Troubled Sea

by Jinx Schwartz

  Jerry nodded; it seemed there was a tire shop every few miles. “Retreads are a very big business here?”

  “It is said vulcanizadoras are our national treasure.”

  Nicole leaned forward. “Uh, this car doesn’t happen to have retreads, does it?”

  “Of course.”

  Mentally tightening her nonexistent seatbelt, Nicole rolled her eyes and sat back to watch the desert whiz by. “Hey, I’ve always wanted one of those,” she said as a flash of red passed her window.

  Juan skidded to a halt and backed at warp speed to a little stand by the road.

  “What are you going to do with it, Nikki?” Jerry asked, eyeing the object of Nicole’s admiration. “You don’t cook.”

  “I want one for my front door.”

  “It will be my gift,” Jaime told her.

  Nicole carefully inspected the five-foot red chile ristras and selected one with the brightest color. Jaime paid the vendor, then turned to Nicole. “Now, Nikki, when you return to your home, each day you will remember me.”

  Nicole opened her mouth to say something flippant, but failed as a jolt of heat rolled through her body and up her neck. All she managed was a meek, “Thank you.”

  Back in the car, Jerry made an attempt to lighten the mood. “Look guys, things aren’t all that bad. This is hardly the first drug bust flop, and it won’t be the last. And you gotta admit, the cooperation from all sides was top notch.”

  “Yeah, the only people who didn’t cooperate were the narco-pricks,” Nicole grumped.

  “True. And we’re gonna have to come up with a lot of attaboys to wipe out this major awww-shit. If,” Jerry added, “we still have jobs when the dust settles. How could we have been so wrong? That telephone conversation had every indication of a legitimate drug-slug intercept. The kind of tip that pays off.”

  “Perhaps the message was misinterpreted,” Jaime suggested. “It happens.”

  “What do you mean, misinterpreted?” Nicole asked.

  “Perhaps I mean mistranslated.”

  “Wait a minute,” Nicole said, “I thought the conversation your agent picked up was in Spanish.”

  “No, it was in English. But there is very little difference in the content.”

  “Let me see it again, please,” Nicole asked.

  Jaime opened his brimming briefcase and shuffled though it until he found a dog-eared transcript of the intercepted telephone message. He handed it to Nicole. Jerry looked over her shoulder as she read it aloud, first in English, then the Spanish translation.

  “All right, one more time. The original says ‘nineteen November, Agua P, one hundred twenty K.’ ”

  Jaime nodded.

  Nicole read it again, in Spanish, then fell silent, studying the words as if willing them to morph into a clue. “Jaime, who has the original audio tape of the conversation?”

  “Felipe, the technician you met at the hotel in San Carlos, has a copy. Will that do?”

  “Sure, that’d be fine. Can we give it a listen? Maybe call Felipe so he can play it back over the cell phone for us? I mean, to hell with security at this point.”

  Jaime pulled out his Nokia, punched in some numbers, barked an order, and hung up. Three minutes later, when the phone rang, Jaime handed it to Nicole.

  Nicole greeted the Mexican agent, and listened carefully to the recording, checking each word against the typed transcript in her lap.

  “Gracias, Felipe,” Nicole said, handing the phone back to Jaime, who terminated the call.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Word for word. It was translated correctly. And that conversation screamed ‘dirty’ to high heaven. Dammit, where did we go wrong?”

  Jaime shrugged. “November and Noviembre are almost the same, nineteen is nineteen, Agua P must be Agua Prieta, and one hundred twenty K? Well, it could be a one hundred and twenty thousand, or kilometer one hundred and twenty, but my guess is still one hundred and twenty kilos.”

  Nicole fell back into her funk, staring glumly out the window at the desert. Suddenly she burst into laughter, startling the others. “There is a little justice after all, boys,” she said, pointing to the other side of the road.

  Sitting in a ditch, tilted at a precarious angle, sat the sailboat, Water Princess. Two tires on one side of the trailer were flat and the tractor was nosed down. The abrasive American captain appeared engaged in a heated conversation with Sunglasses, the personnel management expert from the white Bronco back at the San Carlos boatyard. His head snapped around when he spotted the Mercedes, he said something to the captain, and they both watched Jaime's car as it sped south.

