««—»»
When they were safely in the car and driving down a street filled with taco stands, trinket shops, tattoo parlors, and drunk, staggering American tourists, Keith finally dared to speak.
“Holy shit, I thought we were dead meat.” He threaded his car through the milling crowds. Joe twisted around and looked at Ramón in admiration. “That was really smooth the way you handled that, Ramón.”
Ramón smiled at them from the backseat. “In Mexico, la mordida takes care of everything.”
Joe frowned. “La Mordida? What’s that?”
“Translated literally it means ‘the bite.’ It’s slang for a bribe because it means the bite the government takes out of everything.”
“Is Mexico really that corrupt?”
Ramón laughed. “Corrupt? Shit, everyone from the cop on the corner to the president in the palace is on the take and for sale.”
“What would you have done if he hadn’t taken the bribe?”
Ramón lifted his shirt and showed them his nickel plated .45 Colt Commander. “I’d have killed him.”
“That’s hardcore, Ramón,” Joe said with a whistle.
Ramón shrugged. “We have a saying, plata o plomo, which means ‘silver or lead.’ Take a bribe or take a bullet.” He looked at the two Americans and chuckled. “But silver usually wins out.” He sat up and pointed through the window. “Hey, turn,” he said, tapping Keith on the shoulder. “Turn here. We need to pick up our escort.”
“Escort?” asked Joe.
“Yeah, the guys who are going to ride with us and make sure everything goes smooth.”
“No trouble with the cops?” asked Keith.
“These guys are the cops.”
“What?”
“Sure. They’re on El Jefe’s payroll to make sure nothing goes wrong.”
From the passenger seat, Joe said, “We need to get the M-16s out from under the hood. In this heat, with the engine going, they might warp.”
“We can do that when we pick up the guys.” Ramón pointed to a wrecking yard on their left. “Turn here, this is the place.”
Junked cars sat glinting under the pounding sun. The Impala pulled in and Keith shut off the engine. He looked through the windshield and saw two figures materialize from the swirling dust.
“That’s them,” Ramón said, and opened the door and stepped out.
“I don’t like this,” Keith muttered under his breath as he watched Ramón shake hands with the two men and then walk back to the car with them in tow. Ramón bent to the driver’s window and pointed over his shoulder at a squab-nosed man in pleated khakis and a blue guayabera shirt. “This is Carlos.”
Ramón pointed to the other guy, a stocky man with salt and pepper hair and a luxuriant moustache. He wore a dark blue suit over a powder blue shirt and dark tie. Both Americans wondered how he could wear that much clothing in the torturous heat. “That is Vicente, but we call him Vinnie.”
Keith and Joe waved and nodded. Keith asked, “Do either of them speak English?”
Both men chuckled dryly. Vinnie said, “Of course we do. We were trained by the DEA.” They all got a big laugh out of that, then Joe and Keith opened the doors, popped the hood, and climbed out.
“Is there anyone else around?” Joe wanted to know.
Carlos and Vinnie shook their heads. The Gifford brothers moved with practiced efficiency. Keith reached under the hood and unscrewed the firewall between the engine compartment and the interior. Joe helped lift the firewall away and then Keith pulled out the six M-16s and handed them to his older brother, who walked back and placed them in the trunk. The Mexicans watched approvingly. Next, Keith pulled out two shoulder holsters with Beretta M9 pistols and extra magazines. He tossed one to Joe, who caught it and put it on.
After checking his weapon and strapping on his shoulder rig, Keith turned to Ramón. “Okay, let’s put the rubber to the road.”
They piled into the Impala and headed south through the Chihuahuan Desert, the third largest desert of the Western Hemisphere and the second largest in North America; a hundred and forty thousand square miles of burning sand, creosote bush, and saguaro cacti, interrupted only by numerous small mountain ranges.
««—»»
They’d been on the road for three hours, boredom and monotony unrelieved, when Keith asked, “How much longer before we get there?”
