The woman screeched and pointed at the enclosing young guy, calling out a name. “Javier…Javier,” she yelled in a pleading tone. Tears streamed down her face as she shook and trembled.
“Drive, Trey,” Mancini spat. “Get us out of here, now!”
Trey glanced around, first at Mancini, then at the screeching woman and finally at the approaching three guys. He pumped the gas pedal and the car pitched forward. The woman screamed something neither of them understood.
“Jump in the back if you want out of here, lady,” Trey yelled.
She seemed to understand and flung herself over the side of the car and sprawled along the back seat with her legs flailing in the air. Trey steered away from the onrushing young guy but struggled to control the vehicle. He tried to weave between the remaining two men but the front fender clipped the stocky old guy in the center of the highway. The guy’s left kneecap caught the full impact of the collision and buckled so the leg crumpled at the joint, with an audible crack. He went down onto the blacktop, snapping his jaws at Trey as his head clattered against the top of the driver’s door.
“Fuck!” Trey shouted, swerving the car to the right.
The Thunderbird’s front right wing slammed into the tall guy in the denims. He staggered backwards but didn’t go down. Trey desperately tried to regain control of the vehicle, twisting the steering wheel left and right while the car’s rear end fishtailed across both the highway lanes.
The young guy sprinted after the Thunderbird and closed the distance between him and the slaloming, slow moving vehicle. The tall guy batted the car’s side, searching for a firm handhold. His right hand swooped through the air and gripped hold of the woman’s flailing right ankle. She twisted and shrieked and tried to kick his hand away.
The younger man caught up with the Thunderbird’s tail end and he rounded the trunk on the passenger side. Mancini twisted in his seat to see what was happening behind him. The tall guy ran beside the vehicle, still clutching hold of the woman’s ankle. The young guy sprung forward, grabbing the woman’s leg with both hands. He snarled and bit into the woman’s calf, shaking his head in frenzy and tearing at the flesh with his teeth. The woman screamed in agony and a plume of blood spurted across the exterior side of the Thunderbird.
“Ah, shit,” Mancini yelled. “Step on it, Trey.”
Trey struggled with the steering wheel but managed to regain control of the vehicle. He took a quick glance over his shoulder then turned back to face the road. The woman’s agonized screams reached a higher level as the young guy tore at her leg wound with his fingernails as well as his teeth. Trey hit the accelerator and the car sped up with the front wheels either side of the lane marker lines. Both the tall man and the younger guy couldn’t keep pace but they still hung on to the woman’s leg. She wailed as she started to slide backwards across the seat, her legs and pelvis dangled over the top edge of the car as the two guys tried to drag her clear.
Trey knew they were going to lose her if he carried on accelerating so he stamped hard on the brake. The Thunderbird skidded to a halt within a couple of seconds and the tall guy was the first to release his grip as he tumbled headlong in a forward motion. His face smacked against the blacktop and he slid across the rough surface. The younger guy tried to hold on to the woman’s leg but the forward momentum caused him to spiral in the air, land hard on his back and roll across the highway. Trey didn’t think the two of them would rise to their feet anytime soon.
The woman howled in extreme pain while hauling herself back into the Thunderbird’s back seats. Trey couldn’t believe it when he saw the two guys who’d just slammed onto the hard ground, spring upright as though nothing had happened. The young guy’s face looked as though all the skin tone had been sucked out, except for the woman’s blood coating his lower jaw and top lip. The tall guy’s face looked as though he’d stood too close to a giant cheese grater. His facial features had been filed away by the slide across the blacktop and his head was a bloody mess but still he lurched towards the Thunderbird, seemingly unaffected.
Trey stared in disbelieving horror as the tall guy increased his speed. The guy’s nose was totally missing and his lips and cheeks were nothing but tatters of shredded flesh. The younger guy wreathed on the ground, trying to flip himself to his feet, a few yards from the passenger door.
“Come on, Trey, move it,” Mancini barked, shaking Trey from his sickened trance.
