“Helping you hunt M is frankly not my job.”
“But you’ll reconsider retaliating against the families?”
She turned cold again. “I’m sorry I cannot be of more help to you, Dr. Cross. But our visit together is at an end.”
The hood came down over my head. My wrists were cut free and a strong arm supported my elbow. As I was led away, I said, “Thank you for your time.”
“You’re welcome,” Emmanuella Alejandro said.
Chapter
66
The new leader of the Alejandro cartel watched Cross until he was placed in the back seat of the Tahoe. As the SUV drove away, she turned to Raphael Durango, the rugged-looking man who’d brought the American here from the city.
Emmanuella trusted him implicitly. Durango was strong, smart, well trained, bullheaded, and completely loyal to her. Even though her skin was pale and his was the deep, dark red of the Sierra Madre, he was also her half brother.
Her father had been a miner in the mountains and fell in love with one of the Tarahumara Indian women there. Durango had grown up running around and climbing in the steep mountains before joining the Mexican army, where he was part of an elite fighting unit similar to the U.S. Army Rangers for more than a decade.
After he was discharged, their father died and Durango had come to claim his inheritance. Marco had seen their half brother’s value right away and made Durango Emmanuella’s bodyguard. Since Marco’s imprisonment, Durango had become her trusted confidant as well.
“Cross is sharp,” Durango said. “He may find Maestro before we do.”
“Unless he’s allied with M and supportive of having us destroyed.”
“Is that possible?”
“Why not, Raphael? Cross is a man of law and order. In any case, we are close to finding this pig M. I feel it in my bones. We need to learn who helped Maestro here in Mexico. Or at least figure out how they got in and out of Mexico City.”
Durango poured himself some water. “Just so you know, when we used the wand on Cross, we found a GPS transmitter in his belt, low back.”
“What?” she snapped. “Someone else knows he was here?”
Durango shook his head. “Calm down. The new Tahoe has an electronic jammer, and so does this entire hacienda. No one knows he was here. But now we know where he’s going and we will for as long as he wears that belt.”
“How’s that?”
“We got the transmitter’s frequency off the wand readout. It won’t take much to have it send his location to us.”
“That could be useful. Especially if my instincts are correct and Cross is aligned with M, wanting to see us destroyed and using his ability to go inside that penitentiary to bring Marco unwittingly to his side.”
“Why didn’t we kill him, then?” Durango asked.
Emmanuella’s cell phone rang before her fury could build. She looked at the caller ID, gritted her teeth, and answered sharply, “Yes, Claudio?”
“I think I’ve got them,” her ex-husband said. “Four men, one woman, all American. Left on a chartered jet from a private field in Cuernavaca yesterday afternoon at two, destination Denver.”
Claudio had a reputation for impulsiveness, jumping to conclusions based on emotion rather than fact, so she said, “What makes you think it’s them?”
“I slipped five grand to the woman running the counter at the jet service. The charter was covered by one of the passengers. His name is Matthew Butler. I have copies of his passport and those of the people traveling with him.”
“But what makes you think it’s them, Claudio?” she repeated impatiently.
“I’m getting to that, Emmanuella,” he grumbled. “I had her look to see if Butler had chartered other jets recently through the same leasing network. He had. Four times in the past six weeks. And here’s why I think it’s them. The dates and the destinations line up with most of Maestro’s victims. Catherine Hingham, the CIA agent found in Washington. FBI agent Mason White in LA. DEA agent Eddie Hernandez, again in Washington. And now the three dead yesterday.”
Emmanuella thought about that, then said, “Well done. I mean that, Claudio. But I need to know more. I need to know everything about this Matthew Butler and the people who were with him.”
Chapter
67
Washington, DC
Two days later, in the early evening, Mahoney, Sampson, and I landed at Dulles International, feeling tired but happy that the cartel had not retaliated against the family of Dean Weaver, the CIA officer killed and left at the courthouse entrance in Mexico City, before they could be put into the witness protection program.