Ramón consulted his watch and then looked out the window. The view had remained unchanged for the last two hundred kilometers—nothing but sand and scrub whizzing by in a blur, and in the distance the jagged outline of the purple mountains. They hadn’t seen a gas station or truck stop in a hundred kilometers. “About six more hours.”
Keith inwardly groaned. Suddenly, there was a loud bang and the car swerved to the left. He wrestled with the steering wheel and hit the brakes. The big car fishtailed and then slid to a halt in a plume of dust.
“Shit, I think we just blew a tire,” Keith announced.
They climbed out as a group and gathered around the car. They were on a barren stretch of highway, with nothing but the cracked pavement running in a ribbon to the horizon in both directions across the bleak, Martian landscape, empty and forbidding.
Vinnie checked the front tire on the driver’s side. Sure enough, it was flat. “Let’s change the tire.”
“We can’t,” said Joe.
“Don’t worry,” Vinnie said condescendingly while he smoothed his tie as it flapped in the hot wind. “I know how to change a tire.”
Joe smirked at him. “No, you don’t understand. We don’t have a spare tire. It’s packed full of guns.”
Ramón slapped his hand on the roof of the car. “Shit, don’t you have a patch kit?”
“No, it’s a brand new tire. We just refurbished this damned car. All the parts are new.”
Vinnie squinted at the landscape and the road. He saw saguaro cacti jutting from the sand at intervals, but little else, not even telephone poles. “We can just stop the next car that comes along and get a tow truck.”
Ramón shook his head. “It could be hours before anyone comes along this road, especially at this time of day. The truckers drive at night and they won’t stop for anyone.”
An evil smile crept across Vinnie’s face. “We will make them stop.”
“What’s the nearest town?” asked Joe.
Ramón shrugged. “This is the middle of nowhere, man. There’s nothing for another hundred kilometers either way.”
Joe found a map of Texas and Mexico in the glove compartment. He pushed it at the three Mexicans. “Here, I have no idea where we are. See if you can read this map.”
After a few minutes of study, Ramón announced, “According to this map, there’s a town twelve kilometers off the highway to the east.”
They crowded around the map and Vinnie asked, “What’s it called?”
“La Esperanza.”
Vinnie and Carlos shook their heads, frowning. Carlos said, “Never heard of it.”
Ramón looked at the younger of the two Americans. “Keith, do you think we could get seven or eight miles on this flat tire?”
Keith shrugged. “Yeah, if we go slowly we can make it, but it might fuck up the front end.”
Ramón raised his hands in a helpless gesture; he knew how much Keith’s car meant to him. “Once we get to a town we can call El Jefe.”
Keith looked to his brother. Joe nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s do it.”
They climbed in the car and slowly pulled back onto the highway. The Impala crawled forward like a wounded animal for a quarter of a mile and they came to the turn off. Ramón pointed and said, “Here it is. Turn here.”
They swung onto the secondary road. Within half a kilometer it turned to washed-out gravel, and they bounced over a series of potholes. For nearly an hour the car limped slowly into the foothills of the Sierra Madre. The road twisted up through the hills like a snake.
If this doesn’t screw up the chassis, then not
hing will, Keith thought as they bashed along the rutted road.
At dusk they came to the outskirts of La Esperanza, a sleepy little village of sunbaked brick adobe houses nestled at the base of the ever-rising mountains. Keith turned the car from the pitted dirt road and rolled onto cobblestones. The Impala limped toward the center of town, thumping like a lame horse. As the car wobbled through the silent neighborhoods, Joe pointed to the windows of the passing houses. “Check out the bars on everybody’s windows.”
From behind the steering wheel, Keith craned his head. All of the buildings had heavy iron bars covering the windows. The town looked like a fortress. As Keith peered at the houses, his eyes widened, and he pointed with one hand, nudging his brother with his elbow. “Check it out, look at the scratches on that door.”
The wooden door of one of the little houses had deep gouges torn from it. “What did that?” asked Joe when he saw it. From the back, the Mexicans shrugged and Ramón said, “Probably just a mountain lion.”
