‘Get the chair, you damned fool. My arms are going.’
Sabir rolled over and over towards the chair. He shunted it hard, using both his legs like a scythe. The chair came to a stop just in front of Calque’s swinging body.
‘Quickly, damn you.’
Sabir rolled back the way he had come. He kicked the chair the last few feet.
Calque fished at it with one foot, and then pulled it towards him. He tottered for a moment, as if he was about to fall sideways, and then he somehow managed to regain his balance. ‘Oh God. Oh God. I think my right shoulder is out of its socket.’
Sabir rolled over onto his knees. This time around he gathered himself for a moment or two before trying to rise to his feet. He stood up, rocking in place like an emergent jack-in-the-box.
‘I can’t hold this position for very long.’ Calque was shouting in an effort to be heard over the gunfire.
The barrage from outside had redoubled in energy. Stray bullets began to thump into the warehouse. The ones that found their way in through the windows zipped and twanged through the warehouse’s interior space.
Sabir went in search of a knife. He tried the kitchen area first. A stray bullet smashed through the window in front of his head, showering him with glass.
He turned his back to the chest of drawers and began feeling around behind him. Third drawer down, he struck lucky. He got his hands on a serrated bread knife with a fair edge to it. He hurried over to Calque.
‘Here. Hold this between your knees.’
‘Cut me free, you imbecile.’
‘I can’t with my back to you. I can’t reach up that far. Do as I say.’
Calque scissored his knees together around the hasp of the knife.
‘Hold it tight now.’
‘What do you think I’m doing? I wish I’d pissed on your head while I had the chance.’
‘Watch your language or I’ll leave you hanging.’
‘Yes, you’d do that, Sabir. That would be just like you.’ There was an edge of raw humour in Calque’s voice.
Sabir worked his wrists against the bread knife. The knife popped out from between Calque’s knees and clattered to the floor.
‘I don’t believe this.’ Sabir dropped to his knees and felt around behind his back for the fallen knife.
‘I just felt a bullet tug at my shirt.’
‘Then hold the knife tighter. Imagine you’ve got diarrhoea and you’re trying to hold it in. If you tense your arse cheeks, your knees tense too.’
‘Very funny. I’ve got a dislocated shoulder, you bastard. You try and tense your arse cheeks with a dislocated shoulder.’
Sabir ignored him and replaced the knife between Calque’s knees. He began to saw away at his bonds for a second time. ‘I’ll shove this damned thing up your arse if you let it fall again. Do you hear me, Calque?’
‘I hear you. If we ever get out of this, Sabir, remind me never to turn my back on you.’
Both of the men began to laugh.
‘Damn!’
‘What is it, Sabir?’
‘I think I’ve jut been hit by a bullet.’
‘Where?’
‘I can’t tell. My middle, somewhere. It felt like someone just rabbit punched me.’
‘It was probably spent. Rabbits don’t punch that hard.’
‘Thanks. That’s very comforting.’ Sabir had his hands free now. His biceps were still bound, but he was able to bend one hand outwards, like a claw. ‘I need to stand on your chair. Otherwise I can’t reach you.’
‘No. I can’t take that again. I can’t take the weight on my arm.’
‘I’m going to do it anyway. It’s our only chance. I can feel something wet down the front of my pants. We may not have that long.’
‘You probably pissed yourself. Aaaahhhh!’
Sabir eased the chair out with his knee and positioned it behind Calque. He heaved himself up, balancing first on one leg, then on both. He twisted to one side and then stretched his forearm out to its full extent and began to cut.
101
Abi knew they were in trouble as soon as they emerged from the building.
Almost immediately, Berith jerked backwards and fell. The rest of them began to zigzag, firing as they ran.
The two heavy machine guns were still laying down covering fire. Then one of the machine guns abruptly stopped.