  Nicole giggled again.

  “What’s so funny?” Jerry asked, looking out the back window at the receding scene. “Oh, nothing really, probably just my female ego gloating over a little comeuppance. I tried to talk to the boat captain when they were pulling the Water Princess onto the trailer at San Carlos Marina, and he was quite rude. Bruised my feelings.”

  “I must say, señorita Nikki, I certainly find it odd that any man would be rude to one so beautiful as you,” Jaime said diplomatically. “Perhaps he is queer.”

  Jerry and Nicole chuckled at Jaime’s innocent, but politically improper, assessment.

  “Thanks, I needed that,” Nicole told him with a smile, then went back to studying the ragged message.

  Ten miles down the road, she screamed, “Stop the car! Now!”

  Chapter 32

  So death lies in wait alike on sea and land.—Plato

  Juan, startled by Nicole’s outburst, skidded to a heart-stopping halt on the shoulder, and all but clipped a grazing horse. The frightened mare kicked Jaime’s door.

  “Madre de Dios, my car!” Jaime roared, reaching for his gun with every intention of shooting the horse.

  “Forget the damned horse,” Nicole yelled as the mare, tail held high, escaped into a pasture. “Agua P! Agua Princesa! Water Princess! They were working on the...what d’ya call it? Keel? In the San Carlos boatyard. I thought they were just repairing some scrapes, but think about it—if that trailer wasn't broken down, maybe they’d have crossed the border yesterday. November nineteenth!”

  “Nikki, you are either demented or a genius,” Jerry said.

  “You may have the demented part right, but my nose says that boat’s dirty.”

  “Zactly. My nose also twitches. Even if the Spanish is not quite correct, I suspect we have a boat with one hundred and twenty kilos of cocaine in her keel.”

  “What’s wrong with the Spanish?” Jerry asked.

  “Water Princess, correctly translated, would be Princesa del Agua.”

  “Jaime, one of those guys on that intercepted phone call was a Gringo. He was the one who said Agua P.”

  “True. You Gringos can never get your adjectives in the right order.”

  “Semantics,” Nicole huffed.

  “Hey, watch it, I’m Jewish,” Jerry quipped, earning him a puzzled look by Jaime and a slap on the arm from Nicole.

  “Cut the crap, Jerry. The question is, what do you plan to do, Jaime?”

  “We must check this boat. We could, of course, simply keep an eye on them until they are repaired, then alert the border officials. In fact, that is what we should do,” Jaime said, cutting a sly look at Nicole and Jerry.

  The three stared at each other for about a second, then yelled, simultaneously, “No way.”

  “Juanito, get the weapons from the trunk,” Jaime told his son, then started punching numbers into his cell phone while Juan, flushed with excitement, popped the trunk and returned with a shotgun and a handgun. Jaime put down his phone, checked the .357 Magnum he'd considered using on the horse, and, satisfied his weapon was in order, turned to the backseat, saying as he did so, “I am sorry I don’t have more weapons. If I had...” His jaw dropped. “What are you doing? ”

  The DEA agents briefcases were in their laps, and Nicole’s was in pieces, contents dumped on the floor. She didn�
��t bother looking up. “Leveling the playing field. So arrest us,” she said, and continued piecing together her Paratus DRD. Jerry finished dismantling his own briefcase, then Jaime and Juan watched with fascination as the two agents skillfully assembled and loaded their weapons.

  “Jesús, Jose y Maria.What are those?”

  “I call mine the Equalizer,” Nicole said. “Jerry dubbed his the Widowmaker.”

  “We Mexicans name our houses, you name your guns? I shall be required to reprimand you both severely, just as soon as this situation is over. Now, as you Americans say, let’s go kick ass and take names.”

  “Jaime, you watch too many movies.”

  Juan jammed down the accelerator and fishtailed across the sand and cactus median, into the path of an oncoming truck. The eighteen-wheeler narrowly missed them as they flew onto the asphalt and sped north in front of him.

  Nicole looked back in the direction of the blaring air horn and said, “Bimbo? Is that what that truck’s logo said? Oh, never mind. Jaime, do we have a plan?”

  “Yeah, Jaime,” Jerry said. “Your country, your plan.”

  “I think we must go by the seat of our trousers.”

