“Remember when I fell off the wall back in our gang days and I was out of commission for a while? I guess the doctors rearranged my nerve cluster.”
Zeke chuckled. “I was always quicker, but you were more resilient.”
Juan fired from around the shield, but his opponent ducked and slid to the other side, kicking the gun from Juan’s hand. Juan, in turn, bashed the shield against Zeke’s gun hand, and it fell to the ground as well. Juan kicked both guns across the floor.
Zeke threw punch after punch, interspersed with kicks at Juan, but the shield and helmet blocked the brunt of the damage.
Keep it up, Juan thought. Wear yourself out.
Then Zeke managed to knock the helmet from Juan’s head and delivered a single, carefully aimed punch. Juan raised the shield, and Zeke’s fist smashed into it. He cursed and stepped back, kicking in a violent pirouette that flipped the shield from Juan’s hand. The two men stood regarding each other.
Juan shook his head. “Why are you doing this? We used to be friends. I was your only friend.”
“Don’t take it personally. We both had shitty childhoods and vowed to get out of that dump, but I was always going to rise above you. The key to life is ambition and knowing that you’re always moving in the right direction. You now stand in my way.”
“You underestimate me.”
Zeke chuckled and sent out his foot in a horizontal kick to test Juan’s reflexes. Juan easily backstepped it.
“You’ve done your research on me, old friend. I faked my death after I got fingered in a robbery. It helped free me up to get where I needed to go—which was Panama, to get my face fixed. I even found a way to grow hair. Then, for a few years, I did odd jobs and learned meditation.” He grinned. “I guess you could say I found enlightenment. I developed my physical and spiritual sides until I was ready to return to my old stomping grounds as a new person. You should have seen the look on Gabella’s face when she saw me ten years later. She never guessed my true identity. The drugs probably helped in my favor. She was still a junkie and had been in and out of prison so many times. It wasn’t hard to hand her a gun and give her a few targets—people from my past who had wronged me. I’d rather have done the jobs myself, but I couldn’t risk getting caught, not with a big score just on the horizon.”
“Vaquero.”
Zeke snapped his fingers. “Exactly. The man isn’t as low-level as you—and the press—might think. He lives an austere life, but he’s a bad, bad man. He’s kinda like that vigilante smugger . . . What’s his name? Juan Santiago? What a joke. Word is he got himself killed. Me? I don’t really give a damn what happened to him, but after the hefty pay I’m going to receive from Vaquero, I’m looking to take over his territory.”
Juan spat to the side as they moved in a slow circle, their feet light upon the floor. “What do you know about smuggling?”
“I don’t have to know anything about smuggling. I can pay other people for that.”
“You think you can trust a man like Vaquero?”
Juan threw a fist out, and Zeke countered it. They broke apart again, Juan eyeing the other man’s ever-shifting footwork like a fluid dancer as Zeke watched Juan’s simpler and slower balancing and rebalancing on the balls of his feet.
“Death provides certain insights, my old friend. I’m not dumb.”
They closed again, and Juan threw a knee into the man’s side while Zeke delivered a blow to the top of Juan’s head, which hurt him more than it did Juan.
“Aggh. What kind of fighting style is that?”
“One I developed myself. Try to counter it.”
“I don’t have to counter it. I’ve made myself an expert in human anatomy. I need only to touch you in a certain spot, and you’ll go down.”
“Fancy,” Juan said, keeping his dukes up as he shifted his weight back and forth on his feet like a mongoose ready to meet a cobra. “How’d you find out about this safehouse? I’ve never seen that dirty cop before.”
Zeke smiled. “You wouldn’t know this policeman because he came before your time in Getsemaní. Let’s just say he wasn’t always a cop. I recruited him the same time I joined up with Gabella. He knew nothing about this place, but when I found out about it, he had a good enough reputation that Aguilar vouched for him.”
“Then how did you know about it?”
“Cali told me about it.”
“What?”
