“You have a great problem, Frank. You have never been able to hide your lean and hungry look,” Sholokoff said. “That’s because a black heart has no loyalty. You can only think in terms of your own needs. I do not believe your story about the girl in the cantina. Have you done something you shouldn’t? Do you want to confess to La Magdalena?”
“Why do you mock me, sir? I’ve done everything you wanted, including hanging up that cowboy preacher on a cross.” Frank’s features sharpened with resentment, his cheeks sinking and pooling with shadow. “I’m surprised you didn’t have us throw dice for his clothes.”
One of the men on the first floor opened the door that gave onto the stairwell. “Mr. Sholokoff, there’s a truck and an SUV out by them trees,” he called down the stairs. “The maid hauled freight like somebody stuck a cattle prod up her ass. I sent Toy Boy out.”
HACKBERRY AND PAM Tibbs and Jack Collins and Eladio and Jaime fanned out in the pecan trees as soon as they had exited their vehicles. The rain was blowing in a fine mist against a barn that stood between them, dimming out Sholokoff’s compound. Hackberry held the cut-down twelve-gauge with one hand, the barrel resting against his shoulder, and studied the main house through his binoculars. Pam was to his right, carrying the AR15 with her left forearm partially wrapped in the sling, a thirty-round magazine inserted in the frame. She had strung two pairs of handcuffs through the back of her cartridge belt and had stuffed a twenty-round magazine in the back pocket of her jeans.
The house was massive, the walls two feet thick, built of stucco that had been painted a mauve color, the flower beds bordered with bricks and packed with soil that was as dark as wet coffee grounds, the yellow and red hibiscus and climbing roses and Hong Kong orchids trembling with rain that dripped off the roof.
The position was bad; the angle of approach was bad; and there was too much light in the sky.
The back door opened, and an overweight Mexican woman came into the yard and walked toward a hogpen with a heavy bucket in her hand. Then she looked once over her shoulder and dropped the bucket, full of slops, onto the grass and ran past the barn into a cornfield.
“I think Jack’s inside contact just blew Dodge,” Hackberry said.
“Hack, this sucks,” Pam said.
“There’s nothing for it. We believe in what we’re doing,” he replied. “Those guys inside don’t.”
“You and I stay together. I don’t want any one of these bastards behind me,” she said. “They’re planning to kill us. I know it.”
Before Hackberry could answer, the back door opened a second time, and one of the biggest men he had ever seen came into the yard. His long-sleeve shirt looked like it was filled with concrete; his neck looked as stiff and hard as a fireplug; his hands were the size of skillets. But his face didn’t match the rest of him. It was too small for his head, as though it had been painted in miniature on his skin, his hair cut like a little boy’s. A MAC-10 hung from his right hand.
The man looked at the slop bucket on the grass and walked toward the barn, looking neither to the right or left, entering the open front doors and walking steadily toward the open rear doors that gave onto the pecan orchard.
Before he emerged from the barn, Pam Tibbs moved quickly out of the trees, throwing the AR15 to her shoulder, aiming it at the center of the large man’s face. “Drop your weapon,” she said. “If you don’t, I will kill you where you stand. Do it now. No, it’s not up for discussion. Do not have the thoughts you’ve having. Drop the weapon. No, don’t look at the others. Look at me and only me, and tell me I won’t kill you. I’m the only person on the planet preventing you from going straight to hell in the next five seconds. The first round will be in the mouth, the second one between your eyes. You will not know what hit you. Indicate what you want me to do.”
The man with the miniaturized face stared woodenly at her, his skin slick with rain, his chest rising and falling, the blood draining from his cheeks, mist blowing in his face. Pam closed her left eye and lifted her right elbow, her finger tightening inside the trigger guard. “Good-bye,” she said.
“I was just checking the yard. I got no beef with y’all,” the man said, letting the MAC-10 fall to the barn’s dirt floor.
“Thattaboy. Now on your face. Come on, handsome, do it. You’re making the smart choice,” she said.
