Hailey's War

by Jodi Compton

  I drove the Bronco back up to the roadside. When I got there, Payaso was already behind the wheel of the SUV. I led him to the driveway of the Skouras place and tapped my brakes to make the brake lights flash, then pulled over. I shut off the engine, grabbed a brown paper grocery bag, and ran to the SUV. I climbed in the passenger side but didn’t stay there, getting into the back instead. If the other soldier was looking out the front window when we drove up, it was probably too much to hope that he wouldn’t notice that his partner had morphed into a Hispanic male, but if he did, well, there was no point pushing our luck by having a blond girl visible in the window, too.

  I crouched on the floor. The grocery bag was mostly a prop, filled with crumpled newspaper to give it shape, but there were a few things we’d need at the bottom, and I dug them out. A ski mask. A canister of pepper spray. The duct tape.

  When Payaso stopped the SUV in the driveway, near the house, I handed him his ski mask and the handcuffs.

  “Anyone in the windows?” I asked, getting the pepper spray out of the bag.

  “No, they’re clear,” he said. “Why don’t you have a mask?”

  “The guy in the bushes down there saw my face already.”

  I opened the side door, shook the pepper spray, and squirted a little into the gravel of the driveway. This would be a bad time for the nozzle to be clogged. It wasn’t.

  “Okay,” I said. “Keys?”

  Payaso pulled the keys from the ignition and handed them to me. I sorted through them, fast. One was a smallish mailbox key, one was a Honda key, probably to the guy’s private car. Three were what looked like house keys. I chose one at random, isolating it from the others between my thumb and index finger. Then I jumped out and raised the grocery bag to obscure my face. I walked fast to the front steps and up them, stopped at the front door. I stuck in the key I’d chosen. It didn’t go in. Dammit. I tried another. It slid in and the door swung open.

  Inside, the entryway was empty. No one was in my line of sight. I leaned back out, signaling Payaso to come.

  I stepped quietly into the entryway, onto a floor of linoleum marked to look like distressed gray tiles. I listened for noise and heard it from the kitchen. The other tunnel rat was in there.

  Payaso appeared behind me, masked now, gun in hand.

  “Jeff?” a male voice said, from the kitchen. “That was fast. You forget something, you dildo?”

  His footsteps drew near. Up close, he had that all-over-golden-brown coloring that some southern Europeans have: golden-brown hair and eyes, a touch of warmth to his skin tone, his jawline stub-bled in a lazy-fashionable way.

  I didn’t let him get all the way to the doorway. Instead, I walked through it, pepper spray in hand, and sprayed him directly in the face, and when he yelped and stumbled back, I threw my hardest straight right. He fell, and as he pitched forward, I grabbed him around the neck and rammed a knee into his liver. It’s always tempting to aim for the testicles, but it’s harder than many untrained fighters realize to hit that sweet spot that causes instant incapacitation. Liver, kidney, solar plexus-these were all more accessible and nearly as brutal.

  I wrestled the soldier onto his stomach and began wrapping his wrists behind his back with duct tape. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Payaso covering us, holding his gun two-handed like a cop.

  “I got him,” I said. “Watch behind us, too.”

  Serena’s surveillance had suggested that there were still only two guys living in the house-now both accounted for-but you couldn’t be too careful.

  The soldier turned his head to the side, to where he could almost make eye contact. His nose was dripping blood from where I’d hit him.

  “What the fuck?” he said. “Who the fuck are you guys?”

  “Shut up,” I said, winding more tape around his ankles. “Is there anyone else in the house besides Nidia?”

  “Who?”

  “Nice try,” I said. “Is there?”

  “Fuck you.”

  I sighed. “I’m gonna leave you for a minute while I go get Nidia from upstairs. Don’t think my associate won’t shoot you if you give him trouble. Tip your head back and breathe deep; your nose will stop bleeding in a minute.”

  Then, to Payaso: “Don’t let him provoke you into conversation, okay? We’re keeping this guy on a need-to-know basis, and what he needs to know is nothing.”

  Payaso nodded.

