Depth of Winter

by Craig Johnson

  “Yeah, she tried to scratch Bidarte’s eyes out, but he promised her that if she didn’t do what he said, he’d kill your daughter, or worse.” He bit a lip and then looked up at me. “Hey, man? I am so totally ready to get the fuck out of here.” I stared at him, and the next words came out in a rush. “This is too much, I mean the guy is loco, you know what I mean?”

  “Yep.”

  He shrugged a shoulder, lacking the means to gesture. “I might as well be a prisoner around here myself—and there doesn’t seem to be any kind of retirement program in the outfit, if you know what I mean?”

  “I do.”

  His eyes suddenly became more intense. “Get me the fuck out of here, and I’ll do anything you want.”

  I thought about it. “Is this the communications center?” I glanced around at the banks of equipment. “All this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there a phone, one that’ll reach the US?”

  He smiled. “You mean like one you drop a quarter into? No . . .”

  “Well, that’s disappointing.”

  “Dude, I’ve got satellite, ultra-high-speed internet, six-G, high-def. . . .” He nodded toward the wide-screen TV behind me. “I can personal interface you with anybody in the world in seconds.” He laughed. “All I need is a phone number, email address, anything! Who do you want to talk to?”

  Pulling out my wallet, I extracted FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Mike McGroder’s card and started to hand it to him. “I’m assuming you can do this with one hand?”

  He sighed. “Slowly.”

  “Right or left?”

  “Left.”

  “Figures.” I pulled the Case knife from my back pocket, flicked it open, and slid it through the nylon tie, releasing his hand as I stood and moved to the side, pushing him back to the table with my hip and placing the Fed’s card on the desk in front of him. “Make magic.”

  His fingers swept across the keyboard before reaching out and pulling the headphone plug free. Immediately I heard a ringing, but the TV remained black.

  After a few more rings, the screen suddenly leapt to life, and we were treated to the foreshortened image of McGroder’s face in what I assumed was his office in El Paso. “Whoever this is, you better have a damn good reason for bothering me when . . .”

  Peter Lowery looked up at me as I leaned in over his shoulder. “Do you want them to see us?”

  “Sure.”

  He hit another key and there was a blip as McGroder stared at the screen, silent and unmoving.

  I glanced at the electronics expert. “Did it work?”

  My answer came from the FBI man. “Holy Mary Mother of God.”

  I grinned my most becoming smile and tipped my hat. “Howdy.”

  His eyes darted above the screen and around his room as people began crowding him, along with a dark-haired woman with gorgeous, tarnished gold eyes. “Where in the wide world of fuck are you?!”

  9

  “It was that maniac Guzmán.” McGroder buried his face in his hands. “I never should’ve put the two of you together.”

  I lowered my head so that I could be seen, even though I had no idea where the camera was. “Mike, there’s no way you would’ve let me do what I needed to do when I needed to do it, and he was very helpful . . . along with a number of other people.”

  He peered at me through his fingers. “What other people?”

  “Other people, on a purely unofficial basis.” I gestured toward the blond Rastafarian. “Peter Lowery for one, who has agreed to help me so long as we don’t pursue further prosecution against him.”

  “What? Who? What?”

  “Try and stay with me here, Mike.”

  “Is the Seer with you?”

  “At this juncture, no. I deemed it irresponsible to have a blind, legless soothsayer along at this stage.”

  “Irresponsible? Irresponsible? I’m glad to hear at this stage that there’s anything you deem irresponsible!”

  Vic pushed the FBI man aside. “I repeat—where in the wide-world-of-fuck are you?”

  I tried to remember exactly what Adan had said to me. “Farther south than Médanos de Samalayuca Nature Preserve in a place called Estante del Diablo, a monastery—Monasterio del Corazón Ardiente—near a town by the name of Torero.” I glanced at Lowery, still attached to the chair, rather proud of myself. “How was my pronunciation?”

  “I couldn’t understand a word you were saying, man.”

  I gestured toward the computer. “Can you give them the coordinates of this place?”

  He reached across and began typing. “I can give them the coordinates of this room.”

  I glanced at the screen as Vic crowded in again. “What’s the current situation?”

  “Difficult to say.” I glanced at Lowery. “I’ve just arrived, and I’m inside.” I lifted the AK. “Heavily armed, and I’m getting ready to do a little reconnoitering to try and find out exactly where they’re keeping Cady.”

  “Stop.” McGroder stuck a finger out at the screen. “Whatever you’re doing is going to get you killed and possibly create an international incident. Now that we know where you are we can come to you.”

  “When?”

  He hesitated. “Well, we have to negotiate things with the Mexican authorities . . .”

  I shook my head. “Can’t wait that long.”

  “It’s a foreign country, Walt, we have to go through channels.”

  “Mike, it’s Cady. I need to get to her now.”

  “Just give me a few hours . . .”

  “I gotta go.”

  “Can we contact you through this number?” His eyes played across the screen. “What is this number?”

