Aztec Fire

by Gary Jennings

  I hit the ground, rolling.

  But I still hung on to my pistols.

  My momentum also carried me into the shooter who made the mistake of trying to holster his pistol before grabbing his knife. Pistols were expensive—not all constables even had one, and he worried about damaging his gun. Holstering the pistola instead of dropping it, however, cost the constable a second or two—time that he did not have.

  Using my shoulder as a battering ram, I knocked him off his feet, then rolling off him, I raised both my pistols.

  The man holding Maria released her—and charged me with a knife. I shot him in the chest, then dove and rolled again, more out of instinct than logic, but I had sensed a shot was on the way.

  It came from Gomez’s pistol.

  Rising to my knees, I shot him between the eyes. His head snapped backward, and the bullet drove him to the ground.

  I rolled again and leaped to my feet. The man I’d slammed into was onto his knees and rising. I laid the butt of my pistola atop his head as hard as I knew how … as if I were hammering spikes.

  His skull cracked audibly, his eyes rolled back until only the whites showed. Almost instantly he began hemorrhaging from the nose and ears. When I checked his throat, he had no pulse.

  Maria was on her feet. She stared at me, her pretty face twisted with terror at the attack.

  “My father,” she cried, then ran past me.

  Reloading my pistols, I made sure Gomez and both constables were dead, then followed her inside.

  I found Maria in her father’s bedroom, on her knees beside him, sobbing. The old man was on the floor, not stirring. A piece of rope was around his neck. They had strangled him.

  We had no time for grief. I crouched beside her and took hold of her arm. “We have to get out of here. More of them will come.”

  “Go away.” She pulled away and shook her head. “I have to bury my father.”

  I got up, forcing her to her feet. “Don’t be a fool—they’ll be coming for you. You’re already gallows-bait with three dead constables in your front yard. When Colonel Madero arrives, he will order his men to take turns on you, then drag you to the nearest tree and hang you. If I’m here, they’ll flog, castrate, and hang me, too.”

  “I can’t leave—”

  “Stop it! You know we have to go. We need money, blankets, food—some tortillas. Grab what you can. Throw it all in a sack with some clothes and all the money you have. I’ll get the horses ready.”

  I made sure my mule was dead and then checked the constables’ horses, which were tied to a hardwood hitch-rack in the courtyard. I selected the best two for our mounts—a big roan and a chestnut. I found a goatskin water bag, a cross-buck pack, and a horsehair mecate in their tack shed and designated the third horse, a high-spirited gray, as our packhorse. The mecate would be our lead rope, and I affixed it to the gray’s headstall. I collected the powder flasks, ammunition, pistols, and saddlebags from the three dead men. They only had one passable musket, which was sheathed to Gomez’s horse. Knowing Gomez, his musket and mount were stolen. I could not imagine him paying money for such things.

  I loaded their three pistols and put them in saddlebags with the spare ammunition. I tied them to my saddle. The pistolas were in bad shape but might be useful for close-range combat. I had an old grain sack tied to the dead mule, containing a change of clothes, a blanket, and the crumbs of tortillas I’d eaten earlier.

  Except for the guns and ammunition, I would lash everything to the pack animal, including the food and water bag.

  I went back in the house and found Maria kneeling beside her father, praying. She had dressed. Luckily, she had changed into one of her discreetly split riding dresses. I grabbed a sack sitting nearby, which I had told her to fill with tortillas and any money her father had kept in the house.

  When I took her arm again and led her out to the horses, she pulled away. “Wait. I forgot something.”

  Ayyo … When she came back, she had a small sack hanging on her side from a cord over her shoulder. It looked heavy. I assumed she’d brought the family gold hoard or perhaps some expensive jewelry.

  I helped her onto a horse and tied the big sack I carried from the bedroom onto the packhorse.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  WE RODE FAR into the night, putting time and distance between ourselves and Madero’s constables. The road west led back to town and into the hands of Colonel Madero. It would also connect to the road that went north to Guadalajara. When we reached the lake, we would take the road leading south.

