Nothing to Hide drm-3

by J. Mark Bertrand

  César.

  The words reverberating in my head are my own, spoken years ago to Nesbitt when I only knew him by the nickname Magnum. I plan on slapping the cuffs on César, too. And there he is, surrounded by minions, smoking a cigar in the warm evening. Whenever I’m tempted to congratulate myself on being a good cop, a careful gatherer and logical analyst of concrete evidence, something like this happens to remind me all I am is an instrument. A blunt instrument of fate.

  César disappears down the steps. I wait and watch, wondering whether his men will let me pass. After a frozen moment, several people approach and enter the cantina without being molested. I follow their lead, doing my best impression of a hapless tourist. Their eyes bore through me, but the gang proves as lax as the border agents, making no move to stop me.

  I step down, grasp the door in my hand, and pull. A blast of muggy air hits my face, accompanied by a woman’s laughter and the strumming of guitars.

  From a spot I’ve elbowed my way into at the far end of the long bar, I watch the round table where César holds court, flanked on his right by Brandon Ford and on his left by a tall and shapely blonde with big eyes and a tiny dress. Either she arrived early or she came with the table. Apart from the old man, no one at the table takes much notice of her. They can’t afford to. This is business, pure and simple.

  Did César somehow rise through the ranks of the cartel, or did Nesbitt plant him here? I suspect the latter. Whether all the pieces fit or not, I can’t tell, but a theory rumbles like thunder through the back of my head. Nesbitt uses César to infiltrate the cartel, then César decides he doesn’t need Nesbitt anymore and uses Magnum’s own people to take him out.

  At the table, Ford does most of the talking, leaning in and gesturing emphatically with one hand. Insisting on something. César dismisses all this with a slight shake of the head, as indifferent to Ford as a horse is to a fly. He steals glances at the blonde beside him, takes drags on his cigar and sips of tequila neatly from a glass at his elbow.

  Increasingly desperate, Ford turns to his men for confirmation of whatever it is he’s saying. They have their backs to me, but I can see their heads nodding. One of their voices carries over the hum of conversation and music.

  “We left it where they told us to. If it’s not there, how is that our problem? Is this his city or isn’t it?”

  So that’s the problem. César has already discovered the absence of the van. Now the deal is falling through before my eyes.

  Sweating cerveza in hand, I notch out a new position for myself down the bar, close enough to hear what’s happening at the table without being too obvious an eavesdropper. César hasn’t aged well, but he has retained the graceful manner I recall from our encounter more than twenty years ago. He studies the cherry of his cigar, letting Ford’s words bounce off him, then raises his hand as if to summon someone from across the room. I follow the motion with my eyes. He looks at me. Looks away. Then his eyes cut back to me. The hand lowers.

  “Gentlemen, excuse me,” he says to the table. He rises and makes for the rear exit, the blonde bouncing her way behind him.

  Ford and his men exchange glances, dumbfounded.

  “You’d better go after him,” one of them says.

  “Fine. You sit tight.”

  Ford peels away. The others make no move to follow him. Before he reaches the exit, they’re already calling for drinks, content to let the boss sort everything out. I scan the crowd for any of the gangbangers César brought in with him, but I’m not sure who’s who anymore.

  Ford disappears behind a black-painted door.

  Over the din I hear an electronic chirp and feel the vibration against my leg. I reach for my phone. The number on-screen is Jeff’s. His voice crackles, but it’s no use. I press the phone tight against my head and clamp my free hand over the opposite ear.

  “Say that again.”

  “Out back,” he says. “They came out back. They’re leaving. I have to go.”

  The volume climbs as I move forward. Maybe it’s the thumping of the pulse in my head. I hear something crash on the floor and look down in time to see my beer bottle rolling around just as I kick it. The bottle spins, gurgling foam, but I keep pressing toward the door. I pull it open and duck through, down a dimly lit hallway, dodging a waitress with a tray of empties over her shoulder. I reach a door with a scarred kickplate and a grimy push bar.

