by Blake Banner
“Filho de puta! Cabrão! Asesino! It is me who save! I save you! You filthy viado! Bicha corno! Asesino! Asesino!”
I slowed and raised a warning finger at her. “Don’t start again! I swear! Just—don’t talk! Just don’t!”
She flopped back in her seat and settled to sniffing and sobbing again. After a while, she muttered “Meu Raul, amorzinho…” reached down, pulled the attaché case onto her lap and hugged it. “Meu amorzinho…”
I parked in the short term car park and accompanied Joelma into the terminal building. There I bought her a sports bag and filled it with clothes that looked roughly the right size. At first I asked her if she liked the things I was buying, but when she just stared at me as though I had finally taken leave of my senses, I bought whatever caught my eye and stuffed it in the bag. When the bag was full, I took her by the arm and led her to passport control.
There I handed her the bag and turned her to face me. “We’re in love,” I said. “Try to look as though you don’t want to tear my eyes out. Give me a hug, make it convincing, and try not to draw attention to yourself.”
Her face was twisted and damp with tears. I tried not to imagine what she was feeling. She narrowed her eyes with hatred and gave her head a small shake. Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Filho de puta...”
Son of a bitch. She wasn’t wrong. She put her arms around me and held me. Then she looked up into my face and kissed me on the lips, she held my head in her hands and whispered close to my ear, so I could feel her moist breath on my skin: “I will find you, and I will kill you.”
I watched her step back, away from me, turn and go through passport control.
Sometimes thinking can be the enemy of survival. I didn’t think about what had just happened. I turned and walked away to book my flight to Mexico City.
FOURTEEN
It was four in the afternoon in Durango, and we were sitting in the courtyard garden of the Hotel Gobernador, by the pool. It was 90F in the shade, though in the sun it seemed hotter. Njal had a cold beer, and I was on my second martini. The vodka they’d used to dry it up was doing a good job of numbing my conscience, but Njal didn’t look happy.
“You keep changing the plan, man. That is a sure path to disaster. You know this.”
I drained my glass and signaled the waiter for another.
Njal sighed. “And you are drinking too much.”
I pulled a pack of Camels from my pocket. “You mind if I smoke? Or am I doing too much of that too?”
He held out his hand and I shook one free for him. Then I lit up and handed him my lighter. He was waiting for me to answer, so I said, “I’m not changing the plan, Njal. The plan is the same. I’m adapting the strategies to meet the new situations. Were you ever a soldier?”
“My life story is not relevant now, Lacklan. We were supposed to put the body in bleach to delay its discovery. We were not supposed to meet up so soon. We are being seen together, in Durango. We arrived in the same goddamn car, and we are just seventy-five miles from Sinaloa. It’s sloppy. It’s not like you and that worries me. You said you were OK for the job.”
I thought about it and wondered if he was right. I shrugged. “Both hits so far went off without a hitch and ahead of schedule. The only changes I made were to compensate for the early strikes, and to avoid the cops getting too curious. It would have been stupid to stay in Argentina once Terry was dead. Same in Brazil. And as for the bleach, you know as well as I do that Joelma would not have done that. It would have been out of character and the cops would have smelt a rat. It was wrong.”
“Yeah, maybe, but what about Mexico? We wound up on the same fuckin’ plane, man. If we had stuck to the plan, that would not have happened. And when we got off, instead of ignoring me, you come over, ‘Hey, man! I didn’t know you was in Mexico! What’s happenin’? Don’t tell me you goin’ to Durango! Me too! Come on, we hire a car together!’ That was crazy, man. What got into you?”
“I don’t agree. I don’t think it was crazy at all. I thought it through for thirteen hours on the plane. I think it was the smartest thing we could do.”
“And getting the same hotel and getting drunk, that smart too?”
“Yup.”
“So, you better explain why.”
“Is that a threat?”
He nodded. “Yuh.”
