by Callie Hart
“And you think she will still love you if you murder her father? You think she won’t see my death every time she looks into your eyes?”
“You don’t know your daughter, Fernando. You don’t know her at all.”
I run at him. I’m not going to wait for him to make the first move. Fuck that. It takes all of a second for me to reach him, but it’s a second that Fernando has time to prepare. I’m waiting for him to raise his hammer, but he doesn’t. He reaches behind himself, and suddenly there’s a gun in his hand.
I’m sure there’s an old adage about this. Never bring a knife to a gunfight? Well, in this instance, the adage still holds up; an axe in a gunfight is just as useless. Fernando doesn’t waste any more time. He fires the gun, and an explosion of sound rings around the inside of the shed. He misses me, but only just.
Natalia screams as he aims again. This time I’m so close that he can’t miss. Still I heft the axe upward, swinging it over my head. He’ll have to kill me with this bullet, otherwise I’ll keep coming. Nothing but a headshot will prevent me from planting this honed slice of metal into his body.
The steel sings as it cuts through the air. Fernando leaps back, dodging the first cut. He shoots at the same time, and the bullet hits me in the shoulder. The impact nearly knocks me off my feet. It feels like a drop of molten lava has landed on my skin, and the liquid metal and rock is burning its way through me, tearing me apart from the inside out. It hurts like a motherfucker, but I know what to expect. This is not the first time I’ve been shot. I’m sure it won’t be the last either. My left arm is going numb. Thankfully my right arm is still in perfect working order, though. I lift the axe, determined to finish this.
Fernando grins savagely, raising his eyebrows. “You’re a brave man, Cade Preston. But I told you what I do to dogs who attack my family, did I not?” He shrugs almost apologetically. “I gave you Kechu’s name. I suppose we both should have known how this story ends.”
I brace to take the next shot, but it never comes. One second Fernando is standing there, right in front of me, and then the next a loud shout fills the air, and Fernando is off his feet, toppling to the ground. The gun goes off, a bright flash of light illuminating the inside of the shed, but the bullet lands in the rafters somewhere overhead.
And Plato… Plato is on top of Fernando, striking him over and over again. He’s wearing his white suit pants and a pair of white, patent leather shoes, but it seems as though he didn’t have time to find a shirt. His face is bloody, and he’s sporting a black eye, but other than that he looks uninjured. He screams, his face a rictus of rage as he continues to hit Fernando with every ounce of strength he possesses. When I last saw him, he looked half out of his mind, his eyes glossed over and vacant, as he fucked a naked brunette. Now he is completely out of his mind. He’s far from vacant, though. He attacks with the ferocity of one of Fernando’s wolves, teeth bared, eyes flashing with hatred.
I want to help him, to lash out with the axe, but it’s too fucking dangerous. They’re both struggling so wildly that I could easily hit Plato instead of Fernando, and that would be disastrous. I can do nothing but watch as Plato beats the shit out of his master. With each strike he lands, I can see the victory in his eyes. He’s been waiting to do this for years.
Fernando drops both the gun and his hammer as he tries to defend himself. This is a big mistake on his part. Plato snatches for one of the weapons—I’m sure he’ll go for the gun, but instead he takes up the ball hammer, spinning it menacingly in front of Fernando’s face.
“This is for Persephone,” he growls. The hammer comes down, making contact with the side of Fernando’s head, and a shower of blood explodes everywhere, so much of it that it looks like some kind of Hollywood special effect. He hits him again and again, and Fernando makes a sickening, voiceless cry each time. It reminds me of a French film I saw once, where a man had his head caved in with a fire extinguisher. The camera didn’t pan away. Not even when the guy’s head cracked open, and pieces of skull and brains were flying everywhere. Unlike that camera, I could easily look away now, but I don’t. I watch with grim satisfaction as Fernando’s face is reduced to a bloody, meaty pulp.