  SALIDA.

  The breeze on the street is cool in comparison to where I’ve come from. There’s a lonely sidewalk and a few parked cars and at the end of the road-which is so narrow it must be one-way-I spot the brake lights of the white van.

  I run. In contrast to the din inside the cantina, out here there is nothing but the sound of my feet on the pavement and the hum of traffic out on the thoroughfare beyond the van. I reach the back bumper as the van rolls forward.

  “Wait!” I yell, slamming my hand against the side.

  The van lurches and halts. I wrench open the passenger door, only pausing an instant to confirm that it’s Jeff behind the wheel. He motions me inside with an impatient curse, then mashes his foot down on the gas. I fall heavily against the back of the seat, the force pulling the door shut.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I gasp.

  “We’re cutting this too close. I told you to stay with him. You better put your seat belt on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  According to the clock on the dashboard, it’s already a quarter past eight. The fact that he’s here, and that he managed to take the van, fills me with wonder. Behind me, a mountain of long canvas duffels lie one on top of the other like a stack of body bags. I slip through the seats, steadying myself against the side of the van, and stagger toward the nearest one, pulling the zipper open. Inside there are smaller nylon cases, the same kind I saw in the icebox inside the storage unit, with pouches on the side for 30-round magazines.

  Jeff yells at me to sit down, then yells again for me to hold on as he turns.

  “You got them,” I say. “You got all the guns.”

  “Do you have your gun?” he asks.

  “It’s still under the car.”

  “Great. In that case, you can make yourself useful and see if there’s any ammo back there. Otherwise we’re taking a knife to a gunfight-assuming you have a knife.”

  “Who says anything about a gunfight?” I ask, crouching between the seats.

  “When they came outside, there were guys waiting. They grabbed Ford and stuffed him into the trunk of the car. Whatever we’re heading into, I’d just as soon be ready.”

  “They kidnapped Ford? The old man was with him?”

  “The old man was in charge,” he says.

  I slump to the floor, feeling the hum of the wheels underneath me.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Jeff says.

  “I think he recognized me.”

  “Who, Ford?”

  I ignore the question. “They were supposed to pick up the guns. But you took them instead. And now Ford’s got some explaining to do.”

  “So it’s my fault?” he asks. But he’s not angry. He’s laughing.

  While Jeff struggles to keep up in the traffic, I feel my way around in back, opening bags, digging through their far recesses in search of ammunition. Water, water everywhere. And not a round to fire. I have to empty each of the duffels, patting down every empty magazine pouch. There must be a hundred rifles in total, maybe more, some of them rattling around loose in the canvas bags, but most tucked inside the soon-to-be-discarded Cordura cases.

  At the bottom of the second to last bag I find an odd-looking case. It’s similar to the others, only longer, like it was made for a full-size rifle, and it’s olive drab with stained leather tabs on the corners, the surfaces scuffed from use. There are no magazine pouches on the outside, but when I unzip the case, I find not a brand-new flattop M4 but an old-style CAR-15 with the carry handle on top, the bluing around the sharp edges all but worn away. Nestled in the space between the grip a
nd the bottom of the case are four stubby plastic 20-round magazines. I grab one, pleased with the weight. Running my finger along the top of the mag, I feel the sharp point of a full-metal-jacket round.

  “We have ammo,” I call out. “But not much.”

  In all those straw purchases, one of Ford’s middlemen must have bought this off a private seller who’d delivered up the goods already in a case, with his loaded magazines forgotten inside. I like the well-used look of the CAR, so I slap one of the mags inside and tuck a second into my front pocket. Then I load one of the M4s for Jeff, sliding it between the seats with the last of the four magazines alongside.

  When I crawl back into the passenger seat, we are no longer driving down city streets. The lights are all behind us and a dark stretch of highway looms ahead, the running lights of several cars just visible about a mile in front of us, the cone of their headlights casting shadows on the swaying palms. Jeff’s face, illuminated by the console, is grimly set.

  “I’m trying to catch up,” he says.