Abi could put two and two together as well as anyone. ‘They’ve got snipers. Disperse. Get under cover. We haven’t got a chance out here in the open. Get out wherever you can. Every man for himself.’ He grabbed Dakini with his free arm and dragged her towards the field of blue agave. He saw Rudra doing the same thing with Nawal.
Asson appeared to lose his footing, catch himself, and then trip again, spread-eagling himself flat on the ground. He lay there for a moment as if he was winded, and then his head exploded in a frenzy of blood, brains and bone matter.
Primary shot and follow-up – the bastards had semi-automatics.
Abi realized the snipers must be up in the trees overlooking the warehouse. Maybe they’d even placed deer platforms up there for just such an eventuality? He cursed himself for not having taken more pains reconnoitring the place. He’d simply assumed it was exactly what it looked like, and left it there. Now he and his siblings were paying for his slapdash ways.
‘We’ll make for the cenote. That’ll be outside their line of fire. We can regroup there.’
The second heavy machine gun stopped firing.
Abi was beginning to get a very bad feeling indeed.
102
Sabir placed his right foot in Calque’s left armpit, and grabbed the Frenchman by the wrist. ‘Are you sure you’re up for this?’
‘Of course I’m …’
Sabir jerked Calque’s arm towards him before he could finish his sentence.
Calque’s face went white. Then he let out a series of expletives under his breath. He was holding his left bicep with his right hand, tight to his side.
‘Did I do it?’
Calque exhaled. ‘You did it.’
Both men were lying pretty much flat on the ground in an effort to avoid any more ricochets.
‘Let me see your stomach.’
Sabir raised his shirt.
‘Spent bullet. I though as much. You’re lucky. If that had hit you in the face you could have auditioned for Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs.’ Calque glanced across the room. ‘There’s some tequila. We need to rinse your stomach with it. Then we need to get out of here.’
‘We’re never going to get out of that front door.’
‘Then we go down. To the crystal meth laboratory they were talking about. We can hide in one of the vats if we need to. We can get out later. When things have quieted down.’
Calque crawled over to the counter and made a grab for the tequila bottle with his good arm. The firing had died down a little outside, and there was now only the occasional shot. ‘How are you feeling, Sabir?’
‘As you said. It was only a rabbit. But he must have been a big one. Someone’s got it in for my stomach, what with the datura and the odd bullet. Do you think it’s still in there?’
‘It never was in there, you fool. The ricochet just messed you up a little.’ Calque pushed Sabir back and raised his shirt. ‘You’re not going to enjoy this.’
‘I suppose this is revenge for your arm?’
‘You suppose right.’ Calque upended the bottle.
‘Oh Jesus. Jesus.’
Calque took a swig from the bottle and then handed it to Sabir.
Sabir took a long pull, and then shook his head. ‘Come on. We can’t lie here forever. Someone will come back and find us. I don’t know who I dread more. The Corpus or the drug traffickers.’
Calque stood up. ‘If we get hit now, it’s fate.’
‘Wait. Look. They left the rucksack with the codex and the crystal skull behind them. I’m taking it.’
‘Okay. Why not? We might as well die rich.’
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103
Abi knew they were near the cenote. But how near, he couldn’t tell. Dakini was a yard or two behind him. Also flat on the ground. Twenty yards away he could see Nawal and Rudra. He’d lost sight of Oni maybe two minutes before. He was probably dead too. The guy was so huge he’d have made an obvious target for the snipers.
‘We’re going to have to make a stand of it. If we keep the cenote behind us, it means they can’t get around and backshoot us. They’ll have to come in from the front. You all still got your weapons?’
The others nodded.
‘Okay. Let’s run for it.’
He stood up and took Dakini’s hand again. She’d never been a particular favourite of his, but now he felt a sudden protective urge towards her. It must be hard to be so damned ugly that people crossed the street to avoid meeting your eye.
They ran as fast as they could. For some reason the shooting had fallen away behind them. Then, as Abi ran, it redoubled in violence, but not, oddly enough, in their direction. Was Oni making a break for it? Were Vau and Alastor still alive?
