“I said I can walk,” the woman snarled. She took a step and then toppled forward. If the driver had not caught her, she would have hit the ground face-first. The driver half-dragged, half-carried her to a sitting position at the base of a tree stump. “Lady, I’m sorry,” he said. “I got my orders. Just drive until we got here. I didn’t know that freak Homer was gonna—”
The driver stopped talking when he saw the two men bracketing him. Both wearing ski masks, one pointing a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, the other a heavy blue steel semi-automatic pistol. “Turn around,” the man with the pistol said. The driver never considered reaching for his holstered weapon.
“Where’s the other one?”
“In the van,” the driver said. “Front seat. I didn’t—”
“Shut up,” the man with the pistol said softly. Then the driver heard him speak to the woman. “One or both?” is all he said.
“Not him. Just the other one,” the woman answered, her voice thick with clotted blood.
“So the one in the van, he started it, huh?” the man with the pistol said, much louder than necessary for the woman to hear.
“Yes!” she answered, a moan with steel still in its core.
The driver heard noises behind him. He couldn’t understand them—knew they were human, but not like any human sounds he’d heard—even with a decade behind bars for reference. He heard something crash through the brush toward the van. Heard the door torn open. Heard a body being dragged out. Heard “You started it!” screamed by the voice of a deranged maniac. Heard the unmistakable sound of something unyielding being rammed into human flesh. Over and over and over. His knees buckled but he held himself firm. Just like the Army, he told himself. I got my orders.
The driver heard the snap of bone . . . bone too large to be snapped by human hands. A thin scream escaped the lips of the other guard. Then he was silent. But the flesh-pounding assault continued—a wall of dull-red noise.
“Get back in the van,” the man with the pistol said. “Don’t turn around. You were transporting her to Carver. There was a huge tree limb across the road. You stopped. The other guy got out. That was the last time you saw him. Somebody slipped little plugs into your nose. When you woke up, the woman was gone too. Call HQ. Report in.”
“I don’t—” the guard started to say, but a giant hand closed around his carotid artery. He felt something inserted into his nostrils just before he lost consciousness.
When he awoke, he was alone in the van, parked alongside the two-lane blacktop, a mile or so before where he had originally turned off. A tree limb across the road blocked his path.
He called HQ.
Rhino was crouched over Tiger, who lay in the back seat of the shark car. “She’ll be all right,” he said. “Maybe a slight concussion. The cheekbone’s probably fractured. And she lost a couple of teeth. No internals, no wounds.”
“He started it,” Princess mumbled, looking down.
“He did, brother,” Cross said soothingly. “You did right. Easy now, okay?”
Ace sat between Cross and Princess, shaking his head. “We was gonna do the fucking guard anyway, right? I mean, that’s what the feds paid us for.”
“Yeah,” Cross said quietly. “The weasel had about a hundred sexual-abuse complaints against him. About two dozen of the women were going to testify. This way, he gets himself killed, line-of-duty, all that. Must have been an escape attempt gone wrong . . . ’cause Tiger got killed too. Everybody’s happy.”
“Except he—”
“I know. It’s on me. I fucked it up. Never thought he’d try anything in a moving vehicle, with a live witness and all. Tiger, I’m . . .”
The woman waved Cross’s words away, her eyes starting to focus.
“How the girls gonna be happy, man?” Ace asked. “Their lawsuit just got killed too.”
“They’re amateurs,” Cross said. “For them, revenge would be better than money.”
“I’m a pro,” Tiger said softly. “And you couldn’t pay me enough money to let that . . . thing live another day.”
“Quitasol means ‘parasol’ in Spanish,” Cross told the assembled crew. “It’s a tiny little place. Sits in a triangle, at the bottom, like it was covered by the others. Guatemala to the north, Honduras below, El Salvador to the west. Nearest jump-away is Belize. It’s right on the water. And they have commercial flights to Miami and Jamaica too, gives us a lot of options.”
