Crossing the Line (35 page)

THIRTY-SEVEN

S
omeone was tapping on the side of the Pig.

When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but blinding white light. Once again—for the second night in a row—I woke up to something that was far too bright for dawn. For a moment I thought maybe it was Kevin or Tony, screwing around to get even with me for scaring the hell out of them around the fire. But no, they wouldn’t do something like that. They didn’t have that kind of mischief in them.

It had to be the Mexican cops coming back to shake us down again.
Bastards.
Or maybe they’d told some of their cop buddies where to find us, told them that the pickings were easy and the girls were pretty in the hippie climbers’ camp. They would be armed, but they wouldn’t be drawing down. I’d already seen that Mexican cops in the Border Corridor were arrogant, sloppy, and dirty. They wouldn’t be expecting a hippie climber to pull a sawed-off shotgun and jam it in their faces.

I was operating on autopilot. And it was Roberto who’d done the programming.

Mouth open, eyes squinted against the light, I raised my head and felt Lydia’s dreadlocks slide off my neck. The light was a flashlight. Someone was holding it right in my face, his arm inside the open side window of the Pig. Lydia twitched in her sleep. She was half on top of me. As gently as possible, I nudged her off and to one side in the narrow confines of the Pig’s cargo area. She murmured something but didn’t jerk awake.

The light stayed in my face, blinding me. I shook my head and made a sleepy, confused noise. Then I snatched for it with my left hand while twisting around to reach under the driver’s seat with my right. I caught the flashlight a second before I found the pistol grip of the shotgun. I shoved the light away, banging the arm that was holding it against the side of the window so that whoever was holding it would have to let go. The shotgun snagged under the seat as I tried to wrench it up.

“Eh eh eh,” a voice said, too calmly. “Don’t do it, my friend.”

Something cold and metallic was pressed into the hollow of my throat. Smelling oil and cordite, I recognized the object. I also recognized the voice.

Oh shit.

A rush of fear shot through my veins and into each and every capillary.

“How are you, my friend? Last time I saw you, we were under the earth. You were supposed to stay there,” Zafado said in Spanish.

The flashlight was withdrawn through the window when I let go of it, but its beam was still directed in my face. The cold muzzle of the gun remained pressed into my neck. Lydia was moving now, waking up.

“Hey,” she said irritably. “Hey, man. What’s with the light?” She made as if to snuggle up to me again, grasping at me with her legs and arms.

Before I could say anything, she was ripped off me. The sleeping bag that had covered us was torn off, too. Someone near the open tailgate had grabbed her by the ankles and jerked her right out of the truck. Her fingers grabbed without purchase at my legs as she went. I heard her hit the stony ground with a thump and a curse.

So there was someone else. At least one other person. I couldn’t risk an attempt to grab the gun at my neck before it fired. I couldn’t risk a fight like this, confined in the cramped cargo space of the Pig, against multiple assailants and with innocents around.

I let go of the shotgun. It was still trapped under the seat.
I should have slept with it against my thigh. Stupid
. The fear was oozing out of me in the form of a chilling sweat. I held both hands in front of my face to shield it from the light.

“That’s good. Now come out, come out, my friend. Real slow, or your girlfriend might get hurt.”

I scooted out of the open back end of the truck. The air outside raised goose bumps on my naked flesh, every tiny hair standing on end.

Three men stood in the moonlight. Zafado, holding the flashlight in one hand and his too-familiar chrome automatic in the other, was grinning through his large, crooked teeth. A big man whose name I didn’t know was there, too. A gangbanger, shaved head and all, but older than the others, with an obvious pedigree of prison bulk. Bruto’s replacement, I guessed. He was dragging Lydia to her feet with an arm around her neck.

Standing to one side and looking amused was El Doctor, Jesús Hidalgo.

“
Buenas noches,
Officer Burns,” he crowed in a singsong voice. “My lawyer informed you not to try and contact me, did he not? And yet here you are, just a few miles from my home. Shame on you. I was most surprised to learn from my police friends that a man who looked like you was in the neighborhood.”

