Kingdom of God Read online

  “I’m not sure yet. Call them.”

  Blaylock reached up to the radio on his vest.

  “Taylor, can I get an ETA.” He released the call button. Static came over the radio. “Taylor, copy, over.”

  Bronco continued to yank at his leash. One of the three diggers scaled the wall of the five-foot deep hole. He helped the other two men climb out. They gathered around the white pickup and stared at the detective, three guardsmen and the dog. The SUV’s headlights illuminated the steam pouring off of their heads and shoulders.

  Thirty minutes passed. The two groups of four men remained clustered by their respective vehicles. Michael wrapped his arms around his torso. The hand-cuffed man remained in the rear seat of the Suburban. His head was down. His eyes were closed.

  “How much longer we waiting?” Blaylock grumbled.

  “However it long it takes for them to get here.”

  “I thought you were leading this thing.”

  “I am.”

  “Then what are we waiting on them for? You got a guy and a hole. You need a fucking roadmap?”

  Another howl echoed across the valley. Bronco started barking. Peters patted the dog’s side, allaying his cries. A low rumble filled the air. The detective looked out across the lakebed again. Several hundred yards away, a black SUV trundled across the desert floor.

  Michael exhaled as the vehicle neared. It came to a stop next to the other SUV. Two pairs of high beams now lit up the area surrounding the hole. The front passenger door opened, and Sool stepped out. He trudged over to Michael.

  “What’d he say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What’d you ask him?”

  “Just where Los Hermanos and the orphans are.”

  “He didn’t say anything.”

  “No.”

  “All right.”

  “Hey, can you confirm?”

  “What?”

  “Can you confirm that it’s even him?”

  Sool chuckled.

  “You’re asking the wrong dude.”

  “You can’t confirm that it’s him?”

  “I don’t know what he looks like.”

  The smile departed Sool’s face. He approached the other SUV and climbed in through the open rear door. He grabbed the man by the elbow. Bronco snapped at the handcuffed man as Sool led him out of the vehicle.

  He wrangled the man over the loose piles of dirt. Every eye in the area followed the two men. They stopped at the edge of the pit. The man in the blue button-down shirt tilted his head back and trained his eyes on the sky.

  “You see that?” Sool said. “We’re going to put you in there if you don’t tell me where the brothers and the orphans are.” The man closed his eyes.

  “Mi alma está preparada. El Señor me ayudó.”

  “Okay. Let’s see.”

  Sool released the man’s arm and strode back toward the black vehicles. Michael and the other guardsmen gathered next to the headlights casting a beam of light onto the hole. Bronco continued barking. He stood on his hind legs, tugging against his leash. Saliva shot out of his mouth. The man reopened his eyes and peered over his shoulder. The steam from his breath poured out of his nostrils in short bursts. The metal chain on his handcuffs rattled.

  Sool looked at Blaylock and pointed to the dog. The sergeant unfolded his arms and stepped to Bronco’s side. He reached down for the dog’s harness and unclipped the leash. The dog charged. Michael’s throat closed.

  The man fell to his knees. Bronco bit into his forearm and hauled his body to the ground. The man wailed. The dog whipped his neck back and forth, dragging him across the loose piles of earth. A loud crack boomed across the valley.

  Bronco snapped at the man’s neck. His screaming quieted. A gurgling sound emanated from the side of the hole. The dog released his grip on the man’s spine and gnashed at his scalp. The man’s cries resumed.

  Michael turned toward Sool.

  “That’s enough.”

  “Hang on a sec.”

  “That’s enough.”

  Michael hit Blaylock’s shoulder. The sergeant shook his head and traipsed over to the howling man. He snatched Bronco by the harness and pulled the dog back toward the vehicles. Michael heard him whisper “’atta boy” while patting the canine’s back. Bronco retreated to Peters’ side. The private clipped the leash back onto the dog’s harness.

  The screaming continued. The man writhed atop the mounts of earth. Dry soil coated his shoulder and arm. Michael’s gaze circled around the site. Every muscle in his neck tensed. He turned toward Sool. The man in the black vest appeared stone-faced with his arms wrapped around his chest. Michael finally turned to Blaylock.

