Ty swam out of the best night's sleep he had enjoyed in two weeks. As the early morning fog lifted from his brain, he snapped to awareness of where he was and who was with him. The who was with him part was easy, because she was lying on his left arm and he was behind her, his nose buried in her strawberry-scented hair, his right arm flung over her. Ty smiled when he realized Stella was back in her chemise, even after their magical night. Stella's modesty gave him something else to tease her about. Ty tried to slip out of bed, but as soon as he moved, she grabbed his arm tightly.
"Not yet Baby," she said sleepily, "hold me for a few minutes while I wake up."
Ty couldn't think of anything he wanted to do more. Yes, after last night they needed to talk, but that could all wait while he had her wrapped in his arms. She was a big delightful handful and despite her shyness, was a vocal and passionate lover. She wasn't skilled, but she was adventurous, athletic and enthusiastic; they were a perfect match. He also appreciated that she was a very complex woman and loved the seemingly opposite facets of her personality. She was smart and competent, yet shy and modest, strong and athletic, yet sweet and demure; the woman had it all.
He had feelings for her, feelings that grew stronger every day, and he was sure she felt the same about him. Romance wasn't a complication he envisioned when he set out to avenge his grandmother. When he first made the decision to seek retribution, he had nothing to lose. Now he did and that worried him. He worried not for himself, but for her. It would be an awful thing if she fell in love and something happened to him. As he held her, he tried to tell her that, but he was Ty that morning instead of Richie, and the words didn't come easy.
Stella listened quietly until he haltingly finished saying his piece, then she rolled over on top of him and sat up, straddling his waist. She was as quick as a big jungle cat and had him pinned to the bed before he could blink. Ty's eyes were big with surprise when she started poking him in the chest with her finger.
"I understand what you are saying, Baby, but it's too late to warn me about falling in love with you; that train left the station a while ago. When I'm with you, I'll have your back, but you are going to have to take care of yourself for me when I'm not around ... got it?"
Ty smiled and kissed the long slender finger she'd been poking him with.
"Yeah, I get it," he replied.
Richie drove back to the barrio at seven-thirty. He had a couple of small jobs that Saturday morning, but so far, nothing scheduled for the afternoon. That changed about ten-thirty, when of all people, José Figueroa, Ronnie's former boyfriend, called him. Richie was on his toes, thinking José was calling about Ronnie, but it turned out to be some unpleasant work.
"Yo, Richie Reliable, I gotta emergency job for you," José said.
Richie had just installed a dishwasher for a family over on Utah Avenue and was hooking up the drain line. He took a quick look at his watch.
"I have about half an hour left on this job, so I can be there elevenish. What's the problem?"
"Man, there are a million big fucking bees or wasps flying around my front door. They are coming out of a hole in the porch ceiling, and I have company that's allergic."
Richie chuckled, sometimes it was better to be lucky than good. Instead of having to sneak around to get into José's place, he had just received an engraved invitation.
"I'll have to stop by the hardware store first, but I'll be right there," he said.
Richie finished up the dishwasher job then hustled over to Ace Hardware. He bought a couple of cans of wasp and hornet spray and dug his coveralls out of his truck. He slipped on the coveralls over his clothes, and after making sure he was unnoticed, he pulled the silenced Beretta out of its hiding place and put it in his tool bag. José's request sounded genuine, but he was not going to the lion's den unprepared.
Richie was still thirty feet from José's door when he saw the angrily buzzing swarm of black and yellow insects around the entryway. He stopped in his tracks and called José. When the man answered, Richie informed him that he was out front and warned him to stay in the house. Richie was leery of dealing with the insects, because while he suspected they were yellow jacket wasps, they might be Mexican killer bees. He sighed resignedly and walked back to his truck for a hat, gloves and a bandana to cover his face.
Armed with the potent wasp spray that killed the insects on contact, Richie went back to the entryway. He moved close enough to the door to see the small hole in the ceiling the bugs were swarming out of, and sprayed a steady stream in its direction. To his relief, they were yellow jackets, but even so, he had to retreat twice before he could get close enough to direct the stream into the hole. When the seemingly unending stream of wasps stopped coming out of the hole, Richie quickly sealed it shut with a few squirts of expanding foam. He was stung twice for his efforts, once on the wrist when his sleeve rode up, and once in the back, right through his coveralls. He zapped a few stragglers not trapped in the ceiling, then rang the door bell to give José the all clear.
