Standoff

Fifteen

I needed somewhere else to look. The wall behind Perez’s head would do. There was a black and white photograph of a Mexican bandit hanging there, a large sombrero pushed back on his head and a couple of ammo bandoliers crossed on his chest. I couldn’t decide whether it was an old photo or a new photo made to look old. The bandit was grinning with mischief beneath a thick black inverted V of a moustache. Also on the wall was a map of the north of Mexico and the south of the United States, Texas and the province of Chihuahua butting up against each other.

My attention shifted back to Perez sitting behind his desk. While I couldn’t read anything in those black button eyes of his, the fact that he was stropping the pearl-handled knife against a leather strap hanging from a corner of his desk didn’t bode well. Carlos’ position, though, was clear. The guy wanted me dead. I sat in the chair opposite Perez while his lieutenant paced the room and ranted about how I’d refused to engage in the payback raid and therefore couldn’t be trusted; how I wasn’t one of them. I felt like I’d been detained by the school principal, only in this case the headmaster enjoyed separating people from their skin, most likely with that knife he was honing, while his staff’s teaching method was simply to chop folks up.

Meanwhile, I had my own considerations. The base outside the door was large and the significant numbers of men I was yet to quantify were being trained for something more than security. Though the evidence would be considered circumstantial in a court of law, the black King Air and the easy brutality I’d just witnessed left no doubt in my mind that Apostles and Perez had indeed been responsible for the massacre on US soil. I was also certain that Perez himself had led the operation. But all of these pieces were yet to form any kind of clear picture about what they were actually up to. What was coming next? And I was still no closer to getting anything from Perez with his DNA on it that pathologists back in El Paso could use to either positively confirm or eliminate his involvement in the slaughter at Horizon Airport for that court of law. In short, I was getting nowhere.

With a flick of his head, Perez gestured to Carlos to leave. Carlos did as he was told, but only after throwing a malevolent glare at me as he stormed out of the room.

“I asked you to help,” growled Perez in English, his face impassive, the knife sliding back and forth across the strop like he was stroking a cat.

“You have people who slice and dice,” I replied. “You don’t have people who do what I do.”

“How do you know what I have? You would be surprised. I am disappointed. What do I do with you?”

That pool bar in the Bahamas came to mind.

“I agree with Carlos. If you will not do what is asked, you cannot be trusted. I think I will kill you and the Saint can meet with your skinless corpse.”

I forced myself not to swallow. “Dismembering people might happen every other day in your world, but it doesn’t happen a lot in mine. Never, in fact. So maybe after I’ve been around you people a little longer I’ll come to feel it’s like doing the dishes after dinner. Meanwhile, as I said, there are other skills I can bring to the table. But if you’re not tired of US law enforcement confiscating your drugs and costing you millions, you go right ahead and do what you gotta do with that butter knife of yours.”

My impression was that reckless bravado — balls — was the only language Perez understood. He kept stropping back and forth, back and forth, those unblinking pupil-free buttons fixed on me. He put the knife down with care, like he didn’t want to damage it in any way, opened a desk drawer, pulled out a pen and paper and scrawled a note on it. “Wait for Juan de Jesús del Los Apostles de Medellín here,” he said, pushing the folded sheet of paper across the desk toward me. “We will be watching you.”

I reached for it and Perez’s hand flashed out, darting like a rattler. Something lightly touched the back of my hand and a split opened out on the skin, two inches long. Pulsing veins and white tendons revealed themselves. It was horrifying and also fascinating. Somehow that asshole had picked up his knife and cut me, all in the one lightning movement. I looked again at the cut in disbelief. It didn’t hurt — the blade was so sharp the nerves were yet to realize what had happened.

“Carlos!” Perez called, his voice a spray of gravel across steel roofing.

Blood began to well up out of the cut. I kept staring at it, in shock. Carlos and two others walked in. Carlos leaned over Perez and the boss said a few quiet words while the two other men moved behind me. And then the world turned black as a hood went over my head.

I could smell Turbo long before the hood came off. The aroma of rotting shit, sea salt and diesel oil was both unmistakable and reassuring. At least I knew where I was. With the boat secured against the quay, I was dragged up onto solid ground and the cuff locks cut away. The hood came off next, removed by one of Carlos’ men, the other flunky covering me with a revolver. The cut on my hand was throbbing, hot bolts of pain shooting up my forearm. Not a good sign. Infection was having a party down there but I couldn’t see much in the darkness other than the wound was caked in black blood.

