Conquistadors

by Jeff Kirkham

  Tavo fancied himself as a modern-day J. Paul Getty—the man who made billions by investing in failed stocks during the Great Depression. Tavo planned a much bigger play than Getty—the ultimate “bear market” hedge. He would corner the gas market and set himself for massive gains in a future depression. Beto had jumped out of his chair because their longest, deepest bet looked like it might pay off. Their cartel had everything to gain by the American economy going south.

  “Is there civil disorder in America?” Tavo asked his daughter. Civil disorder would be the precursor to total meltdown—the point of no return.

  “Los Angeles is a mess, of course. People are fleeing like refugees—by car, boat and motorcycle. There were already some inner city riots last night because of the stock market trading halt and because of some power problems in L.A. No word yet on whether all this is a terrorist attack or not. So, yes. There’s definitely civil disorder.”

  It sounded precisely like what they’d been hoping for. He thought the attacks were likely terrorism accelerated by some old fashioned bad luck. Random chance worked like that.

  Even in Vegas, a craps table can crap out ten times in a row. The odds are on the order of sixty million-to-one. However impossible that seems, it happens once every three years. And that means it can happen twice in the same week. Random chance doesn’t work like people imagine. Very strange events, like a dice roll of seven ten times in a row or like two nuclear attacks in the same week, are certain given enough time. In this universe, the strange is commonplace.

  Tavo took the long bets that nobody else could see. He was the kind of bettor who kept a stack of chips on the Hardways, stepped back from the craps table, and waited for the big payday. He didn’t mind losing money in the short term, and he certainly didn’t mind watching other people lose it all. He and his boys had placed a big bet on the Hardways—betting against the western economy—and odds were looking good. The nuke in Los Angeles had put them over fifty-fifty. If the civil disorder spread, they’d be in the big money.

  “How’s it going with General Bautista?” Saúl asked Sofía. Tavo noticed that Saúl tucked his hair behind his ear.

  She brightened. “Thank you for reaching out to him for me. He’s got patrols accompanying sixty-five of our most problematic gas delivery routes. Robbery of our trucks have dropped to nothing.”

  The men shifted in their chairs, crossing their legs and flexing their arms. Alejandro leaned forward and added, “He’s one of the good ones. He was base commander when we cross-trained with Mexican Special Forces. Bautista would hammer back drinks with us at the enlisted bar on weekends. When he got shit-faced, he’d shout, ‘one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor!’ All the SF guys would join in. He’s probably the highest ranking officer I’ve ever seen close the bar with the Joes.”

  Tavo watched his men preen for Sofía; married men, all. He couldn’t blame them. She was one of those women whose magnetism multiplied by ten when she started talking. Her eyes blazed hazel and her cheeks had that rare, Spanish-Mexican rosiness. Her quick wit, expansive intelligence and indefatigable optimism vibrated with goodness. If she weren’t his blood, and if she didn’t despise his criminal enterprises, he’d worry about her taking his place at the head of his organization.

  “The General and I have shared many drinks, and he’s always been the perfect gentleman.” She smiled.

  “Well, my darling. What comes next you won’t want to hear.” Tavo sat up and reached for his glass of agua de jamaica.

  “I assume it has to do with the men I saw crawling around the Hotel Filadelfia as I flew away?”

  “I’m sad to say that it does.” Tavo took a sip.

  “Uncles, please talk sense into my papa. You’ve done enough. I would be thrilled to work with the four of you in real business. Actual business. You’d be marvelous successes and it’d be the same thrill as…what you’re doing now. Please talk some sense into my father.”

  The men shifted in their seats and their eyes wandered. Tavo guessed what they were thinking: Sofía had no idea what it felt like, doing what they did.

  She apparently read the room and knew she had said too much. “I’m sorry tios, I love you all and I want you to be safe.” Sofía stood, went to Beto, pinched his cheek and kissed the other. Then she moved to each of the men, hugging and kissing them on their cheeks in turn.

