Other than one guard standing near the open gate leading into the courtyard, smoking and staring into the glow of his phone, there was little else happening at the ranch. Kneeling in the darkness well beyond the spill of light coming from the compound, I studied my surroundings and watched the moon wink out over the ridge of low mountains.
As throbbing pain over my ear faded, second thoughts crept in. Here I was alone, on foot, planning to put the phantom sneak on the home of one of the most dangerous cartel leaders I’d ever heard about. Being impulsive sometimes worked out, but I wondered if this was truly a bad idea.
I wasn’t trained in military tactics. The only ones I’d learned were from Perry Hale and Yolanda, and I’d never put them into practice. This was the time to cut and run, make my way back to the highway and maybe hook up with that caravan of immigrants headed north. I could dump the artillery, shuck the vest, and in my casual Aloha shirt, maybe blend in as a reporter or hanger on.
But that’s when my stomach growled so loud that I was afraid I’d wake the neighbors. At the same time Stupid Guard over there with cell phone laughed and lightly swatted at a drone that buzzed up close and circled his head.
Even murderers played around.
Who was guiding the drones? Where was that guy? And how many of the damned things did he have? This bad idea was getting worse.
A stick snapped behind me and I swung around, rifle to my shoulder. One guy had already snuck up on me that night and dented my skull. I wasn’t going to allow that to happen again. I’d already threaded my finger through the trigger guard when I saw a doe stop at my movement. We looked at each other for several seconds, me through lenses, her through what nature had provided. Deciding I might want to eat her, she stomped her foot once to make me move, and when I remained still, she bounded away.
I thought about doing the same thing, cutting to run, but Stupid laughed again at something he was looking at on his phone. If they’d been on high alert, he and others would be watching.
I put a couple of pieces together in that puzzle. Judge and his team had failed. Everyone chased after them, leaving a skeleton crew to man the compound. Those guys weren’t worried, so they were getting updates from those who were dealing with the remainder of Judge’s team.
It was time to go.
I decided to leave Stupid to his social media, if that’s what he was intent on, and circled around, looking for another way in. They might have surveillance, but I was hoping they’d be standing down now that the initial assault had failed and everyone was chasing the intruders like hounds after a rabbit.
I slipped through the darkness, circling the compound and doing my best to look for cameras mounted on the walls. The drone buzzed around the ranchero’s circumference and disappeared around back, moving toward the steep rise to the south. I made it to the wall without being seen and paused to let the butterflies in my stomach settle down.
My mouth was dry as cotton. I remembered seeing the team members load several bottles into their packs. Victim said he was always prepared and I figured he’d have plenty in there. Good lord, I really wanted to suck down a bottle of water from my pack, but those plastic containers are like door alarms. It would crackle loud enough to wake the dead, and I didn’t want to join those guys right then.
Four doors slammed on an unseen vehicle in the courtyard. An engine started.
Dammit! Everything I’d put together was wrong. There were more than a couple of guys in the ranchero. Back against the stucco wall, I waited to see what would happen next. Voices shouted back and forth. A minute later, extremely bright tail lights of a retreating SUV appeared from the front side and shrank as they sped down a dirt road.
At least four more people were off my field, if only for a short period of time.
The slight breeze from the compound brought the smell of rotting carrion. I wondered if I was close to trash cans. Garbage pickup in the desert was a stretch, and it was entirely possible that they were using a nearby wash or arroyo as a dump.
Climbing over the wall near the dump sounded like a good idea. Most folks wouldn’t think about keeping watch in that direction or posting a guard there to breathe the stench all night.
A huge, waist-high boulder sticking from the base of the wall gave me an idea. It looked as if it had been there for centuries. Instead of designing the compound wall a few feet one way or the other, the builders had simply built over it, making the chunk of rock part of the architecture itself.
That’s great from an aesthetic point of view, but it defeated the point of a wall, if its purpose was to keep people out. Standing on the boulder, I slowly peeked over and into a well-groomed and empty courtyard. There were no kind of anti-climb measures on top. I’d have expected something as common as broken glass set in the stucco, or spikes, or even concertina wire.
The smooth, flat surface made it easy to roll over the top and into the courtyard. The night-vision goggles strapped to my aching head gave me a clear view of my carefully landscaped surroundings and the sight of an oddly decorated mesquite tree several yards away.
Large crooked objects dangled from the limbs and I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at through the green lenses. After studying it several moments the strange forms came clear and my breath caught at the horror of what I’d found. Hanging from wire handles were the gruesome remains of stained human spines and barely attached skulls. Grisly ornaments on a common mesquite tree.
She was truly a Devil Woman.
Chapter 33
The gunfire beyond the courtyard walls caused Carlos Tamayo to lock the door of what he called the Control Room. Oftentimes the portly technician saw himself as a pilot, one who operated his drones from as far as eight miles away. His expertise was technology and drones. He was far from being classed as a soldier.
An hour earlier, while making a routine security sweep, he’d located at least two people moving near the deep arroyo just east of the ranch. Then another. Anyone out there that time of the night was bad news.
