by Tom Wood
The biggest danger Victor faced was the driver, who was toying with a mobile phone as the doors hissed open. He waved Victor on without checking his ticket, and as he passed, Victor caught the scent of alcohol. None of the other passengers seemed concerned by this, and he took a seat next to an old man in a string vest.
The bus rumbled into motion. Like many of the buses he had seen, it was a repurposed American schoolbus. Repainted and modified, but the shape was unmistakable. The seats were textured vinyl worn down to a glassy sheen. The old man next to him was having fun sliding back and forth. Victor shuffled farther along the seat to give the man more room to enjoy.
It was hotter than outside, and humid. The locals were well conditioned to the climate and seemed content. Victor sweated.
The journey took several hours. It was a slow drive out of town and into the surrounding countryside. The roads weren’t great. Some were little more than tracks. The bus swayed and jolted, rocked and shook. The old man was having a great time.
Victor departed with three other passengers. The bus stop was at a crossroads that had a scattering of buildings around it. The closest was a petrol station that had a sign for Pepsi, but the logo was decades out of date. The other passengers didn’t waste time. They headed as a group away down a bisected road while Victor headed into the petrol station. The guy who owned it, or just ran it, was sitting outside in a plastic chair. He sipped from a glass bottle of Coke.
Opening a chest cooler, Victor selected an ice cream and gave cash to the man in the plastic chair.
Victor said, “Campo de aviación?”
The man looked at him and said nothing.
Victor crossed the road to where a square-fronted building named Ruiz’s stood. The window displayed sun-faded posters advertising beer and food. Chairs and tables sat outside, but were unoccupied. The comedor was half bar, half café, but neither. It had an open cooler by the door full of cans of soda, bottles of water, juice, and beer. Some people paid at the counter and took them on their way. Others sat down at the counter, like it was a bar, while Ruiz prepared deli-style sandwiches on the same surface. Meanwhile, a waitress provided table service, ferrying plates of food from a kitchen behind swinging doors, and beverages from behind the counter. Beer bottles, mostly, but different brands from those available in the cooler by the door. Nothing on draft, and no optics for spirits, but he saw a line of tall bottles behind Ruiz that could be domestic concoctions. The furniture looked expensive and solid and hardy enough to survive a lifetime in a backstreet Dublin pub. The plastic tablecloths seemed almost insulting in comparison.
There was space for around thirty drinkers or diners, but only two tables were occupied. A trio of young men sat together in the corner Victor would have chosen, and four men who were older, but not by much, sat in the center of the room, beneath a single ceiling fan.
With his preferred seat taken, Victor took a chair where he could watch the door and see through the windows without too much effort. He knew everyone in the establishment was either staring at him or talking about him, but he ignored their curiosity.
The bus journey had been long and he was hungry. There was no menu, however, so he asked for eggs, beans, fried plantains, baked peppers, and tortillas, which arrived fast and steaming. The plate wasn’t especially large and the food wasn’t piled high, but he left a significant portion of it. A good way of losing weight, he had read, but he did it for practical purposes. He never wanted to operate on a full stomach. He preferred to eat smaller, higher-calorie meals on a more frequent basis.
He was something of a novelty to the waitress, who asked him several times if the food was good, if he wanted anything else, if she could fetch him another drink. The final time she worked up the courage to ask him where he was from, so he had kept it vague to blunt any further conversation. The waitress didn’t handle the bill. Instead Victor paid at the bar, and made sure to add on a large tip to offset the distrust he generated on account of his foreignness.
Victor said, “Donde puedo encontrar el aeródromo privado?”
Ruiz was young, with a fleshy face and neat, thin hair. His eyes were red and he had bags beneath them. There was tiredness in his movements but an energy in the gaze he cast. He hesitated, so Victor put some more cash on the bar, which was slid away by a prompt palm.
“West,” Ruiz said. “Five kilometers.”
“Much appreciated, sir.”
Victor turned to leave, but saw that it wasn’t going to be that simple.
• Chapter 21 •
Nothing triggered it and there had been no warning signs, so he was a little surprised to see one of the three young men from the table in the corner approach him. He had slick hair and the expression on his face said plenty, as did the fact that his two friends had swiveled around in their chairs to watch the proceedings.
A random attack then, delivered by someone with something to prove. To someone, Victor realized, when he saw that the waitress’s gaze was glued to the guy with slick hair.
There was an inevitable path these things always took. Verbal aggression first as the attacker psyched himself up, which would lead to a shove, then maybe more verbal aggression if Victor didn’t comply, or a punch thrown if Victor shoved back. That was how it went the world over with those who linked violence to self-worth.
“You were flirting with my fiancée,” the young guy with slick hair said.
Victor didn’t respond. Instead, he selected a bottle of sparkling water from the cooler cabinet by the entrance. There were a few brands available. He chose the one with a conelike shape, the bottle made of green plastic. He paid for it with cash while the young guy grew even more agitated at being ignored.
“Hey, I’m talking to you.”
