South

by Lance Charnes

  Copyright © 2013 by Lance Charnes

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Wombat Group Media

  Post Office Box 17190

  Anaheim, CA 92817

  http://www.wombatgroup.com/

  First ePub Edition, November 2013

  ISBN 978-0-9886903-5-6

  Cover design by Damonza.

  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.

  No animals were harmed in the writing of this novel.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Betty

  Who put up with this again

  Glossary

  The first instance of each term in this glossary is highlighted in the text. Clicking on a link will bring you to this page for a definition. Press the “back” button on your screen — or on the term you looked up — to return to your place in the text.

  ACU: Army Combat Uniform, the successor to BDUs and “fatigues”

  AFV: Armored fighting vehicle

  autodrive: Generic term for the autonomous-navigation mode in late-model cars

  babu: (Hindi) official, authority

  black site: Covert facility, usually for holding captives

  bruja: (Spanish) witch

  BRV-O: Humvee replacement for American military and law-enforcement forces

  burner: Cheap, disposable phone, untraceable to its user

  cabrón: (Sp) bastard

  capo: Chief of a cartel

  cariña: (Sp) darling

  CBP: U.S. Customs and Border Protection

  chaat: (Hindi) Appetizers or snacks; Indian tapas

  chhaavi: (Hindi) girlfriend

  chica: (Sp) babe, chick (derog.)

  chipku: (Hindi) irritating person

  choli: Midriff-baring, tightly-fitted Indian blouse shell; sleeveless to long-sleeved

  churidar: Type of Indian trousers; loose to the knees, tight through calves, worn long

  CI: Confidential informant

  claro: (Sp) Of course, certainly

  compa: (Sp) contraction of compadre; comrade

  compartment: Collection of related intelligence classified above Top Secret

  dataspecs: Eyeglasses fitted with data displays fed by earpiece-mounted phone pods

  EAD: Executive Assistant Director; high-level manager within the FBI or ICE

  El Norte: (Sp) United States

  el otro lado: (Sp) the other side [of the border]

  ERO: Enforcement and Removal Operations, a branch of ICE

  Feeb: Derogatory name for an FBI agent

  feng: (Chinese) crazy

  FLETC: Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Glynco, GA

  gabacho: (Sp) white guy, Anglo

  HemaSafe: 2032 synthetic blood substitute used in first aid

  hermano: (Sp) brother

  hijo de perra: (Sp) son of a bitch

  hijo/hija: (Sp) son/daughter

  HSI: Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of ICE

  ICE: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

  jamaica: Mexican hibiscus tea, served iced

  Krinkov: AKS-74U, cut-down variant of AK-74 with folding stock; used by Russian special forces

  kronk: Synthetic opioid; derivative of vicodin

  maha: (Hindi) Great, excellent

  mango lassi: Yogurt-based, mango-flavored smoothie popular in India

  maquiladora: (Sp) Factory set up near the US/Mexico border to take advantage of low wages and easy shipping

  México Unido: 2032 political front for Zeta narcocartel

  mierda: (Sp) shit

  mijo/mija: (Sp) endearment for son/daughter

  mojado: (Sp) wet; (applied to a person) wetback

  la mordida: (Sp) “little bite”; bribe

  MRE: Meal, Ready-to-Eat; US military field rations

  NANU: North American Nurses Union; Canada-based successor to the banned American Nurses Assn.

  narcomanta: (Sp) Banner used by narcocartels to mark turf or threaten enemies

  NVG: Night-vision glasses or goggles

  oye: (Sp) hey

  patrón: (Sp) boss, master

  pendejo: (Sp) prick

  qin: (Chinese) dear; used in place of “girlfriend” in greeting (“Hey, qin!”)