He alerted Incencio who told him his men would handle the situation. Having done his duty and identified exactly where the intruders were, he toggled the drone and reversed its position to make a sweep along the arroyo, just in case there might be others skulking in the darkness.
He was right. A human shape caught his attention and then, as he swung the tiny aircraft around to get a better look, the live feed went black. When that happened, he second-guessed himself, wondering if what he’d seen was real or a camera malfunction.
He’d never lost a drone before, and it confused him. Fingers flew over the keyboard as he attempted to contact the missing aircraft. Annoyed that he was blind, Carlos was also frustrated that Hector Tejada was sitting a few feet away, watching porn.
The second technician’s job was to man the security system with the cameras scattered throughout the ranch, but that wasn’t happening. Usually conscientious, Hector was in the process of updating all the software in the windowless room that night, and to do that, he had to take the entire system down and bring it back up again.
He’d shut it down at midnight, not expecting trouble.
Chapter 34
Knowing for sure now that I was in the right place, I licked my dry lips and breathed through my mouth to avoid the stink. Turning away from the tree full of death, I scanned the tropical courtyard. There were no guards. No one patrolling the area. Dark windows in the surrounding buildings stood open, probably for air circulation. A few doors yawned wide, left open by those who split in a hurry to kill people.
Directly across the courtyard from where I crouched was what I assumed to be the main ranch house. The facing wall was one of those bi-folding glass walls designed to bring the outside in and gape open to the lush courtyard. The large room full of lights was way too bright for the NVGs, so I pushed them up on my forehead.
An agitated small person walked from one side of a bright room to the other, talking on a cell phone and waving a glass in the other
hand. By the stride, and certain physical characteristics, it was obviously a woman.
I was about to move across the courtyard when a blow that felt like a Sammy Sosa homerun swing punched me in the upper left side of my chest. The impact and my own contracting muscles knocked me backward at the same time a dry buzz like an angry wasp hissed upward under my right ear.
The blow was followed by the crisp sound of a gunshot, and I realized the wasp was really the ricocheting bullet deflecting off the steel plate in my tactical vest. I landed with a hard thud, gasping for air.
Twisting in the general direction the shot came from, and still on the ground, I brought Victim’s AR to bear on Stupid, the guy who’d been on his cell phone instead of guarding the gate. He’d apparently decided to do his job and check the grounds, finding me crouched there like a peeping tom. The shooter’s mistake was that he expected that one round to take me out, and it would have if I hadn’t been wearing a tactical vest.
There was an Expedition parked between me and the arched gate, and he’d used the SUV for cover until I stepped out into the open. He should have used all the firepower in his hands like his buddies, and the swarm of bullets would have likely hit something to take me and keep me there. Thinking I was down and out, he straightened to check the results when a three-round burst from my rifle killed the man who’d just shot me.
His mouth opened at the impact of at least one of the 5.56 caliber bullets. The cigarette in his lips tumbled down past the glow from a cell phone tucked screen outward in his shirt pocket. He staggered sideways, reaching out with one hand to steady himself against the Expedition. I took a bead on that glowing screen through the material and pulled the AR’s trigger twice more, killing the guard and the phone at the same time.
He slid down to sit on the ground like he was tired, shoulder leaning against the fender. His head drooped against the side of the vehicle, and he stilled.
Gasping at a sharp pain in my chest, I rose to one knee, and swept the muzzle across the courtyard, looking for more targets. A door opened on the plain building to my right, and a man stepped outside with a rifle in his hand. Uncertain where the shots were coming from, he hesitated, probing the shadows that the landscaper’s accent lights didn’t reach.
The AR in my hands cracked again and the backlit soldado went down on his rear. As he fell backward, the door slowly swung open, revealing a now empty room bathed in dim yellow light.
The thought flashed through my mind that I was shooting unknown individuals on private property, in a foreign country, and that put me on dangerous ground at the very least. Once again, I was in a gray area, as far as the law was concerned.
None of that mattered right then. That odd thought vanished as quickly as it came. These people were part of a cruel cartel, and they made their living by breaking laws, those in Mexico, and across the river in my country. As far as I was concerned, Davy Crockett was dead-on when he said be sure you’re right. I was. The evidence was hanging in the mesquite tree behind me.
Lucky for me, Stupid was trained to aim for center mass. His round caught me in the plate on the upper left side of my chest. Sticking my hand in between my Aloha shirt and the vest, I felt around for a hole or blood. There was neither, though it hurt like hell, and I figured there might be a cracked rib or two I’d have to deal with later.
Dammit! That was only a few inches from where I’d been shot a few months back. The big trapezius muscle and scar tissue under my left arm was still sore in the mornings and now this.
With the wall to my back and satisfied I was going to live a little while longer, I stayed on one knee and swept the area again. No one else appeared from any direction. I was right. Most everyone was off after Judge and his team, mostly leaving the henhouse unguarded.