As soon as he was on the ground, she handed her rifle to Hackberry and stripped a pair of handcuffs from the back of her belt and hooked up the man’s wrists, snicking the ratchets into the locking mechanisms. When she straightened up, she was breathing hard, her cheeks pooled with color. “They must know we’re here. What now?”
“We go through the cellar door. Let Collins and the Mexicans handle the upstairs,” Hackberry said.
She took the assault rifle from Hackberry’s hands and wet her lips. She looked over her shoulder to see where Collins and the two Mexicans were. Collins was talking to the Mexicans, all three of their heads bent together. Her breath was still coming short in her chest. “Hack, don’t let those guys get behind us. Listen to me on this,” she said.
“We’re going to be all right.”
“Saying it doesn’t make it true.”
“The way you took that guy down was beautiful. You’re my champ, kid.”
“Yeah, and this whole deal still sucks, and you’d better not call me kid again,” she said.
NOT ONLY HAD the two visual screens inside Jack’s head gone on autopilot and red alert, they had also gone out of control. On one screen, Jack had watched the female deputy disarm, take down, and cuff a giant of a man without breaking a sweat, patronizing him while she did it. That was more than impressive. Six like her could probably wipe out the Taliban, he thought. In fact, he felt a stirring in his loins that made him uncomfortable, not unlike a wind blowing on a dead fire and fanning to life a couple of hot coals hiding among the ashes. Rid yourself of impure thoughts, he told himself. Do not be beguiled by a painted mouth at a time like this. In spite of his self-admonition, he could not completely take his eyes off the female deputy.
Conversely, on the other screen were images that continued to disturb and anger him, namely Eladio and Jaime trading glances whenever they thought he wasn’t looking, both of them as transparent as errant children, both of them armed with Uzis.
“Through the kitchen, boss?” Eladio said.
“No, we’re going in through the patio,” Jack said.
“The kitchen is wide-open, boss,” Eladio said. “The big man with a child’s face left it open.”
“No, the French doors take us into the dining room, then down the stairs to the cellar,” Jack said. “You two will go ahead of me.”
“That’s not your usual method, Señor Jack,” Eladio said. “You are always our leader. No weapon does damage like your Thompson loaded with a full drum. It is magnificent to behold.”
“We’re involved in a military action here. We’re splitting our forces and catching our enemy in a pincer movement,” Jack said. “You know what that is, don’t you?”
“No, what is it?” Eladio asked.
“The Germans learned it from Stonewall Jackson. They put their panzers on their flanks, just like Jackson put Jeb Stuart’s cavalry on his. You boys are family. You think Stonewall Jackson wouldn’t take care of his boys?”
“What is this about Germans and rock walls? This sounds like bullshit,” Jaime said.
“Come on, boys, let’s have some fun. While the sheriff and his deputy draw everybody into the cellar, we’re going to put hair on the walls.”
“The gringos are not to be trusted, Señor Jack,” Eladio said. “The old one dotes on his puta. She has a foul mouth and looks at us with contempt. When they get what they want, they will dispose of us.”
“The sheriff is a straight shooter. But that’s also his great weakness,” Jack said.
“He shoots straight? Shooting straight doesn’t have nozzing to do with this discussion. You speak in nozzing but riddles,” Jaime said.
“‘Nozzing’? Son, you obviously have a speech defect,” Jack said. “When we get back to the States, I’m going to take you to a speech therapist, and we’ll cure this problem once and for all. In the meantime, Eladio, could I see your cell phone?”
“What you want it for, boss?”
“To make sure we have service here. It’s always good to be prepared,” Jack replied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THROUGH THE BARS in his cell, Krill could see the rain blowing on the fields and the side of the house, and the hills that looked like giant white caterpillars disappearing inside it. Mike stood in the middle of the room next to the Asian woman, who was still suspended from a rafter. Mike was opening and closing his hands, his wide-set eyes turned upward at the sound of feet overhead.
