Trail of the Chupacabra: An Avery Bartholomew Pendleton Misadventure (The Chupacabra Trilogy - Book 2)
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Information
Dedication
Also by Stephen Randel
Introduction
Prologue
Part I
Chapter One: El Comienzo
Chapter Two: The Sonesta Royale
Chapter Three: Our House Wine Is Wild Turkey
Chapter Four: It Isn't Easy Being a B-List Monster
Chapter Five: El Carnicero
Chapter Six: The Ferret of the Vieux Carré
Chapter Seven: You Have the Right to an Attorney
Part II
Chapter Eight: Operation Mexican Shadow
Chapter Nine: Ghost From the Past
Chapter Ten: Evel Knievel Never Jumped the Rio Grande
Chapter Eleven: The Flying Burrito
Chapter Twelve: It Wants Khaf
Chapter Thirteen: Hard Bargain
Chapter Fourteen: The Honey Pot
Chapter Fifteen: They've Got Us Surrounded…Again
Part III
Chapter Sixteen: They Can Come in Pretty Handy
Chapter Seventeen: Before He Was King
Chapter Eighteen: Circles
Chapter Nineteen: Tough Day at the Office
Chapter Twenty: Going in Hot
Chapter Twenty-One: Occasionally, Lost Cats Found
Epilogue
TRAIL
OF THE
CHUPACABRA:
AN
AVERY
BARTHOLOMEW
PENDLETON
MISADVENTURE
A Novel by
Stephen Randel
Knuckleball Press
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Stephen C. Randel
Published by Knuckleball Press
All rights reserved
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Stephen C. Randel except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For my dad, thanks for everything, Pop. - Your number one son
Also by Stephen Randel
The Chupacabra: A Borderline Crazy Tale of Coyotes, Cash & Cartels
2012, Knuckleball Press
www.stephenrandel.com
Introduction
Chupacabra - A legendary creature believed to inhabit parts of Latin America, particularly Mexico. Its name translates to “goat sucker.” The name comes from the creature’s reported habit of drinking the blood of its victims.
While the chupacabra may or may not exist, the violence in Mexico is very real. Despite efforts by officials on both sides of the border, more than fifty thousand drug-related murders were reported between 2006 and 2013. Many of the victims were tortured first. Many were women or young people. The overwhelming majority of the weapons used in these crimes came from the United States.
“Of course I’m sane, when the trees start talking to me, I don’t talk back.”
—Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic
“They’ve got us surrounded again, the poor bastards.”
—General Creighton W. Abrams Jr.
Prologue
Rosalina smiled at the warm sun climbing in the sky to the east of Monterrey, Mexico. It was early Sunday morning, and the traffic was light. The young nurse hummed a nursery rhyme and thought of names for the baby as she drove toward the hospital. Driving was becoming uncomfortable now that she was six months pregnant. Her husband had been taking her to work recently, but today he was out of town. His work took him away often, and sometimes for quite a long time. She never knew exactly where.
In her rearview mirror, Rosalina noticed two white pickup trucks approaching at a high rate of speed. She pulled over to the right-hand lane and slowed to let them pass. One of the trucks pulled directly in front of her and slammed on its brakes. Rosalina tried to stop in time, but she couldn’t. Her car rear-ended the truck. The second truck pulled up behind her and blocked her in. She was stuck and scared. A group of men holding automatic weapons and with bandanas covering their faces jumped from the trucks and surrounded her car. She locked the doors. One of the men approached her window. He had dark shoulder-length hair. He raised the butt of his rifle and smashed the window in. Shards of glass sprayed the front seat. Terrified, Rosalina cried out for help, but there were only a few cars on the road, and none of them stopped. Most sped up and drove past without the driver even looking over. In Mexico it was safer to drive past than get involved. The man with dark hair reached in and unlocked the door. He grabbed Rosalina by her hair, dragged her out of the car, and threw her in the middle of the road.
“Please don’t hurt my baby!” Rosalina pleaded.
The longhaired man slowly raised his weapon. He fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into the screaming woman. With the last burst, he aimed for her abdomen. The dark-haired man ordered one of his men to take the woman’s car and follow him. As quickly as it had started, the men took the vehicles and were gone.
Rosalina’s bloody body lay in the middle of the street. Passing cars drove around it. It was a full ten minutes before anyone even bothered to stop.
Ten years later…
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
El Comienzo
The night sky was inky black. Even though the city was deep in slumber, occasional muted sounds of car horns and sirens, talking to each other, arguing with each other, echoed faintly through the air along a city block in Reynosa. Rows of warehouses lined the streets in this old industrial section of the Mexican town. In the middle of the block, two men stood outside a pockmarked building with a sign describing it as an automotive supply company. The men extinguished their cigarettes as they suspiciously eyed a large black SUV with dark tinted windows quickly approaching. One of the men reached his hand inside his coat as the vehicle pulled to a stop in front of the building. From the back seat, a man exited the car. The two sentries in front of the building immediately recognized the heavyset man.
