The Devil You Don't Know (American Praetorians Book 4) Read online

  By the time we pulled up to the entrance of the hotel, we were both pretty much up to speed, at least as much as was possible on the timeline we were working under. I found myself getting into the “hostile territory” mindset, scanning the cars and the people by the entryway, until Mia reached over and lightly caressed the back of my neck. “You're getting that field animal look,” she warned. “Remember our cover.” I forced myself to relax.

  I stopped the car just outside the front doors and we got out. I handed the keys to the valet, and then offered my arm to Mia as we headed up the steps. She took it enthusiastically, leaning into my side as we walked. We looked just like a fittingly amorous couple there for a good time. At least I hoped we did.

  We checked in, with Mia hanging on my neck the whole time. We had worked out the details of our cover story on the way in; we were newlyweds, I was a day trader and adventure sports guy. It wasn't going to stand up to a detailed interrogation; I didn't know jack shit about the stock market. But it would explain a younger, kind of scruffy-looking but obviously fit guy with the money to stay there.

  Now, I haven't spent a great deal of time hanging out in five-star hotels. I've spent far more of my time in dirty little shithole houses and sleeping in the weeds, much like I had done barely a day before. The contrast was a little striking. The entire lobby seemed to gleam, from the polished tile of the floor to the equally polished wood veneer of the check-in desk. A huge crystal chandelier hung over the floor. A handful of people pushing luggage were coming and going, but we'd picked a kind of slow time to check in.

  As we were stepping away from the desk, two of the elevators opened, and a half dozen men in suits came out of each. Every bit of their bearing screamed “security for a very important person.” They looked a lot like Ernesto's PSD, and I suspected many of them were drawn from the same pool. One of them definitely had a tattoo crawling up his neck that looked suspiciously like the top of a gang tat. Shortly after they spread out in a somewhat discreet row toward the door, another elevator opened and Alonzo Reyes himself got out, accompanied by two more security goons, a couple of venerable-looking older gents in expensive clothes, and a stunning, obviously medically enhanced blond in a skintight dress and stiletto heels.

  Mia was quicker thinking than I was. She whipped out her smartphone, grabbed me, and kissed me passionately, while holding up the phone to take a photo of the kiss. As it just so happened, Reyes and a good portion of his PSD were in the background, offering a pretty good angle on their disposition. She knew what she was doing.

  When she broke the kiss, I felt a little flushed, and cursed myself for it. It had felt awfully good. Focus, idiot, I grumbled silently. I wasn't actually here on vacation, and I had no illusions about her, either.

  Our arms around each other's waists, we made our way toward the elevators. We'd gotten a suite on the top floor, just down the hall from where Ernesto had said that Reyes' picked set of rooms should be. We would be able to get more of an idea of his security setup there. We passed close to one of the suited goons, who eyeballed us hard as we went. So much for camouflage; these guys weren't going to dismiss anybody as harmless.

  We got into the elevator and pushed the button for the top floor. Since there was a very obvious CCTV camera in the corner, we stayed in character. That apparently meant Mia wrapping her arms around my neck and trying to stroke my tonsils with her tongue. I played along, slipping my arms around her lower back and holding her close. When the doors opened, we kind of stumbled out into the hall, acting like a couple of high-school kids at the prom.

  There were two more of the goons in the hallway. One was sitting in a chair, tapping on a tablet, with what could only be either an SBR or a submachine gun under his jacket on his lap. The other was standing, leaning against the wall across from his buddy. Both watched us like hawks as we moved down the hall to our door.

  I must have tensed a little, because Mia pulled me closer and touched her cheek to mine before hissing in my ear, “Relax. You're on vacation, with your sexy new wife, just here to drink, lie on the beach, and get laid. You don't even notice them.” She kept it up, kissing my neck and giggling as I fumbled with the key and opened our door, then we kind of half-fell through the door, still making out and dragging our bags with us.

  Once the door was closed, though, while she stopped kissing me, she didn't pull away. “Are you done?” I asked.

