Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(44)

*

ALTHOUGH HE MOURNED his family and lamented the situation he was in, Orlando had been determined not only to survive but to come out the other side as a man to be feared. With the weapons and ammunition he’d taken from the two dead bounty hunters—a goat’s horn AK-47, a semiautomatic twelve-gauge shotgun, a 9mm pistol, and a .357 revolver—Orlando eventually hiked down from the mountains and slept for a few weeks in the burned-out home of his family in El Pozo while he plotted his revenge on the men who had wiped them out.

By the end of the year, by the time Orlando had turned twenty, he’d killed thirteen of the men who had ordered and participated in the raid. Seven of them died at the same time when the local police station exploded after a package bomb addressed to the chief of police was delivered.

The rest of them were killed one by one using the stealth, patience, and ruthlessness he’d learned in the mountains.

Orlando wasn’t garish or showy in his methodology. He didn’t humiliate his targets ahead of time or mutilate their bodies afterward. He didn’t hang the dead men for public display, or pin notes to their clothing to trumpet his revenge. He also varied his technique based on the target and the circumstances.

Two he shot point-blank in the face while they sat napping in their patrol car. A federale had his throat slit while sitting on a barstool at the local cantina. Another was garroted on his day off while he was bent over weeding his vegetable garden.

The local commander of the federales who served as liaison to the national army and who had likely approved the raid on the Panfile farm, was strangled to death in his bed by Orlando’s bare hands.

It wasn’t long before word spread about what had happened in and around El Pozo. Orlando had become a man to be feared. When the bosses of the cartel asked him to join them on an official level, Orlando shrugged and agreed. His enemies already considered him a member of the Sinaloans as it was.

He’d become known as El Pu?o, The Fist.

*

DESPITE HIS RAPID rise in the structure of the cartel, Orlando never succumbed to the temptations all around him. He didn’t drink alcohol or use the products they distributed, he wasn’t needlessly cruel, he didn’t lust for power, and he never cheated on his wife, whom he loved with all of his heart. During raids and operations, El Pu?o never panicked, never lost his cool, and never inflicted more damage or pain than absolutely necessary.

He preached to others that patience and strategy were more important than ruthlessness or bloodlust. He was never in a hurry as he surveilled and observed the habits of his targets. He almost always refused to go after the families of their enemies, although he knew there were plenty of thugs who would and did. Orlando was an apex predator with nothing to prove to anyone.

When he was promoted to the exalted position of head of security for the entire organization, he tried to teach those same virtues to the hundreds of soldiers they sent him for training and instruction. With just a few exceptions, he failed. The men they sent learned his techniques, but they were largely hotheaded, bloodthirsty, and sloppy. He couldn’t train that out of them.

There were a few exceptions. Pedro “Peter” Infante had been one of them. Infante had headed up the Wolf Pack of four assassins. Despite Infante’s skill and caution, his entire team had been wiped out. It was the first time that had happened within the organization.

And as far as Panfile was concerned, it would be the last time as well. He’d come north with three other handpicked men, but he’d left them at a cartel-affiliated motel property in Roswell, New Mexico. He’d told the men to wait there until they heard from him.

The three weren’t happy about being left behind, but they did as they were told. They wouldn’t be there when Panfile returned, he knew. They’d get bored waiting and go back home. The three men were well trained by him, and they were efficient and ruthless killers. But for this assignment, he knew he couldn’t fully trust them and he couldn’t afford any mistakes. Plus, this was personal.

It was personal because Orlando’s protégé, the best of them all and the most famous, had been Abriella Guzman.

Abriella, who’d been brutally murdered six months before, not far from where Orlando Panfile made his camp.

Abriella, his beautiful and charismatic student, who had been taken from the world by a gringo falconer who lived less than three miles away.

Abriella was the one protégé who could make him abandon his principles about not harming families because she’d been slaughtered before she could ever have one of her own.

*

AFTER HIS MEAL, Orlando washed his dishes in the small creek and propped them in a sagebrush to air-dry. Then he walked up the hill and dropped to his hands and knees to approach the spotting scope.

He’d inadvertently timed it just right. This was the period in the afternoon when the family went to town for grocery shopping or doctor’s visits. He watched as the falconer stood by while his wife buckled their baby into her car seat. Both adults climbed into the white van with lettering on its side, and they drove away.

Americans treated their babies like eggs, he thought. All five of his children had grown up happy and healthy without ever once being strapped into a car seat.

He waited until the car was out of sight and then another fifteen minutes to make sure they didn’t forget something and come back.

Orlando went to his den and fitted a curly black wig on his head and used adhesive to apply a thick beard to his face. He checked his appearance in a hand mirror and approved of what he saw.