The Western Front - Parts 1-3 (Western Front Series)

by Archer Garrett

  “I’m proud of you; you were perfect.”

  “Thanks. I can barely breathe.”

  “It’ll pass.”

  “Let’s go to my office for a few minutes.”

  They walked down the hall in silence, the weight of the broadcast still hung heavy on the two men. He shut the door behind him and sat down across from the governor.

  “How did it feel, killing me that is?”

  “It felt rather strange, staring at you and all.”

  “It’ll buy me a lot of time, get Washington off my back. I’m sure by now they know I’m the one that’s responsible for the secession.”

  “You’re not responsible Reese, they are.”

  “I know, but tell that to them.”

  The governor leaned back in his chair and contemplated the future during the lull in the conversation. He retrieved the bottle of scotch and poured it into two glasses.

  “What you did in Afghanistan, do you think it’s repeatable on the border?”

  “With the right people, most definitely.”

  “I believe I have the right people, they just need someone who has the experience. I’ve been here a long time, Reese; talked to a lot of community leaders across the border over my years. They despise these cartels and their do-nothing government as much as we do. We started out with a conventional war down there, but I don’t think we can win it like that. If we do, we’ll lose a lot of lives in the process. That’s why I need you.”

  “Tell me about how you’ve been fighting them so far.”

  “Well, we bombed Matamoros.”

  “That’s going to complicate the situation tremendously.”

  “Get some rest; I know you haven’t slept in days. You can strategize later.”

  “I’ll go get my stuff together; I can sleep on the way.”

  i i

  Barrett stared down into the vast expanse of nothing in front of him. The distant sounds of a flock of sheep could be heard somewhere beyond the horizon. The valley below them was blanketed with yellow and white wildflowers, and dotted with prickly pears. The occasional Mexican-olive and mesquite tree towered over the barren surroundings.

  He climbed out of the Humvee and walked to the front. He leaned against the hood and continued to survey the South Texas plains. Barrett watched a family of Mexican prairie dogs scamper to and fro, searching for an evening meal.

  “What’re you looking at amigo?”

  “I don’t know, maybe a year, maybe more.”

  “No lo entiendo, amigo.”

  “Alex, do you know where we can get some horses?”

  “Sí.”

  “We’ll probably need about twenty, maybe more; I don’t know yet.”

  “For what motivo, amigo?

  “We’re going south; how far, I don’t know. For how long, I don’t know. We need smart, sure-footed, long-distance horses.”

  “Is no problem, amigo; I can get. You know, eh, how do you say, Araloosa?”

  “Appaloosa?”

  “No, Araloosa. Is what you want; I can get.”

  “I need one more thing; I need a translator, someone who can speak to the locals and explain that we mean well.”

  “Sí, I can get that to.”

  “No, I mean-“

  Alejandro laughed at his friend’s nervous response and replied, “I will go; ¡desde luego.”

  Barrett chuckled at the humor and smiled at Alex. They watched at the low hanging sun rapidly approached the end of its daily ritual. The comfortable silence of two old friends felt good to Barrett, almost like home. It had been far too long; he was glad the old grudge seemed to be fading away.

  “How bad will Matamoros hurt us?”

  “Is bad, but los carteles do much worse to pueblo. Acciones, no palabras”

  “Actions, not words?”

  “Sí, is what I say.”

  The conversation lulled until the sun sank below the distant hills. As darkness began to envelop the plains, Barrett walked back to the Humvee’s side and climbed in. Alex followed suit and did the same. As they began the long drive back to Port Mansfield, Barrett asked, “Do you still miss her?”

  “Sí, todos los días.”

  “Do you ever think it’ll ever get easier?”

  “No. Do you still miss her?”

  “Sí, todos los días,” Barrett replied.

  “Do you think it get easier?”

  “I don’t expect it does, friend. I don’t expect it does.”

  i i i

  The crisp, October weather could not have been more perfect. The combination of the cool wind and the warm rays of the sun felt rejuvenating to Jake. He was perched in the bow of the boat as Clayton navigated the flooded logging road with deft skill. They had spent the last hour or so tying and baiting the lines, but now came the fun part.

  They passed by the first few lines without event. Jake, unhappy with the slow start, turned and shot a scowl at Clay, but he only laughed and shouted, “Give it time, son; you’re too impatient.”

  “Always have been.”

  As they rounded the next bend, Jake watched the braided line that hung from the oak limb. The line was tied to a point on the branch about three feet from the top of the water. It continued down into the murk another foot or two before terminating at the heavy hook.

  At first the line looked like the others, hanging at ever so slightly an angle from the tug of the current. When they were several dozen feet away from the line, Clayton slipped the motor in neutral and revved it loudly. The limb suddenly disappeared below the water. Jake let out a roar of approval at the sight. Clayton eased him closer so he could retrieve the catch.

  Jake plunged his hand into the water and searched for the submerged branch and line. Finally, he grasped it and began to pull it out of the water. The lack of resistance surprised him. Without warning, the line tugged him with unexpected force. Jake momentarily lost his balance and almost fell out of the boat. Clayton laughed at the predicament as he watched his son.

