“Dammit!” the General swore. “Never leave a man behind!” Fire Team Leader Charlie dusted himself off and chased after Private Zulu. “Morons!” the General said in disgust as he checked his stopwatch.
Fire Team Alpha and Bravo’s ATVs jockeyed for position as they noisily bounced over the rough terrain, swiftly approaching the rugged six-foot-deep gully with sloped walls. They reached the lip of the gully neck and neck as both teams flew down the embankment. Upon reaching the bottom of the gully, both privates poured on the gas and launched their machines up the far side. Like a pair of synchronized swimmers, they both shot off the top lip of the gully and directly up into the air with the noses of their ATVs pointing straight at the sky. Simultaneously, the pull of gravity slowed their vehicles’ ascent. With balloon-like quad tires spinning and engines still revved to the max, both teetered over backward and crashed back to the bottom of the gully, spilling the men in all directions and kicking up an enormous cloud of dust.
“I think I broke my giblets,” Private Tango cried as he climbed to his feet, holding his throat with both hands.
“Damage assessment, Private Foxtrot,” said Fire Team Leader Alpha as he dusted himself off and examined the upside-down ATVs his soon-to-be former employer had rented them.
“I’m okay,” the private replied. “Just got some dirt in my teeth and skinned my knees up a fair bit.”
“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Fire Team Leader Bravo. “I think we pulled a half gainer.”
“No,” moaned Private Tango, now clutching his stomach with both hands. “I think I pulled my whole gainer.”
“What the hell happened?” asked Private Zulu as he pulled his ATV up to the lip of the gully. “You guys doing some kind of moon shot?”
“Where’s your Team Leader, private?” Fire Team Leader Alpha inquired.
“My who?” Private Zulu turned to look behind him. “Hey, where’d he go?”
It took the men a good ten minutes to get the ATVs righted and safely up the far side of the gully. In the meantime, an out-of-breath Fire Team Leader Charlie had rejoined the group.
“Okay, boys,” said Fire Team Leader Alpha. “I’m driving now. Stay close and follow me. You can’t hardly see your hand in front of your face it’s so damn dark.”
Another fifteen minutes later, the men had rounded the boulder and dejectedly returned bruised, battered, and dusty to the motor pool. Parking their ATVs, the men literally fell off their machines. The General was sitting in a folding chair with his legs crossed and still holding his stopwatch as he shook his head in disappointment. Surveying his motley and defeated brigade, the General clicked off his stopwatch, clinched his eyes shut, and rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand.
“I don’t even want to know,” he muttered.
• • •
El Barquero pulled his car off the dirt road and up to the metal gate that guarded the road to the farm. The four men who stood beside the gate drinking cerveza and smoking cigarettes around a small gas lamp eyed him with suspicion. One of the guards picked up his assault rifle and cautiously approached the car as the other three slowly moved around the car to block its movement forward or back. One of the men circling the car produced a field radio and spoke into it. El Barquero rolled down the driver’s-side window and looked at the armed man who approached. As he neared the window, another guard used a long, black metal flashlight to illuminate El Barquero’s face. El Barquero didn’t flinch in spite of the blinding light; instead, he stared directly into the eyes of the approaching silhouette of the man with the gun. Coming closer, the guard turned and nodded to his partner to shut off the light as he recognized the powerfully built man behind the wheel.
“They’re in the barn,” he said as he pointed down the road. “The Padre has been waiting for you. Let him through.”
Two of the men pulled the metal gate aside to allow the car to pass. El Barquero pulled his car onto the dark, rutted gravel road that would take him the last few miles to his destination. He had been in the car for more than six hours, including the time waiting to cross the border. He was now about twenty miles outside of Piedras Negras in the Mexican State of Coahuila, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas. It was near the western edge of his cartel’s territory along the Texas border. He had driven straight through from Houston, where he had finalized the details of his latest gun delivery for the cartel. This was the largest shipment he had ever made. It was a plan he had been grooming and cultivating for nearly six months.
