by Blake Banner
He raised both hands. “Hey! You asked, I told you. I am not defending the guy, Sole.”
“Sure you’re not.”
“But, I godda say, I do wonder. Why don’t you go back to the States? Is better there than here, right?”
She ignored the question and looked at me. “Are you another one of those who believe the sun shines out of Jim Redbeard’s ass?”
I smiled and shook my head.
“Well everybody else does, including himself.”
“I don’t. Clearly, you don’t either.”
She almost scowled. “Watch your step, friend. Don’t jump to conclusions. He’s a good man.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Isn’t it time you swept the floor?”
“Excuse me?”
“Eggshells. I seem to be treading on them. He’s a great man who thinks the sun shines out of his own ass. It’s a fair description. Yours, not mine.”
She turned away and gathered three cups from the draining board, put them on the table with milk and sugar, then brought over the percolator and sat to pour.
“I can’t afford to go back to the States, you know that, Njal.”
“And you know he will pay.”
“I don’t want his money.”
“He already pays for…”
“That’s for his kids, not me. I don’t use a penny of his goddamn money on myself.”
Njal sighed. “Is no good for you to be here, Sole.”
“We’re not going to have this conversation again, Njal.”
“Sell the house…”
She burst out laughing. It was a nice thing to see, even if the laughter was tinged with bitterness. It was more than nice. It was delightful. It made me smile.
“A house and land in Sinaloa? Who’s going to buy that? And even if I could find a buyer, how much do you think they’d pay? Ten thousand U.S. dollars? I’d be lucky to get that much!”
I sipped my coffee. It was good and strong. “You get paid for receiving these goods?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re too ready with a hostile answer. How about you follow your own advice and don’t jump to conclusions?”
She was quiet for a bit, looking at her coffee. “Yeah, I get paid.”
“Local cartel take any interest in you?”
“Not so far, but I keep a very low profile. Don’t worry, you’re not at risk.”
I drained my cup and stood. “C’mon, Njal. We have a long way to go, promises to keep, and miles to go before we sleep.”
He sighed and stood. “It is in the hay shed?”
She nodded. “On the right inside the door. You need to move the top bales, and the tarpaulin.”
As I reached for the door, she said, “Robert Frost.” I stopped and looked back at her as Njal stepped outside into the afternoon sunshine. She managed something vaguely like a smile. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” She gave a small shrug. “Sorry.”
I shook my head. “No need. I get it.”
We crossed the yard to a wooden barn and Njal heaved the huge door open. Immediately on the right there was a tiered stack of hay bales, about three high at the front and six at the back. Over the front nine bales there was a large, sage green tarp. I pulled it off and between us we heaved off the top three bales, revealing a hollow in the middle with two military green kit bags stashed inside it. I heaved them out and laid them on the dirt floor. Njal pulled the door half closed and leaned on the jamb, keeping watch while I opened up the bags and started taking the stuff out, laying it on the ground and making an inventory in my mind.
There were two Heckler & Koch 416 assault rifles with the AG-HK416 grenade launchers and infrared telescopic sights. There were two Sig Sauer p226s with extended magazines and a Glock 17 with its own high capacity mags, and two suppressed Maxim 9s. There was also an orange osage take down bow with twelve aluminum, broadhead arrows and two strings, and two Fairbairn & Sykes fighting knives. Finally, there were two sets of night vision goggles, two pairs of binoculars, six cakes of C4 with detonators and enough ammunition to fuel a whole revolution. I said: “OK, everything’s here.”
He turned and looked and I threw him the Glock, a magazine and one of the knives. I took a Sig and slipped it behind my back into my waistband and shoved the knife into my boot. It was good to feel them there again. Then I put everything back in the bags, we carried them to the Jeep and dumped them in the back.
We stood looking at them a moment. Njal sighed. He didn’t need to say anything. We both knew. There was no point concealing them. If anybody got close enough to see what was inside the bags, either we would be dead or we would have to kill them. The time for hiding was all but over.