“Inside,” the man said as he unlocked the front door to the warehouse. The two sentries obediently followed him. They walked through a small office and into the storage room that comprised the majority of the building. The heavyset man turned on the interior lights. As the fluorescent lights overhead flickered to life, they revealed rows of storage racks stocked with auto parts. A large delivery van was parked next to the sliding doors at the back of the warehouse.
“Go out back and get Manny and Victor,” the heavyset man said to one of the sentries. The sentry immediately complied.
“Boss. What’s going on?” the other sentry asked.
“The Padre wants the weapons moved tonight.”
“Where?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Are we coming with you?”
“Yes. You drive the van. Just follow my car. We need to be quick.”
“Boss!” the other sentry shouted as he ran back into the room. “They’re not out there!”
“What?” The heavyset man pulled a pistol from his jacket.
“Victor and Manny. They’re not out back,” the sentry replied.
“Check the van,” the heavyset man ordered. One of the se
ntries swung the van’s rear doors open. The bodies of two Mexican men rolled out, their throats slit.
“Jesus Christ,” the heavyset man said as he looked into the van loaded with crates of military-issue assault rifles, ammunition, and grenades. Attached to three of the crates were large blocks of plastic explosives. The detonators were clearly visible.
“Run!” the heavyset man yelled.
As the men turned toward the front exit, an incandescent fireball engulfed the middle of the block. The shockwave from the explosion shattered car windows a full block away from the building. Flaming embers slowly rained down from the pitch-black night sky while hot metallic debris pelted the street like burning hailstones. The black SUV in front of the warehouse was on fire. The driver was dead. The majority of the block was destroyed or in flames.
From the rooftop of a building a hundred yards away, the flickering fires that engulfed the street illuminated the dark face of a large, muscular man dressed in black. The hulking man placed the remote detonator in his pocket as he watched the carnage below. This was only a portion of the weapons he had stolen from the U.S. National Guard for the Padre’s cartel. Once the seaborne shipment had landed in Guatemala and was smuggled across the southern border of Mexico, it had been divided up and transported to storage points in the cartel’s territory. He’d discovered this particular location from one of the Padre’s men, who had unfortunately passed out in a brothel. He beat the man for an hour. After the cartel soldier gave up the information, he gave up his life. Rage burned in the muscular man’s eyes as he watched the flame-filled street below. The Padre had reneged on payment for the weapons. The Padre tried to have him killed. But El Barquero would have the last word. “The Ferryman” always did.
• • •
To: Editorial Department
Austin American-Statesman
Dear Sir or Madam:
In response to the overwhelming number of vapid readers of your humble publication, I would like to take a brief moment to respond to the horde of pinheads, nitwits, imbeciles, dunces, morons, and dimwits who felt obligated to comment on my last correspondence to your organization’s editorial department. Their idiotic and uneducated retorts and vicious personal attacks against my research regarding the timing of an overwhelming invasion of four-legged bloodsucking chupacabras due to global climatic shifts caused by the burning of fossil fuels are pathetic. Please note, I didn’t ever say it was going to happen today. Nor did I say it was going to happen tomorrow. I just said it was going to happen. Further research conducted at my own expense suggests that elevated levels of sunspot activity on the photosphere of the sun may have delayed the chupacabras’ migration across our southern borders as they shift their historic breeding grounds to more temperate climates. I have theorized that the intense magnetic activity that governs the variation and size of sunspots is at the root of the delay. Coronal mass ejections associated with sunspots are obviously disrupting the Earth’s magnetosphere and disorienting the internal navigation capabilities of the beasts. I am certain this is a short-term solar phenomenon that will self-correct at any moment. When that happens, the international scientific community will know that I was right. In the meantime, I suggest your readers apply extra sunscreen.
Sincerely,
Avery Bartholomew Pendleton
• • •
Avery shut down and closed his laptop computer as the airline flight attendant’s intercom announcement instructed. As the cabin crew prepared the plane for landing, Avery looked out the window at the long stretch of swamp and marshland below. Avery had never been to New Orleans before. In fact, Avery had never really been much of anywhere before. He wasn’t a big fan of flying. It had something to do with the big sign outside the airport that clearly stated TERMINAL. Or maybe it was that the TSA screener had gotten to third base with him and didn’t even buy him dinner first. Nonetheless, Avery’s longstanding reluctance to engage with the real world had recently begun to soften. After receiving a design fee in the low five figures from the retailing giant IKEA for his blueprints and design templates for a next-generation computer work station, Avery had started to reengage with the public. The money wasn’t insignificant. In fact, it was quite a generous offer. Still, Avery was rather upset that IKEA had only purchased his idea for an upfront, onetime fee and not the ongoing equal split of revenue from the project as he’d originally suggested. He was also pissed off that the final number of cup holders strategically located around the workstation had been dramatically reduced. However, the good news was that they did keep the attached mini-fridge. It took a significant amount of negotiating on Avery’s part, and the negotiating on Avery’s part mainly involved the threat of lawsuits. Ultimately, they finally gave in. The mini-fridge was a deal-breaker for Avery, and IKEA’s lead counsel threatened to quit if she had to deal with the condescending, boorish, and rude man for another instant. Victory in hand, Avery immediately took his newfound fortune and quickly quadrupled it in the currency markets. He then proceeded to lose half of it overnight in the metals markets.
