The Cartel (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 15) Read online

  Because of that, she was the one who got to choose their penalty.

  With the gun on an angle, she jammed it onto the back of the man’s right hand and pulled the trigger.

  Over his screams, she tried to explain that he now had two signs of the stigmata. Hopefully he would find religion after this and leave the Enzo Cartel.

  “Because if you don’t leave the cartel on your feet, you’ll leave on your back, in a casket or a mass grave like some of your victims.” She turned around at the door. “You were at the wrong place, wrong time. Soon my name will strike fear in the Enzo Cartel. Tell them I’m here. Send the message. Sarah Roberts says no one lives.”

  She left the room as the lone Mexican bellowed a horrific tune of pain. Outside, she dumped the Mexican’s gun and grabbed her own. Once her weapons were securely fastened to her body under the habit, she picked up her one knife. Knives were silent. Guns were loud. Sometimes a kill needed to be quiet.

  Then she started down the road to the café she was supposed to visit tonight. A couple of deep breaths loosened the tightness in her shoulders.

  Vivian said she would locate a lieutenant of the Enzo Cartel at the café. This lugarteniente held the second highest position in the cartel and, according to Vivian, he was having a drink with some of his men—Halcones—at the Baja Café three blocks from the church. He would recognize Sarah, but perhaps not in a nun’s habit.

  The darkened Mexican street didn’t give her black figure away as she moved toward the café like a ghost in the night, keeping to the shadows.

  It was only a matter of time before the cartel released Aaron to turn off the pressure she was about to mount. Vivian claimed there was no other way. Raids and arrests by the DEA and the Mexican federales would only cause Aaron’s death.

  Sarah had to do this her way, as she always did.

  They’d release Aaron soon.

  Or she would kill them all.

  No one lives.

  She banished thoughts of Aaron as the café came up on her right.

  Chapter 2

  Casper pulled the curtain aside and peered into the parking lot of the hotel. Overwhelmed with frustration, he’d found sleep elusive the last few nights. Sarah was driving him mad with her constant badgering. One week in Mexico and nothing had happened. Red tape. Multi-agency bullshit.

  His hands were tied. So far, there had been nothing he could do about it. As in Amsterdam, if the local authorities didn’t offer carte blanche, he had to wait and do things their way.

  This was Mexico, not America. The kidnapping of a Canadian man didn’t raise the American or Mexican stakes too high.

  Mexico’s DFS, Dirección Federal de Seguridad, or Federal Security Directorate, and the Municipal Judicial Federal Police, also known as Federales, were assigned to aid in the DEA’s every need. Buck Schaffer, known as Casper to his colleagues, had arrived in Tijuana with Sarah as an adviser to the DEA. The joint task force was supposed to strategically enter the Enzo Cartel compound and shut them down, in addition to find and release the Canadian, Aaron Stevens, but the bickering about how that was supposed to happen had gone on for too long.

  Aaron didn’t have the luxury of waiting.

  Casper had no idea what he would tell Sarah in the morning as another day would probably pass without action.

  Each team argued who would lead the strike on the cartel, with neither one agreeing that the Americans could have point on it. Since they wouldn’t allow the Americans to lead the raid, it had to be the DFS or the Federales. But neither felt the Enzo Cartel was big enough to bother with, especially for one man.

  It was brought up in a PowerPoint presentation—a fucking PowerPoint presentation—that collapsing the Enzo Cartel at this early date was like spraying a wasp nest during the daylight while the wasps weren’t there. All you did was kill the hive. The wasps would build another.

  The DFS wanted to wait until the Enzo Cartel was big enough to put a dent in the opium and cocaine heading over the border since they were a relatively new and small organization. The Federales weren’t interested in attacking a cartel to save one Canadian man. Thousands of Mexicans were kidnapped yearly. Tens of thousands were murdered annually. Why was this one man so important? Because his girlfriend was here? Because she was important to the American government?

  That wasn’t good enough. So they waited. And they debated. And Casper kept Sarah up to date, but trimmed the information some. If she knew the truth, she’d freak out on him. If she knew a raid wasn’t imminent, and the likelihood dimmed with each new day, she might do something reckless.

  So what was next? If not today, it would be tomorrow when Sarah would do more than demand answers. And then what would happen? Probably the Mexicans would arrest her, detain her, and one of the authorities on the mordida—on the take, accepting bribes—would seal her fate while she was in prison and the Enzo Cartel would have their wish granted. Because that was the cartel’s main goal. Kill Sarah Roberts for costing them millions in laundered money when she shut down a human trafficking club in Toronto.

  Casper let the curtain fall back into place. He turned to face the darkened room and contemplated Sarah’s psychic ability. What he saw her do in Amsterdam was incredible. He grew to respect her. She was strong, confident and quite an admirable opponent. Bringing her to Mexico to be there when Aaron was freed had been the plan since they landed in Amsterdam.

