood, bouncing in the air, the weapon gone. She jerked upright and slammed on her brakes, rolling him onto the sidewalk. As soon as he had cleared the hood, she hit the gas again. He made it to a knee and saw her coming. He held his arms out and screamed, his mouth open through the clear faceplate of his helmet. The bumper caught him just above the waist, slapping him back on the hood. But only for a second. He clawed, trying to maintain his position, the friction of his legs against the ground sucking him under. She rolled over the top of him, the car bucking as if she’d hit an asphalt speed bump. She jerked the wheel to her left and slammed into the street, the pickup and SUV directly behind her.