There weren't many options to pick from, so the choice took only a few seconds.
Masterfully avoiding the alarm, Tristan hot-wired a four-seat pickup—the largest car available that wasn't a truck. In the trunk was packed what looked like a bunch of supplies for a beach holiday.
'It looks like some family will have a terrible vacation. They better have their car insured,' Tristan thought as he started the engine and drove back to his team.
He didn't spare the car's owners another thought.
After the team threw out unneeded inflatables and put their things inside, Tristan kept driving away from the Cuatro Angulos' territory.
The next two days, he did little else but that.
The speed didn't help Cutout feel better, but it saved them more altercations with Cuatro Angulos forces. It also helped to switch the car a few more times, because the stolen cars soon became reported to the police, attracting more attention from both police and Cuatro Angulos.
When they reached the safer territories, where Cuatro Angulos couldn't chase Tristan because they belonged to other cartels, Tristan slowed down.
Cutout was feeling stably shitty, and from Tristan's expert opinion, could continue to feel this way for a couple days longer without much harm. However, he had to rest and recover enough to cross the border security.
Tristan had a few plans charted for crossing the border illegally, but they were all risky in their own way, troublesome, or took even more time—like a detour all the way to Texas.
So Tristan's team took their backpacks, abandoned their car at the bottom of a nearby river, and booked a couple of adjacent rooms in the nearby hotel.
By Tristan's schedule, they had three days of spare time left. But air conditioning and clean, dry clothing really did wonders on Cutout's recovery.
In two days, he could walk without wobbling around (too much).
Tristan, as usual, spent the downtime doing useful things. In this case—feeling out the local underground.
Two days after they arrived at the town, Tristan exchanged their team's weapons (which will be too problematic to move over the border anyway) on a car and ownership documents for it in someone else's name.
Overnight, Tristan fixed the documents to fit with his own name.
Next morning, Cutout hid his bandages over the shirt, put on sunglasses to hide the bags of exhaustion under his eyes, and the team went to the border patrol.
No one looked at their documents or them too closely. One man got concerned that Cutout was moving so stiffly, but a lie that he sprained his muscles made him back off.
Twenty more minutes later, Tristan finally drove onto the American soil.
[Task complete: cross the border to America. Reward: your PP increased by 20000!]
"We should, we should... Even with the route you, ah, cut down, King Lion. The killed smugglers, I mean." He smirked. "Not to say they didn't deserve it for the trick they tried to pull. If anything, this makes their brethren respect us more. More importantly, as Victor told me the other day, our own chemical labs are starting out to work nicely."
Victor nodded.
"Just a few now, since we don't have the specialists. It takes a long time to teach one from the ground, but I've established apprenticeships. There are some people in our ranks who have at least a rudimentary relevant education, and could be used to scale up the production."
Tristan smiled.
"All in a day's work, so to say... Great job, Victor. You can really make a well-drilled little recruit out of anyone, it seems."
Victor didn't smile, but sat a little straighter at the praise.
His gang, now integrated into the King Lion Gang, wasn't called First Day Army just because it sounded "striking" and "cool", but because Victor had served in the military in the past, before it screwed him over.
There were many people like him among the gangsters, but Victor learned not only violence and misogyny but also how to be an effective drill sergeant.
Tristan had been specializing his underbosses more and more lately, gradually turning the gang structure from the feudal "everybody has their piece of land and governs it as he wants" to the more modern "everybody has a specialization and does what he knows best".
Victor's specialization was training the gang's forces. Human resources, one could say, although Victor would've been offended at the wording.
Damien was good at recruiting and negotiations. For his recklessness, he was good at aggressive diplomacy—he either pressed other people into agreeing with him, or things ended with bloodshed.
When other people realized that either worked for him, and that Damien had more forces on his side, he wasn't afraid to throw into this, they usually chose to agree with him.
Vargas kept the peace inside the gang. He had a milder nature than other underbosses, and Evelyn, who was still helping him—as much as Tristan disliked remembering about her existence—was good at reading people. Together, they resolved various inner disputes before they could become strife and monitored the actions of the police.
Martinez was good with logistics and numbers. Pure paper-pushing administration, which was too complicated and boring for younger underbosses.
James was usually quiet during councils like this one. He could shoot and he could fight, but on everything else, his opinion was usually as direct and simple as a hammer. But James was a good hammer, and there was always something to hammer at in a gangster's life.
And then there was Leon Clavon. Tristan mostly just let him manage his own branch of the King Lion Gang, while getting reports on his actions from his own people there. Leon's main redeeming feature as a leader was knowing when to accept when someone was better than him.
Besides that? He wasn't particularly good at anything, and especially terrible at choosing subordinates. Pierce was competent, but an asshole. Whitman would fuck the gang over for his personal gain. And Tristan planned to take over the gang from the moment he joined it.
The council continued after with reports from Vargas and Leon, who were only present via a remote video call today.
The gang was doing great, and the success of Operation Claw pruned the weed that prevented King Lion Gang from growing even taller, even faster.
'Now all that's left is to...' Tristan checked the planner app on his phone, then on his other phone. 'Oh, I need to go to court already?'