Border Son Read online

  “I’m not taking you in and I’m not killing you,” Adan said, reclining back. “But I can’t go with you. It’s suicide. And if you don’t know by now, I enjoy living. Enjoy living a lot. You’ve been a good soldier, Roberto. Wish you wouldn’t have gone and screwed it up.”

  While Adan had been talking, Roberto’s mind was already miles ahead, thinking how he was going to get into Salazar’s place. It was a virtual fortress with armed men and a gated entrance. It wasn’t a question of whether he was going in after his mother, but simply how he was going to go about doing it.

  “I need to get in.”

  Adan stared back.

  “Can you get me in? Anything, please, Adan.”

  Adan thought about it, and then conceded. “I can get you inside the gate. After that, I’m out. You wait for me to get back on the street before you start anything. If you get caught and say my name, I’ll find anybody you’ve ever cared about and kill them all. You understand?”

  Roberto nodded.

  “You’re as good as dead once you’re inside.”

  “I know.”

  “But hey, you deserve a chance, right?” Adan grunted. “You’ve always done right by me.”

  “I’ve tried,” Roberto said.

  “This must be how you got roped in with this Tyler, huh? An impulsive, stupid decision like this.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Alright. Let’s get this over with.”

  The two left the room, walked outside, and got into the back seat of a sedan with windows tinted as dark as midnight. Adan’s driver fired up the car and headed to Salazar’s compound.

  70

  Did you think you could steal from me?”

  A fist crushed Tyler’s abdomen and he would have doubled over on the ground except for the two large men holding him. His legs were like jelly and his flesh was bruising with each passing second.

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?” Salazar said.

  He punched him again, then took a step back. He motioned with his hand and one of the goons grabbed a chair and sat Tyler on it. Tyler’s left eye was swollen, his nose was broken, his lip split. His head was held up by one of the men, who now grabbed him by the back of his hair.

  Salazar pointed at Tyler’s shoulder. “What is that?”

  Salazar approached Tyler, ripped his shirt open, and saw the bandage on the gringo’s shoulder. He grabbed at it and pulled it off. A bullet hole partially healed but now oozing from one of the previously thrown punches.

  “So he did shoot you, eh?”

  Salazar walked over to his desk, grabbed a silver letter opener from a drawer, and walked back.

  “Hold him still,” Salazar said to the men.

  He pushed the letter opener into the hole on Tyler’s back. Tyler tensed with pain, a scream echoing in his throat that could not find release past the hand which clasped his mouth shut. His eyes clenched, tears forming, the white-hot heat in his shoulder radiating through his body. Salazar forced the tool out the other side and stood up, admiring his work.

  “Clean through. Amazing shot. What a waste. A gun hand like that could have made a fortune with me. But here, he wasted his talents on a pendejo like you.”

  Tyler convulsed. He wanted nothing more than the silver stick to be removed. He wanted this to end. But Salazar would not let it. He would drag this on for as long as he possibly could. Salazar went back to his desk, sat down, and took a cigar from the humidor on the desk. He lit it with great flair.

  “Where is my shipment?”

  Smoke from the cigar drifted through the room. Salazar’s words entered Tyler’s ears, but all he could think about was the searing fire in his shoulder.

  “You tell me, and this all stops. I’ll make it quick. I’ll make it so they can bury you in one box, not three. That seems fair, doesn’t it?”

  Tyler was on the verge of blacking out. The blood from Tyler’s lip dripped down his chin, his vision started swirling. Suddenly Salazar was standing before him again.

  “Where is my shipment? Where did you dump it?”

  Salazar put a finger on the letter opener, moving it up and down a little. Fresh pain shot through Tyler’s shoulder.

  “Where is it?” Salazar screamed.

  Tyler’s head flopped down, and as he lost consciousness, he heard Salazar give an order to one of the men behind him.

  “Bring his father up here.”

  71

  Are you hurt?” Ed asked Camilla.

  “No.”

  “What happened?”

  She told him about how Roberto told her to go to Deming. How Agent Lomas had said he was arresting her, but instead of driving to El Paso, he drove her here.

  “He did the same to us,” Ed said.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He could hear a soft cry escape on her breath. There was no hope he could lend to her. This was the end. He knew enough of the world to know that they would not be leaving this house.

  She spoke again, and the rhythm of her words was shaky, as if she was trying to portray confidence in the face of overwhelming terror.

  “I would have liked to have met under different circumstances,” she said.

  “Maybe after all this is over,” Ed said.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  72

  Adan’s car pulled up to the gates. The driver rolled down his tinted window, and from the back seat, Adan yelled to the guard to open up. The guard stood from his post, his hand resting on the top of his machine gun. He stuck his head in the window.

  “You back already, Adan?”

  “Just open the gate, pendejo.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Open the gate, or I’ll shoot you right here.”

  The guard cracked a smile, flipped a switch, and the gates started to open. The driver brought the vehicle into the compound and backed in against a manicured shrub that took more water than it was worth to keep alive.

  “Alright, we’re in,” Adan said.

