Chapter Sixteen
RAVEN
I watched Miguel fall asleep in first class in the half empty FBI jet with his head resting on a neck pillow leaning up against the window of the plane. Cassidy and Mike sat with Lincoln, Mac, Damon, and a cluster of other FBI agents near the back of the plane’s cabin, in quiet discussion as we flew toward Houston to pick up the Special Ops team. DEA SAC Hope Bannister and her team were also onboard, taking up several rows in the center of the plane.
Cass and Mike had given Miguel and I a hug when we got to the airport. We hadn’t had to explain a thing to them since they’d heard of our close encounter with death before we got there.
Once we were off the ground, I learned from Lincoln and Mac that one of the FBI agents in the car which had followed us on the freeway, had survived the shooting and crash, and though, injured critically, had been extracted from the crumpled vehicle. He was in surgery. I prayed again, this time for the man’s recovery, grieved that the other three agents had died from their wounds. I hoped those cartel fuckers would pay for their crimes.
All of them were on their way to jail after giving up their weapons when they realized a standoff with the cops was useless. I was certain they hadn’t been handled with kid gloves while being carted off. I rested my head on Miguel’s shoulder soon after, praying we’d all survive in Grand Cayman to make the return trip. All I wanted was for all of this to be over.
I opened my eyes, only realizing I’d fallen asleep when I heard the screech of the plane’s tires on the runway. I sat up, seeing that I’d been drooling on Miguel when I noticed a wet spot on his shirt. “Oh, shit,” I said, wiping the back of my hand over my lips and cheek. Miguel’s low chuckle made me look over at him. He was watching me with glittering eyes.
“I love the sounds you make when you’re dreaming.”
I didn’t know what to say. “I-I make noises when I dream?” I hadn’t remembered dreaming.
“These little snorting, whimpering sounds. It’s adorable.”
I felt an embarrassing smile spreading across my face. “Shut up.” As the cabin lights came on, I suddenly realized it was dark outside. I checked my watch. Sure enough, I’d been asleep for almost five hours.
“Hey, guys.” Lincoln appeared beside my chair out of nowhere.
“Are we in Houston?”
He nodded. “Yeah. We’ll be on the ground for less than thirty minutes, just long enough for the guys to load their gear and join us here in the cabin.”
The FBI tac team. Right. I’d almost forgotten why we were in Houston, only that Houston had been the destination.
“There’s something I wanted to share with you,” Lincoln said, looking slightly worried.
I sat up in my chair as he crouched beside the seat. “What?”
“The plan of getting Castillo out of the house with Tawny Flores and her attorney isn’t going to work.”
“Why?” Miguel asked.
“You know Damon has some way of listening in on phone conversations. He told us about it back in the office.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Well, after we all talked, he went back to listen in.”
“And?” I began feeling panicky.
“And, Damon overheard a conversation with Mancuso talking with who we can only guess is Rafael Castillo, Oscar’s half-brother, head of the cartel. He said that everyone but a handful of his sicarios who’ll be going to the bank with Flores and Aston, are staying put until they come back with the money, locked up inside the house.”
“Does that mean they know about the FBI raid on the compound?” Miguel asked.
I glanced over at him. He was frowning.
“We can’t be sure. It might just be that Rafael doesn’t want to risk Oscar’s life, but the reason for it doesn’t matter. I just wanted to let you know that when we do breach, Oscar and possibly Rafael will be inside the house.”
“How does this change things?” Miguel asked.
Lincoln stood. “It doesn’t really change anything. Whether they suspect the raid or not, we’re still going in. I just wanted you to know that if they do suspect something, they may have taken extra security measures, that’s all. We’re still going forward. We’re going to do our jobs and rescue those hostages, while putting an end to Castillo and if we’re lucky, his half-brother, Rafael, assuming he’s in the house also.”
Miguel nodded at Lincoln. “Thanks for letting us know, Snow.”
“No problem.” Lincoln walked back to his seat.
“Don’t worry, Raven. It’s better to know than not to know.”
I frowned at him. “I wish the FBI and DEA didn’t have to go through with this fucking raid at all. I naively thought it was going to be easier.”
