Traffic on the 101 was extra shitty today. It was always shitty but today, the extra pile-on of accidents just made me curse this polluted city even more.
“ETA?” Liam asked, he was connected via Bluetooth.
“Twenty.” I eyed the five-car pileup on the shoulder and slow moving vehicles who most likely were nosey spectators and said, “Make that thirty.”
Hadn’t these L.A. drivers seen enough accidents? Why does everyone need to take pictures or gawk at the cars who were safely pulled to the side?
From the looks of it, the cars were messed up, but the drivers were talking to each other.
Just another day on the freeways of Los Angeles.
The cops weren’t on the scene yet which meant that in another five minutes, the 5 miles per hour speed that I was going would be reduced to zero.
“I’m getting out of here,” I turned my signal on and maneuvered my car to the right. “I’ll take Temple all the way down.”
“‘Kay,” Liam replied as he ended the call.
I exited on Alvarado and took a left to Temple. It was only 1439, but traffic was already a monster because of the fresh accident.
I didn’t want to leave Athena, but Liam had texted asking if I wanted to chat with the shooter.
Our buddy in the FBI, Salvatore, gave us three hours with Abel Maganos in a special room with no recording devices.
I’d only met Salvatore once.
He was a 10-year FBI veteran who served time in the Army before working for the bureaucracy. He was one of our local contacts who had been briefed on Dr. Bridges’ current situation. A boisterous half-Italian, half-Black guy who pulled no punches and whose loyalty was to keep Dr. Bridges upright and away from danger. I instantly knew that I had an ally in him.
It seemed that a lot of people owed Dr. Bridges their lives.
And a lot of them were willing to protect him and his legacy.
His legacy being the science that he masters and his precious daughter that he’d protect with his life.
A daughter who I just put in harm’s way because I took my eyes off of the mission for a second and hell broke loose.
Eleven green lights later, I squeezed my car beside two Ford F-150s. They looked at home in front of the strip club that boasted Lunch Hour Delights and Dinner Discounts.
I tapped on the new plates that Liam had on his white truck. The tag boasted EXMIL. The guy was just fucking obvious sometimes.
His plates had special security sensors. As soon as my hand got near it, his watch alerted him that I was here.
It was customized by Tony.
Brilliant invention.
I entered the strip club, the bouncer giving me a nod and “Hey.”
“Downstairs.” I motioned with my phone in my hand.
“Got it,” as he pointed to the right where the EXIT STAIRS sign was lit up.
I took in the sounds of Hotel California in the background and the stage where two barely clothed women were dancing on the poles.
Ten guys were nursing their drinks and some were eating their lunches.
Did they tell their significant others where they went to lunch?
Probably not.
It would be easy to say, “I ate at a fast food place,” rather than, “I had lunch today while watching strippers on stage.”
The latter would require a lot of explaining and a whole lotta groveling.
Jogging down the stairs, I saw a small room at the end of the hallway.
I knocked twice and tapped twice.
Liam’s bulky frame opened the door as his eyes flitted to the side, “You got thirty minutes with him before Salvatore arrives with his crew.”
My eyebrows shot up, “Thirty?”
“Affirmative.”
I hadn’t realized that two and a half hours had passed. After dropping off Athena at my place, ensuring that she was safe in the house, activating the security alarms, and checking the feeds on my phone then driving… Fucking traffic.
I would have been here twenty minutes earlier if it hadn’t been for the congested roads.
But now wasn’t the time to bitch about it.
I had important matters to take care of.
Matters that made my hands twitch in anticipation.
The nerves that Athena had soothed with her words and touch were now buzzing with energy.
Liam must have sensed the change in me.
He warned, “We gotta turn him to Salvatore intact, buddy.”
I gave him a small nod as I eyed the disheveled man on the other side of the room. His hands were tied behind his back, but his black eyes projected pure menace.
The fluorescent lights in the room weren’t the best, but I recognized him from the pictures that Tony sent.
Abel Maganos.
Born in Mexico to a mother who sold her body to the streets, he was left for dead at the age of seven. Picked up by the Sotelo gang and was a top assassin of the cartel by the time he was sixteen.
He moved to Colombia when he was seventeen and the half shaved head that he was sporting now was born when he pledged allegiance to El Padre.
Somewhere on his tattoo-infested body, he would have a replica of the man who owned Colombia branded on his skin.
“What do you have?” My question to Liam.
“So far, he’s said nada. When I asked him why he was at the paintball field today, he just sneered and said the same reason you’re there. He spoke a lot of shit in Spanish.”
Liam understood some Spanish, but not as much as me.