I smiled. Never ask a Norseman a direct question if you don’t want a blunt answer. “OK, the one thing we didn’t allow for was Joelma being a loose cannon. What you don’t know is that after you left she went hysterical, screaming at the top of her lungs that I was an asesino, amongst other choice Brazilian epithets. It was so bad we were pulled over by the cops. It was a miracle we got out of there without being arrested or shot.” I pointed at him like my finger was a gun. “And that was following the plan.”
“OK, so?”
“So I got her to the airport, she played her part, but before she left she told me she’d hunt me down and kill me.”
“You believe her?”
“No, but I think she is crazy enough to send an anonymous message to the Brasilia PD. And when they find the body, they could well put out a BOLO.”
He nodded. “Last time she saw us, we were going our separate ways.”
“Exactly. So they will be least likely to be looking for two guys traveling together in Mexico and staying at the most expensive hotel in town.”
He grunted. “I still think you’re drinking too much.”
“Yeah, well, the alternative is worse. We’re ahead of schedule, it’s been a tough few days and we have twenty-four hours to kill. A miserable, foreign teetotaler sticks out in this town like a hard-on at a nuns’ convention. Best thing we can do is go on the town, let off steam and pick up a couple of high-class hookers. Then disappear tomorrow, leaving a false trail.”
He grinned. “That’s more like the kind of thing I wanna be hearing from you, dude. That’s the Lacklan I know.”
I agreed with him. It was the kind of stuff I wanted to be hearing from myself. But all I could think about was getting the damn job done and going home. I didn’t tell him that. I smiled instead. “OK, so after your next beer, you go out and buy some fancy clothes for tonight. Then we’ll book a couple of escorts and go out on the town, have dinner, go dancing. A couple of dudes having a good time. Stay out of trouble. Meanwhile, contact your contact and see if they’ve collected the goods…”
He nodded and reached for his cell. While he was dialing, I went on. “While you’re out, I’m going to ask the concierge if it’s cool for women to visit us in our rooms. Then I’m going to ask him the best route to get to Texas…”
He suddenly smiled and spoke into the phone. “Hey, Danny! How you doin’, man? Cool, cool, chillin’ here in Mexico. Comin’ home tomorrow. Listen, I wanned to ask you. Did Mom get back OK…? She did? That’s cool. She was lookin’ a bit sick, you know? OK, no, that was it, man. I just wanted to touch base. OK, I’ll call you when I get home, man. Hang loose, dude.” He hung up. “Yeah, she got home OK.”
“So where do we collect the stuff?”
“It’s about halfway between Mazatlán and Culiacán. There some small farms there on the coast, bays, inlets, streams. They have a small holding, a fishing hut, couple of barns. They good people...” He seemed to hesitate for a second, like he was thinking about telling me something, then went on. “It’s about two hundred miles away, so it’s gonna be like four hours.”
“OK, we collect the stuff mid afternoon. We leave here around twelve noon, get there about four. Then we follow the original plan. We follow the road like we were going to Cosalá. About three miles before Vado Hondo there’s a settlement, just a few houses, people minding their own business. Then there’s a dirt track that climbs into the hills. We follow the track for about seven miles, till we come to a deep gully on the left. There we lose the car in among the trees. From that point on it’s on foot for eleven miles. We need to estimate six hours. We want to get to the forest outside
the ranch at about three AM, which, working backwards, puts us dumping the car at the gully at nine PM latest.”
Njal nodded. “If we collect the stuff at four in the afternoon, that’s plenny of time.”
“We don’t sleep. We dump our stuff and recon the ranch, lab, whatever it is. Then before first light, we return to our dump and then we sleep. We will have another day for a second reconnaissance before they arrive. By then we need to have the hit figured.”
He gave me two thumbs up. “I’m gonna buy clothes. I get you some nice Levis and a cool shirt.” He stood. “You fix us up with a couple of nice señoritas, man. We can party.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Did you get stuck in the ’70s and just stop aging? What is your story, Njal?”
“I wasn’t born in the 70s, man. I am Scandinavian. We exist in a time warp. I catch you later, dude.”
