The Dogs of Mexico

by John J. Asher

  “ ’Ey, you would shoot us in front of the witness, no?”

  “Just blink and they’ll be dipping your brains out of the soup back there for a week. Empty your pockets. Easy.”

  The guy was even smaller than Robert had thought—thin little-boy arms, tattoos interwoven with weld-like scars that Robert recognized as old cigarette burns. His teeth were bad, the blackened decay of a crystal meth user. He emptied his pockets—wallet, change, a plastic prescription bottle, a yellow-handled pocketknife. The truck driver looked on, stoic. The dog rested his head over one foreleg, watching for the chicken. One of the women at the rear stood just long enough to do a quick stir in one of the pots, eyes showing briefly over the stovetop before she dropped from sight again.

  “Turn around, easy.” Robert felt the smaller man down for weapons, giving special attention to his boot tops. Satisfied, he lifted the knife from the change, put it in his pocket and stood back.

  He nudged the gun toward the bigger man. “Outside,” he ordered. “Stay close here. Not too close!” The men followed just out of reach as Robert backed through the doorway into the yard, glancing about, squinting against the sudden light. He did a double take—Ana—standing behind the Nissan’s open door, one hand on the steering wheel, engine idling.

  Robert turned, shouting at the men, “On your knees!”

  The two exchanged looks.

  The truck driver appeared in the doorway behind, looking on, stoic, still holding his bowl.

  “On your knees!” Robert shouted again, tilting the gun at the two men.

  They knelt. The smaller man crossed himself.

  “Robert, please!” Ana cried.

  Thinking Ana had gone for good, he had herded them outside, thinking he would kill them, then take their car and catch up to her. But now, the gravity of killing them was more than he expected. Not only that, here Ana was, watching everything. He had boxed himself into a corner. But then, recalling Mickey, the bullet hole in her forehead, the flies, he had to restrain himself from shooting them dead on the spot.

  “There’s an aluminum case in their car,” he said. “Get it and my bag.” He pitched the Chevy’s keys to her. She fumbled them in her nervousness, but quickly recovered and unlocked their car.

  “There’s a gun here,” she said, standing back.

  “Good. Put it in our car.”

  “No… You get it.”

  “Get that goddamn gun!” he shouted. “Put it in the car!”

  She hesitated, then piled Soffit’s aluminum case and Robert’s carry-on in with the other luggage. With visible distaste she lifted a machine-pistol from the rear floor and put it in the Nissan.

  Robert took the Chevy’s keys from her and stuffed them in his pocket. He sighted the .380 on the larger man.

  The man threw his hands up. “No! Wait—”

  “Robert! No!”

  In the same moment he became aware of a taxi van slowing, turning in alongside the Chevy—a whole van full of Anglos staring through the windows.

  The .380 bucked on the end of his arm, twice in quick succession. The big man pitched backward, arms flailing, his blue pumps kicking as if riding a bicycle. The little guy fell to his knees, shoulders hunched, blackened teeth bared in a quivering grimace as the gun muzzle swept past and fired again. Both front tires sank on the Chevy, air whistling out in a cloud of dust, the resounding gunshots echoing through the mountains. Chickens squawked and flapped off down the slope into the brush. The dog scrambled from under the wall, barked once and stood looking confused.

  Passengers in the van stared stupefied as the taxi squealed out backward, gunned hard onto the pavement and up the highway, disappearing over the pass.

  Robert took quick aim at the front tire on the truck across the road. The tire went with a bang, blowing off a heavy warp of retread. The trucker in the doorway slowly lowered his bowl.

  The two men huddled trembling on the ground as Robert pulled the wad of bills from his pocket and handed it to Ana. “Take two hundred bucks and give it to that guy,” he said.

  Wordless, the trucker accepted the money, nodded to Robert, tipped his hat to Ana. But she was already hurrying to the car, scrambling into the front passenger seat.

  Robert eased around to the driver’s door, got in behind the wheel, shoved the car in gear and squealed out onto the pavement.

