Lockestep

by Jack Barnao

  He nodded without speaking and forced his way into the brush, swearing softly as it tore at him. He had given me my machete back, and I used it to move branches aside, not slashing them.

  That last quarter mile took us almost an hour, but at last he stopped beside a big bare rock face and pointed down to his right. I caught up and looked. The skeleton of a shack was standing there with a roughly cleared patch of ground around it and a well sitting out in the yard.

  "It's there,” he said hoarsely.

  "Right. You go ahead and pick up your money, and check that well, see if there's any water in it. I'll watch from closer in, but I'll keep under cover until we know it's clear."

  He nodded and set off, moving faster than I would have done, slipping once and sending a small torrent of soil down the slope. I sighed. That was all the warning a Mexican would need, our caution had been wasted.

  He made it to the edge of the clearing and went on into the yard, not stopping to look around. I followed and crouched at the edge, keeping out of sight and silent, waiting for someone to challenge him. The sun was directly overhead, resting its weight on us like molten brass, shrinking Amadeo's shadow to a puddle around his feet as he walked boldly up to the house and glanced inside. Then he turned and stood with his back to the doorway and paced out twenty steps from it, then turned and paced another ten away from me, almost out of my line of sight. He crouched there and began to hack at the soil with his machete, chopping and prying, the blade chinking on the hard ground.

  He dug for five minutes, then lifted his machete triumphantly in his right hand and began to dig more carefully, scraping around what he had found. I backed away from my hiding place and moved down to my right, where I could hide again but with a good view of what he was doing. I saw him set the machete down and reach into the hole, coming up with an aluminum briefcase, which he set on the ground and unlocked.

  I was watching everything around us, seeing nothing but the abandoned banana trees and the brush. But I felt uneasy. There was someone here. I could sense it.

  I watched Amadeo toss his machete aside and open the briefcase, brushing impatiently at the lock, then snapping it open with his thumb and flipping up the lid. He knelt there, looking into it like a child with a beautiful storybook. And then a rifle cracked, and a bullet ricocheted off the hard ground in front of him and skipped up over my head.

  It had come from the hillside, an area I had scanned fifty times without seeing anything. I held my fire, waiting for the man to shoot again, but Amadeo bolted down the trail as if it led to safety and not an ambush, as I was sure it did.

  I swore but waited. He would stay on the trail and I would find him, but if I came out now, I would be dead. And then, after a thirty-second wait, I saw a movement high up in the rocks opposite and recognized a straw hat among the boulders. It was two hundred yards out, beyond the calibrated range of Amadeo's little rifle, out where I would have to guess at the bullet drop, aiming high and hoping for a hit. Besides, the hat might be a decoy, a test to check if Amadeo was alone.

  After another minute a man stood up, and then another, and they ran across the slope, which was almost bare on that side on the trail, the remnants of burned-off fields that had grown corn for a year or two and been abandoned when the lateritic soil baked itself hard. They ran parallel to the trail, and when I was sure they had not seen me, I slipped out of cover and ran softly down the trail after Amadeo.

  He had cleared the first hundred and fifty yards, but then I slowed. This was the dangerous part. We had turned off the trail a quarter mile from the shack. The ambush must have been waiting after that, somewhere close to where I was now. I pushed into the brush on the opposite side of the track from where the men had been and made the best time I could, listening for sounds of activity.

  I found them, around the next corner. I could hear Amadeo blustering in Spanish, and then the sound of a slap. It was still beyond me, and I came closer to the trail, hoping he would keep his mouth shut about my being there. If they thought he was alone, I had a chance to get him back. If they expected me, we were both dead men.

  I crept down through the edges of a bush, glancing around behind me but seeing nobody. The voices were louder now, two other men and Amadeo, his voice pleading, theirs curt and contemptuous.

  The .45 was in my belt, ready, cocked. I took out the little .38 and stuffed it into my right sock. I was as ready as I could be.

  I inched out onto the trail and rounded the corner of a tree and saw him kneeling on the ground, his hands on his head, pleading in Spanish. The two men were standing over him, one of them holding the briefcase, the other leveling a pistol at Amadeo's face. I saw his thumb move, pulling back the hammer, and I shot him through the right ear.

