She peeked at Luis now and then. He’d saved them once again, been brave again. She was so lucky the Cartel chose him for this. She avoided his eyes, though, fearing she’d crossed some kind of line by throwing herself on him the way she had. It wasn’t until they passed a scorched Policía Federal station that Luis whispered, “You played that great back there.”
Nora risked a look. He gave her an encouraging smile. “I didn’t go too far?”
“It was perfect.” He patted her hand. “Remember that. We may need it again.”
Twenty minutes later, the bus groaned into the back lot of San Luis Rio Colorado’s central bus station, a stained white building with a peaked roof. Nora noted the uniformed cops using their batons to shove back a jostling crowd along the station’s wall. “What are the police like here?” she asked Luis.
He’d already stood in the aisle and had to duck to peek out her window. “If they’re still here, they work for the Zetas. Assume any uniform you see is crooked.”
The crowd’s shouting sounded ugly and desperate. The other passengers avoided looking at these people and their scraps of luggage, pretended not to hear. Nora stuck close to Luis as he retrieved their backpacks from the baggage hold under the bus. “What’s happening?” she asked when they edged into the middle of the lot.
Luis, his back to the crowd, cocked his head and focused on the noise. “They’re afraid they won’t get on the bus. It sounds like they think the company sold too many tickets.”
“Would they do that?”
“Yeah. Come on, we’re going around front.”
A mob ten or twelve deep boiled around the bus station’s white-and-green façade, spilling into the street. Men and women and children of all ages shoved and battered each other with suitcases and bags to get a few feet closer to the entrance. A hooded gunman by the doors ripped out a burst into the air from his AK, sending the nearest people screaming backwards into others who had no interest in moving away. Nora didn’t need convincing when Luis towed her around the corner to a bus-stop bench. “Stay here,” he said. “Have your weapon handy.”
Nora perched in the canopy’s tiny patch of shade, one arm around Hope, her other hand clutching her Glock behind her. Hope stared at everything with huge eyes—the soldiers crowding the restaurant on the next corner, the sandbags piled in front of the police station across the street, the Mexican flags, the white banner hanging from an electrical cable crossing the street, twitching as cars drove underneath.
She’d seen this scene before, in Somalia. One army leaves, another arrives, and the normal people try to get out of the way. She never thought she’d be one of them.
Luis fought his way out of the scrum and grabbed Nora’s arm. “Let’s go.”
“What about Mexicali?”
“We’re not getting there on a bus. It’s gonna get ugly in a few minutes. We need to go.”
He led Nora and Hope across Calle 5 and north toward Francisco Madero, a big commercial street running through San Luis’ downtown. The sounds of more shooting and screaming followed them, but Luis refused to look back. More Zetas had just arrived at the station, and he had no interest in finding out whether they had his picture, too.
“Why didn’t we just book straight through to Mexicali?” Nora asked after they’d limped a block. “Why’d we get off the bus?”
“Because it wasn’t one of our options. If Hope wasn’t so damn cute, the driver might not have sold me tickets to get here.”
“So now what?”
They reached the intersection with Francisco Madero. The gunfire back at the bus station sounded like firecrackers at a Fourth of July parade. Luis parked Nora under the overhanging roof of a party-dress store—creampuff dresses in sherbet colors—then stepped into the street to snag one of the white taxicabs cruising for fares. They used to line up at the bus station, but not today.
After the third taxi slowed, then sped past, Nora called out, “You’re trying to catch a cab?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t we rent a car?”
“You saw how it was back there, right? You think there are any rental cars left here?” A fourth taxi raced past. Then he understood: the drivers didn’t want to pick up a man traveling alone. He might jack the cab, or the Zetas might pull them over and kill them both. He motioned to Nora. “Come out here.”
She raised an eyebrow, but hobbled to him. “Is this where I pole dance so they’ll stop?”
“Not yet. Just make sure they can see Hope.”
The fifth taxi, a four-door Nissan hybrid, stopped within seconds. Luis leaned down to the driver’s window. “How much to get to Mexicali?” he asked in Spanish.
