Borderlands (Mitch Kearns Combat Tracker Series Book 6)

by JT Sawyer

  With her husband providing a lucrative income, she was able to focus her attention on her child’s wellbeing and mingle with the other women in the upscale neighborhood that only consisted of three garish city blocks and felt like its own version of a border town, with slums constricting all four sides.

  Anna looked into the content face of Reies. “Ah, my sweet, we have a fun day ahead of us and then your poppa will come home later tonight.” She paused on the last word as if it was stuck in her throat, wondering which woman’s scent he would reek of this time. Then she looked out the window at a single cloud in the cobalt sky. “Or maybe he’ll be home tomorrow—or next week,” she whispered. Quien sabes?

  Chapter 6

  A Gila woodpecker was busy hammering its way through the soft flesh of a columnar cactus. It was a calorie-intensive activity but one that would allow the bird to fashion its nest in the cool, hollow cavity beyond in time for the spring arrival of its hatchlings.

  Rafael Grimero was sitting under the shade of a nearby cottonwood tree, a film of sweat forming above his eyebrows then quickly evaporating in the late morning heat. He had hardly noticed the temperature spike past the one hundred degree mark, his concentration focused entirely on the convoy of vehicles passing in front of his binoculars.

  He had been waiting for three days for this particular shipment of supplies and had hoped to have this handled under a night sky rather than in broad daylight, but schedules in his line of work were always fluid.

  For nearly a year, he had been the chief architect in attacking the Culebra cartel’s smuggling routes in southern Arizona. His four RIP crews spread around the region were all comprised of former cartel members who had suffered under the hands of Mateo Dizon. Most had tried to start over in Phoenix but were lured back to work for Rafael by the promise of revenge, coupled with the lucrative pay. Unlike Mateo, he allowed his men to leave of their own free will and used any surplus funds, largely his own, to provide for their families.

  Most people in this line of work survived less than three months but Rafael had grown up in northern Mexico along the Arizona border and had learned every trail, crossing point, and hideout from his father, who was a well-known smuggler throughout the ’90s. Back then, Rafael was proud of the work he and his family did trying to sneak job-hungry immigrants across the border to search for a better way of life. Rafael’s grandparents had first come to Arizona in 1948 after the Bracero Program was created to prevent labor shortages during and after World War II for the agricultural industry. The fruit growers and federal government kept renewing the program until the mid-1960s, after which time many immigrants just started sneaking across the border to work seasonally then return home after the harvest.

  Rafael was one of thousands of ‘anchor babies,’ children born to illegal mothers who gave birth in the U.S. This afforded him citizenship and his mother healthcare benefits after her delivery. Eventually she returned with her son to Mexico to assist her husband in helping others surreptitiously cross the border during the ’80s. That was before the drug cartels ran Mexico—before Mateo became the strong arm of the Culebra cartel in Agua Prieta.

  Rafael took a deep breath as he studied the lead truck through his binoculars. A hundred yards more and you belong to me.

  As often happened, he felt the urge to lean over towards his younger brother Daniel and say something witty but then the painful memory of his death nearly a year ago seeped back into his soul.

  When the immigrant smuggling industry withered, Rafael tried to find work in Tucson but the pay was never enough to provide for his brother, who had chronic kidney disease requiring a regular supply of prescription medications. With Mateo Dizon coming into power, the man sought out Rafael for his knowledge of the travel corridors through the desert. The reluctant smuggler signed on with Mateo, knowing it was the sole means of providing for his brother’s needs.

  With Rafael’s understanding of remote desert routes and Mateo’s tactical abilities, they brought stability to the cartel’s business dealings along the Arizona border and put an end to the bloody wars that were once waged daily between the rival groups.

  Then one June evening nearly nine months ago, a group of cartel enforcers sent by their boss in Nogales came to Rafael’s house. They inquired about the sum of 1.2 million dollars in stolen funds missing from a recent shipment.