  “The capital is south,” I told Maria, “but that is not our destination. We’re heading for the China Road, which runs from Mexico City to Acapulco. Guerrero still holds much of the region.”

  Like Veracruz, the main port on the east coast of the colony, the Acapulco region on the west coast was tierra caliente—a hot, wet zone. Beginning on the sandy beaches of the tropical Pacific Coast, the terrain rose inland, finally reaching up to the plateau. Across the plateau in the Valley of Mexico lay the capital, Mexico City, which was said to glitter in that valley like a crown jewel.

  General Guerrero was born and raised in the tropical region. A motley mix of races—Spanish, indio, africano, mestizo, mulatto—Guerrero spoke all the languages and dialects. Since the Spanish considered these people inconsequential beasts of burden, Guerrero owned their love and their loyalty.

  Having lost everything already, his supporters had little, if anything, to lose, which made them truly dangerous adversaries.

  While I had never met Guerrero, as his “Alchemist” I had donated many arms and much explosive to his Cause over the years. He would recognize my code name when I gave it to him and welcome Maria, too. The printed word might not have been mightier than the sword, but it could inform both the sword and the sword’s supporters. Printers and pamphleteers were invaluable to the Cause. They were its very vanguard.

  Maria knew nothing about my insurrectionist history and dealings. I told her we would head for rebel territory without mentioning my connection. She was silent, but I knew our destination had to please her.

  Near dawn I finally said to her, “We need to rest the horses.”

  We also had to get off the main road. Not only might Madero’s constables catch up with us, but the viceroy had couriers who raced the length and breadth of the colony, informing other constables of escaped fugitives who might be headed their way. From the footprints we left in Maria’s yard, they would know there were two of us. Constables in the communities up ahead would soon be watching for a male and female on the run.

  We found a clearing concealed by trees far from the road. I did not want to risk a fire but thought the site remote enough for a cold camp. We’d have to eat the cold tortillas and cold beef she’d brought even though the early dawn air carried a chill and a fire would have been comforting.

  I untied Maria’s supply sack from the spare mount. Opening it up to get out the blankets and tortillas, I found books … a small painting of Maria’s mother and father … female things … and books …

  Books.

  “Where are the tortillas and blankets?”

  She stared at me. “What … what?”

  “The supplies—never mind. We’ll have to make do tonight. We’ll buy blankets and food. How much money do you have?”

  She shook her head. She was still dazed, but was coming out of it. “I don’t know. Nothing. I didn’t bring any. There was no room in the bag.”

  “You should have left this other stuff behind.”

  “Some things are more valuable than money,” she said, glaring at me.

  I stared at the sack she had hung over her shoulder. “What’s in that?” I asked, pointing at it.

  She opened the sack and took out a book.

  “Another book?”

  “It’s my favorite. Sor Juana. I shall read her for comfort.”

  A volume of poetry by Sor Juana. The poet-goddess of the colony. Dead for over a hundred years.


  No tortillas.

  No blankets.

  No money.

  I crossed myself. I was suddenly feeling very much in need of the Christian God.

  Santo Maria.

  We needed a plan. And a miracle.

  PART VI

  UN MAL HOMBRE

  TWENTY-FIVE

  GUN-MAKER FELIX BAROJA was in bed when royal officers pounded at his gate.

  Colonel Madero sat outside the compound in his light, four-person coach. A soldier sat in the driver’s box, the stock of his six-foot buggy whip braced in its cylindrical whip-stand. The coach’s woodwork was cedar with silver trim. Its large waterproof mica-glazed storm curtains were rolled up, so Madero could view his surroundings unobstructed and enjoy the cool evening breeze.

  The short trip over had been comfortable. The coach rode on firm transverse springs and steel axles, its interior upholstered in plush red velvet with two wide-padded seats. The black-clad Colonel Madero sat in his coach alone, fingering the broad brim of his black flat-crowned hat, his raptor’s eyes and mirthless smile ever-present even when he was alone, even when he was rasping the hoarse stentorian orders, which no one dared to ignore or dispute.

