~Chapter 2~

~Chapter 2~

~June 7th, 2019- Somewhere Across the Border from Texas
Hugo Perez’s worn boots shuffled dully across the concrete. A short man with black hair and mustache, he appeared to be an unassuming Mexican farmer. Few would guess he was one of Mexico’s most prominent drug dealers.
So prominent, in fact, that he had just recently been offered a partnership with a very large crime syndicate from the United States. They had sent him the offer over six months ago, and had sent a lady lawyer to iron out some of the contract details two and a half months ago. And, much to Perez’s initial confusion, they sent a second lady lawyer about a week ago. It didn’t take long for him to figure out the first was a fraud, but he still didn’t know why.
Perez nodded to the guard outside a large wooden door. Here, in a concrete bunker built into the side of a large hill, Perez kept whatever he didn’t want people to see. Drugs, weapons, even prisoners.
The guard brought out a ring of keys and, after shuffling through them to find the right one, unlocked the door and let the drug dealer into the room.
“Good morning, Senorita Menyala. Feeling better today?”
The woman calling herself Merah Menyala looked up from the metal chair she was tied to. Her face was bruised and beaten; her eyes looked tired and dull. Her once brilliant red hair was dirty and sticking all over the place.
Perez sat in the chair opposite her and looked her over. In another setting she would have been a beautiful woman. Her body was athletic and well formed, and her face was classically beautiful. It was almost a pity Perez had to kill her.
He brought his dark eyes to stare into her green ones.
“Now, let’s start again, shall we? Who are you?”
The woman parted her cracked lips and, after a painful attempt to clear her throat, spoke in a raspy voice.
“My name is Merah Menyala.”
Perez clucked his tongue at her, “But you see, I know that is not true! I had my people look it up, and there is no person we can find, lawyer, assassin, business woman, who has that name. But we did find that “Merah Menyala” is technically not a name, it is the name of the color scarlet in an Asian language called Malay. So do we want to come clean now?”
The woman just smiled at him, “Why don’t you just call me Scarlet then?”
Perez nodded, “Ah, I thought you might say that. You see, we did turn up an assassin who goes by the name of Scarlet, and you fit the description of her.”
Scarlet choked out a hoarse laugh, “Heh, plastic surgery… makes you look like anyone.”
Hugo shook his head sorrowfully, “It is sad how you maldito Americans turn everything into such a joke.”
Scarlet’s smile disappeared and she rested her chin on her chest.
“Well excuse me, Senor, I’ll just quit with the jokes and go straight to the part where I die in absolute seriousness.”
Hugo struck her across the cheek and the sound reverberated around the small room. He rose with eyes flashing and fist clenched.
“Aye Caramba! Vete a hacer punetas!”
Scarlet lifted her chin to put the green evil eye on Hugo.
“Go to Hell? You first, Perez!”
Hugo raised his hand to strike her again, but was stopped by the sound of gunfire coming from outside.
“Caramba!”
Scarlet raised her head and stared defiantly at Perez, ““Dammit” is right, Senor “muerto hombre”!”
Two shots and the thud of a body hitting the ground outside the door caused Hugo to spin around wide-eyed and face the door just as the lock was jingled, then turned.
The man who walked in looked like he could take out a small army. His black ragged hair and goatee were heavily caked in sand. His ice-blue eyes gleamed from the darkness of his eye sockets, and the scar running down the left side of his face gave him something of an evil look. His heavily muscled five-foot three-inch frame was clothed in desert fatigues and ammunition.
The AR-15 he had cradled in his right hand smoked slightly, and the barrel glared balefully at Hugo.
Nathan Wolv, ex-Marine Recon and current mercenary and assassin, grinned evilly at the drug dealer.
“Helluva day, eh Perez?”
Perez swore rapidly in Spanish as he fumbled at his side for a pistol. His stream of curses was cut short by the spattering of Nathan’s AR-15.
Nathan stepped into the room and was kneeling behind Scarlet before Hugo’s body hit the floor. In less than a second he had slipped the blade of his small Winchester knife between her wrists and, with a quick movement, severed the rope binding her.
“How you doin’, Red?
Scarlet rubbed her wrists and shook her head to clear her hair from her face.
“I’ve been better. But next time you get to be the decoy.”
Nathan helped her up and handed her a Smith and Weston pistol.
“We’ll see, but now we gotta go. I got the cops only minutes behind me, and they won’t like the fact I jumped the gun and gunned down all the guys they were so keen on arrestin’.”
Scarlet nodded and, gun at the ready, followed Nathan out of the room and across the sand to where Nathan’s borrowed Jeep sat waiting.