The swap itself would be straightforward. We’d meet in front of the fountain and make a nice, low-profile exchange, smiling all the while like captains at the Harvard-Yale game, complimenting each other on our smashing successes thus far this season. Then we could promise to do it again next year, say our good-byes, and run like hell for the U.S. border before anyone had a change of heart.
While I explained this, I realized that I didn’t have a plan B, some kind of out for Helen and me if the deal went south. Took me about half a heartbeat to figure out what that would be.
When Esperanza returned, I asked her a few questions in passing about Ensenada. She proudly trumpeted the fishing industry, debunked some local legends, and bragged up the once-a-week air service to the United States from the airport. She even put in a plug for her night job, letting me know that special clients were entitled to preferred rates. A regular Chamber of Commerce, that girl.
* * *
We burned a smoke and had another drink. Until the couriers showed there wasn’t much else to do. A check of my watch told me I had an hour or two to spare. I stood up, stretched, and told the guys I was going to duck out for a bit and would meet them at the hotel a little later.
I started the wagon up and dropped it into gear. Then I made a left at the first corner and headed south toward the far edge of town, toward plan B.
72
El Ciprés airport is roughly five miles south of Ensenada, beyond the tenement warrens and across an open patch of flat, dead earth. It’s surrounded by the usual desperate clutch of warehouse buildings and unnamed streets that sprout up near all airports like molehills on the prairie. The airport is a civil/military facility with the airlines and the smaller general aviation planes sharing the runways with the Fuerza Aérea, a common arrangement, even in the United States.
But unlike their American counterparts, the Mexican Air Force was a third-rate flying circus that any five kids with slingshots could take down on a good day. I doubted they had anything more than a few World War II issue fighters dry-rotting away in a dark hangar anyway.
The word ciprés is Spanish for “cypress,” a pleasant deviation from the usual practice of naming an airport for some general who got his ass shot off in one of Mexico’s three-dozen revolutions.
But the cypress tree is also a funerary symbol, denoting grieving as well as the underworld. Branches of the tree have been placed outside the homes of the deceased since ancient times, a tradition that lives on in many quarters, including the homes of the Buonomo clan in Chicago. In light of the fact that there were no cypress trees within a hundred miles of Ensenada’s airport, however, I found the name to be a bit disconcerting.
I found a road that led to the general aviation sector and parked in front of a Quonset hut that looked like it had done a tour on Wake Island. The hand-painted wooden sign out front said ARAGON AVIATION and listed Pepe Someone-or-other as the manager. The lights were out, but that was fine by me. I wasn’t looking for a job—just a plane I could steal.
Security at small airports is surprisingly lax, not because the aviation community has a low quotient of ne’er-do-wells, but because there just isn’t that much of a market for stolen Piper Cubs out there.
I flipped the horseshoe latch on the gate and walked right out to the ramp like I was Pepe himself. Near as I could tell, I had the run of the place.
A dozen odd planes in various stages of decay crowded the Aragon ramp like sick cattle awaiting death. Several tired Air Coupes pined for release at the back of the lot near a blast fence that had maybe one last blast in it. Farther off, a wingless PBY slumped beside a deengined DC-4, castrated testimony to the cruelty of progress and the disproportionate value of aircraft parts versus whole planes.
Scanning past the hulks, I spied a row of large half-moon hangars that trailed off into the night, all dark save one. A flood of light spread out on the ramp from the second one a hundred and some yards away, its doors rolling open with a distant creak. Some airliner had probably just had a gear swing or engine change and was going back into service.
I walked over to a couple of the better-looking planes on the ramp, a sun-beaten Cessna 140 and a Debonair. They were probably available for charter, meaning they flew regularly and didn’t have too many car parts on them, but it wasn’t like I was going to be picky about it if a carload of banditos was bearing down on Helen and me. A pair of wings that could get me the hundred miles to America was worth a helluva lot more than a brand-new Corvette if it came down to that.
