She skillfully brought the fast-descending balloon to a landing on the sandbar.
“Let’s anchor it and keep it inflated!” Madge shouted, tossing Sonny the rope and pointing to a large log half-buried in the wet sand.
If she deflated the balloon, they would need a portable fan to inflate it again, and they weren’t packing a fan. Sonny tied the balloon down, then ran to Raven’s balloon. Luckily there was no wind sweeping across the shallow river, and in the fall and winter the sandbars ran for miles.
He cautiously approached Raven’s basket, sure that Raven would have one more trick up his sleeve. The mannequin dressed in black was tied to the side of the basket, its face covered with a phantom-of-the-opera mask. The exploded firecrackers covered the tip of the broomstick. No wonder the witnesses who saw the death of Mario Secco swore they saw the gunfire coming from the black balloon; the firecrackers created a loud noise and a flash of fire.
Sonny noticed a tape player hanging around the dummy’s neck. When he clicked it on, Raven’s mad laughter crackled. The message was for the police chief.
“Garcia … by the time you listen to this, Sonny Baca will have a hole in his head. I owed him one, now I’m even. I owe this fucking state one, and it’s going to get it. Bad! You and the FBI boys can’t stop me.”
There was a pause. “But let’s suppose Baca made it out alive. Sure, that would even be more fun. Tricksters love games, don’t we, Baca? Yes, I love the game, but it’s coming to an end! You have created the fire of the nuclear bomb, and you will feel its wrath!”
Sonny jumped back as a flash of fire exploded from the dummy, quickly engulfing the basket in flames. The tape player must have been rigged to trigger an explosion after the message played once. Raven had planned everything down to the last detail. The balloon that fired on Mario Secco had also gone up in flames. But the police thought the propane tank had blown up. No, Raven had planned the burn.
The sound of a helicopter made Sonny spin around and aim his rifle up. He relaxed when he saw the TV 7 chopper swooping over the treetops to land on the wide sandbar. Francine Hunter jumped from the helicopter and came scrambling across the sandbar, followed by Peter shouldering a camera.
“Did you get him?” she called as she ran toward the burning basket.
“You okay?” Peter asked.
“I’m okay,” Sonny shouted above the roar of the motor. “It was a decoy!”
“Get a shot!” Francine shouted at Peter.
Madge came running up, putting an arm around Sonny. “Are you all right?”
“Okay,” Sonny answered.
“Why burn it?” she asked, looking at the flames and the column of smoke as the basket quickly burned.
“To burn the evidence,” Sonny answered. “Raven likes games.”
Francine Hunter shouted, “Peter, keep it rolling, keep it rolling! Get a shot of Sonny. Hold on to his arm,” she told Madge, positioning her for the shot she wanted Peter to take. “He’s our hero for the day.”
She turned and faced the camera. “This is Francine Hunter, reporting from a sandbar on the Río Grande where Sonny Baca and Madge Swenson have just landed after being shot at possibly by the person or persons who killed Mario Secco. The hot-air balloon you see burning in the background belongs to the suspected murderer.”
Damn, Sonny cursed silently, and kicked the wet sand at his feet. You advertise and you get what you pay for.
He turned to Madge. “Can we get out of here?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Hey! Lemme finish the shot!” Francine Hunter called as Sonny and Madge walked back to her balloon.
Peter turned and very softly said, “Chill, Francine. Don’t you see they almost got killed?”
“Oh, yeah.” Francine nodded, tossing hair from her forehead.
“Look!”
A second helicopter swooshed over the treetops and roared to a landing.
“Shit!” Madge said. “Doesn’t that goddamned pilot know his draft is murder?” She held the lines of the moored balloon, which swayed precariously from the chopper’s gust.
Two men jumped from the helicopter and raced toward Sonny. Sonny recognized Mike Stevens and Eddie Martinez. Stevens came toward him while Martinez ran to check out the burning basket.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Stevens shouted above the roar of the motor.
“Taking ballooning lessons,” Sonny replied sarcastically. “Agent Stevens, this is my flying instructor, Madge Swenson.”
