CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Empty lot next to Cantina Rojas, Ojinaga, Chihuahua State, Mexico, September 29, 1962

Antoine got Michaele comfortably settled on a backpacker foam mattress on the rooftop of the autobody repair shop which looked out onto the empty lot and the sidewalk. Cantina Rojas was on his left, and an open-front discount women’s clothing store was on the right. Across the street the view was stale view of the slab side of a cinder brick building—a maquiladora [small factory that assembles prefabricated goods—in this case, chimney, venting, and air distribution products]. Ojinaga serves as a support center and market community for the surrounding area. The maquiladora was humble enough to lack even a sign to identify it. Antoine set down two small plastic bottles of Evian water and a cellophane-wrapped egg salad sandwich.

Michaele coughed a small amount of blood into a pile of paper napkins he brought with him to the scene.

“You all right, Michaele?” Antoine asked solicitously with genuine concern on his face. “Think you can pull this off?”

“Jawohl, Bruder,” Michaele said with determination equal to Antoine’s concern.

“You have to suppress that cough until it’s over. That’ll be tough, but you can’t draw attention to yourself.”

“I know, I know. If I have to cough, I’ll bury my face in the pile of napkins. Nobody will hear a thing.”

Antoine looked over the edge of the flat top roof at the scene two stories below and approximately fifty yards away. It was approaching noon. The situation was ideal for a sniper: sun at Michaele’s back, noisy cantina next to the planned kill site, fairly busy rural Mexican road traffic on the pothole ridden street. The ambient noise would muffle almost all the sound Michaele was likely to make, even the actual firing of the rifle to some degree.

One of the more famous famous norteño musical groups from Ojinaga, and one of the loudest—Los Diamantes de Ojinaga—was already heating up the sound waves on the block; and the crowd inside the cantina and out on the sidewalk was getting drunker and more boisterous as the morning drew closer to noon. Unlike many other regional bands that used only accordions as the lead band instrument, Los Diamantes used saxophones and accordions together to get a richer and louder sound production, and one that reached a hundred yards away from the rowdy beer and tequila joint.

Sidewalk traffic was intermittent and not heavy. Ojinaga retained its rural culture, environment, and poverty. Most of the people walking along the hot sidewalk were peons—hardscrabble farmers-who never saw a surplus enough to turn an actual profit. The dusty border town was a way station for narcotic smuggling and illegal immigration; so, it was not hard to pick out the occasional small band of illegals led by their unfeeling and often thieving coyotes as they made their weary way towards the border and the riches of Los Estados Unidos [USA]. The pedestrians were either too tired, too thirsty and hungry, or too frightened to look up at the building where Michaele lay in wait. Antoine took one last reconnoitering look over the eight-inch high rain gutter border of the autobody shop to be sure there were no federales in view, bade Michaele good hunting, and crawled back to the rooftop enterway into the stairwell which led to the street on the opposite side of the cantina and the maquiladora. He could just make out muffled coughing by his old friend lying outstretched in the sweltering noonday sun as he descended the trash strewn stairs.

Rick Saunders had intentionally skipped breakfast and made the long trip from Dallas on an empty and increasingly noisy stomach. He was looking forward to satiating his appetites—both of them, but food first. He wore a light blue denim shirt, faded blue jeans, and scuffed desert boots, the better to make him fit in with the nondescript flow of people along the sidewalks and streets. He kept a hand on his wallet all the time, fearing pickpockets or brazen bandits. His broad brimmed Stetson shielded his head and eyes from the brilliant sun and from any view of the world above his eyebrows as he sauntered along the uneven pavement of the sidewalk without a care in the world.

Jérôme was waiting a block ahead of Rick. As the Texan rounded the corner and approached the former German POW who had suffered at his hands in an Allied POW camp not so long ago, Jérôme started walking towards Cantina Rojas, making sure to gauge his pace to equal that of Rick. He was wearing a large brimmed straw sombrero which he had intentionally dusted with road and coal dust and a sarape gabán [poncho] typical of the Mexican state of Coahuila in northeastern Mexico. It was old, worn, and dirty, but the bright bands of color were still evident—dark brown base with haphazard bands of yellow, orange, red, blue, green, purple, and chartreuse. Its purpose was to cover the machine pistol he concealed beneath it.

