Page 32 of Blind Trust
“It is not hot,” Arturo said. “You eat while I show you what I brought you. Then suit up and show me your GPS.”
Arturo had fitted him out.
He had a Ka-Bar knife down his back, like old times, with a 9mm handgun on his right hip, and another pistol strapped to his ankle. With the AR in his hands and extra ammo hanging crisscrossed over his chest, he looked like freaking Rambo.
Brian couldn’t have asked for more. Arturo had treated him as a brother would.
Add in the martial arts fighting skills Brian Meng Ken had grown up with, and the various styles he’d picked up in more recent years, the question was never which weapon he should use, but which of these fighting tools he would choose to use to win a battle.
He was a man who didn’t deliberate long, but who knew almost in an instant, which tool was best, and unerringly selected the correct one. As a result, he rarely lost a fight.
Had there been tapes, his fighting style would have been analyzed as similar to Bruce Lee’s, though he knew several other styles. Bruce had been the hero of Brian’s childhood that he’d most wanted to emulate.
Martial arts had gone a long way to making him strong in mind, body, and spirit when he was a child and neighborhood boys had picked on him for being half “chink.” In the martial arts community, his heritage was something to be proud of, and his father and grandfather were Chinese men he also looked up to. The Marines had simply added to his arsenal.
All this, Arturo, of course, knew, as the two of them had fought often together, to the point where each knew what the other would do without the fancy high-tech equipment which allowed communication on an operation.
But given all that, it still felt good to be fitted out with the tools of his trade again, and to be going into the fight with his brother at his side.
The GPS device showed Brian and Arturo an area Arturo knew.
“There is an old abandoned warehouse there,” he said. “The company went out of business. I don’t know who owns it now.”
Brian got into Arturo’s car for the drive to Ensenada, thirty minutes away, and they headed down the highway.
GPS had still not moved, which meant they should catch up to them soon. They spent the drive catching up with each other. Arturo talked about his wife and kids, his old grandmother who was now one-hundred-and-three, and his American cousin who had joined the Marines last year.
When they arrived in the area, Arturo drove slowly past the warehouse once, and then circled back and came in from the other side. He’d spotted a place to park near an old building where it would be less noticeable. They would be moving in heavily armed, but he didn’t want his car stolen or the tires removed.
The warehouse was in front of them, and they moved in closer. The GPS showed she was in a brown adobe building behind the old warehouse.
“Even if this warehouse is empty,” Arturo said. “There may be squatters inside.”
“Great,” Brian said.
They would have to check out the larger building before checking out the smaller one, because the larger one would be at their backs when they entered the smaller hut, and they didn’t want anyone sneaking up behind them.
The adobe building Cecelia was inside, looked like a small but long house, with a window the size of shoe box set ten-feet-high, near the tin roof, to allow for air flow in the heat. The open windows had no glass, and no screens, which also meant no air conditioning.
Brian could hardly stand the thought of her being in there and couldn’t wait to get her out.
As he watched the building, his thoughts turned to what she might be going through.
Cecelia was in that building, and she’d be sweltering in this heat, likely getting more dehydrated by the minute.
After we get her out, I’ll need to get water into her soon.
Already, he was thinking of the aftercare she might need. He had his medical kit in the toolbox of his truck and had been prepared for anything, but the truck was on the other side of the border, and he might have to get what she needed faster than he could get to what was in the truck.
Arturo might have to come through for him again, if she needed anything right away.
The warehouse was empty of people, but there were boxes stacked inside. Someone was using it for storing and shipping. There was a forklift in the middle of the building, and a folding table and one chair, which looked like a makeshift office for deals. A notepad and pen sat on the table. Arturo looked at the notepad, but it didn’t say anything and provided no clue as to who was using the warehouse.
Since no one else was inside, they used the building to get closer to the adobe building, and watched it, to see how many men they would be dealing with.
Brian counted two men inside the adobe building, who had gone inside carrying cardboard boxes of supplies, and two men outside, one casually leaning on an old Jeep, while the other sat on a chair near the door, cleaning his fingernails with a large knife.
That made four men, that he knew of, armed with guns and knives. There might be more.
