The Relic Runner Origin Story Box Set

by Ernest Dempsey

  "Like the cartels?"

  "Among other things," she said. She lifted her glass and raised it toward the two men. They joined her and clinked their drinks together. "Salud."

  "Salud," Dak and the bartender joined.

  Carina downed the entire glass in one shot. Dak arched an eyebrow at the impressive display, then took a little sip. The barkeep finished his in one go as well and looked at their guest with curiosity in his eyes.

  "Too hot for you?" the young man asked.

  "Nope," Dak said. "It's perfect. Incredibly smooth. But where I come from, we sip good whiskey. Seems like the right thing to do with your tequila. It should be appreciated."

  Carina eyed him suspiciously, then nodded. "I don't usually have time for such things, but I like your style."

  She tapped her glass on the counter, signaling for another round. The barkeep splashed another pour into the vessel, and this time when she picked it up, she only took a slow sip.

  "Come," she said with a flick of her head. "We have business to attend to."

  "Thanks for the drink," Dak said to the bartender. "Quite the talent you have there." He raised the glass to the young man who took the compliment with a humble grin and a bow.

  Carina led the way back to the manager's office door. When she opened it, he was greeted by a tiny room barely 150 square feet, if that. An antiquated metal desk sat to the right with a computer monitor atop it with cords running to a tower on the floor to the right. A lamp with a canvas lampshade on the left side of the desk illuminated the room with a dim, yellowish glow. A black plastic wastebasket in the corner and a vinyl-upholstered chair were the only other furnishings in the minimalist space.

  She closed the door behind him and locked two deadbolts and the latch. He took another sip of tequila as he watched, surprised at the number of locks she utilized on an office door.

  For a place this small, he knew there had to be more than met the eye.

  "I'm guessing this isn't your real office," he suggested.

  She looked up at him, momentarily losing herself in his emerald eyes. Her mind didn't wander for long.

  "You'd guess right." She motioned to a closet door in the back of the room, then glided over to it with an elegant speed.

  She pulled open the wooden door to expose exactly what it looked like—a closet. Inside, a few windbreakers, shirts, and slacks hung from hangars. Cardboard boxes full of paperwork, receipts, and invoices littered the floor. She bent over and dragged one of the boxes out. Dak quickly averted his eyes at the spectacle until she'd moved the container out of the way.

  Carina spun and looked at him. "What's the matter with you?"

  He pulled his focus away from the uninteresting ceiling. "Sorry, I just didn't want to… um…."

  Her eyebrows lifted, her face relaxing with amusement. "Wow. A gentleman and a killer. Interesting." She paused as if contemplating the enigma standing before her. Then the moment was over and she motioned for him to follow her. She stepped back into the closet, drawing back the hung clothing to reveal a keypad on the wall. Dak noted how both corners displayed the thinnest of seams. They were barely visible in the darkly lit room.

  She entered a code on the keypad, but before she finished, turned to him and said, "If you're going to avert your eyes, I'd rather you do it now than when I'm bent over a stack of boxes."

  He blushed. "Yes, ma'am," he said, turning his head to the side.

  The panel beeped, and a green light glowed. As he suspected, the wall slid backward exposing an entryway to the left interior.

  "Very cool," Dak offered.

  "I like it. Gives me real privacy. And the cartel goons are too stupid to look beyond the boxes and clothes. Also helps that I'm a woman."

  He followed her through the narrow opening into a room that was three times the size of the previous.

  "Why's that?"

  She looked at him like ants covered his face. "You don't know much about the cartels, do you?"

  "Only a little. I don't believe what I read in the papers or on the news."

  "At least you have that going for you." She walked across the room to a stand-up desk midway down the right-hand wall. A flatscreen monitor sat on it. The computer on the floor next to the desk glowed with several sapphire LEDs. A steel table in the center of the room reminded Dak of a butcher shop he'd seen once, except there was nothing on it. Except for a white leather desk chair near the elevated desk, and a sparse few other necessities, the room was empty. She put her hand on the optical mouse and clicked it.

