Verdugo Dawn

by Blake Banner

  He nodded. “OK, you win.”

  “If you deviate even a tiny bit from the plan, I will cut your legs off at the knee joint. Then I will cut your arms off at the shoulder joint. After that, I’ll cut what’s left of your legs off at the hips. But I won’t let you bleed out, Mendez, because I want you to live with the same crippling horror that Sole has lived with all her life after you did what you did to her father.”

  “Who the hell was her motherfockin’ father? You know how many fockin’ men I have killed, or had killed? Well, if you ever find out, let me know, because I ain’t got a puta idea!”

  “Just do what I told you. You know by now that I meant what I said. I will, literally, butcher you.”

  I dialed, put the phone on speaker and set it down between us. It rang a couple of times, then a voice said, “Si, Don Eulogio, como esta usted? En que puedo servirle?”

  Mendez scowled at me, and I settled the point of the blade of the kitchen knife against his knee joint, just below the kneecap. He blanched and swallowed.

  “Si, mire, quiero que cuide muy bien de Sole. Sabe que ella es muy importante para mi.”

  “Como no, don Eulogio!”

  “Déjeme hablar con ella.”

  So far, he had followed my instructions to the letter. Now Sole’s voice came on. “Yes, my darling?”

  “I am just telling the pilot to take special care of you. I want you to be in good shape when we next meet, Sole.”

  “You’re the sweetest man I ever met, Eulogio. I could eat you up.”

  “Hand me back to the pilot.”

  “Dígame, Señor Méndez.”

  “Nada, solo recordarle que Sole es mi gran amor, cuide de ella como su vida dependiera de ello.”

  He hung up and I put the cell in my pocket. He regarded me with contempt for a moment, then asked, “So, now what?”

  “You have a choice.”

  “People only ever tell you you have a choice when they are stealing all your choices from you except one. The one they want you to take.”

  “OK. Give me your supplier. If you refuse, I will do to you everything you did to Sole’s father.”

  “What do you mean, give you my supplier? Supplier of what?”

  “That’s strike one. You’re bullshitting me, because you know precisely what I mean by give me your supplier.”

  He sighed. “I have different suppliers for different things. The colonel was one of my principal suppliers of opium and coca.”

  “Strike two. You’re still bullshitting me. I am going to give you one last chance. Then it’s game over. I want the names of your principal suppliers of coke, heroin and prostitutes. And I want enough evidence—proof!—to bring them down and put them away for life.”

  He laughed out loud. “His name is General Dionisio Gutierrez, and you will never prove anything about him. He is above the law.”

  “Well, I guess that means you are no longer of any use to me.”

  His face drained of color and he held up his free hand. “Wait! Wait! I can still help you.”

  I stood. “I don’t need any help, Mendez.”

  I put a round from the AK-47 through each of his kneecaps. The pain was so intense, he passed out instantly. I found plenty of gasoline in the garage and I doused the ground floor rooms and the bodies in them. I doused the furniture and the drapes and soaked the carpets. As I was finishing, Mendez awoke. He was numb with pain and his pupils were wildly dilated, but he called to me.

  “I won’t beg for my life,” he said, “but you will.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The colonel had an arrangement with his base, that he must check in every evening while he is here. So when he did not check in this evening, that will have triggered an alarm. You can kill me, but they will get you, and they will destroy you. They will make an example of you.”

  I poked a Camel in my mouth, flipped the Zippo and lit up. I inhaled the smoke deeply and let it out slowly. Then I left the room and went out to the beach through the glass doors. I stood and smoked and listened to the sounds of the night. At first, I heard nothing but the cicadas and the owls, but gradually, I became aware of another sound, almost imperceptible, but unmistakable—the distant, steady throb of helicopter rotors. They were coming for me.

