by Blake Banner
His right-hand suit turned to give him a warning look just a little too late. Montilla had opened his mouth to answer, but Chetan, Red and his boys had all drawn their weapons. Red’s voice was high and shrill.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on here, but we are gonna walk out, git in our trucks and leave you to do whatever the fuck it is you are plannin’ on doing.”
Montilla held up his hands as his own boys pulled their weapons. Red was outnumbered, but not by much, and Montilla had to be aware that in a shoot out in the open church, he was seriously at risk.
“Take it easy, guys, you got the wrong end of the stick. We are partners. We are on the same side, right?”
“Are we?” It was Chetan. “What’s all this shit about his name and Gamma and the university?” He shook his head. “Don’t tell me. We don’t wanna know. We just want out of here, and leave you to play whatever fuckin’ games you’re playing with this motherfucker.”
Montilla’s face had gone deadly. His voice was real quiet. “What’s the hurry? We have business to discuss. You are our guests.” He gave a small laugh that was as cold as a dead hand. “You’re the guests of the Sinaloa. We are going to eat an’ drink, an’ talk business…”
I tried to laugh, but it came out as a cackle. “Punks to push his dope are a dime a dozen on any fucking street corner from San Diego to Miami. But people who know about Omega and Gamma, they are a fucking risk to your masters, isn’t that so, Montilla?”
“Shut the fuck up, Lacklan. You want your lady to get out of here alive today, you better shut the fuck up.”
I laughed out loud, like a madman, even though the pain was excruciating. “Too late, Montilla! Too late, Chetan! None of us can leave here alive tonight! Omega cannot allow it! You have got to kill us all, now, Montilla! You have to kill us all, and you know it!”
I don’t know who realized it first. It was a matter of microseconds. But both Chetan and Montilla got it. There was no way that situation was going to end without bloodshed. Whoever got off the first round had the edge.
As Chetan screamed, “Kill the motherfuckers!” Montilla was screaming, “Mátenlos! Mátenlos a todos!”
Then all hell broke loose. Red and Chetan and his boys were backing into the pews, taking cover behind the stone pillars that held up the arches and the roof. Montilla and his men were doing the same thing, amid a hail of bullets across the central aisle. At the same time, both sides were edging toward the door. Red and Chetan to escape, Montilla to cut them off and kill them. But all I could see was that with about twenty rounds going off every second, the chances of a ricochet hitting Cissy, who was screaming hysterically, were getting higher at every moment.
Fear, pain, and despair can give a man almost superhuman strength. As the shooting started, and I heard Cissy’s panic as she screamed, my belly flooded with burning adrenaline and I pulled in a kind of frenzy, flattening my hands against the wood. I screamed at the top of my lungs and the agony in my back and my chest sent my muscles into a kind of seizure. I felt the skin rip from my wrists and blood flood my hands as I pulled, and suddenly, I was falling, dropping to the floor.
I landed in a heap at the bottom of the cross. My breath was coming in gasps that I couldn’t control, but I clawed my way across the floor toward the altar. I reached out and grabbed one of the tall, wrought iron candlesticks and pulled it toward me. It tipped over and the thick church candle fell by my face. I took it and put the flame against the rope that held Cissy, dousing it in wax to make it burn faster. It caught and I seized hold of it with my both my torn, bloodied hands and pulled. It snapped and I reached up for Cissy, pulling her down from the altar on top of me in a heap. She clung to me, quivering and sobbing. I held her tight for a second. All around us, gunfire was exploding and bullets were smacking the walls and singing across the nave. I whispered in her ear, “Stay put. You’re safe behind the altar. Do not move!”
She curled up in the fetal position. I grabbed the wrought iron candelabra. It was about three feet long with a wicked spike at the top. I slid down the two steps and crawled on my belly into the side aisle, by the transept. Right there, peering from behind a pillar, taking aim at Red’s men, was one of the suits. He didn’t notice me because there was too much noise, and he was busy trying to kill people. I levered myself to my feet and put every ounce of rage and hatred that I had built up over the last couple of hours, all the pain, the agony and the fear, all of it, into that one, superhuman blow with the iron candelabra, that smashed his skull and snuffed out his life. Leaving a red smear on the whitewashed wall.
