The Breakout Read online

  It was just a rock again.

  He straddled the Honda, stomped it to life.

  * * *

  George Rankin, feeling guilty, shoved his cell phone into the right hip pocket of his slacks. Leaned back in his desk chair, sitting in his cubicle in the DEA’s Intelligence Center in El Paso, Texas—which was located on Fort Bliss—paperwork spread out in front of him. He might have been sitting in a large but low-rent law firm. Cheap desks and office chairs in each cubicle. Outdated computers on the desks. Pictures of family members thumbtacked to the cubicle walls. Men and women in cheap suits talking on phones and banging away at computer keyboards with crumbs from dozens of working lunches stuck between the keys.

  George had a picture of his thirteen-year-old daughter thumbtacked to the gray fabric wall to his left. He got to see her every other weekend unless a case made it impossible. Happened at least half a dozen times a year, and he felt bad every time. Meghan was used to it, but that only made him feel worse. She was so accustomed to being disappointed, it no longer came as a surprise. He’d call on Friday afternoon, she’d pick up, and the first words out of her mouth were, “It’s okay, Dad. I’ll see you in two weeks.”

  Like a punch in the gut every time.

  But that wasn’t making him feel guilty at the moment. He wasn’t thinking about his daughter at all. This wasn’t his weekend to have her. He was thinking about Gael Castillo Jimenez and his wife Sarah, who was seven months pregnant while Gael was in Mexico on a dangerous undercover assignment, no idea he was soon to be a father.

  George thought about that every time he talked to Gael on the phone, and wanted to tell him, but knew he couldn’t. The man needed to stay focused.

  Sarah had said this herself when George spoke with her over lunch three months back. “You can’t tell Gael. I understood the job when I married him and I won’t have you distracting him from doing it.” She said this while eating a foot-long cold cut trio at Subway, her already large belly resting on her lap like a medicine ball, her eyes serious, and he’d known she was right in her desire to keep this from Gael. But that didn’t stop George from being concerned, and it didn’t stop his guilt.

  He also felt pressured to get this case wrapped up before Sarah’s due date, which was rushing up quick, but couldn’t let Gael feel that pressure, not even on a subconscious level. The man needed to make smart decisions that would keep him alive. Which meant he couldn’t know Sarah was two months away from giving him a son.

  He’d spoken at Gael’s wedding, was supposed to be his friend, and even though not telling him was the best thing for him right now, it didn’t make him feel one damn bit better about it. This was news he would tell his friend in any situation but this one.

  In any situation but this one he wouldn’t have to. Sarah would have done it already.

  While he was thinking about this, Francis Waters leaned over the cubicle wall they shared and looked down at him, arm resting on the barrier between them. George glanced up, felt what he usually felt when he looked at the guy—mild distaste—and said:

  “What’s up, Francis?”

  “That call about the Rocha case?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s it going?”

  George shrugged. “I’d hoped to have more at this point.”

  “What do you have?”

  “Not much.”

  “Maybe you got the wrong man undercover.”

  “No, he’s doing what he can.”

  “Who do you have down there?”

  “You wanna know that, ask Ellison.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  George Rankin didn’t trust him, but he wouldn’t have told anybody. You tell one person, you might as well tell the entire office, and this he wouldn’t do. The organization worked hard to keep case information need-to-know, and when agents went undercover, they were “transferred” to another field office first. The only people who knew where they really were, other than the deputy chief and the chief, were the individual agents supervising each case.

  But all of that aside, George thought they had a leak, someone drip-feeding Rocha information. He might have been wrong, but wasn’t about to bet against his own gut, especially not with Gael’s life. If Rocha found out Gael was DEA, Gael was dead, buried in the desert, and never heard from again, and because it happened in Mexico, they’d be unable to do a damn thing about it. He said none of this, only:

  “I don’t talk about ongoing investigations, Francis.”

  “Just wanted to know how it was going.”

  George stood up. “I gotta go talk to Ellison.”

  He stepped out of his cubicle, walked down the carpeted aisle to the back of the room—passing a dozen cubicles along the way, people in half of them talking on the phone, snatches of conversation floating through the air—and knocked on Ellison’s closed door.

  When Horace Ellison first transferred here from Chicago, as the new chief of intelligence, he’d stood at the front of this room and given a speech about how his door was always open, but that was strictly metaphorical language. George had never seen the damn thing open unless someone was stepping through it, after which it was immediately closed again, slammed shut with a bang.

  From the other side of the door: “What?”

  “George Rankin, sir, about the Rocha case.”

  “Come on in.”

  George pushed open the door, stepped into Ellison’s office, and closed the door behind him. The office was white-walled and tidy, with not a picture in sight. To the left of the desk, a bookshelf stuffed with books on drug law, DEA procedure, and so on. The desk itself bare except for an in-box and an out-box. The in-box empty, the out-box full.

  Ellison looked up from the three-year-old iMac on his desk. He was about fifty, with a half-halo of thin gray hair hooked over his ears with sideburns, the top of his head polished-chrome bald. Brown eyes. Lips like a wide-mouthed bass. He wore tailored suits but they still hung off his shoulders oddly, never appearing to fit. His tie was knotted with a neat, if asymmetrical half-Windsor.

