Cold River Resurrection by Enes Smith Read Free Book Online

as the three on the floor were handcuffed.
    “You shot Jimmy, you bitch, you’ll pay for – .”
    Smokey moved forward, fast, jerked him to his feet, and pushed him to the door where Burwell waited.
    “Get him in a car, now!”
    Sarah watched as Martina, one of the medics, pulled her stethoscope away from the gunman’s chest and looked up, shaking her head. Dead. She let herself be led outside by Smokey.
    Kincaid came up and tapped her shoulder. Burwell put his arm around her and then followed Kincaid inside the house. She put her gun on safe and took the sling off her shoulder and handed the machine gun to Smokey.
    “You alright?” he asked.
    She looked up at him. “For now, Smokey. For now.”
    So this was what it was like. Been shot at a lot of times, girl, but never shot someone. I should feel more, but I don’t. I want my babies, they need me, need to get them out of the community center.
    “El Tee, can we get my kids from the center?” She was surprised at how calm she sounded.
    “Soon,” he said, sounding far away. They had too much going on. Drug raid gone bad. Woman lost, possibly dead. The smell of pishxu , sage, was strong. There would be more death.
    Officer Sarah Greywolf motioned to the side of the building and Smokey followed her around the corner, away from the patrol cars, the drug suspects, the other officers. She turned her head to his shoulder, and the first tears came.
     
    Near Hermosillo, Mexico
     
    Enrico Alvarez stood alone on the platform and looked down on the workers below him. The large warehouse was brightly lit, even at midnight, the work continuing around the clock. From where he was the workers resembled white insects, their breathing apparatus looking like strange colorful antennae. He knew that he should wear a respirator like the workers, but he was only going to be in the weighing and packaging room for a minute longer.
    The workers wore respirators so they wouldn’t get addicted so quickly to the powder they were weighing. Once they got addicted, they made mistakes, and eventually would have to be killed or dumped in Mexico City with a habit.
    Alvarez wore his usual grey suit and light blue shirt, with twin scars running down his cheeks, remnants of a childhood spent in the slums of Zihuatanejo, and later, Mexico City. He had shoulder length thick black hair that draped over the collar of his suit . He was short and fat, but no one had called him that for almost twenty years. A door opened behind Alvarez and a large man dressed in khakis stood behind him. His second in command, Roberto.
    At a table below, a dozen workers meticulously weighed the powder and  placed it in bags.  The bags were then sealed in cans with various food labels for export to the United States. A woman suddenly became animated, waving her arms, urging the others around her to work faster, her long hair pulling out of a bun and falling on her shoulders.
    Alvarez pointed. The man behind him spoke into a radio. Two men came in a side door below and grabbed her arms and pulled her from the room.
    They turned walked outside and down a stairway. He waited for Roberto and they walked together to the adjacent building.
    This one was not so brightly lit on the inside. Smaller, darker. Two men were bound and gagged, laying on the floor in the middle of the room, with a half-dozen guards standing over them. The bound men wore the uniforms of the local policia .
    There are some good policia , and some bad ones, Alvarez thought. The bad ones, like these, thought they could arrest two of his employees. The good ones, they just leave me alone.
    He walked up and held out his hand. Roberto placed a .45 caliber pistol in it, and Alvarez shot the first man in the head. The second one, maybe twenty-one years of age, Alvarez thought, began pleading.
    “Por favor, Senor, I will do anything , just give me the chance, I will work for you do any . . .”
    Alvarez shot him and calmly handed the gun to Roberto, walking to the