The Devil You Don't Know (American Praetorians Book 4)

by Peter Nealen

  We swept forward, kicking weapons away from hands. I heard a couple of single shots echo across the desert from the other side of the highway, then silence descended again.

  Once we'd pushed a good fifty yards past that clearing, I was pretty sure we'd gotten all of them. I started angling us back toward the road.

  The white pickup was smoking; Derek had turned its engine to metallic hamburger. The big guy I'd shot was lying just a few feet away from the road, behind a bush. I kicked him over and knocked his Tapco'ed out AK away from his hands. There was sand in his staring eyes. He was gone.

  I really didn't want to hang out out there. But we took the time to quickly go through pockets again. It was the same deal as the Magdalena ambush—phones, wallets, and not much else. Again, we took the phones and left the rest.

  After five minutes of consolidation, we climbed back into our vehicles and got ready to move. I walked up to Harold's box truck, yanked open the door, and gave him a hard stare. “I'm going back to my vehicle,” I said. “Can you move where, and when, Nick's vehicle does?”

  He nodded, still looking shaken. He hadn't signed up for this. My sympathy was tempered by the fact that if he had had less of a “see no evil, hear no evil” mindset, he might have seen it coming. I just nodded, and headed back to the SUV.

  “All good? No potentially disastrous holes?” I asked, as I levered myself in and pulled the door shut. There hadn't been anything between the vehicles and the gunfire out in the desert.

  “Not that I can find,” Larry replied. He sounded pensive. I frowned, looking over at him. Something was bothering him.

  “I recognized one of those guys,” he finally said, after we'd started driving again. “Went back and checked the body after the shooting was over. It was him, all right.”

  That was a bit of a shock. “Who?” I asked.

  “His name was Hernandez,” he replied. “He was a Marine; he was in our trail platoon on the float before you and I went to the Philippines.”

  That wasn't just a shock, it was a straight hook to the gut. “Are you sure?”

  He nodded gravely. “Absolutely. No question about it. He even still had his meat tags on his ribcage.” A lot of guys had taken to getting their dog tags tattooed on their ribs; they were known as “meat tags.”

  “Fuck.” I slumped back in my seat a little. I'd heard stories of gangsters joining the military, getting trained, and then going back to the barrio. It shouldn't have surprised me. But this had just gotten a lot closer to home than it had been before.

  Chapter 5

  The miles rolled by. We stopped to get gas at a Pemex truck stop in the middle of nowhere; I hadn't been kidding when I'd said we didn't have the fuel to outrun the ambushers at the arroyo. We were practically running on fumes by the time we pulled in.

  There were about a half-dozen semis and several pickups and cars parked around the stop when we pulled up. We drew some stares as we got out, though we left the weapons in the vehicles. The sight of a bunch of gringos this far south apparently wasn't all that common.

  I looked around, while trying to make it look like I wasn't holding security. We weren't exactly dressed in the 5.11 tuxedo, but we did put off a bit of a “meat eater” vibe. Visible alertness can be a deterrent; it can also be a target indicator.

  As soon as the Expedition was gassed up, I looked over at Larry and made a little circle in the air with my finger. We'd have to be sure we switched drivers often; this had been a hell of a long run already, and we'd get burned out fast. He just nodded, and moved to the passenger's side, while I slid in behind the wheel.

  Predictably, we were ready to go before Harold and his people. I had to give Canfield a pass; the guy was limping worse and looking kind of gray. When I'd checked on him, though, he'd given me a thumbs up and what must have been an attempt at a game grin. “I'm good,” he assured me. “Let's drive on.” If only his boss had that attitude.

  Though as we pulled out of the gas station and got back on the long straightaway through the desert, it occurred to me that I couldn't really fault Harold that much. We weren't the most normal people in the world. We sought out this kind of violence, most of us because, after spending most of our adult lives at it, we didn't know how to do much else. We were used to it, if a man can ever get used to getting shot at. Every one of us had become hardened to the violence, the blood, the death.

