Days of the Dead

by David Monnery

  And then he realized that Bazua’s ledger had saved him.

  He stumbled to his feet and started forward again, a little more cautiously this time, his hand shaking slightly from the shock. The man he had killed was face down on the flagstones, arms by his side, as if waiting for a massage.

  Shepreth walked carefully through the open chapel to the doorway which led on to the cloister, and inched an eye around the jamb. Three of Payán’s men were sheltering behind the old stone columns, one firing, the other two reloading. He aimed at the former’s legs and the man dropped with a squeal. The other two made a dive for the shelter of the nearest room. ‘Clear,’ he yelled to Docherty, and watched the distant figure of the Scot scurry along behind the far columns and disappear into the open door of the church. One more burst of fire into the relevant room and Shepreth abandoned the cloister, running back out through the open chapel.

  Docherty was waiting in front of the church, slamming another magazine into his AK47. ‘Go,’ he told Shepreth, turning the gun on first the helicopter and then the pick-up.

  The explosion of the helicopter’s fuel tank almost knocked Shepreth off his feet as he ran for the wall; the boom from the pick-up was almost anticlimactic in comparison. He clambered over to find the two women waiting, Carmen’s anxiety dissolving into a huge smile as he appeared. A moment later Docherty was jumping down beside him, urging everyone up the slope which the three of them had descended not half an hour before.

  As they climbed the path the whole head of the valley seemed lit by the burning vehicles below, but no figures emerged into the atrium. Payán’s men no longer had their leader to make their decisions for them, and his right-hand men in Chihuahua and Ciudad Juárez were a long way from the action. Docherty reckoned that their chances of reaching the border had improved considerably in the last half-hour.

  Getting across it was another matter. If there was an American name inside the ledger Shepreth was carrying, then that American would soon be pulling out all the stops to recover it. One of his agents at the border crossing perhaps, obeying orders he didn’t understand. ‘Could you come this way, sir? I’m afraid we’ll have to look after these records for you…A possible threat to national security…’

  And that was an optimistic reading – Mr X would no doubt prefer that they were killed. Docherty kept walking, half of his mind celebrating their success, the other half searching for ways to make it stick.

  A few metres behind him Carmen was also counting blessings and curses. Her whole being seemed to be almost quivering with relief that her sister was alive, that Shepreth hadn’t been badly injured or killed, that they were on their way. But it had taken only a few seconds for her to realize that her sister was not the same person she had been a year ago. Of course she hadn’t really expected that she would be, but she couldn’t help hoping…Now only time would tell how serious the damage was, and the sense of heartbreak which that provoked seemed so at odds with the happiness which kept bubbling through her whenever she thought about Shep.

  He was bringing up the rear, still a little in shock from that moment when he thought his life was over. The bullet had caught a corner of the ledger – another couple of inches down or to the right and he wouldn’t have been walking anywhere.

  They were ascending the dry stream bed now, and the fires in the valley below were no longer visible. The moon was riding high in the centre of a shimmering universe, the shadowy mountains stretching away, and the thought crossed Shepreth’s mind that it wasn’t the sort of place from which you took a taxi home.

  For the next hour Docherty navigated their way across the broken plateau towards the niche in the rocks where he and Manolo had waited two nights before. There they rejoined the Tarahumara, along with one of his young disciples, their backpacks and the six horses.

  Docherty returned the AK47 to its rightful owner. ‘Payán is dead,’ he told Manolo.

  The Indian’s lips creased in a smile. ‘And the man you were looking for?’

  ‘He is dead too.’

  Manolo nodded gravely, then gave a wan smile.

  They mounted the horses. Despite Carmen’s assurance Docherty was half expecting problems with Marysa, but the opposite seemed the case. Once in the saddle she seemed more animated than before and more at ease with her mount than Docherty was with his.

