In this week's Tuesday Tease we feature an exert from Lance Charnes' thriller novel 'South', you can also find out about the author and the purchase links after the excerpt. Enjoy!
1
SATURDAY, 25 MAY
Luis Ojeda scanned his binoculars
along the rusty sixteen-foot fence to the dirt road’s visible ends. Nothing. A
dead floodlight at the curve over the arroyo left a patch of twilight in the
line of artificial day. The lights on either side leached all color from the
night.
The patrol was late. He’d been out
here face-down in the dirt for over an hour, waiting for the right time. These
desert mountains turned cold after sunset, even this late in a nasty-hot May.
He was prepared for it. Army field jackets and winter-weight ACU trousers like
he wore now got him through January in the ‘Stan all those years ago. He could
wait all night. Usually, the travelers couldn’t.
He glanced downslope over his
shoulder. Five brown faces stared back at him, their eyes glowing orange in the
floodlights’ glare. This run’s travelers. Each wore a backpack holding
everything they could bring with them from their old life to their new one.
The young mother lay at the group’s
left edge. Her dark anime eyes stared at him from under a road-weary hoodie.
Her little girl—four, maybe five tops—pressed her face into her mom’s shoulder,
the woman’s hand wound through her tangled black hair. Luis usually tried not
to bring kids this young, but they had nobody else anymore, and when Luis
looked into the girl’s eyes he saw his daughter at that age, scared, sad and
trusting. So here they were.
Back to the binoculars. Dust
shimmered in the floods to the west, then a whip antenna, then a tan cinder
block on wheels crawled up the rise. The BRV-O’s six-cylinder diesel clattered
off the rocks around them. It swung around the dogleg over the arroyo, chunked
along at around fifteen, then trundled east.
It stopped.
Two men heaved out. Tan utilities,
helmets with no covers, desert boots: contractors. Mierda. They strolled back the way
they’d come, M4s slung across their chests, hands resting on the grips. One lit
a cigarette. They stopped at the edge of the pool of dark to look up the pole.
The one not smoking leaned into the
radio handset on his shoulder. Then he turned to look straight at Luis.
Luis became a rock. The guard was
probably half-blind from the light; Luis doubted the guy could see him in the
semi-dark, even if he knew someone was out here. Chances were the gringo was going to take a leak.
Then the guard’s hand went for the tactical goggles hanging around his neck.
¡Chingado!
As the guard seated the goggles
over his face, Luis went flat. As long as he didn’t move, his
infrared-suppressing long johns and balaclava would defeat the goggles’ thermal
vision and make him fade into the petrified sand dune under him.
The travelers didn’t have that
gear. Luis peered back into the dark. All five travelers should be shielded by
the ridge, but “should” didn’t mean shit if the guard caught the bright-green
return of a warm human body on his scope. If he did, they’d all find out at
2900 feet per second.
The area around them hushed,
letting the little sounds fade forward. The breeze rattled the creosote and
pushed pebbles around. Luis could hear the contractors’ voices—an off note in
the wind—the shush of rubber boot soles on gravel, his heart going crazy, his
sweat plopping on the sand.
Fucking contractors. Border Patrol
agents had a code, they were civilized, they had to be nice and usually were.
These contractor assholes shot people for fun, the way he had in the ‘Stan
before Bel reformed his sorry, angry ass. A month ago, these idiotas were probably losing hearts
and minds in the Sudan with every full magazine. Now they were doing the same
thing here.
A whimper. Luis cranked his head
back to check the kid. She squirmed, a little dark bundle rocking against a
dark background. The mom forced her daughter’s face tighter against her
shoulder. Her big, terrified eyes found Luis.
Chill, he told himself. Be the rock. The travelers could
smell fear. If he was calm, they’d be calm; if he stressed, they’d scatter like
sheep. He tried to smile back at the mom, hard as it was to do with crosshairs
on them all.
Boots scuffed gravel at his ten
o’clock, then at nine. Voices mumbled a few yards off. Somewhere out there, the
sound of a huge mosquito buzzed the border. Had they called in a drone? If they
had, game over. Dirt lodged in Luis’ nose and mouth, ants crawled on his right
hand, something sharp dug into his hip. Twenty-plus years after Afghanistan and
here he was in the same shit, just with different players. Be the rock.
