On The Border

Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

    Amaya had already seen the video before he received the call from Evia.  He had seen it several times, in fact, watching it closely, stopping it, starting it, taking notes.  It interested him.  The man was brave, certainly, or possibly insane.  Or both, of course.  The figure, when he appeared, wasn't just backlit, as it first seemed.  Amaya was fairly certain that some kind of image trickery had been used, and that the man's features were blurred.  As to "LoneRanger," there were several possibilities.  Amaya was fairly certain the man wasn't a crazed professional baseball player, or fan, so he likely had nothing to do with the professional baseball team.  Realistically, he was probably in some way associated with either park rangers or some kind, or the real Texas Rangers.  Amaya had no idea how to narrow that down any farther at present.  

    Amaya was smart enough to know there were things he didn't know.  There were people who could do all manner of technological wizardry with computers and images, but he was not one of them.  Getting such people to work on the problem would be one of the first suggestions he'd make to Cardoza.  First, however...

    "You have, of course, pulled everyone out of that location?" Amaya asked.

    "What? Why?  We can rebuild, and if this man is stupid enough to come back, we will bury him!"  Cardoza snapped..

    "You see those numbers scrolling at the bottom of the image when the man is speaking?"  Amaya pointed.

    "He wasn't so stupid as to leave us his phone number?" Cardoza asked.

    "No.  Those are GPS coordinates.  In addition to drawing many curious on-lookers, in numbers that could not simply be killed and hidden, I suspect various police agencies are on the way there, if not there already."  Carodoza cursed and began making phone calls.

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    Several days later, at another Starbucks in the city of Eagle Pass, Texas, Smith and Hunter met up again.  "Lone Ranger?  Really?"  Smith asked.

    Hunter shrugged. "It was his idea.  Besides, you can't argue with the results."  The newspaper on the table between them carried a news story and an editorial about the recent attack on the cartel, and YouTube footage that was posted online.  A group of Texas Rangers and local police had descended on the coordinates that had been provided, and a few arrests of slower moving cartel members had been made, as well as a good bit of equipment being confiscated.  

    "You two planning on doing this again?" Smith asked.

    "Again and again.  We hit them, they lose stuff, and he's getting some good reactions from the public.  Maybe we can shake off some of the fear they use to stomp on everyone with."

    "You know you're playing a real dangerous game with this?" Smith asked.

    "Yeah, but it needs to get done.  Besides we managed our first run without even firing a shot."  Hunter smiled.