Throughout Quitasol, all radios went dead.
They didn’t stay dead for long. As the Comandante screamed orders from the palace, electronics experts worked with triangulators trying to locate the new source. A source that was broadcasting over the single station available, and broadcasting so powerfully that it reached the remote mountain settlements, as well as the dense streets of the capital.
The streets quickly filled with people as radios were turned to maximum volume. Soldiers responded. The crowds moved back, but the radios continued to blare the news. . . .
The Harrier came shrieking across the border again, this time aimed in another direction entirely, flying over ground unprotected by radar systems.
La Casa de Dolor loomed in Buddha’s vision. He fired both his 25mm Aden cannons at the walls, muttering, “Just like a fucking video game,” as the walls started to tumble. The Harrier twisted back, hovered just above the prison, and released its cluster bombs right onto the tops of the exposed buildings.
Several of the guards fired their rifles futilely at the buzzing jet. The rest of them ran for cover. Buddha emptied his rocket pods, not bothering to aim, knowing he couldn’t miss at that range, but being careful to hit only the south side of the prison.
Some of the guards were stalking through the prison, systematically slaughtering the inhabitants of the cells even as their comrades urged them to run for it.
Fal let loose with his shoulder-mounted LAAW at the north wall. Four more shells, and the wall itself was only rubble. Ace and Princess stood and watched: Ace with his scattergun ready in case any of the fleeing guards came their way, Princess adjusting a complex shoulder harness made of nylon, his face frozen.
Falcon dropped the antitank weapon, pulled a small scanner from his pocket, hit a switch. “Got her. Full thermal. Let’s move out.”
The men walked rapidly but purposefully, Princess in front, sweeping the area with his heavy machine gun, a creature from nightmares, moving robotically in response to pushes from Falcon on either shoulder.
The prison was in ruins. Humans who could still move were trying to run. To run anywhere.
The three men made their way through the carnage, Ace occasionally blowing away anyone in uniform and mechanically reloading.
The woman was in the last cell at the end of the corridor. A lone guard walked that corridor, aiming his pistol into each cell, pulling the trigger several times. He seemed to have an endless supply of fresh clips. His back was to the approaching men. Ace and Princess fired simultaneously. Pieces of the guard flew off. Falcon never looked up, his eyes only on the transmitter. He came to the end of the corridor.
“Marlene?” he asked.
“Oh, God. What’s happening? Are you—?”
Falcon nodded. Pulled a pistol and, aiming parallel to the cell door, blew off the lock. Princess stepped inside. The woman fainted. Ace and Falcon strapped her into the harness on Princess’ back. Falcon took the machine gun and the point. Princess followed, carrying the woman on his back, his treasured Lone Eagle Magnum in one fist. Ace brought up the rear, shotgun barrels seeking new prey.
The prison yard was no more. Everyone was dead, dying, or running. No one challenged the strange group.
“Double-time now,” Falcon called back as they came upon the trail he had marked.
They reached their camping area just as the Harrier made a helicopter’s vertical landing at the far end of the strip. The rocket pods popped free. Princess gently loaded the girl into one of the empty tubes, then climbed in there with her, cradling her frail body in his enormous arms. Falcon and Ace scrambled into the other. Buddha hit the switch and the pod faces closed. He looked grimly down the makeshift runway, nodded to himself, and gave it maximum thrust.
The Harrier cleared the edge of the jungle by three feet, climbed vertically, straightened out, and rocketed back to its nest.
The radio continued its denunciation of the regime. Telling the people that La Casa de Dolor was no more. That the rebels had freed their comrades and executed the traitors who had imprisoned them. Soldiers swarming through the streets were met with sporadic gunfire from rooftops—gunfire that increased as they moved farther away from the presidential palace.
“Everyone goes down,” Cross said to Rhino and Tiger. “A bush moves, you blast it. Turns out it was just a pig, we have barbecue. Don’t even think about telling the rebels from the government. Everyone’s a hostile until we get over the border. Got it?”
Tiger and Rhino nodded, not looking at each other.
Cross looked out the back window and saw two soldiers facing away from the building. Their posture was nervous, alert. He made a hand signal. Tiger stepped out of the whorehouse and shot the two soldiers in the back with the silenced Sig. As Cross covered the area from the shadows, a MAC-10 in each hand, Rhino slipped behind Tiger and yanked the tarp off the package the rebels had brought across the border, revealing a stabilized mortar, pre-aimed. He reached down and delicately touched off a series of timed launches.
Seconds later, chunks of the presidential palace flew into the air. Tiger took the wheel of the armored Chevy Blazer waiting in the back alley. Rhino sat in back, his Uzi steady in his lap. Cross was in the passenger seat, tossing white phosphorus grenades at random as the Blazer fought its way through the clogged streets.
One of the whores trapped in the house screamed. Fire raged throughout the capital. More of the soldiers ran than fought. The Blazer rolled on through, indifferently lethal.
