Then he burst out laughing.
I think we’re going to get along just fine.
“Nice job, Jim.”
Byrth smiled.
Payne added: “But just remember that payback is hell.”
Now Byrth laughed aloud and said, “Liz Justice said you were a good sport. I’ll deal with the payback.”
THREE
D/E Connector Philadelphia International Airport Wednesday, September 9, 3:10 P.M.
Juan Paulo Delgado sat at a rental Dell laptop computer inside the Road Warrior Connection kiosk.
He reached into his camo shorts and pulled out the flash drive. He stuck it in a USB slot on the side of the laptop, and simultaneously hit the CONTROL, ALT, and DELETE keys. When the screen went blank, he held the CONTROL and Z keys simultaneously. The computer restarted, loading the secure program from the flash drive that mirrored his laptop in the safe of his converted warehouse loft.
As the computer booted up, he wondered if there actually was something to what Jorge Aguilar had suggested in his text message.
Did Los Zetas have anything to do with the kid’s disappearance?
The Zetas, led by Heriberto “The Executioner” Lazcano, were mercenaries working as the enforcement arm of the narco-trafficking Gulf Cartel. They numbered some five hundred men, and were heavily armed and well-trained. The majority of them had been commandos in the Mexican Army’s Grupo Aerom?vil de Fuerzas Especiales, which, ironically, went after members of the drug cartels. They were ruthless and fearless. And what they could not or would not do-assassinations inside the United States, for example-they hired others, most notably gangbangers, to carry out for them.
The Gulf Cartel-if not the biggest of the Mexican drug-trafficking organizations (MDTOs), then one of the richest-was based due south of Brownsville, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico, thus the source of the cartel’s name. Since the 1970s, the Gulf Cartel had trafficked pot, coke, meth, and smack into the United States. And they taxed anyone who used their “plazas,” or smuggling routes. The Zetas acted as their lethal collection agency for slow- or no-payers.
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Thus, Juan Paulo Delgado knew that the Zetas were not to be fucked with.
He also knew that, compared to the gangs to whom the cartel wholesaled drugs for resale in the United States, he was a very, very small player. He operated on the fringes of what to the cartels was a multibillion-dollar-per-year enterprise. As long as he kept paying the plaza taxes that the Gulf Cartel levied on him, and he didn’t step on their toes, and he didn’t try to become a bigger player, he would more or less be left alone with his crumbs.
Which meant that it had been a damned dumb move to pump forty-two rounds-two of 9-millimeter and forty of 5.7-millimeter-into his former business associate in that South Dallas crack house. Not because it was wrong to take out the bastard who owed him for the kilo of black tar smack. But because that property had also been an occasional stash house for the Zetas.
Not long afterward, he’d learned on the street that they were not exactly pleased that El Gato (a) had drawn unwanted attention to the stash/crack house and (b) had made the mess with what once had been their P90 Fabrique Nationale submachine gun.
Like toothpaste from a tube, there of course was no way to put fired bullets back in a gun. The damage was done. But Delgado had a hard time believing that any of that actually warranted the anger of the Zetas.
You never know, though, what sets those fuckers off.
Or whom they’ll hire to pull the trigger.
They could’ve grabbed the kid-or had him grabbed-to send a message.
Or it could be the kid’s just out getting laid…
For two days?
He shook his head, then clicked on the Firefox browser icon to connect to the Internet.
He signed in to his Gmail account. There was nothing new to read except junk mail. He deleted that. He then decided that while he was signed in, he would just send an e-mail to Jorge Aguilar. Typing took less effort than thumbing and, like text messages, the e-mails also went to Jorge’s cellular phone.
He opened a new window and wrote:
From: jjd ‹[email protected]›
Date: 09SEPT 1520