Border Son Read online

  “A dark, gritty story takes the reader on a journey to the other side where light banishes the darkness and good triumphs over evil. A father learns his criminal son, who made all the wrong choices in life, is in danger and swoops in for the rescue, searching diligently until he finds him, then risks his own life to save him. Clearly allegorical, this is a story that will stay with the reader long after the last page.”

  Lynette Eason, bestselling, award-winning author of the Elite Guardians and Blue Justice series

  Praise for Coldwater

  “Parker, who also wrote the excellent Purgatory Road, has a real knack for creating fully realized characters and putting them into situations that force them to act in unexpected ways.”

  Booklist

  “Parker has an exceptional talent for drawing out the suspense.”

  Killer Nashville

  Praise for Purgatory Road

  “Not for the faint of heart, Purgatory Road is a compelling story that suspense fans are sure to love.”

  Bookpage

  “This is a skillfully written, gripping thriller, well supported by the author’s fine eye for setting and ear for dialogue.”

  Booklist

  “In a voice that is as hypnotizing as a desert mirage, debut novelist Samuel Parker entices readers down a dangerous road, where the forces of good and evil are as crushing as the Mojave heat. This is suspense in its purest, most unfiltered form.”

  Fresh Fiction

  Books by Samuel Parker

  Purgatory Road

  Coldwater

  Border Son

  © 2019 by Samuel Parker

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4934-1644-8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Contents

  Cover

  Endorsements

  Half Title Page

  Books by Samuel Parker

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Author Note

  Dramatis Personae

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

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  20

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  29

  30

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  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

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  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  An Excerpt from Purgatory Road

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence.

  —Léon Bloy

  Author Note

  Writing about a culture that I am not a part of was always going to be a dangerous proposition, especially in this day and age. My love and interest for the southwest and for Mexico comes from an unknown source. I am fascinated by the people, the myths, and the environment. If I have done a disservice to any of these during the writing of this book, it was never my intent.

  Roberto, Camilla, and all the inhabitants of Nuevo Negaldo are not to be interpreted as caricatures of an entire people, but individuals. If anything, I wanted to represent the relentless devotion to family, an aspect of Mexican and Latino culture that I admire.

  I am in debt to the works of Dan Slater (Wolf Boys), Luis Alberto Urrea (The Devil’s Highway, Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border), Charles Bowden (Murder City, Down By the River, El Sicario: Confessions of a Cartel Hit Man), Yuri Herra (Signs Preceding the End of the World), and Alfredo Corchado (Midnight in Mexico) as well as countless other authors who have written on the Drug Wars along the southern border. I will also freely admit that Felipe may be a little too indebted to Graham Greene (The Power and the Glory).

  I am also indebted to my friend Sylvia Villalobos Everitt, who answered a slew of major and minor questions concerning Mexican-American culture, always willing to help steer me in the right direction as far as customs and language. If I made any mistakes or blunders in this book, it is due to not asking enough questions which I am sure she would have gladly answered.

  At the end of the day, I wanted to write a story about family, set in a part of the world that inspires my imagination. To that end, I ask for your grace.

  Dramatis Personae

  Ed Kazmierski

  Tyler Kazmierski

  Camilla Ibanez

  Father Felipe

  Agent Lomas

  The Owner

  Julio—coyote

  Juan—migrant

  Luis—migrant

  Los Diablos

  Roberto Ibanez

  Miguel

  Adan

  Cartel

  Hector Salazar—plaza boss

  El Aguila—Cartel boss

  El Matacerdos—sicario

  Arturio

  Vicente

  1

  The sun was cresting the low eastern hills of Nuevo Negaldo as the rusted Buick made its way through the still-sleeping town. A street sweeper turned his head and crossed himself as the car passed. It moved steadily, pushed neither by schedule nor fear of discovery. No one would dare watch it, and no one would dare talk.

  Roberto Ibanez had driven this route before, so often that his mind would normally drift to the tune of the narcocorrido playing on the car’s radio. But today was different. He was focused. Miguel sat in the passenger seat dozing, his head against the tinted window, his sleep apnea abated only when the car’s suspension jolted.

  The town gave way to the high desert scrub and emptiness. They drove into the sunrise, the day’s story just beginning.

  His left hand on the wheel, with the other Roberto rolle
d a coin through his fingers. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on one side, script on the other.

