Lita blinked at her, as if in doubt momentarily, then left the room and locked the door.
Shit, Maggie thought. So much for that.
A warm trickle of blood ran from her nostril down her cheek. Maggie rolled over, making the bed squeak, and landed flat on the floor on her side, puffing for air. She didn’t know which hurt more, her nose or her wrists.
She heard a knock at the front door. The teenager was back. Instructions were mumbled to Paavo and him before she heard Cain and Lita leaving with Beltran. The door shut and several pair of footsteps hastened down the outside stairwell. Maggie gasped as blood ran off her chin onto the green carpet inches away from her face. Her wrists ached. Her hands were starting to deaden.
Twisting her neck, she saw the sliding mirrored closet door. Could she somehow break it and use an edge to cut the hard plastic tie binding her wrists? Not without making a hell of a racket and tearing up her arms. She rolled up quietly, landing on her feet in a crouch. Thank God she did her yoga. She peered under the bed, hoping to find something sharp, anything, to cut her loose.
Then she saw it, right in front of her: the corner of the metal bed frame. It would take an age, but she had time. She just had to be quiet.
The front door opened again and Señora Gomez said she was going out. The door shut. The TV volume ratcheted back up.
On her haunches, Maggie waddled over to the corner of the bed, turned her back to it, positioned herself so that the cable tie around her wrists caught the bottom of the corner of the metal frame. Her hands buzzed.
Steeling herself, she started to rub, trying to avoid skin. Even so, it hurt her hands more than any effect it had on the plastic. She also had to prevent the bed frame from squeaking or moving around and thus attracting attention. Several minutes passed and all she had to show for it was that her arms were killing her. Her thighs were burning too. She was making zero progress.
She rubbed harder.
The metal frame squeaked. She froze.
Someone in the living room got up, came pounding down the hallway. Her nerves shot into overdrive. Quickly, she stood up and lay back on the bed. Her arms rang out in pain and her whole face throbbed.
The key twisted in the lock. The door opened. Paavo’s thick shadow blocked the hallway light. “What’s going on in here?”
“My damn wrists are killing me. That she-devil tightened the straps way too tight. You’ve got to help me. Please.”
“They’ll be back.”
That’s what she was worried about. “Come on, man,” she pleaded. “I’m going to lose circulation pretty soon.”
Somebody else came lumbering down the hallway. The kid looked in over Paavo’s shoulder, eyeing Maggie in a helpless position. His narrow face split into a wicked smile. “What are you doing, bro?” he asked slyly.
“Not what you think. Now go back out there and stand guard.”
“Stand guard? While you do what? As if I didn’t know.”
Maggie breathed through her mouth, one nostril plugged with blood. If there was one thing she never wanted to experience, it seemed like it was about to happen.
“Get back out there,” Paavo said to the kid.
“Why? She looks pretty hot tied up like that.”
“If Cain heard you, you’d be in serious trouble.”
“I thought it was Comrade Cain. Besides, he’s got Lita. What do we have? Señora Gomez? Maybe you like it big and stanky, but I think Alice Mendes here is much more my type.”
“I’m going to pretend we never had this conversation,” Paavo said, pulling the door shut and locking it.
“I’m going to lose my hands in a minute!” Maggie shouted.
Both men padded back to the living room.
Think.
Then she realized how dense she could sometimes be.
Yoganidrasana sleep pose.
She stood up, kicked off her low-rise Doc Martens.
Lying back on the bed, she lifted her legs, bending her knees, brought her right foot all the way up to her ear. Razors of pain circled her right wrist and she knew it was bleeding. She breathed deeply and got the foot behind her neck. Yes. Then, slowly, she brought the other foot up, hoping the guys in the front room weren’t coming back anytime soon. The TV was still going. It took a while, but finally her ankles were crossed behind her neck, her head resting on them. Not bad. With her butt lifted, she pushed her hands down as far as they would go underneath her behind and rocked, which sent stabbing pains through her wrists, but on the second try, her bound hands popped under her rear. Her hands were now in front of her.