  They could stop anywhere, I realize, dragging Ford out into the dust, leaving nothing behind for us but a bullet-riddled corpse. We’d have his body and nothing else. The end of the road and not a thing to show for it. No answers and no explanations.

  “How many guys did you count?” I ask. “Are we about to do something stupid here?”

  He shrugs. “Maybe five or six? There’s a woman, too. And the old man.”

  Nesbitt said he would go far and he certainly has. Nesbitt said he would take care of it, that César was his problem, not mine. But Nesbitt is dead and César isn’t. What did he expect me to do? What was in that packet he gave Jeff for me? An apology? A confession? An entreaty urging me to finish the job he barely started?

  “César,” I say. “He’s the boss. He’s the reason Nesbitt dragged me into this. Don’t let them get away.”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  Jeff is exasperated, but I don’t care. I watch the red lights on the horizon, willing them closer. Not for Ford’s sake, not anymore. The generalissimo with silver hair, the old man, the big boss. The one who plucked the cigar from his lips, his once-handsome face, and smiled. César, he’s the one I want. He’s always been the one. But he was untouchable until now.

  CHAPTER 27

  There are two cars up ahead. Our headlights flash on the trunk of the rearmost car, gilding random bits of trim, casting a glow into the cabin. In the backseat, a round-faced man with black hair and an old scar down his cheek turns to squint at us, and makes a rude gesture with his hand. The figures up front are only silhouettes obstructed by the headrests. I can see the driver fiddling with his rearview mirror, trying to cut the glare.

  “He’s in that one,” Jeff says.

  The car in front, a sleek Teutonic sedan, contains César, the blonde, and a couple more of the foot soldiers.

  We’re racing down a divided highway, two lanes heading south and two north, with scraggly palms swaying in the median. Just beyond the grass shoulder on our right a metal fence runs parallel to the road, backed by a screen of lush, shadowy scrub, while on the left the bare prairie is interrupted every mile or two by modest signs of habitation-a garish motel, a lonely Pemex gas station, a walled courtyard hiding a cluster of squat houses. I hold the CAR-15 in my lap, the barrel pointing toward the floor between my feet, my hand resting on the cocking handle. My window is rolled down, the wind thundering in my ear.

  In the backseat of the car, the scarred man is yelling to his companions, jerking his thumb in our direction. He twists himself around and starts waving a chromed semiautomatic in the air, warning us off.

  I glance down at my untrembling hand, feeling disassociated from my physical self, a hovering watcher, calm and detached. As my options pare down, so does my indecision, leaving behind the hard but simple equation of survival: kill or be killed.

  The man lowers the chrome gun, his expression transforming from one of menace to wide-eyed surprise. And he’s not paying attention to us anymore. His eyes are cast down. I lean across the dash, trying to see what he’s seeing.

  The trunk lid bounces as the car hits rough pavement, rising a foot in the air, opening up a gap for our headlights to shine through. Under the lid I glimpse a section of forearm before the trunk settles down.

  “It’s Ford! He’s opened the trunk-”

  The driver hits the brakes, bathing us in red, and the back end starts to slide. The trunk lid rips free of Ford’s grasp, flapping wide open, revealing his hunched body like Botticelli’s goddess on an oyster shell. His skin is washed out by the shine from our high beams, but the rictus of fear is unmistakable.

  Jeff has to brake, too, swerving into the next lane to avoid a collision. The car’s brakes let up and it gains speed on us. Jeff hits the gas, pitching me back. In the trunk, Ford is writhing, afraid to jump out and afraid of missing his chance, too. I can almost read the thoughts running across his face.

  “He’s gonna jump,” I say.

  The van veers again, just as Ford makes his move. He rises on his haunches and rolls forward, more of a fall than a dive. I lose sight of him as he hits the road. Jeff mashes down the brake, hurtling past the spot where Ford landed. We shudder to a halt with the screeching of wheels. Ahead of us, the car stops, too. They’re about thirty yards away, cocked sideways on the periphery of our headlight cone, the open trunk screening their movement.

