Standoff

Thirty-three

I watched Juliana get out of the car and head to reception with a small rucksack, her ponytail bouncing as she walked. Was she checking in, having just arrived, or had she been staying here a while already? And what was she doing in Puerto Triunfo — staying somewhere strategic prior to visiting the Hacienda Nápoles, or hanging around for the same reason I was, hoping to pick up Apostles’ scent? Reclining in the seat, I settled in for the long haul but around twenty minutes later Juliana came out, still carrying the rucksack, changed into fitted jeans and a singlet, her dark hair no longer in a ponytail but held by a bright-orange headband. I got out of the car and followed her from a distance.

She stopped at a shop and bought a Zero. I followed her down a couple of streets as she window shopped.

My cell vibrated. I checked the screen. Arlen.

“Hey,” I said.

“Okay, you might be onto something, though what I’m not sure. You’re right about an inventory. They did one. Nothing is supposed to have been removed from the property. That’s one of the reasons the army’s there — to stop looters. I’ve just received a copy of that inventory, dated 17 July. After your escape from Apostles’ camp and before Laughlin. The inventory’s long — reads like a props list for an episode for Game of Thrones. Medieval fighting axes?”

“He’s a romantic. What about the horse?”

“It’s on the list.”

A tingling sensation ran up the back of my neck.

“Well it’s not there now,” I said.

“And you’re sure it hasn’t been moved to another room?”

“Not according to Jimanez. I think it has been heisted,” I said.

“Risky thing to steal from a cartel boss while he’s still alive and on the loose.”

“You’d think. What if the cartel boss stole from himself?”

“What, he just wandered back after hitting Laughlin and removed a few of his favorite things?”

“Why not? And it could have happened before Laughlin.”

“Whatever, it’s still brazen.”

“This is a guy who whacked a US military facility.”

“Good point.”

“What about the surveillance cameras?”

“I’ve put in a request on that front. No idea when they’ll get back to me, though.”

Mañana, most probably.

“It’s a long shot, Vin,” Arlen added.

“Got nothing to lose,” I said.

“And not a lot to gain either. What matters is not what he took, but where he took it to.”

Yeah. Confirming that he’d come back and run off with some of his stuff didn’t necessarily take us anywhere. I looked up and saw Juliana coming my way, carrying a poorly wrapped crossbow in a bag. “Arlen, gotta go.” I hung up on him and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of her.

“Tú!” she blurted. You!

“I thought you were gonna stop following me,” I said.

She tried to push past me, but I blocked her path again. “What you got there?” I nodded at the badly wrapped crossbow in her hand. “That a crossbow?”

A bunch of storm clouds rolled across her face. “I should have killed you.”

“You’ve never killed anyone in your life. Take it from me, you don’t want to start.”

She turned away and strode across the road. I went after her. “Juliana, I’ve got some explaining to do. Let me buy you a drink.”

“No, I don’t care what you have to say. I don’t do friendly chitter-chatter with my father’s people,” she snapped.

“I’m not your father’s people and never was.”

She stopped on the other side of the road and stared into my face. “You lie.”

“All the time when I’m working undercover.”

She scoffed. “Undercover. You?”

Was it so hard to believe? “C’mon. Vodka, lime and soda, right? What have you got to lose?”

She examined my face, weighing the pros and cons. The pros had it. “I give you five minutes, no more.”

I found us a bar facing the river. We could have anything we liked as long as it was aguardiente. With my cover blown, I figured I could tell Juliana pretty much everything now without compromising any secrecy acts. So I debriefed her on Horizon Airport, the gun battle with Kirk Matheson and my subsequent escape across the border into Mexico. I took the spin off my reasons for sending Matheson home after she batted him into the weeds with her Renault. The events in Bogotá she already knew about, but I recapped them anyway. Then I told her about the house in Juárez and the camp in the Mexican desert that I subsequently escaped from. There were some details omitted, a few of the more challenging details such as the ones that concerned Bambi.

When I was finished, half an hour and two-thirds of the bottle of aguardiente later, she asked, “Why have you come back? Why are you here?”

“Unfinished business,” I said.

