T Parker - The border Lords

Two nights after the great crash of his faith, Ozburn landed Betty at a private strip near Indio, California. The runway had been offered by one of the Desert Flyers. He called a cab that took him to one of the motels along Interstate 10. He had his mane tucked up under a cowboy hat, and he wore a Mexican poncho over his shoulders. As always now, he wore his sunglasses against the brightness of the light, even after dark. It felt right to change his look. ATF was certainly out there, tracking him like a pack of silent hounds.

He got an upstairs king with free Wi-Fi. He swung his duffel onto the bed and pulled out a fresh bottle of tequila and poured half a plastic cupful. He drank it in a gulp, to an ovation of warmth and excitement inside. He counted out his vitamins and supplements and washed those down with another gulp.

While Daisy sniffed around the room, Ozburn drew the curtains tight against the night and hung bath towels over the bathroom mirror. He could look at his reflection only very briefly before revulsion made him look away. He closed his eyes against this apparition and he felt the urge to pray. But who do you pray to when you have pulled your faith out by the roots and flung it into the dust forever?

At eight P.M. the room phone rang as planned, and Ozburn told the caller his room number. He made sure both of the Love 32s were fully loaded and off safe and he slung one over each arm and moved a chair to the middle of the room facing the door and waited for the knock.

Half an hour later he heard it and said, "Come in."

Big Paco lumbered into the room with the same briefcase in which Ozburn had delivered the first Love 32 to him. He was not as tall as Ozburn would have thought but he was certainly as big. His sport coat must have been fitted by a skilled tailor. He wore his sunglasses as before and his pitted face caught the light unhappily. Paco shot out a stout leg and the door slammed shut. Ozburn stood.

"Tequila?"

"Yes, please."

Ozburn poured drinks into plastic bathroom glasses while Paco set the briefcase on the bed and opened it. Ozburn handed him a drink and Paco handed him a small digital postage scale. Ozburn set the scale on the tabletop and turned it on and reset it. When the weight settled to zero he set the stacks of hundred-dollar bills on it and read the readout: one pound, eight ounces. Ozburn tapped his calculator. Seventy two thousand dollars. Then he weighed the twenties and the fives. There were eighty-seven thousand, five hundred dollars-one-half of the total.

"The first ten are almost ready," said Ozburn.

"The sample gun is very good. Is quiet. We are ready for the first ten."

Paco placed the money back in the briefcase and shut it. He slipped the scale into the pocket of his sport jacket. They touched plastic cups.

"I want to trust you," said Paco.

"As I trust you."

"But you now have eighty-seven thousand and five hundred of our dollars and we have nothing. You know that the Gulf Cartel can't be in the business of loaning money to strangers."

"You have my word and you will have the guns. Someone has to trust someone for things like this to work, Paco."

"We have something even better than trust. Come see."

Ozburn followed Paco outside to the parking spaces where a new Escalade waited. The windows were darkened but Ozburn saw movement inside. Then a rear door opened and a man in a green military uniform stepped out. He had a machine gun strapped over his shoulder. He looked at Paco and Oz, then reached back into the vehicle and brought Silvia out by the hand.

There was no sign of her having been severely stung by the scorpion but the girl was plainly terrified.

"We have friends in Agua Blanca."

"There's no reason to bring her into this."

"We want no reason to hurt her. She is our guarantee that our money and our good friend Sean Gravas will not disappear. She guarantees that the guns will be delivered to us."

"You people have no rules anymore."

"You saved her life. Now her life depends on you, again."

Ozburn turned and walked back into his room. Time to call an old friend, he thought. He unwrapped one of his several new preloaded phones. He drank more tequila, then lay back on the bed and called Charlie Hood.

"Charlie, Gravas here."

"It's good to hear your voice."

"Do I sound like me?"

"You do."

"I looked in the mirror a second ago and I thought, man, what happened to you?"

"Something did happen to you and we can find out what it is."

"If I'll come in and surrender. Not yet."

"Seliah's falling apart without you. If you can't come back for you, come back for her."

"Charlie. You dear old friend. You square. You cop. You Boy Scout."

"That's what you were, too."

"But it doesn't apply to this."

"What is this? Define your mission."

Ozburn thought for a moment. "Perform good acts and defeat evil."

"That's not good enough, Sean. Try again. Why did you gun down the safe house assassins?"

"Disgust. We provide a home for them, so they can murder? No. No more living off the fat of the American land for those killers. Herredia is the mother rattlesnake and they are all his living children."

"It was an experiment. We were working them. We were getting some good intel out of it."

"All our plots and plans. All our manpower and money. It's all useless, Charlie. It's a jobs program for people like us. It's make-work. Like digging a hole and filling it up again. Over and over. Don't you ever feel the need for clean and clear action? For defined and attainable goals? Something simple with the pure ring of accomplishment in it? Don't you just want to take a really high-quality, well-built gun, and feel the balance and weight of it in your hand, and kill somebody who deserves it?"

"I've felt that."

"These Love Thirty-twos are awesome, Charlie. You put your hands on one yet?"

"The one you left in the Buenavista house. I haven't fired it."

Ozburn looked down at his filthy jeans and his dusty boots and the big gnarled hand resting across his dirty poncho. "It builds up, Charlie. Over the years. I guess the undercover did me in. I couldn't take it anymore. Then Sel took me down to Costa Rica and somehow I got better. Then I got a whole lot worse. I'm not sure I'm me anymore. That make sense?"

"I don't doubt you, Sean. I know who you are."

"You don't doubt me or yourself, because you're simple."

"If you say so."

"Simple is good. It must be like having a flashlight with batteries that never wear out. You can depend on it and it will show you whatever you want to see, whenever you want to see it. I was like that, but now I'm not. When I shine the light I see dark."

"I'll come get you. Right now. We can figure a way to make things work, Sean."

"I've got something better."

"Explain."

"The Love Thirty-twos? They're being made in TJ now, in a secret factory run by Ron Pace and protected by Carlos Herredia."

"Pace Arms is operating out of Mexico?"

"That's the word. And if you think it through, it makes sense. Global economy, man. So, how would you like to nail some Gulf Cartel men with a hundred of those guns and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Right there in L.A.?"

"Quite a bit."

"Good, because Sean Gravas is the dealer. With a little help from me, the guns, the men and the money will all be yours. It'll be the biggest deal I ever did for ATF."

"You murdered three men, Sean. That kind of puts you on the outs at ATF."

"Murders? Why? They land me right where I need to be, don't they? According to the new cartel rules?"

Hood said nothing for a long beat. Ozburn chuckled. "I'm still ATF, Charlie. In my little wooden heart. You don't think I'm out here just having fun, do you? I'm on to something big. I'm going to accomplish it. And when I deliver the guns to my buyers, you can be there. I'll surrender to you. But not before. I'm not coming in until I have something to show for all this."