Xochi laughed.
“Of course not,” she said. “That’s why I’m clearly the superior version.”
“I won’t argue with you there,” Dean said. “I like your version better, too.”
Xochi glanced through the open doorway into the bathroom.
“Is there no door on the toilet?”
“Yeah,” Dean said, flapping his hand in the general direction of the other door. “You know what? I’ll just... be out there. Sam? Sam!”
Sam looked up from his laptop screen.
“Oh yeah, right,” he stood and followed Dean out into the garage.
If Dean thought it was hard to leave the Impala at the California border for one night, he was even less thrilled about leaving it with a near stranger for who knew how long.
“Are you sure about this?” Dean asked Xochi yet again as he watched Chato cover the Impala with a tarp. “I mean, I’m not gonna come back for my car and find she’s got six-inch-tall windows and an Aztec warrior painted on the hood?”
“I’m sure,” Xochi said. “She is in good hands.”
Dean believed her, but he still called Bobby and gave him the address of the garage.
“Just in case,” Dean said into the phone.
“In case what?” Bobby asked. “In case you go and get your dumb ass killed?”
“Well, yeah,” Dean said. “Or something like that.”
“What the hell are you two up to down there anyway?” Bobby asked.
“Something big,” Dean said. “Don’t wait up.”
He ended the call.
Xochi was in the midst of hooking a trailer with two dirt bikes to a beat-up brown Land Rover.
“Where’d you get these?” Dean asked.
“The bikes are mine,” Xochi said. “I won them in a poker game a few months back. The Rover...” She shrugged, tipped her chin toward Lil’ Sleepy, who was noisily demonstrating his name, snoring in an old bucket seat propped up against a stack of tires. “It belongs to Lil’ Sleepy. He sold it to me last night for a dollar and a bottle of mezcal. We’d better get going before he wakes up.”
“Forget I asked,” Dean said. “What are we gonna need dirt bikes for anyway?”
“We will need to go out into the deep desert to call Huehuecoyotl,” she said. “These will be much faster than hiking, and with the Borderwalker on the move, every minute counts.”
Claudia appeared from a back room, looking worn and rumpled but determined.
“How you doing?” Dean asked.
“Okay, I guess,” she said. She looked Dean over. “Rough night?”
“What would you know about something like that?”
She rolled her eyes dramatically.
“I’m not stupid,” she said. “I’m not a virgin either.”
“You know what?” Dean said. “I do not need to know that.”
Sam came out of the office, gear packed up and ready to go.
“Are we gonna have a problem crossing the border?” Sam asked.
“Claudia,” Xochi asked. “You have your passport?”
Claudia nodded.
“We used to go visit my dad’s relatives in TJ every weekend,” she said. “I always have it.”
“They are never very concerned with people going out,” Xochi said. “Only coming in.”
“Yeah,” Dean asked. “But what about the stolen car?”
“Stolen car?” Claudia asked.
She looked impressed. Sam looked annoyed.
“It’s not stolen,” Xochi said. “I bought it and Ashley did up all our paperwork for us last night. Registration, vehicle permit and tourist card. Mexican insurance. That kind of thing. Anyway that’s not our main problem. Our main problem is that we cannot bring any weapons.”
“What?” Dean shook his head. “No way.”
“Listen to me,” Xochi said. “Coming in, they search for drugs and people. Going out, it’s money and guns.”
“I’m not going into this hunt naked,” Dean said. “That’s just crazy.”
“I know a guy,” she said. “He’ll hook us up on the other side of the border, but for now, this is the way it has to be.”
She unbuckled her gun-belt and walked over to the tarped Impala, holding out her hand to Dean for the keys. He reluctantly gave them to her. She pushed back the tarp and popped the trunk, lifting the false bottom and adding her pistols to the rest of the arsenal. Then she held out an empty hand to Dean, fingers curling inward in a “gimme” gesture.
“Oh no,” Dean said.
“Oh yes,” Xochi said. “Trust me on this. It would be different if we were crossing on foot, but we need the bikes and CBP is much more careful with vehicles because they are more likely to carry a large shipment of contraband. You can keep any bladed weapons, just nothing that the gun dogs can smell.”
