Pandora's Temple

by Jon Land

  “You mean the one your soldiers are sleeping against?”

  Morales ignored his remark. “I started my career as a runner using that bus to bring drugs into your country. I would recruit local children and pay them a dollar to play students heading to America on field trips. I keep the bus here as a reminder of my humble roots. And even men like us must never lose sight of how hard we worked to get where we are, si?”

  “For sure,” McCracken acknowledged, meaning it this time.

  Morales’s eyes returned to the briefcase. A woman clad in a tight satin dress laid a heaping plate she had filled from the lunch tables down before him. Another woman who might have been her twin refilled his glass of sangria, making sure just the right amount of floating fruit spilled in. Their moves looked robotic, rehearsed. And the fact that they remained cool amid the scalding heat made them appear like department store mannequins devoid of anything but beauty.

  “You have brought your deposit?” Morales asked.

  “In exchange for the first shipment to be delivered within the week. That was the deal. A fair exchange.”

  “Then let me see it,” Morales said, again angling his gaze for the briefcase cuffed to Sal Belamo’s wrist. “Of course, I could always have one of my men cut your man’s hand off.”

  “But that would leave him with only one,” McCracken noted, unruffled. “And then I’d have to take one of yours in return. Also a fair exchange.”

  Morales grinned broadly, his threat left hanging. “You are good at math, señor.”

  “Just as you are with women.”

  The grin vanished.

  “Sal,” McCracken signaled.

  At that, Belamo pried a small key from his shoe and unlocked the handcuffs from both his wrist and the briefcase. Then he handed the case to Morales who laid it in his lap and eagerly flipped the catches, slowly raising the lid. His breathing quieted, his eyes widened.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” Morales asked, clearly dismayed as he spun the open briefcase around to reveal nothing inside but two pistols, a sleek semiautomatic and a long-barreled Magnum revolver.

  “Those are very valuable guns, señor,” McCracken said, as Morales’s personal Zeta guards steadied their weapons upon him. “Men have perished under their fire, many with prices on their heads. You’re welcome to the rewards in exchange for the hostages.”

  “Who are you?” Morales asked, tossing the briefcase to the veranda floor as he rose again.

  “I’m the man doing you a big favor, Morales. Someday you’ll thank me for showing you kidnapping doesn’t pay, at least not when you’re bringing in as much as you are from your drug business. Here,” he said, handing Morales a ruffled piece of paper.

  Morales straightened, trying to make sense of the number and letter combinations. “What is this?”

  “The latitude and longitude marks denoting the locations of your largest storage facilities. If I don’t leave with the hostages, all four go boom.”

  Morales smiled, chuckled, then outright laughed. “You are threatening me? You are really threatening me? Here in my home, in front of my men?” His voice gained volume with each syllable. He seemed to be enjoying himself; the challenge, the threat.

  “I’m going to let you keep your drugs, against my better judgment, but the four Americans, the college students, leave with me.”

  At first it seemed Morales didn’t know how to respond. But then he threw his head back and laughed heartily again, both the women and his guards joining in for good measure. Only his wife, Elena, stayed quiet, too busy swiping the tears of pain from her face.

  “Just like that?” Morales said, the veranda’s other occupants stopping their laughter as soon as he stopped his.

  “Yup, just like that.”

  “And what do I get in return for accepting your gracious offer?”

  “You get to stay in business.” McCracken tapped his watch for Morales to see. “But the clock’s ticking.”

  “Is it?”

  “You have one minute.”

  Morales started to laugh again but stopped. The two women nuzzled against him on either side in spite of his wife’s presence, his private guards slapping each other on the back.

  “I have one minute!” he roared, laughing so hard now his face turned scarlet and he wheezed trying to find his breath.

  “Forty-five seconds now.”

  Morales jabbed a finger at the air McCracken’s way. “I like you, amigo. You’re a real funny guy.” He stopped laughing and finally caught his breath. “After you’re dead, I think I’ll have you stuffed and mounted on the wall so I always have something to make me smile.”