Miguel squeezed my hand. “It never was going to be easy, Raven. That’s why we stopped in Houston to pick up the FBI’s best tac team. Trust me. We’re going to be just fine.”
I nodded, feeling a knot in my belly. Moments later, the flight attendant opened the door at the front of the plane, not far from where we sat. Boots clomped up the steps.
Jarrett and SAC Sarah Connor, were the first to get on the plane. They greeted us with smiles before moving to the rear. Next to board was the Spec. Ops tac team that I’d heard so much about. I watched them with interest as they came aboard, and wasn’t disappointed in the least.
Watching the FBI’s tac team board the plane was like spending an evening at Chippendales. They came onto the plane one by one, bowing their heads as they walked down the aisle carrying small duffels, some nodding, some smiling. All of them were perfectly intimidating in their all-black tac gear. There were quite a variety of sizes, some tall, some on the shorter side. One had a deep scar tracking down his cheek which disappeared into a full red beard. He looked like a Viking. Most wore knives at their belts, one so massive, I was positive it had to be a prop right off the set of Crocodile Dundee . All of them were physically fit, evidenced by the defined muscles that were outlined through the long-sleeved, fitted, black T-shirts they wore with black cargo pants.
They took their seats in economy behind us, and I marveled at how some of them managed to fit themselves into seats not made for men their size. The Viking stood speaking with Lincoln and Mac, and I guessed he was their leader or whatever they called a man in charge of a tac team. When they were finally all seated, the plane took off again, flying into the night sky for the two-hour, forty-seven-minute flight, according to the pilot. I wondered if the pilot and co-pilot were FBI also.
We flew in a commuter jet, but this wasn’t a commercial flight. I could only assume it was owned and maintained by the Bureau. We’d checked in with TSA when we’d boarded through LAX’s executive terminal. The only thing I knew about it was that it catered to wealthy fliers who took private planes and thought themselves too good or too rich to mingle with the masses.
Miguel was subdued during the last leg of the journey, sitting beside me with his eyes closed, although I knew he wasn’t sleeping. He’s probably gearing up, figuring out how many bad guys he’s going to kill once he gets in there. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Get a grip, Mathis. He doesn’t need you falling apart now. He needs you to believe in him. That’s your role here. As if I’d said the words out loud, he opened his eyes and turned to face me.
“Stop worrying. I can hear the gears in your brain turning a mile a minute. Once we get there, things are gonna happen fast, Raven, and you have to be prepared.”
I nodded. “Yes…be prepared…okay.” I bit my lower lip. “Be prepared for what exactly?”
He smiled. “They’ll probably give you an earwig so you can listen in to whatever’s happening inside the house and if they don’t do it right off, your stubborn ass is going to bellyache until you get one.”
I opened my mouth to…what? Agree? Probably. But I shut it as he raised his hand.
“Let me finish.” He looked down at my lap where I was twisting both hands together. He reached over and took one. “Listen. There’s probably not going to be a whole lot of negotiating once we get in there. There will be shooting, lots of it. You’ll hear running and screaming, cries of pain and all that shit.” He stared at me, eyes clear, a small frown on his face.
“If we find the hostages dead or alive, someone—whoever finds them first—is gonna announce that, so the rest of us know. The whole reason we’re going in there is to find living hostages. If we don’t, well, we’ll be bringing out bodies, Raven. I don’t want you to see that, especially if it’s Tawny or even Brian Leopard. That’s gonna be hard for you to take and frankly, we have no idea what they’ve been put through. Understand?”
I swallowed hard. “You mean torture, right?”
He nodded. “Yes. I’ve seen some of that and I can tell you, it’s not a pretty sight. I don’t want you to have those memories.” He reached out and placed his palm over my heart then looked up at me. “I don’t want this gentle, kind heart to be broken. That’s the stuff of nightmares, the kind of stuff you can’t put out of your mind. I never wanted you touched by that. I don’t want you tainted by what you see.”
“What about you, Miguel? What about what you’ll have to see?”
“It’s not about that.”
