Weston Ochse - Age of Blood

It didn’t take long to place the sign on the door, get a worried look from a bum nearby, and lock the gate. Then J.J. was bopping down the street, pretending to own the universe.

Walker and Yank drew their SIG Sauer P229s and began room clearing per SOP. Entering simultaneously through each door, one low, one high, each of them covered a sector of the room to allow for greatest coverage of fire. They’d cleared two rooms when Walker was surprised to hear Holmes’s voice speaking to someone else outside.

“You don’t have a last name?” Holmes demanded.

Walker tapped Yank on the shoulder and both of them slid from the room. Holmes stood with his hands at his sides. To anyone else he might have appeared relaxed, but Walker recognized the tension in his boss. Holmes was addressing someone in the shade of the cabana near the pool in the central courtyard.

“I have had many last names. Since one is as good as the other, if you wish me to have a last name, then choose for me.”

“Or I just call you Ramon?”

“This is good, too.”

Walker peered around the corner. He saw a man seated in a chair beneath the cabana. He wore linen slacks and a linen jacket over a white shirt. The shoes on his feet were perforated to let air in. Gold dangled from his wrists and a large necklace hung around his neck. He appeared to be about fifty, had a solid head of hair, and was handsome in the way older Mexican men often seemed to be.

But there was something else, too. Something different about this man that made Walker’s skin buzz. The other SEALs called it his supernatural early-warning radar. He’d called it a pain in the ass until he learned to control it. He still remembered the first time on his first mission, falling to the ground and doing the kicking chicken as a seizure completely took him over. It was one reason he’d been selected: his past history of being possessed by a Malaysian grave demon was reason to elevate him above all the other candidates. He’d since come to terms with his sensitivity and used it for the team’s benefit. So now that he felt the buzz, he had to wonder who—or what —was speaking to Holmes.

He moved out in a combat crouch, training his pistol on the man. “Chief, step back.”

Holmes did as he was told, taking several quick steps backward as he drew his own pistol. “What’s going on, Walker? You feel something?”

“Yes, sir. Closer I get. Yank, to me,” Walker yelled.

Yank appeared on the other side of the cabana, his pistol in a two-handed grip, his face a mask of serenity.

Ramon hadn’t moved. He sat, acting as if three SEALs weren’t pointing their weapons at him. He turned to look at Walker.

“So… you’ve been involved with such things before.”

“Yeah, I’ve been around. So what is it? Are you demon or a man?”

Ramon laughed. “I’ve been called both quite frequently of late. One man’s man is another man’s demon.”

“I think you better explain yourself,” Holmes said, tightening his grip on his pistol. “Tell us what’s going on.”

The former Zeta hit man smiled sadly, much as he probably did with his targets right before he murdered them, thought Walker.

“Doesn’t a man have his privacy?”

“We operate as a team. We have no privacy. We’re brothers.”

“And if I tell you, then I’ll instantly be a brother,” Ramon said, snapping his fingers.

“Well.” Holmes seemed to consider it. “Maybe a stepbrother.”

“Once removed,” Laws added, coming up behind them.

“But you need me. The embassy sent me.”

Walker detected a strange tone in the man’s speech, as if he was really upset about not being brought into the fold but hiding it well.

“You’d probably help us, but we’ll move on without you,” Holmes said.

“And what happens to me then?” Ramon shifted his eyes toward where Yank had him covered.

Holmes shrugged. “I guess that’s up to you.”

It was a real Mexican standoff for almost a full minute. The silence in the courtyard was disrupted only by the sound of the pool filter, Walker shifting his feet to get a better line, and cars rumbling past outside. Finally the man in white held his hands out to his sides and slowly got to his feet.

“I was a hit man for the Zetas cartel and could get at any target, regardless of where they were,” he began, making eye contact with each and every member of Triple Six. “No one could figure it out. They’d watch for me. They’d plan for me. On occasion I’d have the audacity to tell them I was coming. Once I even gave them the time.” He shook his head sharply. “Didn’t matter. Was nothing they could do. If the Zetas wanted you dead and they called me in, it was a done deal.”

“I thought you said the embassy sent you,” Laws noted.

“Alas, I did my job too well. My former employers tried to get rid of me. I had to—how do you say it—change teams.”

“How’d you do it?” Holmes asked. “I mean, you told that story for a reason. How’d you get away with killing so many people?”

“Let me show you.” He held up his right hand. His lips peeled back slightly as he concentrated on it. The fingers grew long, talons sprung from the nails, and sand-colored hair shot forth from the skin.

“Skinwalker,” Laws said.

Ramon smiled.

“Now I see why the cartel wanted you dead,” Holmes said.

Ramon flexed his hand and it returned to human form. “Yes. A sad thing when you can’t trust those you work for.”

“You said it before. The problem with being the best is who’s out there who can stop you?”

“I would think you know that problem very well, Lieutenant Commander Holmes.” Ramon sat back down. “Can we begin now or is your man going to have another feeling?”

For a second it looked like Holmes was going to carry the situation to the next step; then he dropped his weapon and shoved it into the waistband behind his back. “Nah. I think we’re ready to get to work.”

The other SEALs followed Holmes’s lead. Walker felt a little relief, but not too much. He was still in the presence of a skinwalker, or what legends generally referred to as a werewolf.

As it turned out, Ramon was a gold mine of information. He’d been a one-man killing machine for the Zetas, responsible for more deaths than a Salvadoran hit squad. Working against the other cartels, the Zetas had tried to poise themselves on top of the power pyramid. Instead of fighting for territory, they fought for smuggling routes and constantly worked against other cartels.

Ramon explained the structure. There were eight major cartels. The Gulf Cartel, the Beltrán Leyva Cartel, La Familia, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Juárez Cartel, the Tijuana Cartel, the Knights Templar, and Los Zetas.

The Gulf Cartel, which controlled the Baja Peninsula, was one of the strongest in men, arms, and influence, until they began to fight among themselves. It was now broken into two factions, Los Metros and Los Rojos, each struggling to claim the territory it once had. In 1999, the Gulf Cartel was responsible for the formation of Los Zetas, hiring thirty-one GAFE soldiers as assassins; these soldiers turned several border towns into ghost towns, their violence and cruelty unmatched and unchecked. When the leader of the Gulf Cartel was captured in 2008, Los Zetas seized the opportunity to swell their ranks to more than three hundred former special operations soldiers, and thus became the dominant force in human and narcotics trafficking.

La Familia was formed by members of the Gulf Cartel who splintered off to create an organization similar to the Zetas, in order to attack the Zetas and keep them away from the Gulf Cartel. What had initially appeared to be a parting of ways turned into a savvy reorganization. But in mid-2011 the Gulf Cartel was overcome by its own infighting, resulting in the Knights Templar, which had since flourished in the absence of La Familia. Knights Templar aligned itself with the Sinaloa Federation in an attempt to root out any surviving members of La Familia and prevent Los Zetas from expanding into the territory.