"Thirty-five minutes," muttered Leeds to himself. "It's only thirty-five minutes."

CHAPTER 36.

Alpha walked diagonally across the Mariposa Mall parking lot, pa.s.sing in front of a defunct PetSmart. All but one of the plate-gla.s.s windows spanning the storefront were missing, the broken gla.s.s spread over the sidewalk next to the lot. His right hand drifted to his hip as he probed the darkness inside the store for movement. He couldn't a.s.sume the business was abandoned. He'd made that mistake on the streets of Mexicali, walking right into an ambush. His chest still ached from the high-velocity bullet stopped by his liquid-armor vest.

Not that he could do much to defend himself from AK-47-toting cartel lookouts at the moment. He'd ditched his vest, helmet, and rifle to avoid attracting attention, staking his life on a concealed semiautomatic pistol. Glancing around at the abandoned businesses and empty streets, he wondered if the ruse had been necessary. Mexicali had a stronger pulse than this place. Nogales, Arizona, appeared to have been ransacked and left for dead by the cartels.

He jogged across Mariposa Boulevard, headed straight for the unlit Motel 6 sign standing tall above the scattered trees and low-lying businesses. The back of the motel was dark. They'd seen no working streetlights on the way into town. Most had been shattered, their remains lying on the pavement below.

Stepping onto the sidewalk, Alpha shuffled briskly past a boarded-up Mexican restaurant. Not even a Mexican restaurant survived? He checked the street behind him out of habit, catching a glimpse of his SUV parked beyond the corner of PetSmart. They had his back. No need to keep looking over his shoulder.

A wide dirt lot separated the restaurant from the Motel 6 parking lot, extending the full length of the motel and ending in a tangle of bushes and browned palm trees. He veered off the sidewalk and crossed the empty lot, heading straight for the corner of the two-story building.

Arriving at the nearest corner, he put his back against the painted cinder-block wall and scanned his surroundings. A boarded-up gas station at the intersection of Mariposa Boulevard and North Main Avenue was visible beyond a dense line of dead-looking palms that flanked the front parking lot. Nothing stirred in any direction he looked. Alpha moved along the wall toward the gas station, stopping at the front corner of the motel. He peeked into the lot, spotting a lone metallic-gray SUV parked at the far end, next to a row of unlit vending machines. He spoke quietly into the miniature voice-activated microphone clipped to the inside of his shirt collar.

"There's no sign of the family or Quinn near the car. They must be in one of the rooms."

"Copy that," said Bravo. "I don't know how much longer we can sit here. A sedan pa.s.sed west of here, heading north on Interstate 19."

"There's an empty lot adjacent to the motel with some bushes and dried-out palms toward the back. I think you could stash the car there and cover it with dead palm fronds. I'm going to move around the back of the building and position myself somewhere facing the front of the motel. We'll have full coverage that way."

"Do you know which room they're in?"

"Negative," said Alpha. "I'm going to work on finding out."

"Is the office manned?"

"No sign of it, but who knows? Though you'd think the clerk's car would be around here somewhere. All I see is the SUV."

"Can you tell if there's any electricity running to the place?"

"I don't see or hear anything running on electricity here."

"I think the doors default to the open position when the power is out in these places. They may have just walked into a room."

"Then it's fair to a.s.sume they'll be here for a while," said Alpha. "At least the inner parking lot is concealed from the street. Not that I expect a lot of traffic. I'm going to head around the back of the motel and see if I can access the office. My guess is they took a room directly in front of their SUV. I should be able to see it from the office."

"Copy. We'll take up a position watching the back parking lot. Let us know if you need a hand."

"Contact Jose and let him know what we're doing," said Alpha.

"Got it."

Alpha returned to the other corner, checking the back parking lot before stepping into the open. He strode past several rooms to arrive at the breezeway that connected the two parking lots. A glance into the opening confirmed he was alone. He crossed quickly, pa.s.sing a few more doors on his way to the back side of the motel, where he found a beat-up, white, two-door sedan parked in the shade in front of two rusted, industrial-size dumpsters. Either the car had been abandoned here long ago, or somebody had beat his team to the hotel.

"This is Alpha. I have a white sedan parked behind the office."

