Each section had a label indicating the currency stored below: U. S. dollars, Swiss francs, Greek drachmas… Colombian, Venezuelan, or Mexican pesos. Floor-to-ceiling displays of cash dominated every inch of wall space.
"Es mi cambioy" the short, fat black marketeer beamed proudly. "My… How you say? Exchange for todo de business, no?"
"Yeah, yeah," Jody said, his eyes locked on the fortune in the room, his breath suddenly short with envy.
"Time to go. We must to meet others," Paco said, looking at a diamond-encrusted Rolex Presidente. "For to get delivery receipt. Then maybe senorita, some fucky-fucky, no? Entonces vamonos a la Maracaibo antes de que Santander vuelva."
"This jerk-off thinks if we hurry, we might have time to get laid before Santander gets back," Sawdust drawled.
"Tell him we'll take a rain check on the pussy," Jody said.
"St, si," Paco chirped, getting the gist of that. "No senoritas. Lo siento." He led them out of the room, carefully shielding the lock with his body while he reset it.
"You believe this, Salsa?" Jody whispered.
All Shane could do was shake his head in wonder.
"Tengo sedy " Paco said. "Bebemos tan fuerte como los otros San Andresitos. "
"He's thirsty," Shane said. "He wants-"
"I got it," Jody interrupted, looking at his watch. "Only one beer while we get the delivery receipts, and then, adios."
"Siy siy esta bieny mis amigos. " Paco grinned, showing teeth the approximate color and texture of an old wooden fence.
Paco led them to his Toyota, then they got in and drove up the street.
Five minutes later they were parked next to the three other Toyota Land Cruisers in front of the Corraleja Cantina-the very bar Shane had read about in the guidebook.
It was just past two in the afternoon and the businesses in town had closed for siesta, but nobody seemed to be sleeping. Inside they could hear laughter and Mexican music playing on what sounded like an old scratchy forty-five. Then a glass broke, followed by hoots of laughter.
"AndalePaco said, grinning, as he led them into the cantina. The Vikings took their gym bags with them as they got out of the Toyota and cautiously walked through the door.
Even though it was named after a Colombian bullfight, Shane thought the place looked more like the bar from Star Wars. Adrenaline and beer were being mixed in dangerous quantities. Sweating men were talking loudly.
Forty pairs of angry eyes swung toward them.
Suddenly the room went deadly silent.
Chapter 41
BAR FIGHT
THIS JOINT DON'T feel too friendly, Jody said, one hand on his gym bag, the other fingering the hard place under his jacket where he kept his chambered Heckler amp; Koch.
"Hola, mis amigos," Paco shouted expansively to the other San Andresitos, who were in a booth at the back of the cantina. Paco led the way through the bar full of Colombian misfits, to where Spartacos Sococo, Emilio Hernandez, and Octavio Randhanie were perched on hard, butt-polished vinyl, grinning like three hungry vultures on a split-rail fence.
Shane and Jody wedged in next to Emilio Hernandez and Spartacos Sococo, while Paco Brazos, Tremaine, and Lester found seats next to Octavio Randhanie. The San Andresitos forced smiles onto their faces while the background noise in the bar began to build again slowly.
The cantina was quite large, dominated on one side by a scarred wooden bar and mismatched furniture. The men in the place all seemed to be made of gristle and knotted twine. Their brown muscles glistened with sweat. There was no air conditioning; a big paddle fan with wicker blades turned ineffectively from the ceiling while an old Wurlitzer jukebox screeched American rock and roll through blown-out speakers.
"Que bueno, no?" Paco said. "Good pussy, abajo. Pero tienes ningun tiempo por la fucky-fucky, no?" He grinned, spreading his lips happily. His bullshit brown-toothed grin was really beginning to wear thin.
"Look, boys… Amigos" Jody said. "We don't need to get laid, we need our paperwork-our receipts proving that the merchandise got delivered up here safely, so we can collect our money from Sandro Mantoor in Aruba. You got that for us?"
Five sets of stone-hard eyes met Jody's question, glaring volumes of guarded thought, but no hint of what was to come.
"Sawdust, tell 'em what we want."
Lester Wood rattled it off in Spanish, and the San Andresitos all nodded, sipping whiskey from shot glasses, but nobody made a move to hand over anything.