Carlos grabbed my wrist and lifted my hand, I guessed to inspect the damage. I guessed wrong. “When you meet Jesús del Los Apostles,” he said, “make sure you tell him we treated you well.” He then spat into the wound. One day Carlos and I would exchange words. Or maybe lead. I added him to a mental list I was keeping, a list growing daily on this mission. Any hesitation I had about nominating myself his executioner, a seed planted by CIA dipshit Chalmers back in El Paso, was gone. Perhaps Chalmers’ purpose in planting the self-doubt was to make me question my purpose here, even if only for a fateful second or two — just enough indecision to get me killed. Chalmers was so going on that list.

Carlos climbed back into the boat, laughing, as the flunky tossed a plastic bag onto the quay. It landed heavily not far from where I was standing. I watched the boat reverse a short distance before it accelerated forward and surged into the night. I went to the bag and was surprised to find the Sig, three magazines, my wallet — the cash replaced by the folded front page of the El Diario — my cell, and even the bottle of DEET. It was like I was back where I started.

The wound on my hand needed attention. Wandering into town, the only shops open were the ones that sold booze. The bar on the water, the place where we’d stumbled across Perez barely forty-eight hours ago, was heaving with drunks and guitarists belting out tunes. I went in and bought two bottles of aguardiente and then headed to the bus station where I was hoping to find a room with a shower in the vicinity. At the station I lucked out, coming across a lone vendor selling an array of items to late-night travelers, from bags of potato chips to sewing kits. I bought a bunch of things including said chips and a sewing kit, and then found that room with a shower.

Standing under the cold-water tap, I soaked my hand and drank aguardiente. I examined the puffy red skin around the gaping cut, not a good sign. With the black blood soaked away I could still see tendons and the pain was growing more intense despite the help of the local sauce. With the bottle half drunk, I got out of the shower and went over to the table, where a length of cotton thread and a curved needle had been soaking in booze. I threaded the needle eventually, took another swig of aguardiente, and poured the alcohol in and around the cut. It stung like a bitch and made the flesh around the wound pucker. Taking the needle between shaking fingers, I sewed the two sides of red inflamed skin together with half a dozen large, painful sutures. To finish, I smeared toothpaste on the wound to dry it out.

Sitting on the chair, naked, I looked down at myself and drunkenly counted the scars I could see. There were plenty I couldn’t. What a fucking mess. I had broken a couple of fingers on my left hand a year or two earlier that occasionally gave me some trouble. Perhaps this injury to my right would even things out a little. The second bottle of liquor was waiting patiently. I opened it and drank half while I ate dinner, which was a packet of chips, and collapsed facedown on the bed, the timetable for the bus to Medellín under my cheek.

There was a Piper Cub mounted on top of the entrance gate to Hacienda Nápoles, Pablo Escobar’s retreat in the Colombian countryside near the town of Puerto Triunfo on the Magdalena River. According to the plaque on the gate, this very aircraft flew the drug lord’s first shipment to America. I’ve heard of self-made millionaires framing their first big check for sentimental reasons and I supposed the Cub was Escobar’s variation on the theme. I stood aside for yet another minibus turning into the driveway, full of tourists come to ogle the dead criminal’s lifestyle.

Drinking the last of a bottle of Gatorade, I flicked it into the trash. The jury’s out on the exact number of people Escobar murdered before he was shot dead himself on a rooftop in Medellín, but it was somewhere in the thousands. The fact that he was a greedy, manipulative, murdering psychopath who turned his country into a financial basket case with stratospheric murder rates was fading from the public consciousness. Folks had short memories.

I got back into my current mode of transport, an ancient purple Kia bought for cash off the sidewalk in Medellín. The thing blew smoke like an old pothead and had to be topped up with oil at every gas stop, but at least it was free of electronic bugs. Perez’s boast that he would be watching me had been on my mind from the moment he said it and I was pretty sure he wasn’t being metaphorical about it. I searched all my returned possessions and eventually found a tracking device secreted in the bottom of the bottle of DEET, which was now in a tourist’s backpack heading south to Rio de Janeiro.

Perez had scrawled the Saint’s address for me on that sheet of paper so he knew where I was going. I just didn’t like the thought of the little blade-stropping gnome sitting on my shoulder and knowing my every move.