  He ended up on Mateo’s doorstep to seek answers. Rafael suspected his longtime partner was connected with the accusation and he had an inkling that it was tied to the disappearance of two of their top smugglers a year earlier. Two mutilated corpses had been found in the desert along a remote route outside of their normal travel corridors, and Rafael knew it was them regardless of the official border patrol reports indicating the bodies were unidentifiable.

  When he visited Mateo’s home, he found him absent, which put Rafael in the precarious situation of being alone with Anna, whose wiles always required him to be more disciplined with his thoughts. Though he kept his desire for her submerged over the years, she was less restrained when he was around and had sought out his company at every business meeting or family gathering. Her splendor and allure were unequaled. Rafael thought that even the flowers bowed down before her when she walked by; but he would never betray a colleague’s trust and always maintained an air of aloofness around her despite the obvious chemistry between them.

  Seeking answers, he revealed what the cartel had told him about the missing funds to Anna, who begged him to flee to Miami, taking her with him. It was a place she’d always spoken of longingly—away from the desert and the Mexican cartels. The thought had crossed his mind before but he wasn’t about to have his reputation stained as a traitor, nor put his brother at risk. Plus, he was no adulterer. Though the latter was rampant in the cartel, it never sat well with his Roman Catholic roots. However, standing before her, inhaling the lovely aroma from her long hair, his nobility only extended so far. Hearing that Mateo was in Nogales on business and with his future uncertain, he felt his granite resolve weakening in Anna’s presence that night. Standing in the faint moonlight on the back porch, staring longingly at her soft curves that begged to be touched, he felt the outside world dissolve as a tidal wave of emotion flooded through his soul. His defenses against her constant charms crumbled. That blissful night alone with her in his arms sealed his fate.

  The next evening, the cartel enforcers returned, barricading the windows and doors of his house, thinking he was inside. But when the flames erupted, it was the horrific screams of his younger brother that resounded throughout the neighborhood. Rafael returned to Agua Prieta hours later hoping to confront Mateo about the missing funds but instead he only found the charred corpse of Daniel amidst the smoldering ruins of his house. He knew Mateo had framed him to divert attention from his embezzlement but there was no way to prove that to the cartel boss. In the hours that ensued that night, he became a hunted man, suffering three bullet wounds in a skirmish near the border and barely escaping into a remote hideout in the Arizona desert.

  Now, he sought to cripple Mateo’s operations and expose him for the coward he was. Rafael often wondered what became of the 1.2 million dollars. Did Mateo use it to fund his own side business or is it stashed somewhere for later use? Either way, I will destroy him bit by bit until he has nothing left and the cartel turns upon him as they did me.

  As the truck in the distance came to a halt at a fallen tree Rafael’s men had chopped down, his thoughts drifted back to that fateful night with Anna. He had never loved another woman like her. Maybe I should have taken you with me when I fled. He shook his head, glancing around at his stark surroundings. But then you would be hunted—and a woman like you was not meant to scratch out a life hiding in desert caves.

  Rafael heard the first rounds of suppressed gunfire from his snipers around him as they removed the drivers in each convoy. As a half-dozen men poured out from the rear of the trucks with their rifles, the shooting continued. Mateo’s smugglers were strafed with a f
ierce current of constant bullets, the trucks and surrounding rocks turning crimson within sixty seconds.

  When silence had returned to the valley, Rafael stood up and trotted down the slope, his AK lowered towards a crawling figure on the ground before the first truck. He recognized the older man as one of Mateo’s head drivers. As the man looked up at him, Rafael squeezed off a round into his head, splintering it apart on the dry river bed. A second smuggler was staggering to his knees and Rafael heard gunshots from over his shoulder as one of his men put two rounds into the limping figure’s chest.

