by Blake Banner
He’d brought my rucksack with him, so I removed Romero’s head with my knife, wrapped it in his shirt and stuffed it, along with the money, in the sack. I didn’t enjoy doing it, but sometimes you have to do unpleasant things in life. That’s just the way it is. I made my way down the stairs. On the way, I rummaged through the pockets of the various corpses, collecting car keys. That wasn’t nice either.
I found Pepe and Chico standing with the three girls out front, in the wavering orange light of the fire. Chico was trying to have a conversation with them, like he was chatting them up on a street corner, raising his voice over the roar and crackle. The girls were lined up in a row, staring at him like he was crazy.
I’d put the Smith & Wesson in the rucksack. I didn’t figure I would need it again that night. I had the Sig p226 under my arm. That would be a different story. I spoke as I approached them.
“Any of you girls know how to drive?” They gawped at me, either because they were in shock, or because they didn’t speak English. I tried again. “Quien de ustedes sabe manejar?”
One of them, she looked like the oldest, raised her hand. “Yo se manejar. Tengo permiso.”
She had a license. I looked at the guys and pointed at the barns. “Those two barns, where you didn’t find the girls?” They looked and nodded. “One of them is a lab. Go have a look. See if there’s a stash there.”
They nodded again and set off at a run. When they’d gone inside, I pulled out thirty grand from the rucksack and gave the girls ten grand each, plus the keys to an Audi. I pointed at the cars parked out front. “Get the hell out of here. Váyanse! Váyanse rápido!”
They just stood and gaped. Today was a day for gaping. “Go! Go!”
Finally they turned and ran toward the car, glancing over their shoulders at me like I might shoot them in the back before they got away. I ignored them and headed after Pepe and Chico at a jog. My job tonight was almost done.
As I pushed through the door into the middle barn, I heard the Audi sliding away onto the road. I tried not to think of all the things that could go wrong for three young girls in a stolen Audi with thirty thousand US dollars between them. I told myself, if they were smart, they had a fighting chance. Which was more than Pepe and Chico had.
I stood looking around. They’d found the light switch and the big, fluorescent overhead lamps were casting a dull, dead light over the cavernous wooden hangar. It was a big operation. There were benches, easily forty feet long, where the blocks of coke were already being stacked. I counted twenty kilos just at a glance. Pepe and Chico were watching me, waiting for instructions. They were surprised, like me. I was asking myself, if the Sinaloa cartel was so powerful, and this ranch was firmly inside their territory, how the hell had Romero got away with setting up such a big operation?
Looking at the equipment and the raw materials he had amassed, he was either preparing to give the cartel a run for its money, or they knew what he was doing and were on board with it. To give a cartel pulling in four billion bucks a year a run for its money is, at best, a stupid thing to do. And Emilio had not been a stupid man. So there was more going on here than I was aware of. Suddenly, I had alarm bells going off in my head.
Pepe shrugged and spread his hands. “What the hell, boss?”
I pulled the Sig and said, “I’m not your boss, Pepe, I’m your executioner.”
His reflexes were better than I expected. He lunged to one side, hit the floor in a roll, and ran screaming behind one of the benches as the Sig spat and two rounds hit the floor. I swore under my breath. Chico reached for his gun and joined the ranks of gaping souls waiting to be reborn as surprised babies.
I went after Pepe, but he was scrambling around like a headless chicken on speed. I let off two more rounds and missed again. Then he was bolting through the door.
Now I had a problem. I needed to destroy the lab, but I needed to get Pepe before he made it back to Arana. I needed Arana on side, and talking. That meant I had to act fast.
I ran to the door. What I did next depended on what direction he took. If he went left to grab one of the cars at the front of the house, I’d follow and kill. If he went right, over the fence and back toward where we’d left the trucks, I’d let him get away, finish the work in hand, and then hunt him down in the sierra. That would be a problem.
He did what he’d probably been doing all his life. He made the wrong choice. He ran for the cars. In the light of the collapsed hay barn, now burning low and starting to smolder, he was a dancing, jerking black silhouette. I ran five strides and dropped on one knee. I took my time, a full two seconds to aim, then double-tapped.