  I glanced at Lowery again, who shrugged. “It’s a private server and IP address, but I can unblock it.”

  Vic interrupted. “How are you?”

  “I’m okay, but the fun’s about to begin, and I wish you guys could be here with me with a team of Navy SEALs, a squad of Army Green Berets, or a patrol of MARSOC Marines.”

  She glanced at McGroder and then gave me a curt nod. “We’re on our way to you now.”

  I felt better with that thought. “Be careful, these guys are kind of ruthless.”

  Vic leaned in, her dark hair swinging forward like a curtain on the third act. “So, these motherfuckers are soon to learn, are we.”

  I watched as Lowery typed some more and then when he hit one final key, the civilized world disappeared. Taking a deep breath, I stood. “Okay, which way is up?”

  He was about to speak when there was a heavy knock on the door behind me. I raised the AK and flipped off the safety lever, but Peter lifted his hand and motioned for me to step back toward the wall behind the door. I did as he directed but kept the rifle aimed at whoever was on the other side.

  Lowery hit a few more keys, and the video game materialized back on the screen, frozen in mid–submachine gun blast. “Yeah?”

  The door opened about halfway, and a man with a thick Mexican accent grunted. “You okay, soldado?”

  I watched as Peter gestured toward the screen. “Yeah, just catching up on my mad game skills, Jefe.”

  “Right. You gonna show me those tricks to get me to Arma-Battlefield two?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m just a little busy right now.”

  “You coming to the party? It’s getting wild out there—lots of puta-poontang.”

  “Maybe later.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Amigo, why is your hand tied to the chair?”

  There was an even longer pause.

  “Because I’m right-handed, and sometimes I immobilize it and force myself to play with my left so that I can get better with it.”

  “I thought you were left-handed?”

  “. . . No, right.”

/>   The man leaned against the doorjamb. “I sometimes do that when I beat off.”

  Yet an even longer pause.

  “. . . Cool.”

  “Hombre Cabeza is making an announcement later, make sure you don’t miss it.”

  “Not on my life.”

  “Don’t joke about that.”

  “Yeah.”

  The door closed, and we both listened to his footsteps fade, and I sighed, stepped away from the wall, and whispered, “That was very well done.”

  “Yeah, and more information than I really wanted.”

  Taking Henry’s knife from the small of my back, I slipped it through the nylon zip-tie, freeing his other hand. “There isn’t any back way to the second floor, I suppose.”

  “Um, no.” He thought about it. “I mean, there’s a stairway outside in the plaza by the front door along with the one on the inside, but there are armed dudes there, at the base of the inside stairs, and there’s supposed to be two more at the door upstairs.” He looked at me. “Why don’t you just wait, like they said?”

  “Not in my nature.” I returned the stag-handled Bowie to the waistband at my back and glanced at the door. “Is there anything that would get those guys to move?”

  “Not really, there was a guy that fell asleep—”

  “Yep, I’ve heard the story.” Going to the door, I looked back at him. “What about food or a changing of the guard—and how many guards are there and do they know each other?”

  “I don’t know, man—I know there’s a turnover because Bidarte keeps killing them. That’s the head of security’s deal—Culpepper. You meet him yet? He can be a real pain in the ass, but you know I haven’t seen him around lately. Shit, maybe Bidarte killed him.”

  “Maybe.” I threw a thumb toward the corridor. “Are there any rooms across the hallway that face the plaza, so I can get a look-see? I mean ones that aren’t full of armed, umm, dudes?”

  “The rooms at the end of the hallway are used for storage, but they’re mostly unlocked.”

  “Nice security you’ve got here.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Nobody steals from Hombre Cabeza, man. You know how he got that name, Head Man?”

  “Because he’s the boss?”

  “No, because he skins the faces off of—”

  “I’ve heard that one, too.”

  He looked at me questioningly. “About the soccer balls?”

  “Yep.”

  He shrugged. “You don’t scare easy, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Yeah, there’s nobody in this wing but me and storage.”

  I cracked the door, and the sound of the drums, horns, and crowd resonated through the building. “How long does this party last?”

  “Tonight and tomorrow—or as long as the crack, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, and overly active libidos hold out. Then they have the auction.”

  “The what?”

  “The auction will be tomorrow night, after everybody is good and wasted and ready to spend some money.”

  “What do they auction?”

  He looked at me like I was the last passenger on the last bus from Dumbassville. “You don’t want to know, man.”

  * * *

  —

  I’d moved a number of the boxes that were covering the windows from one of the rooms in the corridor so that I could see part of the plaza and to give me cover in case anybody happened to come in. There were shutters, but I adjusted the louvers so that I could also see the stretch of the wall where Adan had lowered me the beer.

  I was thinking about the auctions, and the bodies on the other side of the wall behind the barn—the unfortunates who I guess hadn’t been lucky enough to have found a buyer.

  Evidently, it was the way Bidarte got rid of unwanted employees or people who had fallen into his hands whom he had no use for. Lowery said the sale was usually held once a month, but that this one was a big one. I could only think of my daughter upstairs and what he had in mind for her.

