Cartel: A Jason King Thriller (The Jason King Files Book 1) Read online

  Cartel

  The Jason King Files Book One

  Matt Rogers

  Copyright © 2017 by Matt Rogers

  All rights reserved.

  Contents

  Reader’s Group

  Books by Matt Rogers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Announcement

  Afterword

  Reader’s Group

  About the Author

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  Books by Matt Rogers

  THE JASON KING SERIES

  Isolated (Book 1)

  Imprisoned (Book 2)

  Reloaded (Book 3)

  Betrayed (Book 4)

  Corrupted (Book 5)

  Hunted (Book 6)

  THE JASON KING FILES

  Cartel (Book 1)

  “Welcome to Tijuana…

  Where life is worth a lot

  And death is a business”

  Roberto Castillo

  1

  Tijuana, Mexico

  June 23, 2007

  Joaquín Ramos shifted his grip on the steel baton.

  A fat droplet of blood fell from the tip of the weapon and splashed onto the dirty concrete floor. In the sudden quiet of the humid warehouse basement, the impact made a distinctive plink. He glanced down at the crimson ball and spat in its direction.

  The man across from him whimpered from his seated position, hunched over in defeat. The chair he rested on had been carried down from the derelict interior above their heads — its frame was still coated in dust and muck. No-one had used this place in years. What was once a thriving maquiladora factory that imported foreign parts and assembled them for future export now lay dormant.

  Ramos touched the steel club to the man’s bloody forehead and pushed him gently into an upright position.

  ‘What were you doing on my property?’ he said for the third time.

  ‘Come on, Joaquín,’ the man whimpered. ‘We grew up together, cabrón…’

  Ramos cocked his head. It was true — he had spent many years working terrible jobs alongside the whimpering mess sitting across from him. Which meant he understood the informal use of the word “cabrón”. Such a term could be misconstrued in other parts of the Spanish-speaking world.

  He took the tip of the baton off the man’s sweaty forehead and jabbed it into the ball of his throat, pinning him uncomfortably against the chair back. ‘You will talk to me like a businessman, not a friend. That’s what this discussion is.’

  ‘Okay…’

  ‘What were you doing on my property?’

  Ramos had found the man snooping around the unkempt perimeter of one of his processing facilities. He had spent many painstaking months setting up the site in total secrecy, and given the man’s rumoured ties to one of the rival cartels in Tijuana, Ramos was taking no chances. He knew the man’s name due to their past shared experiences — yet he refused to think it or speak it. It was better to treat him as a soulless piece of meat, given what might have to transpire if certain unpleasant details were uncovered over the course of the interrogation.

  A thick glob of saliva and blood dripped from the corner of the man’s lips. It splattered across the seat between his legs. Ramos grimaced and rolled up the sleeves of his sweat-soaked shirt — revealing meaty forearms covered in weather-beaten brown skin.

  His riches had not come without a certain level of elbow grease.

  ‘You going to answer me?’ he whispered.

  The man in front of him shivered. He would know that as Ramos’ tone decreased in volume, his infuriation heightened. The man had been in the presence of such instances many times before.

  Never on the receiving end, though.

  ‘Please…’

  ‘Why don’t you want to talk?’ Ramos said. He caught three droplets of sweat from his grimy forehead before they ran into his eyes and used the liquid to slick strands of unkempt hair back off his forehead. Interrogations were unsanitary. He had learnt that long ago. ‘You’re worried I’ll see straight through your lies.’

  The man lifted his head and snivelled. Tears had formed in his eyes. ‘If I tell you anything, my fate is sealed.’

  ‘It’s sealed now.’

  The man bowed his head. ‘We were like brothers.’

  ‘Were,’ Ramos snarled. ‘This is business. Business is ruthless.’

  ‘This isn’t you. The old you was different.’

  ‘The old me was nothing. The old me worked for less than minimum wage in a box factory. The old me couldn’t afford shit. You know that better than anyone.’

  Silence.

  Maybe the man across from him was recalling Ramos’ distress as his mother wilted away, riddled with cancer and unable to afford treatment. Ramos had certainly not forgotten. Hence his ruthless pursuit of expansion. Hence his determination to never have to want for money again.

  ‘What were you doing on my property?’

  The fifth time he had asked the question.

  There would not be a sixth.