  I searched the rest of the house. It was a nice place: could have been anybody’s Lovely Vacation House with the sectional sofa and the flat-screen TV and the big, clean sliding glass door. You wouldn’t think two organized-crime guys and an imprisoned mother-to-be had been living here.

  Outside the door that I believed to be Nidia’s, I tried the remaining two keys, the second of which slid easily into the lock. I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Nidia was in bed, her back to me, under the covers. The TV set was flashing, but without sound. In her position, I’d try to sleep most of it away, too.

  But she wasn’t asleep. She rolled over and saw me.

  Her green eyes had deep purplish shadows underneath them, and when she saw me in the doorway, gun in hand, her expression was one of amazement but not of relief. She didn’t seem to understand what she was seeing.

  “You’re safe now,” I said. “We’re leaving. Get dressed.”

  She stared.

  “Andale,” I prompted. “Tenemos prisa.” Come on, we’re in a hurry.

  Finally getting it, she scrambled up from the bed.

  When Nidia saw Payaso, ski-masked, armed, and standing over the tape-wrapped, bloody-faced form of the soldier, she jumped and nearly backed into me, frightened.

  I said, “Esta bien, he’s with me.”

  Payaso hastily ripped off the ski mask and echoed me: “Esta bien, no tenga miedo.”

  So much for protecting Payaso’s identity, I thought, seeing the soldier get a good look at his face. But it was clear that Payaso’s main priority was reassuring Nidia. He was staring at her: beautiful despite the shadows under her eyes, and real to him for the first time. If he’d had a hat to tip, he would have.

  I looked at Nidia, then nodded at the tunnel rat. “You want to kick him in the ribs?”

  “Como?” she said, confused.

  “Go on,” I urged her, “it’ll be cathartic.”

  She just stared at me. I realized I was pretty jazzed on adrenaline and success. I mean, little Nidia Hernandez was not going to kick this guy in the ribs, and it wasn’t just because she didn’t know what cathartic meant.

  “Never mind. Let’s go,” I said.

  The soldier’s nose had stopped bleeding, and his eyes had stopped streaming from the pepper spray, and as we left, he found his voice and his bravado, calling after me.

  “You’ve signed your own death warrant, bitch,” he said coldly. “I recognize you now. We know who you are.”

  I stopped in the doorway, then looked at Payaso. “Go on out to the car with Nidia,” I told him. “I’ll be right there.”

  Payaso wasn’t sure. “Cuidado,” he said, but he took Nidia out.

  When they were gone, I walked back to the tunnel rat and sat on my heels. It’d been a long time since I’d felt this way, high on adrenaline, sure of myself, full of purpose. It was making me overconfident. I knew it was pointless to engage with this guy any further, but I just couldn’t help myself.

  “You guys know who I am?” I said. “I know who I am, too. I’m Staff Sergeant Henry Cain’s daughter. And to clarify, you’re the fuckup who just let a one-hundred-thirty-five-pound bike messenger kick your ass and take Mr. Skouras’s unborn grandkid away from you. You think there’s a Christmas bonus in your future?”

  He snarled, “You’ll be dead by Christmas. You have no idea how badly you’ve fucked yourself up here.”

  I let him have the last word.

  thirty-seven

  Skouras’s SUV was the last thing we wanted to be driving with his men looking for us, s
o we only took it to the end of the driveway. I was silent on the drive down, thinking about my own vanity. I’d given Skouras’s machine another clue to my identity, telling them my father’s name and that I was a bike messenger. It probably didn’t matter. It wasn’t like they couldn’t find out where I came from, not if they wanted to know. Which now I was sure they would.

  As we got into the Bronco, Serena hailed me: “Insula, do you read? Over.”

  “This is Insula. Mission accomplished.”

  “I’m looking at the three of you right now, man,” she said. “I don’t fucking believe it.”

  “See you on the main road. Over.”

  Even then, I’d probably known I was speaking too soon.

  Serena was in Payaso’s GTO. She’d driven it carefully off road and over field land to the surveillance spot because we hadn’t had time to mount a sophisticated operation that would have entailed Serena hiking in from the distance that I had.

  I turned the wheel and the Bronco trundled in a U-turn, and I headed back the way we’d come.

