A Ryan Weller Box Set Books 1 - 3

by Evan Graver

  “Hey, Coastie, got a minute?”

  “Yeah.” Mango stepped aboard the boat and made his way up the ladder to the bridge. “What’s up?”

  “I spoke to my DHS contact. He says if you want in, you’re in. He ran a background check on you and liked what he saw. I work for DWR, but that’s just a cover for doing work for Homeland.”

  “All right, bro.” Mango high-fived Ryan. “I suspected something like that.”

  “The plan was for Greg to run the show, but he can’t do it. DWR brought me in to help, and they told me to be on the lookout for someone I thought would make a good addition to the team. You’re it.”

  Mango looked out across the water and nodded.

  Ryan could see he was ready to jump on the opportunity. “Take your time and talk to Jennifer if you need to.”

  “I don’t need to talk to her. I’m in.”

  “Good. I have an idea about how to track down these gunrunners who stole your boat.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I want to outline it for everyone.”

  They climbed down from the bridge and gathered the group in the salon, except for Chuck and Marlene who went to the bar for a drink. When everyone had found a place to sit, Ryan took the stage.

  “First for Jennifer’s benefit, Greg and I work for Homeland Security through Dark Water Research. I spoke with my contact at Homeland, and he agreed I could hire your husband.”

  Jennifer looked at her husband. “When did you decide this?”

  “A few minutes ago, when Ryan offered me a job.”

  She nodded, but in a womanly way which said, we’ll talk about this later.

  “We’re investigating sailboat thefts in the Gulf of Mexico. We believe they’re connected to arms trafficking. Emily’s friend just sent us her research, which shows most of the boat hijackings are taking place off the Yucatán Peninsula. Emily has it on her phone if you want to look at the map.

  “The consensus is the hijackers are using RIB boats off a mothership. My plan is for me and Mango to take my sailboat into the Gulf and bait one of these RIBs into attacking us. We’ll overpower the men and do a little interrogation to figure out what’s going on.”

  Everyone began voicing their objections at once. It took Ryan a minute to quiet the room.

  Greg crossed his arms. “I don’t like it.”

  Meeting his stare, Ryan asked, “How else are we going to infiltrate these guys?”

  Jennifer said, “I don’t like this plan either, Mango. You already lost a leg and we agreed you wouldn’t do anything like this again.”

  “I know.” He looked pleadingly at his wife. “This is a job and you wanted me to find something to do.”

  She crossed her arms and locked eyes with her husband. “Fine.”

  Everyone in the room knew it was not fine.

  “You have a sailboat?” Emily asked.

  Ryan nodded. “I have a thirty-six-foot Sabre.”

  Greg gave his partner the stink eye. “Your boat’s still in Wilmington, correct?”

  “Yes,” Ryan replied. “We’ll have Chuck fly us there.”

  “It’ll take two months for you to get into position,” Greg said.

  “No, it won’t,” Ryan countered. “It shouldn’t take us more than three weeks, tops. We’ll run offshore down the East Coast and then cut across Florida on the Okeechobee Waterway to Fort Myers. From there we can make the crossing to Cancún.”

  “Great, it’s settled then,” Greg said, throwing his hands up in the air.

  Shelly gave Greg a look to tell him to keep out of it and gave Ryan a little shrug to say, I don’t know what his problem is. Ryan knew exactly what Greg’s problem was. He wanted to be in on the action. He didn’t want to be trapped in an office, staring at the walls while someone else was out prowling for trouble. Greg wanted to be out fighting and diving and running the show.

  “Has Landis approved this little scheme?” Greg asked.

  Ryan said, “Not in detail, but he gave me the green light.”

  Mango asked, “How soon do we leave?”

  “That’s up to you,” Ryan answered. “The sooner the better. How soon can you be ready?”

  “I need to pack a bag and I can leave with you from here,” Mango said.

  “What about you, Jennifer?” Ryan asked. “Want to ride with us down to Florida?”

  “I’d like that.” She turned to Emily. “Are you going?”

  “This is the first I’ve heard of this plan,” Emily said. “I’ll need to ask my boss for more time off work.”

  “Ain’t this a party,” Greg said with defeat in his voice.

  Ryan put a hand on Greg’s shoulder. “Buck up, buddy, we need someone to watch our back, and there’s no one I’d rather have.” He squatted by the wheelchair. “I have a GPS tracker on my boat. If something goes awry, you can track the boat to the mothership and send in the cavalry.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Greg huffed.

  “I know you don’t, but this is the best I’ve got,” Ryan said. “Monday, I’m going up to Austin to meet with a Professor Rueben Morales. He’ll give me the scoop on Aztlán. After the meeting, we’ll fly to Wilmington and get the boat.”

  “If your theory is right about these guys building a Mexican army, you better hurry,” Greg said. He still didn’t like the idea of Ryan and Mango sailing into the sunset after pirates, but he’d come to terms with the idea. It was what needed done.

