For the duration of his stay in Laredo, Robert Stockwell, special agent in charge of DEA's Houston Division, had set up camp in Scott Greene's office. As the local resident agent in charge, Greene had the only private office. The rest of the agents worked in a cubicle farm down the hall.
Glenn Peterson sat in one of two wooden armchairs in front of Greene's desk. The office door was closed.
"I wanted to talk to you before OPR got here," Stock-well said. "I know you and Greene have a history."
"I was his group supervisor in New Orleans," Peterson said. "His first posting after the academy."
The SAC nodded impatiently. "You and I need to make sure we're on the same page."
"What page is that?"
"I don't think I need to tell you how bad this looks, es-pecially to headquarters."
"How bad it looks?" Peterson said. "We lost three agents."
"Exactly. And unless we manage the situation correctly, there could be significant blowback."
"Blowback from headquarters?"
The SAC leaned forward and planted his elbows on the desk. "Of course from headquarters. And beyond. This thing could land us in a Congressional hearing. That's why we need to make it clear right up front that Greene was acting on his own, without authority from the division, certainly without authority from headquarters, and that no one, no one, in his chain of command was aware that he was plan-ning to conduct an illegal operation in Mexico, in contraven-tion of Mexican law, United States law, and DEA policy."
The SAC sounded strange, like he was testifying al-ready. Peterson guessed he was getting warmed up before he had to give a statement to the suits from OPR. "I didn't know what he was planning," Peterson said, "but come on, Bob, we both know extraordinary renditions happen from time to time, and headquarters tends to give them...tacit ap-proval."
"I don't know anything about that," Stockwell said. "And if you knew about any renditions coming out of this division it was your responsibility to come to me so that I could..."
"Could what, Bob?"
"Take appropriate action."
Peterson decided not to press the issue. The SAC was full of shit, but there was no way to prove it. No paper was cut on renditions. Thus there were no official requests and no official approvals. They were done off the books, and when a case agent filed a DEA Form 6, a Report of Investi-gation, to document an arrest made by rendition, the report always said that the defendant was apprehended on the U.S. side of the border and that the information about the defendant's whereabouts came from an anonymous tip.
Staring across Greene's desk at the SAC, Peterson was once again struck by how strange the man sounded. Stock-well was fond of cursing. Like a lot of desk jockeys he thought it made him sound tough. Now he was speaking in pure bureaucratese. Something he normally didn't do, espe-cially not one-on-one. Unless...
"Bob, are you recording this conversation?" Peterson asked.
Stockwell rubbed a hand across his face. "Why would you ask that?"
"Are you?"
Stockwell tried a hard stare, but he couldn't quite pull it off. The street agents didn't call him Bobby Socks for noth-ing. "No, I'm not recording it," he finally said in a voice that was a notch or two higher than normal. "Should I be?"
Peterson knew when he was being lied to, and he was being lied to right now, by his boss. He shook his head. "No reason I can think of."
"Scott Greene's reckless disregard for the law and DEA policy got three agents killed."
"Four crooked Mexican police officers killed our agents," Peterson said. "And that's who we should be going after. Not Scott Greene."
Stockwell shook his head. "No one is going after Scott Greene, but he has to be held accountable for his actions. Just like everyone else."
"The U.S. attorney's office indicted Sergeant Felix Ortiz for his participation in the abduction, torture, and murder of a DEA agent. What did DOJ expect? That would be the end of it? That we'd be happy with a tick mark in the indicted column? Case closed, move onto the next one? No, because that's not how we do things at DEA." He jabbed a finger out the window. "Those dope dealers out there need to know that we won't stop, that we will keep coming, that we will go to the ends of the earth and do whatever it takes to catch them and drag them back to an American prison for killing one of our agents. Because that's how we protect the rest of our agents."
"There are procedures," Stockwell said in a precise and moderated voice. "You know them as well as I do. When pursuing international fugitives we work through Main Jus-tice and the State Department in order to coordinate with our foreign partners."
"Are you fucking kidding me," Peterson said. "Foreign partners? Is that what we're calling Mexico now? Our for-eign partner? It's a narco-state run by gangsters. You think the Mexican government was ever going to turn over Felix Ortiz to us? There was only one way to get our hands on him and that was to go in and take him. So that's exactly what Scott did." Peterson hesitated for a second before plunging ahead. "Then you let two spooks snatch him right out of our holding cell."
"The agents from OPR aren't coming here to talk about how Ortiz got out of our custody. They're coming here to talk about the illegal way he got into our custody. So I sug-gest you focus on that."
"It'll be a short interview then because, like I said, I had no idea what Scott was planning."
"Would you agree that Special Agent Greene has a problem with authority?"
"You're talking about Afghanistan?"
Stockwell nodded. "DOD almost threw us out of the country because of that stunt he pulled."
"It wasn't a stunt," Peterson said. "He raided the big-gest heroin processing plant in the country and made the largest heroin seizure in DEA history."
"He didn't clear the raid with the military."
"Because the military was protecting the plant."
"That was never proven."
"An entire platoon of Marines was assigned to guard that plant because it belonged to a warlord who happened to be on our side that week. The only reason the Marines didn't shoot down Greene and his entire team was because the pla-toon commander thought the helicopters were carrying their relief."
"The situation over there has always been complicated," Stockwell said. "We have to make deals and we have to compromise. That's why every operation has to be cleared through the International Enforcement Division and coordi-nated with DOD. We're not an agency of cowboys anymore. We don't kick down every door we come across just because there's an ounce of coke on the other side."
"This morning when I looked at my badge it still said Drug Enforcement Administration, not Department of De-fense."
The SAC leaned back in his chair. "Greene is missing and we have to find him."
"So you can throw him under the bus?"
"You're mandatory in six months."
Peterson nodded. "And that means I'm the only one in this room not bucking to cap my career by landing a chief's job at headquarters."
"Scott Greene broke the law in two countries."
"The op went sideways on him," Peterson said. "He'll have to answer for that. But he's not responsible for the deaths of those agents."
"You need to get out ahead of this, Glenn. If you know where he is..."
"I have no idea where he is."
Stockwell stared at him for a long moment. "With or without your help, we're going to bring him in. His cell phone has gone dark, but I have alerts on his credit and debit cards. We'll know within ten minutes if he tries to use them."
"Sounds like you have everything covered."
"Have you spoken to him?"
"No," Peterson said without hesitation. Thirty years of carrying a badge and a gun and dozens of brushes with death had proved to him the truth behind the old adage, He who hesitates is lost. Maybe Stockwell knew he had talked to Greene, but maybe he was just fishing. Either way, he wasn't getting any help from his ASAC in railroading a good agent.
"Do you really want to bet your pension on Scott Greene?"
"Are you threatening me? Is that really where you want to go with this?"
"It's not a threat," Stockwell said. "It's simple reality. Because when the music stops, somebody always gets left without a chair. I know that somebody isn't going to be me. And I'd rather it not be you."
Peterson opened his mouth to tell his boss to fuck off, but before he could get the words out someone knocked on the door.
"Come in," Stockwell said in a hurry.
The door opened and the two suits from OPR walked in.