“How much room will you need?” Falcon asked Buddha.
“I can get down pretty much on a dime. But getting off, at least a hundred meters . . . and that’s only if there’s a pretty low tree line direct ahead.”
“There is no way to ensure enough time,” Falcon responded. “We have to reach the zone, set up camp, and then start to work. It may take us . . . I don’t know, perhaps weeks. We can’t use power tools, and . . .”
“It’s mostly flatland,” Cross said. “Solid rock.”
“And you know this from . . . ?”
“A native. One that wants this to work. One that knows if you can’t clear the area Buddha never gets the signal to come in.”
“Ah.”
“And one who knows there isn’t that much time.”
“That leaves you, me, and Tiger to exit once we—”
“I know,” Cross told Rhino. “And we’re going to have to drive out. The place should be in turmoil. You know what it’s like where nobody knows where they stand. Like a goddamn prison riot. People use the chance to settle old scores, maybe. And there’ll be looting and burning and whatever. But the military, it’s not gonna try and stop people from leaving. More people, that’s the last thing they need. And we won’t be the only ones heading for the border.”
“Jamaica or Miami, it won’t make any difference,” Rhino said softly. “If I get on a plane, everyone’ll remember.”
“You’re not going to Jamaica unless things go wrong,” Cross told him. “That’s just a backup. All you have to do in Miami is get off a plane. Then you disappear. Only you never leave the airport. I got a Lear standing by.”
“I’ll have to wait to RDV with Buddha, then?”
“You want Princess to make it back to Chicago from Miami on his own?” Cross asked.
“All right,” the monster-man agreed, knowing the logic of the crew chief to be coldly correct, as always.
“Falcon’s going straight across to Oklahoma. He’s got his own people there. Ace is going to drive right up the highway. He’s already got relatives in Belle Glade who’ll cover for him, say he was there all the time.”
“Is Tiger gonna be okay?” Princess asked. “She didn’t look so good before.”
“Better not let her hear you say that,” Cross warned him. “Besides, that was almost three weeks ago, and she’s been rehabbing perfectly. She even has her stripes back.”
“I don’t like the idea of moving around unstrapped,” Ace said. “It’s not natural.”
“You won’t be in enemy territory and—” Rhino started to say.
“And you ain’t never been a nigger in the South,” Ace finished his sentence.
“Or an Indian, anywhere,” Falcon added.
“None of us can carry,” Cross said. “We have to play it meek and mild until we get back home—I mean, to this place. Sure, you’re more likely to get pulled over by some Klansman with a badge; but, without a weapon in the car, no drugs, no nothing, there won’t be a lot they can do. Why bother with a flake job if they don’t know you? And if they do try that, it just means a little time Inside until the rest of us can do what we need to do. We’ll have enough money to grease anything that happens . . . except icing a cop. All right?”
A full minute of silence was followed by Ace’s “All right” in response. Falcon said nothing. But he had not protested in the first place, merely supported the truth of Ace’s comments.
“Okay. Everybody has their route in. Everybody has their route out. Everybody has their money. We all have the plan. Buddha g
ets his go from Fal, we get ours when Buddha makes his first pass.”
“You sure I’m gonna be able to make this . . . rental, boss?”
“Already set,” Cross assured him. “And don’t be bargaining with them either. I told you the price—hand it over. You act like a decent guy, they might even give you some practice time, get familiar with it.”
“This time, everybody’s going,” Buddha said. “If we don’t come . . .”
“Then we’ll be in the same place we’d be if we didn’t agree to this deal.”
“Huh?”
“Not here,” Cross said.
“Man, I thought Chi-Town summers got ugly,” Ace groused, mopping his forehead with a camouflage handkerchief. “This place stays humid.”
“It’s a rain forest,” Falcon told him. “We’re actually under a canopy. It’s just about always raining overhead, because the moisture gets trapped in the overgrowth.”