  Watching the young people through the shutter, I shook my head and wondered if they knew what kind of game they were playing. Maybe that’s the way it was here, that life had little meaning and the span not so great, so you might as well have a good time while you can.

  The tiny portion of the Day of the Dead torchlight fiesta that I could see was in full swing with everyone either with garishly painted faces or wearing skull masks. They were drinking and dancing and pawing each other, and I was wondering what I could do to get Adan’s attention if I saw him.

  I had kept the empty pony bottle, because even in this hellhole of trash and death, I hated to litter, so thinking of how he’d gotten my attention, I reached into the gym bag at my boots and pulled out the bottle and some twine that had unraveled from the hemp rope I’d thrown together to climb the building. There was enough of the stuff to tie around the bottle and slip it under the bottom of the shutters. I tied it off on a loose nail head and waited, hoping that if he walked by, he would notice it.

  The drums and the horns continued playing what sounded like the same song over and over, and I rested my head against the stone wall, which was cool and felt good. I looped the string around my finger and had closed my eyes for what I thought was just a moment; then I felt something pulling at the bottle.

  Adan wore a skull mask and top hat. He was carrying a torch and was looking around, refusing offers from quite a few women and quite a few men.

  There was an old oak barrel in front of the wall and he grabbed it, tipped it, and rolled it in front of the window. Standing on it, he pretended to watch the festivities from a higher vantage point.

  He turned his head, speaking from under the papier-mâché mask. “How do I look?”

  “Like a dead Fred Astaire.”

  “What are you doing in there?”

  “I found a way in, and we’ve got someone on our side.”

  “Who?”

  I hunkered near the window. “What does it matter, we can use all the help we can get.”

  “Just remember what your friend said about not trusting anyone.”

  “Well, he let me get a call in to the FBI, and they’re on their way.”

  “When?”

  “Well, they weren’t exactly clear on that.”

  He leaned back. “With what?”

  “We didn’t get to that part either.”

  He sighed and looked around, still selling the idea that he was watching the festivities. “We will stick with the original plan in hopes that we can get out of here with your daughter and our lives. Have you found where she is?”

  “As near as I can tell, it’s like Culpepper told us, she’s on the second floor but heavily guarded every step of the way.”

  “Ideas?”

  “I’ve got one, but it’s not the best.”

  He turned his head once more. “So it’s a bad plan?”

  “Better than no plan at all.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Do you think you can get inside the building?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Can you get a few more masks?”

  “Probably.”

  “There’s just one more thing. . . . We need another guy.”

  * * *

  —

  “This is a bad plan, man.”

  “Just put your mask on while we figure out where to put all your damned hair.” I stuffed the dreadlocks into the top hat and pushed it down on his head. “There, your own mother wouldn’t know you.”

  The skull mask rattled as he spoke. “I never knew my mother.”

  “Well . . . There you have it.” I turned to glance at Adan, who looked much more convincing than Lowery. “You’re sure you can’t find somebody who is really Mexican out there?”

  He glanced around
the communications room. “In this group? That we can trust? No.”

  “So what all did you find out?”

  “Not a lot. Bidarte is supposed to be making a celebratory speech later this evening, but the party goes through tomorrow and tomorrow night there’s the auction.”

  “I heard about that and saw the aftermath on the other side of that wall behind the sale barn.”

  He turned to look at me. “We should probably get your daughter out of here before then.”

  “Agreed.” I opened the gym bag and took the magazine from the AK and began pushing the rounds out, emptying it entirely; after reattaching the magazine, I handed it back to Lowery.

  “I get the rifle but no bullets?”

  I gestured toward the computer screen. “I’ve seen you shoot—you’re lucky I let you carry one at all.” I turned back to Adan. “You still have your pistol?”

  He pulled it from his trousers. “Yes.”

  I nodded and began sliding zip-ties onto my wrists until there were about a half dozen on each arm. “There, that should work unless they get really curious.” I looked up at them. “Okay, here’s the deal. We use the inside stairwell, because there will be less spectators, but the trick is getting these guys down without alerting the ones upstairs—so no shooting. If they hear us, it’s all over.”

  Lowery slanted his head to one side. “So what do we use, our scary masks?”

  “You don’t do anything—my friend here will take one and I’ll take the other.” I turned back to the Doc. “Look, I know there are two men downstairs and two upstairs, but there might be more than that, so if you want to back out of this, now’s the time.”

  Adan shrugged.

  Lowery glanced at him and then back at me. “Fuckin’-A, I want out.”

  “You don’t get to choose.”

  He gestured toward Adan. “Why the hell not, he does.”

  “I’m not paying him.”

  “What are you paying me?”

  I nudged him toward the door. “Your life.”

  “Lotta good that’s going to do us spilling out here on the floor riddled with bullets.”

  I opened the door, peeking around but not seeing anything. “C’mon.”