Stephen Randel - Trail of the Chupacabra

I have something really important to suggest. And by suggest, I mean demand. Immediately! The economy is in a shambles. Unemployment is increasing, home values are declining, debt is rising, and consumer confidence is falling. Worst of all, the retail price of soft drinks is at an all-time high. Obviously, this is clearly not a good economic signal, as I’m sure you’re aware of the inverse correlation between sugar/caffeine-based asset prices and the stock market per my very popular Internet-published treatise entitled Soda Pop Killed the European Union, or How Dr. Pepper Kicked Greece’s Ass .

Sir, I know you’re extremely busy, mostly with taxpayer-financed lunches and pointless speeches; by the way, do you have a speechwriter I could borrow for a few days? I have a few things I’d like to get off my chest, and apparently my signature style is a bit blunt for the common man.

I digress. You pig. Here’s my problem with the current situation. It’s all about inflation. Where does inflation come from? Pretty much from you and the Federal Reserve. Jackasses. When money is printed in order to add “liquidity” to the market, the value of previously printed paper currency is devalued. It’s an insidious form of taxation without representation, and that really gets my Jefferson up. And my Thomas is a real humdinger!

I beg you to return us to a gold standard, but not the old, ridiculous gold standard, a new and much-improved one. I suggest the World of Warlocks (WOW) Gold Standard. And by suggest, I mean demand! Wait, I demanded something earlier. I’ll just suggest it aggressively. The economy of this Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) is quickly becoming the twenty-sixth largest economy on the planet. At its explosive current rate of growth, it will inevitably pass Sweden’s GDP sometime in the next few years. More importantly, the stable currency and low inflation rate of World of Warlocks is the envy of most modern economists. How do they do it, you ask? Or wait, did I just ask that? Really need some caffeine. Never mind. Anyway, they do it with a currency tied to a specific commodity…gold, and lots of it. I myself, and by “myself” I mean my Level Eighty-Five Night Elf Rogue whose name is unpronounceable in the English tongue (you can just refer to him as Fred), have accumulated close to one million pieces of gold, just under the game’s allowable cap, an artificial ceiling that I can’t fully understand (for more information on this topic, please reference my website, where I debate whether WOW is a paragon of capitalism or socialism). Nevertheless, the economy of WOW is a model of efficiency and productivity. Aligning the U.S. dollar with the WOW Gold Standard would be a courageous but no-risk decision. In WOW, the intelligence of the elves, the industriousness of the dwarves, and the sweat of the humans power their economy. And by “humans” I mean the human avatars in the game, not your orc-like colleagues over at the Federal Reserve fumbling around with the discount rate and presuming it actually does anything they actually mean it to. Bunch of monkeys humping a football in a boardroom, that’s all they are. Additionally, in WOW, the trolls and their deviousness offer a natural counterbalance to the rest of the society to avoid reckless social and charitable decisions in roughly the same way the old Republican party used to in ours. In summary, WOW is the perfect economic model of guile, ingenuity, and deceit. It’s efficient, brutally fair, and extremely stable. Sound like ours? Of course not, you read the papers. Tell me I’m wrong. If your bureaucratic mandates require a commission to study the issue, I’m happy to volunteer as the chairman. Obviously, I would require the appropriate travel vouchers and lodging/meal per diem. Nothing more than the average senator receives. I’m not a greedy man by nature.

P.S. — Any information you can send me regarding how to exchange Fred’s significant WOW gold balances for nonsequential, unmarked twenty-dollar bills or bearer bonds would be greatly appreciated.

The large white delivery truck headed north toward the U.S./Mexican border. Originally, it had been a beer truck, and it still looked vaguely like a beer truck, but in reality it was more like a tank. The glass in the driver’s compartment was bulletproof, and the run-flat tires were designed to continue operating even when shot with large-caliber ammunition. The gas tank was armored and self-sealing, and the cargo bay was reinforced with steel plate armor. It had horizontal firing ports that could be opened to allow gunmen inside the truck’s storage compartment to fire on assailants. A trap door on the roof of the cargo bay opened to allow a fifty-caliber machine gun to be raised via electric motor and employed against other vehicles. The modified truck was extremely heavy. A customized, more powerful engine and stronger, more durable shocks and brakes offset the increased weight. The truck was closely followed by two black SUVs with tinted windows. The three-vehicle convoy barreled down the highway.