“Dammit,” Dean said, slapping his beloved Colt 1911 into Xochi’s outstretched palm.
“Sam?”
Sam nodded and handed over his own .45.
“Ammo too,” Xochi said.
Sam and Dean emptied their pockets into the trunk of the Impala while Claudia looked on with amazement at the growing pile of weapons.
Once they were all stripped down and harmless as civilians, Xochi closed the trunk and tossed Dean the keys.
“I hate this,” Dean said.
“Don’t be scared,” Xochi said, with a sarcastic smile. “I’ll be here to protect you.”
“Let’s get on the road, already,” Sam said.
THIRTY
Getting across the border was more boring that stressful. Traffic was backed up and creeping along. Guys with dogs and mirrors on sticks strolled up and down the lanes, peering in through windshields. People in the cars had that dull, thousand-yard stare you see in any morning rush hour anywhere in the world. There were traffic lights over each lane, either red or green. If you got a red light you had to go get a full inspection. Dean got a green light. No problem.
When they finally made it through to the other side, they passed underneath a big sign that read “Bienvenido a Mexico.” Xochi directed Dean onto the astoundingly named Periférico Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, bypassing the more touristy shops and cheap pharmacies and heading down into the gritty heart of the other Nogales.
“Pull over here,” Xochi said, indicating a large, bland franchise hotel that seemed set up to cater to foreign business travelers.
Dean did as she requested, though it was easier said than done. He had to battle several mobile vendors, a pair of kids engaged in a scrappy fist-fight and a swearing woman in a pick-up truck, in order to get the Rover to the curb.
“Sam, take Claudia and check into that hotel,” Xochi said. “I don’t want her anywhere near the business Dean and I will be doing, but I also don’t want her to be alone. The truth is, you two are much more important to this hunt than we are. I can’t risk anything happening to either one of you.”
Sam frowned. “Am I gonna get arrested for trying to check into a hotel with a fifteen-year-old girl?”
Xochi shook her head ruefully.
“Not in Mexico,” she said. “In fact, you probably won’t be the only one.”
“I hate it here,” Claudia said, arms crossed and slouching in an elaborate expression of distaste. “It’s worse that TJ. It’s gross and dirty and my phone doesn’t work.” She reached out and put her hand on Dean’s arm. “Why can’t Dean stay with me?”
“No,” Dean said, pulling away from her. “You know, I can’t. See, I really gotta... go do this other thing right now. You’ll be fine with Sam.”
“We won’t be long,” Xochi said. “Go on.” Xochi handed her backpack to Claudia. “Hold on to my things for me. We’ll bring back some fresh clothes for all of us too, okay?”
Sam got out of the car and led the theatrically pouting teenager over to the hotel. Dean watched Sam push the door open and let Claudia go ahead of him. It really did look bad, this Gigantor American with no luggage leading a tiny Mexican teena
ger into a border-town hotel. What made it worse was that there were tons of people around, not bangers or obvious criminals, just ordinary citizens going about their daily business and no one even looked twice.
Once Sam and Claudia were safely inside the hotel, Xochi got out of the back seat and came around to the driver’s side.
“Better let me drive,” she said.
Dean was happy to let her take the wheel. Driving in this town was like a bad video game. He slid across to the passenger side and she got in behind the wheel.
“What are we doing again?” he asked.
“You want guns, don’t you?” she asked, pulling the Rover out into traffic and heading south, away from the border. She took a few, seemingly random turns, laying on the horn to clear dogs and ice-cream vendors and women with huge carts of laundry out of their way. Dean tried to keep a fix on where they were in relation to the hotel, but soon got utterly turned around in the chaos.
