by Evan Graver
He turned to DiMarco as he started the boat’s twin diesels. “Ryan shot Guerrero.”
Surprise registered on the older man’s face. “Bet that stirred up the hornet’s nest.”
“I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes,” Greg said. But he wished he was the one who had put the bullet in Guerrero’s head and was now on the run for his life. He wished with all his heart for the use of two good legs to carry him back into battle. He missed the adrenaline, the intensity, and the laser-like focus of disarming a bomb in the middle of a firefight. “God, please,” he’d begged so many times he’d lost count. There was no answer and there never would be. That didn’t stop him from pleading his case.
DiMarco leaned forward to look at the map application. “Where are we going?”
Greg pointed. “Can you put Barra del Tordo in the chart plotter?”
DiMarco entered the coordinates as Greg throttled the engines up and headed north.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Mex 80 wound through densely populated urban areas. Strip malls, businesses, and houses pushed in on the street. Small stands of trees and brush grew everywhere someone neglected to prune them. Vines crawled along every fence, bringing shades of green to the already vibrantly colored buildings. Ryan thought it looked cool, but despite the beauty of the city, he and Mango were antsy, losing time in stop-and-go traffic. Beneath their face masks and ball caps, they were sweaty. Ryan’s arms ached from the lack of power steering. He guessed the truck was from the eighties when stereos and air conditioning were optional. Neither of which the truck had. Every time Ryan shifted gears, his elbow hit the packs stacked on the seat between him and Mango.
Between the suburban towns of Miramar and Altamira, they’d turned onto Altamira Road by the Petrotemex chemical plant. All around them, police vehicles and armed cartel trucks patrolled the roads.
Altamira Road changed names a few times before it began paralleling the Gulf Coast. Getting off the main road made them less visible and it would be a nicer drive. Ryan enjoyed seeing something new when he drove. Since he’d never driven through Mexico, everything was new.
Leaving the suburbs behind, they headed through mesquite-covered hills, passed lagoons, and crossed rivers. Suburbs gave way to smaller houses, and then they became the rundown shacks of poor farmers and peasants. They pulled off their disguises and tucked them away.
In two hours of driving, the terrain changed from marshy to long, flat plains. A few farms dotted the land, but mostly the countryside was desolate. It was a beautiful drive. Mango navigated with the map application. Lots of little unpaved two-track trails snaked off the main road. Before they reached Barra del Tordo, Ryan turned off onto a small paved road leading east to the Gulf.
“Where are we going?” Mango asked.
Ryan downshifted and slowed for a speed bump on the roughly paved road. “We can’t be this close to the ocean and not take a look. Besides, we can find us a taco stand with a view.”
Mango brightened. “I’m all for that, bro. I need to eat something.” He patted his belly.
The road ended at a small public beach with picnic table shelters and palm trees swaying in the breeze. A small restaurant in a weathered shack had Tecate beer and Coca-Cola signs plastered on it. Ryan parked the truck. At the restaurant, they ordered tacos and cold beers then ate at a picnic table while watching the surf roll in.
Mango was in the middle of biting into his taco when he stopped and said, “Mexican food in Mexico is just tacos.”
They both laughed.
Ryan chewed his taco and tried to calculate the time it would take for Greg to arrive. The drive from Tampico had taken two hours, including the running gunfight and stealing a truck. He mused out loud, “If Greg runs the boat hard, he can make almost forty-five miles per hour.”
“And burn a serious amount of fuel,” Mango interrupted.
“So, he’ll run a little slower, knowing we won’t be able to get fuel until we get to Texas, which isn’t too far away.” He took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and continued. “Best scenario, he runs at thirty-five knots and gets here in just over two hours. He might be looking for a dock up on the Carrizal River right now.”
“We might have missed him passing by. We should call him.”
Ryan pulled the sat phone from his pack, dialed the number for Greg and listened to it ring. He swiveled his head and body to watch the few people walking around the small beach and parking lot. Sun shone on colorful umbrellas, and small children laughed at a picnic table as their harried parents tried to corral them for lunch.