  I told Payaso, “When we get down to where we left the guy driving the SUV, keep an eye out. He’s unarmed, but if he got free… I don’t know what he might try, just be looking.”

  “He didn’t get free,” Payaso said. “I did him up good.”

  But the danger rarely lies where you think.

  There was about ten miles of long, lonely back road ahead before we’d get to Highway One south, along which we’d probably fall in behind Serena, or she behind us, depending on how fast we each were traveling. The single-lane road, shrouded on each side by pines and underbrush, was very lightly traveled. That was the reason I’d been able to lie by the side of the road in our ambush plan without first drawing the attention of some poor horrified local.

  It was also why, when a sleek silver Mercedes carrying two people shot up the road toward us, I tensed. But that was all. It happened too fast. I was going about sixty, so was the other guy, and we were on top of each other right away.

  The passenger was a man I didn’t see clearly. The driver, whom I did, was Babyface. In that split second, I knew that he had time to see me, Payaso, and worst of all, Nidia.

  “Oh, fuck,” I said.

  “Who was that?” Payaso said.

  “Enemigo,” I said.

  Maybe he didn’t see. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t. Eyes glued to the rearview, I willed the Mercedes to keep going.

  Its brake lights flashed red, and I knew it was going to turn around. I pushed the accelerator to the floor. With my right hand, I grabbed the radio. “Warchild,” I said, “we’re being pursued. It’s a silver Mercedes, California plates.”

  “Insula, I’m two miles to Highway One. What’s your twenty?”

  “About five miles out,” I said. “Just stay clear of us, okay? I’ll catch up with you when I can.”

  He was gaining fast. I had less than a quarter mile on him when I gained Highway One, braked hard, and swung the Bronco into the southbound lane at about thirty miles an hour. That might not sound like a lot of speed, but it is for a right-angle turn, when you’re carrying a pregnant woman. In the rearview, I saw Payaso wrap his arms protectively around Nidia.

  I jammed the accelerator down again, picking up speed.

  I should have listened to Serena. I should have gotten the fastest goddamned car CJ’s money would buy. I was an idiot.

  If I stopped, could we win in a shoot-out? Who was the other guy in the car? Was that guy armed? That Babyface was strapped was a given.

  We were both doing 110 miles an hour, and I was glad that we were passing through a quiet stretch of Highway One. Peace, privacy, and not a lot of cross-traffic: convenient for those rare times when a white homegirl needs to blast through at a high rate of speed, pursued by a mobster’s henchman in a Mercedes.

  I wondered if I could lose Babyface just long enough to dump Nidia out somewhere. Not only would this mean she and her baby would be safe, but I’d also kind of decided that she was my bad-luck charm, because every time I was in a car with her, shit like this happened.

  Then I was distracted by a blur of motion in the bushes off the road, a flash of red lights. It was a highway patrol car, all lights and siren, coming out of his speed trap.

  Payaso cursed in Spanish, then apologized to Nidia.

  The highway patrolman fell in behind Babyface, who at this point was right behind me. Neither of us was showing any sign of stopping.

  After the first initial flash of anxiety, I was wondering if this couldn’t work to our advantage. If I pulled over, Babyface almost certainly wouldn’t. It wasn’t like he could explain to the cops why he was chasing us. And if I complied and Babyface kept going, surely the patrolman would chase Babyface, wouldn’t he? Maybe the cop had even decided that I was simply trying to outrun a nut job who was chasing me.

  That was it, then. I would pull over like a nice white college girl, Babyface would keep going at a hundred miles per hour, the cop would chase the Mercedes, and I’d bang a U-turn and haul ass. Perfect.

  I took my foot off the gas and hit my turn signal, showing my intent to pull over.

  “What are you doing?” Payaso said.

  “Trust me,” I said as the Bronco bumped onto the rough shoulder of the road.

  Babyface raced around me and kept going. The patrol car did not pursue him. It was slowing, pulling over behind me.

  Shit. This was not going according to plan.

  We’d both stopped, but the patrolman was still in his car. He had his hand to his mouth, and I thought he was talking on the radio, calling his buddies to chase Babyface. This would give me a moment to think.

