The Bones of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

  Cuervo—a crow-voiced little man and the Sinas’ best driver—is at the wheel of the lead vehicle and increasing its distance ahead of the other two trucks. He knows every foot of this trail, every bend and rise and rut and shoulder from one end to the other, and he guides the Ford F-150 through the curves like it’s on rails. Chubasco sits beside him, an MP5 propped against his leg, an ammo bag strapped across his chest. Puño’s in the rear, armed and equipped the same way

  Via sat phone, Chubasco has contacted the Sina subchief in Loreto and told him to post a crew of gunmen at a point a little north of the Finca trail’s junction with the San Javier Road. The first vehicle to emerge on that trail will be their target, and because there’s nothing to the south except wilderness, it is almost certain to turn north on the road to town. If it should turn south, the ambushers are to notify him and go after it. In either case, they’re to disable it any way they can without killing the two men in it. If they abandon the vehicle and try to escape on foot, shoot them in the legs but don’t let them bleed out.

  I don’t understand why they had to try to sneak away, Chubasco says to Puño. Why not just tell me they wanted to go back to town? Thanks for the offer of a bed but we gotta get back because blah-blah whatever. I have you call the gate and out they go. But no, they gotta sneak off like thieves. Were they stealing something? Afraid they might get searched and caught?

  Puño shrugs. Stealing what? he says. They had no access to cash, to jewelry. There aren’t any drugs there. What could they steal that’s worth killing two of our guys and the punishment they’ll get for that?

  Chubasco sighs. So why’d they run?

  The phone trills. Puño answers, Yeah? He listens, then says, All right. Let me know if she turns up.

  He cuts off the call and says, That was Romero. Said Griselda told him they left the Lupita girl tied up in a stairwell. The other girl who went upstairs with them, Gatita, she can’t be found. She’s not at the party, not at the dorm, not anywhere on the compound. Looks like they took her.

  Gatita? Why take her?

  A hostage to get past the guards? Open the gate or we’ll kill her.

  No, Chubasco says. Open the gate or we’ll kill you is what they’d tell the guards. Hell, it’s what they did. Christ, who are these guys? I hope to hell the fools don’t kill themselves on this road before we catch them.

  They go through a sharp curve that ends in a long, slow-winding series of descending curves and Cuervo cries, There!

  Far ahead and through the glitter of the rain, the dark form of the Sangrero vehicle is visible against the forward cast of its headlights.

  Busted their taillights like it was gonna make them invisible, the dumb shits, Cuervo says.

  The Sangreros disappear into a sharper curve.

  RUDY

  With the windshield wipers working at full speed, Frank’s zipping us down the snaky little mountain trail like some hillbilly who grew up running moonshine on roads like this. He’s always been a masterful driver, quick to learn a particular road’s character and adapt to it. The drive to the Finca was all he needed to get to know this one. Although we never touched thirty miles an hour on the way up there, we haven’t dipped below it driving down, in spite of the wicked wind that’s corkscrewing through the passes and walloping us from all sides. Despite my faith in his skill, I can’t help pressing back into my seat and bracing an arm against the dashboard every time we swing out toward a cliff or a rock wall. Kitty sometimes lets out a small squeak on those turns, but all in all she’s being a trouper. The way Frank looks at her in the mirror, I can see he’s impressed, too.

  We have to assume there are chasers after us even though none has come in sight. And then on a fairly straight stretch that, as Frank recalls, will become a sharp bend leading into the exit pass, he looks in the rearview and says, “Here they are.”

  I turn and see the headlights and roof-rack lights appearing out of and disappearing into the curves behind us. They’re between two hundred and three hundred winding yards back. Kitty’s looking back at them, too. “Fuck you bastards,” she says.

  “That wheelman’s very good,” Frank says, his eyes cutting between the mirror and the trail ahead.

  We go into the bend and out of their sight. And there, directly ahead, is the pass opening. “Yes!” Frank hisses.

  We plunge into its greater darkness, our headlights reflecting off the flanking walls as we follow the tightly winding trail downward. The chaser’s not going to gain on us in here, but the next span of minutes seems endless. At last our lights show the gap at the end of the pass just ahead.