“Yes, yes, it is. You have a kind heart too. Down deep inside, you hate injustice of any kind. I know that about you.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen things, and I hate injustice, but you’re different. You’re clean and unblemished by evil,” he said. “I’m a hard man and I never wanted this for you, Raven.”
“You’re not a hard man, though. You’re a good and decent man who laughs at Nightcrawler’s reviews, who loves my nana, who always makes Dolly feel important when you compliment her cooking. You’re a man who adopted a tiny, white kitten to chase your demons away. I know you, Miguel Huerta. I don’t want any of this for you either.”
He lifted our clasped hands and kissed my knuckles before resting our hands on his thigh. He faced forward again, blowing out a long breath, and closing his eyes again as we flew ever closer to our destination.
MIGUEL
Several non-descript vehicles awaited us at the airport. We deplaned quickly, letting the FBI Spec. Ops team file out and take up positions before we descended the steps. I noticed that Sarah, Jarrett, and one of the tac team members carried sniper rifles as they disembarked. Even though I knew we had some great snipers on our team, it was nice to note that they probably felt as close to their own weapons as I had when I was stationed in Afghanistan. It just meant that they had lots of practice with the guns.
I watched the FBI sniper with a rifle case stop beside Sarah at the bottom of the stairs. He looked her up and down, no doubt noting her short, blonde hair, slight build, and the fact that she couldn’t be more than five feet tall. He nodded at the weapon she held in a zippered case.
“Sniper, huh ?”
“Yep.”
“Seen combat?”
“If that’s what you call heading up the ATF office in L.A., then yeah, seen plenty of combat.”
He laughed. “What you got there?”
She grinned. “Treated myself to an FN Herstal M249s PARA semi-automatic for my birthday last year.” She patted the weapon like it was a newborn.
“Damn, that’s some hard-core hardware, woman.”
“You’d better believe it,” Sarah said.
“That fires 5.56 caliber NATO 200 rounds?”
“Yep.”
“Respect,” the guy said, reaching out a gloved fist which she bumped with her own.
“Okay, let’s get going,” Lincoln said, standing near the vehicles with the Viking at his side. I’d yet to learn the man’s name. Lincoln waved us over and Raven and I jogged to him. He held the back door open of one of the cars. We dived inside and he and Mac climbed into the front seat. I glanced around the tarmac one last time, noting that several of the FBI tac team were standing in a square around us, automatic rifles drawn, muzzles down, clearly providing protection until we’d all loaded up.
Once we were on the road, I leaned forward between the seats. “Where are we staging?”
“We’ve secured a warehouse about two clicks from the compound,” Mac replied. “We’ve got about five miles and we’re going fast. We’ll be there in no time.”
“Compound?” Raven asked. “I thought we were talking about a house here.”
Mac fished in his duffel, withdrawing an iPad, powering it on. “These are the SAT photos Mark Evans sent to us. We got them just before takeoff in Houston.”
Raven leaned forward to look with me.
“There’s the main house. We’ve seen men going in and out here and here.” Mac pointed to the front and back. “That’s a pool. That appears to be a gardener’s shed, too small to be anything else. That structure is big enough to be barracks, just like we thought, and those are most probably guesthouses.”
I pointed to a small structure. “What’s that?”
Mac turned the iPad to look at it. “Looks too small to be a cottage. Could be electrical or pool equipment, I guess.”
“Could be an armory,” I suggested.
Mac nodded. “Might be. That’d be bad.”
“Could be a fucking doghouse,” Lincoln said, sounding irritated. Raven looked up and I could see Lincoln eyeballing him in the rearview mirror. “Armory or no armory, there’s no use worrying about what we can’t change.”
“Lincoln’s right,” Mac conceded. “Just trust me…this is the best team of guys I’ve ever worked with. Every last one of them is a pro and they’ve seen it all. I would have been proud to serve with them overseas.”
“Well, coming from a Green Beret, that’s high praise, Mac,” I said, reaching for Raven’s hand as we sat back.
