Wolf Pack, page 25
“Stand by,” Infante said. The phone went silent and Cruz assumed Infante was covering the mic with his hand. He was no doubt getting further instructions from Abriella.
Infante’s voice was hollow when he came back on.
“Abriella says kill them all.”
“What?” Cruz said. “Even the federales?”
“Yes. She says this way we won’t have to come back for them.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Cruz whispered.
* * *
—
CRUZ AND REYES each had a Heckler & Koch UMP submachine gun within reach. It was a stubby but lethal weapon chambered in Smith & Wesson .40 with a thirty-round magazine. At full automatic, the H&K fired at a rate of six hundred rounds per minute.
Before leaving on the mission, they’d trained with the pieces by sawing watermelons in half from twenty-five yards away.
They’d never used automatic weapons—much less two of them—on a target in any previous missions in this country. Cruz wasn’t sure he welcomed the new wrinkle, and he knew Infante didn’t. He’d talked about the escalation of weaponry with Reyes, and Reyes just shrugged. He had no strong feelings about it.
There was nothing more attention-getting and splashy than gunning down several law enforcement targets in broad daylight on the steps of their courthouse. This was the kind of thing that happened in Mexico, not in the U.S. It was audacious and risky, and it would bring down the wrath of LEOs across the entire nation on their heads.
Which was why the afternoon was perfectly arranged to produce maximum violence and chaos on a strict timetable of destruction. Even if the surviving cops could comprehend that three of their own had gone down simultaneously, the other planned actions at exactly the same time would create fog-of-war confusion.
By the time it was all sorted out, the Wolf Pack would be several counties away in cars belonging to the Arrowhead Valley Lodge—vehicles that were not mentioned in the APB about the white van and the Mercedes SUV.
The plan was even more outrageous than several of the drive-bys they’d accomplished on Mexican politicians and police chiefs in the past.
And it was pure Abriella.
* * *
—
INFANTE CAME BACK ON. “Leave no witnesses,” he said. “Then get to the meeting place as fast as you can. Call me with the results.”
“Okay,” Cruz said and punched off.
Reyes said, “We’re not going to get out of this alive, are we?”
“I’d be surprised if we did.”
Reyes whispered a prayer to himself in the back seat.
Cruz saw commotion through the window in the conference room. The game warden stood up and then moved away from the window.
“Get ready,” Cruz said. “I think the meeting is breaking up.”
* * *
—
INFANTE PLACED the phone on the countertop in the kitchen and rubbed his face hard with the heels of his hands. His stomach was in knots and he hoped he wouldn’t have to run to the bathroom to void his insides.
Abriella, on the other hand, was ecstatic at the news. As the day went on, Infante could see her gain confidence and validation. Now that she was in charge and her plan was taking shape, she was a different person. Gone was the sulky woman with the bad attitude.
Abriella Guzman had been replaced by ABRIELLA GUZMAN, the alpha female of the Wolf Pack.
She wore a tight black top and camo tactical pants with lace-up boots. The grip of a 9mm semiauto stuck out of the side pocket on her right thigh and the left pocket bulged with extra magazines.
Her eyes sparkled.
He could see this image before him eventually appear on T-shirts and bandanas in Sinaloa. He could imagine her as the inspiration for narcocorridos sung throughout Mexico and beyond.
“Let me know when it’s done,” she said. “They know where to regroup with us, right?”
He felt a flash of anger. Of course they knew where to go afterward. She either thought Cruz and Reyes were dense and hadn’t listened the night before, or she was tweaking him for taking them all to the wrong address two nights before. Or maybe both.
“They know,” he said.
On the table were two additional H&K UMPs and a Benelli M4 H20 Tactical twelve-gauge semiauto with a pistol grip.
She grasped one of the submachine guns by the strap and threw it over her shoulder.
Then she looked at her watch.
“The falconer dude should be here any minute,” she said. “Let’s get into position.”
Infante nodded. He picked up the H&K by the strap and the shotgun by the pistol grip in the other hand and followed her out of the house through the back door, where two of the ranch vehicles were positioned and waiting for them.
His eyes were on her buttocks in the tight trousers the whole time.
After all, he thought, even though he felt sick inside and a sense of doom hovered over his head and shoulders, he was still a man.
* * *
—
“HERE THEY COME,” Cruz growled to Reyes in Spanish.
He heard the sharp snap of the bolt of the submachine gun being armed behind him and the snick of the safety being thumbed off. Cruz armed his weapon as well.
He knew they couldn’t be seen clearly from the outside with the windows up due to the dark tint of the glass. He’d made sure that was the case when he crossed the street earlier.
“Don’t open the window until you’re ready,” he said.
“I know,” Reyes snapped.
The double doors of the county building opened at once, each side swinging out. The doorway was suddenly filled with people.
Cruz reached down and touched the toggle switch to power down the driver’s-side window. But he didn’t depress it yet.