  The screen bloomed to life with dozens of images. Some featured a massive estate with a mansion atop a rise in the center. The gray stucco and terra-cotta roof stood like a fortress against the natural backdrop of the hills, forests, and mountains in the distance.

  "When was the last time you heard of a woman running a cartel?" Carina asked, continuing her line of thought.

  Dak lifted his shoulders and bobbed his head. "I guess I haven't."

  "And why do you think that is?"

  He shifted. "I don't know, but I feel like the answer isn't a complimentary one."

  "You'd be right. None of them suspect me of much because I'm a woman, incapable of running an operation like this."

  Dak scanned the room, bewildered. "An empty room with a computer in it?"

  She sighed in derision and clicked the mouse again. Without looking, her fingers tapped across the numbers on the keyboard and then dramatically hit the enter key.

  Within a second, the sounds of locks clicking filled the room. The floors in front of each wall began moving, all rising from the ground. When the hydraulic motors stopped, Dak found himself in a completely different space.

  "Now this is a gun cave."

  She looked at him, befuddled. "Never heard that before."

  "Just made it up." He looked at her with squinting mischief in his eyes. "Man cave sounded wrong, on account of you being a woman."

  She blushed. "Thank you."

  The hidden walls held racks of weapons from small, compact revolvers up to a few .50-cal sniper rifles complete with tripod and long-range scopes. Some racks on the back wall held rucksacks and metal boxes marked with a symbol indicating explosives.

  "Try not to get too excited, soldier," she said. She reached out and touched his face, pulling it back toward her.

  For a second he thought, no feared, she might try to kiss him. He was both relieved and disappointed when she turned his head to the computer screen. There, in several boxes, was a face Dak had imagined finding for the last seven months.

  "Luis," Dak muttered.

  "Yes," she said. "And before you play with those," she indicated the weapons stash with a finger, "you need to learn all you can about his organization."

  "Good call," he said. "By the way, I'm Dak. I know you know that, but I thought a formal—"

  "Carina. A pleasure," she said, forcing her eyes to stay locked on the screen and not the powerful, rugged man next to her. "But we both know who each other is. Actually, I'm surprised you didn't ask how I know so much about you already."

  "You're a professional," he said. "I would expect nothing less."

  Another blush reddened her faintly tanned cheeks. "Well, I appreciate that."

  He leaned forward, placing one hand on her desk as he peered at the images. She could feel his warmth near her and caught her breath for a second.

  "So," he said, quickly steering back to business. "Tell me everything I need to know about this cartel."

  Eight

  Guadalajara

  Carina clicked on a minimized window and the screen's main image changed to a white background with grid lines.

  "A spreadsheet?" Dak wondered.

  "A list," she corrected. "It lists nearly every point in Mendoza's supply chain. Each one of these businesses is used as a front to move drugs, money, and weapons. His system is elaborate, but the concept is simple enough. He uses legitimate businesses: supermarkets, shoe stores, coffee shops—any busi
ness you can imagine. And he doesn’t own any of them, not on paper, anyway."

  "He coerced the owners into helping him."

  "Coerced is putting it mildly. Mendoza only knows one way of negotiating."

  Dak knew exactly what she meant. While his experience in the drug trade was limited, he'd seen enough organized crime to know how it worked. If you owned a business, either you cooperated and got to keep your livelihood, or you didn't and you would end up in a ditch.

  Back in the United States, the exploits of the Italian, Irish, and Russian mafias were well known. If you didn't work with them, you'd be out of business or at the bottom of the ocean. The cartels weren't much different, although their schemes differed.

  In the States, businesses in the larger cities paid for protection from other organizations. Racketeering was truly one of the country's oldest professions. They used their businesses for other purposes, certainly money laundering, but not to the level the cartels operated. And Mendoza's system was impressive, to say the least.