A laugh. Then the night exploded.
The first bursts were
recon-by-fire, looking for what came bouncing out of the dark. Disciplined
soldiers know to hunker down and wait it out, but the travelers weren’t
soldiers, and they weren’t disciplined. Two of the men broke and ran the
instant bullets sprayed off the ridge top. Luis yelled “Get down!” but it was
too late. He jerked his face back into the sand at the next burst, but not
before he saw a runner throw up his hands and fall face-first.
The little girl started screaming.
Her mother’s eyes went all white and she tried to stuff her sleeve into the
kid’s mouth, but the girl wouldn’t stop shrieking. Bullets churned the dirt in
front of them.
¡Mierda! ¡Chingado! “Don’t do it!”
Luis hissed to her. “Stay there!” His voice sounded like he’d huffed helium. He
didn’t care if he drew fire as long as that pretty young mom with that sweet
little girl kept her head down—
The woman bolted.
He screamed “No!” and before he
could think, he was charging toward her. More shots. Dirt kicked up around his
feet. A line of bullets tore across the woman’s back, each one marked by a
splat of blood. She let out a little “Ah!” and went down hard.
A burning-hot something slammed
into his back, knocked him ass-over-heels down the slope and hijo de perra, it hurt. He spit out
the sand he’d eaten and rolled onto his back. A bloody hole in his chest on his
right side, a weird noise when he breathed, pain when he did anything.
Luis tried to catch the breath
running away from him, but it was hard and it hurt and he wanted to just lie
there. Little sharp spikes of fear stabbed at him. The gunshot echoes faded
away into the breeze. Those animals up there would come out to see what they’d
shot. If they found him they’d arrest him, or maybe just shoot him again. Or
they’d call in a gunship drone and kill anything bright green. Any way this
went down, he’d never see his wife or son or home again. That thought hurt
worse than being shot.
He wrenched his head to his right.
The mother and her child lay roughly twenty feet away, two dark, still shapes
against the sand. You cabrones,
he fumed. You killed a baby.
Or had he killed her by bringing
her here? Get away. Think later.
The oldest traveler—slight, late
fifties, his hair mostly gone to silver—took Luis’ hand in both of his. He had
dark smears on his face and upper arm. “Mister? We go.”
Go? Luis could hardly breathe. He
waved toward the lights and fence. “You go. Keep heading south. Mexico’s that
way, you can still make it. Go down the arroyo, through the culvert.
Understand?”
The old man nodded. The floodlights
glimmered in his eyes as he looked toward the two dark shapes just upslope.
He’d protected and comforted them even though they weren’t blood.
“I’m sorry,” Luis said.
The old man nodded again and shook
Luis’ hand hard. “As-salaam alaykum.”
“Alaykumu as-salaam.”
Then he was gone.
Luis managed to get two magnesium
flares out of his pack. They might blind the guards long enough for him to get
over the next rise and for the old Arab to make it down the arroyo to safety.
Just before he popped the first flare, his eyes snagged on the mom and her
daughter. So small, so dark, so still. Another bad picture to add to his
collection.
This used to make sense. This used
to feel worthwhile. He used to be able to tell himself it was worth the risk to
stand up to the locos who’d
wrecked his country and caused all this—risk to himself, to his family, to the
travelers. But the camps filled and spread. It was all so futile, not worth
that little girl’s death, or his own.
If you let me live, he told the sky, I’ll stop. I’m done.
2
The U.S. ranks 103rd in the
2032 Corruption Perception Index, one below Madagascar and far below all its
OECD peers. Gross underfunding of government at all levels, elimination of
public-sector pensions, and widespread contracting of public services to
unscrupulous private firms, has led to an epidemic of corruption reminiscent of
Russia under the late Vladimir Putin.
-- “Release of the 2032 CPI,”
Transparency International
FRIDAY, 30 APRIL
TWO YEARS LATER
Luis opened Coast Conversions’
front office at six-thirty to give the techs time to set up for the day’s work.
One of them—Tyler— already waited outside, as usual. He was one of two who
lived in a former self-storage place three blocks away. “Where’s Earnes?” Luis
asked.
“Angels Stadium. The free clinic.”
Tyler limped through the door, stowed his pistol behind the counter, then
passed into the shop and started turning on lights and compressors.