“I am sorry I caused you this trouble, hombre,” Krill said. “I have been a soldier in the service of others, just as you are. We take orders from little men who never have to kill or die in battle themselves.”
“You talk too much,” Mike said.
“Give the woman some water. She’s done nothing to deserve what has been done to her.”
Mike’s attention was fixed on the sound of boots moving back and forth on the floor upstairs, and he could not be distracted. His blond hair was long and oiled and hung in strings over the tops of his ears. His eyes were so widely spaced, they looked as though they had been removed from his face and stitched back in the wrong place. He was a man to whom the fates had not been kind, Krill thought.
“Give the woman some water, and I’ll give you back the spoon,” Krill said. “Then Frank will not be able to use you as his scapegoat any longer.”
“Where is it?” Mike asked.
“In the chemical toilet. Where else?”
“Get it out.”
“You have to give the woman some water.”
Mike walked toward the bars. “You’re going to pay a big price if I have to come inside that cell.”
“I am not putting my hand in a toilet for you. I am sorry, señor.”
“Where are your shoes?”
“They hurt my feet. I took them off.”
“Get back against the wall.”
“What for, señor? I am not a threat to you.”
Mike stepped closer to the bars. “Get back against the wall, turn around, and lean on it. I’m coming in.” With a flick of his right hand, he whipped a telescopic steel baton to its full length.
“Señor, you’re not going to use that on me, are you?” Krill said.
“Get back against the wall!”
The woman, still hanging by her arms, lifted her head from her chest and parted her lips. “Give me some water,” she said.
Mike looked over his shoulder at her. “Be quiet,” he said.
“I need some water,” she said.
“You did this to yourself, lady. I tried to be nice to y’all, and this is what I got. Now close your mouth.” Mike turned back to Krill. “You move your ass to the back of the cell. Spread your legs and lean on your hands. Don’t tell me you don’t know the drill.”
“Please give me water,” the woman said.
Mike turned around again, his hand gripped tightly on the foam-wrapped handle of the expandable baton. “I’ve had it with you, lady. You open your mouth one more—”
From the back of his waistband, Krill pulled loose the shoestrings that he had removed from his running shoes and braided into a garrote. He flipped the garrote over Mike’s head and jerked it tight around his throat and squeezed Mike’s head between the bars, pulling backward with all his weight, the garrote sinking deep into the neck, closing the windpipe and carotid artery and shutting off the flow of blood to the brain. Mike tried to work his nails under the garrote while veins bloomed all over his neck, not unlike cracks in pottery. Krill pulled tighter as Mike slipped down the bars to the floor. Krill grabbed Mike by the back of his shirt so he would not roll away from the cell once he was on the floor.
Krill got down on his knees and reached through the bars and slipped his fingers into the dead man’s shirt pockets but found nothing. With two hands, he turned him over so that the dead man faced the cell, his eyes half-lidded as though he had been shaken from a deep sleep. Krill got his hand into the man’s left pocket and found a folding single-bladed knife and a wad of Mexican currency and a penlight and a betting receipt from a racetrack. In the other pocket was a three-inch iron key.
Krill was trembling as he rose to his feet and extended his arm through the bars and inverted the key and inserted it into the lock. The key was an old one, and he twisted it slowly so as not to break it off inside the mechanism. He felt the tumblers turn and click into place and the tongue of the lock recede into the door and scrape free of the jamb. He shoved the door open, pushing aside Mike’s body.
“Hold on, Magdalena,” Krill said. “You are a great woman, a master of distraction, the greatest woman I have ever known. I will get you down right now. I never could have done this without you. You were magnificent.”
“Don’t talk,” she said, her lips caked, her voice hoarse. “His right ankle. You must hurry.”
“What about his ankle?”
The color was gone from her face. “He has a gun,” she said. “They’re moving around upstairs. Hurry.”
“No, we get you down first,” Krill said. He fitted his left arm around her waist and lifted her weight against him, then sawed through the pieces of clothesline that held her wrists to the rafter. When she fell against him, her cheek and hair touched his face, and he thought he smelled an odor like seawater on her skin.
