Head Wounds Read online

  “Can we use some of the money to buy Blossom a new stove, fix her roof, and put some aside for the girls?” Isabel asked.

  “I think that’s the perfect place to start,” Grace said.

  Isabel clapped her hands together. “Good, now I won’t feel like such an outlaw.”

  Clayton grinned and slapped Wendell on the back. “What have I always told you? The women rule.”

  “Isn’t that the Apache way?” Wendell replied.

  CHAPTER 21

  Throughout his shift, Clayton continually glanced at his desk phone and the lined writing pad beside it with the Piedras Negras phone number Smitty Winters had given Pruitt yesterday. The urge to dial the number had tugged at him for hours, but first he wanted to read Smitty’s Confessions of a Marine Sniper. At least the part about how Trevino had saved the jarhead’s life.

  It was a paperwork day and the seemingly endless amount of it should have fully occupied his attention. But he kept looking at the door waiting for Pruitt—who’d promised to check for its delivery at his apartment—to walk in with the book in hand. At five-thirty, Pruitt showed up and handed Clayton the opened package.

  “I couldn’t resist,” he said with an apologetic smile. “I had to read what Smitty wrote about El Jefe. The guy was a kick-ass warrior back in the day.”

  “I bet he was.” Clayton pulled the thin book out of the overnight envelope. “I owe you big-time for this.”

  “No problem,” Pruitt said. “You know what they say: eat, sleep, read. My ex-wife practiced that daily. That’s why we’re divorced.” He waved goodbye on his way out the door.

  Clayton examined Confessions of a Marine Sniper. A paperback slightly over a hundred pages, it had been self-published through an Internet company. The cover design consisted of the Marine Corps emblem of the eagle, anchor, and globe in the center with an outline of a prone Marine rifleman below. The title ran along the top with Smitty’s name, followed by MSGT, USMC, Ret. at the bottom.

  On the back there was a photograph of the author and a brief bio about his thirty years of service in the Marine Corps and his major combat decorations.

  There were sixteen chapters. Clayton turned to the one titled “Bardera, the Bird, and the Bear.”

  We’d been working roadside checkpoints for about a week in an area outside the town of Bardera, a major relief distribution hub. The main road into the interior was in piss-poor condition with potholes, crumbled pavement, and washouts that could almost swallow a truck, blow out tires daily and crack axles. Just about every convoy suffered delays and breakdowns, especially along several really bad stretches, which we had to constantly patrol.

  Clayton skimmed ahead. Smitty went on to write about how they were not allowed to disarm civilians and could only shoot if a gun was pointed at them or if the weapon was a machine gun or larger. The brass even required them to carry reminder cards of what they could and could not do. Smitty called it BS.

  He talked about the men in his team and how excited they’d been to ship out from Camp Pendleton and the disappointment they felt about not being allowed to go to war. He described the terrain as an empty desert of rolling plains with scrub brush, thorn trees, and occasional isolated hills. He wrote about the starving people, nothing more than walking skeletons, staring empty-eyed, barely able to slap away the swarms of flies that hovered around their heads.

  Duty consisted of a dull routine in hot and dusty days and cold and windy nights spent removing broken-down vehicles from the roadway, guiding vehicles around hazards, guarding precious emergency food and cargo in the disabled trucks, escorting convoys to the distribution centers, and patrolling for rebels in the immediate area. Occasionally a Special Forces bird would overfly a convoy to keep any possible hostiles or bandits off guard.

  At dusk during a swirling dust storm that had slowed a large convoy to a crawl, the Marine escort vehicle was hit by an RPG, wounding Smitty, who was the senior NCO, and Micky, his eighteen-year-old driver, and knocking out all radio communication. At the same time, the armored personnel carrier at the rear of the column came under heavy rebel fire. Reinforcements were a good twenty minutes out and all fixed-wing air support was grounded due to the storm. Smitty continued his story:

  Overhead, out of the storm, came a small assault helicopter we fondly called the Killer Egg, inbound to Bardera. It hovered in front of me, one man on the portside bench. It dropped low and that one lone soldier jumped to the ground, rolled, and came up firing at three rebels approaching my position. They all went down as the bird veered away to the rear of the convoy.