  “I don't know,” she said with a smirk. “I'm kinda comfy. And there might be somebody monitoring the room, after all; we really shouldn't break cover until after the mission's over.”

  Now she was fucking with me. I reached up and gently but firmly loosened her arms from around my neck and stepped back. “I know what you're doing,” I said. “And you can stop.”

  To her credit, she didn't try pouting or anything. She just kept that little smirk on her lips as she folded her arms under her breasts. “And what am I doing?”

  I just stared at her coldly. “Manipulating.”

  “Really?” she said with an arched eyebrow. “How so?” I just scowled. “Let me see,” she said. “I could be trying to manipulate you, trying to sex you up so that you warm up to me faster, letting me gain your trust more quickly. Or I could just be that committed to the cover story. Possibly, I just see the chance to mix a little bit of business and pleasure; we're in a five-star hotel on the beach in Veracruz, after all, and you're pretty hot. Or maybe I even genuinely like you.” She tilted her head and studied me. “But whatever I say, you can't be sure, can you? That was something else Renton warned me about. He said you weren't exactly the trusting type. I can see he was understating things a little.”

  I snorted as I tossed my suitcase on the bed—there was only one; good thing there was a couch—and moved toward the bathroom. “Lady, if you knew half of the shit I've seen in the last three years, you'd be wondering why I'm not more paranoid.”

  She backed off, though she was still just as affectionate when we went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. I was hoping to catch Reyes again there, but he never showed. We made a great show of having a bit too much to drink, and were acting like a couple of horny drunks who weren't sure where their room was but were really anxious to find a bed and get busy when we stumbled out of the elevator on the top floor.

  Still making out, stumbling, and laughing, we hadn't gotten far before we crossed whatever the invisible threshold was that triggered the goons. The guy in the chair, who hadn't moved since we'd first gotten there, was on his feet, his jacket in front of him, but with a weapon obviously at the low ready underneath it. The other one came off the wall, his weapon hand hovering right by the opening of his jacket, ready to sweep the garment aside and draw. After a couple of seconds, another door opened, and three more came out, just kind of looming in the hallway.

  We gave it a few more seconds before we “noticed” them. “Oh, shit,” I said, “our room's back there.” Mia waved drunkenly at the guards as we meandered our way back toward our room, where I fumbled with the lock while she nibbled at my ear and got her hand up under my shirt. I got the door open and we stumbled inside, still kissing until it snicked shut behind us.

  This time, she disengaged as soon as the door was shut. “Wow,” she said. “That was quite a reaction for a pair of wasted lovers in the hall.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. I wished I had one of those fiber-optic door scopes like SWAT teams got issued. Then I might be able to spy on the hallway from inside the room. “Imagine what the reaction would be for a snatch team.” I shook my head. “Well, trying to take him in here is definitely a no-go. It may not be his place, but he's obviously got it locked down as if it is.” I took a deep breath. “At least we know he's here. Now we get eyes on him and maintain surveillance until we can find an opening. Start building a pattern.” I pulled out my phone and got on the line to Mike, to start getting guys in position.

  For the next three days, Mia and I played at being newlyweds on vacation, hanging out by the pool, in the
restaurant, and down at the beach, but trying to time our passes through the lobby for when there was some kind of activity among Reyes' security people that might indicate he was moving out. The entire time, two man surveillance teams in rental cars were randomly wandering through the streets nearby, waiting for a call that would put them onto Reyes.

  After that first day, Mia was nothing but professional when we were alone. She still played the part of the sexy new wife whenever we were in public, and did a very convincing job of it. I was looking forward to ending this phase, frankly; her public displays of affection were starting to get to me. I couldn't afford to lose focus, either on the mission or on the fact that I really didn't know this woman, and I sure as fuck didn't trust her.

