Power and Empire

by Marc Cameron

  Someone was making another run to the grave.

  Clark scrambled to his feet, peeking over the lip of dirt to see the top of a man’s head as the tractor rolled steadily toward him. The higher angle of the driver’s vantage point would put him in full view if he tried to climb out now. He dropped immediately, rolling onto his back, staying tight against the dirt wall nearest the house and pulling a layer of clods on top of him to help him stay hidden as long as possible.

  With the tractor getting closer by the second, he drew the Glock 19 and hastily screwed the Gemtech suppressor onto its threaded barrel. “Press checks are free,” he muttered under his breath as he slid the slide back a scant quarter-inch to assure himself that there was a round in the chamber. He hadn’t lived to be an old man by taking things for granted.

  The suppressed Glock wouldn’t exactly be silent, but Clark had taken steps to close the gap between kaboom and a mouse fart. A slightly-heavier-than-stock recoil spring would slow down the action just enough to channel most of the escaping gasses down the suppressor instead of out the chamber. Subsonic ammunition would go a long way toward dampening the noise.

  Stalks of grain rustled against the side of the chugging tractor as it broke into the clearing. The thought occurred to Clark that it might be a backhoe or some other kind of small ’dozer that could simply cover him up with dirt before he could crawl out. But the engine sounded smaller, like the little tractor he kept on his own farm. The tractor stopped. Above, and out of the line of sight, the driver switched it off. Clark could hear the man groan, as if overweight, when he climbed down from the tractor. Plastic sheeting rustled. Clark tensed as dirt rained over the edge. He was close. Very close. Any moment he would look over the edge, as people did when they neared a deep hole. Clark heard another sound that he couldn’t quite make out. He’d just decided it was probably a shovel blade being driven into the dirt, followed by the scrape and subsequent ignition of a match.

  The smell of cigarette smoke drifted down into the pit. Clark listened as the man unzipped his trousers and—smoking and singing a narcocorrido, or narco ballad, called “Cuerno de Chivo”—relieved himself less than ten feet away. The song’s title literally meant “horn of the goat,” but that was a euphemism for an AK-47 rifle. Singing around the cigarette clenched in his lips, the man did up his zipper while he droned on about blowing the heads off his enemies with the horn of a goat.

  Clark took a deep, relaxing breath. Pissing beside the grave of a dead girl, happily singing about bloody murder—two strikes against this guy being an innocent bystander.

  More grunting and groans came from above, and then a heavy thud as the man dragged something into the dirt from the back of a trailer or cart. He sang with gusto about the joys of killing and then dumped another young woman into the hole. Clark ignored the falling body, focusing on the edge, waiting.

  Clark fired twice when the man looked over to admire his handiwork. The nine-millimeter rounds took the man low, angling up through a distended belly to tear through his diaphragm, blow out a lung, and then bisect his heart from bottom to top before lodging in the back fat near his left shoulder blade. Blinking stupidly, he tried to swallow but could muster only a ragged cough. The cigarette dropped from his lips, followed by a stream of frothy blood that cascaded down his chin like something from a Quentin Tarantino movie. A half-second later his knees buckled and he toppled over the edge, landing on top of the other bodies with a heavy thud.

  The dirt walls of the grave had absorbed much of the noise the Gemtech didn’t suppress. Clark doubted anyone at the house had heard a thing. Even so, he stayed focused on the lip of the hole above for a full minute, just in case the fat Mexican had any friends he hadn’t heard.

  He took a moment to check the new female body. Another young woman, perhaps fifteen or sixteen. This one had dark hair, but like the first girl, she looked larger than the description of Magdalena. This one, too, had been strangled before she’d been dumped naked into this dirt hole. Clark choked back the hatred in his gut. The dead man faced him, eyes glazed, mouth open and full of dirt and blood. This fat singer of grisly ballads was an evil bastard to be sure, but he was a gravedigger, a gofer, not a ringleader.