I had the gift of being able to understand and speak multiple languages. Maybe because I grew up with a mother who spoke three fluently. Spanish wasn’t my forte, but I got on fine with it.
“Quien te envio?”
The man whose head hung low sat straighter on the chair he was bound to.
He let out a sinister laugh. Insulting. Meant to degrade a lesser man.
Hundreds, maybe even thousands of people have died from by man’s hands. A lot of them were innocent most likely. Such is the war on drugs. Civilians become the unintended casualties.
“Por que estas aqui?”
The snarly laugh came out of his mouth again and as I took my steps closer to him, I readied my fists that were about to meet this fucker’s face.
“Intact Webb,” Liam reminded me.
My right fist flew and the sound of his head flinging to the side was loud in the room.
“Joder!”
Abel cussed as blood trickled down the side of his mouth. He’d need dental implants by the time I was done with him.
“Por que estas aqui,” I repeated. It wasn’t a question.
Abel spat out blood and sneered.
My left fist flew and his head slammed to the right.
“Que Cabron! Hijo de puta!”
A tooth flew when he spat out more blood.
I already knew before entering this building that he wasn’t going to tell me shit. It would take hours and hours of interrogation and torture before a name came out of his mouth. He wouldn’t sell out his lord because he’d be dead before he could inhale his first breath of freedom outside the prison walls. Or even inside the jail cell he could die in an unfortunate incident or mishap if El Padre ever heard that his name came out of Abel’s mouth.
And drug lords have a way of knowing when someone ratted them out.
Liam also knew that we weren’t getting any information from the sorry excuse of a human being. He was holding Abel in this room for me.
Turning the chair around, I sat a few inches from where Abel was and asked in Spanish, “Why did you shoot her?”
Athena was being watched.
We knew that.
Abel and his friends did the watching.
But now she was being shot at.
What changed?
Abel’s bloodied face raged, his eyes turned to me violently. “Vete a la mierda.”
He’d been in Colombia for a decade or more now, but even when he cursed, he still paid homage to his motherland.
“She’s not your target. Why shoot at her?”
If the son of the devil could smile, it would be Abel.
His eyes burned red and his mouth fumed with blood, the raw hatred in his voice coated the room.
“Ella es una puta. La hija de una puta.”
My back stiffened, the tightness in my neck muscles strained, aching to be released. My foot flew in the air, knocking back his chair.
Not even in this guy’s nightmare would I ever allow Athena to be called a whore.
I stood up.
“They’re on their way.” I heard Liam’s voice on the south end of the room.
I eyed the BSA Scorpion Air Rifle flush against the dingy yellow wall and grabbed it. I hadn’t held one of this size since before I enlisted. It felt light, smooth, and slick.
The silencer was in place, improving the balance of the rifle, making the pellet undetectable before hitting the projectile.
I put my finger on the muzzle.
I’d held many rifles, guns, pistols. None of them were fired to inflict pain on the innocent.
Athena’s shoulder was bruised because of what was fired from this.
The man who took the shot was groaning on the dirty, brown/yellowish carpet. He wasn’t the one who ordered her to be hurt.
But he was the one who took the shot.
He hurt her.
I placed the rifle on my left arm, my firing arm.
“Buddy…” Liam’s voice was closer. I gauged his distance to be five feet away.
I took another step, situating the barrel of the rifle between Abel’s eyes. Eyes that have now turned three degrees scared.
It didn’t matter if you were the son of Satan or the apostle of Hades.
When your eyes were looking at the end of a barrel, you knew you didn’t have a lot of choices, the power was taken from you.
And in the deepest recesses of your being, the truth was inescapable: you were mortal.
Therefore, you can die.
“Para asustarlo.” The voice was gurgled from the blood still dribbling out from his mouth. I could barely make out the words, but he said them.
I seated the rifle by his forehead, my shoe finding a home on his left shoulder.
“Say it again,” I commanded, play time was over. It had been over since the second he fired that shot at her.
He repeated what he’d said, “Para asustarlo.”
To scare him.
“Dr. Bridges?” I said, pressing the blunt edge of my shoe deeper between his shoulder blades.
“Si.” His face was now turning a shade of purple. He was in a shitload of pain as I wasn’t merely pressing on his shoulder blades, I was getting him reacquainted to an old injury that he had when he played soccer in his teens.
See, Tony’s files – the ones that I read and re-read when he sent them to me – were rich with the history of the lives of the men who were following Athena.
The man who was now closely acquainted to the pain I was inflicting on him was a soccer star when he was twelve. But he’d injured himself while colliding with another player and in the same shoulder, had two dislocations that required surgery.
