Free Kill Zone: A Lucy Guardino FBI Thriller by CJ Lyons

bum steer.”
    “After that you arranged for Raziq and his family to come to the States?”
    “Rashid ended up with a bounty on his head over there. He almost got killed; there were a few assassination attempts. Relocating him seemed like the least we could do. It paid off, too. He’s been invaluable, helping us dismantle smuggling routes across Asia and Eastern Europe.”  
    “So this Marine who was upset. He blamed Raziq for the bad intel?”
    “Yeah. But how would he know where to find Rashid? Plus, I can’t see him coming after Rashid’s kids. And after all this time…” His voice trailed off.
    Lucy dialed Taylor. “You at the office yet?”
    “Just got here, or should I say back here. Walden has me working background on Raziq. Most of it I’m still waiting for the DEA to release.” Taylor’s tone of disdain made it very clear what he thought of the DEA hogging intel.
    “Give me what you can on—” She turned to Haddad. “What was the Marine’s name?”
    “Stone. Andre Stone.”
    “A Marine named Andre Stone,” she told Taylor. “And talk to the DEA about any unusual activity here in Pittsburgh. Ask Homeland Security to send over the foreign arrival data for the past few months.”  
    “You focusing on an Afghanistan connection?”
    She remembered Raziq’s multiple passports. “Yeah, but don’t rule out Pakistan or any other countries in that area.”
    “That’s going to be a lot of names.”
    “Cross check them all with Raziq’s cases with the DEA. I’ll call if I think of anything else.” Lucy hung up and turned back to Haddad.  
    “You said Mina had her hands cut off?” Haddad said. His voice was flat, distant, as if willing himself to remain professional. “Sounds more like Mexican cartel style of violence than the Middle East.”
    Talk about your remote possibilities. “Why would Mexicans target an Afghan—and in Pittsburgh of all places?”
    “I don’t know. I was just thinking. It’s kind of our doomsday scenario: if the cartels south of the border ever teamed up with the Afghans, they’d control virtually the entire world’s production and distribution of heroin. Talk about global domination.”
    Given Haddad’s personal allegiance to Raziq, Lucy wondered if the DEA Agent was trying to deflect suspicion from Raziq. After all, most of the time, in crimes like this, a parent was involved. Sad but true. “You think a Mexican cartel would come all the way to Pittsburgh to target a former Afghan DEA informant’s daughters?”
    “No. You’re right.” He blew his breath out. “As horrendous as it is, killing two little girls is small potatoes to the cartels. They’ll take fifty-sixty people in a day—civilians, not even fellow narcos—chop off their heads and hands, hang their bodies from highway overpasses just as a friendly warning.”
    That fit with the briefings she’d read on the violence south of the border.  
    “It’s just that we’ve heard chatter about the cartels looking for new routes to expand east of the Mississippi. Detroit, Philly, and Baltimore top the list of potential operation centers. My bet was on Detroit. With the kind of money a cartel has, they could buy the PD and police union, fire all the honest cops, and run the entire city within a week. The way things are up there, the citizens might even be better off.”
    “Detroit, Philly and Baltimore are all port cities.”
    He nodded at her like she was an exceptionally bright student. Lucy decided to let it pass. They had more important things to worry about than her ego. “Right. Control one of those ports and a cartel would have a backstage all-access pass to the entire Eastern seaboard.”
    Pittsburgh wasn’t exactly a “seaboard” city. It had three rivers and tons of barge traffic that went from the Ohio River to the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. But she doubted that counted.
    Haddad continued, “All that bullshit about tunnels and submarines filled with drugs? Just the tip of