There were five of them. Two bulky men who held the doors open, two women in business suits, and the sheriff in his wheelchair. They were intermingled at first and it was impossible to separate out the targets.
Then they did him a favor. The sheriff rolled to the left toward a handicap ramp on the side of the stairs. One of the women, who was young, fit, and attractive, went with him.
The other three knotted up and started to descend the stairs on the right side. The older woman led, coming down a step ahead of the two burly men behind her. Cruz got the distinct impression that the two sets of people couldn’t get away from each other fast enough.
“We’re missing the game warden,” Reyes said. “Maybe he’s coming out behind them.”
“We can’t worry about that now,” Cruz whispered to Reyes. “I’ve got the ones on the right. You take the targets on the left.”
“Got it.”
Simultaneously, both driver’s-side windows whirred down.
Reyes fired first, a high-pitched staccato ripping sound that tore open the afternoon and was even louder inside the SUV. In his peripheral vision, Cruz saw plumes of granite dust explode from the front of the building on all sides of the young woman and the sheriff. The woman went down in a heap and the sheriff’s chair rolled down the ramp on its own with the sheriff’s head flopped back and his arms limp at his sides.
Cruz locked eyes with one of the burly men, who instinctively reached into his jacket. Too late. Cruz pulled the trigger and didn’t let go until the entire magazine was empty and three bodies lay sprawled on three different levels of the steps.
“Ándale, ándale, ándale!” Reyes shouted from the back seat.
Cruz tossed the weapon aside to the passenger seat and rolled up his window. It smelled of acrid burnt gunpowder inside the cab, and expended brass shell casings had pooled in his lap between his thighs and were burning through the fabric of his pants.
He cursed and swatted at them as he started the engine and peeled away from the curb.
In his rearview mirror, he could see the lifeless body of the sheriff roll slowly out into the street.
As he cleared the town, he stopped the vehicle and left it running while he jumped out to peel the magnetic ARROWHEAD VALLEY LODGE decals off the two front doors. He sailed the signs into the trees on the side of the road and jumped back into the SUV.
* * *
—
INFANTE FELT THE vibration of the burner phone in his pocket as he followed Abriella across the lawn toward the two ranch vehicles. He planned to take the four-wheeler the caretaker had used and Abriella had the keys for a Ford F-350 flatbed pickup.
She noticed that he’d stopped to answer the phone and she paused before mounting the sidestep to climb into the cab. She cocked her head expectantly to hear the news.
Over the hum of road sound, Cruz said to Infante, “It’s done.”
Infante whistled his relief. He noted that Abriella was watching him intently.
He nodded to her and she beamed.
“You got them all?” Infante asked.
“All but the game warden. He must have cut out early or gone out a different door.”
Infante nodded to himself.
“What?” Abriella asked.
“They got them all except the game warden.”
“Did they miss him?” she snapped.
“He wasn’t there.”
She pouted for a few seconds, then shrugged. “So no big deal. We keep to the original plan.”
Infante nodded. Before learning from Cruz that the game warden was in the meeting, they’d already set that phase of the operation into motion by shooting two cow elk that were grazing near the highway that morning and calling it in to the authorities so the game warden would respond. Infante had found himself more bothered by the slaughter of two wild animals than he’d ever been by the death of a target, and the afterimage of the two big bodies steaming in the grass in the early-morning chill had stayed with him.
She glanced at her wristwatch and then signaled for Infante to wrap it up.
He said to Cruz, “Good work, my friend. Abriella is staying here to meet the falconer and I’m going up to the road to take care of the game wardens. Maybe both of them will show up. Then we meet.”
Cruz grunted and terminated the call. He was apparently in no mood to chat.
As Infante swung one leg over the saddle of the ATV, Abriella called out to him.
“Peter.”
He looked up at her. Her smile was radiant.
“I know you didn’t like splitting up,” she said. “I get that. But this way we can do it all at once. It’s all coming together perfectly.”
“Yes, it is,” he said, trying to keep the cynicism he felt out of his voice.
“We’ll leave our rentals here and take this truck to the meeting point.”
He nodded. He didn’t know if she was repeating the plan she’d devised for him or to remind herself. And he didn’t care.
“I’ll meet you back here when you’ve taken out the game wardens,” she said. “I’m not too worried about doing the falconer by myself.
“After all,” she said with a mischievous wink, “he’s some dude who flies birds around, I guess. What could go wrong?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AT 2:05 P.M., Nate and Liv drove the Yarak, Inc. van up the mountain highway into the Bighorns. They were running late because Liv had asked him to pull over twice so she could get out and throw up.
“It’s been bad most days,” she said about her morning sickness when she climbed into the van the last time, “but today it’s especially bad. Maybe I should have stayed home.”
“Not to worry,” Nate told her.
But that wasn’t completely true. Liv was a vibrant personality. He wasn’t used to her being sick and it unnerved him. He found himself becoming more and more aware of the other presence in their lives: the baby.
