Aztec Treasure

CIA Senior Agent Al Perkin’s POV

Sons of Tezcatlipoca Task Force

Los Angeles, California, USA

On the long wall of the Task Force room was a diagram of everyone associated with the Sons of Tezcatlipoca. National leadership, including Chapter Presidents in the United States and Mexico, all had their photographs printed on legal-sized paper with their name and position across the bottom. Underneath them were letter-sized photographs showing Chapter officers, while below them were five-by-seven photos of Club members. Spouses, children, and girlfriends all got wallet-sized shots, each attached to the member’s photo. We used Sharpies to put black X’s over those confirmed dead, red X’s traced over those presumed dead, while those in jail had green X’s over them. The display covered fifty feet of wall, and the number of X’s reflected months of work by our Task Force to wipe this violent biker gang out of existence.

Four months after the gang killed former DEA agent Sean Ryder and his wife and the wall was a sea of black, red, and green. It was the people who were still at large or unconfirmed that bugged me.

Jose Correirra, the young President of the new Sons chapter in New Orleans and the man behind the attack on the Steel Brotherhood’s Orlando clubhouse, had a red X over his face. We’d found his blood and Harleigh Ryder’s clothing in an abandoned boat on a remote Florida lake filled with alligators. The locals searched for their bodies without success. Jose was the highest-ranking member of the Sons of Tezcatlipoca that might still be out there. I had my suspicions that the Steel Brotherhood knew where the body was, but they weren’t sharing.

Three people disappeared shortly after the raid on the Orlando clubhouse. Consuela Correirra didn’t travel with her husband Manilo to Florida. She was assumed to be with Jorge and Eva Correirra, who vanished at the same time. We’d been monitoring all of their accounts, but even Echelon didn’t get a whiff. They were either dead or good at hiding.

We had accounted for all Club Officers, and their immediate families, except one. Maria Meztli, the 17-year-old daughter of deceased Denver President Pedro Meztli, disappeared after her father’s decapitated head was found on the border fence near San Diego. It wasn’t surprising that he’d hide his family, as the Club was in bed with the Sinaloa Cartel. The Cartel was fuming over the attacks on the bikers and the loss of their drug shipment.

But then came the meeting of Sons leadership in Mexico and the drone strike. Mexican authorities found Pedro’s wife under the rubble but not Maria. Her packed bags were in a vehicle parked outside, and DNA confirmed it was her. There was no trace of her body.

I was looking at her photo when Frank Donovan, the leader of the Fugitive section of our task force, came up next to me. “Still no sign of her,” he said.

I tapped the photo. “Maria is out there. Maybe her Mom left her in town, maybe she got away, but she’s alive.”

Frank shrugged his shoulders. “Who cares? She wasn’t in the Club, and she’s a kid. If she escaped all this crap, good for her.”

I shook my head, no. “The Sons are all about relationships. Have you ever seen a biker gang with a leadership structure like that?”

“It’s pretty standard stuff for a biker gang.”

“Bikers either elect or fight for their positions, Frank. In what universe does a single extended family hold the Presidency and at least one senior position in EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER?” I walked him down the line. “It’s like a Mafia family. Everyone is a brother, cousin, or second cousin. It’s also so inbred I expect to hear some kid on a porch playing Dueling Banjos.” He pointed at a few of the wives. “They’re all second cousins or third cousins of each other. Not a single Chapter President married someone outside the family.”

“That is weird.” He walked with me while I proved what I was saying.

“What if we’re wrong about the Club?” Frank looked at me funny. “We’re all assuming that the wives and daughters have nothing to do with the Club, so they aren’t priority targets. After all, no outlaw biker gang would allow women to know what is going on.”

“Pretty much,” Frank agreed.

“The Steel Brotherhood isn’t like that. Rori’s got serious pull with that club, more than Chase has. Their ‘Ladies Auxiliary’ does more than organize parties. Pedro Meztli didn’t have a son, and based on what we’ve seen, his daughter would marry a leader of one of the other Chapters. Maybe women like her and Consuela aren’t so innocent. Could they be the ones who have been draining the accounts, hiding the members, and paying for the lawyers? Was Maria stashed down there as part of some emergency plan?”

Frank looked at the wall. “It’s a reach. She’s in high school, Al. Consuela, I’d buy her knowing more. She was married to Manilo for decades and disappeared with two other leaders.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Still, our group is running out of leads on the remaining fugitives. Maybe we need to spend some time watching the wives and families and see if anyone turns up?”

I liked that. “Use the money trail to get warrants. Maybe we can find payments that aren’t easy for them to explain. Meanwhile, I’m going to have my associates in Mexico head back to El Pozo. After the drone strike, everyone was looking for men who might have escaped. I want to find out if anyone saw Maria.”

I went back to my desk and logged on to the encrypted CIA server, requesting help from agents in Mexico, then typing in my daily update to CIA brass. I looked up when someone started shouting to turn the television up.

The entire office watched spellbound as the hostage situation at the Arrowhead Pack played out. Our team still smarted from the orders directing us to immediately stop our investigations into Chase, Rori, and their friends. There was plenty of smoke, and with a little more time, we would have nailed them to the wall. They made friends with the brass and got their get-out-of-jail-free card.

“What a nightmare,” Frank said as he watched. “A man wanted for murder tapes a sawed-off shotgun to the neck of the Sheriff’s wife? I’d hate to be on that SWAT team.”

