Chapter 11
Ian didn’t get a chance to watch Maria disappear into the crowd.
As soon as she left him, the train’s engine rumbled to life and his cellphone vibrated with an incoming call. He fished it out of his pocket, cursing. There was too much noise in the open area, so he ducked behind the block wall once again.
“I’m here,” he answered.
“On the train?” LaGuardia asked.
“About to board. I don’t have much time.”
“Understood. Sorry it took so long to get back to you.”
Ian wondered if the delay had been strategic. He didn’t expect LaGuardia to keep him on speed dial, but some serious shit was going down. Ian had found a dead body and been instructed to avoid the police. This situation was urgent, and those orders were questionable, at best. Even though Ian was new to ICE, and just a grunt on temporary assignment, he knew the regulations. U.S. agents couldn’t ignore Mexican authorities while operating in Mexico. Not overtly, anyway.
If Ian happened to get caught, he’d make a great fall guy. Who would believe him, a disgraced DEA agent with a record of going rogue?
Plausible deniability. LaGuardia had it in spades.
He might have been waiting for Ian to get a safe distance away from thefederalesbefore he bothered to initiate another communication.
“I didn’t expect company that fast,” Ian said, cautious.
“Did they get a good look at you?”
“No,” he replied, which was only half-true. One of the men had seen his face, but so what? Ian was hot on Sarai’s trail. He wanted to stay the course. He wanted to find Sarai and help nail Armando Villarreal to the wall. His career hung in the balance.
“I have some new intel on the target,” LaGuardia said. “Are you familiar with the PFM?”
If memory served, PFM stood for Policía Federal Ministerial. It was a special agency in Mexico that investigated police officers, sort of like Internal Affairs. “Yes.”
“Villarreal has connections to that organization.”
“He was an informant?”
“He might have been an agent.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. A man named Armando Villarreal Castillo worked as an armed guard in the capital building for almost ten years. During that time, the PFM was created to fight police corruption. We believe that Villarreal was recruited for an organized crime unit.”
“Based on what?”
“Based on the sequence of events. The Los Rojos cartel went on a killing spree, targeting the families of the investigators. Villarreal’s wife was among the victims. After her death, three of Los Rojos’s top members were murdered by an unknown assailant. Then Villarreal fled to San Diego and hooked up with Carlos Moreno.”
Ian absorbed this information with a frown. He didn’t know much about the Los Rojos cartel, which operated in central Mexico. He was more familiar with their rivals in Tijuana. “You think he joined the Moreno cartel for protection?”
“Either that or he was following orders,” LaGuardia said. “The guy in charge of the PFM’s covert ops was assassinated two years ago. He took the names of his agents to the grave.”
“Two years is a long time to stay in a broken assignment.”
“Maybe he couldn’t leave.”
“Why didn’t he approach U.S. authorities?”
“Would you have in his position?”
Ian rubbed a hand over his jaw, uncertain. Everyone liked to point fingers at Mexico’s corrupt law enforcement system, but there were dirty players on both sides. Villarreal wouldn’t have known who to trust, and he’d been in the country illegally. “I wouldn’t have gone on the run with a hostage. That’s the act of a desperate criminal.”
