The Bones of Wolfe Read online

  Lights come aglow on both sides of the trail and three men emerge from the scrub, two from the left, one from the right, each of them wearing a utility light strapped to his forehead like a miner and each man armed with an M4A1 carbine. They curse the mosquitoes that in this part of the marsh are so fierce even the strongest repellent is of small effect.

  In the light of the head lanterns, the man at the truck is revealed as young and clean-shaven, with a pale wormlike scar that angles vertically down the right side of his mouth. He presses a button on his wristwatch to illuminate its face and show the time. Chico, he says, the vehicle, move.

  Got it, chief, Chico says, and jogs up the trail to the huge black Suburban. The chief calls another crewman to the rear of the Ram and has him shine his light on the padlock securing the topper gate to the tailgate. He stands to the side of the lock to avoid possible damage to the cargo, puts the muzzle of his carbine to the juncture of lock case and shackle, and blasts the lock apart. He raises the topper gate and the crewman shines his light on the crates inside. Because of the attack’s diagonal lines of fire into the cab, the shipment shows no sign of having been struck.

  Good, says the chief.

  Driving in reverse, Chico brings the Suburban to within a few feet of the Ram, and the other men store their weapons in it. The chief orders them not to take anything from the dead men, not their guns, phones, money, anything. They have just removed the first crate from the truck bed when they hear a pulsing buzz from the Ram cab. They recognize it as an incoming phone call on what has to be a satellite unit, as no cell tower is in range.

  They know the truck stopped, one of them says.

  Don’t piss your pants, the chief says. By the time they get here we’ll be long gone.

  Still, they step up their tempo, panting with effort, sopping with sweat, faces itching and bloated with mosquito bites. In another few minutes they shove the last crate into the Suburban, shut and lock the rear doors, scramble into the vehicle, and drive away.

  RODRIGO AND MATEO AND CHARLIE

  In a large room on the highest floor of a towering Mexico City building whose blazing neon sign reads Zuma Electrónicas, S.A., a young technician called a screener sits before a row of computers, intermittently shifting his gaze between the monitors and the sports magazine in his lap. It is dull duty but pays well. Like the majority of employees of Zuma Electrónicas, the screener has a university degree in computer engineering. And like everyone else who works on the top floor of the building, he has a top security clearance and knows that the company has commercial ties—mostly clandestine—to numerous other business organizations and that its true ownership is a secret protected by many buffering layers of corporate law.

  The monitors keep track of company transport vehicles equipped with encrypted GPS senders and appearing as yellow blips on a green geographic grid. On this slow evening there are only two blips to keep an eye on. Alpha vehicle is delivering a shipment from Mexico City to Acapulco, and Beta vehicle is collecting a shipment at a transfer point on the Laguna Madre and relaying it to a recipient in Irapuato. The screener does not know what kind of cargo either vehicle is carrying or any of the names of its crew. His data sheets tell him only the type of vehicle each one is and its schedule, including the cargo’s point of collection if the delivery did not originate from Mexico City. His responsibility is strictly to keep track of a vehicle’s progress and confirm that its cargo arrives on time.

  Both vehicles are holding to schedule. Alpha is only two hours from its destination, and Beta collected its cargo and left the lagoon twenty-three minutes ago, its crew chief phoning in on arrival there and again on departure. The Beta is moving at a snail’s pace on what the screener knows is a difficult and circuitous backcountry trail that terminates at a junction road, but once the Beta arrives at that junction its progress will speed up and it will easily make the Irapuato delivery on schedule.

  But now the Beta stops moving.

  The screener looks at his wristwatch and enters the time on a clipboard form. An unscheduled stop by a company vehicle on business is always a matter for immediate attention. A flat tire or engine trouble can throw a delivery far off schedule, and a crew chief is obliged to call the screener about any such problem at once so that the company can dispatch speedy assistance if required and inform the awaiting party of the delay—and to dispel any worry about a hijacking. However, a crew chief isn’t required to call if he’s making an unscheduled stop shorter than three minutes, as for a roadside piss. The screener shifts his attention by turns from the unmoving blip to his wristwatch to the data sheet, which tells him the Beta vehicle is a new Dodge Ram pickup with less than four thousand miles on the odometer when it left the capital early this morning. When the third minute elapses he calls the crew chief’s satellite phone. He lets it buzz and buzz without an answer for almost a full minute before he picks upanother phone and calls the tracking manager to notify him of the stalled truck and its lack of response.