  Rafael gave a hand signal to his men coming down the slope for them to halt. He inspected the other dead bodies, recognizing faces of men he’d worked with in times past. Coming around the back end of the last truck, he saw a young man clutching a pistol, his hands trembling uncontrollably and his saucer-like eyes unblinking. He looked no older than thirteen. The boy was cowering on his side under the frame of the truck and appeared uninjured.

  One of Rafael’s men came up and pointed his rifle at the boy, yelling in Spanish for him to drop the pistol. Rafael pushed the rifle away and waved him off. Kneeling down by the rear bumper, Rafael slung his AK and patted his chest.

  “Go ahead, amigo. Shoot if you must. None of Mateo’s men can save you now so you must take care of yourself.”

  The boy tried to steady his hand, his finger hovering over the trigger. He darted his eyes up at the other man who wanted to kill him, then back at Rafael. “Como?”

  “Because you still have a chance for a new life, apart from these kinds of people.” He waved his hand at the carnage around them.

  The boy’s lips fluttered as he spoke. “Like you, out here? No, gracias.”

  “All you have probably known is how to survive but that is not the same as living.” Rafael reached his hand out, placing it on the muzzle of the pistol then lowering it. “Hay otros mundos—there are other worlds apart from this one.”

  The boy released his grip on the weapon and handed it to Rafael. Then he squirmed out from under the truck, accepting a hand up from the weathered figure.

  “What is your name?” Rafael said, tucking the pistol into his waist.

  “Tito, but I go by TJ.”

  Rafael yelled up at his other men to remove any bodies from the vehicles and drive the trucks up to their agreed-upon location several miles distant by their main camp. As the men started working, Rafael grabbed a pack with some water and food then nodded for the boy to follow him. They walked for fifteen minutes through the canyon until it split into two branches.

  He handed the boy the pack and removed a clip-on pocket knife from his belt. “El tenedor a la derecho es no bueno,” he said, pointing to the right fork. “It will lead you into a border patrol checkpoint after three miles. The path to the left will take you past a militia group but they are not as clever as they think. Walk for four miles and then wait by the spring until sundown—that’s when they pull back and have dinner. After, head north and walk all night—you will make it to just outside of Tombstone. Hide during the day and then go to the red-brick house of Martine de Ruiz one block east of downtown. Tell him I sent you. He will help get you up to Phoenix, to a place with others like you who are looking to start over.”

  TJ flung the pack over his shoulder and glanced down each fork as he shuddered out a deep breath, as if he’d just run uphill. “Come se llama?” he said, extending his hand, glancing at the curved scar that ran from ear to ear along the older man’s throat.

  “Rafael,” he said, shaking the young man’s thin hand. “Now go, amigo, and forget you ever saw what happened here.”

  “Why are you doing this after I pointed a gun at you?”

  “A man is what he is—but you have a young soul, TJ.” Rafael patted him on the shoulder. “And I hope you will find another way on the road ahead so your life is not spent trying to forget the sins of your past.”

  Chapter 7

  The next day, in a cinder-block warehouse on the east side of Agua Prieta, Mateo stood before two of his senior smugglers, who were studying the topographic map taped to a whiteboard. In the top right corner there were two ranches indicated, one listed as Jacobs and the other as Kearns.

  Both of the lithe figures had a dark complexion from a life lived in the elements, along with numerous scars on their forearms from bushwhacking through cactus for years as smugglers. Felix, the tall man sitting to the right of Mateo, had a wispy mustache and a few black bristles on his chin while the other man was a foot shorter and had a bushy beard. His name was Vincent and he had served in the Mexican military throughout most of his twenties. He had trained Mateo’s other men in counter-insurgency methods gleaned from U.S. military advisors. Each man had been hired by Mateo with cartel approval to handle executions, kidnappings, or interrogations that could otherwise cast an unpleasant light upon the police force.

  Mateo traced a finger along the red-highlighted regions on the map where a tangle of canyons intersected near a narrow dirt road.