I saw him stumble, then heard him swear, “Ay, mierda!” He took another step and then carefully lay down. I jogged over and confirmed the kill with a round to the back of the head. In his next life, he would be a disgruntled baby. Shit happens.
I went back into the lab, pulling the C4 from my rucksack as I went. I broke the cake in two and placed one half dead center on the stash of coke on the bench. I set the detonator to ignite in half an hour and ran. I was figuring that on a remote ranch like this, there had to be a store of fuel for the trucks. As you’d expect, it hadn’t been with the hay. It hadn’t been with the girls or in the lab either. That only left the barn next door.
I wrenched open the big, wooden doors and sure enough, they had half a dozen drums stashed against one wall, beside a truck and a tractor. Fighting to stay focused, I shaped the other half of the C4 and placed it on the lower middle drum. I set the detonator for twenty-seven minutes.
For good measure, on my way out, I passed by the kitchen in the house and opened all the gas taps. Houses in Mexico, especially in the country, tend to use large canisters of propane to heat their water and to cook. Propane is highly explosive and it ignites very easily. I now had a large house filling up with combustible gas, a burning barn, half a dozen drums of gasoline and two shaped charges of C4, all ready to go off at the same time—in about fifteen minutes.
It was time to go.
I ran, sprinting back across the open land, past the smoldering wreck of the hay barn, over the fence and away. Now my mind was focused on Arana. I kept thinking about what he’d said about his supplier, Rafael Montilla, connected to the Sinaloa cartel. Something was nagging at my mind, something that didn’t make sense. My mind was spinning, racing, making connections.
Connections that should not possible.
Sixteen
After ten minutes of scrambling through the undergrowth and clambering over rocks, I crested a hill and paused to catch my breath. Three distinct reports in rapid succession tore the night in half. The first was the flat, jarring slam of C4. I turned to look and saw the lab building disintegrating by the dim light of the hay barn. A second later, there was the richer, deeper roar of gasoline igniting, and the next barn went up in a mushroom fireball that illuminated the whole ranch and tore through what was left of the barns, sending out liquid tongues of fire toward the sky and the house.
Then came the third explosion: the hard, flat bang of gas shattering the roof and the windows of the house, sending blue plumes of translucent flame curling out into the darkness. I didn’t pause to see the aftermath. The job was done. Below me, I could see the glint of reflected fire on the chassis of the Jeep. I bounded down, staggering, slipping and sliding, crashing through the small trees and bushes, toward the esplanade in the gully where we had left the trucks.
I drove hard, chasing the funnels of the headlamps around the tight twists and hairpin bends of the road. Climbing higher into the sierra. I could have taken the 195 through Nogales, and that would have been quicker, but I didn’t fancy driving through populated places with US plates and a Mexican head in my rucksack, in the vicinity of a large explosion. It didn’t seem smart.
It was close to eleven PM as I pulled in to the parking lot at the Casa Coca. I climbed out of the cab and stood for a moment to light a cigarette and look up at the translucent emptiness of the night sky, pe
ppered by a trillion specs of frozen light. I told myself there was no heaven up there that we could aspire to, no hell beneath us that could be condemned to. We were not suspended between Heaven and Hell. We were in Hell, plain and simple. We were in Hell, trying to get out.
I crossed to the door and pushed through. Arana was sitting at his usual table with Juan and Alejandro, his two last remaining boys, drinking beer and playing cards. The bar was quiet, aside from the wailing of a Mexican band and a couple of girls sitting and talking at the bar.
They looked up as I walked in and threw the rucksack on the table. It landed with a hard thud. They all stared at it.
“Open it.”
His fingers fumbled with the buckles, but he finally got it open and Romero’s head rolled out, wrapped in the sticky, bloody shirt, followed by a drift of hundred dollar bills. He peeled back the shirt and looked at the features.
I asked, “Do you know him?”
He glanced at me, then looked back at the waxy face. He shrugged. “Emilio… Yeah, I think so… His face is familiar.”