  The manager says to keep trying to connect with the crew and to advise him right away if he makes contact or if the Beta resumes movement without having replied. Then the manager makes a phone call of his own. Within minutes of receiving it, a fire team of five armed men in a Ford F-250 truck races out of Ciudad Victoria, almost a hundred miles from the Ram’s location but the company’s nearest station to it.

  Two hours later the fire team leader phones the tracking manager from the scene of the attack and tells him of the shot-up truck, the slaughtered crew, the stolen cargo. The hijackers must’ve made it back to the main highway before the fire team exited from it because the team spotted no vehicles on the dirt road. The manager tells the team leader to hold on while he relays the finding to the Director.

  Awakened by the call, the Director, Rodrigo Wolfe—whose standing order is that he be notified without delay of any hijack, never mind the hour—listens to the manager’s report without interrupting him, not even on hearing that the ambushed crew was that of his young cousin Alberto Delmonte. He commends the manager for his prompt action and concise account and instructs him to tell the fire team at the scene to convey the bodies to the Nuestra Señora del Cielo medical clinic in Mexico City and to have the Ram towed to the nearest junkyard and converted to scrap. The manager knows that the medical clinic is owned by the company and it will see to the proper but covert disposition of the deceased.

  Tell the fire team to say nothing about the hijacking, not to anyone, Rodrigo adds. And tell the screener nothing other than he was right to call you and everything has been taken care of.

  Using a different phone, Rodrigo then calls his brother Mateo, the chief of security, and tells him what’s happened.

  You notified the Zetas? Mateo asks.

  Not yet. They’re going to be unhappy.

  Has to be an inside job, Mateo says. Somebody tipped the hijackers to the transfer. Somebody of ours or somebody with Charlie, but somebody who knew about tonight’s run and who’s familiar with the trail to Boca Larga.

  Rodrigo sighs and says, The only people of ours who knew those things are you and me, Alberto and his crew, the tracking manager, and the screener. Neither the screener nor the manager knew what the load was. But as you know, Alberto always told his crew what they were carrying.

  Yeah. Showed he trusts them, he always said. Makes them even more loyal. Can’t say I entirely agreed with him, but I let him run his crew his own way.

  On the Texas side, Rodrigo says, the only ones who knew about the run are Charlie Fortune and the delivery crew. At least that’s the way he’s always operated. I’ll find out if he did anything different this time. Still, the odds are that the inside guy is one of ours.

  Either somebody in Alberto’s crew, Mateo says, or somebody who used to work the Boca Larga run in the past and who found out about Alberto’s run tonight. Whoever he is, you think he tipped the Zetas? They steal their own buy, and when we tell them it’s been ripped they act all pissed and demand their money b
ack?

  No. Scheme like that’s beneath them. There are a lot easier ways for them to get money than by risking a breach with their best supplier of weapons. For damn sure, though, it was a professional crew. The fire team said the vehicle was shot to hell, every man in it with multiple wounds and every pistol still in its holster, that’s how quick and hard they got hit. Automatic weapons, 5.56 black-tip rounds, diagonal enfilade from both sides. Fast and slick. They did the hit, ripped the cargo, got the fuck out. And as far as the Zetas are concerned, I can tell you that they’re not going to want their money back, they’re going to want what they paid for. We either recover that cargo for them very damn soon or order a replacement of it from Charlie and eat the cost.

  Yeah, that’s how it’s looking, Mateo says. I’ll start nosing around about the other pickup crews right away. There can’t be too many guys among them who’ve worked Boca Larga before Alberto’s crew took it over. If the tip to the hijackers was from one of our guys, I’ll know his name before the sun comes up. On the off chance he’s a Texan, Charlie will root him out pretty fast, too. We find the insider, we’ll find out who did the hijack, I’ll run their asses down and get the goods back. If they still got them.

  There’s a plan. Get on it. I’ll call Charlie.