It’s all over for the Villalobos cartel boss. It will be any second, anyway. But then out of nowhere Fernando’s rallying, thrusting his hips up and unseating Plato, who falls sideways onto his back. It all happens so quickly. Fernando leaps on him, fingernails scratching at his face as he tries to claw Plato’s eyes out.
I race forward, grabbing hold of Fernando, restraining him. He’s fighting with the strength of a man possessed, though. He’s hard to keep hold of. I stagger backward, and I am lost in the moment. The shed fades away. There is only the adrenalin firing through my veins, and my heart beating like a piston.
A loud, whirring, grinding noise cuts through the madness, and then Plato is in front of me, grabbing hold of Fernando by his shirt.
“You can’t kill me,” he howls. “I am the head of this family. I am your master!”
Plato spits in his face. “Not anymore, motherfucker. Now, you’re red dust in the wind.” He drags him out of my arms, and then he’s trying to lift the other man off the ground. Plato’s strong, but not strong enough to heft a grown man directly over his head. I rush to his side, grabbing hold of Fernando’s thrashing feet, and then we’re lifting him, carrying him, throwing him…
…into the wood chipper.
This is the source of the loud whirring, grinding noise. Plato must have turned the thing on while I was grappling with Fernando. As Fernando’s body feeds into the machine, the grinding noise takes on a new, urgent high-pitched whine.
This. This is the moment. A few days ago, I couldn’t decide what the most violent, awful thing I’d ever seen was. But it’s this. This is it.
Fernando screams as he is consumed by the machine. Blood and pieces of flesh shoot into the air as he disappears, inch by inch. Plato’s prediction is proved right when the chipper begins to dispense with Fernando’s body parts out of the chute at the other end, sending gusts of red mist and blood cascading into the air.
“Holy…fucking…shit.” This is a vision I’ll never be able to forget. Ever. I turn away as the machine draws close to finishing its task. Fernando has stopped screaming—he died a while ago—so there’s no point in seeing him fully consumed. Natalia is standing with her back against the wall, her eyes unfocused, her mouth hanging open. She’s covered in blood, soaked in the stuff, and her hair is hanging loose down past her shoulders again.
She’s in shock. She must be. No matter how much she hated him and wanted him to die, seeing her father being fed into a fucking wood chipper is still going to fuck up her head beyond belief. It’s fucked up mine, and I know the bastard deserved it.
I take her into my arms, holding her close, stroking my hand up and down her back. “I have you, baby,” I tell her. “It’s okay. He can’t hurt you anymore. He can’t hurt you ever again.”
In the middle of the shed, Plato stands with his hands clenched into fists, staring at the wood chipper. He’s frozen to the spot, his chest rising and falling like an injured animal.
“Hey, man. Are you okay?” He doesn’t even seem to hear me. “Plato?”
Slowly, he turns around, the tension in his shoulders easing fractionally. He has that look to him now, that look I’ve seen on so many guys before: a shadow of darkness and pain lurking behind his eyes, that says he’s done something so messed up and so dark that he’ll never be the same again.
“Don’t call me that,” he says, looking me square in the eye. “I’m not Plato. My name is Freddie Arcane.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE ROAD OUT OF HELL
“It can’t be true. It can’t be.” Natalia bursts into tears the second she sees Laura. During the violence and chaos of the past hour, I haven’t had chance to tell her about my sister. When Ocho and Laura walk out of the rainforest, cautiously creeping toward us, both Natalia and Plato look up disbelievi
ngly. Plato sinks to the ground, simply unable to process what he’s seeing. Natalia runs to Laura, and the two women cling to each other for dear life. They’re both crying, sobbing, in fact, and neither one of them seems like they’re planning on ever letting go. I have no idea what trauma Laura went through here at the estate, but I know Natalia helped her through it. Or she tried as best she could. Their friendship is an obvious, tangible thing.
Ocho hovers off to one side, clasping hold of his Walkman headphones in one hand, a rifle in the other. Plato studies him warily, looking like he’s about to hurl himself at the man any moment.
“It’s okay,” Laura says. “He’s one of us.”