"Copy. Do you need backup?" said Bravo.

"Negative. I got this."

His attention centered on a scratched utility door next to the sedan, which he hoped might give him un.o.bserved access to the office. He took a black cylinder the size of a small flashlight out of his left cargo pocket and drew his pistol, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the suppressor tightly to the weapon's threaded barrel. He let his hand sweep over the sedan's hood as he approached the door and found it warm for a car parked in the shade. Somebody was here. Alpha gripped the door handle and turned slowly.

The k.n.o.b continued to revolve, locking in place after a quarter turn. Now for the moment of truth. He rested the pistol in the crook of his left elbow, the suppressor flush against the door, and leaned gently into it with his shoulder. The heavy metal security door inched inward, pa.s.sing the point where an interior door lock would stop it. A quick visual check of the door frame came up empty for a contact alarm.

He pushed the door three-quarters of the way open and slid into a rancid-smelling room. Dozens of torn trash bags littered the floor, their contents spread in every direction. Flies buzzed over whatever fetid bits of food the rodents had left behind. He examined the rest of the room, noting that the few linens left haphazardly folded on the metal shelves had a suspicious brown tinge. Business has been very slow for a very long time.

He leveled his pistol at an open doorway leading toward the front of the building and stepped carefully into a short hallway, noticing a closed door immediately to his right, labeled TOILET-BAO.

A single cough from beyond the hallway froze him in place.

A second, rougher cough, followed by a muttered curse in Spanish, erased his fear that his entrance had been detected. He walked into the motel office, finding a dark-skinned, weathered Latino wearing a frayed cowboy hat seated in a rocking chair near the front window. He held a satellite phone in his right hand, the other hand rubbing the stubble on his face. Alpha watched him for several seconds before interrupting his intense concentration on something in the parking lot.

"Buenos das."

The skinny cowboy dropped his feet from the plastic table in front of him and started to stand.

"Sientate," said Alpha, aiming the pistol at his head.

The man hesitated before easing back into the rocker, his eyes flickering back to the window.

"Cul es tan interesante por aqu?" asked Alpha, nodding at the window.

The man started to turn his head to face him.

"No me mira," said Alpha. "Mira adelante."

The man faced forward.

"Cul es tan interesante afuera de la ventana?"

"Nada, seor," said the man.

"Nada? No lo creo," he said, struggling for the right Spanish syntax. "Ha denuncio esto?"

The man squinted, his face betraying surprise. "Sinaloa?"

"S. Y t?" said Alpha.

"No, seor. I work the night shift," replied the man.

"Hablas ingles?"

"S."

Alpha wasn't sure what to make of the situation. He needed more information.

"This is very important. Muy importante," said Alpha. "Did you report the new check-ins to your Sinaloa contact?"

"There's no cartel here," the man stated, visibly tensing.

"I need to know if you made a call," he said.

The Mexican raised the phone to his ear, prompting Alpha to press the trigger. The single bullet pa.s.sed through both sides of the skull and blasted the satellite phone out of his hand. The man remained upright for a moment, his head superimposed against a crimson-splattered wall, before his corpse slumped over the right armrest. A thick stream of blood poured from his head, spreading rapidly across the salmon-colored tile.

Alpha stared at the mess on the wall for a moment, replaying the moment. The man hadn't given him a choice. There was absolutely nothing he could have done differently. Only cartel snitches carried satellite phones.

He snapped out of the internal dialogue to a.s.sess the situation. The bullet had fortunately embedded in the wall a foot to the left of the window. He couldn't tell if it had penetrated the outer wall, but a bullet hole was a lot less conspicuous than a broken window. He'd caught a break with the blood-spray pattern, too, as the densest splatter was mostly confined to the wall. A few dime-size splotches. .h.i.t the window, which he could easily wipe clean.

He knelt for the phone, which lay behind the man's foot. He plucked the brain-splattered device from the sticky carpet and held it between two fingers. Son of a b.i.t.c.h! The bullet had gone straight through the phone. He had no way to determine whether the man had placed a recent call.

"Motherf.u.c.ker!" he hissed, throwing the phone at the wall behind the reception counter.

"You OK?" he heard through his concealed earpiece.