He left, with his long, loping stride, and I sat and finished my drink, listening to the birds and wondering how much of what I had said to Njal was true, and how much was bullshit. Was I OK for this job? Or was I going to pieces? I wasn’t all that sure. No doubt we’d find out in the next couple of days, but at what cost, and to whom?
The night was uneventful. The concierge had found us an escort company called VIP Escorts, that he said was muy elegante and the girls muy sofisticadas. The girls in question were called Sandra and Nancy, and took us to a good Mexican restaurant that wasn’t superb. According to Sandra, who was cute and dark, it belonged to her uncle.
They both spoke broken English and we spoke broken Spanish back to them; and after the first hour they spoke to each other and laughed a lot, and Njal and I watched and smiled and discussed existentialism.
After dinner Nancy, who was also cute and dark but had dyed her hair blonde, took us to a nightclub that she said belonged to her brother. There the music was too loud to talk, so they danced with each other and laughed a lot. And Njal and I stood and watched and thought about existentialism.
At about two AM they forced us to dance and we made fools of ourselves for half an hour until finally we went back to the hotel.
At nine the next morning, we paid them double what they had asked for and promised to call next time we were in town. They left, looking cute but not really elegant or sophisticated, talking a lot and laughing more. I wondered briefly what Jim would make of our expense accounts when he reviewed them.
I had not seen a single sign that either the cartel or Omega were watching us that night. By the looks of it, they were still completely unaware of our presence. That led me to thinking for the thousandth time about what Raul Rocha had said before I shot him: that Ben had told them I had reached an arrangement with him. That was why their security was so lax. That was why, despite what had happened to Omega 1 and 2, despite the crash of their computer networks, Omega 3 was not on red alert. They were barely on any kind of alert.
So either Ben was alive, despite the fact that I had shot him through the heart and watched him die[7], or somebody was trying to make me, and what was left of Omega, believe that he was alive.
Who?
It was an impossible question to answer on the practically nonexistent information I had. I could speculate: Jim, Gibbons, some as yet unknown member of Omega, even Marni. But speculation got me nowhere, and besides, the real question was not who, but what for?
So far the net effect of this deceit—this game—was the steady and systematic destruction of Omega; and so far that suited me fine. But a war is decided at the outcome of the final battle, not before, and that battle was yet to come.
At eleven thirty that morning, we settled the bill and asked the concierge for the best route to the border with Texas. He gave us elaborate instructions involving the 40D to Monterey, because, he said, Chihuahua was not safe, and then the 85D to Nuevo Laredo.
We listened carefully, made notes on a map, and then loaded up the Wrangler we’d hired in Mexico and took the 40D, like he’d suggested, but in the opposite direction, down into Sinaloa. On the way we stocked up with water, sandwiches and a couple of blankets—provisions we knew we would soon need.
Njal drove. He drove fast and with skill. The road was surprisingly good and cut a deep channel through steep canyons among dense pine forests that seemed to stretch on for eternity. Finally, after a hundred and fifty miles and just under three hours, the landscape began to change. We left the tiny village of La Guasima behind us and the pinewoods began to give way to fields and crops. Then we passed Concordia and Malpica, and we were descending toward the flat, coastal area just south of the Gulf of California. Outside Villa Union, we joined Highway 15, straight and flat, and headed toward Mazatlán, the second drug capital of Sinaloa, and home to Omicron. Of the five heads of Omega 3, he was the one I had come to think of as my real target: General Francisco Ochoa, the supreme commander of Mexico’s special forces. He was a dangerous man, and if we failed in this mission, I had no doubt it would be because of him.
Njal put his foot down and we began to accelerate along the freeway. Then, as though he were echoing my thoughts, he said suddenly, “This is it.”
I looked at him, then at the open fields that stretched toward the Pacific beyond. I nodded, but I didn’t say anything.