He allowed Rick to get closer—about ten yards now. He passed the discount store and walked purposefully along the sidewalk that faced the empty lot. He stopped for a second, lifted his sombrero, and wiped the sweat off his forehead—the signal to Michaele that the target was close behind him. He then turned and walked across to the other side of the street and back the way he had come. Jérôme never looked back. He met Antoine waiting at the next street in his Ford Fairlane Crown Victoria—now so covered with dust that its colors could not be distinguished with certainty—the engine idling. They moved the large four-seat sedan as swiftly through the gathering crowds on their way to market as they could without drawing attention to themselves and parked in front of the stairway of the autobody shop.

Michaele coughed up a large thick quarter cupful of bloody sputum and wiped his mouth with a napkin which was now nearly soaked with blood. The signal had been given; so, he chambered a 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge into the barrel of the English Parker Hale C3A1 sniper rifle and drew a bead on the head of a passing farmer to approximate the correct angle of his shot. In less than ten seconds, Rick Saunders walked into view. It was eleven-forty; he was five minutes early.

Michaele suppressed a nagging cough and felt the wad of bloody sputum trying to cough its way out. He suppressed the droplets of sweat running down his forehead and into his eyes. He suppressed the almost impossible craving to pull the trigger until Rick walked into a portion of the sidewalk where he was separated by three feet from the nearest other pedestrian on the sidewalk.

Rick never varied his pace or his direction of gaze. He wore an anticipatory smile.

Michaele centered the reticle on a point just above Rick’s cheekbone and directly in front of the upper third of his ear. He took in a breath, fought the need to cough and to blink, and slowly squeezed the fine-tuned trigger.

Rick Saunders, Major, USA, retired, felt nothing as his head exploded. He was dead before his body crumpled to the ground.

At first, the few people on the street and the sidewalk scattered in terror, then slowly they began to gather to get a view of the macabre scene, looking around and finally up to see where the shot came from. It would be foolish for Michaele to look over at his handiwork or to allow anyone on the ground to see him. He thought about gathering up the blood-soaked napkins scattered by his backpacking cushion, but thought better of the idea and crawled on his belly towards the opening to the stairs. He released a mighty exhalation and cough, and sprayed the roof and the upper stairs with a copius blood spatter. He hurried down the stairs heedlessly, stepping in the blood and marking his path with the prints of his desert boots all the way down the stairs, across the sidewalk, and into Antoine and Jérôme’s Ford.

As the crowd gathered on the opposite side of the building where the Ford was parked, the three assassins threaded their way north on backstreets until they left Ojinaga proper. They traveled at a speed between sixty and seventy miles per hour across the nearly 15,000 acres of open farmland with nothing but cattle pasture and plots of soy, cotton, corn, wheat, onions, peanuts, canteloupes, and assorted vegetables, to reach the border station at the Presidio–Ojinaga International Bridge. It was a modestly busy day; so, there was an uneasy wait of half an hour before the US Border and Customs agents finally got to them.

“Identification papers, please,” the Hispanic agent requested politely.

Antoine reached his driver’s license and all of the car’s occupants’ US passports to the woman.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” she said. “I appreciate seeing your passports. Technically your driver licences are sufficient, but the US is soon going to require passports of everyone. Mexico is a foreign country, which seems to be news to lots of American tourists. What was the nature of your visit, gentlemen?”

“Tourism, Officer,” Antoine responded.

“Bringing anything back?” she asked.

“Oh, we certainly hope not,” he answered with a big bad-boy smile.

She laughed, even though it was joke that was getting time and repetition worn. She raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“No, Ma’am,” Antoine answered, serious this time.

“Drive safely, gentlemen. Remember the speed limit is fifty.”

“Thank you, Officer. We’ll be careful.”

As he started to roll down the window, Michaele developed a severe coughing spell. The customs agent looked at him sitting in the backseat and took note of the blood he was coughing up.

“That’s a really nasty cough,” she said. “You okay?”

Michaele could only nod.

“Cancer,” Antoine said with a sad look. “The trip was probably too much for him. We’re headed back to Tucson to get him into the hospital there. Appreciate your concern.”

“I won’t keep you then. My best wishes,” she said, leaning into the open window to say it to Michaele.