Fluorescents glinted off shiny SUVs and luxury sedans at each station, waiting
for their armor and ballistic glass.
Luis began to ready the front
office for what he hoped would be the morning rush. A full shop and one man
down. Great. Earnes could be
waiting in line all day to get into that Doctors Without Borders clinic. Luis
would have to ding him a day’s pay, too, something he hated to do.
That was the downside of managing
this place: having to knock heads without being able to hand out rewards. The
upside? Routine. Safety. Some thought “same shit, different day” was a curse.
For Luis, it meant not having to cross deserts or climb mountains. Not being
chased or shot at. Not having people’s lives in his hands—and fumbling them.
He leaned against the doorway,
watched Tyler make his rounds through the work stations. “How’re you doing? Leg
okay?”
“Okay, sir.”
Tyler left half a leg in Yemen. All
five of Luis’ techs were vets; they had good work habits, and it was the only
way to get guys with mechanical and metalworking skills now that most community
colleges were closed and the unions were long gone. Luis made it a point to
hire guys out of flops or Ryantowns. A down payment on karma? He hoped he’d
never find out.
The strip lights cast shadows on
Tyler’s hollow eyes and cheeks. He worked full-time and still didn’t eat
enough. Like everywhere else, the pay here was shit even for Luis, and he was
the manager, but Xiao, the owner, wouldn’t cough up a cent more.
The door chime’s synthetic bing-bong broke Luis out of his
thoughts. He called out “Not open yet” before he looked back over his shoulder.
A cop swaggered to the counter. Mierda.
The cop—Schertzer, unfortunately a
monthly regular—leaned an elbow on the blue laminate countertop, chewed on his
gum. “How’s it hanging, Ojeda?”
“You’re two days early,” Luis
growled as he stalked to the counter.
Schertzer shrugged. “So call a
fucking cop. You got it?”
It wasn’t like this steroid-square cucaracha was a real policeman,
just one of the contractors the city pretended was a police force. Dark-blue utilities,
black tac vest, jump boots: all Luis saw was a school-crossing guard with a
gun.
“Yeah.” Luis opened the lockbox with his key,
pulled out a white envelope, and slapped it into Schertzer’s outstretched hand.
La mordida, El Norte style. “Now get out.”
The cop waggled the envelope to get
the feel of it. Apparently satisfied, he shoved it into the patch pocket on his
right thigh. “The widows and orphans appreciate your money, Ojeda.” He smirked,
then turned toward the doors and waved over his shoulder. “A-dios.” He stopped with his hand
on the push bar, looked back. “By the way, a road crew’s coming through in a
couple days. They’ll want their cut, too.”
“They’re finally going to pave the
street?”
The cop shook his head, bottling up
a laugh. “Shit, no. They’ll get their taste, you know how it goes. That’s why
I’m early, make sure we get what’s coming to us. See you soon.”
Luis watched Schertzer ooze off to
the right, no doubt to collect his bite from the other garages and workshops
along this light-industrial strip off Newport Boulevard. He’d bled money into
these pendejos for years.
He’d run across people like Schertzer in Mexico and the ‘Stan, but it burned
his gut to see them in this county. It was easier for the kids; they weren’t
old enough to remember when cops and fire marshals and road crews weren’t all
on the take.
He sighed. That was old-timer talk.
“There goes the lowest bidder,” he said to himself.
#
Luis glanced up from taking a
customer’s payment to catch Ray’s face outside the window. Ray raised his hand;
Luis nodded to him.
The customer—a big-busted Newport
Beach trophy blonde in tiny clothes—paid up and wiggled off with her bodyguard
to claim her husband’s newly up-armored Range Rover. Ray turned to watch her
go, then let out a long breath through pursed lips as he ambled through the
front doors. He was a big, square outline against the morning sun. His thumbs
hooked in the pockets of fashionably tight, white churidar slacks, their calves
stacked just so over expensive new designer boots. Just like he’d stepped out
of a vidboard ad, if those models had faces that looked more Aztec than
conquistador. A long way from his old caballero style.
Ray gave Luis his crooked smile.
“Hey, hermano. All your
customers look like that?”
“Enough do.” He shook Ray’s hand,
which felt like a brake drum. “Oye,
compa. Long time. How’s it going?”
Ray rocked his hand side-to-side.
