by Glenn Trust
He plunged the blade deep into the lower side of Alejandro Garza’s abdomen until the point pierced through his back. The man’s eyes opened wide in surprise. For a moment, his grip tightened on Sole’s throat. Sole withdrew the blade and stabbed again, and again, thrusting the blade into the body of the man until the hands around his throat loosened.
He rolled out, pushing himself to his knees, blood dripping from his arm and the knife in his hand. Garza toppled over, and Sole gazed down at the man who had murdered his family.
There was no begging for mercy, no pleading look in the killer’s eyes. Both knew that begging was pointless. Eyes wide open, he waited for the justice the North American held in his hand.
Sole obliged him. He passed the blade over Garza’s throat, severing flesh, arteries, and cartilage in one motion. Alejandro Garza was dead.
Sole rose to examine the scene. The four, armed cartel men lay dead, looks of surprise and confusion still on their faces. He lifted an AK-47 from the ground beside one of the bodies. The round-faced man who had grinned and identified himself as Bebé Elizondo still lived, clutching at his spilling guts and moaning in the dirt near one of the vehicles.
“I can make you a rich man,” Elizondo gasped at the man standing over him. “Richer than you can imagine. You can replace the man you killed. I can use someone like you. I can …”
Elizondo’s negotiation ended. Sole fired a single round through his head, then turned his attention to the cliffs where the sniper firing had subsided. He scanned the rock walls, searching for the crevice where Monty had hidden, there was no movement.
Lower down, he could make out two forms clambering over the boulders until they came out to stand in the wash two hundred yards away. Sole checked the AK’s magazine. Only three rounds had been fired from it, including the one that ended Bebé Elizondo’s life. He readied himself to end the fight.
The two men exchanged words that Sole could not hear, then turned and began trotting along the cliffs at the edge of the wash away from the scene of the carnage. Sole understood.
They might be killers, but they were paid killers. They did not risk themselves without the promise of compensation. With their source of income lying dead in the dust, they took the reasonable business approach to the situation and called it a day.
Another cartel might be willing to pay for their skills, but that wasn’t Sole’s problem. He watched until they dwindled out of sight, lost against the background of the cliffs.
Then he sank to his knees in exhaustion. It was over.
Life
“Where is John?” Isabella sat on the Dupart’s sofa sandwiched protectively between Jacinta and Maggie Dupart.
“He said to say you won’t see him again … that he is sorry for all the trouble he brought to you.” Sam Goodwin sat in a chair facing her, their knees touching, her hands clenched in his.
“Did they kill him? Did he survive?” Isabella’s red-rimmed eyes were damp with tears.
“Maybe. We’re not sure,” Sam said softly. “He had a plan … he and Monty.”
“Who is Monty?”
“Someone from his past. John didn’t go into details about him, just that he had some skills that they needed to help get you away.” Sam shrugged. “There’s a chance that they survived, but we aren’t sure. Our job was to get you out. He said no matter what, drive and keep driving until we were over the border and back here.”
“But how will we know?” Isabella looked up.
“We won’t,” Sandy said and knelt in front of his mother. “John wanted it that way. He said to move on. He wanted you and Sam to build a life together.”
“Sounds like John,” Billy Siever said from a chair in the corner of the room. “Always taking the fall for things.”
“He said it was his fault that all of this happened to you.” Sandy nodded. “His way of making up for things, I guess.”
“He didn’t create the cartel … sell drugs … murder people for money,” Billy said. “They did all of that. If we are victims, he is too.”
“Anyway, he said we wouldn’t see him again, whatever happened.” Sandy shrugged. “I believe him.”
“So what’s next?” Edgar Dupart stood in the kitchen doorway, arms folded, looking over the somber gathering of survivors.
“We go home, I suppose.” Billy had been on the phone almost non-stop with his panic-stricken wife from the moment he found a phone to use. “Can’t see that there is anything else to do.”
“And John?” Isabella looked up. “We just leave him?”
“It does seem wrong,” Sam agreed. “Just go on about our lives like nothing happened while John faces God knows what. I’m no hero, but it seems wrong to just turn away.”
“It was what John wanted … why he did what he did to get us free. I don’t have any answers, and it's not the first time John has saved my ass, but I believe in my heart of hearts he would want us to move on.” Billy shrugged. “I’m going home to Vera.”
Luis Acero watched and listened from a dark corner of the room. The only thing he had in common with these people was the time spent imprisoned with them. They came from a different world, from different lives where people didn’t sell drugs on street corners or make side money by snitching to police detectives. They were John Sole’s people, and he was not one of them.
