Carlos Calderone was in his glory. Standing under a huge skylight at one end of the hall, he paused with his hands on the podium. It was a calculated move, the kind of histrionics he admired from American movies. He could feel the heat from the sun as it poured through the crystal-clear glass and splashed over the podium and the stark white wall behind him.
He looked up at the sun, its outline blurred by the glass, and watched his own blood through closed lids. He could see the delicate network of veins and the throb of his pulse as the lids reacted to every beat of his racing heart.
He looked out over the audience members, relishing their presence precisely because they were there whether they wished to be or not. What made this gathering so sweet was the fact that these men, among them, had probably killed several hundred people and yet they were frightened of him and unwilling to spurn his invitation. He raised his hands to quiet the murmuring and tapped the microphone to make certain it was working. The echo of his tapping finger bounced throughout the hall.
"My friends, welcome to my home." He paused for effect, then waved his hand at the far wall where a dozen men in crisp black uniforms wheeled in a table stacked with glasses and a dozen ice-filled salvers. Quickly with the economy and precision of a well-coached drill team, the group split into pairs and moved to the end of each table.
Calderone gave another signal, and the teams went to work, one man swiftly and quietly placing a champagne glass in front of each guest, while the other filled the glass nearly to the brim.
"Don't worry about the champagne, gentlemen. I assure you the vintage is ideal. And the price is of no concern. Nothing is too good to celebrate the commencement of a grand adventure like ours."
The men murmured, raspy whispers cutting through the general undertone. When each guest had been served, a waiter mounted the stairs in front of the podium and presented a glass to Calderone himself.
"We will toast now before I explain to you what it is we are toasting. I am sure you will all indulge me in my taste for the mysterious. And I believe you know enough about me to believe that I would not have called you all here if it were not important."
Calderone hoisted the glass high over his head, where the sun flashed like fire, its light refracted by the shimmering wine, and spilled rainbows onto the white wall. Then, when every eye was on the elevated glass, he said, "To our future," and took a long sip.
The audience emulated him, hoisting their own glasses and echoing the sentiment.
"Very well," the flesh merchant continued, "let me explain to you what this is all about. As you know, we share a common business. As you also know, a great deal of effort and not a little money goes into the competition among us. For quite some time, as I am sure you are all aware, I have been expanding my business on the theory that what works for Pemex and General Motors would also work for me."
He paused again and took another sip of champagne. Watching their faces, he could see they were far from convinced. Many in attendance envied him; others resented him. Calderone didn't kid himself. More than half of the men below would kill him if they got the chance. But he didn't hold it against them, could understand why and even agreed with their reasoning. He had expanded to their detriment, and no man loves one who takes food out of his mouth.
But that was personal, and this was business. What he hoped to do was to make them see the wisdom of his plan. That wouldn't be easy. Small minds didn't handle large questions very well, and the ease with which he had built his empire was proof that most of the men gathered before him had small minds.
"You have all seen this place. Like you, I started with nothing. And this," he said, waving his hand in a broad circle, "is all the proof you need that I was right."
He waited for the men to look around them. That they were impressed was obvious. That they were envious was also transparent, but the crucial question was whether they were intimidated by what they saw. Anticipating them, he continued, "Now, I know some of you are saying 'Who is Calderone? What does he have that I don't have? If he started with nothing, then I am no worse off than he was at the beginning. If he can do it, why can't I? And I don't blame you for asking such questions. They are the very questions I asked myself a few short years ago. But I not only can give you the questions, I can also give you the answers. You can't do what I have done for one very simple reason — I won't let you!"
An angry buzz filled the room. Before it could get out of hand, he leaned into the microphone and raised his voice to shout, "Would you permit it if you were in my place?" The edge to his voice and its increased volume hushed the crowd again.
Calderone smiled. "Of course you wouldn't. You know it and I know it. But that does not mean that I am a greedy man. Not overly greedy, anyway." He smiled at his own joke, and a few nervous titters joined in. "But I am reasonable, and I am fair. What I propose to you is that you all join me. I know you cherish your independence, just as I do. But if you are practical, you will see that I can offer you benefits more valuable than independence. I can bring to the table assets that none of you can match… organization, expertise and technology. To some of you, those are just words. You are proud men. I know that. But there is more to technology than a ten-year-old Chevy. And I don't mean just a good stereo system."
One of the men toward the rear of the room stood up. "Fuck you and your technology," he shouted angrily. A few approving murmurs echoed the sentiment, but others shouted him down.
Calderone held up a hand to quiet them. "Let him speak. He is only saying what a lot of you are thinking. If I can't convince him, I don't deserve your attention anyway. Raul, come on up here." He waved the angry man toward the podium.
Raul Ramirez looked around him uncertainly. Several men seated near him were leaning forward, urging him to accept the challenge. He took a tentative step forward, then staggered as a thrust from behind propelled him ahead faster than he was willing to go.