The baby would change . . . everything.
“Still, I hate to be late,” she said. “It’s not professional.”
“It isn’t like there is another commercial falconry operation in the phone book.”
Nate had loaded one of his peregrines into the van before they left and the hooded bird leaned deftly into every turn on its perch on the way up. He brought the bird along for demonstration purposes in case the client wanted to see a raptor in action.
His weapon was holstered and under his seat.
As they climbed, he noted how much snow was still on the ground inside the timber. He enjoyed the fresh spring smells of the thawing mountains.
“I hope we don’t need to stop again,” Liv said while delicately wiping her mouth with her sleeve.
“Again, don’t worry about it. The turnoff isn’t much farther up the road.”
“If this client is as hot as she sounded on the phone, I’m glad I’m along,” Liv said with a grin. “I’m sick, but I could still fight her.”
To demonstrate, she threw a weak punch into the air.
Nate’s cell phone lit up on the dashboard and he picked it up.
“It’s Joe,” he said. “I’ll call him back later.”
“Why not take it?” Liv asked. “We might be out of cell range at this lodge we’re going to.”
“Because I hate cell phones and he knows it.”
She rolled her eyes and said, “Take it.”
* * *
—
THREE MILES FARTHER up the highway near Burgess Junction and the summit, Infante stood in crusty snow that went up to his knees behind the trunk of a massive ponderosa pine. He’d parked the ATV in a stand of buckbrush so it couldn’t be seen from the highway, and he’d taken his position.
The two dead cow elk were thirty yards from where he hid. He’d watched as a pair of ravens landed on the carcasses and picked at the soft tissue around the eyes. If nothing else, he thought, the big ravens would draw the attention of the game wardens to the exact location of the bodies.
He was well within shotgun range of the dead elk.
Infante checked his watch. He was surprised the game wardens hadn’t yet arrived. What else did they have to do? Infante asked himself.
His feet were cold and the snow he stood in had begun to melt into the fabric of his trouser legs.
A few minutes earlier, he’d observed silently as a car slowed down on the highway and came to a stop near the elk. One of the ravens had flown away, but the other stayed. The remaining bird was defiant toward the intruders and continued eating.
The car had been driven by two middle-aged tourists with green Colorado plates and a COEXIST bumper sticker. The driver, who wore a windbreaker and a Tilley hat, had left his car running as he got out and approached the dead elk in the snow. His wife did the same. They both stood and stared at the dead animals with their hands on their hips.
“That’s just terrible,” the man said. “Look how close they are to the highway. I could have hit them on the road.”
“Do you think that’s what happened?” the woman asked. “Someone hit them?”
She wore black yoga pants, Ugg boots, and a puffy down vest.
“Naw,” he said. “When you hit an elk, it really messes up your car. If a car hit them, it would probably still be here on the side of the road.”
“Then what killed them, do you suppose?”
“Probably bears,” the man said. “Or wolves. Or maybe some idiot shot them.”
“Everybody around here has guns,” she said. “I bet that’s what happened.”
“Oh well,” the man said, turning back to his car.
“Shouldn’t we call someone?” the woman pleaded.
“Who?”
“Well, someone.”
“Just forget it, honey.”
“We can’t just leave them here like this.”
“What do you want to do? Bury them?”
“Someone should do something.”
“Maybe we could call the Wyoming Fish and Game people,” the man said. He was obviously unenthusiastic.
Infante hoped they did. Maybe a second call would light a fire under the game warden.
“Where do we find them?” the woman asked her partner.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe you can look them up on your phone.”
“I barely have a signal.”
“Then wait until you do.”
“This has really ruined my afternoon, Ted.”
“Just get in, please.”
Infante heard her sob, then two car doors closing.
They were the only people who had come by since Infante had hidden himself. He looked at his watch again and wondered why the game warden hadn’t responded.
He couldn’t just stand there in the snow all day waiting to ambush the target. That would foul up Abriella’s well-tuned agenda.
But that was the flaw with her plan, he thought. She didn’t account for something going wrong—and something always went wrong. The unexpected always shouldered its way in.
His patient and deliberative approach to their contract work was designed to eliminate as many unanticipated variables as possible, like the game warden not showing up. But Abriella thought the world should operate according to her preconceived notions—that people should do and say what she thought they should do or say.
That was the problem with millennials, he thought.
* * *
—
DOWN IN the valley, Abriella heard the crunch of gravel up in the trees and she knew the falconer was coming. She glanced at her watch. He was a few minutes late.
She stepped out from behind the main lodge where she’d been waiting and walked out into the yard. She swung the H&K behind her on its shoulder strap and pinned it there with her elbow so it wouldn’t be visible from the front.
A light-colored vehicle emerged from the timber across the grounds of the resort. It drove into the lodge compound tentatively, as if the driver were trying to figure out which way to turn.
