The Tournament Trilogy

by B. B. Griffith

  Diego rubbed the sweat off of his face and brushed his hands off over the grass. He waved Luis over and was about to start talking to the man when the man spoke first.

  “Diego Vega. It’s about time, no?”

  It took Diego a full ten seconds before he realized that the man had spoken in fluent Spanish. Not textbook Spanish either, his was a practiced Spanish, southern in dialect. Far from reassuring Diego, this knotted his stomach. He was sure the men were worse than the normal police. They had to be some sort of special police—perhaps even ICE or the FBI. A million terrible possibilities flashed through Diego’s mind: There was an immigration problem, a customs issue, maybe something had happened to Gabriel or Adrian as they mowed several blocks away, or worst of all, maybe something had happened back home, to his family.

  “Sir, what is this about?” he asked, his voice softer than he intended, but twice as strong as he felt.

  The man ignored him and continued talking. “Do you have any idea what we’ve gone through to find you? You’ve got a good brother in Miguel. Mistrustful, but loyal as an old junkyard dog.”

  Diego froze. This man knew Miguel. Something had happened at home.

  “Please. Just tell me what happened. What is the problem?”

  “We didn’t get anything out of him. It could have saved us a lot of time,” the man said, shaking his head. “But what can you do? There is no way he could have known...”

  “Known what?” Diego shifted to get a better look at the man in the glasses near the car. They both looked Mexican but there was nothing particularly notable about either of them. No badges or guns. Their sunglasses covered much of their faces.

  The man put his hands in the pockets of his loose slacks.

  “We’ve been watching you for a long time, Diego.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name doesn’t matter. Should you take us up on our offer you’ll find out more. Either way, you will most likely never see me again.”

  “What offer?” asked Diego, looking to Luis who, having caught a few words of the Spanish, blanched noticeably. He seemed glued to his spot behind his mower, torn between pretending he couldn’t hear and eavesdropping.

  “We want you to work for us.”

  “I have a job.”

  “You’ll like ours more.”

  “Who do you work for, the police?”

  “No.”

  “Drugs? I don’t do drugs. I won’t deal with them.”

  “Neither do we.”

  “Then who do you work for?”

  “Mexico.”

  “Mexico what?” asked Diego, nervously running his thumb and middle-finger down the sides of his moustache.

  “Just Mexico.”

  “Like the government?”

  “No. Just Mexico.” The man gestured backwards at his partner, and in response his partner reached in through the passenger window of the old Cadillac and took out a shiny folder of metallic white. He walked a few paces, delivered it to the man in front of Diego, and returned to his post leaning on the driver’s side door. The man held it out with two hands as if presenting an award.

  “It’s a significant opportunity.”

  Diego took it and slowly turned it around to face him. He flipped open the cover, read a few lines of the first page he saw, and looked back up, his brow furrowed.

  “La Tournamenta?” he asked, reading slowly over each syllable, as if testing its feel.

  “Tell only who you must. Believe me when I say that in that line of work,” he pointed briefly at the embossed “T” on the cover, “the fewer people who recognize you, the better off you are.”

  He smiled at Diego, a strange smile coming from a stranger, one in which Diego sensed admiration. He looked at the folder in his hands. The light reflected brightly off the cover and Diego blinked several times. When he looked up again the man was already walking back to the car and his partner was already inside.

  Diego stammered after him. “What do I—”

  “It’s all in the folder, Diego. Good luck my friend,” the man called over his shoulder as he popped open the driver’s side door and closed it gently behind him. Diego and Luis watched in silence as he rolled the engine over for a few seconds, kicked the car to life, and slowly pulled out into the street. His partner flicked a type of farewell salute to them both as they passed, skittering stray pebbles in their wake.

  ————

  It was now five years later. Diego read the folder countless times since that day, and still sometimes did even now, despite being firmly entrenched in the organization as the captain of Team White. He still thought often of that first day. They were right, of course. The job was an unbelievable opportunity, and once he was sure that the Tournament was real, that the men had been serious, he agreed to take part. Of the men themselves he knew next to nothing, only that they had helped find him and assign him his role on Mexico’s team. He hadn’t heard from them since, nor had he seen them again.