“Hey, buddy,” Greg said. “We’re almost to El Tordo.”
“We’re a little south of the village on a public beach. How close to shore are you running?”
“Close enough for you to see us.”
“We’re watching for you.”
“What are you doing at the beach?”
“Eating Mexican,” Ryan replied and grinned at Mango, who shook his head in consternation.
Ten minutes later, Ryan and Mango helped a young fisherman push his wooden panga into the surf. The kid motored them past the breakwater to a blue-and-white sportfisher with a gleaming aluminum tower. They were going home.
Epilogue
Floyd Landis watched as the breaching team formed up outside a small ranch home in a wealthy suburb of Austin, Texas. The team leader counted down over his radio and the breachers bashed in the front door with a heavy steel ram. The Homeland Security Special Response Team didn’t fire a shot as they piled through the door and cleared the house.
Landis listened as the SRT agents shouted for several people to surrender. He waited until an agent approached and told him the house was clear. Then he lumbered inside and found Professor Rueben Morales lying on his stomach, hands cuffed behind his back and his feet shackled by zip cuffs. When Landis squatted beside him, Morales screamed and thrashed, demanding to be released.
“Scream all you want,” Landis said. “No one cares.”
Morales stared up with furrowed brows. “I am an American citizen. You can’t raid my home without a warrant and just cause.”
With his fingertip, Landis touched the medallion hanging from Morales’s neck. “This is a just cause.”
Ryan’s email with the map of targets and the list of Aztlán cartel and ISIS cell addresses had created a firestorm at Homeland. But typical of government, nothing moved quickly. By the time Ryan and Mango had escaped Tampico and were eating tacos on the beach, word of Arturo Guerrero’s death had reached the U.S. cells. In retaliation, several suicide bombers detonated their vests inside Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, a car bomb exploded in San Antonio, and the Brown Shirts mustered for war.
DHS had finally coordinated with various local police and sheriff’s departments to round up the cell members when the cartel attacked the border patrol station in Brownsville, Texas. The Texas State Guard, Highway Patrol, and local units rallied to suppress the invaders.
Landis had demanded the Austin SRT team help him arrest Morales and search his home. Morales had several prepaid cell phones he’d used to coordinate the cartel’s attacks on U.S. soil. They also found a large cache of documents linking Morales, Guerrero, and several Mexican-American politicians to Guerrerro’s plot to retake the Desert Southwest.
While standing in Morales’s study, Landis’s phone rang. He answered it with his typical gruff fashion.
“Good to talk to you,” Ryan said.
“Word on the street is that two white devils assassinated cartel kingpin Arturo Guerrero. Do you know anything about that?”
“Not a thing,” Ryan lied.
The sun-dappled waters of the Gulf of Mexico sparkled like winking diamonds. An occasional wave broached in a whitecap, and a gull wheeled and screamed in the sky. Ryan Weller pulled the salt air deep into his lungs and stared up at the peak of the mast seventy feet above him. The stretch of white sail was almost blinding in the sun.
“This is the life, bro,” Mango called to him.
“Yes, it is,” Ryan replied, looking back at him. “Mighty nice boat you bought for yourself.”
“We like it,” Jennifer said.
They were well offshore, sailing from New Orleans to Texas City. The young couple had purchased an Amazon 44 sailing vessel to replace the boat stolen by Guerrero’s men. They had used their share of the five million dollars recovered from La Carranza Garza that Mango had tossed over to the Hatteras in a big, green duffle bag.
They’d divided the money evenly between Ryan, Jerry DiMarco, Mango, and several charities after they took out the expenses of running the big sportfisher, Dark Water, and Ryan’s lost sailboat. They tried to give some to the active-duty SEALs, but they wouldn’t accept it, so the DWR men had split their portion between the EOD Warrior Foundation, Navy SEAL Foundation, and Coast Guard Tactical Law Enforcement Foundation to give aid to families of deployed, fallen, or injured EOD techs, SEALs, and Coast Guard Special Forces.
