Green Ice: A Deadly High

by Christian Fletcher

  “Where are you?”

  Mancini hesitated. He didn’t want to give away his location in case the situation was one big set up. “Near the marina,” he compromised. Hector, or whatever his real name was remained silent and Mancini wondered if he was still on the other end of the line. Sweat started to roll down his forehead as he felt the tension build. He turned when he heard a flapping sound and saw a huge Mexican flag fluttering in the sea breeze, at the top of a high pole.

  “Hector…you still there?”

  “Continue in the direction you are going. There is a bar called Botanica on the corner of Lazaro Cardenas Boulevard. I will meet you there.” The phone clicked and the connection was cut.

  Mancini hung up the receiver and made his way back to the waiting Thunderbird. He checked his watch and saw it was nearing one p.m.

  “So, what’s up?” Trey asked, as Mancini slumped back into his seat.

  “Drive on and stop when you see a bar called Botanica.” Mancini studied his map again, looking for Lazaro Cardenas Boulevard. He saw the road was around a half mile ahead of them.

  Trey pulled over at the side of the road before they reached the intersection. “I think I saw the place back there.” He angled his head behind the vehicle. “Looked like some shitty little bar. You sure we’re not going to get rolled in there?”

  “Sit here, if you want but I’ve got to meet this guy,” Mancini said. “I don’t know how long it’ll be before he shows.”

  “Maybe I’ll stay with the wheels. You know, somebody might try and jack it.”

  “Okay, stay put but don’t call anybody and don’t get out of the car,” Mancini instructed, hauling himself out of his seat.

  “Got it,” Trey said.

  Mancini walked a few paces on the sidewalk then stopped, surveying the line of parked vehicles along the side of the road. No suspicious looking people remained inside the vehicles, all of them were empty. No cop types, talking into transmitters lurked around in the vicinity. The location seemed safe. He walked a few yards away from the rear of the Thunderbird and saw a sign with ‘Botanica’ scrawled in yellow paint, hanging above a green colored structure with two small front windows either side of the entrance door.

  Mancini wiped the sweat from his forehead and took a final glance up and down the street before he approached the bar. He felt uneasy and was definitely way out of his comfort zone.

  Chapter Nine

  Mancini hesitated to compose himself for a brief moment, before he pushed open the bar entrance door. He could hear the music blaring before he stepped inside the place and the track was some kind of dance tune he didn’t recognize. The bar interior was dark and Mancini flipped his shades up around his forehead as he moved inside. His eyes adjusted to the change in brightness and he took in his surroundings. The lengthy wooden counter stood to his left, with a big burly guy serving beers to a couple of rough looking hombres, dressed in checked shirts and denims. All three of them stared disapprovingly at Mancini as he approached. Three scantily clad girls occupied a table opposite the counter. They seemed much friendlier and eyed Mancini with lingering glances.

  “Cerveza, por favor,” Mancini said. Asking for a beer was one of the very few Spanish phrases he knew.

  The bartender pointed between two separate pumps and Mancini plumped for a glass of ‘Dos Equis.’ The two guys muttered to each other then turned back to glare at Mancini. He tossed a ten dollar bill onto the counter, ignoring the intimidating stares. The bar felt stiflingly hot and Mancini hoped he wouldn’t have too long to wait before Hector showed. He couldn’t nurse a solitary beer for a long period of time without aggravating the bartender. Nobody wanted a guy on his own, lingering in a bar without drinking. In Mancini’s experience, those types of guys were either cops or somebody up to no good.

  One of the girls called out something Mancini didn’t understand so he pretended he hadn’t heard and continued to sip his beer.

  “That chica would like to know if you are looking for a good time,” the barman said in perfect English to Mancini.

  The two guys snickered and muttered to each other.

  “Tell her, I’m exceedingly flattered and under normal circumstances, I would like nothing more than to spend a while in her company but unfortunately, I’m waiting for somebody,” Mancini said, without turning away from the counter.

