Degüello

by Billy Kring

  He looked for Hunter and spotted her, standing outside the Jeep, looking at Suretta and her henchmen.

  Ike slipped between the hangers and worked his way to the rear, coming up beside the groups and Hunter, slightly to their left.

  Kelly hid in the floorboard of the Jeep, listening to sounds of the rapidly departing plane as her heart beat faster. She’d counted seven men, plus Suretta and Paco. The children and Ramona remained in Suretta’s vehicle, along with Nadine, who held a pistol pointed at Ramona’s waist. There was no way Hunter and Ike could beat that many. All these people had guns, too. Kelly spotted two of the men with stubby rifles like half-sized machine guns, and all of them wore pistols. Hunter and Ike needed to leave.

  Kelly opened the door on the Jeep and stood outside the vehicle, saying to Hunter, “There’s too many. Let’s drive away!”

  Hunter reached for the driver’s door when the men with machine guns cut loose and bullets banged into the front of the Jeep. Hunter turned the key and nothing happened. The men advanced as they worked to put in new magazines. Ike came up beside Kelly and said, “Hunter, let’s go. We can make another plan.’

  She looked at Suretta for several moments, and Suretta glared back. Hunter said under her breath, “Shit.” She hurried to join Ike and Kelly, and they raced to the rear of the hangers, with Ike in the lead. He hopped the ranch fence separating the airport from the next place to it, and Kelly and Hunter followed.

  Suretta watched them for a few seconds, and when they ran further into the ranch pasture, she said to the others, “Stay on the roads, run them down if you can. Paco, take Nadine’s place and send her to me.”

  Paco nodded and trotted to Nadine, telling her what Suretta wanted. She slid out of the seat and let Paco inside to guard Ramona as she hurried to be with her boss.

  He kept his pistol in his hand but didn’t point it at her. Anita sat in Ramona’s lap looking wide-eyed and frightened. The other girls were in the back and terrified into silence.

  Paco and Ramona watched through the vehicle’s windows as Suretta and Nadine ran after the other three. Ramona said a silent prayer for Ike and the Kincaid woman and the young girl wo had befriended Anita.

  Ike stumbled a bit, tiring as they ran over rocky ground covered with thin soil and a scattering of short, rounded mountain cedar bushes. His head pounded with every footstep.

  Hunter took the lead and said, “I’ll go slower, but if you need help, tell me.”

  Ike nodded, his face feverish. “I’ll keep up.”

  Kelly didn’t have a problem keeping pace since she enjoyed running, but this was different because bad people were after them. She glanced back and felt a thrum of fear in her chest as she saw Suretta take several trotting steps and hurdle the four-foot-high, barb-wire topped fence separating the airport from the ranch pasture, and then wait for Nadine. They weren’t all that far behind.

  Hunter talked over her shoulder as she ran, “We’ll stay on the edge of this hill, then go over the next one, and from there we’ll go back across the airport runway and onto the golf course.”

  Ike nodded, his face grim and his lips thin in the effort to run.

  Kelly sped up to stay beside the struggling man, and to be closer to Hunter. As they went around the edge of the small hill, she lost sight of Suretta and Nadine, but she knew they were coming, and fast.

  Going up and over the next hill was almost too much for Ike, but he continued, his breath rasping and ragged. Kelly thought she might have to catch him if he collapsed so she edged to within a foot of his side as they ran.

  Hunter descended the slope and said, “Going down will be easier, but don’t stumble, there’s lots of cedar stumps and branches scattered around here. When we hit the bottom, stay in the cedars and go straight to the fence and back across to the airport property.”

  When they hit the bottom of the hill and moved among the cedars, Kelly heard the clacking of kicked stones from the slope as Suretta and Nadine pursued them. She glimpsed them once, and Nadine looked tired, but Suretta moved like a machine, relentless.

  Hunter reached the fence and found a sagging portion that she held down to help Ike across, then Kelly. They trotted across the open area and heard angry yells from behind, but they didn’t look back this time.

