Louise
The meet was at an old, abandoned airfield way out in the boonies.
We got there with only twenty minutes to spare and pulled up alongside the runway, the ice cream truck sitting incongruously next to a couple of rusted aircraft carcasses.
Even in September at nearly eight in the evening, the Texas sun was hot, bleaching the tufts of grass that had grown up through the cracks in the concrete and gleaming off the broken panes of glass in what had once been the tiny passenger terminal.
The door to the control tower had long since been broken open, so we climbed up to the top and stood looking out over the airfield.
Some local teens must have discovered the place, because there were empty beer cans and graffiti all over the inside.
“You think we can pull this off?” I asked, nudging a can with my foot.
Sean wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Just remember,” he said. “It’s all about attitude.”
The sun glinted off a speck in the distance, a speck that slowly grew bigger and bigger in the clear blue sky. Then, with a roar of engines that shook the tower, the private jet was throttling back and sweeping in to land right in front of us. Sean led the way down the stairs.
The first three people out of the plane were men in suits, all carrying machine guns. The fourth was an older guy in slacks and a shirt. He removed his big, gold-rimmed sunglasses as he approached us. “Sean? And Louise?”
They’d demanded our full names on the phone. With the cartel, you didn’t fuck around with false ones. We nodded.
“I am Francisco.” He sounded cautious, but not unkind. “These men will search you.” It wasn’t a request.
Two of the men stepped up to us while the third kept his gun pointed right at us.
Hands swept up my legs and over my ass, up my sides and across my back.
Having a man do it should have felt uncomfortable—awkward, at least. But the men were as clinically professional as doctors, far from Malone’s heavies or Murray’s leering thugs.
It made it even scarier: I suspected they’d be just as clinical if they were ordered to drag our bodies into shallow graves.
The men stepped back and nodded that we were clean. “The weed is in the truck?” asked Francisco. Sean nodded. Francisco spoke in rapid-fire Spanish to two of the men, and they hurried off to the ice cream truck. “We’ll try some samples,” he told us as an afterthought. Again, not a request.
We spent an agonizing ten minutes standing there while the packets of weed were unloaded, counted and stacked up on the runway.
Packets were selected at random to be sliced open and tested.
Francisco sniffed the weed, rubbed it between his fingers and finally smoked joints of it, just one slow inhalation of each sample before he crushed the joint underfoot.
It was impossible to read his expression.
At last, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call.
Just one word: Sí. Then he crossed his arms and just stared at us as if waiting for something.
“So?” Sean asked at last. “Are we making a deal?”
“Not with me,” said Francisco. “With her.”
Behind him, a woman emerged from the plane.
Her long, coal-black hair blew in the wind, as did the long, gauzy layers of her exquisite white dress.
Everything about her was coolly elegant and off-the-scale confident.
One of those people who’ve held so much power for so long that they’ve become accustomed to it, like a president.
The men with guns stepped back respectfully as she approached.
I’d seen her in photos, but only grainy black and white ones shot with a long lens. This was Isabella Gallego. The head of the entire Gallego cartel.
It was very difficult to gauge her age. She could have been anywhere between mid-thirties and mid-fifties. Her skin was soft and barely lined, her hair still completely black—natural or dyed, I wasn’t sure. She was incredibly beautiful.
She looked both of us up and down, speaking to Francisco without turning to him. “So it’s good?” she asked in heavily-accented English.
“It’s really good,” said Francisco. “Smooth. Strong.”
“And consistent?” asked Isabella.
“Very.”
Isabella drew in a long, slow breath. “Okay,” she said. “Two hundred and fifty thousand, as agreed.”
I took a deep breath and glanced at Sean. He nodded at me. You can do this.
“No,” I said.
Isabella slowly took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were a beautiful deep brown, but they were utterly without warmth. “Excuse me?”
“I have a counter-offer,” I told her.
“That isn’t how this works. We agreed a price.”
I looked nervously at Sean. “We said two-fifty on the phone to get you here. But the weed is worth six hundred thousand. You know that. We know that.”
Isabella stared at me...and then laughed out loud. “In Texas, maybe. But we’re not from Texas. We’ll sell it to our dealers for seven hundred thousand...maybe eight. If we pay you six, it’s barely worth the trouble.” She shook her head. “Two-fifty. Take it.”
I wanted to take it. I was terrified. But two hundred and fifty thousand wouldn’t pay for Kayley’s treatment. I shook my head again.
