Drone

“Gary, I’m just an old soldier. You tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it,” the general said.

Diele laughed to himself. The general was about as political as they come. When Winchell was appointed the superintendent of the Air Force Academy, he stated that the primary purpose of the school was to promote racial and sexual diversity in the service, and its secondary purpose was to promote military preparedness. He did that knowing full well that one day he’d need that kind of politically correct gold star in his record if he wanted the Senate to confirm his appointment as a major general, which it recently did, thanks to Diele.

“Well, I’m no soldier, Winston, but I’ve read a little history, and it seems to me that patience is a virtue in both politics and war. We’ll wait and see for now. I have a feeling that Myers will hand us the nylons we need to strangle her with.”

8

Isla Paraíso, Mexico

The .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifle roared. Another massive brass casing tumbled onto the stony ground.

Water sprayed up a half meter to the left of an orange target buoy bobbing in the bright blue Pacific water five hundred meters away.

“¡Hijo de puta!” César barked. He lay prone on the ground as he fired the tripod-mounted weapon, Ali next to him. A pair of oversize earmuffs made the crime lord look more like a DJ than a sniper. Ali wore a similar pair. The Barrett’s big-caliber rounds were designed to pierce armor and the blast was deafening, literally.

César stood up and pulled the muffs down around his neck. So did Ali.

“No, jefe. It was an excellent shot. The wind has risen.”

The gusting wind on top of the island’s mountain peak buffeted them, fluttering their hair and shirts.

“I’m worried, Ali.”

“About Hater?”

“I have tried to reach out to him, but nobody can find the bastard.”

“If he has gone to the Americans, they would already have been here and your sons killed—or worse. Trust me, there is no evidence linking your sons to the massacre. The fact that they are still breathing proves this.”

“You seem certain,” César said.

“I am, jefe. I trained your sons myself. I am certain they left no clues behind.”

César stared hard into Ali’s eyes, probing him for lies. He found none.

That was because Ali was supremely confident about Hater. He had ordered the Mara gangbanger crushed to death in a thirty-ton hydraulic press the day after the massacre. Hater’s tattooed remains were scooped into a sealed barrel and sunk to the gulf floor where the drum settled in the middle of an abandoned dumping ground for American military ordnance. The Mara had to be killed. Hater was the only link anyone had to the massacre—and Ali.

But the inability of either the Mexican or American government to find other hard evidence against the Castillos and launch an attack had come as a complete surprise to the Iranian. The boys really had covered their tracks.

Now Ali wondered if the feckless Americans would ever seek their revenge against the Mexicans. If evidence was the problem, he’d have to provide it. Fortunately, he’d planned for this contingency, too.

César laughed. “Yes, you trained them well, didn’t you?” He clapped Ali on the back, then turned the Iranian back toward the big sniper rifle. “So tell me, maestro, why can’t I hit the fucking target with that thing?”

“It takes patience, jefe. You just need to practice. Trust me,” Ali said, smiling.

* * *

Three hours later, the three Castillos and five premium escort girls were barricaded behind the gilded doors of the mansion’s Fiesta Room, a sordid collection of vibrating beds, leather sex swings, exotic animal skins, glittering disco balls, thundering audio, and a bank of digital projectors looping porn on every wall.

When he was certain they were all passed out from copious amounts of Cristal, meth, dope, and perversion, Ali slipped into his own private quarters and locked the door behind him. He opened up his encrypted cell phone and dialed an untraceable number that bounced off of a series of satellites and cell towers, sending the signal halfway around the world and back again until someone on the other end of the line picked up.

“Yes, Commander?” a man asked in Farsi. The Western-trained computer specialist was speaking from Quds Force headquarters in Ramazan, Iran.

“The dog needs her bone,” Ali said.

“It will be done within the hour.”

Ali clicked off his phone. The technician he had spoken with was first-rate. By this time tomorrow, Myers should be howling with rage, and by the grace of Allah, tearing at Castillo’s throat with her sharpest teeth.

9

Arlington, Virginia

Within the last fifteen minutes, there had been an explosion in tweets and retweets on a string of highly related, red-flagged search topics: #elpaso, #cincodemayo, #massacre, #myers, #killers, #aztlan, and others.

What was going on?