"I'm thinking we got us a little problem," Sawdust said. "These boys don't seem t'wanna ride in the wagon."
"Tell 'em we don't get our receipts, we're gonna take that info back to Sandy. And if they got some dick-brained idea about us not getting outta this town in one piece, then Sandy Mantoor isn't gonna send any more product up here. He's guaranteeing our safety."
Lester Wood translated this, but after he finished, all four of the San Andresitos just stared. Nobody was smiling any longer.
"Kinda like barkin' at a knot," Lester Wood drawled.
"Okay, what's going on? Where's our bottom line here?" Jody asked.
Paco rattled off some Spanish, and the other San Andresitos nodded.
Sawdust translated: "Seems we're being kidnapped. They won't let us go unless we pay them."
"You want us to give you money to let us out of here?" Jody growled.
"Si… Si, dinero. Money for to go. Es corrector " Paco said.
"You fuckin' people…" Jody snapped. "I'11 die here before I pay one fucking cent."
"Jody… Let's think this through," Shane said softly. "Let's get a number from 'em. Why should anybody die if we're only talkin' about one or two grand."
"No," Paco said, understanding instantly when the subject was money. "No es suficiente. "
"How much?" Jody was smiling now, but Shane knew that smile. He'd been dealing with it since the sixth grade. It was a deadly warning.
"Te va a costar veinte por ciento. "
"He wants twenty percent," Sawdust drawled. "We need us a laugh track t'go with this."
"That's about three million dollars!" Jody said. "You sure that's gonna be enough, you fucking ladron?"
The four San Andresitos froze. Shane realized most of them had taken their hands off the table where they were now dangerously out of sight.
"Jody…" Shane said. "Take a look around in here…"
Jody swung his gaze across the bar. Most of the men had silently risen off their stools and were now forming a loose circle around their booth. Shane continued: "I think I saw some of these people driving forklifts in Paco's warehouse. They lured us in here. We've been set up."
The bar had gone graveyard quiet, except for a bad version of "Blue Suede Shoes" screeching over the blown speakers, sounding more like a catfight than music.
Suddenly, Jody yanked his H amp;K P-7 out of his waistband and shoved it in Paco's face. Simultaneously, all eight men in the booth had guns in their hands.
Half the men in the bar had also found weapons in that split second.
Twenty pistols were cocked and aimed at the Vikings sitting in the booth. It had happened fast, but Jody had beaten Paco's draw. Paco Brazos was in no-man's-land, frozen, with Jody's gun an inch from his face, his own weapon not quite out.
"I'm ready! Go for it, asshole! Let's do the dance." Craziness lit Jody's face like the changing colors of a raging fire. It was all there-excitement, adrenaline, and a willingness to die, all of this registering in one crazy heartbeat. "Come on. Start blasting. But no matter what, you're on the bus. You're goin' first, greaseball."
They were all stretched out in deadly postures, each one shoving a gun across the table at the enemy opposite him. None of the Vikings had time to get to their Polish MP-63s but instead had gone for their handguns. Shane had snatched the Spanish Astra out of his ankle holster and was trading aims with Spartacos Sococo's huge Desert Eagle. They posed there for several dangerous moments before a slow, impish smile broke across Paco's dirt-brown face.
"No quiero disparar… No shoot. Tomamos y comemos y luego tus papeles. " He turned to the other San Andresitos. "Mis amigos… No mas… No mas. "
"He's changed his mind… He doesn't want to shoot us. He's gonna give us our papers," Sawdust said, holding his Colt Commander on Emilio Hernandez, who had a blue-steel Beretta 9 aimed right back at him.
"Tell 'em to put their guns away," Jody ordered, and Sawdust did.
All of the San Andresitos slowly reholstered their guns. The Vikings didn't.
"Get the rest a'these shit burners outta here," Jody ordered, indicating the men standing in a deadly circle around them.
"Veten, veten afueraPaco said to the sweating contingent of armed men.
Slowly, the men in the bar shouldered their weapons or repacked them in faded canvas holsters. They sauntered toward the door, trying to look tough in the middle of a retreat, dragging their pride like heavy sacks behind them.
