The Traffickers

THREE

Love Field, Dallas Wednesday, September 9, 7:34 P.M. Texas Standard Time

Juan Paulo Delgado had collected his large black duffle bag at baggage claim and was waiting impatiently on the curb for El Cheque to show up. The Southwest Airlines flight had landed ten minutes early, and Delgado had sent him a text message telling him to step on it. El Gato hated waiting for anything.

There were two cast bronze plaques mounted on the exterior of a nearby wall, each plaque illuminated by a pair of bright halogen floodlights.

Bored, Delgado stepped over to read them.

On the first was:

TEXAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY “The Lone Star State Presents…” LOVE FIELD This airport was named in honor of First Lieutenant Moss Lee Love (1879–1913), Eleventh Cavalry, by the United States Army on October 19, 1917.

Love was killed on September 4, 1913, when his Type C Wright pusher biplane crashed at North Island, San Diego, California.

He had been flying for his Military Aviator Test.

Born in Fairfax, Virginia, Love was appointed to the U.S. Army in 1910. In April 1913, he was ordered to Texas City, Texas, and there detailed for aviation duty with the Signal Corps and the 1st Aero Squadron. He was with the Signal Corps Aviation School at the time of his death.

Love Field opened for civilian use in 1927, and remained the major aviation hub for Dallas and its citizens until being joined by the Dallas-Fort Worth Regional (now International) Airport in 1974.

Delgado shook his head disgustedly.

Who gives a shit?

Just another dead gringo.

Damn land-grabbers.

Delgado looked at the other cast bronze plaque. It had a replica of a Texas lawman. He wore a big Stetson hat, a gun belt with a Colt revolver, a Western-style shirt bearing a badge that was a five-pointed star within a circle, Western-style pants, and pointed-toe boots.

The sign read:

TEXAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY “The Lone Star State Presents…” ONE RANGER, ONE RIOT While developing settlements in what then was the Mexican province of Tejas, Stephen F. Austin called for men to “range” the frontier to protect its people. These “Rangers” in 1835 officially became the legendary policing force known as the Texas Rangers.

In 1896, Texas Ranger Captain William McDonald was sent here to Dallas to shut down a planned illegal heavyweight prize fight.

Dallas Mayor F. P. Holland met Captain McDonald as he disembarked his train at Union Station downtown.

Mayor Holland looked at Captain McDonald and in great shock said, “Where are the other Rangers?”

“There’s only one fight,” McDonald said. “Hell, ain’t I enough?”

McDonald’s legendary reply became known as “One Ranger, One Riot.”

The phrase embodies the toughness and determination of all those who have sworn the oath to uphold the laws as a Texas Ranger.

One creed of the Texas Rangers is also from Captain McDonald: “No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that’s in the right and keeps on a-comin’.” (Sculpture created by Waldine Tauch, and gifted by Mr. and Mrs. Earle Wyatt on the occasion of the dedication of Love Field’s new terminal, 1961.) More gringo bullshit.

And this should still be the “Mexican province of Tejas.”

Delgado’s phone vibrated, announcing a received text message.

He pulled out the phone and read its screen:

214-555-7636 TURNING INTO AIRPORT NOW

About damn time.

He looked at the clock on the phone’s display. It showed seven forty-five. The cellular service in Dallas had automatically set back the time on the phone; Texas Standard Time was an hour behind Eastern Standard Time.

That makes it eight forty-five in Philly.

While he had the phone out, he typed and sent a text to Omar Quintanilla: JESUS OK? FIXED?

A moment later, his phone vibrated.

Quintanilla had replied: 609-555-1904 SI… BUENO… NOW SLEEPING

Delgado snorted. Poor little El Gigante.

Another text then came from Quintanilla: 609-555-1904 ANGEL TOOK THE 9S

Delgado nodded.

He had told Quintanilla to settle Jim?nez’s bill with two of the TEC-9 pistols that they had stolen from the Fort Worth gun store last month. The store was on the south side of town, and they had carefully cased it over time.

He grinned at the memory of that morning.

El Gato, El Cheque, and Paco Gomez had taken the Chevy Suburban to a salvage yard on the western edge of Dallas, where they’d swapped the plates with ones they’d taken off a just-totaled pickup. They’d also helped themselves to a twenty-foot length of rusty heavy-duty chain from one of the tow trucks there.

At two the next morning, El Gato, El Cheque, and Gomez had driven the SUV to the gun store in South Fort Worth.

