Once inside the Suburban, Ned noticed the police car pull away. “He was okay,” El Guason told El Vaquero Loco. “He was calm, handed the product over, took the cash, didn't freak out.”
“How much did you give la chonta?” El Vaquero Loco was addressing Ned directly. He used a slang term for cops that translated literally to “wanker” that was not common in Sonora, but Ned understood it anyway.
“Five hundred.”
“For both?” El Vaquero Loco smiled broadly. “Espagueti, you are a natural.” The men in the car laughed. El Vaquero Loco told him they would have a party when they got back to the ranch. “Just a few more stops,” he assured him. “Now that you know how things work, you can do this by yourself—make lots of money.” Ned tried his best to smile.
“Don't worry, my gringo friend,” El Guason said. “You are one of us now—you are safe.” Ned only felt more frightened.
* * *
O'Malley came into Meloni's cubicle and threw down a file folder. “I have a small amount of good news and a great deal of bad news,” she told him.
Meloni rolled his eyes and sighed. “The good news is?”
“I tracked down the file on the woman who was with Aiken when he tried to flee the country,” she answered. “Her name is Daniela Eminescu and she's a Moldovan national, since deported.”
“And we know where she is?”
“That's the bad news,” O'Malley said. “We don't. Moldova is one of the poorest and worst-run countries in Europe, a very easy place to disappear into.”
“We have people there?”
“No, but the CIA has plenty—just look at the location, it's Moldova, a former Soviet republic,” she replied. “And there's Interpol.”
“And the locals?”
“Bad news—considered among the worst police forces in all of Europe, if not the worst,” she said. “You name the type of corruption and they have it—torture, bribery, links to organized crime, links to terrorism, missing suspects, everything they can do, they do.”
“And even if we find this woman, what are the chances she'll tell us anything of value?” His experiences with questioning girlfriends and ex-girlfriends had left him less than ambitious at the prospect of getting much out of this one. It would be different if he had something to offer her, but couldn't think of anything.
“I thought you told us to exhaust every lead,” said O'Malley, reminding Meloni that she was just as capable of taking over as he was.
* * *
The following day, Ned was sitting in his room. He had woken up at about six in the morning and could not get back to sleep. He was alone in the big room, and it did not make him any more comfortable. He could hear noise from downstairs—it actually sounded like a party—and did not want to leave the room. Instead he waited, trying to formulate a plan. If he could manage to escape, where would he go? All of these guys were friends of his boss over at Holsamex, and he really didn't know anyone in the country who was not attached to the company. He could try to make it back across the border, but even if he succeeded, he would be taking his chances with the FBI, the Russians, and the bikers. Unable to figure out a way out, he defaulted to laying low, doing what the men who were holding him instructed and getting out when he could get his hands on some real cash.
As he was thinking to himself, Ned was startled by El Guason, who stumbled in the door, blind drunk. He staggered to the bed El Vaquero Loco had been in the night before and wriggled around, trying to get comfortable. On his back, he turned his head to face Ned and grinned. He spoke to him in Spanish. “Ah, gringo, guero, you should not be so scared,” he said. “It's a good life . . . cars, money, guns, women, drugs . . . anything you want. All you have to do is, like you say, play ball.”
Ned did his best to smile and nodded.
“No man, you don't understand,” El Guason said. “You are one of us now, and we are going to be in charge very, very soon.”
“In charge . . . of what?”
“This place, Sonora,” El Guason looked at Ned as though he was incredibly stupid. “The local guys are such cowards—they look tough, these cowboys, but they run when they see us.” He grinned.
“What about the cops? The government?”
El Guason laughed. “We own the cops,” he said condescendingly. “And we are the government. We have nothing to worry about.”
Ned wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but El Guason was snoring even before he finished his sentence.
Chapter Four
The sounds coming from downstairs died down at about seven-thirty in the morning. The music stopped, the laughing and talking finished, and Ned heard the front door open and close a number of times. Hungry, curious, and urgently needing to use the washroom, Ned emerged from his bedroom, passing the loudly snoring El Guason on the way. The washroom was at the end of the hall, and he had to step over a passed-out man to get inside.
Once finished, and grateful that Jessica, Maria, and the others were around to clean up after these men, Ned headed downstairs. He hadn't heard anyone speak or do anything other than snore for about a half-hour, so he felt bold enough to explore his surroundings.
The living room was dominated by the sight and sound of El Ratón, who was sound asleep on his back at the bottom of the stairs. The noise coming from him sounded to Ned like it came from a poorly maintained chainsaw. Ned marveled at how big the man really was. He was under so much more duress when they had been together earlier that Ned failed to really comprehend his enormity. Though not very tall, Ned estimated his weight as close to, if not exceeding, 400 pounds. The girls had not cleaned the area around him yet.
That presented a major problem for Ned. Although he wasn't exactly committed to a serious escape attempt from the ranch house, he also knew it was not in his best interest to wake anyone either. They were all armed, presumably still drunk, and not the type of guys you'd want to wake with a start. Ned took his shoes off and held them in his left hand. Using his right hand on the stair railing to steady himself, he leapt over El Ratón. He succeeded in clearing the big man, but also knocked over two empty Coors Light bottles. Terrified that the sound of the clattering bottles would awaken at least some of the men in the room, Ned dove behind a door into the dining room. There were more sleeping men in there. Despite the noise, nobody even stirred.