The driver, a roundish middle-aged guy in a green-and-white-striped Santos Laguna tee shirt, gave Luis a classic double-take. “¿Estás loco, señor? You see what’s happening here?”
Luis edged in closer, his shoulders filling the window. “Yeah. That’s why me and the wife need to get out.”
The driver’s face lost some of its color. “I can’t. They’re stopping cars going out.”
“Yeah, and I’ll bet you know how to get around that, too.” The driver looked away, chewed on a lip. “A hundred bucks American, cash, and a tank of gas at the other end.”
That got the driver’s attention. He checked his mirrors, looked around for anyone who might be watching. “You got it? Now?”
Luis peeled five twenties from the much-shrunken roll in his pocket, folded them in his hand, then showed the driver the bills in his palm. The driver reached for the money, but Luis slammed his fist shut. “When we get there, compa. After you take us out of here so we don’t have Zetas hassling us. ¿Comprendes?”
The driver peeked past Luis at Nora and Hope. Luis hoped Nora was using her most pathetic look on the man. Finally, he said, “Okay. Get in, now.”
Nora didn’t say a word until they were twenty minutes into their ride, heading southwest toward the farm roads leading to Baja. She whispered, “Once we leave here, are we safe?”
Luis considered that for a moment. “You’re safe when you land in London. I don’t know what’s going on in Mexicali. This was Norte turf two years ago. Now look at it.”
She nodded, her face grim. “Paul and Peter are there?”
“That’s what Ray said.”
“How do we find them?”
He had to think about that one, too. “I’ll call Ray once we’re there.” He hoped Ray would finally give him a straight answer. “We’ll get them back, I promise.”
62
“Goddamnit! You shoot these terrorists, or I’ll shoot you!”
— Off-duty Oakland PD sergeant to a squad of riot police responding to a longshoremen’s strike at the Port of Oakland; video shown on YouTube.com
MONDAY, 17 MAY
The loudspeaker scratched out, “Code Orange, Code Orange. All available ED staff to Reception. Code Orange.”
Bel had just left an exam cube—the day’s fourteenth case of listeriosis—and stood in the middle of the aisle, processing this order. Nurses and doctors popped their heads out of green curtains. Confused looks, then shock. Bel joined a stampede of nurses through the double doors leading to the Pit. A mass-casualty incident had just hit the ED.
Outside, Bel found half a dozen dirty, bloody men in blue overalls lying on the floor at the Reception booths or helping each other through the outside doors. The tear-gas fumes rolling off them stung Bel’s eyes half-closed. She dived toward the nearest prone man—gunshot wound, lower abdomen—and demanded, “What happened? What is this?”
“Strike,” he grunted, his eyes screwed closed against the pain. “God damn! At the plant. We walked out. Set up a line. They got cops or something.” He stifled a scream. “It hurt bad, nurse, please, it hurt bad…”
Bel swept the area for staff. No doctors around yet, of course. As head nurse for the department, she had to get things moving. She pointed to Sindee, the nearest nurse. “You’re Staging Manager. Get gurneys, as many a
s you can. Set up stations in the back hall, we’ll have to treat them there.” She pointed again. “Dakota! Triage, now!” She stood, slapped her hand against the nearest Reception window, startling the clerk. “Code Orange the whole hospital, stat!”
Training, instinct and anger took over. She was back at Bagram, helping the night duty nurse, suddenly facing half-a-dozen DUSTOFFs hauling in casualties from a patrol gone bad. She got Dortmund with the Taser to herd the regular waiting patients either outside or into the back of the Pit. A young doctor appeared at the ED doors; she pinned him with a pointed finger. “You! Ops Section Chief! Get treatment organized. Go!” He went.
Sirens outside. It hadn’t registered until now that she hadn’t heard a single ambulance arrive. The plant and the cops hadn’t called for transport, as usual. The approaching sirens weren’t the whoop of ambulances or the honking of fire engines; they were police cars. More wounded? Or more trouble?
