Verdugo Dawn

by Blake Banner

  I didn’t say anything. I knew I was walking a line, and I had to tread carefully. I needed him to believe I had information he wanted, but I didn’t want him to need it so badly he started cutting bits of me off and feeding them to his piranhas.

  I didn’t expect the punch. He was brutishly strong and rammed his right fist into my floating ribs. It hurt. It winded me and set my heart pounding. Hunter and Lovejoy grabbed my arms and Mendez drove a second punch home. I was ready for this one and absorbed it, but it still hurt like hell and left me lightheaded. The two backhanders set my head ringing, but brought me out of the stupor caused by the body punches.

  He smiled at me, but spoke with repressed rage. “I would like to do more. I hate you. I really fockin’ hate you, and your fockin’ lies. And fockin’ around with my woman! Bot I know you can take a lot of punishment, and I ain’t got the time to waste on you. So we gonna cut the crap. You gonna tell me…” He counted the items off on his fingers. “Who you fockin’ are!” He stepped up close, grabbed a fistful of my face in his hand and screamed at me, less than an inch away, “Who you fuckin’ are! You hear me, you piece of shit? Who you fockin’ are!”

  He let go, paced away and then came back, with two fingers raised. “Two! You gonna tell me who you work for! Who set you up here…”

  Hunter interrupted. “Who classified your files.”

  Mendez snarled, “Shut the fock up when I am talking! Who sealed your files, who is paying you to make these hits! You gonna tell me all that, with names, numbers, details—every fockin’ thing!”

  “I already told your men, I have amnesia. I don’t remember anything.”

  “Bot you remember blowin’ Ivory’s head off, and you remember killin’ the boys from the Chupacabras, and Ivan…”

  “So you say, Mendez. But here’s a news flash, pal. Just because you say something don’t mean it’s true. You talk a lot of shit, and one hundred percent of it is just that, shit. Nobody employs me, nobody tells me what to do, I’m in New Mexico because I woke up here. But the rest of it?” I shook my head. “That’s a fantasy, pal. Your fantasy, not mine!”

  He nodded vigorously for a long time. His face flushed red and his eyes were bright. I wondered if he was going crazy. Finally, he said, “Oh, yeah. We gonna find out!” He turned to the apes on the door and snapped, “Traigan a la puta!”

  They opened the door and lumbered down the steps into the cold night. I heard them tramp across the dust and a moment later, there was the thud of a trunk being closed.

  Next thing, Sole was being thrust up the stairs into the RV. Her hands were bound with duct tape and she had a strip over her mouth. She stared at me for a second, but her eyes were wild with terror and she looked away again, at Mendez.

  He considered her a moment, then strolled over to the large, silver fridge and pulled it open. He helped himself to an iced bottle of Bollinger, a frosted glass, a plastic tub of caviar and, from a bread bin, a basket of crackers. Then he organized himself in his chair, with all his bits on the coffee table in front of him.

  As he prepared a cracker, he held up one finger, without raising his eyes.

  “There is no fault, no right or wrong, but thinking makes it so.” He stuffed the cracker in his mouth and spoke with his mouth full. “That is Shakespeare. A very wise man.”

  “Really? Corny quotes from the Middle Ages while you eat caviar? Where’s your white angora cat?”

  He glanced at me from under his brow. “To you, it is a joke. For a barefoot boy who fought his way from the slums of Hermosillo, it is important.”

  “Yeah, maybe it would be, for a barefoot boy who fought his way from the slums of Hermosillo. But you’re not that boy. You were born to wealth and privilege unimaginable to most American kids. So can the clichés, Mendez.”

  He smiled on one side of his face and popped the cork on the champagne. He glanced briefly at Sole, like this was something they used to share, but aside from that, he ignored her. He poured himself some champagne and said, “Rabelais: Do as thou wilt shall be all of the law. Do you know that one? Most people attribute it to Alistair Crowley, or even Francis Dashwood, but it was Francois Rabelais.”

  “Is that your North Star? Do what the hell you like?”

