The Cain File

by Max Tomlinson

  Achic nodded. “Yeah, you’re both right. Right on the money. I can’t argue.”

  “Then let’s get it on, already,” Clarence said, still playing his video game in the back of the truck. “The Ice Lady wants me. I can sense it.”

  Achic checked the Google map on his tablet. Then he looked at the picture of the pretty woman, the same one who jumped out the window in Quito while he took a couple of bullets. Alice Mendes, the Ice Lady now, with some dickhead terruco standing behind her, gun in his hand.

  She was smart to get that picture out to the Frenesi site.

  Inside some cinderblock shanty, way up there in the slums.

  She had cajones, to go up there alone.

  Maggie, Alice Mendes, IceLady69, whoever, could be in some serious shit.

  Fifty thousand hovels like that up in that slum. But with the coordinates she sent, Achic could find it. Ex-Coast Guard, man. No problem.

  “Let’s go, men,” he said. “John Rae is officially a no-show. Which makes me in charge.”

  “Cha cha time!” Marcelo fired up the Nissan, the old engine chugging, like half the trucks did in this part of the world. “Cain, we come to crash your party.”

  “You got it!” Achic said in English, mimicking Johnny Canales on TV. Reached under the seat, pulled his black Glock 18 automatic, the one with an extended magazine, adding a few inches in length to the handle.

  “Now you’re talking, homeboy,” Clarence in the back said, thumbs punching, playing his stupid game, the truck bouncing around on the dirt road. “Let’s go get us some terroristas.”

  Achic kept looking at the map, the red little pin on it moving, showing where their truck was, heading toward Ciudad Bolívar, getting closer.

  Get Maggie safe and sound.

  Get that Peruvian shitbag Cain.

  ~~~

  Two-thirty in the morning Yalu awoke, thought she heard something outside the safe house. Maybe the wind. She’d finally fallen asleep, after getting little Ernesto back to sleep first, hugging him in the cot she was curled up in, in the bedroom, the door pulled shut. Just Ernesto and her, Comrade Iker standing guard out in the living room, although he was probably asleep too. Comrade Iker wasn’t much, but he was better than nothing, so they said. And he was available.

  The others had gone, taking the norteamericana who looked like a fashion model to make the exchange for Beltran. They’d left over an hour ago, headed off to the border. Yalu hadn’t heard the old Toyota pulling back up into the dirt road. So it wasn’t Abraham and the others out there, making noise. They had gone to meet Comrade Cain.

  Cain.

  How she wanted to see him again. More than wanted. But Abraham wouldn’t let her. The last time was when she’d caught that dirty Beltran ogling her ass out on the road to his mansion. Not only was Yalu the bait in the trap, she offed his pathetic chauffeur.

  Cain had been pleased.

  Abraham didn’t like her around Cain.

  There it was again, a sound outside. A window? The outhouse door? Left unlatched and catching the wind again? Damn Abraham anyway.

  “Hey! Iker?” she shout-whispered, not wanting to have to mollycoddle Ernesto back to sleep for another two hours. No answer. Iker was either asleep or in the outhouse. She needed to be sure.

  Holding Ernesto in her arms, Yalu climbed out of her cot, quietly as possible, set the baby down on his back in his playpen. He murmured, eyes shut, dribble on his lips. Her son. And such a responsibility. The word burden came to mind. She scolded herself, touched two fingers to her own lips, pressed them dutifully against Ernesto’s forehead. Then she stood up, glanced around the half-finished room ankle-deep in clothes and junk, searching for rats or critters who might feast on her son. All clear.

  Wait. What was that? Inside the house.

  She tip-toed to the door, picked up the Belgian FAL rifle leaning on the frame. Held the gun in one hand by the pistol grip, a light enough weapon for a woman. Pulled the bedroom door open with the fingers of her free hand, no doorknob, just a hole. She crept out, drew the door shut behind her.

  “Iker?”

  No answer. She gripped the gun in both hands, flipped the extended safety selector off she said, creeping to the front door. “Iker?”

  Another two steps. The wind was blowing up a gale out there. Just her fears?

  “Abraham?” she said. “Is that you?”

  “Put the g-gun down, chica.”

  -17-

  Yalu jumped, the voice right behind her—right behind her—in this very room. Not a meter away. She spun with the rifle, but knew she was too late.

  There, facing her, a little mid-30s Latino with a bandito mustache, sharp eyes blazing in the dark, holding a submachine gun, small hand gripping the magazine. The gun’s stubby barrel pointed at her belly, still a little soft from carrying Ernesto. He had one of those plastic battery-operated hiker’s lamps on his head, an elastic strap around it, making his thick hair bunch up.

  “D-down on the floor it goes, chica.” He motioned with the machine gun. Casual. Confident.

  She laid the rifle quietly on the rough floor, not wanting to wake Ernesto. If people knew who he was, who his father was, there would be hell to pay.

  The little vato with the machine gun reached up, flicked on his forehead lamp. The light blinded her. “Sorry.” He tilted it down. “Where are the others?”

  “I’m the only one here,” she whispered.

  He cocked his head to one side. “So why are you w-whispering?”

  “I’m the only one,” she said, louder. Maybe she could get away with it. Where the hell was Iker anyway? Useless bastard. “No one else.”

  The little guy cupped a hand around his mouth, shouted: “Clear in here!”

  The front door opened silently, telling her that it couldn’t be Abraham, who always banged the damn thing. Another hiker headlamp appeared, on a dark-skinned smallish man, also in his mid-30s, with a Glock machine pistol. He moved silently. The beam of light from his forehead centered directly in Yalu’s eyes. He came up close, making her blink. The front door stood open, some big guy with a military shotgun filling it. He had his back to them and was watching the front of the house. The wind blew through the open front door like wind in a tunnel. He had the door propped open with a cinderblock he found out front.

