Fortress Doctrine (Maelstrom Rising Book 5) Read online

  The older man looked him in the eye then, for the first time. His eyes flicked to Fernandez and widened slightly as they moved back to Hank. It was as if he’d suddenly realized that the two men who’d come out of nowhere to help weren’t quite the simple Good Samaritans that he’d possibly assumed.

  After all, neither of them looked like ordinary civilians, even in civilian clothes. Both were hard and fit, though Fernandez was barrel-chested and burly, while Hank was lean and wolfish, with deep-set eyes above sharp, angular features and a black beard that he’d only started to grow in the last month or so.

  They both looked like meat-eaters, once anyone took a second to really look. They looked like killers.

  Which, of course, was exactly what they were.

  “He does know you,” Hank pressed, fixing Elizondo with an unblinking stare.

  “They robbed my store.” The older man sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “I tried to stand up to them, but they said they’d rape my wife and daughter and chop my son into pieces in front of me before they killed me.” He spread his hands helplessly. “What could I do?”

  “Then? Nothing.” Hank looked around, making sure that the Vengadores weren’t coming back. “Now? There might be something. Come on. Let’s get away from the street.

  “We’ve got some questions, and you might be able to answer them.”

  Chapter 23

  It took about half an hour to get to Nikola Elizondo’s house. The younger men came with them; Elizondo had insisted that they should, especially Castaneda.

  Elizondo had led them along a twisting maze of side streets, deliberately keeping away from the main thoroughfares. Hank noticed, and from the way Fernandez was looking around, the other man did, too.

  Hank had called Vega via cell. It felt weird, after having gone almost entirely to radio comms, to be using a cell phone again, but it was the best option they had.

  “Send it.” Vega sounded like he was trying to stay quiet; there was some vague noise in the background. It sounded like he was near a marketplace or something.

  “Met a new friend.” The phones might be off-the-shelf, prepaid burners, but he wasn’t going to go into much detail over a non-secure line. “How about you?”

  Vega hesitated, and Hank mentally kicked himself. They hadn’t worked out a verbal code ahead of time, so Vega was fishing for the right words. The Triarii infantry sections might have become much more comfortable with irregular operations, but some of the clandestine stuff was still outside of their wheelhouse, and they simply hadn’t been trained on it like the Grex Luporum teams had.

  “No new friends, but we’re seeing some sights.” Vega’s words were halting and hesitant enough that Hank could tell he was making the code up on the fly and hoping that he was being clear enough without being too clear. “Watching a parade on Pablo Ginther right now.”

  Unfortunately, that didn’t tell Hank exactly where they were. There hadn’t been time to memorize major streets and routes in Camargo. And he couldn’t exactly pull a map out and check while they were walking, even if he’d had a detailed street map.

  He was starting to worry that splitting the element had been a major mistake. If they had to link up in town…

  “Keep an eye on it, and I’ll contact you when I have more. Don’t hesitate to call if you see something you think I’d be interested in.” He wasn’t sure if that was vague enough if anyone was listening in. He didn’t think that the cartels necessarily had the phone signals monitored—though given some of what he’d seen when they’d gotten involved directly in southern Arizona, he wouldn’t be all that surprised—but the references to Los Chales had stuck in his head. If the Chinese were involved, the same way they had been in San Diego…

  He put the phone away as Elizondo led the way into a narrow alley. Most of the houses were surrounded by cinderblock walls with rolling metal gates. One of them even had spikes embedded along the top of the wall. Given the number of doors and windows Hank had seen covered in iron bars, that wasn’t a big surprise. Camargo might not have been a major nexus of cartel activity—at least, until lately—but crime was still clearly a concern. And if there was much police presence, the security measures suggested that the cops were either impotent, corrupt, or both.

  Pretty standard for most of Mexico.

  The house that Elizondo led them to wasn’t inside a compound, but the front was plastered concrete, with a reinforced door and narrow windows that no human being could force themselves through. It was less obtrusive, but the security features were definitely there.

