by Sam Jones
Billy cleared out the remaining shards, hopped off the toilet, and told Maria to go first. Maria stood on the toilet, hoisted herself up, and slipped through to the other side.
“Go around!” an agent shouted from outside, their hustled footsteps now audible on the pavement.
Billy grabbed Nicky by the elbow. “You’re next, penny pincher.”
Nicky hoisted himself up and followed Maria out of the window just as three hard knocks rattled the door to the room.
“Open up!” one of the agents shouted.
Billy hopped back on the can.
SMASH! The door was kicked open, this time falling off its hinges from the repeated abuse it had sustained in the past five minutes as two of the agents moved inside, drew their guns, and began to clear the room.
Just as the blond made it into the bathroom, Billy slipped out the window at the back of the L-shaped, two-story motel at the bottom left of the L. His feet hit the pavement of the narrow alleyway, an eight-foot-tall concrete wall painted pink on his right and nothing but clustered-up palms behind it draping over.
Maria and Nicky were already fifteen feet ahead of Billy and moving left toward the corner that peeked around into the parking lot out front. “Billy!” Maria said in a hushed tone. “Hustle up!”
Billy heard shoes crunching on the gravel behind him. It was subtle, barely audible. Most people would miss it. But Billy Reese, veteran of the Vietnam War, was able to make it out despite the ambiance and his heavy breathing.
Feet, don’t fail me now.
He spun on his heel, raised his Colt, and had the redheaded CIA agent dead in his sights just as the man rounded the corner behind him.
The guy knew he was screwed the second he saw Billy and froze in his tracks.
“Drop it and kick it away,” Billy ordered.
The guy obliged. “Easy, man,” he said, kicking away his piece.
Billy cocked back the hammer on his Colt.
“Fuck easy.”
Billy backed up, gun still trained on the redhead as he hustled toward Maria and Nicky, moving in an all-out sprint the second he reached them at the corner.
The blond and the raven-haired man arrived at the redhead’s location just as he scooped his gun back up and shouted to them, “They ran back to the parking lot!”
The agents doubled back.
Maria, Billy, and Nicky booked it toward the Trans-Am Billy had snagged earlier from the safe house, which was now parked toward the center of the lot. As he produced the keys, all the different law enforcement/government agency reps converged onto the parking lot at the same time.
“Start the car,” Billy said as he tossed the keys over to Maria and took cover behind the beige Volvo parked next to the Trans-Am just before the agents rounded the corner at the bottom of the L.
Billy raised his Colt and squeezed the trigger.
He fired high and wide at the agents right as they stepped foot on the lot, all eight shots, wide enough to miss, but close enough to push them back into cover.
The agents retreated immediately as the rounds went over their heads and fell back behind the corner of the motel as Maria started up the Trans-Am and pulled up to Billy. Billy hopped in the back as she peeled out, the agents running out of cover and toward the rear end of the Volvo but giving up the chase quickly as Maria put the pedal to the floor and created nothing but distance. Billy was flat on his back on the seat as Maria took a right, a left, and then another right, zigzagging the Trans-Am as far away from the agents as possible and deep into the belly of the city.
Billy’s heart was racing. It felt like all the adrenaline from the whole ordeal, all the action over the last few days, was finally catching up to him.
Jesus.
I just shot at the CIA.
Maria glanced at him through the rearview mirror. “Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”
Billy sat up. “I’m fine. Just catching my breath.”
In the front passenger’s seat, Nicky was shaking and sweating and generally looking like shit.
Billy nudged him on the arm to get his attention.
Nicky jumped.
Billy forked a thumb over his shoulder. “Switch seats with me.”
Nicky, his mind racing in all kinds of directions, didn’t want to move. He was paralyzed from the action. Incapacitated with fear.
“Why?” he asked.
Now Billy was pissed. “’Cause you’re an asshole,” he said. “A real big one. Now get in the back seat before I slap you so hard you’ll travel back to the fuckin’ future.”
Nicky switched seats with Billy and kept his head down and his mouth shut.
Billy slipped up front, rolled down the window, and changed out the magazines in his Colt. It was quiet for about ten seconds before Maria said to him, “You just shot at—”
Billy held his hand up and shut his eyes—Please don’t.
Maria let it go.
She breathed. Counted to ten. Her body was wracked with tension. She was off the grid. Off the radar. Working against orders. The whole situation wreaked havoc on her mind and made her feel like she was tumbling down a rabbit hole with no end in sight.
But the fact that she was doing it for the right reasons sustained her sanity.
She looked at herself in the mirror—That girl’s parents deserve to know…
“How did they find us so quick?” she asked.
Billy held up a little black square made of plastic, about the size and dimensions of a ring box. “They bugged the car,” he said as he tossed the thing outside.
Maria pounded a fist on the steering wheel. “Damn it.”
“Yeah,” Billy said. “Someone must have done it back when they were driving us around in circles.”
“At least you got rid of it. Now what?”
Billy looked in the rearview mirror into the backseat. “How were you planning on getting out of town?” he asked Nicky as he racked the slide back on his Colt.
