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Page 4.
Chapter 1. Desert Stakeout
 Joe Mackinson was on stakeout in an unmarked DEA car, at a desert oasis outside San Diego at night, thinking about Carly and the tuna fish salad she'd made for him, when he noticed a flash overhead. Shooting star, he thought—the desert air was filled with them some nights, especially when the air was cold and clear like this. He heard a distant pop, and listened carefully, but heard nothing more but the wind sighing over the desert floor and through the river reeds near his car.
A faraway coyote called to its hunting partners, and an owl screeched closer by. Nothing more.
The desert itself seemed luminescent, under the incredible carpet of stars in the black sky. Mack had parked on a dark road, under riverside trees. He was waiting for a group of Sonoran narco-traffickers to drive past on their way to meet their Tijuana equivalents for a twenty million dollar cocaine deal. DEA had an inside man, who somehow managed to stay alive and send out valuable information.
Mack sighed. What could go wrong tonight? What couldn't go wrong? For the moment, his life was quiet. Often, meetings like this ended up in a shoot-out, and the Mexican cartels were among the most cruel and vicious thugs in the world. Mack had traded fire with some of them in other border regions, and he'd seen what happens when you put a human being in a barrel of gasoline and toss in a match, as had recently happened to a DEA informant in Juarez.
Still, Mack was passionate about his job. He didn't love it. He loved his wife, not his job. That's how he saw it. He was addicted to the excitement, the urgent sense of doing something worthwhile. Sometimes it was terrifying. He had a bullet scar in his arm, a knife scar along his ribs, a very faint razor scar on his left cheek (after plastic surgery), and shrapnel in one leg to show for his eight years in the department. Carly worried about him all the time. He kept promising he was ready for a desk job, but he always put off the paperwork.
As he sat waiting for the radio call for action from his boss, he unscrewed a steel thermos. Suddenly, the crappy car smelled like their kitchen in the Talmadge section of Mid-City San Diego. As frogs chirruped a chorus in a stream buried in willows and reeds to one side of the dirt path, Special Agent Joseph Mackinson unwrapped the lunch Carly had packed for him.
The night was cool, in contrast to the day's desert heat earlier. The night was moonless, and there was fog on the river below. It was too dark, so he turned on the book light next to the computer. The hooded lamp cast a tiny spot of light on the brown paper bag. It was a tidy little package, as she would make with her even fingers with their dark red nail gloss. He smiled to himself, picturing her—straight dark-brown hair swinging in a page boy cut, lively blue eyes, a businesslike pout of rouged lips. There was a perfectly made tuna salad sandwich, on toast, with the edges cut off, a pickle on the side, a small bag of chips, and a dark red apple the color of her fingernails. What he wouldn't give to be home with her, rather than sitting in this godforsaken foggy swamp, hoping to tail a gang of murderers to a nest full with more murderers…
Somewhere, a barely audible noise rose up that didn't sound natural. He wasn't ready to notice it yet, other than to start becoming faintly aware that something had changed.
Something was changing around him. The awareness had just begun to nibble at his consciousness, but he wasn't ready to pay attention to it.
As he bit off a corner of the sandwich and started to chew—crisp bits of celery killing the fishy taste of the tuna, getting the seafood-love from Carly, a grin and a wink from the kitchen where he'd rather be with her than this godforsaken hole in the middle of nowhere—he heard a thump.
He stopped chewing and listened, with a big tasty blob in his mouth. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror—a slightly scared looking white guy about 30, with a light brown buzz cut and a desert camo uniform.
He heard two more distinct thumping sounds somewhere behind him.
As he bit off another piece of bread and tuna, he used his free hand to surreptitiously make sure the doors were locked. The windows were slightly open, an inch or two, and he left them like that for air circulation.
He shifted the sandwich to his other hand, and checked on the seat to his right. There lay his 9 mm Glock in its canvas holster, and several full clips on the sprawling belt. An Uzi lay on the floor on the front passenger side. The windows were ordinary safety glass, but the doors and body were of the new bathtub kind, with a poured, lightweight composite interior that could absorb most ordinary ammunition, or at least slow it down if fired from ambush.
He had a partner, Leonard 'Leo' Roberts, clean-cut young Black guy from Florida, age 28, with two years in the agency. Leo had called at the last minute to say he had a flat and would be late. He'd ride in with the rest of the team, and join Mack once the pursuit got rolling.
There was a louder thump.
Wind shoved against the car.
It was a slight motion, but an abrupt little jerk that made hackles rise along Mack's spine.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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