One of us. One of the broken. One of the wounded. Plato grunts, struggling to his feet. He approaches my sister, slowly taking both her and Natalia in his arms. They stand like that for a long time, while Ocho and I simply watch them.
An hour later, we’re on the road. Ocho drives, while I sit beside him in the passenger seat of the Humvee, which he had stashed three hundred meters down the mountain, already waiting for us. None of us have a cell phone. God knows where the fuck mine went, lost at some point while we were all fighting for our lives. Ocho takes us to a small, run-down shack in the village as soon as we reach the foot of the mountain, and through a series of grunts and gestures manages to persuade the owner of the only landline in Orellana to let us use it.
“Hello?” Jamie’s voice is on edge. He already knows it’s me calling, and he’s bracing for the worst.
“We’re out,” I say simply. “Any chance you might be able to organize a ride?”
“How many seats?”
I look at the faces of the stunned, exhausted, blood-covered people surrounding me, and I say, “Five.”
We drive through the night, and into the next day. Around two in the afternoon, Laura insists that we stop off somewhere to buy medical supplies. She says I look like dog shit, and I can believe it. I feel like dog shit. I’ve lost a lot of blood. Just because I’ve taken bullets in the past doesn’t mean the experience of being shot is any more pleasant. Natalia argues with an old man in a pharmacy just outside of a small settlement called La Frontera, The Border, aptly named considering it’s proximity to the crossing into Peru.
The old guy in the pharmacy doesn’t ask any questions as he inspects my shoulder. He says it’s a through-and-through, that the bullet traveled straight out the other side of my body, and then he cleans the wound, stitching me up and handing over a couple of antibiotics. The wound is almost one hundred percent going to get infected, but I’ll be able to receive more comprehensive medical treatment once I’m back in New Mexico. The painkillers the guy gives me are legit, and soon I feel like I’m fucking flying as Ocho drives us through an unmanned checkpoint into Peru.
Colombia would have been closer, but planes entering the States from Bogota or any other port out of there are monitored so rigorously, we would never make it back into the States. Jamie decided departing from a tiny airstrip in Peru would be safer, so we head south instead of north.
We’re on the road for forty-eight hours. A heavy, tense silence settles over the car, no one really feeling the desire to discuss what we all just went through. Occasionally, I feel Natalia’s cool touch on the back of my neck, and I can’t help but wonder what the fuck is going on in her head. The life she knew is now over. Nothing can ever be the same again. Is she happy to be running from Ecuador, ducking off highways every time we see a cop car, sleeping in snatches whenever we can? Is she happy that Fernando’s dead? I’m too fucked up on pain meds and pain itself to ask her right now, in front of others, where she might be too upset, worried or ashamed to admit otherwise.
We arrive at the tiny airfield Jamie picked out just as the sun is going down. It’s not really even an airfield. It’s a flight school, of all things, and the place looks like it’s been closed for years. Full-blown trees are growing out of the cracked blacktop, and the control building looks like it’s about to fall down. If it weren’t for the single, pristine white single prop Cessna sitting at the far end of the runway, I’d think we’d come to the wrong place.
There’s no one to stop us from driving out onto the blacktop. No one to ask us for passports, or confirm our visas. Ocho guns the Humvee’s engine, and then we’re pulling up alongside the small aircraft, and Carnie, one of the Widow Makers’ recently promoted members, is hopping down out of the plane.
“Took you long enough, motherfucker,” he says, punching my arm. I wince, trying to hide how painful the light tap is, but Carnie notices.
“Another war wound, man?”
“You could say that.”
“Oh well. Chicks dig scars. And speaking of chicks…” His eyes are all over Laura, appraising her, devouring her hungrily from the ground up. Such a fucking asshole. I give him a warning glance so caustic it could strip paint.
“Don’t even think about it, shithead. That’s my sister.”
Carnie’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “No fucking way! You’re Laura? You’re alive?”
She nods.
