Chapter Two-Hundred and Sixty-Three

Chapter Two-Hundred and Sixty-Three
Hawkins felt relieved to hear what Hondo told them. “And at least, this cartel is willing to listen.”

“Si, they are,” Hondo replied. “But I think Carlos isn’t coming alone and he will bring a death squad with him. They are going to make an example out of Ronnie and if  Mezla gets killed that will show the other cartel that they should have stayed out of their business.”

“And what will that do to Granite Falls?” Kota wanted to know.

“Bien, if they can confront them on that farm, they can downplay innocents getting hurt,” Hondo explained. “But if they run into them in town, then innocents will die in the crossfire.” 

“We just have to make sure they catch everyone then,” Hawkins stated.

“I have the evidence we need to wrap up the mayor and Hal,” London informed them. “We just need to call in the Marshals to make the arrests.”

“Maybe we don’t,” Kota suggested. “We can get Mark and Allen in quicker and let them call in the Marshals. They can make that call.”

London sighed hard. “If that’s what you want to do, I’m all in but you have to catch them unaware. These men won’t go down easily.”

“Hell lady, we know that,” Titan stated. “Gil thinks he has the power behind his office and Hal is just plain stupid.”

“If anyone is, he sure is and he won’t go down without cause,” London agreed. “So do what you need to do then.”

“If you need us with you today Hondo, let us know,” Hawkins offered. “We can send Brute, Nash and a few other men with you if you like.” 

“Si, I will take all the men I can get. I will have my five sons with me as well. Carlos wants to show Ronnie and his friends that he has the power of the cartel behind him and I'm afraid he will use the men against them. It might get nasty before we are all done.”

“Yeah, it might,” Hawkins agreed.

Brute scoffed. “We’ll be ready for anything then, just tell the cartel guys not to shoot us by mistake.”

“Oh, dios mio…Si, I will do that. We will pick you up on our way to the airport. We should leave fairly soon if we want to meet his plane.”

“We’ll be ready,” Brute assured him.”

“And I’ll call Mark and get him in the loop about our mayor and his cop,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins ended the call with Hondo then called Allen and Mark. He told them to come out to the compound. He didn’t want to tell them over the phone, of course.

They arrived within half an hour. They sat patiently and listened to what the MC had to say. Then they looked over the evidence London had and they looked angry when they found everything to be true.

London told them what her father had been doing and how he was dying from his drinking. 

Mark said he already knew about Jenson’s drinking and he wasn’t too surprised to find out he was involved. He looked at London and nodded. “I’ve been watching him for a while now. I had a feeling he’d been doing something but I never realized it was this bad. Then Ronnie and his gang? I figured they were up to no good but no one came forward until now. Now it all makes sense. We can only prepare for what’s coming and round up the bad guys after the cartels duke it out. Damn, I hate this. I wish we would have known before now.” 

“We couldn’t tell you before now,” London explained as she shook her head. “Ronnie and his friends wouldn’t have allowed us to bring it up. Ronnie wanted to take me hostage at one point. I wasn’t safe in town, so after I came here to get Chris, I ended up staying. Ronnie had to keep their secrets until they were ready to move. They’ve killed people to keep those secrets.”

“Yes and don’t worry, we’ll bring that up when we get them to court,” Allen assured her.

“We have the texts on Jeson’s iPhone," Hawkins said. “London has files and photos along with more evidence.”

“That will hopefully make the case.” Allen nodded.

“If they make it to court,” Hawkins reminded them. “They got a cartel hit squad coming for them. And those guys don’t mess around. They don’t like to miss what they aim at.”

Mark nodded. “Yeah, that’s for sure. Let’s just hope they don’t get innocents killed today.”

JuJu finally looked up and said, “You might need a boat in the river at some point today.”

“Why is that?” Hawkins asked. 

“Last night I went out there to sabotage their boat and I found it loaded down with pills and other shit. I was gonna blow it up but I figured you might need the evidence so I watered down the pills and put sugar in the gas tanks. If they try to use the boat, it won’t be going very far.”

Allen shook his head and said, “You realize you might have fucked up our case right? We needed those pills as evidence.”

“No worries on that, there is enough of them left as evidence,” Juju assured him. “But they might just toss the evidence over the side to get rid of it.”

Mark grinned. “If we find traces of the pills that’s all we need. Oh and we’ll be busting Agent Trey Ritcher too.” He looked over at London and grinned. “You included him in the evidence as well and I thank you for that.” Shaking his head he admitted, “I never did like him, he was just always a little too slick and the people we had the evidence for, he always managed to get them off. Now we know why.”

Allen nodded as he added, “You sure didn’t leave us much to do with this but that’s ok, we’ll be around to mop up the mess after the cartel gets done.” Then he looked over at London to ask, “What do you want to do about your dad?”

London shook her head. “You can’t take him in yet. They’ll know the jig is up, so to speak. From what they tell me… He isn’t going to make it anyway. The booze finally got him, I think you should just let it happen. I know that seems cruel but that’s just the way he lived. Always on the edge and he’s the one who drank. No one had a gun to his head. I think he’s known about his liver for a while now. This was his way of dealing with his bad choices.” She paused then said, “He’s made some bad decisions along the way. He lost his temper and hurt my mother causing her to almost lose Chris when she was pregnant. Then after he was born deaf, because of him hurting her, he ignored the kid for most of his life. He finally got the boy he wanted and because of something he did to her while she was pregnant, he couldn’t face the baby he’d created with her.”