The Spirit Survives Read Free

the first aid kit. Gritting my teeth, I applied alcohol-saturated gauze to my head. Despite almost passing out from the alcohol scorching my scalp, I managed to apply steady pressure to my wound. When the bleeding appeared to have stopped, I threw the bloody gauze aside, covered the wound with clean gauze, and stretched tape across the fresh pad and under my chin. After swallowing three aspirins, I began feeling somewhat better.  
      Reaching into the backpack a second time, my fingers closed around my small flashlight. Its beam revealed a man lying face down about twenty feet in front of me. His ponytail was visible, and his left leg was buried in rocks up to his knee. He must have dived into the cave as the entrance was collapsing from the force of the tornado. Blood encrusted his head and his injured leg, and he wasn’t moving. I tried to walk toward him, but dizziness forced me to my knees.  
    The groan that cracked the silence a second time hadn’t been made by the man trapped in the cave with me. Pointing my flashlight toward the sound, I saw eyes shining in the corner about thirty feet to my left.  
    Oh shit! The sound I’d heard wasn’t a groan. It was a damn growl. My unconscious companion and I were sharing the cave with a timber wolf.

 
    Chapter 6
     
    Cherokee Alverez and Bo Lopez, both independent operators before joining forces, had been partners for three years. Cherokee worked for anyone with the money to pay him, but Bo was more specialized. He worked primarily for two of Mexico’s largest drug cartels as their principal operator in the USA. He understood that, if the two cartels ever started a war with each other, he would have to choose a side and the value of his life would be substantially reduced.  
    Bo was fifty-four years old and had short gray hair, a muscular build, and at six- foot-nine, he stood out in any crowd. He looked menacing, regardless of his size, with green eyes and a mean smile which looked more like a snarl. He would make a person not accustomed to dealing with his sort wince. He was the one in command in this partnership.  
    Cherokee was thirty-six years old and had coal black hair, which he wore in a ponytail. He considered himself a lady’s man, and in fact he was quite successful with women who needed to be dominated. His dark brown eyes were covered with sunglasses most of the time. He had a tattoo of an angel on his neck. He had awakened with his prize tattoo after a drunken spree with two women in Mexico. He didn’t know where or exactly when he got the tattoo. Cherokee thought it was some sort of blessing bestowed upon him.  
    Alverez and Lopez were contract killers.
    On August 10, 2005, Bo accepted a contract from Elezar Fernandez, his contact with the Salazar cartel. The hit was for a nineteen year-old girl named Veronika Ivanova. Bo was not told why Salazar wanted this girl killed and didn’t care anyway. He was getting paid $50,000 plus expenses for the hit, and he offered Cherokee a thirty percent split. Cherokee quickly agreed on condition, that he could “play” with the girl if she was good looking. Cherokee was always horny.  
    Fernandez supplied Bo with an address for the girl, an art major at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay. She had an apartment off campus in nearby Appleton, Wisconsin.  
    Bo and Cherokee’s base of operations was Chicago, and the Salazar Cartel was based in Houston. Bo had been to Houston many times to meet with Fernandez and discuss jobs, and he was expected to go anywhere in the USA or Mexico to fulfill his contracts.  
    He was paid well for his efforts, but a female college student should be an easy hit and so the amount of money seemed especially generous. He grinned when he thought of his promise to Cherokee to let him “play” with her if she was good looking. Hell, this might be fun. Everyone should enjoy their job ,” he thought.
    At the airport in Green Bay they rented a Ford Excursion and then drove to the