Carnie can’t stop looking between the two of us, shaking his head, grinning like he just won the lottery. “That is bad ass, man. Bad. Ass.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
REUNION
Since the Cessna’s such a small plane, we have to refuel in Mexico. Only Carnie gets out of the plane, though, and the airport officials don’t ask questions. Pick the right town in Mexico, and a ten-thousand-dollar bribe can buy you anything.
Soon, we’re flying over New Mexico. The wheels touch down, and the Cessna bounces once as Carnie aims the plane’s nose directly toward the Widow Makers’ compound in the distance. In the back of the plane, Laura’s forehead is pressed up against the seatback in front of her, and she’s white as a sheet. Anxious, by the looks of things.
Natalia seems less fragile. She hasn’t slept at all. I feel her eyes on me, burning holes into the side of my head as I talk with Carnie, but I make a point of pretending that I don’t notice. She needs time to figure out what she wants to do, and I think her intense study of me is a part of that problem solving. She has options open to her now. She’s entered the States illegally, but that can be fixed. Jamie has enough dirt to bury a number of politicians in the state of New Mexico; a green card shouldn’t be too hard to drum up once a few phone calls have been made. So she can either stay here in New Mexico, here with me, or she can go somewhere else, explore the rest of the country, see what there is to be seen. It’s her call. I won’t ask anything of her.
At the very back of the plane, Freddie buries his face in his hands, taking ragged, uneven, bottomless breaths. When he uncovers his face, sitting back in his chair, his eyes are bloodshot and his cheeks are bright red, his hands trembling like crazy.
“I can’t believe it,” he says. “I seriously can’t fucking believe it. I never thought I’d step foot on American soil again. I thought for sure I was going to die on that godforsaken mountainside.” He’s wearing a t-shirt Carnie had in his backpack, plain white, now spackled with flecks of blood, and I get the feeling the poor bastard’s spent a lot of time either naked or dressed in a full suit over the last three years. I can tell by the way he keeps running his fingers over the hem of the t-shirt that it’s a novelty to him.
“What do you plan on doing now?” I ask him. He looks stunned at the very thought of having a say in the matter.
“I don’t know. I hadn’t gotten that far. I’ve been so focused on getting out that I never really considered what would come after that.”
“Where are you from?” Carnie asks.
“Texas. Not far from the border of Mexico. I’m not going back there, though. No way.”
There’s a story there. Has to be. From the anger and the pain in his eyes, the idea of going back to his hometown fills Freddie with the same horror and panic as the idea of staying in Orellana probably would. There will be time for questions later, though. Right now, I just want to get Laura and Natalia into
the Widow Makers compound. I won’t feel that they’re one hundred percent safe until those gates have closed behind us, and the outside world can no longer reach us.
Carnie navigates the plane toward the fenced-in structure ahead of us, and I can make out a line of people already waiting at the gate for us. I asked Carnie not to say anything to Jamie about Laura. My friend has spent just as long looking for her as I have, he has every right to know she’s alive, but telling him over the radio just seemed wrong somehow. The plane stops a hundred feet from the compound—protocol in case there’s trouble at the clubhouse, or equally any trouble on board the plane—and we begin to disembark.
A huge plume of dust kicks up in the air, spiralling up toward the sky as a masked rider burns toward us on a motorcycle. It’s Jamie, of course. I know from the sound of his bike’s engine. I also know it’s him because he would never allow anyone else to ride out here. He’s always the first to face any potential danger, before the other members of the club. That’s why sending me alone without him to Ecuador was so damned hard for him.
Both Natalia and Freddie look worried, while Laura, leaning against me for support, looks a little apprehensive herself. “Is that—” she whispers.
“Yeah,” I answer. “He’s going to shit the bed.”
“I can’t believe it. A motorcycle club.” She shakes her head. And then, “He’s going to be mad at me,” she says quietly.
“What? Why the hell would he be mad at you?” I hug her holding her to me, and I can feel her trembling.
“We fought the last time we saw each other. I was angry with him. I said things I shouldn’t have.”
“Do you really think he’s been clinging onto a handful of angry words for the past seven years? God, you’re crazy, girl. You’re fucking crazy.”
