“Okay.”
“Be a trifle cold on the return, but it shouldn’t be a real problem. Mind, with the extra pod, we had to lose the Sidewinders. That’s the way Cross said to do it.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So what you want to do is—”
“Get in and get the fuck out, right? Sure.”
“And the money?”
“A million bucks for a rental, that’s what you’re asking?”
“Oh, I’m not asking for anything, son. Cross made a deal. A million for the rental, the loads, any shakedown runs you want to make to test her out, fuel, and a ride to this little airport I know about when you come back. He said you had a good sense of humor . . . and I can see he was right, you acting as if you want to bargain.”
“The money will be here in twenty-four hours,” Buddha said, turning away. “I have to—”
“Ah, we have telephones here, my friend. Very civilized. At your pleasure . . .”
“It is as I promised, sí?” the Mayan asked Cross, a sweep of his arm indicating the plush foyer of the four-story house located on the fringe of the capital city’s most upscale neighborhood.
“It looks fine,” Cross assured him. The women were upstairs, arguing over which bedroom each would occupy as work space. Rhino was prowling somewhere within the house.
Tiger sat next to Cross, watching the Mayan, but not speaking or moving.
“Your . . . customers, they will start to arrive at the end of the week. Once word has been spread discreetly in certain circles.”
“We’re almost there,” Cross told him.
“Almost . . . ?”
“One problem you got: You don’t trust us. That’s okay, I understand. But you’re not taking any risk until we deliver, that was the deal.”
“You believe there was no risk in—?”
“Real risk. You’re not putting any troops into the field until that radio tower goes down.”
“I tell you . . . my compadres, they think I am insane to even go this far. Especially with a man like you. That tower, it is guarded like it is the life of Torrando himself.”
“Torrando is—?”
“He is El Presidente today. Tomorrow, he may be muerto if God wills it. But if he goes, those with him go as well. And so the guards are good ones. Not the fat, lazy swine who worked in the dungeons. They are soldiers. The elite. The best he has. It will be impossible to reach the tower with the kind of explosives you would need.”
“Sure. Whatever you say.”
“In any event, you did not bring explosives with you. You could not bring even a pistol across our borders on the main roads.”
“That’s one of the two things we need from you,” Cross told him. “We need weapons. That’s our problem. And you need to watch us. That’s your problem. So here’s how we’re going to do it. You give us enough men to watch the door, all right? They do all the talking. What’s the most anyone charges for whores around here?”
“I would not know this.”
“Sure. Anyway, you can find out. Whatever that price is, ours is double, understand? So the guys at the door, they don’t have to be hard, but they got to look hard, understand? Like they was hired to protect the place, watch the money, check on the girls. We want no phone in the place. No appointments. All word-of-mouth. Everytime someone shows up, your guys, they pat him down—no weapons allowed in here—tell him the price, ask him which girl he wants. We got photos, and if they’re not with a customer, they’ll be lounging around in that room you got in the back. We need someone on the front door around the clock. There’s a door in the back. You got two choices with it—seal it up or put a man on it. Your own man—we’re not dealing with it.”
“What else do you require?”
“Weapons. We need an Uzi, a pair of MAC-10s, three shotguns, twelve-gauge, and”—looking across at Tiger, catching her nod—“a Sig Sauer nine. With plenty of ammo for each one. And we need a suppressor for the Sig. A real one.”
“Those are expensive weapons. Especially with a silencer. And very dangerous to possess here. I do not know if—”
Cross handed the Mayan a plain envelope. “What you got in there is twenty thousand, American. That’s enough to buy everything we want a few times over. We came over the border in a limo. Your guys go back and forth whenever they want. Buying pieces like we need in Guatemala is about an hour’s work.”
“Very well.”
“Good. While you’re there, I got a couple of other things I want picked up.”
The Mayan looked a question, but did not speak.