  The six of them made the long descent in single file, reaching the canyon floor soon after two-thirty. Even with the benefit of the hidden moon the trail was almost invisible to the naked eye, and for the next few hours they were totally dependent on Manolo’s knowledge of the canyon. They were still about eight kilometres from the station at Divisadero when the first rays of light began working their way down the eastern canyon wall, and Manolo led them out of the main canyon and up a narrow wooded cleft past a succession of small waterfalls.

  ‘The walk to the station is all uphill and sometimes steep,’ he told Docherty. ‘It will take the women at least two hours.’

  The Scot did a quick calculation. The train was due at ten past one, but it was unlikely to be less than half an hour late. They didn’t want to be hanging around the station for too long but then they could hardly afford to miss it. ‘We’ll be here for about five hours,’ he told the others, adding that they should try to get some sleep if they could. Which of course was easier said than done. His own brain seemed determined to watch endless reruns of the night’s events, so he just lay there with his eyes open, head on the backpack, staring up at the kaleidoscope of colours on the soaring canyon wall.

  The next thing he knew, Manolo was shaking him awake with the news that it was almost eleven o’clock. He woke the others, and wished he’d been more careful with Marysa, whose eyes sprang open with an expression he wished he hadn’t seen. Then they closed again and she pursed her lips, as if she was trying to squeeze something from her memory.

  Ten minutes later they were ready to go. Docherty thanked Manolo and asked him to give his goodbyes to Paco. ‘Tell him I will bring my family to meet his,’ he said, hoping it would be possible.

  The walk to Divisadero took less than the expected two hours but it was hard work just the same. They arrived at the station looking like one more group of exhausted gringo backpackers, and were duly set upon by the sellers of Indian trinkets and Mexican snacks. There was no sign of Payán’s men, either uniformed or otherwise. If a search was underway – and it was hard to believe that it wouldn’t be – then it hadn’t yet reached here.

  Docherty bought a couple of burritos and sat down to eat them, his eyes scanning the station area. He was pleased to see that there were several other gringos waiting for the train – a couple who looked and sounded like Germans, two obviously American young women and a lone male with the Australian flag plastered across his backpack.

  The minutes ticked by, and eventually the train arrived – a line of dirty green coaches pulled by a blue diesel. Apparently it stopped for fifteen minutes at Divisadero, during which time the tourists were expected to gape at the canyon below, take photographs and buy souvenirs. The four of them watched out of the window, expecting at any moment to hear the whirr of an approaching helicopter above the idling hum of the diesel.

  The train eventually clanked out of the station. Docherty bought their tickets to Chihuahua and surveyed the other occupants of the first-class carriage, at least half of whom were gringos. He caught one of the men smiling at him, and realized it was a smile of envy from another middle-aged man, one who hadn’t got a woman as gorgeous as Marysa sitting next to him.

  Creel was the train’s next stop, and if any station in the mountains was being watched then that would be the one. It seemed to take an age to reach, but when they finally pulled in alongside the crowded platform there was no line of men waiting with guns. There were two uniformed policemen standing beside the doorway to the station building, but their wholehearted attention was almost immediately claimed by the two American women who had got on at Divisadero, and who were now asking for dire
ctions.

  In the seat behind, Carmen and Shepreth were both remembering their first kiss on this very platform, three long nights ago.

  The train resumed its journey, following a succession of winding valleys down from the mountains. Docherty’s mind continued to race with unverifiable assumptions and unanswerable questions. No one had seen Carmen, so their pursuers were probably looking for two gringos and one woman. Did they have any photographs, either of Marysa or himself? He could just imagine Bazua taking humiliating shots of women, and it was hard to believe that someone hadn’t taken his own picture on Providencia. But maybe he was just being pessimistic. Maybe there was no pursuit.

  As they neared the small town of Cuauhtémoc he wondered whether it would be safer to leave the train rather than go on to Chihuahua. No, he decided. They would probably be the only gringos getting off there, and at Chihuahua their fellow-tourists would serve as camouflage. They would stay on board.