“I know damn well where you do your flying, Baca.” The agent scowled. They had been tailing him, hoping he’d lead them to Raven.
“Glad to meet you, Agent Stevens. What brings you to the Grand Central sandbar on the Río Grande?”
He was in no mood to joke. “Stop the camera!” he shouted at Peter. Then turning to Sonny, he asked, “Did you see him?”
“I got a shot off,” Sonny answered.
“You sure it was him?”
Sonny shrugged. The FBI knew it was Raven, they had known all along. If they weren’t sharing information, why should he?
“This was a stupid stunt, Baca, a real stupid stunt!” Stevens shouted.
“If it was so stupid, why didn’t you stop me?” Sonny asked.
He knew they hadn’t stopped him because they had hoped he would draw Raven out.
“They want to catch Raven, but let you take the chances,” Madge said with clear disgust.
“We’ve got jurisdiction in this case. Getting Sonny to work for you is not a good idea, Ms. Swenson. This stunt was not a good idea. You went to visit Mr. Baca early in the morning, that’s your business.” Stevens grinned. “Just leave the job of finding Mario Secco’s murderer to us. Have a good morning,” he finished. “Let’s go!” he shouted at Martinez, and together they ran toward the helicopter.
Sonny spotted a man sitting behind the chopper’s pilot. A third agent? The FBI chopper rose quickly and disappeared over the trees.
“Did you see who was sitting in the chopper?” Francine Hunter said. She and Peter had stood by quietly, listening to the exchange.
Sonny shrugged. “An agent.”
“No,” she whispered. “That was William Stone.”
Sonny ran the name through his name file, but nothing registered. William Stone was a common-enough name.
“CIA,” she said in a tone that said her reporter’s mind had sniffed a clue.
“CIA? You sure?” Sonny asked, turning to look after the helicopter. Sonny had noticed the pilot in the chopper, and the big, blondish man in the backseat. For a moment he had thought the man was Jerry Stammer; the glare of the sun made it impossible to see his face clearly. But no, it wasn’t, so Sonny dismissed him as an agent.
“CNN did a story on him when Bush raided Panama. William Stone was the top honcho in the CIA group that was sending arms to the Contras in Nicaragua.”
“What’s he doing in Alburquerque?”
“Wire services say he’s in the region visiting the FBI, but they don’t say why.”
Sonny remembered the CNN story now. Stone had been exposed in the report as the leader of the intelligence unit that was overseeing the Contra supply line. That was right after Gilroy got shot down and busted by his own agency for talking too much. Was he Stone’s scapegoat? After the CNN show Stone had disappeared back into the caverns of the CIA. Why surface here, now?
And what the hell was he doing riding around in an FBI chopper with the two agents who were chasing Raven? He looked at Francine and saw her mind was asking the same question. Then he turned to Madge.
She shrugged. “I’m ready.”
“What the hell, we might as well wrap up with a shot of these two sailing off into the blue,” Francine said to Peter.
Sonny and Madge climbed into the basket, and Peter untied the anchor line. The balloon rose quickly, up and out of the bosque.
“What now?” Madge asked as they flew over Coors Road. She had spotted her chase crew; her assi
stant drove a bright orange pickup. Now she looked for a clear spot where she could land.
“Back to square one,” Sonny mumbled in reply, but his mind was working on the incident with Stone. The FBI wanted Raven because he had tried to blow up a WIPP truck carrying nuclear waste material. He qualified as a terrorist. But why would the CIA be interested in Raven? William Stone wasn’t out for a joy ride. Nothing was making sense.
Madge brought the balloon down on the soccer field near St. Pius High School. Tony in the chase truck was right there to help. An angry Chief Garcia also came roaring up.
“Did you see him?” Garcia asked as Sonny and Madge climbed out of the basket.
“Yes,” Sonny answered. “He was hunting coyotes.”
Raven had scored again, the evening news would say. That is, the murderer of Veronica and Mario Secco was shooting at any balloon that went up, at will, and the police were helpless to stop him. The news would drive a deeper wedge of fear into what was left of the balloon fiesta.