The Harrier touched down. Buddha hit the switches and the pods opened. Princess jumped out first, the woman still in his arms. Falcon and Ace got out more slowly. Of the four, only Ace showed any signs of recent exposure to cold, hugging himself, shivering. Princess was pumped with excitement, exchanging high-fives with everyone in the open-mouthed ground crew. Fal stood by, indifferent. The woman appeared to be in shock. Buddha climbed down from the cockpit.
“Let’s go get our money,” he said.
“You handled the truck beautifully,” Rhino complimented Tiger as they waited for the flight leaving Belize.
“Anytime I can’t out-drive that little slug, I’ll start taking estrogen supplements.” She laughed.
“You can’t,” Cross said.
“Can’t what?”
“Out-drive Buddha. He’s the best there is.”
“Is that why you keep him on? Because, if it is, now that I’m—”
“It’s not the only reason,” Cross said, looking across at Rhino.
The huge man moved his head a fraction, but enough to indicate agreement.
“What, then?”
“He’s one of us,” Cross told her. “He hates them. He hates them all.”
“And I don’t?”
“I can’t speak for anyone else.”
“Yeah? Well, you do a pretty good job when you want something.”
“Sure.”
“What’s your problem?”
“You’re my problem. We had a deal. You’re out of the joint, get to start over.”
“And you got paid.”
“And I got paid.”
“So we’re—what?—done?”
“I don’t know what we are. But the crew, that’s us, not you.”
“Oh.”
Cross said nothing, dragging on his cigarette, eyes alert. They had decided to go weaponless into the airport, but the local cops weren’t as handicapped. Belize had no treaty with Quitasol, and, according to the CNN feed they could see in the terminal, the capital was still in flames. But a lifetime of watchfulness always called the shots in Cross’s world.
“Because I’m a woman?” Tiger finally asked.
“Because you’re a woman . . . What? Just say what you want to say, all right?”
“I thought . . . you and me . . . we’ve been . . . together before. And this time, I guess I . . . I don’t know . . . I got no place to go. If I go back to what I was doing . . . I may be off their records, but they’ve got my prints and—�
�
“They’ve got all our prints,” Cross interrupted. “They’ve had mine since I was a kid. Ace and Rhino’s too. Fal and Buddha from the service, at least. Only Princess is off their screen. And he couldn’t hide in a circus.”
“I know. I just meant, look, Cross, you wanted me to be straight, here it is: I don’t want to play house with you. I mean, I don’t want to play housewife with you, okay? I want to . . . be with you. But I don’t want to stay home. I want to work.”
“You mean you want in, right?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah. Just like that. You and me, we get along now. What happens if we stop—getting along, I mean?”
“You think I’d rat you out?” Tiger snarled low at him.
“No. Not for a minute. I think the reason the others go along with me is because they know I don’t have my emotions in it. It would make a mess. Fucking Buddha, you know how he is. First thing, he’d say you and me, we should split one share. Okay, that wouldn’t fly. But he’d put it in people’s minds, understand? So, when we hand out assignments, the first time it looked like you got the softer piece, there wouldn’t be the same . . .”
“Trust?”
“Yeah.”
“But I worked with you before. With the crew, I mean.”
“Sure. But that was free-lance. Same as Fal.”
“I held up my end?”
“No question.”
“But this is different because . . . ?”
“Fal isn’t in on every job. He gets to pick and choose. He passes on most of what we have anyway. He’s connected to us, but he’s not. He has his own . . . None of us do, see?”
“I don’t have my own,” Tiger said, eyes welling.
“You had your own fucking cell a few weeks ago,” Cross said, staring straight ahead.
“It’s too big a risk,” Buddha told Falcon. “Nothing was said about me driving back. Fuck a whole bunch of that. I want to see Chicago soon, not in a couple of weeks.”
“Flying, that’s what’s too big a risk,” the Indian said. “You can’t take her on a commercial flight. Look at her, she needs a hospital, not a plane trip.”
“I’m . . . okay,” the woman said.
“Yes. And you may be recognizable as well,” Falcon told her politely.
“But what difference does it make? I mean, you men are heroes. You rescued me. Why should you care if—?”
Falcon turned to face the woman, who was lying on a motel bed, propped up by several pillows. “Ma’am, what we did or didn’t do isn’t important. What is important is that we disappear. We agreed to do . . . certain things. In exchange for payment. We are . . . unauthorized to act by any government, despite what you may believe. Quitasol has no extradition treaty with America, but that is only because it operates as a safe harbor for drug dealers. We agreed to return you to Chicago. I don’t believe you are in any condition to travel unassisted. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then you take her,” Buddha said. “You drive through the fucking South with Princess, see how far you get before he hammers a few people and you all end up on some chain gang.”
“Buddha—”
“Man, don’t even think about threatening me. I did my piece. Came back for you and all. Got you across the border. I earned my money, and I want it. What I don’t want is to wait for it.”
“Come on, Buddha,” Princess exhorted him. “It’ll be fun!”
“No way.”
“All right,” Ace said. “It ain’t no big thing. I just hope none of us mess up the shark car.”
“What the fuck you talking about?” Buddha demanded. “Nobody drives that car but me. And it’s not exactly parked in the lot outside.”