As I drove along, the fence lining the road suddenly became new white posts and rails, which suggested money splashed around on maintenance and upkeep, something the authorities turning the Escobar place into a cheesy theme park seemed to lack. The land behind the fence was also not overgrown but a mixture of open land for grazing dotted here and there with islands of tress and thick bushes. The front entrance to Apostles’ place would be coming up soon — Hacienda Mexico. I was wondering what the Saint might mount on top of his gate, other than surveillance gear, when it flashed by suddenly on the right. It was ordinary, if a heavy steel gate between two reinforced brick columns in the middle of pretty much nowhere can be considered ordinary. It was the sort of gate designed to discourage everything from ram raiders to nosy US federal agents. I drove on, unsure about whether I should make an appearance with my hand the way it was. Swabs of iodine and hydrogen peroxide were getting on top of the wound and a local doctor had replaced the sutures I put in with ones that didn’t resemble a kid’s shoelaces. My paw was now thickly bandaged and looked like a Casper the Friendly Ghost hand puppet.

A helicopter appeared unexpectedly from behind a hill, came in low over the road and crossed the fence into the Hacienda not too far in front of me. I watched as it climbed a hundred feet or so, cleared some trees and descended, coming in to land. Was the Saint on the way in, or heading out? I drove on, looking for a place to make a U-turn.

Around a bend an old green Renault was pulled over onto the side of the road, its rear end jacked up. A woman was standing behind the vehicle, hands on hips, a little overwhelmed. I could use some cover for additional hang time in the vicinity, right? I pulled up behind and walked over. “Hola.”

“Hola,” the woman said without enthusiasm, her car’s trunk open.

“¿Necesitas ayuda?” I asked. Need help?

“Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish,” she lied with an accent that was equal parts Spanish and American.

“That’s a relief,” I told her. “Me neither. Need help changing that wheel?”

“No, thank you. I can do it,” she said.

“You sure?”

“A flat tire is nothing.”

The damsel was maybe late twenties, dark eyes, straight dark hair and olive skin. Despite the denial about the linguistic skills, her overall appearance promised that she could olé like a native, assuming they did that in this country. I walked past, glanced inside the car and caught a glimpse of a digital SLR camera with a high-power lens and a pair of powerful military-grade binoculars on the driver’s seat.

“Nice camera,” I remarked, and the look on her face suggested I’d just trodden on her foot.

“I am a birdwatcher,” she told me tersely.

I smiled. Of course she was. “Seen any yellow-bellied sapsuckers?”

“What are they?”

“Birds.”

“There is no such bird.”

I was sure she was wrong, but what did I know? “So, you’re good?”

“Yes, I’m good. Thank you.”

The thankyou was an afterthought and there was no thanks in it. I happened to see into the trunk area as the woman replaced the floor mat. “Well, have fun,” I said. “Buenos días.”

“Buenos días.”

I got back to my car and sat behind the wheel as the woman turned the handle on the jack, lowering the car. She had nice legs. In fact, I couldn’t help noticing that she was nice all over, except for an attitude on the wrong side of testy. I started the car and pulled onto the road, doing that U-turn and heading back the way I’d come. I waved farewell and wondered what she’d changed given there was no spare in the trunk.

The gate came up quickly, diverting my thoughts away from the woman. On impulse, I turned in, stopped and pulled off the sock puppet. What the hell — unemployed fugitives like me who were keen to seek gainful employment didn’t put these things off. I got out of the car and walked to an intercom covered by a surveillance camera, perched on top of the brick pillar like a robot bird peering over the edge. I pressed the button on the intercom. “Hola.”

Nothing.

“Hola,” I repeated and waited.

“Vete a la mierda,” growled a male voice. Or, in short, fuck off. No doubt someone was checking out my car and deciding that any person driving a piece of crap like that had no business ringing the bell.

“Juan de Jesús del Los Apostles de Medellín. He’s expecting me.”

“¿Quién es usted?” Who are you?

“Vin Cooper.”

Silence.

The green Renault drove past on the road behind me, the attractive non-Spanish-speaking Colombian woman with the non-flat tire. Her eyes flicked in my direction but only for an instant before they returned to the road in front of her.

“Wait there,” said a different voice — an American voice — through the intercom.

I waited, keeping half an eye on the driveway beyond the gate, watching for movement. A white golf cart eventually appeared, driven by a trim blond Scandinavian-looking type in his thirties, a Colombian goon in the passenger seat beside him large enough to compress the cart’s suspension so that it drove lopsided. The cart pulled up on the other side of the gate, which remained closed, and both men got out. The goon wore a coat, despite the heat and humidity. He pulled it away from his body a little to show the piece he carried in a holster below his armpit — why, I have no idea. Perhaps the warning was standard operating procedure in his line of work.