When Ryan had told Larry they’d donated the money, Larry had said, “I couldn’t think of a finer thing to do.”
Ryan made his way back to the cockpit where Jennifer and Emily Hunt lay stretched out on the padded benches. He stopped to admire his voluptuous, blonde girlfriend. She wore a bright-red bikini top with white shorts over her bikini bottoms. She’d fanned her blonde hair out across the white vinyl. Ryan smiled, happy she’d snuck away from work to hang out with him.
Mango set the autopilot and picked up an acoustic guitar.
“I didn’t know you could play,” Ryan said.
Mango shrugged. “I never told you.”
“All that time we spent together offshore, and you never mentioned it?” Ryan said.
Mango shrugged again. “It wasn’t important.”
“Play us something boaty,” Emily said, sitting up so Ryan could sit beside her. He grabbed two beers from the cooler and handed her one.
Mango sat on the bench beside Jennifer and tuned the flat top. Then he strummed out a few cords before singing a Kenny Chesney cover about pirate flags and island girls.
As the words drifted away on the wind, Ryan’s thoughts turned to a different pirate. One selling guns to the highest bidder and willing to supply a Mexican drug cartel who’d tried to start a war with America. Ryan took a swig of beer. International arms dealer Jim Kilroy might be protected by the U.S. government, but he wasn’t immune to one man on a mission. Ryan Weller was that man.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my wife, Becky, and son, Patrick, for putting up with the many hours I spent writing and editing this book. Thanks to my mother and father, Bruce and Susan, for the encouragement and motivation, my mother-in-law, Sarah Ansley, for graciously allowing me to spend hours writing in her coffee shop, Ths. Jitterz Coffee Company, in Kenton, Ohio. Thanks to the Davie Writers’ Group in Davie, Florida, for listening to the story and offering much needed direction and advice.
I am grateful to all the men and women who are serving, have served, or will serve in the U.S. Armed Forces and the Coast Guard. I made many lifelong friends in the Navy and some of them appeared throughout this book in various forms. I served with the mighty Vanguard, HM-14, and love those big, smoky birds. During my time with the squadron, I was a line shack maintainer and then crossed over to work on the mine countermeasures gear. It was a job I truly loved.
Dark Ship
© 2018, 2019 Evan Graver
www.evangraver.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any forms or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic, or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Cover: Wicked Good Book Covers
Editing: Larks and Katydids
Proofreading: Gerald Shaw
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, business, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by Third Reef Publishing, LLC
Hollywood, Florida
www.thirdreefpublishing.com
Dedicated to:
Antonio “Tony” Vesuvius Forte
You challenged and motivated us.
Even at your lowest, you inspired us.
Your twelve years on this earth were not enough.
We love you and miss you.
Chapter One
José Luis Orozco considered cocaine, tequila, subordinates to do his bidding, and the ever-present rotation of beautiful women to be the luxuries of command. One such creature was under his desk right now. He kept pushing her hands away from his crotch. While he wanted nothing more than to relax into his chair and feel the warmth of her mouth around him, he had to finish this meeting first.
He needed to take retribution for their jefe muerto—dead boss—Arturo Guerrero. Orozco wanted the killers dead. Better yet, he wanted them brought back to Tampico, so he could torture them. His gaze drifted to the massive Russian leaning against his office wall, a bounty hunter he’d hired to track down the asesinos Yanqui—Yankee assassins—Ryan Weller and Mango Hulsey.
Suddenly, Orozco’s hand shot out to clamp onto the edge of the desk and his eyes closed.
“Are you all right, Patrón?” Eduardo Sanchez asked, even though he could see the woman’s bare feet sticking out from under the desk and knew exactly what she was doing. His boss had a habit of mixing business with pleasure.
“Sí, sí,” Orozco groaned, trying not the let the excitement show on his deep brown face. The creases around his mouth gave the appearance of a perpetual frown, accented by the shape of his long goatee. He kept his mustache, beard, and hair trimmed close to the skin.
