The Last Line by Anthony Shaffer

Author:Anthony Shaffer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Chapter Fourteen

VICENTE HOUSE

LA CALLE SUR 145

DISTRICTO IZTACALCO

2231 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

20 APRIL

It had taken less than an hour for the eight of them, traveling in two vehicles, to thread through the city’s streets from the Hilton to Iztacalco. Teller and Procario had gone up to the OP house and awakened an angry Vicente.

“¡Diablo! ¿Tienes una idea qué hora es?” the informant had demanded of the men at his door.

Teller glimpsed a pretty, younger woman in the hallway behind the man, clutching a robe tightly at her throat. “I am sorry, Señor Vicente,” he’d replied, speaking Spanish. “But you can blame it on your neighbors.”

Vicente’s eyes had widened, he’d glanced out the door, looking up and down the street, and then he’d motioned the men inside with a hurry-up motion of his hand. “If they discover that I am helping you—” he began.

“With a little luck,” Teller told him, “your neighbors will not be a problem for much longer.”

“God willing,” Vicente said. “But you will forgive me, señor, if I believe that when it happens. You Americans, you come and then you are gone. The Mexican police … half of them work for the cartels, and the rest are never around when you want them. But the cartels, and the evil they bring, they are always here.”

In the third-story room upstairs, they began setting up their equipment—the triple-M scope and the satcom link back to Langley first. Langley, Teller thought, might not be particularly thrilled to hear from them. He and Procario weren’t even supposed to be here now, and Marcetti and his team technically were working for INSCOM. Still, they knew some people at the Agency who would be willing to work with them back-channel, and the satellite feed allowed them to keep tracking the Cellmap data.

Once the connection was complete, Teller brought up the street map showing central Iztacalco. As he zoomed in for a close look, two clusters of blue dots defined themselves, one on the west side of La Calle Sur 145, one on the east. Closer still, and he could see the specific houses.

“So,” Procario said, looking over his shoulder. “Now we know how Grant and Dominique got spotted when they were surveilling the Perez house.”

“An overwatch,” Teller agreed. “Looks like six in the Perez house, and … Christ. Twelve in the other. I think what we have here, March, is an ambush.”

“You’re right. So, how do we take them down?”

“We need some tactical intel,” Teller said. He moved the cursor over one of the blue dots in the Perez house and clicked on it. A phone number came up. A long moment passed. Then data scrolled down the side of the screen, personal information on Federico Ortega Noreno—his address in Mexico City, driver’s license statics, arrest warrants, prison records …

“Looks like a street-level thug,” Procario said. “Since he turned twenty-one he’s been in jail more than he’s been free. Theft, breaking and entering, aggravated assault, auto theft, narcotics possession with intent to sell…”

One by one, they identified the owners of each of the cell phones in both target houses.

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