El Barquero had paid the motel owner to not allow anyone in the room, maids or otherwise. After the twelfth day, which seemed more like twelve months to Sanders, El Barquero helped clean him up and took him back to Sanders’ small apartment. El Barquero explained that the rent had been paid and someone would come by to deliver the drugs on a regular basis. He was instructed to go back to his life and continue to serve in the National Guard. Sanders knew the big Mexican would want something someday; he just didn’t know what.
About four months later, that day finally came. Sanders met El Barquero in the same small tavern where he first made his acquaintance. El Barquero explained that he knew the deployment date for his unit was approaching and that while Sanders could hide his addiction from them while he was stateside, once he was shipped overseas he would be on his own. Sanders said he planned on disappearing before the deployment, but he’d need enough money and drugs to stay gone forever. El Barquero assured him this could be arranged through his employers and that a drug-induced, semi-conscious, leisurely early retirement in a small Mexican village on the Gulf Coast with sandy beaches, warm sea breezes, and pretty senoritas was easy enough to provide. Days lost in a comforting dreamlike state while swinging in a beachside hammock sounded to Sanders like the perfect way to drift through the rest of his life. The only catch was what he would have to do.
As preparations for his National Guard unit’s departure stepped up in pace, the arms, equipment, and munitions stores at their base were being rapidly expanded. Sanders had information on the inventory of equipment and access to the armory. The weapons cache didn’t just include assault rifles and ammunition; it was stocked with machine guns, grenades and grenade launchers, mortars, landmines, anti-tank weapons, night vision equipment, and military-grade body armor. It was all the sort of things that El Barquero’s employers desired for their battles with government authorities and rival cartels. This wouldn’t be just another shipment of pistols and shotguns to resupply their soldiers; this would be the shipment that would allow the cartel to expand its smuggling territory.
Sanders agreed with the plan, which delighted El Barquero, because Sanders didn’t really have a choice. El Barquero had already worked out the logistics for getting the merchandise into Mexico and informed his employers of his intentions. He didn’t want to have to kill Sanders for nothing.
When the time came to execute the plan, Sanders had prepared the falsified requisition documents and delivery orders for the munitions and acquired a large military truck for transportation. He had even coordinated a detachment of Guardsmen to assist in loading the vehicle.
After leaving the base with the shipment and nervously driving for several hours while imaging a roadblock of police at every bend in the road, he rendezvoused with El Barquero at an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the Louisiana swampland. Large portable canister lights illuminated the inside of the warehouse, while the two men used a small forklift to transfer the heavy wooden crates to the tractor-trailer El Barquero had supplied. Even with the lift, it took the men several hours to transfer all the weapons and supplies. The sun was just beginning to come up over the horizon, and Sanders was a sweating, nervous wreck. He knew that sooner rather than later, someone would notice the missing inventory and question his paperwork. And what if someone had spotted his truck barreling down the two-lane roads of the rural Louisiana backcountry? He knew he was in over his head, but there was no turning back. El Barquero had detailed the plan to him precisely up to this point, but nothing else. Where was the money? How would he get to Mexico? Most importantly, where was his fix? He desperately needed a fix. He had to be perfectly sober as he procured the weapons and truck from the armory, but that was hours ago. Now he was sick and he needed to shoot up.
El Barquero approached him after the portable lights were taken down and the truck was ready to depart. In the dark, cavernous room, the tall Mexican had lit a cigarette lighter to provide illumination for Sanders to shoot up the heroin-filled syringe he handed to him. Sanders’ shaking hands struggled to find a vein. Eventually he found one and slowly pushed the plunger down, feeling the warmth spread through his body as he slumped to the ground. The menacing man standing over him said nothing. He just stared into Sander’s eyes, into his soul. Sanders felt strange. He knew something was wrong. What he didn’t know was that the syringe contained a “hot load.” It wasn’t just heroin. He was struggling to breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He was choking. The last thing Sanders ever saw were the eyes of the “Ferryman.” Those black eyes, those evil eyes that glimmered with fire from the flickering glow of the dancing lighter flame.
Once he knew Sanders was dead, El Barquero left the body and drove the tractor-trailer across the state line into Texas. He arrived at the Port of Houston around midday. He met with the contacts his employers had promised would be waiting for him. In short order, the shipment was sealed inside a cargo-shipping container and loaded aboard a vessel bound for Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, on the Gulf of Honduras. Very few cargo containers coming into U.S. ports were checked, and almost none of the outgoing ones. A shipment of weapons this large was easier to smuggle in through the southern border of Mexico than across the northern one. El Barquero’s employers were making the rest of the arrangements to move the shipment north across Mexico to its ultimate destination in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. His contacts took the large truck to dispose of, and he was given the keys to a car and told to meet his boss outside Piedras Negras at the farm. He knew what they meant. He’d made the trip before.
El Barquero pulled his car up to the massive yellow farmhouse surrounded by a large white wooden fence. He noticed dozens of late-model trucks and sedans parked outside the large red barn to the back and left of the house. Farther back, about fifty yards from the barn, a long row of black wooden barracks lined the back fence. Armed sentries were scattered across the compound, which was illuminated by powerful lights mounted on tall poles. As he parked his car, two guards approached with weapons poised to confirm his identity. They immediately recognized the tall gun smuggler through his open window.
“The Padre is in the barn,” one of the sentries said. “He’s been waiting to see you.”
“Why all the cars?” El Barquero inquired.
“They’re fighting the roosters tonight,” the other sentry replied.
El Barquero made his way quickly across the open compound and approached the barn door. Sounds of men shouting and swearing came from inside the building. As he entered the barn, another armed guard lowered an AK-47 in front of his path.
“Wait here,” he said. “Miguel!” he shouted at the young boy sitting on a crate next to the door. “Let the Padre know he’s here.”
Young Miguel jumped from his perch and scampered up the raised rows of seating crowded with boisterous men who surrounded the cockfighting pit, which was twenty feet in diameter. A four-foot-tall wooden fence, one side painted red, the other painted green, surrounded the pit that had been built to contain the combatants and their handlers. Miguel reached the top row of seating and ran down the aisle to the side of a balding man of medium build with a large bushy black mustache. The man wore a black suit, immaculately polished black cowboy boots, and a priest’s Roman collar. He was sitting alone. He seemed to barely notice the boy who was whispering in his ear, his attention focused on the ring below. But slowly the man in black turned and looked in El Barquero’s direction. He raised his hand and motioned toward himself. The guard lowered the weapon that blocked El Barquero’s path and nodded his approval to pass. El Barquero followed the same path the boy had taken. As he passed the boy, who was on his way back down, the boy stopped and stared intently as the large man wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt straining at the seams to contain his muscular torso strode past him. The seated man motioned for El Barquero to sit beside him.