Normally, he sourced firearms in relatively small quantities. For years, the easiest way had been to employ dummy buyers to purchase weapons legally from gun shops, firearms shows, hunting and fishing retailers, sporting goods stores, pawn shops, private dealers, and even chains of mega-warehouse stores. The lax background checks employed by these legitimate dealers made accumulating pistols, rifles, shotguns, and even semi-automatic assault-style weapons that could be converted to fire in full automatic mode relatively easy. The weapons purchased were perfectly legal except that the dummy buyers would then pass the weapons on to El Barquero, who would mark up their price and move them across the border. His buyers were paid for their work, sometimes in cash, sometimes in drugs…and sometimes when they had outlived their usefulness, they paid him with their lives. The problem with this method was that it was time-consuming. The National Rifle Association and its numerous influential Washington lobbyists had made civilian purchases of powerful assault weapons relatively uncomplicated for someone with a clean record. Law-abiding citizens needed assault rifles for hunting and to protect their homes, and the Second Amendment protected that right, they argued. However, you still couldn’t send a dummy buyer into a sporting goods store to buy one hundred Colt AR-15s without drawing suspicion. It took time to accumulate a significant amount of merchandise to transport.
Over time, even using dummy buyers became more difficult. Increased pressure to stem the tide of guns illegally finding their way onto the streets caused U.S. authorities to increase the level of scrutiny regarding federal background checks and the amount of time it took to purchase guns. They also increased prosecution of unscrupulous gun dealers who skirted these requirements.
El Barquero had turned to other methods, including hiring partners to specialize in following and casing police vehicles, particularly unmarked ones. Numerous assault rifles were stolen from the trunks of unattended law enforcement vehicles parked in driveways while the officers were off duty. Even parked police cruisers on the street were targeted.
He also used some of his shadier contacts at gun stores to put him in contact with locals who were large gun collectors. He used the guise that he was interested in buying or selling rare and valuable firearms. Sometimes he was able to personally meet the collectors at local gun shows as well. After learning their identities, he would stake out their homes and break in during the night. He was good with alarms, and after subduing the homeowners in one way or another; he would pilfer their stores of weapons. The locks and hinges on their gun cases proved little challenge for the small amounts of shaped charges of high explosives he employed if the owner wouldn’t cooperate.
He had learned his trade as a senior officer of the Mexican army’s elite Special Forces Airmobile Group. He had been trained by some of the world’s best counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operatives. Over the years, the Padre had approached him numerous times, attempting to persuade him to leave the military and come work for the cartel. Despite the Padre’s repeated promises of wealth and power, El Barquero had always refused. Few people declined the Padre’s requests and lived. He was the exception. It wasn’t until his pregnant wife and unborn son were killed in a violent carjacking that he finally gave in. His world was empty. He had nothing left to live for.
But even invading homes was hit or miss, as antique guns were of little use to him. Occasionally, however, the robberies paid huge dividends. The number of private collectors who hoarded assault rifles, machine guns, and even large
-caliber sniper rifles was amazing, particularly in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. He handled these jobs himself, as the risk of being caught was high if the alarm wasn’t handled properly, and hired agents couldn’t always be trusted to permanently silence a gun owner who would rather have his guns pried from his cold, dead hands than turn them over without incident.
Breaking into the homes of gun collectors led to breaking into gun stores, which had proven successful as well. He avoided stores in major metropolitan areas, tending to focus on small towns and cities where he felt his crime was easier to commit.
He even considered stealing guns from small-town police departments or out-of-the-way military facilities, but ultimately the plans proved to be too complicated for him to facilitate on his own. For a job like that, he needed someone on the inside. That was how he found Sanders.
