Cactus Garden

by Ward, Robert

  “We’ve got to go across there,” Charlotte Rae said. “Then down the center aisle and we hit the door. The guards are outside. But they come in sometimes too. There’s a fridge in the room above us. They have drinks in there. A real little party scene.”

  Jack looked up and saw two flights of steel steps leading up to an office. The windows emitted a dull orange glow.

  “Could be somebody up there now. You know how many of them there are?”

  “Two usually, but the night before a shipment, there could be four or five.”

  “Great. And I suppose they all love machine guns?”

  “Each and every man,” she said.

  “Can’t let that stop us. You go first. I’ll cover you.”

  “Me? Why me? You go first. I’ll cover you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jack whispered.

  “I can outshoot you. Believe it. Remember, I just acted helpless.” Jack was stunned.

  “Well, you go first, because if you run into the guards, you can say Buddy sent you over to look up some manifests.”

  “Yeah, like they’re gonna believe that.”

  “Come on. They aren’t gonna shoot the boss’s wife.”

  “Girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend? Come on. You said you were his wife.”

  “That was just part of the setup. We knew you would want to fuck his wife more than his girlfriend.” Jack was flabbergasted.

  “Jesus. And I liked you,” he said. “Look, you get out there. As soon as you make it to the corridor, give me a sign and I’ll come.”

  “All right, but if I run into the guards, try not to shoot me in the butt. Okay?”

  “Don’t worry. I like your butt just the way it is,” Jack said.

  “Pig,” she said. She leaned down, waiting, then quickly darted across the open space.

  Jack glanced at her in amazement and wondered about what she had just said.

  Was it true that he’d rather fuck Wingate’s wife? The greater the taboo the greater the temptation? He’d never done it before. He’d always hated guys who would do it to other guys. But then Buddy wasn’t so much a guy as a lizard with human skin. Maybe, in her case, it was true. Maybe he admired her all the more for telling him. He looked across the room.

  She’d made it and was now signaling to him from behind the pile of crates.

  He looked up at the office, which was still emitting an orange glow of Happy Hour bonhomie. The guards were probably inside drinking blood cocktails, he thought.

  He was moving then, moving slowly, painfully, but crossing.

  Fifty feet, and it seemed like a hundred yards.

  Then he was there by her side, panting for breath. Every bone in his body felt as if it had been ripped out and reassembled by an amateur.

  “The door is right down there,” she said.

  “But it’s locked, señorita,” a voice said behind her.

  Jack turned and looked down the barrel of an AK-47 assault rifle.

  The beady eyes and the mustache at the other end of the rifle looked coolly at Jack.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, Pancho?” Charlotte Rae said. “Mr. Wingate sent us over here to look at these Barca-Loungers. He wants one for his own private study.”

  “How did you get in?” Pancho said. “And who is this?”

  “I walked in, with this key, while you were upstairs in Mr. Wingate’s private office having some of his Herradura tequila,” she said. “And this is … my assistant.”

  “And who is going to assist him?” Pancho laughed.

  “I had a little accident,” Jack said. “Got hit with a few dozen margaritas. You know how that can be?”

  “Pancho knows all about it,” Charlotte Rae said.

  Pancho dropped the barrel of the gun a quarter-inch.

  “You need help with this? Where’s your car?”

  “Outside. But no, we can handle it ourselves.”

  Pancho lowered the gun barrel toward the floor, but as he did, the outer door opened and another guard entered.

  “Pancho, I just had a call from the compound. The American …”

  He looked up, saw Jack, aimed his rifle and fired. Jack heard the bullet tear into the boxes behind him.

  Jack pulled out the Glock, aimed, and shot the guard in the head, then wheeled and shot Pancho, point-blank, in the neck.

  “Not bad,” Charlotte Rae said.

  “We’ve overstayed our welcome,” Jack said.

  He grabbed her hand, and they ran down the corridor, stepping over the dead guard’s body as they reached the door. Jack peered cautiously out of the door to the parking lot illuminated by sodium lights.

