Hunt Them Down Read online

  ALSO BY SIMON GERVAIS

  MIKE WALTON SERIES

  The Thin Black Line

  A Long Gray Line

  A Red Dotted Line

  A Thick Crimson Line

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Simon Gervais

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503903210 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1503903214 (hardcover)

  ISBN-13: 9781503904507 (paperback)

  ISBN-10: 1503904504 (paperback)

  Cover design by Jae Song

  First Edition

  To my wife, Lisane, for making everything possible

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Chicago, Illinois

  Special Agent Pierce Hunt was pissed. Whoever at headquarters had the bright idea to embed a big shot reporter like Luke Moore in his team was an idiot. He had enough on his mind without the additional chore of babysitting a prima donna. He shook his head in frustration.

  “We’re two minutes out,” Hunt said into the microphone of his PRC-126 as his driver cranked the wheel of the Dodge Durango and accelerated out of the final turn.

  Hunt and the rest of his rapid response team—RRT—had flown in from Stafford, Virginia, the night before. They were about to hit the stash of Ramón Figueroa, a midlevel associate of Valentina Mieles—also known as the Black Tosca—who controlled the heroin trade in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago. Intelligence indicated they would find over a quarter of a ton of pure heroin hidden in the warehouse. It was an incredible amount. In the last few years, the Black Tosca’s cartel had gone from being a low-quality heroin producer to becoming the dominant Mexican drug cartel by refining opium paste into high-grade heroin that sold for much less than it used to. The other cartels quickly embraced the method, and in no time, unwitting people addicted to painkillers were switching to heroin because the prices were now lower than prescription pills.

  Chicago—one of the United States’ largest interior cargo ports and the world’s third-largest handler of shipping containers—had become a huge drug distribution center. With over one billion square feet of warehouse property, it offered the traffickers plenty of space to hide their products.

  “Are you nervous, Agent Hunt?” Moore asked.

  Hunt ignored him. The man was a real pain in the ass.

  “Agent Hunt, I asked you if you were—”

  “Stop talking now, or I’ll tape your mouth shut,” Hunt warned him. When the reporter didn’t reply, Hunt continued, “You stay in the truck. You don’t move until I tell you to. Understood?”

  A quick look over his shoulder told Hunt the reporter wasn’t used to being talked to like that. Still, the man nodded, which was the smart thing to do when flanked by two massive DEA special agents dressed in combat gear.

  There were three other agents in the Dodge Durango and another thirty in seven similar vehicles. Hunt knew them well and trusted them to do their jobs and to watch each other’s backs. Six snipers were already in position and had been trained on the target for the last three hours. Hunt checked on them one last time.

  “Sierra One from Alpha One.”

  “Go ahead for Sierra One.”

  “Sitrep, over.”

  “Site is green. Traffic is light. No movement in and out of the building. The two panel vans are still parked in the open drive-in doors. Sierra Two is ready to cut the power on your order.”

  “Ten-four, Sierra One.”

  The protocol for operations such as this required linking with city officials in order to turn off the power grid in the area. There were approvals to receive, board meetings to attend, but Hunt didn’t trust anyone outside his team and his chain of command to keep their mouths shut, so he hadn’t mentioned anything about cutting power in the operational plan he had submitted to the brass. They’d do it manually. He was more than happy to get a reprimand if straying from the plan kept his men safe.

  Built in the midfifties, the warehouse was located on Lawrence Avenue and was made of reinforced concrete. It had two drive-in doors with eighteen-foot clearances, a total square footage of just under twenty-five thousand, two floors, and two six-thousand-pound-capacity elevators. Hunt and his team had studied the blueprints and practiced their assault on a replica at their headquarters in Virginia. The warehouse’s office occupied less than 5 percent of the total square footage, so they were confident that the two floors would be large open spaces and not a cluster of small individual storage rooms. That didn’t mean it would be left undefended—hence the high number of RRT operators taking part in the raid.

  A quarter of a ton of heroin—226 kilograms—represented a significant amount of money. The wholesale price of a single kilogram was
$60,000. Cutting the heroin with vitamin B and other substances provided enough powder to fill twenty-five thousand single-dose envelopes that would be sold at $5 to street-level dealers, who in turn would sell them for between $10 and $15 to their customers. The DEA had done the math: each kilo brought in a $70,000 profit to the mill operator.

