The Officer and the Entrepreneur by Dan Slater

Author:Dan Slater [Slater, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B07H7DLLVR
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2018-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

PART III

Pleasing the Boss

“Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”

Genesis 37, “Joseph’s Dreams”

15. Initiative

The next day at a Burger King on I-35, a few miles north of Laredo, Corley and Leonard met face-to-face for the first time.

Over Whoppers and soda, Leonard laid the trap in his first face-to-face meeting with Corley.

Corley wore jeans, a gray T-shirt, and a puffy black sleeveless jacket—standard-issue college jock. J, Corley thought, didn’t look like a cartel associate. But what should he look like? A white trucker with long hair, a belly, and bad teeth (Leonard’s disguise) could, for all Corley knew, be the typical appearance of certain operators in the cartel world. Three months had passed since their first phone contact, after all; a couple dozen hours of conversation had engendered the sort of easygoing rapport that Leonard worked so hard to achieve with his targets.

“He’s in a good mood,” J said of Jefe. “He must’ve got some pussy last night.”

Corley bit into a Whopper and spoke of his money problems as if confiding to an old friend. He wanted to know, but hesitated to ask directly, if Jefe intended to reimburse him for the trip.

Jefe, J explained, came from a blue-collar background and appreciated people who took the initiative to better their lives. J said that Jefe planned to front Mickle, Epps, and Corley five hundred pounds of marijuana, giving them, on credit, an amount of pot worth $175,000 in Laredo and about a half-million dollars in South Carolina. In return, Jefe demanded only that Mickle, Epps, and Corley come back to Laredo to handle security for the shipment, following the truck north.

“No problem,” Corley said.

Outside, in the extended cab of a semitruck, J introduced Corley to Jefe, played by a Mexican American agent, and P, Patrick Curran, the boss’s improbable gringo son-in-law. Corley retrieved the military items from his duffel bag, and the agents became giddy. Gifting the items to Jefe, Corley explained each one: a brand-new IR strobe light, still in the box, that attaches to helmets and is used for night vision; an automatic Gerber knife with a Japanese-style “tanto” blade; special-issue ballistic Oakley glasses with replacement lenses; tactical gloves with hard knuckles for close-quarters combat; and two thirty-pound bulletproof vests. “If you saw the last Transformers movie,” Corley said, “they gave them this to wear over their uniform, and right there on chest they’d stitch your name . . .”

“Jefe!” J said, and they all laughed.

“Rank would go on the other side,” Corley said. “Sergeant, lieutenant—”

“Comandante,” P said, using the Spanish term for a Zetas cartel boss.

“There are inserts for plates on the front, back, and sides, and they’ll stop an AK-47 round,” Corley said of the vests. Then he found the smallest item in the bottom of the bag. “Here’s a special tool for breaking down the M4.

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