  As Kelly ran, she moved behind Ike and saw a dark spot on the tail of his untucked shirt where the bag from his neck drain had been. It was torn, and the smell hit Kelly and made her wrinkle her nose. It was of something wrong, of infection in the wound, and she knew what it was because she saw the angry redness around where the tube came out of Ike’s neck. It was infected, and Ike was sick from it.

  She started to say something, but realized there was no time to do anything about it but to try and escape their pursuers.

  Hunter said, “Not much farther and we can slow the pace. Can you make it, Ike? Are you okay?”

  “I’m right as the mail,” he said, quoting a Doc Holiday line from the movie, Tombstone. Sweat filmed his face and his eyes were fevered.

  “Hang on,” Hunter said. She led them to the fence dividing the airport property from the golf course and crossed it, then helped Ike across as Kelly crossed further down to save time. She led them into a low area toward the water hazard and out of sight of their pursuers. “Sit down, you can rest for a minute while I watch.”

  Ike went down and lay on his back, breathing heavily. Kelly worried he might die any second.

  Hunter spotted their pursuers. Suretta pushed her people and they were closing the gap, fast. “Let’s go,” she said, and she and Kelly helped Ike to his feet. Car traffic passed on the highway nearby, with the drivers running above the speed limit, cheating the time a little to get where they were going. She told Ike and Kelly to go ahead, that she would bring up the rear. When she looked for Suretta, Hunter was shocked to see how near they were.

  She touched Ike on the shoulder, “Let’s go, they’re close.” Leading them to, and across the highway when no traffic was visible put them facing another fence, but one that sagged, so the three of them had no trouble crossing. They moved across the small limestone hills, through prickly pear clumps and cedars, keeping the bushy cedars between them and Suretta.

  Ike began breathing hard almost immediately. “Stay with us, Ike,” Hunter said. Kelly took his right arm to assist him as they crossed rocky ground that could twist an ankle in one wrong step.

  Leading them over a low shoulder of the ridge left them looking down on a small cemetery, and beyond that, a small cluster of houses and apartments.

  Stumbling twice, Ike reached deep inside to keep up with the two women. When they neared the cemetery and its trees, Hunter spotted a neat pile of recently cut limbs from them where someone pruned the trees to make the place more appealing.

  She said, “Ike, I have an idea.” She led him to the pile, then worked fast to open a space under it. “In here. We’ll come back for you.”

  “I can still fight them.”

  “Yes, but you can’t outrun them. Kelly and I can, and we need to get away to help Ramona and the girls, and you.”

  Ike wanted to argue, but said, “Okay. But here, take the other pistol. I won’t need it in there.”

  He crawled in the space as the two females layered the limbs over him, providing a well-hidden blind for Ike. “Don’t forget me,” he said.

  “We won’t.” Hunter brushed out the few tracks before leading Kelly away, and their pace accelerated as they covered more level ground, going in front of the apartments. Hunter stopped Kelly before she crossed into open space, pointing to where the road went under the I-10 Interstate and into Sonora. “When we go, we’re exposed. Run fast, and as soon as you can get to the first house, cut into the alley behind it. There’s more cover there.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To set up an ambush.”

  “And rescue the girls, and Ramona?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “How?”

  “I’m g
oing to find a place to hide you, too, and not in the same place as Ike, just in case. Then I’m circling back to the airport and take the girls and Ramona from whoever’s holding them in Suretta’s car.”

  “And?”

  “You’ve got a lot of questions.”

  “I want to help.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Okay.”

  Hunter draped her arm over Kelly’s shoulders, “You’ve been a big help, but now I need you to only do what I say, Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s going to get dangerous.”

  Kelly thought of Bobbi and Consuela, both dead, and of Carl with his smell and his rough hands like sandpaper, and looked at her, “Wasn’t it already?”

  Hunter nodded, “It’ll be worse now, that’s what I’m saying.”

  Kelly nodded. “Whatever you want, I’ll do.”

  ~**~

  Nadine sat on the small hill above the cemetery, looking through 7x50 Zeiss Binoculars, watching Hunter and Kelly as they went under the I-10 Interstate. She called Suretta, “They’re back on the town side.”

  “You still watching them?”