  "Most of his allies are taken care of," Carina went on. "He pays well because he understands their value in the grand scheme. It also helps him move more money around to keep both the United States and Mexican governments off the money trail. And yes, he runs similar operations in the US."

  "Doesn't surprise me." Dak's eyes rolled down the list. There were dozens of businesses in Uruapan alone, but there were others with different towns or cities listed next to them. "What are these?" He pointed his finger at the monitor, indicating the anomalies.

  "Expansion," she answered simply. "Mendoza is pushing all the way to the Pacific. He's also making a move toward Central Mexico and the Gulf. If I had to guess, he wants to set up a regional empire where he can go virtually unchallenged by anyone."

  "With that kind of power, he'll be untouchable," Dak echoed her sentiment. "Neither government could get to him."

  "Correct."

  He leaned closer to the screen, studying it intently. His focus, however, was sucked away by the distracting scent of rose and lilac from Carina's perfume. She'd been working all day and still smelled like a meadow of blooming wildflowers.

  He cracked the whip in his mind and got back to business, pulling his wandering eyes from their attempt to admire her.

  "Can you show me a map of this area?" he asked, clearing his throat.

  "Sure." She clicked a button, tapped several keys, and then hit enter.

  A map of the region blinked on the monitor.

  "Zoom out," he directed.

  She pulled the wheel on the mouse and the image of the area narrowed as the camera view withdrew.

  "That's good," he said. The entire nation of Mexico was in full view. A red pin indicated Uruapan on the map.

  "He's not just trying to establish a long-term foothold in the region," Dak said, realization hitting him like the glove of a heavyweight boxer.

  Carina twisted her head and looked up at him. Dak felt her gaze but didn't meet it with his own.

  "Look at what's on either side of this," he said.

  It was her turn to corral her impulses. She looked at the monitor once more. "Water," she answered. "Like I said, he wants to stretch from the Pacific to the Gulf."

  "Yeah," Dak said, "but men like Mendoza have egos. They don't just look to set up a safe place where they can operate unimpeded. Do you think he's going to stop expanding once he reaches both seas?"

  She studied the map for several breaths before she realized what Dak was saying. "You think he wants to go farther?"

  Dak nodded. "I think Mendoza is looking to build a vast empire. He can't take on all the cartels in Mexico."

  "No single organization is capable of that," Carina offered. "Even though they're at war with each other, there is a sort of unwritten understanding that no one group should get all the pie. They squabble over territory, but in the end, things usually come out the same. Some cartels have more than others, but all always have something. Unless, of course, they break the rules. When that happens, the organization is wiped off the face of the earth."

  "Interesting sub-culture," he commented.

  "So, what's your point?" Carina asked.

  He liked the blunt way she went about her business. She was no nonsense. He appreciated that. In his life, he'd seen plenty of the other. It was refreshing to meet someone who operated more like him.

  "My point," he said, "is when Mendoza secures territory on both shores he'll be able to export his goods to a wider customer base. All of South America will be open for business. Not to mention Canada and the Caribbean. From there, my guess is he'll establish bases on some of the islands. When that happens, the Eastern Hemisphere will be in reach."

  Carina looked up at him again, this time with disbelief. "No cartel has ever tried to get that big," she said. "It's too broad for any of them. The logistics alone would consume them and spit them out."

  "You know that. I know that. It's the classic cautionary tale from every major empire that's ever existed, from Babylon to Persia to Rome, all the way down to Great Britain. Sooner or later, your resources are stretched too thin. Even so, that lesson has been ignored more often than not, most recently by Adolf Hitler."

  He let the words loom over her.

  Carina considered what Dak was saying. Deep down, she knew he was right. She could see it now, though she wondered why she hadn't before. She'd spent so much time working on undermining the cartels; piecing together an understanding of how their systems and processes operated—maybe that was the problem. She'd been close to it for so long, she'd become blind to other possibilities, other schemes the cartels might use to expand their businesses to feed their hunger for more power, more money.