  There in front of him was a pickup truck. He turned and looked at Charlotte Rae, who reached down to the guard’s pocket and pulled out his truck keys.

  “I love your mind,” Jack said.

  “What do we do now, Agent Walker?”

  “I’m out of clever ideas. Now we run.”

  She nodded, squeezed his hand once, and they took off across the macadam.

  They were within five yards of the truck when the firing began, and the first bullet hit Charlotte Rae. Jack heard her moan, saw her left side sag. He wanted to turn and fire back, but it was no good. He had to get her to the safety of the truck.

  He reached for her, as she fell toward him, barely able to keep her feet.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Leave me.”

  “Wrong, orphan,” he said.

  He pulled her along, then turned and saw two guards running from the east end of the warehouse. They had automatic weapons and were firing again.

  He pushed her to the safe side of the truck, then crouched by the fender and returned their fire.

  He hit the first man in the kneecap and saw his leg explode with a bright cherry-red burst. The man screamed and went down, and the second guard dodged behind a dumpster.

  That gave Jack the time he needed.

  He climbed into the truck from the passenger’s side and pulled Charlotte Rae in behind him.

  Her eyes were milky and stared straight ahead. She was still moving, but Jack worried that she was badly hit and might pass out on him.

  “The keys.”

  She handed them to him, and he put them in the ignition and turned them, flooring the truck’s gas pedal from the passenger’s side.

  The engine roared to life, and Jack slid over behind the wheel, only to be met with a bullet in his right shoulder. The pain was searing, and for a second he lost control of the truck, narrowly missing smashing into one of the sodium lights.

  He saw three more guards rushing toward them now, and he shook his head fighting his own blackout and turned the truck away from them toward the highway.

  “Keep down,” he said, reflexively, but it was wasted advice. Charlotte Rae was already down, down and out. Her beautiful mouth lay open in a grotesque manner, and Jack thought, “She’s gone,” and felt his heart break.

  He heard the bullets slamming into the back of the truck, felt one whistle right through the cabin and smash into the windshield, making a spider’s web of cracked glass.

  He had no choice but to go on, the pain in his shoulder searing up into his temples.

  He was on the highway now, and he knew that they would be getting into their own cars to come after them. He had to turn off, find a hiding place.

  Ahead in the dark, was a small road, which ran downhill toward some adobe homes.

  Maybe here there would be a garage, a place to park, so he could see the extent of her wounds.

  He made the turn and roared over the deeply rutted path, but the headlights seemed dim to him, and he suddenly knew that he had lost his way. There was something up ahead there in the dark, something he could almost see. What the hell was wrong with his sight?

  He never woke up, even as the truck rolled off the road, down an embankment, and smashed through the high weeds on the beaches of the Rio Grande, bursting into flames as it smashed into a grove of eleg
ant, lonely cottonwood trees.

  Chapter 25

  It was very pleasant lying in the mountain cave. Even though he knew he was freezing to death, Jack didn’t really mind at all. The stalactites hanging down over him were spectacular, and the ice beneath him was somehow reassuring, even though he might freeze to death. Maybe that was it, he thought. Maybe cold death itself was reassuring. No double-crosses in the land of the big freeze. No tunnels, no ghost cactus, just good solid reliable cold … cold that could freeze away all the pain and all the loss and all the blown chances.

  So go with it. Shut the eyes and let the cold take you away.

  Only there was something irritating going on, something that probed and twisted the body, something that took away all the snow and the ice, something warm and relentless, and he wanted to strike out at it, tell it (whatever the hell it was) to get the fuck away from him.

  He was doing just fine freezing here.

  And most of all, he didn’t want to hear any goddamned voices. Didn’t want to be drawn back into the world. Didn’t want to think of the girl, what was her name? No, don’t remember, don’t think of it. And isn’t that the ugliest little trick that memory plays, you can’t will yourself not to remember.

