Retribution Road by Jon Coon (e reader comics .TXT) 📕

“That’s a start. Tell me the rest. What is that dream you keep having?”

“It’s the same. Either I’m trapped in that school bus or I’m hung up in the deco chamber with Emily, she’s not breathing, and I can’t get to her. Or I’m trapped in that sub with bodies bumping into me and no room to move. I’ve never been claustrophobic. I used to love cave diving. But now? I guess I’ve just seen too much. And I don’t think talking about it helps.”

“Apparently kissing does,” she offered, smiling.

“That could be true, and I think we should test that hypothesis more often.”

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll make you a doctor’s appointment, and you try the new meds. Prazosin helps some patients with nightmares. Zoloft and Paxil have also helped. Promise me you’ll keep the appointment, and we will start testing that hypothesis more often. Also, talk with Alethea. I’m sure she can help.”

Gabe walked from the desk in the reception area to the computer room where Tom and Jimmy the Geek were engrossed in navigation charts with blue lines running back and forth from Colombia to Mexico to Jamaica to the US southern Gulf Coast and back. There were so many lines the chart looked like a bowl of blue spaghetti.

“Any luck?” Gabe asked.

“Jimmy thinks there may be a point of convergence here,” Tom said, pointing to a spot on the map in the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas near the border with Belize. “Plenty of jungle and small coves that could hide a sub base. We’ll get the satellites to have a closer look. How did you do with the Navy?”

“Master Chief Kurczewski is going to the commanding officer today. The commanding officer will take it to SEAL Team Two in Norfolk, and we should hear something soon.”

Juan Caldera owned several houses and other real estate but had only one home for his family. Built like a fortress of steel and stone, it sat high on a mountain face just below a plateau with an airfield. He stepped out onto the third-story veranda with a brandy snifter in hand and watched the evening sun slip beneath western mountains.

The mountains of Chiapas reached 4,900 feet, and the views of the river and the jungle below were spectacular. Emerald greens and tanzanite blues that would challenge the palette of any painter. Even the tranquility of the magnificent sunset or the happy laughter of his children playing in the spacious room behind the ten-foot bulletproof glass doors could not calm the storm of his emotion.

His wife of twenty-two years, and still the keeper of his heart, came from behind and wrapped her arms around him. “Come in and eat. The children are waiting for you. They won’t go to the table until you come in.”

“Yes, all right.” He kissed her, and they walked in, arms linked.

“Dinner,” he said to the children inside, and growled like a shaggy lion. “Last one to the table will be my dessert.”

Shrieking with laughter, the children ran to the dining room and stood by their chairs. Their parents entered the room, and when Juan helped Lareina into her chair, the children sat. Juan offered grace, and the first course was served by two kitchen servant girls. The children were quiet, waiting to be spoken to before speaking, and careful never to interrupt either of the adults.

“I visited the hospital today,” Lareina said as they sipped coffee and waited for the first-course china to be cleared. “They are thrilled with your gifts to the children’s wing. They say many children will be helped by the physical therapy equipment you gave.”

“To those who are given much, much is expected. We do what we can. Thank you for telling me of their need.”

“I’ve heard there is great need in the camps. They are filling so fast there’s not enough of anything. They say there are a half-million refugees from San Salvador, not to mention the thousands from Guatemala. Is there anything more we can do there?”

“Our men are putting together another caravan. Now is the time to hit the American border again. Our plan is working. Soon there will be no border there at all, and we will flood them with the drugs they so desperately want and the millions of refugees fleeing the chaos of our neighbors to the south. North America has turned its back on us for too long. Now they will know what it’s like to have the squalor we’ve lived in for decades while they’ve grown rich and fat.”

“You are a good man, Juan. Like Father Raul says, it’s truly time for justice to come to our people.”

“Tom may be right, it may be the only way, but it’s starting to feel wrong,” Gabe said to Alethea. He’d called her mostly to get Carol off his back. But when Alethea asked him what current events might be triggering the old fears and feelings, the conversation quickly shifted to the plans they were making for another assault on the cartel. “I know we have to stop the tons of drugs they’re attacking us with, but every time we hit them, they hit back. And every time, it escalates. More die on both sides and hundreds might have been killed if that sub full of Semtex in Baytown had blown. It’s madness, and I’m beginning to think only a miracle—and a big one—will ever stop it.”

“Then let’s start praying for that miracle.”

The way she said it convinced him she was serious. That was no offhand comment or flip answer. Perhaps a miracle was the only way the violence would ever end, but was that too much to hope for, to pray for? That was the question.

And it wasn’t his only question.

“Alethea, when I was at your house with Cas, while you were in the hospital, I had a vision, a dream that has been bothering me. Souricière was part of it. And