Sanders had been a good man most of his life, until his wife left him for another man. She even took their two children with her. Over time, his drinking had progressed to the point where he was clearly going to lose his job. It was just a matter of time. Somewhere along the way, at his lowest point, he fell victim to the intoxicating grip of heroin. El Barquero had met him earlier that year in a small tavern in New Orleans a few blocks off Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. Sitting at a table in the back of the dimly lit and empty bar, he bought Sanders a few rounds while he listened to the man’s woeful tale of losing his wife, his kids, his money, and now he faced the ever-growing prospect of his Louisiana National Guard unit being deployed to the Middle East by the end of the year. Noticing the track marks on his arm, it didn’t take long for El Barquero to ask him if he wanted to follow him back to his motel room, where he could help the sweating and shaking man get well. Sanders reluctantly agreed but began to have second thoughts as they drove toward the city limits. As Sanders entered the dark room on the second floor of the dingy motel, he worried that he had made his last mistake. Unfortunately for him, it was only the first mistake in his relationship with El Barquero. The enormous Mexican gave him some money and enough junk to keep him high. For the better part of the next twelve days, Sanders rarely removed the chain on the door except to let his new benefactor in to hand him some food or more of the heroin that numbed his body and washed away the pain in his head and in his heart.
El Barquero had paid the motel owner to not allow anyone in the room, maids or otherwise. After the twelfth day, which seemed more like twelve months to Sanders, El Barquero helped clean him up and took him back to Sanders’ small apartment. El Barquero explained that the rent had been paid and someone would come by to deliver the drugs on a regular basis. He was instructed to go back to his life and continue to serve in the National Guard. Sanders knew the big Mexican would want something someday; he just didn’t know what.
About four months later, that day finally came. Sanders met El Barquero in the same small tavern where he first made his acquaintance. El Barquero explained that he knew the deployment date for his unit was approaching and that while Sanders could hide his addiction from them while he was stateside, once he was shipped overseas he would be on his own. Sanders said he planned on disappearing before the deployment, but he’d need enough money and drugs to stay gone forever. El Barquero assured him this could be arranged through his employers and that a drug-induced, semi-conscious, leisurely early retirement in a small Mexican village on the Gulf Coast with sandy beaches, warm sea breezes, and pretty senoritas was easy enough to provide. Days lost in a comforting dreamlike state while swinging in a beachside hammock sounded to Sanders like the perfect way to drift through the rest of his life. The only catch was what he would have to do.
As preparations for his National Guard unit’s departure stepped up in pace, the arms, equipment, and munitions stores at their base were being rapidly expanded. Sanders had information on the inventory of equipment and access to the armory. The weapons cache didn’t just include assault rifles and ammunition; it was stocked with machine guns, grenades and grenade launchers, mortars, landmines, anti-tank weapons, night vision equipment, and military-grade body armor. It was all the sort of things that El Barquero’s employers desired for their battles with government authorities and rival cartels. This wouldn’t be just another shipment of pistols and shotguns to resupply their soldiers; this would be the shipment that would allow the cartel to expand its smuggling territory.
Sanders agreed with the plan, which delighted El Barquero, because Sanders didn’t really have a choice. El Barquero had already worked out the logistics for getting the merchandise into Mexico and informed his employers of his intentions. He didn’t want to have to kill Sanders for nothing.
When the time came to execute the plan, Sanders had prepared the falsified requisition documents and delivery orders for the munitions and acquired a large military truck for transportation. He had even coordinated a detachment of Guardsmen to assist in loading the vehicle.
After leaving the base with the shipment and nervously driving for several hours while imaging a roadblock of police at every bend in the road, he rendezvoused with El Barquero at an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the Louisiana swampland. Large portable canister lights illuminated the inside of the warehouse, while the two men used a small forklift to transfer the heavy wooden crates to the tractor-trailer El Barquero had supplied. Even with the lift, it took the men several hours to transfer all the weapons and supplies. The sun was just beginning to come up over the horizon, and Sanders was a sweating, nervous wreck. He knew that sooner rather than later, someone would notice the missing inventory and question his paperwork. And what if someone had spotted his truck barreling down the two-lane roads of the rural Louisiana backcountry? He knew he was in over his head, but there was no turning back. El Barquero had detailed the plan to him precisely up to this point, but nothing else. Where was the money? How would he get to Mexico? Most importantly, where was his fix? He desperately needed a fix. He had to be perfectly sober as he procured the weapons and truck from the armory, but that was hours ago. Now he was sick and he needed to shoot up.