Zeke seized the opportunity to throw a chop at Juan’s neck, but Juan raised both his hands and separated his palms so that the man’s chop passed between them. Then he grabbed Zeke’s wrist and leaned into the direction of the attack, using the man’s own momentum against him as he was thrown to his back.
He got back up quickly enough, though.
“Yes. Your girl. She told me willingly enough in our little ‘private sessions.’ Well, not exactly willingly. I used a certain form of incense when we practiced outside of class. It helps facilitate a hypnotic stance where an individual is more compliant to words. Well . . . I also injected her with a truth serum without her knowing about it when I was assisting her from behind. She was my eyes and ears inside Aguilar’s operations, and she never even knew it.”
Juan tightened his eyes on Zeke, even though he knew it was best to keep one’s eyes unfocused on any one object so you could take in everything in your surroundings and react. He couldn’t help it, though—the man had used Cali.
“She shared all sorts of things with me about her personal life, including her thoughts on this Paul Ramírez guy. When she showed me a picture of you on her phone, I couldn’t believe my eyes. You, one of the good guys? I had quite the laugh over that.”
Zeke feigned an attack and drew back out of Juan’s reach. “Ever watch soap operas? I ask, because that’s what your life reminds me of. You’re so easy to manipulate. Remember your little guys’ night out at the restaurant? Oh, how I loved pressing your buttons. It’s just a shame you had to kill Gabby that night, although to be fair, the girl did have it coming. Anyways, I enjoyed watching the drama between you and Sam unfold. It really hurt Cali’s heart.”
Juan’s eyes darted to the side of the room, where both Cali and Sam remained motionless.
Zeke laughed. “I guess you could say that this is all your fault.”
Juan charged, and Zeke tightened his grin, punching Juan in the gut and throwing him onto the overturned wooden rocking chair, which cracked apart into pieces of sharp, splintered wood. Before Juan could even rise, Zeke’s heel arced down in a lightning-fast strike.
Juan thrust the sharp end of a chair spindle into Zeke’s leg as he rose. He tried to kick Zeke in the head, but the man caught Juan’s foot and twisted him around. Barely managing to catch himself on the floor with his palms, Juan shot his foot back and into the man’s jaw. Zeke staggered back a few steps as Juan regained his footing.
“You continue to impress me. Too bad you didn’t attend one of my classes.”
“I would have found you out sooner, then.”
“Maybe. But we’d have given my students quite a show, don’t you think?”
They each took deep breaths to regain their composure and energy.
“There’s two things I’m still not understanding,” Juan said behind his raised fists.
“Oh?”
“How did you knock out the two officers in the witness’s first safehouse, and how did you knock out Boraita in the truck? There were no bruises on any of their bodies, and their blood tests came back clean.”
“Since you won’t be alive much longer, I’ll tell you. The police were knocked out by spraying knockout gas into the air conditioning unit outside. For your police friend, I used an experimental serum. Both the gas and the serum knock out the victim instantaneously and leave virtually no trace in the bloodstream.”
“Where’d you get them from?”
“I can’t be giving out all my secrets, now can I?”
“ELEPHAS.”
The man stiffened.
“You were there. In the crowd,” Juan said. “Weren’t you?”
Zeke’s eyes twitched.
Juan rushed forward, faked a punch, and instead kicked Zeke in the chest. The man fell back a step, and Juan broke the chair’s back over his head as he’d seen in countless WWE matches.
Juan walked up to the downed man and slammed his knee into the man’s face. Then he turned Zeke facedown and zip-tied the man’s wrists and ankles.
“I’ve got bigger plans than just smuggling, you know,” Zeke said as he spat blood out to the side and wriggled like a fish upon the linoleum floor. “Got to see opportunities and align myself with the real big players.”
Juan pounded his palm against the back of the man’s head with just enough force to smash the man’s head into the floor. Juan heard the man’s nose cracking, and turned the unconscious man’s head to the side so that he wouldn’t drown in his own blood pool.