The now familiar buzz of a drone came from the opposite side of the wall. Someone, somewhere, was looking for the action. Luck had been with me. I’d crossed the wall after it had passed on one of its many rounds, but sooner or later the operator was going to bring it inside the courtyard.
That thought had no more than entered my head when the drone appeared over the main house and slowly drifted my way. I lined up on it and emptied the magazine. It was like bird hunting, except this time I didn’t have to lead it. One of the rounds hit it dead center, and the machine pitched over and thrashed itself to death on the ground.
Chapter 35
Despite his irritation, Carlos was distracted by the high definition images on Hector’s screen. Naked women did things he’d never thought of, and their actions made it hard to concentrate on his job securing the area.
Focusing on his own screens, Carlos piloted the replacement drone around the exterior of the rancheria. He made a mental note to tell La Jefa that he needed more sophisticated aircraft that would give him clearer images at night. In his mind, he played out a scene in which he stood beside her with a glass of wine in one hand, rubbing his other hand up and down her side, explaining how only he could keep her safe, using technology.
Then his hand rose higher, like those images on Hector’s screen and . . .
The system still wasn’t up when time gunfire erupted just outside their building. Both men reacted by almost jumping out of their chairs Who would have thought someone would attack at four in the morning? Certainly not the two young men who’d never been physically involved in any violent act. Neither were soldados. They were technicos, or technicians. The original intruders had been repelled, and likely dead by now.
It was probably those idiotas out there, celebrating their victory by shooting into the air.
Hector had been watching with his mouth open. Shocked back from the world of skin and moans, his teeth clicked shut. “Who is it?”
Carlos swung the upgraded DJI Phantom 3’s over the wall and instead of a celebration, saw a lone figure on one knee, exchanging gunfire with someone else. He zoomed in to find the man was no one he’d ever seen. Carlos flinched when the unknown individual aimed directly at the drone and fired. His screen went blank and he knew the man had killed his aircraft.
“Turn that shit off! We’re under attack.”
“Another one? What do we do?”
Carlos nodded toward two H&K machine pistols laying on the table beside them. “We kill anyone who comes through the door.”
Like twins, they picked up the weapons and laid them in their laps, watching and waiting in silence, surrounded by a room full of flickering screens, terrified that the door was going to open or worse, explode inward.
After a moment, when no one kicked in the door, Carlos turned toward the screens showing animated sand drizzling through an hourglass. “Hector, when will your security system be up and running?”
His eyes flicked from the door to the flickering screens. “When we are already dead.”
Eyes wide with fright, Hector ran his hands over the submachine gun as if it were a woman. “You should have sent out an alert when your first drone disappeared.”
“You could have suggested that earlier, instead of watching pornografia!”
“Cameras are my job.”
“Your job is security and you’ve failed. If the Mujer Malvada finds out, she will decorate her arbol cadaver with your backbone and I’ll tie a ribbon on it.”
“Be quiet. Someone might be listening at the door.”
Chapter 36
I slapped a fresh mag into the AR and studied the courtyard. With two guys on their way to the hereafter, and the drone operator probably holed up somewhere inside one of the handful of buildings built around the courtyard, it looked like it was just me.
All except for that small individual I’d seen in the bright room across the way. The large windows and open bi-fold glass wall gave me a clear view of a bright, grand room.
Weapon at the ready, I crossed the landscaped space, feeling the hair on my neck prickle at the thought of the shot I wouldn’t hear. Would the drone operator come out blasting? Good lord. Did they have weaponized drones? I wondered if he
was one of those geeky tech guys that could shoot me down like a stray dog.
I’ve got to quit being so impulsive.
Heart pounding and twisted tight as a mainspring, I closed on the ranch house, one slow step at a time, following the muzzle of the rifle in my trembling hands. After one last swing to make sure no one was behind me, I edged into the bright room.
The smallish person I’d seen wasn’t there, and I wouldn’t have been either in their situation.
Thick hand-hewn beams supported the ceiling of a wide, open-concept room decorated in the traditional, brightly colored Spanish style they love down in Mexico. A leather couch sat with its back to me, along with a couple of fat, comfortable-looking chairs facing a huge flat panel television mounted on the far wall. Tuned to the History Channel, the irony was that the night’s program was about drugs and cartels.
In plain sight to the left was an office with a massive desk holding three computer screens facing an empty chair.
A wide granite island on the right separated the combination grand living/media room and office from a fully appointed kitchen. A lot of money had been spent on upgrading everything with high-end stainless-steel appliances. It was a hundred-thousand-dollar kitchen that looked as if it had never been used.
Rifle at my shoulder, I waited for someone to pop up and start shooting.
Nothing.
The island was a good place to hide. Two closed doors on the back wall in the kitchen indicated there was more house beyond. I held the AR steady toward the upper edge of the granite island where I expected someone to pop up and start cranking off rounds at me.
“All right. Name’s Sonny Hawke.” My voice sounded high and reedy. I cleared it and brought it down a notch. “Texas Ranger. I’m here with a warrant for your arrest.”
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