  “You won’t be smiling in thirty seconds time, Morales, unless you agree to give me the Americans. Tick, tick, tick.”

  Morales reached down toward the briefcase and scooped up the two pistols. “Are these loaded?”

  “They are.”

  “So I could kill you with them now.”

  “You could.”

  “Let me see,” Morales said dramatically, looking from one pistol to the other, “which one should I use. . . .” A broad smile crossed his lips. “Eeney, meeney, miney . . .”

  And in that moment a portion of the compound’s façade around the gated entrance exploded in a fountain of rubble and dust. The remainder of the first wave of missiles that followed in the next instant obliterated the unmanned watchtowers and took out the compound’s armory in a sizzling display of light and ear-ringing blasts that grew like a fireworks display.

  “Mo,” said McCracken.

  CHAPTER 4

  Juárez, Mexico

  The missiles were Hellfires, fired from a pair of Hank Folsom’s drones that had been stationed over the compound. The countdown to fire had been triggered by Sal Belamo twisting the key into the handcuffs latching him to the briefcase, a signal sent to an operative at a base in Nevada whose hand was already poised on the button.

  For McCracken, the deafening blasts of the missile strikes slowed time to a crawl. He saw the series of blasts hurl any number of Morales’s men through the air to land in bloody clumps. He saw showers of vegetables, sliced meat, chicken, fish, and what looked like sangria kicked up from the luncheon tables behind the shock wave from a nearby strike. He saw the soldiers who’d been spared by the initial explosions springing desperately for their weapons, even as their eyes turned toward the sky in fear of falling to the next round of blasts. He saw the pistols Morales had been holding rattle to the veranda floor, and he ducked to retrieve the SIG Sauer in the same moment Sal Belamo grabbed hold of the .44 Magnum, the scorched air smelling like it was on fire now.

  In that moment the last two years vanished behind the haze of battle McCracken knew so well. Age lost all meaning, time measured in the breaths and moments between explosions, gunshots, and screams.

  Do I still have it?

  As if to answer that, McCracken and Belamo shot all six of Morales’s private guards, neither sure of whose bullets had felled which men. McCracken recorded the bodies tumbling in the same splotchy glimpses he caught of the barrel’s muzzle flash and smelled the smoke wafting upward before being swallowed by the air and breeze. The most powerful man in Mexico was left cowering on the floor using his wife with a now broken finger as a shield. By then, though, his soldiers who’d recovered their weapons in the courtyard just below also recovered enough of their senses to launch an all-out charge for the veranda.

  A few had actually opened fire wildly on McCracken and Belamo, when a huge figure burst up through the Mercedes SUV’s open sunroof. Johnny Wareagle, all seven feet of him, held M1A4 modified M-16s in either hand, clacking rounds off in two directions at once as if capable of focusing his eyes separately. Those eyes were deep-set and ice blue, his mostly jet-black ponytail whipping from side to side with each twist of his head.

  More missiles rained down, kicking up so much ground dirt and debris that Wareagle and the entire SUV vanished in the resulting cloud. The soldiers his bullets had s
pared opened up into that cloud with an unrelenting and deafening barrage. Spent shells clanged against each other on the ground in soft counterpoint to the shrill sound of the steel of the Mercedes being punctured, its windows shattered, and tires popped.

  Several of Morales’s soldiers were still firing when the dust cloud cleared enough to reveal Wareagle now standing behind them, opening up with fresh magazines at his targets caught totally by surprise.

  “Who are you?” Morales asked again, fearfully this time as McCracken jerked him to his feet with the SIG pressed against his skull.

  “Wanna try breaking my finger, amigo? Now let’s go get those kids.”

  He steered Morales through the courtyard, Belamo covering his rear flank with quick three-shot bursts from a salvaged assault rifle: an M-16, procured by Morales from his American contacts no doubt. Half-dressed reinforcements were spilling out of what must have been the barracks among the nest of interconnected buildings beyond, struggling to right their weapons once they recorded the sight before them.

  “Tell them not to shoot,” McCracken said into Morales’s ear.