  The bartender translated, repeating Mancini’s words in Spanish. He heard whispers from the women behind him. Maybe they were all thinking he was a cop. Mancini kept glancing at the door, wishing Hector would show up.

  Thirty long minutes ticked by that felt like hours to Mancini. He slowly sipped his beer and tried to ignore the obvious jibes, dirty looks and hostile mutterings from the other bar dwellers.

  Everybody looked around when the door swung open and a tall man with thinning black hair strolled towards the counter. The bartender seemed to know him and they conversed for a few seconds before he turned to Mancini.

  “You are here to meet Hector?” he asked.

  Mancini nodded and downed the remainder of his beer. “Are you Hector?”

  “He’s waiting outside,” the tall guy said bluntly. “Follow me.”

  Mancini dumped his empty glass on the counter and nodded briefly in gratitude to the bartender. He cautiously pursued the tall guy towards the bar door, turning briefly to smile at the three girls. The tall guy led Mancini around the front of the bar to a narrow side street spurring off the main road. Mancini glanced behind him. Was this guy leading him into some kind of trap?

  The tall guy approached a stationary battered, green Nissan car, parked facing them amongst the shadows of the surrounding buildings. A big guy with a bushy beard and wearing big sunshades sat in the passenger seat. Mancini felt apprehensive and slowed his pace. The tall guy waved him forward towards the Nissan’s trunk.

  “Come on, hurry,” the tall guy hissed. “We need to be quick.” He raised the trunk cover and was hidden from Mancini’s sight.

  Mancini reluctantly rounded the side of the vehicle, half expecting the tall guy to pull a gun on him. Thankfully, he was wrong. The tall guy beckoned him forward towards the trunk space.

  “We have some things you will like, my friend.” He zipped open a brown sports bag and Mancini peered inside.

  He saw two metallic black handguns, four spare magazines and a few boxes of ammunition.

  “Both weapons are Heckler and Koch USP,” the tall guy said. “German made, nice guns. They have just been cleaned and oiled and good to go. Each magazine takes fifteen, nine millimeter rounds. These will allow you to get your job done without any fuss. We have provided you with some tactical gloves also. Please wear them in case you have to use the firearms. The gloves will prevent any gunshot residue going onto your hands. It goes without saying to dump the weapons and the carrying bag when the task is done.”

  Mancini nodded. He knew the drill but listened to the guy out of courtesy anyhow. The tall guy closed the zipper and handed Mancini the holdall.

  “Good luck, friend,” the tall guy said, slamming the trunk lid down. He then moved quickly towards the driver’s door, bundled into the seat and drove away within a few seconds.

  Mancini waited until the Nissan turned back onto the highway and was out of sight before he began to walk out from the side street. He glanced left and right but nobody watched him from the shadows or shaded doorways. So far so good. Now came the difficult part.

  Trey was playing some kind of game on his phone when Mancini returned to the Thunderbird.

  “Open the trunk,” Mancini hissed.

  Trey glanced around with an expression of shock on his face. “Hey, yo. There you are. I thought you’d run out on me, you were so damn long, man.” He reached down in front of him and engaged the trunk release lever.

  Mancini placed the bag inside the compartment, alongside his own rucksack. “Okay, let’s go. Head towards Miramar. It’s a street about a mile behind us. I’ll check it out on the map.”

 
; Trey started the car and pulled out onto the highway. Mancini found Miramar Street on the map and realized they’d have to loop around at the intersection. Miramar stretched from the main route by the harbor, through the center of the city and beyond.

  “It’s a long street,” he muttered to himself, pointing out the route on the map to Trey. “We’ll take a drive by the house we want, for a look-see first and park up someplace nearby.”

  “Won’t they be expecting somebody to show up?” Trey asked.

  “Yeah, probably but I don’t know how much they’ve let their guard down. The jungle drums have said they’ve been on one long party since they took off with that big bag of cash they stole from Oreilles.”

  “What’s this new wave riding rush they’re talking about?”

  “What?”

  “This new shit that’s supposed to trip you right out and get you so fucked up, you don’t even know what your own name is type stuff,” Trey said. “Isn’t that what this is all about?”

