They did know that Paz was highly interested in the oldster in the food truck, that he'd evinced great satisfaction upon sighting him, satisfaction of the kind that betokened nothing good to the object of that interest.
Fierro said, "He's carrying something, looks like a bag. Wonder what's in it?"
His voice sounded innocent enough, but Paz still gave him a suspicious side glance. No mention of the million-dollar ransom money had crossed his lips; he feared to lead his henchmen into temptation. That size sum — in cash, no less — could engender greed sufficient to overcome their fear. Especially in Fierro, a bold and unprincipled rogue and conscienceless killer. Too much like Paz for Paz himself to ever fully trust the other. But he needed Fierro; he did good work.
No more time could be spared by Paz for searching for the lost medallion, he had to get about his work. It was an ill omen, though. He'd had the piece for many years; it was his good luck charm, his talisman.
He mentally damned himself for being a superstitious old woman. If he didn't get moving, and quick, he risked losing Beltran. That must never be.
He straightened up, said, "Wait here. I've got to go kill a man and then I'll be right back."
He went around the front of the Explorer, padding light-footed along the aisle at the head of the row of parked cars. He hauled a pistol, a flat, big-caliber semi-automatic, out of his right hip pocket.
He caught fresh sight of Beltran, from up close, feeling the old familiar sensation of bloodlust rising in him. A good feeling.
Monatero had steered him right, he told himself. The Supremo cell commander hadn't known who Beltran was, who he really and truly was, not until Paz had told him. But he'd known the operational details of the kidnap exchange.
Beltran had ordered Rubio, Torres, and Moreno to maintain comm silence and not contact the Supremo home base. He hadn't said anything about home base contacting them, though.
His doubts mounting as the day wore on, Monatero had finally given in to his fears and phoned Rubio's cell late in the day to find out what was happening. Rubio had briefed him on developments, including where and how the ransom swap was set to go down.
Monatero had learned that the Kwik-Up mini-mall off the highway was the staging area for the Garros exchange at Sad Hill. He'd told Paz, and the tip was a good one.
* * *
Paz walked soft, but at the last instant, eagerness for the kill had caused him to speed up as he closed in on Beltran.
The sound of his footfalls might have betrayed his approach, or perhaps Beltran had sensed something at the last: impending doom casting its shadow before it.
Paz said, "Hello, amigo."
Beltran turned, face to face with Paz. Beltran, Havana's ace spymaster, the deep cover legend whom Monatero had known only as Tio Rico.
Uncle Rico, aged, amiable, ineffectual vendor of snack treats from a beat-up old food truck.
Paz loomed, standing up close to Beltran, separated from him only by the length of the gun barrel whose muzzle he held jammed into the other's middle. With his free hand, Paz relieved the oldster of the burden of the knapsack, gripping it by the shoulder strap and taking it away from him.
It was heavy, bulging at the seams. A million dollars! Not bad for a day's work.
The rest went quickly, in a businesslike manner. Beltran wasted not a breath on appeals, pleas, or last words.
Paz made no final speeches, no taunts, no exit lines. Having said hello to Beltran, all that remained for Paz to do was to say goodbye to him.
"Adios, amigo," he said, pulling the trigger. He fired several times, blowing out most of Beltran's middle, muzzle flashes underlighting his face to showcase its gleeful, masklike cast.
Having the gun wedged up tight against Beltran's flesh served as a kind of silencer, muffling to some extent the sound of the blasts. Beltran stood there in place, thrashing and thumping against the truck door as Paz unloaded into him.
A round ripped through him and the door into the cab, setting off the computerized musical ditty that the food vendor had played through the roof-mounted loudspeaker to announce his approach and peddle his wares.
The tune was the same one that had played earlier today, when he'd showed up at snack time at the Supremo Hat Company:
"La Cucaracha."
It was on a short loop and now kept replaying itself, again and again, its piping notes shrilling through the parking lot.
Paz stepped back from Beltran, who slid down the side of the door, sitting down on the pavement and slumping forward, head bowed, as if bowing down to his slayer. A distinctive touch; Paz liked it.