  Our Lady of Guadalupe

  Help All Those Who Invoke

  Thee in Their Necessities

  Help Me to Alleviate All the Suffering

  and Misfortunes in the World

  Back and forth the coin rolled, back and forth his thoughts vacillated with the movement. His fate oscillating in his hand. He could not make up his mind.

  Miles from Nuevo Negaldo the car stopped, kicking up dust that blew through the sagebrush. The doors opened and Roberto and Miguel got out. They walked around the back of the car and opened the trunk. Miguel stretched his back and yawned.

  In the trunk were two men.

  Roberto reached in and pulled out the first man. Then the second. Crammed in like sardines, their legs numb and asleep, the victims were unable to support their weight and they crumpled to the ground.

  Each hostage had their hands bound behind their back with duct tape, one strip across their mouths, another across their eyes. The first captive was shorter, his Mayan heritage darkening his skin and stunting his height. The other was a gringo.

  “Miguel, you take him,” Roberto said as he pushed the bound Mexican.

  Miguel simply nodded and went to work.

  Several yards off the road, Miguel forced the man down to his knees, drew a 9mm from his belt, aimed it at the back of the man’s head, and pulled the trigger.

  The Mexican fell against the desert floor, his feet spasming against rock as the blood left his body. Miguel fired two more shots into the dying form and then stretched his back again. Violence before breakfast was hard work.

  Still standing behind the car, Roberto looked down at the coin in his hand. Our Lady looked up at him from the silver surface. He put the coin in his pocket as he whispered into the gringo’s ear.

  “Listen. I am going to shoot you. You will not die. It will hurt like hell, but fall forward and don’t move. It is the best I can do.”

  The gringo tipped his blindfolded and gagged head, his breaths becoming more hurried and laborious through his nostrils.

  Roberto grabbed the man’s shirt above the left shoulder and pulled down, tearing the fabric and exposing the gringo’s skin. Reaching into the trunk, he took a half-empty bottle of tequila and doused his victim’s back, then took a swig of the remaining drops and threw the empty bottle on the ground.

  Miguel returned to the car, tucking the gun into his overexerted waistband.

  Roberto looked back with vacant eyes. “My turn.”

  Miguel got back into the Buick to enjoy the show from the comforts of the air-conditioned interior. Roberto pushed the gringo out to the killing ground. Just past the first victim, he forced the man down to his knees. He drew his pistol, ejected the magazine, removed one of the hollow point bullets, and replaced it with a ball round. He jammed the clip back into the pistol and chambered it.

  “Be strong, mi amigo,” he whispered.

  One shot into the man’s back and the gringo fell. Roberto stepped over him, gun pointed down, and fired two quick rounds. He holstered the gun in his belt, then crossed himself. Turning back to the car, Roberto walked to the driver’s door, got in, and drove back to Nuevo Negaldo.

  2

  The first shot had thrown Tyler forward, smashing his face into the dirt. Excruciating pain stabbed into his back and beat with his quickened pulse. Dust filled his nose as he sucked in against the tape over his mouth. His ears were ringing, left deaf by the two shots that had ricocheted off the hardpan next to his head. He felt the earth spinning beneath his masked eyes, the vertigo trapping his own thoughts inside his head, isolated from the world.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  Pain.

  The stabbing turned into burning and he could feel his blood pooling beneath him from his shoulder. The bullet had passed through, into the rock, burrowing a hole into the earth which now drank from him. The ringing in his ears slowly subsided, replaced by the desert silence. The only sound was his labored nasal breaths. He may have passed out or may have been aware. Roberto could have shot him five minutes ago or five hours, he could not tell.

  The heat of the sun scorched his back.

  Summoning his strength, Tyler tried to roll over but was stopped halfway by the lifeless body that lay next to him. He could feel his hair, wet, and didn’t know if it was his own blood or Ignacio’s. Tyler kicked at the body and grunted. No response. He kicked again.

  Dead.

  Ignacio had been tough. Smart. He had taken the beatings the night before quietly. Ignacio thought they would let him go. Now his mind was free of the burden of wondering. But then again, Tyler didn’t expect it to end this way either.

  The sun traversed the sky, but his only notice of it was the intensity of heat on him, baking him. The pain in his wound slowly numbed as the nerves exhausted themselves. He felt like a brick, his shoulder melding with the stones.

  Time passed.

