Edge of Battle aow-2 Read online

  “I told you before, ‘Comandante,’ that I don’t want rich and powerful cookers and dealers in this county—I want everybody kept small time so they don’t attract attention from the state or the feds,” Nuñez said. “Money makes you cookers greedy and stupid, and that hurts everyone. Now you’re going to surrender one of those trucks and a couple of your men to me.”

  Fuerza nodded, looking dejected and defeated. “Talvez,” he said. “Take the trailers then. Just don’t take my delivery truck, okay? That is important to my business. And don’t run no computer checks.”

  “That’s not your call, Ernesto,” Nuñez said, giving the Mexican a mischievous grin. “I’ll need a contract tow company to take the trailers, and I don’t want any outside eyes back-checking my report, so I’ll take the delivery truck instead.”

  “Nuñez, I ask you, do not take my delivery truck, please…”

  “Sorry, Fuerza. Maybe next time you’ll play straight with me. Stay here until I have your men in the paddy wagon, and then I’ll let you ‘escape.’”

  “You greedy bastard. I told you, I have a deal going that will make this lab setup look like a child’s chemistry set. I could use your help.”

  “Tell me what this deal is about.”

  “I got me an army, Nuñez,” Fuerza said. “I got me some good fighters, real pros. They…”

  “More of your pansy Mexican stoners, ‘Comandante’? No thanks.”

  “No, not the Rural Defense Corps—these guys are for real. No hassles for you at all. We will not stay in San Bernardino County—we just need safe passage for these guys when I bring them across.”

  “Pros, huh? Who are they?”

  “You do not want to know who they are, Nuñez,” Fuerza said. “They will take over security and enforcement for my network. All you and your guys need to do is let them through when I tell you they are coming.”

  Nuñez thought for a moment; then: “Okay, Ernesto. But I’m raising my fee to twenty thousand a week.”

  “Twenty thousand? You do less work for more money?”

  “You think it’s easy or cheap to explain to the bosses how over a million dollars’ worth of Mexican crank gets discovered in Los Angeles, Riverside, and Imperial Counties every month, but not in San Bernardino County?” Nuñez asked angrily. “There’s a lot more than just my team involved in this, Fuerza—everybody from the state narcotics control bureau to the DA to the fucking newspaper reporters have their hands out. It’s going to cost you big to go big-time.”

  “I tell you, Nuñez, back off, and there will be plenty of money for all of us.”

  “Twenty thousand a week, starting now,” Nuñez insisted. “Maybe that’ll take care of this sudden urge to expand your operation. Take it, or I’ll confiscate more than just the damned truck.”

  “Okay, okay, I will pay,” Fuerza said. “But please, do not go near the delivery truck, and tell your deputies to stay off the computer.”

  “Stop whining about that truck, Ernesto,” Nuñez said. “Be thankful I’m not impounding everything here and tossing your sorry stupid ass into jail. Now shut up and stay put until I come for you.” Fuerza plopped back on the hard bench seat of the sheriff’s department Humvee and waited.

  It did not take long. Nuñez returned a few moments later: “What the hell is going on, Fuerza? We just ran the plates on your truck for wants and warrants, and the whole fucking world exploded on us! Were you involved in some sort of border incident down in Imperial County?”

  “I do not know nothing about any border incident, Nuñez. I have been here for…”

  “Bullshit, Fuerza. You’re going down big-time, jerkoff. You should have told me what you’re involved with when I first nabbed you. This whole area will be swarming with feds in an hour—the computer reported the tag check to every law enforcement agency on the damned planet. You’ll be lucky if you just end up with life in a federal prison. It’s out of my hands now, asshole.” He disappeared again, shouting, “Bag up any cash and product you see before the damned feds get here, boys. We’re going to lose this crime scene in just a few minutes, and then we’ll be sucking hind tit as usual. Search that truck good and…”

  The gunfight lasted less than a minute. Fuerza heard and felt a few heavy-caliber bullets ricocheting off the Humvee, and he hunkered down on the floor until it was over, then sat up and shouted, “Coronel, aquí.”

