THE THOUSAND DOLLAR MAN: Introducing Colt Ryder - One Man, One Mission, No Rules

by J. T. Brannan

Chapter Six

  Within minutes I had – as planned – a nice hard bottle of Corona nestled in my right hand. I preferred it to a beer glass – if I had to hit someone with it and it broke, the shape of the bottle was more forgiving than a glass, less likely to put shards into my hands.

  The place was just as I imagined it to be – a heaving, neon-lit, beer-stained strip club which seemed to cater almost exclusively for local heavies. There was a long bar against one wall, with plenty of tables and chairs surrounding a wide circular stage in the middle of the large room. Off to the side were private booths, filled with esses drinking tequila and smoking joints; on the stage were three naked woman, gyrating around their poles with scant regard for the music. Some men were receiving lap dances at their tables, and money was flying everywhere.

  I’d asked at the bar about Santiago, and been pointed in the direction of one of the private booths, over on the far side of the stage. The barman must have radioed across as soon as I’d left, because I was only halfway across the room when two skin-headed, tattooed monsters sidled up next to me, pulling up their baggy shirts to proudly show me their Glock 9mm pistols, settled snuggly into their waistbands.

  The presence of Santiago’s bodyguards suited me just fine – at least I wouldn’t have to look around anymore to find what I was after. They were going to take me straight to him.

  ‘You asking about Mr. Alvarado?’ they asked me in Spanish, and I nodded my head.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied in English. ‘I’m an American. I have a business proposition for him.’

  The men looked confused, perhaps unable to understand me; but they cinched in to either side of me and started marching me toward the rear booths, ignoring the girls who danced across the stage just inches away. They’d probably seen such displays so many times now that they were inured to them. Even tits and ass could get boring after a while, I supposed.

  They led me toward a private booth, filled with six tough-looking men and three half-naked girls. A fourth girl – fully naked – was giving a lap dance to one of the guys while his buddies cheered. Perhaps some people never got bored of it.

  The guy with the girl grinding away on his lap looked across at the two men on either side of me and held up two fingers. Give me two minutes. It must have been Santiago, head of this little gang; and as the girl continued to rub herself over him, and his guards continued to jostle me, and his cronies continued to cheer their boss on, I watched him carefully, sizing him up.

  He was a good looking kid, fit and athletic; despite his lifestyle, he obviously kept in decent shape. His eyes were glazed though, as if he’d taken too much of his own shit; and this display in front of his men made me think he was still a kid at heart, and weak with it. I could sense that – despite being in charge here – he really wasn’t very far up the ladder. A cartel boss he definitely wasn’t, not by a long shot; he was merely a messenger boy for the big shots.

  But even messenger boys could be deadly in Nuevo Laredo, and I couldn’t be complacent; more people were probably killed in this one nightclub in a single month than in some entire US towns in a year.

  I knew the two men either side of me were armed; from the positions of the other men around the booth’s table, I couldn’t be sure about them. But the table itself was in their way, would make responding quickly hard to do. Santiago would probably be packing, but I was doubtful of his ability to draw it and bring it into play in the time he would need.

  Around the club there was a scattered security presence, but nothing that looked too problematic. The only unforeseen circumstance would be the other patrons, many of whom – despite the police being just across the road – would undoubtedly be armed. But if the shooting started, human nature being what it is would mean that almost everyone would just high-tail it and run. Survival is our most powerful instinct, after all.

  I went through my plan of action in my head, centering myself for the task. There were a lot of people, potentially a lot of guns; some of them might know what they were doing, but they wouldn’t be trained, not in the way I had been. Even now, roaming from town to town, I probably still trained more in one week than these common thugs had in their entire lives.

  Wherever I was, I always made sure to stop in at the local martial arts, combat sports and self-defense gyms; boxing, wrestling, wing chun, taekwondo, karate, judo, savate, MMA – you name it, I’d trained in it at some stage over the years. I kept my weapons skills sharp too, visiting any gun range that I could. Some offered long-range targets for the rifle, others were more tactical and combat oriented, focusing on submachine gun, carbine and pistol work.