  Whatever I may have thought of Harold's refusal to see anything amiss with his employer and its activities, he was a civilian. I knew he'd been to Mexico before, but for all the cartel violence, there were still plenty of places in Mexico that an American could go and never see a sign of bloodshed. I was pretty certain that whatever part of Mexico Harold had seen before had been a safe area.

  He was out of his element, knew it, and was scared shitless that he wasn't coming back. I couldn't really blame him for his trepidation; he wasn't trained and hardened by a decade or better of death and conflict.

  It's funny, sometimes, the things you think about when you've got miles and miles of nothing to drive through. Even with the threat hanging over our heads, there was plenty of time to woolgather, driving down the road.

  The Sonoran countryside rolled past, miles and miles of wide open desert. Creosote bushes and saguaro cactus loomed on either side of the highway. Sometimes the hills in the distance provided the only real indicator that we'd gone anywhere at all.

  We turned onto Highway 15D, steering clear of Guyamas. There wasn't a lot going on there, but after the last two encounters, I didn't want to provide any surveillance another shot at eyeballing us. They could do their job the hard way. We weren't going to parade in front of them to make it easy.

  It was boring as hell. Cuidad Obregon passed by without incident. No one eyeballed us, followed us, or tried to stop us. Navojoa was the same. I almost started to let myself think that we'd given our enemies the slip, and would be able to drive on with the mission.

  Almost.

  The open desert began to give way to farmland as we crossed into Sinaloa. I expected the threat to rise; we were in the heart of what had been the Guzman-Loera empire, after all, and it was now the center of the fight for territory in that infamous cartel's death throes. I also expected more overt military and police presence. But we saw little besides the regular traffic on the highway, and only a few light prop planes overhead. Of course, most of the eradication operations were going to be up in the mountains, and the counter-insurgency ops were happening more in the cities than out in the hinterlands. So we didn't see more than a couple of Mexican Army pickups, even as we passed Culiacan.

  It was a long, long haul. We kept switching drivers, but numbness was setting in by the time we got to the outskirts of Mazatlan, near midnight. Eighteen hours is a long time in a vehicle, no matter who you are.

  Once we got within twenty miles of Mazatlan, I started looking for a place to go firm for a few hours. I wasn't inclined to go into the city or stay at a hotel. I knew I was going to get some push-back from Harold and his people, but I would be a lot more sure of security if we found a turnoff and crashed out in the vehicles for a few hours, setting a watch. If the mara types were still after us, they'd have no way of knowing where we'd stopped unless they had eyes on us already, and it looked like we were alone on the road.

  I called Nick and filled him in on my plan. He agreed. Not five minutes later, he was pulling onto a nice, big, gravel turnoff on the side of the highway. The vegetation was thick on the edge of the road, and looked damned near impenetrable.

  We pulled over as close to the trees as possible. We'd have some standoff from the road. I got out, wincing as close to eighteen hours of near-immobility made my muscles protest the movement fairly vigorously. I felt like a hobbling old man. I left my rifle in the cab for the moment; we were still visible from the road.

  As I slowly made my way to Nick's Yukon, Harold stuck his head out of his window. “Why are we stopping here?” he asked. “We've got enough gas to get into town
.”

  “We're going to hold here and get some sleep,” I replied. “We'll go in to the meeting place tomorrow. That was when it was scheduled to happen, wasn't it?” I checked my watch. “Actually, technically not tomorrow, but today. Whatever.”

  “But, we've got reservations for the Ramada,” he protested. “We don't have to stay out here.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Let me put it this way,” I said. “Somehow, Mara Salvatrucha, or somebody who hired them, knew our route well enough to have ambushes in place for us not once, but three times. What makes you think they won't know where we're supposed to be staying?”

  He groaned. “We haven't seen any sign of them for over twelve hours,” he said. It may have just been my own fatigue that made me hear a note of whining in his voice. “They can't still be after us.”

  “They might have given up,” I conceded. “On the other hand, they might have just backed off in the hopes of catching us when we've let our guard down. I'm not inclined to take the chance.” I started to turn away as Nick came over from his truck.