  Roberto rubbed his hands on his pants. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t keep the sweat off them. He stared out into the compound. Salazar’s hacienda was up the steps to his right. To his left, he could see out over the plain below, across Nuevo Negaldo and on into the United States.

  “Any idea how many men he has in there?” Roberto asked.

  “No idea. I would assume a lot.”

  “And where did you see my mother?”

  “They had just brought her in through the door when we were leaving. I have no idea where they would have put her.”

  “So I just go through the front door and start searching.”

  Adan thought about it. His face showed the sign of a man wrestling against common sense. “You won’t make it through the front door,” Adan said, “and if you do, I doubt you’d make it to the second floor.”

  “I’m going anyway.”

  Roberto checked his weapon again for the hundredth time, his nerves getting the best of him. His adrenaline was pumping, the fight-or-flight portion of his brain stuck in neutral and overheating. Adan reached over and grabbed his arm.

  “Hold up. I got an idea,” Adan said. “Give me your gun.”

  “Why should I trust you?” Roberto asked.

  “If you don’t by now, then there is no hope for you. They’ll search you. Me they trust.”

  Roberto relented and handed over his weapon. Adan tucked it into his jacket.

  “Just keep your mouth shut. You got me?”

  Roberto nodded.

  Adan tapped the driver on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go, amigo.” They exited the car and Adan motioned for Roberto to follow. Walking up to the house in broad daylight seemed foolish, but he followed Adan’s commands.

  They walked up the stone steps to the mansion’s front door, and it opened as they approached. The guard on the inside spoke to Adan and nodded to the driver. He knew them. He did not know Roberto, and as anticipated, R
oberto was frisked before they were allowed to pass.

  Inside, it felt more like a hotel than a house, and there were several people milling about. Adan went toward a quiet spot and pulled Roberto in close. He gave Roberto his gun back and then held out his hand to the driver, who produced a suppressor from his pocket. Adan gave it to Roberto.

  “Find a spot in here to lay low. Give me an hour to be gone, you got me?”

  Roberto nodded.

  “I’m serious, bro. An hour. I have no doubt you’re not going to make it out, but good luck. If you do make it out . . . never mind, you won’t. This is it for us. Too much heat is going to come down. It ain’t going to come down on me, you hear?”

  Roberto nodded as Adan slapped him on the shoulder, looked into his eyes, and departed with the driver. Roberto followed a man in a pressed linen suit and then ducked into a side room that was empty. He turned and watched as Adan left through the front door and was gone.

  From the opposite end of the building, emerging from an archway that led to a lower level, two men appeared with a third in tow. The man between them was hooded and being practically dragged up to the second level of the hacienda.

  Roberto was in the belly of the beast. Somewhere in this maze of a house was his mother. She just had to hold tight until the shooting began.

  73

  They brought Edward up from the basement. As they did so, he tried to give a parting grunt to Camilla, who was equally blind to what was happening, and he heard her Spanish tongue reciting something at his departure. Her voice was angelic, a holy psalm as he was led through the valley of death. His captors forced him up the stairs, his feet tripping over themselves. From the back of a truck, to the desert walk, to being bound in Salazar’s mansion, his body was losing all muscle strength. Even if they cut him loose now, he was sure that he wouldn’t have the strength or stamina to run a hundred feet. His throat was dry, and all he could think about, apart from whether he would be dead soon, was how thirsty he was.

  The stairs were never-ending, and by the time they were halfway up, the men were carrying him, his feet dragging on the steps, up and up.

  Finally, the stairs stopped, and he sensed that he was brought into a room. Ed could smell cigar smoke, and the air, which was warmer and thicker than in the basement, wrapped around his body.

  Another chair. More duct tape. Once he was secured, the sack came off his head.

  Across from him, similarly tied down in a seat, was Tyler. His son. The catalyst for this grand adventure. Tyler looked as if he had been hit by a truck. His face was swelling up on the left side, he sat slumped down, his shoulder exposed and blood running down his chest. A slender piece of metal sticking out of the wound. He looked to be on his deathbed.

  “Tyler!” Ed screamed.

  One of the men who had brought Ed up cuffed him behind the ear.

  “No, no, no,” the man at the desk said. “Let him speak. Let him make his presence known.” The man stood, walked over to Ed, and sat down on a chair that one of the men had placed for him.

  “My name is Salazar. But I am going to assume you know that, just as I assume this here is your son.”

  Ed nodded.

  “Good, see? We have started out well. Now, your son took something from me. Something very important. Did he tell you about this?”

  Ed thought about how to respond, but slowly nodded again. It was pointless to plead ignorance.

  “Did he tell you what he did with it?”

  “No.”

  “Tell you where it is?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No. He just told me what he did, nothing more.”

  “So he told you he stole from me, stole a large shipment, millions of dollars, and yet you helped him leave Mexico? Why? Why would you do this if he didn’t tell you more?”

  Edward considered his words. He was about to voice into existence the thoughts that he had kept buried in his mind.

  “He is my son . . .”

  “Yes, you said that.”

  “That is why.”

  Salazar stood and walked over to Tyler. He bent over and whispered in his ear. “Your father is a good man, eh? You see him there. Come all this way for his son. And this is his reward? Look at him,” Salazar said. “Look at him!”