  I had half a can of gasoline left and I used it to make a trail across the sand to the gate. There, I stopped and dropped my cigarette onto the gas-soaked sand and watched the ephemeral, translucent flames dance and race, like some diabolical express train, across the sand and through the door, into the house. Then there was a sudden whoosh! and the ground floor windows shattered. Rich yellow and orange flames bulged out and curled up the walls. Far off, in another world, a separate reality, I heard a terrible scream, but I heard it as I saw the flames, through a sheet of bulletproof glass in my soul, that let nothing in and nothing out.

  He was silent for a while. Then he rose, and in the dense mist it was like he levitated and moved toward the door. I heard him say, “Follow me.”

  The door was ajar, and though he had gone inside, out of the moonlit desert, it remained dark within. I followed him through the doorway and saw light filtering out through another half-open door at the end of the hall.

  I shouted, “No more games, Olaf!” but there was silence. I moved down the hall, toward the living room, then stepped in.

  As I entered, I heard his voice. “Everything is changing.”

  Somehow, the fog had come into the room through an open window, but outside there was a bright, diffuse light, like sunlight, or fire, through thick smoke. I couldn’t make out why, because it was so foggy inside. Inside, the fog was so thick I couldn’t see the walls—only Olaf standing across the room, like we were inside a cloud.

  I heard myself say, “Where the hell…?” but it was like somebody else’s voice.

  Then Olaf was murmuring, a soft, rhythmic chant that was bewildering and made no grammatical sense: “Compassion is the doorway to get to Heaven you must pass through Hell so compassion is the doorway to Hell leads to darkness these are the things beyond your understanding just the basics is quite hard to achieve reality is plastic and mutable, and the things that stand in your way will fade now because reality can be separate realities can rise up around you like walls that are so much finer when reality fades from under your feet...”

  He said it and I realized the floor was gone and I was suspended in space. His voice droned on, “How deep can you go if the floor vanishes from under your feet now?”

  And I was plunging down, with my stomach in my mouth—or I might have been soaring up. I heard a voice yelling, “How?”

  Then I was flying up in the stratosphere, and far, far below, a translucent flame danced in a distant desert under the moon. His face was close to mine, and I could see his eyes, black and beady, like an eagle’s.

  He said, “In trance you are transmuting when your consciousness flies high up everything alters the walls are translucent. You become trance-lucid. The light can penetrate you are conscious of endless realities which are too many things to hold in the fist of your brain.”

  I shook my head. His words had no logic in syntax, but they were penetrating my brain like an active fluid with a life of its own.

  I said, “No! How do you do this?”

  Then I was looking down on the desert, enveloped in creeping shrouds of smog. Here and there in the hills I could see electric flashes of gunfire, artillery and bombs exploding. And gradually I became aware that I was in a glass sphere, drifting high in the air. Olaf was there, next to me, talking without opening his mouth, like a ventriloquist.

  “The Conscious Ones, who bred the snake with the goat, have been called so many things over the millennia: demons, angels, devils, elves, gods. But the great power of the gods has been always the vast tides and currents of the human mind’s experience in three dimensions. You ask me how I do it. I don’t. You do. Like all the men and women before you.”

  I gazed at his still, motionless beak and his s
ilent, black eyes. “Who is speaking? You or me?” I asked, “Why? Why are you doing this? Why are you making me do this?”

  “Who makes the reflection in the mirror? Who speaks, the reflection or you?” He gazed out at the battle far below, and his mind said, “The eagle is detached. He does not carry the chains of compassion.”

  Then we were higher, in space, looking down on the small planet, and I could see tsunamis welling and surging, the sun scorching the fields, crops failing, bodies withering like scorched twigs, wars raging over continents, and the smoldering ruins of the cities, like black teeth during famine, and famine spreading like pestilence over the globe. His mind said, “The game is huge. You must play your part.”

  “What about Sole?”

  His head seemed to tilt on its side, and for a moment, I saw his eyes as they really were: vast, deep. Black almonds. There was a compassion in them that was beyond my understanding.

  “Help her to be free, but take care not to get lost in the reflection.”

  “Who are you? What are you?”