  No, no, don’t think of that one; let the ice come and freeze everything out, baby, freeze out all the names and all the faces …

  And let the voices stop:

  “Jack, Jack, Jack … wake up, babe.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Ah, that’s better. That’s the Jack we know and love.”

  “Get away. Get away…. Come on.”

  Lights, lights, lights, who put the strobe lights in the cave? Hot stage lights (this is a set, isn’t it?) burning away all the cool, crystal, embalming snow.

  Turn away from them, get the head back into the white cave. But there’s no escaping them, no escaping the lights.

  “Come on, Jack. Open those blue eyes and make our day.”

  “C.J.?”

  “Whoa! Listen to the man!”

  The comforting snow melting away, and now Jack became acutely aware of a terrible pain in his right shoulder, as if somebody had shot a harpoon inside his skin and forgotten to pull it out. He opened his eyes slowly, painfully, and saw Calvin Jefferson beaming down at him.

  “C.J. Where the fuck am I?”

  “Believe the kind sisters call this place Angel of Mercy Hospital. It’s in El Paso.”

  “I don’t want to die in fucking Texas,” Jack said.

  “Don’t believe you’re gonna die at all, Jackie. Can you move?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you are one tough Mick, Jackie. All you got out of the deal was a bad concussion, a neat hole in your arm, and a couple broken ribs. I wouldn’t try playing any one-on-one for a while, but you should be okay in a week or two. How do you feel?”

  “Wasted. Can’t keep awake. Like somebody grew cotton in my mouth.”

  “That’s probably from the lovely narcotics they’ve been pumping into you.”

  “How ironic. How’s Charlotte Rae?”

  “You were alone, Jack. Some local guys found you, took you to this hospital. You saying you were with the girl?”

  “Yeah…. She got me out of there.”

  Jack fought to stay awake, but the cold was coming back now in waves, clear, crystal ice … and he was slipping away, back to his mountain cave. He could hear singing, and some kind of chanting, and he half expected to see adorable ice dwarfs. He was almost gone, out there on the big glacier, when he felt a wave of adrenaline panic. With all his remaining strength, he reached up and clutched C.J.

  “C.J.? You gotta find her. If Wingate or Morales get to her, they’ll kill her.”

  “Don’t worry, man. I’ll take care of it,” C.J. said.

  “And, C.J., there’s something else.”

  He was slipping away again.

  “You rest, man. Whatever it is, it can wait.”

  “No, the tunnel. Morales….”

  “Don’t worry about the tunnel, Jackie. We hit it two days ago. They were all cleared out, but they left about a hundred pounds of Colombian white.”

  “They were gone?” Jack said. He could barely hear C.J. now…. His head was pounding, and the drugs were shutting him down as if someone were drawing a big zipper over his head.

  “Yeah … but it’s okay. It’s a partial victory. We get the drugs, shut down one of their best routes, and our bosses get their pictures in the paper. So don’t worry, man. You just rest. I’m really glad you made it back, Jack.”

  “But there’s something else,” Jack said. “I can’t think … something … Michaels … Where’s Michaels?”

  “Will you stop it?” C.J. said. “For godsake. Let it go.”

  “No,” Jack said. “Listen to me … Michaels …”

  “—is dead,” C.J. said.

  “Dead?”

  “As in, stone cold. He was speeding up on Mulholland, blind drunk, and he went right over at Fryman Canyon. Man, he had enough booze in his system to open a bar.”

  “Dead?” Jack said.

  That was impossible. Why would he be dead? Michaels was the cartel’s agent in place. It made no sense … made none at all…. He fought to stay awake, to think it through, but it was too much for him….

  And he fell back into the comforting, freezing snow.

  Jack awoke, chills running through his body. Still half-asleep, he looked up and realized that the air-conditioner vent was directly above him. It was pouring sheets of freezing air down on him. Great, between the painkillers that had pushed his circulation down to zero and the subarctic blasts sweeping down on him, he was practically a Popsicle.

  His shoulder burned, and he had a splitting headache.

