Not Quite a Fair Fight

Crashing the Aztex Party In The Yucatan

Most is concurrent with "Not Quite A White Knight Vol. 4.9.

Note the Point-Of-View, each chapter contains the observations of Irene or Tony. As the commander of the operation, Irene must report on the general course of events to the Prince. As the lowest-ranked trooper involved, Tony's perspective reflects what he sees. The Prince is not "on camera" in this, for most of the operation he is at the resort for the law firm's extended Labor Day social, keeping folks happy.

The story is nominated as "Non-Erotic." There are naked men and women involved, but outside of the principals who retain an appropriate attitude there is only incidental reference to how they might be making friendly contact.

Torture and lethal actions will occur, but the story will not dwell on these. The purpose is simply to show how a substantial threat to the Prince's people was neutralized.

I suggest that the chapters with Tony's viewpoint (1, 5, 7, 11, and 13) will be the most interesting.

Prelude - Darnel started it.

Chapter 1. Tony Comes In - Tony's View of the Aztex plan. (Tony)

Chapter 2. Recon Off Yucatan - Success in battle requires a plan, and a plan requires gathering information before the troops depart. (Irene)

Chapter 3. Mayan Contact - The good guys get lucky and save a Mayan from becoming fish bait because of his young love. (Irene)

Chapter 4. Tuska Sails - Events during the voyage and after arrival. (Irene)

Chapter 5. A Close Look - Going over the latest maps for the changes. (Tony)

Chapter 6. Flex The Plans - Adjusting the plan for the new maps and making a path while the Aztex poison gang does their thing. (Irene)

Chapter 7. Blue Encounter - Boots on the ground as Tony returns, and something critical comes out of the Blue. (Tony)

Chapter 8. New Wrinkle - One new fact leads to a critical change. (Irene)

Chapter 9. Events Of The Week - The lull before the storm as both sides move forward with plans. Cameras, mikes and drones put us there. (Irene)

Chapter 10. Sunday Night Command View - Special Force Tony opens the doors and contacts the package. (Irene)

Chapter 11. Escape - "I have food... and a blessed jeep..." (Tony)

Chapter 12. Onion Bun - How do you say "rain steel and fire" in Aztex? (Irene)

Chapter 13. Adios Mexico - We exit via Zodiac. "...this sea is trackless..." and "Tropic Maria" gets us to Belize. (Tony)

Chapter 14. Reports Of Ops - Reports sent to the Prince during operations. (Irene)

Chapter 15. The Morning After - Cleanup, collect, and survivors including whores. (Irene)

Chapter 16. Politics - Mexico and the Church each manage the aftermath. (Irene)

Chapter 17. Closing The Books - Later details. (Irene)

Not Quite A Fair Fight

A Story In The "Not Quite A White Knight" Universe

Prelude

This story is tied to the "Not Quite A White Knight..." story line and uses the same characters. There are nearly naked men and women involved, but only incidental reference to how they might be making contact. It is mainly an outline of the combat operation and the various wrinkles that required adjustments.

The story is nominated as "Non-Erotic." There is no explicit sex on camera.

-

Darnel really started it all in May when he picked Gracie for a sex and pain party he was arranging because that worked for him, he was counting on it mushrooming into a war between 49 and the Crystal Aztexs. The man made his living causing trouble for other gangs, so it was a normal boring night. The real cause of the conflict was economics and ego, but aren't they always? That is the human condition.

It didn't go the way Darnel hoped, more conflict came from other quarters like Houston and Hanoi.

The Aztex plan was to send drug crazed volunteers with automatic weapons into the Pablo, the family apartment building that was the center of 49, on the September 1 Labor Day holiday. The resulting combat was so unfair.

The Aztex assault force of drugged-up assholes were recruited with an announcement that promised, when they ran out of ammo, free drugs would be provided to enhance the zip-tie after-party.

I couldn't allow that to happen. Whether or not I am a nice guy had nothing to do with it.

Every citizen knows that the cops usually need a warrant to enter, and I kept the Pablo "due cause" free, so my folks could grow weed, cook up party drugs and live in safety. We supplied some of the natural demand LA has for these products.