Abi didn’t care. He needed the cenote. When they got there they could plan their next move.
He glanced back over his shoulder. Nawal and Rudra were making ground. So he’d have four guns.
Not a lot. But it would have to be enough.
104
Sabir had to help Calque down the trapdoor steps. Calque’s left arm hung uselessly at his side, and he was forced to descend the steps sideways, like a crab.
When they reached the bottom, Calque let out a soft whistle. ‘I think we’ve just found our way out of here.’
With its 130-inch wheelbase, the armour-plated Hummer H1 Alpha looked like some low-crouching animal, waiting to pounce on its prey.
‘Look at this, man. Gold-plated sub-machine guns. And how about these pistols. What sort of people gild their pistols?’
‘You’d be better off looking for the Hummer keys. The firing’s died down. Someone’s going to be coming in here soon. And this will be the first place they make for.’ Calque was staring at the bricks of crystal meth. ‘Have you ever seen anything like it? You’re looking at ten thousand ruined lives.’
‘The keys, Calque.’
Both men began to search feverishly through the collected paraphernalia in the display cases. Sabir’s military reservist training was beginning to come back to him. He selected two Heckler & Koch MP5Ks, because he knew how to use them, and also two of the gold-plated Smith & Wesson 469s. One had an engraving of the Mexican eagle figured into its grip, and the other an engraving of a Rottweiler.
‘I’ve got them.’ Calque snatched a set of keys off a communal hook set into the end of the display cabinet.
‘Try them.’
Calque aimed the keys at the Hummer. There was an answering click-click. ‘We’re in business, Sabir. I hate to restate the obvious, but you’d better drive.’
Sabir threw the guns and the rucksack containing the skull and the codex onto the back seat. Then he helped Calque into his seat, and belted him in.
‘Wait. Let me out again.’
‘Are you crazy? We haven’t got much time left.’
‘Let me out, I say.’
Sabir unbuckled Calque from his seat and helped him from the vehicle.
‘Find me something flammable.’
‘For Christ’s sake. You don’t mean to burn this place down?’
‘I’m a policeman, Sabir. Have been all my life. I can’t let this filth get out onto the streets. If you don’t want to help me, leave. But I’ve got to do it. I’ve just got to.’
Sabir sighed long-sufferingly. ‘You’re right. I should have thought of it myself, of course. But I was too busy thinking about my own skin and yours to give much of a damn about ten thousand complete strangers.’
Both men began ferreting through the detritus surrounding the industrial vats.
Then Calque straightened up. ‘I saw hand grenades, didn’t I?’
‘Gold-plated ones. Yeah. They’re probably fakes. You can’t persuade me that anyone in their right mind gold-plates a live hand grenade. But we should be able to tell if they’re real by the weight.’
‘Worth a try, then. Crystal meth produces a highly flammable vapour. The slightest spark can ignite it. Chuck a grenade into one of those vats and the whole place would go up.’
‘The death grip. How opposite. Yes. With us in it.’
‘We’d have eight seconds. Isn’t that right? Particularly if you back the Hummer right up to the vats, Sabir.’
‘Five seconds, not eight. Just how long ago did you do your military service, Calque? The Franco-Prussian war? You like to live dangerously, don’t you?’
‘You’re the one to talk. Shall we do it?’
‘You take one vat and I’ll do a second. But I won’t have time to strap you back in. You’ll have to take your chances leaning out of the window. If you fall out, I leave you. Okay?’
‘Who did they torture, Sabir? You or me?’
‘You, I’m glad to say.’
‘Did you leave me then?’
‘Stupidly, no.’
‘Then you’re not going to leave me now.’
Sabir backed the Hummer up to the nearest of the industrial vats.
Both men removed the safety pins from their grenades, keeping their fingers tight down on the spoons.
‘You on the death grip, Calque?’