  In the rearview mirror he glimpsed the smaller man scrambling to his feet, diving into the Chevy. Robert almost ran off the road as the little guy popped the trunk, dashed behind the car and dragged out a second machine-pistol.

  26

  Pursuit

  “GET DOWN! GET DOWN!” Robert floored the accelerator. The machine-pistol made a stuttered corn-popping noise. Bullets hammered the trees and kicked up dust alongside the pavement.

  Robert grabbed Ana’s shirtfront and jerked her forward. She slid off into the footwell and balled up in a knot, arms covering her head. Robert hunkered down, squinting over the top arc of the steering wheel. The rear window frosted over, spurting chunks of safety glass. Stuffing flew from Ana’s headrest. The Nissan dropped over the crest of the pass. The shooting stopped. Robert realized he was still in third gear. He shifted to fourth and tried to straighten the car, but the rear end was swinging back and forth, bumping up and down.

  “Oh, shit…”

  Ana stared up at him, eyes ringed white with fear.

  The car bumped and thumped, the rear end sway-banging side to side. He braked around a switchback, slipping sideways, the flat tire slapping against the rear fender. Halfway down the long winding descent, the tire wobbled off the rim and went over the cliff trailing smoke. The wheel rim whined on the asphalt, vibrating through the chassis. Robert glanced at the speedometer: Thirty kilometers per hour.

  At the bottom of the mountain, he pulled over and they got out. Ana leaned against the car, hand over her heart, breathing hard. His own hands were shaky.

  He stared at the rear wheel rim. The spare was packed with money—and how would that work?

  “Listen,” Ana whispered. “What’s that?”

  A whump-whump-whump sounded from up the mountain behind.

  On an outcurve above, he saw the white Chevy wobbling around a switchback, coming down the mountain toward them.

  “What the— Get in! Get in!”

  The front-wheel drive threw gravel and squealed out onto the blacktop. The rear whipped side to side, the rim shrieking over the pavement.

  The men either had another key, or they had hot-wired it. He should have cut the fan belt and ripped out the wiring. Not only that, in the heat of the moment he had overlooked the possibility of a second weapon in their trunk.

  Ana crouched on the seat on her knees, staring through the gaping holes in the frosted rear window.

  “My god!” she cried. “They’re going to catch us!”

  “Here,” he shouted. “Hold this thing on the road!”

  Ana grabbed the wheel as he reached back over the seat and snatched up the machine-pistol.

  “I can’t hold it!” she shouted above the squealing of metal on the pavement.

  He took the shuddering wheel in one hand and did a quick study on the gun—a .45 ACP Uzi with a sixteen-round magazine.

  “They’re going to catch us!” Ana said.

  He caught a glimpse of the Chevy bucking up the mountain after them, throwing up smoke from the front tires slapping up and down on the pavement. But the Chevy with its two flats on front was moving in a fairly straight line, whereas the one tire on the rear of the Nissan was throwing it off balance, swinging back and forth.

  Robert downshifted and gunned the Nissan. The rear slipped toward the dropoff. He let off the accelerator and lost speed. He glanced at the speedometer: Twenty kilometers per hour.

  The Chevy was gaining, but it too had slowed. The smaller man leaned out the window with the machine-pistol. The gun hammered but the Chevy was pitching hard and the shots were going wild. Bullets clipped foliage and kicked up dust on
the cliff facings. Sheet metal pinged as bullets hit the car. The Nissan crawled toward a curve at the top of the ridge. Robert glanced at the speedometer—ten kilometers per hour, engine whining, dragging the skidding rim up the pavement. The Chevy was a hundred yards behind, lurching and bouncing, slamming the little guy up and down as he fired out the window. Then he opened the door and jumped out and began to run up the highway in his cowboy boots, faster than the Chevy, faster than the Nissan.

  The Nissan lurched to a stop as Robert shut the ignition off. The automatic opened up. Robert fell over on the seat, thumbing the Uzi’s safety off. He jerked back on the cocking knob. The car rocked in a spray of glass and dust. Ana huddled in the footwell, arms covering her head.