  “No mi fuego, no mi fuego!” Morales screamed, as more of the drone-fired Hellfires erupted all around them.

  “Now, tell them to bring the Americans here. Tell them to bring those kids to me now!”

  Morales spouted out more Spanish, shouting to be heard over a fresh wave of explosions.

  McCracken remained in the open, continuing to hold Morales before him, the man’s bulk more than enough to keep him shielded and prevent any of the drug lord’s soldiers from risking an almost impossible shot much more likely to take their leader. Still, the moments lengthened, twenty seconds feeling like twice that, stretching into thirty and then forty.

  That’s when two bearded soldiers wearing only their boxer shorts and wife-beater T-shirts emerged from another of the buildings, each dragging two of the missing Americans forward. The boys, filthy, weak, and emaciated, had all they could do to stay on their feet.

  The staccato bursts of gunfire, meanwhile, had lessened in intensity, dominated now by the distinctive clacking of Johnny Wareagle’s twin assault rifles. McCracken felt motion behind him, sensing the seven-foot Native American alongside whom he’d been fighting for over forty years taking up position on his rear flank to make sure no surprises awaited in the course of their escape.

  McCracken backpedaled, dragging Morales with him by the collar, his hand slippery with the oily paste the drug lord used on his thinning hair. Belamo hovered just to his side and herded the college kids together behind him.

  “Nice work, Indian,” McCracken said drawing even with Wareagle.

  “Problems, Blainey,” was all he said, continuing to clack off rounds in three-shot bursts.

  Pistol still pressed against Morales’s skull, McCracken followed Johnny’s gaze to their Mercedes SUV, or what was left of it.

  “Guess we better call a taxi,” he said.

  “How about that?” suggested Sal Belamo, his gaze tilting toward the yellow school bus.

  CHAPTER 5

  Juárez, Mexico

  McCracken could only hope the monument-like memorial to Morales’s past would still work. “Hope you don’t mind us borrowing your bus, amigo,” he said, dragging Morales on again.

  He felt the drug lord stiffen even more under his grasp. “You’re loco!”

  “For a long time now. Explains why you should have listened to me in the first place. When something works for me, I stick with it.”

  McCracken reached the door just before Wareagle, who was concentrating his fire upward now, toward Morales’s soldiers crawling across the walls in search of better vantage points. Belamo got to the bus last and shouldered the door open, shoving the college students up the stairs under Wareagle’s protective cover.

  “Down!” Belamo yelled in after them. “I want you lying in the aisles!”

  “Get her moving, Sal,” McCracken ordered.

  “This thing’s a hundred years old, boss.”

  “Just like us. Vintage.”

  “You’ll die for this,” Morales rasped, canting his head to try to look back at McCracken.

  McCracken jerked him back into place. “Not today.”

  The engine fought Sal Belamo, refusing to catch. Hotwiring the bus had been a snap since the ignition was already long gone and the remaining wires hung in place, ready to be twisted. But the tires were low on air and badly warped as well as laden with bumps from having sat for so long in the same place. The one saving grace was that the engine was diesel and diesel fuel was much less likely to evaporate over time, and sure enough the engine rumbled to life after the initial sputter. Belamo started the vehicle backward toward what was left of the gate, doing his best to ignore its bouncing shimmy.

  Wareagle moved on foot with the bus and hurled smoke grenades from his weapons vest in all directions. The thick gray smoke blew outward, combining with the black smoke and flames climbing from the impact points of the Hellfires, to create the cover they needed. Belamo felt the bus crunch over the various debris strewn behind it. And then a charred vehicle frame snared on its underside and the bus dragged it all the way to the remnants of the main gate, shedding the frame as soon as Belamo shifted into gear. The transmission ground and bucked before it finally churned through what was left of the gate.

  Wareagle chose that moment to slip past McCracken up the stairs and onto the bus. He’d shouldered another half-dozen assault rifles and two rocket launchers salvaged off Morales’s dead soldiers to add firepower to their escape. McCracken remained in the open doorway, holding Morales on the lowermost step with the SIG Sauer pistol still trained on his skull until the school bus started putting distance between itself and the smoldering compound that belched smoke into the air. Then he dragged Morales all the way inside and flung him hard to the bus floor. The man turned onto his back and lay still, his hate-filled eyes finding McCracken’s.