  rubio/rubia: (Sp) blond man/woman

  Ryantown: Homeless encampment, usually located on abandoned parkland

  SAC: Special Agent in Charge; chief of an FBI or ICE field office

  Sharpoo: Shar-pei/poodle mix; 2030s trendy celebrity pet

  sicario: (Sp) gunman

  telenovela: (Sp) short-run Latin American televised soap opera, often known for convoluted plots

  tonto: (Sp) fool, idiot, dumbass

  vidboard: Billboard-sized video screen; used to show full-motion-video ads in public

  vidframe: Picture frame that shows video graphics instead of photos

  yaar: (Hindi) dude, bro, “mon”

  zakat: (Arabic) donations to charity; one of five “pillars of Islam”

  zip: Fifth-generation synthetic evolution of methamphetamine

  Cast

  Luis (Lucho) Ojeda (aka Juan), auto shop manager/coyote for the Pacifico Norte cartel

  · Mirabel (Bel) Ojeda, ER nurse; his wife

  · Ignacio (Nacho) Ojeda, deployed U.S. Marine; their son

  · Christiana (Christa) Ojeda, their deceased daughter

  · Alvaro Ojeda, Luis’ father

  · Graciela Ojeda, Luis’ mother

  Ramiro (Ray) Esquivel, Southern California “area manager” for the Pacifico Norte cartel

  · Salma Morales, schoolteacher/makeup artist; Ray’s long-term girlfriend

  Octavio (Tavo) Villalobos (aka La Almádena), Southwestern “regional manager” for Pacifico Norte; Ray’s boss

  Nestor Villalobos (aka El Tiburón), Tavo’s brother and Pacifico Norte capo

  Nura (Nora) Khaled, FBI agent; Luis’ client

  · Boulus (Paul) Khaled, chief counsel for the Arab-American Institute; her husband

  · Butrus (Peter) Khaled, their son

  · Raja (Hope) Khaled, their daughter

  Jack McGinley, Special Agent, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations

  · Carla Jean McGinley, his kidnapped wife

  · Joella Murchison, Carla’s kidnapped friend

  Carl Jorgensen, FBI Special Agent; McGinley’s FBI counterpart in JTF-30

  Calvin Gennaro, ICE Special Agent, El Paso field office, Enforcement & Removal Operations

  Friday Tranh, ICE Special Agent, Phoenix field office, Homeland Security Investigations

  1

  SATURDAY, 25 MAY

  Luis Ojeda scanned his binoculars along the rusty sixteen-foot fence to the dirt road’s visible ends. Nothing. A dead floodlight at the curve over the arroyo left a patch of twilight in the line of artificial day. The lights on either side leached all color from the night.

  The patrol was late. He’d been out here face-down in the dirt for over an hour, waiting for the right time. These desert mountains turned cold after sunset, even this late in a nasty-hot May. He was prepared for it. Army field jackets and winter-weight ACU trousers like h
e wore now got him through January in the ‘Stan all those years ago. He could wait all night. Usually, the travelers couldn’t.

  He glanced downslope over his shoulder. Five brown faces stared back at him, their eyes glowing orange in the floodlights’ glare. This run’s travelers. Each wore a backpack holding everything they could bring with them from their old life to their new one.

  The young mother lay at the group’s left edge. Her dark anime eyes stared at him from under a road-weary hoodie. Her little girl—four, maybe five tops—pressed her face into her mom’s shoulder, the woman’s hand wound through her tangled black hair. Luis usually tried not to bring kids this young, but they had nobody else anymore, and when Luis looked into the girl’s eyes he saw his daughter at that age, scared, sad and trusting. So here they were.

  Back to the binoculars. Dust shimmered in the floods to the west, then a whip antenna, then a tan cinder block on wheels crawled up the rise. The BRV-O’s six-cylinder diesel clattered off the rocks around them. It swung around the dogleg over the arroyo, chunked along at around fifteen, then trundled east.

  It stopped.

  Two men heaved out. Tan utilities, helmets with no covers, desert boots: contractors. Mierda. They strolled back the way they’d come, M4s slung across their chests, hands resting on the grips. One lit a cigarette. They stopped at the edge of the pool of dark to look up the pole.

