Yeager's Law

by Scott Bell

  “So the driver works for smugglers, hey?”

  Santos made a seesaw gesture with one hand. “Could be. Professional thieves, hijackers, smugglers. Something like that.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, nothing.”

  They pushed through the waist-high gate in the white rail fence surrounding the ranch house and followed a stone path through a garden of native plants and decorative cacti mixed with rock. A traditional hacienda, the house was huge, with heavy adobe walls and a red-slate-tiled roof. Arches led to a perimeter walkway paved in red brick.

  Santos opened the double French doors, and DaSilva stepped inside. Inside the cool interior, DaSilva crossed the library and sat in the leather chair behind the antique mahogany desk.

  “Drink, Don DaSilva?” Santos crossed to a buffet that held an ice bucket, glasses, and a variety of decanters.

  “Yes. Scotch, with ice.”

  Santos looked a question at Pedro, who shook his head and slipped into a chair by the doors. Pedro would remain alert but effectively invisible.

  “I have not been here before. What assets do we have?” DaSilva asked. “How many men? Guns?”

  “We have twelve guards,” Santos replied, clinking ice cubes into a crystal glass with a pair of tongs. “Four on duty at a time, in rotating shifts. All armed with automatic weapons and sidearms. There are eighteen peons, mostly young girls and boys who work in the big barn. It has been converted into a workshop and warehouse where they break down the product into small packets for ease of transport.” Santos brought DaSilva a drink then returned to the bar and poured a shot of tequila for himself. “The workers are housed in the barn next to the warehouse. The guards have the bunkhouse attached to the barn.”

  Santos downed the shot. “The security room is through there.” He motioned with the hand holding the glass, pointing to a door on the opposite wall. “We have cameras positioned around the perimeter of the hacienda with IR capability. Analytic software will detect the approach of a human form and send an alert to the guard’s screen. The guard will notify the security squad on duty, who will respond to the threat.”

  DaSilva nodded and pursed his lips in thought. The ice tinkled in his glass when he raised it for another sip.

  “We have many sources on the local and federal police in this area.” Santos chuckled. “So many, in fact, that I think we employ more than the government does.”

  “So we will have plenty of warning if anybody shows up unexpectedly?”

  “Yes. Plenty of warning.”

  “Pedro,” DaSilva said, “I want you to call our people in Monterrey. Get another ten or twelve men. Have them armed for war. When we find who has our money, we are going after it.”

  “Sí, Don DaSilva,” Pedro said, standing. “It will be done.” Pedro took out his cell phone and stepped outside to make the call. When the door opened, DaSilva heard the faint sound of screams coming from the stables.

  Turning to Santos, DaSilva said, “Get me a bed-warmer. Something young.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Book Finders

  Austin, Texas

  On Monday morning, Nita Lutz pulled her silver Corolla into the bookstore’s side lot. The remains of seven years’ worth of faded University of Texas parking permits curled on the windshield. Seven years into a four-year journalism degree, Nita had stopped wasting her parents’ money, given up on school, and gone to work at Book Finders full time. And now it’s going to pay off, big time. Only not how I ever thought it would.

  The Corolla’s door squealed when it closed, and she had to bump it with her hip to get it to shut all the way. At six o’clock in the morning, hers was the only vehicle, except for an orange muscle car on the far side of the lot, a hot-looking Dodge. Just think. Soon, I can buy as many muscle cars as I want. And Ferraris and Jaguars and Aston Martins. She giggled and gave the Corolla’s door a solid kick, leaving a baseball-sized dent.

  Nita scrabbled in her purse for the store keys. She had a thousand things to do in the next few hours to make everything come out the way she wanted. Her hands still shook, even an hour after leaving Steven. Last night had been so… exciting.

  She didn’t notice the blond man in the Hawaiian shirt with a toothy grin and whisker-stubbled cheeks.

  Until he stuck a gun in her belly.

  Hacienda Del Norte

  Northern Mexico

  A knock at his bedroom door awoke DaSilva at eight twenty in the morning. After a long night on the phone and supervising the final details of the interrogation of the smuggler, Castillo, DaSilva had gone to bed late and slept poorly. The clumsy efforts of the peasant girl sent to please him had not improved his mood.