  He said, “I am. Nothing more.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He smiled, though it was a strange, eerie expression. “You live in a storm of emotions. Every wave is the push and draw of death. It is so hard for you to understand so many things. Your feelings make you blind. But now you had better move.” And he reached out with his long arm and touched my forehead.

  Twenty-Two

  There was something hard pressing on my forehead, which I gradually realized was a stone. It was dark. My mind was in a fog and I was confused by the angle of everything, until I realized I was lying in the sand. Waves of heat washed over me, the sand was tinted with orange and the air seemed to roar in my ears. I turned and saw the burning house, both floors engulfed in flames. I swore profusely, wondering how long I had been unconscious. I went to stand, but froze. There were voices and running, tramping boots.

  The voices were male and Spanish. I lay in the sand and watched their black silhouettes, bobbing and dancing against the flames as they ran. I counted six of them. I felt behind my back for the Sig and found, stuck into my belt beside it, the kitchen knife I had grabbed earlier. I crawled backward toward the pine trees that encircled the house, among the dunes, got to my feet and ran toward the back of the house.

  For me, it was pretty much a straight line. For them, they had to circumvent the house. I could now see that they were five grunts and an officer. It was hard to make out if he was a lieutenant or a captain. They had slowed from a run to a walk and were staring at the vast fireball that had been Mendez’s house like they had never seen fire before. The officer issued orders, pointing with his right hand, while his left held his assault rifle steady: two men to the left, two to the front and one with him to the right.

  I watched them disperse. The wavering black stencils of the officer and the three men vanished behind the flames as trails of sparks dragged lazily across the dunes. The two who’d been dispatched to the left approached as silhouettes through the wavering heat. They passed just eight feet from where I was lying and moved toward the front of the house.

  I rose to my feet and ran at them with the kitchen knife in my hand. The attack was fast and savage. It had to be. One second’s delay, one moment of hesitation would have cost me my life. I descended on them, sprinting through the sand, gave a little jump and rammed the broad blade of the knife violently into the back of the nearest solder’s neck, severing his spinal cord and disconnecting his brain from his body in an instant.

  It took less than a second to drive the blade through to his trachea and wrench it free again. His pal was still asking himself, “What the…?” when I drove the same blade deep into his heart through his fifth intercostals. As his heart went into spasm, I pulled the knife free, grabbed his nose between my index and middle fingers, twisted hard and lifted, so his chin was in the air, and rammed the broad blade of the knife through his jugular and his carotid, slicing out through his trachea in the same motion.

  They both died quickly and violently, in absolute silence.

  I returned to the cover of the trees and circled back around to the front of the house. I could see the four small, warping black figures coming around the other side, walking hesitantly, with caution. A voice called out over the roar of the flames, calling for, “Mi Coronel!”

  They paused at the front of the house, then backed up toward the trees and the beach, moving away from the growing heat. I closed in on them, crouch-running among the deep shadows cast by the dancing flames, exploiting the roar that muffled the sound of my movements.

  The officer pointed and two of the grunts headed toward the near side of the house, in search of their companions. He and the remaining soldier continued down toward the sea. I followed the first two. This kill was going to be easier.

  I waited for them to move around the corner of the house. Then I sprinted toward them. The bodies of their companions were not yet clear in the leaping flames and dancing shadows of the house. But I knew there would come a moment when they would be, and in that moment they would stop and hesitate, giving me a full two or three seconds of advantage.

  It came as the two dark bulks became visible lying in the sand. The two soldiers stopped and peered. I dropped to one knee and double-tapped them both in the back of the chest. They fell forward, as though in reverence for their fallen companions.

  I turned and ran back toward the tree line and the beach. I came out of the cover of the trees and saw the two men, indistinct figures against the ocean, which was alive with the reflected fire from the house. I stood motionless. They were fifteen or twenty yards from me. An easy shot in daylight, doable at night. I took aim and squeezed off four shots in rapid succession. One of the bodies went down heavily and awkwardly, but the other fell in a dynamic motion, and a second later was up and running.