  The one not smoking leaned into the radio handset on his shoulder. Then he turned to look straight at Luis.

  Luis became a rock. The guard was probably half-blind from the light; Luis doubted the guy could see him in the semi-dark, even if he knew someone was out here. Chances were the gringo was going to take a leak. Then the guard’s hand went for the tactical goggles hanging around his neck.

  ¡Chingado!

  As the guard seated the goggles over his face, Luis went flat. As long as he didn’t move, his infrared-suppressing long johns and balaclava would defeat the goggles’ thermal vision and make him fade into the petrified sand dune under him.

  The travelers didn’t have that gear. Luis peered back into the dark. All five travelers should be shielded by the ridge, but “should” didn’t mean shit if the guard caught the bright-green return of a warm human body on his scope. If he did, they’d all find out at 2900 feet per second.

  The area around them hushed, letting the little sounds fade forward. The breeze rattled the creosote and pushed pebbles around. Luis could hear the contractors’ voices—an off note in the wind—the shush of rubber boot soles on gravel, his heart going crazy, his sweat plopping on the sand.

  Fucking contractors. Border Patrol agents had a code, they were civilized, they had to be nice and usually were. These contractor assholes shot people for fun, the way he had in the ‘Stan before Bel reformed his sorry, angry ass. A month ago, these idiotas were probably losing hearts and minds in the Sudan with every full magazine. Now they were doing the same thing here.

  A whimper. Luis cranked his head back to check the kid. She squirmed, a little dark bundle rocking against a dark background. The mom forced her daughter’s face tighter against her shoulder. Her big, terrified eyes found Luis.

  Chill, he told himself. Be the rock. The travelers could smell fear. If he was calm, they’d be calm; if he stressed, they’d scatter like sheep. He tried to smile back at the mom, hard as it was to do with crosshairs on them all.

  Boots scuffed gravel at his ten o’clock, then at nine. Voices mumbled a few yards off. Somewhere out there, the sound of a huge mosquito buzzed the border. Had they called in a drone? If they had, game over. Dirt lodged in Luis’ nose and mouth, ants crawled on his right hand, something sharp dug into his hip. Twenty-plus years after Afghanistan and here he was in the same shit, just with different players. Be the rock.

  A laugh. Then the night exploded.

  The first bursts were recon-by-fire, looking for what came bouncing out of the dark. Disciplined soldiers know to hunker down and wait it out, but the travelers weren’t soldiers, and they weren’t disciplined. Two of the men broke and ran the instant bullets sprayed off the ridge top. Luis yelled “Get down!” but it was too late. He jerked his face back into the sand at the next burst, but not before he saw a runner throw up his hands and fall face-first.

  The little girl started screaming. Her mother’s eyes went all white and she tried to stuff her sleeve into the kid’s mouth, but the girl wouldn’t stop shrieking. Bullets churned the dirt in front of them.

  ¡Mierda! ¡Chingado! “Don’t do it!” Luis hissed to her. “Stay there!” His voice sounded like he’d huffed helium. He didn’t care if he drew fire as long as that pretty young mom with that sweet little girl kept her head down—

  The woman bolted.

  He screamed “No!” and before he could think, he was charging toward her. More shots. Dirt kicked up around his feet. A line of bullets tore across the woman’s back, each one marked by a splat of blood. She let out a little “Ah!” and went down hard.

  A burning-hot something slammed into his back, knocked him ass-over-heels down the slope and hijo de perra, it hurt. He spit out the sand he’d eaten and rolled onto his back. A bloody hole in his chest on his right side, a weird noise when he breathed, pain when he did anything.

  Luis tried to catch the breath running away from him, but it was hard and it hurt and he wanted to just lie there. Little sharp spikes of fear stabbed at him. The gunshot echoes faded away into the breeze. Those animals up there would come out to see what they’d shot. If they found him they’d arrest him, or maybe just shoot him again. Or they’d call in a gunship drone and kill anything bright green. Any way this went down, he’d never see his wife or son or home again. That thought hurt worse than being shot.