  He fell on top of Amadeo, and the other man froze in alarm, his own pistol pointing vaguely toward me. I shot him in the chest, twice, and he fell, clawing at his heart. Amadeo got to his feet and grabbed the briefcase, then came pounding toward me shouting, “Thank you. Thank you."

  I put an urgent finger to my lips and he shut up, but kept running. I grabbed him and he started to speak, but I dragged him off the trail and into the bush beside the trail, “There's two more of them. Shut up,” I hissed.

  He was almost blubbering with relief, but he sank down to the ground and lay there while I waited, listening to every sound. If the other men were good, they would come quietly, I had to expect an attack. While I waited, I refilled the three-shot magazine. Amadeo watched me, licking his dry lips. “Give me a gun,” he whispered, but I shook my head. Guns are for experts. In his hands they would be a liability.

  It took three long minutes before the other men emerged onto the trail. Only one of them had a rifle. It was old, all the blue worn from the barrel, and I doubted if it was accurate, or he would have killed Amadeo with his first shot. But he held it at the ready position, across the body, the butt raised to his armpit, braced to swing up the muzzle and sight a shot, not just blaze away. He stood, looking around alertly while the other one checked the two dead men. I waited. This was Amadeo's fight. If they attacked us, I would shoot, but I wasn't about to murder them just to clear us a path to the highway.

  Amadeo whispered, almost soundlessly. “Plug the guy with the gun,” and I shook my head. “They tried to kill me, fer Crissakes. Waste ’em."

  I shook my head again and he hissed, “What in hell are you waiting for?"

  This time he was too loud. Maybe it was on purpose. I didn't have time to discuss it. The rifleman turned suspiciously and moved along the trail toward us, his finger on his trigger. I could see the rifle was an old bolt-action Remington, probably a 306, a hunter's gun. That meant he was a hunter, which meant he would be good at this range.

  Behind him the other man had gathered up both pistols and was moving toward us, checking all around him as he came. He didn't worry me. He was still forty yards away, and pistols are chancy. I was wrestling with the choice of shooting the man with the rifle while I had the drop on him or warning him first. As a soldier, I would have fired. As a bodyguard for a dope-smuggler, I was faced with ethical problems. Then Amadeo shifted his position and the sun caught the corner of his briefcase, and the hunter fired, drilling a shot right through the sparkle.

  I fired in the same instant, hitting him in the forehead, so his sombrero flew up and away as he toppled, dropping the gun. The man behind him fired wildly, blazing from both hands. I took aim and shot him through the right arm, above the elbow. He screamed and dropped his guns, grabbing his shattered arm. Amadeo came off the ground in a run, grabbing the fallen rifle and pumping shot after shot at the wounded man, hitting all around him until I sprang out of cover and clobbered him with the butt of my own rifle. He fell, sobbing with frustration “Lemme get him."

  "Leave him alone.” I bent and picked up the rifle and cranked out the last couple of rounds, catching them and slipping them into my pocket. “Let's see to him. He's hurt."

  I advanced on the injured man, who was
lying in the dust of the trail, writhing with pain. The pistols lay beside him and I picked them up, slipped out the magazine from the automatic and then threw it and the revolver away, high into the bushes where it would take an hour to find them.

  Amadeo caught up with me, clutching the back of his neck, swearing in Spanish. His foot swung back to kick the man on the ground, but I shoved him off balance and he fell, spitting, helplessly angry.

  I stooped to the wounded man and took his hand away from the blood that was seeping through his fingers. He fell suddenly still, staring at me out of frightened eyes, like a steer in a slaughterhouse.

  I dumped my pack and took out the first-aid kit, pulling out the bottle of Dettol and a gauze pad. His shirt sleeve was torn by the bullet, and I ripped it away, exposing the wound. The bullet was still inside, flattened against the broken bone that deformed the back of his tricep. I slapped on the Dettol, holding him as he squirmed against the pain, then put the gauze pad over it and wrapped a bandage around it. Blood seeped out into the dressing but it didn't escape, just stained the bandage and stopped. Then I took out the triangular bandage and put it over his head, tucking it around his arm and making a sling. He stared at me, baffled.