But as with all laws, there is a loophole to the "cops need warrant" thing. If, for example, an overdosed meth-head asshole is seen entering my building holding an AK-47 with a half-dozen clips of ammo, then the police do not need a warrant to storm in. Once in the door they can greatly disturb the premises and the innocent inhabitants with enthusiasm and their own automatic weapons. (Ask Gracie's late mother.) So when Tony gave me the drug-crazed Aztex plan I put my best people on making a 49 plan to stop it.

My military advisor Irene planned an even more unfair preemptive counterattack on the Aztexs during their warm-up party in the Yucatan, where they thought they would be undisturbed as they "got the mood right." There was nothing fair about it, but then, that was what the Aztexs asked for, and it kept my people safe. Sounded good to me.

This is the story of the unfair preemptive counterattack on the Aztexs.

-

Chapter 1. Tony Comes In - Tony's View

by Tony

(Note: Except for the last dozen paragraphs, most of this chapter is Tony's viewpoint of events in "Not Quite A White Knight book 4" chapters 8 to 20.)

I have learned that the Leader of the 49 has several names including the Prince of the Colony (?), Eric Grey Esq. (a fucking lawyer!), Chief/Jefe of the Tribe and the name he used with his gang, Paulo Zero. I will use Paulo when I refer to him, as that is the name he gave when we were first introduced roughly a decade ago. I was also told at the time that the 8-story apartment building, an urban fortress in LA, was named after his father Pablo Zero who was a serious drug dealer in Miami during the power boat era, and was built by his uncle Toad who was a criminal mastermind in LA with several violent specialities, running several crews. I never learned Toad's real name.

I had been the head of the Crystal Aztex (their spelling) LA chapter for a few years when my wife, who I will only dignify with the term "witch," betrayed me in hopes of advancing her standing in the national gang's leadership. She needed a sacrificial goat and I guess I looked good for it. I was accused of "acting nice to our enemies" plus our divorce was not moving quick enough for her.

Her plan was to torture me before a crowd as an inspirational pain spectacle to whip up the cream of suicidal maniac drug fiends gathered from all the Aztex chapters. At the high point of the weekend she was scheduled to be impaled on my drug-enhanced erection as she used a chest spreader to open my chest so she could rip out my heart with her bloody bare hands while I and 200 other people watched and screamed. That would end our marriage without lawyers. After they drank a mix of rum, drugs and the blood drained from my body they planned to party (with rape) to exhaustion. Once exhausted and half asleep, they would be driven to airplanes and flown overnight to LA. There, once they were tuned up on PCP, a witch's cocktail of other drugs and given automatic weapons, they would be driven to the eight-story Pablo apartment building for a mass slaughter they thought would destroy 49, the rival gang.

The Aztexs would then move into the building, because the upper floors would make a great drug factory, in partnership with their Asian suppliers.

Meth abusers can get crazy when other drugs are added and the Aztex command staff had a recipe book of made-to-order cocktail mixes for any party. This type of thing - the pyramid horror show sacrifice with a mass attack after - was an annual event, but usually a much smaller group (30 to 50) of suicidal maniacs was involved. The media wrote the attacks off as gang-on-gang annual end-of-summer violence. (Labor day and Memorial day are traditional gang violence high points.)

For this blowout they collected around 150 party goers plus maybe 20 to 50 staff and veteran maniacs.

In this case the press would call it a riot or a gang war, because "Divorce with Prejudice via mass murder" does not sell newspapers or draw clicks in the state with the most divorces, divorced people, and divorce lawyers.

The Aztex theory was that, using new safe labs in the Pablo, in six months folks from California to Texas would be amazed at all the high quality meth flooding the market, forcing all their smaller rival out of business. The same way Borders killed local bookstores, or Amazon killed Borders.

The Aztex chapters in Houston and Taos and other cities started decades ago as a group of smarter-than-average college students - a chemistry club really - who sought to experiment with drugs for personal use. Over time, as the founders aged out, less reasonable elements of the gang took over. They managed the physical and intellectual assets a bit more aggressively than the lotus eater hippie founders. The new leaders moved the gang into the drug trade, primarily manufacturing and marketing meth because you didn't have to grow anything. (The big drugs like grass, cocaine, and heroin are all grown, so they are subject to the vagaries of farming, like weather, clouds, insects, etc. Then they have to be processed. Meth starts with the process, so it is simpler.) Eventually the gang moved into other criminal enterprises. Now, with demand outpacing even the most organized squads of smurfs, the gang found itself partnered with criminal forces from the Orient who supplied the precursors for the meth.