Maggie, you flexible bitch.
She gritted her teeth, raised her hands up, up over her head, jammed her eyes shut while she fought them past her feet, then unhooked her right leg. Worked it down. Her hip cracked. Then the other leg. Stretching out. She lowered her hands in front of her. It was done. Her right wrist sang with pain and dripped with blood.
But you couldn’t beat the results.
With her hands clasped together in front of her, she rose up—quietly—pulled the blanket off the bed, wrestled the mattress off the frame, which took some doing, but it wasn’t rocket science. Just clumsy. Tipping it up on end, walking the mattress over to the door, she leaned it against the entrance. A barrier. And noise cover. She stepped back into her shoes and went to the mirrored closet door, looking for a good place to kick the damn thing in. Get herself a good long piece of glass to use as a weapon.
~~~
“Three people leaving that apartment on the third floor,” John Rae said.
Through the high-powered binoculars from the back window of the delivery van, he saw a Mestiza dressed like a Jehovah’s Witness, carrying an empty shoulder bag, and Comrade Cain, leading Beltran in a suit out into an open stairwell. “Right on the GPS coordinates Maggie’s friend passed to her boss.”
Two days in solitary confinement with no sleep, plenty of hostile treatment, and no food or water had left John Rae bruised and more than annoyed. But when all was said and done, he was here, thanks to Maggie’s mysterious web buddy calling Ed with her location. Now John Rae was back where he should have been originally.
What was ironic was that he didn’t particularly want to be released from the brig just yet. But Maggie had changed the equation. And now he had her to worry about. It was cool, though. He still had his part mapped out. Two birds. One stone. It was doable.
“It’s him all right, vato,” Achic said with excitement, next to John Rae in the back of the van, watching through binos as well.
John Rae raised his binoculars again. Last time he’d seen Cain was in a skirmish in the mountains between Peru and Ecuador. Cain was still fit, but a few lines had appeared on his chiseled face. He wore a loose black jacket, the pocket on one side heavy. Where the hell was Maggie? “Beltran’s looking a little worse for wear,” he said. “But I don’t see Maggie.”
“Maybe she’s already at the bank,” Achic said.
“No. We checked.”
“Maybe she’s on her way. Maybe we missed her.”
“We haven’t seen anyone looks like her leaving,” John Rae said. “Just that tall kid, doing a check of the building.” That was John Rae’s first clue this was a safe house. “And that plump woman.” He focused his binoculars back up to the apartment with the red door. “They could be holding her.” That made more sense.
“Cain must be heading to the bank,” Achic said.
“Got to be. That woman with him’s got an empty bag.”
“Shouldn’t we be following Cain then?”
“Yes,” John Rae said. “But I bet you five beers Maggie’s still up there in that safe house with those dirtballs.”
“Not taking that bet,” Achic said. “But if she is, she’ll still be there after we grab Cain.”
John Rae heard the urgency in Achic’s voice. “Not necessarily,” he said. “They could move her.” Or worse, John Rae thought, but didn’t want to give voice to that thought.
�
�So what do we do?” Achic said hurriedly. “They’re getting into that van.”
So they were. Some old ’70s piece of shit. Mag wheels. It fired up quick and took off.
“You guys follow them.” John Rae opened his heavy gabardine jacket, pulled his Glock 18C, checked it. “I’ll catch up with you if I can. I need to make sure she’s not still up there.”
“After all this?” Achic blinked in disbelief. “You’re going to miss the glory? Arresting Comrade Cain?”
“All yours, little brother,” John Rae said, reholstering the gun, but leaving the snap undone for quick access. “You might find it in your heart to give me a side mention when you’re telling the arrest story on TV and to the newspapers. And when they pin the National Order of San Lorenzo on your scrawny chest.”
The man in front of the van said something rushed in Spanish to Achic. Getting antsy.
“Alert the rest of the team.” John Rae pulled down his dark knit hat and slipped on his sunglasses. It was hard not to look like a gringo, but the scroungy three-day beard was helping.