They exceeded the speed limit only by a little all the way back to Fort Worth and the Tarrant County Elmwood Sanatorium outside of the city, arriving before dark. Antoine and Jérôme got Michaele settled into bed after receiving a scolding by the evening shift nurse. When she had vented her spleen, she strutted out of the room still angry.

“She’s right, you know, Michaele. You have to get rest. Stay here for a month, then get back to London. If that’s a problem, I have left instructions for the staff to call me at the corporation offices. Jérôme and I will come back and get you if we have to.”

“You have more important things to do than to nursemaid me,” Michaele said. “I’ll be fine.”

That bit of unlikely optimism was given the lie by another coughing spell.

“You will, Bruder. You will,” Jérôme lied as they parted.

The word of Rick Saunder’s assassination reached the Texas Rangers office in Presidio the following day. The Mexican federales had been called that morning and hurried into Ojinaga to discover the body of a murdered man whose wallet contained a Texas state driver’s license and a retired Army officer ID card along with a wad of cash. They did not want anything to do with an international incident which would bring a spotlight into the activities into their lucrative region of northern Mexico where the Río Conchos River drains into the Rio Bravo [known as the Rio Grande in the US]—an area called La Junta de los Rios. Their meager Mexican salaries did not support the Federales or their families, and scrutiny on their extracurricular activities would be counterproductive.

Mexican authorities had a grudging respect for the Texas Rangers and regularly worked with them on selected cases. Two rangers—Tom Packer and Eldred Drake—were allowed in and conducted a cursory crime scene evaluation. Intuition led them to the rooftop of the autobody repair shop, where they found a single brass casing and a bushel basket full of very bloody tissues. With the help of the Federales, they measured and photographed the bloody footprints on the roof and the stairs, noting that the prints were not from cowboy boots or any familiar American or Mexican-made boots. They took note of the fact that their Mexican counterparts seemed anxious to get the body back to the States and that the wallet was empty of cash.

Back in the Presidio office, Tom said, “This here was a professional hit. One shot from a sniper rifle, and no one seen a thing.”

Tom was twenty-five years older than Eldred and looked like he had stepped out of an 1870 Texas Ranger recruiting lithograph. Although the current approved attire included a white shirt and tie, tan trousers, a light-colored western cowboy hat, a ranger belt, and cowboy boots which Eldred had worn ever since he graduated from ranger school, Tom was old style. He wore whatever clothes he could afford or muster, which were usually—like today—worn out from heavy use. Unlike his junior associate, Tom dressed more like a compromise between Mexican vaqueros and some kind of gringo police officer. Unlike most modern rangers, he preferred to wear broad-brimmed sombrero as opposed to a neat new Stetson and wore throwback square-cut, knee-high boots with a high heel and pointed toes—the Spanish style. He still wore silver spurs because he liked the jangling sound—and he insisted that the ladies were unable to resist a ranger in real boots and spurs. Both rangers groups—new and old—carried their guns the same way, with the holsters positioned high around their hips instead of low on the thigh. This placement made it easier to draw and shoot while riding a horse, although now they more often used motorized travel.

Ranger Eldred Drake had ambitions. He intended to move up the ranks in the ranger organization; so, he was a stickler for details in the manual and in his dress. He wore clean crisp, freshly laundered and pressed Levis, a wide belt with his rodeo championship buckle, and a snap button long-sleeve white cotton shirt and a string tie. His boots were polished every morning and dusted off from his day’s work every noon and just at quitting time. He was scrupulous about shaving twice a day because of his fast-growing and heavy black beard. He had wavy black hair and an Indian nose. His teeth were big, and there was a conspicuous gap between his front two incisors—all harking back to the distant point in his genealogy when a great-great grandfather had married a Native American woman. Together they produced twelve Mestizos. The subsequent generations did little to dilute the strong genetic contribution of the Natchitoches Indians whose genealogical contribution was now lost to the mists of time.

Eldred made the decisive point: “But even big-time pros make mistakes. The guy or guys who did this hit made three big ones: we have the slug, and it is intact enough to find out the make and model of the gun, at least. We have bloody footprints that don’t match anything we see on men’s feet around here. And, there is all that bloody toilet paper up there on the roof. I don’t think that’s from an injury. I think somebody is mighty sick. I’m gonna take some of the globs of blood over to Doc Pinter’s. I have a hunch about what this is. He used to work up at the Elmwood Sanatorium by Fort Worth, and he can confirm my hunch.”