  That’s over $15 million in heroin. Hunt wasn’t naive. To him and his men, $15 million was a fortune. But to the drug traffickers it was nothing, and it tortured Hunt not being able to hurt the damn cartels. He had seen firsthand the devastation and misery hard drugs left in their wake when his younger brother, Jake, had overdosed on the stuff fifteen years ago. Hunt might not be able to harm the cartels, but if his actions saved even just one life and spared a family the grief associated with the loss of one of their own, it was all worth it.

  “Sierra One from Alpha One,” Hunt said as the driver turned onto Lawrence Avenue.

  “Go for Sierra One.”

  “We’re one minute out.”

  “Copy that, Alpha One. You’re one minute out. Standing by to cut power.”

  With the exception of the two drive-in bays, a standard-size windowless door was the only entrance. Hunt had no doubt the traffickers had reinforced the strike plate and the doorframe with a high-end dead bolt, so he had come prepared. A ram wouldn’t do here, nor would a thermal option. He didn’t want his two breachers to spend too much time exposed. Hunt was a fan of explosive breaching, and that was the method they’d be using today. One team would go through the door while his team would enter through one of the bays. With the power out, the simultaneous breaches would allow his team to deliver overwhelming force before any of the defenders could understand they’d been hit.

  That was the plan, anyway. But how often did anything go according to plan?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Chicago, Illinois

  Luke Moore of HJ-TV Chicago News wasn’t at his first rodeo. He disliked the DEA agents, and he knew they despised him back. They were a bunch of bullies with guns, just like the local PD. Dangerous bullies with guns. And Luke would make sure they didn’t break the law. If the big guy in the passenger seat thought Luke would stay inside the vehicle, he didn’t know Luke’s reputation very well. They might have guns, but Luke had his camera. He had started tweeting about the raid the moment they left the regional DEA office. The hundreds of likes and retweets coming in from his half a million followers melted his last barrier of intellectual resistance against sharing everything live on social media. Once at the warehouse and outside the SUV, he’d be in the perfect position to capture anything these bullies did. His bosses might slap him on the wrist since sharing live content of this operation was strictly forbidden, but he would be quickly forgiven if the ratings were there. And Luke knew they would be. They always were when he was bashing the police in the pursuit of justice.

  Ramón Figueroa was eating a bag of barbecue potato chips when his phone rang. He licked his fingers clean before answering.

  “Yes?”

  “The DEA is on its way.”

  Figueroa sat straighter in his chair. “What? Are you sure?”

  “You know that reporter, Luke Moore—”

  “I know who he is!” Figueroa snapped back. Moore was a local reporter well known for his bias against the police.

  “Moore is live tweeting about a raid he’s part of. He mentioned a link to the Black Tosca’s cartel.”

  Fuck.

  “How long do we have?”

  “About fifteen minutes. Tops.”

  Maldita. Figueroa banged his desk with the palm of his hand. He’d have to leave a lot of product behind. But that was the cost of doing business. It would set them back a month, no more.

  “We’ll move to site two. I’ll call you when we get there.” He hung up, removed the battery from the burner phone, and grabbed his suppressed AR-15.

  Figueroa hurried down the stairs and jogged to the lab, where Edmundo and Juan—his two team leaders—were supervising the addition of cutting agents to the heroin.

  Both men turned when they saw their boss barge in without a mask.

  “DEA will be here in less than fifteen minutes,” Figueroa whispered. “Get the rest of the guys, and pack everything you can in the trucks. I want to be out of here in five. Leave everything else behind.”

  Edmundo pointed at the dozen workers cutting the heroin. All of them were women between the ages of fifteen and twenty who had, in one way or another, fallen into the hands of the cartel. They were slaves, victims of human trafficking. As an added humiliation, they were forced to work naked.

  “Them too?”

  Figueroa shook his head. “No. We’ll load the trucks ourselves.”

  “As you wish, boss.” Juan raised his rifle.

  Figueroa pushed the barrel back down. “Their blood will contaminate the heroin. Usher them into the corner. Do it there,” he said, pointing to a space at the opposite end of the lab.

  Edmundo approached the workers and barked orders in Spanish. The women looked nervously at Figueroa, knowing something awful was about to happen. But what could they do? They were naked and unarmed, but it was human nature to hold on to hope.

  Maybe, just maybe, if they did what they were told, everything would be all right.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Chicago, Illinois

  Hunt was less than half a mile from the warehouse when the lead sniper broke the air.