  My left arm was smashed, and I had taken shrapnel in the neck. Mick, my driver, was bleeding and unconscious. The soldier pulled us out of the vehicle before it blew up, dragged us into a roadside ditch, checked our wounds, and asked me if I could fight. I nodded and he handed me his Beretta M9 and took off toward the firefight at the rear. I had the M9 and my own Colt .45 but never needed to use them. Ten minutes later the shooting stopped, and the soldier returned to tell me the rest of my squad was okay. He dressed my neck wound and said it was just a nick although at the time it had turned my shirt red with blood and I thought I was gonna die.

  Mick had come around. The soldier patched the wound that had grazed his temple and sliced off part of his ear. He checked my vitals, grinned, held out his hand, and asked for his M9 back.

  I gave him the weapon, thanked him, and asked who he was. He said to call him Bear. That’s the only name he ever gave me. He wore the rank of a sergeant first class and had a Special Forces Airborne patch on his shirtsleeve. He looked like an Indian right out of those old photographs from the nineteenth century.

  He asked if we needed to be evaced and I said that Mick and I would stay with my men. He left in the bird as Corporal Evans came up from the rear to give me an action report. It was only then that I learned Bear had taken out another three camouflaged hostiles who had Evans and the rest of my team pinned down in the APC. Bear had found them one at a time, slit their throats, and scalped them.

  Sometimes I wonder if I dreamt it. That Bear was just a ghostly memory of something I made up. But then the weather changes and the ache in my left arm reminds me that what happened in Bardera with Bear and the Killer Egg Bird was all true.

  I’ll never forget that warrior. He would have made a helluva Marine.

  Clayton closed the book, wondering if war had changed Trevino into a killer or if he was just naturally good at it. Had the military simply taken El Jefe’s raw talent and sharpened his skills? Was it something he’d learned from his warrior tribe?

  He glanced at the desk phone again. Maybe the Piedras Negras phone number Smitty had given Pruitt was from a burner phone. Maybe not. What if it had been Trevino who’d called Smitty? Did he think it safe enough to use his personal phone? And if so, why did he call in the first place?

  It seemed completely out of character, unless Trevino was reliving the past, taking inventory of his memories of war and of the people whose lives were intertwined with his during those times. Clayton knew that combat veterans and first responders often buried their harrowing experiences for decades only to have them erupt unexpectedly when triggered by a painful event. As a career police officer, it had happened to him. As a combat veteran and cop, it had happened to his father.

  Clayton was on his own for dinner, so there was no need to rush home. Grace was at the board meeting of the friends of the public library, Wendell was back in Albuquerque for classes, and Hannah was at an early evening NMSU baseball game with her boyfriend.

  He picked up the handset, set the phone to automatically record, dialed the Piedras Negras number, and listened as it rang.

  “How did you get this number?” It was a man’s voice, stern and demanding.

  Surprised, Clayton took a deep breath and said, “Estavio, I’m Detective Istee with the Doña Ana Sheriff’s Office. Do you have a few minutes to talk?” He waited for the phone to go dead.

  “Smitty Winters sends his regards
,” he added. “That’s quite a story he tells about what you did to save his life in Somalia.”

  “What do you want?”

  Clayton smiled. Trevino hadn’t denied who he was. “Right now, just to talk.”

  “Talk.”

  “It was you outside the museum, wasn’t it? Releasing the spirit of the man I’d shot there to enter the Real World to be with his ancestors. Or were you there to put a ghost sickness on me? What was his name? His ID said Lawrence Anico, but we knew that was fake.”

  “His name was Fernando. I should kill you for what you did to him.”

  “I wish it hadn’t happened and I am sorry that it did. You were kind to rescue him many years ago after his German parents were murdered in Mexico. Some think you killed them. I don’t.”

  “You’ve done your homework. Do you have the money?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The million dollars. Do you have it?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Trevino laughed. “Someone has it.”