His piece was a 9 mm Glock. Not my favorite weapon, but efficient, and it would do the job I had in hand. I picked it up and hunkered down. I had three of Montilla’s men in my line of fire. The only problem was, my hands were shaking like I had advanced Parkinson’s. I took three deep breaths, propped my arms against the pillar, and took aim. Three double taps, six shots. The grouping wasn’t bad. They all went down. Montilla’s ten men was now just six, including himself. That meant now he was outnumbered by Red’s boys.
There was a moment’s panicked shouting in Montilla’s gang and he dispatched two of his suits to neutralize me. I’m not easy to neutralize, and as they came around the pillar, their guns blazing, they found I wasn’t there. I was over by the wall, lying in the shadows. But they never got to find out where. If I had been in full health I would have gone for headshots. But the state I was in, I aimed for the chest, double tapped and took them both down easy.
Montilla was now down to four men. I took their weapons, scrambled back to the altar and shouted at the top of my voice, “Montilla! You’re down to four men, you son of a bitch.”
The church went silent. I gave it a beat and shouted into the void. “Chetan! Listen to me! We take out this son of a bitch. I go my way, you go yours! We have a common enemy! We outnumber him now!” I waited. There was more silence. I played my trump. “Storm the bastard! I’ll take him from the rear!”
It was too much for them to resist. They were terrified of what Montilla would do to them if he survived, and they had seen what I was capable of. They came screaming out of the pews like an army of barbarians. Montilla’s four men started shooting like crazy. One of Red’s men screamed and went down, so his charging horde was a total of just six. Plus Montilla’s four, that was ten guys, all attacking head on. None of them was looking at me, because they were all focused on each other, and the hail of bullets that was crossing the nave of the house of God.
I used the altar to steady my arms and worked systematically. I took down two of Montilla’s guys with clean headshots. That left Montilla and one of his suits. They must have been going crazy trying to work out how the hell the situation had turned so fast.
I shifted my aim. Two more of Red’s charging maniacs had gone down under Montilla’s hail of bullets. That left four. I took out two, and next thing Montilla and his guy and Red and Chetan were racing each other to the door. I tried to take out Chetan, but I got Montilla’s guy. Then they were out, into the night. I hobbled after them. I needed Rafael Montilla and I needed him alive. I also needed Chetan dead. Red was a schmuck, but Chetan was dangerous.
I got to the door and my legs gave out under me. I heard the roar of engines and the scramble of tires on dirt, and as I crawled out, two sets of headlamps took off, with their beams playing crazy against the dark, desert sky; one toward Mexico, the other toward Tucson.
Twenty Two
Somehow we made it to the Toyota Red’s men had been driving. We sat in the dark cab staring out at the unreal night, the ghostly white church with its doors open, glowing softly against the black sky and the yellow light spilling out onto the dust. We could not see the carnage inside, but it screamed at us through the silence.
Cissy was in shock. She sat trembling beside me. The desert was freezing at night and her teeth were beginning to chatter. I switched on the AC and fired up the engine, then rolled across the dirt toward the blacktop.
Slowly, clarity
began to seep into my mind. I knew with an almost psychic certainty where they had gone and I knew exactly what to do—how to finish this. Every inch of my body hurt. I hurt inside and out and my muscles were so spent I could barely move the pedals and the steering wheel, but I didn’t care. My pain and my exhaustion were not relevant. I had to finish it tonight, and I had to finish it my way.
I didn’t see the desert. A warped, distorted orange moon was making black stencils of the mountains in the east, like something out of an apocalypse. Papago cacti leapt at us out of the darkness, into the narrow funnels of light from the headlamps. And nightmares washed around us, invisible as we raced through the night. But I ignored them all. I could see just one thing in my mind, revenge, and I kept playing it out, over and over, feeding on it, nourishing my limbs and my hatred with it.