  If she had died in Europe, then the cartel would’ve disposed of Aaron and the DFS and the Federales would’ve gotten their wish of watching, waiting, monitoring.

  But Sarah didn’t die. He had placed the right calls and got the right people set up, only to be stopped here, at this shitty hotel on the outskirts of Tijuana, waiting for nothing to happen.

  Going against policy, doing it his way, would piss off the Mexicans. Collaborating with Sarah and using her psychic ability, if she would, to release Aaron could prove to be exciting and dangerous. But could they do that and leave the country without repercussions? He thought not.

  Casper was valuable to his superiors back home. The consequences would be light. They needed him. They signed off on this assignment. He was supposed to return to the States with Aaron free and Sarah in tow.

  But any cowboy stuff would hurt relations with the Mexican authorities and potentially damage future cooperation.

  Did that matter to him? How important was Sarah? If Aaron was left behind, how important would she be then?

  He shook his head in the dark room at the notion that Aaron could ever be left behind. That certainly wasn’t an option. But until now, the Mexicans were sealing Aaron’s fate by keeping Sarah secluded in this hotel. Soon, one of Enzo’s men would hear that Sarah was in Tijuana. They would come. Sarah would be taken. She would be tortured, flayed with an onion peeler, torn apart and killed for destroying their money laundering operation. Then Aaron would die.

  And for what? So more drugs could be sold on American streets?

  Casper had to put a stop to this. He had to act. But how? Without backup, any operation was suicide. Unless Sarah’s sister offered a way in and a way out. Something only an entity with the power of seeing things from the Other Side could offer.

  He snapped his fingers.

  “There has to be a way,” he said to the empty room.

  Once dressed, he opened his hotel room door silently and checked for the security detail. A lone man sat on a chair by the elevators. He leaned on the table, a newspaper dangling over the edge, his AR-15 strapped to the back of his chair.

  Casper eased his door closed. At the phone, he dialed the room-to-room feature and called Sarah’s number, rocking back and forth on his heels. She would either chew him out or agree that they had to do something. The waiting around was probably driving her more mad than him.

  After five rings, he set the phone down. She was sleeping. Of course she would be at this hour.

  But fuck it. He needed an answer.

  He dialed out again.

  Af
ter ten rings, an odd premonition that something wasn’t quite right swept over him. He set the phone down softly, going over ideas in his head. Why wasn’t she answering? If she wasn’t in her room, where could she be?

  He dialed the front desk. The clerk answered on the second ring.

  “Good evening, Mr. Schaffer. How can I assist you?”

  “Have you seen the occupant of room 510 this evening? Sarah Roberts?”

  “No sir, not since I saw you with her in the restaurant here in the lobby earlier this evening. Why, is something wrong?”

  “I just tried her room but she didn’t answer.”

  “Probably sleeping, sir.”

  Casper thought about it. Certain people slept at different degrees. Some were light sleepers, others could slumber through a tornado.

  “You’re probably right.”

  Casper hung up and headed back to his door. He opened it, eased out of the room and started down the hall to Sarah’s room. His footfalls on the carpeted hotel floor made no noise. The guard by the elevators didn’t move.

  At the door to Sarah’s room, he knocked lightly.

  After half a minute with no answer, he knocked harder, his stomach twisting. Could they have gotten to her? On the fifth floor?

  It couldn’t be. Security was tight. This operation had a combined force of nearly fifty men with a dozen taking rotating shifts guarding the hotel’s exterior.

  Unless someone was accepting bribes. He had to consider that. A bribe or two later and a small bomb could be delivered to Sarah’s door. Or sicarios—gunmen, hitmen—could be offered a free pass.

  He knocked harder. The guard by the elevator didn’t budge. Casper frowned, his internal radar pinging. He needed his weapon. He needed to sound the alarm.

  First he needed inside her room.

  He ran for his own room, fumbled the key card, finally got inside and dashed across the floor for his service weapon. He chambered a round and grabbed the phone by the bedside to ring the front desk again.

  “Good evening, Mr. Schaffer. How can I be of service?”

  “Bring up a room key for Sarah’s room, number 510.”

  “But sir—”

  “Something’s wrong,” Casper shouted. “Just do it or I’ll shoot the lock off the door and break into her room.”

  Casper slammed the phone down and ran from the room. Once in the corridor again, he turned toward the guard.

  “Hey, wake up,” he shouted. “Going into room 510 to check on Sarah Roberts.”

  The guard didn’t move.

  “You listening to me?” Casper screamed as he made it to Sarah’s door. “Wake the fuck up, asshole!”

  Casper closed his hand into a fist and punched Sarah’s door. “Wake up, Sarah. We need to talk.”