  “Yeah. Hold what you’ve got until they stop moving, then I’ll guide you in.”

  “And Ike hasn’t moved?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good.”

  She watched Hunter tell Kelly something, then point up a brushy hill to the west of their position by the Interstate. On the crest fluttered a large United States flag on a flagpole.

  Kelly hurried up the hill as Hunter ran into town. She’s fast, Nadine thought. Hunter disappeared among the houses, still running like a deer toward the main street. Kelly made the top of the hill and found a place under a small oak near the flagpole, where she pulled a few dead limbs to her and formed a half-circle brush screen around her position.

  Nadine smiled. She knew the kid thought she was safe. Calling Suretta, she told her where everyone was located, and started down the hill below her to Ike’s hiding place where she would wait for Suretta to show up. Then the fun would begin with that bastard Ike.

  Chapter 19

  Hunter maintained a fast pace through the town, eliciting a few raised eyebrows as she held her six-minute-per-mile speed across streets, through neighborhoods, and dodging between moving cars and trucks on the main roads.

  Taking a right at the main intersection in town, she followed US 277 between the Dairy Queen and the Sonic, and under Interstate 10, then turned left on the access road in front of the Days Inn and on to the entrance to the airport. Hunter’s heart beat strong and regular, and her muscles felt loose and warm as she focused on her jeep and finished the run at her driver’s side door.

  Suretta’s vehicle was nowhere to be seen. Maybe they’re in town, looking for us. She said a little prayer and lifted the hood, spotting where a bullet knocked off a solenoid wire. Putting the wire back in place fixed the problem and Hunter started her Jeep, pulling away from the parking area. She continued looking for Suretta and her crew while driving across US 277 and taking the road to the cemetery. When she could see the brush pile that marked Ike’s hiding place, she stopped.

  As she walked toward it, Hunter saw the pile had been disturbed. A sense of dread washed over her, and she hurried to the far side of the brush, only to see most of it pulled away, and strong evidence of a struggle visible by the tracks and spots of blood and other fluids on the ground.

  They had Ike. Hunter saw Ike’s shoeprints, and Suretta’s. She thought another one was made by Nadine, and at least two other prints had to be Suretta’s people.

  Hunter was furious with herself. That they had taken Ike was her fault. But she had no time to waste, and hurried down the slope to find Kelly in her hiding place.

  Hunter sped by the cemetery in the Jeep and cut under the Interstate again, this time circling into town and taking a caliche road up the hill where the flag flew and Kelly waited. Her new phone vibrated with a text message, and she ignored it as she drove the last distance to the top of the hill.

  Kelly had been taken as well, and evidence of a struggle was evident, from where Kelly built a brush blind, to where she hit someone with a stout branch and left blood on it. They drug her to the vehicle, and someone pushed her inside, leaving fine droplets of blood on a flat piece of limestone where Kelly stood.

  Hunter felt so weak that she sat on a large, upright stump. She’d failed everyone, Kelly, Ike, Ramona, Anita. Every-single-one.

  Her phone vibrated again, and this time she checked it. Ike had written: chapa ranch at amistad.

  Hunter was confused. She said to herself, “Solomon Chapa?” Had Ike made a mistake? Was he the boss? A feeling like ice ran down her spine. Chapa had his own child kidnapped and was going to sell her? Now he had them all, his wife, his daughter, Kelly, and Ike. She prayed the message wasn’t a blind lead, but it didn’t matter since that was the only one she had.

  She texted Ike’s phone, but got no response.

  If Solomon Chapa is behind these kidnappings and murders, and has his own child and wife taken…Hunter felt her anger rise to a white-hot level.

  Hopping in the Jeep, she drove off the hill and through Sonora, taking the highway to Del Rio. She had some stops to make there, and she wouldn’t tell Norma about it, just to keep her friend out of trouble. But soon, very soon, she and Solomon Chapa would have a reckoning. Hunter worked her hands on the steering wheel, her eyes holding the look people talked of when she was angry.