  As Felix was taken into custody more officers went to the bunkhouse where the single workers lived and to the huts of workers with families.

  Madero preferred the coach over horseback for two reasons: Mounting and dismounting a horse with a metal leg was embarrassingly awkward, and in his line of work perception was power. He could never appear vulnerable.

  Once when a constable had inadvertently smirked while Madero mounted a horse, he had ordered the constable’s wrists lashed to an overhanging tree limb and had commanded his coach driver to take his buggy whip to him. Long after the spine and ribs gleamed white as alabaster beneath the constable’s flayed and bloody flesh, Madero compelled the driver to continue the flogging. That Madero had crippled the man for life was of no consequence to him. In truth, when Madero thought about it at all the man’s agony combined with his eventual incapacitation only heightened Madero’s … arousal.

  He was a perfect officer for a corrupt royal government that was under attack, a man who gauged which way the wind was blowing and went with it.

  Coming from a Castilian farming family without wealth or political influence, Madero had risen through the ranks to become an officer. A lieutenant, he had nonetheless shown exemplary courage while leading his company of regulars against a superior French force during the initial uprising in Madrid. Later, when he saw that the royal family, Spain’s wealthiest elite, and its aristocratic nobility were supporting the French, he had allied himself with those factions. When desertions to the rebel cause opened up the army’s ranks, Madero won promotion after promotion.

  As the uprising swept over Spain like a hurricane of fire and the French forces were clearly broken, he had switched allegiances again, working secretly with the guerrillas as a double agent to defeat his French employers.

  Madero soon made himself useful to the guerrillas as a spy able to weed out and punish his former friends and allies—now deemed traitors to the Cause.

  After Napoleon’s defeat, the Spanish king returned to rule the nation he had so unceremoniously abandoned. Instead of rewarding the guerrilla leaders, who had driven out the foreign invaders and whom he had fought alongside for six years, Madero turned on them. Knowing intimately the structure of the guerrilla organization—in particular their hierarchy and principal leadership—he used that knowledge to hunt down and punish the leaders who expected more from their king than capricious arrogance, violent oppression, and self-serving despotism.

  New Spain was old Spain’s most valuable asset. The largest Spanish colony, it was—in the eyes of the Crown—one vast mountain of silver, whose ore had been created by the Almighty for a single purpose—to be mined and refined by slaves for the aggrandizement of Spanish kings. A mother lode of other raw materials as well, New Spain was also an enormous market for shoddily produced, insultingly overpriced Spanish goods, which their incompetent monopolistic manufacturers could purvey to no one else. Sending Madero to the colony to organize and direct a network of secret police and spies served the Crown not only in its subjugation of the colony but removed Madero from the Iberian Peninsula where his infamous reputation—indeed his very presence—had become an embarrassing liability.

  Madero hated everything about New Spain, but most of all, he loathed peons—whom he considered subhuman savages. Criollos too—whom he considered craven, lazy, and untrustworthy—he despised. Of course, he also disdained his fellow gachupines, whom he privately averred lacked “cojones.” His loyalty belonged solely to whoever paid his blood bill, and in New Spain that paymaster was the viceroy.

  TWENTY-SIX

  AFTER HIS OFFICERS reported back on Felix’s questioning—as well as on that of the man’s workers—Madero stepped down from the coach and summoned Felix.

  Still attired in his long white nightshirt, the gunsmith struggled to conceal his fright. Attempting to brazen his way out of his predicament, he stared Madero in the eye and said with a boldness he did not feel:

  “I am Spanish, just as you are. The viceroy himself will hear—”

  Madero laid his triple-plaited wrist-quirt down across Felix’s cheek, cutting it to the bone. Felix collapsed to his knees, sobbing, clutching his face.