  His world changed so dramatically that he often caught himself thinking about his old life much like a man would recall a movie viewed long ago. Since then he had been there to lead his team through four consecutive tournaments, and when he needed it they were there for him as well. The second time he was called to fight for Mexico he managed, tooth and nail, to bring his team all the way through to the glorious finish, but the Tournament had a short memory and in the past years his team hadn’t fared well. In contrast that mirrored their colors, it seemed as though Black had fallen into an almost supernatural groove since they had arrived, stopping every opponent before they could really start. Still, Diego Vega had never been so confident in his team, and the slates were all clean once more.

  The world had shifted under Diego’s feet in the past five years, but the man himself changed remarkably little. He still wore his moustache as he always had: thin, trimmed, and brushed downward. He still preferred t-shirts and jeans, buying new versions of the same whenever either wore out. His hat remained the same, faded to a ghostly off-white by the sun and the sweat around the band. His only upgrade was the pair of cowboy boots he allowed himself to purchase after winning it all three years prior. He loved them dearly and would never part with them, but he often wondered if their purchase had brought bad luck down upon them. For all his stolid leadership Diego was a superstitious man, fond of routine, who never bucked what won. If his tried and true methods of leadership failed him, he often blamed some small deviation from procedure as the missing bolt that caused the machine to seize up.

  The only noticeable physical difference between the man that was Diego Vega of Vega Lawn Services and the man that was now Captain Vega of White was the tattoo on his right outer forearm. His skin was dark and tough, weathered by the sun already, so the tattoo had to be dark and bold in order to stand out. He instantly knew what the design would be: the eagle of Mexico, noble and reserved even as it battled a snake. He much preferred the Mexican eagle to its counterpart in the United States, a depiction of the great bird that Diego had always found violent and panicked, in perpetual motion. But how to portray the symbol of his country in a manner that would be White’s alone? Countless of his countrymen had inked the bird on themselves as a show of pride. Most often the eagle was depicted as menacing: a show of machismo surrounded by garish colors, or clutching a bloody something in its talons, its curved beak gleaming like a scythe. The bird he knew was pure and simple in its beauty; a fluid animal, not jagged. His eagle would never draw attention to itself, it would be a presence more felt than seen or heard.

  In depicting this on his forearm, Diego took the traditional picture of the Mexican eagle and broke it into thirty-one pieces, one for each of Mexico’s states. These thirty-one pieces were small and clear; rolling shapes, gently curved and sloped, each about the size of a dime. He fashioned these shapes into an outline of the bird as if lit from behind. The result was a simple, elegant illustration that was part hard lines and part negative space.

  Only two
others shared his vision of the eagle, and both wore it in exactly the same way on their own right outer forearms. A woman, Lilia Alvarez, had been chosen as his striker, plucked right out of jail and armed again with the make and model of gun that had put her there in the first place. His sweeper was Felix Ortiz. A gentleman, observant and professional, the recruiters had found him when he was pumping his entire life and soul into a doomed little hotel on the coast of Mazatlan. Their journey together hadn’t been easy, and more than once one or the other had almost walked away, but ultimately Diego so endeared himself to them that neither could walk away from the man.

  And now all three of them were faced with the first round of the Tournament come again. They had drawn Grey. The English were coming for them—of that Diego Vega was certain. He knew Alex Auldborne as well as anybody. Better than most. Auldborne was the type of captain to move first.

  “It’s a funny thought, the English wandering around Mexico,” said Lilia, her nose touching the stained wooden floor of a small, single room ranch that the team owned off of the Huapango Lake in Mado, fifty miles northwest of Mexico City. She stretched her small body in anticipation of what lay ahead, making sure that every part of her legs and butt remained flattened to the ground as she leaned first over her right thigh and then her left. She draped herself easily and completely over her legs, so that her long black hair rested in flowing waves down and around her body, dark as India ink.