  ~~~

  Achic stood, looking the woman closely in the eye under the light. She was hiding something. He saw her eyes dart down to an empty sleeping bag on the floor, a daypack next to it, then back up to him. Quick, but not quick enough.

  “Clarence!” Achic shouted over his shoulder. “Did you check the outhouse yet?”

  “Shit.” Clarence’s big frame thumped the ground as he hopped off the porch.

  “Iker!” the terruca woman shouted, her hands cupping her mouth now. “Watch out . . .”

  Achic struck her across the face with the gun, knocking her to the floor. He flipped the Glock to semi-auto. She howled, rolling. “Any more of that and you lose a kneecap,” Achic said.

  She looked up at him through gritted teeth, blood running down from her eyebrow.

  She was hiding something all right.

  ~~~

  Outside, Clarence marched to the outhouse, the big Kel-Tec KSG shotgun up and ready, like some badass weapon out of a video game he’d played as a kid.

  He stood now, legs apart, stared at the little crescent moon in the top of the outhouse door. Yeah, he should have checked before. “Hello?” An eyeball appeared at the crescent moon. Big and worried.

  “How’s it going?” Clarence said, making sure to use the polite form, as he didn’t know to whom the eyeball belonged. “I’m Clarence, your friendly mercenary. Come on out with hands up and all that good stuff. Because if I even think you have a weapon . . .” Clarence shrugged with the shotgun in his hands. “Hell, I’m being kind of a softie right now, compared to how you vatos carry on. Not to generalize or anything, but you terrucos do tend to be kinda fanatical.”

  T
he eyeball disappeared.

  A second passed.

  Two seconds.

  Clarence sighed, fired the Kal-Tec twice at the outhouse door.

  Twin booms reverberated around the mountainside. The outhouse door vanished, leaving a shredded suggestion on hinges.

  Clarence strode up, pointing the shotgun into the ragged hole that had been a door.

  A middle-aged Mestizo wearing a chullo hat sat on the floor in a crouch, pants and underwear down to his ankles. An automatic rifle lay on the floor. The man had been hit and was covered with blood, like he’d been through a carwash of it. He looked at Clarence with fearful eyes, wheezing. He didn’t have much time left. His rifle might as well have been a mile away. A newspaper was tattered around the inside of the outhouse. Scrap of headline about Bogotá FC, winning 2-1. He’d been reading the sports section on the pot, fell asleep. Last newspaper he’d ever read.

  He was going to bleed to death. That wasn’t the way to go.

  Clarence didn’t want to fire again. Sure, it was the slums, but he’d already fired twice. Eventually, someone would notice, even in this part of town. He pulled his boot knife, stepped up onto the porch of the outhouse, shaking his head. “Should have come out when I gave you the chance.”