José opened the door a crack, then let Richie in when the handyman gave him a thumbs-up. Richie looked around when he stepped through the door. José had a very nice house. It wasn't that big, but all the furnishings were high-end, including the sixty inch plasma TV hanging on one wall.
"Okay José, problem solved. You owe me twenty-two dollars for bug spray and foam, and I'm going to have to charge you fifty bucks for labor, because two of the little bastards stung me. I hope Veronica didn't get stung too."
José scowled at the mention of Veronica's name as he peeled a Benjamin off a thick roll he pulled from his pocket.
"That sorry bitch left me last night," he snarled as he handed the bill to Richie.
Richie expressed his condolences as he folded the bill and slipped it into his coverall pocket.
"Sorry to hear that, Amigo," he said. "You guys made a nice couple. How about your guests, they okay?"
Before José could answer, the guest himself came into the room. The man was about five foot seven, slim and dapper, with slicked-back, glossy black hair and a moustache similar to Richie's. He was wearing an expensive looking suit and black alligator shoes. Jose made introductions and Richie bowed slightly as he shook Rodolfo Beltran's hand. Beltran smiled at being paid respect in the old Mexican way, and handed Richie his business card.
"I appreciate the prompt good service and my thanks to you. If you are near Capitan Loco's tonight, it would be my pleasure to buy you a drink," Beltran said.
Beltran's English was good, but stilted and formal. Richie nodded, unzipped his coverall and slipped the card into his shirt pocket.
"It would be my honor, Señor," Richie respectfully replied in Spanish.
After departing José's house, Richie went to lunch at Restaurante El Cid. Liliana was off that day, so one of the Sanchez's daughters waited on him. Since the girl was still a teen, Richie held off on the flirting. As he sat drinking his iced tea and waiting for his meal, he took out the card that Beltran gave him.
Rodolfo Beltran
Agente de Talento
Modelas de Mexico
Oficínas: Guadalajara y Ciudad Juárez
Talent Agent for Models of Mexico, Beltran claimed, with offices in Guadalajara and Juarez.
All through the meal, Ty McGuinn thought of ways to deal with Beltran. That the man had some serious dues to pay was an understatement. Ty couldn't even begin to guess how many young women Beltran had tricked into a life of forced prostitution. First, Ty tried to think of a way to let the law handle Beltran, but he quickly saw that wouldn't work. Beltran would be safely on the other side of the border by the time the slow wheels of justice turned. Beside, Beltran in effect raped his friend Veronica and had pulled his dirty trick on Ty's cousins. That made it personal, and it made Beltran's punishment Ty's to dole out. It took Ty only a few seconds to come up with a punishment that fit Beltran's crimes.
Richie left the restaurant and drove to the 7-11 on Colorado. He called Stella while he was filling up the gas tank of his truck.
"Looks like tonight's the night," he told her. "Can you pick me up in front of Sears at the mall in about thirty minutes?"
Stella was at the mall right on time. Ty hopped into the rented Expedition and Stella drove them straight to her motel room. Once in the room, Ty slipped into his intelligence officer mode and briefed her back on all he'd learned and surmised. He was counting on her to shoot as many holes in his plan as she could. If there were problems with his plan, or if he was making false assumptions, now was the time to find out, instead of once the operation was underway.
"Okay Stel, here is what I know. The Barrio Aztecas are smuggling drugs and women across the border into the US. Their connection for drugs in Mexico is the so-called Mexican Mafia. The Mexican Mafia is run by four drug lords, each of whom controls a segment of the drug market in the US. The Mexicans bring the drugs up through Central America and Mexico, right to the border. The Aztecas send a crew of coyotes into Juarez to lead the porters carrying the drugs across the border. The women are recruited by 'talent scouts' that sign them to fake modeling contracts and bring them to the border, where other Azteca coyotes smuggle them across the river.
"The Aztecas distribute the women and drugs across the country, and use their legitimate businesses to launder the profits. They are probably paying off people in both the county government and the sheriff's office to turn a blind eye towards their operations.
"Javier Ortega is the highest ranking Barrio Azteca gang member still on the streets. He controls the operation from the third floor of the building where Capitan Loco's is located. We can link Ortega to my grandmother's murder through the necklace he sold to Alex Padilla.
"I don't think there is much else we can find out that would benefit us, without going straight to the source and asking Señor El Loco Ortega directly. So I'm going to pay him a little visit tonight and while I'm at it, I'm also going to put Rudy Beltran out of business."