  I was in great shape, too – my daily curriculum of hiking twenty miles a day was supplemented by a steady diet of hundreds of pushups and sit-ups, with visits to the weights room whenever I got the chance thrown in for good measure.

  The people in this room might be carrying the odd pop gun, but when the shit hit the fan, I doubted they would be ready.

  I, on the other hand, had conditioned myself to be ready; and that was really the only secret to success.

  Finally Santiago got bored – or at least more intrigued by what I was there for than he was with the stripper – and sent her on her way with a slap to the backside. She gathered her clothes and pushed past the others, the look on her face suggesting she was glad to be out of there. The other three strippers joined her, leaving the men to their business.

  Santiago looked across, and my two chaperones gave him a burst of rapid-fire Spanish.

  He looked me up and down then, a quizzical look on his eye; he paused to light up a joint, then looked back at me. ‘You want to discuss business?’ he asked in English.

  I nodded my head.

  ‘What sort of business a gringo like you want?’ he asked, and a couple of his colleagues – presumably the ones who could also speak English – rewarded him with a laugh.

  ‘The business concerning a young girl called Elena Rosales,’ I replied, eyes never wavering from Santiago’s. He met my gaze, eyes still glazed but realization beginning to register. He didn’t reply though, just kept looking at me, waiting for more.

  I didn’t continue though, knowing that if I just kept on staring, he’d break eventually; he was just that sort of person.

  It took almost a full minute, during which the tension around the table grew with every passing second.

  In the end though, Santiago broke just as I knew he would. He waved a hand in the air, the smoke from his joint wafting around the booth, and laughed good-naturedly.

  ‘Yeah, mano, yeah, I think I remember her,’ he said, concentrating as if he really was trying to recall her. ‘A real sweet piece of ass,’ he continued with a grin, ‘I fucked her every way you can imagine, homes, I mean every which way, you know? Mmmm,’ he said, puffing away, ‘she was a real sweet piece of ass.’

  It was designed to upset me, I knew; and so I just kept on looking at him, my expression set in stone. ‘Good for you,’ I said. ‘So where is she now?’

  His eyes narrowed, confused that I wasn’t becoming angry. ‘I don’ know, mano,’ he said evenly, ‘the little slut’s probably bangin’ away in some whorehouse right now, I don’ know.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do know.’

  His glazed eyes flickered, the anger he’d tried to generate in me now reflected across his own features. ‘Oh yeah?’ he shouted. ‘You think I know? You think I know? Who you fuck are you, eh? Who you to be tellin’ me what I fuckin’ know and don’t know?’

  I saw the tilt of the head, knew it was the start of Santiago nodding to the men on either side of me; knew the initial conversation was over. It was Plan B time again.

  I loved Plan B.

  I wrenched my forearm free from the man on my right, smashed him across the face with the bottle; at the same time I pulled free from the man to my left and buried an axe hand right into his throat, the callused edge of my extended hand breaking his trachea.

  As the second man fell to the floor, blood gur
gling from his throat, I dropped my bottle and reached into his waistband – where he’d been kind enough to show me he was carrying his gun – and pulled the Glock pistol free.

  The first guard was recovering from the blow with the bottle, but not for long – I shot him in the chest, dropping him where he stood.

  The others around the table were only now starting to react, going for weapons they didn’t have a chance of getting into play. The Glock fired once, twice, again and again, the shots deafening in the enclosed space as I took out the men surrounding Santiago; ten shots in five seconds, five more dead men, their bodies slumped over the table, or back against the wall, blood sprayed all over the small booth.

  I’d only transitioned to a two-handed grip for the last man, ensuring accuracy for my final shots; he’d had the most time to react, and had almost cleared his own handgun from underneath the table. If he’d shot from underneath the table, he might have had a chance.