Eventually, Xochi turned down a narrow side street and parked. There was a tiny hair salon that didn’t look open across the street and some other sort of establishment whose business wasn’t immediately obvious to Dean. The building they wanted was a sad, crumbling little structure that seemed too square and featureless to be a private house, but too small to be any kind of commercial building. It was painted bright blue, the thick paint cracked and peeling to reveal an earlier, pink-and-white birthday-cake color scheme. The doors and windows were heavily barred, the bars painted pink to match the previous color scheme and never redone. All the streets they’d been down so far were jumping with pedestrians, but this street was nearly deserted.
Xochi pulled out her cell and dialed. Spoke a few words, nodded and pocketed the phone.
“He’s there,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She got out of the Rover and Dean did the same. Dean watched as she called a kid who looked about Ben’s age over to the car. She started doling out money, pointing to the car. The kid winked and lifted his T-shirt, revealing the handle of a gun protruding from the waistband of his jeans. Xochi thanked him and then motioned for Dean to go with her into the blue building. He followed close behind her, not happy to be going into something like this unarmed. Especially because everyone else seemed to be armed except for him. He had no choice but to trust Xochi on this.
They entered a dim, musty hallway lined with about twenty electric meters. It seemed impossible to Dean that a building so small could house so many different households. Xochi headed to the back and took a set of sagging stairs up to the second floor. Dean followed without comment.
The first door at the top of the stairs was open. Xochi went right in and motioned for Dean to join her. She shut the door after him and turned a key that had been left sticking out of the lock.
It was an empty room, empty except for a tall, wiry man in his late thirties with a stoned, beatific smile and a black duffle bag. Thinning hair slicked back into a rat-tail, a large, broken nose and a pinkie ring. He wore immaculate, sharply pressed jeans and a shiny red cowboy shirt unbuttoned at the throat to reveal way too much werewolf chest hair. His dinner-plate-sized belt-buckle had the letters “BM” spelled out in red rhinestones.
“Dean,” Xochi said. “This is Baby Malo.”
Dean couldn’t imagine why anyone so hairy would be nicknamed “baby” anything but he was willing to roll with it. The guy seemed friendly enough.
He said something to Xochi in Spanish and then switched to English. “I couldn’t get HKs. Glock okay?”
“Did you get the Benelli?” Xochi asked.
He said something else in Spanish and unzipped the bag, pulling out a gorgeous, brand-new 12-gage tactical M4 in desert camo. He handed it to Dean.
“Damn that’s nice,” Dean said, checking the chamber and finding it hot and ready to rock. “I take it this isn’t loaded with salt, right?”
Xochi shook her head, taking a Glock 17 from the bag and looking it over.
“Standard rounds, yes, but I have a friend in Chihuahua who makes 12-gage slugs in solid silver. For the Nagual.”
Dean whistled.
“Yeah, that’ll do it.”
There was a sudden heavy pounding on the door. Dean spun reflexively toward the sound and Xochi did the same. Baby Malo didn’t wait to see who it was, just took off through a door on the far end of the room, leaving the bag behind. A deep, masculine voice called out from the other side of the door. It needed no translation.
“POLICIA!”
Dean swore and lowered the shotgun. Of all the potential problems he might have imagined they’d encounter on this hunt, getting arrested for buying guns in Mexico certainly wasn’t one of them.
“What do we do?” Dean asked Xochi.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing the bag of guns and taking off after Baby Malo.
The next room was furnished, two small beds, a sofa and a card table with four chairs. There was so much furniture that it was hard to maneuver in the narrow space. Xochi jumped up onto the couch, walking across the cushions and heading for a barred metal door that seemed to lead to some kind of balcony. Dean could hear the door back in the other room splintering. The cops would be in any second. He followed Xochi out onto the balcony, and found her with one leg over the railing.
“Jump,” she said, and was gone.
Dean looked over the edge and saw a weedy little yard surrounded by high brick walls. There was a weird plastic ride-on toy for kids sitting in the corner, a large yellow duck with wheels and a saddle like a horse. Xochi crouched in the middle of the yard with the Glock in one hand and the bag in the other.
“Hurry,” she hissed.
It sounded like the cops were through the door and into the empty room next door. Dean didn’t need any more incentive. He jumped.