We went back inside. Sole was sitting at the table, staring at her empty coffee cup. She looked up as we came in. Njal shrugged.
“OK, so we are going.”
She nodded and pointed to a flask on the table, and a bottle of Scotch. “I made you some coffee. I laced it, to keep you warm.”
I said, “Thanks, for the coffee, and for doing this.”
She echoed Njal’s shrug. “I need the money, mister.”
I glanced around. “How much would you have to sell the house for, to be able to
go back?”
She looked around, like the price might be written on the walls somewhere. “Two fifty? Three hundred? That’s the ballpark. Why? You want to buy it?”
“It might have its uses. We’ll talk in a few days.”
Her face hardened. “I don’t want charity!”
“Good!” I snapped. “Because you won’t get any from me. Or sympathy, for that matter. Your kids might, but you sure as hell won’t! So you can can the attitude.” I turned to Njal. “Come on, let’s get going.”
I walked to the Jeep and heard the door close behind me. As we turned to skirt the house and drive back toward the gate, I saw her at the kitchen window, watching us. I ignored her and accelerated away. One thing I sure as hell didn’t need was another woman complicating my life.
It was nearing five o’clock, and sunset was a good three hours away, but the gray dust had turned to copper and the shadows of the trees were stretching long across the flats. As we ground our way back toward the highway I asked Njal, “How far from here to where we leave the car?”
He checked his phone, swiped the screen a few times. “Fifty-five miles. More than half is country roads, and the last ten miles is rural mountain. Hour and a half.”
I grunted. “I’d hoped to get there when it was dark.”
He gave me a look that said he was struggling to hide the fact that he wanted to hit me. “Yuh? So, we could have stayed half an hour more with Sole, chill, have a sandwich, you know? OK, so she has a bad attitude. Don’t mean you godda fight with her. Do like me. I chill.”
I was quiet for a bit, then said, “You’re right.”
He sighed, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and fished one out. As he lit up, he said, “Don’t do that, man.”
“What?”
“Say, ‘You right,’ like that. Freaks me out. You want a cigarette?”
He handed me one and I poked it in my mouth, turned onto the highway and lit up as I accelerated toward La Cruz, and the turn off for Cosalá. I ignored his quip and started to talk half to myself.
“So here’s the bit we haven’t planned for, because we couldn’t. Two guys in a rented Jeep driving through deep Sinaloa countryside in late evening. Chances of getting stopped by either gang members or the cops—which is pretty much the same thing—are unquantifiable, but possibly high.”
Njal inhaled deeply and blew a stream of smoke at the roof of the car. “Down here, not so much, but the closer we get to Cosalá, the higher the chances get. Not cops, but if there are gang members out for any reason and they see us, they could stop us if they think we don’t fit.”
“OK, here’s how we deal with it. Next chance I get, I’ll pull over. You grab one of the Hecklers. Keep it up front
. If they stop us, we make like tourists and ask for directions to Culiacán. If they don’t buy it, we have to take them out. All of them, fast, before they can make a call.”
“Yuh, we knew this.”
“Good.”
We covered the first forty-odd miles without incident and at about six in the evening we started to climb into the hills. It was still two hours till sunset, but because of the mountains, most of the time the sun was behind the ridges, and darkness started closing in early. That at least was a relief.
We passed a sign for a lake called Presa el Salto, and after that the woodland started getting more dense; another three miles and the banks of the road were steep and overgrown, and we were climbing and twisting through the dusk in thick forest, with our headlamps on. A couple of sharp bends after that and we suddenly found ourselves behind a Dodge RAM. I dipped my lights and slowed. My gut was on fire. I was telling myself it was probably just some farmers going home from the fields, but I couldn’t recall having seen any fields for several miles. I glanced at Njal. He cocked the HK and popped a grenade in the launcher. I cocked the Sig and put it between my legs on the seat.
The hazards on the Dodge came on and it began to slow and move into the center of the road. Njal said, “We gotta kill them.”
