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Chapter 4
Brady dug through his paperwork, still piled nearly eight inches tall on his desk. It was never his intention to leave his filing until he had to fill out something or pay his taxes or create a financial statement or get a security clearance. So he kept his bills piled up, his receipts and stubs all put in one big basket. That way the rest of his desk was open and free to use. But damn, today, a day when he needed to find a phone number, it meant he was going to have to take at least an hour and paw through everything he’d collected since before Maggie got back.
He was looking for Charlie’s phone number. She was the mysterious woman who had sent him on the last mission.
The bad guy he’d been tasked with apprehending, Esquivel Rojas, was caught, along with his Navy co-conspirators, but Brady had no doubts that Mr. Rojas’s cartel had filled the vacancy with somebody equally as dangerous as Rojas himself. And with the money and connections the cartel continually raised, there wasn’t going to be anything that would stop their progression. The fact was, human trafficking was far more lucrative than selling drugs. The biggest problem with the drug trade was it killed off your customers.
“These guys are idiots for businessmen. That’ll never work.”
While the drugs were addicting, he’d seen the stats, and just like being on one of the SEAL teams for one or two rotations, people addicted to hard drugs never made it past their sixth, seventh, or eighth year. That’s why the younger generation was always who they were looking for. However, human trafficking was the gift that kept on giving. The women got pregnant, their babies could be stolen, or they could be held for ransom, ensuring the pipeline for generations to come and repeating the cycle of crime over and over again.
It sucked, but Brady didn’t really think there was ever going to be a solution to the problem. It was just something you had to do, raising kids that understood the real meaning of honor, integrity, family, and saying no to peer pressure. It was parents’ job not to send their kids to the street to be raised but to raise them at home, with families that loved and supported them.
But he knew many parents were not up to the job. They were too busy chasing the dollar or trying to be more successful than their neighbors. And the kids paid the price.
“Then why don’t they stop having kids?” he wondered.
As he neared the bottom of the pile and his spirit began to crater, he suddenly found the card taped to a yellow-lined piece of paper. His finger smoothed over the raised surface of the business card, and he remembered that day she handed it to him. That was the day he found out that Maggie’s supposed murderer was still alive. His biggest problem that day was accepting the job with the qualification he wasn’t allowed to kill the son of a bitch who murdered his wife, or at least that’s what Brady thought at the time.
He checked the garage for Maggie’s car and saw she was still gone with Emma, doing some last-minute shopping before her trip. With the coast clear and privacy afforded, he dialed the number in Washington, D.C.
“Brady?” the woman’s voice answered.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I never thought I’d hear your voice again. You’re the last person I expected to make this call, Brady. I thought you’d turned into a mole.”
“I’m surprised myself. But, Charlie, if I can call you that, I need your help.”
Brady heard the exhale blow snow into the phone. He might be putting her in a difficult spot or asking something she couldn’t provide him, but she didn’t hang up, and she was still listening.
“Well, Brady, I’ll do what I can. What’s going on?”
“Are you still working for that group?” Brady meant the semi-government semi-private group who had hired him and several of his SEAL acquaintances over the past couple of years. Word had gotten out of this supersecret organization. The only people who had more questions about it were usually the spouses of the men who went on some of these secret missions. In Brady’s case, he was done. He’d found the woman of his dreams again, for the second time, and he didn’t plan on ever letting loose of her. So there wasn’t anything she could tempt him with, and she had tried. He was good at saying no.
“Maggie wants to go back to Baja. She’s got some priest she’s working with there, and dang it, I can’t talk her out of it. I’m asking you for your help. Is there any intel you can share with me to keep me in the loop just in case?”
“You mean she’s not taking you?”
“That’s right. As you know, we have Emma now, and I’ve asked her, but she wants me to stay home and protect our daughter. Otherwise, I don’t think she could keep me away.”
“God, Brady, I can’t imagine what that’s doing to you, sitting home and sending her back down there to non-government people. For Christ’s sake, the Catholic Church? You really think you can trust them?”
Brady hadn’t considered that. He was more concerned about the cartel. But Charlie had concerns about the priest. That had not been on Brady’s radar, and he kicked himself for not having thought of it.
“You really think some of these guys could be compromised?”
“You think because they wear robes, gold sashes, and funny hats and give Communion and counsel families that they can’t be tempted by money?”
“I’m a dumbass, Charlie. You’re right. She’s not safe, is she?”
Charlie sighed again. “Look, I don’t have anything actionable or anything recent to lead me to believe the cartel is already back up in operation, since it’s been less than two months. But they move fast. They relocate to different sections in Mexico, different provinces, different countries sometimes. They move quite freely, with all the planes and yachts and huge buses they steal or procure or buy off people. They can’t be stopped. And if they want to move, if it’s safer and better business for them, they move. All we can do is keep coming after them with the sweeper and the dust pan. We get the heads here and there, but we’re never going to get them all.”
“I know that, Charlie. I’ve tried and tried, and I cannot talk her out of it. If I give you the name of this priest, could you do a check on him, just so I know who I’m dealing with?”
“Sure. Get his name, and I want to see a little history of where he came from. Some of these guys get relocated as well. The church owns a lot of property in Mexico. They also finance local businesses. It’s a sticky situation but not impossible to find out about. They’re not good at hiding things. The cartels are much better at paying people off or killing them. That’s their mode. And they use churches, aid groups, or cartel employees posing as clinic workers. If this priest is dirty, they’ve either got something on him or his family or he’s on the take. And just because I don’t find anything on him doesn’t necessarily mean he’s clean, either. But if I can know what route he took to be stationed there… You say this is Baja?”
“Yes, San Felipe.”
“Okay, well, that’s not down toward Cabo, and you want to stay away from that area. But San Felipe, I can’t say that I’ve heard of anything really hot going on down there. But get me his information unless you have it now, and I’ll do some checking.”
Brady thanked her for the information and for her assistance, and he hoped to God Maggie wasn’t going to strong-arm him about giving up the name of the priest. He hated to have to paw through her things to try to find something without her knowledge, but there was no way in the world he was going to let her board a plane for Mexico without that information in his hot little hands, first.