“One’s a present. For you all. It’s a bit too bulky to carry in a suitcase, so make sure you’ve got a truck.”
“What is this . . . present?”
“Your broadcasting booth,” Cross told him.
“There’s three of us,” Cross said, looking at Tiger and Rhino. “Everybody works overlap until this is done. Five hours straight sleep every twenty-four, so there’s always two of us awake. I’m not worried about the girls making a break for it, but we have to watch none of the customers gets stupid. And if they do,” he said, looking meaningfully at Tiger, “we have to handle them sweet. We don’t know who’s coming, but Jorge said they’d all be big players. We total the wrong one, we might get visitors. And, remember, none of the girls can see you, either.”
“I don’t know how to count this damn money,” Tanya whined, looking at a stack of bills on the coffee table in the beautifully appointed waiting room.
“You don’t need to count it,” Cross told her. “We’ll exchange it once we get back to the States.”
“You said—”
“—that you could keep all your tips, right? And you can. Nobody’s taking a penny from you. They pay us at the door. Whatever they give you, it’s yours to keep. What’s your beef?”
“Well, I just like to know what I’m getting. I mean, I don’t know if these guys are tipping me a C-note or a fiver, do I?”
“Fine, all right, give it to me,” Cross said, leaning forward. Tanya handed it over, reluctantly, as if worried it would not be returned. Cross riffled through it, spinning the stack against his thumb. “You got about six grand here.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You said this place would be paradise; I guess you weren’t wrong. That’s only for two days. I only turned—”
“Nobody cares,” Cross told her.
“You have to come to the house,” Cross said reasonably. “Rhino has to show your guys how to work the thing, right? And there’s no way he can leave—we won’t have enough manpower to cover the place if something happens.”
“If something happens . . . ?”
“Look, pal. This is cover. Deep cover. We spent a long, long time setting it up. Our base is there. If this regime of yours decides they want to close the place down, the game’s up, understand?”
“Sí. But could we not . . . ?”
“Your guys, they’re radiomen, right? I mean, not amateurs? Rhino wouldn’t have to start from scratch?”
“No. Of course not. It is just that we have never seen such a—”
“Get the rig inside another truck. Not a pickup, something with a covered back, okay? Bring it behind the house. Tonight. Right after midnight. Don’t move after that. Make sure there’s a piece of red cloth tied onto the antenna. And when you hear three raps, open the door. No smoking, no talking, no piss breaks. You stay in there until you hear the raps. You let Rhino in. He’s gonna have maybe a hour to show you everything. In the dark, with a flashlight.”
“We can do this.”
“You got the weapons, I’ll give you that. All right, tonight. And give us an extra man on the door, just to be sure.”
“You sure this’ll hold?” Cross asked Rhino, indicating a four-bolt configuration screwed deeply into the wooden floor, with a thick black Perlon climbing line looped around it in a boxed-X pattern.
“My weight times ten,” Rhino assured him
. “And it’s only dropping one floor. Too short to even call it rappelling—I can get down in one hop.”
“All right. You know they’re not going to speak English, unless Jorge is there too.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Rhino squeaked. “None of the switches are marked with words anyway. I can hand-sign it all, no worries.”
“Tiger will have you covered on the way down. With a silenced piece. If there’s any trouble, the one thing we don’t want is noise. . . .”
Rhino nodded, realizing that Cross was on full-auto now, reciting mechanically, not telling anyone anything they hadn’t heard a thousand times. The pre-battle ritual. Meaningless now.
“This two-at-a-time thing doesn’t really work with only three for coverage.” Tiger smiled at Cross.
“Huh?”
“Well, let’s say two of the three want to . . . get together privately . . . No way to do that, is there?”
“I guess not. When we get back . . .”
“Maybe women are different from men,” Tiger said.
“Maybe?”
“All right.” She chuckled. “We’re about to . . . do something. I don’t know how men get ready. Me, I’d kind of like to . . . let some of this energy go someplace, if you get my drift.”