  “I don't want to stay here,” Harold said. He sounded like he was going to try to take charge.

  I didn't even look at him, just raising my voice slightly. “The options are the same as back in Green Valley, Harold,” I told him. “If you want to push on without us, that's on you.”

  It was borderline extortion; if he didn't do it our way, we wouldn't protect him. But, I told myself, if we did it his way, we'd have even more problems. I'd rather have an unhappy client than a dead one. Furthermore, if the shipment got grabbed before we could make contact with Reyes' people, we'd be back to square one.

  “One man up,” I told Nick. “Everybody else, crash out. We'll move again at first light.” I checked my watch again. “That's in about...six hours.” Nick just nodded, exhausted. He moved back to his truck, and I walked back to pass the same thing to Jim.

  “What about you and Larry?” he asked.

  “I'll take a turn on your truck, and Larry will step in with Nick's,” I replied. There was no point in trying to set a watch on my vehicle, not with only two of us. I wasn't going to trust any of the Harmon-Dominguez personnel to stand watch, either.

  Jim nodded without another word. We'd all lived hard lives, but fatigue gets to everybody eventually. I filled Larry in, back at my truck, pulled out my rifle, found a spot on the ground next to Jim's truck, and lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Morning, and time to move, came far too early. I'd gotten off watch only an hour before, and had promptly fallen into a near-coma as soon as I'd lain back down. I got just enough sleep before Ben was shaking me awake to feel even groggier as I sat up.

  I shook off the cobwebs as I got back into the Expedition. Larry was squinting at the faint light of morning as he started the engine up. “Just like old times, huh?” he said, as I levered myself into the passenger seat with a grumbling groan.

  “Old times sucked,” I replied. “New times aren't shaping up to be all that much better.”

  Larry chuckled. He had a way of being cheerful even when life was miserable, that at one and the same time could be aggravating and encouraging, depending on just how pissed off at the world I was at the time. Right at the moment, I was just trying to get my brain in gear and get back into the hunt. There was no guarantee that this linkup would be exciting; it would probably just be a transfer, followed by getting some kind of surveillance on the SCC people to see if they could lead us to Reyes. This was going to be a long, drawn out op, requiring a lot of patience.

  That didn't mean I thought it was a good idea to relax. There were a lot of corpses lying in the desert to the north to illustrate just what a bad idea that was.

  Nick led the way back onto the highway, and we headed into Mazatlan and whatever was going to come next.

  The SCC reps were waiting for us; at least I assumed they were SCC. There weren't any company markings on their vehicles, but Harold told me over the phone that the three black Suburbans waiting in the parking lot of the Parque Industrial Alfredo V. Bonfil were the people we were there to meet. He was the one with the contact information for the meet, so I had to take him at his word.

  There was only one way in or out; the Parque was enclosed by big concrete and steel industrial buildings and warehouses. It was still fairly early; a few people were out on the sidewalks, but not many. It was just us and them for a hundred yards.

  I studied the SUVs from the street. There was something off about this. We'd come down with the cargo in box trucks. There was no way those Suburbans were going to be able to carry everything those two box trucks were hauling. My hand slid under my spare shirt and found my rifle's grip, ready to rip it out and go to work.

  “Something's not kosher here, gents,” I sent over the radio. “Stand by.”

  Even as I said that, the rear doors on all three Suburbans opened. The men who got out were obviously a PSD, a Personal Security Detachment. They wore suits, but the weapons under their jackets were easily spotted.

  So was the attitude. These guys didn't carry themselves like most contract security types I'd seen. They looked around, sure, but most of their attention was directed at us, and the stares were identical to the challenging looks we'd gotten from the gangbangers on the streets of Hermosillo. Whatever these guys were now, they'd started as gangsters.

  I tensed up even more, even as Harold got out of the box truck, and I had to follow suit, leaving my rifle behind. Eric had stepped out of the Yukon and was waiting for us as I strode up to flank Harold. Together, the three of us approached the SCC vehicles.