  An hour and twenty minutes later she was in Del Rio and pulling into the Wal-Mart shopping center. Hunter went inside and straight to the Sporting Goods section, buying binoculars, a Gerber folding knife with a four-inch blade, a Remington Model 870 twelve-gauge pump shotgun and two hundred rounds of .40 caliber pistol cartridges. There were no good rounds for the shotgun; no 00 buckshot, Number 2s or Number 4s, only number 6 loads for game birds. She didn’t like the limited choice, but bought a hundred rounds of Number 6s, and a canvas dove hunter’s bird carrier pack worn at the waist.

  Taking the purchases to the Jeep, she drove away from the store and to a back road with no houses. Using the Gerber knife, Hunter worked loose the overhead liner in the Jeep and fitted the shotgun and cartridges into it. If someone looked closely at it, they would see some outlines of the boxes, but a casual glance shouldn’t be enough to alert anyone. She hoped.

  Hunter drove to US 90 and headed west toward the lake, then turned left on the road to the dam and the border crossing port of entry.

  The port was not busy, and the Jeep passed through with no problem. On the Mexican side, Hunter flashed a big, friendly smile at the officer and he smiled back as he waved her into the country.

  She drove the road that made up the top of the dam, and followed it as the pavement continued and extended beside the lake. As the pavement narrowed and ended with the road becoming caliche, Hunter noticed a large monument of stone, with a square statue that she felt sure was made of granite or volcanic rock. She parked at the base of the short pyramid-like structure and climbed the steps to the statue. It was of Tlaloc, the Aztec god of rain.

  Looking around the area from the monument’s height, she noticed a road going to the right, along a peninsula of land extending into the blue water of Lake Amistad. People worked out there on what appeared to be a park, with small shelters up and down the road near the water.

  She drove by a sign that said Playa Tlaloc, Tlaloc Beach, with an arrow pointing toward the area where the men worked. Parking the Jeep and walking to one of the men nearest to the road, Hunter asked him, “Donde esta el Rancho Chapa?”

  The man, a lean fellow of about fifty, peered at her before saying, “Solomon Chapa?”

  “Si.”

  He rubbed his chin with the side of a thumb before answering as the other workers stopped to watch them. He said, “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” He seemed to relax a bit. “Stay on the road for two miles, and look to the right tow
ard the hills near the lake. The house is there, on a small hill between two larger ones, and on a piece of land with deep water on three sides. Armed men are there, and it is having much activity at the rancho for several days. Hombres con armas, you understand? Men with weapons.”

  “Thank you.”

  “There are many small paths from that place, by water and by land, and secret ones that go to the mountains, if one wants to travel so far.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Vaya con Dios.” He shook her hand with a soft, gentle grip typical of rural people in Mexico. He looked worried about her, and like he meant what he said: Go with God.

  She drove slow since there was no other traffic on the road, and made occasional stops, usually on ridges or small hills to use the binoculars and scan the terrain. Spotting the large ranch home surrounded by high walls happened five miles down the road as Hunter looked toward the lake and spotted the tan, ten-foot-high walls surrounding the compound. The structure, almost blending in with the terrain, was on a shoulder of the largest hill by the lake, and slightly below the crest.

  The large, wooden front double gate stood open, and Hunter spotted Suretta’s vehicle and several others inside. A side path left Hunter a place to park out of sight of the main road and Chapa’s compound. It left a hike over rough terrain, but was the only choice Hunter had to approach it under cover. A long, single, white caliche road pointed like a finger at the ranch, and a Black Suburban patrolled it in regular patterns, from the double gates to the main road. She watched it park at the gate and two armed men enter, then close the big gate behind them.

  Hunter thought that if she could get to the top of the tall hill, she could spy on those inside the walls. Tricky, yes, but she could take a longer route and come up the back side, keeping behind cover until she reached the crest.

  Using the knife to work loose the headliner took little time, and the weapons fared well in the trip. Hunter buckled on the dove hunting bag at her waist and filled the three pockets that usually held doves with shotgun shells and the boxes of pistol rounds. The binoculars she hung around her neck, and the knife went into the front pocket of her Wranglers. Carrying the twelve-gauge shotgun in her right hand allowed her to use her left to draw the pistol from her waistband if she needed it.