The Journey to Freedom: Path to WW3

Chapter XXIV

To give yourself the best possible chance of playing to your potential, you must prepare for every eventuality. That means practice.
Seve Ballesteros

The next day I wake everyone up and tell them to get ready for shooting practice. I start moving blocks and tree trunks to different places and moved the truck that we fixed, to where I thought where maybe the convoy would be. Everyone gets washed up and gets dressed while I am getting things ready. It was 5 am so it was still dark.

Raul comes out of his house and asks what I am doing, and I tell him that I was moving things around so that we could practice how things were going to be when it was time to hit the convoy, he volunteered to move his truck to where ours was so we could have a decent target practice set. I told him that I was thankful for it but I instead sent him to town to get some barbacoa and tortillas for everyone, so they can eat breakfast before we did anything. He agreed and went back to his house and then came back out fully dressed and left to get food.

Once I had everything ready Carmen comes out and says good morning. I reply with a good morning and thanked her again for the food last night. She replied, "De nada" and I keep moving stuff around while the guys were getting ready. She asked what I was doing and I explained to her what I was doing and she told me that it was amazing that it would be the first time seeing actual soldiers practice for war. Even though I hesitated in saying that we weren't at war, but it made sense because it truly was a battle and we were at war with the cartel. She says that she was going back inside because it was too cold for her and I thanked her again and mentioned that Raul was going to get breakfast for all of us, this way she didn't have to cook anything for us. She just smiled and said ok and walked back into her house.

I walk into the barn and saw that everyone was getting their guns and radios. The guys were doing mic checks and I was so surprised that they were so full of energy at such an early morning. Especially Fito, Drew, and my cousin Daniel since they were civilians and not soldiers.

"Whenever you're ready," says Marcus.

I told him that we would start practice a little after breakfast because we needed to be ready on a full stomach and when the sun was finally out. Daniel then snaps at me "Then why'd the fuck you wake us up so early for?"

I tell him that usually at this time on the bases we exercise to get our blood pumping and when we are done with exercising then the food will be more tasteful after a hard workout. "That makes sense, I guess." He replies.

So I told them that we needed to do 30 pushups, 30 sit-ups, 30 jumping jacks, 15 pull-ups, and run for at least 10 minutes, so that when we are done, then the sun would be out by then.

Kevin tells Daniel "I bet I can do those 30 pushups before you even hit 20."

I laugh and say "Ok, let's make it a competition, this way we actually work harder and make room for breakfast.

Everyone starts doing pushups and Fito beat everyone at the pushups. Then we do sit-ups and Kevin beats everyone. We do the jumping jacks and AB beats everyone. Marcus wins at the pull-ups. And finally, we just stroll for the run. While we are just laughing at who won at the exercises, Raul shows up along with the sun.

"Compré cinco kilos de barbacoa y dos kilos de tortillas de maíz. Me tarde porque apenas las estaban haciendo," Raul says.

Everyone starts to eat, and I tell them "Eat up boys because today we will practice until we get it right."

Carmen comes out to kiss her husband and I look at them kissing and I start to remember when Zaelia used to kiss me when I went to work or when I was just leaving the house, she always wore heels no matter what. Whether it was laundry, going to the supermarket, or anything. The heels always made her look even more beautiful. I finally come to my senses when Kevin asks me if I was ok because I had zoned out for a second. I tell him that I was ok, I was just remembering something. Everyone stops eating then looks at me tearing up.

"Everything ok cuz?" Daniel asks.

"Yeah man, I was just thinking about Zaelia," I reply.

Once we are done eating, I tell them what everything is and how I wanted everything to run. They all nod in agreement and do practice runs for 4 hours straight until it got done exactly the way I was hoping. I also gave them worst-case scenarios and they got those down also. It was close to noon and I asked Raul if he didn't mind if I used his house as a practice run because the barn didn't have any rooms. He says it was ok and tell him to move the trucks like they were parked the first time we saw them at the Garza house.

Carmen sits over by the barn and watch how we do our practice run and I could see that she was impressed by us, even though it was just 3 three people doing the run, I could still tell that she was impressed by how we did everything. Once we were done after about 2 hours, I tell everyone that we are done for the day.

"Tomorrow is Saturday and I expect everything to go exactly as planned," I tell them.

"We went through best- and worst-case scenarios, and tomorrow we will be doing it for real, I don't want anyone freezing up. This will be for real, we may have just said bang you're dead today, but tomorrow with live ammunition, we will make sure that everything goes as planned." I say as I finish telling them.

"Now remember, we must leave the money truck intact, or else people will suspect things," I tell them.

"Once we have the truck, Garza will be in the back with the money and only two of us will be in the front. Seeing that Daniel and Fito have tattoos, they will be in the front so that no one suspects them. We will have to consider the fact that the truck might be low on gas for the 3-hour trip. So, we need to have gas cans ready here to fill up and then be ready to leave as soon as the truck is filled up. Once that happens, then we will be in Piedras Negras to meet my godfather at my grandpa's ranch so he can take the truck back to his house and hide the money while we drive to the airport strip and take the helicopter back to the airport and take off back to Washington with Garza to deliver him. Tomorrow is Saturday and we got a long day ahead of us, no mistakes and nobody stays behind." I tell them.

I walk off and ask Carmen and Raul if it is ok if we shower and get ready to call it a day, they tell me sure and that dinner will be ready in an hour. I thank them and tell the guys about dinner being ready in an hour. I also tell them that tomorrow when we leave, we must thank them again for risking their lives for us. It's hard as it is for them to even trust their lives with us, knowing that they could be found out and they could be put in jeopardy. They all nod and start walking away to get their clothes ready for showering up and for dinner.

Once the day has come to an end, I lay on my bed and hope to whatever god is out there, to protect us and to take care of all our families because we will be needing some kind of divine intervention if we were to pull this off.