  ‘I will fry you like I did to many of the men you work for,’ Ramos said, low and cruel. Both a threat, and a subtle acknowledgement that he knew the true nature of the man’s presence on the site’s perimeter.

  The Draco cartel.

  ‘Then do it,’ the man said.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be like this.’

  The man lifted his head. ‘Like I said before — if I say a word, they will only do worse.’

  ‘So you admit they recruited you?’

  A pause, then a nod. ‘I wouldn’t lie to you.’

  ‘What are they planning?’ Ramos said, his pulse rising. ‘Why are they interfering with my business?’

  The man scoffed. ‘Really, Joaquín? You are interfering with theirs. That much is clear. They’ve had this city on lockdown for a decade.’

  ‘I’m the new breed.
’

  ‘They don’t appreciate that.’

  ‘I never expected them to.’

  ‘Then let me go,’ the man said. ‘I swear, Joaquín, I’ll get the fuck out of Tijuana and never come back. I’ll never speak of you or anyone in this godforsaken city again. Please…’

  Ramos listened to the spiel, then crouched down on the dusty basement floor. He was close enough to smell the sweat leaking from the man’s pores, hear the sharp intake of breath as he rapidly pumped oxygen into his lungs in an attempt to stifle the terror.

  ‘And what example would that set, my friend?’ Ramos said.

  The finality of the rhetorical question set in.

  The man whimpered softly — then he exploded off the chair in one swift motion. The sound of his feet scuffling on the concrete floor echoed off the walls. He made a beeline for the stairs leading up to the ground floor.

  Ramos caught him by the throat in a vice-like grip and threw him to the floor. The man landed on his back, knocking the breath out of his lungs in a burst of exhalation. Then his head followed, snapping back against the concrete loud enough to twist even the most hardened stomachs.

  When his skull bounced off the floor, it met the length of Ramos’ baton. He swung the club with lethal intentions. The blow ruptured the soft tissue of the man’s face.

  If it didn’t kill him, the next four strikes did.

  Ramos turned away from the disfigured body and shrugged off a chill. Despite the stifling heat of the basement and the sweat coating him from head to toe, a wave of sudden cold washed over him. It was a foreign sensation that came from within — unpleasant as all hell.

  Ramos knew what it was.

  Discomfort.

  But that’s what this business was about. If he wanted to remain in his comfort zone, he never would have made a single dollar as the head of a new cartel. Every day he had to push himself to do the unpleasant but necessary tasks that a figure of power was required to carry out.

  Including killing old friends.

  He had to maintain his aura of invincibility and unhinged menace, his reputation for reckless forward motion. His reputation as a man who never backed away from a challenge. That’s how he had wormed his way into this position — and it’s how he would climb his way to the top.

  Through ruthlessness.

  Through devastation of all competition.

  He had heard stories of — and sometimes been inadvertently involved in — the cartel wars of the past. Now, as he made for the stairs that would lead out of his hellhole, he realised he was the first in a new generation.

  Those who didn’t begrudgingly accept their place in society.

  No-one resisted the Draco cartel because no-one knew any better. They enforced their hold on Tijuana through extortion and a reign of terror. Ramos considered himself a man of the people. He would destroy the Draco cartel piece by piece without them ever knowing it was him, and then he would appeal to the masses who had been oppressed by the group.

  His cartel was low on numbers, but rapidly expanding.

  And he had momentum on his side.

  As he reached the doorway and planted a dusty trainer on the first step, a sharp electronic beep rang through the basement.

  He froze.

  ‘What the…’ he whispered.

  He turned back to the grisly remains of the man he’d beaten to death and noticed a dull artificial light blinking in the lip of his pant pocket. When the man had fallen to the ground, the device must have become dislodged from the bottom lining of his pocket. That’s why Ramos hadn’t come across it on his initial search.

  He crossed back to the corpse and tugged the small black rectangle free from the displaced lining, tearing strands of fabric in the process. He scrutinised it. It was some kind of panic button — used to call upon reinforcements in the event that the man found himself in trouble.

  Ramos had no doubt that the man had activated it at some point during the interrogation.

  ‘You slimy fuck,’ he muttered.

  Above his head, the distinctive sound of an approaching car engine made him freeze. Tyres squealed, and doors slammed.