We formed a convoy as we drove through town. Judging by how low the cars in front and behind us were riding, I guessed our vehicles were armored. I noted the thickness of the windows and figured they were bulletproof as well. Lincoln and the FBI team weren’t taking any chances with this group. The only thing to stop us from getting to where we were going, would be an IED or an RPG.
I guessed we were driving right through the middle of town for just that reason. No one could sneak out into the middle of the road to plant an IED, not with late night tourists all over the fucking place. I doubted even the cartel would be willing to fire upon us with an RPG, not as fast as we were traveling, and definitely not at all eight cars at once.
In the end, we made it to the warehouse without incident and the minute we drove through the large, double doors to park inside, they were shut behind us by other FBI agents who’d been waiting for us. I breathed a sigh of relief as we piled out of the cars to stretch our legs. I looked around the place, noting the huge bay doors we’d driven through. On the opposite end of the building was a matching set of double doors. The cavernous space was big enough to be an airplane hangar but that didn’t make sense since we were five miles from the airport. Numerous wooden crates were stacked against the walls and there were two stationery forklifts parked on one side. A small office was the only private space in the building.
The big man Raven had called a Viking came jogging over. He stopped at the huddle we’d made with Lincoln, Mac, Sarah, Damon, Cassidy, and Mike. Mac looked at us and then nodded to the large red-haired man.
“Miguel Huerta and Raven Mathis, I’d like you to meet Candy Sorensen. Candy heads up our tac team in Houston.”
Candy stuck out his hand, and I shook it. “Your background is Force Recon, right, Huerta?”
“That’s right.”
“Good to have you with us. We have two other Recon Marines on the team.”
“Look forward to meeting them,” I said.
“Nice to meet you, Raven,” Sorensen said, shaking his hand.
“And you, Candy.”
Raven had called the man handsome in a rugged sort of a way. I hadn’t given it much thought, but then again, I’d spent half my life climbing mountains with a seventy-pound pack on my back with guys like Sorensen. I much preferred the gentle doe-eyed sort of man like my Raven to the big, burly guy standing before us. Skill was all that was required here…skill and respect. That , Sorensen had in spades. I’d seen the way his men respected him which meant he’d proven himself to them in the field. That kind of respect had to be earned, and he obviously had it.
I heard boots on the floor and turned to see SAC Bannister heading our way. She stopped before Lincoln, holding out her hand. “Look, Snow…I probably owe you an apology for the way I spoke to you back in L.A.”
Lincoln shook her hand. “No need, Bannister. We’re all in this together and I assure you we have no intention of leaving Special Agent Willis in that compound to rot. When we go in to get the hostages, he’ll be coming out along with the others.” He hesitated for a few beats before going on. “How good is he at—”
“His job?” she interrupted.
He held up a placating hand. “No, Bannister. I was going to say, how good is he under pressure?”
A chagrined expression crossed her features. “Sorry.” She actually sounded more upset than angry. “I can assure you that Trevor can hold his own. He’s been working undercover ever since coming to work for the DEA. When you’re walking into the literal lion’s den of drug dealers to make a case, hoping that some coked up motherfucker isn’t going to go crazy and shoot you in the face just for shits and giggles, trust me, that takes balls of steel. Yes, in answer to your question, he’s good under pressure and he’s no doubt doing his job as we speak. He’s done it many times.”
“That kind of commitment can also wear a man out,” Sorensen said. “If he’s been under for a long time…well, ma’am…that wears on a man.”
“Sorensen’s right,” Sarah interjected. “Twenty years ago, we had an ATF agent undercover with the Hells Angels. He was trying to make a huge illegal weapons case, but the challenges were almost debilitating. He was constantly being forced to party with them—which included drug use—so the ATF was forced to approve that conduct just to keep him safe. Trying to intervene in murder plots by vicious bikers at war with the Mongols, without coming under suspicion himself was a monumental feat.”
Sorensen nodded, looking deadly serious.