Topawa rose, a dead glow illuminating still, silent houses and cars. We flashed through it and were gone. Then we were climbing gradually into the highlands south of Sells. The road, arrow-straight till then, began to bend and weave slightly. Then Sells was ahead of us, ghostly and still. We sped through it, past the dreaming, peaceful houses with blind, sleeping windows. And next the Ajo-Tucson Highway was there. The tires screamed as I turned east onto it and floored the pedal.
Cissy had curled up on her seat, hugging her arms and trembling. I watched the needle climb to eighty on the speedometer. For twenty minutes, we hurtled through the desert. Then we were entering Three Points and the general store and the gas station were ahead of us at the crossroads. I felt the hot burn of adrenaline fuel the rage in my belly as I skidded right onto the 286 and headed south.
South, toward Keystone and the county sheriff. My voice was loud and shocking in the dark closeness of the speeding cab. “Cissy, I need you to focus now. I need you to pay attention and answer my question. Can you do that?” I glanced at her. She was staring at me and trembling, but she nodded. “I need you to tell me where Red’s uncle Caleb lives.”
It took her a moment, but she finally said, “As you’re coming in to Keystone, on the left, Ruggles Road. It’s a quarter of a mile up, on the right. Are you going to…”
“You just stay in the car. I’m going to bring you a blanket and a hot drink. This all finishes tonight, baby.”
She nodded and we drove in silence for another fifteen minutes. Then I was turning onto the Keystone Road, slowing, searching for Ruggles as the limpid glow of Keystone rose ahead of me. I found it on the left and turned, with the certainty of death in my heart. I killed the headlamps and cruised slowly till I could see the house ahead. There were lights on inside. I pulled off the road and stopped.
“Is that it?”
She nodded.
I climbed out and went the rest of the way on foot. I didn’t try to be quiet. I was too tired and too mad to try to do anything. He had the drapes open and I could see them inside. The window was a warm, orange oblong in the black stencil of the house. I could see from a distance they had a fire burning. The sheriff was standing by the fireplace with his arms crossed. Red was pacing up and down. I couldn’t see Chetan, but I guessed he was sitting, thinking.
I circled around the back of the house where I figured the kitchen would be. Like most back doors, the lock was a chub and took me about fifteen seconds to pick, maybe less. I pushed it open and stepped in. The block of knives was by the cooker. I guess even slobs like Caleb cook sometimes. I pulled out the biggest blade and wondered if he kept them sharp. We’d soon find out.
I moved down the passage till I was standing outside the living room. I could hear them talking. It was mainly Red. He was having some kind of crisis. His voice was shrill and he was panicking.
“What the fuck are we gonna do? They’re gonna come for us. We pissed off the Sinaloa cartel, man! That’s bad! That’s real bad…”
The sheriff’s voice drawled, “Will you git a grip of yourself, Red? You’re squealin’ like a girl. From what you’re tellin’ me, that motherfucker whipped their asses and as of right now, there ain’t nobody in southern Arizona dealin’ in whores and blow on any kind of scale. This ain’t a problem, Red. This is an opportunity.”
Chetan’s rasp. “He’s right, Red. You need to get a grip. You’re losing it.”
Caleb again. “We step into the void and take over…” He chuckled. “That asshole done us a favor.”
Into the void, yes. Take over, not so much. I heard Red’s boots step up to the door and stop. I moved. I opened the door, put my left forearm across his throat, squeezed and pushed the whole length of the kitchen knife through his kidneys and into his liver. He jerked and quivered for a couple of seconds, and then he was dead and all his worries were over.
Mine were just beginning.
Red slid off the knife onto the floor. The sheriff was frowning, staring at him with a ‘does not compute’ expression on his face. But Chetan was already on his feet, charging at me. I was weak and exhausted, and he was strong. He grabbed my wrist in his left hand and pounded my belly twice with his right fist. I went down and he was on top of me, forcing my knife hand in toward my neck and face.