“About normal. How’s Bel?”
Luis shrugged. “Fine. The usual.”
“Nacho hanging in?”
Nacho—Luis’ son Ignacio—was a
Marine on his first deployment to Sudan. “Yeah, he’s okay. The stories he tells
me, it’s like what we did in the ‘Stan.”
“Never ends, does it?” Ray’s dark
dataspecs scanned the office’s lights and corners. The gray that used to be in
his hair was gone now. “Have any bug problems in here lately?”
“Stopped getting it swept two years
ago.” They weren’t talking about the six- or eight-legged kind. Luis used to
have to worry about those things; no more, thank God. He peered closer at the
corners of Ray’s nose and mouth. “Are you taking tighteners?”
“A couple months now, yeah. Like
it?” Ray turned his face to let the strip lights flash off his shiny, smoother
skin. “You could do with some too, hermano.”
First he’d lost his tattoos, now
this. “Can’t afford them. Besides, I like looking like a grownup.”
Ray shrugged. “Look, the boss
wanted me to talk to you. He’s got a job for you.”
Luis put up his hands. “Save it.
I’m out, remember?”
“I know, I know. He told me to ask,
so I’m asking.” Ray leaned in, laid a hand on Luis’ shoulder. “This job, it’s a
special one, you know? Some good coin. Check it out.” He tapped the phone pod
on his left ear.
A few moments later, the store
slate peeped. Luis brought up the email, then the attached picture. A studio
portrait: a dark-haired man and woman, two cute kids, nice clothes,
healthy-looking. The guy could almost pass for Latino, but the woman had the
sharp features of a high-caste Arab. After fifteen seconds, the picture
dissolved into empty black, literally blown to bits.
“Which one?” Luis asked. “The guy
or gal?”
“All four. Told you it was
special.”
That was strange. Back when he was
in that business, Luis moved a lot of older people and young women, since the
young men were usually dead or in a camp. Still, not even the money got his
interest. “No way. Besides, I thought you guys had some new kid doing that.”
“Federico? Yeah.” Ray planted his
hands on the counter. “We did until he got dead a couple nights ago.” He leaned
forward and dropped his volume. “The boss is pretty hot to move these people.
He’ll make it worth your—”
“I said no.” Luis heard the heat in
his own voice, backed off. “Even if I survive it, Bel will kill me.”
Ray smiled and straightened up.
“Yeah, and probably me too right after.” He scratched the back of his neck.
“Look, this puts me in a bind, you know? He asked for you specifically. Tavo
trusts you. You maybe have some bargaining room here. At least say you’ll think
about it.”
“Bargain? With a cartel sub-boss?
Are you crazy?”
Luis noticed a gray Ford Santana
parked across the street, screaming “surveillance.” Cops following Ray? Or were
they after Luis because of Ray? Either way, he wasn’t going through all that
again. He needed to care for his parents, help provide for his family. He’d
already sacrificed enough for a lost cause.
“I’m not thinking about this. No.
Do I need to spell that?”
Ray sighed, shook his head. “Tavo’s
gonna be pissed.” He stuck out his hand. “Come down to the bar sometime. I
never see you anymore. Salma misses you, too.”
And Luis missed them. But every
time he went to visit Ray and his long-time girlfriend, Bel’s temperature
dropped thirty degrees and Luis got frostbite. “Sure, compa,” he said as he shook Ray’s
hand. “Soon.”
About the Author:
Lance Charnes has been an Air Force intelligence officer, information technology manager, computer-game artist, set designer, Jeopardy! contestant, and now an emergency management specialist. He’s had training in architectural rendering, terrorist incident response and maritime archaeology, but not all at the same time. Lance tweets (
@lcharnes) on shipwrecks, scuba diving, archaeology and art crime.
Me links:
· Official Website:
http://www.wombatgroup.com
· Facebook Author Page:
https://www.facebook.com/Lance.Charnes.Author
· Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/lcharnes
· Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/lcharnes
Book links:
· Kindle:
http://smarturl.it/south-kindle
· Amazon TPBK:
http://smarturl.it/south-tpbk
· B&N:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/south-lance-charnes/1117249949
· Kobo:
http://store.kobobooks.com/Search?Query=9780988690356
· iTunes:
http://smarturl.it/south-itunes
Books by Lance Charnes on Amazon:
