LAWSON WAS HUNCHED OVER HIS COMPUTER CHECKING ON THE PROGRESS of his subpoena for Francisco Colorado’s bank statements when Perez stepped into his cubicle.
“¿Cómo estás?” she said.
Lawson looked up from his computer. He knew she was referring to the Treviño case, which they often discussed. “Así así,” he said. “That means ‘so-so,’ right?”
“Sí.” She nodded. “Muy bien, güero.”
“Gracias morena,” he said.
Perez gave him a knowing look. “Someone’s been giving you lessons.” One of her favorite pastimes was teasing him about how he’d fall in love in Laredo, get married. His plans to make a clean break for Tennessee would be dashed. Perez was wearing khaki cargo pants and a loose-fitting blue polo shirt to accommodate her swelling waistline. He knew she was due next month around Thanksgiving.
By now, they were working a handful of cases together, and the rest of the squad expected that if there were a callout or a reactive case, Perez and Lawson would go together. The other guys were relieved because they didn’t know how to deal with Perez’s pregnancy.
“Watch out you don’t end up delivering the baby yourself,” one agent had cracked to Lawson, who’d given him a withering look. He had a younger half sister, and he’d spent much of his childhood with his mom after his parents’ divorce. He liked to think he could get beyond the macho attitude of some of the other guys on the squad.
Hodge had finally gotten his indictment in the drug gang case with the help of an IRS criminal investigator from Waco. Lawson was impressed with Steve Pennington, who knew his stuff but didn’t feel the need to advertise it. Hodge had been unusually upbeat since the indictment. With the case coming to an end, he was one step closer to leaving Laredo.
Lawson had learned a lot from Hodge about how to keep up with the paperwork the FBI required for every step in an investigation, but when it came to a true partnership he looked to Perez.
“Any word yet from our source on the Garcia case?” he asked.
“Nada todavía,” she said. A few weeks earlier, they’d finally been able to piece together what had happened to the brothers through sources from Nuevo Laredo. Some Zetas had intercepted the brothers outside the ranch where they were going to ride and demanded their motorbikes and pickup truck. When they’d refused, the gunmen had killed them.
It turned out the guy using the Garcia brothers’ cell phone had given the order to shoot. They’d already given the information to the police in Nuevo Laredo, but predictably they’d done nothing with it.
“What about our pilot. Has the helicopter taken off yet?”
Perez was pivoting to another case they’d recently taken on: a murder in neighboring Zapata County. A man had gone jet skiing with his wife on Falcon Lake, a reservoir on the Rio Grande. And they had made the mistake of straying into Zeta territory on the Mexican side of the lake, where they’d been shot at with AK-47s. The man had been killed, but his wife had escaped on her jet ski. Weeks had already passed since the shooting, and they’d yet to recover his body. And neither Lawson nor Perez could cross the border into Mexico. A Mexican police commander had volunteered to help, but a week later his head was delivered in a suitcase to a Mexican army barracks near the lake.
After the death of the police commander, they’d scrambled to find anyone who could stage a search for them in Mexico. Lawson had finally found a seasoned Texan pilot to fly a helicopter used by Mexican volunteer firefighters over the area where the man had disappeared. A couple of the firefighters had agreed to go along with him in case they located the body.
Lawson checked the time on his cell phone. “The helicopter should be out there by now. We should hear something soon.”
“Let me know when you hear from them,” Perez said, heading back toward her cubicle in the corner of the office.
About thirty minutes later, he appeared at her desk, his face flushed. Perez could tell it was bad news.
“I just got a call from the pilot. They flew over the area but were shot at from below, and now they’re running out of fuel. He says it’s too dangerous for them to land.”
“Oh shit,” Perez said, getting up out of her chair with some difficulty. They already harbored enough guilt about the police commander. He could have refused to help them, like the others, but he hadn’t and now he was dead.
“I’ll work on getting them permission to land in Texas,” Perez said with urgency, reaching for her cell phone.
“They need fuel,” Lawson said. “I’ve got to figure out how to get it to them.”
“I’m going with you,” Perez said, sitting back in her chair and strapping on her ankle holster.
“Why don’t you stay here,” Lawson suggested.
“Hell no,” Perez said and grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair.
She’d made a point of telling Lawson about her last pregnancy in Miami, where she’d worked up to delivery day. She was proud that she’d helped take down a Colombian coke dealer when she was eight months pregnant. She’d stuck out the surveillance for seven hours, taking bathroom breaks in the bushes. Later she found out that her squad leader had forgotten all about her, which was why he’d never relieved her from her shift. A rookie at the time, she was determined to make a good impression on the all-male squad, so she’d rolled with it without complaint. When they finally hit the house, she was right there with them. Afterward, the agents took photos with the seized merchandise. Perez posed for a sassy side profile with her pregnant belly and the bricks of cocaine.
“I’m co-agent on this case,” she said. “I’m going with you.”
Lawson could see the determination in her face. There was no way he was going to talk her out of it. He slipped his Glock 27 into the concealed holster on his waist. “All right, let’s go, pregnant lady,” he said.
On the way out, he asked Perdomo if they could borrow his squad vehicle, because it was a pickup truck. From their office they sped north to the outskirts of Laredo where the airport was located. There they bought two fifty-five-gallon drums of jet fuel. While a man filled the barrels, Perez worked her cell phone trying to get the Mexican helicopter permission to land on the U.S. side of the border. It would take them at least an hour on a patchy road to get to Zapata and the helicopter.
Their drive south on the highway with two highly volatile barrels of jet fuel sloshing around in the bed of the pickup felt like an eternity to Lawson. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said, glancing at Perez and her very pregnant stomach.
“Just forget about it,” she said, in a tone that told him not to bring it up again.
He changed the subject. “Do you sometimes feel guilty about the police commander?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “We can’t let these guys down.” Perez had finally secured permission for the helicopter pilot to land on the U.S. side of Falcon Lake.
When they arrived the exhausted helicopter crew was waiting. The pilot quickly fueled up the helicopter’s tank, then they watched it head south again for home. The crew had decided not to risk another dangerous foray over the lake. Once again, they’d come up with nothing. As the Zetas’ power was becoming more absolute on the other side of the border, Lawson was constantly being reminded of his limitations. The sense of powerlessness it gave him only strengthened his resolve to take down Tremor Enterprises and Miguel.