  “Nos vemos al almuerzo.” She waved as she left. “See you at lunch.” Tavo noticed her shoulder’s slump a little as she went back inside to help her mother in the kitchen.

  “Who fucked us, Canoso?” Beto’s eyes caught fire as soon as Sofía stepped out of earshot. The meeting had been called to talk about the hit on the Hotel Filidelfia.

  “I don’t know yet,” Tavo admitted. “It smells like someone from inside our circle. The assaulters were Kaibiles, so the hit had to originate from the Guatemalan Ministry of Defense.”

  “Maybe American agencies pulled the trigger?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Tavo shook his head. “The CIA or the FBI could’ve picked me up any of a dozen times in the U.S. If they could’ve, they would’ve. This is something else.”

  “How’d you escape and evade, Boss?” Alejandro asked.

  “I’m nobody’s boss,” Tavo corrected. “I had to shoot two of the Kaibiles,” he lied. He shot them because he wanted to. These were professional soldiers and they knew the game of life and death. They would be okay with killing their brothers-in-arms, so long as it was necessary.

  “I don’t think the hit on the Filly is our biggest concern right now,” Tavo changed the subject.

  “Really?” Alejandro furrowed his brow. “How could a hit on us not be our biggest concern? Isn’t that why you called the meeting?”

  “Yes, but if America keeps on this downward spiral, government threats might not be a problem for us anymore. They’ll evaporate.”

  The men nodded and stared into their corners of the hacienda courtyard. It wasn’t the first time they’d talked about a collapse of the western economy. They talked about it every time they’d met for almost a decade. Their slack jaws and silence belied the truth: they never really thought it would happen. It just seemed so weird, like waking up to discover that aliens had landed. Even though they’d made a game out of preparing for the Planet of the Apes, they hadn’t actually believed it.

  “What’s the point of no return?” Beto asked, watching the little water fountain in the courtyard burble its endless loop of water. “When do we know if the U.S. economy has flipped for sure?”

  “End of the week. Maybe sooner,” Tavo considered the rumors of bank closures he’d heard that morning. In 1929, that’d been enough to tip the U.S. into the Great Depression, but now with the Federal Reserve and the stock markets being smarter, maybe the U.S. economy could absorb the hits. There was a chance they could pull out. “We should know by Friday,” he repeated.

  “We have more than a brigade of trained guys. We have weapons and ammo. What are we going to do with them, besides bunker up with our families at the ranch?” Alejandro wondered out loud. The three lieutenants hadn’t thought much past initial survival. Tavo, on the other hand, had much bigger plans.

  Their ranch in Hermosillo—the first property taken by Tavo and Beto from a drug lord—had been built up as a survival retreat for these four men and their families. Tavo never visited the ranch because the buildings looked exactly like what they were: a castle. It was a classic “drug lord” thing to do—build a thick-walled compound that fairly screamed “criminal mastermind.”

  Tavo paid his twenty-five percent to see the ranch built and stocked without complaint, but he’d never stepped foot on it. Over the years, the lieutenants had packed the ranch with military vehicles, light and heavy weapons, food, ammunition, water systems, solar systems, cattle, pigs, chickens and even an old attack helicopter. The only good thing Tavo could say about the high-profile project was that they’d placed the compound dead-center in the middle of 100,000 hectares of
land, well away from prying eyes. In northern Sonora, one more narco compound was barely a blip on the radar of the local gossip network.

  “I think we may need to look at being in a different business.” Tavo let the news sink in while he furrowed his brows like a concerned father. “Are any of your families overseas at the moment?”

  The men shook their heads. Beto’s son—Tavo’s godson—had recently started college at the University of Pennsylvania, and it’d be easy to get him back to Mexico even if flights stopped.

  Tavo stood from his chair. “Maybe it’s best if our families all head to the ranch, at least for the weekend.”

  The men nodded and dug their cell phones out of their pockets, drifting to private corners of the courtyard to call their wives.

  Fifteen minutes later, they regrouped in the hacienda. The shadows stretched and the Los Mochis heat broke for the evening.