“You know a guy named Tony Soza?” Nicky asked him.
Billy knew the guy.
Of course I know the guy.
Nicky said, “He’s just waiting on me to call him. He was going to fly me to Vermont once I collected the rest of my money.”
“Is he at his hangar?”
“Probably.”
“You remember where it’s at?”
“Yeah. It’s in Marathon.”
“Good. Tell Maria where to go then. After that, you can give us the head’s up about the best restaurants to hit up in Bogotá.”
Nicky hung his head. “I’m a dead man. You guys just killed me…”
Billy finished reloading his Colt, holstered it, and began fiddling with the car radio to give him something to do. “It’s pessimistic thinking like that,” he said to Nicky, “that causes cancer. Seriously.”
“Billy,” Maria chimed in, motioning toward the radio deck. “Please don’t. Not now.”
“It calms me down.”
“We just shot at the CIA. Scratch that—you shot at the CIA.”
“And?”
“And, I’m a little on edge quite frankly.”
“How does turning on the radio make that worse?”
“Christ. You’re a five-year-old.”
“Now you’re just being petty…”
He continued to turn the dial.
“Please don’t be a dick,” Maria said, shaking her head, just wanting him to stop.
Billy began to look offended. “The language you’re using right now is so uncalled for.”
“You’re not—”
Billy wagged his finger, like an adult scolding a child. “Uh-uh,” he said. “I’m being civil right now, and you’re running that big ole potty mouth of yours like some kind of sailor.”
Maria chuckled. “‘Potty mouth’?”
“A big one,” Billy added, smirking but trying to hide it for sake of the performance.
She laughed.
He laughed.
“Guys,” N
icky called out from the back seat. “Can you not joke around right now? I’m really freaking—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Maria and Billy said in unison. Unplanned.
They caught eyes.
Complacent. At ease.
But then they quickly looked away.
It was a much-needed moment of alleviation for both of them.
41
THE DJ ON the radio announced the time: “It’s eight and twelve minutes in the p.m., kids,” his groovy voice said, “and we’ve got plenty of hits to take care of you for the rest of the night. Next up is a personal favorite of mine, and it’s actually a cover of a Hall and Oates song from 1980. Ladies and gentleman, from Paul Young, ‘Every Time You Go’”—his voice dropped to a cheesy baritone—“‘Away’…”
“Jesus.” Billy sneered at the radio next to the mechanic’s toolbox, sitting at a table with a beer in his hand and his eye on the road leading up to Tony Soza’s hangar in Marathon. “Paul Young sucks.”
Maria ducked underneath the wing of the Hawker 400 currently being fueled up by a kid who looked no older than twelve but moving with the temperament of a seasoned, twenty-year professional mechanic, complete with a cigarette hanging from his lip, and a pouty-lipped scowl on his face.
When Maria and Billy showed up to the hangar with Nicky in tow, flashed their badges, and told Tony Soza that his original contract with Nicky had been cancelled, Tony was more than happy to oblige.
They would just have to pay him double.
Billy and Maria were more than happy to the terms, because they made Nicky foot the bill, along with additional gas money that Tony now factored in for a trip to Bogotá.
It pretty much wiped out all of Nicky’s funds he had stuck around Miami to collect by the time all was said and done.
“How are we looking?” Billy asked Maria as she sat across from him.
“Nicky’s grabbing a map,” she said, reaching for the bottle of beer Billy snagged from the fridge in the corner and taking a swig, “and I just finalized the route with Tony.”
Billy cheeked his watch. “How long before your L-T realizes you’re M-I-A?”
“She probably already has,” Maria said. “But I’ll handle the consequences when I get back. We’re too far along at this point to quit.”
Billy took a long look at Maria, admiring her.
In every way.
A kind of charm about her had grown on him in the past few days. He wasn’t lusting. He wasn’t getting hot under the collar.
He just…liked her.
“You know that I can see you staring at me, right?” she said to him, less annoyed at him than usual. “I’m two feet away from you.”
Billy looked away. “Hey, man. I’m just…appreciating the fact you’ve been hanging in with me through all this. That’s all.”
“Well,” Maria said, “it’s like we stated before: we both have reasons why we’re here. We’re in this together.”
“Yeah, but…I don’t know how many cops would risk getting nailed to the wall in almost every sense imaginable for justice, especially when it probably means her career. We both know we’re in trouble when we get through this. If we get through this.”
“Thought you said talk like that leads to cancer.”
Billy pointed a finger at her and winked. “Touché.”
Nicky walked into the hangar from the adjoining office with a folded-up map clutched in his hands, still on edge, his eyes darting around, suspicious of every person, corner, and light fixture his eyes landed on.
He spread the map of Bogota out on the table and flattened it. “Okay,” he said. “This is the location where Yurek and the other pilots were going to be flying in to. See this spot to the east?” He pointed to a part of the map nestled in a valley. “That’s it. Right there. The exact coordinates Kruger gave us for the drop.”
“And what exactly were you guys supposed to be delivering to him?” Maria asked him, the question lingering in everyone’s mind.