  Robert kicked his door open. He slid out and flattened himself on the pavement. In the same moment, he glimpsed the gunman’s cowboy boots from the underside of the car, ducking to the passenger side. Robert pushed up with the Uzi just as the gunman popped up in the window, his head visible as he shoved the machine-pistol through. Robert’s first impulse was to shoot him through the door, but Ana lay huddled in the footwell directly between them. Robert fell back—all but dead—but the little man’s expression turned to surprise as the cocking knob locked back, the clip empty. Robert realized he was running back to the Chevy, tearing the clip out.

  Robert leaped to his feet. He sighted the Uzi a little to one side, intending to cross-rake the man as he ran zigzag down the pavement. But there was only a short pop pop, the gun emptying in a fraction of a second, three or four spent casings arching out, bouncing on the pavement. The Uzi’s clip had been all but empty. The little man dove headlong into the Chevy. Robert spun around, searching for one of the handguns as the little guy leaped out, slapping in a new clip.

  The sudden roar of an air horn, the squall of tires skidding on asphalt, and Robert jerked around to see a bus barreling down on him from the outcurve just above. He fell back as the bus careened toward the dropoff and then leaned toward him, its crates of chickens shifting on top, its big-eyed passengers sprawling inside. The bus barely missed him, ripped the rear bumper off the Nissan and spun the car around so that its front-end slammed him into the side of the passing bus. The gunman leaped aside as the bus banged head-on into the Chevy, driving it backward, clanking to a stop. Smoke boiled up. Hot water and steam spewed out.

  Robert lay on the pavement struggling to regain his breath in a smoky wake of burned brakes and rubber. Blood leaked from his nose. Tears fractured the light. He struggled to breathe. He thought he might have broken ribs, but managed to get to his feet and back into the Nissan. The engine turned over with a reluctant grind before it caught and fired up. Straining to see through the bullet holes in the web-frosted windshield, he steered the wreck back up the highway, groaning toward the top of the pass, dragging the fiberglass bumper cover behind. Robert ventured a quick glance through the shot-out rear window—a gaping hole fringed with a lacy web of safety glass. Passengers were spilling out of the bus, crowding around the Chevy and the two men.

  The Nissan shuddered over the summit and started down the mountain switchbacks, dust and glass shaking out. A piece of plastic had been shot off the steering wheel, the metal core exposed. The airbag had spilled out of its cavity without inflating.

  Robert began to think he wasn’t seriously hurt—ribs bruised, perhaps broken, a dull headache, regaining his breath with effort.

  Ana huddled in the footwell, forearms clamped over her head. She began to edge her way up onto the seat, a warp of copper hair falling down from its clip, a dazed cast in her eyes.

  “You okay?” he said, watching the rearview mirror.

  She stared at him. “Your mouth…” she mumbled.

  “Nosebleed, that’s all.” Tasting it, metallic.

  “I can’t believe we’re still alive.” She began to push her way back up onto the seat, but stiffened as he slowed and eased the Nissan off into a patch of weeds, bringing it to a stop. “What’re you doing?” she whispered.

  Wordless, he took Soffit’s .45 from under the seat, found the .380 in the footwell next to the accelerator, and the big man’s Beretta wedged between the passenger seat and the center console. He unzipped his reclaimed maroon carry-on and retrieved two of the cardboard rectangles he had hidden under the expansion flap. He stripped the cartridges off, fed three replacements into the .380’s clip and stuffed the rest in his pocket. He unclipped the holster from his belt, fit the .380 in it, and handed it across to Ana.

  She withdrew, staring first at him then back up the road.

  “Ana,” he said, “you want to huddle on the floor with your head covered up and get your ass shot off, I can’t stop you.” She lurched as he tossed the holstered gun across the console into her lap. He got out, took the bolt cutter from the rear footwell, and began knocking out what was left of the rear window. Ana got out and he knocked out the fragmented windshield as well.

  Ana looked on for a second, then clipped the holstered gun to the waistband of her jeans.

  “Listen,” he said, gentler, “I appreciate that you came back for me.”

  She ignored him, opened the rear door, took a few of the washcloths from the carry-on and wet them from one of the water bottles.