  “Come with me.”

  Michael rushed over to the fallen man. Blaylock followed him, drudging over the loose earth. The detective bent down and pulled the man back up to his knees. His right eye was swollen shut. Blood poured down his scalp, mouth, chin and neck. His fractured humerus protruded from his shirt sleeve. His right ear dangled by the small strip of skin against his neck.

  “Hey. Hey, Heriberto. Can you hear me?”

  The man tilted his head back and lifted his blood-drenched eyes to the detective. The sergeant stood directly behind him. Michael unholstered his sidearm and to handed it to Blaylock. The sergeant switched the safety off and trained it at the man’s head. The man sat back on his heels and sobbed. The barrel of the pressed against the back of his head.

  “I’m going to count to three. You’re going to tell me where those orphans are. The sooner you tell me, the sooner it’ll be over.” Michael held out his thumb. “One.”

  The man bowed his head. He continued to cry. Michael extended his index finger.

  “Two.”

  The man struggled to lift his head. His neck jerked in small spasms. Blood cascaded from his throat. He turned and looked at Michael once more. He spit out a blood-soaked tooth.

  “Mi...mi al...al...”

  “Goddamnit.” Michael threw his hand down and turned away. He slammed his eyes shut and covered his ears.

  The ringing in his hearing aid returned. A few seconds went by. Michael slowly reopened his eyes and turned around.

  Sergeant Blaylock flipped the safety back on the sidearm. He extended it and a single shell casing to the detective. The man’s body lay crumpled in the hole. A large wound appeared in the back of his head. His hands were still tied behind his back.

  The pickup’s engine roared to life. A man in a white t-shirt and jeans inserted the shotgun into a nylon bag and zipped it closed. He tossed it into the truck’s bed and climbed into the cab. A flat patch of loose earth appeared in the desert floor next to the pickup. The driver pulled forward and drove out onto the lakebed.

  One vehicle remained by the filled-in hole. Peters and Michael sat in the front two seats. Jen, Sool and Blaylock were crammed in the rear. Michael glanced at Jen out of the corner of his eye. She was digging through several pages on her phone. The glowing screen cast a light on her enraged expression.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “I overreacted. I’m sorry.” She turned off her phone and raised her head. She looked out of the window on her right.

  “We can’t go back to the consulate. We can’t show our faces in T.J. with Heriberto gone. We’re going to the rendezvous at Paseos del Valle. I hope you don’t mind sleeping on the floor for the next few days.”

  “Where is the-”

  “I wouldn’t mind if you got something out of him. Like one thing we can go off of. Instead we have to look over our shoulders for nothing. Security has a hard enough job. You didn’t have to make it any harder.” Michael’s eyes fell to the car’s floor.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. It’s your department. Apologize to them. They’re going to have to protect you from his crew for the rest of your life. You and your family.” Michael drew a short breath through his nose.

  “Yo
u want to ask Guy about this.”

  “Don’t bring him into it.”

  “I didn’t sick any dogs on him.”

  “He didn’t pull the trigger either. I’ve seen Guy’s work. He’s gotten results. We trust him. Joe said you were a good detective, but I...I just don’t see it. I can’t.”

  Michael raised his eyes to the windshield. A black expanse stretched out in front of him.

  Sool sat up in his seat. He started rubbing the back of his neck.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he chimed in. “It’s PT you should worry about. Had a lotta friends in there too.” The cabin was silent for a moment. Sool leaned forward and wiggled his arm through the gap between the partition and the car’s door pillar. He gave Michael a hard pat on the shoulder. “Hey, it’s cool. Not like it can get any worse.”

  Blaylock reached for the radio on his vest.

  “Taylor, we clear?” Static came across the line.

  “Clear,” Taylor radioed back.

  “Great. Let’s roll.”

  Peters turned on the engine and put the vehicle into gear. He executed a wide U-turn and made his way out of the valley.