“Buenos días,” said the blond guy. “Can I help you?” I recognized his voice as the one in the intercom, an educated voice dressed in knitted shirt, shorts and boat shoes, no socks. We were a long way from any boats.

By way of an answer, I passed through the bars the now blood-stained note scribbled by the Tears of Chihuahua.

He scanned it. “You have some identification, Mr Cooper?”

I went for the folded newsprint in my back pocket, which triggered a response from the goon, the coat coming away from his gun in a hurry and his other hand reaching in.

“Easy, Mack,” I told him, slowing my movements. Producing the folded paper, I waggled it so they could both see it wasn’t going to shoot them and opened it out to show the front page of El Diario.

A phone began to ring, some Beyoncé tune. The guy in the boat shoes took out his cell, decided not to take the call and put it back in his pocket. “Señor Apostles is not here,” he informed me.

“I was told he would be,” I said and motioned the note in his hand, the details scrawled on it by Perez.

The guy returned the note through the bars. His cell rang again. He removed it from his pocket a second time and turned it off, this time without checking the screen. “Change of plans. He wants you to meet with him in Bogotá. Tonight, eight o’clock at Dry 73.”

“Dry 73?”

“Go to the Marriott. There is a bar. They do martinis. You like martinis?”

“No.”

He shrugged before turning and going back to the cart, the goon following. The cart reversed into a bay and then accelerated silently, disappearing quickly into the trees.

I scoped the general area. Deserted. The only noise was coming from my tinnitus. Bogotá was a four-hour drive, six in my piece of crap, assuming it was even capable of going the distance. I walked over to it, got in, reversed back out onto the road and stood on the gas. Glancing into the rear-vision mirror, I saw a black Range Rover turn out of the Hacienda Mexico gate and accelerate onto the road behind me. It came up fast in the rear-view mirror, seemingly in a hurry. Slowing down I made a passing gesture out my window; the big black off-roader ignored the offer and instead just ploughed into the back of my car. My neck snapped back against the headrest and then jack-knifed forward.

“Hey!” I yelled.

The vehicle rammed the rear bumper a second time and the Kia swerved and bucked and threatened to skid sideways.

That’s when the shooting started. The window behind me shattered, filling the air with crystals of safety glass. Holes appeared in the roof, letting in daylight.

I pulled the Sig. What the fuck? Or rather, who? Was it the guy in the boat shoes? The goon? Blood was everywhere. Had I been hit? And then I realized that reaching behind for my weapon had inadvertently ripped the surgical tape and the scab clean off the wound on my hand and blood was pouring out of it, making the Sig’s handgrip equal parts slick and sticky.

Whoever was behind the wheel of the Range Rover knew how to drive. And in this heap I couldn’t out-accelerate, out-brake or outmaneuver it. The road ahead was clear of traffic. I couldn’t see a way out. As it pulled adjacent with the Kia’s boot, I shot out the front tire. A puff of dust on the sidewall indicated a bull’s-eye as air rushed from the hole, but it made no difference. The damn thing had run-flat tires.

The four-wheel drive shouldered the Kia’s fender, which pushed the car into wild oversteer. It skidded sideways, came up on two wheels, and hit the dirt and grass on the side of the road. A spin came next, swapping end-to-end, all control gone. Then the car was on its side, sliding, the cabin filling with dust and glass and noise. A collision with something. Sky, earth, sky. And then, for a moment, silence. Fluids began to gurgle and steam escaped from under the hood. I was dazed. Somehow the Kia had ended up on its wheels, right way up, almost swallowed by a thick shroud of unkempt bush.

“Get out of the car,” a man yelled. My brain was still spinning. “I said get the fuck out!”

The door beside me was wrenched open. An arm came across my chest, the seatbelt released, and I was pulled out of the seat by my collar and dragged along the ground.

“Well look who we got here. Vin fucking Cooper.”

It was Kirk Matheson, a Glock in his shaking hand. He stood over me, the sling hanging loose from his neck. He was excited, pumped up, shaking like a cop who has just caught himself someone drifting in a parking lot.

“I saw your face in the surveillance camera. How fuckin’ lucky was that? I tried calling it through, but the fool wouldn’t pick up. So you’re after a job with the Angel?” He laughed. “You and I both know that ain’t gonna happen, Mr Under-fucking-cover.”