  “Let’s hope they put it to good use, as you have with the hunting ranch you bought for your people. I was sorry to learn of the fire. Has Commander Lorenz of the Piedras Negras Police Department been unable to help you?”

  “I am impressed. Enough small talk. What do you want?”

  “To get to know you better. That’s all, for now.”

  “To arrest me, you mean.”

  “You murdered five people in my backyard, Estavio,” Clayton said. “Lucy Nautzile, James Goggin, John Cosgrove, and the rancher and the deputy at your campsite. That’s a lot of killing. I’m compelled to arrest you.”

  “The last two were inadvertent, and—like you—I am sorry.”

  “Did you come back to New Mexico to kill me?”

  “Yes, and your family also if necessary.”

  “I’m happy that you changed your mind. Can we meet? I’d be willing to come to you.”

  “Come here and I will kill you,” Trevino promised.

  “I thought we’d gotten beyond that. What name did you use in the Army?”

  “Now you sound like a cop.”

  “Actually, I’m a fan. You’ve had a life filled with adventure, heroic exploits, and danger. I’d like to know more about it.”

  Trevino laughed. “We should exchange dossiers, Detective. Although I believe mine to be more extensive than yours. Don’t push it, or you might see your entire family dead.”

  “You were that angry? Why the sudden change of heart?”

  “You swim in dangerous waters, Clayton Istee. We have talked enough.”

  “Before you hang up, how did you arrange in advance to have John Cosgrove assist you at the Las Cruces hotel?”

  “Those incidentals are of no consequence. Cosgrove was gullible and greedy, like so many Norteamericanos.”

  “No regrets about killing him?”

  “None.”

  “What do you know of DEA Special Agent Bernard Harjo’s whereabouts?”

  “I know nothing about him other than he was to accompany you to Mexico to arrest me. Is he here?”

  “I don’t know where he is. I hope you will call me so we can talk again.”

  “There is no need for that. Adios, Detective Istee.”

  The phone went dead. Clayton listened to the playback. He’d solved the case, gotten a confession, had it all on the record. Okay, he hadn’t Mirandized Trevino, so it wouldn’t hold up in a court of law. But that didn’t matter. The case would never go to trial anyway, and he doubted El Jefe would ever allow himself to be captured alive.

  Clayton would love to give it a try. He was itching to know for certain what had made Trevino change from a cold-blooded assassin back into a flawed and imperfect human being.

  He made copies of the recording, sent them in an email attachment to Captain Rodney and Sheriff Vasquez, and left for the night, suddenly starving. He needed a green-chile cheeseburger with all the fixings, and he knew right where to get it.

  CHAPTER 22

  For the equivalent of one hundred U.S. dollars, Danny Fallon paid a month’s rent for an old, furnished single-wide mobile home in Zaragoza, a town forty miles outside Piedras Negras. On concrete pillars, it tilted a good three inches off center, sloping from the rear bedroom to the front living room/kitchen area. The surrounding trailers, also rentals, looked no better, and the neighbors were mostly day laborers, drunks, drug addicts, disabled, or plain crazy. They paid no mind to Fallon and Harjo, who crashed on the floor of the mobile home in surplus sleeping bags they’d bought in lieu of using the lice-infected beds.

  The water, when it was on, had a harsh, chemical smell to it, but they had no plans to use it. They weren’t bathing, shaving, or changing their clothes. Deep cover meant being completely invisible, attracting no attention. They became derelict Mexicans wandering the Piedras Negras streets. They ditched Fallon’s rental car on the side of the highway outside of Zaragoza. It was gone on the first morning. As they waited for the bus from Saltillo that would take them to Piedras Negras, Fallon called from a burner phone to report it stolen to the rental company.

  Some days they took the bus, other days they hitchhiked or rode in the back of delivery trucks, paying the drivers pocket money in pesos for the privilege. In Piedras Negras, they bought a clunker at a junkyard along with a rebuilt starter and water pump to keep it running. At night they parked it and took the last bus back to Zaragoza.