I climbed onto the wing of the Debonair and jimmied the door lock with the dummy I carried on my key ring. Almost all airplane keys are mere formalities, serving about the same purpose as parsley on egg salad. I wasn’t taking it anyhow—at least not tonight—just checking that it would be ready if and when I needed it.
I pulled the door open with care and slipped into the pilot’s seat, then fumbled around for the battery button. When I found the rocker switch, I pushed down on it, snapping it to ON with a small click. I gave the instruments a five-second once-over—gas gauges at full, ammeter good, cockpit lights okay—and pronounced the plane fit for flight. Then I flipped the switch down and climbed out.
As I stood up on the wing, I made out several men standing in a faint fan of light from the open hangar down-ramp. A small twin-engine plane was taxiing at a good clip toward the hangar, but it wasn’t showing any lights, not even a taxi light. Mechanics often repositioned the planes for maintenance in breakneck fashion, but not unlit and at night. I scratched the stubble on my chin as I watched the operation unfold.
The hangar lights went out as the plane neared, two men guiding the machine through the half-open doors with flashlights. This was highly unusual and ridiculously unsafe. It wasn’t acceptable anywhere in the world to taxi a plane into a hangar, especially a dark one, but that was exactly what the guy at the controls did, running up the engines, spinning the aircraft in a hard, tight turn, and cutting the power well inside the doorway. Even in Mexico, that was a bit loco.
Then I heard some of the men shouting in English as the noise of the engines died. Hardly a crime—but pretty strange for working-class guys who should have been speaking Spanish.
I cupped a hand to my ear, leaned toward the sound, and clearly heard a man inside the hangar shout, “Shut those fucking doors—now! On the double!”
It was the kind of talk and tone you heard in the military, but rarely in the civilian world. Now I was genuinely interested in what was going on down there.
With the hangar lights doused, the ramp was completely black. I stood there awhile, deciding whether or not to stick my eye into yet another knothole. The whole operation was ominous, and one thing I’d learned long ago was that bad things tend to be related. It was just easier to assume the worst about something and feel guilty—and alive—later if I was wrong. I threw all my chips in and set off across the ramp, staying closely in line with the parked aircraft to mask my movement.
I made it to the near edge of the first hangar, skulking along in the shadows of the closed doors until I reached the corner. The doors of the second hangar were shut tight, but the lights had been turned back on, their shafts escaping through several open transom windows along the building side. The windows were a good fifteen feet above the ground, so I wouldn’t risk detection as long as I was quick—and quiet. I took a breath and shot out into the alleyway, traversing the open space as fast as I dared.
Once across, I crouched down in the dark corner behind a doorframe that extended beyond the brick sidewall. The sound of muffled voices came from inside, but the words were just a jumble. I needed to get closer.
Scanning around for anything useful, I spied several maintenance stands bunched along the side of the hangar, one of them tall enough to afford a look inside through the open window.
Slowly, silently, I wound up the stairs, one by one, until my eyes were level with the bottom of the window frame two feet away. Then I reached out very carefully, stretchi
ng my arms across the gap and placing my hands against the wall. Spreading my fingers wide, I braced myself against my hands and leaned in until my nose was pressed flat against the brick. Squinting from the bright light inside, I peered through the one-inch opening between the painted glass and the lip of the steel frame.
What I saw stunned me.
73
In the middle of the hangar floor, several men in dark coveralls were swarming around an aircraft—a Lockheed P-38 Lightning with Mexican Air Force markings. The cockpit hatch was open and a man in a flightsuit with a tight platinum flattop was descending from the wing with a snarl on his face that would have sent Pancho Villa fleeing in terror. If he wasn’t the towhead I saw earlier in town, he was his doppelgänger.