Trey came to his senses and released his foot off the brake and hit the gas. The tires screeched on the blacktop and the Thunderbird bolted forward. The tall guy and his younger counterpart swatted the air in an unsuccessful attempt to try and make one last grab at their prey as the car sped by.
The woman sobbed between long, pain stricken wails as she clutched the back of her leg with both hands, trying to stem the flow of blood from the deep wound. Trey moved the vehicle over to the right lane and kept glancing in his rearview mirror as they sped along the highway. Mancini turned to see the three attackers in the distance, still trying to pursue the Thunderbird. He glanced at the woman lying on her stomach across the back seats and she looked in a bad way. He reached into his jacket for his pack of smokes and offered Trey one.
Mancini tried to stop his hand from trembling while he lit both their cigarettes. “Shit, we need to get ourselves some fucking heavy artillery.”
Chapter Six
Trey put a few miles distance between them and the three attackers before he made his suggestion.
“Do you think we should like, pull over and try and patch her up or something?” He glanced in his mirror at the woman on the back seat.
Mancini swiveled and studied the woman’s leg wound. Her right calf was a mangled, gory mess of torn flesh, sinew and muscle. Then he looked at her face. Sweat ran in rivulets over her forehead and across her cheeks, her breathing seemed wheezy and labored and she muttered as her eyes drooped closed. She seemed barely conscious and almost delirious.
“We’ll patch her up as best we can and dump her off at the next town we come to,” Mancini said.
“Don’t you think we should, like take her to a hospital or something?”
“We don’t have the time,” Mancini huffed. “I’m sure she’ll be okay.”
Trey shook his head. “What the hell was wrong with those guys back there? They seemed like wild animals or some shit. I mean, I hit that fat guy and broke his leg. Did you see his kneecap pop, man?”
Mancini nodded.
“And the dude just, like tried to get right back up. He didn’t look as though it had hurt him at all. Then those other two guys slam dunked onto the road, one of the guy’s faces was shaved right off and he got up like nothing had happened. Man, what the hell? Did you catch how those guys smelled? I caught a seriously strong stench like cat piss or something on those guys. Something ‘aint right here.”
Mancini too had smelled a strong odor of ammonia when the crazy guys were attempting to attack them. He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on. I haven’t got any answers. We should just get on with the job we’ve been sent to do and get the hell out of Dodge.”
“I’m with you on that,” Trey muttered.
The highway remained clear and Trey pulled the car over onto the shoulder overlooking the sea.
“I got a first aid kit in the trunk,” Trey said. “You good to patch her up?”
Mancini nodded and climbed out of the car. He retrieved the first aid kit from the trunk and dabbed the woman’s wound with antiseptic on a cotton pad. The woman winced and moaned and tried to bat Mancini’s hand away from her leg. He coiled a bandage over the pad and around her calf then tied a knot at the base of the ankle. The woman shivered, although she still sweated profusely and she was barely conscious.
“That should hold till we hit the next town,” he muttered.
“She looks like she has a fever or something,” Trey said. “Shit, there’s blood all over the back seats.”
“We’ll clean that of
f when we get to our next stop,” Mancini said. “Nothing attracts cops more than a car that looks like the floor of a slaughter house.”
Mancini replaced the first aid kit in the trunk and pulled out a gray blanket. He propped the woman upright in the center of the bench back seat and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. Trey pulled away from the shoulder after Mancini slumped back into the passenger seat.
A few cars and trucks flashed by, heading in the opposite direction. Trey wondered if those vehicles would encounter the crazy guys further back on the highway. Several one storey dwellings cropped up on either side of the road and the rugged countryside soon became a populated urban area. Mancini took out a map from his jacket pocket and studied the area, following the highway with his finger.
“Looks like we’re coming to a town called El Sauzal,” he said. “We’ll stop somewhere and dump her off and do a quick cleaning job. Don’t stop anyplace that’s too populated. We don’t want any witnesses.”