  We exit into the open, still going downhill, and are nearly blown off the trail by a wind that hits us broadside from the south. If it’s not hurricane force it’s damn close to it. The scrub is leaning almost flat against the ground and quivering like it’s trying to tear free. Frank fights the wheel all the way down the trail to its junction with the San Javier Road, which doesn’t show vehicle lights in either direction. He hangs a left onto it and speeds up. I look back and see the reflected glow of the chaser’s lights approaching the mouth of the pass, then the hazed and shuddering brightness of headlights and roof lights emerges and begins nosing down toward the road.

  I look ahead again just as a set of headlights comes on about seventy yards away, glaring from the shoulder on our right.

  “What’s that?” Kitty says.

  In the same instant that I think, Shooters, Frank apparently has the same thought and cuts off our headlights just as automatic gunfire begins flaring from both sides of the ambush vehicle. The rounds ring against the plates protecting the engine, then our front end sags a little when the tires are hit. But they’re obviously not called run-flats for nothing, and despite their slight sag we’re going over fifty as we close on the ambushers, still pouring a barrage of fire into our shielded motor.

  “They’re trying for disablement or they’d shoot the windshield till they drilled through and nailed us!” I say.

  “Their mistake,” Frank says. “Hold on!” He swerves to the right and off the road, and we go jarring and jouncing over the rocky ground a short way before he cuts back hard to the left and hits the headlight switch—only the right light now working, set on bright—and accelerates toward the shooters’ SUV. The blaze of our headlight is stark on the five or six of them in their flapping raincoats as they scatter, and Kitty yelps just before we ram the rear door of the SUV with a hellacious crash that sends the vehicle spinning onto the road, knocking down two of the shooters and running over them. We skid off the road on its other side, and Frank wheels us around and back onto the pavement and we speed away on the spongy tires, the engine holding fine, the sole headlight casting a long beam.

  “Sweet Mother Mary! Gallo wasn’t bullshitting about the bumper and run-flats!” Frank says.

  “Wow!” Kitty says in a tone a kid might use after her first roller-coaster ride. Frank cuts a look at her in the rearview and grins. I turn to look at her in the glow of the dashboard and see the bright excitement in her eyes. She rubs her forehead and I ask if she’s hurt, and she says no, she just took a knock on the door pillar, then asks, “Who were they?”

  “Non-friends of ours,” I say.

  Through the rain-smeared back window I see the lights of the chaser slowly approaching the smashed-up SUV blocking the road, then stopping short of it. Farther behind, two other vehicles with roof-rack lights—more chasers—have come out of the pass and are creeping down the trail to the road.

  By the time the lead chaser slowly eases off the road and around the wreckage, it’s only a speck of light to us. We have a lead on it of nearly two miles when we curve out of its view on a long bend of the San Javier Road heading to Loreto.

  It’s 11:44.

  Frank catches the glance at my watch. “We’ll make sure she’s gone,” he says, “then hijack whatever boat looks strong enough to get us across and that’s got a full tank. Reimburse the owner later if we’re still kicking
.”

  “Sounds like a plan. And you sound like Mateo. If we’re still kicking.”

  “Make sure she’s gone?” Kitty says. “She who? You mean Rayo?”

  “Don’t fret, dear lady, everything’s cool as can be,” Frank says, wrestling the wheel against the sidelong buffeting of the storm. I don’t know if I could keep us on this road like he’s doing. Some driver, Frank. Some guy.

  The San Javier Road transitions into the crosstown avenue at the south end of Loreto. The city’s taking a beating and is in near-total darkness, its electric power knocked out. Only a scattering of windows show light, undoubtedly generator produced. The streets are all but deserted, the few vehicles on them moving slowly, discernible solely by their misty lights wobbling in the wind.

  “Here come headlights,” Frank says, peering at the rearview.

  I take a look. They’re about two-thirds of a mile back, the only lights behind us and very slowly gaining. “If it’s them, they’re not using the roof rack and they’ve made us by our broken taillights,” I say, “but they don’t look in any hurry to catch up.”