“No,” Ace said, swinging a single key on a ring he had pulled from his pocket. “But I know where it is. Real close. Right over in Liberty City. Cross had it brought down here so we could have cover, in case it got bad going back.”
“That miserable lowlife sonofabitch!” Buddha said. “He said a Lear. I fucking knew he’d—”
“Have a nice flight, Buddha,” Falcon told him.
“Princess has to stay in the back seat,” Buddha replied, defeated.
“She’s a mess, Cross.” The speaker was a white male, somewhere in his forties, with a husky chest and a wrestler’s build. His eyes were a whirling miasma of compassion and cynicism.
“That’s why we brought her to you, Doc.”
“I don’t think so. And you must think I’m pretty stupid. That’s not like you, Cross.”
“All of that means . . . what?”
First,” Doc said, ticking off the points on his fingers, “this is . . . the girl the Quitasol government was holding in that prison in the mountains. You know . . . Quitasol? That place that’s apparently burning to the ground.”
“I heard there was some kind of revolution going on, yeah.”
“Second,” Doc continued, as if Cross had not spoken, “that job has your fingerprints all over it. Somebody paid you to pull that girl out. And, as usual, you got it done.”
“People say things.”
“Third, no way you did anything without being paid. At least a substantial portion in front. So, the way I figure it, you have to turn the girl over to get the rest of the money. How am I doing so far?”
Cross gave Doc a thousand-yard stare. Said nothing.
“So you leave her with me, figuring she needs medical rehab anyway, and, besides, you want her stashed where her father can’t find her . . . and maybe take her back without you getting paid in full.”
“You got paid,” Cross said flatly.
“I did. And she’s taking nourishment well, gaining weight, all that. She appears to have been subjected to . . . various forms of ugliness, but, given our knowledge of the Quitasol regime, not extensively so.”
“Funny,” Cross replied. “Seems like all the reports say she died in the attack on that . . . prison or whatever they call it.”
“Yeah. Funny. So the deal wasn’t that you bring her back at all, that’s what you’re saying? This wasn’t about her?”
Cross just watched Doc’s hands, silent and still within himself.
“But that doesn’t work either. No way you bring someone back without there being something in it for you. You figure it out by yourself before you even brought her here?
“Guessed.”
“Good guess. He didn’t want her rescued, he wanted her silenced. Anyone who’s done prison work would recognize the game. George Jackson tries to ‘escape’ with a ‘smuggled’ gun. And he gets smoked before he ever reaches the wall. Big surprise. But he sure stopped writing those books after that.”
Cross shrugged.
“So now you’re going to blackmail the same guy who paid you to kill her?”
“Doc, let’s just say, hypothetically, I knew what the fuck you were talking about, okay? And let’s just say the people with me, they saw it as a straight rescue. Maybe I thought they’d never pull off their end. But they did. And we got her now. I didn’t get paid for a homicide. I got paid for an extraction attempt. But when we found she didn’t want to go home to Daddy, we brought her here.”
“And if you think I’m going to turn her—”
“She’s not a girl, Doc. She’s a grown woman. Pretty tough too, for someone who never had to work. But if you turn her loose, he’s going to have her taken out, no question. And she doesn’t have what it takes to go underground.”
“I believe that’s her choice.”
“I believe we need to talk to her. Together.”
“Do we have it confirmed?” the immaculately dressed man asked the chauffeur.
“No. And we probably never will. The destruction of the prison was near-total. And we have no—repeat, no—assets on the ground there. The press statements are conflicting, depending on which side breaks through. They’re still fighting for control, but the President has made
a run for it. He’s in Paraguay, about what you’d expect. Anyway, the rebels say they destroyed the prison and liberated their comrades and the American woman was executed by the guards during the assault. The government says the rebels bombed the prison and killed a bunch of people, including your daughter, but they claim the prison is still standing.”
“And this Cross, he says—?”
“Nothing. He says he wasn’t there. It was a job. He says he got it done. Sent an extraction team in, they did their best. No question something big happened down there.”
“I need to know.”
“Yes, sir. I understand. We will do everything in our power to . . .”
The immaculately dressed man got to his feet, turned his back on the speaker, and walked from the room.
“I could never talk about it before,” the woman said.
“You didn’t remember . . . ?” Cross asked gently.
“I never had a day I didn’t remember,” the woman said, voice sharp and focused. “This isn’t about ‘recovered memory’ or ‘flashbacks’ or anything else. Except him. And what he did. I couldn’t talk about it because I just . . . couldn’t, that’s all. It all seemed so . . . useless. My mother knew . . .”
“You told her?”
“No. I didn’t have to. She turned me over to him. Like a gift. She saw us. More than once. She always knew. But it wasn’t until I was . . . locked away. Until I knew I was going to die. Those pigs . . . they thought they were torturing me. Rape. I’d been raped since I was a little girl. I know what hurts. They couldn’t hurt me. But I knew enough to let them think they did.”
“And now . . . ?”
Everybody Pays Page 31