“He found himself constantly having to fend off the advances of women in the club because he had a wife and two children of his own at home. The ATF finally put a female agent under with him to act as his girlfriend. She had to go through training to be a proper ‘old lady,’ taught to wait on her fellow agent like a slave, walk two steps behind him at all times, all to keep herself safe. After two years, he was patched into the club, waiting on the final nationwide chapters to approve his inclusion, but by then, using drugs, partying, and doing whatever else he had to do just to survive with the criminal gang had taken its toll on him.” She blew out a tired breath.
“His wife and kids were estranged, he was spending no time at the office, his reports were getting fewer and farther between, and he was constantly having to fight to protect not only his life but that of his fake girlfriend. At that point, the ATF had come to the conclusion that they were losing him. When confronted with what was happening, he readily admitted he was becoming one of them.”
“What happened?” Raven asked.
“They had to close the case to keep the agents alive. They moved in and arrested everyone they could but only ended up with a handful of indictments for low-level players in the MC, nowhere near bringing in the case they’d hoped to. The agent was forced to go into hiding with his family, moving every two weeks. It destroyed his life,” Sarah said. “Are you sure Special Agent Willis is still—”
“Yes!” Bannister said, more forcefully than she probably should have. Defensiveness was bleeding out of every pore. “Sorry.” She took a deep breath, scrubbing her hand through her hair. “If you’re asking if he’s still okay, then yes, I’m sure he is.” She let out a breath. “I’ve talked to him about this very thing. I’d been worried about him for a while, especially with his background prior to joining the department, but honestly, I know he can and is doing his job. He admitted that the pressure is intense, and that he will most likely want out when this assignment is all said and done.”
She looked around at all of us. “The last time I spoke to him…well…he promised that he’s in it until the case is done. He said he hasn’t had to go through all of this just to come up short.” She looked directly at me and Raven. “And I can promise you that he will do anything to save innocents like Tawny Flores and Brian Leopard. I have faith in him. You need to also.”
I nodded, seeing the challenge in her eyes. “I will.”
“Me too,” Raven said.
Sorensen cleared his throat. “We should go over the plan,” he said, consulting his dive watch. “I want to figure out our approach and gear up.”
“We’re moving tonight?” I asked.
Sorensen eyed Mac and Lincoln. “No earlier than midnight for sure, but I think it’s best to wait until 0400. Even then, I’m torn. Do you think we can wait that long?”
“Sorry,” Raven said. “Why four a.m.?”
“Because that’s the time when the sicarios will be most likely to let their guard down,” Mac said. “They’ll be tired, less alert at four in the morning. The Army has studied this fact at length. Lack of sleep is associated with impaired reaction time, poor judgment, more accidents, low morale. The Army looks at sleep patterns to help soldiers cope with guard duty at the time when the body normally requires sleep. Graveyard shifts in any profession are difficult…it doesn’t matter what industry. The human body isn’t made that way. Nurses, doctors, cops, and even airline pilots have been shown to be less effective in overnight hours. More mistakes are made. Add stress into the equation, and you begin to see patterns. Trust me, Raven, it’s a thing.”
“That makes a lot of sense.”
“I don’t think we can wait,” Bannister said, chewing her thumbnail.
“What do you think, Sorensen?” Lincoln asked. “Should we split the difference between midnight and 0400 then…say 0200?” He checked with Mac. “Good?”
Sorensen and Mac exchanged a glance with each other, seeming to come to a silent agreement. “We’ll set off at 0200,” Mac agreed.
“We’re here to serve,” Sorensen said. “Give us an order and we’ll follow it.”
Heavy boots rang out on the cement floor and Jarrett sauntered over. I’d seen him huddled with the Spec. Ops and DEA tac teams earlier, but now, he was all smiles and dimples, seemingly ready to join in on the discussion. He slapped Cassidy on the back and looked around at the rest of us.
“Are we gonna start plannin’ this shindig, ladies? My trigger finger’s itchy.”
Sorensen smiled at him then pointed to a table near his guys. Several cardboard rolls lay on its surface which I could only assume were maps. “Let’s go make a plan.”
I threw an arm over Raven’s shoulders. He looked at me with such a trusting expression, it made my heart skip a beat. I smiled back before turning to the rest of them.
“Sounds good. Let’s go make a plan.”