Primary Valor by Jack Mars (booksvooks TXT) 📗

three men stood in a roughtriangle as the crowds passed around them. Luke and Ed eyed each other.

“And they don’t like it whenthings get messy.”

“How about you?” Ed said. “Do youlike it?”

Bowles smiled. “I try not to letit come to that point.”

There was a silence.

“Well… are you ready to say helloto our friend the human trafficker, Felix Cienfuegos?”

* * *

“You understand this guy isdangerous, right?”

Luke was talking to Bowles. Theywere sitting in a sedan half a block from the house. Until a moment ago, Bowleshad been intending to walk up the front path and ring the doorbell.

Bowles was still wearing hisjacket and slacks. Certainly, he must have his service gun on him. Ed and Lukewere suited up with Kevlar, helmets, visors, batons, shotguns, flashbangs, andTasers. Luke also had a Glock 17 pistol. Ed had a Heckler and Koch MP5 strappedacross his chest. He had loaded thirty-round magazines for the gun, stuffed invarious pockets. They had brought all this stuff on the plane with them. Theywere ready to go in hot. Luke didn’t really see another way.

“This isn’t a tumultuous entry,”Bowles said. “We have tactical teams for things like that. There are only justthe three of us.”

Ed shook his head. “Three of uswho are going to get our asses blown off if we just stop by and say hello.”

Bowles shrugged. “We don’t know ifCienfuegos lives here,” he said. “We don’t know if he’s even in the country. Wedon’t have accurate data about who lives here. We don’t have a warrant for hisarrest, or for anyone’s arrest. We don’t have evidence that anyone in thathouse committed a crime. We’re gathering information about a crime that tookplace eight hundred miles from here. We’re stopping by this house because a manon a video who rented a van might bear a passing resemblance to a persondescribed by a convicted felon. The felon described this person during aninterrogation which, if conducted by a different government, we might refer toas torture.”

He was talking about the LouisClare interview. Of course. The South Carolina cops had brought Clare in, andhe had complained that someone worked him over a little bit. Bowles was privyto this fact. Bowles probably knew everything, not just about this case, butabout Luke and Ed in general.

“We did nothing to hurt that man,”Ed said.

Luke didn’t say anything.

“Mock executions count as torture,”Bowles said.

Ed shook his head. “Didn’t happen.”

“It was an extrajudicial arrest,by federal officers who invaded the interviewee’s home, bagged and disorientedhim, locked him in the trunk of a car, took him to an isolated location,dangled him above live alligators, threatened him with a silenced gun, left himtied to a chair for hours, explicitly and repeatedly threatened to murder him,slapped him, banged his head on the floor, choked him, and refused to identifythemselves the entire time. What does that sound like to you?”

Ed looked at Luke.

Luke shrugged. “We let him smokecigarettes. Considering the circumstances, I thought that was—”

“I read the report,” Bowles said.“Let’s leave the KGB stuff in the old Soviet Union where it belongs, shall we?”

“The guy is a human trafficker,”Ed muttered under his breath.

“Former human trafficker,” Bowlessaid. “Who has rights.”

Ed sneered at Bowles. “That formerhuman trafficker, who has rights, like the right to remain silent I suppose,told us the location of a warehouse where three dead children were found. If hehad remained silent, he wouldn’t have told us about that and those kids wouldstill…”

Bowles shrugged. “Those kids werethere a long time. They’re dead. They aren’t any less dead because you foundthem.”

“All right,” Luke said. He raiseda hand. “Okay? Enough.”

This guy was about asstraight-laced and matter-of-fact and by-the-book as they came. This was whothe FBI wanted looking over the SRT’s shoulders? Okay. But there was going tohave to be an accommodation to reality somewhere. Ed was passionate. Ed was bighearted. Ed would shred the rulebook to save lives, or even just to bring adead child home. If they couldn’t live with that, this wasn’t going to work.

“Let’s do this,” Luke said. “Atthe very least, let me and Ed knock on the door. We’ll do the good cop, badcop.”

Bowles shook his head. “We’re nothere to play games.”

“It’s just that I’d feel bad ifyou walked up there and got killed,” Luke said. “I’m starting to take a shineto you.”

Bowles gave a half smile. “Knockaway. I’ll hang back. When they open, I’ll follow you in to question whoever wefind. I happen to be fluent in Spanish.”

“Sounds fair,” Luke said. Helooked at Ed. “You ready?”

“Born ready,” Ed said.

Ed and Luke left the car andwalked up to the house. They moved slowly, Luke soaking it in as they moved.

It was a typical Florida house, alow-slung one story place, maybe a little larger than most. There were palmtrees on the property, and thick bushes. There were two cars in the driveway, ablue BMW and a black Acura. Both of the cars had small dents and scuffs. Theywere not new off the showroom floor. Behind the drawn blinds in one room of thehouse, there were flashes of light suggesting a large TV was on.

Luke and Ed went up onto the smallstone front porch of the house. It was under a hard plastic awning.

Bowles was back behind themsomewhere. It was a good place for him.

Luke knocked on the door, thenstepped briskly to the left. Ed stepped to the right. Luke half expected a ten-year-oldboy to answer, say his uncle wasn’t home. Something along those lines. Even so,they were flanking the door now, on either side of it. It wasn’t a good way tobe if someone checked the peephole. But it was a good way to be in case someonecame out. They’d have the jump on him.

It was also a good way to be incase…

BOOOM.

A gun blast ripped a wide holethrough the wooden door. The hole was at chest and head level. It shredded thedoor like poorly made Swiss cheese—too much hole, not enough cheese. A shotgundid that. It would stop a large deer, or a large man.

Instantly, Luke had one of the M84stun grenades in his hand. He pulled the pin, let the spoon