“That’s good.  What’s Moses barking at?”

“He thinks I’ve got a fish.  He hates fish – well, he hates fish that aren’t deep fried at least.”

Kate laughed, “I think by the time we leave this place, we’ll all hate fish.”

“You know what?”  Geram smiled and said, “I do believe you’re right.”

Kate sat on the bank beside him as he continued to work the spinner bait through the water.

“What happened that night; how’d you get shot?”

“I lost focus for just a second, and the next thing I knew I was hit.  I guess it just wasn’t my lucky night.  If it hadn’t been for Jake…” his voice trailed off.

“I think you were very lucky that night.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Have you ever been shot before?”

“Never.”

She sat in silence for a while as he occasionally cast the rod and began the cycle of reeling it anew.

“It gives you some perspective, doesn’t it?”

“It does.  I’ve had several dreams about that moment where I stared at his barrel.  I wasn’t ready to die – on so many levels, I wasn’t ready to die.”

“I had a dream the other night about my mother.  It’s the only dream I’ve had about her since she passed.”

Geram placed the rod on the bank as he sat down in the sand and faced her.

“What was it about?”

“We were in this beautiful restaurant at this beautiful table.  There were candles and the reflections of the flames danced on the silverware and china.  We were the only people in the place.  Mom looked angelic, like I’d never seen her before; her face was so radiant.  She never said anything; she just smiled at me with the most amazing smile.  Behind her was this sculpture. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember being in complete awe of it.  The detail was indescribable, the curves and lines were perfect; I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

I asked her who made it, but she didn’t answer.  She just kept smiling at me like an angel.  It made me feel so warm and safe to see her smile like that.

I never saw who it was, but when I asked her again, a hand reached across my shoulder and pointed at Mom.  I was like, ‘Mom!  You made this?’ But she never said a word; she just kept smiling back at me like she’d never been happier.”

Geram thought for a while, before asking, “What do you think it meant, Kate?”

“I’m not sure.  I know of all people, Mom was not an artist,” Kate smiled at the memory of her mother.

They sat in silence as they waited for Jake and Clayton to return, the distant sound of their motor was barely audible.

“Maybe,” she said, “maybe it was supposed to mean that there’s something more.”

“Maybe it was.”

Kate buried her feet in the sand and looked away.  “Things are going to get bad, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, they are.”

“But there’s something more.”

“Yeah, there’s something more.”

“Then I can accept that.”

A note from the author:

I hope you enjoyed the first book in the series; if you did, please leave a review on Amazon and spread the word; it would be greatly appreciated.  The sequel to The Western Front, Kratocracy , is also available on Amazon.  I’ve included an excerpt from the book on the following pages.

Regards, -Archer Garrett

KRATOCRACY

Kratocracy (Kra-toc-ra-cy) [kruh-tok-ruh-see] (Origin: Greek, krateros, strong) (noun, plural – Kra-toc-ra-cies) (similar: Kratocrat –noun; Kratocratic –adjective):  Government by those who are strong enough to seize power through force or cunning. (Montague.)

One

The four grey SUVs cautiously approached the outskirts of Viejo Guerrero, known to the gringos as Old Warrior City.  The vehicles were dented and dusted thoroughly, with the occasional rusted bullet hole in a door or fender; the windshields were cracked and caked with dirt and grime in the areas beyond the reach of the dry-rotted wiper blades.

The cartel soldados in the vehicles were anxious to make the delivery, but were fearful of what may lie between them and Falcon Lake.  They gripped their rifles tightly as they peered out the windows of the vehicles at the abandoned structures and barren landscape.  Dread was a new emotion for many of the halcones and sicarios; they were more accustomed to inflicting terror than being gripped by it.

The ones they feared were surrounded by myth and mystique; most reasoned the source to be gringo irregulars, but some of the more superstitious among them told stories around campfires about the spirits that roamed the borderlands.  These spirits, they would say in hushed voices, were angered by the choices of those in their ancient bloodline; the drug trade was destroying the delicate borderland, and the spirits were angry.

Who could blame these men for their superstitions?  The borderlands were a place steeped in centuries of bloodshed and wars, and nearly every man had a tale of a strange encounter that either they, or someone they dearly trusted had experienced.  Now there was incessant talk of the mysterious riders that were haunting the soldiers of the cartels.

They referred to them as the jinetes fantasma, the phantom horsemen.  Entire parties of soldados had disappeared without a trace, never to be heard from again; the few men that had escaped certain death told fantastical tales of the dark riders.  The riders would only materialize between dusk and dawn because they feared the light; they would appear from seemingly nowhere, abduct the narco scouts and overwhelm the defenseless encampment.  The cartels had sent teams of hardened, experienced men to the borderlands for the sole purpose of finding and eliminating the source of the attacks, but to date, none had been heard from again.

If any place invited the talk of spirits and times long forgotten, Viejo Guerrero was it.  Founded in 1750 as a Spanish colonial town, more than twenty years before the American Revolution, it was the capital of one of the many republics, including the Republic of Texas, that rebelled against the subversive centralization of Mexico and the dissolution of the Mexican constitution by the Santa Anna government.

Journal remnants from an expedition in the nineteenth century observed that, “Guerrero is a fine looking and well-constructed town.  The houses are built of a kind of marble or stone, with flat roofs, surrounded by a wall. The streets and public squares (of which there are two) are well laid off, and the whole place presents an appearance of elegance and neatness. There is one cathedral in the place and several large public buildings. The inhabitants have fine gardens and throughout the place there are numerous groves of orange trees that give it a most luxuriant and smiling appearance.”

Viejo Guerrero, like many other towns and villages in the area, had been abandoned when the Falcon Dam was constructed on the Rio Grande; a new city was built nearly twenty miles to the southeast on higher ground, not far from the dam.  Viejo Guerrero was left to its fate, to be consumed by the rising waters of Falcon Lake.  The lake’s waters had advanced into and receded from the ghost town numerous times since the dam’s construction; the current water level left a little more than half of the city back on dry land.

As twilight yielded to dusk, the sky was painted with oranges and yellows; the thin, wispy cirrus clouds reflected an array of colors, from bright purple to dull gray.  The cool, inviting temperature and the gentle breeze made a picturesque sky even more perfect.  The men in the SUVs would have greatly preferred to be tending a warm fire back at camp and trading tall stories as the last vestiges of the day disappeared, rather than meeting the mules in these forgotten ruins, far from any signs of civilization.