  Charlie Fortune Wolfe awakens to the vibration of the cell phone under the corner of his pillow. The riverside night is still and clammy, ringing with frogs, the screened windows are black under the dense overhang of trees. The red numerals of the bedside clock radio read 1:46. He sees that the caller is his cousin Rodrigo Wolfe.

  “Rigo. What is it?”

  Rodrigo tells him, speaking in English.

  “Alberto?” Charlie says. “Ah, Jesus . . .”

  In response to Rigo’s question, Charlie tells him the only ones who knew about the run’s cargo or schedule were himself and the crew.

  “Who’s the chief on it?”

  “Eddie Gato.”

  “I still haven’t met him,” Rodrigo says. “Frank and Rudy I know, but Eddie not at all. Alberto mentioned him many times. Close cousin, right?”

  “Right. Been working with me three years and been my Boca Larga man since last year. I broke him in on that run myself. Listen, Rigo, I know what you’re wondering, so I’ll tell you right now—Eddie wouldn’t sell us. Neither would any of his crew. Those guys have been with me for years. And there couldn’t have been anything odd about the transfer or Eddie would’ve clued me, but he called in an all clear after the drop. If somebody’d been holding a gun on him, he would’ve used a different code to tip us off.”

  “Hey, Charlie, you vouch for them, that’s it. Man, if I stopped trusting you, who the hell could I trust? Lot more likely the inside rat is somebody on our end. Mateo’s out there right now trying to ID him. We have to find the son of a bitch and get the cargo back before it ends up who the fuck knows where.”

  “Let us help, Rigo. Frank and Rudy are on the body run your guys gave us, but they’ll be back tomorrow . . . hell, it is tomorrow. They’ll be back this afternoon and I’ll keep them on hand. Hey, man, I want those bastards as much as you do. It was my shipment and Alberto was my blood and bone, too. Just give the word and we’re on the way.”

  “I know it, Charlie. I’ll be in touch as soon as Mateo has something.”

  His name’s Donasio Corona and he was in Alberto’s crew, Mateo says. Twenty-six years old. Came to us three years ago after doing two and a half at Veracruz state for robbery. We put him on various small duties the first couple of years—runner, street lookout, driver—some of those jobs for Alberto, which is how they got to know each other. Last year one of Alberto’s crewmen got killed in a bar fight and he took Corona on in his place. Anyway, he’s our guy. No doubt about it.

  It is nearing dawn. Mateo arrived at Rodrigo’s estate in the city’s Chapultepec district a short while ago. They’re taking coffee in the softly lit courtyard gazebo, well distanced from the house and all servants’ ears.

  I’m impressed you ran him down so fast, Rodrigo says.

  All it takes is talking to the right person, Mateo says, but you never know who the right person is till you talk to him. I been going around all night to see those of our people who know about Boca Larga, asking them all the same question and doing a lot of tap dancing to avoid telling any of them about the hijack. I think it’s best we don’t let word of it get out just now. Might put the guys who did it on sharper guard.

  I agree. So who was the right person to talk to?

  Ignacio Verdes, another of our crew chiefs. He said it was odd I should ask if he’d heard or seen anything out of the ordinary about any of the guys in the transport crews. Said Alberto called him yesterday morning before he left on the Boca Larga run and asked if he could borrow a man. One of his guys, Donasio Corona, had called him before sunup saying he was sick as hell, shitting and puking since three in the morning, probably because of some bad menudo he had for supper. Alberto told him to see the company doctor as soon as the office opened, then called Ignacio, who let him have Neto Valles, one of his best men. Like some of the others I talked to, Ignacio was curious about why I was asking, and I told him I couldn’t say at this time. He’s going to be awful damn pissed about losing Valles.

  And Donasio Corona has of course disappeared, Rodrigo says.

  Wasn’t at home. Didn’t go see the doctor. Isn’t in any hospital or jail. I sent his picture and prints to our network guys with connections to the passport office and access twenty-four seven, and they reported that the prints aren’t in the files, so he’s never been issued a passport under any name. I ordered our border crews to post lookouts with all the wetback smugglers in case he should try crossing with one of them. On the off chance he’s still in town, I have people keeping watch on all the joints where he’s known to hang out. My guess is he got out of Mexico City but will stay in the country.

  And Corona knows the Larga run pretty good?