Stella couldn't find much to fault with anything he said, but she did have a couple of concerns.
"I know you have a key to the back door of Capitan Loco's, and you've disabled the alarm so you can get in, but you've never been above the first floor of the place. They could have a ton of security, for all we know."
"The Aztecas own the barrio, so I doubt if more than a couple of guys will be up there after closing, and we have the floor plan that's on the property appraiser's web site. I'll play it by ear once I'm inside the building. If the odds are too long, I won't do anything, and we'll come up with another plan," Ty replied to her concerns.
Stella reluctantly agreed and moved on to the next subject.
"We also need to do something about the women they are holding. Once this goes down, the women will be a liability they'll need to get rid of."
Ty saw the truth in her statement.
"You are right about that. We certainly can't go to the sheriff's department with the information either. I think we are going to have to let RJ tip off his Ranger pal Lyle Gross about the women."
Stella nodded and added, "I also think we should let Sergeant Steadman in on it, too. He seemed like a straight shooter, and wasn't at all happy about how the sheriff was handling things."
Ty concurred and fished his Nextel out of his suitcase. He turned it on and called his brother first. RJ was surprised to hear from him, and full of questions about how Ty knew the things he was saying.
"Listen RJ, you need to trust me on this, okay? I promise you that everything I'm saying is true. I think the sheriff's office has been compromised by Barrio Azteca, so we need to go over their heads to make this happen."
RJ finally agreed to make the call and disconnected, so Ty called Detective Sergeant Ernie Steadman next.
After the two men exchanged greetings, Ty got right to the point.
"Ernie, do you think some of the higher ups in the sheriff's department might be in the pocket of the Barrio Aztecas?" he asked.
Steadman was silent for a long ten count before cautiously answering.
"The thought has crossed my mind on occasion, but Porlock ran for election promising to end gang violence, and since he's been sheriff, he pretty much has. The funny thing about it though, is only Porlock's hand-picked gang suppression squad is allowed to patrol in the barrio. I know most of those guys, and from the lieutenant on down, they are a bunch of shady characters."
Ty smiled at Ernie's answer and made the detective's day.
"If you feel that way, you will understand why I want you to check this out yourself, Ernie. I had someone snooping around in the barrio and this is what they found out..."
Ty went on to tell Steadman about the dancers and other women, and gave him the address where a shipment of girls would be arriving that very night. He also told Ernie about the call to the Rangers, so there wouldn't be any friendly fire incidents.
Rodolfo Beltran exited Capitan Loco's Gentlemen's Club at eleven PM, and walked around the building to the back parking lot. Beltran was a happy man as he walked across the deserted parking lot towards his rented Ford Fusion. It had been a very profitable night, and his briefcase was heavier by ten thousand American dollars. Beltran hit the button that unlocked the doors of his rental. He was reaching for the door handle, when a dark dressed man in a ski mask jumped out of the shadows and touched him with something that made his body seize up. He pitched forward on his face, breaking his nose and chipping a couple of his teeth. His assailant quickly slapped a duct tape gag across his mouth to silence his painful moans, then dragged him behind his car.
Beltran was petrified with fear as his silent attacker quickly taped his hands behind his back and wrapped a couple of turns of the thick fabric tape around his head and over his mouth. Beltran violently shook his head side to side when the black dressed man pulled a silenced pistol out of the waist band of his trousers and leveled it at his head.
"Rodolfo Beltran, the El Paso Vigilante Committee has convicted you of rape, kidnapping and slavery," intone his assailant. "The sentence for your crimes is castration."
Then the man lowered the business end of the pistol down to Beltran's genitals and pulled the trigger twice. Beltran's screams were muffled by the tape, as the man with the pistol picked up the spent shell casings, then turned around and walked away.
Unfortunately, while Beltran was writhing on the ground in agony, the last of the young women he recruited were already on there way to El Paso...
Authors' note:
Caution, the following scene contains a fairly graphic rape that is an all too common occurrence in the very real world of forced prostitution and the smuggling of unsuspecting young women bound for the sex trade in the United States. You can read it or skip down to the next section break.
D-G & JJ
The desert night was dark and moonless east of Ciudad Juarez, the sprawling Mexican border town located just south of El Paso, Texas. Pedro Suarez, a member of the infamous Chicano gang Barrio Azteca, scanned the north bank of the Rio Grande for any sign of US border patrols. Satisfied that it was safe to cross, he silently signaled to his two underlings, who in turn urged their human merchandise to come out of hiding in the nearby underbrush.