  “What’s going on, Rankin?”

  George told Ellison about his latest phone call from Gael, told him that Gael had gotten his hands on some paperwork that might prove useful, told him he was thinking about trying to flip one of the girls who worked for Rocha.

  “I think it might be too dangerous.”

  “Hard to know,” Ellison said. “He’s in the middle of it, probably has a better picture of the situation than either of us.”

  “I’m just worried he’s putting himself in danger to make the case.”

  Ellison leaned back in the chair. “He put himself in danger the moment he went undercover, Rankin. I know you two are friends, but you have to trust he knows what he’s doing, because he does. He’s good at his job.”

  “I know. You’re right.”

  “Why don’t you go pick up whatever he left at the dead drop and replace his phone with a charged one. Maybe we can start to make a real case.”

  George nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  He turned to step out of the office.

  “Don’t forget to shut the door behind you.”

  * * *

  Gael Morales stopped at El Pollo Loco on Santa Lucia, pushed through the fingerprinted glass door, and dug into his Levi’s for the order sheet he’d scribbled on. He reached the counter, and after the woman in front of him had paid, read from the list. He paid with one of Rocha’s credit cards, signed, and wrapped the receipt around the card before slipping them both into his wallet. Rocha demanded receipts for everything. You bought a pencil with his credit card, he wanted verification of purchase and proof you used the pencil to write work-related shit. This meant he kept neat books—and neat records were incriminating records—but so far Gael had failed to locate them.

  When his order came up, he shoved the food into his backpack and headed out into the bright day.

  He kicked his bike to life, twisted the throttle, wondered to himself h
ow much longer he’d be stuck in this world of drugs and violence. But he decided it didn’t matter. Once this case was over, he’d be on another. Again and again he’d be in this world, or a version of this world, working with men who would murder kids over seventy-eight bucks stolen from a cash register. He wouldn’t be out of it until he retired, and even after he was out of it, he doubted it would be out of him. When you became part of something, it became part of you.

  He had a wife back home, a newly built house with three bedrooms, a late-model CR-V parked in the driveway, but he couldn’t even wear his wedding band. He’d slipped it into a blue Tacori box and stuck it in his sock drawer six months ago, before leaving for Mexico, before he’d even gotten used to wearing it. He couldn’t pet his dogs, Truman and Paul. Couldn’t feel his wife Sarah’s heart beating against the palm of his hand. Couldn’t wake to the sounds of her shuffling around in the kitchen downstairs. That wasn’t the life he was living, and when he began living it again, would it feel different?

  What would Sarah think of him if he told her he’d hit a kid with a van, dragged him to Rocha’s backyard, and watched as Rocha put a bullet through his head? What would she think of him if he told her he’d wrapped the kid in plastic and driven him out to the desert, and with Diego Blanco at his side, dug a shallow grave and dumped him into it? What would she think if he told her the others things he’d done—much worse than that?

  Would she decide he wasn’t the man she thought he was?

  She might, and she’d be right: he wasn’t only that man. He was at least one other person besides. But he wouldn’t tell her. She’d never know that he had another man living inside him, a man capable of things she’d never understand, a man capable of things he didn’t understand.

  He toed the bike into first, rode out to the street, and kicking through the gears quickly, made his way east toward Alejandro Rocha’s estate.

  Back home in El Paso, he was Gael Castillo Jimenez, a good man living in a suburban neighborhood, the kind of guy who’d bring a twelve-pack of imported beer and several sirloins to a backyard barbecue, a guy who laughed at dumb jokes and held his wife’s hand in public, but he wasn’t in El Paso. He was in La Paz, Mexico, and here he was Gael Morales. He didn’t have a wife here, he didn’t have dreams of future children, and there was no ethical center within him that might prevent any action he chose to take.

  He wondered what other horrible things he’d have to do before this was finished, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. If something was expected of him, he’d do it.

  7

  Alejandro Rocha was walking along the verge of his swimming pool, pacing from one end to the other with an iPhone to his ear, when he heard the sliding door shudder open. He glanced toward the house, watched Gael Morales step outside with an avocado burrito from El Pollo Loco and a beer from the fridge, one in each hand.

  “Just set them on a table, please.”

  Gael nodded and put down the burrito and the beer.

  “Thanks.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, just take care of the girls.”

  “Sure.”

  Gael headed back inside. Kid hadn’t been with the organization long, but Alejandro liked him. He did what he was supposed to do, didn’t ask questions, and didn’t mouth off around town. That was a rare combination in this business. Didn’t speak well for capitalism—and Alejandro thought of himself as the apotheosis of capitalist success—but when you started dealing in illegal merchandise, even good pay wouldn’t necessarily buy you good men. You ended up with the dregs of society, men willing to take big risks for big money, and that did him very little good. He ran a careful business, his biggest risk the necessity of trusting the people he hired, but he thought the risk with Gael would be minimal.

  Soon it would be time to have him step up.