He had a machete that he held comfortably at his side. He looked very composed and comfortable. Very pleased with himself. His wavy hair was combed, his mustache well-brushed. He was wearing a black polo shirt and khaki pants, looking quite preppy for a night in the mountains. I remembered how Roberto had described finding him at over twenty thousand feet on Aconcagua—in a Ralph Lauren down jacket and untreated leather boots.

“So my
capitáns
and I had a talk,” he continued. “We thought maybe we should take an evening drive over the hills and see who this fellow was, this man who when described seemed a lot like someone who wasn’t supposed to come near me. I would have liked to have brought Bruto, but of course you killed him. That was a shame. He was a loyal friend. Shorty I wasn’t so sad about. He was a perverted little monster. Useful, though. But Bruto, now he was a good man.”

“A good man,” Zafado echoed. “He was my friend too.”

I said nothing. The gangbanger had gotten Lydia to her feet. One bulging bicep was cinched against her throat. With his other hand he was groping up under her oversized T-shirt, the only thing she had on. The fear and rage and helplessness made me feel faint.

But Hidalgo’s words kept me on my feet.

“So how is your brother? I understand he is still in the hospital, where he is being protected by an aged U.S. Marshal and a young Chinese woman. It doesn’t seem that the Americans are taking his security very seriously. Is his condition as grave as I fear?”

I still said nothing. But I looked to Lydia, and saw that her mouth was open in a silent scream as the banger’s free hand moved over her breasts, kneading them roughly. He was murmuring to her with his mouth pressed against her ear.

Hidalgo followed my gaze.

“Tell me, who is your young friend? This almost nude young lady, and you here, entirely nude yourself. Shame on you, Officer Burns. This is not that reporter who lives in Denver. I’ve had someone watching her. Just last night she was in Denver, being watched by a man who looks like an overweight bulldog.”

Zafado glanced at Lydia, too, and snorted at what his fellow
capitán
was doing. Turning back to me, he said, “Hippies. You lie with dogs, my friend, you will get fleas.” He held the light on the mark Lydia had left on my throat. “Or maybe rabies. Then we have to put you down. Like a dog, no?”

I couldn’t believe I’d put Lydia and her friends in this position. Just as I had allowed Roberto to be sacrificed. What I felt was horror, and, as Hidalgo had said, shame. No one had hurt me yet, but what I felt was something like a brutal blow to the gut. I finally managed to speak.

“Let her go. She doesn’t know anything.”

Hidalgo chuckled. Zafado joined in. The big banger was too busy cooing in Lydia’s ear. He’d pulled her shirt up almost all the way to her neck.

A zipper tore open a little distance away. Kevin and Barb crawled out of the tent that was next to the van. Tony was walking up the hill from the other tent. All three of the desert rats were bleary-eyed and stumbling, not understanding what was taking place by the back of my truck.

“What’s going on?” Kevin called, coming closer. “Who are these guys?”

Hidalgo answered him in English. “Stay right there, young man. The three of you will stay where you are, please.”

They did, standing as still as statues on the dirt road as they took in what was happening. Me naked, with the strangers and Lydia—also naked—standing by the back of the van. Zafado’s gun was pointed at my face; next to him stood the urbane-looking man with a machete who had turned to talk to them, and the big, ugly banger with his arms wrapped around and still moving over Lydia’s bare skin.

“Let them go,” I insisted, to more chuckles. “All of them.”

Hidalgo turned back to me to explain what was so funny.

“You think I’m going to harm a bunch of dirty children who are no threat to me?” he said in Spanish.

Yeah, actually I did. That was his signature.

“What kind of man do you think I am?” he asked with mock indignation. He turned again to Kevin, Tony, and Barb while Zafado remained facing me with the gun pointed at my face.

“Do you know this man’s name?” Hidalgo asked them in English.

“Robert,” Tony mumbled.

“What did you say?”

“Robert!” Barb half shouted. She was trembling, holding on to Kevin’s arm with both of her hands. She looked like she might fall down without it. I knew how she felt. But I had nothing to hold on to.

