Alejandro looked back out the porthole. All he could see was clouds. The plane continued to climb. When it reached its cruising altitude, which he guessed was at least twenty thousand feet, it leveled off and flew in a westerly direction.
The minutes melted into hours; Alejandro’s uneasiness grew. He continued looking out the window, trying to see through breaks in the clouds, searching for some recognizable landmass. Every now and then there would be a break, but all he saw was water, an endless bowl of water.
They had been flying for about five hours in a west-southwest direction. Suddenly the cloud cover broke, and they flew into a boundless blue sky. Below he could make out the familiar shoreline of Baja on the Gulf of California. A cold blade of fear sliced through his heart. Do your mother and sister still live in Zihuatanejo? They were making the ultimate threat against him and his family. He felt the rage begin to rise in his throat but forced it back down. Willing an expression of calm on his face, he looked across the aisle at Pizzaro and said, “It will be good to get home for a short visit.”
Pizzaro smiled.
At two o’clock in the afternoon central time the Grumman Gulf-stream swooped in across the mountains and landed in Zihuatanejo’s airport. The aircraft taxied to the part of the tarmac where the civilian, military, CIA, DEA, and dopers’ aircraft were ecumenically parked with the tacit understanding that “if you destroy my plane, I’ll destroy your plane.”
There were no passport or immigration controls for the new arrivals from the States. A black sedan bearing the ornate emblems of the judicial police on its bumpers, and with curtains stretched across the windows in the rear, was parked near the space the Grumman Gulfstream taxied into. Two big men wearing mirrored sunglasses and guayabera shirts lounged up against the car. Pizzaro climbed out of the plane first and walked over to the two men. After a brief conversation, he turned and beckoned the others.
With the two judicial cops in the front seat and Pizzaro and Barrios on either side of him in the back, Alejandro realized that he was way out on a limb without a safety net. He glanced behind him and through a gap in the curtain saw his suitcases containing the Parapoints being off-loaded from the aircraft.
As the sedan sped out of the airport, Alejandro calculated that it had been eight years since he’d been home. But as the car sped through villages, he saw that nothing had changed. Housewives still trudged behind their husbands along sunbaked paths, their burdens balanced on their heads, while the men rode on the family burro, legs dangling, straw hats tilted forward rakishly, machetes stuck through their rope belts. He also noticed that the arrogant children of the arrogant rich still raced their expensive cars along National Highway 200, while women and children waited for rickety, overcrowded buses that were notoriously late and slow. Pushing aside the curtain on the side window and looking up, he saw that many of the ramshackle huts clinging to the hillside now had satellite dishes; he wondered if the peasants’ good fortune was due to hard work or drug money.
When the official car sped around Kyoto Square, Zihuatanejo’s only traffic circle, and he looked out and saw the Japanese shinto arch, he wondered, as he always had whenever he passed the circle, what were the town fathers smoking when they’d built it and named it for a city in Japan?
The sedan sped over the dried-out canal cluttered with trash and headed out on the beach road that ran the length of La Playa Ropa. Seeing all the condos under construction on the mountainside made him realize that the sleepy fishing village of his childhood had been discovered by the outside world, and he wondered how much of that world included traficantes.
When the sedan passed the Bay Club and Kon-Tiki restaurants, Alejandro reached across the seat, parted the curtains, and looked to his right at the glorious vista spread out before him. Below, the lagoon’s aquamarine water filled the space between the two mountains. A cruise ship rode at anchor; yachts crowded the harbor. Lowering himself back into his seat, he asked Pizzaro, “When are we going back to New York?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Pizzaro said, parting the curtain and watching a van drive out of the Sotovento Hotel’s cobblestone driveway and fall in behind them.
Just past the Hotel Catalina, the sedan suddenly swerved left and sped up a long curving driveway, passing posted signs proclaiming government property and prohibiting entry.
They were driving up to the Parthenon, a multimillion-dollar replica of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, built on a chunk of Zihuatanejo’s most expensive real estate by the police chief of Mexico City, whose monthly salary was $350 U.S.