“Whatever. It sucks.”
“Hey, come on, guys. This is fun, right?” Princess smiled. “We’re on a mission and everything.”
Falcon and Ace exchanged looks but kept their silence. As they approached yet another narrow trail, they fell into the positions Falcon had mapped out for them before they started their march—Falcon walking point, a modified M-16 carried in his right hand; Princess next, hauling a rucksack that weighed over two hundred pounds without apparent effort, constantly running up on Falcon in his eagerness to get to their destination. Ace brought up the rear, walking drag, his scattergun on a rawhide sling around his neck and his senses on full alert. They were on the fourth day of their march. As they entered a clearing, Falcon held up his hand, signaling for silence. His eyes swept the area. The only sounds were those of insects and birds. Falcon’s innate sensors probed even as his eyes did, but there was no sign of humans. He was about to signal the others to move on when he finally spotted confirmation of what his internals had been screaming—a filter-tipped cigarette butt almost completely ground into the soil. Almost. Falcon walked silently over to it and unearthed it with his knife as carefully as if it were a prized artifact from an ancient civilization. Then he motioned the others to remain where they were and disappeared. In another half-hour, he was ready to report.
“At least four men, carrying light, maybe three, four hours ahead of us.”
“Are they the bad guys?” Princess asked.
“In the brush, everyone’s the bad guys,” Fal told him. “But these . . . I don’t think they got anything to do with us. According to the map, we’re on course to cross a traders’ road in about four klicks. What I think we’ve got here is a bunch of bandits.”
“They gonna do a Jesse James on a stagecoach or what?” Ace asked.
“Something like that. Best guess is they’re going to deploy along the sides of the traders’ route and just take tolls.”
“Or lives,” Ace replied.
“Maybe. Doesn’t really matter. I can already see where they left a clear trail. It’ll be easy enough to follow at a distance, make sure we cross at a different spot.”
“So we—?”
“Wait,” Falcon said.
The ancient truck labored to climb the slight grade in the one-lane dirt road, hauling its precariously tied down flatbed cargo of green bananas. Falcon watched impassively, invisible. He hand-signaled to Princess and Ace to keep their distance. It was a good quarter-mile ahead of where Falcon had calculated the bandit crew would set up its roadblock, but his sensors picked up human activity on the other side of the road. Had he been alone, Falcon would have vanished. Encumbered as he was, he decided to remain still and see what developed.
It wasn’t long in coming. A chubby man stepped into the road, holding what looked like an old British Enfield. He leveled the rifle at the truck’s cab as another man, younger and leaner, hopped on the running board brandishing a machete. The truck stopped. Three other men emerged from the brush, surrounding the driver, who looked as weatherbeaten as his truck. And older.
Falcon didn’t need to understand Spanish to decode the situation. The bandits didn’t want bananas, they wanted money. And the old man either had none, or wasn’t handing it over. Falcon watched dispassionately as the chubby one chopped at the old man’s face with the butt of his rifle, drawing blood. Then he felt breath against the side of the face and shuddered even before he heard Princess whisper:
“Why are they hurting the old man?”
“They want his money. Ssssh.”
“They can’t—”
“Yes, they fucking can,” Falcon hissed. “They’re thieves. Just like us. We have to be quiet, understand? Our mission is on the other side, not here.”
Princess lapsed into silence. The ugly tableau continued to play out, with one after another of the bandits kicking or slapping the old man. But then the game changed as the young man with the machete emerged from the far side of the truck, his hand twisted deep into the long black hair of a young girl. He threw the girl to the ground. She looked about twelve years old. The chubby man laughed and reached for the girl. She clawed at his face. He punched her sharply in the mouth and she collapsed in the road. The old man rushed to her side, hovering protectively over her body.