  Finally, on the third day, as we were breezing through the lobby to go to some other shop that I really didn't give a flying fuck about, the elevator disgorged the gauntlet of Reyes' PSD again, and after a moment, the man himself came out, this time only accompanied by his two bodyguards and an extremely fat man in a white suit who looked like a Mexican Sidney Greenstreet. I reached down into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and sent Jim a text. It was only one word: “Showtime.”

  Now we could really get to work.

  Chapter 12

  With contact established, I was hoping that we could check out and get on the hunt. There had to be an opening we could use to get at Reyes while he was out of the hotel; trying to grab him in the hotel was going to, at best, result in a firefight that was going to get a lot of people killed, including a lot of people we didn't want dead. But, as Mia reasonably and logically explained, there was no guarantee that we'd find an opening that first day. We still needed spotters inside, and our cover should hold up for at least a week, possibly two. When I sarcastically suggested that she was just trying to get a vacation in on the job, she just smiled beatifically at me. My half-hearted scowl just drew a laugh.

  “I know, you want to be out there, but you know just as well as I do that the guys in the surveillance vehicles are just as bored as we are,” she said. “You're getting grumpy over nothing. You could be waiting back at the hangar, or you can wait here and pretend to enjoy yourself in a fancy hotel. Since we need a spotter here, and you and I have already infiltrated, well, we're it.”

  “Thank you for the lecture,” I said, annoyed. She was right, of course. This wasn't going to be nearly as straightforward or high-tempo as going after ISIS bases in Baghdad had been. Manhunting often is a long, slow, boring process that requires painstaking reconnaissance and the patience to wait until the target gives you an opening, even once you've located the target.

  We held out for four more days; Reyes had suddenly gotten more active, going out two to three times per day. But the reports from the surveillance were always the same; his security was tight, he never seemed to go anywhere that wasn't going to include a fuck-ton of innocent bystanders, and there just were no openings.

  “If we had a battalion, we might be able to overwhelm them,” I said, looking at the imagery we'd collected in the room. “But as long as he's in the city, the city's not a fucking war zone, and he continues being careful, we can't touch him. Fuck.”

  Mia had just come out of the shower, and was sitting on the bed in jeans and a t-shirt, toweling her hair. “Maybe we need to see about drawing him out to somewhere he's more vulnerable,” she suggested. “You guys...oh, who am I kidding, all of us have this problem. We're used to going after them. From what I've seen, you guys are pretty good at staying 'outside the box,' but we all have blind spots from our time inside the box. How often have we really gotten the bad guys to come to us?”

  I looked over at her thoughtfully. “Not often,” I replied. “We've laid ambushes, but actually baiting them in? Now there's an idea...”

  She smirked. “Of course it is. I thought of it, didn't I?”

  I ignored the comment, instead picking up the burner phone that we'd been using for comms with the rest of the teams. I sent a mass text. “Disengage, rally up at base.” I dropped the phone in my pocket and started gathering up the notes and photos. “Come on, we're checking out.”

  Mia sighed and looked around the room as she stood up and started packing what little she had outside of her go bag. “Too bad. A couple more days here would have been nice.” She chuckled when I glanced at her. “I know, I know. Jeez. You need to grow a bit more of a sense of humor, Jeff.”

  I just shook my head and finished packing. We were out of the room in a couple of minutes; for all we'd projected the image of affluent, careless gringos out to have a good time, the room itself had stayed fairly spartan, with all of our crap that we weren't using packed up and ready to go at a moment's notice. We were back on the road and heading for the airport within twenty minutes of the decision to break off surveillance on Reyes.

  Back at the hangar, I grabbed my go bag off the back seat as I swung out of the car and headed straight for Jim, who was just stepping out of the office space. “Where's our guest?” I asked.

  He jerked a thumb toward the little enclosure made of office space dividers in the corner. “In his hole,” he replied, “being unhappy.”

  I walked right over and came around the dividers. Ernesto did indeed look unhappy. Aztec had him zip-tied to a folding chair, and his mouth duct-taped. I reached over and ripped off the duct tape. That couldn't have felt good on two weeks of stubble, not to mention his mustache. “Do you have a way to make direct contact with Reyes?” I asked.