  As we walked over, another man got out of the rear seat of the middle Suburban. Like the PSD, he was wearing a suit, but even from a distance I could tell that this one was of a much higher quality. Its sheen was visible even from fifty feet away. It looked very expensive, and was a marked contrast to our own jeans and cover shirts. Harold was wearing a jacket, at least, but my team was dressed to fight. My chest rig was back in the vehicle, but I had my HiPower and three spare magazines on my belt, and low-profile plates under my t-shirt.

  The man in the expensive suit waited for us, his hands crossed in front of him. His hair was slicked back, and he had a thick, but neatly trimmed, mustache. He wore sunglasses, but took them off as we approached. He watched us with a similar arrogance to the vatos in suits who flanked him, though without the machismo aggressiveness.

  Harold walked straight up to him, holding out his hand. “I'm Harold Juarez, with Harmon-Dominguez,” he said. “You must be Mr...”

  The outstretched hand was ignored. “You may call me Ernesto,” the man said. He didn't sound interested in who Harold was. “There is damage to your trucks. I trust the shipment is intact.”

  Harold started a little, taken aback by the brusque lack of a greeting. “Yes, of course,” he replied. “Although we did run into some trouble on the way down here; it seems like someone was trying to hijack the shipment.”

  Ernesto looked at him sharply. “Who?”

  He shrugged. “I'm not sure. They shot at us three times, once north of the border and then twice in Sonora--” I knew that at least the shooters had been MS-13, regardless of who really wanted the shipment, and Harold knew that too, but he seemed too flustered to remember and I wasn't going to volunteer any information to this guy. I still smelled a rat.

  “Where did they last attack?” Ernesto demanded, cutting him off.

  “Outside Hermosillo,” Harold stammered. Again, he opened his mouth to elaborate but was interrupted.

  “So you have not seen them since?”

  “No,” Harold admitted, “but that doesn't necessarily mean they've given up.” I kept my expression carefully impassive. He was just parroting what I'd told him, now.

  Ernesto held up a hand to stop him and looked at me. He studied me carefully for a second. “Who is this?” he asked.

  Harold seemed a bit thrown. The curt questions and demands, the imperious interruptions, and, I think, the fact
that the trucks he'd expected to be there to accept the cash weren't there, were keeping him on his back foot. He didn't know quite how to deal with this situation, or this arrogant cock-bag demanding answers without answering any questions himself. “This is Jeff McCall,” he said. “He's head of the security escort for the shipment.”

  Ernesto took a step forward, looking me over. He got within arm's reach, his head tilted back to scrutinize my face. It was a challenge, and if I rose to the bait, we'd definitely be blown.

  I met his gaze, but kept my face slack, trying to look as innocent as possible. I'm a hatchet-faced, black-bearded Scots-Irishman, though, and I've been told I look pissed off even when I'm asleep. The fact that I had probably two inches and twenty pounds of muscle on this soft-clothed fuck didn't help the non-threatening rent-a-cop act, either.

  “What happened to the people who tried to hijack the shipment?” Ernesto asked. Harold started to say something, but again that sharp gesture cut him off. “I want you to tell me,” he said to me.

  I lied through my teeth. “We ran away as soon as the shooting started. I don't know what happened to them.” The image of a dead kid with a “XIII” tattoo on his cheek, staring unseeing at the sky with a look of agonized surprise, flashed through my mind.

  He stared me down. Or he tried to. I've been stared at by a lot scarier motherfuckers than Ernesto. I won't lie; I wanted to draw and put a bullet in him, but that was just my innate meanness trying to come to the surface. I knew this guy was dirty. I didn't need to look at the gangbangers in suits to see that.

  Finally, with one last once-over, contempt dripping from his expression, Ernesto stepped back. “You'll follow us,” he said to Harold. “Stay close, and be ready to answer the phone. If you and your company want to remain in Señor Reyes' good graces, you will follow instructions precisely. Comprende?”