  They ran random spot surveillance on Lorenz and his brother, Gilberto, looking for possible weaknesses in their protection that would get them within kill range. They worked varied hours to avoid establishing a routine that might signal any telltale interest to watching eyes. To gather intelligence, Fallon used his phone, or they bought computer time at one of the city’s Internet cafés.

  Frequently they split up to cover more people and places, one on foot, the other in the clunker. They’d switch off to observe in-and-out traffic at the exclusive enclave where the Garzas lived, run surveillance at Longwei’s restaurant, and follow the beat cops outside the Plaza Mercado. They never rendezvoused at the same place and never parked the clunker on the same street. Back at the trailer, they averaged four hours of sleep each night.

  Nothing seemed particularly promising. The safe houses with the underground tunnels to the basement room in Longwei’s restaurant were, as Harjo had described, heavily guarded, and there was nothing subtle about it. Pickups with manned, mounted fifty-caliber weapons in the truck beds were parked outside. Armed guards with automatic weapons roamed the surrounding streets. Few residents dared to leave their homes unless necessary. Several times when Harjo or Fallon attempted to walk by, acting three sheets to the wind, as Fallon liked to say, they were intercepted, cursed, and prodded away by the guards. Not once did they see anyone enter the safe houses, which obviously were no longer in use.

  A police patrol car had been posted 24/7 at the entrance to the gated community where Gilberto and his wife lived. That was a new wrinkle for Harjo, who’d seen no cops there while working for Benito Jimenez. At Garza’s Plaza Mercado and his popular Piedras Negras grocery store, plainclothes officers roamed the aisles inconspicuously.

  Longwei’s restaurant had a doorman packing heat. In parked vehicles on the street near the front entrance, two-man surveillance teams kept watch. It all screamed danger.

  Trailing Lorenz proved difficult. He traveled with armed escorts in accompanying vehicles and rotated between his three mansions in and around Piedras Negras, staying in them on different nights. All were tucked behind security walls with sophisticated surveillance systems and armed guards at the gates. Who knew how many more goons were posted inside? Fallon figured dozens.

  He suggested buying a drone with a camera for a look around the properties. Harjo nixed the idea as a dead giveaway that the brothers were targets.

  Breaching police headquarters without a Delta team and heavy air support would have been impossible. More than a fortress, it was the hub for cartel business, guarded
by highly trained elite police officers who doubled as Lorenz’s assassins, drug mules, intimidators, and rapists. No right-minded citizen would ever go there. Fallon decided no wrong-minded, renegade DEA agents would, either. Harjo didn’t quibble.

  The cartel’s increased show of protection surprised them. What caused it? Were they blown and didn’t know it?

  Along with the elite cadre of officers who worked for the cartel, there were the street cops, mostly lowlifes who transported product from the interior when not serving, protecting, and shaking down the citizenry and tourists. They patrolled in pairs and were expected to pay kickbacks to their superiors. If they failed out of greed or poverty, many were simply disappeared. It made for a high turnover rate among the department’s lower echelon.

  Harjo and Fallon lowered their sights and began surveillance on two of Lorenz’s lieutenants, Diego Mendez and Vito Torres. Both had the bad habit of sticking to a predictable after-hours routine. Graduates of the San Luis Potosi Police Academy funded by the U.S. government, they were former Mexican federal officers bought and paid for by the Lorenz cartel.

  They favored each other’s company and frequently drank and ate together at several popular restaurants and bars. They spent time at an exclusive gentlemen’s club, drove expensive German SUVs, and owned houses in the same quiet, peaceful neighborhood that attracted professional-class residents. They had no personal security to protect them. Mendez was single, with a string of girlfriends. Torres had a wife and three pre-teenage children.

  Ten days in, Harjo called a halt. They had found their weak links. They drove the clunker to Zaragoza, cleaned out the trailer, left the car behind, and took the bus south to Saltillo, the state capital of Coahuila. In a city of nearly a million people, they could safely come up for air and still stay lost among the multitudes.

  At the bus station, they cleaned up, changed into fresh clothes, and rented a room in a nice hotel close to the city center. They ordered room service and a bottle of scotch.