Doctors and nurses poured into the Pit from the hospital entrance. Three guards—fucking worthless rent-a-cops—huddled in one corner, waiting for someone to tell them what to do; Bel got them cleaning up the jumble of abandoned cars blocking the dropoff lane. The team fell into the rhythm it had learned in all those training exercises, leaving Bel to direct traffic and untangle problems. She checked her watch; twelve minutes since the first Code Orange and no sign of Benbow, the department head who was supposed to be Incident Commander. Probably with Admin, figuring out how to get someone to pay for all this. Fuck him.
Three dead so far, twenty-eight admits, ten critical, more coming in. Burns from microwave cannon, burst eardrums from sound guns, tear-gas burns, blunt-force trauma, one poor kid maybe sixteen with his legs crushed. The gunshot wounds she’d seen on the criticals told her the cops had shot to kill, not wound. The cries and screams and moans filled the Pit past bursting. Every new casualty raised the heat on Bel’s rage. They did this kind of shit in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia. This was America, or was supposed to be. Used to be.
A cop filled the doors leading outside. Midnight-blue utilities, black tac gear, white helmet with a shiny black face shield, studded gloves, four-foot baton. No badge, no name tape. Of course; off-duty, the plant had hired them.
He grabbed the nearest worker—a Latino man with a bloody bandage around his arm—flung the man to the floor. When the worker tried to push himself up, the cop smashed the baton across the back of the man’s head.
“Noooo!”
Bel launched herself at the cop, staggered him back against the doorframe before he clipped her with his baton’s handle and sent her spinning into the nearest line of chairs. Fuzz exploded in her eyes; she tasted blood. She struggled up on one elbow in time to watch the cop smash another worker against the wall and beat him into a pile on the floor.
A pair of meaty arms cradled Bel. Dortmund. “Bel, you okay? How many fingers?”
She spat out a mouthful of blood, counted the six fingers she saw wavering in front of her and divided by two. “Three. Gimme your Taser.”
“No, Bel, don’t—”
“Give it to me!” She struggled out of his arms, stood on rubber-band legs, shook her head clear. God, that hurt. Dortmund frowned his disapproval, then slapped the Taser into her outstretched hand.
Don’t think. Do. A wiry old guy spun away from the cop’s baton and crashed into her. She held him up—just barely—waited for the cop to come after them. Just as he raised his baton, she swept up the Taser and shot him in the leg. He dropped like a set of car keys.
The buzzing, yelling, groaning crowd fell silent for a moment. Bel stood, wobbling, still aiming the Taser. The old guy staggered away from her. Then a female voice behind her whooped, “Maha! Bring it!” and the lull broke under a new wave of noise.
A pair of guards stood in the corridor leading to the hospital’s main lobby, their eyes wide. Bel popped the cartridge from the Taser, then pointed to the guards. “You two. Get him out of here, and keep the rest of them out. This is a hospital, not a cage match.”
That might not last long. Through the glass doors she saw a trio of cop-thugs pounce on a couple of workers from the plant, batons swinging up and down until both men lay still on the ground. Other cop-thugs swarmed the parking lot, going after anyone in a jumpsuit, smashing car windows. She stumbled through the doors into the outside heat to watch, horrified, then turned and lost what little breakfast was left in her stomach.
She straightened to wipe her mouth on the front of her scrub top. A thin, bedraggled guy stood a couple feet away, aiming his old-style phone at the carnage. “Please tell me you’re recording this,” she said.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Please tell me you’re going to post this.”
“You bet. You okay, lady?”
She couldn’t focus right and her stomach had turned itself inside out. “I’m better now.”
Bel returned to the Pit. She waved off Dortmund before he could fuss over her and began to help Dakota with the triage. They ran out of gurneys; orderlies used backboards to move the non-ambulatories into the treatment area. She focused so hard on the job that she brushed off the tugging on her sleeve until someone slugged her shoulder. “What?” she barked.
It was Ros, goggles on her scrub cap, mask pulled down. “They’re here. The FBI.”