  “It is the Law of Thelema. Do you know what Thelema is, Verdugo?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  He smiled like I’d said something funny. “Thelema is Greek, it means will. Intention. The great will, the ultimate intention of the Self to consume and to possess. To act in accordance with that Will is to walk in the light.”

  “So you justify all your murder, torture and theft by claiming you walk in the light of the ultimate will…”

  He drained his glass and refilled it. “There is no justification. There is no need for one. I do what I will. That is the law. Do you know what Yahweh means?”

  “No, Mendez, but I fear you are going to tell me.”

  “When God appeared to Moses, Moses asked him, ‘What shall I tell the people is your name?’ And God said, ‘Tell them my name is, Ehyeh, I Am,’ and Moses said, ‘They won’t understand,’ so God said, ‘Then tell them my name is Yahweh. He Is.’”

  “Fascinating. What’s your point?”

  “Humanity was offered the understanding that each one of them was God. God is ‘I Am.’ But in their ignorance, they failed to grasp the understanding that their will was supreme. So God chose the third person of the Hebrew verb ‘to be,’ and became ‘He Is,’ and in this simple act, those who worshipped Yahweh abdicated their freedom and their power. They abdicated their power in favor of any ego who is capable of understanding the Law of Thelema. I am, and doing as I will shall be all of the law.”

  I sighed noisily. “Did you bring me here to quote Shakespeare and Rabelais at me? I’m getting bored. You want me to tell you I am employed by some dark ops government agency to eliminate scum like you. I wish you were right, but you’re not. I don’t know who the Verdugo is, and I am just a guy with acute amnesia. End of story.”

  He stuffed another cracker in his mouth. The action was oddly voracious. He spoke with his mouth full. “Sole has betrayed me. She will be punished. The extent and nature of her punishment depends on you.”

  “Depends on me how?”

  He sat back in his chair and sipped from his glass. He watched me for a moment, licking his lips with the tip of his tongue.

  “Tell me who you are, tell me who you work for, work for me as a double agent, and you can have the bitch and live in style as my operative. That is your best option, but you have alternatives. Tell me who you are and who you work for, but refuse to work with me, and she will die a quick, painless death. Option three, refuse to cooperate with me except under extreme stress, and she will be raped, mutilated, tortured and finally killed, when she is too numb to feel any more pain.”

  I heard a strangled cry from Sole’s throat, and ignored her.

  I pulled my cigarettes from my pocket and lit one. “What makes you think I give a good goddamn what happens to Sole? I told you she dumped me, remember?”

  “Remember? I remember you’re full of shit. What’s your name?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.” I watched him chew a little more and sip from his glass. I said, “I can tell you what I am not. I am not a mercenary, I am not a spook. I am not a government agent and nobody has come looking for me because I have gone AWOL, except you.”

  Something happened to his face. It seemed to go hard, like stone, and his eyes were like stones. He was completely motionless. He said, “So, you are willing to allow Sole to be raped and killed?”

  I shrugged and sighed again. “I don’t want her to be raped and killed, Mendez. I like her and I know you do too, but I have nothing to tell you except you’re wrong about me. I am just a guy with amnesia!”

  He sighed and looked more reluctant than I did. He gave his head a small shake and waved the back of his hand at Sole. “Viólenla.”

  The two gorillas grabbed Sole and
dragged her down to the floor. She tried to scream through the tape on her mouth, but it came out as a strangled screech. I stared at her as she hit the floor on her back, with one ape straddling her and the other holding her ankles.

  I turned to Mendez. “Wait! Wait! What are you doing?”

  “They are going to rape her,” he said. “And you are going to watch.”

  Sixteen

  “Hurt her and you won’t get a word out of me. Let her go and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  “Paren! Déjenla, pues.”

  The ape who was straddling her had her belt undone and the top button of her jeans open. He sighed and looked up at me. He was the guy with the high, Native American cheekbones and the short hair. He looked like he wanted to kill me.

  I smiled at him and nodded. “You’ll get your chance.”