  The sun went down behind the train, and the last hour of the journey was travelled in almost complete darkness. They stepped down on to Chihuahua’s single platform fearing the worst, but another pair of uniformed policemen did nothing more threatening than ogle the gringo women, and during the taxi ride to the city centre they could all feel the tension beginning to drain from their bodies.

  The main square was full of life, and there the taxi driver dropped them off at a car-hire firm that was just about to close for the day. They wanted an early start to visit the ruins at Casa Grande, Shepreth told the reluctant proprietor, and once a sizeable bonus had changed hands the man was able to appreciate their urgency. Five minutes later they were on the way out of the city in a dark-blue Nissan Cherry, with only three hundred and fifty kilometres of modern highway between them and the border town of Ciudad Juárez. For the next three hours Docherty and Shepreth took turns at the wheel, and as they sped along the straight and frequently empty two-lane road the Scot began to feel more optimistic.

  That feeling took a bit of a dent when the lights of the state police car brightened in their rear-view mirror. As it passed them the officer in the passenger seat stared across, turned to say something to the driver, then gave Shepreth the signal to stop.

  ‘Shit!’ the two men murmured in stereo. Glancing in the back, Docherty saw that the two women were awake again. He took the Browning from the dashboard compartment and pushed it into his belt beneath the hanging shirt.

  The two Mexican policemen climbed out of their car and walked carefully back towards the Nissan, each with one hand on the butt of his holstered gun.

  ‘Buenas noches,’ Shepreth said.

  ‘Buenas noches,’ one of the men replied curtly, as he did a round of the faces. ‘Passports,’ he demanded.

  Docherty groaned inwardly – Marysa wouldn’t have one. He handed the nearest man his own, reckoning that it would be better if the cops had their hands full when he pulled the Browning on them, but at that moment Carmen cheerfully produced two passports from the pouch she wore around her neck.

  Docherty hardly had time to feel relieved before another problem reared its head – did the Mexicans know they were looking for Colombian women? Would Bazua have bothered to advertise the fact? Would Payán’s men have known? As the Scot’s fingers inched towards the butt of the Browning once more his mind wrestled with the various options. Should they take their own car or the police car? They could lock the two officers in the boot of one of them…

  The Mexican was still studying Carmen’s passport. Now, Docherty thought, but at that moment bright lights flashed in the rear-view mirror.

  The car was going fast, and as it went by they had a brief glimpse of young American males, a brief sonic deluge from their car stereo. The Mexican stared after the vanishing tail-lights, a frown on his face, and almost absent-mindedly handed back the passport. A few moments later he and his partner were in pursuit.

  The four of them just sat there for a moment.

  ‘How come you had Marysa’s passport?’ Docherty asked, still staring through the windscreen at the disappearing police car.

  ‘I’ve had it all the time,’ she told him. ‘I wanted a picture of her to show people on Providencia.’

  They resumed their journey, and some fifteen minutes later they passed the policemen and the American youths, one of whom seemed to be counting out dollar bills. Forty-five minutes after that they were entering the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, eyes peeled for a suitable-looking motel. The border was now only a few kilometres away but Docherty had no intention of attempting a crossing until he was certain that all the other options looked worse. As things stood at the moment there were people in authority on both sides of the Rio Grande who had a vested interest in stopping them.

  They chose a mid-priced motel, and after they had been given the keys to two of its rooms by a sleepy-looking girl of about twelve, Shepreth phoned Vaughan at his apartment in Mexico City. ‘Just get over the border,’ the DEA man told him. ‘My friends in Washington tell me the President already has a private investigation going – it’s just a matter of time.’

  Shepreth explained that they might run into problems if they just presented themselves at Mexican emigration.

  ‘It seems like about ten million people have managed to get across without presenting themselves to anybody,’ Vaughan murmured. ‘OK, just sit tight,’ he added, rather more sympathetically. ‘I’ll see what I can arrange.’

  Shepreth told the others what Vaughan had told him.

  ‘We could go through the tunnel,’ Marysa said.

  They all looked at her.