  The path smoothed a few hours later. The vehicle passed a smattering of pine trees and shuttered road-side stands. Michael saw the carcasses of two coyotes on the embankment. Faint lights dotted the horizon.

  The light from a buzzing phone filled the cabin. Jen swiped through a few pages before arriving at text-filled screen. She unleashed an exasperated sigh and tapped the partition.

  “It just got worse.” She slid the phone through the gap between the partition and the door pillar. Michael grabbed the phone and gazed at the screen. It was a four-paragraph message from an FBI email address.

  Policia Tijuana had confirmed the death of Julio de la Cruz. Authorities responded to a disturbance at a transient settlement based outside an arid storm drain in the Tijuana River. One of the inhabitants alerted officers that he saw de la Cruz earlier that evening. Two more officers patrolled the encampment until they found a man that was identified as de la Cruz. His appearance was obscured by swelling as the result of several lacerations and blunt force trauma. The man fled on foot toward a shopping center on Paseo de los Héroes.

  Four SWAT teams arrived at the scene. The surrounding area was evacuated. A parking attendant at the Sello Corporativo Plaza notified police that a man ran inside the lower parking garage and never came out. Using security footage, officers tracked the man into an electrical room on the bottom floor. Police descended on the room and broke in. They reported finding the man hanging by the neck with an extension cord. His feet were still on the ground with his knees dangling just above the floor. Paramedics declared him dead at the scene.

  Fingerprints confirmed the man’s identity as de la Cruz. A coroner ruled his death to be a suicide. A note was found scribbled on the back of a piece of paper, and the contents of the note were released to the public. Authorities were seeking any information on the reference to “M.J.” They also announced that with the death of the prime suspect in the bombing, the borders would reopen the following day.

  The coroner noted that de la Cruz was missing four fingernails at the time of his discovery. They also found a sewing needle lodged in his throat.

  Michael spotted a button labeled “next message” in the bottom right corner of the screen. Its subject bore the words “Sgt. Christopher Dowd.” Michael pressed the button. A new message appeared.

  The message conveyed that Dowd, Wendy and Maribel eschewed the nearest medical center and crossed the border into the U.S. They were rushed to Otay Mesa Hospital in southern Chula Vista. Wendy and Maribel were both in a stable condition, while Dowd required emergency surgery to halt some internal bleeding. During the course of surgery, he entered cardiac arrest, and attempts to revive him were unsuccessful. He was declared dead at 7:55 that evening.

  Michael took in a long, uneven breath. He slid the phone back through the partition.

  “I’ll, uh...brief everybody.”

  “On what?” Blaylock asked. “What’s Dowd’s status? How’s he doing?”

  Michael did not answer.

  “What is it? How’s he doing?”

  A few more seconds of silence passed.

  “I’m sorry, sergeant. He, um...”

  Blaylock threw his head back and clenched his teeth. He turned to the window. His skin grew paler. Michael rested his head against the window and covered his right ear. He could still hear the sergeant’s breathing and his rifle clacking against his lap.

  Another hour elapsed. The GPS signaled the next right-hand turn. The private directed the vehicle onto a newly-paved, unlit thoroughfare. A sign emblazoned with the words “Paseos del Valle” was erected on the median. A row of yellow-painted, stucco-sided, two-story homes lined a symmetrical street grid. They proceeded deeper and deeper into the subdivision.

  Blocks of identical houses stretched for hundreds of meters in every direction. All of the streetlamps were off. No cars lined the curbs or sat in the driveways. No lights appeared in any window.

  Peters directed the vehicle up an inclined road. Sool tapped on the partition and pointed to a nondescript home in the middle of the block. A six-foot-high iron gate barricaded the driveway. The gate slid open. The other black Suburban with the shattered rear window was sitting inside the empty garage. Peters drove up the driveway and parked behind the other SUV.

  The three investigators and two guardsmen exited the vehicle and drudged through the front door. They limped up a long flight of stairs toward a single door on the right side of the corridor. Peters pushed the door open. They entered a nearly empty room that stretched the entire length of the building.