  “I’m going to kill you myself,” he rasped.

  “Move from that spot before we reach the border and you’ll never get the chance.”

  The bus backfired as it climbed onto the road at a jogger’s pace, slowly gathering speed.

  “Come on, come on!” Belamo urged from behind the wheel. “Hey, you think you can find me something slower next time?”

  “The space shuttle wasn’t available, Sal.”

  Morales started crawling forward and McCracken kicked him in the head. “I told you not to move.” McCracken kicked him a second time in the ribs. “And that was for what you did to your wife’s finger.”

  “One more thing, boss.”

  “What, Sal?”

  “Welcome back.” Belamo smiled.

  McCracken turned his attention to the fraternity brothers they’d just rescued, the boys looking thin, filthy, and wide-eyed with terror from their positions on the floor. “Under the seats! Now!”

  They moved tentatively, slowed and weakened by their ordeal. McCracken crouched to help them as gently as he could, feeling them stiffen and wince from the sudden motions racking their bruised and battered frames. He glared at the sprawled form of Morales, dazed and still grimacing from the pain in his ribs and head.

  Johnny Wareagle, meanwhile, had poised himself by the emergency exit door, watching when a thin convoy of still functional vehicles poured out of Morales’s compound to give chase.

  “Company!” McCracken yelled up to the front.

  “Give me till tomorrow and I’ll have this thing up to fifty,” Belamo called back to him.

  “Five miles to the border, Sal.”

  “How far you figure to those police cars coming our way?”

  McCracken swung from the bus’s rear, away from three of Morales’s Jeeps and two open troop carriers coming on fast in their wake, toward the front. There, on the opposite side of the road, a parade of police cars tore across the median and twisted into screeching halts on the bus’s side of the freeway that left the cars sideways across the road, blocki
ng their escape route.

  “This oughtta be fun,” Belamo said softly to himself.

  CHAPTER 6

  Juárez, Mexico

  Belamo jammed the transmission up one gear and then another. The bus jolted forward, shook, then began gathering speed as it barreled straight for the federales who were still lurching from their cars and racing to steady weapons atop roofs or hoods.

  “Hey, boss, you know that movie about the bus that’ll blow up if it goes over fifty?”

  “It was under fifty, Sal.”

  “Doesn’t matter since we’re gonna get that high. Now, hang on!” Belamo shouted.

  The bus crashed through the makeshift barricade, its windshield obliterated by bullets as it surged on down the road. From the rear, McCracken watched the federales leaping into the police cars left reasonably whole and functional. They tore off just as Morales’s convoy drew even with them, led by a Jeep with an M-60 machine gun mounted on a tripod in its open rear.

  Its first burst of fire cut through the bus’s steel and glass, forcing McCracken and Wareagle to the rusted-out floor.

  “No time to get fancy, Indian.”

  “Couldn’t agree more, Blainey,” Wareagle said back to him, already reaching for a rocket launcher.

  “Where are those spirits of yours when we need them?”

  “Just arriving.”

  Johnny moved to a squatting position with the launcher perched effortlessly upon his shoulder, exhaust tube even with where the windshield had been thirty feet away.

  McCracken got ready at the emergency exit door. “Tell me when.”

  “Now, Blainey.”

  “Hey, Sal!”

  “I’m a little busy here, boss!”

  “Duck!”

  And with that McCracken jerked the latch downward and shoved the door open. In crazed counterpoint, a buzzing emergency alarm began to wail just before Wareagle pressed the trigger. The rocket burst outward on direct line with the onrushing Jeep still firing off shells that continued to pulverize the bus’s frame. Smoke and flames from the exhaust tube, meanwhile, shot out in a neat arc toward the front of the bus, blowing out the remnants of the windshield and singeing the cracked, faded upholstery on the seats. Smoke rose from it, smelling like burning plastic as the bus surged on.