  “Tavo—you were saying something about going into a different business. What’s that?” Alejandro’s voice went up an octave. He didn’t like change and was bound to object.

  Tavo worked this conversational strategy even with his closest friends: he dropped bits of information and then backed away, forcing them to come to him for more.

  We pursue that which retreats from us.

  Tavo never pursued. Even as a young man with his wife, he would never initiate sex. It was a miracle they had a child at all. As far as pursuing other women beside his wife, Tavo would never expose himself like that. Sex wasn’t worth the vulnerability that came with it. He enjoyed being admired by women and his interest stopped there.

  Now that he had the men on the edge of their chairs, Tavo explained. “If the economy goes down, the narcotics trade will fold. It will be like trying to sell cocaine to Africans. Nobody will have anything of value.”

  Saúl picked up the counterpoint. He had a habit of playing the devil’s advocate in the group. Tavo didn’t mind. Saúl rarely debated with any conviction. “They might still want the coke and heroin to avoid reality—you know—to get away from their worries.”

  “I don’t doubt that people will still want drugs. I doubt they’ll have anything we want in return. The value of a dollar will be highly dubious after this week.” His words sent the men back to their thoughts, just as Tavo had planned.

  After listening to the fountain for a moment, Beto broke the silence. “We have everything we need to weather the storm at the ranch. How can we make profit after the storm?”

  Tavo enjoyed moments like this; moments where his lieutenants were reminded how much they needed him. “Like always, we find a market gap and exploit it. If the American economy collapses, what thing will be in greatest demand, least supply and that we’re already prepared to deliver?”

  “Food?” Beto posited. “Northern Sinaloa could feed half of America.”

  “Maybe,” Tavo agreed. “As of now, we have no distribution system. Food would be a thousand times the volume of drugs. We’d have to build a new distribution system or take it from someone, and that would require time. The summer harvest ended in July and the winter harvest doesn’t start again until January. We’re in late September, so there’s nothing to pick for another three months. Maybe that’ll work out perfectly, or maybe half of America will have already starved to death by then. Still, if we figure out a food distribution system to feed America, how would they pay us? What will they have that we want?”

  He already knew the answer, but the cat-and-mouse served as a reminder of how much his lieutenants needed Tavo to do their thinking. He wanted them to see him as the man with the plan.

  “They’ll need protection…” Beto declared. All eyes turned to him. “They’ll need to be controlled and protected, especially if their government shits the bed.”

  “Excellent, Beto.” Tavo nodded. It was clear that he’d already reached the same conclusion. “If we lost our government here in Mexico, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Local governments, old families, cartels, and even gangs would fill the gaps. The cartels are already governing in a lot of places. If America lost its government, though, it’d be like a herd of cattle set loose in a china shop. It’d be total destruction. Americans don’t know how to feed themselves. As Beto pointed out, they’re counting on Sinaloa to supply ninety percent of their fruits and vegetables this winter. With our army, and our gasoline, we have what Americans want: to be protected. And to be told what to do. Our control would be the new drug—and they would welcome us with open arms…if their government fails.”

  Chapter 5

  Noah Miller

  McCallister Ranch, Fifteen miles outside Patagonia, Arizona

  Noah cranked the windlass stick through the wire until the wire sang with tension and the old man’s gatepost stood straight up and down. He checked the plumb with his bullet level. It still leaned a bit north to south. He put his shoulder to the post and shoved hard. The bullet level confirmed that he’d nailed it—the gatepost stood plumb and true. He started thinking about doubling up on the tension wire for good measure.

  “Stop,” the old man shouted. He carried two red, plastic cups in his hands, probably iced tea. “You never did know when good was good enough. And I could’ve repaired that gate myself.”

  A neighbor of Bill’s had backed into the gatepost while picking up a calf almost two weeks back. While waiting for his tea, Noah had gone to work fixing it for his adopted father.

  “How long were you going to leave it like that—all catawampus?” Noah stood back and admired his work.

  “It’s in the nature of youth to criticize one’s betters.” Bill sighed and handed Noah the cup.