Achic produced a small red walkie-talkie, with its bold letters: Motorola Talkabout. John Rae had one too. “Radio us when you get in range. Maybe you can still make the party.”
“Adiós, amigos,” John Rae said, opening the side door of the van as the guy in front started it up, gunning it like a wild man. They couldn’t wait. Lucky bastards. “Kick that mother in the nuts one time for me.” Especially if he’d hurt Maggie.
“You got it.” Achic doing his Johnny Canales impression.
John Rae hopped out, heaved the door shut. The van squealed into a tight half-circle, leaning out, then barreled off down the street after Cain.
He looked up at the red door on the third floor. Yeah, he bet Maggie was still up there.
~~~
Maggie examined the mirrored closet door, turned her back to it, cocked her knee up to her chest, kicked back hard. The door cracked under her heel but didn’t shatter. OK. A little harder. Again. A squawking crunch. Hopefully, the mattress she’d propped up against the door of the room was muffling most of this.
Again.
Success. Smashing the door without putting her Doc Marten all the way through. She didn’t need to lose a foot. Glass crashed to the floor in a high-pitched clink and jangle. She turned back around. Shards of mirror everywhere. A two-foot section jutted up menacingly from the bottom of the mirrored door, vibrating as if to vie for her attention. Pick me. I’ll do the most damage. Bad luck? For someone else.
~~~
“Can’t you turn that damn thing down?” Paavo said out in the living room.
The TV interviewer wearing the red clown’s nose had just blasted his guest with a seltzer bottle and the audience was screaming with laughter. The teenager in the baggy gangster get-up ignored Paavo, digging into a huge red bag of chips.
“Are you kids deaf?” Paavo said. “Why does everything have to be so loud?”
A knock on the front door caused him to turn his head.
“It’s Señora Gomez,” Paavo said. “Back from the shops. Turn it down already. You know she isn’t going to put up with that racket. Or those chips. You’re spilling them everywhere.”
There was another knock on the door.
“What was that?” the kid said.
“I just told you, moron. The front door. She’s back. Now turn that down already. She’s going to give you a ration of shit.”
“No—back there.” The kid nodded back to the cell-room, where they were holding the norteamericana. “I heard something.” The kid put the chips down, got up, picked up his .38, marched down the hallway.
“No funny stuff!” Paavo shouted, grabbing the remote, shifting the volume down to half its former level.
Another knock at the front door.
“All right, all right.” Paavo pushed himself up from his chair, went to answer the door. Then he remembered. The password.
“Who is it?” he said.
“Cain,” someone on the other side of the door said.
Cain? That wasn’t the password.
~~~
In the small darkened room, Maggie heard one of them striding down the hall, muffled by the mattress she’d shoved upright against the door. She shifted around the corner in front of the shattered closet door with a two-foot long length of jagged mirror in her bound hands. The thicker end she held wrapped in a blanket that trailed on the floor.
Along with the din from the TV and the two terrucos arguing, they hadn’t heard her until the door was in pieces. Then the TV volume had dropped.
Now she heard someone unlocking the door to the room.
Maggie raised the glass sword in her tied hands, ready.
~~~
“Who is it?” Paavo said again at the front door. The answer was simple. Justice.
“Cain,” someone on the other side of the door said again.
No, not right. Paavo pulled his pistol.
~~~
The bedroom door opened a few inches, hitting the mattress.
“What the fuck?” the teenage terruco said, pushing against it. “Why are the lights . . .”
Maggie turned, stood, raised the glass blade, her heart pumping like a fist. She watched the mattress fall back into the room and bounce off the metal bed frame, clanging up a storm.
The teenage kid came in, stepping over the mattress, gun up. He turned toward the smashed closet . . .
Maggie swung the glass blade, caught him across the throat. A giant razor slashing open his neck, cutting his scream short. The air in front of him filled with a spray of blood, hitting her, sticking to her face. The gun fell from his hands as he grasped his throat and gawped at Maggie with round-eyed shock. The pistol bounced off under the mattress, into the corner.