  "Tienes agua?” Do you have water? I asked him.

  He nodded and pointed up behind me into the hillside. He spoke then in a rush of Spanish that Amadeo interpreted for me.

  "They've got a can of it, back on the hill where he was waiting."

  "Good, let's get it. We all need water. Tell him to take us there."

  Amadeo spoke to him, hissing savagely, and the man got to his feet and walked back along the trail, stopping to look down at the dead men. “Ask him if there's anybody else. Tell him if there is and they jump us, I shoot him first, then them,” I instructed.

  Amadeo told him, and he shook his head and spoke rapidly. I made out the word “todos,” everybody. “He says this is all of them."

  "Good.” I reloaded the .22, and when I got to the hunter's gun, I threw that up into the bushes. Our prisoner looked after it, licking his lips, wanting to speak but afraid. I knew he would be out here again as soon as he could, finding all three guns. For now he was grateful to be alive. He would try nothing.

  His water supply was in a jerrican. There was most of two gallons left. I let him drink first, knowing the local water wouldn't harm him, while I drank what was left in my canteen, very little. Amadeo stood looking on, swallowing noisily as we drank. I took out another purification tablet and shook it up with a canteen of water and handed it to Amadeo. “Drink all of it."

  He did, gulping it down like a university student at his first beer-drinking boat race. He didn't lower the canteen even once until it was empty. Then I filled it again and did the same. It was the temperature of bathwater and tasted of gasoline, but it went down like champagne. Afterward I filled the canteen a third time and purified it, then put it back into my pack. We were set to travel.

  "I think we should walk to the road and wait for nightfall,” I said.

  Amadeo asked, “What about him?"

  "We'll take him with us for the first couple of miles, that way he can't find the guns and backshoot us."

  "We should've wasted him,” he said angrily.

  "Ask him how he knew where to wait for us."

  He spoke to the man, who answered almost before he had finished.

  "What's he saying?"

  "He says that García sent men out to all the trails where you would need a Jeep. This one he sent four men to because the guy who used to live here was a cousin of my contact on the beach. He figured it was the best spot to look."

  "That means he could be coming out here himself to check on them. How did they get here, were they dropped off?"

  He asked again, and the man nodded as he answered. Amadeo said, “Yeah, they came out yesterday, after we left the hotel. They had a man watching the place. When we left, García shipped them out here. The Jeep's coming back for them tonight. I guess they figured we'd be here by then if we were coming."

  "Don't guess, ask him."

  He spoke again, and after a long exchange Amadeo said. “Yeah. They figured we would come by cab to the trail and walk in. His buddies were waiting for us on the trail.” His face dropped. “Shit, it's a wonder we didn't walk right into ’em.” He looked at me with new respect. “You knew they'd be waitin', didn't you?"

  "Fortune favors the prepared mind.” Louis Pasteur said it first, and it was the motto of Alexander Fleming, the guy who discovered penicillin, and I believe it implicitly, but it skipped over Amadeo's head like the ricochet in the clearing.

  "Let's go,” he said.

  "First we pull these corpses off the trail. The vultures will be on them in an hour, but the skeletons will hang around forever. We don't want García to tip off the cops if he finds them."

  Amadeo swore, but he saw the sense of it. We all three of us carried the bodies through the bushes where they wouldn't be obvious from the track. I made our prisoner help, just to keep an eye on him. It also made him extra respectful.

  Amadeo didn't pray this time. As soon as we were finished, he set off down the trail faster than he had walked since I met him. The wounded man came next, stumbling with pain and shock, but carrying the can of water and keeping up. When we had covered a couple of miles, I told him, “Alto,” and he stopped.

  "Quédate aquí.” Stay here, I told him, and he nodded and sank gratefully to his knees.

  Amadeo came back down the trail, blazing with anger. “What's with him? Let's go."

  "He can stay here—we'll travel faster without him."