  He stood and towered over me by a good five inches. “Me la pagarás,” he said, and went to stand by the door. His mustachioed friend went to join him and Sole struggled to her feet with difficulty. Her hands were still taped behind her back. I stood behind her and put my hands under her shoulders, heaving her to her feet. As I did so, I muttered in her ear, “Get the hell out of Dodge.” To Mendez, I said, “Let her go home.”

  “You givin’ orders around here now, gringo?”

  “No, I’m making demands in a negotiation.”

  “Demands? I cut your fuckin’ balls off and cut her throat, and nothin’ happened here.”

  “Perhaps, Mendez, but you and I both know that Uncle Sam is coming for you, and without the information I have, your days are numbered. You need me. Period.”

  He looked at the gorilla with the mustache. “Que se vaya. Pero vigílenla. Que no se vaya del área. Si no tienen noticias mías en una hora, mátenla.”

  I didn’t wait. I stripped the tape from her mouth. She gave a small scream and then let out a stream of abuse at me. I spun her around, reached down to the coffee table and took Mendez’s knife. I nicked the tape on Sole’s wrists, tore it open and shoved her toward the door. She turned, slapped me across the face and gave me a mouthful of abuse. Then she turned toward Mendez, with tears spilling from her eyes and her red lips quivering. Her nose was swollen and red, like she had a bad cold.

  “I trusted you! You told me you would look after me! And just because this gringo slob comes sniffing around, you do this to me?” She pointed a quivering finger at the two gorillas. “This is trust? This is how you want me to trust you? By doing this?”

  He arched an eyebrow at her. “Go home. You are lucky to be alive and still have your cara bonita intact.”

  She stared at him a moment, then turned and spat in my face. “Cabrón! Hijo de puta pendejo!”

  Then she turned and stormed out, with the two ape men chuckling after her on her heels. The door closed and Mendez jerked his head at a chair opposite his. Lovejoy and Hunter both had their pieces out, trained vaguely in my direction.

  “So talk. If Jesus and Oswaldo don’t hear from me in one hour, they gonna take her apart like Lego.”

  I sat, thinking fast. I pulled the pack of Camels from my pocket, shook one free and poked it in my mouth. Then I flipped the old Zippo, inhaled deep and sat looking at Mendez while I let out the smoke. He drew breath to speak, but I cut him short.

  “Hassan as-Sabbah.”

  He screwed up his face. “What?”

  Even as I spoke, I wondered where the hell I was going. “I thought an erudite guy like you, who quotes Shakespeare and Francois Rabelais, would have heard of the old man of the mountain.”

  “Cut to the chase, gringo.”

  “That’s exactly where I am cutting. Both the words hashish and assassin derive from this man’s name. If he ain’t the chase, I don’t know what is.”

  He looked at his watch. “You got fifty-five minutes.”

  “Hassan as-Sabbah was the inspiration for the sub-agency which this administration created to eliminate people like you. The SEA, the Special Executive Agency. The operatives work in cells that never connect, under the management of an executive agent. We refer to them, humorously, as executioners.” I smiled at him and watched his face turn a little pale. “Top brass in the local PD and Sheriff’s Department are notified when a Special Executive Agent is operative in the area, but no more information than that is given. Our brief is not to bring people like you to justice, Mendez, but to exterminate you, and if need be, to pursue you back into Mexico and Colombia, hunt you down and kill you there. The SEA is not above the law, but it has an exemption, granted by Executive Order from the president, to act on our discretion in the interests of national security.”

  He was trying to hide it, but it was easy to see he was rattled. I watched him turn to look at Hunter and Lovejoy, and wondered how much I had made up and how much was some dim recollection.

  Lovejoy was frowning at me. Hunter was studying his thumbs. Neither of them would stand a chance at poker.

  Mendez said, “Well, is it true or is he bullshitting me?”

  I laughed out loud. “You think they would know? A couple of second-rate field operatives who wouldn’t know a dark ops agent if he went up and bit them on their asses? Come on, Mendez! You like to play the big Escobar crime master, but he had senators and generals in his pocket. What you’ve got is a couple of bent cops with the IQ of a fencepost and these two clowns from Military Intelligence. You are not in the league. You’re in the wrong match.”