He started to move, intending to circle around the front of the food truck and return to the Explorer the way he came.
People in the lot had heard the shots, but the amplified strain of "La Cucaracha," repeated again and again, defused the threat and made it seem like nothing more than a food vendor's ill-timed advertisement for himself.
Stepping off, Paz felt something slipping out from under his bulletproof vest, falling to the pavement at his feet. Light glinted off the object: his Saint Barbara medallion.
It hadn't escaped him after all! It had been stuck somewhere under the vest and finally worked itself loose during the shooting.
Total satisfaction spread through Paz, suffusing him from head to toe with its warmth. The talisman's loss had worried him more than he dared admit; finding it again filled him with a surge of good feeling, almost equal to what he'd felt pumping slugs into Beltran's belly.
He leaned forward from the waist to pick it up, setting down the knapsack on the pavement and releasing for an instant his grip on the knapsack to retrieve the medallion.
A shout came, loud enough to be heard over the refrain of "La Cucaracha," which continued its idiotic, monotone blaring over the loudspeaker.
"Martello Paz!"
Jack Bauer stood behind Paz, no more than six feet away, gun in hand. Paz half-rose, whirling, swinging the gun around.
Jack shot him twice in the head. Ordinarily he wasn't a headhunter, going for the body shot, the safest and most reliable course in a gunfight. Odds were that Paz was wearing a bulletproof vest, though. This was one time that a head shot trumped a body shot.
One-two, the double tap, surest way to inflict instant death. Kill the brain and the reflexes crash, including those of a trigger finger.
In the Explorer, Vasco and Fierro suddenly found themselves confronted by CTU agents who popped up on both sides of the vehicle, sticking riot shotguns through the open windows into their faces.
"Freeze!"
Fierro moved.
A shotgun blast filled the cab interior. As did much of Fierro's head, blown off at point-blank range.
Vasco froze and stayed that way. Not moving even after a CTU man had frisk-patted him down, relieving him of his handgun and ordering him to get out of the cab.
He had to shout to be heard over "La Cucaracha."
Vasco remained in place, clutching the steering wheel. Until his fingers were pried open and he was hauled out of his seat and thrown facedown to the pavement and handcuffed.
* * *
Jack stood with his arm hanging down at his side, smoking gun barrel pointed at the pavement.
Pete Malo reached across the food truck's rooftop, grabbing a handful of wires leading into the loudspeaker and yanking them out. Cutting off "La Cucaracha" in mid-note.
Blessed silence.
Pete moved up beside Jack, said, "You took a chance there, calling him out."
Jack's ears were still ringing, not so much from the gunfire as from the music. He said, "I wanted him to turn around so I could shoot him from the front instead of from behind. Looks better that way for the record. Less like an execution."
Pete said, "No working that diplomatic status to get off scot-free and board the next plane for Venezuela, not for him. There's no diplomatic immunity from a couple of bullets in the head."
He gave Jack a quick side glance. "I guess you had it
figured that way."
Jack shrugged, his silence committing him to nothing.
Pete indicated the white-haired oldster. "So that's the legendary Beltran. Too bad we couldn't take him alive."
Jack said, "Paz had other plans."
Reflected light from an overhead lamppost glinted off a metallic object on the pavement a few inches away from Paz's open, grasping hand.
Jack picked it up, held it to the light. About the size of a silver dollar, it was a rough-edged, silvery medallion stamped on one side with the image of a haloed woman in a long dress, holding a fistful of lightning bolts.
Pete said, "What's that?"
Jack said, "I don't know. It must have meant something to Paz, though. He was reaching for it when I called him out."
"A good luck piece, maybe."
"Not for him."
Jack eyed the medallion, turning it over in his hand, unsure of what to do with it. An odd trinket, yet it didn't seem right, somehow, to toss it away. Might turn out to be evidence, or a clue, though he didn't see just how yet. He pocketed it; he'd decide what to do with it later.