With a chuckle to himself, Ned put his shoes back on. He walked out the front door and stood on the edge of the veranda. The ranch was huge. There weren't any cattle anymore, but the scrub was low and sparse, as it was over all the flat parts of Sonora that were not actively irrigated. There was one well-rutted dirt road out of the front gate, but the fence around the whole ranch was small and in ill repair. If he had somewhere to go, Ned thought to himself, it would not be too hard to get out of here.
As he pondered his immediate future, Ned was startled by the sound of metal clamping onto metal. He spun around and saw a man sitting in a chair, holding an AK-47. The man, who had long hair, a small beard, purple-tinted sunglasses, and a long, buttery-looking leather jacket laughed. “Sorry to scare you, man,” he said in English. “Go back to what you were thinking about. I have to finish cleaning Rosalita.” The man took a moment to apply oil to a cloth that he then used to polish the gun. Ned was not just surprised that the man spoke English, but that he would engage him in conversation. Everyone else at the house had been tight-lipped except to curse him, mock him, or bark out orders. In fact, Ned was cautiously relieved to have someone to talk to.
Ned was at a loss. He felt like it would be appropriate to introduce himself, but he wasn't ready to reveal his identity any more than he had to. Looking for something to say, he blurted out “nice gun.”
The man laughed. “It is, it is,” he grinned. “You have one, a cuerno de chivo?”
Ned was confused. Cuerno de chivo meant “goat's horn” in Spanish. “Say what?” he asked.
“Wow, you really are new to Mexico,” the man laughed. “Cuerno de chivo is what we call the AK-47
here, the magazine, the clip, you see here, is curved like a goat's horn. Many Americans say it looks like a banana, but we prefer to say goat's horn—a little more poetic. Would you like to hold her?”
Surprised at the offer but not wanting to offend, Ned said he would, and the man handed it to him. In an instant, images of himself killing the man and shooting his way out of captivity rushed through his head. But then he thought of El Chango and the unloaded gun that cost him his life. Besides, it didn't solve the problem of having no place to go beyond the gate anyway. “It's heavy,” Ned said, “but nice. Holding it, it feels natural.”
The man chuckled. “Yeah, everyone compares the AK-47 to the American M-16. They say it is heavier, it is less accurate, not as powerful, it's not this, it's not that,” he said. “But none of that matters. One grain of sand in your M-16 and it does not work; you are holding a toy gun. But you could put an AK-47 through the laundry, run over it with a truck, and throw it off a cliff and it would still work like it was brand-new. This is why we in the Third World like it. We freedom fighters. There's a reason why there are countries with AK-47s on the flag. It is a very effective weapon and it is cheap, especially the copies.”
“Copies?”
“Oh yeah, there is such a demand for AK-47s that they are made all over the world,” he said. “Some, like the Romanians or the Venezuelans, they will pay the Russians for the right to build them. Others, like the Chinese, the North Koreans, the Israelis, they just copy them. The Israelis are so smart. They sold the right to copy their copies to the Italians and South Africans.”
“Is this a copy?” Ned said, handing the man back his gun.
“Nope, believe it or not, this is one of the real ones,” he said proudly. “Made in the glorious Soviet Union.”
“Soviet Union? Don't you mean Russia?” For a high-school dropout from the Midwest, Ned knew a surprising amount about the history and politics of Eastern Europe. After spending almost two years with the Russian mafia, and living with two different women from the region, he knew the differences between Romanians and Bulgarians and why the Croats still hate the Serbs after all these years.
“No, my new friend, the Soviet Union,” the man said. “It was made in Mikhail Kalashnikov's own Izhmash factory in the city of Izhevsk in the Udmurt Republic of the Volga district of the Federation of Russia in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1981—like tens of millions of others.”
“Really? It's that old?”
“But it works like a charm.”
“Must be good workmanship.”
“Nope, terrible workmanship, awful. Bad materials, too,” the man said with a smile and a raised index finger. “But an excellent design.”
Engaged in the conversation and sensing that this man had a story he wanted to tell, Ned threw caution to the wind. “How'd you get it?”
“That is a long story, one that may not interest you.”
Ned made a show of looking around, then back at the man. “I have the time.”
The man sighed, then smiled broadly. “Many years ago, when I was just a teenager, I received it from my father as he was being taken to prison. He told me in a code we had worked out between the two of us where I could find it. He had hidden it in an old freezer in the basement of my uncle's restaurant.”
“Why did he go to prison?”
“This is Mexico,” the man said, as though speaking to a kindergartener. “He went to prison because somebody powerful did not like him. Anyway, you listen, don't interrupt, this is a good story. My old man was a rebel. Even though he was born into a wealthy family, he was outraged and disgusted by the injustices he saw all around him. The strong and greedy constantly preying on the poor and dispossessed. He hated the way Mexico was run, so he tried to stir up the peasants in the southern states to rebel against the wealthy whites—no offense intended, I'm all Criollo blood myself—who ran the country. It didn't take. Those dumb dirt famers wouldn't have understood Marx and Lenin if it was a puppet show. So he went to Cuba, but he didn't like it there either.”