Only then did Jody nod for the Vikings to put their guns away.
"Muy bien, muy bien›" Paco said, heaving out a tortured sigh.
Spartacos Sococo, Emilio Hernandez, and Octavio Randhanie stood angrily, then pushed their way out of the booth.
"Where are the fucking receipts?" Jody asked. With no need of translation, the San Andresitos reached into their pockets and pulled out the delivery vouchers, handing them to Jody, who in turn handed them to Lester Wood. He read them and nodded.
"Yep," he said, returning them to Jody, who put them in his back pocket.
Just then a phone started ringing. Nobody answered it. Paco shouted at the bartender.
"Telefono!"
The old man behind the bar crossed and picked up the phone. "Como?" he said, and listened for a long moment. "Si… Si. Gracias. " He hung up and looked over at Paco.
"Que es?" Paco demanded.
"Cortez viene al pueblo. "
"Santa's coming," Sawdust translated. "This might be a good time t'blow town."
Chapter 42
SANTA'S COMING TO TOWN
TREMAINE SAID, "THEY'RE plannin' something. We need t'break hard on these assholes before it gets outta hand."
They were standing on the curb outside the cantina. The San Andresitos were clustered over by their cars.
"How'd ya figure to do that, Inky Dink?" Jody said. "There's four of us in a town of fifty-five thousand gun-toting pendejos"
Paco broke away from the others, approached, and slapped Jody on the back as he rattled some Spanish. Jody frowned and glanced over at Lester Wood.
"He says we gotta get going before Cortez returns."
"So, let's do it," Jody said. All five of them jammed into Paco's Toyota. He turned his bubble around and headed back toward his warehouse on Calle 16, leaving the three other San Andresitos standing in front of the cantina, staring down at designer-name watches as if their futures were ticking away on each dial.
"Where's he going?" Shane asked. "We should be heading west. That's the only way out of town."
Paco answered in Spanish, and Sawdust turned to Jody. "He says we need to pick up some celadores at his business, for our safety. He says Santander won't attack us if we have enough protection."
"Now he's worried about our safety?" Shane asked. "Five minutes ago this prick was trying to hold us for ransom."
"Good point," Jody said, then pulled the P-7 out of his side pocket and put it against Paco's rib cage.
"Que es?" Paco said, glancing at Jody, then down at the gun.
"So you don't go stupid on us, amigo."
They made a right onto Calle 16 but had to stop as soon as they turned because they were stuck behind a strange column of armed men and vehicles. A sole man pushing a wheelbarrow was leading the parade. Walking on each side of him, guarding the wheelbarrow, were four celadores, their machine guns aimed in all directions. An empty flatbed truck rumbled along behind.
"What is this?" Jody snapped.
"Por comercio… How you say? Dinero por trade, Hernandez no tiene dishwashers, de modo que va a comprarlos en mi tienda."
Sawdust said, "If one of them doesn't have what he needs for his market in Colombia, he buys it from one of the others."
"Si," Paco said.
"They going to your place?" Jody asked.
"Si, a mi tienda… "
"What's in the wheelbarrow?"
"Dinero Colombiano. "
Paco managed to pull around the column, and as they drove past, Shane looked out the window. Sure enough, the wheelbarrow was half full of stacks of Colombian pesos.
Paco stopped the Toyota in front of his warehouse. A moment later the wheelbarrow full of cash and the empty truck arrived. Two yellow forklifts zipped out of Paco's warehouse with pallet-loaded boxes of Maytag washing machines stacked three high. A dozen celadores stood out front, facing Hernandez's celadores over glistening new auto-mags. The man with the wheelbarrow upended it unceremoniously onto the Spanish-tile sidewalk in front of Paco's showroom.
"Cha-ching," Jody said softly.
Three of the women whom Shane had seen in the office upstairs now rushed out of the building and bent over the bundles of cash, rifling through them, their nimble fingers counting. Calculators hummed and LCD screens printed out figures. Once again, Shane noticed that the calculators were the big twelve-digit Texas Instrument computers. He finally realized that when tabulating these huge sums in pesos, the regular ten-digit calculators ran out of decimal points.
Suddenly, from the end of the street, they heard the sound of big truck engines growling loudly. Shane looked over and saw two old army trucks with at least twenty men in them, rolling over the garbage-strewn street.