  “Don DaSilva?” The knock repeated, a gentle tap as if the person hesitated to disturb him.

  “Come,” DaSilva ordered. He sat up in bed, ran his fingers through his hair, and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

  Santos opened the door and took one step into the room. From his expression, everything was not well.

  “What is it?” DaSilva asked.

  “Our captive died,” Santos said. “Before he did, he said he worked for a small-time bunch of thieves. The Cruz brothers.”

  “Excellente! I know those little shits. I didn’t make the connection before. I am an idiot!” DaSilva thumped a hand to his forehead. Santos’s look of fear dashed cold water on his mood. “What?”

  “The captive… the man, Hector. He died before he could tell us where he put the money.”

  “Shit! Can nothing go right?”

  Santos handed DaSilva his shirt; the one from the previous day. The other clothes DaSilva had brought were being cleaned. He had packed lightly, expecting the recovery to take a day, maybe two, at most. The smell of stale sweat made him frown. As did the girl’s bloodstains on the sheets.

  “Have someone clean that up,” he ordered, pointing at the bed. “It would appear the Cruz brothers are looking to take a step up, maybe take on the Sinaloas. Well, one is, anyway. Humberto is dead.”

  “Who is left?”

  “Oscar,” DaSilva said, shrugging into his suit jacket. “Oscar Cruz. We will need to find him and bring him here. Him and his family, hey?”

  DaSilva ran his fingers through his hair again, pushing it into some kind of order. He glanced in the bedroom mirror and paused. When did my hair go so white?

  “Come,” he ordered Santos. “I need to make some phone calls.”

  Book Finders

  Austin, Texas

  Charlie loaded the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher while Yeager worked on his second cup of coffee. It was some fancy dark roast stuff, strong as nuclear fusion, and Yeager decided he liked it pretty damn well. He carried his cup into the living room and settled on the sofa, at the end he was beginning to think of as his usual spot. For the first time in a long while, he had absolutely nothing that he needed to do. No load to haul, no maintenance, no paperwork. Nothing but sit there and sip the fine coffee. Strange feeling.

  It dawned on him that he’d already made the decision in his subconscious, sometime while he slept maybe, not to mount a raid on the thieves who had stolen his truck. Not only was it needlessly dangerous, but he would have been pushing Victor against the wall, committing him to a criminal action that would risk his life and his livelihood. And all of that would have been for a diesel rig that was more albatross than anything else, or perhaps for his pride.

  The apartment phone rang, and Charlie answered it in the kitchen. Hearing her voice made him smile. The throaty, silky sound reminded him of that actress who played in An Officer and a Gentleman. What’s her name? Debra Winger.

  “That was Nita, my manager from downstairs,” Charlie said, coming into the living room. “She has a problem she needs my help on. She sounded kind of agitated, which isn’t like her, so I better go see what it is. Want to come with me? I’ll give you the nickel tour of the bookstore.”

  She wore a white short-sleeved knit top, denim shorts, and sandals. Her copper
hair was pulled back in a ponytail. In contrast to Yeager, on his third day in the same pair of jeans and second day in the same tan cotton shirt, she looked fresh, clean, and astonishingly pretty. A hot sensation zipped through his chest every time he saw her.

  “Sure.” He drained his cup and set it down.

  “You like books? What do you like to read?”

  “You got anything with Dick and Jane in it?” he teased. “I can’t get enough of them two, how they’re always watching Spot run.”

  She laughed. “I’ll show you the picture book section.”

  “Good.”

  In the freight elevator, Yeager wrapped his arms around her from behind. Charlie pressed her backside into him, leaning her head into his collar bone. They untangled when the elevator came to a halt. He followed her down the warehouse aisle, watching her butt more than anything else. Intent, enthralled, and plain goofy with infatuation, he realized too late his situational awareness had devolved to situational stupidity.

  When Charlie halted abruptly in front of him, his brain took a minute to catch up. A flush of cold water ran through his veins, snapping him to full alert.