  ~~~

  Achic stood at the front door, watching Clarence return from the outhouse, wiping his dagger off on a piece of newspaper. He had the shotgun slung over his shoulder, hanging low, pointing forward. “How did we miss him, Clarence?” A little edge in his voice.

  “My bad,” Clarence said, slipping the knife back into the leg scabbard. “Almost three in the morning, I didn’t expect some guy taking a dump.”

  “The woman told Marcelo no one else was here.”

  “Well, she didn’t speak the truth, did she, jefe?”

  “Stay here, keep an eye out.”

  Achic went back inside. Marcelo was tying the woman’s hands behind her back to one of the rungs of the chair she was sitting in. Blood ran from above her eyebrow. He walked over to the closed bedroom door, pointed his gun at it, turned his head, gave the woman a questioning look. “What—or who—do I find in here?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “If I find anyone, they’re dead. You realize that, don’t you?”

  The woman spit on the floor, told him to go straight to hell.

  Achic put two bullets through the door. Two holes appeared. One shot ricocheted.

  Behind the door, a baby started crying.

  Standing behind the woman in the chair, Marcelo’s mouth dropped in surprise. “You put a child at risk?” Achic said to her, flabbergasted.

  “She’s got a kid in there?” Clarence said in English behind him, then must have realized his mistake, because he switched to Spanish. “Tiene un niño?”

  The woman stared hard at the floor, grimacing.

  Achic kicked the door open with a hiking boot, the Glock in both hands.

  He could hear a baby gurgling away. He went in, the gun readied, searched the room. He came back out. “What’s your son’s name?”

  “Long live the revolution!”

  “That’s a long name.” Achic pursed his lips. “Clarence!”

  “Yo!”

  “Bring our little terrorist out here. Support his neck when you lift him.”

  “I know what to do, jefe. I got nieces and nephews.”

  “Marcelo, go out front and stand guard.”

  Marcelo gave a single nod, headed out the front door with his machine gun hanging in one hand.

  Achic strolled over to the scowling woman, while Clarence went into the bedroom. They could hear him going, “Come on, little buddy,” gathering up the kid, the child’s voice full of sleepiness.

  “Where’s Cain?” Achic said to the woman.

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Try again.” He adjusted the beam of light into her eyes. “You can end this as soon as you like. It’s up to you, not me.”

  “I don’t know anything,” she said, squinting.

  Achic looked around the room, the light on his forehead sweeping across, settling on a poster of Chairman Mao. He turned back, blinding her again.

  “Isn’t this all some big mistake, Comrade? Should you really be here? With a child? Where’s the American woman who was here? The one who came to meet Cain?”

  Clarence stood next to him now, holding the baby in his blanket, jiggling him, giving him a little smile.

  Achic continued: “Are you turning this moment over in your mind? Are you saying to yourself, ‘What have I done? What have I risked? My son?’”

  She looked down.

  “I asked you a question,” he said.

  “I don’t know anything,” she said.

  “Let me ask what your people do in this position. Are you reasonable? With a prisoner who has a child? No. I’ve seen what you do.”

  She looked up. Her eyes grew dark. “Vengeance is justice!”

  He nodded. “When I was in the mountains fighting the Shining Path we cornered a woman terruca. She had a rifle in her hands and her baby strapped across her front, like a big bandolier. She knew we wouldn’t shoot children. I just stood there like a boludo, watching her sink back into the jungle. She had a smirk on her face.”

  “Then you have your answer,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  “So what do I do?” Achic said. “Throw your baby out the window? No, because you definitely won’t tell me anything then.”

  She smiled. “You won’t do it anyway,” she said. “You don’t have what it takes.”