  Clark was not one to keep count of the people he killed—the dead took care of that for him. He’d told himself early on when coming to grips with his chosen path in life that if killing ever became commonplace, it would be time to step away. That never happened—though he had to admit that, emotionally, some people were easier to kill than others.

  Satisfied that it was safe to climb out of the grave, Clark left the Gemtech attached to the Glock and stowed it on his belt in a small leather scabbard called a Yaqui slide. It was open at the bottom to accommodate the suppressor. It seemed cruel to leave the girls exposed to the heat of the coming day, but he didn’t have time to do anything about it. Instead, he scooped up the two spent casings he’d fired and dropped them into his pocket before climbing out of the hole.

  Matarife was smart enough to keep the brush and weeds mowed short in a full fifty-meter swath around his house, but there were a few old pickup trucks that provided just enough cover and concealment that, if Clark moved quickly, he could cross from the edge of the field to a brick pool house without being spotted.

  He smiled despite the situation, and kept to the tall Johnson grass while he skirted the property. Long years of just this sort of action had taught him to keep a wary eye for signs of dogs—old chew toys, piles of crap, bones. Fortunately, Matarife didn’t have this added layer of security.

  The home itself bordered on palatial, belying the junked vehicles beside it. Heavy draperies covered four gabled windows on the upper floor. A three-car garage stuck off toward the old trucks, forming a natural barrier between the pool house of matching red brick and the road. Groomed redbud trees alternated with black lampposts on a huge circular drive out front. Clark knew from an earlier drive-by that the iron gate over the cattle guard out front was secured with a chain and padlock. That was good. People put too much faith in locks, and too much faith made them lax.

  Leapfrogging from vehicle to vehicle, Clark took less than two minutes to make it to a four-foot chain-link fence surrounding the backyard and pool. The sun was high now, adding dazzle to the surface of the blue water, and, to Clark’s way of thinking, illuminating far too much of the nude woman who sipped a drink on a floating chair while reading a magazine. Dark hair was piled high on her head. A pair of oversized sunglasses hid her eyes. Clark guessed her to be in her mid-thirties, but the bruises and scars on her fleshy body said those years had been hard ones. It was impossible to feel sorry for her, though. She was sipping fruity drinks in a pool while at least two girls lay dead in the dirt less than a hundred meters away. A black SMG lay poolside, just outside her reach, on a folded pink towel. Clark couldn’t be sure from this distance and angle, but the gun looked like a CZ Scorpion machine pistol. The woman was serious about her protection. Beside the pistol was an empty glass that resembled the full one in the woman’s hand and what looked to be a brown walking cane or a riding quirt. That would explain the whip marks on the dead girls.

  Clark stayed in the shadows, watching the larger house for another five minutes. There was no good way to approach the house alone. He knew he should wait for Caruso, but there were kids’ lives at stake, and he didn’t have the patience or the time to wait.

  Removing the suppressed Glock, he laid it in the grass at his feet and drew the .45. A single shot would wake anyone who happened to be in the house—and, he hoped, bring them outside—but was not likely to cause much concern to the neighbors. It was difficult to pinpoint the location of a lone report.

  The unsuppressed round slammed into the CZ Scorpion, spinning it sideways and puffing the towel beneath it. The woman dropped the magazine on her lap and looked back and forth, unable to make sense of what had happened. Predictably, her first glance was toward the gravesi
te in the sorghum field.

  Clark had already picked up the Glock. He set a suppressed round between her feet, causing the inflatable chair to burst beneath the weight of her fleshy body. Floundering, the naked woman untangled herself from the deflated plastic and attempted to swim toward her Scorpion SMG. Clark sent a second suppressed round zinging off the concrete lip of the pool, stopping her momentum. She spun in the water, looking for the shooter.

  Clark’s eyes flicked toward the house. Still nothing. But it was early, and digging graves was hard work. And Matarife might be sleeping in. Clark decided to wait a little longer.

  The woman treaded water now, looking toward the back field again. She obviously had some demons.

  “Who is there?” she asked, a little on the gruff side for a nude person being shot at. She followed up with the same demand in Spanish, more tentative this time. “¿Quién es?”