I slowed too and wound the windows down. The Dodge stopped and I stopped ten feet behind it. I covered the Sig with my right hand and leaned out the window, smiling. The driver’s door opened and a big guy in an Italian suit climbed out. He had curly hair and a moustache. He looked Spanish, or Middle Eastern. The passenger door opened and a taller, slimmer guy with long hair and dark olive skin climbed out too. His suit looked expensive, like his pal’s, and I caught the glint of a weapon as he walked around the back of the car. Through their rear window I could see two heads: two who didn’t feel they had to get out. If there was going to be trouble, all four would have gotten out. Maybe we’d be OK.
Moustache shrugged and said something in Spanish, like what’s happening? Where you going?
I broadened my smile and said, “Americano, perdido, Culiacán?”
He stared at me for a long moment with hard, unfriendly eyes, then spoke in English.
“What the fuck?” He looked across at his pal with the long hair. “Culiacán. They want Culiacán.” Then to me, “You goin’ north into the fuckin’ mountains. Culiacán is west on the plain. This is Sinaloa, amigo. You ever heard of Sinaloa? Is not smart for two gringos to be drivin’ around at night in Sinaloa in the countryside.”
I grimaced. “Can you advise us how to get back on the right road for Culiacán?”
He looked at his pal and grinned. To me he said, “You got money? How much money you got?”
I made a face of confusion. “I don’t know, a hundred bucks?”
But his eyes were already traveling to the back of the truck and he was frowning. “What you got in the sacks there?”
“Those?” I said. “Oh, Njal, take out the truck.”
Moustache was still frowning at me, trying to work out what I meant, when I plugged him between the eyes. Ponytail was not slow to react. While his friend folded to the ground, he ran and rolled behind the back of our truck. Njal sprayed a short burst of automatic fire and shattered the windshield of the Jeep, then plugged a grenade through the back window of the Dodge. The detonation lifted it a foot off the ground and blew the doors off.
By that time I was out and walking to the back of the Wrangler with my Sig in my right hand and the Fairbairn & Sykes fighting knife in my left. Ponytail came around the trunk to meet me, holding his Eagle out in front of him with both hands. I weaved to my left as he fired and slashed the blade up the back of his right wrist, severing the tendons. His hand went into spasm and curled in on itself. The gun dropped and he was left gaping at the blood streaming from the gash. I kicked him hard in his nuts and as he doubled up, I shot him in the back of his neck. It all happened in less than three seconds.
Njal came around with his Glock drawn and shook his head at me. “This is a fucking mess, man.”
“How far are we from where we dump the Jeep?”
“About fifteen miles.”
“Shit!”
“We got to assume they are part of the gang and they were going to Cosalá. We got to assume they are expecting them and they will come looking for them.”
“We have two options, and only two.”
“Turn back or continue.”
I nodded. “You can go back if you want. Take the Jeep. I can continue on foot.”
“Don’t be a fucking asshole, man. Come on. We are wasting time.”
We clambered in, skirted the wreck of the Dodge and took off at speed along the road. Dusk was closing in. Njal was looking at his phone. “The problem is when we get to the settlement. There we can be seen. We need a goat track. These hills are full of goat tracks. Look…” He said it to the phone. I glanced. He was looking at satellite images. “Up ahead there will be a track on the right, go slow. It climbs that hill and goes to Camoa on the other side. We can leave the Jeep up in the forest. Then we go on foot. It will add another mile to our walk, but we start walking an hour or two before we expected.”
“OK, we do that.”
The turning came out of nowhere, concealed by dense pines. I slowed and turned in, and we began to grind and bump up the track. It was rutted, narrow and winding, and in the failing light, progress was slow and difficult. The headlamps were out of the question, but at times, on our right hand side, we were mere inches from a steep precipice that plunged down into a gorge that was practically a canyon.