18
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 P.M. AND 11 P.M. CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME
Belle Reve Street, New Orleans
"Vikki Valence, this is the police. Come on out of the front door, now. "
Belle Reve was a side street down by the riverside. At the waterfront end of it, at right angles to it, stood a waist-high guardrail, its horizontal post painted in black-and-white stripes. Beyond it lay an embankment sloping down for about twenty yards before ending at the shoreline. The river was a choppy black mirror reflecting the landward lights.
Belle Reve was a cul-de-sac, dead-ending on the waterfront. A quiet little street, lined on either side by a few bungalow-type houses. Not the low-rent district, but nothing fancy, either. Far from it.
And far from quiet, too, with an unmarked police car parked in front of it, facing it, with Sergeant Floyd Dooley speaking through the car's public address system. His partner, Buck Buttrick, stood on the passenger side of the car, leaning a hip against the front fender.
The car, a late model, dark-colored Crown Victoria sedan, stood at right angles to the curbside, its high-beam headlights pointed at the front of the house, bathing it in white light.
Nearby, parked along the curbside, was the SUV that Jack Bauer and Pete Malo had been using. Its engine was off, its lights dark. Jack and Pete were nowhere to be seen.
The one-story house was raised on support poles, leaving about eighteen inches of crawl space between the bottom floor planks of the house and the sandy ground below. The front windows were curtained and the house was dark inside, no lights showing.
Floyd Dooley stood on the driver's side of the sedan. The door was open, and stretching out from where it was plugged into the dashboard was a long, coiled cable wire, at the end of which was a microphone clutched in the lawman's hand.
Dooley spoke in a normal, conversational tone into the mic, his words being amplified through the loudspeaker of the car's PA system.
He said, "Come on, now, Miss Vikki, let's have no more foolishness. This is Sergeant Dooley speaking. You know me. "
Inside the house, Vikki Valence stood to one side of the front window, flattened against the wall. The high-beam headlights shone through the window curtains, illuminating much of the interior, leaving dark squares and patches in the areas where the light did not reach.
Vikki was sweating. Much of the look of a trapped animal showed on her face, a contorted mask of fear. Her hair was a tangled mess, strands falling across her face. A sweat-soaked black dress clung to her body.
She held a butcher knife in one hand, clutching it with the blade pointed downward. It was the only weapon she could find in the house and she'd kept it close to her for most of the long hours of the day and night she'd spent hiding out. She wasn't about to let it go now.
"You know me. "
She knew him, all right. Knew that Dooley and his partner, Buttrick, were the two crookedest cops on Bourbon Street. Making them two of the crookedest cops in New Orleans, which qualified them as contenders for the title of crookedest cops in the world.
She had no doubt that they'd sell her to Marty Paz, or Beltran, or whoever made them the best offer. She had no intention of finding out their intentions.
Dooley's voice came over the PA system: "Miss Vikki, Miss Vikki, come on out now, you hear? "
It was starting to rain, that rain which the storm clouds had been promising all day but which had been so long delayed. It fell in big, fat drops that made plopping noises as they struck the Crown Victoria and the crown of Dooley's soft, small-brimmed fishing hat.
Vikki got down on her hands and knees, crawling away in the opposite direction from the front door. It wasn't so easy to crawl holding the butcher knife but she managed it.
The front room was a kind of living room, with two armchairs and a couch that pulled out to become a bed. It was folded up now. She crawled into the back room, which was much larger, a studio space. The rear wall had a set of French doors that opened onto an outdoor wooden deck. Now they were closed.
The space was an artist's studio, smelling of paint and turpentine and canvas. A wooden easel stood in the middle of the floor space, a square of stretched, framed canvas mounted on it.
Outside, the pace of the rainfall was quickening. Raindrops rustled the leaves of the small, shrublike frees in the front yard and made silver streaks where they fell in the path of the headlight beams.
