Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

He had me face to the left, putting Jennifer in my sight, and continued. For her part, I saw a man cup her breasts and knead. I suppose I should have been aggravated, but the guy did it like he was working a lump of dough and clearly had no ulterior motives. I began to wonder how the child of someone who hired professionals like this could have been kidnapped.

They both stood up and waved to someone inside. For the first time, I noticed the sliding door behind us was four inches thick. A ballistic door. Bulletproof. They’d searched outside in case we were carrying a suicide vest.

What the hell? Who is this guy? The only thing that came into my head was Keyser Söze.

We were led into a room and met by not a man, but a woman of about fifty with a stern visage that exuded control. Someone who was clearly used to being in charge, but her trembling hands belied the act. In English, she said, “Who are you?”

I said, “We’re here to help you. I promise.”

She flicked her eyes at the man who’d searched me, and without a beat he punched my kidney, bringing me to my knees. He drew back to punch again, and I trapped his hand, gasping for breath.

I rotated against the joint, then rolled over, bringing him with me to the ground. All I was thinking was escape. I saw the other man moving in and released the joint lock, collapsing my hands around my target’s head, screaming, “Stop, or I kill this motherfucker!”

Everything paused like it was in slow motion. I said again, “Back off or he’s dead. Jennifer, go to the door.”

She said, “No.” Then turned to the woman. “I want my brother, and you know where he is. You might not realize you know. But you do.”

I heard the words and screamed, “Jennifer, get your ass outside the door, right now!” I saw the other man glide my way and torqued my target’s head. “Back off!”

Jennifer shouted at the woman, “Your son is with my brother. Please, we need your help!”

I heard someone shout, “Alto!”

The guy in my arms relaxed as if on cue.

30

A man entered the room and said again, in a lower voice, “Alto.”

He waved a finger, and the guard advancing on me faded back like a robot. The woman began to weep, sagging against the wall and putting her face in her hands.

He looked at everyone in the room, guaranteeing compliance, then said, “I am Arturo Gomez, the father of Felix. Let him go and no harm will come to you.”

I did so and the bodyguard stood up, then joined his partner, another robot under the control of the man who had entered. Both eyed us, ready to spring forth, but did nothing more. I rose from the ground and said, “I’m Pike Logan and this is Jennifer Cahill. Her brother has been taken and we believe it’s by the same people who hold your son. Any information you could give us would be appreciated.”

“Are you American law enforcement?”

Jennifer said, “No. Just family.”

“Why should I trust you?”

I said, “You should trust me more than the law around here. Who is that cop who just left?”

“Why do you say that? He works with the kidnapping task force. He’s the lead investigator on my son’s case.”

Of course. That’s why he had all the pictures. It made perfect logical sense now. Except the phone trace led to him, which meant he was helping the kidnappers by providing them all the information on the investigation. Possibly even setting up the snatches.

I said, “I’m just paranoid, I guess. Can we sit down and talk?”

He nodded and led us to an anteroom. After settling onto a couch, he began recounting the loss of his son, talking in a monotone as if he’d repeated the story a hundred times. The boy was a student at a university south of the city and had been taken from the campus. The last known location was about four miles away from the university, in a residential area where the suspects were seen driving. Not a whole lot of help.

I said, “You have pretty good security here. Didn’t you have anything on your son?”

“Yes. He had a bodyguard, who was killed trying to protect him. We found the corpse and my son’s car.”

“But someone was left alive, right? Someone saw the suspect’s vehicle.”

“No. Only the bodyguard was with him.”

“Then how did you get the report that they’d been seen miles from the campus?”

Arturo looked at his wife like he’d let something slip he shouldn’t have. She spoke in Spanish, and he nodded, then said, “My son has a tracking device implanted in his arm. We haven’t told anyone until today. The company that’s supposed to locate him told us to keep it a secret to protect him, but they have failed.”

Great. They got suckered. There was a plethora of antikidnapping companies selling RFID chips the size of a grain of rice and claiming they had GPS capability, but in reality, all that thing could do was identify the body after it was dead because the chip could be read from only about three feet away. It was basically the same thing people used to identify runaway animals in the United States. The companies here made a fortune on services for the “tracking,” but the truth was it did little good because the actual locating device was the size of a cell phone, and once it was taken farther than three feet from the subject, it did no good.

Two things about the statement caused me to think, though. One, this man was smart enough to do the research and would know it wouldn’t work, and two, there was a second location. If it wasn’t an eyewitness, then it was something else.

I said, “Nothing small enough to embed under the skin could transmit a location. I’m sure you know this.”

“Yes. I do. The actual transmitter is built into the belt he was wearing. It has a battery life of forty-eight hours once activated and is supposed to send a location every fifteen minutes. It only sent one.”

“But it did send one? The residential location?”

“Yes.”

So it had worked at least once. “How does it send the location? What’s the method?”

He said something to one of the bodyguards and the man left the room. He came back carrying a brochure. He handed it to me, and I saw the specifications of what was being billed as an “antikidnapping alert” device. I said, “So it works on the cell network, sending an SMS text to a server, which then plots on Google Maps?”

“It’s supposed to. But it hasn’t since that one time.”

Which meant the belt was without cell service. Unable to reach a tower. So to find it, we would need to bring the tower to it. Or it meant that the damn belt had been tossed. Think good things. The belt is still active until proven otherwise.

I said, “Can you get me the number of the belt? What it’s using to transmit to the company?”

He nodded and rattled off some more Spanish. One of the bodyguards got on a phone, and something else Alex said finally penetrated.

“You said you’ve not told anyone until today. Do you mean until you told us?”

“No. I told the investigator just before you arrived. The company is doing no good, and I thought he could use the information.”

Holy shit. Use it is right.

I leapt to my feet, saying, “Jennifer, give him your contact information. Call her with the number as soon as you have it.”

I dialed Knuckles and began giving instructions, walking at a fast pace to the front door.

31

The sicario listened to El Comandante rail and realized he was now finding threats in every shadow, paranoid. It was a cycle the sicario had seen many times before. When you assume the mantle of leadership through treachery and murder, you cannot retain control without starting to find the same everywhere, whether real or imagined.

Hearing a break in the stream of vitriol, he said, “El Comandante, with all due respect, do you really think someone attacked Sinaloa so Los Zetas would remove you? There are many cartels vying for the Juárez plaza. Maybe it was Beltrán Leyva, or someone in the Gulf cartel. Sinaloa has many, many enemies.”