  Mercifully, the nurse had come in at one point during his big sleep, awakened him, and shot him full of Demerol again, so his true misery was still hidden by the gauzy tissue of narcotics. It occurred to him now just why people would do anything, sell their children, murder their parents, to get this stuff. You were absolved of pain, of all effort, of even the idea that struggle or family meant anything. All that mattered was that the cool dream and the body rushes never end.

  God, how he wanted to simply lie here and dream. But he knew he had to resist that. He had to think, however difficult it was.

  But lying here, thinking was impossible. He was already half falling asleep again. No, he had to force himself out of the bed.

  Slowly he made it to a sitting position and flung his legs over the bedside. Then he managed to slide into his slippers, put on his bathrobe, and shuffle out toward the hall. He felt dizzy, and the antiseptic smells of the hospital corridor turned his stomach.

  Then he thought of C.J. hovering over his bed, telling him something. What was it? Michaels. Yes, Michaels was dead.

  Gingerly, he made his way down the hall and found the water fountain. His mouth was as dry as the desert they had almost buried him in, and the first mouthful of cold water was a shock to his system. The water wakened him, and he leaned against the wall.

  Now it came back to him. Charlotte Rae was gone. The tunnel had been hit, but Morales and Wingate had gotten away.

  He got another drink, then headed back to his room, his head spinning …

  “Mr. Walker, what are you doing out of bed?”

  The nurse was a friendly-looking Mexican woman about fifty years old. Jack walked past her, opened the closet door. There were new clothes hanging neatly there. A T-shirt, jeans, and his own boots. C.J.’s work. Jack smiled. He reached for the Levi’s.

  “Mr. Walker, you aren’t thinking about checking out are you?”

  “Not really,” Jack said. “I don’t have time for the paperwork. If there are charges, send them to my work address. DEA Headquarters, Los Angeles, California.”

  He took off the hospital gown and started to put on his pants.

  “Mr. Walker, you’ve been shot, you’ve suffered trauma to your head. You cannot just
walk out of here. You could suffer a severe relapse, even a blackout. What if you were driving a car?”

  “It’s okay,” Jack said. “I always buckle up.”

  “I’m getting your doctor right this minute.”

  She turned, and Jack hurried to pull on his T-shirt and boots. Now that the Demerol was wearing off, his body had become a map of pain. He had to keep moving.

  He headed toward the elevator, then realized he would have to go by the nurse’s station. No good.

  Jack went back down the hall, found the fire stairs, pushed open the exit door, and began to descend.

  He felt dizzy, weak, and realized that the nurse was right. He could pass out any second.

  He held on to the round steel railing and took the steps three at a time, half falling at the first landing.

  He had to think. Michaels was involved. That much he knew. Or was he? For the first time another thought formed in his mind. Maybe Michaels wasn’t involved but had known who was.

  Maybe Michaels had been working on finding out. That was possible. Maybe he had been working on it and had actually found out, and they’d killed him.

  Jack stopped, caught his breath.

  He was at the second floor now. He panted, felt clammy sweat rolling down his head.

  Something Morales had said to him in the torture room was important, but his memory was like a bunch of clouds. Clouds with Doughboy faces, floating by in disarray…. If he could just stop them from floating, make them line up in some kind of order. But you couldn’t make a line out of clouds.

  Still, he had to try. What was it that bothered him so about all of this?

  It was this fact—Morales was a businessman. It was obvious he wanted revenge, wanted it badly. His voice had cracked when he spoke of the death of his friend Jose Benvenides. And clearly he wanted to humiliate Jack and the DEA. Perhaps it could all be chalked up to his bout with cancer. Perhaps his mind had become unhinged.

  But Jack didn’t really think so.

  There had to be something more here, something greater than mere personal revenge. Something else, something bigger was at stake.

  Then Jack remembered something else as well—Dr. Baumgartner, in Mexico. He knew that face, goddamn, if he could only think.

  And Zapata … Michaels had said something about that. But Jack couldn’t focus. Just another cloud drifting by.