“The holster is Velcro-strapped to his right ankle,” she said. “Take the pistol from the holster and give it to me.”
“You are a woman of peace, Magdalena,” he said. “You have no business with guns.”
“Don’t talk in an unctuous and foolish manner,” she replied. “A shadow just went past the window. Please do not waste time talking. The men upstairs will show us no mercy.”
Krill pulled up the right pant leg of the dead man and removed an Airweight .38 from the black holster strapped to his ankle. The woman took it from Krill’s hand just as he heard an upstairs door crash open and glass breaking and a burst of machine-gun fire ripping through walls and doors.
“You have to live for your children, Antonio,” the woman said. “You have to tell others what happened to them. From this point, you live among the children of light. You become one with them. Do you understand me?”
“I think I do,” Krill said.
“No, say it.”
“I understand, Magdalena. And I will keep my word and do as you have said,” he replied.
JACK COLLINS PUSHED Eladio and Jaime ahead of him, through the patio door and into the dining room, both of them resisting and looking back at him anxiously. “Get to it, the pair of you,” Jack said. “You look back at me again, you’ll discover another side to my nature. You kill everything that moves on this floor.”
“We are campesinos, Señor Jack,” Eladio said. “We do not know tactics. We do not even know what we are doing here. What is the profit in rescuing a Chinese woman who teaches superstition to our people?”
Jack stiff-armed him between the shoulder blades, pushing him forward through the dining room, knocking over a heavy antique chair, breaking the crystal ware on a serving table. The first of Sholokoff’s men to come out of the hallway was bare-chested, his shoulders and lats stippled with body hair, an automatic in his left hand. He raised the automatic straight out in front of him, his face averted, as though staring into a cold wind and a magic wand could protect him from its influence. At the same time, Eladio shouted out, “Not me, hombre! Do not shoot. I am not one of them! This is a great mistake.”
Jack fired on Sholokoff’s man, a burst of no more than seven or eight rounds that blew away the man’s fingers from his grip on the automatic and stitched his chest and destroyed his jaw.
Eladio stared in horror at the man crashed ag
ainst the wall and fell to the floor. Then he stared at Jack, his eyes seeming to search in space for the right words to use. “I froze. You saved my life, Señor Jack. We must prepare to attack the others,” he said. “They’re hiding back in the hallway. I can hear them.”
“Your fear got the best of you, Eladio,” Jack said. “This isn’t like gunning down a bunch of teenagers at a birthday party, is it?”
“Yes, I was very afraid. I was speaking insane words.”
“I wouldn’t say that. You always knew how to cover your bets.”
“Let us now go forward, Señor Jack. Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Just rest easy a second,” Jack said. With one hand holding the Thompson and the other holding Eladio’s cell phone, Jack pressed the redial number with his thumb. In the back of the house, a cell phone rang.
“You would think your bud would have enough sense to silence his phone,” Jack said. “That’s the trouble with treacherous people. Most of them cain’t think their way out of a paper sack. Your man in there sold out Sholokoff, just like you sold out me.”
“I don’t understand,” Eladio said.
“Your bud in there didn’t tell Sholokoff we were coming. Otherwise, Sholokoff would have set up an ambush. Oh, here’s your phone back.”
Jack tossed the cell phone to Eladio. When Eladio raised his free hand to catch it, Jack lowered the barrel of the Thompson and fired directly into Eladio’s chest, the shell casings bouncing off the furniture and rolling across the hardwood floor.
“Señor Collins, I do not know what is happening here,” Jaime said. “Why are you killing my cousin? Why are you turning your gun on your own people? We came here to fight your enemies.”
“You’re not my people, son,” Jack said. “Turn around and walk into the hallway.”
“No, I cannot do that.”
“Why is that, Jaime? You don’t trust your compadres in there?”
“These are not my friends. You are a deranged man. You’ve killed Eladio. You speak craziness all the time, and now your craziness has killed my cousin.”