Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

As he was speaking the garage door opened again, and the mother exited pushing a stroller.

Jennifer said, “There goes the alarm. Want to try it?”

Pike thought a moment, then said, “A daylight B and E on an unknown floor plan? We don’t even know the lockset.”

“I’ll use a window. I can pop that with a credit card.”

“Jennifer, the windows are all barred.”

She pointed above the garage. “Not on the second floor.”

Jennifer saw him wavering and drove home the slipping time. “Pike, it’s an empty house but won’t be for long. We’re wasting an opportunity to neck down the threat.”

He sighed. “You mean neck down your brother’s location.”

“Yeah, that too, I guess. I hadn’t thought about it.”

He smiled at her joke and keyed the radio. “Knuckles, what’s your location?”

“Coming back down the south side, about two blocks away.”

“Hold what you got. There’s a woman in a stroller headed your way. Get eyes on her and give us early warning when she starts heading back to my location.”

“Roger all. What’s up?”

“Koko’s going to do something stupid.”

Jennifer smiled and opened the glove box, pulling out the little tool kit that came with the rental. She selected a small flat-head screwdriver and Pike said, “You see any chance of compromise, get out. Don’t push it, understand?”

She nodded and slipped into the alley between the garage and the building next door. Barely three feet wide, it stank of garbage and had a stagnant stream of some ominous liquid running down the middle. She saw that the little corridor ended in a brick wall, connecting the town houses to the next building. She reached the wall, glanced back down the alley to the street, and began to climb like it was a chimney, placing one foot on the facing wall and one behind her, then doing the same with her hands. She inched up until she could get her hands on the parapet of the roof, then pulled herself over.

She keyed her radio. “I’m up. Moving to breach.”

Keeping low so as to remain out of view of the street, she reached the first town house, scuttling under the windows to the second one. She said, “We’re positive on the location, right?”

Pike said, “I’ll be absolutely positive until you tell me I’m wrong. Second one in.”

Great. That’s a lot of confidence. She inserted the screwdriver into the jamb of the window, then gently rocked it back and forth, springing free the latch. She placed her hand on the pane and pushed, but the window remained closed. She studied it for a moment, then saw the problem.

Painted shut.

She ran the edge of the screwdriver around the pane, digging out as much latex paint as she could, then wedged the flat end back into the jamb. She lifted the handle, hearing the window groan from the leverage. She gave the handle another pull and the window popped free, sounding as loud as gunfire. Jennifer froze, straining to hear someone coming to investigate. After thirty seconds, she opened the window fully, then slipped inside.

She debated leaving the window open but decided to close it to prevent anyone from becoming curious on the street. She saw she had entered a nursery, with the cloying, sweet smell of diapers and powder.

Her radio came to life. “Pike, woman is headed back.”

“How far out?”

“Look on your map. See the park to the south? All she did was circle it with the kid. Now she’s coming home. You probably got six or seven minutes, unless she stops again.”

“Roger all—break. Koko, exfil.”

She left the nursery at a trot, saying, “Pike, I just got inside. I haven’t found anything yet.”

She entered the master bedroom and quickly surveyed, hearing, “I can’t help that. Get out.”

She swept the closet in the bedroom and found nothing. Moving down the hall, she entered a third room, a tiny cubicle. She saw a filing cabinet and a desk. She ran to the desk and began shuffling papers, all in Spanish.

No good. I can’t tell if any of this is important.

She heard, “Koko, you copy? I have the woman in sight now. She’s about three minutes out headed right toward me.”

And the first thing she’s going to do is put that child in the nursery. Pike’s right, you need to leave.

But she couldn’t leave with nothing. Couldn’t abandon her brother. Jennifer opened the filing cabinet and pulled out a folder, seeing official documents. Each was a printout of some kind with a picture of a person in the upper left corner. Most had a red X drawn across the face, but one was untarnished. None were her brother.

“Koko, this is Pike. She’s entered the garage. Status?”

Out of time.

She took a picture of the one unmarked document with her smartphone and heard the door close downstairs. She gently closed the drawer with the files, then began to ease out of the room but heard the woman cooing to the baby on the stairs. She froze, knowing she couldn’t get down the hall without the mother seeing her.

She heard, “Damn it, Koko, what’s the story?”

She clicked her transmitter twice and heard, “Well, that’s just great. Another damn teammate ignoring my exfil call. I’m coming in. I’ll get her attention and you get out.”

She clicked rapidly four times.

“Roger all. Story of my life. I’m standing by.”

She heard the woman pass by the office and waited. The mother began singing in Spanish, then began making shushing noises. Eventually, Jennifer heard her footsteps on the stairs. When she was sure she was clear, she slipped out of the office and glided as lightly as she could to the nursery.

She saw the baby in a crib, sound asleep. She opened the window and it gave a slight screech. The baby woke up and began to cry.

Jennifer flung herself out onto the roof, thinking, Sorry about that, Mom.

No sooner did she have the window closed than she saw a shadow in the room. She flattened against the wall, then slithered back to the alley. She dropped into the goo at the bottom, splashing the foul liquid on her shoes.

Reaching the car, she saw Pike’s scowl. She closed the door and he said, “Tell me you have the exact grid to your brother, because this favoritism stuff is getting old.”

She shook her head, feeling the tears well up and hating them in front of Pike. “I don’t think I found anything at all.”

28

Carlos waited outside the customs gate of terminal one at Benito Juárez International, feeling like someone had poured sandpaper into his eyes. He hadn’t slept in close to twenty-four hours and wondered how many Sinaloa hit men were now hunting him. The very fact that he was alive would be enough to brand him with suspicion. It wouldn’t matter that he’d escaped the assault on the Juárez house by the skin of his teeth. To Sinaloa, it would look planned. Or he’d simply be made an example of so they could pretend they knew what was going on.

As for him, he had no idea. He’d received a call that the second American, Jennifer Cahill’s partner, was being brought through the gate, then all hell had broken loose. Instead of fighting, he had chosen to run, and had spent the last twenty-four hours driving from Juárez to Mexico City, weaving through towns and avoiding the major thoroughfares to keep him out of Sinaloa clutches.

He’d made two phone calls on the way. One to Mr. Guy Fawkes—aka Arthur Booth—in Colorado, telling him the time was almost right to come to Mexico and having him start to dig into Grolier Recovery Services. Use his skills to penetrate and find out what they really did, because something wasn’t right about that company.

After hanging up, he had laughed at the thought. Something isn’t right. That’s putting it mildly.

The supposed anthropologist woman had had the balls to drive across the border by herself into cartel territory and had found the house with nothing more than a voice mail, then had managed to escape a ring of Sinaloa men, killing several in the process. If that weren’t strange enough, the man with her had somehow managed to escape his captors, drive across the border, find the same house, then slaughter everyone inside with a team of killers.