"¡Más rápidamente!" Pedro angrily hissed when the four teenage girls hesitated to wade into the murky water.
One of the coyotes roughly grabbed a girl by the arm and pulled her down the embankment and into the river, which thanks to drought conditions, was only about three feet deep at most. Her companions soon joined her, prodded by Pedro and the other coyote, who kept saying, "¡Vámanos!" (Let's go!) The group quickly waded across the Rio Grande, and scrambled up the embankment. The four girls nervously giggled to themselves at how easy it had been to sneak into the USA, a land where their dreams would finally come true.
Sisters Yolanda and Carmen Lopez were lured to the border with promises of glamorous, lucrative careers with a modeling agency in New York City. Yolanda was sixteen and Carmen was a year older. It really wasn't a stretch of the imagination to believe they were modeling material; their large eyes, high cheekbones, full lips, long dark tresses, and shapely figures caught the attention of many boys and men in their small hometown in the Mexican State of Jalisco. Their single mother, who was struggling to provide for her two daughters and three sons, saw this job offer as a means of getting her daughters out of a life of grinding poverty, so she willingly signed the contracts stuck in front of her by the smiling 'talent agent', a man named Rodolfo Beltran.
The other two girls, Adriana Martinez, and Sonia Gomez, age fifteen and eighteen respectively, had been enticed by similar promises of fame and fortune in 'El Norte'. These two nubile hotties had been recruited in Ciudad Juarez, and just like Yolanda and Carmen, their parents were easily duped into handing over their lovely daughters to the smooth-talking Beltran.
When the girls eventually learned that they would have to sneak across the border like a common Mexican laborer, however, they began to complain to Pedro. He cut them off with a stern warning.
"You signed employment contracts with the modeling agency. If you violate your contracts, they will have no choice but to have you arrested, and your poor parents will have to reimburse the agency for all the money they have spent to bring you to the United States!"
Pedro's warning squelched any further protests from the girls. They didn't like the idea of sneaking into the USA, but Pedro had convinced them that it was too late to back out of the deal now. This incident should have raised a red flag with the girls, but they were too naive to recognize that their dream was about to become a nightmare.
After stepping over the dilapidated remains of the useless official border fence, the coyotes led the girls down a winding trail through a large tract of undeveloped land. After hiking for about an hour, they came to a stop at the foot of a tree. What got the girls' attention were the dozen or more panties that were tied in the tree's lower branches. None of the girls knew about 'rape trees', but they were about to find out.
Pedro and his underlings, Manuel and Carlos, had been looking forward to reaching the rape tree. These chicas were definitely primo, and what they were about to do to them was considered the biggest perk of being a coyote and drug mule for the Barrio Azteca gang. Carlos and Manuel regarded the women as their reward for carrying the ten kilos of cocaine in the backpacks they wore.
Pedro whispered to his underlings, "Que lastima que no podemos violar la niña. Ella es muy caliente." (What a shame we can't rape the youngest girl. She is very hot.)
"Why not?" Carlos asked.
"Javier says that she's being saved for El Gordo. He likes to be the first to break in the young virgins."
"El Gordo" or "the fat man" was the nickname given to Sheriff Esteban Porlock. The lecherous sheriff was fond of popping the cherries of barely nubile virgins, and the gang went out of their way to keep the cooperative sheriff happy.
"Is there any reason we can't use her mouth?" Manuel asked.
Pedro gave a devilish grin at Manuel's suggestion.
"Javier didn't say anything about her mouth being off-limits. So I guess we can make her suck our pingas."
Pedro removed the small knapsack he was carrying, and fished out several coils of rope, which he distributed to his men. The girls, who were nervously huddled together as they watched the men, began to whimper and cry as they realized they were about to be bound with these ropes.
As Pedro approached the frightened girls, he ordered them to sit. When they hesitated to comply, he pulled out a folding lock blade hunting knife and snapped it open.
"Obey me, or te mato!" (I kill you)
The girls quickly dropped to the ground, and the coyotes bound the hands and feet of all but Yolanda. Pedro had selected this lovely sixteen year old to be the first to be gang-banged, and due to his rank, he always was first in line.
The rest of the girls could only watch in helpless horror as Pedro and his cohorts dragged the struggling girl a few feet away and fell upon her, stripping off her clothes. Manuel and Carlos pinned her arms, while Pedro forced her legs apart and got into position.
