REDBACK

CHAPTER ONE

State of Baja California
Mexico

In the summer heat, glare, and dust of Tijuana, Marquez picked up their informant, Billy Takado, and drove east across the desert plain toward the dry folds of the Sierra de Juarez and a meeting with the most violent cartel in Mexico. From a pass in the Juarez he saw the thin road running through the pueblo out between fields of alfalfa and pale green maize to an abandoned bull ring. The bull ring backed up against mountains and was a dark ellipse in afternoon shadow. The bull ring turned Billy quiet.

Mexican Federal Judicial Police, Mex Feds, as they usually got called, were backing them up today. Marquez had checked in with one of his squad, Sheryl Javits, at the DEA Field Office in LA before picking up Billy. He powered up the satellite phone and called in again now from the pass, and then they descended and drove the potholed road through the pueblo, past a whitewashed church and cinderblock buildings with corrugated tin roofs and on out through air rich with the sweet heavy smell of alfalfa. He slowed as they approached the bull ring. They hadn't seen another car in thirty miles but he put his turn signal on to lighten up Billy.

Two cartel guards waited beside a Jeep parked near the rusted entry gates. They watched the Cadillac with its show pipes, candy paint, and trick wheels, roll through the dust and stop. Marquez got out, then Billy. Marquez wore snakeskin boots, black jeans, and a white linen shirt with gold threads woven through it. The back of the shirt was damp with sweat after the long drive. He wore a heavy Rolex and wrap-around Ray-Bans. Billy wore clothes the Salazar brothers knew him by, Hawaiian shirt, gray cotton slacks, and sandals.

As the guards approached, Billy said quietly, "The one on the right is a cop in Tijuana," and that was who patted them down, jabbing fingers hard into armpits and groin before leading them into the bull ring. Marquez took in a thousand splintered and sun-silvered wood seats, ground hard as stone. He watched the Tijuana cop take up a position thirty yards away, and then looked past him to the rim of the arena and the bright blue sky over the mountains. He didn't want to stand in the heat and wait. He was ready for the meeting. He wanted to get it rolling. He didn't like the nervousness of waiting and when he heard a car he looked quickly at the gates. A black Mercedes sedan with tinted windows pulled up.

Special Agent John Marquez was thirty-three with ten years in at the DEA. He was supervisor of his squad, Group 5, out of the LA Field Office. Group 5 worked Baja traffic only and in the last six months strictly the Salazar Cartel out of Tijuana. For Marquez's squad things started coming together about a week ago and now were moving fast, so fast that he didn't feel in control, but not so fast that he didn't want to keep it happening. In less than a week they'd bumped up from the low level management to this meeting with the Salazar brothers.

"Recognize the car, Billy?"

"No."

The older Salazar brother, Miguel, was a sociopath known only for liking to kill. The younger brother, Luis, was the one Marquez needed to connect with. Luis was their mark. Luis's ambitions were more than enough to work with. Luis wanted to wipe out his competitors, control Baja and keep expanding his business in the U.S. He wanted to be rich and then he wanted to be known as rich. When he talked about New York he talked about having a place on the Upper East Side. He wanted the great cocaine cities of the east coast. He wanted to own New York, Miami, Washington, and Boston.

But neither brother got out of the car. Instead, it was someone Marquez had never seen before, a tall man who might be in his early forties with dark hair and an angular almost patrician face, a high forehead, a well groomed, well dressed man. He looked comfortable with himself. He walked slowly toward them, almost casually, but kept his gaze on Marquez. In his left hand he carried papers and he could be the money man they'd heard whispers about, the financier, the European. He shook Marquez's hand, and then said, "These are for you," and gave him the papers.

"You're name is John Marquez. You work for the DEA, but don't be frightened. You're not going to be killed. You're going to carry a message back to the DEA from the Salazars."

"Am I?"

The man turned to Billy who stood frozen and asked, "Billy, did you think I'd forget?"

The papers were copies of Federal personnel forms, the individual 52s for Jim Osiers, Brian Hidalgo, Sheryl Javits, Ramon Green, and himself, his squad, Group 5. Marquez shuffled through them.

"Tell them anyone who works against the Salazars is in danger. So are their families."

That was it, meeting blown, meeting over, and with Billy just ahead of him Marquez walked out of the bull ring. He was acutely aware of each step and the distance from here to the car, and that it was a setup and probably the Mex Feds who betrayed them.

They were nearly to the Cadillac when a door of the Mercedes opened behind them. Marquez heard the door fall shut, the footsteps coming. He knew from the weight of the footfall. He knew without turning and as Billy slowed, he put a hand on his back and kept him moving forward, saying, "Don't even look at him. Get in the car. We're out of here."

Marquez got the key into the ignition before Miguel Salazar rapped on the driver's window with the blue-black barrel of a gun. He rapped again harder and when Marquez lowered the window, Miguel shoved the gun against his temple. With the barrel digging into his scalp, Marquez said, "Look, I get it; I'm taking the message back."

"Llaves."

Marquez handed Miguel the keys. He put his hands on the wheel as ordered and watched Miguel walk around the front of the car with the gun still aimed at him. Now Miguel was at Billy's window screaming at Billy, calling him a traitor, calling him the shit of a whore as Marquez tried to shut it down, speaking to Miguel in rapid Spanish.

"Not his fault, Miguel. We put him up to it. We didn't leave him any other out."

But that was just more bullshit to Miguel Salazar. He looked from Billy to Marquez, eyes bright with hate of this gringo agent and all gringo agents and all people who would get in the way of his family. And maybe it was something he saw in Marquez's eyes, or didn't see. Or maybe this was the way it was planned.

He pushed the barrel of the gun into Billy's forehead, forced his head back so that Billy had to look up at him though he didn't look down. Billy was two-faced, a snitch, a chismoso. He was nothing. He was a mistake. Miguel looked into Marquez's eyes so that Marquez would understand that he could do nothing, that the gringo DEA, the United States of America, the Mexican government, the judicial police, they could do nothing. The power was his and he pulled the trigger, blew Billy's blood and brains into the backseat and threw the keys at Marquez, saying softly, "Next time you."