"Yeah, I'm good. I found one guy in the office with a satellite phone," said Alpha. "He tried to call for help. Tried being the operative term."

"f.u.c.king cartel is everywhere," said Bravo. "Can you tell if he made any recent calls?"

"That's what the 'motherf.u.c.ker' was about. I somehow put a hole through both his head and the phone."

"You're s.h.i.tting me."

"I wish I was," said Alpha.

"That complicates things," said Bravo.

"Kind of. Are you guys in position?"

"Affirmative. I nestled us into the bushes, nose facing the street. We're moving some dead bushes around for concealment."

"I'm headed your way in a minute. I need to have a talk with Jose."

"If this was my show, I'd suggest we grab Fisher, explain the situation, and get them out of here before s.h.i.t gets real."

"I'm with you, but Jose wants Fisher to have some kind of come-to-Jesus moment that'll get him on board with us."

"We're all gonna f.u.c.king be there when he meets Jesus, if that dude got a call out," said Bravo.

"No s.h.i.t. I'll be there shortly."

First things first. He needed to locate Fisher's room, which shouldn't be that difficult. The Mexican's eyes had been glued to something within sight of his window. Alpha slid the rocking chair and corpse within it back several feet and crouched, trying to replicate the man's view out the window. Standing in a thick pool of blood, he stared through the thin, blood-splotched curtain, looking for anything out of place in the windows on the ground floor. Nothing.

He shifted his gaze up and scanned the second-floor windows, his eyes immediately drawn to a thin gap in the curtains three rooms from the second-floor breezeway. Brilliant light from the rising sun bathed half of the window, exposing movement inside the room. Now we're in business.

Alpha searched the check-in desk for a room map, finding a coffee-stained copy behind the counter. The Fishers were in room 204. The room directly behind them was 215. He folded and stuffed the sheet of paper in a pocket. He dialed Jose while looking around for anything else that might be useful.

"What are we looking at?" answered Jose.

"That depends. Can I knock on their door and explain the situation?"

"Well, what is the situation?"

"The situation is I don't know the situation. The office was manned by a s.h.a.ggy-looking Mexican with a satellite phone. No obvious cartel branding, but he was staring at Fisher's room hard, and his first instinct was to place a call on his shiny satellite phone."

"Please tell me he didn't make the call."

"He didn't, but I have no way to tell if he'd made an earlier call. I hit his head and the phone with the same bullet," he said, pulling the dead Mexican forward off the rocking chair. The body hit the floor like a sack of cement.

"Why would he take a bullet trying to make a call if he'd already reported the Fishers' arrival?" said Jose.

"Instinct? Panic? This guy didn't look like the best decision maker."

A period of silence ensued, broken by Jose.

"If we pull them out now, we lose Nathan's trust-but keep him alive. If we wait and see, we risk losing him altogether. Or we win big and keep that trust intact."

"We're not afraid of a few Russian mercenaries," said Alpha.

Jose laughed. "You'll be up against more than just Russians."

"It's your call. We can keep an eye out five miles up and down the freeway for any cartel activity, and roust the Fishers out at the first confirmation that they've been made."

"Do it. Pull them out at the first sign of trouble and drive north. We'll run interference on the highway."

"Sounds like a plan," said Alpha. "I'll be in touch when we're in position."

"If anything feels off, get them the f.u.c.k out of there."

"Copy that," said Alpha, turning his attention back to the task at hand. He dragged the body into the cramped bathroom attached to the hallway between the office and the utility room and pushed the door closed. Then he stepped into the utility room, closing the door behind him to conceal the blood he'd dragged into the hallway.

"Exiting the back door," he whispered.

"You're clear," replied a member of his team.

After trying one of the room doors facing the back parking lot to confirm that the motel's doors had locked in the open position, he sprinted next door to his team, taking a wide approach to a.s.sess their concealment. The vehicle was well hidden by a combination of bushes and strategically placed dead palm fronds. His team was nowhere in sight.

"Quick meeting behind the SUV," he whispered.

The three men materialized from the bushes, converging on the vehicle as he removed his rifle from the front seat.

"Backup is a good two hours away," said Alpha, "and I sc.r.a.pped our only way to know if the cartel is coming."