Pinter’s office was only three blocks away.

Ranger Drake walked in and asked to see the doctor right away on ranger business.

“I’ll get him,” Ruby Dempsey, the office girl, said.

“What’s up?” asked the doc when he came out from seeing a pregnant patient.

“Need to have you look at a blood sample under the microscope, Doc.”

He handed the doctor the mass of paper tissue with the large blood clot.

“See that gray snotty-lookin’s stuff mixed in with the blood, Eldred?”

“I noticed it. That’s why I brought it to you for confirmation.”

“First thing I do will be to make a Ziehl–Neelsen stain prep. It’s also called the acid-fast stain.”

“For TB, right?”

“Good boy. Who says the Texas Rangers are just dumb thugs?”

“We do, Doc. Keeps the yokels scared of us.”

They both laughed.

With a few manipulations, Dr. Pinter looked under the microscope and said without a bit of reservation, “Acid-fast bacilli—Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Good call, Eldred. Take a look at all of those red streaks. Your sniper has TB, and a well advanced case. Given the amount of blood he’s coughin’ up and all that bacterial sludge, he’s in a world of hurt. He’s actually coughin’ up chunks of lung.”

“I need an opinion, Doc. Is he too sick to travel any big distance?”

“I would bet the barn on it. He’s about to slough his mortal coil. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he’s already dead.”

“Where do ya’ll think him and his friends would likely head?”

“Exactly one place, Eldred. That’s Elmwood up by Fort Worth. Ya’ll skiddadle up there right away, and I’d bet plenty that he’s layin’ up there coughin’ out his lungs and maybe his brains.”

“So don’t think I’m impolite, Doc; but that’s exactly what I’m gonna do right now.”

Eldred reported the doc’s findings and suggestion to Tom and started out the office door to get in the car.

“Hold up a sec. You hearda that new invention—the telephone?” Tom asked.

“Oh, yeah, good idea. We can put a hold on the guy before he can git outta there. That’s why you’re the captain with the fancy gold badge and I’m the guy with the lowly silver one.”

The 1960s badge of a Texas Ranger was the same size as compared to a 1948 cinco pesos coin from which both Tom and Eldred had theirs made. Shortly after the Texas Rangers were merged with the Department of Public Safety, a new badge design was issued by the state. Roughly oval-shaped, it contained the legend “Dept. of Public Safety,” the letters T-E-X-A-S, and a star with the rank in the center. The two mavericks kept their old style badges like many of the old-timers, and no one made a complaint.

“Get on with it and make the call, lowly ranger. Probably oughta call Austin first.”

“Politics,” grumbled Eldred.

“It’s how to keep yer job, young fella. I been at this for nearly thirty-five years. I hadda make a lotta compromises in that time.”

“I’m still learnin’.’”

He made the call to headquarters in Austin and gave the duty officer the shorthand version.

“Ya’ll need to git on over there to Fort Worth [pronounced Fot Wuth] asap, ya heah!” the duty officer said unnecessarily.

“Thank ya’ll very much, Ranger. Idda never have thought of that.

“Anyhow, me and Tom will head out from Presidio. See ya’ll at the sanatorium. Be careful out there. We think these’re bad dudes. Might wanna bring along the cavalry.”

The ranger captain, Reggie Cutler, in Austin, acted immediately after learning about the military status of the victim and called the DOD and the DOJ. The DOD call took half an hour to wend its way to Tucker Nicholsen SAC, 83^rd MP Det CID, in Fort Richardson, Alaska.

“Nicholsen,” Tucker answered.

“This is Captain Reggie Cutler, chief of the Texas Rangers office in Austin, Special Agent. We are investigating a murder that the DOD told us may be related to one you have going—the killing of a US general named Glen Gabler.”

“Yes, sir. You’ve come to the right place. What’s new?”

“I’m going to keep this real simple because it’s kind of urgent right now. The Mexican federales called us about a sniper murder—obvious professional hit—in a little border town called Ojinaga, Chihuahua State. Our rangers confirmed that the deceased is one Major Rick Avery Saunders, USA retired. That ring a bell?”

“A loud one. What have you learned?”