I moved my jaw around. It’d taken a hit somewhere along the way. Where was my Sig? What day was it?

“Get up!” he demanded.

I managed to roll onto my front and take a knee.

“You’re coming back to the hacienda. Once the Angel finds out what you’re all about, he gonna have some fun with you, my friend. Might even get Perez over, peel you like a spud.”

The world came slowly back into focus.

“I said get up!” More yelling.

I got to my feet, feeling shaky. And then Matheson was gone. He had been standing right in front of me. And then he was snatched away by a green blur. I turned my head in time to see the guy complete an arc through the air and come down heavily in some thick scrubby grass and bush back from the road like a bag of trash thrown from a speeding vehicle. The green flash turned out to be the Renault driven by the woman faking a flat. The driver’s door opened and the woman in question got out and ran to the body lying in the weeds. With a hit like that, Matheson should’ve been dead but he moved slow, like a snake shifting its coils in the sun. I gave my head a shake to clear it and walked over, drawing the Sig.

“You hit him,” I said.

“Of course I hit him,” she replied.

Yeah, okay, not the sharpest opener.

She looked down on the half-dead body of the former El Paso County Sheriff’s deputy.

“Why’d you hit him?”

“None of your business.” She flicked her hair away from her face. “You are lucky I din hit you.”

I still didn’t get it. “You were staking out the Saint’s hacienda.”

She answered by pulling a black Ruger pistol from the back of her jeans, aiming it at Matheson and almost managing to get off a shot before I snatched the pistol out of her hand. “Hey!” she snapped at me.

I dropped out the magazine, ejected the round in the chamber onto the ground and handed the weapon back to her.

Matheson groaned.

“I need him,” I told her.

“And who are you?” she asked.

“A guy looking for a job,” I said.

“With the Shit of Medellín?” she sneered. “Yes, I thin’ I should have hit you also. You are like them!”

I thought of those CSI tents dotting the apron at Horizon and the misspelled word on a jungle airstrip and hoped to god she was wrong.

“Your hand is bleeding,” she observed.

I glanced at it absently. It was. I crouched beside Matheson.

“What are you gonna do with him?”

“Take him for a little ride.” I saw the 9mm parabellum round on the grass, picked it up and handed it to her. Then I grabbed Matheson’s wrist, the one attached to his bad arm, and hoisted him onto my shoulder. He groaned again, semiconscious. “You mind getting the trunk?” I asked the woman as I lifted my chin at the Range Rover, straining under the load.

“Get it yourself.” She flicked her hair again and strutted off toward her car. Strut was something she knew how to do. For a moment I thought she was gonna turn and pout, or maybe wink, and then walk back the other way.

The keys were hanging conveniently out of Matheson’s pocket. I snatched them and thumbed the trunk’s release button, dumped him in the empty space, and then went back to the wrecked Kia to retrieve my bag and cover the tunnel it had made in the bush with some loose fronds. The Renault drove off with a handful of wheelspin. I wondered what the woman’s story was. She had some beef with Apostles otherwise why have his place under surveillance? She was also prepared to do a hit and run on Matheson and didn’t act or sound like any kind of law enforcement I was familiar with.

I cleaned up the general area, finding Matheson’s handgun in the weeds as well as his wallet. I threw the pistol into a nearby muddy pool and checked his wallet. A wad of pesos but no business cards or phone numbers so I stuffed it in his back pocket. A few cars came and went along the road, but none stopped. I pulled a couple of sets of cuff locks from my bag and hog-tied him with them. The guy was drifting in and out of consciousness but he’d come around soon enough and when he did I didn’t want any trouble.

Patting him down, hoping to find his cell, all I came up with was some loose change. He must have left it back at the ranch. I trotted to the driver’s door, hopped in and found a nice surprise: a cell phone sitting in a cradle. It had to be Matheson’s. The lock screen showed a default pattern. Thumbing the slide revealed the request for a passcode. I shrugged. Having the cell was better than not having it, but it was no help to me.

The Range Rover purred into life at the touch of a button. Making Bogotá in the time remaining suddenly didn’t seem like such a big deal.

“Cooper …”

Matheson had finally come to his senses.

“Cooper …!”

I turned on the radio. “China Grove” by the Doobie Brothers was playing.

“Cooper!”

That’s what I like about these Brit cars — great sound systems.

“HEY! MOTHERFUCKER!”

Pumping up the volume, I slipped the shift into drive and wondered if this was the model rover they sent to Mars.