‘The death grip. How apposite. Yes. I’m ready.’
‘I’ll call it. Okay? To a count of three.’
‘Okay.’
Calque was half-in half-out of the Hummer’s front window. He had a six-foot throw to the nearest vat. Sabir’s throw was about eight foot. The Hummer’s engine was throbbing quietly beneath them.
‘One. Two. Three. Fire in the hole!’
Both men threw their grenades.
Sabir launched himself back onto the front seat, grabbing Calque by the shirt as he did so.
He engaged the Hummer’s automatic gearshift and aimed it up the ramp.
Then he began to pray.
105
Emiliano Graciano Mateos-Corrientes stood down his snipers. He had the entire eighteen-hectare warehouse site ringed with his men. No one could escape. The ones that had run, shooting, from the warehouse, were all being herded towards the cenote – that was the obvious place for them to go. The rest were dead.
It was still somehow inconceivable to Emiliano that a bunch of gringos should come all the way down to the Yucatan simply to take over his crystal meth factory. Were they insane? Didn’t they know he had fifty foot-soldiers under his command, all armed with the latest weapons? That he had snipers equipped with the most up-to-date ‘light fifty’ Barrett M107 rifles, complete with Leupold 4.5 x 14 Mark-iv scopes and AN/PVS-10 day/ night optics? And that these snipers knew how to shoot the nipples off a three-year-old?
Crazy. Crazy.
He spoke briefly into his walkie-talkie.
What annoyed him the most was that the gringos had managed to time their incursion exactly right. Normally, there would have been a minimum of fifteen men guarding the factory. But someone – that fucker Pepito, probably – must have tipped the gringos off that with the consignment now ready, Emiliano was treating his foot-soldiers to the best whores and liquor his brothel in Mérida could provide. It was the Day of the Dead, man. His men expected to let their hair down once in a while. And he had the local police and most of the local politicians in his pocket. What did he have to fear? A bunch of gringos invading his territory? Jesus.
The Hummer burst out from the basement area of Emiliano’s warehouse and up the escape ramp. The Hummer appeared to hesitate, and then made straight for his command vehicle. Emiliano could see two men in the front seats.
His mouth fell open.
As he watched, he heard two explosions deep in the bowels of his warehouse. Then there was a brief silence. It was followed by the equivalent of a vast intake of breath, as the meth vats caught fire.
Then the warehouse literally burst from its moorings, its corrugated iron roof rising on a crest of over-heated air. When the roof was about thirty feet up, it flipped over onto its side, as if a sudden gust of wind had caught it.
Emiliano instinctively ducked down beside his Toyota Roraima. As he did so he noticed the rear of the approaching Hummer rising on a tide of hot air, and then smashing down again.
The Hummer was coming straight for his Toyota.
He threw himself to one side, shrieking.
The Hummer clipped his foot as it passed, pulverizing the bone, and twisting the foot three times around on the remaining skin and gristle. Emiliano hit the ground and rolled himself into a ball. He knew something terrible had happened to him, but not quite what.
When he tried to stand up, his leg collapsed beneath him, and he caught his first glimpse of the disaster that had been his foot.
He began shrieking in earnest, now, and calling for his mother.
106
Abi, Dakini, Nawal, and Rudra lay fanned out in the gravel at the cenote’s edge, listening for any pursuit. Their guns covered a 180-degree radius, with the cenote behind them forming the remainder of the circle.
‘Did you see what happened to Oni?’
‘No. He just disappeared. I think he went in the opposite direction to us.’
‘That figures.’
They all laughed. Their faces were streaked with dust and sweat, and Rudra had Berith’s blood all over him.
‘I’m going to take a look around the corner of the cenote. See if there’s any way out. Come running if I whistle.’
Abi got to his feet and began a hunched zigzag run towards the far corner of the cenote. There was a burst of machine gun fire, and he threw himself down flat. Then he wriggled back into cover.
The Mayan Codex Page 40