“I’ll fax up the info, but right now things are in the hurry-up phase. We have a lead that suggests that the perp may be currently in Fort Worth. Specifically in the Tarrant County Elmwood Sanatorium outside of the city. Rangers, Fort Worth police, and fibbies, are all gearing up to descend on the place. It’s a TB sanatorium. If he’s still there, this may be a breakthrough for you and us.”

“And maybe a half dozen or dozen other cases around the world, Ranger. We’ll get our people there as fast as humanly possible. I know you have to protect your people, but try if at all possible not to kill the guy. We need to sweat him.”

“Understood. I’ll let you go. See you or one of your agents in Fort Worth.”

“Thanks for the call.”

Tucker called Major Darrin Higgins, Chief Officer MCU, Alaska State Police, in Juneau to give him a heads up and then made arrangements for the Army criminal investigation service in Dallas to send special agents with lights ablaze and sirens blaring. His only other requests—and the strongest ones—were not to kill the arrestee and to try and play nice with all the other jurisdictions involved.

Capt. Cutler’s next call was to AAG Spencer Reynolds, assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the DOJ, who in turn called DFBI Warren Brent Gaines and Superintendent Axel Baird INTERPOL agent in charge in New York City, and Eugène Léon Dentremont, Senior Detective Chief Superintendent of INTERPOL, who had his deputy, Marianne de la Reynie senior INTERPOL technician, forensic specialist, contact the French, Russian, British, and Argentinian law enforcement officers in the cohort of investigators of the murders of senior military officers. Then all eyes and ears focused on Fort Worth—a dusty backwater city in north central Texas—a place most had never heard about before that day.

The rangers stopped at a burger joint and picked up some Tex-Mex to eat on the way to Fort Worth.

Tex-Mex Recipes

Tex-Mex BLT—Serves 2

Ingredients

¼ cp mayo, 1 pinch chili powder, 1 pinch fresh chopped jalapeno, 1 pinch pepper, 4 thick slices whole wheat bread, 8 slices crisply fried bacon, 6 thinly sliced tomatoes, 1 slice thinly sliced avocado,1 sprig roughly chopped cilantro, 1 washed lettuce leaf.

Preparation

Mix mayo with pinch of chili powder and jalapeno and set aside. Toast the bread lightly and spread both sides with mayo. Pile on bacon, tomato, avocado, cilantro sprigs, and lettuce, and top with other slice of toast.

Tex-Mex Stuffed Chilies—Serves 10

Ingredients

-1 med. diced red onion, 1 lb ground turkey or good beef, 1 (1½ oz) envelope taco seasoning, 1 11 oz drained can corn, 1 4 ounce can green Ortega chilies, 1 15 oz can rinsed and drained black beans, ½ 15 oz can refried beans, ½ cup salsa, 4 cps shredded cheddar cheese, 5 med. bell peppers of all colors. Include Ortegas or jalapenos as desired.

Preparation

-Brown ground meat with onion in skillet until done, drain grease. Add taco seasoning and water as per envelope simmer 5 mins., remove from heat and let cool.

-Cut peppers in half from top to bottom, remove all seeds and membrane.

-Place in 2 greased 13 x 9 in. pans.

-Mix salsa and refried beans. To the meat mixture add corn, black beans, green chilies, refried mix, and 2 cps cheddar cheese.

-Stuff raw peppers with mix. Cover and bake ~1 hour at 350^° F, uncover and top with remaining cheese, then place back in oven ~5 min. until cheese is melted.

Tex-Mex Barbecued Salmon—4 Servings

Ingredients

¼ cup fresh orange juice, 2 tbsps fresh lemon juice, 4 6 oz salmon fillets, 2 tbsps brown sugar, 1 tbsp chili powder, 2 tsps lemon zest, ¾ tsp ground cumin, ¼ tsp salt, ¼ tsp cinnamon, 1 lemon slice.

Preparation

-In a ziplock plastic bag, combine first orange juice, lemon juice, and salmon; seal and marinate in refrigerator 1 hour, turning occasionally. Remove fish from bag, discard marinade.

-In a small bowl, combine next sugar, chili powder, lemon zest, cumin, salt, and cinnamon. Place fillets in the mixture and soak in same (but fresh) marinade longer.

-Place fillets on grill on medium-high heat and cover with grill lid. Baste fish with the sauce occasionally. Cook for 10–12 min. or until fish flakes easily when tested with fork. Serve with lemon slice.