  I open the door and slip onto the pavement just as the first shot is fired. There’s a loud pop, a muzzle flash from the side of the car, and a thunk near my left ear. A bloom of broken glass. Then silence. I hear voices, then footsteps scraping across the pocked asphalt.

  By the time they start shooting again I’m already on the move, circling behind the van for cover, drawing back the charging handle and letting it slap a round into the chamber. Hunched at the rear bumper, I wheel around and bring the muzzle up. There are three of them crossing the gap between their car and the van, the scarred one in front with his chromed gun at the ready. Our headlights throw enough light on them to make a sight picture easy. I line up the post on the lead man, lowering my finger onto the trigger.

  Jeff scuttles around beside me, breathing hard, the M4 in his hand.

  “Was there another mag?” he whispers. “I felt around but I couldn’t find it.”

  “I put it next to the gun,” I say, not taking my eyes off the target.

  He mutters something under his breath, then rises. “I can see Ford. He’s-”

  I pull the trigger. At the last moment I drop the muzzle and put the round in the scarred man’s leg. He drops his pistol and doubles over, clutching his thigh. The other two bolt back to the car, leaving him there. He staggers backward a few feet, then falls to the ground and emits a terrible wail.

  Jeff puts his hand on my shoulder, making sure he has my attention. “Hold them off. I’m going after Ford.”

  As he scuttles off into the night, I glance back after him. He’s heading toward the dim lights of a roadside settlement a quarter mile down the highway, just a concrete block wall with a sheet-metal gate and a couple of small shacks on the other side. An amber streetlight marks the entrance. Squinting, I realize it’s not the settlement he’s making for but an inky form limping toward it, trying to conceal itself in the shallow ditch running alongside the road. Ford.

  A burst of gunfire erupts from the direction of the car. Dull, metal hailstone thuds rock the van, sending showers of glass onto the pavement. I put some distance between myself and the bulk of the van, still keeping the cover between us. I need a new firing position and my best option looks like the ditch, where I can hunker down and fire from around the front of the van while they’re looking for me to poke around the back.

  The wounded man rolls on the ground, alternately clutching his leg and reaching for his dropped gun. He calls to his comrades for help.

  “¡Cálmate! ” a voice shouts from behind the car, sounding annoyed at the distraction.

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p; I can’t tell exactly where they’re standing, and they’ve stopped firing, so I aim in the direction of the sound.

  A double tap: one, two.

  Pause to let them look up. Then another two: tap, tap.

  Before they can return fire, I’m on the move, running in a crouch, staying as low in the ditch as I can. By the time I draw level with the back of the van, they’re pouring fire on the front, so I just keep moving.

  I don’t see Jeff anymore. Or Ford. The faster I move, the harder it is to see anything at all apart from the streetlight. Over my shoulder, the gunfire subsides long enough to hear the lead car doubling back. I can’t turn around. There’s no time.

  They can race ahead on the highway, cutting me off, and if I lay down some fire to try and slow them down, my muzzle flash will give away my position. So far there’s no evidence they have anything but handguns, meaning that if I put enough distance between us, my carbine will have the advantage. Until then, I can’t count on keeping enough heads down with my unaimed fire to prevent one of them from drawing a bead on my position and dropping me.

  My lungs swell with the effort of running, only I don’t feel winded. I don’t feel my age, either. The adrenaline is pumping through me, and while my mind may be clear, my body seems to exult in the challenge. No pain, no constraint even. I’m alive, so alive that I feel like laughing. Then they start shooting again and I have no time to feel anything. The engine roars and the tires squeal.

  There’s no choice now but to drop. I hit the ground, swing the carbine around, and fire a string of rounds at the approaching car. It’s the lead car, the one the silver-haired man was in according to Jeff. The windshield shatters, the car dips to a halt, then reverses eagerly until it reaches the cover of the van. I get up and start running again, accompanied by the crack of handgun fire. They must not have spotted me, though, because none of the shots come close.