“What part?”
“You are here to be the smart one. Be smart. Figure out why this man is dead on the floor and my brother is not here.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then,” she said without pausing in her search of the body, “This floor is big enough for two bodies.”
Zack took the hint. “Well, Looks like El Tigre blew you off for his partner. A police officer.”
“Impossible. My brother would never . . .” She thought for a moment. “Yes. He would. So why is this man dead?”
“Their partnership went south for some reason. Someone got greedy? Not enough money, maybe? Your brother killed his partner,” Zack pointed out. “Means he still has the Bible. Maybe the cop tried to take it. Threatened to arrest El Tigre, perhaps?”
Her eyes regarded him. He could feel it right down to his toes.
“I do not think so,” she said. “If he was going to arrest him, he would have brought more men. He would have brought a strike team. The police here are cowards. They do not go by themselves to make arrests. Something else happened here.” She stood up, wiping her hands against each other. Walking past him to the kitchen table, she picked up a bracelet. It was a woven braid, black and red, with a tiny silver trinket in the shape of a tiger hanging from it. “Something else happened, and I know what it is. My brother has been taken hostage.”
Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.
Chapter 23
Zack went to pace the room, but his path would have taken him right across the dead man.
“What makes you think he was kidnapped?”
“We have our little signals. You do not grow up together in the Víbora without taking precautions. We have a code. If one of us is in danger, we leave our bracelet where it will be found.” She held up her arm to show off a similar piece of jewelry on her wrist. A silver coiling snake hung from her bracelet.
“Okay, handy. He’s in trouble. Got a code to tell us where he is?”
She looked around the room. “I do not think he had time to leave one here . . .”
Out the door, she went again, and into the driveway. With one last look at the dead police officer, Zack followed. The thought crossed his mind that everyone looked pretty much the same, lying face down in their own blood.
In the driveway, he found La Cobra walking around, scuffing the dirt with her boot. After a moment, she bent closer to a collection of rocks. With a cry of triumph, she bounced back up and rushed to the truck. “Come, Mister Cole. My brother has told me exactly where they are going.”
He looked down at the pebbles and stones and dirt and couldn’t see anything more than just that. “This is a message?”
“Come!” she called, already in the truck. The engine roared, and Zack had to jump to get in before she drove away.
She was a madwoman as she drove, speeding recklessly around the few vehicles they came up behind. Zack pulled his seatbelt out and clicked it securely in place. “Don’t kill us before we get there. Which is where exactly?”
“An old Azquatels storage facility.”
“Whose facility?”
“The Azquatels.”
“A rival mara?“
La Cobra gave Zack an evil look. “No one goes up against La Víbora,” she said and then turned her attention back to the road. “The Azquatels deal in religious antiquities. Or I should say dealt . . . la chonta shutdown most of their operation last month.”
“So it was the Azquatels that stole the Bible two years ago?” La Cobra shrugged and Zack continued thinking out loud. “Then the police seized it last month and then returned it to its rightful owner. Then, your brother stole it and murdered Father Ferguson . . .”
“The Azquatels must have found out El Tigre had the Bible,” La Cobra added.
“Then they killed the cop and kidnapped your brother? This is sounding more like a suicide mission than a rescue mission.” He had no interest in rescuing El Tigre. The only thing Zack wanted to rescue was the Tyndale Bible.
Laughing, a crazy light in her eyes, she reached over and rested her hand on his leg and squeezed. “Do not worry, Mister Cole. When we are done, you and I will celebrate life.”
He decided not saying anything was the best course of action in this case. After another squeeze, she put both hands on the wheel again, and they were zipping down the road well past the posted limit.
When they drove off the road through a field, he wasn’t even surprised.
Cobra-girl dodged trees and drove around rock outcroppings, bouncing over depressions and deep holes. The pickup rattled and squealed in protest.
“What are you doing?” he finally asked.
“Shortcut.”
“This is a shortcut?”
“Yes. A shorter way than the long way around.”
“I know what a shortcut is!” he said, just as they came to a halt right in the center of a group of straight, tall trees.
When she turned the engine off, she tossed him the keys. “Here, hold onto these.”
“You take my gun but give me the keys to the truck?”
“You know how to drive a stick, yes?”
“I know how to drive a stick, yes, but if you expect us to get out of this alive maybe you can let me in on the details?”
She took his hand and brought them to her lips to kiss the fingertips. “For luck. What you need to know, Mister Cole, is that my brother is there.”
She pointed off through the trees and when Zack looked, he saw a long, gray warehouse, four or five times the size of the one back at the Víbora encampment.
“How do you know they brought him here?”
“The black stones.”
He couldn’t see much of it through the trees, but it was enough to see the black gravel driveway that led to the long, gray metal building.
“Okay,” he mused, “so we go in there like we did at the house? Have his sister call him out?”
“I doubt that would be advisable. The people who have kidnapped him will not respond well to such a blunt approach.”
Zack grabbed his backpack and asked, “Then what did you have in mind?”
He was sorry he asked.