I saw the sheriff take three steps toward us and stand staring. Chetan released his right hand from my wrist and pounded my face with his fist, once, twice, but the third time I had maneuvered the blade round and gashed his left forearm. He yelled and fumbled, trying to get a better hold on my arm without letting go. He was tough but I dug deeper with the blade and he screamed and staggered to his feet.
The sheriff was reaching for his revolver. Chetan was dazed by the pain, but he was hard and he was a survivor. He lunged at me in a kick. I dodged and slashed at his leg. The blade was not sharp and did not cut. But as he came down from the kick I jabbed at his face with my left fist and as he blocked the punch I drove the knife into his chest. He made a strange wheezing, gurgling sound and I screamed and heaved and drove him backward into the sheriff.
As we collided, I let go the knife, stepped to the side and drove my right fist into the sheriff’s face. He staggered back, dazed, pulling his piece from his holster. He was too slow and it was easy. I pinned his wrist against his hip and rammed the heel of my hand into the tip of his jaw, slamming his teeth together and knocking him unconscious.
I used his cuffs to pin his arms behind his back and ripped the cable out of a table lamp to tie his ankles together, loose enough for him to walk, but tight enough for him not to run.
After that, I went into the kitchen and made some coffee. I was shaking badly, but I needed to hold it together a little longer. While the coffee was brewing, I went and got a blanket. I jogged down to the Toyota with it, climbed in the cab, and wrapped it around Cissy. Then I drove up to the house, reversed to the front door and dropped the tailgate.
When I went back in, I could hear the sheriff sobbing and groaning, and repeating, “Oh, God… Oh God…”
I got the coffee, poured it into a flask with a generous dose of bourbon and took that out to Cissy. Then I went and dragged the sheriff to his feet.
“Walk, you son of a bitch.”
I marched him out to the truck and shoved him in the back. There were a couple of bungies there and I used them to secure his cuffs to the back of the truck. I checked my watch. It was almost midnight.
I climbed in, fired up the engine and took off for Tucson. As I accelerated toward the 286, I reviewed the situation. Red, Chetan and their gang were all dead. Cissy was safe. I’d stop by the Hawk’s Nest on the way to her house, collect my knife and my Sig, and the bag of money. That would be for Cissy, as I had promised her. I would leave her safe and sleeping, and then the sheriff and I would go back to Marni’s.
Sheriff Caleb of San Juan County and I had business to attend to. Business I should have addressed from day one. Business I was going to finish now.
Twenty Three
I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to carry Cissy into her house and up the stairs to her room. I left the bag of cash on her chair by her bed. It would be poor consolation f
or what she had been through, but that is the hell we live in: poor consolation. We live, we fight, we survive and win, and then at the end of it all, we die. Any victory is poor consolation in a game like that.
I went back to the truck, dragged the sheriff around to the passenger seat, and took off for Marni’s place. I parked on Tamara Drive and dragged Caleb to the house with the muzzle of my Sig stuck in his ribs. I opened the door and shoved him in. We stood a moment in the dark hallway, listening. The house was silent.
He was panting and shaking. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, boy? You can’t get away with this…”
I cuffed him to the banisters and sprinted up the stairs to check each bedroom and the bathroom. There was no sign of Marni, or that anybody had been there at all. I went down and dragged the sheriff up to the spare room. There I cuffed him to the bed.
“Sleep. Tomorrow you are going to redeem yourself for all your sins, Sheriff. First, you are going to swear an affidavit for me, and then you are going to deliver a package. When that is done, you will have cleaned your karma and you will be a free man. You can thank me for that.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe he was right. At that moment I felt pretty crazy.
I went and stood for ten minutes under a hot shower. Then I toweled myself, dressed in fresh clothes, and went down to the kitchen. There I devoured two steaks and had a large whiskey. I began to feel better, but sleepy. So I had a coffee, drafted a document and called Phil again. I needed him to do some research for me, and send some messages that would not be traceable. He came through. Phil always came through.
By four AM, I was done and I allowed myself four hours’ sleep on the sofa.
At eight, I woke up and had more coffee. Then I carried a glass of milk up to the sheriff and told him to drink it all. He was still looking at me like I was crazy, and I still kind of agreed with him.