In the battlefield, you could win by shooting your enemies straight between their eyes.
Or.
You could win by knowing how to hurt them where it would hurt the most.
I heard the steps closing in on the door to the room.
Salvatore.
“The next time you shoot at her; you won’t live another day to spend with Irma.”
His eyes widened, the fear now reflected in his stare. His mouth moved, but what he wanted to say was stuck between him realizing that I knew everything about him and that I would deliver.
Irma was his girlfriend.
A young woman from his hometown of Guadalajara whom he visited every couple months, the one whom he planned to retire with once his drug dealing business was over – if it would ever be over.
I took my foot of his shoulder and kicked the rifle to the side.
He was loyal to his boss but his loyalty was being tested right now.
It was evident in the way he looked at me while Salvatore and two of his men tagged him.
Salvatore had to take his sunglasses off to check the extent of the damage I’d done to Abel. The inquiring look in his brown eyes didn’t receive a response from Liam.
Abel was going to be taken to the FBI’s headquarters for further questioning. His close relations with El Padre would be another notch to Salvatore’s glowing career.
Before leaving, Salvatore patted me in the back, “Great work catching him.”
I shook my head and pointed to Liam who was talking to the remaining agent. “He’s the one who got Abel.”
“Who rearranged his face?” Salvatore’s appraisal wasn’t lost on me. Abel’s mug would require tons of paperwork to be filed. Not that his superior cared for one of the cartel’s leading men, but because there’s a thing called the law where even the most notorious crime lords had to be bestowed their human rights.
“His face was already messed up,” I countered, kicking a gum wrapper on the floor. “Thanks for giving us time with him.”
Salvatore nodded, the light hitting his balding head that gave it an extra sheen. For what it’s worth, he was one of the good guys. His methods, often unconventional and unpopular, had made him a regular staple on news channels. Criminals complained that they were handled indelicately under his command. Said criminals were infamous for their inhumane acts so they had no rights to protest.
“I knew of your father,” Salvatore said, while we walked up the stairs. Liam and the other agent were leading the way.
“Huh,” was all I could say. My dad never mentioned him. Or maybe he never got the chance to.
“He was a great man.” He went on to say, “He saved my wife’s brother in Afghanistan.”
My dad’s been gone for a long time. Yet the honorable acts that he did remained forever. The world was big yet so small. My father loved reading and when he was home, he’d tell me stories, theories, principles of war and the world. He once said that Karinthy who theorized six degrees of separation was a brilliant writer – we’re all connected to each other by a max of six steps.
“He was,” I replied, while looking down on my phone to check where Athena was in my house. She was in the office/library. She usually went there to catch up on her class work.
“I heard the girl’s very pretty –” The comment was completely out of the blue and had me turning my head to watch Salvatore’s expression. “Andrew mentioned it a couple of times.”
Whoever Andrew was, he needed to concentrate on his own job.
“Outta line,” I declared. “Why is he checking on her?”
The sharpness in my message was highly detectable.
“He was getting intel for the team,” Salvatore explained, his hands folding on his chest. We were now standing in front of the strip club. Abel now long gone with Salvatore’s crew.
My jaw ticked and my teeth clenched, “She’s not part of the intel.”
Salvatore looked at me, wisdom surfacing in his gaze, “Ah.”
“Tell Andrew to stop surveillance on her. We’re handling it on our end.”
“She’s the reason why Abel’s face is unrecognizable. I doubt his mug shot would be of any use. He can’t even open his eyes.”
Liam, now standing by his truck, pinned me with a look.
He wanted to leave.
“He hurt her,” I reasoned even though there was no need. The thought of Abel firing off the shot to hurt Athena made me want to track the motherfucker down and give him another beating.
I lifted two fingers to Liam - two minutes and we’re out of here.
“Does Joseph know?” Salvatore asked, while eyeing the other agent who was now waiting inside the Lincoln Navigator.
“No, I haven’t reported to Dr. Bridges yet. I’ll call him as soon as we wrap up.”
“That’s not my question, Webb.” For the first time, he’s addressing me by my first name. I was Worthington. Our acquaintance was on a professional level.
“What’re you asking me?” I was getting lost in his ambiguity. I had things to do and I’m sure his day was about to get ten times busier with the capture of Abel. By now, word would’ve gotten around that one of El Padre’s prized men was under the FBI’s guard. DEA, ATF, CIA, NSA – everyone would be calling and El Padre would begin plotting on how to get his prized courier back.
“Does Joseph know that you like his daughter?”