“And you?” Edgar Dupart watched Luis eying the others uncertainly, not sure of his place among them. “You will go home as well?”
“Don’t have no home,” Luis whispered through lips still swollen from the beating Garza and Roman Madera had administered.
“Your friend was our friend. He saved Ben from the gangs. You are welcome to stay here for as long as you like.” Edgar’s eyes narrowed. “But no selling drugs while you’re here. You can help out in the store, look after things until you’re ready to move on.”
It was like peeking through a window into another world, the world John Sole had inhabited before Garza took his family from him. It opened his eyes to another facet of the detective who had saved his life twice now. These were good people; the type of people Sole once went home to at the end of the day, and Luis knew he was not one of them.
“No.” He shook his head. “I better go too.”
“Where?” Billy asked. “There’s nothing for you back east.”
“Then not east.” Luis shrugged. “Somewhere else. It doesn’t matter where. I’ll find someplace.”
They spent two more days with the Duparts, recovering from their ordeal and waiting things out to make sure the cartel was not looking for them. Carlos stopped by once to assure tell them that everything was quiet. The Los Salvajes cartel was eerily silent, and the gangs who worked with them were looking for partners. He told them it was a good sign, that Sole had accomplished what he set out to do.
The next day they left. Sam drove Isabella and Sandy back to Georgia. Billy took a flight to Atlanta, where Vera waited at the airport. Luis Acero took a bus to an unknown location.
Each was headed to a life given back to them by John Sole. None had any idea where John was or if he even lived.
***
Except for her mother’s sobs, the hacienda overlooking the Pacific was quiet. Juana Elizondo had received the news of her father’s death from one of Alejandro Garza’s men as she stood on the porch beside her mother. Her younger sister and mother had been sobbing and wailing non-stop since then.
Juana wept her tears with the brief efficiency her father always commended her for and then went to work. There was an empire to run.
She sat at her father’s desk in his study. A folder lay open before her. It contained the information compiled by Alejandro Garza on the American, John Sole. She turned to a man standing unobtrusively in a dark corner of the room.
“Come here, Reynaldo.”
“Yes, señorita.”
He was one of the men assigned by Alejandro Garza to ensure the security of the Elizondo family. Juana had known him since she was ten and he a nineteen
-year old recruit from the Cuban Commando Tropas Especiales.
At first Reynaldo had merely been a guard, walking the perimeter of the estate or watching the banks of video surveillance monitors at night while the family slept. As the years passed and his face became more familiar, he rose to head the house security team, reporting directly to Garza himself.
Now, rocked by the deaths of Garza and Bebé Elizondo, he stayed near the family, unsure what to do next, but reluctant to leave the post that had taken him out of the squalor of a Centro Habana barrio. He was also reluctant to leave Juana.
Their nine year age difference seemed to shrink as she matured into a young woman. Reynaldo Gutierrez began to look for assignments from Garza that would bring him into contact with Juana. A trip to Mexico City to shop. A concert in Morelia. A visit with friends to Paris. Their interactions were always proper, platonic, and well-chaperoned by her mother, Sofia.
Juana knew that he was smitten with her, even if others did not, and even if he could not have put his feelings into words. While she did not overtly encourage his feelings, she did not discourage them either. In her heart, she knew that Reynaldo and his hidden affection for her might be helpful at some point. Just as Bebé hid his cold, calculating ways beneath a soft, round face, Juana concealed hers beneath her pretty exterior.
“I will require your assistance, Reynaldo,” she said, smiling. “Will you help me.”
“Sí, señorita. Always.”
Reynaldo stood before her, his eyes intent, anticipating her next words the way a faithful dog waits for the command to fetch. Yes, he would help her. He would die for her if she would only say the word.
“Good. Thank you for that. I knew you would be here when I needed you most, and I will need you a great deal in the next few months.”
“I will always be here, señorita.”
“Jefa. From now on you may address me as jefa. I will be taking my father’s place.”
“Sí, jefa.” Reynaldo said the words solemnly and nodded.
“Now leave me. I must think. Close the door, but stay close. I may need you.”
“Sí, jefa.”
Reynaldo bowed his head, turned, and nearly floated to the door. When it closed behind him, Juana lifted a wrinkled newspaper clipping and studied the anguished face in the picture.
“I know your pain, John Sole.” she whispered, staring at the image. “There will be more. I promise you that.”