“It was a stupid stunt,” Garcia said.
Madge turned on the chief. “He got closer to the murderer than anyone else yet.”
The police chief looked at her and glared. “Yeah,” he snapped, “and you’re lucky you didn’t get your ass shot off, Miss Swenson!” He stalked away, got in his car, and churned out of the sandy lot.
Madge laughed. “Yeah, I am.” She turned to Sonny. “I’m sorry. I panicked up there.”
“Hey, it was a hairy scene. No problem.”
“How did you know Raven was on the ground?”
“A friend at the police lab told me the autopsy report on Mario Secco said the bullet entered low in his stomach and exited between his shoulder blades. I knew he was killed from the ground, even though Garcia’s boys didn’t bother to check out the angle.”
They looked at the steel plate that sat at the bottom of the basket. One bullet had made a dent in the steel; the angle at which it hit caused it to glance off.
Tony drove them to the balloon park, and Madge drove Sonny home in her red Corvette. “Thanks,” she said at parting, “for everything. About this morning, I promise not to get in your life, unless—unless you call. Then I’ll give you a long balloon ride on a calm morning. Do you still work for us?”
“Yeah. I want Raven as bad as you do.”
“You know we’re running out of time.”
He nodded.
She put her Vette in gear and sped away, leaving a cloud of October dust in her wake.
Across the street don Eliseo and Diego were burning the dead grass along the irrigation ditch. They had paused to watch the blonde woman in the red car deliver Sonny, and when she was gone, they ambled over.
“Hey, Sonny. Who’s the blonde?”
“My boss.”
“She shows up pretty early.” Don Eliseo winked at Diego.
Sonny blushed. If the old man knew, then his friends would know. Doña Concha would kid Sonny; the early morning visit would grow as the story got retold. And sooner or later Rita would hear it.
“I need Diego. Can you spare him?”
“Sure. Just bring him back in one piece. He’s the best worker I ever had.”
Diego smiled. “Your ranchito is going to look as good as one of those manicured estates on Chávez Road, don Eliseo.”
“Don’t get it to looking too good”—don Eliseo laughed—“or one of those rich gringos will try to buy it from me. Adiós. Mucho cuidado.”
“Where we going?” Diego asked as they got in Sonny’s truck. Sonny told him what had happened on the balloon flight.
“I need to check out the place,” Sonny explained.
“Man, you gotta be careful, hermano,” Diego cautioned. “But don’t worry, if Raven left a trail, I can find it.”
“That’s what I hoped,” Sonny said.
They drove to the river and took a conservancy road along the bank of the irrigation ditch, toward the place where Sonny estimated Raven had launched his balloon. They came to a ditch chain hung across two posts blocking the road. Sonny parked the truck and they walked into the river bosque. Sonny carried his pistol; he was taking no chances.
“Around here,” he said, and they began looking for traces of Raven. It didn’t take long for Diego to find the bullet casings in the clearing. He picked one up with a stick and smelled it.
“This is it. Just fired. He waited for you here. See where he inflated the balloon? Enough space to hide, and just enough for a takeoff.” Diego pointed. He picked up a black Raven feather. “Doesn’t make sense. The man leaves too many signs.”
Yeah, Sonny thought, that’s Raven.
“And this?” Diego asked, picking up a small plastic sandwich bag. “He snorted while he waited?”
“You sure?”
Diego tasted the white powder residue in the bag. “I know good coke when I taste it, compa, and this guy is doing quality caca.”
The Raven Sonny had met in June wasn’t snorting coke.
“The man is crazy,” Sonny said. “Maybe he’s also in pain. After he fell into the arroyo, the water would have slammed him against the rocks and along the gravel bottom. One side of his face was cut to ribbons. He wouldn’t have been able to see a doctor. The FBI was still looking for him, making it difficult to get help, so he’s been in hiding three months.”
“And in a lot of pain, so he took dope,” Diego finished. “Makes sense.”
“Where does he get it?”
“He has friends.”