  Nicole giggled. “Pants.”

  Jerry looked at Nicole. “Gee, Nikki, it’s nice to see you so cheerful,” he grumbled, “but I find your sense of timing perverse. Personally, I see nothing funny—well, shit, there’s your boat. And it looks like we’re expected.”

  “I’d say that’s the understatement of the year,” Nicole yelled. Any lingering doubts as to Water Princess’s innocence evaporated; Hector stood in the middle of the road, an AK47 aimed at the Mercedes. Without his sunglasses, his glittering eyes and teardrop tattoo signaled pure malice. He opened fire, peppering the pavement in front of him with two short bursts.

  Juan threw the wheel over, put the Mercedes into a skid, and skillfully brought it to a halt across both lanes. As they rocked to a stop, all four occupants dove out the other side, using the car for cover.

  “He must have recognized my car,” Jaime yelled.

  “Who wouldn’t? Everyone in freakin’ Sonora knows this Mercedes,” Nikki yelled back.

  Jerry added dryly, “Either that or he just really hates old green cars.”

  Hector laid a stitch down the side of Jaime’s paint job, pinning Nicole, Jaime, Jerry and Juan down behind the car-turned-barricade. Nicole crawled next to Jaime, near the front fender, and was about to tell him to move back so she could get off a round when they heard, then saw, the eighteen-wheeler they passed barreling down on them.

  Hector briefly let up his barrage to gape at the oncoming truck, but Nicole and the others were too engrossed in watching their approaching deaths to take advantage of the respite. As if in slow motion, the huge semi jackknifed, filled both lanes of the road, then pitched onto its side, and continued sliding toward them. A mass of screeching, sparking, metal tore into the pavement until, just a few feet from the Mercedes, it stopped. Almost as an afterthought, the cargo doors sprang open and hundreds of loaves of Bimbo Bread spilled out.

  Hector, disappointed that the truck hadn’t done his work for him, opened fire again. His cocaine-fogged brain told him he was invincible. Rambo Mex. Making no attempt to take cover, he advanced on the Mercedes, pinning down his enemies with a steady sweep.

  Nicole popped up for a look and fell back down against Jaime. “He’s gotta be on something,” Nicole shouted. “We’ll have to take him out. Dammit, I wanted him alive and talking.”

  “I want us alive and talking,” Jerry shouted. He chanced a look. “Uh, Nikki, does hidrogas mean what I think it does?”

  Nicole scurried next to Jerry and peeked around his end of the car. “Crap,” she said between her teeth. A few yards directly behind Hector, a low wall surrounded a tank farm. Large red letters on the white tanks proclaimed, Hidrogas. “Propane. Double crap. Okay, Jaime, it’s time for that plan of yours.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Well, you’d better make it fast. Your car isn’t gonna make it much longer.”

  Pieces of the Mercedes, along with shards of glass, rained down around their heads. Crouched behind their fast-disintegrating cover, Jerry thanked their lucky stars Jaime’s car, and the Bimbo truck, were diesel fueled and not gasoline.

  Jaime tried to figure out how to take out the coked-up shooter without blowing the propane plant and incinerating everything for miles around.

  Nicole wiped a trickle of blood from her cheek and cursed Jaime for not installing safety glass in his antiquated Mercedes.

  Juan just wished he had a bigger gun.

  Somehow the Bimbo truck driver scrambled next to Nicole and lay flat, covering his head with his hands and praying loudly.

  As they pondered their options, the last inflated tire exploded next to Jerry, knocking him sideways and out from behind cover. Before he clambered back, he saw cars were lining up on both sides of the highway, with gawkers piling out to watch the show. “It’s starting to look like a circus out there,” he warned. “We’d better take that psycho out soon, or some rubbernecker’s gonna eat a bullet.”

  “I love that kind of talk,” Nicole shouted as she used the barrel of her gun to turn a rearview mirror that miraculously remained intact. “How much ammo does that jerk have?” she said, to no one in particular.

  Hector was only a few feet away when he stopped his advance, but continued to pepper them with steady sweeps whenever he saw movement.

  “You can’t watch us all, you son of a bitch,” Nikki said between her teeth. “Jerry, stick something out on your side, draw his fire. Be careful. On the count of three.”