  Santiago, meanwhile, was rooted to the spot, joint still in his hand, eyes disbelieving. I could hear the chaos behind me as the club started emptying – the girls screaming, the men shouting, everyone running for the exits. Tough, tooled-up esses, along with supposedly hardened club security guards, were racing the girls to see who could be first out onto the streets.

  I looked back at Santiago, reached forward and wrenched the table out of the way so that there was nothing left between us. Two bodies rolled down to the floor in a bloody mess, and I stepped over them, the Glock aimed right between the good-looking kid’s eyes.

  ‘You going to tell me what you know now, tough guy?’ I asked him.

  ‘You don’ know what you done, homes,’ he breathed, obviously scarcely able to believe it himself. ‘You’re dead, don’ you know that? Dead. You don’ know who you fuckin’ with, you – ’

  I cracked him across the face with the pistol, breaking his nose and ruining his pretty features. ‘Santiago Alvarado, useless little piss-ant dealer for Z201, a crew connected to Los Zetas. You see, Santiago,’ I said as he whimpered, backing away from me, the joint finally dropping out of his hand, ‘I do know. I just don’t give a shit.’

  I saw him fumbling under his shirt then, obviously – finally – going for his own piece. I shot him in the shoulder, the round passing through completely, large clots of blood exploding against the wooden backboard behind him.

  Santiago screamed, his gun dropping to the floor; but he was still conscious.

  ‘Tell me where the girl is,’ I said again, close now, the barrel of my gun pressed against his forehead.

  ‘Please,’ he gasped, ‘please . . .’

  He grunted in pain, and I pressed the barrel harder into his forehead to remind him that it could still get worse.

  ‘Tell me,’ I demanded.

  ‘I don’ know where she is, man,’ he managed. ‘Please . . . I brought her over here one night . . . Last night anyone saw her . . .’

  ‘Where did you take her?’ I asked.

  ‘Sanchez . . . he asked for her, I took her to . . . his place . . .’

  ‘Sanchez?’ I asked for confirmation. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Miguel . . . Ángel Sanchez, he’s the . . . head of the sicarios for . . . Los Zetas . . .’

  It wasn’t good news; the sicarios were hitmen, assassins for the cartels. Ruthless and bloodthirsty to the last man. What would they have wanted with the girl?

  I could see that Santiago was drifting off into unconsciousness, but I still had to find out more.

  ‘Is Sanchez still here?’ I asked him, and was rewarded by a slight nod of his head, but that was all; Santiago was out for the count.

  ‘Drop the weapon!’ I heard in angry Spanish from behind me. ‘Drop it right now!’

  I guessed it must be the police; gang members would have just shot me. I let the Glock dangle from a finger and turned to greet them.

  It was the cop I’d met at the guardhouse on the way in, along with two of his colleagues; they all had the drop on me, guns leveled at my chest from twenty yards away. To escape, I’d have to regain control of my own weapon and shoot them all before they could react.

  I was capable of doing it physically, but morally I’d still not descended that far; shooting cops was still a barrier I was unwilling to cross.

  I let the Glock fall to the wooden floorboards with a clatter and raised my hands above my head.

  It was time to see what the local jail was like from the inside.

  Chapter Seven

  The police station was a relic from ages past, a real basic place with a single metal desk for paperwork, a big photocopier and fax machine that were about fifteen years out of date, and one large, concrete cell about the right size for five people. Seven were already inside, in varying states of sobriety, and I could see – and then smell – the vomit on the floor.

  The prisoners who were still awake eyed me warily, sizing me up. The jail cell was right next door to La Zona’s resident sexual health clinic though, so at least I wouldn’t have far to go if things really went wrong here.

  The cops brought me over to the table, where a bespectacled desk sergeant looked up at me with complete disinterest. I may as well have been numbers on the ledger book of an accountant.

  ‘Name?’ he asked, and I shrugged my shoulders in reply.

  To his credit, he wasted no more time on the subject; he merely nodded to the three cops who had brought me in, and they rifled my pockets to find some ID.

