Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

It didn’t add up to a narco hit. The bodies lay as they had fallen. No messages sent through mutilation, no sign of methodical execution, and nothing of value had been taken. Yet someone had ripped through a Zetas safe house, killing everyone inside. Just like the Sinaloa safe house in Juárez. Someone with intelligence and the skill to use it.

Who would that be? Who would have the capability to penetrate both Sinaloa and Los Zetas, then attack with a scalpel, hitting two distinct houses, getting nothing in return? No law enforcement proclamations about stymieing the drug trade, no riches from the houses themselves?

He turned and found the journalist staring at the corpse, his face pale. Scared by a dead man. The sicario found it humorous.

He said, “Sit on the floor in this room. If you move, you will look like El Comandante.”

He searched the rest of the house, finding more bodies, but from what he could tell, all were lying exactly where they had been hit. There were no narco banners left at the scene, no propaganda or bragging, no graffiti designed to intimidate. It was as if whoever had come had killed for no other reason than because they could, like the fox in the henhouse of his youth.

And like that same animal, they had taken the livelihood of the sicario.

Going down the steps to the basement, he realized that he would now be targeted. El Comandante had planned on taking him to Matamoros, which meant he’d probably already poisoned the leadership, offering the sicario to deflect blame from the Sinaloa attack in Juárez. This assault would do nothing but confirm it, leaving him on the outside.

He reached the basement, and, as expected, it was empty, although it wouldn’t have surprised him to find the kidnap victims killed outright as well, like the chickens by the fox.

He went back up the stairs, contemplating what he should do. He couldn’t remain in Mexico City, as all of his contacts here were Los Zetas. He couldn’t trust them for help, and the city itself was foreign. Ciudad Juárez was more his style, a place where he understood the rhythm and flow, but after the Sinaloa hit, he was sure anyone associated with Los Zetas was being targeted, and he had no illusions about his picture hanging on someone’s wall, just like Carlos’s photo had been on his. It was pure luck that he hadn’t been here when the assault went down in the first place. An interconnected event like all the other ones he’d experienced in his life. All that remained was how he would use it.

I need safety. Someplace to hide. But there is no place in this country.

He had one other alternative. A thing he’d always kept but never felt he would use. Maybe it was time to invoke his escape clause with his US passport. Disappear into America for good. What had been a scary, last-ditch solution before his trip to El Paso he now saw as his only option. Before, he’d been afraid of using it, but now he understood that he could cross the border and survive on the other side. Even thrive, provided he had money. A stake to get him started, which he was fairly sure he could obtain by selling the BMW and any other jewelry or watches he could find in this house.

He opened the office door to find the journalist sitting on the floor with his head in his hands, apparently in emotional shock. A lone rooster left prancing in the yard, pecking at the dead around him and waiting on the fox. Baggage at this point. He realized it would be easiest to do it right here and leave the body with the others.

He withdrew his Sig P226 and racked the slide. The journalist snapped his head up, seeing the end of the barrel.

He threw his hands in the air, shouting, “Don’t! Please don’t! Remember I can still identify the contact. Carlos told those other men he was coming tomorrow. Without me you won’t find him.”

The sicario had maintained surveillance on the meeting in the park, more than likely at the exact same moment a team of killers was ripping apart this house, and had learned that the mysterious contact from the United States was flying into Mexico City tomorrow morning. Not that any of that mattered now. He couldn’t have cared less about the American or what he was doing with Sinaloa.

He said, “El Comandante wanted the contact. I do not.”

“Carlos said he was selling the device. It’s worth a great deal of money. Don’t you care about that?”

The words gave the sicario pause. Carlos had said that. Had admonished the men that they would need to bring a great deal of money to get the device—whatever it was—and they, in return, stated a third man was coming who would have the money. After the meeting had ended, and Carlos had left, he’d hoped to learn more about the third man, but the men began speaking in a language he didn’t understand, disappointing him.

He sighted down the barrel, considering. Truthfully, if the journalist ran out of the house right now, he could do little to harm the sicario’s chances of getting to America. He had no idea of the name on the passport or of the sicario’s intentions. What was he going to do, run to the nearest policeman and start ranting? The most he could accomplish would be providing a detailed description, but without something more than a story of abduction, the police in Mexico would toss that in the trash.

It’s worth the risk.

He holstered his pistol, seeing the journalist sag against the wall. Not giving him any time to recover, he said, “Get that money in the drawer. Search El Comandante’s body. Take his wallet, watch, rings, and anything else of value.”

He left and did the same to the bodies in the hall, stripping them of anything that he could sell, then methodically went room by room looking for anything of value he could scavenge. He saw evidence of a search in the other rooms as well, but once again, articles an ordinary thief would never have passed up—and certainly not a hit man from the Sinaloa cartel—were left behind, confusing him as to who had perpetrated the attack.

Nine minutes later they were driving away, the BMW’s backseat holding two garbage bags of valuables the sicario intended to sell in the thieves’ market of Tepito tomorrow afternoon. It would take a few phone calls, but Tepito was a free-for-all of black-market goods where one could purchase anything from weapons to the latest bootleg copy of a Hollywood movie.

The hardest would be the BMW, given its previous owner, but Tepito was overrun with Korean Mafia—a strange set of circumstances, but real nonetheless. The right man wouldn’t care who owned it, only what he could glean from its parts.

The car brought up another dilemma: He couldn’t lie low in a hotel that would ask no questions about a gringo chained to the toilet, as the BMW would be talked about, and probably stripped by morning. He would need to stay at a higher-end hotel, with parking and security, and that meant leaving a trail.

He said, “Have you stayed in Mexico City before?”

The journalist slid his eyes like it was a trick question but answered. “Yes. I reported from here a few times.”

“Where?”

“The Sheraton next to the United States embassy, on Reforma Avenue.”

The sicario took that in and nodded. It was a huge risk, but nobody from the cartels would dare do anything due to the security.

“We’re going back there. Remember what I said about circumstances and making the best of them?”

“Yes.”

“This is one of those times, but not like you think. I should kill you right now, but I have not. I will not hesitate to do so if you try anything inside the hotel while I’m checking in.” He floated his eyes on the journalist, and the man shrank back. “I understand the frailty of life much more than you, and I do not hold my own existence to the same level as you. I am the fox that kills for no other reason than he can, and like the fox, I will be exterminated eventually. You did well today. Continue, and you might return to your life where right and wrong keep the predators at bay.”