  Tyler raised his head, his right eye gazing at Edward.

  “Where is my shipment!”

  In Tyler’s face, beneath the bruises, Ed could see fear, regret, failure. He could see his son shifting through the emotions and not able to come up with an idea of what to do. Tyler closed his eye and shook his head.

  “Acido!” Salazar yelled at one of his men.

  The man walked over to Ed and pulled a small vial out of his inner coat pocket. It was a dropper. Ed watched as the man twisted the container open, lifted the tube up, and placed it over the back of Ed’s hand. Salazar gave a sign and the man squeezed the dropper. Liquid fell on Ed’s skin and started to burn down through the layers.

  74

  Roberto counted the minutes as he hid himself away in one of the side rooms off the inner courtyard. Salazar’s hacienda was massive, with staff wandering around every which way. Salazar had turned the Nuevo Negaldo plaza into his own little fiefdom. Many of the rising Cartel bosses became paranoid the higher they rose. Salazar was determined to be the exception to the rule, throwing lavish parties, flaunting his wealth and status. Even on the street, word was getting around that El Aguila was running out of patience with Salazar’s exuberance.

  That exuberance was going to be Salazar’s Achilles’ heel.

  He had become soft with power. It was the reason why lowlifes like Tyler and Ignacio could rob from him. Salazar’s reactions were always severe, but they were after the fact. He never saw the danger as it was standing right in front of him. Never saw how people would take advantage of his negligence and lack of foresight.

  And now, as evening descended, with bats flying overhead and lights illuminating the courtyard, Roberto was using all of Salazar’s faults to his advantage. He was in his mansion and he was ready to get his mother back.

  From his pocket he pulled out Felipe’s rosary and wrapped it around his wrist. The cross hung down and he clenched it in his fist. He looked at his other hand, the Lady of Guadalupe tattoo on his inner forearm, her hand lifted in blessing, her eyes looking down toward his own hand wielding the pistol.

  Roberto had never been in Salazar’s palace before, and he had no idea where to start looking. From his spot he cracked the door open and looked out. He saw two men walking on the upper walkway across the courtyard. They took an open stairway down to the first level, then through an archway and down below ground. Not knowing where to start, Roberto thought he might as well follow them. He stepped out, made his way to the landing, and then headed down the stairs. As they descended, the stairs circled to the left. He kept his shoulder to the wall, his weapon extended in his right hand as he ventured into the basement.

  The men walked down a long corridor toward a door at the end, and then knocked on it. A few words were spoken, the door opened, and they disappeared inside.

  Roberto stepped down the hall and put his ear to the door. Logic told him there were at least three inside, but he had no idea if there were any more. He listened, slowing his breath so as not to obscure his senses.

  Through the door he heard the voices, muffled by the wood. Then he heard a slap and the scream of a woman. He knocked on the door and stepped back.

  “Yes?”

  “Salazar told me to come down here,” Roberto said.

  The door opened, and before the man on the other side knew what happened, a bullet entered his forehead. He fell backward and Roberto followed him inside. One man was standing in front of a woman tied to a chair, the other was sitting along the far wall. The man standing reached for a gun, but Roberto fired two shots and dropped him. Turning, he fired at the man who was seated and put two shots in him as well. It was over in less than seven secon
ds.

  Roberto lowered his gun hand and clenched his left around the rosary.

  He went over to the woman in the chair and began to untie her. Her reflexes forced her back in her seat and she started hyperventilating. Roberto tried his best to calm her. He took the hood off her head, and to his surprise, he had found what he had come for.

  “Mama, it’s me.”

  “Roberto?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh Roberto,” Camilla sobbed. “Oh my boy, my son.”

  Roberto hushed her as he got the tape off her feet, and then her hands. “We have to get out of here. Quickly. Keep your eyes closed until we get to the hallway.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want you to see this.”

  She did as he told her and kept her eyes shut. Roberto guided her out of the room, down the hallway, and cautiously up the stairs. Once he knew it was clear, they went across the courtyard back to the empty room that he had hidden in previously. When they were inside and the door was closed, Camilla wrapped her arms around her boy and was on the verge of weeping.

  “What is happening?”

  “I’m sorry, Mama. I let this happen. This is my fault.”

  “They were asking about you. And about Tyler. His father was in the same room as me not more than a half hour ago.”

  “They’re here?”

  “Yes.”

  The man he saw being taken upstairs must have been Tyler’s dad. Roberto stepped away from his mother and, for the first time that day, wondered what he would do next.

  75

  Now in the relative safety of the room off the courtyard, Camilla let her emotions finally take hold of her. She grabbed Roberto and held him tight. Her tears came to the surface, and she cried out the fear that had held her in its grip since Lomas had taken her from the motel. She cried also in relief as she held her son in her arms, thankful that he was still alive.

  “Mama, it’s okay,” Roberto said.

  She squeezed him again and then stepped back, wiping her eyes and regaining her composure.

  “We’re getting out of here. It won’t be long until they find the bodies in the basement.”