  A rank smell hit Michael’s nose. The other guardsmen were inside making their sleeping preparations. A few patches of moisture littered the vinyl floor. Mold poured down one corner of the room. Three empty light sockets dotted the ceiling. A coffin-sized box lay atop a table at the far end of the room. A black garbage bag covered the room’s only window.

  Blaylock pushed his way past Michael. He plodded toward the far corner of the room and slung his backpack off his shoulders. He removed a thin plastic blanket and attempted to unfurl it. It remained folded in its plastic case. He tried to pull it open again. It did not unfold. He threw it on the ground and kicked the table next to him. The box crashed onto the floor. The sound jolted the entire room. The other guardsmen resumed putting out their sleeping pads. They did not acknowledge him.

  The sergeant crumpled to the floor with his head in his hands. Peters quietly approached Blaylock and kneeled down next to him. He placed his hand on the sergeant’s shoulder. The two men did not speak.

  Michael shuffled to the corner at the opposite end of the room. Sool was standing to his left. He removed his puffy down vest and stripped the Velcro straps off his body armor. The two vests fell to the floor. Sool collapsed onto his back and rested his head atop the body armor.

  The detective kept his Kevlar vest on. He crouched down in the corner and set his black duffle bag down at his feet. He removed his SDPD-branded windbreaker from the bag and draped it over his torso. He closed his eyes, muttered his nightly prayer and attempted to sleep.

  No quise hacerlo

  hacer daño a nadie

  queríamos

  ayudarles

  lo siento mucho

  no culpes M.J.

  No es su culpa

  Te amo mamá y

  Theresa

  Michael opened his eyes to the sound of high heels smacking against the floor. The room was still dark. His vision was blurred. A sharp pain radiated in his neck. He retrieved a large pair of wire-framed glasses from his duffle bag and put them on. A strip of sunlight broke through the covered window and cast a long stream of light onto the vinyl floor.

  Jen was standing in the doorway. Her speech was muffled. Michael pulled a beige hearing aid from his bag and wrapped it around his left ear. He winced as the dry blood in his ear crac
ked under the device.

  “We have to go,” she said. She left the room. Michael scanned his surroundings with his glasses on. The guardsmen were gone. The wooden box lay on its side at the foot of a metal table at the other end of the room. A bulletproof vest lay a few feet to his left.

  The detective stepped out to an overcast sky. His extra-large shirt and unzipped windbreaker wafted in the light breeze. He held a bulletproof vest in each hand. A thin layer of fog blanketed the subdivision. No doormats or plants appeared outside the row of identical yellow homes. The streets were barren. No people were on the sidewalk. No cars were in the street.

  The black SUV idled on the curb outside the home. The rear door was open. Michael shuffled through the gate and approached the vehicle. He caught his reflection in the rear window. The hair at the back of his scalp stood on end. A thin white beard subsumed his cheeks and chin. His eyes were sunken. His glasses slid down his nose.

  Michael tossed the vests onto the vehicle’s empty rear bench. He spotted Jen in the front passenger seat through the metal partition. The man sat behind the wheel. Michael surveyed the sprawling subdivision from his hilltop vantage point before turning his attention back on the car.

  “Where’s Guy?” Jen looked at Michael through the partition.

  “He left this morning.”

  “What about Los Hermanos?”

  “As far as the public’s aware, the two prime suspects are dead. We can go home.” Jen sat back in her chair and faced forward.

  “We’re just going to let them off?”

  “No. If PT finds out what we did with Heriberto, we’re screwed. We have to get across the border. That’s all.” Michael scanned the suburban landscape again.

  “I’m not leaving without them.”

  “I think we’ll have better luck across the border, detective. Please get in the car.”

  “I want to know where they are.”

  “I think we can trust Guy to take care of-”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” She turned to face Michael again.

  “Detective, it’s out of our hands, okay? Nothing we do will improve the situation. It’s going to kill me if one or both of them strike again. But it’s not up to us. We tried our best and...we have orders to follow. We have ourselves to protect.” Michael remained on the curb.