“The money was in the safe. It’s what Red paid him for the coke. Now you got the coke, the money, and Red’s supplier. It’s a good day for you. You happy yet?”
I walked to the bar and told Anita, one of the girls, to get me a cold beer. I sat on a stool and turned to face him. He was watching me. He had a curious expression on his face. “Where are Pepe, Chico, Julio, Nelson…”
“They were incompetent. They got killed. I destroyed the lab, burned down the ranch.”
He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “There is something wrong with you, gringo. You’re like a one-man focking holocaust, destroyin’ everything. Everywhere you go, people die.” He shook his head again, more emphatically. “You know what? Take the money. Fock off. I don’t want you round here. You’re fockin’ dangerous.”
I picked up the beer Anita had put on the bar and smiled at him.
“Too hot for you, Arana?”
“Fock you.”
“When we’re done, I’ll go.”
Juan and Alejandro were looking nervous. Arana said, “When we are done? I just told you, we’re done.”
I swigged and sighed. It felt good. I was tired. “I need to get rid of Red, remember? Leave you in control down here. Then you pay me off…” I pointed at the bag. “Whatever’s in there. And I blow town, leaving you in control of the supply of coke, meth and girls.”
“Why?” He looked like a mathematician who keeps getting five as the answer to two plus two. “It don’t make no sense. What are you doing?”
“Just having a beer.”
“What are you doing here, in Tucson, in Arizona. What the fuck do you want here?”
“Same as the rest of us, pal. Just trying to find a way out of Hell.” I turned to Anita again. “Get me a hamburger, will you? I’m starving.”
I climbed off the stool and walked over to Arana’s table. I pulled out a chair and sat.
“Tell me some more about Rafael Montilla. And the Sinaloa cartel.”
“Tell you what?”
“You ever meet him?”
“You kidding me? You gonna go kill him now?” He laughed. Juan and Alejandro laughed on cue. I didn’t laugh.
“Did you ever meet him?”
“No! I never met him. I buy, I sell, I do what I’m told. I make a lot of money. I live like a fockin’ king. But they are the emperors, amigo. You should know something. In Mexico, is not the cops that go after the Sinaloa, is the army. They own half of Mexico. Comprendes?”
I nodded. I was beginning to. “From Tijuana and Mexicali down to Acapulco.”
“You got it. Me? I am dealin’ in hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lots of money. But Montilla and Chavez…” He laughed and shook his head. “They are dealin’ in billions of dollars. Thousand of millions!”
“Like a big, multinational corporation.”
“Exactly like that, amigo. Now you are beginning to understand.”
“Like the pharmaceutical industry.”
He spread his hands like I was beginning to get on his nerves. “Enough. I said you got it. No more examples.”
But I wasn’t talking to him. I was talking to myself, wishing I could talk to Marni. “How can I talk to him? How can I contact him?”
He was shaking his finger at me in a ‘no’ gesture. “Uh-uh! Uh-uh, gringo! No way!”
“I need to talk to him.”
“No way!”
“You have some intermediary. Some guy you contact. There must be somebody you talk to.”
He pounded his fist on the table. Anita loomed up beside me and placed a burger in a bun on the table. My head was buzzing and I could hear a pounding in my ears. I was physically exhausted, but I was also exhausted from all the killing and all the destruction. I kept repeating to myself that I was in Hell and needed to get out. I said, “How come you knew Emilio?” I picked up the burger and bit into it. I spoke around a mouthful of meat. “Where would you have met him?”
His face was flushed. He looked mad as hell. Juan and Alejandro were sweating and watching each other across the table.
“What, you questioning me now? You askin’ me questions?”
“You met him when Montilla recruited you.” It wasn’t a question. It was the only answer that made sense. He went a pasty gray color. “Shit.” He stared at me. “I just whacked one of Montilla’s compadres?
“I need to talk to him.”
“No! No! You fockin’ crazy! Just fockin’ go!”