There was a tiny noise, barely audible, from off to my left.
The men with guns, readying themselves in case they were told to fire.
Isabella was looking at me pityingly, urging me to do the smart thing.
I felt myself weakening. This is not me.
This is not my life. I was a freaking botany geek, for God’s sake!
I just wanted to run and let someone else deal with this.
And then Sean put his hand on my back. Just a gentle touch, but I could feel the whole strength of him throbbing through me, letting me know he was there, that he was beside me in every possible way, forever. My legs stopped shaking.
“Six hundred thousand,” Sean and I said together.
Isabella shook her head. “You are wasting my time,” she said. And turned to walk away. I saw her nod towards the men with guns and there were three clean, crisp metallic clicks as the guns were cocked.
It was time for my Hail Mary pass.
“Six hundred thousand for the weed,” I said, “...and something better.”
Isabella took another few steps towards the plane and, for one horrible moment, I thought she was going to ignore me. But then she lifted her hand. No bullets came, so I assumed she’d put the gunmen on hold. “What?” she asked, irritably.
“Me.”
Isabella slowly turned around. “Explain. But do it in the next thirty seconds.”
“I increased the THC content of that crop at least thirty percent above normal. I did it through a combination of custom fertilizer mixes, lighting cycles and precise watering. It’s complex, but replicable.
Maybe the crop isn’t worth $600,000 to you, but the value is in the process.
” I offered up a silent prayer of thanks to Stacey.
“I can teach your farmers the same method. How much money could you make, if you can grow stronger weed? Millions. Tens of millions, over the next decade. And I don’t even want a percentage: all I’m asking for is $350,000.
A one-time fee. Plus another $250,000 for the crop itself, which you already agree it’s worth.
” I was ready for her to haggle me down to $500,000, which was the amount we actually needed.
Isabella studied us for a long moment. “Risky way to make an offer,” she said at last, nodding towards the gunmen.
“If we’d just told you on the phone, would you have taken it?” asked Sean. “We had to promise you cheap weed so you’d come here and sample it, see how good it is.”
Isabella stared at him. “I don’t appreciate being tricked, Mr. O’Harra.” She turned to Francisco. “Do you believe she can do it?”
Francisco tilted his head to one side. “I believe it’s worth three-fifty to find out.”
Isabella sighed. “I’d need you in Mexico,” she told me. “You’d have to visit our farms, teach them individually. It would mean several trips.”
I nodded quickly. “Anything. Sure.”
Sean stepped forward. “Me too. I don’t leave her side.”
Isabella sighed again. “Yes, yes, you can bring him.”
“And I want a month, before I start,” I told her. “One month. Then you can have me for as long as you need me.”
Isabella pressed her lips together in a tight line and nodded at Sean. “This one said on the phone that you needed the money to save your sister. That she’s sick. Is that true? Or was that another trick?”
I looked right into her eyes. “That’s true,” I said.
She stared at me for a long time, searching my face for any hint of a lie. I stared right back at her. And at last, after the longest time, I saw the briefest flicker in those ice-cold eyes. “Family,” she said, “is very important.”
Then she slipped her sunglasses back on and she was back to brutal efficiency. “Transfer the money,” she told Francisco. “Load the drugs,” she ordered the men. They scurried to do her bidding. A measured nod of farewell to us...and she was gone, her heels clicking across the runway to the plane.
Francisco pulled out his phone and muttered into it in Spanish.
After a few minutes, he scrawled something down on a piece of paper and then passed it to me, pointing to each line in turn.
“The name of the bank in Switzerland,” he said, “your account number and your password. Six hundred thousand dollars is in there now. Call them and they’ll transfer it anywhere you want. ”
Six hundred thousand dollars. It hit me that Isabella hadn’t haggled. We had a hundred thousand dollars more than we needed. I took the piece of paper and folded it very, very carefully into my jeans pocket.
By now, the men had loaded the drugs into the plane. We watched as Francisco boarded and the steps were pulled up. Moments later, the plane taxied and roared off down the runway, then climbed towards the sun.
I turned to Sean. “Is that...it? Did we do it?”
He nodded slowly, then pulled me close. He gazed down into my eyes, dumbstruck.
“What?” I asked, worried.
“Just...you,” he said, brushing a lock of hair from my cheek. “You’re amazing, you know that?” And he kissed me.