  He heard a car approach, its four cylinders sounding as if only two still had life. It shuddered to a stop some distance away. Tyler heard a door open and close, then footsteps to his side. With a quick pull, the tape was ripped from his eyes and he was blinded by sunlight. His mouth was soon released and he sucked in air.

  A small man squatted next to him, and as he poured water out of a bottle into his mouth, it ran down his cheeks. The man then poured some over Tyler’s hair and neck, cooling him down. With a pocketknife, the man freed Tyler’s hands.

  “Can you get up?” he asked with a thick accent.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, then, I must drag you.”

  The man grabbed Tyler’s good arm and began to drag him toward his car. Tyler attempted to get his legs under him, but only succeeded in pushing his heels into the dirt, helping what little he could to move his body through the dust. The man pushed him into the passenger seat of an old Ford Falcon and slammed the door. Tyler watched as the man walked over to Ignacio, bent down, and examined the body. He then kicked up the ground where Tyler had been lying and rolled Ignacio onto it.

  Soon the man returned to the car, put it in drive, and headed back toward town.

  “Who are you?” Tyler whispered. He felt on the verge of an abyss and a willingness with each passing second to fall into it.

  “Felipe. Father Felipe.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Roberto.”

  Tyler’s eyes grew heavy. The throbbing in his shoulder returned. Words became exhausting. “He trying for sainthood?”

  Felipe laughed to himself. “No . . . he will never be that.”

  “Well, he’s one today.”

  “Yes. Maybe just for today.”

  Blackness overcame him as the sun shone bright over the desert east of Nuevo Negaldo.

  3

  Roberto sat below the oscillating fan nailed to a dark corner of one of the grimiest cantinas in Nuevo Negaldo. Miguel was busy throwing money at one of the women smuggled up from the poor villages in the south to dance on the tables and then be discarded when the next batch arrived. Roberto sipped his beer and eyed all the men who came and went, the bartender, the girls as they moved in and out of the back room. His anxiety had risen with each mile they drove between the killing ground and Nuevo Negaldo. He had second-guessed himself the whole way back, and had considered turning around and killing Tyler where he had left him.

  But by this point, Felipe had most likely found Tyler and taken him into hiding.

  That was the agreement.

  It was a dangerous game that he had started—this demented plan to repay a debt—and there were few that Roberto could trust to help him execute it. Felipe was one of them.

  His uncle. He could trust him.

  He thought he could trust Miguel, but just to be sure, he had gone through the motions and left his compadre in the dark. Miguel was an ox, and dumb as rocks, and if he knew the plan Roberto had laid out for Tyler to get out
of Mexico, under Salazar’s nose, then he might just tell the wrong person out of sheer stupidity. Miguel was good muscle. He was good because he didn’t have many thoughts slowing down his actions.

  They had been ordered to take Tyler and Ignacio out that morning and kill them. Hector Salazar, the plaza boss, had ordered it, and when the order came down, there was no question. Roberto and Miguel had arrived at Salazar’s hacienda, watched as some men loaded the two doomed souls in the back of the car, and then drove out. They had done it before, many times, and the routine was one thing Roberto hoped would aid in his plan. Having Miguel witness him shooting the American would not provide his dumb friend with anything out of the ordinary to report.

  The only thing that could expose the plan was Tyler himself. Either he was already dead out in the desert, Felipe had picked him up, or . . .

  The sunlight coming through the open door would dim in shadow when a patron would enter. Each time Roberto found himself holding his breath in case an unlikely event would happen—one of Hector’s men dragging in a half-alive Tyler and demanding an explanation.

  It never did.

  The last part of the plan was simple and complex at the same time.

  All that remained was to get him across the border.

  It was this last point, waiting out in the future, that unnerved him to no end. The border. Tyler could not simply walk across. He could not drive across. All roads north were watched and monitored by Salazar’s men and informants on both sides of the border. Even some of the US Customs guys were on the payroll. They would find Tyler. And if they did, not only would Tyler take a bullet in the head, but Roberto could also go down. They would probably kill Miguel too, just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Miguel looked over to Roberto, a half-drunken smirk on his face, oblivious to the potential danger his partner had put him in. He laughed and turned back to his entertainment.

  The last part would be difficult.

  It hinged on one person now. One person who had no idea what she was being asked to do, but would do what Roberto asked because she loved him and would do what she could to help him. She always did, and even though there were few in this life that Roberto cared about, he cared about his mother above all others.