  Elizondo unlocked the door and ushered them in, glancing down the alleyway behind them nervously. He was clearly rattled by the encounter in the park, and Hank couldn’t say he blamed him, especially if he’d already had run ins with the Vengadores.

  The two Triarii ushered the young men in and then followed, with Elizondo entering last and locking the door behind him.

  They found themselves in a slightly Spartan but clean living room. The walls were whitewashed, the floor swept, and the furniture was slightly shabby but serviceable. An arched, open doorway led back toward what looked like a kitchen.

  Elizondo quickly drew the curtains but stayed by the windows, peering out for a long moment. Hank looked at Fernandez, who nodded and moved toward the back of the house, checking to make sure they were alone. The boys found seats on the sofa.

  “So, Señor Elizondo.” Hank hadn’t stopped speaking Spanish; in fact, he’d fallen back behind them when he’d been on the phone with Vega so that he was fairly sure none of their companions had heard him speaking English. It wasn’t necessarily an unbreakable cover—he wasn’t sure if he was capable of building one of those—but given the number of Caucasian expats he’d seen in Camargo so far, he hoped that no one would immediately tag them as Americans. “Tell me about what’s been happening in Camargo. Where did these Vengadores come from?”

  Elizondo shot him a glance, but Hank stayed impassive. He’d just revealed a little bit—the Vengadores hadn’t been identified by name during the entire encounter before. So, Elizondo now knew that he had more information than some tourist might. Which was telling.

  But it also established where they stood a little bit better, and Hank needed Elizondo to trust him.

  Elizondo didn’t answer right away, but went to the kitchen and came back with a cup in his hand. Hank couldn’t tell what was in it, but suspected that it wasn’t coffee or tea. Elizondo’s hand was shaking.

  “They came about a month ago,” he said, sitting down on the chair at the end of the sofa. “But that was not the beginning.” He took a sip and set the cup down on the coffee table. It rattled a little as he put it down.

  “About a month before that, a new company moved into Cuidad Camargo and purchased a large portion of the city’s industrial district. Warehouses, business offices, things like that. They called themselves China Agricultural Industry Assistance International.” Hank’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t heard of the company itself, but it sounded an awful lot like a number of other companies that were fronts for the Chinese Communist Party’s actions overseas. Another connection he could make thanks to his reading since San Diego.

  “They set up quickly, flooding over a thousand people into the city. They talked to many of the major farmers around here, as well as several important officials in the city government. They were going to expand their operations into Chihuahua, and they wanted to cooperate with our farmers. Many of the farmers weren’t eager; there’s little enough arable land here as it is. But they had a lot of security, and their security men went everywhere with them. That part wasn’t that strange—everyone with money has security in Mexico these days. But these men…” He took another drink.

  “Were they Mexican or Chinese?” Hank frowned slightly. The Los Chales were coming into focus, and it wasn’t pretty.

  “Chinese.” Elizondo looked up at him thoughtfully. The man was rattled, but he was thinking, even as he answered Hank’s quest
ions, thinking about what the questions themselves said about the situation and the man asking them. “All of them were Chinese. At least, to start.

  “They were all heavily armed, and many of them had tattoos. Lots of tattoos. We’re used to gang tattoos here, too. Los Zetas used them a lot, as do the maras. But these were different.”

  “Triads.”

  Elizondo nodded. “I think so. They acted like it, too. The security wasn’t there at the meetings with the CAIAI people to make sure the Chinese businessmen were safe. They were there to intimidate the farmers.”

  Hank nodded quietly. That fit with what he’d expected. He couldn’t be sure that the so-called CAIAI was a Triad shell company or a CCP proxy. But in the end, the difference was hardly enough to comment on. And after San Diego—and the reports coming from the other West Coast ports since—he wasn’t inclined to believe that any Chinese activity in the Americas wasn’t ChiCom infiltration. “So, what then? How did the cartels get involved?”

