“Actually, from what I’ve read, those things are pretty sophisticated. Otherwise the cartels would be losing a lot of money at the bottom of the sea.” Acres of dead and dying pine trees appeared on each side of the road. Dex grew quiet now. The weight of things usually hit him once we had a visual confirmation that something was really going down.
He looked out at the rows of trees. “Why do you think the owners abandoned this place?”
“Probably over farmed. My grandfather used to move crops around and leave fields barren to keep the soil good. Trees take a long time to grow, so you wouldn’t have that luxury.”
“Is Gage still planting stuff now that Pops is gone? Shit, I used to love hanging out up there.”
“I think he still does some farming, but he’s always up in the mountains logging. He doesn’t have much time.” The casual conversation had helped relax Dex. We were both feeling the weight of this, but we always had each others’ backs. I wouldn’t have done this without Dex at my side, and I was sure he felt the same.
A dilapidated farmhouse came into view. There were two trucks parked in front of it. Three sketchy looking guys, including two wearing Bent for Hell cuts, met us. I didn’t recognize anyone but then the club membership had grown a lot in the last five years.
“Do your brothers know what you’re up to?” Dex’s tone had thickened. The adrenaline was still pumping, but it was manifesting itself in a different way. My partner could transform from light hearted clown to fiercely dangerous in the blink of an eye.
“I told them I was going undercover and that’s all. Just in case.”
I stopped the truck, and the three men held securely onto their guns as they waited for us to get out of the truck. We fist bumped below the dashboard.
“Let’s do this,” I said.
We hopped out and Dex went right into his routine. “Beautiful day, ain’t it?” he said loudly.
The men didn’t answer.
We walked up in front of them.
“Yep, after this gig, my partner and me,” Dex inclined his big head my way, “are going to take some of our hard earned cash and buy us some glittery pussy down in Vegas.”
The man without the MC cut scowled at Dex. He had an ill-fitting glass eye that had a yellowish cast to it as if it had fallen into a toilet bowl of piss. “We don’t give a fuck about that.” The deep crevices in his face showed he’d spent a lot of his life in the sun. He even had a slightly fishy smell to him as if he’d just gotten off a boat, which he very likely had. “Arms behind your heads so we can search you. If there is so much as a ball point pen on you, we’re going to shoot you where you stand.” We’d come completely naked of electronics and wires. We had only our clothes, our wits and our fists.
Dex dropped the stupid motherfucker routine and grew uncharacteristically quiet as we lifted our hands behind our heads. The man with the glass eye stepped closer, and his stench grew stronger. He patted me down and then moved to Dex. With one eye, he stared long and hard at Dex. It seemed that the zipper tattoo on the side of Dex’s arm had caught his attention. He had gotten the tattoo after he’d suffered a nasty compound fracture riding motocross. He thought the zipper would look cool over the scar, but it had almost cost him getting hired at the department. Normally, he had it covered, but today we’d dressed for the weather and for our roles of two clueless couriers picking up drugs. The one-eyed creep searched Dex and then nodded his assurance to the other two that we were clean. Tension radiated off of Dex, unusual for him. I could not figure out what had darkened his mood so drastically.
The Bent for Hell guy, with an equally recognizable tattoo of a skeleton hand tattooed over the top of his hand, hopped onto a forklift.
“You,” the one-eyed man pointed at me, “back that truck up over here.” I followed his orders. Dex walked up next to me. We headed back to the truck.
“I know him,” Dex said quickly. “I arrested him three years ago.”
I didn’t look at Dex, to avoid making it look as if we were having a conversation. “You sure?”
“Can’t miss that ugly glass eye.”
We reached the truck.
“You think he recognized you?”
“Can’t miss this fucking zipper tattoo,” he answered, ominously.
“You!” the man called again. “The big stupid one, you come back here and help with the cargo.”
Dex glanced briefly at me. Scared shitless wasn’t a look I’d ever seen on my best friend’s face. Never. He walked away, and I climbed into the truck. My pulse pounded in my ears. I looked up into the rearview. The forklift was waiting with its load. Dex carried a large crate toward the truck. The grimace on his face made it seem as if he was holding the whole damn world in that wood box. We’d combed through every detail and taken every precaution. But it looked as if we were going to be done in by a tattoo.