Bel stood, peeked through the windows. Three big, black SUVs blocked the dropoff lane. Men in FBI windbreakers pooled on the sidewalk, listening to an agent who pointed and yelled words she couldn’t hear. She surveyed the shambles around her. “I can’t leave, not with—”
“You have to,” Ros said. “Let’s go.” She grabbed a fistful of Bel’s sleeve and dragged her through the ED’s double doors. “Where’s the tracker?”
“In my pocket.”
“Lose it, and your badge.”
Bel dropped the little paper-towel-wrapped bundle into a half-full trash bin in the treatment area, then followed it with her ID and its embedded tracker. Rocketing, colliding priorities filled her brain. She and Ros rushed through the bustling doctors and nurses toward the back door. Gurneys and stretchers lined the corridor beyond, tended by more nurses and doctors and techs and orderlies, the moans and pleas bouncing off the linoleum and the metal doors to make the sound of a suffering army.
Bel and Ros got partway down a corridor leading to the back of the hospital when Bel pulled up. “Wait. I have to go to the locker room. I need my stuff.”
“There’s no time.”
“I have to pee, too.”
They trotted through the halls—running would draw too much attention—passing the usual foot traffic as well as other people rushing because of the Code Orange. They fit right in. In the locker room, Bel quickly emptied out, grabbed her purse, gym bag, and spare clothes, thought a moment, then took the lock, too. She’d never be able to come back, and who could tell if she’d need a lock someplace? Ros stood by the door, staring at her watch, barking “Hurry up!” every minute or so.
They breezed into the short hallway leading to the double sliding doors that opened into the parking garage. A security guard stepped out from behind his counter, held up his slate. “Excuse me ladies,” he said. “We have a security alert, you have to scan out.”
Had the FBI turned out building security to look for her? Bel nudged Ros away so they could pass on either side of the guard. Ros nodded, moved ahead, pulled her staff ID out of her collar while Bel pretended to dig hers from her purse. The guard turned to catch Ros’ scan. She fumbled it, opening the clip that held the card to its blue-and-white lanyard. Ros and the guard stooped at the same time to pick up the ID. Bel swooped around them and scurried out the doors.
“Wait, miss, wait, you have to…”
Bel angled for the stairwell. Running feet slapped concrete behind her: Ros, closing fast. The guard dithered at the open doors, not sure whether to chase them or call for help.
Bel and Ros charged up the steel stairs, their footsteps clanging up the concrete shaft. Ros cut for a door co
vered with a gigantic blue “3”. “Where are you going?” Bel demanded. “I’m on four.”
“I’m on three.” Ros grabbed Bel’s arm. “Stop bitching.”
They race-walked partway up the nearest ramp and stopped at a beat-up, burnt-orange Kia two-door hybrid with blacked-out windows. Ros tossed a set of keys at Bel. “Get out of here before they lock this place down.”
“Your car? I can’t—”
“Just shut up and take it. They’ll be watching yours. It’s old and there’s no batteries left in it, so it’s slow as hell, but it gets great mileage.” Ros grabbed Bel’s biceps. “You have to get away from these bastards. Consider yourself paid back.”
Bel hugged Ros hard, wished she’d spent more time getting to know this woman instead of shying away because she was always throwing herself in the way of danger. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she murmured. “I’ll let you know where I leave it.” She pulled away, dragged her car keys from her purse and handed them to Ros. “Blue Chevy Breeze. Its batteries are dead, too.”
Ros squatted next to the open driver’s door as Bel cranked on the engine. “When you get a couple miles away, stop someplace with no cameras and take the plates off. There’s another set underneath. The screwdriver’s in the glove box.”
“What? Fake license plates? Ros, what—”
“The union, remember? Think I want these people keeping track of where I go?” She stood, shoved the door closed, then swept her hand toward the aisle. “Stop fucking around, get out of here.”
The world started crashing in on Bel all at once. She was a fugitive, and she’d involved this other person. This friend. “You be careful,” she said, trying not to let her voice break. “Thanks.”
Ros nodded. Her chin looked stiffer than normal, her lips flatter. “Don’t get caught.”
63
MONDAY, 17 MAY
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