  “Alpha One, Sierra One, over.”

  “Go for Alpha One.”

  “I have movement at the drive-ins. Six males of Hispanic origin climbed into the vans. One of them is Ramón Figueroa. Some of the men are armed with what seem to be AR-15s.”

  Hunt’s hopes of a victimless raid evaporated quickly.

  The intelligence provided to his team hadn’t indicated any other commercial operations going on at the warehouse. It made his next tactical decision much easier.

  “Sierra One, you’re clear to engage on your authority. Don’t let the vans get away.”

  “Sierra One copies. All Sierra elements are clear to engage on my authority.”

  Figueroa closed the door and started the diesel engine. Site two was another warehouse ten miles away. Two of his men would ride with him. He had ordered Juan, Edmundo, and a third man to take a separate route. It had been his decision to have only five men with him on Lawrence Avenue. By keeping a low profile, he had hoped to extend his stay longer than the ninety days he usually remained at a given place.

  He wished he could have brought the girls, but fifteen minutes wasn’t enough time to get them dressed and to secure them in the back of each truck. And they were cheap anyway. Much cheaper than heroin. His associates would have no problem sending more girls his way. He knew the drill.

  Born thirty years ago in a lower-middle-class family near Reynosa, Mexico, a city about eleven miles south of McAllen, Texas, on the southern bank of the Rio Grande, Figueroa had watched his parents work for an American-owned aluminum vents factory. It hadn’t taken long for him to figure out that the Americans were doing business in his hometown because of the low labor rates the hardworking Mexicans were willing to accept. Not Figueroa. In town, he’d seen men who lived a far easier lifestyle, had more money, and drove shiny black cars. That was what he wanted for himself too. His initial job working for the local kingpin had been menial, but his loyalty and his willingness to do what he was told without asking questions had helped him work his way up the ladder. Within two years, he’d been tasked with accompanying shipments of young girls to the United States. Half a decade later, and with a shiny black Escalade parked in his underground garage, Figueroa was the Black Tosca’s representative in Chicago.

  In his side mirror, Figueroa saw Trevor exit the warehouse with Fernando. Trevor was the youngest in his crew, but he had already proven himself as a merciless street enforcer. He was passionate about his job, but maybe a little too ambitious for Figueroa’s taste. He’d have to keep a close eye on him. Trust only went so far.
Fernando, though, was a different animal. At twenty-six, he was five years Trevor’s senior and a graduate of the accounting program at the University of Chicago. Fernando was incapable of violence; his forte was analyzing corporate balance sheets and keeping financial records.

  “We’re good to go, boss,” Trevor said as he slammed the sliding door behind him.

  Figueroa gently pressed the gas pedal, and the van moved forward. He cranked the steering wheel hard to the left to leave some space for the other van parked next to them. He felt the van shudder lightly, as if he had driven over a glass bottle. A millisecond later, bullets punched through the hood of the van.

  Figueroa jammed his foot down on the gas pedal, and the tires spun before catching traction. The van leaped forward and onto the street outside the warehouse. He had to call site two to warn them and ask for backup. As he pulled his phone from his pocket, the van swerved into the opposite lane. An oncoming car blared its horn. Figueroa jerked the wheel to the right to avoid a head-on collision, and his phone fell in between the seats. He searched for it with his right hand. The tips of his fingers touched it, but that only pushed the phone farther down and out of reach.

  “Call site two now,” he shouted.

  Before Trevor or Fernando could do so, the van jolted right. Figueroa attempted to recover, but the engine didn’t respond. The steering wheel was heavy and sluggish, and the van came to a stop in the middle of the road, its left front and rear tires shot out.

  “Out!”

  Figueroa grabbed his AR-15 and jumped out of the van. Trevor did the same, but Fernando remained in his seat, too terrified to move.

  “There.” Figueroa pointed toward three SUVs approaching at high speed. Their emergency lights confirmed they were law enforcement.

  Figueroa and Trevor opened fire on the lead SUV.

  Hunt watched his snipers engage with the targets. This was a busier neighborhood than he would have liked. In an effort to avoid collateral damage and unintended civilian casualties, Hunt had wanted to box in the panel vans at the warehouse, but they’d been seconds too late. Two hundred yards away, two men exited the immobilized van and raised their rifles.

  “Gun, gun, gun,” Hunt warned, bringing his MP5 to bear.