  Ryan said, “We’ll do our best.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Chuck Newland set the Beechcraft King Air down at the Austin-Bergstrom airport just after one p.m. Monday. He taxied it to a stop outside a private terminal. The four passengers walked into the terminal while Chuck saw to the plane’s needs. Ryan took an Uber northeast through the city. Both Emily and Mango had insisted on accompanying him to the meeting. Ryan told them Landis had arranged the meeting and Morales had agreed to see only him.

  When Ryan called Landis to have him check Mango’s background, he had also asked him to find someone he could talk to about Aztlán. He wanted a better understanding of what he might be dealing with. During their return to Texas City on the Hatteras, Ryan had used the internet to do more research about Aztlán and the various groups calling for the unification of ancestral lands, but he wanted a professional’s opinion. Landis had scheduled an appointment with Morales, a professor at the Center for Mexican-American Studies at the University of Texas. Morales held a PhD in anthropology and had recently published a paper entitled Historical Heritage and the Legend of Aztlán. Ryan smiled at the memory of Emily interrupting his research and their not-so-clandestine lovemaking in his bunk room.

  The professor lived in a ranch-style home near the university campus. Morales answered the door and ushered his guest inside. Ryan followed him through a recently remodeled open-concept living room and kitchen to a concrete patio surrounding a clear blue pool, edged with lush flowers. The man wore khaki slacks, brown loafers, and a light green dress shirt. He’d rolled the shirt sleeves to his elbows and left the top three buttons unfastened. He sported a trim goatee and long white hair pulled back in a ponytail. His brown eyes stared at his guest from behind wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Please, Mr. Weller, have a seat.” He gestured to a chair at the head of the table as he pulled out a chair for himself.

  Ryan sat down at the rectangular glass-topped patio table.

  “A drink?” Morales asked, leaning forward to pour lemonade from a sweating pitcher into two glasses.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Please, call me Rueben.”

  Ryan leaned forward to examine a medallion nestled in the curls of the professor’s white chest hair. “A Spanish real de a ocho?”

  Morales lifted the coin and chain over his head and laid it on the table. Ryan picked it up.

  “It is not a Spanish piece of eight, as you suggest, rather a silver Mexican eight-reales coin, minted after Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1
821. They manufactured this coin until 1918 when the peso was introduced.” He took the coin and chain from Ryan and settled it back around his neck. “When I spoke to your supervisor, he said you were interested in Aztlán.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You aren’t a student at the university. What piques your interest in Chicano heritage?”

  “I’m investigating the theft of sailboats in the Gulf of Mexico. Reports show the pirates wore a patch like this.” Ryan pulled a paper from his pocket and smoothed it on the table. It was a computer-generated copy of the Aztlán patch worn by the pirates as described by Philip Nagel and the Hulseys.

  Morales picked up the printout and studied it for a few moments, while sipping his cold lemonade.

  “What do you think?” Ryan asked.

  The older man snorted. “What people do in the name of Aztlán no longer surprises me.”

  “Tell me about Aztlán.”

  Morales leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs.

  “I read your paper,” Ryan said. “It was very enlightening.”

  Morales’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, then what do you need me for?”

  “I want you to fill in the gaps.”

  “All right.” Morales sipped his drink and set it on the table. Both glasses left wet rings of condensation on the glass top.

  A breeze, created by a large fan blowing across the pool, negated the spring heatwave. An umbrella provided shade along with the mature trees clustered around the patio.

  “Aztlán means ‘the land of the North, the land where we, the Aztecs, came from.’ Which is interesting because in the ancient language of Nahuatl, where all these legends come from, no such word exists. You see, Nahuatls stress their words on the second-to-last syllable. When the Spanish began using the word, Aztlán, they placed the accent mark over the second A, shifting the stress point of the word. This is typical of several words the Spanish took from the Nahuatl language.”

  “Does that negate the whole business?”

  The professor chuckled. “Hardly. It is only a mispronunciation. You see, the legend says the Aztecs came from ‘the place of the seven caves.’ One cave for each tribe of the Xochimilca, Tlahuica, Acolhua, Tlaxcalteca, Tepaneca, Chaica, and Mexica peoples. These tribes left Aztlán for various reasons. According to codices left by the Aztecs and oral histories written by Spanish priests, the Mexicas were the last to leave their homeland between 1100 and 1300 AD because of a heavy drought. Many believe the ancients moved from as far north as Utah to the Valley of Mexico. They’ve been searching for their homeland ever since. Where it is, or was, no one knows anymore.

  “Aztlán, today, is a powerful symbol of spiritual and national unity. Because so many Chicanos and Mexicans believe their ancestors came from what is now the Southwestern United States, they would like to see it returned to Mexico.”

  “They believe the U.S. government stole their heritage after the Mexican-American War and then with the Gadsden Purchase,” Ryan added.

  “Correct,” the professor replied, running a hand over his pony tail.

  “What are your thoughts on the matter?”

  Morales squinted his eyes and steepled his hands while he studied his guest. “The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden Purchase will never be overturned. Those states will never willingly turn themselves over to any Mexican government. Civil war would erupt before that happens. But I’ll tell you a secret, one which should be obvious to anyone willing to look at history. The Mexican people don’t acknowledge the border. They believe the border is there to divide and conquer them. Since they don’t believe in the border, they’ll keep crossing as freely as they please. They’ll come to the United States and take jobs and money and benefits because they believe they’re entitled to them. This was their land before it became the property of the white men. Manifest destiny means slavery to them.”