Calderone scrutinized Ramirez as he mounted the steps. The man was slovenly, his clothes rumpled and spotted with grease. A generous stomach protruded over a ragged belt from which the leather was cracked and peeling, and the tip of which was pitted with several makeshift holes made with a nail as Ramirez's girth had increased. A two-day growth of beard, long hair combed back behind the ears and shiny with oil, and the overly sweet fragrance of five-and-dime cologne completed the image. Ramirez was everything Calderone had come to hate. He resembled too much what the businessman had once been, and resembled too closely the men who had given him his start.
The Carlito who had started out in his early twenties had been buffed and polished until no one would recognize him now. No one, that is, but Don Carlos Calderone himself, who couldn't look in a mirror without seeing the young man he had been, buried, but not hidden, under the grand exterior.
Calderone swallowed his distaste and grasped Ramirez by the hand. He shook it firmly, conscious of the dirty cuff of Ramirez's cheap shirt. This man was the clay he hoped to mold, and he couldn't help but wonder whether he was equal to the task. He invited Ramirez to use the microphone, and waited while the man looked around the room.
Ramirez's eyes grew as big as balloons, yellowy whites swallowing dark irises. The perspective from the podium was vastly different, and Calderone was counting on intimidation to work in his favor. If Ramirez lost his nerve, he would play right into Calderone's hands. If he couldn't make an argument for his independence — and that of the others — then that independence was a thing of the past.
Ramirez bowed nervously and swallowed hard. Picked up by the sensitive microphone, the gulp echoed from every corner of the room. The crowd laughed, daring Ramirez to do it again. He looked apologetically at Calderone, then began to speak in a soft voice. "I mean no disrespect to Don Calderone, but there are many things he may have forgotten. Living in a place like this…" he gestured grandly while the crowd looked around"…living in a place like this, it is easy to forget."
"What is your point, Raul?" Calderone prodded him, tr
ying to keep him off balance. The one thing he couldn't afford was for this man to beat him at his own game. Losing face in front of the others would be disastrous.
"Point? I don't know. I guess what I mean is that it's easy for you to scheme grand schemes. You're not out there in the sand like we are. You don't have to worry about the federales or the Border Patrol. We do."
Grateful for the opening, Calderone leaned forward. "What you say is true, Raul. I don't have to worry about them. That is precisely my point. If you join me, you won't have to worry about them, either. None of you will. I can buy the kind of protection you only dream of. And the more of us who band together, the more protection we can buy. We can have our own police, and why not? The politicians have theirs, so why should we be any different?"
The crowd applauded, and Calderone stepped back graciously, letting Ramirez have the mike again.
"This organization you talk about. What good is it to us?"
"Do you know where the Border Patrol is at all times? How many times have you been arrested, your money and vehicle confiscated? Which of you has not done a year in jail?"
"That comes with the territory, Don Carlos, and you should know that. If I am not mistaken, you are no stranger to the inside of a jail."
"That's right, I'm not. But of all the men in this room, I am the only one who can say I will never see it again. Why? Because I have bought into the Border Patrol. And because I have the very best electronic equipment that money can buy. I know where the patrols are, I know where the motion detectors are, and I'll bet a dozen cows that some of you don't even know what they are."
Ramirez shrugged. "So you have fancy toys."
Calderone slammed his fist onto the podium. The hollow thunder was picked up and reinforced by the microphone. "Toys? You think I am talking about toys? I'll tell you what I am talking about. I am talking about computers. I am talking about satellite communications. I am talking about the ability to monitor every Border Patrol radio transmission, right here from this house. Do those things sound like toys to you?" He appealed to the audience, and it was clearly his point.
"And I'll tell you something else. I can tell you where every single railroad car in the Southwest is, where it's been and where it's going. I can even do better than that. I can make it go wherever I want it to go. Why waste gasoline when the railroad will move your freight for you? Can you arrange such a thing, Raul?"
"No, Don Carlos, I cannot." Ramirez seemed cowed. It was time for the coup de grace.
"And can you deal directly with the American growers? Can you make deals with them and have them pay you, as well as the chickens? Can you do that?"
"No, Don Carlos. I cannot do that." Ramirez looked slyly at Calderone, as if he had sensed a hole in his defenses. Smiling slightly he asked, "Can you?"
Calderone raised his chin slightly so that he was looking down at Ramirez across the bridge of his nose. He hesitated for several seconds. "Yes, I can do that."
The uproar in the hall told him all he needed to know. He looked at the applauding men. Now all he had to do was decide who was sincere and who was trying to applaud himself out of a noose.
It wouldn't be hard. And, besides, he could always err on the side of caution.
25
The prison cell was crowded. Nine men, counting Bolan, shared a space barely large enough for four. The variety of insect life would keep an entomologist busy for a year.
On being taken to the police station, he had tried to explain what had happened, but it had been like talking to a stone wall. It hadn't taken him long to realize he had been set up. The police had arrived so quickly, they had to have been tipped off. Apparently they had been the second wave. If the hit men had managed to take him out, that would have been fine and dandy. But they hadn't fared very well, and the B team had been on hand to get him out of the picture.
He had expected to be asked questions, perhaps none too gently, but the federales couldn't have cared less what he had to say. Not only didn't they question him, they didn't even book him. It was as if he were a piece of paper that nobody wanted to read. It was simpler to file it and forget it.