“Tiger . . .”
“Cross, stop playing. There’s nobody watching. But you’ve been watching me. And don’t even pretend it’s because you’re afraid I’m going to go off. I’m just as much a pro as you.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“So . . . what?”
“Can’t we . . . be together and watch the pressure point at the same time?”
“One of us at least has to—”
“And you want that to be you, right?” Tiger whispered huskily, grinning.
“Actually, I want it to be you,” Cross said, flat-faced. “But I don’t know if you can keep your concentration.”
“Me? I can do it better than you could.”
Tiger leaned over the railing at the top of the stairs, bent slightly forward at the waist. She was nude. Cross stood behind her, already inside her. Tiger’s silenced pistol swept the area below. “Looks good to me,” she whispered.
“Looks better from here,” Cross replied.
Tiger giggled. “I hope so.”
“And you can stay like this until . . . ?”
“Question is, how long can you stay like this?” Tiger chuckled, wiggling her hips back against Cross.
It was no contest.
“They can use it,” Rhino said.
“No question?”
“None. They already knew ninety percent of it. Probably could have worked it out by themselves, but it’s not the kind of thing you want to test. A signal that strong, you could triangulate on it in minutes.”
“Then all we’re waiting on is word from the field.”
“I know.”
“Look, Rhino, if Princess had lost it, we probably would’ve heard an alarm—we’re hooked up, and Fal has the transmitter.”
“All we can do is wait it out,” Tiger said gently, putting one hand on Rhino’s gigantic forearm. “You’ve got your five hours coming. Two of the girls aren’t working now. . . You want to . . . ?”
“No offense,” Rhino told her.
“None taken,” she said.
“There’s a pattern,” Rhino said to Cross. It was three days later, and both men were sitting in the kitchen on the first floor, a vantage point that gave them full sound coverage without sight. Good enough for their purposes. The girls were above them, Tiger on the floor above that, asleep.
“To what?”
“We get heavy traffic some times; almost none at others.”
“Not so surprising. This is a whorehouse, not a bus station.”
“I know. And this ‘siesta’ thing takes its toll, too. But Buddha has to make his move in daylight, right?”
“I don’t know. That’s the smart way. But it’s got the highest risk . . .”
“He won’t want to fly at night without air-to-air,” Rhino said, certainty in his voice. “Not Buddha. And he won’t want to miss the pickup, either.”
“He’s not coming back alone,” Cross told Rhino, finally picking up on the source of the huge man’s anxiety.
“If he does, he’ll never spend the money,” Rhino said, his voice so low it sounded almost normal.
“I think it’s finished,” Princess told Ace, looking out across a clear-swept area of rock and dirt.
“One more day,” Ace said sourly. “I don’t want to give that fat little motherfucker no excuse not to land.”
“Oh, Buddha wouldn’t do that,” Princess assured him. “We’d all be stuck here if he did that.”
“Sure,” Ace said. And went back to work with his machete.
“Do you believe these men can do as they promised?” a slim woman with a scar that bisected the empty socket of her right eye asked Jorge.
“They are not our people,” he said. “They are not men of honor. They have no cause except money.”
“And what does that mean?” an older man asked from the far corner of the darkened basement. “We have risked much for this.”
“We have risked nothing,” the woman hissed at him. “Some . . . money, what is that? A run across the border? Some of our soldiers in their little house of whores? This is nothing. And what we fight for, it is everything.”
“Sí, Rosita. I do not mean to—”
“They only took one of my eyes,” the woman said, her voice harsh in the quiet air. “And even if they took both, I could still see. I ask Jorge because, unless these men do as they promise, there will be no risk at all. And no change for our people.”
“I believe they will do it,” Jorge said finally.
