The Cartel Enforcers (The Bill Dix Detective Series Book 2)

The Cartel

ENFORCERS

by

C.L. Swinney

Published By:

RJ Parker Publishing, Inc.

ISBN-13: 978-1503149878

ISBN-10: 1503149870

THE CARTEL ENFORCERS

Copyright © 2014

by C.L.Swinney

United States of America

License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. Please respect the author’s work. All rights reserved. No parts of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written authorization from Chris Swinney.

This book is a work of fiction

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.

Chapter One

Two blacked-out SUVs converged on the well armored Mercedes being recklessly driven by Pedro Munguia. Unrelated vehicles careened off the highway as the pursuing SUV drivers patiently waited for Pedro to make a mistake. His mind raced as he frantically attempted to call his wife using the Bluetooth attached to his ear. However, fleeing from the bounty hunters he and his friends called the “Cartel Enforcers” made it near impossible to drive and dial at the same time. Pedro couldn’t decide which was more important, retrieving his semi-automatic handgun, or calling for help. In a split second he decided his wife’s and daughter’s lives were more important to him than his own. He discarded his hand gun in the front passenger seat and kept repeatedly pressing the redial button to his home phone number. When he finally got through, the message told him the line was no longer in service.

“It’s too late!”
Pedro screamed while swerving his vehicle.

Desperation sunk in. Pedro assumed the men chasing him had already had their way with his family based on the disconnected phone line at his home. Plus, the only way anyone would have figured out where he had been hiding was to beat it out of his family before killing them. Now, once the killers pursuing him caught him, they would extract whatever they could from him through torture. Then, they would kill him too.

Pedro bellowed, “Raphael!” and tried to maintain control of his vehicle while dodging his pursuers.

Pedro cursed one man for all the dread falling upon him now; Raphael Sanchez. He believed Raphael set him up and now he owed more than $500,000 in cash to the largest Hispanic sleeper cartel operating almost undetected in the United States. A family so well connected by being infused into the local infrastructure of San Diego, and having more financial resources than imaginable, Pedro was certainly doomed and had nowhere to run.

His life was falling apart in front of his eyes, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. He was just a small-time crook in the eyes of law enforcement and he had no idea that he was being used to track a much larger fish who’d recently been given up by Jim “Blood Hound” Calhoun. Calhoun had been snared in the largest narcotic seizure ever recorded in the Bahamas and had given up the Hispanic sleeper cartel responsible for the Tijuana-San Diego border in an effort to avoid a death sentence. When faced with certain death, most criminals tend to drop the tough guy persona and throw any and everyone under the bus.

Pedro briefly relived the deal with Sanchez in his head, how he simply brokered a minor change in the original deal to add 50 kilos of cocaine to the order, added a few points to make his standard profit, and that was it. On the surface it was like the hundreds of deals the two had done over the last ten years.

It didn’t matter now. As a group of Enforcers was hunting Pedro in the cars that chased him, one thing was certain; he would pay the monetary debt with his life. Ordinarily, Pedro would have tried to reason with the killers, but not this time. Pedro was mortified because he didn’t have enough money to buy the men off and there was no way they’d deal with him. Compounding the drama was the fact he had learned just prior to picking up the tailing killers that he had been labeled as an informant for the police. Pedro was arrested during a recent drug bust at the Tijuana border as the load he brokered was headed into San Diego. He was released just seven days after being caught with 100 kilos of cocaine. People began to talk and speculate how he got out so quickly. Before too long, he was labeled as a snitch. All of these thoughts caused Pedro’s mind to spin out of control.

The SUVs easily closed in on Pedro as the traffic began to get congested. Pedro hoped he could make it to the safe house in Temecula, CA. He drove in a zigzag fashion and made it appear as though he was passing the next off ramp and at the last second, he stepped on the accelerator and veered hard to the right. One of the SUVs made the same aggressive maneuver and clipped the back of a large pick-up truck. The pick-up truck tumbled over and over until it landed halfway on the concrete barrier separating eight lanes of rush hour traffic. Dust and debris covered the freeway as multiple accidents began to occur.

Both Pedro’s vehicle and one of the SUV’s wobbled and swerved as they tried to keep their wheels on the asphalt. The driver of the first SUV over corrected his steering just slightly and the tires grabbed asphalt causing the SUV to flip violently down the freeway. One of the would-be killers was ejected from the second SUV bore down on Pedro and he felt a sudden tightness in his chest.

Pedro quickly abandoned the notion of making a final run toward the safe house for two reasons. He didn’t want to give up the location of the safe house in case he somehow survived this ordeal, and he knew he did not have enough weapons at the house or the training to fend off a SUV full of Cartel Enforcers. Pedro looked up into his rear view mirror and could see the massive wreck the SUV and pickup truck created, but did not have a moment to be relieved as he saw the final SUV maneuver in time to miss the wrecks and catch the off ramp he had barely managed to take.