  Clark let the Glock speak for him, sending another round slamming into the CZ, this one shattering the plastic magazine. Even if it was still operable, he’d just turned the SMG into a single-shot.

  “Tell me who is there!” the woman screamed. The sound of the suppressed Glock was about as loud as an energetic hand clap, but Clark was close enough that she’d zeroed in on the pool house.

  It had been a good three minutes and there was still no sign of anyone at the back door. Her boyfriend didn’t care about her, or he was too deep of a sleeper to worry about, or he was gone. Not once had this woman looked toward the house, which led Clark to believe it was the latter.

  The woman started toward the gun again.

  Clark put a round into the water beside her. “Keep going,” he barked. “Makes my job a lot easier.”

  She swished bronze arms in the water, swimming away from the splash of the shot. “Who are you?” She turned, treading water again. “Did Zambrano send you?”

  “Suppose he did?” Clark said.

  “Ernie left already,” she said. “He has the girl and the money with him.”

  “I see,” Clark said. He let her stew awhile, then said, “And suppose Zambrano didn’t send me?”

  The woman shook her head. “You are not police,” she said. “Police would let me put some clothes on.”

  “Lady,” Clark said, “the last thing I want to do is sit here and look at your fat ass.”

  The words seemed to bother her worse than the shooting.

  “Who, then?”

  Clark decided to drop a bomb and see how she reacted. “I think you may know something about my little girl.”

  The woman gave a tremulous shake of her head—but she couldn’t help another glance at the sorghum field. “I don’t know—”

  “Cut the shit!” Clark barked. “Who else is in the house?”

  “No one.”

  Clark put another round into the water, half hoping it would hit her. It didn’t, but it had the desired effect.

  She held up both hands, kicking with her legs, barely keeping her head above water. “Who is your girl?”

  “Magdalena,” Clark said, gambling again.

  The woman sputtered. “You lie.” It would have been a scoff, had she not been working so hard. “She comes from Parrot, who got her from Dorian. I know all about her. She has no friends in the States. Anyway, she is gone.”

  “Where?”

  “Why should I tell you?” The woman said. “You will only kill me.”

  Clark gave an honest chuckle. “I’m a half a breath from killing you anyway. Let’s try this. What’s your name?”

  “Lupe,” the woman said, coughing from a mouth full of water.

  “And you work for Matarife?”

  “If you can call it that,” Lupe spat. “I am his prisoner, like all the other girls.”

  “Is that right?” Clark nodded despite the fact that the woman could not see him. “You sure as hell look like a prisoner, sitting around in the pool drinking fruity umbrella drinks.”

  “I am . . . how do you say it, the girl in charge,” Lupe said. “His bottom bitch.”

  “I can believe that last part,” Clark said. “Okay, Lupe. Tell me again where Matarife . . . Ernie is.”

  “He has gone to deliver your girl, Magdalena.”

  “Deliver her to who?”

  “Zambrano,” she said. “Can you believe it? The man can buy any girl he wants and he picked that little whore.”

  “Where is Zambrano?”

  Lupe laughed hysterically. “They do not tell me those things.” She pointed to a ring of purple bruises on her neck. “I told you. I am a prisoner myself.”

  Clark groaned. “Ernie’s cell number, then.”

  “He calls me,” she said. “Not the other way around. He is a very careful man.”

  “Let’s say you needed to tell him something important,” Clark said. “Where would you start?”

  “He will come back home, eventually. Probably not for a few days, though. I like it when he is away.”

  “I’m sure,” Clark said. “Who would know where to find him?”

  Lupe raised her hands again. Grinning stupidly, thinking she’d use her body since it had served her in the past, she kicked upward, bringing her breasts above the surface. “Search me, señor.”

  Clark sent another round zipping into the pool, inches away. The smile bled from her face.

  “Last time I ask,” Clark said. “How do I find Zambrano?”

  She spat into the water, then wiped a hand across her face. “I am telling you I do not know,” she said.