  "An’ what about when García comes out to pick him up? He'll spill his guts, an’ García will have the police lookin’ for us."

  I had an answer for that one, I'd been making my plan ever since we set out. “Give me a thousand bucks,” I told Amadeo.

  He tightened his grip on the briefcase. “For this scum? You think that'll work? He'll take my money an’ screw us. Kill the bastard. You should've done it right off."

  "Give me a thousand-dollar-bill before I get impatient,” I said, and he knelt and opened his briefcase, keeping the contents out of the prisoner's sight, glaring at me as he did so.

  He handed me the bill. “Hiring you was the biggest mistake I ever made. You're a goddamn wimp."

  "Yeah, that's why you're dead on the trail back there with the vultures pecking your eyes out,” I said. It was time for more stick and less carrot. He was getting uppity, now he had his money.

  The prisoner was watching the bill like a kid at his first magic show. I tore it in half, jaggedly, and handed him one piece. He glanced at my face, convinced now that I was the neighborhood conjurer. Then he took the bill, carefully, as if it might burn him.

  "Now tell him he gets the other half on Sunday morning. If he keeps his mouth shut until then,” I told Amadeo, smiling at the prisoner as if he were my favorite nephew.

  "You think that's gonna stop him talking?” Amadeo was spluttering with rage, but I just turned and smiled at him, and he rattled at the prisoner. I could make out the word domingo, Sunday. That was fine.

  The prisoner nodded, bobbing his head excitedly. For a whole grand he would have let me take his arm off. It was a year's pay for the kind of sleaze work he was doing for García. Hell, he could buy a farm and work himself to death an honest man.

  Amadeo paused for a moment to shake his finger at the guy and hiss a last warning, then he turned and stomped off down the trail, his half-million bucks pulling down his left arm as he carried it inside the beach basket he had picked up again at the shack. Except for the tears in his pants, he looked like every other gringo tourist. I winked at the Mexican, who smiled ingratiatingly, showing a mouthful of good white teeth. Then I started after Amadeo.

  He soon slackened speed. I caught up with him, and he started snarling again about how hungry he was. He also demanded water, but I didn't give him any. What we had was insurance. If we ran into another ambush, we m
ight have to take to the hills again, and a quart of water would be worth more than all the paper he had in his basket. That was one of the things he swore about.

  "That sonofabitch put a bullet through about fifty grand. It's torn all up, hell of a mess."

  "It could have been your head,” I reminded him, still watching the trail ahead. I didn't expect any more trouble. Our prisoner would have told us. He wanted to collect the other half of his hush money. And besides, even García would run out of help if he struck a couple of ambushes on every trail.

  We stopped for half an hour in the shade of one of those huge gray-barked trees that look like monster beeches. It had no leaves, but the trunk was six feet through, and there was a block of shade to the north side of it. Amadeo even loosened up to the point where he lit up a cigarette, breaking the match carefully and burying it in the dust of the trail.

  "Can you get in touch with Maria? Or will we have to keep our date with her on the boat?” I asked him. Color me true-blue. I'd been hired to help him find his cash, pay his wife, and leave. So far we'd done the first part.

  "We'll have to meet her. She's got the boat for three days this time. I told her to keep looking for us, every night at dusk. We see her, we can head home back to TO."

  He tried to make his voice businesslike. Carry out the mission, then home. But I didn't believe him. Half a million bucks isn't big money in drug-dealing terms, but it does buy you a couple of kilos of coke and the use of somebody's light airplane. Starting from here, Amadeo could be big-time within six months if he didn't still have the embarrassing business of squealing on his Canadian buddies to go through. I knew he was planning to dump me and take off. I wondered how he would do it. He'd tried running away, and that hadn't worked. I figured that this time he would try to kill me. My assignment was entering its most dangerous phase.

  Fourteen

  We reached the highway at five o'clock. We had drunk nothing since our quart of water at midday, and Amadeo was clicking my button between his teeth again. He hadn't spoken to me in a couple of hours, but when he heard the rush of cars passing on the highway, he turned and said, “Nearly there. Now what?"