Pedro’s vehicle and the trailing SUV crashed through poles and blew through intersections with no regard for the citizens around them. Pedro looked to his left and noticed marked police units converging on his location. Pedro had always despised law enforcement but he thought being captured by the police now would be the only way he would survive.
For awhile
, he mused. It was not a comforting feeling because once the cartel members figured out another way to get at Pedro, which they always did, he was dead.

The driver of the SUV seemed to anticipate what Pedro was thinking because the vehicle lurched forward as the driver mashed the accelerator in an effort to get to one side of Pedro’s vehicle. Pedro sped past a bus depot as buses slowly rolled out of the massive lot right in front of him. Pedro was dodging between pedestrians and buses trying everything he could to lose the looming SUV.

Two buses collided making it impossible for Pedro to go forward. He frantically looked for a way out. Suddenly in his peripheral vision he noticed the SUV was clearing the rear bumper of his car. Pedro tried to move away but the driver of the SUV pushed the right rear quarter panel of his Mercedes causing Pedro’s vehicle to crash into a telephone pole. Glass and twisted metal flew everywhere. Pedro was stuck in the front seat of the car pinned firmly by the air bag and seat belt.

Through a trickle of blood Pedro could see two marked police cars closing in on him and he felt some small sense of relief. Moments before they arrived, Pedro watched as the SUV carrying Cartel Enforcers got in between him and the two police cars. The police officers observed the SUV’s aggressive move and slammed on their brakes.

They radioed for back up and positioned themselves to use the front of their cars as cover. No one had time to think.

Gun fire erupted as two men dressed in black BDU’s (battle dress uniforms) slowly exited the SUV with AR-15 assault rifles and opened fire on the two police officers. High velocity rounds shredded the front of the patrol cars but could not penetrate the engine block giving both officers time to shoot back and look for cover. Both officers had previous combat experience in Iraq, but were still caught off guard by the level of skill possessed by the urban guerillas firing on them now. The men from the SUV continued shooting at the officers until they ran out of bullets from their first magazines. In unison the men released the magazines, flipped them around, and slammed them back in the rifle. The officers were out matched. As they frantically tried to unlock their patrol rifles, a frightening reality set in. Both cars were without power now causing the locking mechanism holding the rifles to stay locked.

One of the officers got hit in the leg from a ricocheted round and yelled to his partner for help.

The second officer saw his partner go down to the pavement. His urge to help his fallen comrade compelled him to leave his position of cover in an attempt to help pull his friend out of the line of fire. At the same time the two shooters snickered and while the moving officer attempted to use suppression fire to fend off the shooters, they shot him several times. Despite his severe injuries, the officer, spiked with adrenaline, was able to return fire long enough to get he and his partner behind the patrol car. After doing so, the officer collapsed and lay motionless.

Once the two officers appeared no longer to be threats to the mission, a third man, the driver of the SUV, exited the vehicle. Together, all three men began jogging directly toward Pedro.

Pedro frantically searched for his firearm and began praying. He violently pulled at the seat belt as he pierced the air bag with a small pocket knife. Out of nowhere Pedro heard small caliber rounds and could see them hitting the SUV and the ground near the advancing Cartel Enforcers. One of the three Cartel Enforcers doubled over and Pedro could see blood spewing from the area near the man’s neck. The man toppled over and fell dead to the ground.

The remaining two Cartel Enforcers began returning rounds in the general direction of where they thought the rounds were coming from and ran back toward the SUV to use it as cover. At the same time, Pedro was freeing himself and had located his firearm. Pedro was very good with a gun. He began squeezing off well placed rounds toward the two remaining Cartel Enforcers in an effort to confuse them and he hoped to keep them at bay.

Sirens and the melodic sound of helicopter blades spinning through the air were getting louder which meant they were getting closer to Pedro. One of the Enforcers began shooting toward Pedro’s location while the other one shot at an unknown target to Pedro’s left. Almost immediately he felt intense burning pain in his arm. Pedro ripped his shirt to wrap around the wound in an effort to control the bleeding. However, he was still losing a lot of blood and was feeling faint. He tried to get up and realized his leg was broken from the crash. The pain caused him to see white spots and yell loudly. Desperation filled his mind as he realized the small caliber fire had ended and both Enforcers were now filling his Mercedes with high-powered bullets.

So much for negotiating
, he thought. Whoever hired the gunmen meant to collect his debt with blood. He could see the Enforcers were communicating to each other with hand signals. Each one took turns cautiously poking their head around the front of the SUV to see Pedro’s location better. After the third time, Pedro heard two loud booms from what he thought was a high powered rifle. Instantly he saw both Enforcers bodies fly violently backwards as their upper torsos exploded from the impact of large caliber ammunition.