Randy White - Night Vision

A spare tire, handled by two quiet men, is bumped against the head of a blindfolded enemy. A third team member sits next to them in a truck, engine running, that alternately accelerates, then decelerates, as the spare tire rocks in sync, as if attempting to climb over the enemy’s face.

The interrogation subject, of course, doesn’t know it’s a spare tire. He’s convinced he is lying under the truck. It is a powerful motivator.

My variation worked well.

When I got my truck into first gear, I accelerated slowly forward until I felt the first hint of resistance. It was accompanied by a duo of howls from Dedos and Calavero.

Instantly, I shifted to neutral, then stepped quietly out of the truck.

Using my left hand on the doorframe, my right on the accelerator, I began to rock the truck forward and back. With my hand, I added more gas with each forward thrust. The terror the two men endured-and the pain they imagined-was caused by the engine noise that grew progressively louder. It was the noise that convinced them their skulls were about to crack like eggs.

After just a few seconds of this, Calavero was begging me to stop.

“Anything,” he pleaded, “I’ll tell you anything.”

He did, too. But he wasn’t nearly as eager to share as Dedos, who I had to threaten just to shut him up.

“Crazy with fear” is just a cliche-until you have actually interacted with someone whose brain has been addled by terror. They weep, they slobber. Their sense of time and balance has been scrambled.

“Sick with fear” is another cliche, yet it accurately described the visceral dread I felt after what the two men confessed to me.

They were members of the Latin Kings. The Kings were killers and proud of it. Members were holding Squires and the girl captive at a hunting camp that consisted of an RV and a couple of outbuildings, half a mile away through the woods. There, a man named Victorino-a Latin King captain-and a woman called Frankie were filming a sex video, using Tula Choimha as their victim.

It made no sense to me when Dedos explained that the woman was Squires’s girlfriend, but I didn’t press for details. I grabbed the radio after a moment of indecision, pressed the transmit button and called, “Chapo! Stop everything! I think maybe the cops are here. Chapo?”

I waited… called again, but no reply. It was maddening.

Dedos referred to the girl as la chula virgen. The Mexican slang he used to describe how she would be raped was particularly disgusting: Romper el tamor con sangre.

His boss was going to bust through the girl’s screen in search of blood.

Equally disgusting was the indifference with which Dedos offered details. He wasn’t referring to a teenage girl. He was discussing a worthless object, a young Guatemalan, no better than an animal.

It was not uncommon in the racial hierarchy of Mexican gangs. He mentioned Tula, in fact, as an unimportant aside after Calavero had told me about Harris Squires.

“This person-we call him jelly boy-he disrespected the reputation of our organization,” Calavero said. “For this, he is being punished. How, I do not know. That is up to our jefe. Now, stop this bullshit! Arrest us, if you want. We’ll be out by tomorrow, what do I care? I’m not guilty of anything but being too stupid to kill you when I had the chance.”

Calavero was lying about Squires, and I knew it. When I threatened to put them under the truck again, Dedos was more forthcoming. Squires was to be the victim in a snuff film, he said. With a camera rolling, Squires would be murdered-“Slow, like a kind of ceremony,” Dedos said-then his body would be burned.

“If he’s still alive,” Dedos added. “He attacked the V-man, so the V-man shot him in self-defense. With a shotgun, but I don’t know how bad. When they sent us out to watch the road, jelly boy was still alive. He was bleeding from the face and chest, but the man is big as a mountain, so who knows? I only do what I am told. I have nothing to do with anything that happens at the hunting camp.”

It was then that Dedos told me about the girl.

That’s when I tried the radio. Then again.

Nothing but static.

I felt a panicked need to hurry even though I was unclear about the timing. Had Tula already been raped or was it happening now? More threats didn’t make it any clearer, and I couldn’t waste any more time.

Shock affects different people in different ways. Into my mind came an analytical clarity: I had to do whatever was required to help the girl-do it in a way that didn’t risk my future freedom, if possible, but saving the girl came first.

There is a maxim that applied. At least, I wanted it to apply, because it excused the extreme behavior that might be required of me. An old friend and I had pounded out the truism together long ago in a distant jungle:

In any conflict, the boundaries of behavior are defined by the party who cares least about morality.

The Latin Kings cared nothing of morality. They’d made that clear.

I gave myself a second to review. No one knew I was here. The pandilleros had no idea who I was. They wouldn’t expect a hostile visitor, particularly someone with my training and background. And, tonight, there were no rules, no boundaries of behavior.

Thinking that transformed my strange, restless mood into a resolute calm. I had made the decision to act before giving it conscious thought. The decision tunneled my vision. Thoughts of legalities and guilt-even my fears for the girl-vanished. They were replaced by the necessity of operating in the moment. Of acting and reacting with an indifferent precision.

It was a familiar feeling, a cold clarity that originated from the very core of who I am. I might have been in North Africa or the jungles of Central America. Nothing existed but my targets-threats which I must now find and neutralize.

There were three targets, according to Dedos, not counting Squires or the woman named Frankie, whose role was still unclear. Two fellow gangbangers plus their boss, Victorino-or the V-man, as they called him. All men were armed with handguns and knives. Two carried fully automatic weapons-“T-9s,” Dedos told me.

He was referring to one of the cheapest machine pistols on the market, a Tec-9. Cheap or not, the thing could spit out twenty or thirty rounds in only a couple of seconds, then fire again with the quick change of a magazine.

Daunting. But yet another reason not to hesitate when my targets were in sight.

I was hurrying now, but methodically. From my equipment bag, I took a pair of leather gloves and put them on. The night was warm, but I pulled on a black watch cap, too. Roll it down, it became a ski mask.

I looked at my leather boat shoes. The tread was distinctive, so I found rubber dive boots in my truck.

When I had changed shoes, I tried calling Chapo on the radio again-nothing but static. Then I frisked Dedos and Calavero more thoroughly.

Dedos had pointed a. 45 caliber Glock at me, fifteen rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. Because Glocks have no safety-and I don’t trust the weapon, anyway-I chose not to slide it into my belt.

That would come later.

Calavero’s derringer was a. 357. The recoil had to be horrendous, but it was a manstopper at close range. I slipped it into my back pocket.

I found a key to the gate and keys to what Dedos said was a Dodge Ram pickup hidden in the trees fifty yards down the hunting camp road. Because a priority was getting my own truck out of sight, I opened the gate, backed my truck into the shadows, then jogged back to Calavero and Dedos. I used my Randall knife to free their ankles-but not their hands-then ripped the tape from their eyes.

“Get up, get moving,” I told them, pointing Dedos’s Glock at them. If I was going to shoot someone, I wanted the medical examiner to find rounds from a gangbanger’s gun, not mine.