  Jerry fished the chile ristra from the backseat, and then shoved it along the ground past the rear tire with his gun. Nicole watched in the mirror until Hector spotted the moving red target, swept his aim towards the back of the Mercedes, and demolished the red peppers. In his fogged brain, the bursting peppers spurted blood, making him laugh and concentrate on spilling more.

  Popping up over the hood, Nicole nailed him in the throat.

  Hector dropped his gun, grabbed at his neck, took a few steps forward, and was staring dumbly at Nicole when he went down to his knees. The teardrop tattoo saddened his face and he looked, in his last moment of life, like a small boy whose dog just bit him. An eerie silence followed Hector’s crumple to the pavement, and then applause, whistles, horn blasts, and cheering broke out.

  Nicole high-fived Jerry, Jaime, Juan and the Bimbo truck driver, then did a little happy dance.

  Juan flushed the sailboat captain, Hector’s cousin, Martine, and the boatyard’s truck driver from their hidey-hole under the boat trailer. Martine fell to his knees, crying and praying, too terrified to stand. The driver, having no idea what was going on, remained dumbfounded. The American yachtsman, his hands held high, looked more belligerent than frightened; he had a good lawyer in San Diego.

  Nicole helped Juan cuff all the men, then looked around for a place to put them. The Mercedes was in shambles, so she pushed them into the back seat of the Hector's Bronco. Jaime stood nearby, talking into his cell phone.

  “Jaime, they’re all yours,” Nicole told him. “My work here is done.” A wave of fatigue and vast relief washed over her as she realized the truth in her statement.

  The American whined, “Hey, you, I’m a U.S. citizen. I want you to arrest me. I have rights.”

  “Hey, Captain Terrific, let me advise you of your rights. You don’t have no stinkin’ rights. You’re in Mexico, in case you forgot. They don’t have any of that Miranda crap down here. I suggest you start talking before the comandante’s federal goons get here. Word has it he had them trained by some old men who fled Germany after the war.”

  Jaime said, “Zactly,” but looked a little dismayed when Nicole described his men as Nazi goons until she winked. Realizing they were playing good-cop-bad-cop, just like in the movies, he turned what he hoped was an appropriately maniacal glower on the mariner.

  The captain bla
nched and began protesting when Nicole and Jerry, unwilling to witness Jaime’s non-ACLU approved interrogation procedures, left him to Jaime and walked away. They figured a couple of well-delivered swats and the threat of a long stay in a Mexican jail would probably get the wanted results.

  The shootout scene took on a carnival flavor. Traffic jammed both sides of the road as people, mostly Mexicans, spilled out of their vehicles, waiting to see what happened next.

  Less patient drivers, mostly Gringos, formed a new lane down the sandy median. A funeral procession stopped and the widow took pictures, while other mourners scooped up loaves of Bimbo.

  Someone notified the PGR drug checkpoint a few miles away, and black tee-shirted agents, some munching on Bimbo, swarmed around Water Princess and the ravaged Mercedes.

  Word also traveled into the nearby town of Santa Ana and the citizenry piled into an assortment of vehicles to come out and see for themselves what was going on. Two enterprising men showed up on horseback and began selling lukewarm soft drinks from their saddlebags.

  Nicole finished off an orange Fanta, half of which exploded out of the bottle when she opened it with her Swiss army knife. “Rough ride, them horses. I’m famished, where’s the taco man?”

  “Want some Bimbo?”

  “I think not. I hear it has a shelf life of nuclear waste. Oh, what the hell, I just drank a Fanta, for God’s sake.”

  Nicole and Jerry spent two hours surveying the crime scene, making notes, taking photos with Nicole’s miraculously intact digital Sony, and calling Washington on Jaime’s phone. After gathering what personal belongings were salvageable from the bullet-ravaged Mercedes—their hard sided luggage somehow survived—they went back to the Bronco to check on Jaime’s interrogation results.

  “The American has closed up like an almeja. I released the truck driver, as he is just a boatyard employee, and his boss is coming to get him. Martine is still shaking too hard to talk. He’s just a boy.”

  Nicole opened her mouth to compliment Jaime on his surprising sensitivity, but was drowned out by approaching helicopters. “Oh, boy, news do travel fast. Here comes...well, everybody.”