“You have mountain lions in Mexico?” Keith asked.
Carlos rolled his eyes and told him, “We have all kinds of animals in Mexico. Maybe even some you’ve never heard of.”
“Oh, I am not so sure about that,” Keith countered. “I watch a lot of those nature shows on the Discovery Channel.”
Carlos shook his head and Vinnie and Ramón suppressed their laughter. They pulled up in front of the lone cantina in the main square and came to a stop.
Ramón squinted at the façade through the dusty windshield. “Looks like this is the only place open.”
Vinnie opened the door and said over his shoulder as he climbed out, “In these little towns all they have are cantinas and churches.”
The five men pushed their way through the swinging front doors. The place was empty except for a chubby bartender, listlessly wiping the bar with a dirty rag, and a lone waitress sitting on a barstool reading a magazine. They looked up in surprise when the doors opened. As the men made their way to a table and sat down, the bartender glanced nervously at the fading sunlight filtering through the cantina’s barred windows.
“See what they want and get rid of them,” he whispered. “It’s almost dark.”
She tossed down her magazine and walked over to the table. “Hola, my name is Maria. Can I get you something to go? It is almost closing time.” She had thick black hair falling in rich curls to her shoulders and wide almond eyes.
Ramón checked his watch and frowned. “So early?”
“We close at sundown.”
Ramón’s eyes flashed. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. A cantina that closes after dark?”
“We don’t get many customers here. This is a very small town.”
“What we really need is a gas station,” Joe cut in.
“The gas station is closed.”
“Let me guess,” Keith cracked. “It closes at sundown too.”
She shook her head, bouncing black ringlets of hair. “The owner is dead. It has been closed for months.”
Vinnie, disgusted, pulled out his cell phone. Ramón produced some crumpled bills from his wallet and tossed them at her. “Bring us five beers and something to eat.”
Maria picked up the money and returned to the bartender. They put their heads together and began whispering fiercely.
Vinnie shook his phone, and then tapped it on the table. “I can’t get a signal on this damn thing.”
Carlos laid a hand on his arm. “We’re in the mountains, Vicente. There probably isn’t a transmission tower for a hundred kilometers. This is the middle of nowhere.”
Vinnie slammed the table with his fist and then shut off his cell phone and shoved it back into his pocket. The bartender approached the table and bowed his head meekly. “Excuse me señores, but we are closing.”
Ramón threw some more crumpled bills at him. “No, you’re not. We’ve been driving all day and we’re thirsty and hungry.”
The bartender looked around the table helplessly. “But señores, you don’t understand. You need to leave La Esperanza. It’s almost dark—it is not safe.”
Keith raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, not safe?”
The bartender nodded vigorously, like he was bobbing for apples. “Yes, you need to leave La Esperanza.”
Joe broke in and demanded, “Why isn’t it safe here?”
The bartender made the sign of the cross. “The chupacabras.”
Ramón, Carlos, and Vinnie scoffed and muttered sarcastic remarks under their breath. Keith and Joe exchanged puzzled glances and then looked to their Mexican companions.
“What’s a chupa-whatever?” asked Joe.
“Chupacabra,” said Ramón. “It means goatsucker in English.”
Joe sat back, frowning. “Goatsucker? What the hell?”
Keith tugged absently on his left ear. “Yeah, what’s a goatsucker?”
Carlos waved his hand. “It’s a myth, a peasant superstition.”
Vinnie looked at the bartender. “There is no such thing as a chupacabra, you foolish old man. Now go get us some beers and some food.”
The bartender bugged his eyes. “But señores, I beg of you. The chupacabras will come in the night. It is not safe.”
Maria returned with a tray of beer bottles and set it down on the table. Carlos, Vinnie, Ramón, and Keith snatched up their bottles and began sucking at them like thirsty babies reaching for a nipple. Joe picked up his beer and pinned Maria with his eyes. “What about you, tamale-pie? Do you believe in the chupacabras?”