  “Once Vincent has disabled the vehicle and captured the target, he will alert you,” he said, pointing to Felix. “Then you and the group you’re smuggling will make your way across the border, where you should be apprehended within the hour by the border patrol. That will provide the necessary vacuum of manpower we need to the east so Vincent can make it back across with the target.”

  Vincent exhaled slowly while running his leathery hand through his wavy black hair. “That’s going to be some challenging terrain to negotiate in a vehicle and through an area that Rafael’s RIP crew has been known to frequent.”

  “Yes, that bastard just hit one of our convoys yesterday. The only good thing to come out of that was it helped me triangulate his possible whereabouts a little better,” said Mateo.

  Rafael’s reputation as a bajadore, a bandit of legendary status, had grown to sicken Mateo. Every time he heard the man’s name uttered, he wanted to plunge his blade into the person who spoke it.

  If only the cunning Rafael hadn’t slipped out from his grasp a year ago and fled to Phoenix, where he started running his stolen goods to a new outfit in California. With his knowledge of Mateo’s smuggling routes and operations, Rafael quickly started disrupting field operations across the border. During the ensuing year, Rafael used vicious guerilla tactics to put a considerable dent in Mateo’s profits from the hijacked shipments. Years to build my reputation here only to have months of continual damage by Rafael drive a wedge between me and the other cartel leaders.

  He never bought into the story that his two top smugglers, Miguel and Tomas, had run off with the 1.2 million dollars in missing funds. He suspected Rafael of embezzling the money but wondered why the man wouldn’t have done something more grandiose than merely eking out a life of revenge in the desert. But then Rafael always lived by some antiquated personal code that eluded Mateo. He chalked the man’s motives up to misguided morality that blinded any business sense.

  “Tomorrow at this time, the reign of the almighty Rafael will come to an end,” he said, rolling his tongue around his lower lip.

  Mateo’s intended target was an Anglo whose family had a ranch thirty miles north of the border. His surveillance teams in the desert indicated the man was visiting this weekend and he would have in his possession an item of great value to Mateo. Vincent’s job was to wait along a nearby road and ambush the target as he left, then retreat across a remote section of the border back to Agua Prieta.

  “And all the intel points to this guy being at his family’s hacienda for a while?” said Felix.

  “Si, I have it from someone trusted on the inside that he will be leaving tomorrow morning along that road.” Mateo tapped his finger on the road junction, which revealed widening contour lines where the terrain leveled off. “When I learned about this man and his accomplishments from my sources in Tucson, I knew he would be the key to eliminating Rafael’s grip on the supply lines.”

  He turned and placed a firm grip on Felix’s shoulder. “
And you, mi amigo—once you are apprehended by the border patrol, you will serve the customary 48-hour detention at their facility before being deported back here. Then you will be rewarded handsomely—you both will,” he said, darting his eyes at Vincent. “After this week, we will enter a new era of power that will make everyone take notice of Agua Prieta.”

  ***

  A few hours later, Anna was reclining on a leather sofa in the family room when Mateo barged through the front door followed by a vapor cloud of tequila that emanated from his pores.

  She darted upright then raised a single finger to her lips while motioning with her head to their child’s bedroom. “You’re later than I thought you’d be.”

  He merely grunted, then shuffled by and flung his police shirt on the coat rack in the corner. “Lots of work to do today. Busy, busy, busy,” he mumbled, then sat down at the kitchen table and poured himself a glass of scotch.

  She got up and glided barefoot across the polished tile floor. She leaned over his right shoulder, convincing herself to hug him but feeling his body tense.

  “Is this about the recent arrests in the south?” she said, referring to a rash of car thefts caused by young teens.

  He only shook his head then slouched back in his chair. Anna moved around the opposite side of the table and gracefully inserted herself into her seat. “Then what? You’ve just been so distant lately. What’s bothering you?”

  He leaned his sweaty forearms on the table and smiled. “Nothing you need concern yourself with.” He waved his half-full glass of whiskey in the air. “Soon, we will be living in a nicer casa than this I think, though.”