If I didn’t need you to help me figure out what the hell is going on with this ELEPHAS mess that Rockwell and Paul are involved in, you’d be dead. Especially after what you did to Cali.
Juan stepped over to Sam and put a finger to his neck. He didn’t feel a pulse. He took a deep breath and checked again. This time he felt something, but it was faint. Then Juan moved over to Cali and felt for her pulse. Hers was steadier, and she opened her eyes when she felt his warm finger on her neck.
“You’re okay,” Juan said. “I’ve got to go after that sniper.”
“Don’t . . . go,” she said, looking very sleepy and very bruised.
He lifted her hand in his. “I’ll be back.”
38
Trail
The rain was still falling lightly as Juan took off at a trot toward the only position with a line of sight facing the living room window.
Forty yards from the house and a few feet into the tree line, Juan found the matted-down underbrush created by a prone figure. A rifle with a broken scope lay next to it, partially covered by tall grass and bushes. Crouching low, Juan spotted some scant traces of blood on the ground, preserved by overhead branches and foliage. Two large stumps had concealed the sniper from the house, but there was just enough space for the sniper to observe through his scope.
The rain did a good job of covering up the sniper’s trail as he had retreated farther into the trees, but Juan was no amateur tracker. He wondered where the sniper had been hit. Probably in the shoulder or maybe grazed in the head, judging by the cracked scope.
It had been fifteen or twenty minutes since Sam had shot him, which was a big head start, but he couldn’t change the facts. Juan followed the path that he would take for a quick escape, even with the knowledge that he hadn’t been trained like Paul. They were both elite operators in their own sense, and he hoped his instincts would lead him down roughly the same course.
I’d keep angling toward the road so that I’d eventually intercept it and could run parallel with it, observing it as I moved. There might be a vehicle I could commandeer, although it’d be unlikely with the storm.
Juan moved like a wary jungle cat, as silently as he could, toward the road. Once he had it in sight, he skirted it, keeping to the shadows. It wasn’t long before he came upon Paul, crouched over a puddle, washing the bloody cut on his face with water cupped in his hands. “Paul?”
Juan’s brother turned and looked up at him, a pistol suddenly in his hands. Juan placed his own pistol on Paul. “I ought to shoot you,” Juan said.
“I know you,” Paul said in a hoarse voice.
“It’s me.”
“I’m supposed to kill you,” Paul said, almost as if it were a question.
“No, you’re not. I’m your brother.”
“I’m supposed to kill the man who looks like me. Because he can’t be me. Because I am me . . .” Paul shook his head as if it pained him to think.
“Who wants you to kill me?”
Paul didn’t answer Juan, only turned to look back at his own reflection in the muddy water in front of him. “I can’t fail or they’ll . . .”
“They’ll what?”
Paul looked up at Juan as if he had the answer on the tip of his tongue, but it was elusive nonetheless. The confusion in Paul’s eyes pained Juan to his core.
“ . . . they’ll kill her . . .”
Understanding flooded Paul’s eyes. Paul tilted his gun upward, but Juan got his shot off quicker.
Paul gasped and dropped his gun, Juan’s bullet still ringing off the metal of Paul’s gun. Paul sprang at Juan and knocked the gun from his hand. “Must kill you. Must kill my reflection . . .” Paul’s powerful fingers closed in around Juan’s neck.
Juan struggled against his brother’s grip. “Stop it.”
“Kill the impersonator. Kill the man who looks like me . . .”
Juan’s vision grew blurrier by the second.
Paul slammed Juan into a tree, pulled him back, and shook him like a mad animal. Grunting from the exertion, his own face grew nearly as red as Juan’s.
Juan kneed Paul in the chest and sucked in a breath as the grip was released. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Kill him . . . Kill him . . . Kill—”
Juan backhanded Paul with both fists. “Fight this, goddamnit. This isn’t you.”
Paul drew a knife from under his arm. It was a bare-bones weapon, a single piece of flat metal with a rough end for gripping and a blade at the other end. He sliced the air with it, inches from Juan’s face.
