Read Online Cartel by Chuck Hustmyre - Free Book Online

Cassidy, he had hung around to watch.
    Five minutes after leaving the voicemail message for Ortiz, Cassidy had walked out of the café. Four gunmen were waiting, all wearing black military clothing and black hooded skull masks, the favorite operational uniform of Los Zetas.
    Most of the abduction was caught on a bank surveil-lance camera across the street. Cassidy fought hard, but un-armed he was no match for his attackers. At one point, though, before the cartel gunmen stuffed him into the back seat of a dark SUV, Cassidy looked across the street directly at the bank security camera and pulled off the mask of one of his attackers, and for just a second the camera recorded an image of the man's face.
    Scott had sent the image to DEA and FBI headquarters, and even to the CIA and the NSA, in hopes of identifying the man using facial recognition software, but all of those agencies' computer whizzes had reported back that they had gotten no hits. The face wasn't in any of their databases. So Scott sent the image to the Policia Federal and to the coun-try's lead investigative agency, the Policia Federal Ministe-rial, known as the PFM, which had a few years ago been created to replace the notoriously corrupt AFI, the Agencia Federal de Investigacion.
    Neither the PF nor the PFM had responded to Scott's requests to help identify the gunman.
    When Scott and his team had tried to contact Ortiz, they couldn't reach him. When they went to his apartment in Nuevo Laredo, unarmed, per Mexican law, and only there to interview Ortiz, his wife said she hadn't seen him. Scott thought Ortiz was either dead or soon would be, so he pushed the U.S. attorney's office in Laredo into indicting the missing Mexican police sergeant.
    After a federal arrest warrant had been issued for Ortiz, Scott had gone through the motions with the Justice and State departments to file the warrant with Mexico and to re-quest extradition, but the Mexican government, after much foot-dragging, had declined the extradition request. So with extradition off the table, the Mexican government had no reason to arrest Ortiz.
    Then Scott had gotten the late-night, anonymous phone call from a man who said he knew where Ortiz was hiding out. Scott had jumped on the information and had arranged the hasty cross-border snatch job.
    Now he was standing at the end of his driveway in the dark, with this morning's raid and the deaths of three of his agents hanging around his neck.

Chapter 17

    Scott walked up his driveway toward the open garage, where his wife's Ford Explorer and his F-150 pickup were parked. On the way he picked up a bicycle with pink and white tassels hanging from the handlebars and a set of training wheels. His daughter couldn't ever seem to remember that at night her bicycle went in the garage with mommy's and daddy's cars.
    When Scott stepped into the kitchen, his wife, Victoria, was setting the dinner table for three: herself and their two children, six-year-old Samantha and nine-year-old Jake. It had been a while since Victoria had set a place for Scott. Most nights she put a plate in the microwave for him. Some nights she didn't.
    Samantha was the first to spot him. "Daddy," she shout-ed as she hopped off her booster seat and ran toward him with her chubby arms outstretched. Scott scooped her up and spun her around at arm's length. He hugged her tight and planted a kiss on each cheek.
    "Dad, did you catch any bad guys today?" Jake said from his seat at the table.
    "Yeah," Samantha said, echoing her brother. "Did you catch any bad guys today?" It was the same question they always asked him on the nights he got home before their bedtime.
    "As a matter of fact, I did catch a bad guy today," he said.
    "How bad was he?" Samantha said.
    "Really bad," Scott said. "Super bad."
    As Scott set his daughter back down on her booster seat, Samantha gave her brother a cocky look. "I told you daddy always catches bad guys."
    "Not every day he doesn't," Jake told his