Chapter 24
A few minutes later Zack found himself walking across the clearing around the building, hands in the air behind his head, figuring how many different ways this could go wrong.
He paused and looked left, then right, trying to see everything around him.
The main door was on the east side of the building facing him, near this end. The windows above and around the doors stared back at him. That’s what this cleared space was for. To allow people on the inside to see anyone who was approaching long before they became a threat.
Zack didn’t feel like much of a threat right now.
He felt like bait.
Ten steps.
He was the bait.
Twenty steps.
Soon he was within one good sprint of the doors.
No one had come out.
No one had shot at him.
Was anyone even here?
A shadow passed behind the dirty windows to the left of the main door.
When the door opened, Zack stopped, hands still behind his head.
This was where the plan got sketchy.
He didn’t like this part of the plan. Way too easy for someone to die. Mostly himself.
“Alto!“ the burly man in the doorway demanded. He was tall, lean with corded muscle under his dark skin. His handlebar mustache was thick and bushy. His eyes raked Zack up and down, a measuring look, and then he switched to English. “Gringo. What are you doing here? You are trespassing!”
“No, really.” Zack kept his voice friendly even though he was feeling anything but. “Listen. Let me explain.”
He started to bring his hands down.
The man practically jumped through the doors, pulling a black semi-automatic from his waistband and aiming it at Zack. “That is far enough, señor! Get down. On the
ground. Now!”
From around the corner, right on cue, Cobra-girl swung herself out of hiding and had her gun up against the man’s neck with three quick strides. She was shorter than this guy, but she had the drop on him.
The advantage was hers.
Zack saw now why they called her the cobra.
Swift and deadly.
“No, señor,” she hissed to the thug. “You will drop your weapon, and you will get down on the ground. Now.”
The man swallowed, his head held at an odd angle with the gun against his cheek. Turning his gun sideways, he dropped it in the dirt at his feet.
Then he laughed at her.
Her whole body radiated surprise. She glanced over at Zack, who could only shrug. Why was this madman laughing when a gun was about to blow his head off?
“I don’t know what you find so funny,” she said to the man, shoving her gun harder into his face. “I will kill you if you do not do as I say. Where is my brother?” The man snickered. “Tell me or die!” La Cobra screamed at him.
Zack wasn’t sure which was more intimidating, the woman or the gun.
Whichever one it was, it worked. The man’s smile turned harsh, and he carefully motioned with a thumb behind him. “He is in the building. There.”
“See what good neighbors we can be?” she said sweetly.
He made a noise in his throat and then spit. “I will never soil myself with your—”
The gun in her hand reared back and then struck on his cheek before he could finish. He winced and dropped to his knees in the dirt, one hand to his face. Zack rushed forward and grabbed the gun before it got back into the wrong hands.
There was blood on the guy’s cheek.
The Cobra had struck.
“Now,” she said, circling to put herself behind him, back to the open door of the storage building. “You will bring me to my brother. You will take me to El Tigre!”
“No need,” a new voice said. “I’m right here.”
A tall, thin man stepped out of the shadows behind her. He wore a black silk shirt unbuttoned with black jeans. Below his neck was a tattoo that read, La vida por las maras, ‘the life for the gang.’ A long hunting knife hung from his belt at his left side and in his right hand, he held a chrome-plated semi-automatic pistol like he was born with it resting there. He looked to be about Zack’s age, thirty-one or thirty-two years old and had three parallel scars tracing their way up the right side of his face. This was La Cobra’s brother.
El Tigre with his stripes.
“Now, sister,” he said. “You and your new friend over there will drop your guns, as you made my friend drop his. Then, we will step inside. We have much to discuss.”
Zack lifted his hand out away from his body and tossed the gun back toward the first thug, still on his knees with his bleeding wound.
Another fine mess he’d walked into.
Chapter 25
A squirming knot was twisting up his insides. Zack was getting that sinking feeling he always got when things were about to go from really, really bad, to worse.
He had no idea how he was going to get out of this.
He sat in a small dark room tied to La Cobra, back to back in metal chairs. Their hands tied behind the chair backs, their feet tied to the metal legs. Then, just for good measure more rope was tied around their waists and chests. Houdini might have been able to find a way out of this, but he couldn’t. They were in deep, deep trouble.
“Can I ask you something?” he said to her, tugging uselessly at his bonds.
“We are trussed up like two goats meant for slaughter, Mister Cole. I would expect that if you were going to ask me something, this would be the time to do it.”
“Then let me ask you this. Can I ask your name? Your real name?”
He felt her stiffen against his back. “My name?”
“Yeah, you know, something I can call you other than The Cobra?”
She was silent for a long time. He thought maybe he’d offended her somehow. Like her name was a big secret, and everyone in the country knew better than to ask about it.
“Ana,” she said, in a small voice like a little girl. “My name is Ana.”
“Nice to meet you, Ana.” The name rolled off his tongue. It was a lovely name. It made her seem more human. “Now, do you have any idea why your brother lured us here, Ana? I mean, if he wanted us dead he would have done it outside, right?”