  In the open area, a rake-thin scarecrow with a blade nose and heavy cheekbones stood next to a black-haired woman, holding a shotgun to her head. She was secured to a chair with clear packaging tape. Next to him, two younger men waited, both armed with pistols.

  One of the two—a young Robert Redford clone in a brightly patterned Hawaiian shirt, snug jeans, and flip flops—stepped forward and grinned as though he was having the most fun ever. “Yo! Welcome to the party. Come on down.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Yeager barked in his Staff Sergeant voice. “And what do you want?”

  “Now, is that any way to treat a guest?” the blond guy said. His white teeth contrasted with his surfer tan. Faint laugh lines traced down each cheek. The guy could have been a fashion model, something out of the JCPenney Summer Gunmen catalog. “Come on and join us,” Smiley continued. “Have a seat.”

  In front of the dead forklift, three wooden chairs were arranged in a rough triangle, with the woman taped to the one on the left. She wore a maroon shirt with the words Book Finders embroidered over the left breast and a name tag with Nita in big letters and Manager in a smaller font below. Nita’s mascara had run, giving her raccoon eyes. Both her hands and feet were secured to the chair. The clear packing tape crinkled when she moved.

  “What are you doing with her?” Charlie demanded. “Let her go.”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to bargain here, Mizz Buchanan,” the third man said. Pudgy, with black hair tied in a ponytail, white shirt, and black slacks, the guy looked familiar.

  “How do you know my name?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh, Mizz Buchanan, I know lots of things about you.” Ponytail held a short-barreled, nickel-plated revolver. He stood apart from the other two, off to Yeager’s right, near the dock door. “Except for one very important thing.”

  “What do you want?” Yeager, assessing the tactical situation, hadn’t moved.

  It didn’t look good. The scarecrow, the one with a sawn-off double-barrel shotgun, was a stone-cold killer. His flat dark eyes gave an impression of a soul stained black with blood. Yeager had seen the type. That guy would drop the hammer without a second thought.

  “We want you to sit the fuck down and tell us a story. One that we’ll enjoy,” Smiley said.

  Yeager’s body reacted to the grinning lunatic at a cellular level. Blood rushed to his face, his nostrils flared, and an electric jolt of adrenaline jazzed through his chest. The guy held a blue-steel Taurus semi-auto, probably a 9-millimeter with a high capacity magazine, down by his side. In contrast to the cigar-store Indian with the shotgun, he looked like a man out for a picnic, totally at ease, without a care in the world.

  “What my companion means,” Ponytail said, “is sit down, or Spooky here blows the tits off the fat bitch.”

  Charlie looked over her shoulder at Yeager, his concern mirrored in her eyes. He read the clear message: We can’t win against three armed men, but if we give up we’ll probably die.

  Yeager processed the scene, looking for an edge. He didn’t find one. No choice but to play it out. He nodded with an almost microscopic tilt of his head. Charlie stepped into the circle of chairs, taking the one on the left. Fists clenched, Yeager moved his feet with an act of will.

  “See now? Lookit y’all,” Smiley drawled in a buttery, put-on Southern accent. “We can all just get along here.”

  Keeping out of the line of fire, Smiley skirted behind the chairs and secured Yeager’s arms with packing tape. The scritch of the tape as he peeled it from the roll was loud in the otherwise quiet room.

  Turning to Ponytail, Smiley said, “All yours, boss.”

  “So here’s the deal,” Ponytail said. “A load of books showed up here in the last couple of days. I want it. Tell me where those pallets are, and we’ll be, like, gone, y’know?”

  “Books?” Charlie asked. “What could you possibly want with a load of books?”

  Ponytail beamed at her as if she were a simple child asking a dumb question. “As I’m sure you know, it ain’t the books. It’s the prize inside that we want.” He raised an eyebrow, looking from Charlie to Yeager and back. “No? You mean to say you haven’t found the sixty million dollars yet?”

  “What?” Charlie shouted.

  “What are you talking about, nutjob?” Yeager growled.

