PORT SONS, a reckless but good-natured rodeo champion, is missing from his ranch in California, and his mother asks his old friend PARKER REED, a parole agent, to look for him. At Port's ranch, Parker finds LESLIE KNOTTS, Port's girlfriend...See morePORT SONS, a reckless but good-natured rodeo champion, is missing from his ranch in California, and his mother asks his old friend PARKER REED, a parole agent, to look for him. At Port's ranch, Parker finds LESLIE KNOTTS, Port's girlfriend, who tells him that recently Port called her from ROBERT ASADA'S ranch in Mexico and said he needed help. Although Parker believes that Port will eventually return on his own, he agrees to go to Mexico with Leslie after she threatens to tell the authorities about a murder he witnessed--but didn't report--twenty years ago. After a futile search for Port at Asada's ranch, Parker is ready to take Leslie home. But two Mexican thugs attack them at a motel, and Parker realizes that Port may indeed need help. He sends Leslie home, talks with an FBI agent, and learns that Asada transports cocaine across the border in propane trucks. He returns to Asada's ranch and discovers that Asada has imprisoned Port, who--by committing the murder twenty years ago--interfered with a drug deal, and Leslie, who returned to help Port. Asada says he'll free them if Parker kills his cousin ESTEBAN ASADA, a rival drug lord. In Juarez, Parker asks Esteban for help, but Esteban refuses. So Parker rescues Port and Leslie himself, but before he can take them back to California, Asada injects him with peyote, which produces visions of spiders that seem to devour him. Parker maintains his sanity by remembering that his visions aren't real. What is real, he also remembers, is loyalty, the trait that enables him to defeat Asada. Written by
John Porter
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