“You want to kill Juan de Apostles — I can see it in your eyes.”

I shook my head. “No, the United States government wants him dead or alive, along with his pal the Tears of Chihuahua. Which usually means the preference is to bring the fugitive home in a pine box. But killing him and Perez with a bullet is too quick and easy. I want ’em to go the hard way — have them stand trial, get convicted and spend the next thirty years on death row never knowing whether the next meal will be their last.”

Juliana signaled the barman to bring another bottle. Our terms were improving. She filled the glasses with the last of the first bottle and held her glass to me to toast. “I apologize then,” she said, her smile sultry and her brown eyes wandering a little with the booze.

I clinked my glass with hers. “What for?”

“I didn’t say goodbye to you in Bogotá. I left when you took a shower.”

“Forget about it. Tell me about the crossbow. It belonged to your father, am I right?”

“You know this already?”

“An educated guess. The ranch was full of that stuff and some of it is missing.”

Juliana lifted it off the floor, out of the bag and tore the paper away. “My father is a collector of old weapons. This is a ballista, a French crossbow. It looks old, but it is just a copy.” She handed it to me.

It was heavy, solid and obviously made by a craftsman. Half a dozen bolts were taped to the intricately carved wooden stock. The mechanism for pulling back the thick gut string was still in the bag.

“When I visited him,” she continued, “he would tell me stories. I think these were used in the Hundred Years War against England, maybe around 1400?” She was unsure. “My father had this one made from original plans. It has a range of over three hundred yards. He had it made because he wanted to see how well it would work.”

“What was it doing in that shop?”

“I think it was given as payment to the man who owns the shop.”

“For what?”

She looked at me matter-of-fact. “The man also has a truck. He moved some of my father’s possessions to his new ranch.”

That electric tingle in the back of my neck returned, only this time it ran up the back of my neck, down my spine and into my nuts. I always know where he is. He tells me. I am his daughter. “And you know where that ranch is?”

“Yes, of course.”

We left Juliana’s Renault outside the motel and took the rental. I drove around for a while until I was sure we weren’t being tailed.

“When I left you, I got a job at a bar in the Zona G and also did some modeling work,” Juliana said, explaining her movements. “On the days I had no work, I would take a book, drive to the Hacienda Mexico, and just park there and wait. A stakeout, yes?”

“Did you eat donuts?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“He has many houses, but I was sure he would come back to the ranch. Did you know that the ranch was his favorite place in the world?”

I shook my head.

“This was his true home.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Are we clear?”

I checked the rear-view mirror again. There’d been no traffic in it for a while. “We’re good,” I told her. “Has he been in contact with you?”

“No. I have heard nothing.”

I’ll admit to being disappointed when I heard that, but there was something about Juliana’s certainty that convinced me to just go with it.

“There’s a road coming up on your left,” she said. “Turn there.”

It was a minor road, unsealed. We drove for a minute or two in silence until I prompted her. “So you were saying something about the ranch.”

“After what happened at the American base, it was all over the news, of course. Where is the last place people would think my father would dare to go? It would be the ranch. But I knew he would come back, even for a visit. So I waited. Some nights I slept in the car. Then, early in the morning maybe four days after the fight in your country, a truck came to the ranch when it was still dark. They had the security code. The gate opened and they went in.”

“What about the army?”

“What army?”

“Forget about it,” I said. “Then what?”

“Around an hour later they came out, closed the gate and drove away. I followed, headlights off. And where I’m taking you now is where the truck went.”

“So you don’t know for sure that your father is there?”

“Yes, of course he is there.”

“But you haven’t seen him.”

“He is there.”

Hmm … A joint Colombian Special Forces/CIA go team wouldn’t descend on this ranch without hard intelligence. The word of a resentful dependent wouldn’t cut it.

“Did you talk about your father with the guy in the shop, the truck owner?”

“No, of course I didn’t. Why would I send him a warning like that? Do you think I am stupid?”

“Just checking. So what was your plan?”

“What plan do you mean?”

“You still want to kill him, right?”

“Of course.”

“How were you going achieve that?” I asked her.

“I was going to steal a boat.”