  Ponytail grinned wider. “Well, you sure put on a good act, I’ll say that. Okay, I’ll play along.” He pursed his lips and paced in a circle around the three chairs, like a professor delivering a lecture… or a lawyer delivering a closing argument. “The Sinaloa cartel, from down in Mexico, has a cash flow problem: how do they flow all their cash from the U.S. back to Mexico? One way is to have their people here buy cashier’s checks and mail ’em home. Another one is to buy a load of washers and ship them south, where the dopers sell ’em to Argentina at a loss. They call the difference in price the cost of doing business.”

  The pudgy man strolled behind Yeager, who followed his progress by watching the dark-haired woman’s eyes. Nita breathed in gulps, and her face had turned a bright shade of red. Fresh wetness stained her cheeks.

  “But one way,” Ponytail continued, “is to smuggle big loads of raw cash in, say, a load of remainder books.”

  Yeager snapped his head around and fixed Ponytail with a glare.

  “Aha!” the man crowed. “I see the light has begun to dawn. A former client and current employee of mine”—he gestured at Smiley—“learned of this money train through his… more dubious acquaintances, but he does nothing with the knowledge. Knowing the cartel as he does, my friend here doesn’t want to take them on straight up. He’s smarter than he looks.”

  Ponytail put a hand on Smiley’s shoulder and gave him a pat. “But then a curious thing happened. Serendipity. You know what that means, Mizz Buchanan, don’t you? Something fortuitous and completely random-like. I send my pals here to put the squeeze on a slimeball who’s trying to scam me. While convincing Mr. Slimeball to return some money of mine, he tells us his wife owns a bookstore and maybe he can get the money from her. Can you guess where this might be headed? Yep, none other than Dr. Steve Buchanan, your handsome ex, threw you under the bus.”

  The guy tucked his nickel-plated revolver in his hip pocket and slid forward to loom over Charlie. “Now the word bookstore connects in my friend’s brain here, and he comes to me with a suggestion. A damn good one, too, I might add. Why not, he says to me, he says why not have Dr. Steve buy some books from that special warehouse, and we’ll have our pal on the inside, who told us about this scheme to begin with, switch up some shipping labels.”

  Ponytail straightened and waved his hands like a magician. “And voilà! Here we have a truckload of money sitting on your dock.” He frowned theatrically. “But no… wait. We don’t have a truckload of money. So where’d it go? Inquiring minds
want to know.”

  “Steven took it,” Nita blurted.

  All eyes snapped to her.

  “Stevie?” Ponytail’s eyebrows looked like a McDonald’s sign, twin arches climbing up his forehead. “Steve Buchanan drove off with a big truck? By himself? Or did he hire a trucker type, like this guy here…” He glanced at Yeager. “Well, not this guy. He’s putting the moves on the missus here. But one like him, to drive the truck.”

  “I-I don’t know.” Nita licked her lips. “He asked me to stall the delivery because he wanted what was on the truck. He didn’t say why.”

  The three gunmen exchanged glances. Charlie looked as if she’d had a brick slammed into her head.

  “It’s like we thought,” Smiley said. “Buchanan ran off with the money.”

  Yeager shared another glance with Charlie, who still seemed dazed. The bookstore manager wore the same kind of lost expression, magnified by a big helping of pure terror. As far as Yeager could tell, neither looked as though she had an idea of how to get out of the mess they were in.

  “I have a GPS unit on the cab,” Yeager said. “It shows the truck’s in Mexico.”

  “Mexico?” Ponytail barked.

  “He’s lying,” Scarecrow said. “Let’s kill ’em all and get outta here.”

  Nita made a noise in her throat, and fresh tears flooded her face. Charlie sent him a silent question with her eyes.

  Ponytail scratched the stubble on his chin. “Mexico, huh?”

  Yeager nodded and tried to project confidence. “East of Monterrey, last time I looked.”

  “And why ain’t you called the poh-lice?” Scarecrow asked. His shotgun never wavered from Nita’s head.

  Yeager shrugged. “The cartel has it.”

  “He’s lyin’,” Scarecrow repeated.

  “No, wait,” Charlie said. “He’s telling the truth. We were going to call the police this morning. Last night, we were…” She glanced at Yeager, and a flush brightened her neck. “We were occupied.”