Byrne immediately released his body hold and allowed his patient to resume sitting at her table.
He stepped away, watching closely, making certain that his patient was breathing properly. The Heimlich was violent, it had to be, and sometimes the elderly or the feeble were unintentionally injured. He could only hope that nothing had torn within the tiny woman's body.
The knives were gone. The women crowded around their matriarch. English and Spanish mixed and flew. The tablecloth with all that was on it was bundled and whisked away. Water was brought, and the still silent Donna Santos sipped at it. Byrne and Shepard were ignored as if they had never existed.
Gradually the scene quieted. Donna Santos was spirited away, and their original guide urged the visitors into another room—a sitting room that overlooked a backyard pool. A rolling cart of chilled soft drinks was offered. Then they were left alone.
Silence reigned until Bravo announced, "Byrne, you are the luckiest man who ever lived. If that woman hadn't choked, we would have had to shoot into a charging pack of screaming females."
Byrne pretended to make light of the incident. "All a part of my plan, Bravo." Byrne's nerves still jangled, but Bravo did not have to know it. The drink cart was closer to Bravo. "They got any Diet Mountain Dew on there?"
Bravo said, "No Diet, but here is an original. Drink it and let your nerves settle. You aren't fooling me with that 'part of the plan,' baloney. Your knees were knocking louder than mine."
Bravo looked around. "I wonder what's next?" He studied sliding doors leading into a backyard. "Maybe we would be smart to call it quits and bail out of here."
"That would be easiest but not smartest, pardner. We've got to get these people off our backs. We do it here and now, or it won't get done."
They waited. The front door opened and closed. Voices were busy but were beyond making out words. Bravo said, "I'll bet that was reinforcement coming in—big, overweight guys with automatic weapons." Alpha did not bother to respond.
The wait continued. Bravo sat with his fist gripping his pistol, but Byrne relaxed and examined a woman's magazine from a rack beside his Lazy Boy.
Heels clicked, a door opened and closed, and a new woman entered their room.
This was a younger woman, about their ages, the men assumed, and they rose courteously. The woman waved them toward a large table with surrounding chairs, and motioned for them to take seats.
This was a businesswoman, an authoritative woman used to the give and take of the world. She placed a leather covered attaché case on the table, and studied them with steady and outwardly interested eyes. Byrne placed her as a lawyer, probably corporate law, but maybe Mrs. Donna Santos's personal attorney?
Even in the heat of the California desert, the woman wore a perfectly fitted pants suit. Jewelry was little but expensive looking. Her nails were short and their polish was clear coat. Any facial makeup was carefully applied and, except for lipstick, undetectable to Don Byrne's eye. Byrne guessed that she would be almost painfully efficient, and would be nobody to fool with. He supposed they were about to find out.
Still standing, a dominating position Byrne recognized, she nodded awareness of their presence and began laying out what was about to happen.
"I am April Santos, Mrs. Donna Santos's legal representative. I know who you are. I am not sure why you are here." April Santos's voice was all-business. No slack would be cut here.
Before Byrne could answer, she went on.
"Mrs. Santos will join us in a moment, but only to listen and to observe. You may not address her. If Mrs. Santos wishes to speak, it will be to me, and I will relay her words or not relay them to you.
"My advice is that all details be carefully worded for both clarity and avoidance of anything that might unnecessarily arouse emotions. Are we agreed on those ground rules?"
Shepard deferred to Byrne, and Alpha nodded agreement.
April Santos added, "This conversation may be ended at any time." Her eyes swung to Bravo. "You may release your grip on your pistol, Mister Shepard. There will be no violence in this house. There never has been."
Bravo remembered the appearance of a long knife in every female hand when Donna Santos had seemed threatened, and he was in no way embarrassed. He placed his shooting hand on the table.
Byrne doubted that would make him much slower. Shepard's cowboy shooting had made him very quick indeed.
As if on signal, a door opened, and Mrs. Donna Santos entered. An accompanying lady adjusted her chair, and she sat primly, gazing only at her attorney. Her tiny head was level with others at the table, and Byrne supposed her chair was fitted with a raised seat. No looking up at the world for the Santos matriarch.
April Santos assumed her own chair. Then she asked, "Why are you here?"
Byrne had to gather himself. This was exactly what he had hoped for—a chance to speak at length in calming tones using reasoned logic. His task was to tell their story clearly and succinctly, choosing phrasing that would move swiftly but be powerfully persuasive. He nodded acceptance of the attorney's request and began.
"In 1985, Mister Shepard and I were US Army soldiers. We were, and we looked, young. We could pass for typical college students. We were chosen to act as security for an American Agent detailed to observe and record all that he could of a meeting of men believed to be drug dealers. Our responsibility was to keep the agent safe—nothing more.
"Posing as sport fishermen, we traveled by boat until close to the expected meeting place, an almost abandoned dirt landing strip in Mexico. Three large aircraft with American markings had arrived and a large group of men were dining, wining, and apparently celebrating at tables aligned along the airstrip. At a distance, locals prepared food and drinks, and a large Mercedes automobile idled with an armed driver wearing an armored vest sitting behind the wheel.