Ana remained silent.
They were alone, for the moment. Their captors had forced them into this big empty room, tied them up like this, and then turned the lights off as they left. They hadn’t been back yet. Zack estimated that was about twenty minutes ago. He counted six other men in the building as they were escorted to the room. The only thing he knew now that he hadn’t known before was the big thug’s name: Jorge. The Spanish name for George. He’d almost had to laugh at that. There was the Tiger and the Cobra . . . and George.
“So your brother’s got quite the set of scars.”
“Si,” she agreed. “He was tortured once. Those scars are a reminder.”
That wasn’t exactly something you heard every day. Or ever, in Zack’s experience. “Who tortured him?”
“It does not matter. He killed them. They are dead. He is alive, branded forever with those stripes. Forever after that, he has been known as El Tigre.”
“Hired hit man and gang enforcer?”
“We do what we can to survive in our country, Mister Cole.” He heard the not-so-subtle rebuke in her words and knew better than to push it.
Chapter 26
The fluorescent lights in the dark room flickered to life.
Zack tugged at his bonds and the rough fibers of the rope bit deep into his skin.
With their backs to each other, their seats were positioned in the room so that they could both turn their heads—Zack to his left and Ana to her right—and see the door.
El Tigre and Jorge strode into the room. Jorge carried a rectangular something in one hand, wrapped in a soft brown cloth.
Zack’s heart thumped in his chest.
Was that the Tyndale Bible?
“Para que me trajiste aqui?“ Ana snapped at them.
“Dear sister,” El Tigre purred. “Remember your manners. Our guest does not speak Spanish.”
Well, yes, he did, but there was no reason to let that out. Might give him an edge if they didn’t think he knew what they were talking about at any given moment.
“We will speak English,” her brother continued. “For now.”
“Why are you doing this?” Ana hissed at him.
“You have information I need, dear sister. You sent me after the Bible, and I have retrieved it, at no small risk to my own life.”
Zack couldn’t keep his tongue still. “Risk? You killed a defenseless man of God. What were you scared of? Was he going to pray for your soul or something?”
Jorge stepped forward and lifted his free hand, ready to backhand Zack.
“Stop,” El Tigre spoke that single word and Jorge stepped back, glaring at Zack. “You see, dear sister? You have people who follow you without question, as do I. The tables have turned. Now. You sent me after this Bible and led me to believe its only value was on the black market.” He shook a finger in the air. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. We both know this is not true. The book has other value. Other . . . power. You are here to tell me what that power is. If you do not, then you will die. I am sorry because you are family after all, but that is the way of business.”
Jorge snickered and dropped his bundled package on the nearby table.
“You will not die right away, of course. No, no. First, your friend here will die. Then I will be forced to see how much pain your body can withstand, inch by inch.”
She spat at him.
He reached out for her, grabbing her dark hair, yanking her head back. “Since you of all people know what I am capable of, I suggest you begin telling me what I need to know.”
Her head was held painful
ly backward in his grip.
Ana laughed in her brother’s face.
That apparently surprised him.
With a shove, he let go of her and stepped back again. “What is so funny, dear sister?”
“What is so funny, querido hermano is that I do not have the information you seek.” Before Zack could even take in a breath to tell her to shut up, she said it. “Mister Cole has the knowledge to decipher the book’s secrets.”
El Tigre turned his narrow eyes on him.
“Uh, hi. Name’s Zack Cole. I’d shake hands, but . . .”
“Gringos,” El Tigre sneered. “Always so funny. Tell me, Señor Cole, what is it that you do?”
“Me? Oh. I’m just a software engineer here on vacation.”
Ana swore in Spanish. “He is an expert on biblical artifacts and a smuggler. Do you think I brought him along because he’s bien guapo?“
Zack didn’t know how to respond to that. He’d never been thrown under the bus in such a nice way. “You think I’m handsome?”
She used her own head to rap him on the back of his. He shrugged. It seemed like the best time to ask the question as far as he was concerned. In another couple minutes, he might be dead.
“Well, well, well,” El Tigre mused. “This is amusing, after all. I brought you here thinking to make you tell me the book’s secrets, yet you did not know them. But, you bring the man who does know. By trapping you, I have trapped him. Fate. She is a strange mistress.”
“She likes to bite, too,” Zack muttered.
Jorge broke out laughing so hard he had to hold an arm across his stomach. “Le gusta morder!“
El Tigre’s smile stretched the scars on his cheek. “My friend thinks you are a comedian, Señor Cole.” He pulled out a knife from a sheath in his boot and thrust it down at them. A couple quick slashes and Ana was free of the ropes. “I do not think you are so funny. It appears I have the hostage I need. Go away now, sister. Tell father this is no longer his concern.”
Ana stood, rubbing at her wrists. She stared at Zack for a long moment, then turned and argued with her brother in hushed tones. Zack caught most of it. El Tigre’s own father would have him killed if he didn’t return the Bible. She threatened to add matching scars on the other side of his face . . . or somewhere else. He wasn’t sure about that last part.
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