  A few moments later, the door of the Humvee opened up, and Yegor Zakharov appeared, aiming a pistol inside the vehicle. He glared angrily at Fuerza. “You drove us to an ambush with the police?” Zakharov shouted. “I should kill your ass right now!”

  “It was a shakedown, Colonel—that deputy is even more crooked and greedy than you,” Fuerza said. He turned around, and Zakharov cut off the plastic handcuffs. “Usually a few thousand dollars and some lab equipment and empty chemical drums satisfies him, but he was looking for more this time.”

  “What happened to your security? Don’t you have anyone guarding this damned place?”

  “We can talk about that later, Colonel,” Fuerza said. “Right now, I suggest we collect all the money, weapons, and product we can and get out of here before the real police arrive.”

  OVER SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

  THE NEXT DAY

  The shadow flitted across the hard-baked sand in an instant, so quickly that no one really noticed it. Eyes seared by the sun, stinging from sand, salt, and sweat, it was not hard to understand. Most eyes were concentrating on the path ahead, not on the sky. A false step could result in a twisted ankle or nasty fall, and that would delay everyone. Besides, shadows from birds flying overhead were common—usually the birds were buzzards or California condors, large carrion birds looking for animals in distress below for their afternoon meal. Humans were not on their preferred menu, but if one fell and looked as if it was dead or incapacitated, they would circle overhead and wait patiently until it died all the same.

  This time, however, the shadow overhead was not from a living animal, although even from close-up it resembled a very large Canada goose. It moved slowly, no more than ten to fifteen knots depending on the winds, flying just five hundred feet above ground. It had very long thin wings with ducted turboprop engines underneath, a long neck, a large bulbous body that was not as long as the wingspan, and a broad flat tail.

  The group of fifteen Mexicans crossing the desert stopped for a water and pee break, and it was then that one of the men noticed the shadow, looked up, and saw the flying object overhead. “What is it?” the man asked.

  “Shh! ¡Escuche!” the coyote leader ordered. Now they could hear the faint, low, throaty sound of the device’s small jet engine, and that made everyone in the group upset. “It is a reconnaissance aircraft, probably Border Patrol.”

  “They will catch us for sure!”

  “Maybe,” the leader said. He unslung his backpack and quickly pulled out a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun. “But they’ll have one less eye in the sky to bother us the next time we cross.” He found it child’s play to track the spy plane because it was moving so slowly, and he squeezed off a shot.

  “You fool! They will hear you!” one of the other coyotes complained.

  “We are twenty miles from the nearest road and thirty miles to the nearest town—no one will hear this small rifle,” the shooter said. He fired again, then reloaded.

  “That little popgun isn’t going to hit it from this distance, you idiot!” one of the pollos shouted. But just then the little aircraft turned sharply to the north and started to fly away.

  “Not going to hit it, eh?” the coyote said happily. “Too bad it got away—I really wanted to see that thing come spinning out of the sky, like a wounded duck,” he said gleefully. “Let’s get moving. The more distance we can put between us and this spot, the…”

  “¿Cuál es ése?” one of the pollos suddenly exclaimed. The coyote looked in the direction of the migrant’s outstretched arm. There, at the top of a small rise about a hundred yards before them,
was a…well, it was impossible to tell what it was. It resembled some sort of child’s toy robot, with broad chest and shoulders, bulbous head, slim waist, and large metallic arms and legs, but it was about nine or ten feet tall. It had appeared out of nowhere—none of the sparse vegetation for miles around could have possibly hidden that thing.

  One of the pollos unslung his backpack and reached inside it, but another stopped him. “No, don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t you recognize it? I saw it on TV, back during the attacks on Houston and Washington. Usted no puede matarle.” The first man took his hand out of the backpack but kept it close.

  “Whatever it is, let’s get away from it,” the coyote said. But as they moved a little farther east to try to get around it, the robot thing moved with them—it made no move to walk toward them, but simply shadowed their movements. “It’s moving with us, but it’s not making any attempt to stop us. Maybe it doesn’t belong to the Border Patrol?”

  “¿Qué hacemos?” one of the migrants asked worriedly.