  “They’re not dopes,” Frank says. “They figure we’ve seen them and if they come up fast we’ll turn off the avenue and cut our lights and lose them. Sneak away on side streets. Maybe lay for them. They’d rather keep us in view as long as they can and then close in fast when we stop.”

  Because we don’t know if the Sinas have lookout posts along the route that Puño showed Frank for getting out of town, we don’t turn off at the federal highway intersection but opt for the route Gallo showed us to the marina. We follow the avenue past the closed airport and toward the arroyo bridge near the seawall. But now there’s a yellow light there, flashing intermittently.

  “Oh, man, don’t tell me the bridge is out,” I say.

  The light proves to be the roof flasher of a power company truck. Frank pulls up alongside it and asks a workman if it’s safe to go across. He has to yell to make himself heard through the wind. The guy says yeah, they just finished securing a transformer connection and now have to see about a downed power line near the seawall plaza, and so we better go ahead if we don’t want to get stuck behind them. We ease around the truck and cross over the bridge, the surging water now risen to within a foot of it, and it seems like we’re driving across on its surface. Then we’re on the seawall road, and the truck crosses over behind us.

  Waves are exploding against the seawall. The trees thrashing as if berserk.

  EL CHUBASCO

  Cuervo speeds them out of the long San Javier Road bend and onto the city’s south crosstown avenue, the truck rocking in the wind, its roof lights off, the better to keep the Sangreros from spotting them. In the back seat with Puño now are two Sina gunmen who narrowly evaded injury when the Expedition rammed the SUV—Nico and Moisés, armed with M4s.

  Chubasco has again been in sat phone contact with his Loreto subchief and this time gave him descriptions of the Expedition, of the two Sangreros, and of the girl who may or may not be with them. He ordered him to post lookouts at the federal highway’s north and south exits from the city and at the north and south ends of the city’s coast road. He had then phoned the two chase crews behind him and instructed one of them to help the lookouts on the highway, the other to assist the coastal route guys.

  So where’s their way out? he’d said to Puño after the calls. There’s no air traffic. We got the exit roads covered. What’re they gonna do? Take a boat? In this storm?

  If it’s their only choice, said Puño.

  There! Cuervo yells, and points straight ahead. No taillights. And look at their headlight glow. It’s brighter to the right of them because the left light’s busted! It’s them!

  Chubasco has Cuervo close in on them slowly. No need to risk spooking them into the backstreets and losing them.

  Now they see the whirling yellow light at the avenue’s far end. The Sangreros drive up to it and stop. Chubasco makes Cuervo lower their speed even more. There are no other vehicles on the avenue at the moment. As the Sinas draw closer and see it’s a utility truck light, the Sangreros go around it and over the bridge, and then the truck crosses over behind them.

  They’re heading for the marina and a boat, Puño says. Where else by that route, and what else can they do? Hide till the storm blows over, then drive out or fly out? Bullshit. They’d never get by us and they know it. A boat’s their only bet and damn the risk. Hell, maybe they already arranged for one.

  That seawall road’s too narrow for us to go around the truck! Chubasco says.

  That road’s the shortest way to the marina from here, Cuervo says, you know that, chief. But it catches the most litter in a storm. Tree branches, driftwood, all kinds of crap that’s gonna slow them down. The highway route’s longer but it never gets as much obstruction in a windstorm. We can make better time on it and get to the marina almost as fast as they do.

  Go! Chubasco says.

  Cuervo switches on all their lights and executes a fast U-turn. As they start back to the federal highway bridge, the truck joggling in the wind, Chubasco makes a sat call to the coastal ranch north of town where, in addition to berthing his helicopter, he keeps his powerboat racer—La Ninfa—in a boathouse within the estate’s private inlet. It’s a fifty-footer with oversized fuel tanks that are always kept full, a pair of huge quad-cam engines that can propel it at almost 160 miles per hour on calm water, and a radar system with a thirty-mile reach. The boat’s two-man crew lives in a cottage on the grounds. One of the crewmen answers the call and Chubasco tells him to bring the boat to the mouth of the Loreto marina at once.