Cesar had contacted El Barquero early that morning. Cesar’s sources said that the Padre wanted a shipment of weapons, mainly heavy arms, moved closer to the border, and Cesar had a description of the delivery vehicle and the route they were taking. The only problem was they didn’t have much time.

The weapons were to be used for fighting with the rival cartels that threatened the Padre’s precious smuggling routes into central Texas. The other cartels had recently become more brazen. Everyone knew what had happened in the Veracruz harbor. They thought the Padre was becoming weak. In the wars between the different drug cartels of Mexico, weakness was always exploited as an opportunity to expand. Turmoil within the leadership circle of a cartel created a vacuum that had to be filled quickly. This was the first time in many years that anyone could imagine challenging the Padre in his own territories. However, the other cartels were not working together as they should have. They were just racing forward individually to test the Padre’s vulnerability. The Padre needed to teach them a lesson, and he planned to use the latest military-grade weapons manufactured by the United States to do it. His enemies would be outgunned. Once their men had pulled back from his territory, he could get back to rebuilding his narco-empire.

Ten miles ahead of the armored truck, El Barquero stood on the southbound access road of the highway. The access road led down from an overpass across the route the weapons shipment was taking. Its elevation gave him the ability to see for miles across the pancake-flat terrain to the south. With a high-powered sniper’s monocular/range-finder, he scanned the horizon and watched. The highway traffic was light. According to Cesar, the shipment would pass this way soon. Cesar’s men were to follow the vehicle at a distance. Cesar himself would be trailing a few miles back in a helicopter. The news of the shipment had come so quickly that Barquero and Cesar didn’t have time to coordinate communications equipment. Barquero barely had time to gather his weapons and find suitable transportation for the mission. He was going to be on his own to stop the transport initially, but that was okay with him. Cesar and his men would be close behind, and Cesar had never let him down. In fact, Cesar had bailed him out of a number of tight spots back in the old days. Barquero wasn’t worried; Cesar always brought the cavalry in right on time.

Through Barquero’s monocular, a large, white delivery truck appeared on the distant horizon. It was almost two miles away. He didn’t have much time. He ran for the truck parked alongside the road. The dump truck he had stolen from a construction site was still full of gravel. Putting the vehicle in gear, he pulled onto the highway. The heavy load of crushed rock made gaining speed difficult. He stood on the accelerator, slammed on the clutch, and shifted through the gears with urgency. He could see the delivery truck approaching from the south. The divided highway had two lanes running in each direction. Between the north- and southbound lanes was a small median. It was made of concrete and was the height of a street curb. Barquero pulled into the left-hand lane and continued to accelerate. The armored truck was two hundred yards away. Barquero tightened his seatbelt and pulled on a race-car driver’s crash helmet. This is going to suck. One hundred yards. He gripped the steering wheel tightly and checked his rearview mirror to see if anyone was following him. Fifty yards. He cursed and pulled the steering wheel hard to the left. The dump truck leapt over the low median and bounced into the oncoming traffic. The delivery truck driver had no time to respond; his foot barely touched the brake as Barquero’s gravel-laden dump truck crashed head-on into the Padre’s delivery truck. At the moment of impact, Barquero let go of the steering wheel and crossed his muscled arms in front of himself. He had been trained to let go of the wheel during a collision, as the impact of a crash can rip the steering wheel violently to one side, literally breaking the driver’s arm. The impact of the crash spun both vehicles clockwise. The rear of the dump truck clipped the front end of one of the SUVs, which was following too closely behind the delivery truck and was unable to stop. The second SUV had been far enough back in the convoy to witness the dump truck cross the median at full speed. Its driver slammed on the brakes and slid past the spinning tangle of vehicles in front on him. His SUV came to a halt on the side of the road. The impact between the two trucks was incredibly violent, but incredibly short. The mass of the two heavy vehicles slamming into one another brought them to a quick halt. Dust from the gravel in the bed of the dump truck clouded the scene like a smoke screen.