She replaced the clipping in the folder and closed it. There would be time for that later. There was work to do now.
Los Salvajes must survive. Her father would have wanted it that way.
It was impossible to bring the dead back, but one could learn from their mistakes. Her father and Alejandro Garza were excellent teachers. She would not repeat their mistakes.
***
It took an hour to climb to the top of the cliff walls and then descend to Monty’s sniper nest in the rock crevice. Sole knew what he would find. That didn’t make it any easier. The father he had known only for two short weeks lay still and silent in the bloodstained rocks.
Sole sat with him for a long while, leaning against the rock wall, gazing out through the opening to the blue desert sky and wash below. Side by side, shoulders touching, they sat together, father and son, one alive and feeling the pain of loss once more, the other finally beyond feeling and pain.
The sun was setting as he pulled himself from the crevice cave. Rose-colored shafts of light sprang into the darkening sky from behind the opposite ridge. Sole turned and began pulling rocks from the cliff to pile in front of the opening. It was the only tomb he could provide his father. He wished there was a way to bury him in Cassit Pass beside his mother. Clara would have liked that—Monty too, he thought.
But it was impossible. They would rest apart from each other in death as they had spent much of their lives. Both would have understood.
The first stars were beginning to show in the evening sky as he began the trek back toward the border. He had twenty miles to cover before daybreak. From there, he would cross back into the States, make his way to Albuquerque, pick up his truck, and once again say goodbye to the Duparts.
And after that, what? He had no idea. For now, it was enough to walk across the desert under the stars and remember those who gave him life.
Clara brought him into the world. Monty died protecting the life Clara had given him. In time, John Sole might be able to work out exactly what he would do with that life.
End of Book 3
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From the Author
This is the blah, blah, blah section. You know the author’s “glory page” where he gets to tell you grandiose things about himself and the deeper meaning of his work. Whatever.
It’s also where you get to see the confident poised picture of the author, maybe smoking a pipe, or leaning back with an “I told you so,” disaffected, or slightly superior look on his face. I don’t have any of those pictures so I thought you might like to see a picture of Gunner the Dog. He’s better looking than me anyway.
Here he is doing one of his favorite things on one of our camping trips. If you really want to know more about me (God knows why) keep reading.
I write books. Seriously, that's what I get to do every day. It's great, and I have you to thank for it.
I have been fortunate to author some that have achieved bestseller status, including The Hunters Series of mystery suspense thrillers. It took me a lot of years to get to that point, but I wouldn't trade any of them for a minute. I love writing books for you and the journey that brought me here.
I am a native of the south, Georgia specifically. I spent much of my life there, but I have lived in many other places as well. We moved a lot when I was young. Eventually, we ended up back in Georgia in my teens where I finished school and went to work.
I wanted to write from an early age. A really long time ago, when I was still a young police officer in Georgia, I was writing short stories in my spare time and sending them off to magazines. One day I received one back in the mail.
Life Happened
Attached to it was a nice handwritten letter from an editor (this was long before the days of email and te
xts). The story manuscript was folded and smudged, and there were coffee cup rings on the edges of a couple of pages, which told me they had actually read it, maybe discussed it around an editorial table, or just used it to sop up the coffee.
In her letter, the editor said a lot of things that I don't remember, but it was not the usual form letter that I was accustomed to receiving. It was original and personal.
She said they liked my story, had strongly considered it for publication, but that it wasn't quite believable. Disappointed as I was, I was struck by her last words to me... "Don't stop writing. You're good at this. We almost bought this one."
I remember staring at that a long time. Then I folded it up and tucked it in a file and ... stopped writing.
I wish I could tell you a different story, but I can't. I stopped writing for many years.
There were lots of reasons. Yes, I was disappointed, but the letter that should have encouraged me not to give up was forgotten. Life happened. Dreams of writing were pushed aside by other things... important things.
Mostly I needed money for my young family. In the 1970s, police officers in Georgia were not paid a lot even by the standards of the day. I worked part-time jobs whenever I wasn't working at the police department. Many weeks I had no days off at all.
I'm not unhappy that I did my best to take care of my family. It was the right thing to do and working for them was the joy of my life. Children grew up; then grandchildren came along. More life happened.
Then... The Internet Appeared
Then out of the blue, this thing called the internet appeared, and guess what. I was at a point in life when I didn't need to work part-time jobs every spare minute of the day. I could write again.
It's different these days. I can publish a book whether I convince an agent or editor to read it or not. I am an independent writer/publisher, an “Indie.”