The Heist

tracking device into your shoes or the lining of your jacket.” She shook her head. “Have you forgotten everything you learned as a prosecutor?”
    He fought back the bile rising up in his throat. It wasn’t the horror of what he’d witnessed or delayed anxiety that was making him sick—it was her driving. She was no Wilma.
    “Who are they?” he asked.
    “The Viboras.”
    Burnside felt like he’d been jabbed with a stun gun again. One that delivered fifty thousand volts of raw, primal fear. He knew all about the Viboras. They’d started out as a dozen Mexican soldiers trained by the U.S. Army to be elite narco-commandos. But the dirty dozen went rogue in 1998 to become protectors and enforcers for the Gulf Cartel, then turned on their masters. They used their U.S. military training and the tricks of the drug trade that they’d learned from the cartel to create their own criminal organization and declare war on their competitors. They quickly amassed ten thousand soldiers and became known for the horrific scale oftheir atrocities, like decapitating dozens of their rivals and putting their heads on stakes along a popular smuggling route, and their willingness to blithely kill civilians, massacring entire villages with any ties to rival cartels.
    The Viboras’ influence, and their terrifying use of violence, spread beyond Mexico’s borders into the United States, where they made inroads by recruiting, arming, and training urban street gangs.
    The Viboras were like rabid dogs, but Neal Burnside had no idea how they’d picked up his scent. He’d never gone after the Viboras when he was a federal prosecutor, and he’d never represented one of them—or, worse, one of their rivals—in his years as a criminal defense attorney.
    “This is a big mistake,” he said. “I haven’t had any dealings with any of the Mexican drug cartels. What do they want with me?”
    “They want their money back,” she said.
    “I don’t have it.”
    “But Derek Griffin does,” she said.

While Burnside was cowering behind his car for cover and Kate was shooting blanks at Nick and Chet, Willie slipped around the corner of the house and replaced Tom Underhill in the driver’s seat of the van.
    Nick jumped into the van beside Chet, who was the gunman who’d pretended to be blown off his feet by Kate’s shot, and closed the door. Willie put the van in gear and drove off.
    “This is a real step down after that Maserati,” she said. “It’s like driving a lawn mower.”
    “Good, you won’t be tempted to speed,” Nick said, sitting down on the floor across from a grinning Chet Kershaw.
    “That was awesome,” Chet said.
    Nick relaxed back against the side of the van. “Thanks to your Hollywood magic.”
    “Bullet hits and exploding blood packs are old school,” Chetsaid. “My granddaddy was doing them before I was born. This was easy.”
    Nick had designed it to be easy. He was working with an amateur civilian crew and had no idea how they’d react once the hustle was in play. He’d purposely devised the moves so he wouldn’t push the crew too far beyond their comfortable fields of expertise, and that included Kate. All he’d asked them to do was what they already did well. The only one outside his element now was Tom Underhill, but he’d simply been required to drive the van into the driveway, park it at the right angle to mask Willie’s escape, and position it for a quick exit to the street. With a wife and three kids, Tom had plenty of practice driving an SUV and dealing with distractions. Everything else, at least from Nick’s perspective, had been basic. He hadn’t bothered trying to hack Burnside’s alarm system. He’d simply bumped the locks on the back door, waited for Burnside to disarm the system himself, and then, while Willie was groping Burnside, he and Chet rushed in.
    Tom turned up the police band radio under the dash, tuning in to the constant stream of dispatch orders and cop chatter. “Are you listening to the police band?” he asked Nick. “They’re after us. One of the neighbors reported gunshots and gave a description of the van to the police. Black-and-whites and a chopper are on their way.”
    “It’s okay,” Nick said. “We have an escape plan.”
    “I’ve never been chased by the police before,” Tom said.
    “You aren’t being chased,” Nick said. “The van is.”
    “I’m in the van,” Tom said.
    “They don’t know that,” Nick told him.
    Willie drove west