Patience County War (Madeleine Toche Series) (24 page)

“We certainly think alike my friend, and I think you will be on the beach before you know it. Now I need a rest. Give us a little break and then one of us will drive. If we get pulled over you just hop back into the seat, the other brothers and I will sleep,” Paco said.

“Brothers?” Carlos asked.

“That’s our cover, we’re Monks.”

“Sleep well, Abbot,” Carlos said.

“I will pray for you, my son.”

Twenty hours later, the Winnebago pulled into a pole barn. Manolo jumped out and closed the door behind him. The men exited the trailer and assembled in a line next to it. Jose strode up, looking like a cross between a pimp and Patton. Paco and the others looked at him, hoping it was some kind of a joke to put the men at ease. He began to inspect the men. Paco let him do so, and to their credit, the men acted the part.

“Good, good. These men are ready, Paco.”

“They are ready,” he intentionally omitted any reference to Jose’s position of authority.

“Paco, a word,” Jose said, raising an eyebrow.

Jose walked over to a small room off of the staging area and Paco followed with a nod to the men.

Once in the room Jose began to speak, in a tight voice, “I am in charge…”

He didn’t have time to finish, as Paco closed the door, backed him into a wall, and simultaneously grabbed his testicles.

“I see that I have your attention. I am in command, read this.” He held a note in Manny’s handwriting under Jose’s nose.

“Dear Nephew, Paco is in charge, do everything that he tells you to do. If you don’t, I am sure that he will kill you. Good luck, Uncle Manny.” Jose read the note disbelievingly.

Once Jose had read the note, Paco released him, “We understand one another, Jose. You will do as I say. If you do not, and one of my men gets killed, I will feed you piece by piece to your own dog. By the way, what is his name?”

“Lion,” Jose said, clearly whipped.

“Well, there you go then.”

T
ucked away on a remote farm property thirty miles west of Patience, Paco, Manolo, Philippe, and Carlos sat down around a picnic table inside the pole barn where the men were relaxing and examined a map. Landmarks around the town of patience were highlighted along with Sam’s home. Other areas were marked, including his parent’s home, Madeleine’s restaurant, and the homes of several Deputies. The map had been carefully prepared showing various ingress and egress points.

“We need to do this as quickly as possible, targeting those people who are connected to the Sheriff. I believe that we will have to use those individuals to get to him. Surprise didn’t work the last time, and few people are as good as the Man. We will assume that we cannot take him by surprise. We must kill him and any collaterals and carry out our mission. We kill the sheriff and his immediate family and any other law enforcement officers who get in the way. Then we head to the extraction point and disappear,” Paco said gesturing to various points designated on the map.

“We will have to use some of Jose’s men to fill out our ranks,” Manolo said.

“Carlos, are there any among those men who have some experience?” Philippe asked.

“We could get half a dozen out of that group, a few have military experience.”

“I think that we’re going to need to hold that restaurant. We’ll move in on Sunday. They’re closed midday for a big family meal, very French. Chances are the Sheriff might be headed that way anyway, he seems pretty tight with those people,” Philippe added.

“Is there any chance of resistance there?” Paco said.

“Only an old woman, her granddaughter and a boy, aged twelve to thirteen.”

“No men?” Paco asked.

“No, but the whole town goes there to eat. If we’re not going to attract attention, then we have to strike early in the morning.”

“The mission there will be to hold the women and the boy and wait for the Sheriff to arrive, or in the alternative to get him to trade himself for them. We’ll then take him and eliminate him. No theatrics, we’ll do it cleanly. He will simply disappear. We’ll send a few men to his parent’s farm, to find the additional targets,” Paco said.

“We can avoid anyone seeing us. Jose’s men are thugs anyway, and can disappear into one of Manny’s other areas for a while,” Manolo said.

“We all look the same to them anyway,” Carlos laughed, and the others joined in.

For the rest of the day, the men were divided into three squads of six men each. Paco headed up one of them, Manolo and Philippe the other two. Carlos selected four men who would go to the restaurant, where no action was anticipated. Carlos brought the men forward and Paco sat them down.

“Simple mission: hold an old woman, her granddaughter, and great grandson hostage, so that we can grab the sheriff and if possible avoid unnecessary bloodshed. There will be no harm done to the people at the restaurant. Do not give them a reason to remember your faces.” Paco appraised the men as he addressed them. They all had the rough-around-the-edges look of men on their side of the law. Nothing jumped out at him; they each met his eye for the most part and said nothing.

“You will drive up in a delivery van and gain access to the building through the rear door. Separate them and keep in contact at no more than ten minute intervals. You will be issued weapons and secure communication equipment. Any deviation will be severely dealt with.”

All three men nodded, stood and made their way back towards the tables where the other men sat waiting for the midday meal.

Jose watched from the other side of the pole barn, seething internally. He hated Paco and everything military, his own brief stint in the Mexican military having been anything but memorable. Apparently his sergeant had not been impressed with his connections, having had some of his own. Jose could still feel the toe of his boot in his ass. He should have been given better instruction with that rocket launcher before being ordered to fire it. He grimaced a little at the memory of the noncom Officers’ latrine detonating and being ordered to dig the new one by hand. He was not meant for such indignity, and this Paco was the absolute embodiment of every maniacal drill sergeant or officer he’d ever encountered. Now Jose was in charge. These were his men, and they would follow his orders.