  He wrenched his head to his right. The mother and her child lay roughly twenty feet away, two dark, still shapes against the sand. You cabrones, he fumed. You killed a baby.

  Or had he killed her by bringing her here? Get away. Think later.

  The oldest traveler—slight, late fifties, his hair mostly gone to silver—took Luis’ hand in both of his. He had dark smears on his face and upper arm. “Mister? We go.”

  Go? Luis could hardly breathe. He waved toward the lights and fence. “You go. Keep heading south. Mexico’s that way, you can still make it. Go down the arroyo, through the culvert. Understand?”

  The old man nodded. The floodlights glimmered in his eyes as he looked toward the two dark shapes just upslope. He’d protected and comforted them even though they weren’t blood.

  “I’m sorry,” Luis said.

  The old man nodded again and shook Luis’ hand hard. “As-salaam alaykum.”

  “Alaykumu as-salaam.”

  Then he was gone.

  Luis managed to get two magnesium flares out of his pack. They might blind the guards long enough for him to get over the next rise and for the old Arab to make it down the arroyo to safety. Just before he popped the first flare, his eyes snagged on the mom and her daughter. So small, so dark, so still. Another bad picture to add to his collection.

  This used to make sense. This used to feel worthwhile. He used to be able to tell himself it was worth the risk to stand up to the locos who’d wrecked his country and caused all this—risk to himself, to his family, to the travelers. But the camps filled and spread. It was all so futile, not worth that little girl’s death, or his own.

  If you let me live, he told the sky, I’ll stop. I’m done.

  2

  The U.S. ranks 103rd in the 2032 Corruption Perception Index, one below Madagascar and far below all its OECD peers. Gross underfunding of government at all levels, elimination of public-sector pensions, and widespread contracting of public services to unscrupulous private firms, has led to an epidemic of corruption reminiscent of Russia under the late Vladimir Putin.

  — “Release of the 2032 CPI,” Transparency International

  FRIDAY, 30 APRIL

  TWO YEARS LATER

  Luis opened Coast Conversions’ front off
ice at six-thirty to give the techs time to set up for the day’s work. One of them—Tyler— already waited outside, as usual. He was one of two who lived in a former self-storage place three blocks away. “Where’s Earnes?” Luis asked.

  “Angels Stadium. The free clinic.” Tyler limped through the door, stowed his pistol behind the counter, then passed into the shop and started turning on lights and compressors. Fluorescents glinted off shiny SUVs and luxury sedans at each station, waiting for their armor and ballistic glass.

  Luis began to ready the front office for what he hoped would be the morning rush. A full shop and one man down. Great. Earnes could be waiting in line all day to get into that Doctors Without Borders clinic. Luis would have to ding him a day’s pay, too, something he hated to do.

  That was the downside of managing this place: having to knock heads without being able to hand out rewards. The upside? Routine. Safety. Some thought “same shit, different day” was a curse. For Luis, it meant not having to cross deserts or climb mountains. Not being chased or shot at. Not having people’s lives in his hands—and fumbling them.

  He leaned against the doorway, watched Tyler make his rounds through the work stations. “How’re you doing? Leg okay?”

  “Okay, sir.”

  Tyler left half a leg in Yemen. All five of Luis’ techs were vets; they had good work habits, and it was the only way to get guys with mechanical and metalworking skills now that most community colleges were closed and the unions were long gone. Luis made it a point to hire guys out of flops or Ryantowns. A down payment on karma? He hoped he’d never find out.

  The strip lights cast shadows on Tyler’s hollow eyes and cheeks. He worked full-time and still didn’t eat enough. Like everywhere else, the pay here was shit even for Luis, and he was the manager, but Xiao, the owner, wouldn’t cough up a cent more.

  The door chime’s synthetic bing-bong broke Luis out of his thoughts. He called out “Not open yet” before he looked back over his shoulder. A cop swaggered to the counter. Mierda.