“Why not?”
“No faith in Castro and his brother. They had lost the revolutionary spirit; they had become exactly what they claimed they were fighting—wealthy autocrats who stamped out dissent by force,” he continued. “When my old man saw Castro wearing an Adidas jogging suit, he flipped out. Not only was Adidas a huge multinational corporation that ran sweatshops all over the Third World, but it was founded by two Nazis and they even made sophisticated weapons for the Nazis to fight the powers of Bolshevism at the end of war.”
“Really?”
The man sneered. “Yeah, Dad could not have been more pissed. So he went to Nicaragua where the Sandinistas were taking over. He really believed what they were selling—Ortega and those guys, land reforms, nationalization, right out of the old Soviet playbook.”
“I vaguely remember something about that . . . Reagan, Bush, Oliver North . . .”
“Yeah, Reagan was actually right about what was going on, but he was stupid about how he handled it,” the man continued with a sigh. “The Sandinistas were doing what the Soviets told them to do in exchange for weapons and cash. In fact, that's where my dad comes in. Ortega was building this secret airbase on the shores of Lake Nicaragua. It would have had the longest landing strip in all of Latin America, able to handle the Soviets' biggest transports, tankers, and bombers. At the same time, the Soviets were training Nicaraguan pilots to fly MiGs in Bulgaria. The Sandinistas thought they were in charge, but Dad knew it was all being run by some subcommittee back in Moscow.”
“So your dad was a pilot?”
“Nope, he volunteered, but the Nicaraguans did not trust him because he was a Mexican Criollo, thought he might be a spy or at least not someone who could be trusted with too much responsibility,” he said. “So they sent him to El Salvador to help with the civil war down there. Most everyone is white there, so they thought he'd fit right in.”
“How did that go?”
“Not so good. Everyone likes the stereotype of the chubby, friendly Salvadoran, but they were not so much like that in the civil war—very violent, nasty business. Dad lost two fingers,” he said with a serious look, holding down the two smallest fingers on his left hand to show Ned which ones his father was missing. “And it was a bad war; the rebels were in four separate groups that could never agree on anything—ideology, use of force, tactics, the role of women—so they never got anything accomplished. Then, when the Soviet Union fell apart, there was no more money, no more weapons; the rebels were forced to make peace with the government.”
“And your dad?”
“He left long before that. I was born in 1984 and by then Dad had had enough with the Commies—realized they'd never win again and even when they did win, like Castro, they were no better than the guys they replaced. Look at the Chinese, a few assholes get rich running what is essentially a huge slave-labor camp and they have the nerve to call it Communism. Crazy!” He was getting angry now, his hands tightening around his rifle's stock and barrel. “So Dad comes back to Guadalajara and his parents want nothing to do with him. Why would a distinguished surgeon and an equally distinguished engineering professor have anything to do with a Commie rebel?”
Ned shrugged.
“So Dad went to work—funny, no? Communism is all about everyone working for the common good and this was the first time the old man had ever had a job in his whole life!” the man laughed. “He worked in a shoe factory.”
“And he was arrested for being a rebel?”
“Aw, Espagueti, you let me down, I thought you were listening to me,” the man smiled. “He was arrested because someone did not like him—maybe he was a better soccer player in school, maybe some girl liked him better, who knows?”
“Really? Is that how it works down here?”
The man turned pensive. “Yeah, that's why we are freedom fighters,” he said. “For too long Mexico has been run by the hierarchy based on power and privilege. It's our du
ty to bring all that down.”
Ned looked surprised. “So you guys are rebels. I thought you were drug traffickers.”
The man looked very serious. “There is no reason why we can't be both.”
Ned knew it was unwise to annoy a man with an AK-47 in his hand, so he changed the subject. “What are you doing up so early?” he asked. “Everyone else is asleep.”
The man snorted in disapproval. “They all drink too much, smoke too much; not me,” he said. “And you? Why are you up and around? Leaving so soon?”
Deflecting, Ned said that he couldn't sleep.
“Why not? There is lots of beer and plenty of weed.”
“I don't drink or smoke much anymore,” he said. It was technically true because since he had moved to Mexico he had very little money and even fewer friends. He knew he had free access to alcohol and drugs in the ranch house, but had decided to keep his wits about him, especially after what happened to El Chango.
“Coke, meth, you do those?”
“Never.”
“Sounds like you've seen what they can do.” The man smiled. “That's good, very smart,” he said. “Go inside now, get one of the girls to cook you some food. You can eat it out back where it's nice. They will show you where.” The man got up, took his gun, and walked about forty feet over to where a black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows was parked. As he approached the car, the back-seat door opened from inside. The man first handed his gun to someone inside then got in the car itself. A moment later, it drove away. Ned was confused by what had just happened, but he knew he'd see the man again.
* * *
Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle Page 45