The two brothers moved in a circle, one lunging, the other backing away, always maintaining the rotation of the circle as they moved. Fat drops of water splashed upon their heads and shoulders and outstretched arms.
“You have a choice. You don’t have to kill me.”
“I have to. Or they will kill her.”
“Kill who?”
“That’s enough,” a voice called from the wet, dense foliage. Both men stopped, recognizing the voice.
Juan tripped backward over a fallen tree and landed on his back, raising his boots to guard his chest and kick out if Paul tried to fall on him with the knife.
Paul hesitated and turned to face the approaching footsteps.
“Let’s go,” the voice said.
Juan stared in confusion at the gun now pointed at him in Anita Chou’s extended hand.
“Don’t follow us,” she said as she grabbed Paul’s shoulder and urged him to follow her.
“What have you done to my brother?”
“I didn’t do anything to him,” she said as she plunged a needle into Paul’s neck. “I’m not compliant in this, either. But when he didn’t report back and went after you again, he missed his daily shot. The one I just gave him should keep him stable, but it won’t fix him. If he dies, this is on you.”
“ELEPHAS. The serum.”
“Gee, cutie, you catch on quick, dontcha? Now get out of our way.”
“I can help you,” Juan said, moving to get up.
“Uh-uh. Don’t. Stand up, and I’ll give you a third eye. You can’t help us.”
Juan held his tongue as he watched the two of them go. Instead of trying to wrap his head around everything and drive himself into an even bigger fury, he was focusing on taking easy, shallow breaths to recover from the throttling he’d just received. And that’s when he heard the gunshot, but it didn’t come from the direction of Paul and Anita.
It came from the safehouse.
39
Unfinished Business
He found Sam running toward the tree line behind the house.
“What’s going on?”
Sam looked at him. “Bastard took off.” There was a gun in his hand.
“I tied him up.”
“You should have killed the man.” I need information from him. “Is Cali still okay?”
“She’s fine. Are you coming or not?”
Juan supposed he was. He joined up with Sam.
“He couldn’t have gotten far. His wrists are still tied, but he got them out in front of h
im. Man’s like an eel with no backbone.”
“He’s fast, too.”
“He’s looking for the witness. Is he out in the jungle?”
“No,” Juan said. “He should be in the bathroom under the trapdoor in the floor.”
“Good,” Sam said. “That’s good.”
They followed the only path they could find through the jungle. The vines and branches that had been snapped were still fresh.
Juan jumped ahead and held up a hand to stop. In the absence of their footfalls, he could hear the passing of fast-moving water somewhere ahead.
“A river,” Sam said.
Juan nodded. “It’s where I’d go.”
They dodged branches and low, thorny bushes for another minute, and then they saw him.
Twenty yards ahead, Zeke Sabate was starting to cross a deadfall that had linked up both sides of the river below. As Juan and Sam approached, they saw that the river was nearly ten feet wide. There was no way for a person to clear it in a single bound. They could also see that the water level was quite high, almost even with the embankment on either side. The water was a thick, chocolate milk consistency. It carried branches and debris swiftly along under the fallen tree bridge.
Juan fired a warning shot into the mud on the other side of the river. “Stop!”
Zeke turned. As Sam had said, his wrists were zip-tied out in front of him. But as Sam had left out, the man’s face was nearly bruised up beyond recognition.
Juan turned to Sam. “What the hell happened to him?”
Sam didn’t meet Juan’s eyes, just kept his own gun sighted on the man halfway across the bridge.
Zeke opened his mouth as if to speak, but all that came out was dribbles of blood. He tried to spit, and snot and blood trickled down his chin. His long blond hair was soaked a darkish brown from the rain and lay plastered across his face and neck. He looked like a wet, long-haired dog. It was almost pitiable.
“I’ll say it again,” Juan said. “What happened to him?”
The Colombian Rogue Page 26