  “What about the Brown Berets and this patch?”

  “There are several groups trying to change the geopolitical culture and take back Aztlán, or the Hispanic Homeland, or the Republica del Norte.” He waved his hands in a circle as if encompassing them in one group. “Brown Berets, La Raza Unida, Nation of Aztlán, are just a few who want to move the border back to where it was in 1847. They would settle for an open border if they could get it.”

  “That’s an easy one.” Ryan grinned. “Annex Mexico and make it the fifty-first state.”

  Morales laughed. “Not as easy as you might think.”

  “It would be difficult.”

  Morales uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. He spread his hands and looked Ryan in the eyes. “All this information is on the internet, and you read my paper. I’m sure you read many others like it, so, what exactly do you want from me, Mr. Weller?”

  “Do you have information on individuals who might want to start a war with the United States to achieve their objectives of a reunited Aztlán?”

  “I have my sources, Mr. Weller. None of them tell me of anyone who is amassing an army to sweep across the border and strike fear in the hearts of Americans.”

  “If you did, would you tell me?”

  Morales shook his head as if saddened by his question. “I am but a simple professor.”

  Ryan now leaned forward. “A professor with ties to the Brown Berets. You give speeches at their rallies and you’ve been arrested for demonstrating in the streets.”

  The man’s head jerked up, civility wiped from his eyes. “I am a professor who believes in the rights of our first citizens.”

  “Professor,” Ryan asked, “who built the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde? Who built the ruins at Casa Grande in Arizona?”

  “No one knows.”

  “Could it have been the Aztecs before moving to Mexico City?”

  “I don’t know,” Morales admitted.

  “Then how can you call Chicanos and Latinos the first citizens of the United States?”

  “Because they were here before the white man!” His eyes blazed with fire as he jerked forward. His face was less than a foot from Ryan’s.

  Ryan smiled. “Maybe the Chiricahua Apache should revolt against the invaders from the south. Perhaps the Navajo should begin raiding across the border to steal cattle and slaves like they used to. They were here before the white man. If the Mexicans can come freely into this country, then maybe their old enemies should be able to invade theirs.”

  Morales hissed, “You understand nothing of history, Mr. Weller.”

  “You’re right, I’m just a simple sailor who has fought and bled for my country. What little I know about history could fill a thimble, but I do know this.” Ryan stabbed a finger at the ground. “I will fight to protect my country from those who seek to do it harm, whether that’s Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or a modern-day Mexican incursion. I’m looking for anyone related to this patch who might be running guns and/or drugs into the United States.” He paused to gauge Morales’s reaction, then plowed on. “As an American citizen and a staunch anti-Second Amendment advocate, you should be willing to fight anyone bringing illegal weapons into the country.”

  The professor’s gaze locked with Ryan’s before shifting away. He refilled his glass of lemonade and leaned back in his chair. “There are rumors of a man named Juan Herrera trying to unite the independent movements.” He spread his hands for effect. “I have no idea who he is, or where he’s based.”

  “Could he be behind these sailboat thefts?”

  “I don’t know. All I have is a name. We hear rumors about him at some of the rallies, but that’s all.”

  “Thank you for your time, Professor.”

  Ryan stood, and Morales rose with him before leading Ryan through the house. At the door, they shook hands.

  “No hard feelings, Professor, I’m just trying to do my job.”

  Morales’ lips lifted in a thin smile, but he didn’t say a word.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Morales watched Ryan Weller step into a midsize sedan. He knew someone would even
tually connect the sailboat thefts to the Aztlán movement. He hadn’t expected the investigator to drive right up to his front door and tell him of his suspicions.

  The professor ran a hand over his head and his fingers wrapped around his ponytail, stroking the thick ring of hair as the car drove away. He closed the door and stepped into a home office. He opened a desk drawer, removed a cell phone, and dialed the only number stored in its memory.

  “Hola, amigo.” The voice of Arturo Guerrero came over the line.

  “Tenemous uno vecino entrometido.” We have a nosy neighbor.

  “What does he know?”

  “He suspects the sailboat thefts are connected to the Aztlán movement because of the patch your gunrunners like to wear. I warned you not to let them wear it.”

  “Relax, Rueben.” Guerrero’s voice was always smooth and calm. It took a lot to rile the man. “What does he really know?”

  Morales took a deep breath to steady his nerves. “He knows men wearing Mexican Navy uniforms have been stealing sailboats and he believes they’re bringing guns into the United States. He has a copy of the patch.”

  Morales heard Guerrero let out a long sigh. “Rueben, he’s fishing for answers. How did he get your name?”

  “Through my work at the university.”

  “He has no way of knowing your part of the movement. If it would make you comfortable, you may have several men follow him.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “If he knows more than he should, eliminate him.”

  “Sí, Arturo.”

  The line went dead, and Morales put the phone back in the desk drawer. He picked up a second cell phone and called a number from its memory.

  “Fernando, I have a job for two of your men. I want a man followed and, if need be, eliminated.”

  “Sí, Professor.”