  He kept his gun down by his thigh. Something had happened to the guard at the elevators. He still wasn’t moving. The front desk clerk could be compromised as well. If that were the case, when the elevator doors opened, a trio of masked gunmen would exit and punch holes into his body from twenty feet away.

  He spun around on his heels and ran for the exit sign. Gunmen would be coming up the stairs as well. Everything would be guarded. He was trapped.

  At the exit door, he slammed into it sideways, shoved the door open and then jumped back. Nothing happened. No one shot at him.

  He stepped inside the door, leaving it open a crack to watch the corridor. After a short wait, a young Mexican male, dressed in the hotel’s uniform, exited the elevator, glanced at the security guard, gave a slight shake of his head, and started toward room 510, a key dangling from his palm.

  The clerk was a short, rotund male in his early twenties. The buttons on his shirt, a size too small, had been undone at the collar.

  Casper came out of the stairwell, his gun aimed at the clerk.

  The clerk stopped short of room 510, his eyes widening.

  “What?” the clerk gasped. “What’s going on?”

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Hernandez.” It came out in a squeak.

  “Okay, Hernandez, take it easy. Here’s how this is going to work. Continue walking to room 510. Once there, insert the key and open the door. Then I need you to leave the door ajar and return to the front desk. If I need you again, I will call.”

  Hernandez shook his head up and down rapidly, sweat already forming on his round face. His breathing turned ragged. Air came and went in short, timed gasps.

  “Do it now,” Casper said when Hernandez hadn’t moved.

  Dazed, his lower lip quivering, Hernandez brought the key up and aimed it for the slot in room 510’s door handle. Casper remained in a shooter’s stance, feet wide, arms outstretched in a firing position similar to the one he would use at the firing range.

  The key card slipped inside the knob without resistance. Casper prepared to leap back if someone rigged the door to blow. But nothing happened. The door opened with ease.

  “Now go back downstairs. Speak nothing of this. I will call you within five minutes.”

  Hernandez walked backwards for a few paces, then turned and jostled down the hall toward the elevator, his trousers audibly rubbing at his inner thighs. Casper waited as Hernandez pushed the elevator button. The elevator hadn’t been called to another floor, so the door opened instantly. When Hernandez disappeared inside and the door shut, Casper lowered his weapon and moved in front of Sarah’s door.

  He pushed it all the way open, keeping himself to the side. By the empty bed, the lamps shone to illuminate an empty room.

  Sarah was gone.

  Casper entered the room to find no signs of struggle. Even the bed was still made up.

  “Shit!”

  Where did she go? Willingly or forced?

  He jumped back into the corridor and ran for the security guard by the elevator who hadn’t moved the entire time.

  “Hey, wake up.” He touched the guard’s shoulder. “Wake up, asshole.” He shook the man. When he got no response, Casper checked his pulse.

  There wasn’t one.

  “Fuck. What the hell?”

  The elevator dinged beside him. Something metallic clicked from inside the elevator. It sounded like a gun was being readied.

  Casper sprinted for his open room door.

  The elevator opened behind him.

  He was too far from his room. He wasn’t going to make it in time. Ten feet. Eight feet. A cold sheen covered him as if he had just ran through the blast of an air conditioner.

  Movement behind him. Footsteps entering the corridor.

  He waited for the bullet.

  His open door came up on the right. When no bullet came, he dove inside the room, rolled on the floor and smacked into the base of the bed.

  Scrambling on his hands and knees, he crawled behind the open door and looked through the crack to watch the hallway.

  The worst thing about his job were these tense moments. Not knowing what was going on or who was involved. How could they circumvent security? Even in moments like this, he felt fear, which was rational. But fear did strange things to the human body. In Casper, it heightened all five senses. His hearing became acute, his eyes wide. It was his breathing, rapid and loud, that scared him. It could very well be the one thing that gave him away. If these were cartel men and they saw him, he was as good as dead.

  Did Vivian warn Sarah to leave tonight because the Enzo Cartel were staging a hit on her? If so, why didn’t she tell him about it? If the attack on the hotel couldn’t be stopped, at least she could’ve saved his life.

  Thanks Sarah!

  If he made it out of this, Sarah would have to explain herself.

  He forced his breathing to slow down, to get quieter, then waited behind his room’s door, staring out into the hallway until his vision blurred. Then it wavered. He blinked, refocused his eyes and wiped his moist hands on the carpet to remove the sweat building up.

  A man wearing a black balaclava leapt into sight. He carried a chanate—Spanish for grea
t-tailed grackle—which was an M4 carbine with grenade launcher strapped to his chest, the barrel end waiting to do business. Casper recognized the beta C-mag double drum magazine, what was commonly called, huevos de toro—bull’s testicles.

  What the fuck?

  These hitmen meant business. Cartel business.