I picked up the burger with my left hand and bit into it as I reached under my arm with my right. I sat back, chewing, and shot Juan through the eye. Alejando wasn’t done gaping when I shot him through the ear. They both sagged in their chairs, goggling at each other across the table, only Juan was also weeping long red tears from his empty left socket. Arana was trembling badly. I swallowed before I spoke.
“ You got no gang left, Arana. It’s just you and me now. I got to be honest. I’m tired. Real tired. Tired of killing. I’d like it to stop now. But I need you to tell me how you contact Montilla.”
He had his hands half raised. “I don’t contact Montilla. Nobody contacts Montilla. Montilla contacts you.”
That made sense. I took another bite of the burger and spoke with my mouth full. “So who is your contact? Who do you talk to?”
His face was pleading. “Nobody! The stuff arrives, I distribute to my buyers, everybody gets paid, is cool. You know? No need to talk to nobody.”
I sighed. “I don’t want to argue with you, Arana. I told you I’m tired. I lost count of how many men I have killed tonight. I want to stop. But I need to know how to contact Montilla, and if you don’t tell me I’m going to have to hurt you.” He was trembling badly by now. He was sweating and he had tears in his eyes. I wondered how many men he had tortured and killed, how many he had watched beg and plead without showing them compassion. “You don’t look to me like a man who would stand up under torture. Don’t make me do it.”
I stood. He squealed. There was a smell of ammonia on the air. “No! Wait!”
“Talk.”
“Let me take the money. I’ll go. I’ll run. Go to India! Or Indonesia! They won’t follow me there! I’ll tell you everything. Just give me the money and a car! I’ll run!”
I nodded. “Deal. Tell me.”
He got to his feet and pointed at the stairs. “Is up, in my safe.” I waved him on with the Sig. Anita and the other girls were holding each other and weeping silently. I ignored them and followed Arana up a flight of heavy wooden stairs to an oak door. He pushed it open and we went in. The apartment was surprisingly luxurious. We went through a broad living room with a cinema-sized TV and into a den where he had a desk and a computer and a large leather chair. In the corner, like Romero, he had a safe sitting on the floor. He hesitated, turned to look at me.
“You don’t need to do this. We can blame Red. We can say he killed my men…”
“I’m going to count
to three, then I’m going to shoot you in the elbow.”
He waved both hands at me, backed up to the safe and dropped on his knees. He dialed in the combination, then opened the box and pulled out a black book. I stepped behind him. Inside I could see more cash, at least fifty grand. He handed me the book and started pulling out the cash and stacking it on his desk as he spoke.
“Is listed as Control. He told me, never call this number unless is a life or death situation, you know? No contact, just the deliveries and payment. Everything was workin’ like clockwork till you show up, making focking trouble for everybody.”
I found the number. The other names all looked like buyers. I shot him while he was kneeling in front of the safe. It seemed appropriate. I went into his bedroom and found a sports bag in his wardrobe. I took it back to his den and piled in the money. It was as I had figured, just over fifty grand. I took it downstairs. Anita was still sitting at the bar with the other two girls. They looked real scared when I came in.
I put the bag on the table next to my rucksack. “You girls legal in this country?”
Anita nodded. “We got papers. You a cop?”
I shook my head and tossed her the sports bag. “Divide it up between you. Get the hell out of here. Get a fucking education. Do something useful that doesn’t involve fucking gangsters for a living.”
I went back up to the den. I heard the door slam, and a couple of minutes later, the roar of an engine outside and tires on dirt. I grabbed Arana by his heels and dragged him bumping down the stairs. At the bottom, with difficulty, I hoisted him onto my shoulder, carried him out to the Jeep and slung him in the back. By the time I had done the same with Juan and Alejandro, my legs were shaking with exhaustion. I threw Romero’s head in for good measure and stuffed the sack of money on the passenger seat.
The cooker at Casa Coca was electric, but whiskey and brandy and rum all make pretty good Molotov cocktails. I didn’t want my DNA or my fingerprints showing up there when the cops finally came down. But more than that, when I contacted Montilla, I wanted him to know what Arana discovered just before he died: that I was a destructive son of a bitch who liked to burn things and blow them up.