  “There is absolutely nothing funny about those three criminals running around my country,” said Felix.

  He sat across from Diego at a thick, squat work table, pocked and crossed with deep gouges. Felix was tall for a Mexican, and possessed of a somber, patient intelligence unique to men forced to grow up too soon. He wore a dark, solid colored button-down shirt and khaki slacks with old and faded penny loafers. He spoke strongly but betrayed very little emotion. His small eyes were set back behind dark, full eyebrows and stray wisps of dark brown hair. Whatever expression they provided was hidden.

  “You call them criminals as if it is a bad thing. I was a criminal once,” Lilia said, looking up from her folded position. Her teardrop face seemed to be resting of its own accord on the wooden floor. She winked up at him and grinned.

  “Not like them,” said Felix, looking down at her. “You did what you had to do to survive. Those three are lunatics.”

  “They’re coming. Nothing we can do about that,” said Diego, tracing the length of a deep gouge in the table with his forefinger.

  “Auldborne is hot-headed. Like a cowboy with something to prove, angry all of the time. His power comes from the head of steam he builds up like a locomotive to run over everyone in front of him.”

  “Then let’s not get in front of him,” said Felix.

  Lilia slowly unwound herself and rocked into a ball on her back. Felix watched his captain as he swept his hand across the scars of the table.

  “But he is still just a man. All of them are only human,” said Diego. “He will tire. And when he does, we will be there. This is our land.”

  Diego looked first at his striker as she rocked slowly back and forth on the floor, and then at his sweeper who waited calmly across from him, both hands palm down on the table.

  “Let him chase us around a strange land until he falters. Let him lose himself in Mexico. Then let us put an end to him, and be done with them all.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE FRENCH TRIPLETS OF Team Silver were told of their draw, that Eddie Mazaryk and Black were coming for them, so they started drinking heavily. They only managed to rouse themselves when they learned that Black had filed a flight plan and were flying towards them presently.

  They learned this because Eddie Mazaryk himself called them as they lay prone in various positions throughout the pub they owned.

  Tristan Noel, the sweeper, was the only one to awaken for the call. A persistent ringing worked its way into his dream for a while until he sat up with a nauseating jolt. He was behind his bar again and he hadn’t dreamed the noise: The slop sink was definitely ringing. The only other sound in the downstairs bar came from his brother and captain Yves Noel, who snored under a table out front. As his head cleared he realized that the slop sink itself wasn’t ringing, but something inside of it was. He blinked for a moment until the pieces came together and he picked the phone out of the sticky mess at the bottom of the sink, cursing to himself.

  “Allo?” answered Tristan, his voice thick and dry.

  “We’re boarding an airplane, Tristan,” said Mazaryk in pitch perfect French.

  “Who is this?” asked Tristan. He saw Yves stir and then moan.

  “You know who this is. We’re boarding an airplane. Tell your worthless brothers we’re coming for the three of you,” said Mazaryk. He hung up.

  Tristan looked at his brother pawing his way to a sitting position against the trunk of the table.

  “Merde,” said Tristan. Shit.

  “Everyone is far too loud. Phones ringing. People swearing. This place smells like stale sweat,” complained Yves, squinting up at his younger brother. “It must have been a good night.”

  The two looked alike in almost every fashion: both were square jawed, with prominent, boxy cheekbones and small, beaked noses. Both had long, thick, brown hair, down to the base of their neck; remarkably well behaved hair that stayed wherever they brushed it, in part because it was a tad greasy. Yves called it natural product.

  The only noticeable difference between their two appearances was that the captain, Yves Noel, wore his hair loose and brushed back in waves, and the striker, his younger brother Tristan Noel, had a perky pony tail. A closer look revealed a long, thin scar that ran the length of Tristan’s right temple, a Tournament souvenir from an errant blade of shattered glass. It tightened the skin to the right of his right eye just enough to give the impression that he was carefully examining everything at which he looked.

