Rain Dogs - Softcover

The year is 1976, and while America celebrates its bicentennial, the first shots are being fired in the narcotics and human trafficking war that is still being waged today. Colt Freeman and his partner want only to preserve their small piece of the marijuana trade operating from their outpost in the verdant forest of northern California. Veterans of the horrors of a war fought in the jungles of Asia, this modern day Butch and Sundance ply their trade with proficency and stealth. And, when necessary, deadly force. Hundreds of miles away, along the border between the US and Mexico, a law-enforcement task-force patrols the desolate no-man's land that separates misery and prosperity, seeking to curb the unspeakable violence that feeds off the ever-growing river of humanity who find themselves at the mercy of the ruthless coyotes they have employed to guide them on their desperate crossing. Some distance further southwest, an elegant hacienda is nested behind the protective walls of an isolated ranch on the coast of the Sea of Cortez. Beyond those well-guarded gates, Miguel Zamora has placed himself at the center of a powerful circle of corrupt Mexican officials on the cusp of establishing ties with the Colombian cartels. Driven by avarice and steeped in paranoia, Miguel begins to seize control of his world with a singular and savage brutality that threatens to unleash a firestorm of bloodshed on both sides of the border. As the peaceful idyll of the Humboldt woodlands devolves into a combat zone of territorial violence, Colt and his partner decide to cash in on one last harvest, one final run down the coast before leaving their outlaw lives behind. But when their meticulously planned scheme comes undone, it forces them into a rash and hazardous escape from the law and directly into the crossfire of an internecine narcotics war that no one had seen coming. Rain Dogs is a stylish thriller, epic in scope and atmosphere, driven by a compelling and intricate plot that weaves together the disparate threads of greed and madness, solipsism, and moral compromise into a climactic confrontation on the unforgiving soil of northern Mexico.