HANGURE

A Native American boy goes missing in Japan. The CEO of the Native run casino on the reservation hires a one time active duty Marine, Japanese speaker, and former soldier of fortune born on the Wind River Reservation to search for him. When his Shoshone Arapaho mother died, John H.H. Becker was raised by a Japanese step mother between the ages of four and eight in Nippon. He returns to the land of the rising sun in search of answers and finds himself in a dark world inhabited by a new generation of yakuza connected criminals that now have international reach.

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HANGURE 

 Marisol, his wife and the chief of police at Pueblo Santa Cruz, was in her tenth week of pregnancy. ‘She should not be here!’ John Hoonah Hetaw Becker, more commonly known as Cowboy, whispered under his breath. An unusual and unencouraged nickname for a man with high cheekbones, copper tinted skin and prominent Native American features who was born almost 39 years ago to an unwed Shoshone Arapaho mother on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation. Was there another woman in the world as head strong and stubborn as his wife? He wondered. Jorge her 73-year-old part time, twice retired and now semi-employed in village law enforcement; deputy moved to stand beside her, pumping a round into the chamber of his 12 gauge. Cowboy pulled the scarred and chipped stock of the Remington 870 firmly to his right shoulder. The one with the sawed off 14-inch barrel that Kyoko Kim, KK had liberated from the Narcos. A weapon that would get him arrested on a weapons violation charge in the states, and probably here also.

Centering the amateurishly soldered tarnished brass bead on the center back of the man largest in circumference, he slowly pushed the safety at the rear of the trigger guard to the left with his trigger finger. Of the four, fatty and the one slowly moving to out flank the totality of the Santa Cruz police force, were the only ones that Cowboy was confident the nine .33 inch in diameter death balls of the 12 gauge double 00 round wouldn’t blast through the squishy parts of their bodies and not strike Marisol or Jorge. Marisol had the 9mm Smith & Wesson M&P out of her holster at the end of her right arm pointed at the floor, her index finger outside the trigger guard, parallel to the barrel.

The men were treating this as a joke. They were confident. They outnumbered the cops, one a skinny, five-foot nine-inch old man with an almond-colored furrowed face, pump shotgun and a revolver, the other a slim young woman, a Mestiza with cafe au lait skin and light brown eyes not yet thirty. Only five and a half feet tall with a baby bump forming. But still there was a shotgun brought into the situation, causing them to hesitate. Marisol slowly raised her pistol. It was clasped in both hands now and pointed at the men.

Things had moved fast and unexpectedly. The bartender, waitress, and only other customer sensing trouble had hurriedly left when the three gringo friends of the rapist showed up in the Bomac blue 1991 Chevrolet Suburban. Less than a minute before his wife and Jorge’s arrival. A four-month hitch as a floor hand on a drilling rig enabled Cowboy to immediately identify the dull, but somehow oily industrial chemical resistant paint applied sloppily to the old Chevy. He had been forced into an awkward crouched position. His footwear put him a bit over six feet tall; the ceiling was a little under that height. His left boot was in the toilet bowl, bracing himself on the toe of his right boot with the barrel of the shotgun pushed through the three-foot-wide curtained half wall of the servicios de Senoras, the lady’s room. There was an open-air trough like urinal out back for the other sex. That was where he had hastily come from to guard Marisol and Jorges flank.

The man standing in front of Marisol moved his hand behind his jacket, hand closing on the grip of a polymer framed auto-loading pistol. The man was standing between him and Marisol, shooting the bastard would endanger his wife and their unborn child. The only option he could see was to shoot the fat guy, swing the shotgun to the left, pump in another round and shoot the guy attempting to out flank Marisol and Jorge. That should discombobulate the other two. It would also probably result in shots fired chaotically, putting Marisol and Jorge in greater danger. His finger moved from the safety to inside the trigger guard only a half inch away from the trigger, waiting for the rapist and possibly murderer to clear leather. Only then, depending on if the big guy wrapped his hand around the grip and pulled the revolver from his belt, would he decide to shoot the fat man and hope for the best.

Three days ago, one of the four, the one with his fist around the pistol behind his back at the five O’clock position had raped and beaten a fourteen-year-old girl so badly that she was hovering between life and death. Marisol had driven her to the hospital in Los Mochis, while Doctor Garcia attempted to stabilize the child in the back of the pickup crew cab. She had instructed Cowboy to ride North and find the man, hopefully before he crossed the border. “Call me with your location but do nothing!” His wife had ordered. Marisols first husband had a 1980’s vintage Honda 250 he had been riding when the Narcos killed him. Cowboy recently had finally got it running and set out with a bedroll wrapped shotgun lashed to the handlebars. It had been a dusty uncomfortable ride. The worn suspension and fragile, ancient swing arms of this model coupled with the ethanol varnished jets of the carburetor, along with ancient deteriorating rubber seals and cracked leaky plastic lines meant difficult starting along with iffy acceleration, not to mention the sense that you were riding a loose collection of parts, not all moving smoothly in the exact same direction.

His quarry’s fiery red hair and beard were hard to hide as he fled North in the open top Jeep Wrangler. The puzzling thing was why he had not moved from the lonely hole in the wall cantina for at least a day and a half. ‘If it were me running from the law in Mexico, not that I would do what he did, I would beat feet to the border and not stop until safely out of the country.’ Cowboy told himself. The witness had observed the colorful bearded man heading North on Highway 15. A clerk at an Oxxo gas station and convenience store in Guaymas positively identified the man telling Cowboy; “He drove north on the dirt coastal trail toward Bahia Kino.”