Now he was up again—he was the first one in. Stealthy as a shadow, Ian opened the side door in tiny increments, making no noise, until he could slip in.
In, he texted to the others and within a minute, one of the longest of his life, received two identical texts from Eric and Charlie. He couldn’t see them from where he was. Ian hugged the wall, grateful for the shadows giving him cover to slide closer to where the action was, in the lit-up middle of the huge space. He’d only slipped halfway along, his eyes adjusting to the gray light, when he saw her.
Sofia!
Ian had to fight everything in him that demanded he race to her where she was tied to a pipe near the wall, wrench her free, and settle the score with everyone involved. He scanned her, hating that she looked scared and disheveled, her face streaked with mascara. On the other hand, she didn’t appear to be hurt, for which he was grateful.
Ian tore his eyes from her and assessed the situation, flattening himself against the wall as a man strode up to Sofia, kicking out the legs of a small foldaway table and slamming it into place near her. The dark-haired man was obviously in charge and could only be the Mateo that Scotty had mentioned. Ian strained to hear.
“So, to continue,” Mateo said, as if he and Sofia were in the middle of a normal, social conversation. “I assume you know the basics of how a cartel operates, yeah?”
Sofia gave a half-shrug, half-nod. “I’ve seen movies and police reports on TV when they make an arrest of the capo at the top.”
“The top.” Mateo seemed lost in dreams. “You know I started right at the bottom? Know what a halcone is, profesora?”
“It means falcon, doesn’t it?” Sofia, though scared, sounded interested, and Ian bet she was trying to keep this creep talking. Smart girl.
“Muy buena.” Mateo clapped her. “Yeah, falcons are the lowest rank, the eyes and ears on the street, keeping watch for cops or rivals, and reporting it back. That was me in Mazeros. Age eight.”
“That’s very young.” Sofia sounded sympathetic.
“Became an operador soon as I hit my teens. Supplier, to you. Operador senior, now.”
He didn’t sound happy to be a middleman, Ian thought.
“Oh, I like what I do. I like supplying and transporting, and I’m good at it. Good at doing what I have to in order to protect my turf, too.” He rolled his head in a circle, making his neck crack, smirking when the sharp sound made Sofia flinch. “Doing what I have to in order to rise in the ranks.”
“Oh?” Sofia said.
“Yeah. All the way to lieutenant.” Mateo moved his hand up, indicating the height of his ambition. “And I’ll get there, get given this city if I prove that I can crack the market here. So I got a plan together.”
He turned to the man who’d sidled up to talk to him, his head respectfully bowed. The guy handed him something slim, like a small book or tablet, their low-voiced exchange in Spanish too fast and colloquial for Ian to follow. Ian tracked the smaller man as he returned to two other men farther back. That was one group. There was another group, four men, over at the other side of the building. The noise and chemical odors suggested they were working.
“To lace the marijuana being sold here in San Diego with MDMA,” Sofia replied. “That was your plan.”
“Is my plan.” Mateo banged his fist on the table. “Get the marks hooked so that they have to come back for more of my supplies. But when a profesora at the high school got her hands on some of the weed, I knew it wouldn’t be long before the DEA came sniffing around. So what to do? Bribe you?” He scoffed. “No. Not like you’re gonna join us, like Danny, in the lab, and Antonio, in the police station.”
The name Danny didn’t ring a bell, but Ian assumed it was one of the lab techs Sofia had spoken to. And, apparently, there were dirty cops too, which was why her initial report had never been filed. Ian breathed steadily in and out, maintaining readiness, his cell phone, with its message ready to send, in his hand.
“Why are you telling me all this?” Sofia’s voice had a catch in it as she asked.
“So you know why I want you gone.” Mateo shrugged, spreading his hands, palms up. “It’s nothing personal. Just a warning to anyone else thinking to interfere. A live warning.”
He opened the device one of the other men had brought him, and Ian saw it was an iPad. Mateo held the device up to Sofia, then went to place it on the table. He cursed, something about the camera being in the back. He shouted to someone he called an idiot to bring him a stand, so he could record—
And that was when Ian pressed Send on his text message to Eric and Charlie, and charged forward, throwing himself from the shadows of the wall into the center of the factory, every molecule in his body focused on taking Mateo down.
The operador didn’t stand a chance, not from the first second when Ian’s momentum bore him to the floor, where his speed and experience didn’t permit Mateo to even touch the gun he had in a shoulder holster before Ian disarmed him.
“Ian!” Sofia yelled, but he couldn’t spare her a glance, any more than he could look up to see what was happening in Charlie and Eric’s fights with the other men.
No, Ian’s focus was on wrapping an arm around Mateo’s neck and, as soon as his windpipe was in the crook of Ian’s elbow, getting a hand to the back of his head to push it forward. Mateo’s arms flailed but, Ian’s choke hold had him unconscious in four seconds, and he had the piece of filth zip-tied in ten.
“Quadrant clear. Report?” he shouted to Eric and Charlie, rushing to Sofia.
“Clear,” called Charlie a few seconds later.
“Eric?” Ian shouted, his body tensing at the ugly sounds of fighting.