She kneed him in the groin. Hard. He doubled over in a gush of blood and she kicked him onto the lopsided mattress, knocking everything awry. The .38 lay in the corner under the bed frame. She stepped over the metal frame and got down, fumbling for the gun, both hands still girded together. Just out of reach.
~~~
Paavo turned from the unopened front door when he heard the noise from the back of the apartment. He headed back, past the crucifix, his 9mm raised.
Then he heard the vip-vip-vip of an automatic pistol behind him at the front door.
He spun back around, saw a diagonal of bullet holes through the front door, leading up to the lock. Another rapid salvo of shots blew the doorknob out.
He raised his weapon in both hands and waited for his intruder.
~~~
Outside the blasted front door, John Rae stood back, the Glock up, and jammed the heel of his cowboy boot onto the weakened door. It crunched, gave way, opened a foot into the apartment.
Just some crappy furniture, a coffee table with an open bag of chips on it, and a TV on the wall to the left, some inane shit with dancing girls.
But a man in there had wanted some kind of password from him. He knew that much.
~~~
“Hey there!” the girl they called Alice yelled.
In the hallway Paavo whirled back around. Things were coming at him from both sides.
The norteamericana was standing there with a .38 aimed coolly at him. Hands still tied together. How the hell did she manage that? He started to raise his gun, but knew he was too slow. He just hoped she was a bad shot.
~~~
Maggie fired into Paavo’s chest, her tied hands bobbing with the shot. Paavo bolted back, looking down at the blood blossoming across his chest in amazement.
She fired again. And again. All hits. He was popping red all over.
Paavo went down on his back, flat, the back of his head smacking the floor and bouncing, making her wince. He lay eye-open dead in front of the open front door, the gun still in his gnarled hand.
The open front door was riddled with bullet holes.
Someone was out there, waiting. They’d shot the lock off the door, kicked it in. She pointed the
.38 at the door. She figured she had three more shots.
Friend or foe?
“Want what he just got?” she yelled in Spanish, her hands buzzing around the pistol. Then, in English, for good measure, because she didn’t know who was out there. “This gun’s loaded!”
“Maggie?”
“John Rae?” It hurt her head to speak, her nose full of blood from Lita’s fist.
Behind her she heard the teenager. She swiveled around. He was staggering out of the room, holding a blood-soaked pillow to his neck.
-31-
“I’ve seen worse,” John Rae said, pulling back the blood-soaked pillow on the teenager’s neck just enough to inspect the gash Maggie had inflicted with her length of glass. Maggie jerked back in disgust. A crooked slit, twice as wide as a mouth, dripping without the pillow. John Rae let the teenager squeeze the pillow back into place. “He’ll probably live.”
The kid, for his part, was now a creature owned by fear. Speechless and terrified, he gripped the cushion tightly to his neck.
“Got a cell phone?” Maggie asked him. Her voice sounded strange to her and she pinched her nose, painfully pushing it this way and that to see if it was broken. The boy got his phone out of a pocket with a trembling hand that immediately went back up to clasp the soggy pillow. Maggie took the phone, her right wrist hastily bandaged with torn sheet, growing red where the plastic tie had cut into it. She dialed 911, Quito’s emergency number, instructed the operator to get an ambulance there quick, while John Rae knelt down, went through the pockets on Paavo’s lifeless, bullet-ridden body. She hung up, kept the phone. She didn’t need the teenager calling anyone.
“Nice shooting, Maggie,” John Rae said, standing up, holding Paavo’s phone. “We don’t want to leave this around for him to use.”
They heard neighbors talking excitedly downstairs, no doubt alarmed by the gunshots. But no one was out on the landing, or on the stairs. In a neighborhood like this, people minded their own business. They probably had a pretty good idea that an apartment with as many unsavory types as Cosecha Severa milling around was to be avoided to begin with.
The Cain File Page 27