His men did not dare utter another word. Beside Orozco’s right hand was a massive stainless-steel Smith and Wesson Model 500 revolver with rubber grips and a laser sight. He’d shot more than one man in a fit of anger, and no one sitting around the desk wanted his head turned into a canoe.
Orozco pushed the woman’s hands away. She laid her head in his lap, and he stroked her silky, black hair. Again, his stare fixed on Grigory Dmitri Morozov, who was examining a statue of Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte. Our Lady of Holy Death, colloquially known as Santa Muerte. The idol, a cross between the Virgin Mary and the Grim Reaper, wore a hooded cloak and carried a scythe. Her face was a grinning skull. Orozco considered Santa Muerte to be his patron saint. He often prayed to her for guidance.
Morozov smiled, laying his lips back and baring his teeth in the snarl of a feral hound. Even the man’s canines stuck out like the fangs of a ferocious hunter. Most did not know his real name and referred to him by his nickname, Volk—the Wolf, Orozco did the same. He was one of the few men Orozco feared.
Volk was a monster. At six feet, six inches, he weighed nearly three hundred pounds. Hardened muscle packed his frame. The only fat was around his midsection. His arm and chest muscles stretched the fabric of his dress shirt. He wore his blonde hair swept back off his forehead. The blue-eyed Russian reminded Orozco of a beefier Dolph Lundgren, when Lundgren fought Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV.
“Give me an update,” Orozco said.
“Patrón,” Sanchez pleaded, “let me send some sicarios after them. We can take care of this with our own assassins. We do not need this puta stinking up our business.”
Orozco smiled in agreement. The bounty hunter was a whore, but Orozco’s voice held a warning. “Do not bring this up again, Eduardo. Our sicarios are good for killing in Mexico but not in the United States. We have enough heat on us already because of Guerrero. Volk will keep us from being associated with their disappearance.”
“Si, jefe, but—”
The cartel leader cut him off by wrapping his fingers around the grip of the fifty-caliber revolver. He wasn’t in the mood for insubordination. He wanted this meeting to be over. The damned woman’s hands were ins
istent. Ignoring them as best he could, he said to Volk, “Tell me how you plan to do it.”
Volk pushed a lock of his blond hair behind his ear. “They work for a company called Dark Water Research.”
“We know this, Lobo,” Orozco snapped. He used the Spanish version of the Russian’s nickname. “Guerrero knew this and didn’t kill them. Now we need revenge, and I’m paying you for results.”
The Russian nodded, unaffected by the temperamental Mexican. “Mango Hulsey is living on a sailboat at the Dark Water Research facility.”
“Again, this much we know,” Orozco shouted angrily. He brushed away the woman’s hand.
Volk ran a finger over the statue’s scythe, letting the tip linger on the scythe’s point. He picked up the statue to examine it more closely.
“Put that down!” Orozco roared, snatching up his revolver and aiming it at Volk’s head. The laser sight painted a dancing red dot on the Russian’s forehead.
“Neechevo srashnava,” Volk said in Russian. No harm. He set the statue down, aligned as before, and looked at the shorter man. “Ryan Weller is traveling with a Homeland Security agent in Atlanta, Georgia. I sent a team after him. They will take him when they have the chance. Then they will go after Hulsey.”
“Excelente.” Orozco rubbed his hands together. “I want to drag their bodies through the streets as an example to anyone who wishes to mess with the Aztlán cartel.” He couldn’t keep the girl’s hands off him, and he couldn’t stand it any longer. “All of you leave. Now!”
When the room was empty, Orozco leaned his head back and thought about his rise to power while the woman pleasured him. After the asesinos Yanqui had killed Arturo Guerrero and escaped, war had enveloped the city. Street fights, car bombs, long-range assassinations, and drive-by shootings had punctuated the power struggle for leadership of the Aztlán cartel and ownership of Tampico, Mexico.