“Don’t you have any of the other guys from the office to help?”

“I asked Weber and he said he doesn’t want to pay for the overtime for anyone else. Pisses me off, but what else can I do?”

“Typical,” replied Jack. “I often deal with the same problem in Canada.”

“Well, as Weber said, it is no big deal to get a plate number and I should be able to follow a truck easy enough.”

“How long do you think before the deal goes down?”

“You know how dope deals go.”

“Never on time, that’s for sure.”

“Exactly, we could be waiting half the night.”

Davidson and Weber sat in a car four miles away and smiled.

“What do you think?” asked Weber. “Turning up the pressure enough?”

“I would say so. If they sit there an hour or two waiting for the delivery, they’re bound to talk about something.”

“Hope so. I’m getting too old to be out this late,” replied Weber.

“Good thing they’re sitting in the car,” noted Davidson.

It was after one o’clock and Adams was scanning the horizon with the binoculars when he blurted, “Fuck! They’re here, but not where they crossed last time. Look,” he said, passing the binoculars.

Jack focused the binoculars and looked to where Adams was pointing. He could make out the shapes of several men on the Mexican side of the border, but they were slightly to the right of them instead of the left as expected. “They came out practically on top of us,” said Jack, handing the binoculars back.

“Yeah, except if the truck comes from El Paso it probably won’t go past us,” said Adams. “I’m going to have to sneak down the ditch about a hundred yards to get the plate. It could still be another hour or two.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Ten minutes passed as Jack and Adams, both hunched over, crept along a ditch, stopping twice to lie down flat when a car and a truck passed. Eventually they could hear whispered conversation from the Mexicans guarding the drug shipment and knew they had gone far enough.

Adams tapped Jack’s arm and pointed to a small knoll up from the ditch in the direction of the voices. There were a few clumps of dried grass to give them cover.

Jack nodded and they both crawled toward the top of the knoll to watch. As they went, he winced several times when sharp needles from small cactus plants found his elbows and his knees.

Once in place at the top of the knoll, Adams looked through the binoculars and then handed them over.

The binoculars were barely needed, but Jack used them to count about thirty men, many of whom were wearing Mexican police uniforms. Somewhere in the darkness behind the men, they could hear a truck idling.

“Must be a small shipment, maybe only one or two ton,” whispered Adams. “For the really big ones the bad guys hire the military to protect the crossing. You’ll see fifty to a hundred soldiers protecting it.”

Jack felt his stomach knot as he thought of how dangerous Mexico really was for anyone who would dare to take on the cartels.

Another few minutes passed when the sound of a car racing up the highway from El Paso could be heard. It caught everyone’s attention when the car came to a screeching stop a short distance down the road.

The whispers of the Mexican police officers became louder and more excited.

Seconds later, gunshots erupted from the car and bullets flew overhead.

Jack literally kissed the dirt as he stuck his face as deep as possible into a small indentation in the ground. Several of the Mexican police officers returned fire and the bullets whizzed like jet-propelled bees over Jack and Adams in the opposite direction. The truck that had been idling immediately sprang to life and seconds later all of the Mexicans ran back.

“What the hell happened?” asked Jack, as the car on the highway did a U-turn and sped away.

“The car had to be from the Guajardo cartel,” replied Adams. “They must have found out at the last moment what the Sinaloa boys were up to and sent someone out here to fuck with them.”

Adams and Jack both stood up and walked back to the car. On the way Adams asked, “Do you feel like going for a drink?”

“Normally I would jump at the chance, but I want to rent a car from the airport and be at the Armadillo around noon tomorrow. That may give the bad guys the impression I just arrived. I also don’t know what tomorrow will bring, so I think I better take a rain check tonight and get some sleep.”

“I understand. I’ll pick you up in the morning around ten-thirty and drive you to the airport. I’ll also arrange to get a policewoman and check into the motel before you do and put a backup team at that spot about five minutes down the road from the motel.”

“Thanks.”

“How are you going to handle it with my people if the bad guys want you to go to Juarez?”

“I’ll say they want to meet me in the dance spot you showed me. The Old Warehouse. It’s so big they’ll have a hard time knowing if I’m there or not. I’ll also tell the bad guys I want my own car, so I’ll have some control.”

“How will you communicate with me?”

“I’ll tell the bad guys I have to call Damien and then call you on your cell.”

“Who’s Damien?”

“National president of Satans Wrath. He’s the top boss in Canada and is who they will think I represent.

“And once you meet Tio?”

“Party hearty and try to gain his trust to find out what they did with Lily. Once I do that, I’ll try to get anyone who was involved, including the two hit-men who killed Porter, back across the border into El Paso so they can be arrested.”

“And how the hell will you manage that?” asked Adams as they arrived at the car and he unlocked the door.

Jack shrugged and said, “I don’t know yet, I’ll come up with something. It’s what I do.”

Adams stared silently at Jack over the roof of the car.

“Relax,” said Jack. “What could possibly go wrong?” he added with a smile, trying to sound light-hearted.

“What can go wrong is you’ll leave a pregnant widow and a son behind,” said Adams tersely.

Jack quit smiling.

chapter twenty-eight

The following morning, Jack went to the hotel lobby with his laptop and only one of his suitcases. He had decided he would not check out of his room in the event he needed a safe haven later on.

In the lobby he used a pay phone to make a collect call to Natasha. He did not want to risk using the phone in his room in case a nosey hotel clerk listened in, nor did he want to use his cellphone in the event it fell into the wrong hands after and would have a record of his call home.

Natasha answered and Jack could hear Mikey banging a spoon on the tray of his high chair in the background.

“So where you been?” asked Natasha, sounding snippy. “Taking care of business?”

Jack smiled. Usually collect calls meant they could talk freely, but not always. Natasha always acted like a jilted woman until Jack gave her the clearance to talk. Even then, most details were left out.

“I called to tell you I love you,” said Jack, “and Mikey, too.”

“I love you, too,” she said lovingly. “We miss you.”

“I think the only thing Mikey misses is his food if it’s a minute late,” said Jack.

“No, he doesn’t. You’ve seen his face light up when he sees you. Speaking of which?”

“Hope to have a business meeting today with this new partnership. With luck, I’ll be back sometime this weekend.”

“Call me as soon as you can.”

“I will.” Jack knew Natasha worried about him. They had made a pact that rather than have her worry needlessly, he would try to let her know when he was doing something risky and then call her as soon as it was over. In the long run, it was a bit easier on her that way.