  Elizondo looked down at his drink. “No one knows for sure. The traffic in and out of their compound got heavier and heavier, moving in and out of town. No one knew where they were going, either, unless they were meeting with the farmers, which stopped surprisingly early.

  “Then they bought out the oil and gas installations next door to the industrial park. Again, no one knows how they did it, but suddenly there was another Chinese company running those places. And the tanker trucks started to come and go.” He shrugged, shaking his head. “Maybe the Triads didn’t have enough people. But they started bringing in local gunmen to escort the tankers. And most of them started wearing those revolucionario armbands. The Aztlanistas.

  “But even they must not have been enough. Because then more gunmen started to be added, who did not wear the Aztlanista armbands. Soon enough, the Vengadores were operating openly.

  “That made things worse for everyone else, though.” His voice got haunted. “The Vengadores and the Aztlanistas hated each other from the beginning, and they fought openly several times. There was a gunfight in front of the Hotel Santa Fe a few weeks ago.

  “Then the Triads cracked down. They found everyone on both sides who had been a part of the fighting. I don’t know how. Maybe they guessed. Maybe they just took what looked like the right number.”

  “They probably had some cameras set up and used facial recognition.” Fernandez’s voice startled Elizondo, who looked up at him in surprise. “Either that, or something more advanced. I’ve heard that the Chinese have perfected some other tech tricks to identify people, even if their faces are covered.”

  “I don’t know.” Elizondo looked back to Hank. “But they found them, or enough of them, anyway.

  “They killed them all.

  “Most of them were killed in their sleep. They used machetes and shotguns. The leaders… The leaders they hauled out into the street and cut their throats before hanging them from lampposts.”

  Elizondo just stared into nothing for a moment. Even living in the horror show that Mexico had become, he clearly hadn’t been prepared for or used to that kind of murderous violence.

  “That quieted things between the gangs, at least in town.” He wrung his hands. “I don’t know what’s been happening outside, but they haven’t been fighting each other where the Chinese can see.”

  “Instead, they’ve been taking their frustrations out on us.” Castaneda had recovered his wind, and there was hate in his eyes.

  But Elizondo didn’t chide him. Instead, he nodded. “They’ve attacked many of the local people. The Aztlanistas are the worst. They go out of their way to target the Dutch, French, and South Africans who live here. There are a lot of them here. Someone killed the Kollens only a week ago. It was bad.”

  Hank’s eyes shifted from Elizondo to the younger men and back. “Has anyone tried to do anything about it?”

  Elizondo looked at the floor. The boys started to look angry. “The State Police haven’t done anything. One of their vehicles came around that part of the city, but they left almost immediately.”

  “Everyone is afraid of the narcos, and the revolucionarios.” Elizondo didn’t sound like he thought that was unreasonable. “The Chales were frightening enough. Now?” He shook his head. “All we can do is try to endure. As always.” He looked up at the window. “Cuidad Camargo had managed to avoid most of the wars. But not anymore.”

  Hank and Fernandez traded a glance. The big man shrugged slightly with a raised eyebrow. Out of our wheelhouse, boss. I don’t know.

  Hank thought for a moment in the silence. Elizondo seemed to be completely absorbed in his own thoughts, but the boys were watching him carefully.

  “Is there anyone—who isn’t the Policia—who would be willing to resist, if they got some help and some training?” He watched Elizondo carefully, but he could see the boys react out of the corner of his eye.

  Elizondo looked up, his hands falling to his lap. “And what happens if we fight them?” He pointed out the window. “You saw what happened at the park, and that was only for trying to get out of their way, after looking at them wrong.” He glanced at Fernandez, then stared at Hank. “I don’t know who you are, or where you came from. But your family isn’t here. You’re not facing the same threat we are.” He spread his hands helplessly. “And even if we weren’t afraid for our families, how are we supposed to stand up to men with machineguns and armored vehicles?”