Sitting on his bunk, he had watched the other prisoners carefully, fully expecting to be attacked as soon as the guards had left the cell block. It seemed like hours since he had been unceremoniously dumped into the cell, and no one had said so much as a word to him.
Something about the situation kept tugging at him. After wrestling with a vague uneasiness for a quarter of an hour, it hit him like a blow from a pile driver. He was a nonperson. And a nonperson not only didn't exist, no one existed who had ever seen or spoken to him.
The full significance of that fact dawned immediately. To these men, he wasn't there, and, a minute after he left the cell, he would vanish from their memories and, just as surely, from the face of the earth. To remember him was to place oneself in danger. The motley assortment of disreputable and objectionable and socially unacceptable men who shared his cell, and who peopled the one adjacent and the two across from his, had gone collective amnesia one better — they had developed it before the fact.
More troubling than the certainty that he was right was the realization that this phenomenon wasn't a new one to these men. They had seen it all before, knew what was expected of them, how they should behave. How many times must it have happened for them to be that perfect in their parts?
With a solid clang, its echo lingering in the air like a death knell, a master switch was thrown, and the cell block was plunged into near darkness. Only a quintet of low-wattage red bulbs, one in each of the cells, and one high on the wall over the entrance to the cell block, remained lit. The bulbs were recessed in the ceiling, encased in thick Plexiglas, itself securely defended by a thick wire mesh. The reddish light oozed down the walls and onto the floor like a pool of anemic blood. The eight men huddled in the far corner moved uneasily, their eyes either closed or reduced to virtual slits.
The cell stank, and its walls began to shimmer as the bugs came out of their crevices. The shimmering chitin of the cockroaches gleamed, even in the dim light, as hundreds of the vermin descended the walls. Bolan brushed them away by the dozen, not even bothering to try to kill them.
The sound of their wings made his skin crawl. The men bunched across from him seemed to be unaware of the insects swarming around them. A dull thud at the end of the cell block came as a welcome diversion. It got his mind off the poor conditions in the cells.
There was a second clang, and the four lights in the cells went dark, leaving only the single dim red bulb high on the wall.
The warrior heard footsteps, but refused to stand or make any move toward the bars. If whoever was there had come for him, he'd make the bastard walk every step of the way. His eyes not yet adjusted to the gloom, he blinked rapidly, trying to pick some features out of the center of the twin shadows that hovered just outside the bars.
The sound of a key grating in the lock caused him to bunch his muscles, gather his legs under him ready to spring, knowing as he did so that this was precisely what they hoped for. He was unarmed, and there was no way in hell he was going to get beyond the confines of the cell block. Unless they wanted him to, unless they either let him out or escorted him out.
Bolan decided to bide his time. The ball was in their court now, so he was willing to let them serve. If he couldn't volley, that was his problem, but there was no point in surrendering before he even had a chance to play. If he lost, it sure as hell wasn't going to be by default.
The barred door swung back, dull flashes of red reflecting from the bright metal scratches where the door met its seat. The rest of the door was as black as wrought iron in the near darkness, more like an insubstantial partition made of shadows than a physical impediment.
The shadows talked to each other, but the words were soft, almost as insubstantial as the shadowy door. He waited, his feet up on the cot, his back against the stone wall, feeling a hundred roaches crawling on his skin, slipping do
wn his collar and inside his shirt. They crawled on his face and over the naked skin of his arms, but he ignored them all. The warrior was concentrating on the presence in the open doorway.
"Belasko, come on out."
The voice was a harsh whisper, as if the speaker were reluctant to wake the sleeping prisoners. Bolan ignored it.
"Belasko, man, come on out. You hear me?"
The nearer shadow took a step forward, and Bolan could tell the man was large and broad, but his face was featureless in the darkness. The figure took another step, and Bolan distinctly heard the rap of a hard heel on the stone floor. The sound of the pneumatic gun caught him by surprise. He felt the sting of the dart, then even the bit of light winked out.
* * *
The rumble of the engine through the floorboard made Bolan's cheek feel numb. Then he remembered… the dart, and the blackness that seemed to well up out of the floor and swallow him. He shook his head, but the pain that shot through his skull was excruciating. He could feel the sting of the dart high on his chest, under the left collarbone. He moved his arms slightly and realized his hands were shackled behind him.
He rolled onto one side, trying to relieve the stiffness in his arms and shoulders. He had no idea how long he had been out, but judging by the bit of sky he could see through a dirty window, it had to have been more than two or three hours — it was starting to get light. The car bounced and he landed on his shoulder hard. The pain that shot through his upper body made him wince, and he saw a bright flash as the pain overloaded and arced through his nervous system, transformed into light.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he brought his legs around, tight into his body, and realized his feet were also shackled. The clank of the chains alerted the driver, who turned and looked over the bench seat.
The driver leaned forward a second, and the dome light went on. He turned to the rear, letting up on the gas as if he couldn't look and drive at the same time. He wore a puzzled frown. "Belasko? You awake?"
Border Sweep Page 16