Nicky looked at them both. “Kruger’s people never told us.”
Billy squinted. “What?”
“He just gave us the weight,” Nicky said, “a time, and a destination. His guys would show up to load the product in the planes at our hangars two hours before we were scheduled to leave.”
“And I’m guessing he told you to not look inside the boxes too, right?”
Nicky nodded. “He was very specific.”
Billy and Maria looked at each other with perturbed looks on their faces.
More questions, less answers.
“If it was dope,” Maria said, “why would Kruger bother hiding it?”
“Right,” Billy said. “I would think the same thing if it were weapons, too.”
“Unless it’s an unconventional weapon.”
Billy shook his head. “Makes no sense. We’re just making shit up now. It’s gotta be something else. Something we probably can’t think of off the top of our heads.”
He turned to Nicky. “Yurek didn’t have any clue about your government connections,” he said. “Right?”
“Not at all,” Nicky said.
“Any they didn’t have any idea what was going on with your deal with Kruger? The real details?”
“They were under the impression that Yurek was going to be flying a load of coke down to Nicaragua next month for Kruger. I was just planning on telling them the deal was called off after we finished the real one in Colombia.”
“So all they really only knew was his name. You were misleading them in every direction while you finalized the real deal.”
“Right. And I should have never told them a fucking thing in the first place…”
Billy looked at Maria. “The CIA was onto Kruger already,” he said. “They knew who he really was. That he was Sykes. But all they had was his alias, Kruger, so they just tracked it down whenever it popped up on their radar. In this case when Nicky told them that they he had struck up a deal with Kruger to fly some shit down to Colombia.”
“They probably started to get suspicious,” Maria added, “that Nicky was bullshitting them after a certain point, too.”
“Maybe,” Nicky said, trying to fool himself into believing that he was a better liar than he actually was.
Billy stood up. Started pacing. “No,” he said. “No, Maria’s right. They knew something was up. It’s the only reason they were outside that convenience store after Yurek was killed. They were looking for him. For Nicky. Nicky just decked out before they got a line on him. But they knew about Yurek, so they kept an ear out in case his name came up.”
“In this case,” Maria said, “they probably overheard over a radio band that Yurek had gotten shot at a convenience store and came running.”
“It also explains why they approached us outside the convenience store afterward,” Billy said. “Why they grilled me. Why that guy gave me any information, true or not. They must know about Kruger’s deal. They just don’t have the specifics. They thought maybe I did, hence that whole song-and-dance routine on the sidewalk.”
Maria said, “And then they tailed us.”
“Right. But either way, I still think we have the jump on them with what we know. We need to move. Now. We’ll have Hector and Tony drop us off in Bogotá, then we stake out the drop site and take Kruger down before the CIA puts two and two together.”
“Don’t trust them enough to help?”
“Not at all.”
“Me either. But how do you plan on the just the two of us taking Kruger down?”
Billy winked. “One step at a time, Delgado…”
“Well,” she said, not amused, “won’t Kruger just change out the location to make sure nothing is left to chance?”
Billy thought about it.
He walked back over to the map. “Show me where your planes have flown before,” he said to Nicky. “Other landing strips. Places you’ve used before or know about.”
Nicky ran his finger along the map and pointed out a doz
en different locations. “We’ve mostly picked up product from these places,” he said, pointing from one part of the map to the next, “and then we flew it back into Miami. Couple of other places, too. Mostly Miami.”
“Flight time to Bogota from here?”
“Three hours and some change,” Nicky said. “Sometimes four, depending on the route.”
Billy pointed at the valley where the deal was taking place. “Did you ever pick up from here before?”
“No,” Nicky said. “It was actually just forested area before Kruger came in. His people said they razed the trees and built a runway, apparently.”
“What for?” Maria asked, mostly to herself. “There are plenty of spots to drop off dope already.”
Billy stared at the map.
Thinking.
“You don’t take drugs into Bogota,” he said. “So what the hell is Kruger flying in?”
He looked closer at the valley as he thought of how his friend, Sykes, would treat a situation like this.
What would he do?
What would he do?
“He’s not going to change the location,” Billy said. “He’s using this place for some very, very specific reason.”
The kid mechanic pounded his fist on the side of the plane. “Listo.”
Maria rubbed her hands together and hopped off the table. “Well,” she said. “Shall we?”
Billy wagged a finger. “Now you’re stealing my lines.”
He followed her toward the plane.
And, in typical Billy Reese fashion, an obscure thought crept to the front of his mind: Tommy and Heather.
He couldn’t recall how long it had been since he talked with either of them.
A few days, maybe?
Whatever was causing him to think of them felt almost…cosmic, like a psychic link that twins had or mothers shared with their children when one of them was…
What word am I thinking of?
Distressed.
“Hey, space cadet,” Maria called out to him.
Billy got out of his head and held up a finger. “I need a minute.”
He moved to the office, almost hustling, and spotted the kid mechanic swiping a beer out of the fridge.
“Teléfono,” Billy said to him.