He hit the packed dirt hard but managed to hold onto the shotgun. Xochi kicked open a door on the ground level and Dean followed her back into the building. He could hear heavy-booted footsteps upstairs and men’s voices. That’s when his phone started to vibrate in his pocket.
Xochi was trying several doors and finding them all key locked. Dean took out his phone and looked at the screen. It was Bobby Singer, calling on the line that he only used in case of dire emergency. Dean took the call.
“It’s not a good time, Bobby,” Dean said.
“Are you crazy?” Xochi said, looking back over her shoulder before starting to kick at one of the locked doors. “Put that away!”
“Dean,” Bobby said, his familiar drawl dropping in and out. “What the hell’s going on down there?”
“Look,” Dean said. “I got a major law enforcement situation here...”
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Well, I just got a call from your brother’s phone. Some Mexican guy telling me to wire twenty-five grand or they’ll kill Sam.”
THIRTY-ONE
Xochi kicked the door one last time and it finally gave. On the other side was a single cop.
He looked about eighteen. Bad skin and a sorry, adolescent excuse for a moustache. He was dressed in black fatigues and a black Kevlar vest with “POLICIA” in big yellow letters. He looked like a startled cat, AK47 pointed at his dusty boots.
Xochi dove back, away from the door. Dean dropped the phone and reflexively raised the shotgun, drawing a bead between the kid’s eyes.
“Dean?” Bobby’s tiny voice echoed from the phone on the floor near Dean’s boot. “Dean, you there?”
The kid looked absolutely terrified, nearly cross-eyed staring down the barrel of the big gun. This was their chance to get away, but Dean couldn’t help remembering what he’d said to Sam about ganking innocent humans. He just couldn’t pull the trigger.
Six other officers came barreling down the stairs, pouring in behind the kid and screaming at Dean in Spanish. An older guy with a real, grown-up moustache stepped into the room, ripping the shottie out of Dean’s grip and throwing him against the wall.
Xochi let out what was probably a colorful string of Spanish profanity an
d dropped the Glock before another officer did the same to her, kicking her legs apart and patting her down with obvious enthusiasm. The nervous kid picked up Dean’s phone, ending Bobby’s call and slipping the phone into a zippered plastic bag. The guy with the thick moustache cuffed Dean and led him out of the building.
Out on the sidewalk, three more officers had wrestled Baby Malo to the ground. One of them had a knee pressed into the small of his back and was cuffing him, while another pressed a handgun to his head.
Dean was unceremoniously stuffed into the back of a dirty-white police cruiser. Officer Moustache didn’t bother to cup the back of Dean’s head to stop him from banging it into the door frame. As tense as he was about his own situation, Dean couldn’t think about anything except Sam. Sam, and Claudia. Where was Claudia during all this? Did the people who had Sam also have Claudia? It had clearly been a serious mistake to bring her with them. Maybe a fatal mistake.
The cops put Baby Malo in the back of the cruiser with Dean.
“No, no, wait a second,” Dean began.
They didn’t wait a second. They just slammed the car door and rapped on the roof to tell the driver to take off. As the cruiser pulled out into traffic, Dean twisted back to see Xochi being led out of the building between two big bruisers.
“Where are they taking Xochi?” Dean asked.
“Jail,” Baby Malo said. “Just like us. Only it’ll probably take her, like, twice as long to get there.”
“What?” Dean tried to look back again, but they’d already turned a corner. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean those guys will want to spend some time with her before they bring her in. That’s how it is with women prisoners.”
If Dean’s hands weren’t cuffed behind his back, he would have put his head in them. How had this happened?
Dean and Baby Malo stood together in a crowded holding cell inside the Nogales police station. There were probably twenty-five men in the ten-by-ten cage made of flimsy chain-link fencing. Several rattling electric fans did their best to circulate the stale air, but it was still unbearably hot and stank of stale sweat and urine. Outside the cage were three hostile, perspiring guards with automatic rifles—in case anyone got the idea that it might not be that hard to pull the chain-link loose from the connecting poles.
Supernatural 8 - Coyote's Kiss Page 15