The caravan drove up onto the heights and stopped. Men lugging automatic weapons poured out of the van and rushed to take up strategic positions around the hilltop. Barrios went over to the van, reached inside, and came out with a pair of binoculars; he crossed to the bluff and began scanning the road. Watching him do this, Alejandro thought, We’re on their home turf, where they have most of the umpires on their payroll, and they’re still paranoid. The good guys must be starting to get their attention.
Walking over to Pizzaro, who was leaning up against the van, Alejandro asked, “When and where is the drop?”
Pizzaro ignored his question. “Since we’re in your hometown, why don’t you invite us over to your mother’s for a home-cooked meal, and introduce us to your sister. Her name is Maria, isn’t it?”
Alejandro glared at him. “When I see my family, I’ll see ’em alone, not with any of your goons.”
They remained there for three and a half hours, until the sun touched the ocean, sending shimmering pink rays skimming across the water. The ocean told him it was almost sunset, and he knew that all along La Playa Ropa people were drifting out onto the beach to enjoy it and the brief “green flash” that followed.
At the northwest end of La Playa Ropa—a section of beach the locals called “Gringo Gulch” because the Canadian and American dropouts and holdover hippies lived there—people were gathering for the ritual of sunset watching at Rossy’s, a two-story beach restaurant built on columns and open to the air.
Grim-lipped, Alejandro watched the huge ball float down out of the sky, its hue so furious a blazing orange that a golden aureole sprang forth around the ball, lighting up the sky and the ocean. He snapped a look at the others. Everyone was watching the sight.
The sun slipped down behind the line, pulling the day with it and replacing light with darkness.
Alejandro had never felt more alone.
A man leaned out of the back of the van and shouted in Spanish, “The plane just left.”
“Where’s the landing zone?” Alejandro called to Pizzaro.
“We’re going to be moving out in a few minutes,” the doper said, and looked over to Barrios, who was scanning the road with the binoculars.
The flight of stone steps lifted out of the sands of La Playa Ropa and rose up to a narrow footpath that clung to the mountain’s steep side. The footpath spiraled upward, weaving higher and higher above the ocean; at the top an abandoned lighthouse stood sentinel over land that had been baked into barrenness by the sun.
The night was black, the moon full and the breeze cool, laced with the day’s leftover heat. Alejandro glanced south at the lights of Zihuatanejo. They looked like a hodgepodge of twinkling campfires set into the shadows of towering mountains.
The sound of Pizzaro talking on the walkie-talkie caused Alejandro to look over his shoulder. Barrios was leaning up against the lighthouse, watching him. Their eyes locked. The caravan had driven down from the heights of the Parthenon twenty minutes earlier and had driven out the beach road, stopping a little beyond Rossy’s. The bodyguards jumped out of the van and spread out around the foot of the small mountain while Alejandro, Pizzaro, and Barrios trudged up the stone steps to the lonely lighthouse.
Alejandro gazed down over the beach, where the sands were thick with his past. At night the sands belonged to the tree rats, and to the packs of emaciated dogs scavenging for food, and to the lovers who copulated under thatched r
oof palapas with the rising tide lapping at their feet. He saw himself as a barefoot boy trudging from hotel to hotel, hawking his jewelry. “Silver necklace, señora? Pure silver bracelet, señora?” He smiled when his thoughts resurrected his dognapping days, when he would snatch tourists’ pets and turn them over to Bill Trout, La Playa Ropa’s king of the dognappers, to negotiate the ransom from the animals’ hysterical owners.
He was remembering the good times he used to have with the gentle expatriate from Chicago’s South Side when Pizzaro shouted, “The chutes have been dropped.”
Alejandro extended the handset’s antenna and walked backward to the middle of the bluff, holding the homing device in front of him, its beacon reaching far out into the darkness.
Pizzaro and Barrios moved about, peering off the bluff, searching out the surrounding light.
At first Alejandro thought they were birds gliding at him out of the moon. As the birds grew in definition, however, a spark of excitement grew in his chest. He aimed the transmitter in their direction and said, “There they are.”
