Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

Leave it to her to actually know the answer.

“You mean it’s some kind of cult?”

Jennifer said, “Yes and no. It’s not a cult like you mean, with only a few people belonging to it. La Santa Muerte’s huge down here, but it’s also definitely frowned upon by the Church. The Mexican government thinks it’s nothing but a way for the drug cartels to sanctify what they’re doing, and it’s officially illegal, but I guess around here being illegal doesn’t mean a whole lot.”

We were just south of Eje 1 Norte, only a half mile or so from the tourist area of the historic district and the president’s palace, but had crossed some border that separated the good guys from the bad. The Tepito barrio was just across the road, and according to all the research I could find, it was about as bad an area as I could possibly imagine. Known as the thieves’ market since colonial times, the barrio was home to every sort of illegal activity, from prostitution to gun running, and the people who lived there were known throughout Mexico as fighters. Tough guys who took pride in their rough-and-tumble existence.

Merchandise was sold throughout in all manner of tiny little shops or right out in the streets, each alley clogged with stolen, smuggled, or counterfeit items. The people here knew which alley to go to for drugs, weapons, CDs, or phones, but we didn’t have a clue. All we knew was that the little blue marble on our smartphone, representing the BMW from the narco’s kidnapping house, was located in the heart of the barrio.

After we’d dropped off Felix yesterday, his father had taken Jennifer and me to a BMW dealer to see what we could do with the key fob. The dealer was closed because of the late hour, but Arturo had pulled some strings. I’d heard him shouting into a phone and figured his son’s rescue was paying off.

I’d wanted to go just by myself, because it was a long shot and I didn’t want to get Jennifer’s hopes up. I wasn’t sure what the thinking would be back home and needed to contact Kurt Hale before I did anything else. The last thing I wanted was for Jennifer to think we were still on the hunt for her brother, only to have the Oversight Council pull us home. I’d probably end up tying her to the airframe to prevent her from doing something stupid.

After a little baksheesh exchanged hands, courtesy of Arturo, the BMW dealer read the fob. It turned out that not only did it work the doors, ignition, and windows, but it had the maintenance records for the car stored on its embedded chip, including the VIN and other identifying characteristics. In other words, a partial lead. It would take some hefty convincing to make the lead pan out, as I’d have to get the Taskforce to penetrate BMW of North America and create a BMW Assist account tied to the VIN for us to track the vehicle.

It was almost a 100 percent guarantee that the narco didn’t have that sort of thing operational in his car—what crook would want Big Brother to have the ability to track him?—but it was about only a 50 percent chance that he’d taken the extra step of removing all the electronic infrastructure that allowed the feature to work, especially since that infrastructure was probably threaded throughout other operational capabilities like arteries in a body.

We’d taken the information back to our hotel in the Zona Rosa and I’d given the team what little we had, telling them to return to their rooms for some shut-eye. We all needed some decompression time after the activities of the past couple of days, and I wasn’t sure when we’d get another chance. It was the way of such operations. You might get sleep for the next four months because the command decided to pull the plug, or you might be up for the next four days.

Used to the stop-and-go, they left, but Jennifer had stayed behind. I let her, given her brother’s life was at stake.

I had contacted Kurt on our company VPN, an encrypted network that bounced around forever through various ISPs to cloak who I was calling. He took the information, but, as expected, he was decidedly lukewarm on doing anything with it.

Jennifer, behind me and off camera from the VPN, had pleaded with him, trying the same hand she had with me about a threat to the GPS constellation, but he wasn’t buying it, and I understood why. Hell, I wasn’t even buying it. The evidence was simply too weak, and we were literally flying by the seat of our pants down here, conducting operations without a shred of backup should someone get rolled up.

In the end, Kurt said he’d prep the intelligence picture—a nice way of saying he’d have the hacker cell penetrate BMW—but we were to stand down until further notice. We agreed to talk again the following morning, and I signed off.

After the call had ended, I’d sat for a minute reflecting. Jennifer had cleared her throat, reminding me she was in the room, and I told her to go get some rest. She didn’t move.

I joked, “What? You want to sleep in my room tonight?”

She slowly shook her head and said, “No. Not with your attitude about my brother.”

Trying to lighten the mood, I said, “Usually the woman waits a little longer in the relationship to start withholding favors to get what she wants.”

Jennifer’s face was flint. Not a bit of humor at all. She said, “Usually the man I sleep with isn’t such a callous ass.”

I realized the joke was a mistake. I’d just brought our relationship into the equation of what should have been a team member–team leader discussion. I needed to get that back.

“Jennifer, listen to me closely. I care about your brother, and I’ll do whatever I can within the limits of what’s possible, but right now, you need to get your head on straight. This is a Taskforce operation, period.”

She said, “You never seemed to care about that in the past. You always did what you thought was right, regardless of Taskforce rules. Remember in Prague? You rescued all those sex slaves when you could have simply used a beacon. Now, when it’s someone I care about, you’ve turned into a by-the-book soldier.”

It was true, I’d taken a significant risk assaulting a house full of Albanian Mafia who were trafficking in young girls, but she was failing to remember that the only reason I’d done it was because she had demanded the assault. I thought it prudent to let that remain unspoken.

“Jennifer, one of those girls could have positively ID’d the terrorist. That’s why we went. Just like we did today, in case you have forgotten. We just hit a house we thought was holding your brother, but he wasn’t there. I’m sure there were a few girls out the night we hit the house, and we didn’t go running around the countryside chasing them.”

“Because the girl with the knowledge was there. If she hadn’t been, you might have chased her down.”

I said, “Jennifer, please … don’t make this hard. You know I’m correct here. Don’t make me play team leader.”

She took my hand and said, “I don’t want my team leader. He’s kind of an asshole. I want my Pike back.”

Damn it. Unfair.

“Jennifer, listen, if we’re stood down tomorrow, that’s the end of it. They’ll take the aircraft and head home and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t call a Prairie Fire for your brother.”

She held my eyes. “I’m not asking them. I’m asking you. If they fly home, we stay and find my brother. Just the real Grolier Recovery Services. That’s all I want.”

She stared into my soul, waiting for an answer I knew damn well I couldn’t give, but my resistance was eroding just from her presence. I was beginning to wonder if I’d lost the ability to control my own fate. If somehow she’d planted a chip in my head and had a remote control in her purse.

She was the exact opposite of me, always following the rules and chastising me for bending them—or breaking them outright. Now she was begging to do exactly that. I should have found it a relief, like I was rubbing off on her, but I didn’t. All I felt was a loss of control. Well, my conscious brain did anyway. My subconscious was another matter entirely, and it apparently held more sway.