  Ramos hadn’t brought any help. He was alone, and trapped. He cursed himself for his inexperience. Errors in judgment seemed to present themselves on a consistent basis these days, largely due to the brash nature of his cartel’s rapid expansion.

  He’d backed himself into a corner.

  Once again.

  There was a cluster of broken furniture hoarded into one corner of the rundown space. The only illumination down here came from a flickering bulb fixed into the ceiling in the centre of the room, which plunged each of the corners into shadow. Ramos slid a semi-automatic Glock pistol from his waistband — smuggled across the border after being plucked out of unnoticed U.S. Army surplus by a bribed serviceman — and tucked himself into the darkness behind a rotting desk.

  He waited with a pounding heart.

  It wasn’t the Draco cartel. A man and a woman came tearing down the stairs at a tactically dangerous pace, probably worried that their contact had met an untimely demise. They were attempting to compensate for such a delayed response. They both wore black khakis and baggy black polyester jackets, despite the Mexican heat. Both swept standard-issue U.S. firearms over the room. Both were white.

  Law enforcement.

  Traitorous bastard, Ramos thought of the dead man.

  He kept himself pressed to the filthy floor. Sweat leaked out of his hair — he ignored it.

  The pair noticed the corpse in the centre of the room. Their eyes boggled at the grotesque nature of his injuries and they lowered their weapons, all their attention seized by the body.

  Amateurs.

  ‘My God,’ the man said, and his accent confirmed Ramos’ worst suspicions.

  They’re American.

  He looked at the corpse occupying the pair’s attention.

  What the fuck were you doing talking to Americans, my friend?

  ‘Do we know who it was?’ the man said.

  ‘Whoever owns that facility,’ the woman said softly, as if hesitant to disturb the dead.

  ‘Five years,’ the man said, staring into space. ‘Five fucking years we’ve used this guy. We’re back to square one.’

  ‘This needs to go to D.O.D. It’s beyond us.’

  Ramos rose into view when the perfect opportunity presented itself. The Americans had spent the entire conversation fixated on the corpse at their feet, still slightly aware of their surroundings. They thought they were well and truly alone — but when their eyes met upon the mention of the Department of Defence, their guard dropped away entirely.

  Ramos stood up and shot them both twice each in the stomach, targeting the liver and other juicy internal organs with expert precision. The gunshots were like bombs dropping in the contained room. They roared and cracked off the walls.

  Both of them dropped in ungainly fashion, their faces paling in an instant, the sidearms in their hands cascading to the dusty floor and scattering away. All important motor functions were temporarily impaired as the overwhelming agony took hold.

  Ramos smiled and stepped out from behind the desk.

  ‘You two have not been in the field long, have you?’ he said, speaking English for the first time that day.

  The woman was mortally wounded, already slipping into unconsciousness, and the man wasn’t far behind. Ramos crossed to where he lay on his back and wrenched open his jacket, yanking an identification badge out of his inside pocket. He regarded the insignia with a mounting fury.

  ‘DEA?’ he said incredulously. ‘You’re DEA?!’

  Neither responded. The woman’s eyes closed — either dead, or close to it. The man flapped his lips like a dying fish. It seemed he was trying to form a sentence, yet the massive internal bleeding prevented a single syllable from leaving his mouth.

  ‘What the fuck is the Drug Enforcement Agency doing over the border?’ Ramos said.

  He squatted down, so
his face was mere inches from the American man.

  ‘Should have stuck to your jurisdiction, my friend,’ he whispered.

  He followed it up with a fifth bullet, sending it through the man’s forehead. The exit wound splattered gore across the concrete underneath his head.

  Ramos got to his feet, tucked the gun back into his waistband, and made for the stairs again.

  An interesting development.

  He’d roll with it. The United States could keep sending their agents, for all he cared.

  He’d send them back in bodybags for as long as he drew a waking breath.

  2

  The Pentagon, Washington D.C.

  June 24, 2007

  Lars Crawford had never held much interest in official military procedures.

  He shuffled through the high-ceilinged hallways of the Pentagon with intent in his stride. The tie that usually adorned his uniform had been left in the car. Whenever something captured his attention so completely, structure and demeanour went out the window.

  He was cerebral in that regard.

  Which was likely half the reason he had received the call this morning to report to the Pentagon as soon as humanly possible.