“He still has to buy it. Maybe with the money they took from Gloria.”
“Or he’s connected,” Diego suggested.
“To the pipeline?”
“Hey, this stuff is pure,” Diego said, holding up the plastic bag. “Sabes que, last week I was in town, looking for work, and the word on the street was that a big shipment is coming in. I mean really big.”
“From where?”
“Colombia. It’s not being brought in by the Mexican mafia. There’s a direct line from the Cali cartel to Juárez, but for some reason Abrego’s boys in Juárez are not handling this shipment. That means someone is paying a lot of bucks for protection.”
“You mean to buy out the Juárez cartel?”
“Yeah.” Diego nodded.
“Is the dope here?”
“The drop is this week. Everybody knows, but the people I talked to say very little. The deal is big. In the millions. Many millions. That means they have police protection, all the way from U.S. Customs right to the front door.”
“Garcia?”
“Garcia’s never taken a bribe. But when it comes to millions of bucks worth of coke, I guess you can’t trust even your best friends.”
Sonny couldn’t believe the police chief could be bribed. The man was a sonofabitch, but a good sonofabitch. He was a homeboy from the barrio, in trouble like most kids growing up. But he’d gone into the police academy and worked his way up in the ranks. He loved the city and its people. But would he take a cut if the money offered was enough?
“Not Garcia.” Sonny shook his head.
“So they go around the city cops. Sonny, when the big boys cut a deal like this, they go to the top. They buy a Customs agent, and the guys who do radar surveillance along the border, and finally they buy someone in the DEA. To them it’s business.”
Yeah, Sonny thought, big business.
“Remember last year, during the balloon fiesta? There was talk of a big shipment, but it wasn’t coming through regular channels to the dealers in town. It was something new.”
Sonny looked at Diego and both connected at the same time.
“You’re thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Someone is using the fiesta as cover!” Diego exclaimed.
“Someone like Mario Secco could have pulled it off. Alburquerque becomes a distribution point.” Sonny snapped his fingers. “A lot of people in town—to fly balloons, to have fun—except a few of them come to pick up dope. It makes sense!”
“You think
they’re using the balloons to distribute?”
“Maybe.”
“How?”
“Maybe just as a decoy.”
“Right! They start a war to confuse the local cops. They can bring it through Juárez if they’ve paid off the mafia. Then truck it in one big shipment right up I-25. But they still have to distribute it.”
“That’s where Raven comes in. He needs a cut to bankroll his cult.”
“And soothe his pain,” Diego added.
“Who fronts the money?” Sonny asked aloud. “Who in the hell would work with Raven?”
“Desperate people.”
“Very desperate. They need workers when they drop the stuff.”
“Grunts. Yeah. I can ask around,” Diego offered.
“No. Too dangerous,” Sonny said.
“Mira, hermano, I know the streets. Most of the homeless just want to exist, but a few know the dope scene. I can find things real quick along Central Avenue. I know my gente; I’ll be all right. It’s you I worry about. Raven wants to get you for what happened at the arroyo. I say we get him first!”
15
Sonny dropped Diego off near the El Rey downtown, then drove by the police building to see Howard.
While they sipped coffee in the officers’ lounge, Sonny filled Howard in.
“So Raven’s dealing, and a big shipment’s coming in.”
“Colombian,” Howard acknowledged in a low voice. “U.S. Customs and the DEA claim they’re tracking it. They haven’t let the local cops in on much. Pisses Garcia off.”
“So the agency knows?”
“Yeah, they always know when something’s coming in.” Howard leaned forward and whispered, “They track everything. Sometimes they find it, sometimes they don’t. When they find the junk, they create a media splash out of it. Most of the time they find nothing. Makes you wonder, huh. The shit hits the streets and the dealers make a few bucks. But the cartels who fund the shipment make millions.”
“Cali and Juárez,” Sonny said.
“Hey, what the news don’t tell you is that there are cartels right in this country. Yeah, people here making as much money as those in Cali and Juárez.” Howard nodded solemnly and sat back to sip his coffee.