  I looked down at my hands. Unless I was very charming and very convincing right off the bat, this was going to go sour fast. We were carrying two guns, a switchblade, pepper spray, a ski mask, and duct tape. We couldn’t afford a search.

  A pickup truck rambled past, heading north, and I had time to notice the dog, a Dalmatian, that pressed its face against the glass as if curious about our situation. The cop was still inside his cruiser.

  “Payaso,” I said, “whatever happens, we’re not shooting a cop, okay? Worse comes to worst, if Nidia’s in custody, she’s safe, right?”

  “Bullshit,” Payaso said. “La jura isn’t going to protect her. The old man will send his lawyer to bail her out and that’ll be that, he’ll have her all over again. We’ll never find her this time.”

  “Payaso,” I interrupted, meaning, Stop scaring her. “I’m going to talk our way out of this. Make sure your gun’s not showing, okay?”

  The patrolman was at my window. Young and blond and starched and ironed, nothing out of place. I smiled at him and rolled down the window.

  “Thank God you came along,” I said, making my voice breathless and relieved. “That man was chasing us.”

  “Yeah, the Mercedes, I noticed that,” he said. “Why?”

  “I didn’t mean to, but I cut him off,” I said. “He pulled up alongside us, waving a gun. I accelerated to get away, but I guess that was the wrong thing to do. He started following us, and I guess it just got out of hand.”

  “I guess,” he said. “Where were you headed?”

  “To a doctor,” I said. “My friend is pregnant. She was having some abdominal pains, and I offered to take her and her boyfriend to the ER.”

  Sure. Just a nice white girl, chauffeuring a vato and his girlfriend to the ER, pursued by a psychotic Mercedes driver. Who wouldn’t buy it?

  “Am I going to get a ticket, Officer?” I said, trying for an abashed smile. “I swear, I was just trying to get away from that guy. Please, do you think we could just let this go?”

  His eyes narrowed; he was looking down at my clothes. “Is that blood?”

  Oh, hell. I’d abandoned the jacket we’d stained with stage blood, but in all the excitement, I hadn’t noticed getting that guy’s blood on me, though it had been practically inevitable. “Uh, yeah,” I said. “It’s, uh, hers. She h
ad a nosebleed as well as the stomach-”

  Too late, the patrolman wasn’t buying it. His voice froze over. “Miss, step out of the car. Now.”

  That was when I heard the safety click on Payaso’s gun, and I felt the cold ring of the barrel pressed just below my ear. The young cop’s mouth dropped open.

  “Officer,” Payaso said, “take your weapon out of your holster and drop it on the ground, or I promise, I’ll shoot her dead right now.”

  Falling into my role as cowed carjacking victim, I put both hands on the wheel and tried to make them tremble. “Please,” I said. “Please, Officer, he’ll do it.”

  I had to hand it to the kid: He was probably still a rookie, and in this part of the state, I doubted he’d dealt with much more than heavy sarcasm from speeders he’d stopped, but he had backbone. He didn’t immediately comply. Looking at Payaso, he said, “Sir, that’s not going to happen. Put down your weapon now, before you do something I think you really don’t want to.”

  Then I heard the sound of a car approaching us, powerful engine rumbling.

  “Orale,” Payaso whispered, looking through the windshield.

  I thought first of Babyface, but it wasn’t the silver Mercedes. It was Payaso’s GTO, in the wrong lane, bearing down on us like a bull in a matador’s ring. Serena had arrived.

  The patrolman looked up, too, and his mouth fell open. A minute ago, he’d thought his situation couldn’t get any worse, but now it had. I knew the feeling.

  “Run,” I said.

  He scrambled and dove behind the car. Serena blasted past us, so close I didn’t believe the side mirror would survive it, the Bronco shuddering in the wall of air the GTO displaced. Then Serena drifted into a beautiful sideways stop and wriggled up to sit sidesaddle in the driver’s window, watching the patrolman scramble up the hillside at the edge of the road. She braced her arms on the roof of the car, gun in her hands, and fired.

  She was too far away to hit him with a handgun, which was why, for a minute, I didn’t call her off. I just wanted to do what Payaso and Nidia were doing, which was staring in awe. This was not Serena. This was Warchild.