“Whatever it takes. Got it. Are you coming back in to the office?”
Cruz peered at the digital clock on the dash. It was already five-thirty. By the time he got to the office in traffic, it would be six or later.
Then again, what did he really have waiting for him at home?
“Yes. I’ll be there shortly. You don’t need to wait for me. Get some sleep, chase women or whatever you young men do, and I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
Chapter 6
Sinaloa, Mexico — 1986
The midnight horizon glowed with leaping licks of fire as the meager improvised tarpaper shacks around the hidden field blazed. Dense, acrid smoke belched into the night sky, carrying with it all the earthly possessions of the simple farming family huddled together, their wrists bound with plastic ties, the children sobbing as they watched their home vaporize. A pair of armed men stood next to a lifted four-wheel drive pickup truck, watching the blaze as they shared a bottle of mescal while admiring their destructive handiwork.
The mother tried in vain to comfort her panicked children — two little girls and a small boy — as the father mumbled a prayer to the Virgin of Guadalupe, who had been conspicuously absent in assisting him this year. He’d planted a cash crop instead of tomatoes — marijuana bringing with it a substantial premium over the edible harvest he’d always grown in the past. He’d needed the money for his youngest girl’s operation, to repair a congenital deformity; Michelle had been born with a cleft palate that would limit her chances in life due to the effect on her appearance. He had realized that cultivating cannabis carried a risk, because the other drug growers and their distribution network didn’t want competition, but he hoped to be able to get away with it this one year, and then go back to tomato farming.
The farmer’s luck had been bad ever since the arrival of his newborn two years ago. First there was her birth defect, then a bad harvest, and just a few months ago, news that another baby was on the way. More mouths to feed diminished the miracle of birth somewhat. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his children, but the financial pressure was immense, and the last thing he needed was another one. And in the back of his mind lurked a darkness — what if this one also had some problem; an even more expensive one to care for? He’d tried to banish the thoughts, but they had recurred and grown to dominate his days.
Two of the men approached — rough looking, wearing cowboy hats and carrying pistols. These were the foot soldiers of the local distribution network; in 1986, there was only one cartel, operated by Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, also known as The Godfather, who lived in nearby Culiacan and controlled all drug traffic of any note in Mexico. Everyone answered to him, including these men. In a few years, Gallardo would divide up the country and create a more fragmented cartel scheme, dolling out territories like a multi-level marketing magnate, but at this point, he alone was the ultimate authority, with close friends and family members handling the local day-to-day operations.
The mother pleaded frantically with the two men to forgive them, to at least release the children — they were helpless babies, the boy the oldest at five years old. One of the men backhanded her, splitting her cheek open. The father begged for them to show mercy in a keening burst of rapid Spanish, his tense formal and respectful of their obvious dominance. He acknowledged that he knew it was wrong to grow marijuana without their consent, but there was the baby’s operation to consider, and to please, in the name of all that was holy, not punish the innocent for his bad judgment.
The men were unsympathetic, and drunk, flushed with the power of life and death over their miserable captives. The distraught children were dressed in rags, and the parents weren’t much better — their poverty and desperation was palpable.
The heavier of the two men moved towards the kneeling prisoners and kicked the two year old in the head with his heavy cowboy boots. The snap of her neck was audible; the additional blows with his heel unnecessary. The mother shrieked in blind rage, screaming her baby’s name into the deafness of the night. The two men laughed drunkenly, and the kicker wiped the blood from his boot onto her tattered peasant dress before moving to the father and silencing his hoarse yells with a brutal pistol blow to the head. Dazed, he fell over, blood flowing freely from a gash in his scalp.
Grabbing the mother by the hair, they forced her to her feet, and the kicker tore at her dress. She struggled in protest, hysterical with grief and fear, and was rewarded for her efforts with a savage punch to the throat. The men hauled the now silenced woman off to a flat patch of dirt near the flaming main dwelling, and took turns raping her while the father and children watched helplessly.
Eventually tiring of the sport, they dragged her back to her now mute family and discarded her beside her toddler’s mutilated corpse. The woman had gone into shock, barely registering the abuse or the mangled body of her baby, her awareness shut down as a self-preservation mechanism for what remained of her psyche. She raised her head from the dirt, and in her delirium saw Satan dancing in the house’s flames; the dark one had come to claim them for his own.
The kicker moved to the little boy — the only one of the family who wasn’t crying. The child radiated a piercing look of pure hatred at the man, but there were no tears. Already, he’d been hardened by the demanding life on a rural farm, where he worked besides his father from dawn until dusk.
“Hey, look here, we have a tough guy, Hmm? What a tough character, this little cabron is, huh? He looks like he wants to kill me,” the man taunted, slurring as he waved the pistol in the boy’s face.
“I think he would, if he had a chance, Paco,” his companion confirmed.
“All right, little man, you want to kill me? You want to kill someone? Let’s see you do it, you goat prick.” The kicker flipped open a long wooden-handled folding knife, freeing the little boy’s hands with a single slice of the razor-honed blade.
The little boy rose to his bare feet, glaring defiantly. The kicker spat dismissively and cuffed the boy, knocking him back a few paces; but the little boy remained on his feet, although obviously dazed by the blow.
The man strode to him and flipped off his pistol’s safety, jamming it into the little boy’s tiny fingers while maintaining an iron grip on it. He forced the child’s hand towards the back of his father’s head, holding the knife at the boy’s throat. He reeked of onions, alcohol and sweat, and the little boy gagged at the powerful stench of his bear-like captor.
“Go ahead, cabron. Be a man. Blow his fucking head off. Either that, or I’ll cut your throat and fuck him in the ass for good measure. After I’m through fucking you, too,” the kicker hissed in his ear.
The roar of an engine arriving in the field startled the group, and the kicker reflexively squeezed the boy’s hand, depressing the hair trigger of the automatic. A spray of blood spackled the little boy as the father fell forward, his struggle on the planet finally at an end.
A stately older man approached the scene from his Ford Bronco, taking in the carnage with a practiced glare. Like the others, he wore a cowboy hat, but his bearing was one of authority that immediately commanded the men’s full attention.
“What the fuck are you doing? What’s going on here?” he demanded, as the kicker scrambled to his feet, fear spreading over his face, as well as his partner’s.
“Uh, nothing. Just cleaning up the job, Jefe. Having a little fun,” the kicker mumbled sheepishly.