  I moved back among the trees, telling myself I needed to get one of the Jeeps I had seen earlier, or the Land Rover. But at the same time, I was aware I could not leave this guy alive. I scrambled into a heavy, exhausting run on an intercept course.

  Next thing, there was a shower of singing, whining lead smacking into the tree trunks around me. I dropped on my face and wriggled toward the cover of a large pine. I peered around it and saw him running—more like wading—through the sand, climbing the dune toward the parking lot. I stood and, leaning against the vast tree trunk, took aim. He turned, saw me, aimed and fired as I emptied my magazine in his direction.

  He went down and I ran. I crested the dune and began a sliding, tumbling gallop down toward the cars. It didn’t take me long to pick a vehicle. The old military Jeeps were easy to hotwire. The modern Land Rover was a better vehicle, but it would be a bitch to hotwire.

  I jumped in and in fifteen seconds, I had the engine roaring. As I reversed toward the road, I saw his silhouette crest the dune. He stopped and I saw his weapon spit fire. Two slugs sang past my head, too close. I rammed in first. The tires kicked up gravel and as I fishtailed out of the lot onto the road, I thought I saw him talking on the radio.

  I accelerated down the road, following the same course I had earlier, chasing Sole and Mendez. This time, the sky was ablaze with light behind me and I knew I had a minute or two at most, maybe less, before the sky was full of choppers, and the deadly fire of mounted machine guns.

  A voice in my head bellowed at me. “What’s my plan? What now? What the hell do I do now?”

  But I knew there was only one possible plan. Head north, for the border, and try to get across into the USA, with no papers, no ID and no memory of who I was—and the whole of north Mexico on my tail. That was the plan. It was a plan that was impossible to execute. It was a countdown to death. The thought made me snarl. I’d go down fighting and I’d take a few of the bastards with me. There would be a place at the table for me in Valhalla.

  Valhalla…

  They must have been searching the area nearby, because it was only five minutes before I hear
d the choppers coming back, closing in behind me. I looked over my shoulder. I was doing nearly eighty on the mountain road and it was a miracle I didn’t kill myself. At a glance, I recognized three Sikorsky Hawks ranged in a line, thundering down on me with their spots glaring.

  I turned onto a straight stretch of road running through flat farmlands and I floored the pedal. But the Jeep was no match for the choppers. Pretty soon, two of them had drawn level on either side and the third buzzed me, maybe six feet over my head, and took a position in front of me.

  They were more interested in making me stop than in killing me, but I was pretty sure that if I didn’t stop, the next thing would be to riddle the Jeep with machine gun fire. So I figured I had nothing to lose, swung the wheel left and careened into a field under the left-hand chopper.

  I had no idea how far I’d get, but I knew I wasn’t ready to go down yet. I wanted to take at least one chopper with me. So I hurtled across the cabbages or lettuces or whatever the hell they were, bouncing, lurching and leaping toward the tree line.

  The Hawks had a much wider turning field than I had, and they had to avoid each other. So I gained a few hundred feet. But within seconds, they had made up the distance and loomed up behind me now, jockeying for position. I thought I’d make it hard for them and hurtled into an orange orchard, doing forty and skidding left and right to miss the trees. The glaring spotlights kept picking me out. Then I would spin the wheel and skid between trees, kicking up showers of dirt behind me. Occasionally, I heard a crack and whine, and the hammering of automatic fire. Then, fountains of dark dirt would leap up around me, showering the windshield and the hood as I thundered through it.

  Now I was sure it was just a matter of minutes before I died. They were done playing.

  Suddenly, I was at the crest of a hill, and next thing, I was in the air. I smacked down hard with a jolt that rearranged my skeletal structure. Then I was skidding, sliding sideways, trying to rectify. A hail of hot lead strafed the dirt inches from the Jeep. I managed to miss five trees, but smashed the sixth one broadside and I took a twelve-foot dive through the air.