The traffic on the highway increased in number. Vehicles pulled out onto the main route from side roads and intersections. Mancini felt uncomfortable with the looks they received from the occupants of passing vehicles. He glanced back to the map spread across his lap.
“Ah, shit, we’ve got a toll gate coming up ahead,” he groaned.
“You got any Mexican coin?” Trey asked.
“Yeah,” Mancini said, reaching into his pants pocket. “I made sure I had some before we left LA. Don’t hang around if they ask any questions. Just be vague if they ask about the girl.”
“Vague? What’s fucking vague, man?”
“Mancini sighed. “Just don’t go into too much detail, if they ask. I hope there are no cops hanging around the toll.”
The Thunderbird rumbled forward for another mile before Mancini and Trey spotted the toll gate’s white, flat roofed canopy, straddling across the highway.
“What do I say?” Trey asked. “What if they want to know what happened to the girl?”
Mancini detected an element of panic in Trey’s tone. “Try and keep calm and don’t tell them too much. Say we’re taking her to the hospital if you have to. Just get us through the toll as quickly as possible.”
The traffic slowed in front of the Thunderbird and Mancini sighed as they joined the line of waiting vehicles. A middle aged woman in a blue VW stopped next to the T-Bird in the adjacent lane. She glanced at Trey and Mancini then into the backseat at the injured girl. Mancini knew there was going to be some sort of interaction. The woman in VW wound down her window and called out to Trey and started conversing, nodding to the girl in the back of the Thunderbird.
Trey flashed Mancini a worried glance then turned back to the VW. “El hospital,” he called.
Mancini wiped a coating of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. The heat increased due to their temporary stand-still and the tension progressively grew. The line of cars nosed onward and Trey rolled the car forward. The woman in the VW’s line stayed stationary and her vehicle fell behind the Thunderbird. The toll booth loomed closer and Mancini handed Trey a few notes and some coins.
“Just pay them and get out of here, real quick.”
Trey stopped at the toll booth and a woman, smartly dressed in a blue uniform took the money without batting an eyelid. She didn’t give the injured girl a second glance. Mancini and Trey breathed a sigh of relief when the barrier across the lane lifted.
They drove through the toll and Mancini baulked when he saw cameras on top of yellow poles, lined up with each lane. The Thunderbird was no doubt on some computer hard drive somewhere now and Mancini hoped the streaks of blood across the side of the car wouldn’t start alarm bells ringing in an official government office someplace.
A few yards further on, they drove beneath a green sign above the highway. Printed white lettering on the sign welcomed drivers to Ensenada in both Spanish and English. Mancini presumed El Sauzal was a province of the larger city. They saw a sign that pointed the way ahead to Ensenada or a right turn beside a small minimarket, indicating the route to San Miguel. Mancini quickly glanced over the map.
“Turn right in here,” he instructed Trey. “We’ll leave the girl by the store and give the car a once over.”
“We’re just going to leave her here?” Trey asked, quickly turning onto the minimart’s parking lot.
“Yeah,” Mancini grunted. “Somebody will find her and call an ambulance or take her to the hospital. We don’t have the time to fuck around here, Trey.”
“Yeah, right,” Trey muttered, obviously not happy with the situation.
“Pull up along the side of the building.”
“Got it.”
Trey brought the Thunderbird to a halt under the shade of a tree alongside the minimart.
“I’ll go get some cleaning wipes or something,” Mancini said. He climbed out of the car and headed for the store.
Trey turned off the ignition and sat for a while, mulling over the past events in his mind. He couldn’t get the image of those attacking guy’s eyes out of his head and wondered if they were perhaps possessed by demons or something supernatural.
“Shit, what am I doing here?” he muttered to himself. “I could be hanging on Venice Beach, right now, checking out the chicks and the surf.”
He glanced in the rear view mirror at the girl in the backseat. She sat bolt upright, her skin was pale and sallow and her lips were slightly parted but her eyes were closed.
“You feeling any better, lady?” Trey called out.
The girl didn’t answer or show any sign of response. Trey hauled himself out of the driver’s seat and made his way around the side of the car. He touched her forehead and the skin felt icy cold.