  This was one of their favorite games—talking as though Noah was still a boy and as though Bill was a decrepit old man. Noah was thirty-five, and Bill McCallister, despite his injuries from military service, was a ramrod-fit sixty-two years old.

  When two men spent as much time together as these two had, they devised their own means of self-entertainment. Noah and Bill employed at least ten standard routines of good-natured ribbing.

  “Well now,” Bill admired his son’s repair job. “You sure you don’t want to concrete this all in and replace the gate posts with some of that well pipe in the east pasture? Then we could build the cows a little cabana inside the corral. We could hire some boys to serve them umbrella drinks and give them massages.”

  “I apologize for fixing your gate like a real man should. You probably had a roll of duct tape set aside for the job.” Noah sipped the iced tea.

  “Do not ever disrespect duct tape.” Bill pointed a finger at Noah’s chest. “A real man knows that duct tape is one of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century. It’s what truly and finally separated homo sapiens from the Neanderthals. To real men, duct tape is sacred and you best watch what you say about it.”

  “I stand corrected.” Noah bowed his head and chuckled.

  “Did you catch the news about Los Angeles?” The old Green Beret changed the subject.

  “No.” Noah glanced about the ranch, searching for other projects he could hammer out. “Why should I care about Los Angeles?”

  “Hmph.” Bill gave Noah a disapproving look. “The least you can do, while you’re trying to find the bottom of that bottle is to listen to the news while you’re doing it.”

  “I prefer music. I drink with the Man in Black--the only recording artist who pairs perfectly with Tennessee whiskey. Jonathan R. Cash.”

  “Apparently, you learned at least one thing from me,” Bill nodded. “And that’s not his actual name. Don’t go saying that to someone who knows better… You’re not going to ask about Los Angeles, so I’ll just tell you. The durks hit ‘em with a nuke, son. It didn’t do much damage, but those bastards attacked ‘em with a no-bullshit nuclear weapon.”

  “It finally happened? So, did we hit back?” Noah looked off to the west, as though he might see a mushroom cloud two thousand miles away in Los Angeles.

  “They don’t know who to glass. The nuke came in on a
sailboat and any evidence is either underwater or floating around in the stratosphere.”

  “I’ll be damned. Just like that? Out-of-the-blue?” Noah found himself caring more than usual about the outside world. This bit of news could actually reach the borderlands.

  And it could give him a window of opportunity.

  Bill studied his face. “You really didn’t know, did you? I worry about you, Noah.” Bill gave him a look that meant all bullshit aside. Hard drinking wasn’t something one cowboy brought up with another cowboy. Not until it became an issue with the law. Drinking oneself to death in the safety of one’s own kitchen fell into the category of “none of anyone’s damn business.”

  “How about you?” Noah fired back, steering the conversation into safer waters. “Did you wake up today caring about the fate of the United States of America? I thought you’d sworn all that off—the red, white and blue and all that. Didn’t you fight under that flag? Didn’t you take a bullet for them?”

  “Hmph,” Bill shrugged and stared at the mountains surrounding his ranch. “I’m so close to Mexico and so far from all that yap, yap, yapping about transgender bathrooms and free college. Americans and me aren’t even the same species anymore… But don’t think I don’t know you’re trying to throw me off your trail, son. Have you been listening to the news or haven’t you?”

  “You know I don’t listen to the news, so why are you sheep dogging me about it?”

  “Well, you should. You can’t maintain situational awareness without knowing the damned situation.” In thirty years, Bill had taught Noah as much about combat as he had about ranching. Phrases like “situational awareness” and “OODA loop” were as common to them as “I’m going out for a bit” and “where’d you leave the truck keys?”

  “Someone hit a Saudi oil pumping station with a dirty bomb. That made the stock market run into a high-speed death wobble. Today, they’re not cashing checks at the bank. Electricity’s going off around the country, especially in California. Then that nuke went off in Los Angeles Harbor. Things are good and supremely FUBARed. Just as I predicted.”