  “Especially when the government will label us illegal militias if we do?” Castaneda sounded cautious, but there was something in his eyes, a glint of the pent-up fury characteristic of a young man who’s been forced to watch his town and his elders trampled over by thugs while being unable to do anything about it.

  Hank kept his eyes on Elizondo, but he was observing Castaneda and his pals even so. A part of him, the result of a lifetime in a ‘civilized’ society that decried the expenditure of the young in war, almost cringed at what he was thinking. But there is a reason that young men are eager for battle. And if Hank was going to follow through on the plan slowly forming in his mind, he was going to need the younger men, the ones with the fire in their belly and the taste for a fight.

  And yet… he couldn’t just recruit the young bucks and try to make this happen with them. That wasn’t the way he’d run things with the militia in Lajitas, and it went against most of his impromptu self-imposed crash course in unconventional warfare. No, he needed to convince Elizondo and the older members of the community, too.

  “The people are the sea in which the guerrilla fish swims,” Mao had said. Monster he might have been, but he was right about that. If the Triarii were going to dismantle this operation, they’d need the locals’ assistance.

  Especially if they were going to try to do it without being ratted out to the narcos and killed.

  “I understand your fears, Señor Elizondo.” Hank stood, as he looked over at Castaneda. The kid was sitting up straight, that fire still smoldering in his eyes. “Believe me, I do. But this is bigger than just Camargo. I have people at risk, too. I’ve already lost a few.” Arturo’s face flashed in front of his eyes. “You can try to keep your head down for as long as possible. Some people have managed it.” He shook his head, his eyes turning hard. “But I don’t think you really believe that you can. Not after that little display back there. They know who you are. Doesn’t matter how much you hide and cringe; that’ll only encourage ‘em to come looking. If they can’t find a reason to hurt you, well… They’ll make one.”

  Elizondo had looked down at the floor again, unable or unwilling to look Hank in the eye. “Sooner or later, you’ve got to make a stand. If you don’t, who will?”

  Nobody in the room had an answer. Hank turned and walked out the front, pulling the phone out of his pocket.

  Let Elizondo think it over for a bit. He needed to make a couple of calls.

  Then they needed to leave town, recock, and plan their next move. The seed he hoped he’d planted with Elizondo might not take root immedi
ately, he suspected that the boys would respond more quickly.

  The Triarii needed to be ready to move when that happened.

  Chapter 24

  They had left Elizondo with the burner phone numbers, just in case. He still hadn’t been convinced, but Hank had thought that he was thinking it over. The man was frightened, and the glimpse of a couple of children peering fearfully out of the back of the kitchen explained why. A man with a family—particularly one that had already been threatened—needed one hell of a push to get him to take up arms. Particularly against the kind of odds they’d be facing if they were going to take on the Chinese, the Soldados, and the Vengadores.

  He’d contacted Vega and had him fall back to their position outside of town. He and Fernandez had followed shortly thereafter, promising Elizondo that they’d be in touch, and that they’d do everything in their power to keep the bad guys from tracing them back to him.

  It had been nearly nightfall again by the time they’d reached the patrol base in the riverbed. By then, he’d had the beginnings of a new plan put together.

  Still, he was exhausted. They’d been on their feet most of the day and had covered a lot of miles. Fernandez found a spot to lie down, grabbed his gear, and was promptly asleep, his head on his chest rig and his rifle at his side, the sling wound around his arm, just in case.

  Spencer met Hank at the back of his truck. “I know you’re smoked, judging by Fernandez’s spectacular slow-motion rucksack flop over there, but Wallace wanted you on the radio as soon as you got back.”

  Hank nodded wearily. “Where’s the radio set up?”

  Spencer jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “On my truck.” Hank nodded again and shambled over there. Everything hurt, from his feet to the headache that was starting to clamp down on his skull.

  Lovell had the HF radio set up; a square loop antenna was tied up between the trees above the truck. Hank barely glanced at him and muttered a monosyllabic thanks as he took the handset. The radio, being a commercial rig, had a cover over it because there wasn’t an NVG setting for the control screen.