"Adentro! Adentro! Andeles!" Paco said as he began to move toward the warehouse.
"Not so fast, asshole," Jody said, grabbing Paco by the collar, now putting the P-7 to his head. "You're not quite through here yet."
All of the celadores swung and pointed their weapons at the Vikings, but Jody ignored them and pointed up the street at the approaching trucks. "Whose guys are those? Is that Santa?"
"Si, Santander viene" Paco said. Unreasoning fear was in his eyes and spreading over his face.
"Let's go," Jody said, jamming his gun barrel hard against Paco's temple, freezing the army of celadores on the sidewalk.
Paco shouted at them, "No disparar! No disparar!"
The women on their knees kept gathering and tabulating. They never looked up.
"Somebody get a piece on this guy," Jody commanded, and Sawdust put his pistol to the back of Paco's head.
Jody jumped out of the Toyota SUV. Then he ran around and got behind the wheel, pushing the fat San Andresito over into the passenger seat beside him. Tremaine broke out the glass of the two fixed windows in the rear of the Toyota, using the barrel of his pistol. Gym-bag zippers ripped open in the car, followed by a chorus of forty-round mags slamming home and sliders being tromboned.
"Only one way out and that's past those guys up there," Jody said. "It's gonna be reckless, so hold on." He backed up, turned, then headed up the street directly toward the approaching vehicles and twenty armed men.
"No! No, es loco… Somos muertos!" Paco said, sweat pouring down his round face, drenching his shirt collar.
A happy madness distorted Jody's features: "We may die, but we're gonna take a few motherfuckers with us."
In seconds, the first bullets rocked the Toyota. Fired from a half a block away, they thudded into the grille and shattered a side mirror.
"Get busy!" Jody shouted.
Shane leaned out one of the broken side windows and aimed his Polish MP-63 up the street at the column of army vehicles. The badly rocking SUV distorted his aim as its tires spun, looking for purchase on a street covered with decaying garbage. He started blasting, aiming blindly with one hand, the bolt clattering maniacally as the machine pistol fired, spewing hot brass out into the street.
It was hard to assess what happened next because it was a blur of spinning tires, rotating landscapes, and chattering gunf
ire. Jody was heading right at the lead truck, then yanked the wheel to the left at the last second. The radial tires spun garbage out behind them, slushing badly in the rotting muck as the SUV hit a curb and bounced up then, somehow, they were on the sidewalk in front of Sococo's showroom.
Ten automatic weapons broke out simultaneously, shattering the remaining windows in the Toyota. Jody kept his head low while the entire front windshield starred and then rained chunks of glass in on them.
Shane dropped the first clip and jammed his last one home. Tremaine was firing out the window on the far side of the SUV. With the windshield gone, Sawdust was aiming straight out the front, his MP-63 barking loudly inside the car, throwing a stream of spent casings at Paco in the front passenger seat. The sweaty San Andresito screamed in panic as Sawdust's hot brass hit him, the bullets whizzing past his ear. They were now opposite Cortez's two army trucks.
Santander's men had taken cover behind the vehicles and let loose as the Toyota roared past on the sidewalk. The Vikings fired until the weapons were empty and the slides locked open. Heavy 9-millimeter bullet hits rocked the SUV but, miraculously, it didn't stall.
Shane grabbed his Astra and emptied his last clip until he was pulling the trigger maniacally, dry-firing, unaware that he was empty because of the booming retort of the Colt Commander that Sawdust was using right next to his ear. The chattering racket of ten incoming machine guns set up a deadly cacophony only twelve feet away.
"I'm dry!" Shane yelled. They were now past the column of men and trucks. Almost immediately, Jody's P-7 flew over the seat and hit him on the shoulder. Shane scooped it up, turned, and kept firing out the back window.
Somehow they got through the violent maelstrom and bounced back onto the street.
"Anybody hit?" Jody yelled.
"Yeah, I'm leakin' some," Lester Wood drawled.
"How bad?"
"Well, it's… It's… I think I'm okay…"
Jody was making a right turn, back onto Calle 16, heading out of town. The Toyota engine sounded as if it had been hit-running rough and getting worse by the minute.
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