The Journey to Freedom: Path to WW3

Chapter XXII

The true value of somebody in this town is very hard to determine. It's all smoke and mirrors. – Mark Ruffalo

I stay up all night, cleaning out all the weapons and making sure that they are clean and work properly. Once the morning sets in, everyone starts to wake up. Lawrence gets up, washes his face, brushes his teeth and sits across from me and helps me put back together all the weapons.

"Bro, your face doesn't look so bad. I'm glad that you're ok." Lawrence says.

"Thanks bro," I reply.

We finish putting everything together and put everything away. Raul steps in and sees that everyone is awake. He asks me if I'm ok, and I tell him that I'm fine. I give him a letter and tell him to drop it off at the front desk of the hotel. It was a letter from me to Melissa, just telling her that I had a great time last night, but I won't be able to go on that date because of certain circumstances. He says ok and tells us that breakfast will be ready in a few minutes.

I change clothes and go for a 30-minute run. When I return, there was a plate of food for me at the barn. One of the guys must've brought it for me, I think to myself. Once I'm done eating I walk back to the house and take the plate to Carmen. She tells me that she took the plate over there for me since I didn't show up for breakfast in the morning. I apologize and tell her that I was thinking a lot and that was the reason I didn't show up. She turns around and gasps because while we were talking, her back was turned towards me.

"Dios mío! Que le pasó?" she asks.

I tell her what happened, and she tells me to be more careful. And that the girl I was with is a good girl. She had a bad night once with one of the cartel guys. He forced himself on her and the cartel boss's right-hand man had him killed because he liked that girl. Now he protects her from all men. Doesn't matter who it is. I tell her that I noticed that last night and that I was damn lucky that he didn't kill me. I thank her again for the food and start walking to the barn. Marcus already has the laptop set up and start listening in to see what information we get.

The first three days we got nothing. Chatter over about where they ship the drugs, where the money gets laundered, where they bring in the drugs from Colombia. They were giving us the whole layout of their operation, but unfortunately, that wasn't what I was looking for, all this reconnaissance I was transmitting to the chief, he kept telling me good work and that once we had the boss over here, he would give the go for hitting his spots in Colombia, and the money that was being shipped in to Mexico from the states.

Finally, we got a break. There was an armored truck with a convoy coming into town on Saturday afternoon. They were bringing the shipment directly to him and the total was a little more than 200 million dollars. We look at the map and see where they were coming in from. I tell Drew to go to the house to see if Raul knows anyone that is selling an old truck. I tell AB to start making two explosives and to paint them yellow because we're going to replace the yellow dividers on the street and blow the convoy to kingdom come.

I call my godfather and tell him that the money truck is coming in three days, and once we take it, we're taking it over to Piedras Negras and we'll meet up with him at my grandpa's ranch so we can load up the money in his truck and he can hold it for us there until we get back. He agrees and tells me to call him when we're an hour away from the checkpoint so he can meet us there.

I tell my cousin and my friends that they can have the next two days off and do whatever they need to do in order to blow off some steam so they won't be too nervous when the time comes to do this job. My cousin and everyone else ask what is there to do in the town to blow off steam besides go to the bars. I tell them to go to the massage parlor and get a massage with happy endings. They laugh and ask me if I'm serious. I tell them yes because once we get back to the pentagon, the chief will want us to do another job, I already know this because you could tell that he is testing us with this mission.