Honoring Mahoney’s wish that we not divulge the text I’d received earlier, I said, “It does make sense. Someone who works at the NSA or who has access to someone who works there.”
Mahoney said, “We’re talking a highly sensitive situation, then, above my pay grade. I’ll have to seek guidance on that angle, John. The rest of you should start running down the bank accounts listed in the confessions. I want you to trace the money backward. I have a strong feeling that all roads eventually lead to Mexico.”
My cell buzzed for the second time that morning. I looked at it, half expecting M to repeat exactly what had been said in our top-secret meeting.
It was from Bree: Call me. I may have found a way to identify Maestro.
Chapter
56
South of Oaxaca, Mexico
Matthew Butler shivered a little as the sky lightened in the east. In a few hours, it would be one hundred and five degrees, but there’d been no cloud cover during the night, and currently the desert air swirled in the thirties.
Butler had not come prepared for it, but he was highly trained. He could shut off something like pain or cold at will.
He did so as he left the spot where he’d spent the night, leeward of a wall of dull red rock. He climbed the side of a ledge, and when he got to the top, he took the raw wind straight in the face.
Butler scooted forward in the low light to where the ledge became the farthest point of a pinnacle some four hundred vertical feet above a gravel state road that wound through the mountainous terrain. He settled into a wide crack in the side of the pinnacle facing almost due south, assembled his Swarovski BTX spotting scope, and took his long-range rifle from its case.
When he had it locked in and aimed down at a tight bend in the road, he triggered his jaw mike. “Everyone awake?”
“Sipping my espresso,” Big DD said in Butler’s earbud.
“Mocha latte here,” J. P. Vincente said.
“Put caramel in mine,” Alison Purdy said.
“None for me,” Cortland said. “Caffeine gives me the shakes.”
Butler smiled. “And now we wait.”
Several minutes later, as light came on slowly, he began to be able to pick out other rock formations overlooking the road bend and the steep hillside on the opposite side where scrub gave way to groves of pi?on pine.
“We’ve got them leaving the hacienda gate,” M said in Butler’s other earbud. “Three black Escalades.”
“They’ve gone with three vehicles this morning,” Butler said, relaying the word.
“Roger that,” Vincente said. “Adjusting the plan.”
“I’m with him,” Purdy said.
“We are less than twelve minutes out.”
Butler looked around at the highest point on the other side of the road, unable to make Cortland out. But the sniper was there. He’d been in place all night, lying prone beneath dun-colored camouflage, eager to prove his skills.
Cortland had been embarrassed that he’d missed the pervert Frenchman in Paris six weeks ago and had vowed it would never happen again. Butler believed him. Paris had been a rare error on Cortland’s part. Butler expected his accuracy to be exceptional when the time came.
“Six minutes,” M said and Cortland passed it on.
The sun was rising above the eastern horizon when M said, “Two minutes. Road is clear to you. Both directions.”
“Rocks,” Butler said.
Above the near side of that tight bend in the road, Butler saw a flash and heard a muffled, delayed thud as a slab of rock the size of a refrigerator broke off and fell, shattering debris across the road.
“Well done, DD,” Butler said.
“Once a sapper, always a sapper,” the big man said.
Butler got behind his rifle, dialing in his scope to the distance to the debris while calculating for the steep downwardness of the shot. He looked south, saw headlights slashing the road.
“Eyes on,” he said. “Cort, you’re up.”
“Watch ’em fall,” he said. “Cartel swine.”
The first Cadillac rounded the bend, the other two tight on its bumper. The driver saw the rocks and slammed on the brakes a little too late. He crashed into the rubble; his front wheels went up onto it with a screech before the vehicle stopped. The others hit in a bumper-to-bumper chain reaction.
“Perfect,” Butler said. “Everyone, steady now. Wait for it.”
He watched six men climb out of the first and last SUVs carrying automatic weapons. They looked nervous, sensing an ambush.
“Patience,” Butler said.