Revenge of The Dog Team. William W. Johnstone

      

REVENGE OF THE DOG TEAM

      REVENGE OF THE DOG TEAM

      WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

       WITH J. A. JOHNSTONE

      

PINNACLE BOOKS

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

       www.kensingtonbooks.com

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      ONE

      Night and the desert.

      Nevada is mostly badlands, arid, sunbaked flats ribbed by jagged mountain ranges. Located in the central part of the state, the Black Sand Desert is one of the baddest of the bad. By day a bleak inferno, by night it’s even more dangerous, a place shunned by honest citizens. Avoided by law enforcement except when absolutely necessary, and then the authorities come well armed.

      A good place to do dirty business: gunrunning, dope and people smuggling. On this night in June, a deal was going down, the kind that’s best done in the hours of darkness, far from the haunts of men.

      Choey Maldonado was taking delivery of a quartet of female sex slaves.

      They couldn’t even be called whores, because that term implies a certain amount of remuneration, no matter how minimal, and sometimes even a degree of choice. Aspects that were absent in the case of this unhappy foursome.

      The meeting place was a flat west of the Tres Hermanos, the Three Brothers mountain range. So named because the triple peaks, standing in single file running north-south, resembled with their rounded tops and hunched shoulders a trio of cowled monks, monastery brothers—or so they had seemed to the conquistadors who first penetrated these lands five hundred years earlier, in search of fabled cities of gold.

      They found no cities, no gold. A number of silver veins and lodes were scattered among the hills, but they eluded the invaders. The indigenous native tribes had had their own name for the triple-peaked landmark, but what it was is unknown, since nobody had bothered to record it before the locals were exterminated by the conquerors.

      A canyon mouth opened in the western slope between the middle peak and the southernmost; through many a twisty turn, the passage wound its way through the rocky mass clear to the other, eastern side. On the west, opposite the pass, the flat was studded with boulders, some house-sized, others the size of cars. Cactus clumps filled in some of the empty spaces. An old dirt trail snaked through the rocks, running roughly parallel to the hills. To the south, it stretched all the way across the border, deep into Mexico.

      In the lee of a rocky knob as big as a church, a campfire was burning. Nearby stood an old beat-up pickup truck and a mammoth, late-model SUV. The pickup was the delivery vehicle. The SUV was receiving the consignment.

      Two men, Esteban and Bronco, belonged to the truck. The SUV yielded three men: Choey Maldonado, Fierro, and Gomez. The women were named Lina, Amparo, Carmen, and Marisol. Carmen, the oldest, was twenty; the youngest, Amparo, was fifteen.

      The men were all armed with handguns. That was a matter of course. They would no more have gone about unarmed in this wasteland by day or night than they would have gone about without wearing a pair of pants.

      There was a sawed-off shotgun in the cab of the pickup truck and an assault rifle in the SUV, but those were reserved for any unanticipated problems on the road, not for the meeting at hand. Heavy firepower was not required for tonight’s venture. This was a friendly meeting, a routine business deal. This land belonged to Clan Maldonado, affirmed not by title or certificate but by force of arms.

      Esteban and Bronco were coyotes, people smugglers. Esteban had a pompadour hairstyle and a pointy goatee; Bronco was flat-faced, thick-featured, squat-bodied. Their boss was a longtime Maldonado family associate. This was merely the latest of a series of exchanges that had gone down dozens of times without a hitch.

      So simple was it that clan chieftain Rio Maldonado had sent younger brother Choey to handle it, figuring that not even “the kid” could screw it up. Still, as insurance, he’d sent along Fierro, a trusted lieutenant and a professional gun. Gomez was the driver. Between the two of them, they could probably keep Choey from doing anything stupid.

      Choey, twenty-one, had a slender frame, but too much booze and soft living had already left its mark with a puffy face, soft belly, and flabby limbs. A shiny, chrome-plated semiautomatic pistol was wedged into the top of a pair of too-tight jeans. His untucked shirt was worn bunched up at one hip, the better to show off his fancy gun.

      Fierro was middle-aged, lean, his face as gaunt and hollow-cheeked as the hand-carved wooden image of some martyred patron saint of a pueblo church. Gomez was fleshy, moon-faced, and pear-shaped. Fierro handled the money; Choey couldn’t be relied on not to try to divert a few bills into his pocket. Fierro handed the bill roll to Esteban.

      Esteban went over by the fire and started counting the cash, several hundred dollars in well-used twenties. Not a lot of money for four young women, an outsider might think, but in these parts, fresh flesh was cheap. The supply of girls looking to cross north over the border was inexhaustible, and for the fresh, good-looking ones who fell into the grip of the coyotes, it was a buyer’s market.

      Choey bridled, said, “What’s the matter, don’t you trust us? The Maldonado never shorted anybody.” His tone was offensive.

      Esteban ignored it. He knew Choey. He said, “Sure, I trust you. It’s just that Max, he don’t trust me.” Max Alacran was his boss. Esteban spoke without losing track of the count.

      Fierro sidled up alongside Choey, ready to intervene in case he did something stupid. “It’s business, Choey.” He tried to keep his voice flat, level, but into it crept a hint of a sigh. Playing nursemaid to an overgrown juvenile was part of the job, but it was wearying.

      Gomez knew better how to defuse the situation. Waddling into the firelight with a bottle of tequila they’d been passing around, he raised it to his lips and took a swig from it.

      That caught Choey’s attention. “Hey,” he said, “save some of that for me, you pig.” He grabbed the bottle, fastened it to his mouth, and up-ended it.

      Esteban finished counting and caught Fierro’s eye. Fierro replied with the slightest of nods. Esteban pocketed the cash. The deal was done.

      When Choey took hold of the bottle, it was more than half full. When he unfastened his mouth from it, little more than a swallow or two remained. It was not the first bottle he’d taken the lion’s share from on tonight’s venture. His face was flushed, his eyes glittered. His wet-lipped mouth gaped slackly open.

      Esteban and Bronco were already crossing to the truck. “All right, you’re done here,” Choey called after them. “You can go.”

      The coyotes knew how to deal with Choey, not even bothering to ignore him. Bronco got behind the wheel of the pickup and started it up. Esteban stood at the passenger side, hand on the opened door. Nodding to Fierro, he gave him a quick two-finger salute before climbing into the cab.

      The truck made a K-turn,