Both nose cowlings on the plane were raised, revealing the full complement of four .50-caliber machine guns and a twenty-millimeter cannon, same as when it rolled off the assembly line two decades earlier. The plane the Luftwaffe nicknamed the “Fork-Tailed Devil” was no longer a match for modern jet fighters, but at full power the P-38 could go like a raped ape and was still a highly capable and very lethal aircraft.
Several gray metallic boxes sat on the hangar floor at the feet of two men who were attending to the weapons with the care of surgeons. One of the men unsnapped the latch on a box and hauled out a seemingly endless belt of .50-caliber ammunition, holding it up approvingly in his hands as if it were a newborn baby, the copper jackets gleaming in the artificial light. He said something to the other man and let out a low whistle. Both broke into wide grins, the wicked glare of the bullets reflecting in their eyes.
The aircraft scheme was a typical dark olive shade that hadn’t been applied any too recently. Patches of bare aluminum shone irregularly along the plane’s leading edges where wind and weather had had their way with the paint. The words Fuerza Aérea were clearly stenciled in white letters along the tail boom, and a three-colored Mexican flag adorned the vertical stabilizer. A man wielding a paint can was hastily slathering a fresh coat of olive drab over the air force markings on the side of the plane.
A very bad feeling descended over me as I watched the operation. The men were moving with purpose and precision, skilled technicians intimately familiar with their tasks. But they were all speaking English and had no business anywhere near a Mexican Air Force plane, especially since the military portion of the airport was way the hell down at the other end of the field. And there was no accounting for the men painting over the markings, or putting live ammunition in the guns. This was no air-show prep.
No, the aircraft was either stolen or, more likely, tacitly loaned to this goon squad for a CIA mission or some kind of assassination plot. I didn’t know who the president of Mexico was that week, but I guessed that he might very well have eaten his last state dinner.
I picked up fragments of the conversation here and there, but most of the men had their backs to me, the low hum of a generator further cloaking their words in a dull fuzz.
“Arriving tonight,” “First light,” “Not gonna be anything left standing” were among the words I overheard, the hair on my neck rising a little higher with each phrase.
For half a second I considered whether Frank or Roselli could have ordered anything like this up, then dismissed the thought as wildly out of bounds. Still, the whole scene was bone-deep unsettling, and I was suddenly shot through with an overwhelming urge to get the hell out of there while I still could.
I slithered down the stairs, checked my six, and darted away across the ramp. While I ran, I made a snap decision: if the couriers had made it down, I was going to make the swap tonight. There was way too much bad mojo in Baja. Somebody was going to be in a world of hurt come morning—and I didn’t want it to be me.
74
Vito was waiting for me in the lobby when I returned. He gave me a quick chin nod and tilted his head toward the stairs. I went right up, and he followed a few seconds later.
In the sepia glow of the poorly lit hallway, Vito motioned toward Lino’s room and rubbed his thumb across his first two fingers several times. His mouth hung slightly open, the dull brown light from the exposed overhead bulb glinting off the silver in his whiskers ever so slightly. Something about the light and the excited gleam in his eyes made him look like one of those rapacious figures in a Caravaggio painting. It amused me, although I don’t quite know why.
I rapped lightly against the door, said, “It’s Joe,” and stood back so what light there was would fall on my face.
A thick, deep voice I didn’t recognize leeched heavily through the wood, said, “Who’s dere?”
I repeated my name, louder. A muffled voice spoke inside the room. There was a pause, then I heard the slow click of a hammer locking back and the fumbling of a chain.
The door cracked open and a honker the size of the Andrea Doria slid out like it was making an Atlantic crossing, trailing a face in its wake that suggested a life of brute physicality. The heavy-lidded, uninquisitive eyes on that face did nothing to refute that suggestion.
Above the simian head I saw Lino looking at me. “Let ’em in,” he said.
The beast snorted and pulled back the door. I stepped inside and Vito followed. I nodded to Lino then gave the gorilla a good once-over.