Maria nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen them. Everyone in this town has. They come in the night. You should leave here before they come.”
Ramón interrupted her sharply. “We have a flat tire.”
“You said there was a gas station, but it was closed, right?” Joe asked.
She nodded. “Yes.”
Joe looked around the table at his partners. “Maybe we can fix the tire ourselves at the gas station. What do you guys think?”
Ramón drained the last of his beer and belched. “It is possible, I suppose.” He swiveled in his chair to face the bartender, who had returned to his spot behind the bar. “Where is the gas station, you fat pig?”
“It’s on the other side of town,” the bartender said nervously.
Joe sat up and placed his beer on the table. “Can you show us the way?”
The bartender’s face turned pale. “Dios mio, no! I’m not going outside!” He shuddered, made the sign of the cross, and retreated further behind the bar.
Joe swung around to Maria. “How about you?”
She backed away, hands up. “Madre de dios! No way.”
Ramón opened his wallet and whipped a stack of bills onto the table in front of her. “How much do you want?”
She shook her head. “No, I won’t go outside after dark. Not for any amount of money.”
Ramón reached out and grabbed her arm and pulled her close. He lifted his Hawaiian shirt to reveal his gun. “Plata o plomo, one way or the other, you’re coming with us. Which will it be?”
The bartender ducked down behind the bar, going for a double-barreled shotgun under the counter. In a flash, all five men at the table had their pistols out and aimed at him.
Ramón snarled, “If you want to see sunrise tomorrow, put the gun down and get back from the bar.”
The bartender dropped the shotgun and raised his hands in the air. “Please don’t make me go outside after dark. The chupacabras will kill us all!”
“Shut up about the goddamned chupacabra!” Carlos snapped. “You peasants drink too much peyote beer, and every half-starved dog is the chupacabra.”
Ramón stood up, still holding Maria by the arm, and began heading for the door. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Let’s get the car fixed. The sooner we get out of here the better.”
In the car, Keith slid behind the wheel, with Maria next to him, and Ramón on the other side of her in the passenger seat, his pistol pushed into her ribs. Carlos, Vinni
e, and Joe climbed in the back seat. Keith started the engine and pulled out. The car bumped down the lane. Through the windshield they saw deserted and empty streets; houses shuttered and barred, a ghost town. The sinking sun streaked the sky with ribbons of pink and purple, casting long shadows across the cobblestones.
After five minutes Carlos commented, “That’s strange.”
“What’s strange?” Joe asked.
“There are no dogs in the streets. Every town in Mexico is filled with stray dogs.”
“The chupacabras killed them first,” Maria said. “Then the cattle, and then—”
Keith interrupted her. “Where in the hell is this damned gas station, anyway?”
“We are getting close,” Maria said, and she pointed. “Turn here.”
They turned a corner and saw the gas station sitting in a cul-de-sac at the end of the street surrounded by old chicken coops, used appliances, and junked cars. Keith pulled up in front of the station, killed the engine, opened the door, and climbed out. The building grinned at them like a sun-bleached skull.
Ramón pushed open his door. “Come on, let’s go,” he said, tugging on her arm.
She shook her head and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I am not going in there. I am staying in the car.”
“Look, we’ve all got guns and we know how to use them,” Ramón grumbled. “You’ll be safer with us.”
Carlos called to her, “We will protect you from the big, bad chupacabra.”
Ramón pulled her from the car and they marched toward the garage. Something landed with a heavy metallic thump on the roof of the building. Joe looked up. “What was that?”
Carlos shrugged. “Probably just bats. They have a lot of bats in the mountains in Mexico.”
Maria stiffened when she heard it. Her eyes watched the sky, nervous as a prairie dog. As a group they approached the garage, nothing more than two car pits adjacent to a tiny office, windows cracked and covered in dust. Vinnie and Carlos reached out and grabbed the handles on the roll-down shutters covering the garage. With a mighty heave, they lifted them up and peered inside. Carlos reached over and flipped the light switch. Nothing happened.
Fury of the Chupacabras Page 2
