Gone

CHAPTER 20

Vida Gomez kept the stolen Cadillac Escalade at a steady sixty as they rolled east on the San Bernardino Expressway in El Monte, east of downtown LA.

They were nearing their exit when a motorcycle gang roared past out of nowhere. Completely startled, she cursed violently as a dozen black-leather-clad motorcyclists on big Jap bikes screamed around both sides of her SUV like a fusillade of just-missing guided missiles.

Assholes, she thought, seething, as one of the devil-may-care speeding bikers popped a wheelie. She could have shot one of them. All of them, in fact. The thing she hated most on this earth was to be snuck up on.

Trying to roll the tension out of her neck, she glanced back at the six buzz-cut men seated behind her to see if any of them had witnessed her blow her cool. But they were calm, oblivious, half of them dozing as usual.

Though all of Perrine’s handpicked cartel soldiers had obeyed her so far, she never once forgot that they were killers of distinction from a place where killers were a dime a dozen. Any sign of weakness, even the slightest hint of fear, could be fatal in her line of work.

What was up with her today? she wondered. It definitely wasn’t like her to be so jumpy. This morning she’d woken up with a bad feeling. It was something in the air that wouldn’t quit, a brooding sensation that something unpleasant was about to occur.

Or was she just being paranoid? Having a bout of stage fright? She didn’t know. The only thing she knew was, this was definitely the part she hated the most, the space between the plan and the execution.

The latest task given to her elite squad was to deal with an Asian gang out of El Monte called the Triumph Dragons. The Vietnamese gang, though quite small, ran one of the busiest docks out at the Port of Los Angeles, down in Long Beach. Perrine had made a deal with them to let a large shipment through, but at the last second, the Dragons had reneged, causing the seizure by the US Coast Guard of an entire shipping container filled to the brim with premium Colombian heroin.

Manuel had not been pleased. Yesterday afternoon, the cartel boss had forwarded to Vida a very simple instruction by encrypted text message.

Slay the dragons, his text had said. Each and every one.

She weaved through the dense El Monte neighborhood until she found the location she was looking for, a deserted parking lot behind a shuttered supermarket on Cogswell Road.

The young man slouching in the passenger seat beside her loudly slurped at the last of his McDonald’s chocolate shake as they came to a stop.

“You’re going to do this now, right, Jorge? Not having any second thoughts on me, right?” she said in Spanish.

“Please,” Jorge said, looking at her, his brown eyes soft in his even softer face.

Youthful appearance aside, Jorge was an up-and-comer in the cartel’s newest ally, Mara Salvatrucha, the brutal Hispanic gang otherwise known as MS-13.

Jorge had dealt to the Dragons before, so his job had been to set up a dope deal. Five kilos of coke at the cut-rate price of $12K per. There weren’t any drugs, of course, and the only thing cut-rate was going to be the lives of the Vietnamese gangbangers, as soon as they showed up.

Vida looked out on the El Monte neighborhood as they waited. Low stucco houses, palm trees, chain-link fences. California shabby, minus the chic. Above it all, dark clouds rolled against the fast-fading gold of the sky.

More waiting, she thought, feeling like a bubble about to pop. It was driving her mad.

Vida sat bolt upright as Jorge’s phone finally rattled in the silence.

“Is it them?” she said hopefully.

“It’s them,” Jorge said with a nod. “They just got off the expressway.”