Iron River by T. Jefferson Parker Page A

bodies into the boat, swinging the dead by ankles and wrists high until their own weight carried them over the gunwales and they hit the deck with thumps that became less hollow as their numbers mounted.
    “Holy shit,” said Pace.
    “Little holiness here,” said Bradley.
    “Five men.”
    “A hundred a week. Two hundred. Heads on stakes. Mendez against the Zetas. We don’t know how many are dying.”
    “I may vomit.”
    “No one cares about your vomit. Stand up and shake it off, Ron. It’s time to negotiate with Mendez.”
    “He’s Herredia.”
    “Herredia, then. Stand up. Clear your brain. We’ve got a deal to make.”
     
     
     
    Late that night they sat on a tile veranda overlooking the Pacific. Bradley watched the moonlight shiver on the water and heard the palm fronds rattle in the breeze. He felt culpably brutal but he was not a man given to self-doubt.
    Pace proposed to manufacture one thousand guns, two large-capacity magazines for each firearm and one sound suppressor each, for one million cash dollars. He pointed out that this was roughly one-half the cost of used Chinese- and Indian-made submachine guns in God-knew-what condition, and only one-third the cost of new ones—few of them concealable and none of them silenced. They would be warranted free of defects for one year. The guns would bear no serial numbers or manufacturer’s marks except for Love 32 on the right side of each barrel.
    Pace handed Herredia some Polaroids of the Pace Arms building, the mold and dye bays, the assembly lines, the firing lines, the offices. Herredia looked at them patiently in the light from a tiki torch.
    “I think the thirty-two ACP is a weak load,” he said.
    “Tell the five dead men that,” said Pace.
    “I want to rename the gun,” said Herredia. “Something about death or the devil.”
    “I’m sorry, Mr. Mendez, but it’s the Love 32. This is nonnegotiable. History . . . ,” he added absently, staring out at the water. Herredia brooded and glowered and tried to ply Pace with fine tequila and wine and fishing stories but Pace responded with a series of knock-knock jokes until Bradley finally butt in and suggested that he shut the fuck up and make a deal.
    Pace came off his price a hundred grand, while making clear that all transportation and shipping was one-hundred-percent Mr. Mendez’s responsibility.
    “Shipping is not an interest of mine,” Herredia said, with a look at Bradley. “Mr. Jones here is very good at moving things from one place to another. Between us, the transport will go smoothly.” At first, Bradley hadn’t liked El Tigre’s quip about the stolen Red Cross helo carrying more cash and guns than any vehicle. Bradley had no patience with men who didn’t value a good ally when they were lucky enough to have one. If Herredia wanted to move his own dollars and guns, then let him. But now it sounded like Herredia was offering to share the machine. A helo. Interesting.
    “And I’ll need one-third of the nine hundred thousand dollars up front so I can order materials, hire my crew back, retool the lines for a totally new product, and make enough molds and dyes to crank out the units fast,” Ron said.
    Pace had told Bradley this a few days ago when he’d made his proposal over martinis, so Herredia was prepared for it. Herredia told Pace that there would be three hundred thousand cash in small bills waiting for them in a Compton warehouse just as soon as they could get there to pick it up.
    Pace told Herredia that, once operational, he would run one assembly crew—his finest—on seven twelve-hour shifts per week, with two hundred and fifty units ready for pickup in ten days. The full one thousand would take until midsummer, three weeks out.
    “Your enemies will never know what hit them,” he said.
    Bradley was prepared for Herredia to pitch smug Ron Pace off the balcony and be done with the pendejo. Ever since the death of Gustavo Armenta, El Tigre had expected vengeance on