Savages

Your strengths are your weaknesses.

The more you try to protect something, the more vulnerable you make it.

To wit:

Lado pulls his stash houses from the suburbs to rural locations that he can protect.

Makes fewer cash runs with more protection.

They go in the day instead of at night.

Fine but

Rural means isolated.

Fewer runs mean more cash per run, and day means

Chon doesn’t have to buy a nightscope.

And they know where the concentrated stash houses are, so it’s just a matter of surveillance to know when and where the cash convoys are going to roll out.

Knowing is one thing.

Doing another.

“We’re going to need more ordnance,” Chon tells Ben after literally scoping out the stash house in the desert.

Fine, Ben says.

218

Chon rides the pony down to Calexico, right on the border.

Etymology obvious:

California

Mexico

Calexico.

The name reflects the reality. You take a walk in old downtown Calexico you aren’t sure which country you’re in. Truth is, you’re in neither and both.

Chon goes to see this man he knows. You meet some interesting people around the edges of the elite forces thing. Guys who dig the scene, probably a little too much, for a lot of different reasons. And probably more of these guys cluster around the border, again for a whole lot of reasons.

Some of them see themselves as Davy Crockett.

Except this time they keep the Alamo.

You look at Barney, you don’t think elite forces. You think pudgy Smurf with bottle glasses, bad breath, and lung cancer.

Anyway, Barney is happy to see Chon.

“What can I do you for?”

“A Barrett.”

That is, a Barrett Model 90. A humongoid sniper rifle that can send a .50-cal bullet into a target with accuracy from a mile away.

“Jesus, who are you going to shoot with that?” Barney asks.

“Cans,” Chon answers truthfully.

“My man,” Barney says.

Yeah, it’s that kind of world.

Chon buys the Barrett and a 10X Leupold M-type scope to go with it.

219

O writes Paqu:

Dear Mommy,

Rome is GR8. The Colisiam is awesome. Everyone rides around on motor scooters and the men are beautiful. So are the women. So is the food. I mean, you think you’ve had pasta until you’ve been here, but you haven’t. (Don’t worry, I’m not eating too much of it.)

I miss you.

How RU?

Ophelia

220

Ben goes to Home Depot, Radio Shack, and HobbyTown USA.

With Chon’s shopping list.

Because …

221

Chon’s going Sunni on them.

IED.

You don’t have bombers, missiles, and drones, so you come up with Improvised Explosive Devices. Plant them by the side of the road, hit the remote trigger device as the convoy comes by.

It takes Chon three days to build them.

Happy hours on the old dining room table.

“You’re not going to blow us up, are you?” Ben asks.

“We should be okay,” Chon says. “Unless the BC has a drone overhead or something. Then we’re fucked. But I wouldn’t use the TV remote for a while.”

Just to be on the safe side.

Ben asks, “What should I do if I hear you mutter, ‘Fuck’?”

“At this range? Nothing.”

A lot of existential questions will be answered just after the “Fuck.”

As in life itself.

222

The caravan comes up the twisted road.

Like a coiled snake, the Cajon Pass. Way the fuck out there in the empty desert, miles away from anything that could pass for civilization.

Moonscape on either side of the road.

God threw a temper tantrum and tossed boulders around like marbles on the steep slopes.

Turning red in the dawn light.

The reflection makes it tough on Chon, high up on the opposite slope, sighting the Barrett.

He hopes Ben is cold enough to throw the switches.

223