  “What?” he temporized. I leaned over him, getting within inches of his face.

  “Do you have a direct line to Reyes?” I bit out. “Yes or no?”

  He looked fucking terrified, and I didn't think it was entirely because of me. “I'm not supposed to,” he said finally. “Everything is supposed to go through Señor Tenorio.”

  “But you have one anyway,” I suggested.

  He nodded, looking away from me. “I made sure I did, just in case.”

  “So you'd have something to give up if somebody came for you,” I supplied, “something to take some of the heat off of you by getting the law to focus on your boss.”

  “It's...” he began, but I cut him off.

  “Oh, no, it's not going to be that easy,” I said. “I don't need you to just give it up. I need you to use it.”

  He jerked his head up to look at me, his eyes wide. “Are you crazy?” he said, visibly shaken. “Do you know what he'll do if anyone on my side of his operations contacts him directly? He'll have me killed!”

  I pulled over a box and sat down on it, directly in front of him. “Ernesto, I'm going to tell you a little story. A couple of years ago, in Iraq, we rolled up this Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer. Really bad dude. Worse, he was a facilitator for some even nastier dudes. We're talking bombings, assassinations, torture houses, all that kind of heavy shit. When we grabbed him, he wasn't going to talk. Just sat there and mean-mugged us; real tough-guy. Well, he stayed tough, at least until our interrogator broke six of his fingers, smashed four of his toes with a hammer, and crushed one of his nuts with a pair of pliers.” Ernesto visibly paled at first, and actually flinched when I got to the crushed testicle part. “He wasn't so tough after that; sang like a canary. And after we'd wrung him dry, do you know what I did? I put a bullet in his brain and put him in a hole in the ground.” I leaned forward again, forcing him to try to scoot backward to get away from me. “You shouldn't be worrying about what Reyes and his people are going to do to you, Ernesto,” I said quietly. “You should be worrying about what I'm going to do to you if you don't do exactly what the fuck I tell you to do.”

  Movement at the edge of my vision drew my eye. Raoul was standing there, with Mia beside him. She'd changed back over to cargo pants and a t-shirt, and her dark hair was now in a ponytail. I was still wearing my tourist clothes, which must have made my threats that much more unnerving to Ernesto. He looked like he was about to get sick, which I counted a good thing.

  Raoul must have either been l
istening in or have read my mind. He held up a phone, another burner that he'd picked up while Mia and I had been out playing tourist. I took it and held it up in front of Ernesto's face. “Easy way or hard way, Ernesto?” I asked.

  He looked pained, staring at the phone, then looking around at the walls, the floor, the pitiless stares from Raoul and Mia behind me, then finally back to the phone. Finally, despair written all over his features, he nodded, his head sinking to his chest. I got up, pulling out my knife, and he flinched, but I just cut one of his zip ties. I held out the phone, and slowly, reluctantly, he reached up and took it.

  Before we let him dial, we walked him through exactly what he was to say. “And we understand Spanish, too, fucker,” Raoul told him. “You try to fuck with us on this and we will know, and you will pay the price.”

  Looking like a man condemned, which was a fairly accurate assessment of his situation, if we were being honest, he dialed the number. As it began to ring, I reached over, pulled it away from his ear, and turned on the speaker. He wasn't happy about that, but I gave him a faint grin that promised nothing pleasant.

  The phone rang for what felt like a long time. Finally, a cultured-sounding voice answered in Spanish. Ernesto hesitated, but began to speak as my eyes bored holes in his skull.

  Raoul leaned over and whispered in my ear, translating. “He's staying on script so far. Ambush at the meeting site, he's on the way out of Guadalupe, thinks Tenorio's involved, had no choice but to contact Señor Reyes...” The voice on the other end answered curtly. “Reyes ain't happy to be hearing from him.”

  “Of course not,” I murmured back. “Being directly contacted by one of his dark side functionaries fucks up his plausible deniability.”