Grab my balls? Well Mr. Paco, you might just die in combat. Accidents do happen. This was his chance to show his uncle that he could be trusted with the most important of missions, not just making drugs and selling them to the Anglos. As for that bastard Carlos, this was something that he was going to do with his own men with his own plan. He didn’t trust that man. He always seemed to be second guessing him, if only with his eyes. He walked to the small farm house on the property that had been rented, sight unseen, through a local contact. Inside, his men were sitting around the living room, playing cards, watching TV, and drinking beer and tequila. He motioned to three of the toughest looking men and the ones who had been selected by Carlos, and took them into a small side room, set up with a desk, phone, and computer.

“Men, I need your utmost loyalty. We are being left out of the true objective here, which is to avenge the death of our compadres and send a message that we will do as we please without interference. It is us who will take this sheriff and remove him. My uncle’s true intention is for blood to avenge blood. We will take this man and his disappearance will be a warning to all. It is I who will be the true Patron soon, and your loyalty to me will be rewarded. You will be my captains and share in the bounty.”

The men looked at Jose, and nodded when they thought it was time to do so. In various stages of inebriation, just about anything their benefactor said was fine. He kept them in money, booze, and women at this point, and that was all that was important. More money, booze and women sounded good. One of the men managed, “Not a word Patron, we will do as you say and this gringo cop will pay.”

“Tomorrow, when the others have left, we will arrive before them, take the sheriff, and have him when the great Carlos and Paco show up.”

Jose could tell that his men didn’t mix with Paco’s men and clearly didn’t like them. Thugs as they were, they didn’t like either people as pathetic as themselves or people they couldn’t push around.

The feeling was returned; the looks that some of them got were definitely meaningful. Soldier boys, thought they were tough. Well, maybe they were, but enforcement through violence, now that was their line of work.

“Now go and have some drinks, but turn in early. We will be on the most important job of our lives in the morning.”

He clapped them all on their backs as they walked out of the room, sat down at the desk and looked over the map and diagram of the sheriff’s house that Paco had distributed. He reached down and scratched Lion’s ear as the dog lay on his side, whimpering and pumping his legs, asleep halfway through some dream race. Even in his sleep he keeps himself in training, he thought. I too have trained my whole life for this day. My future is made. I will have the Hacienda and the high-born wife, and I will leave this country for good. People will send me money, and I will be the law.

“There should be no problems tomorrow. Jose will stay here. We will bring the sheriff here and eliminate him. We will make his bones disappear with the body with chemicals that we have at hand. Then, we will return to the Winnebago and drive back to the border and into Mexico, a job well done.” Paco breathed a sigh of relief.

“What if we encounter resistance?” Manolo questioned.

“We will kill all combatants, anyone who takes up arms against us. There will be no prisoners.”

The men nodded, and remembered their long ride from the border and knew that if they were caught, they would never see their wives and girlfriends again.

S
am woke early and trudged out of bed and down the stairs to make coffee. He simply did not care whether coffee was good or bad for you. There was enough misery in life without denying yourself everything.

As soon as there was a trickle in the pot, Sam put another cup under the stream of coffee and poured himself the first run, ironically a bootlegging term. Must be spending too much time with Nathan, he thought. He plopped himself down on his sofa, facing the window that overlooked the meandering little offshoot of the main creek that wandered back on his property and through his family’s and Nathan’s land. As long as nobody polluted the stream and the land stayed in their families, it was a tie that bound them all together. As he drank his coffee his thoughts drifted to Christine, not only the physical memories, but more so what life would be like with her and her son. Some men don’t want to get into a relationship with women with kids, but his knew his heart had already been captured twice over, once by Christine and once by the boy. He caught himself planning their lives and smiled. He hadn’t thought much of marriage and a family, although he was now definitely past his youth. The creaks, moans, pops, and protests of his body when he got out of bed were proof of that. He
had casually told his parents once that he felt old. They laughed outright at him, in that telling way people do when you say something downright stupid. John got a hold of himself first and slapped Sam on the back. “Forty ain’t old boy. Hell, you haven’t even reached the first water station on this marathon!”

Sam might have argued, but knew if he did he would just be talking out of his ass, so he decided to learn from the experience instead.

Sam threw on some old workout shorts and walked out to his barn, where he had a few pieces of equipment for doing pull-ups, leg presses, pushups, and the like. He did it all slowly and deliberately without pause, and was done in fifteen minutes. He certainly didn’t need to get any bigger. He’d learned a long time ago that you can kill yourself in the gym, but there’s always somebody bigger, unless you’re Nathan. As he was catching his breath, Sam heard the distinct and unmistakable sound of his dad’s dog howling in the trees behind his house. The skin on his arms and legs grew goose bumps as the realization hit him. He tore towards the house and his cell phone. As he neared the front door he caught a glimpse of two men raising shotguns and firing. He twisted and threw himself through the door and a few pellets stung into his shoulder as the right side of the door frame blew apart. He could hear the men coming fast behind him as he scrambled for the kitchen, where he knew his pistol was sitting on the table. Feet crashed onto the porch as Sam scrambled for the kitchen. He stumbled and heard a shell being racked into a shotgun, and cranked his head around to see the shotgun raised to fire directly at him. Just as he anticipated the blast, the gunman went down in a tangle of snarl and fur. Gingas was tearing into the man. Sam leapt into the kitchen and snatched his gun, running wildly back into the living room, where the second man was aiming to shoot the dog. Sam fired three times in succession, catching the man in the chest, belly, and face, throwing him backwards as the big bore magnum launched him back out the front door. Sam took a quick look out the window in time to see three more men coming his way with assault rifles.