The store was in a deteriorating shopping strip two blocks east of Interstate 35, and its storefront was covered with large signs advertising the guns and accessories inside. It had surveillance cameras, and wrought-iron bars bolted over the windows and the aluminum-framed glass door.

El Gato and Crew had a can of black spray paint, a length of chain, and a half-ton Suburban.

Delgado had let Gomez out at the corner. Gomez, who stood six-one, wore a black hoodie, its top up. He carried the can of spray paint along the side of his leg, attached to the end of a four-foot-long extension arm they’d bought at Home Depot for ten bucks. He trotted down the sidewalk of the strip center, keeping his face concealed from the cameras. When he got to the gun store, he simply extended the aerosol can to the camera lenses and squeezed the extension arm’s grip. The lenses were quickly covered in a coating of black paint.

Moments later, El Gato was backing up the Suburban to the front door. Then El Cheque, the chain coiled over his shoulder, jumped out the right rear passenger door.

He dropped the chain at the foot of the gun store’s front door, grabbed one end with his leather-gloved hands, and began threading it through the wrought-iron bars. Then he wrapped the chain around the heavy metal support bar bolted across the center.

Gomez, also wearing leather gloves, took the chain’s other end and doubled it around the trailer ball of the receiver hitch that was affixed to the Suburban’s rear frame. Then, with an open palm, he pounded twice on the big SUV’s rear window… and ran.

El Cheque got out of the way just as the accelerating truck took up all the slack in the chain-and popped the bars and the door off the face of the storefront. It made an enormous noise. There was mangled metal and broken glass everywhere and, inside, an alarm blared angrily.

El Cheque ran inside the store and spray-painted the cameras there, while Gomez went to the Suburban, unwrapped the chain from the hitch, and pulled the door frame and twisted wrought iron to the side. El Gato then backed up the Suburban to the doorway, and Gomez threw open the SUV’s rear hatch, removed a pair of bolt cutters, and went into the store to cut the steel cable the store owner had strung through the trigger guards of all the shotguns and rifles on the racks. El Cheque was already coming out with an armful of the TEC-9s.

They’d had the back of the Suburban, its rear seats all folded flat, covered with guns and ammo in five minutes.

And two minutes after that, they were on the interstate and getting far away from the scene and its blaring alarm.

Juan Paulo Delgado was not surprised that Angel Hernandez had agreed to the barter. The TEC-9, a more or less cheap knockoff of a fine Swiss submachine pistol, was a coveted weapon. Early semiautomatic TEC-9s had an open bolt design and could be converted to fully automatic. They even had a fifty-round box magazine, which made for one lethal weapon.

The newer models that El Gato and Crew had stolen were of a slightly different design and could not be converted, and their mags held only twenty bullets. But they still resembled the older fully auto TEC-9s that Hollywood had glorified by having all the badass movie drug-runners shooting them. And that was enough to give the gun “street cred”-credibility in the ghetto. So much so that homeys even shot one another just to get their hands on any variant of the TEC-9. They even mimicked that moronic pose they saw in the shoot-’em-up flicks: holding the guns sideways while they fired.

There was also a strong irony about bartering the guns for stitching up Jes?s Jim?nez, and it was not lost on Juan Paulo Delgado.

Not only was Angel Hernandez going to flip the pistols for a helluva lot more money than if he’d just been paid in cash for his services-but he was also likely going to get more business from whomever those TEC-9s shot up.

A horn honked.

Delgado looked up from the phone and saw Jorge Ernesto Aguilar at the wheel of Aguilar’s ten-year-old dark brown Ford Expedition.

He could not help but notice that the SUV had brand-new twenty-two-inch chrome wheels and low-profile high-performance tires.

Delgado shook his head as he slipped the phone into his pocket.

They must’ve cost more than the damn truck is worth.

What a waste of money.

But… he’s not the only homeboy with them.

The Expedition pulled to a stop at his feet. Delgado opened the back passenger door and threw his duffle on the bench seat. Then he went to the front passenger door and got in.

“Hola,” El Cheque said.

“What took so long?”

El Cheque made a face, which caused his cheek scar, the check that gave him his name, to distort. Then he looked out the driver’s-door window, scanning his mirror for a gap in the traffic. He saw one and accelerated the Expedition into the flow.