Pedro whipped out his erect member and taunted the sobbing girl.
"Don't cry, chica, by the time we're done with you, you'll be begging for more!"
Pedro positioned himself at her opening, and nodded to Carlos, who covered the girl's mouth to stifle her scream. That first brutal thrust tore asunder Yolanda's hymen, and as the struggling girl writhed in pain, Pedro jack-hammered into her, while encouraged by the cheers of Manuel and Carlos. As soon as Pedro was finished, Manuel took his place, and after him came Carlos.
When the coyotes finished with Yolanda, they allowed her to get dressed, but her panties were added to the rape tree's collection. The sobbing girl was returned to sit beside her companions, where she was once again bound hand and foot. Pedro approached Adriana and grabbing her by the hair, pulled her to her knees.
"We're not going to rape you, niña, because the boss wants to save you for an important amigo, but we are going to use your sweet mouth to get our pingas hard and ready to do your friends."
Pedro then took out his semi-rigid cock and pressed the head against Adriana's lips. She turned away in disgust at the sticky residue of Yolanda's deflowering, and was rewarded with a stunning slap to the side of her face.
"¡Abre to boca y chupa mi pinga!" (Open your mouth and suck my cock!)
It took another three slaps before Adriana obeyed. Her first attempt at giving a man a blow-job was amateurish, but Pedro quickly regained his erection. He released his grip on her hair and turned to the next victim. This time it was Yolanda's seventeen year-old sister Carmen who was dragged away by Pedro and Carlos, while Manuel grabbed Adriana for some oral attention.
The rape of Sonia followed the systematic gang rape of Carmen, and Adriana was repeatedly forced to give each man the use of her mouth to make them ready for the next victim.
When their ordeal was over, the girls were freed from their bonds and the hike continued for another half hour, at which point the group reached an asphalt road. A van soon pulled over, and the girls were loaded into the back after being bound, gagged and blindfolded.
The van headed for northeast El Paso, and the heart of Barrio Azteca's drug and prostitution operations. After turning onto Colorado Avenue, an area populated with numerous nightclubs, it pulled into the back of what to the casual observer looked like an apartment building tucked a block behind one of the strip-clubs. But this was no ordinary apartment building; it was the gang's brothel.
The four girls were quickly carried like so many sacks of potatoes into the building's stairwell, and taken down to the basement. This was where the brothel's 'fresh meat' was always taken until the breaking-in process insured the new girls had been turned into compliant little whores. Nobody at ground level would ever hear a girl scream as her will was broken.
Waiting down in the basement in one of the small rooms cobbled out of wood and sheetrock, Esteban Porlock smiled when he heard the coyotes arrive with his newest treat. He liked the large amount of cash the Barrio Aztecas paid him, but he loved the special favors they allowed him with the young virgins.
Porlock's anticipation was suddenly broken, when he heard yelling and the sound of a gun shot from the floor above. He took out his side arm and squeezed his bulk against the wall behind the bed as he tried to make sense of the commotion he heard. When the tumult reached the basement right outside the room, Porlock tried to make his large body smaller by lying on the floor behind the bed.
The two swat team members who found Porlock didn't recognize him, so he was brought upstairs to join the other gang members sitting against the wall in nylon handcuffs. Ernie Steadman didn't have any trouble recognizing him, however, and the detective broke into a grin when their eyes met. Steadman sauntered over to the trust-up sheriff and took the Miranda rights warning card out of his pocket. He knew the warnings by heart, but he always read them from the card anyway.
"Esteban Porlock, you are under arrest for frequenting a place of prostitution. Other charges may be added later. You have the right..."
Two blocks away from the brothel raid, Ty McGuinn's phone vibrated in his pocket. Ty flipped open the phone and retrieved the text message.
Fun has begun — on my way to your 20
The message was from Stella, who had been sitting in her rental car waiting for the raid to begin. Once it started, she sent her text, then put the big SUV in gear and drove over to Colorado Avenue. She parked in the deserted McDonalds across the street from Capitan Loco's, ready to back up her man.
Ty put his phone away and pulled his balaclava down over his face. He pulled on a pair of tight black leather gloves, checked that his weapon had a round in the chamber, and then unlocked the burglar bar door at the back of the strip club. Ty was sweating profusely in the protective vest Stella had scrounged up for him, but he was amazingly calm as he pulled open the door...