He didn’t understand the contrast between himself and Victor. The former wanted to humiliate the latter. The latter didn’t want to kill the former. It didn’t take much to drop someone. Even a strike delivered with just the right amount of force to put an enemy to sleep might kill him if he hit his head the wrong way on the floor, or if he choked on the resulting vomit, or if he had a weak heart that couldn’t take the trauma. The last thing Victor wanted to do was leave a corpse behind. He couldn’t close the distance to Maria Salvatierra with detectives on his heels, looking to find a vicious foreigner who beat a local to death.
It was never a good idea to fight straight after a meal, so he wanted it over fast. Most fights were won with the first punch, which meant they were won before it was thrown. A fight was won when the decision was made to strike first. Action, instead of reaction. The young guy with the slick hair hadn’t made the decision to fight. At least not yet. His intention was to intimidate, maybe to belittle. Certainly, to get a reaction. Drive the outsider away, acting the big man to impress his friends and fiancée too, if that worked for her. Victor had no decision to make. It had already been made. He walked around on a hair trigger. Not temper, but practicality. He couldn’t always preempt conflict, but he could always be ready for it.
Victor said, “Let’s just skip to the end, shall we?”
As the young guy was processing the remark, Victor dropped him with a stomp kick to the base of the sternum. Nowhere near his hardest kick, because he didn’t want to paralyze the guy’s diaphragm to the point it might never recover, but delivered with enough force to catapult him backward over a table. He hit the floor wheezing and clutching his chest.
Instinct compelled Victor to follow through, to chase after him, circling the tipped-over table to finish him off on the floor. A stomping heel to a vital area usually did the trick, but was often fatal. Vital areas were vital, after all, which was why Victor was apt to target them. A stomp elsewhere was inefficient and risky; any move that took one of Victor’s feet out from under him created vulnerability. Hence, kicks were rare too, and best employed in surprise attacks, when those risks were minimal.
He didn’t
want to kill his attacker, and he didn’t want to cripple him either. So Victor fought the instinct and remained stationary, leaving the young guy wheezing and gasping and his eyes glistening but alive and uninjured. The waitress rushed to aid him.
Before Victor could tell the other two in the corner there was no need for anyone else to get hurt, they were standing up. Not just the two, but the older guys from the other table too. It was a domino effect, but in reverse. As soon as the young guy with the slick hair went down, everyone else stood up. Maybe he was well liked. Maybe his father was someone. Maybe his mother could make trouble for those who didn’t back up her son. It was immaterial. Victor wouldn’t be around long enough to find out why. A quick glance told Victor that Ruiz wasn’t going to get involved, at least. He rolled his eyes, used to senseless violence.
Six against one, but only at the start. These were not timid men, and they had been drinking, but once they started going down, it would discourage the less confident from joining in.
Fighting multiple opponents was never easy. Human survival instinct had a way of focusing on the most immediate threat to the point of tunnel vision. That tunnel vision had its benefits, but created vulnerability too; danger in the peripheral vision went unseen. But that instinct, that tunnel vision, applied only when danger was felt, when under threat. Victor felt neither of those things.
The trick was not to fight more than one person at a time, so he used the room to his advantage, positioning himself so the fallen table and the chairs were obstacles, barriers, to funnel his opponents so he could deal with them one by one.
The main problem he had was balance. Pull his punches too much and it would only encourage others to join in. They would have nothing to fear. Most people could take a knock or two, especially the kind of guys who had drunk multiple beers by one in the afternoon in a hot bar with no air-conditioning. But hit them too hard and it would have the same effect. Then it would be revenge they were after instead of bragging rights, and it would be that much harder to put them down in the first place.
He used the water bottle to drop the first of the young guy’s friends with a blow to the skull. The makeshift weapon was small, but was still half a kilogram of accelerating mass, made rigid from the shaking and the resulting increased internal pressure. Victor discarded the bottle as the man fell. It was effective only in a surprise attack and he wanted both hands free.
One of the older guys was the next closest, and the most eager. He even smiled. Some people enjoyed fighting, but only when they were winning. He had tears on his cheeks by the time Victor stopped hitting him.
That shocked the rest into inaction. Only one was brave enough to approach, and he didn’t rush.
Victor could tell by the way this one approached that he was a boxer, even before he brought his hands up into a guard; and when he did attack, the crispness of his punches confirmed he didn’t just train to keep fit or even spar, but to fight. He was lean and quick, with good head movement. He didn’t come at Victor in a straight line. He moved from side to side, never stepping forward if he could move laterally instead. As expected, he had an excellent jab—fast and powerful—followed by an equally good right cross. The former being the perfect punch to set up the second’s knockout potential. They hit nothing but air.
The boxer was a rangy guy: long legs, long neck, long arms. The length of the arms told Victor he wouldn’t be throwing many hooks, many uppercuts. He would jab to find the range and send the right cross to do damage. Long arms were a disadvantage up close. Victor knew, because he had them. One of the reasons he preferred the elbow over the punch, aside from the obvious advantage the elbow had in terms of resilience over the fist, was it could be used at kissing distance. He preferred to be as close as possible. The closer he was, the more options he had.