  The coyote thought for a moment; then: “We split up,” he said. “There’s only one of it—it can’t follow us all. Up ahead about three kilometers is a gully. Follow the gully toward those mountains until you come to a concrete alcantarilla. Stay out of sight until we meet up with you.”

  “What about our pickup?” one of the men asked. “You had better not call him off, asshole…!”

  “We have a deal, dammit. Just do as I say. Now split up!” The pollos did as they were told, breaking up into two-and three-man teams and fanning out. The smuggler chambered a round in his rifle and approached the robot, shouting, “Hey, you! What are you? What do you want?”

  “No tire en el avión,” the robot said in a machine-synthesized male voice.

  That was bad—the spy plane was apparently beaming down its images to this contraption, because the robot knew that he had fired on it. “Fine, fine. I won’t fire on your spy plane anymore, prometo. Now leave us alone.”

  “What is your name?” the robot asked in Spanish.

  “Are you the police? Border Patrol?”

  “No. But the Border Patrol is watching you. What is your name?”

  “How do I know the Border Patrol is watching?” the coyote asked. “I don’t have to tell you shit.” He leveled the shotgun at the robot. “Now leave us alone, ojete!”

  “That’s Martín Alvarez,” Senior Patrol Agent Albert Spinelli said, watching the video feed on a laptop computer broadcast via satellite from the Cybernetic Infantry Device unit on the scene. They were outdoors at a vacant area adjacent to Runway 27 Left at Gillespie Field near El Cajon, California, standing beside a Humvee with a small satellite dish on top. The entire area north of the parallel runways, including the runways themselves, had been closed off to all air traffic, and a small encampment had been set up with two Humvees, a satellite dish, and a large thirty-foot-long, ten-foot-high nylon net strung across Runway 27 Left to recover the Gullwing unmanned reconnaissance aircraft. “No surprise seeing him in this area.” Spinelli definitely appeared uncomfortable at watching this group of illegals crossing the border near Campo, California, just east of the steel security fence that stretched ten miles either side of the Potrero-Tecate border crossing station.

  “The bastard took a shot at my UAV,” Dr. Ariadna Vega, deputy commander and chief engineer of Task Force TALON, a joint military–Federal Bureau of Investigation antiterrorist strike force, said in a surprised, worrisome voice. She too looked extremely uncomfortable watching this encounter, although for decidedly different reasons.

  The Border Patrol agent looked at Vega suspiciously. “Alvarez is small time, usually nonviolent,” Spinelli said. “First time I’ve ever heard of him using a weapon. He’s usually too drunk or stoned to even walk straight, let alone shoot straight.”

  “There’s something strange about those migrants,” Ariadna remarked.

  “What?”

  “They look…I don’t know, pretty well organized, like they’re used to walking out in the middle of nowhere in the desert,” Ari said.

  “The migrant farmworkers are already pretty tough hombres to do the kind of work they do,” Spinelli said. “A lot of the migrants have made this trip dozens of times, and you have to be tough to survive it.” He looked at Vega again, trying to guess what was wrong with her expression. “Don’t worry—after the shootings at Blythe, we’ll be on guard for any violent characters.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Our patrol will be there in twenty minutes,” Spinelli replied. “We’ll pick them up, drive them back here, and give them all a checkup. We have a group of volunteer nurses and paramedics and a volunteer doctor on call who’ll help us out. Then they’ll be processed. We’ll identify them the best we can and weed out the criminals and the violent ones. Any wanted suspects are processed by the Departments of State and Justice for extradition. The Mexicans will be deported across the border; the OTMs—other than Mexicans—will be deported after a hearing. If they have any outstanding warrants, either in the U.S. or with any other Interpol reporting agencies, they’ll be detained until they can be transferred to the proper authorities. We’re seeing more and more of them with lengthy criminal records.”

  “The others will get deported?”

  “Yep. They’ll be bused across the border from San Diego to a Mexican processing center in Tijuana or Mexicali.” He thought for a moment, then went on: “Alvarez, the guy with the shotgun, concerns me. Smugglers with guns are getting more and more common on the border, and we want to clamp down on that hard and fast. I think Alverez is wanted in Tamaulipas State on suspicion of killing a Mexican federale. I want him for questioning. Have your guy…robot…CID unit, whatever you call him, hold that man until our agents arrive.”

