Retribution Road by Jon Coon (e reader comics .TXT) 📕

birthday was not something Tom was thinking about. Nor was the reconstruction at the top of his agenda. He was intensely focused on finding Maria, who hadn’t been heard from since her last frantic call from Mexico City two weeks before. Tom had pulled out all the stops searching for her and was preparing to return to Mexico, in spite of the dangers the cartel presented. He and Gabe sat in the command center conference room talking about the trip.

“We use pseudonyms on Facebook to send encrypted messages or sometimes just special ads to bogus email accounts. I’ve tried everything. She must have lost her sat phone and not be able to get online.” Tom stared at the bottom of his coffee mug, then set it on the desk. “I’m afraid she may be in too deep this time.”

“Then how are we going to find her?”

“This isn’t much, but those earrings she always wears … both are short range trackers. If we can get within a few miles, we should be able to pick up that signal.”

“So you’re thinking a plane or drones?”

“Or both. We know the hotel she checked into but never used. Our guys found her car, and there was a bug in it. So the cartel was monitoring her travel and phone calls. Clever fox. He’s good, I’ll give him that.”

“So what are you thinking? When do we go?”

“At this point, I don’t think you or I would last a day in El Patrón’s backyard. But we need to do something, and it needs to be today.”

“Whatever it takes, I’m in.”

“I’m trying to get a special team sent in. New faces. Ones the cartel won’t know. And planes from our CIA base in Colombia, ones the Mexicans won’t recognize as ours. Bob is calling in a lot of favors and so am I. But, honestly, I don’t know if that will be enough, and I want so badly to just get on a plane and go down there myself.”

“You said it though. You wouldn’t last a day on your own.”

“I’m working another angle, I just don’t know if we can put it together this fast.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s a big airshow in Mexico City in two weeks. I’m trying to get the Confederate Air Force—excuse me, that’s now the Commemorative Air Force—invited. With all the fuss about the Confederacy, we had to change our name. But if we can pull this off, it would let us have a half-dozen slow flyers in the air and do a lot more than I could on my own. You and I could go in with a team, disguised of course, under the pretext of doing logistics for the show and then start searching. I know she’s the best, but three weeks is too long. We have to go now.”

“When will you know? About the air show, I mean?”

“Hopefully in the next twenty-four hours. I don’t think we have a lot of time.” Tom was staring at the bourbon bottle on the desk and thinking seriously about how much he wanted a double. But now was not the time. He put it out of his mind and settled for a bottle of water.

“What can I do to help now?” Gabe asked.

“It’s hurry up and wait. Just like we were trained for. How are you coming on those memory chips from the sub?”

“Jimmy the Geek is working on them. They aren’t encrypted, so it shouldn’t be too hard. He said check back this afternoon.”

“Good. Once we locate their base, we want to get trackers on those subs. Be thinking about how to do it.”

“I know just the guy. Okay if we invite the Navy to help?”

“It’s your party. Invite whoever you want.”

Gabe called the Navy Experimental Diving Unit in Panama City and asked for Master Chief Kurczewski. “Please tell him Agent Mulder is calling.”

Kurczewski came on the line laughing, “Yes, Agent Mulder, how can your Navy be of service today?”

“Would you happen to have a submarine and a diver or two who would like to risk life and limb helping me tag some narco-subs so we can track them and really piss off the biggest cartel in Mexico?”

“I like it so far. Keep talking.”

“Well there are benefits: long hours, crappy food, rotten pay, and we’ll probably get shot at and barely escape with our lives.”

“Outstanding. When do we go?”

“I’m waiting on our tech guys to give us the destination. Shouldn’t take long.”

“I’ll take it to our CO today. He may even want to go.”

Gabe put down the phone at the command center desk and realized Carol was standing behind him.

“You’re planning another little adventure, like the sub dive?

He smiled. “That wasn’t so little.”

“Gabe, we need to talk about what happened down there. That could have been a lot worse.”

“But it wasn’t. I didn’t really panic.”

“I don’t know what you’d call it, but it sounded like a pretty real panic to me. I talked with Alethea, and I’ve been reading online. There are meds, good ones, that will help. And she says you need to talk. That the more you talk the easier it will be for both of us. The medical community has learned a lot about PTSD in the last few years. You don’t have to live with this.”

“I don’t want to burden you with my nightmares. Besides, when you’re there, I do just fine.”

“She also said you are big on denial. Look, Bozo, I can help you. I’m willing to help you, but you have to do your part. I’m not letting you go off and have another episode that might not end as well as the last one unless you get a better handle on this.”

“Okay, what do you want to know? I was trapped in a school bus with a bunch of screaming, decomposing, dead kids, and it freaked me out. I had to burn my drysuit because of the stench. And I couldn’t get the taste of death out of my mouth for a month.