"Attempting to record and photograph all that was happening, our agent lay a body length forward and between then Sergeant Shepard and myself
"We were well concealed in jungle growth, but after some time both Shepard and I became aware of something not quite right. You must understand that, in those days, we were highly trained Rangers. Neither of us has been able to define that worry beyond a vague sense of trouble brewing.
"We warned the agent that something we could not identify was developing and that we would be wise to depart. He had most of what he wanted, and he willingly backed away. We remained in place to cover his rather loud and unprofessional departure.
"We had begun our own withdrawal when all hell broke loose." Byrne paused to admire his cliché ridden description. No one else appeared to share his appreciation, so he continued.
"To us, it looked like a company of uniformed fighters—possibly one hundred, perhaps more. They exploded from the jungle beyond the airstrip with all kinds of weapons firing.
"The men we had been watching fired back with pistols, but they were so outnumbered and outgunned they had no chance. The driver of the Mercedes returned fire, but he was instantly shot in the head and went down.
"Believe me, we were scratching and scraping to get away. Mister Shepard continued to crawl through the jungle, but I saw the Mercedes as a way to swiftly escape what I believed would be remorseless pursuit, and I went for the car.
"The driver's—well, his brains, I guess—were blasted all over the car's seat, but I got in and started away. Only then, did I discover that the Mercedes was bulletproof, and it was well that it was armored because bullets pounded the car unmercifully. No ordinary vehicle could have survived the fusillade laid onto that automobile.
"I spun the car around, if I can call heaving that many-tonned monster in a new direction, and lumbered free of the gunfire.
"As I passed him, Shepard crawled in and without stopping we drove to the bridge crossing the river we had come in by. Shepard rolled out and hurried to our boat docked below. He and our agent took the boat to a point we would both recognize and waited while I drove the Mercedes further up the roa
d to disguise our escape route.
"I drove until the road behind hid the car from immediate discovery. I rammed its nose into the brush and ran for nearly a mile through the open jungle to our boat. From there, we motored downstream watching and listening for boats coming from upriver and for aircraft approaching from any direction. Once, a helicopter full of soldiers flew upriver almost at water level, but we heard it coming and hid within jungle along a bank.
"We dropped the agent, and he flew home. We continued to a different airport and made our more leisurely way back to our army base."
Byrne stopped to soothe a parched throat with Mountain Dew. He was pleased with his explanation and wished he had a tape of it, which made him wonder why the Santos representative was not recording. Perhaps she did not want a record of this meeting to exist, but—then Alpha saw it.
The attorney's briefcase. It lay unnoted on the table, and now that he thought to look, the narrow bottom facing him had a small rectangular section that appeared to be of a different material. A built in microphone?
Not bad. Byrne admired the neatness of it. Such a sneaky device was probably invaluable when recordings were not allowed. He again reminded himself that this was no woman to unnecessarily challenge. Alpha braced his mind for the questions the lady lawyer was sure to ask.
Byrne resumed his story.
"That was long ago. Shepard and I were not in the same outfit. We left the army and went our respective ways. I attended medical school, and I live in Idaho. Shepard remained uneducated and sells real estate in California." Byrne saw the corner of April Santos' mouth twitch at his un-tender jab at Shepard's existence. Good, she had a sense of humor.
"Long ago, my curiosity kept me in occasional touch with our agent, but time passed and our story became old and stale. Until I heard that Mister Shepard had been murdered using a technique popular south of our border, I had not even thought of our wild experience for possibly a year.
"I contacted the agent, who had been desk-bound for many years, and he assured me that Mister Shepard's demise could not be associated with such ancient history.
"Then . . ." Byrne paused for effect, "Shepard reappeared. He had been out of town, and the killers had massacred the wrong man."
Byrne allowed his eyes to roam including all at the table and the servant who stood close to Dona Santos's chair.
"Our search for those responsible for the murder—and the contract for me that we discovered—ended here, at this home, with those present at this time."
Alpha chose to stop there, and he and Shepard waited for the denials and justifications that would be coming. There would be demands for information, some of which he would provide, but basically, he would deny any responsibility or participation in the deaths of the Santos men those long years past. Would he convince anyone? Good question.
April Santos was ready. She immediately asked, "What made you come to this home of innocent people?"
Byrne managed a cold smile, and he heard Bravo snort softly. He said, "We interviewed the individual who offered our names to this household and who was well paid for his information. He told us whom he had contacted. We also spoke at length with the individual who provided the men that were hired to kill us. There are no other tracks. Everything led here."
April Santos appeared undisturbed and unimpressed. She offered no denials or excuses. "I ask again, why are you here?"
"We are here to explain how the provider of money was misinformed. We are here to tell the story that you just heard—explaining that we had nothing to do with the battle in Mexico. We did not instigate nor did we participate. We did not even stay around to see the outcome. It was not our fight. We ran. We fled as hard as we could manage.
"You have been lied to—for money. An innocent man has already died, and we have no wish to join him. A killer or killers are out there searching for me, and as Mister Shepard's survival becomes known, they will again be after him.