  Mancini glanced at Trey. “I knew they stole a large batch of Oreilles’s dope but I don’t know what the hell kind of nasty shit it is.” He’d never taken any sort of narcotic in his life.

  Trey negotiated the traffic and kept glancing at the map on Mancini’s lap. Mancini hoped the three guys weren’t totally spaced out on whatever the new, wonder drug was. He’d seen guys high on PCP, crack cocaine and crystal meth, who thought they were invincible and had absorbed several bullets or whacks with baseball bats before finally going down.

  They turned back, heading west along the main highway until they saw Miramar Street to their right. Trey took the turn into the road, which was a one lane route, nestled between a disco bar and a hotel. The street opened up into a two-way lane after the first intersection and the sidewalks on both sides were flanked with small hotels and bars.

  “Looks like the bad guys wanted to be close to the action,” Trey said, eyeing a young girl walking in the opposite direction on the sidewalk.

  Mancini glanced around the street. He was thinking more about exit routes and possible hazards than admiring the local women. The house number written on the piece of paper was in the high seven hundreds. Luckily, Trey drove slowly, still ogling the chicas, which allowed Mancini to study the building’s address numbers. He guessed the guys wouldn’t be holed up too far out of town. They’d want to be close to the bars and the hubbub of the city. The number of people on the sidewalk started to dwindle the further they drove from the main focal point of Ensenada, which seemed to be around the harbor area. Bars, hotels and restaurants became less frequent, instead replaced with small stores and one storey dwellings. Mancini noticed the number on one house was 796. They’d driven by the address they were looking for.

  “Pull over and park up anyplace you can,” he instructed Trey.

  “Are we at the place?” Trey slowed to a crawl, looking out for a free parking slot.

  “We’re near the house but we need to check it out before we go in. This damn car stands out too much though. Those guys will soon vamoose or at least be suspicious if they see a couple of gringos hanging around near their place. We need to be a bit savvy here.”

  Trey slid the Thunderbird into a parking space on the side of the road next to the oncoming intersection. Mancini didn’t like the position they were in, nose first against the sidewalk and a stationary vehicle either side of them.

  “Pull out and back into the space, at least,” he sighed. “We’re boxed right in here.”

  “Okay,” Trey huffed and carried out the vehicle maneuver, stopping traffic in both directions in the process.

  Mancini baulked at the honking horns from the impatient drivers, waiting to carry on their journeys. Trey finally negotiated the steering and eased the Thunderbird into the parking slot. He cut the engine and sat in silence, waiting for the next move.

  Mancini studied the map on his lap, plotting the quickest exit route out of Ensenada. He hoped the shit wouldn’t hit the fan and they wouldn’t have to leave in too much of a hurry. Worst case scenario was they’d both be leaving the city in body bags.

  Chapter Ten

  Mancini figured out the quickest and easiest route out of Ensenada from their position and showed Trey the way by running his finger along the road lines on the map. Trey nodded and flashed him a nervous glance.

  “You still up for this?” Mancini asked.

  Trey gulped and nodded. He wanted to prove himself to Mancini and prove he was capable of carrying out such a dangerous assignment within Oreilles’s network. Mancini went to the trunk and took out the holdall the tall guy had given him. He returned to the passenger seat and placed the bag at his feet. Trey watched Mancini hunch over the holdall, loading the two Heckler and Koch handguns and fill the spare magazines with 9mm rounds.

  “You know how to use one of these?”

  “Sure,” Trey muttered. “I’ve been a member of a gun club since I was old enough to hold one.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four,” Trey stated. “How old are you?”

  “You ever fired at anything other than targets or bottles?”

  Trey shrugged. “Sure, I’ve been out hunting a whole bunch of times.”

  “This is way different to firing at deer or swamp rats, or whatever the hell you’ve been used to hunting. You ever fired a shot at another human being?”

  “I shot my sister with a pellet gun once. Does that count?”