Pizzaro and Barrios hurried over and stood beside him, their gazes following the transmitter’s line of sight.
Gliding gracefully out of the night, the parachutes looked like prehistoric birds of prey riding the thermals down to earth with their bundles of misery secured in their talons, and at that moment Alejandro was glad that he was a cop working to put a gang of evil people out of business.
The Ram Air chutes glided closer and closer, growing in size until they were a few meters away from the mountaintop. Then they slowed and appeared to stop, hovering on their pillows of air, as the computerized guidance system adjusted for wind direction. Pizzaro wore a satisfied smile; Barrios kept glancing from the homing device in Alejandro’s hand to the parachutes, as if anxiously awaiting the finale.
The parachutes veered off to the left, made a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn around the mountain, cut across the flat bluff, and crumpled to the ground behind them, their canopies blossoming down over the shroud lines and their cargoes.
Sticking the transmitter into his waistband, Alejandro walked over to the parachutes and kneeled on one knee to toss the canopies off the duffel bags. Looking around at Pizzaro, he asked, “Do we have a deal?”
“Impressive,” Pizzaro said, coming over and placing his foot on one of the duffel bags, “but what guarantee do we have that Parapoint will always work, and be on target? If we lost our product during the delivery mode, we’d be out a lot of money. After all, we’re a small company trying to compete in a hostile environment.”
“Hey, amigo, get down off the cross, the natives need the wood. Martyrdom don’t look good on you,” Alejandro said.
Pizzaro made a small gray laugh. “You’re right.”
Alejandro did not notice Barrios drifting off behind him, nor did he see the thin man’s bony fingers slip under the tails of his shirt and come out with a nine-millimeter automatic pistol. A beam of moonlight reflected off the chrome-plated weapon and tinged the corner of Alejandro’s eye at the same moment he saw Pizzaro’s face cloud and heard the crunch of a footstep behind him.
They’re going to take me out! he thought, leaping off the ground, digging his heels into the dirt, and propelling himself backward at the sound. He collided with Barrios, smashing into the doper’s face with the back of his head. They toppled to the ground, with Barrios bleeding from his nose and mouth and pummeling Alejandro about the body with his weapon.
Pizzaro rushed over to the struggling men and threw a headlock around Alejandro’s face, yanking him to his knees with such force that a bolt of pain speared down his neck and into his arms. The undercover dug his teeth into Pizzaro’s arm, and the doper cried out in pain. Alejandro’s head was forced backward by the powerful vise.
Barrios scrambled off the ground and, angrily gripping the nine-millimeter by its barrel, smashed the weapon across Alejandro’s head. The undercover’s rage dulled the pain; he dug his teeth deeper, tasting the coppery flow of blood. With both hands he grabbed Pizzaro’s ankles and jerked his feet out from under him, at the same time arching his own body back and sweeping his feet upward, catching Barrios in the testicles, whooshing the air from his lungs, and crumpling the doper to his knees.
A scream exploded from Barrios as he toppled sideways to the ground, crunched up in a fetal position and hugging his groin.
Alejandro leaped for the weapon Barrios had dropped. Pizzaro grabbed one of his legs and twisted him away from the nine-millimeter.
Alejandro back-kicked Pizzaro in the face and then, as he broke free, hurled himself at the weapon. Barrios leaped on top of him, wrestling for control of the gun. Alejandro struggled his finger through the trigger guard. Pizzaro ran over to them and began kicking Alejandro about the body. A shot rang out. The bullet thunked into the side of the lighthouse, sending shards of stone flying. Alejandro heard the sound of running feet. Gathering all his strength, he yanked the weapon free and was firming it into his hand when the blow came and blackness swept over him.
18
The lines were blurred. Alejandro became aware of them at the same moment he opened his eyes and felt the pounding in his head and the awful ache in his back and shoulders. He was sprawled on a cold cement floor. He blinked several times, trying to focus on the vertical lines; they were bars set high into the wall in front of him.