  They pulled out my wallet, fished out a driver’s license made out in the name of Thomas B. Meyer, and handed it over to the desk sergeant who started to enter the details. I wasn’t unduly worried; by the time they realized that the ID was fake, I hoped to be long gone from here.

  The sergeant opened up a fingerprint set next, gestured for me to roll my fingertips over the ink and transfer them to the paper next to it.

  This, I thought, was going to be more of a problem, and I hesitated. The cops immediately sprang on me, grabbing my forearm and wrist and forcing my hand toward the ink; I resisted instinctively and received a nightstick in my kidney for my trouble. I relaxed, and a slightly blurred and smudged set of prints were quickly taken.

  It might have meant trouble, I knew; a fake ID was one thing, but my fingerprints were quite genuine and would raise alarm bells with the military police, might be fed back to the FBI. It depended entirely on what they planned on doing with them, and how quickly. It might just have been procedure, prints collected and then forgotten about; or it might be something altogether worse. I really didn’t want US law enforcement coming after me here.

  Like the other residents of the jail, I had my possessions removed from me, including my belt, socks and shoes; and, processing now over, I was shoved toward the jail cell.

  I walked slowly forward, all too aware that as soon as I was in there, I’d be fighting. I picked out the likely candidates, assessed their potential strengths and weaknesses as they looked at me with hungry eyes through the bars.

  It was a mistake to be concentrating on what was happening in front of me, what might be happening after I was in there, though; for the real threat was behind me all along.

  I sensed the movement behind me, but couldn’t avoid it in time; the cop’s nightstick caught be heavily round the back of my head, and that was that.

  I was out cold.

  Chapter Eight

  When I woke up, I was in the slaughterhouse, blindfolded.

  And now, after a little beating, I’d had the blindfold ripped off and was looking at a heavily tattooed esse clutching a small chainsaw, revving up the rotating blades as his colleagues cheered him on.

  You could always rely on the Mexican police, it seemed. I should have killed them when I had the chance.

  They must have arrested me simply to keep up appearances; they were always going to hand me over to the cartel. I wondered why they’d fingerprinted me, then realized that it was probably at the request of their paymasters. The cartel bosses would want to know who
I was, just in case I didn’t talk. The chainsaw, coming closer to my too-weak flesh by the second, was a pretty good interrogation tactic though; the thought of its vicious blades hacking off parts of my anatomy was enough to get me to open up and tell them anything. Hell, I’d describe my first sexual experience for them if they wanted me to.

  I don’t know why I’d trusted the cops in the first place; I’d already been told that they provided protection for Santiago and his boys. Ah well, I thought sadly; you live and learn.

  But if I wanted to live through this, I was going to have to act, and act fast.

  I assessed my situation quickly. My ankles were bound, and my wrists too, behind my back. I was up against a metal wall, but I wasn’t secured to anything else, like a chair, and so I was mobile to a certain extent. Now the blindfold was off and my eyes had adjusted to the light, I could also see perfectly.

  Things could be worse.

  I looked at the gangbangers, taking in the five of them in fractions of a second. One of them was still nursing a sore hand, but he wouldn’t let that stop him for long; he was a big, strong guy, like all the others.

  They didn’t seem to be armed with guns, at least not obviously; and so, if they were, those guns were in pretty inaccessible places and unable to be drawn quickly. But I knew these guys weren’t thinking about guns; from the horrific sights of the bloodied and ruined corpses around me, this was obviously a safe haven for them. There were five of them and only one of me, and I was tied up; they wouldn’t feel threatened here.

  No – this was a place of fists, blunt instruments and blades.

  My territory exactly.

  I let my eyes go wide in terror – it wasn’t hard to do – and began to hyperventilate, laying it on thick. I was dehydrated and it was a struggle, but I managed to force some urine out too, make it look like I’d wet myself through fear, and the guys really loved that, pointing and laughing at the gringo who’d pissed himself.