  “You’re wasting my time,” Achic said, while Clarence played with the baby. “You know you’re going to tell me where Cain is, where Beltran is, where the norteamericana is—eventually. The more you delay, the more of my time you waste. It’s a shame, because you are going to tell me. You know how this works.”

  She sneered. “You can’t do it. You have no conviction.”

  “Who are you protecting? Cain? It’s certainly not your baby. Your baby is in danger. Cain isn’t. What does that make him? A man who hides behind babies, lets infants fight his war?”

  She stared him in the face. “Now you’re wasting my time. Look at you. Pussies! You don’t have the balls.” She laughed. “You’re pathetic.”

  “It’s Cain you’re protecting,” he said with genuine admiration. “How does one gain loyalty like that?”

  She spit in his face.

  Achic wiped it off, nodded. He turned to Clarence, holding the infant. “Have you ever had to kill a child, Clarence?”

  Clarence’s face grew tense and solemn. “A kid in Afghanistan, jefe. Boy about six. Mentally retarded. The Taliban tied explosives to him, made him into a suicide bomber. Only he didn’t know it. That’s how they roll. It bugged me for a long time. Hell of a long time. It still does. Yeah.” He shook his head. “Still does.”

  Achic took a deep breath, his chest thumping. Then he reminded himself. Maggie. Cain. “You never told me that before, Clarence.”

  “I never told anyone, jefe.” Clarence looked down as he jiggled the baby. “That’s the first time.”

  “I understand,” Achic said. “I understand.”

  Clarence frowned as he jostled the baby. “I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that today.”

  “Yes, me too.” Achic inspected his gun. “She thinks we have no conviction. That we’re weak.”

  “Yes, she does, jefe.” Holding the baby. “But you just have to think about something else and get it done. You need to think of the worst thing that could happen, to your mother, whoever is important to you, and think how this is going to prevent that from happening.”

  Achic shook his head. “But a child?”

  The woman laughed, but it was brittle.

  Clarence said to Achic: “If it were easy, jefe, anyone could do it. This isn’t some game we play. This is what we do. Must do. We’re warriors. This is war. It’s why we’re here. To do any less would betray our mission. Then the p
eople we’re supposed to protect aren’t being protected. Then we’ve lost.”

  Achic took that in. “You said it well, Clarence. We need to do what it takes to find Alice Mendes. And this woman here is standing in our way. She could easily tell us what she knows. Save her child. So if anything happens, it’s her fault. She could stop it.”

  “Exactly, jefe.”

  “Put my son down, you bastard!” the woman screamed. “Shoot me if you have any guts.”

  Clarence was looking nowhere, still holding the baby. The baby babbled, the surreal sound drifting in and out of wind blowing around the room.

  “You’re a brave woman,” Achic said to her. “You do have conviction. But let’s see who has the most, shall we?” He turned to Clarence. “Hold the child’s leg out, Clarence.”

  Clarence unfolded the blanket, revealed two chubby little legs sticking out of a disposable diaper. The baby shouted with glee. He was the center of attention.

  “Go ahead!” the woman shouted, breaking into tears.

  “Hold him up, Clarence. Away from you. You don’t want his blood all over you.”

  Clarence did as he was told. Her son dangled in midair, legs bouncing playfully. He let out another little happy noise.

  Achic pointed the gun at the child’s foot. His heart was a hammer.

  “Well?” he said, turning to look at the woman, while he held the gun on her child. “Do you think I have the conviction?”

  She sucked in air, seemed to recover, shook her head wildly. “You don’t. You don’t have it.” But her voice wobbled.

  There was a pause. “You’re right.” Achic lowered the gun and gave a sigh of frustration.

  “Here,” Clarence said, the baby under one arm now, reaching out for the gun. “I’ll do it.”

  “No, Clarence. I can’t ask you to do what I should do as leader.”

  “I’m already down for one, jefe. I’m damaged goods. I think about it every day. And it’s not like we’re going to kill him—right?”

  “No, Clarence,” Achic said. “Or course not—not if she tells us what we need to know.”