  "You've been tracking Mendoza's expansion," Dak said, "how soon until he has businesses and property along the Pacific shore?"

  "Could be weeks," Carina said. "He's closer to the Pacific than the Gulf, though I'd say within a month's time we could see him running some operations there as well."

  Dak stood up straight and bobbed his head. "Okay, then. I guess I should get to it."

  "Get to what?" She swirled around in her chair.

  "Mendoza's rival is the Guerreros’ cartel, right?"

  "Yes."

  "I think it's time I make them a little business proposition."

  Lines cut into her forehead as she frowned. "What?"

  "You know where they're based. You can point me to them."

  She laughed at the absurdity of his request. "Sure, but it's not like I can set up an appointment for you. If you try to go talk to the Guerreros, they'll murder you with the same thought they would give to swatting a fly."

  He cocked his head to one side and shrugged. "You got to go sometime, right? This is the only play I can see that makes sense, Carina. Can you point me to them or not?"

  She stared at him with both wonder and fear in her eyes. "This is crazy. You know that, right?"

  "Yep."

  She tossed her head, resigned to the fact his mind was made up. "Okay, it's your funeral. What exactly is your business proposition for them, just out of curiosity?"

  A wicked grin crossed Dak's face. "I'm going to sell them some real estate."

  Nine

  Uruapan

  Luis stood in the grandiose boardroom Mendoza had built in the basement of his mansion. It was the cartel leader's personal NORAD. Surrounded by four feet of poured, reinforced concrete, it could withstand almost any type of attack. While Mendoza's preparations would keep him and his most trusted men safe from rival cartels, the situation room wasn't only built as a safe harbor from other cartels.

  He'd seen what the United States government could do when they really wanted to eliminate a target. They could do it covertly with a small team of operatives, and while that posed a threat, his greater fear was of an aerial assault. The United States military had, at their disposal, an arsenal of silent bombs that could hit with laser precision if given the order.

  He recalled seeing such
weaponry blasted over the media in the 1990s when President Bush sent his troops into Kuwait, then again after the events of 9/11. The American military capabilities were put on full display for everyone to see. Mendoza wasn't foolish enough to believe they would only launch such attacks at foreign militaries.

  In the late 1990s, a mysterious explosion killed a cartel boss in Colombia, along with his entire entourage and security detail. Their compound was reduced to a rubble-filled crater. Precariously, a similar fate met the cartel's main cocaine processing plant.

  The American media didn’t mention it, and the Mexican outlets barely caught wind of the story.

  Every cartel boss from Juarez to Montevideo in Uruguay spent several months on edge, wondering if they would be the next target.

  Further attacks never came, and many of the leaders fell into their usual routines, once more getting comfortable in their day-to-day operations.

  When Mendoza took over Dorado Aguilas, his first order of business was to build this place, along with a half-mile-long subterranean escape tunnel that exited in the jungle. He kept a getaway vehicle there, always fueled and ready in a makeshift garage constructed out of an old barn.

  A projection screen at the back end of the room displayed a map of the region, with Uruapan highlighted. Two other areas were highlighted in a different color, with a light green, semi-transparent hue.

  "We are still on schedule, sir," Luis said. "We currently have operatives along both shorelines evaluating the best locations."

  Mendoza grunted, but it wasn't entirely of approval.

  Luis noted the irritation and continued. "We've selected two potential warehouses along the gulf and three on the Pacific side. All of them are owned by struggling shipping business, which gives us strong leverage."

  "Leverage?" Mendoza asked.

  As prepared as he was, and as savvy as the man's business sense proved time and time again, he sometimes baffled Luis with his nativity.

  "Yes, sir. Now that we have a good choice of locations and the shipping lanes are nearly open, we can begin with the next phase of operations."