“Like what?”
Sam said, “There’s a Japanese fella at Osorio’s.”
“Okay…”
Buck said, “Seems there’s a lot of new activity around Barranca Azul, a few miles out of Presidio, you know it?”
“I know of it, but I’ve never been there. Kind of a ghost town from what I’ve heard.”
“Pretty much. Several old buildings a few local folks use for storage, and the rest abandoned.”
“What kind of activity?”
Buck said, “Something the Japanese fella is overseeing. They’ve put roofs on a half-dozen big old storage barns, running a lot of big trucks to there too.”
“Where are the trucks coming from?”
Sam and Buck grinned at each other. Buck said, “Osorio’s place.”
Hunter leaned forward, “You mean that’s where the drones and all that equipment are?”
Buck said, “Our friend didn’t look inside them, but he’s pretty sure that’s what it is.”
Sam said, “They moved everything, lock stock and barrel.”
“What the hell?” Hunter said.
Sam said, “Oh, that’s not all.”
Hunter waited. Sam and Buck sipped their beers, acting all innocent. Hunter grabbed their forearms as they attempted to raise their schooners again, “Tell me.”
Both men grinned like school kids, and Buck said, “Pasqual Osorio has been sent packing.”
“Do you know where?”
“He’s in Ojinaga, last we heard. Hiding out. The Japanese guy has a couple men looking for him.”
“For what?”
Sam said, “We heard the two men looking are sicarios, hit-men out of Juarez, so…”
Hunter said, “I wonder who he pissed off?”
Buck said, “We don’t know, but we figured you might find out. Word is, his left forearm is in a cast up to the elbow and his face looks like he lost a fight with a heavyweight, so that’ll make him easier to locate. You locate Osorio, get him to talk, get info from him, maybe even bring him across as an informant so you can keep him safe; heck, there’s no telling what you might find out.”
Hunter took in the information, looking at the two men, saying, “For a couple of old geezers, you two sure get around.”
They lifted their beers to toast her.
~*~
Pasqual Osorio sat in the gloom on a rickety chair made of woven river cane and willow branches. His shelter was a small adobe one-room house on Calle Tercera, two blocks from the Ojinaga bus station. He left the single light off, its bare bulb hanging from the ceiling by a long black cord. How far you’ve fallen, he thought. Pasqual dabbed at his swollen right eye, using his last clean handkerchief. The eye wept almost incessantly since the beating. His left arm throbbed, and he tried to ease the position by moving the plaster cast to rest across his thigh.
He couldn’t even get money out of his safe. They controlled everything. And now they hunted him with a couple of human wolves from the so-called New Juarez Cartel, wanting him in the ground because they almost lost the drones in the raid. Blaming him for it, hijo de la chingada. The cabrones, especially their swaggering Japanese hotshot Haruto Hiyoki, never let Pasqual tell his side of what happened. Pasqual had been escorted by two men and taken to Hiyoki, who waited in the barn at the new location. Hiyoki wore his white gee with the black belt at his waist, working on his Shutokan foot
work by launching a few lightning fast head-high kicks to the bag. Pasqual waited until Hiyoki faced him. Hiyoki said, “You’re not relevant, your time is over.”
Osorio tried to explain, but Hiyoki snapped his fingers and the two hulking bodyguards beat the living crap out of Osorio, breaking his nose and both bones in his forearm. As he lay bleeding, Hiyoki told him to drag his ass off the floor and leave, right now.