The chubby man handed his rifle to another of the bandits and stepped toward the girl, unbuttoning his pants. Princess screamed something incoherent and burst from cover, charging straight at the bandits. Falcon said “Fuck!” under his breath and put a bullet into the head of the man holding the rifle. The chubby man barked an order. One of the bandits leveled a pistol at the onrushing Princess even as Falcon’s bullet took out his left eye. The chubby man was scrambling to reach the rifle lying on the road when a shotgun blast took him from behind, shredding his shirt and his lungs. The two remaining bandits dashed for the safety of the trees, but Falcon’s next shot dropped one of them. And by then, Princess had the lone survivor in his hands. He didn’t remain a survivor for long.
Years later, the little girl named her first child Espectro. And when he was old enough to understand, his mother explained that he was named for the ghost who had saved her from horror.
“They started it,” Princess sulked as Falcon prodded him from behind, urging more speed.
“Gunfire brings questions,” Falcon told him. “You fucked up, plain and simple. You pull a stunt like that while we’re in place and—”
“My man ain’t gonna do any such thing,” Ace said soothingly, patting Princess on his massive shoulder. “This time we was just laying up, okay? But once we get across the border, we gonna be undercover, remember? You wouldn’t blow our cover, right, brother?”
“No way!” Princess promised, his voice restored to its usual childish tone. Falcon wondered if his eyes were still purple—the unhuman color they turned every time the child lost control.
Seventeen hours later, they crossed the border.
The stream was a bare trickle as it meandered through a massive rock formation. Yet it was there that those locos from Dios-knows-where had set up their gold-panning operation. El Monstruo, the one with the impossible muscles, he was always working: chopping at the rock with a pickax, hammering heavy steel wedges deep into crevices so that the streambed could be widened . . . foolishness that would never repay him for all his effort. El Indio, ah, that one would come and go, vanishing as a spirit into and out of the surrounding trees. Occasionally, he would be seen with some sort of strange-looking telescope device in his hands. El Negrito, he worked with a machete like a machine. So skinny, yet so strong, working as if he were going to clear the jungle away all by himself.
So said the watchers. And there were many, for this remote part of Quitasol attracted those who preferred the risk and hardship of the brush to the certain poverty of working in one of the open-pit mines. The mines had the gold, it was said, but none for the people. In the mountains, the people could have the gold . . . if it could be found. Not gold ore, for digging was impossible. It was not a job for the hands—only high explosives and heav
y machinery could accomplish such a task. But there was gold in the riverbeds, this was known. And it could be panned, strained, sifted . . . and, perhaps, revealed. So they were all there for the same reason.
The three men working that narrow stream were not talkative. Only the huge one spoke at all, and that was to menace anyone who came close—drawing a line in the dirt with his digging tool and daring others to cross it, telling them they had better not “start it” as if he were a child instead of a grown man. Surely it was not that the fools had discovered something so valuable. Still, one of the watchers said, perhaps they had things of value with them. Tools. Even machinery, maybe. Or a radio. It could not hurt to look, yes? And even crazy men had to sleep sometime.
The men discussed it among themselves. Quietly, for it was a matter of great seriousness. None of them would even consider approaching the huge one without a weapon. His body appeared to have been carved from stone, and even a blade might prove useless against such a creature. Between the watchers, who were all from the same village, they had a single rifle, and four cartridges. And there were three men in the camp by the rocks. Even if they could kill them all, would the trade be worth it? What if the locos had no firearms? With only one bullet left, the villagers would be helpless. And, remember, El Indio, he was no stranger to the darkness. Had he not simply appeared in the distance one evening, as if out of the night itself? No, this was a bad plan. Best to leave them in peace.
“Could it hurt to talk to them?” one of the youngest said. “Perhaps we could learn more about them. Perhaps they could be frightened off?”
The oldest among them laughed aloud. “You go, Carlito. I will tell your widow all about it when we return.”
The young man said the old man had lost his cojones. The old man laughed more. “El Diablo himself would not frighten such men. If you live long enough, this is something you too will understand.”
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