  The whole crew did. Alberto’s been collecting all of Charlie’s deliveries there for about two years steady now and mostly with the same guys the whole time, except for Corona just the past year. They were a good crew and he had no reason to mistrust any of them. They knew that guns are the only cargo ever delivered there, and the load’s usually American military rifles and pistols and that every so often it includes machine guns, sometimes foreign subs. Since Corona’s been with the crew, and not counting last night’s pickup, they’ve made seven collections at Boca Larga. That’s enough for him to have learned that run real good. He knew the exact distance from the junction road exit to the trail entry, which is impossible to spot at night unless you know just where to look. He knew the best spot to hit the crew on its way out. He knew there’s no room on the trail to hide a vehicle and that there’s only one spot just wide enough to make a U-turn without getting stuck. He knew everything you’d need to know for a hijack plan, and he laid it on somebody looking for weapons. And those motherfuckers took out our guys and stole our goods.

  What’s your read on them? Rodrigo asks.

  I figure a young bunch. They’re very good and they’re full of themselves. Probably looking to make their mark in weapons retailing but not flush enough yet to invest in top-grade guns. But even if they could afford a load like this one, they might be the kind who think stolen fruit is sweeter than bought fruit. A lot more satisfying to rip a load than buy it. Not a very smart outlook as a long-term business practice, but not uncommon in young guys with big balls. You’re not so old yet you can’t remember what that kind of cockiness is like.

  I’m not so old yet I can’t still kick your ass. And Corona?

  Hell, he’s just a dumb shit who thinks whatever they paid him was worth it. The big question is who they are, but the pressing question is where he is. I figure hiding out with a relative, a pal, a woman, somebody. Thinking to hole up till things blow over. It’s what all the stupid ones do. Don’t understand some things never blow over.

  So what are we doing? Rodrigo sa
ys.

  I’ve alerted our intelligence people. Gave them the full jacket on him. They’ve put spiders out everywhere. We’ll find him.

  Has to be fast, brother.

  I know, Mateo says.

  Rodrigo calls Charlie Fortune to relay what he’s learned.

  RUDY

  It’s a pleasant Saturday afternoon on the Gulf. We’re bearing south along the Texas coast, about a mile and a half off Padre Island. The sky is bright and nearly cloudless. On the distant eastern horizon a freighter is trailing a thin plume of dark smoke. There’s no other vessel in view except a small boat a quarter mile ahead of us and off to starboard.

  My brother, Frank, and I are on the bridge of the Salty Girl, a thirty-five-foot customized sportfisher belonging to one of our uncles, Harry Morgan Wolfe, who normally uses it for fishing charters, but it sometimes serves other purposes as well. Frank’s at the wheel and I’m astraddle the swivel stool beside him.

  Out on the foredeck, Rayo Luna and Jessie Juliet are lying side by side on their tummies, sunning their exquisite butts in string bikinis and talking about God knows what. Thick as thieves, those two—Rayo of the caramel skin and short black shag, Jessie a tanned strawberry blonde, her long hair loosely knotted in a bunch at the back of her head. They know we’re enjoying the view and that our pleasure isn’t hindered a bit by the fact they’re our cousins. Like Frank and me, Jessie is part of our family’s Texas side and is only a couple of branches removed from us. Rayo’s from the Mexico City half of the family, which originated from the same paternal root and is also surnamed Wolfe, but it places her further out from us on the genealogical tree. For the fun of it we sometimes refer to the two sides of the family in unison as the House of Wolfe. Over the generations, the Mexican Wolfes acquired a touch of mestizo strain through marriage, and most of them have the same light brown complexion and black hair as Rayo. In contrast, we on the Texas side of the house largely reflect the original family’s Anglo-Irish origin, almost all of us fair-haired and light-skinned. Frank and I are the only American Wolfes with a wee drop of mestizo blood, gained by way of a grandaunt whose father was Rodolfo Fierro, Pancho Villa’s right-hand man, and for whom I am first-named and Frank middle-named. For whatever reason, though, Frank tans more readily and darkly than I do, and given his black hair and bandido mustache, when nut-brown in high summer he bears a strong likeness to the Fierro we’ve seen in historical photos. The rest of the Texas clan could be taken for typical natives anywhere in Western Europe.