  ‘Angel was boasting about his escape from the island,’ she said quietly, ‘and his friend – the pig you shot – he told him about a tunnel he has built under the border, right under the Rio Grande.’

  ‘Did he say where it was?’ Docherty asked.

  ‘Not exactly. But he has a bottling plant – for Mexican beer, yes? – and he said the noise of the machinery covered up the noise of the digging.’

  Docherty reached for the telephone directories on the washstand. As far as he could work out there were only four bottling plants in Ciudad Juárez, and only one of them – according to the city map they had already borrowed from the girl in reception – was within stone-throwing distance of the river.

  ‘Now?’ Shepreth asked him.

  ‘Why not?’ the Scot said.

  They all climbed back into the car, and Docherty drove them towards the centre of the town. It was a quarter to one in the morning, but small groups of men seemed to be loitering on every corner of the ugly modern streets, looking like they’d been hired by some spendthrift movie mogul to create a restless, almost ominous atmosphere. The main square showed more activity, but the hustlers were too busy to notice them and the whores turned away when they noticed the women in the back seat.

  Payán’s bottling plant was another kilometre to the west, one of several industrial premises which lay between the wide road and the glorified concrete drainage channel which went by the name of the Rio Grande. There was a light shining through the open door in the loading dock as they went past, but no sign of a night shift in progress. The high wire gates were closed.

  A few hundred metres further up the road Docherty turned the Nissan round and stopped for a moment. There was probably a way in from one of the adjoining premises, but he was still wondering what to do with the other three while he investigated when a Toyota Land Cruiser purred by.

  He watched as it slowed and came to a halt, either at the gates of the bottling plant or somewhere very close by. He turned off his own lights and moved the Nissan forward, pulling up behind the other vehicle just as the gates swung open.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked Shepreth, and followed the Toyota in.

  As he drew up behind it a man on the loading dock glanced in their direction, then gave the men in the Toyota an enquiring look. They obviously had no idea what he was asking them, because neither of them looked round until their questioner’s hands shot up in the
air, and by that time Docherty’s Browning was waiting to invite them out of the cab and into the factory.

  Once everyone was inside, the loading-dock door shut behind them, Shepreth and Carmen held guns on the three men while Docherty went to make sure that the rest of the building was empty. He came back a few minutes later with a ball of wire and the news that it was.

  The sight of the wire made the Mexican night guard talkative. ‘Do you know who you are messing with?’ he asked them contemptuously. ‘Payán – that is who. He will roast your balls over a slow fire for this.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Docherty told him mildly. ‘We killed him yesterday.’

  The man started to laugh, but the look on his companions’ faces put a stop to that. They were now frightened.

  ‘Where is the tunnel?’ Docherty asked them briskly.

  ‘We don’t know,’ one of them said. ‘We have just come from Chihuahua. He will know,’ he added, indicating the night guard.

  ‘Well?’ Docherty asked.

  ‘I know nothing about a tunnel,’ the man said sullenly.

  Docherty walked over to him, grabbed his belt with one hand and thrust the barrel of the Browning down inside it with the other. ‘Where is the tunnel?’ he asked again.

  ‘I show you,’ the man said breathlessly.

  It was under one of the storage rooms which lined one wall of the main building. A concrete slab floor on steel rollers slid aside to reveal a shaft about thirty metres deep. Aluminium ladder-like stairs were provided for humans, winches for the bundles of cocaine, heroin and whatever other contraband came this way.

  The night guard obligingly turned on the lights and Docherty went down. In the chamber at the bottom there was a neatly stacked mountain of plastic bags containing enough drugs to relaunch the American 60s. Facing this yet-to-be-realized fortune was a large opening in the wall. Docherty flicked one of the switches beside it and the lights came on, illuminating a concrete-reinforced tunnel some two metres high and one metre wide which stretched away into the distance. He flicked the other and heard the hum of air-conditioning. Well, he thought, you couldn’t expect smugglers to raise a sweat.