After almost two hours, we finally broke out of the trees onto a plateau, and far below, on the right, we could make out the few, winking lights of Camoa, way down in the valley. I stopped, then reversed back into the cover of the forest and found a space among the trees and ferns where the Wrangler would be hidden from view. Then we pulled out the kit bags, packed them with the food, the water and the blankets, slung them over our shoulders and set out on the long trek toward the ranch, or the farm, or the lab—or whatever it was that Zapata had up there.
It was a long, difficult night. We didn’t talk and we rested as little as we could. It was a twelve mile trek, through dense woodland, scrambling down steep hills and clambering up canyons that were at times almost vertical. At times we would come across narrow tracks that we were able to follow, and then we would walk ten paces and run ten paces, alternating, and we would make fast progress, but at others we were battling our way through trees and ferns, and moving at barely a mile an hour.
At shortly before midnight, with aching legs and sore backs, and scratched and bruised arms, we broke out of the forest onto a high ledge and looked down at the lights of Cosalá. Above us, the sky was almost black, with no moon, peppered by billions of minute, icy stars. Below it, the tiny village winked, and looked oddly warm and comforting.
I was perspiring with the effort of the climb, but it was cold, close to freezing. We sat to rest for a moment, and had a drink from the flask of coffee and whiskey Sole had prepared for us. We both gazed down at the village in silence, in our own thoughts.
After a while, Njal asked, “What are their lives? How many people are there? Five, six thousand? They are ruled by the drug lords and the drugs trade. How do they live? In constant fear of the cartel lords. Who is going to set them free? How many of them are a part of it? How many can imagine something different?”
I took a swig. Felt the sweat chilling on my back and shuddered. “I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder, Njal, if Omega is the cause of all this evil, or just a symptom. Are we fighting against Man’s innate nature? Is there any point to what we are doing?”
He nodded slowly for a bit. “You know the answer to that, Lacklan. Just like I do. The point is the fight. As long as we are fighting, people will keep thinking that maybe there is another way.” He looked at me and grinned. “We are hippies, my friend. Hippies with guns.”
“Now we’re hippies? I t
hought we were Vikings.”
He stood and heaved the sack onto his shoulder again. “Vikings were just hippies with axes.”
And we set off down the track and into the valley.
Another half hour of descent, and two hours of steep climb, found us in a clearing, surrounded on three sides by dense pine forest, and on the fourth, bordered by huge, gray rocks. Beyond the rocks was a steep drop of maybe two hundred feet or more. It was hard to tell in the dark, but down there, in the blackness, a handful of lights winked and glimmered around a floodlit courtyard.
We dropped our bags in among the trees, made a simple, makeshift camp, and then returned to the rocks. There we fitted our night vision goggles and looked down into the eerie, green blackness below. There was no doubt, it was Zapata’s Castillo del Diablo.
It was set in a wide clearing, surrounded by forest on all sides, with only a narrow, winding track connecting it to the outside world. As well as the protection of the trees, it had a high perimeter fence that seemed to consist of a steel frame with wire mesh. I spoke quietly, “Two gets you twenty the fence is electrified.”
“No doubt.”
Inside the fence there was a space of about seven feet which was laid with rolls of barbed wire, and after that there was a perimeter wall eight feet high, made of solid concrete.
Njal grunted. “It’s not a ranch or a lab, it’s a fortress.”
Within the wall there were a number of buildings. At the center was a large, Spanish style villa, with corrugated tile roofs, a veranda and a central patio. Directly opposite the front porch, at about fifty or sixty paces, was the double gate that gave access to the compound: one gate in the wall, and the other in the perimeter fence. Beside the inner gate there was a guards’ hut and beside that I could see three military Jeeps parked up against the wall.
Behind the villa, at about seventy paces distance, was a large, rectangular prefab that must have been at least four thousand square feet, fifty by eighty, and over by the far wall there were two more, smaller prefabs; one looked like a garage with two roller blinds; the other had the look of a barracks. They and the villa were all floodlit by spots, and in their light we could see armed men with dogs patrolling the grounds. They weren’t in jeans and sweats, either. They were in military combat uniform, and they were well armed.