  On the way, chief, the crewman says.

  But even though La Ninfa’s crewmen are superior boatmen, the estate is twenty miles away and the boat will be coming directly into the wind and waves. Chubasco knows it could take as long as half an hour to arrive.

  RUDY

  We don’t spot the marina until we almost drive past it. Frank slowly wheels into the lot and parks next to the pedestrian entrance. If there are other vehicles here, we can’t see them in this darkness. We step out into the slashing rain and hold on to the Expedition to keep from being blown off our feet, then interlock arms with each other and stagger to the entrance. We go past a lightless front office and out onto the main dock and the loud clatter of dozens of hulls against their moorings on the undulant water. The only light is a pale glow from the far side of the marina, most likely from some boat. It’s barely bright enough for us to see that the layout of the marina is as Gallo described, three docks branching from the main one—one on either side of the basin, one down the center—and a cross dock on the other side. There doesn’t seem to be an empty slip anywhere, but no other boats show light or any sign of occupancy, their owners evidently having chosen to wait out the storm somewhere other than on board.

  “That light across the way!” Frank says, yelling through the hull knockings and the hammering rain. “Isn’t it about where Gallo said the Espanta’s moored?”

  “Ah, Christ! You think she’s still here?”

  “She damn sure is!” says Rayo’s voice as a bright light comes on behind us and casts our shadows far down the middle dock.

  We whip around and squint into the glare of her flashlight, unable to see her behind it until she turns the light upward right below her face, producing a Halloween effect, her eyes wild, her grin lunatic. She’s wearing a hooded slicker and clutching a mooring line to keep her balance against the wind. She laughs and lowers the light.

  “Rayo!” Kitty says. She rushes to her and they hug, and Rayo says to us, “What took you guys so long?”

  “Why the hell aren’t you gone?” Frank says.

  “Because when those guys said it was time to go, I was ready for it and got the drop on them!” Rayo says. She opens the slicker and shines the light on the Glock in her waistband. “I told them we were waiting till you got here, then took their flashlight and told them to leave the cockpit light on and I sat on a bench ove
r on the right-side dock there, where I could guard against them sneaking up on me and still be on the lookout for you coming through the entrance! Let me tell you, it’s been—”

  A bright shaft of light flashes briefly through the pedestrian entrance, and through the keening wind comes the sound of a crash.

  “Could be Sinas!” Frank says.

  “Come on!” Rayo says, hustling past us.

  As we follow her down the center dock she flicks the flashlight off and on just once and there’s a deep rumble of engines firing up. At the cross dock, the Espanta’s tossing in its slip, moored with the bow facing out, ready to go, its two crewmen in the front seats. We hustle into the cockpit and the pilot cuts off the panel light and Rayo switches her flashlight off and we’re in full darkness. The four of us hunch low and press tightly together against the back seat as the pilot eases us out of the slip and bears left, the engines growling low. I get the sense that he knows this place so well he could maneuver into or out of it with his eyes closed. Then there’s a shout from the main dock and he works the throttle and we accelerate out of the marina as automatic weapons open fire, the gunmen shooting wildly toward the sound of our engines.

  We exit directly into a furious head sea that starts the boat bucking like it’s becrazed. There’s less chance at the moment of being hit by a bullet than of being bounced overboard or of the bow plowing into the foot of a head-on wave that takes us under. The pilot turns us sharply to port—out of the Sinas’ narrow field of fire and broadside to the waves—and we’re suddenly hoisted so high and tipped to our left so steeply that I’m sure we’re going to capsize or get smashed against the outer wall of the marina. But the pilot cuts back into the wave at an angle and begins zigzagging obliquely through the heave and roll of the broadside swells, the bow rising and dipping. It’s the only way to navigate such a sea and he’s an evident master of it. As he settles into this steering pattern, he turns the cockpit light back on. The other crewman pats him on the shoulder for his expert seamanship and then shouts introductions of him as Disco and himself as Raul. In case you haven’t heard, he says, we’re now in a hurricane! He gestures at the instrument panel, saying, Seventy-nine-point-six on the meter!