“Ah, shit,” he hissed.
Trey turned when he heard footfalls and saw Mancini approaching, carrying a bottle of cleaning spray and a pack of antiseptic wipes. Mancini noticed the worried expression on Trey’s face as he drew near the car.
“You better take a look at her, man,” Trey stammered. “I think she’s dead.”
Chapter Seven
“What do you mean, dead?” Mancini snapped.
“Like, as in not living. Her head feels real cold and her lips are blue and her skin is all pale and shit.”
“Okay, okay, I get the picture,” Mancini groaned, studying the girl. He placed the spray bottle and wipes in the trunk and leaned into the interior. He checked her pulse on her neck and on her wrist then felt her chest for a heartbeat. The girl remained ramrod still and Mancini couldn’t find either a pulse or a heartbeat. She wasn’t breathing and the skin on face seemed to be drying out very quickly.
“Well?” Trey asked.
“Yup, she’s dead all right.”
“How can she just die like that? I know the injury was gruesome but it was only a leg wound, for Christ’s sake,” Trey groaned.
“Maybe she died of shock, hell I don’t know,” Mancini sighed. “Come on, we better get going. We can’t dump her here. We need to find a place a little more secluded. Shit, I didn’t think I was going to have to start dumping bodies before we even got to Ensenada.”
“Ah, man, I feel kind of awkward about this,” Trey sighed.
“Awkward about what?”
“Driving along with a dead body in the back, man. It’s not cool. It’s like that movie, Weekend At Bernie’s or something but not as funny. Ah, this situation really sucks.”
“Get it together, Trey,” Mancini growled. “We can’t leave her here now. The store clerk has seen me and the camera may or may not be working in the store and you can guarantee as sure as shit those cameras at the toll gate were working. It won’t take long for the authorities to trawl through the film and see that girl in the back of our car and come looking for us. That’s what’ll happen if we dump her body right here, Trey.”
“Whatever, man,” Trey muttered, shuffling uncomfortably towards the driver’s door.
Mancini tossed the cleaning products into the foot space and slumped back
into the passenger seat and studied the map. He saw that the side road running alongside the minimart led down to the coastline.
“Take that side road,” he instructed Trey. “We’ll see if we can dump the body down there someplace.”
“I don’t feel great about this,” Trey sighed, gunning the Thunderbird’s engine.
“Nor do I,” Mancini huffed. “But we don’t have a whole lot of options here.”
The side road merged into a downward sloping dirt track, surrounded by tall overhanging trees. The Thunderbird bounced and rocked from side to side as the wheels rolled across the pot holes on the dirt track’s surface. Trey slowed the car to little more than walking pace.
“These damn craters aren’t doing my ride any favors,” he moaned. “I just hope we don’t get a flat.”
“Not much further now,” Mancini said. “We’re nearly at the shoreline.”
“What are we going to do with her body, man? Just dump her in the sea?”
“We’ll place her where somebody will find her,” Mancini said. “I know it’s a shitty thing to do but we can’t allow ourselves to get tangled up with the authorities.”
Trey sighed and shook his head. He glanced in the rear view mirror and watched the girl’s head flop from side to side as the car juddered over the dirt track.
The narrow track came to a dead end a few yards from a secluded, pebble covered beach. A spot for vehicle turning circled around to their right and a clump of low hanging trees stood to the left of the beach. Trey brought the car to a stop a few feet from the surface of pebbles.
“We’ll put her amongst those trees,” Mancini said, pointing to their left. “Then we’ll give the interior a wipe down and get rid of all that blood.”
Trey cut the engine and applied the park brake so the Thunderbird wouldn’t roll forward onto the beach. He stared forward through the windshield and watched the low waves break onto the pebbles. He wished he’d stayed in California and hadn’t been so eager to become involved in this particular assignment. Mancini seemed a callous kind of guy and nothing seemed to matter to him but carrying out his damn mission.
Green Ice: A Deadly High Page 4