El Barquero approached him after the portable lights were taken down and the truck was ready to depart. In the dark, cavernous room, the tall Mexican had lit a cigarette lighter to provide illumination for Sanders to shoot up the heroin-filled syringe he handed to him. Sanders’ shaking hands struggled to find a vein. Eventually he found one and slowly pushed the plunger down, feeling the warmth spread through his body as he slumped to the ground. The menacing man standing over him said nothing. He just stared into Sander’s eyes, into his soul. Sanders felt strange. He knew something was wrong. What he didn’t know was that the syringe contained a “hot load.” It wasn’t just heroin. He was struggling to breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He was choking. The last thing Sanders ever saw were the eyes of the “Ferryman.” Those black eyes, those evil eyes that glimmered with fire from the flickering glow of the dancing lighter flame.
Once he knew Sanders was dead, El Barquero left the body and drove the tractor-trailer across the state line into Texas. He arrived at the Port of Houston around midday. He met with the contacts his employers had promised would be waiting for him. In short order, the shipment was sealed inside a cargo-shipping container and loaded aboard a vessel bound for Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, on the Gulf of Honduras. Very few cargo containers coming into U.S. ports were checked, and almost none of the outgoing ones. A shipment of weapons this large was easier to smuggle in through the southern border of Mexico than across the northern one. El Barquero’s employers were making the rest of the arrangements to move the shipment north across Mexico to its ultimate destination in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. His contacts took the large truck to dispose of, and he was given the keys to a car and told to meet his boss outside Piedras Negras at the farm. He knew what they meant. He’d made the trip before.
El Barquero pulled his car up to the massive yellow farmhouse surrounded by a large white wooden fence. He noticed dozens of late-model trucks and sedans parked out
side the large red barn to the back and left of the house. Farther back, about fifty yards from the barn, a long row of black wooden barracks lined the back fence. Armed sentries were scattered across the compound, which was illuminated by powerful lights mounted on tall poles. As he parked his car, two guards approached with weapons poised to confirm his identity. They immediately recognized the tall gun smuggler through his open window.
“The Padre is in the barn,” one of the sentries said. “He’s been waiting to see you.”
“Why all the cars?” El Barquero inquired.
“They’re fighting the roosters tonight,” the other sentry replied.
El Barquero made his way quickly across the open compound and approached the barn door. Sounds of men shouting and swearing came from inside the building. As he entered the barn, another armed guard lowered an AK-47 in front of his path.
“Wait here,” he said. “Miguel!” he shouted at the young boy sitting on a crate next to the door. “Let the Padre know he’s here.”
Young Miguel jumped from his perch and scampered up the raised rows of seating crowded with boisterous men who surrounded the cockfighting pit, which was twenty feet in diameter. A four-foot-tall wooden fence, one side painted red, the other painted green, surrounded the pit that had been built to contain the combatants and their handlers. Miguel reached the top row of seating and ran down the aisle to the side of a balding man of medium build with a large bushy black mustache. The man wore a black suit, immaculately polished black cowboy boots, and a priest’s Roman collar. He was sitting alone. He seemed to barely notice the boy who was whispering in his ear, his attention focused on the ring below. But slowly the man in black turned and looked in El Barquero’s direction. He raised his hand and motioned toward himself. The guard lowered the weapon that blocked El Barquero’s path and nodded his approval to pass. El Barquero followed the same path the boy had taken. As he passed the boy, who was on his way back down, the boy stopped and stared intently as the large man wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt straining at the seams to contain his muscular torso strode past him. The seated man motioned for El Barquero to sit beside him.
The Chupacabra: A Borderline Crazy Tale of Coyotes, Cash & Cartels (The Chupacabra Trilogy - Book 1) Page 9