(Note: this story occurs in 2008, soon after the "Sudafed Laws" started to go into effect. At the time small-time meth producers employed folks called "smurfs" to purchase the large amounts of OTC drugs used as raw material for their product. However, as the laws took effect backed by real-time computer databases, meth producers needed other sources of supply. One might say that the clever law forced small-time producers out of the business in favor of larger more violent, better financed criminal operations who bought what they needed - like everybody else did - from China. As a bonus, while the other drugs are subject to discovery by drug dogs at the point of import, the chemicals used to make meth do not have the dog problem.)

When I was growing up the LA Aztex chapter was small, our meth production activities were limited to personal use and local street trade. We mainly sold locally grown grass and imported cocaine, that was what the LA folks demanded to drive creativity. For a cut the gang gave cover and protection to all manner of other criminal operations in the geographic area.

For my start, under cover of a the family landscaping and home improvement business, I learned burglary from the homes of people who had too much money. We would do the honest work contracted, cutting prices to keep our honest competitors away from the most promising jobs. But while we did the honest work at bargain prices we would evaluate the home for valuables and security. For instance, people might ask us to water the plants and give us their security code while they went on vacation. I like to say I can open any door passed through by other people. It was an almost honest trade, based on our family values, and we avoided violence. We were careful to put at least 6 months between finishing a landscaping job and the "bonus payoff" visit where we helped ourselves to some marketable items.

Most rich folks only have a three or four month memory for the police report once they realize the safe seems to be empty. Plus, they always have enemies they suspect, like ex-wives, business associates, their kids rowdy friends, the neighbor with the noisy dog, etc.

In LA anybody in such a business needed the protection of/from the gang for their neighborhood (it is really one or the other), and where we lived that was the Aztexs. When my family joined the gang they charged us a smaller cut for the protection, and if they needed our services they called. I'm a charming and reasonable guy so in time I moved up the gang's ladder until the locals elected me as their Jefe.

In the last few years meth production and sales became the big money-maker. In the Aztex area of LA, pre-Sudafed laws, the number of foreclosed empty houses provided a natural garden for meth production to flourish, and the criminals making up the gang followed the opportunity.

In early 2008 new elements started to show up. At first it was known members from other Aztex chapters in New Mexico and Texas who started their own labs in our area for cooking and selling meth. (There were a lot of foreclosed houses.) They were fellow Aztexs who paid their dues and fees so we let them in. As Jefe I invested my cut as usual. This had always been a small-time business, because the choke point was raw materials for production. Then came the damn "Sudafed laws" backed by a computer database for scanned IDs. (The laws started earlier, but the fast computer linkups changed things.) The good news was these new operations seemed to have a safer production process (fewer houses went "boom" in the night) and a small but steady supply of raw materials. The newcomers claimed that associates in Arizona had access to the critical ingredients from the older population living there, as if there were these groups of older smurfs running around in old folks mini-vans. Supposedly the Arizona suppliers partnered with our new cooks. They split the product as payment. I still took my cut in cash, which based on production, not local sales. I thought I was staying on top of things.

At the time I was negotiating with 49, the gang in the adjacent territory. The impetus of negotiation was the unclaimed area called "Seerdon Forest," an abandoned factory area between us. This was prime real estate that begged for both production and marketing. My negotiations also sought common ground toward a merger of the two gangs. But elements on both sides opposed a merger.

For my Aztexs, the biggest obstacle was that 49 was 100% opposed any "death drug" trade including meth. Roughly 15% of my Aztex members were hard-core full-time meth types, and another 15% to 30% were involved part-timers. They wanted me to take the Seerdon and then take the Pablo, with the non-meth types doing the fighting. The rest of my people said that was crazy, they wanted a "live and let live" attitude that worked well for them.