Dooley said, "You are purely trying my patience, Miss Vikki. It's raining and I ain't gonna stand out here much longer getting wet. "
Vikki crawled behind a head-high partition, which screened her from the headlights shining into the house. She got ready to make her break. Not wanting to give herself away by the clip-clop of her sandals on the wooden deck, she took them off.
Holding them by the ankle straps in one hand, and the butcher knife in the other, she tip-toed barefoot to the French doors, keeping the partition between her and the headlights to avoid casting shadows.
She reached for the door handle with the hand holding the sandals by the straps, not wanting to let go of the butcher knife for a second. Holding her breath, she turned the handle, easing the door open to the width it took for her to slip through it, stepping outside onto the deck.
Raindrops pattered on the deck planks. The backyard was dark, except where the headlights shone through the house and through the section of the French doors that wasn't screened by the partition.
She planned to make a run for it, climbing over the back fence into a neighbor's backyard, and making her way away from Belle Reve Street.
It was good to be out of the house where she'd been cooped up for most of the day and night, the thick, humid air of the oncoming storm feeling positively fresh and refreshing after the atmosphere inside the house.
A shadowy figure stepped around the corner of the house on her right, looming into view. He said her name, "Vikki Valence."
A little shriek escaped her as she reflexively raised the butcher knife high.
A deck plank creaked behind her, and before she could react, a strong hand reached around her to clench the wrist that held the knife. A strong arm encircled her wasp waist, lifting her up and raising her bare feet off the ground.
The man who stood behind her, holding her, gave her wrist a little twist in a direction in which it wasn't designed to go. Gasping, white-faced, she let go of the knife, which fell clattering to the deck planking.
The man holding her said, "Easy does it, Miss Valence. We're CTU. You contacted us, remember? Well, here we are."
The speaker was Jack Bauer; the other figure, the one at the far end of the deck, was Pete Malo.
She said, "I'll scream... "
Jack said, "Save your voice for talking. You're going to be doing a lot of it, because we want to know all about your friend Colonel Paz and his friend Beltran." No point in tell
ing her they were both dead, not yet.
Vikki stopped struggling, not that her squirmings were getting her anywhere. Jack's calm, conversational tone convinced her that she was dealing with the real thing, a government man. Hoodlums and hard guys of the Bourbon Street variety that she was used to dealing with rarely bothered to be polite.
Jack set her down on her feet, keeping his grip on her wrist. "Don't run. Where would you go to, anyhow?"
She said, "Don't turn me over to Dooley and Buttrick... "
Pete Malo stepped up, said, "You belong to CTU now." He bent down, picking up the butcher knife. "Nice."
Vikki said, "I was only going to use it in self-defense."
Pete said, "Let's all go inside, hmm?"
Vikki started to struggle again, but Jack held her wrist in a police-style come-along, controlling her movements. She said, "No — no, not inside... "
Jack said, "Why not?"
Pete told her, "Don't get frantic, Vikki."
"I don't want to go back in there!"
Pete said, "I do. I'm getting wet out here."
He opened one of the French doors wide, crossing the threshold and stepping inside, halting almost immediately. "Uh-oh," he said.
He padded around in the studio area lit by the headlights' glare, finding a wall switch and flipping it on, turning on an overhead light.
Jack followed, escorting Vikki inside. His nostrils caught a whiff of decay, a stench of corruption. He knew that smell.
Pete said, "We don't want to leave our police friends out in the rain." He crossed the studio into the front room, opening the front door and standing in the doorway. "Come on in, men."
Dooley and Buttrick hurried across the front yard, up the three front stairs and inside, eager to be out of the rain, now falling somewhat steadily. As soon as he stepped inside, Dooley made a face, nostrils crinkling in disgust. Buttrick said, "What up and died in here?"
Pete said, "Guess."
He turned and went into the studio, the two cops following.
An easel was positioned to take advantage of the natural light that would come shining through the French doors in daytime. Mounted on the easel was a half-finished painting of a nude female. Not Vikki, but some other femme, one who presumably didn't figure in the case, but — who knew for sure?
24 Declassified: 07 - Storm Force Page 27
