by Tom Wood
Slow and obvious, Victor lifted one flap of his shirt to reveal a Glock tucked into his waistband. He had bought it in the back streets of Guatemala City, where small arms could be purchased cheap and were readily available.
“Lose it,” she said.
Victor did. A good pistol, but no use in a six-on-one gunfight. He threw it toward the dunes, high in the air, so it didn’t go far. His gaze was on the woman, so he didn’t see the Glock land, but he was listening hard for it to do so. Twelve or thirteen meters, he noted, should he need to sprint for it. He wasn’t sure how this was going to go just yet, so he wanted to keep his options open.
“Where is it?” she demanded.
He played ignorant—“Where’s what?”—but not dumb, because his answer only angered her further. He wanted her angry.
“The money,” she spat. “Where is it?”
“Far away from here. Safe. Secure. Hidden.”
She edged forward. “Where?”
“I’ll take you to it, if you like.”
“Tell me or I’ll put a bullet through your skull.”
Victor shrugged. “Then you won’t get the hundred thousand.” He glanced at the bag Jairo was still holding. “Well, the other ninety-nine thousand, to be exact. I’m guessing a grand isn’t a good consolation prize.”
One hundred thousand dollars wasn’t a lot of money to Victor, but to some aspiring terrorists living in tents in the jungle, it would go a long way to keep them sustained. Someone had recently told him that revolutions took time, and were expensive. When the average citizen in this part of the world earned less than ten thousand dollars per annum, it wasn’t hard to see how such a group would kill for the kind of cash Victor had brought to them. Or hadn’t brought.
The woman said, “I don’t have to shoot you in the head. I can shoot your dick off if I want to.” She stepped closer. “You’ll be begging to tell me then. You should know that I’m a great shot.”
Victor remained silent. He didn’t have to say anything. They both knew it was a bluff. The old weapons and the mismatched clothes answered for them. They were desperate for funds. She wouldn’t risk hurting him too much. If he died of shock or blood loss they would miss out on much-needed cash. This was a new situation for her—the shakedown-cum-ambush had worked every time until now—and she wasn’t sure of the best way to handle this particular scenario. She was making it up as she went along. Victor had been in similar situations. He knew what to do.
“Okay,” she said, having worked out her next move. “You take us to the money.”
“No,” he said.
“No?”
She was shocked. His refusal wasn’t part of her next move.
Victor said, “If you want the cash, you do it my way. I’ll take you to it. But only you. Your guys wait here. They can build a fire from driftwood. Sing songs about workers controlling the means of production until we get back.”
She smiled with contempt, stepping closer, and answered with a predictable “No.”
Which let him ask, “You’re not scared of me, are you?”
She hesitated, because there was no correct answer. If she agreed, she would lose face in front of her men. If she denied, there was no reason not to go with him.
She smiled at Victor, as if this was a misunderstanding that had spiraled out of control, and lowered the pistol. “We can fix this, can’t we? You want the rifle. We want the money.”
He nodded. “It was supposed to be that simple. It could’ve been that simple. Play straight with me and I play straight with you.”
Jairo, standing at the edge of Victor’s peripheral vision, tensed.
The woman holstered the gun, fast and easy. “It still can be. See? We’ll all go to fetch the money. I’ll go with you. My men follow in another truck. Okay?”
“Sure,” Victor said with a smile of his own, as though she had convinced him it was only a misunderstanding, that her intentions were to make the original deal work.
Pleased to have the situation under control, she turned to face her men, to tell them what to do next. She had a new plan.
The only problem with it was that she now stood too close to Victor, who took a fast step forward—up behind her—and closed the distance enough to snatch the gun from her unfastened holster in his left hand while he grabbed her hair with his right.
In an instant, the muzzle was against her cheek.
“Change of plan,” he said.
Tom Wood is a full-time writer who was born and raised in Staffordshire, England, and now lives in London. He’s worked as a freelance editor and filmmaker, and is a boxing fan who also practices Krav Maga martial arts, which has caused him to sustain a number of injuries. His previous thrillers include Kill For Me, The Final Hour, A Time to Die, The Darkest Day, No Tomorrow, The Game, and The Enemy.
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