We passed Mazatlán on our left and an hour after that we came to a turn off which allowed us to cross the highway and take a dirt track that wound its way past a small lake on the left, surrounded by scraggy trees and shrubs, and then cut through acres of dry, gray dust. We bumped and rattled along that track for about a mile, trying not to kick up too much dust, and all the way I kept my eye on the mirror to see if we were being followed, but there was no one behind us. Just as there had been no one behind us all the way from Durango to Mazatlán.
I shook my head and looked at Njal. “It’s been too easy. It has worked better than clockwork. It’s been a walk over. They are supposed to be the fucking Illuminati. They’re supposed to have eyes and ears everywhere. What the fuck is going on?”
He didn’t answer. The track, which had been straight for almost a mile, now began to curl and the ground changed from gray earth to white sand. Then we came to a broad, shallow river, which we crossed, churning up the slow-moving brown water.
I asked, suddenly, “These people who are helping us, do they work for the cartel?”
He shook his head. “She… They are smallholders, their land is far away from the plantations and close to the highway. They have nothing to offer the cartel. That’s why Jim chose them. They are not at risk, and the risk to us is minimal; and the son and daughter get to go to university in the States, when they are old enough. It’s a win-win. I guess. She’ll tell you her story if she wants to.”
We came out the other side of the river onto something that was barely a track, and followed that around until we came to a small house, set back a way from the road, among palms and eucalyptus trees. It was pretty and well kept, with a nice veranda mostly covered in vines. There were shacks and sheds in back and to the sides, corrals for goats and pens for chickens, and there were a couple of dogs lying in the shade that started to bark as we approached the open gate.
As we drove through, one of them raised his head to the sky and started to howl, but they didn’t get up. They didn’t mind sounding the alarm, but they weren’t going to fight with anybody. Njal drove the Jeep around the back of the house and parked it where it was hidden from view and shaded by a eucalyptus copse. He killed the engine and we climbed out. As we did that, I saw a woman come out the back door drying her hands on a tea towel. She had dark skin, black hair pulled back in a loose knot, a red, plaid shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. She looked at me with dark eyes and no expression, and said, “Where is Njal?”
I pointed at the Jeep with my thumb. “Right here.”
He appeared around the hood and I thought I saw what might have been a smile. “Come inside,” she said. “The kids are with my sister. We are alone.”
FIFTEEN
There were pictures on the fr
idge. It was a big, silver fridge with two doors, and it was covered in pictures drawn in crayon by small kids. There were also words written in plastic, magnetic letters. The kitchen was big, floored in big terracotta tiles. A big window overlooked the back yard, and on the sill there were aloe plants in pots, flanking a plastic bottle of luminous green washing up liquid and a jar with brushes in it. A large, pine table with four chairs drawn around it occupied the middle of the floor. In the sink I counted three dirty plates, three knives, three forks, three glasses. A home for a family of three, hiding weapons for Jim Redbeard, Njal, and me.
She stood by the stove, watching us. “D’you eat? You want coffee?”
Her accent was more California with a hint of Latino than Mexican with a hint of Cali.
Njal answered. “We ate. Coffee is good, yuh?”
“Sit. How’s Jim?”
Njal pulled out a chair and laughed as he sat. He was at home here.
“You know Jim! Always the same. Always happy, even when he is sad.”
I thought the comment was loaded, but she didn’t react. She unscrewed the coffee pot with quick, efficient movements. She was slim, but shapely and very feminine, very much a woman and a mother. “Yeah.” She said it in a neutral tone tinged with anger. “I know Jim. Does he ever ask after us?”
I pulled out a chair and sat. Njal said: “He thinks about you all the time.”
“That’s not what I asked, Njal.”
He looked at me, raised his eyebrows and grimaced. “He wants you to move back. You know that.”
“How would I know that, Njal? He never told me that.” She spooned coffee into the percolator, screwed it shut with more energy than was absolutely necessary and put it on the stove. Then she turned and rested her ass against the sink and crossed her arms. “If he wants me to go back, maybe he should tell me all the stuff he tells you.”