A classic, diligent guard kept him protected from counterattacks, and more punches chased Victor as he kept out of range, waiting for the right moment. He knew it was coming, because every miss made the boxer more eager to land the next one; every miss focused the boxer’s mind on making the next punch better, faster, more accurate. He was calling on every iota of ring time, of practice, of strategy, of experience.
His only experience was boxing, however, so when the right moment presented itself—the boxer trying too hard and overextending to land the first hit—Victor had no trouble sweeping his legs out from under him.
The boxer’s stance worked against him—his left foot was too far forward—and he hit the floor hard, the surprise only adding to the impact. The way he wailed and clutched his hip told Victor the boxer wouldn’t be ready to throw another punch for weeks.
The boxer should have attacked him first. It would have given the others time to surround Victor. The end result would still have been the same, but they couldn’t have known that then. The young guy with the slick hair was standing up as the boxer went down, his hair was a mess, and he had a knife in his hand.
He ignored the pleas of the waitress to let it go and stepped closer. The knife was a large, showy weapon with a semiserrated blade and a jagged point, made to look intimidating. Victor could imagine it scaring people who didn’t know any better. He would be more concerned if the knife was smaller, if it had no serrations or a jagged point, because then it would have been carried by someone intent on killing, not scaring. The serrations were no good for a blade meant for killing. They would catch in clothes. Victor had seen it happen. An experienced knife fighter would know that; Victor had only ever fought one professional who had used a serrated blade, but a true expert didn’t have to worry about such inconveniences. The best cosmetic surgeons in the world couldn’t hide the scars Victor had that proved it.
A blade was still a blade, however. A sharp piece of metal in pretty much any shape could sever an artery. The young guy had the classic stance of the amateur knife fighter: weapon held at his hip and opposite hand out before him. The latter to initiate a grab to lock a target in range before bringing the knife into play; the former because the amateur’s primary concern was to keep hold of his blade. It was a classic contradiction—an offensive weapon held defensively—but it was universal where amateurs were involved.
Victor knew how to defend against such a combatant. He knew lots of ways to feint and trick and trap and take the knife from the wielder, but he didn’t need to refer to his skill set. The young guy had made it easy. He was waiting to counterattack, cautious now that he understood the threat he was facing, so he hadn’t even considered the several chairs scattered around the room tipped over or knocked aside in the commotion.
Victor grabbed the closest and hurled it.
The young guy with the messy hair was fast enough to avoid taking the chair right in the face, but he wasn’t quick enough to avoid it entirely. A leg caught him on the side of the head, hard enough to draw blood and make him cry out, although damage wasn’t the primary objective.
He was too distracted to have any chance of avoiding the second chair, which Victor kept hold of instead of throwing.
He held it by the back, four legs out in front, which he drove into the young guy’s torso in a frenzy of hard jabs—no need to worry about counterattacks with such a range advantage—cracking ribs and causing enough trauma to the abdomen to make the young guy vomit all over himself as he slid down the wall.
The chair survived without so much as a creak. Victor set it down back where it belonged.
“That’s a quality piece of furniture,” he said to Ruiz, who was still behind the bar.
“I know,” came the reply. “I make them myself.”
“No kidding?”
Ruiz nodded.
He didn’t seem too surprised or too bothered about the mess, the crying waitress, or the three prostrate figures who were still conscious but didn’t want to be. Those remaining on their feet had no desire to join them.
“What was that all about?” Victor asked.
/> Ruiz explained, “They come here for casual work. On the farms. One day the truck turns up and they want twenty guys; the next they only want five. Some of these boys walk a long way for work. They have a long walk back. Some don’t want to walk back and tell their wives there’s no more money. Some would rather sit here all day and spend what little money they have on beer. They get . . . agitated.”
Victor nodded. It wasn’t anything unique to this part of Guatemala. He had been to many parts of the world where there wasn’t enough work to go around. It made people who would be placid in any other circumstances aggressive. It made the aggressive dangerous.
He placed some money on the bar, but Ruiz shook his head and pushed it away.
“You’ve taught these idiots the best lesson they’re ever going to get,” he said. “So keep your money. You earned it.”
• Chapter 22 •
If a city was a living entity, then Guatemala City breathed air but exhaled smoke and belched noise. Buses passed by, chugging and sputtering, while tinny music blared from taxis and citizens shouted to be heard over both. Its energy was an extreme juxtaposition of excitement and danger, wealth and poverty. The relentless humidity slowed no one down. Instead, it accelerated them to hustle harder, haggle smarter, and smile wider. Joanna Alamaeda had started off hating it—she liked order, not chaos—but now couldn’t imagine living and working anywhere else. It was a place devoid of cynicism. Even the lowlifes looked after one another. Even the cops thought they were doing the right thing. Even the pickpockets smiled as they tried to steal her phone.