  “Then you’re no good to me—”

  “Wait,” the woman said. She was accustomed to being threatened but smart enough to hear the hard edge of resolve in Clark’s voice. “Dorian. Dorian would know how to reach him. They do business sometimes.”

  “Dorian?”

  “He gets girls from South America . . . and other places. People trust him because he looks handsome and kind, like a model from a magazine.”

  She gave him the location of a hotel in Fort Worth that Dorian frequented, then described him. Clark committed it to memory, deciding on his next move. He needed to find out what she knew about Vincent Chen, but he wanted to check inside first.

  “Who else is in the house?”

  Lupe pushed a lock of wet hair from her face, black eyes casting back and forth for any avenue of escape, a cornered she-wolf—except wolves had souls. “There are two girls,” she said. “Matarife’s prisoners. Take them. They are yours.”

  Clark slipped the Glock in the belt scabbard long enough to climb the fence behind the pool house, drawing it again as soon as his feet hit the grass.

  The day was heating up and a steady breeze blew the odor of chlorine into his face. He motioned with the Glock for the woman to get out of the pool. She had several scars, at least two of them bullet wounds in her torso. It was difficult to tell where the bruises ended and tattoos began, and still, there was a nasty defiance about the woman that made it hard to feel sorry for her.

  Focused on the gun barrel, she didn’t really look at him until she’d hauled herself up the aluminum ladder and stood naked and dripping on the concrete deck. She rolled her eyes when she saw him.

  “You are old . . .”

  “I am,” Clark said. He nodded to the folded terry-cloth robe beside what looked like a rawhide quirt. It was exactly the right size to have caused the bruises on the dead girls.

  Clark ordered the woman to kick the robe to him. He prodded it with his toe and kicked it back to her once he felt sure it didn’t contain any weapons.

  “Here,” Clark said, then nodded toward the house. “Put that on and we’ll go have a talk with those girls.”

  She reached to pick up the robe, but instead of putting it on, she threw it in Clark’s face, shrieking and clawing as she launched herself toward him.

  Even Cla
rk, who prided himself on situational awareness, was caught off guard. The sheer insanity of the move made it effective, and the naked, spitting woman was able to knock the pistol out of the way a fraction of a second before he could get off an accurate shot. Flying at him like a crazed banshee, Lupe tied him up in wet arms and legs. Her teeth sank deep into his shoulder, causing him to stagger toward the pool. He tried desperately to peel her away, bashing at the side of her head with his free hand—but she seemed impervious to his blows. She was short in stature, but Lupe was not a light woman, probably only a few pounds lighter than Clark. And she possessed the strength of a cornered animal who knew she had to kill or be killed.

  Clark regained his footing but realized she was trying to pull him into the pool. No doubt she believed she would be able to take care of the old man once and for all in the deep water.

  He decided to give her what she wanted.

  The pool was just three short steps away. Clark took a couple deep breaths as they toppled over, grabbing the fleshy woman around the ribs and squeezing out as much air as he could an instant before they hit the water in a tangled knot of furious bottom bitch and gray-haired former SEAL.

  Lupe ramped up her assault with a vengeance, disengaging just enough to get a hand up to claw at Clark’s face when they went under. He turned his head in time to avoid her nails, trapping her hand and giving her a vicious head-butt. Blood trailed from her nose. Bubbles erupted in a muffled scream of rage.

  Clark had fought underwater before, in training—and in the cold grip of real-world situations. The water was his home.

  Kicking downward, he drove the writhing woman to the bottom of the pool, hearing the high-pitched whine as his ears equalized to the increased pressure. Another furious shriek escaped Lupe’s lips. This one was smaller than the last, producing only a tiny blossom of bubbles. She gave a halfhearted twist in a last-ditch effort to get away—and then fell limp in his arms.

  Clark counted down another twenty seconds—long enough to make sure she wasn’t pretending. He had at least another minute in him when he let his natural buoyancy carry them upward, taking an easy breath when he broke the surface. He glanced toward the house, making sure no one was waiting to give him a nasty reception, and then rolled onto his back, hauling the unconscious woman in a modified rescue tow to the side.