More news choppers fill the sky, three of them, as well as a police chopper. At least a dozen police cars have ringed the airfield. A few unmarked police cars, too. A few black SUVs. Two ambulances. Three fire trucks. The only thing they haven’t sent yet is a tank, and I wouldn’t be surprised if one’s on its way.
Not even ten minutes have passed since we crashed through the gate, so that’s a pretty impressive response time.
I eye President Cortez in the rearview mirror.
“That’s a lot of people. You must be somebody important.”
He doesn’t smile at the joke. He stares out his window, watching all the flashing lights, his face tight.
“Where is he?”
He doesn’t look at me when he asks the question, but that’s okay. It’s the question I’ve been expecting him to ask.
“All in due time.”
“No”—his voice loud, his teeth gritted—“tell me now.”
I keep watching him in the rearview mirror, waiting for him to shift his gaze to meet mine. When he does, I wait for a beat, and then nod.
“We buried him in a woods near the Chihuahua, Sonora border.”
“Who do you mean by we?”
“An associate of mine was with me. He entered the country to help me stop your son. You have to understand, Mr. President, at the time I didn’t know his story.”
“How did you learn it?”
“Father Crisanto.”
President Cortez shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath.
“I had heard Father Crisanto was murdered. Gunned down in the street in front of his church. How did you know to speak to him?”
“That’s a long story. But the main thing is we tracked him down, and he told us about your son. About how the cartels wanted to hurt you, and so they targeted Alejandro and his family. Can I ask you a question?”
The man shuts his eyes again, and nods.
“When did you discover your son was the Devil?”
The Devil was what the news media had dubbed Alejandro Cortez. El Diablo. A serial killer who had targeted the wives and children of cartel bosses, abducted them, and burned them alive.
President Cortez looks out his window again. He doesn’t speak for a long time, and then he tilts his face to meet my gaze again in the rearview mirror.
“Not for several months. I believed his body was among those found in the fire. My wife did, too. It … made it easier, having that closure. But then the murders started happening, to those women and children, and part of me began to suspect.”
“How so?”
“At the time I believed nobody else could be so brazen. Not if they had anything to lose. And clearly by then my son had nothing to lose.”
From the cluster of police cars, a man begins to approach. He wears a Kevlar vest with his badge hanging from a chain around his neck. He has his hands raised, holding a bullhorn in one of them.
“This must be the hostage negotiator.”
I wait until the man is ten yards away—moving slowly, one cautious step at a time—before I lower my window a few inches. By now I figure a half-dozen snipers have set up all around the airfield, and I don’t want to give them an easy shot.
“Take one more step, and I’ll shoot him in the head!”
The negotiator freezes.
“Turn your sorry ass around and head back to your friends!”
The negotiator doesn’t move. He’s here to negotiate, and so far he hasn’t had a chance to properly do his job.
Before the man can say something, I shout again.
“If you don’t back away in the next five seconds, I’m going to blow his fucking brains out!”
The negotiator doesn’t move at first, at least to my liking, so I start a countdown.
“Five!”
The negotiator takes a quick step back.
“Four!”
Another step.
“Three!”
Another step.
“Two and you better turn your ass around and get moving!”
The negotiator complies. He doesn’t hurry, though, instead walks at a measured pace, probably to try to save face with his colleagues.
President Cortez shifts uncomfortably in his seat.
“How much longer?”
“I don’t know. Hopefully my associate’s contact comes through. If not …”
“Yes?”
“We’re screwed.”
The man doesn’t answer, though he does smile, and stares out his window again. I watch him in the rearview mirror for another moment before I speak.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Certainly.”
“Why did you believe me?”
He thinks it over for a few seconds.
“I saw the truth in your eyes.”
“What truth?”
“That you knew my son. That you were the one who … stopped him. It’s been almost a year now. I have thought of him more often than usual the past couple days.”
I watch him in the rearview mirror for another moment, then lean forward to check the SUV’s glove box. I find a scrap of paper and a pen, and jot down several numbers. I pass it back to President Cortez.
He looks at the paper for a moment. Frowns at me.
“What is this?”
“GPS coordinates to where we buried your son. If something happens to me, I want to make sure I followed through with my end of the deal.”
Without a word, he folds the paper and slips it into his jacket pocket.
“I need to know something, Mr. President.”
He looks at me again.
“Go ahead.”
“Besides the cartels, who benefits most in your government if you’re assassinated?”
He thinks about it for a moment, then smiles.
“Quite a few people. I am not a popular man. My policies have been hard on the cartels, and in turn, the cartels have stopped contributing their blood money to many of those corrupt in my government.”
“Mexico doesn’t have a vice president, does it?”
“No. If something were to happen to me, the Secretario de Gobernación, or Secretary of the Interior, would assume executive powers provisionally.”
“Who’s the current Secretary of the Interior?”
“A man named Felipe Abascal.”
“Any bad blood between you and Felipe?”
“None I am aware of, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any. Besides, he would not take over permanently. As I only have two more years in my term, Congress would select a substitute president by a majority of votes in a secret ballot. That person would be president until the end of the presidential term.”
“So we know for a fact if you were assassinated, Felipe would take over, but it wouldn’t be for long. Congress would need to elect somebody else.”
“Yes.”
“And that could be anybody.”
President Cortez shrugs.
“I would not say just anybody, but there is no telling who may be elected.”
“Would you say the majority of your Congress is corrupt? As in they would do whatever the cartels tell them to do?”
“I would like to think not, but I do not know for sure.”
“Who was the woman that was with you when you arrived at the hotel?”
“My aide. She’s been working for me for almost seven years.”
“So you trust her.”
“Yes.”
“She goes with you everywhere.”
“Yes.”
“Knows your schedule.”
“Yes.”
He pauses, seeing where I’m going with this, and shakes his head.
“No. It … it cannot be her.”
“Let me ask you this: when you arrive somewhere with your aide, who typically gets out of the vehicle first?”
He says nothing, staring out his window.
“I watched you motion for her to get out first. She didn’t. Almost like she knew something bad was supposed to happen.”
Still President Cortez says nothing.
“You understand why we’re here, don’t you? Somebody close to you has been feeding inside information to the people who wanted me to assassinate you. That person was providing up-to-the-minute intel. And that same person, if this goes as planned, will want to make sure I never get a chance to tell my story to the authorities. The last thing they want is for their plot to become known. Do you understand?”
He nods, his expression pained, the knowledge that he was betrayed too much to accept.
I ask, “What is your aide’s name?”
“Imna Rodriguez.”
I watch him in the rearview mirror.
“I hope I’m wrong about this.”
He meets my stare again.
“So do I.”
That’s when Tweedledee’s cell phone buzzes.