  “Quit laughing and throw me the net, old man.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, but I can’t help it – here!” He tried in vain to restrain his laughter.

  Jake pulled the line up again, this time with the net in the other hand. When he saw the slimy head through the muddy water, he scooped the net towards it. As the massive catfish struggled to escape, he flared his tines, only entangling himself further. Jake had committed himself and leaned halfway out of the boat. He had seen the size of the beast and refused to let it escape. Clayton quit laughing as he saw the giant tail swirl the top of the water.

  “Get over here and give me a hand!”

  “Okay, okay! Just don’t lose him!”

  “Grab the back half; be careful!”

  “Okay! On three!”

  They heaved the thrashing beast into the boat on three and stepped back to avoid getting pierced by one of the fish’s pointy tines. They stared in awe of the giant fish.

  “Wow! He must weigh what, sixty, seventy pounds?”

  “Maybe more; he’s a big one.”

  “What do we do with him? There’s no way he’ll fit in your ice chest.”

  “Let’s let him go.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe I’m getting soft, but I have a sort of respect for the big ones. They’re survivors; they’ve made it through a lot. I don’t feel like it’s my place anymore to take that from them. Besides, the big ones don’t taste as good anyway.”

  “Kate’ll never believe me if I tell her we let a seventy pound catfish go.”

  “That’s why they’re fish stories, son. Besides,” Clayton winked as he continued, “in the story, he can be a hundred pounds. Now, help me get this thing back in the water.”

  ***

  Moses’ barking awoke Kate from her nap on the secluded sandbar. The recent floods had nearly submerged it, but a small finger remained. Her skin was warm and pink from the sun’s rays. Great, sunburnt in October; just my luck. She grabbed a bottle of water
from her pack and stood to stretch.

  Kate called out to Claire, “Do you need anything while I’m up?”

  “Oh no dear, I’m fine. Ooh, you’re going to be burned.”

  “I know; just my luck.”

  Sasha padded after Kate as she strolled across the beach to Moses. She scratched him behind his ears while he continued to bark.

  “How’s your shoulder feel today?”

  “It’s better. It hurts a little when I cast, but other than that it’s as good as new.”

  “That’s good. What’s Moses barking at?”

  “He thinks I’ve got a fish. He hates fish – well, he hates fish that aren’t deep fried at least.”

  Kate laughed, “I think by the time we leave this place, we’ll all hate fish.”

  “You know what?” Geram smiled and said, “I do believe you’re right.”

  Kate sat on the bank beside him as he continued to work the spinner bait through the water.

  “What happened that night; how’d you get shot?”

  “I lost focus for just a second, and the next thing I knew I was hit. I guess it just wasn’t my lucky night. If it hadn’t been for Jake…” his voice trailed off.

  “I think you were very lucky that night.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Have you ever been shot before?”

  “Never.”

  She sat in silence for a while as he occasionally cast the rod and began the cycle of reeling it anew.

  “It gives you some perspective, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. I’ve had several dreams about that moment where I stared at his barrel. I wasn’t ready to die – on so many levels, I wasn’t ready to die.”

  “I had a dream the other night about my mother. It’s the only dream I’ve had about her since she passed.”

  Geram placed the rod on the bank as he sat down in the sand and faced her.

  “What was it about?”

  “We were in this beautiful restaurant at this beautiful table. There were candles and the reflections of the flames danced on the silverware and china. We were the only people in the place. Mom looked angelic, like I’d never seen her before; her face was so radiant. She never said anything; she just smiled at me with the most amazing smile. Behind her was this sculpture. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember being in complete awe of it. The detail was indescribable, the curves and lines were perfect; I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

  I asked her who made it, but she didn’t answer. She just kept smiling at me like an angel. It made me feel so warm and safe to see her smile like that.

  I never saw who it was, but when I asked her again, a hand reached across my shoulder and pointed at Mom. I was like, ‘Mom! You made this?’ But she never said a word; she just kept smiling back at me like she’d never been happier.”

  Geram thought for a while, before asking, “What do you think it meant, Kate?”

  “I’m not sure. I know of all people, Mom was not an artist,” Kate smiled at the memory of her mother.

  They sat in silence as they waited for Jake and Clayton to return, the distant sound of their motor was barely audible.

  “Maybe,” she said, “maybe it was supposed to mean that there’s something more.”

  “Maybe it was.”

  Kate buried her feet in the sand and looked away. “Things are going to get bad, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, they are.”

  “But there’s something more.”

  “Yeah, there’s something more.”

  “Then I can accept that.”

  A note from the author:

  I hope you enjoyed the first book in the series; if you did, please leave a review on Amazon and spread the word; it would be greatly appreciated. The sequel to The Western Front, Kratocracy, is also available on Amazon. I’ve included an excerpt from the book on the following pages.

  Regards, -Archer Garrett

  KRATOCRACY

  Kratocracy (Kra-toc-ra-cy) [kruh-tok-ruh-see] (Origin: Greek, krateros, strong) (noun, plural – Kra-toc-ra-cies) (similar: Kratocrat –noun; Kratocratic –adjective): Government by those who are strong enough to seize power through force or cunning. (Montague.)