I couldn’t believe it when the Arrowhead residents, maybe four dozen of them, suddenly pulled their clothes off. Our jaws dropped as they all changed in seconds from naked humans to furry beasts. An entire pack of wolves, WEREWOLVES, now stood among the discarded clothing.

My entire worldview changed with them.

We’d been barking up the wrong tree.

It wasn’t about bikers. It was about Packs! Arrowhead was a werewolf Pack, and there must be more.

Our boss, FBI Commander Irene Lindstrom, whistled to get our attention. “You’ve got twenty minutes to figure out how this information fits into our investigation while I call Headquarters. Be ready to talk.” She went into her office and closed the door.

I composed a quick message to my bosses asking for any new direction based on the information. When I sent it, I went to talk to our Customs/Border Patrol representative. “Sofia,” I said as I got to her cubicle.

“Hang on,” Special Operations Supervisor Sofia Sanchez said as she finished typing. A high-energy spitfire of a Latina, she was one of my favorite coworkers. She looked up. “What’s going on?”

“The border east of Nogales, where we found the vehicles belonging to eight of the sixteen dead Chapter Presidents.”

She nodded. “I went through all the border surveillance recordings from when their heads got hung on the fence back to when we know the Presidents were in their Clubhouses. I didn’t see anyone jumping the fence into Mexico, Al. There’s no reason to park in that area unless you’re jumping the fence east of town. It would have been much simpler to park in town and cross over there, but facial recognition at the border crossing didn’t come up with any matches. My conclusion was that they crossed into Mexico using an aircraft, likely a helicopter.”

“You were looking for people, Sofia. What about wildlife? What if the Sons are werewolves, just like Chase and Rori are?”

“Shit. There was something. Give me some time to find my notes and pull up the feed.”

My phone dinged, telling me I had an incoming high-priority message. I went back to my desk, logging in on my CIA-issue laptop. Sure enough, I had an ULTRA-clearance, EYES ONLY message straight from the CIA Director, Peter Sinclair. He’d included the Mexico City station head and Director of the Central American Desk. “AGENTS ARE TO IDENTIFY, CAPTURE, AND EXTRACT TO GUANTANAMO BAY ANY SURVIVING LEADERS OF THE SONS OF TEZCATLIPOCA MOTORCYCLE CLUB OR DIRECT FAMILY IN THE UNITED STATES, MEXICO, OR CENTRAL AMERICA. SUPPORT OF THIS MISSION HAS THE HIGHEST OPERATIONAL PRIORITY. I AUTHORIZE USE OF ANY/ ALL CIA ASSETS IN SUPPORT. CIA ACTIVITIES INSIDE THE UNITED STATES ARE SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED. USE DISCRETION AND ENSURE DOMESTIC ACTIVITIES DO NOT BECOME PUBLIC. THIS IS CIA-ONLY OPERATION, DO NOT INVOLVE OR SHARE ANY INFORMATION ON THIS OPERATION OR OBJECTIVES WITH OTHER AGENCIES. USE BEST JUDGMENT AND GOOD LUCK. -PETER.”

Damn. I wasn’t shocked by the objective; it wasn’t much different than that of the Task Force. The difference was that the CIA director wanted these Sons for the CIA. His message made me a double-agent against my coworkers. I would use the information learned here to help the CIA grab the target first.

Director Sinclair wanted to have captive werewolves away from US laws and oversight.

I deleted the message and closed up my laptop just as Commander Lindstrom came out of her office. “CONFERENCE ROOM,” she yelled as she led the way. I joined the group heading in, noting that Sofia was still stuck in her computer, even after the door closed. Members found seats or stood around the room as Irene walked to the front of the long desk. “I just got off the phone with FBI Director Patterson and Attorney General Guttierez. The events of today do NOT change the agreement they have with Chase and Rori Nygaard. Our task force remains prohibited from continuing investigations into Chase and Rori, Arrowhead, or their friends and relatives named in the agreement.”

“They aren’t HUMAN, Commander! They turn into WOLVES!”

“Legally, that doesn’t matter. Chase Nygaard entered into an agreement with the Attorney General that granted them immunity from their activities in exchange for information on the Sons. As part of that agreement, the Attorney General agreed to limit Task Force activities to taking down the Sons. What IS different is that there may be more to Arrowhead’s conflict with the Sons than just an attack on the Steel Brotherhood. If the Sons are a rival werewolf Pack, we need to look at things differently. What have you come up with?”

The group had a bunch of good ideas. It was possible the ‘guard dogs’ in Orlando were really werewolves, and it might explain how members of leadership managed to escape the Clubhouses during the raids. Commander Lindstrom had an agent writing everything on a board when the door burst open.

“YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS,” Sofia blurted out. She ran over to the computer driving the television screens around the room, putting a flash drive into it. “Agent Perkins and I were discussing how the Sons Presidents made it from the parking lot east of Nogales into Mexico. He pointed out that I was looking for people, not werewolves. I found this.”

She played a video. It was in black and white, time-stamped along the bottom with a camera identification. It showed where the border fence ran up to jagged rock outcropping that it was unable to cross. “This sector of the border uses cameras and motion detection instead of fencing due to the terrain,” she said excitedly. “Watch the right side.”

We all watched the huge screens, watching a large feline break from the cover of some rocks and run across the border, leaping with ease from rock to rock. He was followed by fifteen more over the next five minutes.

The rosettes on their sides were distinctive. They were jaguars.