Lethal Agent (Mitch Rapp #18)(38)
Bertrand’s only response was to turn away from the monitor and stare off into the darkness of the cavern.
Halabi had wanted to get a measure of the man and that’s exactly what he’d accomplished. The people depicted on that computer screen were nothing to him. Two poor, uneducated peasants who lived and would die like so many others before them. Anonymous and irrelevant.
Of course, Bertrand would care more about the outside world. But how much? What would he sacrifice to save millions of strangers and the morally bankrupt societies that they comprised? Discomfort? Perhaps. Pain? Doubtful. Death? Almost certainly not.
When Halabi finally led the Frenchman out of the cavern, he looked utterly broken. Any illusions he might have had about himself had been stripped away and now lay dying with the people in that chamber.
CHAPTER 18
SAN YSIDRO
CALIFORNIA
USA
IT was still impossible to believe this was really happening.
Holden Flores was crammed into the trunk of a mid-1970s Cadillac—the only vehicle the Drug Enforcement Administration could find with enough space for his six-foot frame, body armor, and weapon. Air was provided by a few holes drilled in what turned out to be less than optimal places. The only comfortable position he’d managed to work out covered about half of them, leaving him with a choice between agonizing leg cramps and suffocation. So far he wasn’t sure which one was worse. More experimentation would be necessary.
Not that he had any real right to complain. He was only a few years out of college and everyone knew shit rolled downhill. Besides, a car trunk wasn’t the craziest place a DEA agent had ever hidden. Not even close. That honor would probably go to a porcelain clown statue outside of Albuquerque back in the 1990s. What made Flores’s situation unique was less the Caddy itself than where it was parked. Not in a remote desert clearing near the border. Not in some dilapidated neighborhood full of meth labs and gangbangers.
No, he was in the bottom level of a parking garage serving San Ysidro’s newest boutique mall. Above him was a tastefully laid-out selection of fair trade coffee, locally made jewelry, sustainable clothing, and all manner of gluten-free, vegan, organic snacks. Normally, not his thing but after four hours in a trunk, a soy hot dog with some ethically produced sauerkraut was sounding pretty good.
Flores started getting lightheaded and he slid his ass off the ventilation holes, feeling a trickle of cool air as he glanced down at his phone. The screen was linked to cameras hidden throughout the space and he scrolled through the feeds. Tesla? Check. Another Tesla? Check. Spotless minivan with a sticker suggesting it had been converted to run on recycled cooking oil? Check. Young, affluent couple pushing a baby jogger toward the elevator? Check and check.
What wasn’t visible was the improbably long tunnel leading from this garage to a far less impressive building on the other side of the Mexican border. In fact, it was so well hidden that no one in Homeland Security’s entire network had ever found even the slightest trace of it. The tip had come from NASA, of all places. They’d been testing a new geological survey satellite when they’d stumbled upon an underground anomaly that traced a perfectly straight line from San Ysidro to Tijuana.
At first they’d thought it was a glitch in their equipment. Once that was ruled out, they started searching for evidence of a disused sewer line or power conduit. When that turned out to be a dead end, a tech in Houston had made a joke about it being a drug tunnel. Apparently, someone there had taken the idea seriously enough to send a few screen shots to her cousin at DEA.
And now there he was, sweating his ass off with a spare tire wedged against his spine. Probably because of some forgotten mine or collapsed well that would have been easy to check out with a little cooperation from the Mexican authorities.
Unfortunately, the chances of that happening were right around zero. Relations with America’s southern neighbor were at an all-time low. The constant background noise about immigration, trade, and drugs had been bad enough, but with the upcoming election, it was all blowing up. Everything was about blame and politics. Us versus them.
Even the solid Mexican law enforcement guys were now either sitting on their hands or, worse, actively undermining DEA and ICE operations. They figured why should they die in gangland executions because the Americans like to get high, eat tacos, and have their lawns mowed on the cheap.
Flores watched the screen of his phone as a maintenance guy appeared on the north camera. It would have been nice if he’d been one of theirs, but they’d run into a suspiciously solid wall on that front. Normally, those kinds of jobs were abundant in this area and the DEA sent various applicants with nicely fabricated résumés. Not so much as a call back.
That had left them with a pretty complicated surveillance environment, but they’d finally figured out the narco trafficker’s system. How were they getting in and out of the tunnel with enough product to make this enterprise worthwhile?
A fucking car elevator.
The very thought of it made Flores a little queasy. Not the elevator specifically, but everything around it. This mall had been built by an American-Mexican consortium. The city had provided incentives and tax credits. When it opened, the mayor and Arnold Schwarzenegger had cut the ribbon. That’s right, Kindergarten Cop himself had shown up to open a drug trafficking front partially paid for by the state of California.
The maintenance man paused, glancing around in a way that was suspicious enough to get Flores’s attention. This section of the garage was as far as you could get from the elevator leading up to the mall. Lighting was worse than in other areas and there was a slight choke point that formed a bit of a psychological barrier for all but the most intrepid parkers, mostly those who wanted space to let their overpriced rides breathe and to reduce the possibility of a door ding.