Delgado knew that it bothered the twenty-five-year-old Aguilar that his boss-Delgado-was only twenty-one. That Delgado was also physically much bigger did not help with Aguilar’s inferiority complex. Nor did it help when Delgado went out of his way to remind Aguilar exactly who was his El Jefe, in subtle and, occasionally, not-so-subtle ways.

Delgado said, “And what’s with those new wheels on here? It’s not good to draw attention.”

El Cheque remained silent. Delgado could see that Aguilar’s eyes were moving quickly, as if he were considering saying what was on the tip of his tongue. Then El Cheque just shrugged.

They drove in silence as Aguilar steered the Expedition off the airport property and made a right turn onto Mockingbird Lane.

Two blocks later, at Maple Avenue, he hit his left-turn signal.

“Where’re we going?” Delgado challenged.

“Umberto’s. He’s got the Suburban. When I went to get it out of the garage, it would not start. So he put a temporary battery in it, then brought it here to put a good one in it for the trip.”

“I thought that I told you-”

“S?!” El Cheque interrupted, his temper about to flare. He then spoke carefully: “And I did do as you said. That is why we are here. Now it is ready for the trip.”

Delgado looked out the window and grinned to himself in the dark.

“What’re we going south for?” El Cheque said.

“The usual. And we need a new girl or two.”

El Cheque nodded.

“Any news on the kid?” Delgado said.

El Cheque shook his head. “Gomez is in College Station trying to follow his trail. What if it is Los Zetas?”

The mention of the Zetas caused Delgado to think of them with guns.

And that made him remember that he was unarmed.

Delgado glanced quickly around the dark SUV and said, “We got guns in here?”

El Cheque opened the top of the console that was between their bucket seats. He punched the overhead map light. Delgado looked inside. There were three handguns, butts up, one a TEC-9.

El Cheque said, “And there’s a twelve-gauge pump in the back.”

Delgado saw that one of the other pistols was a black Beretta Model 92, the same model Jes?s Jim?nez used to shoot Skipper Olde.

He pulled the semiautomatic nine-millimeter out and closed the top of the console. In the beam of the map light, he removed the magazine, then worked the slide. No round in the chamber. He pushed on the top round in the magazine. No movement downward, which meant the magazine was full. Good. He reinserted the magazine in the pistol’s grip, racked the slide, decocked the hammer, then slipped the pistol into his waistband beneath the tail of his T-shirt.

As Aguilar drove down Maple Avenue, Delgado took in the sights of the familiar neighborhood. Most of the signage and billboards were in Spanish, and it reminded him of that plaque at the airport.

“Mexican province of Tejas.”

With places like Little Mexico here, it may as well still be.

Or will be again…

They passed Maria Luna Park and approached Arroyo Avenue.

Up ahead on the southeast corner of Arroyo was a brightly lit convenience store. Taped to the inside of the plate-glass window beside the door was a handwritten sign reading:

NO BAO/NO TOILET! DON’T EVEN THINK OF ASKING!

At the covered island of fuel pumps was a somewhat battered white Dodge van. The chipped and faded black lettering on its side read FIRST UNITED CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER, BURKBURNETT, TEXAS. It was a Ram 3500 with seating for fifteen, and each row had a window, all painted over in white except for those on the doors of the driver and front passenger. The driver’s door was open.

A short, very grimy-looking Latino was walking away from the van. He’d left the pump handle in the van’s gas tank.

“Turn around,” Delgado said forcefully, looking over his shoulder as the man walked to the side of the convenience store. “Now!”

“What?” Aguilar said. But he was already spinning the steering wheel so fast that the tires screeched.

He made the U-turn on Maple and accelerated.

“Pull in to that store,” Delgado said, pointing. “To that side. Not in front.”

Aguilar looked where he pointed, hit his left signal, then found a gap in the line of headlights. He turned into the convenience store parking lot.

When the Expedition slowly rolled past the fuel pump island, Delgado surprised Aguilar by opening the passenger door and leaping out.

Aguilar, pulling to a stop, followed Delgado in his mirror.

El Gato moved with speed and grace. He went quickly to the fuel pump island, then to the open driver’s door of the white church van there. He stepped up on the running board and put his head inside the van, looking toward the rear of the vehicle.

Then he hopped down from the running board, shut the van door, and damn near flew to the side of the convenience store where the grimy Latino had gone.

El Cheque lost sight of El Gato just as he was going behind some shrubbery-and just as he was pulling the Beretta from his waistband.