  Keeping an eye on the road behind, Robert quickly cut the remains of the punctured airbag out of the steering wheel cavity and used it to sweep cubes of safety glass from his seat, then he went around and brushed Ana’s seat clean.

  She handed him one of the wet washcloths and he cleaned his face with it. He stripped out of his blood-splotched shirt. Ana took one of the new shirts from his bag while he rolled the soiled shirt and the stained washcloth into a bundle and tossed it over the embankment into the gorge below. Wordless, Ana handed him the clean shirt and another wet cloth. He touched the cloth to his nose and checked it. Barely tinted.

  The overheated engine ground over, slow. Then it fired up and they began crawling along the high mountain road at around ten miles per hour. Sparks from the wheel hub showered over the fiberglass bumper dragging noisily behind.

  “At least now we can see where we’re going.” He worried about the sparks, hoping the car wasn’t leaking fuel.

  When the road began to descend again, he downshifted to third and shut the key off. The engine made a wheezing sound, the water pump circulating coolant through the block, cooling it. But not only did he lose the power steering, an anti-theft feature locked the steering in place and the power brakes went.

  “My god!” Ana cried, shoulders drawn, her legs stiffened against the floorboard as he got down on the brakes with all his strength. The drop-off swung around broadside as he jerked the emergency brake on and tried to throw the shifter in reverse, gears grinding. The car came to a shuddering halt inches from the abyss, the view through the glassless windshield a sky-blue nothingness.

  Again the engine barely turned over before firing up, bucking a few moments prior to settling down. The heat indicator moved all the way up as the car trembled around the switchbacks. A hot blue haze smelling of burned oil and coolant washed back through the car and out. Ana sat facing the rear, knees in the seat, holding to the tattered headrest, watching through the empty rear window.

  “Open that aluminum case,” he said. “Should be a Bible with photos in the back cover.”

  She glanced at him, then took the Bible from the case.

  “These are…who?” she asked, holding up one of the transparencies.

  “Terrorist. What I was told.”

  “Oh?” she said, frowning.

  “Oh, what?”

  “Arab clothing, but one of these men has blue eyes.”

  Odd, maybe, yes. But then he had seen Arabs with light skin and green to bluish eyes before, mostly among the elite class.

  “Look,” she said, pointing out a bullet hole in the aluminum case. Between her thumb and forefinger she held the blunted round that had penetrated the car’s trunk, passed through the rear seat and into the case. A .45–caliber sl
ug.

  “Check the tire. See if it’s flat.”

  She replaced the photos, set the aluminum case back over the seat, and hit the heel of her hand against the tire. “Looks to be okay,” she said.

  “Good.”

  “You’re not going to tell me, are you.”

  “What?”

  “What’s in the tire, this intelligence thing?”

  He said nothing.

  She sighed, her gaze lingering on him. Then she turned in the seat and settled on her knees again, watching down the road behind.

  He regretted now that he hadn’t killed the two men back at the eatery when he had the chance. But there was the truck driver, and then the shuttle van full of Anglos looking on. Mostly there was Ana. And while he rationalized that he should have killed the two, there was something inherently wrong with killing another human being that he couldn’t entirely dismiss.

  He recalled the grit that had rimmed his vision. It was happening too often, usually when he was about to do something stupid. Confronting the two men as he had, under those conditions, had gone against any semblance of training or common sense. Suicidal.

  “Robert,” Ana said, interrupting his thoughts. “Remember you asked why I joined the Peace Corps?”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “I think I should tell you something.” She fidgeted nervously. “Remember what your hippy friend Sybil said, about running off to other places to find ourselves?”

  “And leaving our old selves behind? Yeah. And?”

  “You may have noticed how I hate guns?”

  “Lots of people don’t like guns.”

  “I accidentally killed my brother.” She shook her head, absorbed in the memory. “We were quail hunting. I was climbing through a fence when my gun discharged.”

  He was at a loss.

  “No one blamed me, but people look at you, you know? I had to leave there. I joined the Peace Corps.”

  He shook his head, a gesture of helplessness. “I’m sorry.”

  “I just felt the need to tell you. I don’t know why.”