“The silver market plummeted significantly today over fears that it would plummet significantly,” the business channel anchor announced, causing Avery to nearly choke on the nachos he’d been stuffing into his face.
“Freaking financial leverage,” Avery growled at the television set. “Oh, you’re a seductive mistress. Charming at first, but in the end, nothing but a money-grubbing whore!”
Avery immediately decided to abandon his brief flirtations with the financial markets and instead refocus on his research into most things paranormal and conspiratorial, particularly his stubborn fascination with the legendary chupacabra. Chupacabra translates to “goat sucker,” and the vampire-like beasts had a long history in the folklore of Mexico and Latin America. Avery thought he’d recently acquired the corpse of one, although DNA testing at an independent research laboratory identified it as a mildly decomposed coyote suffering from a bad case of mange. Still, that didn’t discourage Avery. He viewed the test as either inconclusive or, more than likely, a covert, high-level, government-sponsored coverup that went all the way to the White House.
“Of course they can’t let the public know about this!” Avery had screamed at his friend Ziggy. “It’s an election year! Panicked voters don’t cast ballots for incumbents!”
Avery decided that he needed to utilize the remainder of his wealth to gather more evidence for his theory. That was how he ended up on this airplane to New Orleans. He was on his way to the bi-annual conference of the International Society of Monster Hunters. He was joined on the journey by Ziggy, who was snoring away in a drug-induced slumber, in the adjacent aisle seat. The skinny, lizard-like man wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and baggy shorts woke suddenly as Avery slapped the back of his overly large head.
“Like, knock it off, man,” Ziggy protested as he rubbed his eyes and looked at the portly man wearing a bright yellow tracksuit sitting next to him. “You know, like, you should really think about trimming that beard of yours, dude. It’s, like, totally out of control and stuff, bro.”
“The day I take hygiene lessons from a gecko is the same day I slit my wrists in a warm, Roman bathtub,” Avery replied. “Now get up, you mentally defective reptile. I’ve got to hit the head before we land.”
“Can’t you just, like, hold it till we land?” Ziggy asked as he scrunched into a semi-fetal position in his seat so that the rotund Avery could squeeze past him and into the aisle.
“The timing of my essential bodily functions is not open for debate,” Avery said as he knocked the half-empty bottle of Mountain Dew out of the center armrest. “Damn you, Ziggy!” Avery swore. “You owe me another one when we land. Two, for that matter.”
“Like, why two, man?”
“Because I’m financing your airfare and lodging out of my personal affluence.”
“Your what?”
“My fortune.”
“I, like, didn’t think you like got that much.”
/> “For tax purposes, as far as the IRS is concerned, I didn’t get anything.”
“You aren’t going to pay your taxes?”
“Of course not. Taxes are for losers.”
“Like, why?”
“Simpleton. The Constitution only allows the government to coin money, and that money, when coined, must be freely exchangeable for silver or gold. Paper money, or, in my case, a check from a Swedish company, doesn’t meet the definition of income suitable for taxation. Just look it up online.”
“Like, far out.” Ziggy scratched his oversized head.
“Excuse me, sir,” a pretty flight attendant said to Avery. “I need you to take your seat. We’ll be landing shortly.”
“My good woman,” Avery replied pompously. “I must be permitted to use this flying machine’s facilities. I suffer from a serious intestinal condition that requires my immediate attention.”
“Well, okay,” the flight attendant said, relenting. “Just make it quick.”
“I’ll suggest that to my bowels, but they tend to have an internal clock of their own.” Avery headed toward the back of the airplane. He uncomfortably stood in line behind two people waiting for their turn in the lavatory. Noticing that no one was using the bathroom at the front of the plane, Avery reversed course and made his way forward.
“Excuse me, sir,” a second flight attendant said to Avery. “You need to use the bathroom at the rear of the plane.”
“Impossible,” Avery replied as he reached for the door handle.
“Sir, this restroom is for first class only.”
“It’s unoccupied, and I’m in distress.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the flight attendant, now growing more hostile, replied as she moved to block the door.
“Nonsense. I refuse to be held hostage by illogical policies,” Avery replied. “Out of my way, you pitiless authoritarian.”