The other gang, 49, was larger, more family oriented, they lived longer and were upwardly mobile. They essentially owned the high school where both gangs sent their children. As a gang 49 recruited the best teachers for the school and kept both the teachers and students safe. College success and good careers followed graduation, which appealed to the majority of the citizens living in the Aztex area. They had a criminal side, but none of it was street drug trade. Anybody who tried to step in got stepped on hard. Also, 49's tactical power was dominant, their security guys were disciplined and para-military in nature. I saw a takedown where they baited, neutralized and captured alive a pair of experienced professional suicidal assassins from Mexico. These were real hard-cases. The co-ordinated operation also took down a house and, by taking the whole lot alive, uncovered a plot by the damn Sunset Sharks to start a gang war between us and 49.

For this operation my son, Tonto, was in the control center with a seat front-and-center, because of high school links to other geeks. Tonto was very sweet on a girl in 49. He was also friends with the 49 geeks. So he had a seat.

For my meth-Aztexs the best that could be said was that some of the folks - maybe a third - had their medication right whenever the shooting started for any op. With weapons they were a bigger danger to their own folks than the enemy. Most were either too wound up or too relaxed to live very long, and none of them followed orders well. The idea of actually taking suicidal killers alive was something they had no concept of.

I saw Paulo take part in this op, he was he bait, which means he really trusted his people. Me? I would not trust my guys to get me a drink from the soda machine.

To me, and most of my friends, the 49 gang seemed like people we wanted to stay friendly with. But that minority element in the Aztexs coveted 49's territory and facilities, especially the Pablo apartment building, which was a "New Jack City" type of urban fortress.

Because I did not suspect her until it was too late, the witch I married was able to ease control of day-to-day operation from me. To keep the troops in line she let me out in public, but after the Spring semester ended she effectively kept me on clubhouse arrest, surrounded by big dumb bodyguards with Texas accents. She filed for divorce but that was just a distraction to get me out of the house so she could make personal close connections with visiting out-of-state supporters. More new faces showed up, new drug labs were constructed in empty houses, and with new supplies production shot up. I will say, the new faces built labs which did not blow up and attract attention, they stuck to serious protocols, a concept that eluded the typical LA meth head. I deduced that the increase in serious Oriental faces on the street went with the new supplies of essential chemicals and Chinese-made weapons.

I felt the walls closing in but I stayed cool until the time was right, when the Texas blunder-guards assigned to me relaxed. I sensed this would not be a normal divorce. So I made my move. I knew that a screwdriver properly inserted in the ear can turn off even the biggest Texan. In my escape I damaged a few more Texans and fled to a safe house in another part of LA. From there I made late-night trips to plant wireless cameras, keeping watch on what used to be my territory. On my over-muffled Ducati, wearing leathers and a helmet, I was safe at night except when it rained. And like the song says, "It never rains in California."

I wanted to go to 49, but I knew I could not approach them cold, if I tried I would catch a bullet if I was lucky. To surrender safely I needed a gift for them. The Aztexs provided what I needed. I snatched an Aztex I knew from Houston, a master meth-cook named Crow. He was a perv so his people were used to his taking little unannounced "vacations." They did not even know he was gone, he was so focused on the bait I arranged that he didn't see me coming. I had him wrapped up as a gift for Paulo. Paulo and Irene even got the genius sending friendly emails AFTER he was captured and his brain was being squeezed. But I am getting ahead on myself, after I grabbed the gift I still had to have words with Paulo.

To arrange my surrender, I made a phone call using a line I could trust. My son Tonto was spending the summer in Portland with the 49 girl who had his young heart hooked deep.

(Why Portland? The witch thought Tonto was learning from family how to steal, second-story stuff. That was half true, he was interning with a stockbroker. His girl was just across the river, in Washington state. Thus, Tonto could say with a straight face that he was not in the same state as the girl. The kids are clever.)

This girl, Pammie, was attractive, whip-smart, and nothing like Tonto's mother. Plus she liked Tonto enough to have him under her spell. Totally. I admit she was a too provocative and bossy for my taste, but in bed I can say that Tonto got the better deal. If the boy held on right I'm sure he would have a better life.

On Saturday July 26 I sent a message to Paulo by way of Tonto in Oregon, to his girl in Washington, and his girl's sister who was sleeping in Paulo's bed on occasion. The message gave the times when he could call me on my cell phone without exposing either of us.