  Mancini snickered. “Yeah, that counts,” he mockingly sighed. “Just don’t freeze up on me but don’t do any shooting, unless I do first, okay?”

  Trey nodded and Mancini leaned close to hand him the loaded firearm.

  “Keep it out of sight in the back of your waistband,” Mancini hissed and passed him two spare, loaded magazines.

  Trey shoved the magazines into the side pockets of his shorts, hoping they wouldn’t stand out visibly as an outline too much. Mancini leaned forward and slid his own handgun down the back of his waistband then put his spare magazines in his cargo pants pockets.

  “To answer your question, I’m thirty-five,” he said. “Ready?”

  Trey looked nervous but nodded with false bravado. “Let’s do this,” he croaked, trying to sound convincing.

  “Okay, let’s go then, Audie Murphy,” Mancini said, then climbed out of the car.

  “Who the hell is Audie Murphy?” Trey asked, hauling himself out of his seat.

  Mancini shook his head. “Young guys today,” he sighed. “Google him, if we ever get out of this situation alive.”

  “What?”

  “Just kidding, come on. Let’s find this damn house.”

  Mancini placed the holdall back inside the trunk and Trey locked it up. He ensured he locked the glove box and checked he’d left nothing on the seats.

  “I hope nobody thinks of jacking my ride whilst we’re away,” Trey said, slipping on his sunshades.

  “Me too,” Mancini sighed. “It’ll be a hell of a long walk if it’s gone when we get back.”

  Trey followed Mancini back along Miramar Street. Mancini had memorized the street address and glanced at the numbers along the buildings, his eyes hidden behind his shades. He didn’t want to give the appearance he was searching for someplace or to look as though he was lost. Street guys liked nothing more than to hustle a stranded vacationer searching for an address.

  Mancini slowly walked by an open gateway, with a few one storey buildings standing to the rear of the property and slightly further away from the roadside. He glanced at the street numbers on either side of the gateway. This was the place he was looking for. It made kind of sense that the bad guys would choose someplace slightly out of plain view.

  “Let’s cross the street,” he muttered to Trey.

  They waited until the traffic receded and walked towards a small liquor store on the opposite side to the open gateway.

  “Go inside and buy two sodas but don’t speak to the storekeeper and keep away from any cameras as best
you can,” Mancini said.

  Trey obliged and returned from the store with two cold bottles of pineapple flavored Jarritos. They stood, leaning against the window, sipping their drinks under the shade of the green canopy, draped over the storefront. Mancini kept his eyes on the property on the opposite side of the road. He saw a nearly new, fawn colored Chevrolet parked nose first in the driveway and guessed it was a rental car. The curtains remained open on both levels of the two storey buildings. Mancini glanced at each of the three orange stucco dwellings in turn. The structure to the far right was smaller and squatter than the other two with a pair of large double doors in the center of the facing wall. He guessed that building was more of a storage area, which wouldn’t be used for accommodation purposes.

  Balcony walkways ran along the outside of the building in the center and the one to the left. Several white painted doors, positioned at regular intervals, stood in a line at the rear of the walkways facing the road. The doors were marked with black numerals and Mancini presumed these were numbered apartments. The problem he now faced was matching up the three guys he was searching for with their respective rooms. He’d briefly met Luiz and Jorge but the third guy, Ernesto, he didn’t know at all. All three were originally from Mexico and would easily blend in with the locals. Mancini had to find a way of figuring out which rooms they were holed up in. He knew trying to call La Rat would be a pointless exercise. The location was obviously the only information he had. One of the mysterious Hector’s guys had probably seen the three men out on the town and followed them back to the apartment block. That was as far as it went for those guys. Now, it was Mancini’s turn to take up the baton and continue the repossession action.

  He counted the number of apartment doors. Five on each floor of the two buildings, which resulted in twenty separate rooms. Presuming the guys didn’t share apartments, Mancini calculated he had a one in six point six chance of finding one of the guys if he started knocking on doors. But he couldn’t guarantee any of them would answer or be inside the apartments. He had to think of another way.