"We believe that the best way to remove all that can be ended is by speaking directly and openly to those who believed a lie—those who paid very large sums to have innocents killed and to provide comforts for the liar who told a false story.
"We are aware of the dangers invoked by meeting this situation head on. To protect ourselves, we have written all of this in detail, including our visit to this house today, and we have mailed those witnessed letters to attorneys—to be opened and acted upon in case of our deaths or disappearances.
"We request assurances that our story is believed and that the man or men hired will be recalled, so that we can resume our ordinary lives without fear of this subject rising ever again."
Byrne leaned back in his chair and waited for the questioning to begin in earnest.
April Santos said, "You have no evidence that your story is true and the other is false."
Byrne was plain with his words. "We expect that your good common sense will tell you which story is true. It is completely illogical that we controlled a ragtag militia, that we planned and initiated an attack, and that we fought in such a battle. For heaven's sake, why would we?"
The attorney was equally frank. "For the money."
Byrne kept his face open and apparently confused by the question. He could almost see Bravo's frowning lack of understanding.
Byrne used a moment as if trying to decide what the attorney was speaking about.
Then he said, "The only money we saw was dumped on the tables with everyone helping himself." He allowed his features to wonder.
"That was a lot of money. I'd guess a million dollars, but it went with the battle. We certainly never got it or hung around to see who ended up with it. My guess is that those who reached first got whatever they found, and the million went in many directions, but whoever was running that mob may have had control enough to get it all. We were gone, and other than an occasional marveling at the amount that was tossed out for the taking, I doubt either of us has thought about it."
April Santos said, "There was more money."
Byrne's answer was short. "We didn't see it."
"It was in the Mercedes. In the back seat and in the trunk."
Byrne let his eyes bug. "Damn, I didn't see it. If I had, I would have loaded up with what I could carry. How much was there?"
"More than you saw on the table."
Byrne shrugged his shoulders. "Well, whoever got the car, got the money, I would assume. Ask him or them." He added a thought.
"Check on who became rich about that time, and you probably have your man. Back in those days, that kind of money wouldn't have been common anywhere in Mexico."
Then Byrne smiled. "I figure that alone clears us. Neither of us has or has had big money. We work for our livings, and we live modestly. Ask around. Our lives are not secret and never have been." Alpha allowed himself to appear confident, and he could see Bravo nodding agreement.
The Santos attorney changed subjects, "We would like the name of the person who suggested that you come here."
Byrne said, "Do not expect us to finger anyone. All you would identify is a liar who got away with a bunch of your money. To my mind, you asked for it. Plotting a pair of killings is foul. It is not an honorable way. We will not expose anyone to such planning. Forget that part."
"You will need to give us something more than your version of a story." The woman's tone sounded determined."
Byrne pretended to ponder. There was one name he could give. In fact, he ought to sell it.
"The dealer who provided names of mercenaries available for hire is called Jocko. He runs a business of that same name in the Chicago area. Everything he has or knows is for sale. He has a sign posted that explains that to his customers.
"He can tell you what he told us. You will have to go from there."
April Santos asked their patience while she consulted. She turned aside and whispered softly into Donna Santos ear. The oldest Santos answered in a like manner.
Bravo said softly, "Maybe we should whisper back and for
th a little."
Alpha said, "We've got nothing to whisper about, Bravo. Everything we know is up front and out on the table."
Shepard twisted as if uncomfortably seated. "You know, Byrne, you ought to work on speaking without a million and one ancient clichés. 'Up front and on the table? Geez, that kind of stuff is in every Hollywood thriller ever made."
Byrne said softly, "My God, Shepard, our futures are being discussed, and you worry about my phraseology. Any time you don't like it, just take over, and I'll sit there like a dusty old dullard."
April Santos turned to them and said, "Why did you come here with guns?"
Byrne made himself chuckle a bit depreciatingly. "We do not know this part of the country. We expected to encounter a high wall with broken glass at the top. We expected the house to be protected by sophisticated alarms and powerfully armed security.
"We could not know the result of our appearance. We hoped it would be peaceful, but if not, we intended to defend ourselves as best we could." Byrne's smile was genuine. "We prefer and appreciate our peaceful reception."
Mrs. Santos gestured, and the attorney again turned to exchange whispers. April took the older woman's hand for an extended moment. Then, Donna Santos rose and wordlessly left the room.
The attorney turned to the visitors. She sighed as if facing a difficult explanation.
Before she could speak, Byrne suggested, "It might be best to turn off the recorder for this part."
Bravo jerked alert. "What recorder?"
The attorney smiled and touched a part of the handle—possibly shutting down her recorder, but perhaps only faking it. "You are observant, Doctor Byrne." Alpha said nothing.
She said, "I am not privy to everything about this incident. However, I have been asked to tell you that if anyone was sent to do you harm, they will be advised that the case is closed and that there will be no further rewards for effort or performance.
"Mrs. Santos believes, as I do, that misinformation was extended and accepted. We regret that. Your story is certainly the more honest description. Your immediate action during her lunch, probably saved Mrs. Santos' life and has added great weight to your positions. It is obvious that merely standing aside during that critical moment might have ended most of your difficulties. Mrs. Santos extends her deepest appreciation.
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