Might have been wider than he was tall, shoulders like a silverback just bulging through his threadbare gray suit. There was a high note of some thin cologne around him, but he still smelled like a slit latrine in a garlic patch. And, Christ, was he ugly—I’d seen better kissers on totem poles. The big man projected immense strength and great stupidity. Never did get his name.
Across the room, a slim dark man lay slouching over the back of a shabby chair, picking his nails with a long, narrow knife with a rehearsed cool that was too cute by a mile.
He looked up from underneath an olive fedora with a pimento feather and gave me a knowing nod he hadn’t earned. The hat was nice but looked just plain silly with his cream-and-beige knit sweater and tight brown chinos. Somehow it suited him just the same. The tan-and-white spectators just had to be for irony; nothing else could explain them. He said his name was Tony. Of course it was.
Something across the room caught my eye. There atop the low frame bed sat a beat-up leather satchel, offending neither nostril nor good taste. It immediately garnered my full and undivided attention, beating out the rather heady competition offered by Mighty Joe Young and the Dapper Dagger.
I checked out the bag, shuffling through several bundles of hundreds like a dealer splicing two stacks of cards together.
“It’s all dere, a hundred grand,” Tony said. “Don’t ya trust us?”
I looked into his dark eyes, said, “No.”
But what difference did it make? They were all I had, four criminals carrying out orders for another man, here in a lawless land backing me up against thirty or more desperadoes in a world-class sucker play.
I took a long look at my army: a cooze hound, a sphinx, a stiletto-packing dandy, and a gorilla. I wondered if it was too late to surrender.
75
I sent Tony and the gorilla to Agua Caliente and told them to take covering positions on opposite sides of the fountain in the town plaza. There was only one plaza and one fountain, so even they would have trouble screwing up the job.
Their orders were to not do a damn thing. If the deal went down as planned, they were to back us up then head for home. I was sure the Brookfield Zoo was looking for one of them anyway.
After they departed, I told Lino, “I want you to drive, okay?”
He nodded somberly.
“Vito, you bring the money and come with me for the swap. Is it all there?”
“I count it myself, Joe, all there. Ten bundles of ten thousand—hundred in all.”
“Good. We’ll park close to the plaza. Back the car in and leave it running. Lino, you see anyone sneaking up behind us, you do what you gotta do, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Vit, we gotta be cool here. We have t
o get this lady out alive.”
“Sì,” he said, nodding.
“Nothing crazy here, just the girl for the money—like Hollywood. Capisce?”
“But they don’t use real bullets in Hollywood, Joe. Capisce?”
He smiled a bit when he said it, but not too much.
I drew a bead on him and our eyes met. “Sì,” I said, clipping off the end of the word.
“There can’t be two hundred people in that village,” I continued, “and it’s Sunday night so the town should be quiet. This thing should be quick and neat. Either of you know the guys who brought the money down?”
They both nodded in the affirmative.
“They okay?”
Vito said, “Yeah, I know Tony a little bit. “’e’s not as dumb as he looks.”
“He couldn’t be.”
He snickered. “Well, Roselli trust him. And ’e can throw that goddamn knife thirty feet, ’it a man in the ’eart.”
“You ever see that?”
“No. But I ’ear it’s true.”
“I see,” I said, noting that for what it was worth. “What about the gorilla?”
“Il scimmio? I dunno nothing.”
“Lino?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “I see him break two guys’ heads together in a fight one time. Neither guy gets up. He’s one strong son of a bitch.”
“Is he as dumb as he looks?”
“Yes.” He gave me the faintest trace of a smile. “S’alright?”
I gestured with one open hand, tilted my head. “S’alright.”
And that was that. We could have spent another week on logistics and two hours briefing it and it wouldn’t have gotten any better.
I told the guys to check their weapons, get the cash, and meet me at the car in five minutes. I went downstairs and asked to use the house phone for a local call. It was past the time for being coy, and I didn’t want to go track down another phone somewhere anyhow.
One for Our Baby Page 22