Greeted with silence, he continued: “This man Cross, his name is known to the drug lords. And you know, they have armies greater than those of El Puerco. They know his name. And they fear it. Not because he is a man of honor. But because he always delivers. Not merchandise. He and his . . . comrades . . . are not mules. They are soldiers. All of them, like some army. He has his own reasons for doing this. And it is true that we do not know them. But what does it matter? La Casa de Dolor alone—if that should fall . . .”
“Only if the people know,” the woman with the scar reminded him.
“Sí. But Roberto says the radio they gave us, it will work. Even on the generator, for at least ten minutes. And it will reach every corner. Far beyond Quitasol.”
“But how will they take the tower?”
“This I do not know. I know this man Cross cannot be a traitor, for he has no loyalty. He is a businessman. I assume he is a liar, then. All businessmen are liars. But I believe he can do it . . . Do not ask why, I just do. And as Rosita said, we have risked nothing of value. Not so far. Only if the tower stops transmitting do we go into the streets, agreed?”
The nods were no less emphatic for being silent.
“You ready to take your medicine without any trouble this time, bitch?” the guard asked the woman in the shapeless bleached gray shift.
She nodded weakly, opening her mouth like a trained dog following a command.
“Too bad,” the guard sneered at her. “It was more fun the last time.”
“It’s ready,” said Fal, inspecting the runway. Dusk was falling. “I’m transmitting . . . now.” He flicked a toggle switch on a black box he had taken from the pocket of his jacket. A green light glowed. “Buddha knows now. He should be in after first light tomorrow. We’ve got a good ten hours to cover less than three klicks and find shelter. I’ve been there four times already. The path is marked. That part’s easy. Getting back, there’s where we have to work.”
This was a long speech for Falcon. Ace and Princess squatted next to him by the fire, waiting.
Falcon flicked another switch, watched another light glow green. “Cross knows now, too. We wait for the acknowledge. That comes, we’re gone.”
“They just al
erted Buddha,” Cross told Tiger. “If he signals back, that means tomorrow, sometime after sunup.”
“I’m ready,” she said. “And I’ll tell Rhino when I wake him up for his shift.”
A red light glowed on the black box Falcon held in his hand. “Buddha’s got it,” he told the others. “Let’s move out.”
“I swear I’m gonna miss this place,” Crystal told Candy the next morning, both of them lounging in customer-magnet negligees. “I never worked a place so nice in my life.”
“Yeah. I don’t know about you, but only two guys even tried to get rough. And one look at that monster we got, and that was the end of it.”
“He is a big one.” Crystal chuckled. “I wonder if he’s got a big one.”
“Whether he does or not, you’re not gonna see it.”
“How could you know?”
“’Cause I don’t think he swings that way.”
“Which means you offered him a little on the side.”
“What if I did? I mean . . . what else is there to do here? Watch more Baywatch reruns? That is one lame show.”
“You think they all bought theirs?” Crystal asked, flicking her hands across her pneumatic breasts.
“Sure, girl. Who doesn’t? You believe even the marks think we came stock from the factory like this?”
“I guess not. Although nothing these idiots do would be that much of a surprise.”
“It doesn’t matter much. We only have three more days here.”
“Yeah. Well, you can stay if you want. Me, I miss the States. And I don’t like being locked up.”
“I guess you don’t,” Tiger said, walking into the room, the semi-auto leveled. “That’s why you were so quick to sell me to the feds, huh?”
The Harrier popped straight up out of the dense green Honduran jungle, hovered momentarily, then shot forward like a malevolent wasp. It headed toward the capital of Quitasol, less than twenty miles away, the roar of its vector-thrust turbofan engine blanketing the ground below into stunned silence. The radar found the little plane immediately, but even as the Quitasolan Air Force—four surplus Russian MiGs—was scrambling to alert, the Harrier let loose a single air-to-ground Maverick missile, the electric-optic system guiding the warhead right to its target. The top half of the radio tower disappeared—fire engulfed what was left. The Harrier banked sharply and darted back across the border before any of the MiGs could get into the air.
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