  A voice from the other end of the line: “¿Bueno?”

  In Spanish, Alejandro said, “Do you know how long I’ve been on hold?”

  “I apologize, Alejandro.”

  “Señor Rocha, pendejo. We’re not friends.”

  “Lo siento. How can I help you?”

  “James Murphy.”

  “What about him?”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He was stabbed in the shoulder, a painful but minor injury, and should recover without any lasting damage.”

  “Do me a favor and cut off any mind-altering medications you have him on.”

  “He’ll be in a lot of pain if—”

  “Give him some fucking aspirin. I’m gonna pay a visit and I want him coherent for the conversation. ¿Entiendes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He hung up his cell phone, slipped it into his pocket, and walked to the table on which his lunch was waiting. Sat down on the edge of the chair beside it. Picked up his beer and took a swallow. It was warm after only five minutes in the sun, but he took another swallow before unwrapping his burrito. As soon as he was done with lunch he’d drive out to the jail. He thought his second conversation with James Murphy would be quite a bit different from the first.

  In fact, he was sure of it.

  * * *

  James lay on a bed in the infirmary, his wrists cuffed to it, his ankles shackled. He stared at the ceiling. His shoulder throbbed. His head felt heavy, and thoughts were slow in coming, as if his skull had been stuffed with cloth through which they must filter. He looked left. The man who’d attacked him was two beds over, oxygen being fed into his nostrils, a beeping monitor at his bedside. His wrists and ankles were shackled as well.

  James thought the nameless son of a bitch was asleep, his eyes closed behind the thick lenses of his glasses, but he must have felt James looking at him because he opened his eyes and turned his head.

  He smiled a toothy smile, spoke in English: “Next time I’ll kill you.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “I don’t need luck.”

  “Last attack didn’t turn out too well for you.”

  “I was told you weren’t to be killed, which rather limited my options.”

  “You couldn’t have killed me if you wanted to.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, bolillo. Killing you would be a trivial matter. A guard opens your cell while you sleep. I step inside, knife-punch your carotid. You bleed out before you even know what’s happened. I’d be surprised if you lived another week, and after what you did to me, I’ll make certain that I’m the one to end you.”

  He turned away and closed his eyes.

  James thought about what he’d said. Probably believed every word. But so long as he had information Rocha wanted—so long as Rocha believed he had information—he thought he was safe. The man had said it himself. You don’t burn a book you have yet to read, but sometimes you need to break its spine to get to the information you want. But James would give Rocha nothing despite this nameless motherfucker trying to break him. Because the implication was that once you’d gotten the information, there was no reason not to burn your book, and James didn’t want to be murdered in a Mexican jail.

  He was two years from the end of his most recent contract with the Marine Corps, after which he intended to leave. He’d join the FBI or CIA if they’d have him—they’d certainly be able to make use of a man with his particular skill set and education—turn in his camouflage for a three-piece suit. Worst case, he’d join the police department in Austin.

  Buy Pilar a house someplace so they could start their life in earnest. He’d be thirty then and she’d be twenty-six, a good time to start a family. She’d go off the pill and they’d spend a few months having fun with each other, trying to make it happen.

  But first he had to survive in this jail, get the charges dropped, and kill Rocha, the man responsible for his sister’s death—though he didn’t know how any of that might be accomplished.

  He closed his eyes and felt the pain crash through his body in waves, one after the other, eroding his tolerance. He tried to ignore it, tried to
empty his head of all thought.

  He inhaled, exhaled.

  But the static in his soul wouldn’t go silent.

  Have hope when life is hopeless, and if reality doesn’t match the dreams in your head, you work to change reality.

  Inhale, exhale.

  Think nothing.

  But as soon as he managed to empty his mind, images flashed across the walls of his skull. The sight of his sister dead in the morgue. Her cold lips. Her still hand. The chipped polish on her fingernails.

  Rocha lined up in his sights. A finger squeezing a trigger. Rocha’s head kicking back. Rocha dropping to his knees and falling forward like a felled tree.

  Some deaths must be paid for, and the cost of a life was another life.

  * * *

  Alejandro Rocha walked through the corridors, his pace brisk, his footfalls echoing through the empty spaces. The corridors were dimly lit, walled with bare cinder block, nothing to distinguish one from another, but he turned left and right through them, moving from one to another, knowing exactly where he was headed.

  Finally he arrived at the infirmary, pushed open the door, and stepped into the room. It was only ten feet deep but at least sixty feet wide, filled with beds, a chain of them lined up side by side, blue curtains hanging from rusting steel rods between them, the curtains all drawn back. Most of the beds were empty, with sheets taut and pillows in place, but four of them were occupied by men injured in the yard or in their cells.

  Alejandro walked to the bed in which James Murphy lay with his eyes closed and looked down at him. His face was expressionless, seemed to hold the peace of sleep, but only a moment after he looked down at them the eyes opened. They looked up at Alejandro but the face remained expressionless. Neither man said anything for a long time.

  Finally Alejandro spoke: “He lives.”

  “I’ll still be living long after you’ve been buried.”