  “The viceroy will hear what I tell him,” Madero said, cracking his bloody quirt’s triple-poppers against his metal leg. “Pray he does not hear I had you flogged and castrated as a traitor and that I gladly trimmed the trees on the King’s Highway with your gelded remains and gore-covered entrails. You know why we are here, I trust?”

  “A mule, one of my mules was found somewhere,” Felix said, still on his knees, whimpering.

  “The mule was shot … and its rider killed three of my men. When I saw the carnage, do you know the first question I asked?”

  Felix sobbed unintelligibly, and Madero cut him off.

  “Let me ask you my question: What kind of man could charge with a mule three armed constables? What kind of man was so good with pistols he could best three of my men?” Madero shook his head. “Very strange, don’t you think?”

  “I know nothing of it, señor.”

  “Of course, you do. Your men were persuaded to talk to my officers. You have a worker named Juan Rios, an indio?”

  “Yes,” Felix groaned, “and if he’s done anything wrong, I promise I will flog the very bones off his back.”

  “No, señor, you will not punish him.” Again, Madero cracked the quirt against his silver leg. “God and the Crown will kill the son of a whore. However, I shall be their surrogate.”

  “What did Juan do?”

  “Didn’t you hear me when I said he attacked and killed my men? Don’t make me speak twice about this matter or I will have your ears removed from your head and your cojones from between your legs.”

  “Señor Colonel, I beg of you, as a fellow Spaniard and loyal subject of the Crown, tell me what this worthless Aztec has done. I know nothing—”

  “Then know this, señor. One of your mules was found along with my dead men. This Aztec son of a whore used the mule to rescue a female rebel whom I had sent the men to arrest. Moreover, a rebel on a mule had fled a militia patrol earlier. The militia soldiers who gave pursuit said that he was not only an uncanny shot on horseback but that he brandished two pistols.”

  “Juan took a mule to make a delivery. Perhaps he was waylaid and the mule stolen.”

  “Your men tell me that Juan is a crack shot with a pistol and musket. And that he carries the two when he leaves the compound. Perhaps he sought to keep those weapons a secret. If so, he failed. His coworkers found out.”

  “I know nothing about his marksmanship or pistols.”

  “Sí, sí, you keep saying that, that you know nothing, which puzzles me. You run a gun shop and a powder plant, yet you do not know that this Aztec makes weapons for you as well as for himself?”


  “I swear before my Lord and my king—”

  Madero backhanded him full across the face with the whip, opening his other cheek to the bone.

  “You make a mistake when you appeal to God and Crown to support your lies,” Madero said to the now prone, sobbing man. “I know that when you left the compound to collect bills for your annual trip to the capital, you left Rios in charge of your business and that he has also been making guns and powder … right under your nose. From what your workers tell me, he is the true master of the craft. Do you know what the viceroy would do if I told him that you taught an indio to make guns and gunpowder? Indios are not permitted to own a weapon—let alone learn how to make them. And gunpowder? To teach an indio how to make guns and powder would mean a stay among the Inquisitors’ smoldering coals and hot smoking pinchers, its Iron Maid and flame-shrouded stake.”

  “God in Heaven,” Felix sobbed, writhing on the ground.

  “Someone has been supplying rebels with munitions. They call him the Alchemist—as if he conjured guns out of air. But what if he obtained the balls and powder from your shop?”

  As Felix quaked, Madero wondered how much mordida the man would tally up to avoid the viceroy’s wrath and the Inquisitors’ tender ministrations. Unlike large hacienda owners whose illimitable wealth was so inextricably enmeshed in land that they were frequently cash-poor, Felix ran a prodigiously profitable, cash business. Madero could bleed him till hell froze over.

  Of course, the charges were so serious Madero knew he would have to cut the viceroy in, but for enough mordida that swine would countenance—no, pardon—a regicide or Judas himself.

  Moreover, the trembling sobbing wreck at his feet had committed not so much a sin of commission as omission. He failed to effectively oversee a bond slave. True, the consequences had been grave, but Felix himself had harmed no one with his own hand or even wished the Crown ill.