He sat up. He hurt more. If they had wanted me dead, I’d be dead. He grimaced from the terrible smell. His eyes explored his cell. The sink and toilet were caked in excrement and humming with flies. He retched from the stench. Graffiti written in feces was scrawled on the walls. Names and dates. Curses directed at the mothers of the police, hijo de una puta.
Hearing incongruously happy music wafting in from the outside, he forced himself to get up, stood under the wall with the barred window, and turned his face up, trying desperately to suck in some fresh air. He noticed black patches across his fingertips. Holding up his hands to the dim illumination that came from the streetlights outside, he saw that they’d fingerprinted him. The bastards had flown him there to test Parapoint, deliver their not-so-veiled threat against him and his family—and then have their tamed policemen fax his prints to the FBI, NCIC, and probably the CIA’s Counter-Narcotics Center, too.
They’re clever and cautious, he thought, stretching for the bars and then leaping to try to grab hold of them. He needed to know where he was. He figured he’d been out for at least an hour and hoped he didn’t have a concussion or worse. His hands just missed the bars, and he fell back down and squatted, looking around his cell. There was no cot, nothing nearby to stand on to help him reach up and grab hold of the bars. The toilet and sink were on the other side of the cell. He hunkered down and sprang upward, stretching up for the bars. This time he caught hold of them and scrambled up the wall.
The razor-sharp fronds of the palm trees lining Avenida Moreles were swaying in the gentle breeze. Across the street was the post office and, to its right, Plaza Cuauhtémoc. A line of frightened people had gathered on the street in front of his prison, awaiting their turn to be summoned inside the town headquarters of the judicial police.
His ears pricked up when he heard the heavy metallic scraping of the lock on his cell door. He dropped down as the door was pushed open. Two guards, both around five feet tall, wearing ill-fitting, mismatched uniforms with dirty undershirts showing under their open collars, strutted inside. They would have been comical were it not for the pump shotguns cradled in their arms.
“Venga,” one of them barked.
Alejandro gathered himself up and walked out into a dingy passage lit by the glow of a single bulb hanging by a stretch of black wire from a hole in the ceiling. The air was heavy with the stench of human sweat, shit, and fear. Both sides of the passage were lined with steel doors. The absence of sound from behind them suggested the ominous silence of the helpless. One of the guards shoved him forward, toward a wooden door at the end of the corridor.
The lar
gest rat he had ever seen scurried between his legs. It went ahead of them, up to the wooden door, and attempted to squeeze under it. But it couldn’t get its fat body through, so it pulled out its head and scurried back up the passageway. The shotgun blast almost burst Alejandro’s eardrums. The rat exploded into a crimson mass of fur, cartilage, and body parts that splattered over the walls and ceilings. Some of the mushy mass hit Alejandro in the face. Wiping off the mess, he turned and glared at his guards. They were grinning at him, showing their decaying and missing teeth. The one who had fired the round ejected the spent cartridge from his smoking weapon and jabbed the barrel into Alejandro’s back, making him stumble forward.
The paneled office behind the wooden door was air-conditioned. The man standing behind the big desk in the center of the room had on pleated white slacks, a designer polo shirt, an automatic pistol on his hip, and an expensive gold watch on his wrist. He was a little older than Alejandro and wore his black hair slicked back without a part.
He waved the guards out and pointed to the single battered chair in front of his desk. When the door closed, he said in perfect English, “I’m Major Hernandez y Hernandez.”
“Why am I here?”
The major’s hands flew up in a broad gesture of dismissal. “Possession of cocaine, resisting arrest, destroying property, et cetera.”
“I want to telephone the American embassy’s hot line in Mexico City.”
Hernandez y Hernandez’s thick lips curled into a sarcastic grin. “We can dispense with that formality. Since you’re a Mexican citizen.”
“I’m an American citizen.”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Alejandro Monahan. Your parents did what all gringo-Mexican parents do. They took out an American and a Mexican passport when you were born. Dual citizenship; illegal, but common.”
Alejandro sat up rigidly on the chair, his body now aching all over. “What do you want, Major?”
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