  One

  The four grey SUVs cautiously approached the outskirts of Viejo Guerrero, known to the gringos as Old Warrior City. The vehicles were dented and dusted thoroughly, with the occasional rusted bullet hole in a door or fender; the windshields were cracked and caked with dirt and grime in the areas beyond the reach of the dry-rotted wiper blades.

  The cartel soldados in the vehicles were anxious to make the delivery, but were fearful of what may lie between them and Falcon Lake. They gripped their rifles tightly as they peered out the windows of the vehicles at the abandoned structures and barren landscape. Dread was a new emotion for many of the halcones and sicarios; they were more accustomed to inflicting terror than being gripped by it.

  The ones they feared were surrounded by myth and mystique; most reasoned the source to be gringo irregulars, but some of the more superstitious among them told stories around campfires about the spirits that roamed the borderlands. These spirits, they would say in hushed voices, were angered by the choices of those in their ancient bloodline; the drug trade was destroying the delicate borderland, and the spirits were angry.

  Who could blame these men for their superstitions? The borderlands were a place steeped in centuries of bloodshed and wars, and nearly every man had a tale of a strange encounter that either they, or someone they dearly trusted had experienced. Now there was incessant talk of the mysterious riders that were haunting the soldiers of the cartels.

  They referred to them as the jinetes fantasma, the phantom horsemen. Entire parties of soldados had disappeared without a trace, never to be heard from again; the few men that had escaped certain death told fantastical tales of the dark riders. The riders would only materialize between dusk and dawn because they feared the light; they would appear from seemingly nowhere, abduct the narco scouts and overwhelm the defenseless encampment. The cartels had sent teams of hardened, experienced men to the borderlands for the sole purpose of finding and eliminating the source of the attacks, but to date, none had been heard from again.

  If any place invited the talk of spirits and times long forgotten, Viejo Guerrero was it. Founded in 1750 as a Spanish colonial town, more than twenty years before the American Revolution, it was the capital of one of the many republics, including the Republic of Texas, that rebelled against the subversive centralization of Mexico and the dissolution of the Mexican constitution by the Santa Anna government.

  Journal remnants from an expedition in the nineteenth century observed that, “Guerrero is a fine looking and well-constructed town. The houses are built of a kind of marble or stone, with flat roofs, surrounded by a wall. The streets and public squares (of which there are two) are well laid off, and the whole place presents an appearance of elegance and neatness. There is one cathedral in the place and several large public buildings. The inhabitants have fine gardens and throughout the place there are numerous groves of orange trees that give it a most luxuriant and smiling appearance.”

  Viejo Guerrero, like many other towns and villages in the area, had been abandoned when the Falcon Dam was constructed on the Rio Grande; a new city was built nearly twenty miles to the southeast on higher ground, not far from the dam. Viejo Guerrero was left to its fate, to be consumed by the rising waters of Falcon Lake. The lake’s waters had advanced into and receded from the ghost town numerous times since the dam’s construction; the current water level left a little more than half of the city back on dry land.

  As twilight yielded to dusk, the sky was painted with oranges and yellows; the thin, wispy cirrus clouds reflected an array of colors, from bright purple to dull gray. The cool, inviting temperature and the gentle breeze made a picturesque sky even more perfect. The men in the SUVs would have greatly preferred to be tending a warm fire back at camp and trading tall stories
as the last vestiges of the day disappeared, rather than meeting the mules in these forgotten ruins, far from any signs of civilization.

  The road narrowed for a period, as the mesquite, huisache and wild olives crowded the ruins around them. The hairs on the soldados’ necks stood on end as the shrill screams of a herd of javelinas could be heard somewhere in the tall shadows of the distance. After several hundred feet of tense silence, the restrictive thicket relented to the dusty, open trail that lay beyond.

  As they made a final turn, they could see the aluminum boats and their operators at the water’s edge, beyond the open plaza. The four drug mules wore long serapes and hoods over their heads; they preferred to remain as anonymous as possible on nights like these; each of the mules had dim oil lanterns that served as a beacon for the SUVs. The eerie scene made some of the men rather uneasy. The stone ruins of a centuries-old village with dark, ghoulish figures on the edge of a black water lake conjured images of Charon towering over the banks of the River Acheron, as he waited to the ferry damned souls across to their eternity. All they needed now was an obolus in their mouth to pay the toll, they gloomily thought to themselves.

  The darkness was in full effect as they rounded the plaza, now merely several hundred feet from the figures and the rendezvous point. One by one, the cloaked mules extinguished their lanterns and faded into the darkness around them. The vehicles slowed as the men inside were perplexed by the odd behavior from their contacts; they peered into the darkness, but the cloaked men were gone.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Reese, Barrett and the two rangers from Houston stood waiting by the water, just east of the plaza; the bodies of the previous owners rested in the bottom of the boats beside them. Their lanterns were turned down low so that they would be noticed by the cartel soldados, but little else could be discerned; the dull glow from the flames danced on the dark waters behind them as gentle waves lapped the shore.

  Barrett leaned over to Reese and whispered, “Sure hope they don’t get spooked and shoot on sight.”