  “We can’t,” Ariadna said. “We’re prohibited from making an arrest. We’re out here to observe and report, nothing more.”

  “I can authorize him to pass along an order from me to stay where he is until my agents arrive,” Spinelli said. “I’ll be the agent in charge. You’ll just…”

  “We can’t get involved, Agent Spinelli—that’s final,” Ariadna said resolutely. She touched the comm button: “CID One, you are authorized only to keep the subjects in sight and report their position and movement. You may not detain or interfere with them in any way. Is that clear? Acknowledge.”

  “Received and understood, Ari,” U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Harry Dodd, piloting CID One, responded.

  “That guy took a shot at your recon plane, Dr. Vega—you saw it, we all saw it,” Spinelli said. “That’s a federal violation for sure. Plus he’s wanted in Mexico on a murder charge. You can’t just let him go.”

  “Task Force TALON is not the Border Patrol, Agent Spinelli—we’re not here to do your job for you,” Ariadna said. “We’re here simply on National Security Adviser Jefferson’s suggestion.”

  “But…”

  “As far as you’re concerned, Agent Spinelli, we’re nature lovers out here on a stroll to take pictures of the flora and fauna,” she interrupted. “CID One, continue your assigned patrol.”

  “Roger.” It was only a few minutes later when Dodd radioed back: “I’m picking up a vehicle approaching—a small Ford van, no license plates…subject Alvarez is waving it down. Looks like a rendezvous.”

  “You can’t let him get away, Dr. Vega,” Spinelli said. “Alvarez just walked across the border. That’s illegal. You’ve got to stop him.” But Ariadna said nothing.

  “Ari? What should I do?”

  “Continue your patrol, CID One,” Ariadna replied. “Observe and report.”

  There was a slight pause; then: “O-kay, Ari. The first subject has made contact with the driver of the van…he’s now waving at the other subjects…they’re running toward the van. Looks like they’re all going to get in.”

  “At least get up there and see who the driver is, Sergeant!” Spinelli exclaimed. Dodd trotted over to the van, but the driver and a man i
n the front passenger seat had their faces well hidden with hats and sunglasses. “The other guy has a gun!” Spinelli pointed out excitedly. “I saw a submachine gun in his lap! That’s another federal violation! You can’t let them get away!”

  “Ari…?”

  “Continue to observe and report, Sergeant,” Ariadna repeated stonily. Spinelli banged a hand on the console and muttered an expletive. Moments later they watched as the van sped away.

  “Want me to follow it, Ari?” Dodd asked.

  “Yes! Follow it!” Spinelli shouted. “We might be able to intercept him before he reaches the highway.”

  “Negative. Resume your patrol, Harry.”

  “What is with you, Vega?” Spinelli exploded as he watched the van speed away through the video datalink. “I thought you were here to help us! Instead, you just let a wanted criminal get away!”

  “My orders are to send one CID unit and a Gullwing UAV out to this area, patrol for ten hours over varied terrain and operating conditions in both day and night, and report back to Major Richter and Sergeant Major Jefferson,” Ariadna said curtly. “I don’t much care what you thought.”

  Spinelli was ready to continue arguing with her, but instead he looked at her and nodded his head knowingly. “Oh, I get it now. What is it, Vega—afraid ‘your people’ are going to get persecuted by the big bad federales?”

  Vega whirled around and pushed Spinelli hard in his chest with two hands. “Kiss my ass, Spinelli!” she shouted.

  “I seem to have hit a nerve here, eh, Vega?” Spinelli smirked. “I run into that all the time. Most of the Border Patrol’s recruits are Hispanic because it doesn’t cost as much to teach them Spanish and they blend in with the border area population better. But the downside is that sometimes they don’t want to catch the illegals as bad as others in the Border Patrol do. Some even have family members that are illegals, and they’re afraid they’re going to catch a relative or friend of a relative if they do their job well enough. They’re good agents, but they let their heritage get in the way of their duty. They don’t last very long in the service. After all, they’re just wetbacks in uniform.”