  They all looked worried now, but they were still trying to hide it. Mendez snapped, “OK. So help me. Make it go away!”

  I closed my eyes and smiled. “Make it go away? You want me to make the United States government go away? You can’t make them go away. They are a relentless machine that never stops, and once they are aware of you, they will never lose sight of you again. They will keep going after you until one day a little old lady trips over you and stabs you with an EpiPen, or you have an unexpected heart attack after an excellent meal, or your car collides with a polar bear on the highway near White Sands desert. They will never stop, Mendez—never.”

  He stared at me for a long time, then exploded. “So what do I do? Put a gun to my head and blow my brains out?”

  “I don’t plan to stop you if you do.”

  “Wrong!” He pointed a fierce finger at me. “Wrong, wrong and a thousand times wrong! You will do something about it, if you want to see Sole alive and in one piece. You will be my guardian, my chief bodyguard. It will be your job to keep me safe!”

  I shrugged. “OK, if you think that will make any difference. As a matter of interest, you know who heads up this outfit? You know who the director is? Paul O’Brien. Ring any bells?”

  I told myself I was going too far. I had no idea who Paul O’Brien was, or why I had picked him for the director of the SEA. Mendez looked troubled. I saw Hunter and Lovelock glance at each other and frown and knew I had blown it.

  Mendez grunted and waved a hand at me. “OK, have a drink. Let’s talk business.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Business?”

  Hunter got up and went to the bar. “You remember what you drink, right?”

  “Irish, straight up.” I said it with my eyes on Mendez. “What kind of business?”

  He shrugged. “Simple. You don’t cooperate and Sole dies a slow, painful death. You watch and then die yourself. I win, you lose. You think US law enforcement will be a problem? No problem, we fly you to Hermosillo and believe me, in Hermosillo, I can do whatever I like. I can hang your balls, your naked decapitated body from the fockin’ lampposts and nobody gonna say a fockin’ thing.”

  He spread his hands and gave a very Latin shrug. “That is a bad fockin’ deal for you. But I got a good deal for you. You get Sole, I finished with her. You get a lot of money and you get to work for a great big multinational. You’re a fockin’ A-class killer. So you keep doin’ what you’re good at. But I need one thing more.”

  “What’s that?”

  He sat forward with his elbows on his
knees and stared into my face. “I need you to tell me the fockin’ truth.”

  The pain was sharp and jarring and for a split second, I felt like my skull had shattered and my skin was full of tiny splinters of glass.

  Then there was only blackness.

  * * *

  When I woke up, my head felt like somebody had left a crowbar wedged in my skull while trying to find my brain. They’d obviously failed in the attempt, because the rest of my body felt like they’d given me a sound kicking from sheer frustration. It was pitch dark and I was cramped, jammed into some small, confined space. My belly wanted to panic, but I forced myself to think instead, and allowed my senses to absorb what data there was.

  There was a strong stink of engine oil and gasoline, and a heavy background drone. I tried to move, but everywhere I tried to move to, there was something metal in the way. Then I realized that my hands were tied behind my back, and when I attempted to lever myself into a sitting position, I hit my head on a metal ceiling. The trunk of a car—but that wasn’t right. There was no variation in motion or direction, and the sound of the engine was wrong. It was too steady, too much of a drone. I was in a plane, and I knew it was a twin prop cargo plane. I was in a steel packing case aboard a plane.

  Panic returned to my gut like a snake thrashing under a stick. I was being smuggled out of the country to be dumped either in the Gulf of California, the Gulf of Mexico, or the Sonora Desert.

  It’s hard to keep track of time when you are in pitch black. We need to see space in order to measure time. Maybe ten minutes passed, maybe half an hour or more, and I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious before I woke up. But eventually, the drone of the engines changed and I was aware that we were slowing and descending, and occasionally there was a small pitch and a dance in our motion. And then, after an indefinite time that might have been twenty minutes or a quarter of an hour, the engines whined and roared and we hit the tarmac, bounced and thudded down again. Then we began to slow. I was thrown forward against the steel wall in front of me and the sound of the engines dropped to a growl, and then to an idling drone.