  “So what was all of that about?” asked Yves, resting his head back on the trunk of the table and watching the ceiling fan slowly rotate.

  “They’re on their way,” said Tristan, his voice flat. He grabbed the cleanest tumbler glass he could find, washed it out, and began to rummage around the bottles for the vodka.

  Yves closed his eyes. He didn’t have to ask who was coming.

  “Fucking Russians. Call Dominique. He’s upstairs.”

  “You call Dominique.”

  “Just call him. I think I might throw up.”

  “That nervous?”

  “No. I’m never drinking port again so late,” Yves said, rubbing his face.

  “Dominique, you shit! Wake up! We have a problem!”

  Tristan found the vodka, poured three fingers of it into his glass, and topped it off with warm tomato juice. Dominique appeared at the top of the stairs, naked and grinning stupidly. He was the best looking of the triplets, the only one of any of them that spent any time at all lifting weights or exercising. As the youngest he loved to flaunt whatever advantages he had. As a result, and because of his taste for any type of woman at all, he was often naked. The only thing he never seemed to take off were his aviator glasses; lenses the size of fists, either on his face or holding back his hair. He had them on now as he stood proudly at the top of the stairs, his hands balled into fists at his hips.

  Dominique had several tattoos scrawled on both arms and one on his left shoulder, but the most impressive was inked across his upper chest, centered over his sternum. It stretched across the interior of his pecs, and was perhaps three centimeters from top to bottom. It featured three separate and distinct lines. In the center of the design each of the lines braided itself once with every other, forming a simple knot at its heart. This was the only tattoo that all three brothers shared: the mark of Silver.

  “Tristan, dear brother,” he said, cloyingly sweet. “You’re waking my lady friend.”

  Tristan narrowed his eyes at Dominique, took a sucking sip from his drink, and nodded towards Yves. Dominique turned to
his captain, who had righted himself and moved over to the bar. Yves motioned for his brother’s drink.

  “Remember that terrible draw we had two days ago?” he said, sipping gingerly at the cloudy red.

  “Oh no...” Dominique said, closing his eyes.

  “Yes. It seems they will be landing in mere hours.”

  “Those fucking Russians!”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Start by putting on some clothes,” said Yves, finishing off the drink and handing the cup back to his brother, who filled it again.

  “And after that?” asked Dominique. “We didn’t do so hot against them last time.”

  “Nobody did,” Tristan said.

  Yves willed himself to stand and popped his neck first one way and then the other. He was starting to feel better. It was a strong drink.

  “Yes. Eddie Mazaryk is good. They are all very good. The man is some sort of mind reader.”

  The two brothers waited for their captain to continue.

  “So...” Yves said.

  “So...” Tristan repeated.

  “So.” snipped Dominique.

  “So what if we aren’t in our right minds?” asked Yves.

  “Well then it would be hard for him to predict anything at all, would it not?” quipped Tristan, grinning as he brought two more tumblers to the bar top.

  Dominique sauntered naked down the stairs and up to the bar. Both brothers looked sharply away but Tristan poured him a drink nonetheless.

  “Cheers, brothers. To the Russians. Let’s see them try to forecast our moves when we don’t even know them ourselves. Predict this, you Cossack bastards,” Yves pronounced, holding up his glass. All three brothers clinked and drank.

  ————

  Team Black disembarked at Charles De Gaulle International. They packed nothing and carried only guns. They dressed in trim black suits and immaculate white shirts that looked no worse for the four hour flight from Moscow. Goran Brander wore a thin black tie and smoothed out any errant wrinkles he found as he walked alongside Ales, his long, loping gait equaling two full strides of his shorter teammate. Ales calmly cleaned his round spectacles with the silk of his tie as he walked. He replaced them a tad below the bridge of his nose, where they were most comfortable, and surveyed the immediate scene over them. Out of long habit, he computed distances and approaches, mapped out routes and firing lines.