LITMIR.BIZ

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we can get him to tap out anything on a tablet. Assuming he doesn’t clam up and demand a lawyer.”

      Lyons considered his muscle-bound opponent. “How’s the Oak?”

      “The Oak is currently dying of internal electrical injuries, with his voice box burned out, by the way. We have no leads.”

      Lyons went detective. “We go to back to square one. We do interviews.”

      Kurtzman sighed. “I don’t see how that would help. The surviving bombing victims and witnesses have been interviewed by the Mexican authorities, the FBI and Interpol extensively.”

      “No, I’m talking about the perpetrators’ families.”

      The Stony Man cybernetics whiz tried to fathom where Lyons was going with this. “Carl, same deal. No one could find any terrorist ties in any of their backgrounds. The families and friends of the homicide bombers were horrified. They’re destroyed. No one doubts their stories.”

      “I know. But Able showed up in Ciudad Juárez and suddenly everything went all Armageddon. I wonder if the same thing will happen if we go in again.”

      Kurtzman hated every aspect of it. “You know you may be putting those families at risk.”

      Lyons hated it as well, but he’d always been a let-the-truth-be-told-though-the-heavens-fall kind of guy. “At this point I can’t see them not being involved somehow, willingly or unwillingly,” Lyons kept his poker face as he threw out the bone and desperately hoped for a response. “You got anything better, Bear? I’ll go with it.”

      “I got nothing more than you, and it sounds like you have more than me.”

      Lyons resigned himself to his last, least-worst option. “Then I’m going with the Villa family.”

      “Carl?” Kurtzman’s voice hardened. “They’ve suffered enough.”

      “Which means they’re the most anomalous. You tell me what makes a nice Mexican girl go that way and I’ll believe you.”

      Kurtzman looked away. “I got nothing.”

      “Give me and Able a decent cover. Pol takes lead. I want Gadgets on our six in the background. Me and Pol? Our cover won’t have to last more than forty-eight hours but I want it pretty solid, enough to fool a grieving family and any local police.”

      Kurtzman saw his solution within seconds. “I’ll have Barb work it up and get you documents, IDs and cover files via courier.”

      Lyons nodded and rose. “I’m in a car.”

      Ojinaga, Chihuahua

      LYONS STOOD TO one side leaning against the family room wall and watched Blancanales work his magic. His partner wore his sixth-best tropical-weight suit and looked exactly like a senior insurance investigator. He exuded paternal concern for the distraught family as he interviewed them. Blancanales didn’t have to fake it. Neither did Lyons. In his own days as a police officer he’d been given the terrible task of informing families many times. Lyons grimaced internally. They meant business when they said there was nothing worse than seeing your children leave the world first.

      The Villa family had been destroyed.

      For a father of six, Rafa Villa had only just turned forty. His red-rimmed eyes looked a thousand years old. Señor Villa’s shoulders sagged as though they held the weight of the world. His wife, Juanita, cried so hard as her younger sister Sofi held her that her tears might make Jonah build a second ark.

      Their daughter, Maribel, had just turned eighteen this month. She had graduated at the top of her class at the private Catholic school her parents had scrimped and saved to send her to. The pretty young girl with glasses and black hair that reached her waist had won a foreign student scholarship to the University of Northern Texas. Her declared major was Library and Information Sciences. Her dream was to be a head librarian somewhere in the United States. Two weeks ago she had gone to Texas for college orientation with her aunt Sofi as her chaperone. Maribel had come back with a somewhat geeky but very earnest blond boy and fellow freshman Todd Potter from Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, who’d texted her surprisingly not bad love poetry.

      One week ago to the day Maribel had strapped on a suicide vest of TNT cylinders. The cylinders were wrapped with plastic sheeting containing nuts, bolts and ball bearings. The homemade shrapnel had been coated with rat poison to facilitate uncontrollable hemorrhaging in the victims. Security camera footage showed Maribel Villa stepping into a crowded cantina in Ciudad Juárez, during the lunch rush, yanking off her raincoat and pulling the rip cord fuse. Maribel had killed six people, seven including herself. Two of them had been children. She’d severely injured eighteen others.

      It was utterly senseless. During her short life, Maribel had never left Ojinaga until her short trip for initial orientation and dorm assignment at UNT. There was no evidence of her having any political leanings whatsoever. Maribel’s three great passions in life appeared to be classical Spanish literature, the Ojinaga municipal library where she worked after school, and her dog, Kaliman.

      The fawn-colored boxer lay forlornly, uncomprehending but inundated with his family’s sadness. Lyons dropped to his heels and scratched the boxer behind his ears. Lyons’s inner detective was not buying Maribel being radicalized over a single weekend while under the watchful eye of her aunt, much less at freshman orientation at the University of Northern Texas. The whole thing stank to high heaven. He sighed quietly at Kaliman. “Who’s a good boy?”

      Kaliman’s docked tail twitched forlornly a few times as he licked Lyons’s wrist. Lyons nodded. “You and me both, brother.”

      Blancanales looked over at Lyons. “Señor Irons, do you have any questions?”

      Lyons and Blancanales had come to the Villas’ small farm posing as insurance investigators. One Latin and one Anglo fit the bill. A three-man team would have seemed too much. Schwarz was up in the hills with a rifle maintaining surveillance on the Villa farm and the two approaches to it.

      An undertaker would have given his left testicle for the empathy and professionalism the Able Team leader exuded. “I know the state and local police have already done so, but with permission, I would like to see your daughter’s room. Of course you both are welcome to observe.”

      Señor and Señora Villa looked at Lyons petting the family dog. Juanita Villa gave Lyons a tremulous smile. “Of course.”

      Rafa Villa hung his head for a long moment. Lyons almost thought he had gone to sleep. Señor Villa raised his head and locked eyes with Lyons. “There is something I have not shown the federales.” Fresh tears spilled down the small farmer’s cheeks. “Something terrible.”

      Juanita’s head snapped around. “¿Qué, mi amor, qué?”

      Rafa Villa rose without a word and walked down the narrow adobe hall to his daughter’s room. Lyons and Blancanales shot each other a look and girded themselves for the worst.

      Señor Villa reemerged with an assault rifle. Lyons wasn’t a gun-bunny but he recognized the weapon as one of the relatively new Mexican military FX-05 Xiuhchoatls or “Fire Snake” rifles. The weapon was black and stubby like most modern military weapons. It was Mexico’s first indigenous assault weapon, and only issued to certain units. If you were found with one and not active in the Mexican military it was pretty much a summary death sentence. It was a very strange thing for a teenage Mexican girl to have under her bed. This example was distinguished by a having a nonmilitary-issue, twin-drum, 100-round Beta C-Mag.

      Alarm bells rang up and down the Lyons’s spine.

      Señor Villa was not carrying the weapon like a holy relic, or like a dangerous serpent involved in his daughter’s death. He carried it crooked in his arm, as if he was going duck hunting. Lyons shot to his feet. In the same motion his Python appeared with slight-of-hand suddenness. “Freeze!”

      Villa didn’t freeze. He raised the rifle to his shoulder.

      Kaliman lunged and sank

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