Hidalgo laughed. Once again, Zafado joined in. The banger was too busy.

Hidalgo said, “No? Really? Robert. That is an interesting name. In Spanish we say Roberto. I once knew a man by that name. Where is your friend Robert from?”

“Never told us,” Tony mumbled. “And he’s not our friend.”

“We just met him here the other night,” Kevin said. “Never seen him before until then.”

“Very good,” Hidalgo said. “Then all you must know about him is that he is a very bad man. Forget you ever met him. Now you go. All of you. Bye-bye.”

“Keep the girls,” the banger protested suddenly, his hand now between Lydia’s legs. “We can have some fun with them.”

Hidalgo shook his head, a little reluctantly. In Spanish he said, “We will have our fun with this man here, Roberto, as he now calls himself. We can pretend we once again have our hands on the real Roberto. Now let go of that young lady. She has nothing to do with our business.”

The banger hesitated then let go, scowling. Lydia broke away from him and staggered toward her friends. I saw that her eyes were very wide before her back was to me. Opened in a way and to a degree that she might not be able to ever properly close them again. She’d seen and felt things that weren’t so innocent. But then I suspected she’d known them before, and had overcome it. This time, though, maybe not.

Kevin grabbed her as she half fell into him. He yanked her shirt down over her buttocks.

“Bye-bye,” Hidalgo said again to the desert rats.

When they didn’t move, he flapped his hands at them, motioning them into the van. While a little feminine, it was a particularly effective gesture because of the machete. The blade flashed in the moonlight. And this just hours after I’d told them about
la corbata.

Then they moved as one, in a sudden leap toward the jacked-up van. There was a brief Three Stooges rush into it. When they finally got themselves sorted out, Lydia was in the driver’s seat. I hoped she could drive it—the van was so big and she was so small. They needed to get out of here before Hidalgo changed his mind. Before the banger discovered he had some free time on his hands and that the night was still young. That maybe catching up to them before they reached the highway would be a good idea.

I almost hoped they’d take their time with me.

The engine cranked to life and the rear lights burned red as Lydia managed to flip on the headlights. I felt myself painted crimson by their glow. The van was already facing away from us, and she would have a clear shot down the road. There was a click as the van was put into gear. The engine revved and the tires crackled forward.

Hidalgo turned back to me.

“Now it is just us. Old friends, yes? Connected through your brother. Too bad he’s going to die, by the way. I was sorry to have to cut his throat after he took that great fall. You see, I’m only a simple businessman. For the sake of business, I sometimes have to do things that I’m not always happy about.”

But his grin gave the lie to his words. He was mocking me. For fun. The red taillights made him and his
capitáns
look like devils. They glowed brighter when the van bucked twice and died.

Slightly irritated, Hidalgo turned around. The banger turned, too, looking hopeful. Zafado kept his eyes and his gun trained on me.

The engine cranked and caught again. The red glow dimmed as what had to be a shaking foot was taken off the brake. Hidalgo turned back to me.

He gestured again with the machete, this time tapping the flat of the blade against the upper part of his chest.

“Okay, now, Antonio or Roberto or whoever you want to be. Do you know how to tie your own necktie? Many men do not, I’m afraid. I will have to show you.” Then to Zafado, whose gun was still pointed at my face, “Shoot him in the groin. That way he won’t struggle too much.”

The van clicked into gear again.
Go, go
. Then white lights—the reverse lights—came on.
Shit,
I thought.
She can’t drive it. She doesn’t even know how to put it in gear. They aren’t going to get out of here.

The van lunged backward. It was so sudden, so surprising, and so fast that I didn’t even leap out of the way. I just stood there, frozen, as the engine roared and the big rear end that was plastered with stickers slammed toward me.

As if in slow motion, Hidalgo’s head snapped back when the bumper hit the back of his legs. His head smacked into the window, spiderwebbing the glass. Zafado took it on the shoulder. The banger, who was still turned hopefully toward the van, took the impact in the face and chest. Then Hidalgo flew into me and we both sprawled into the back of the Pig.

In the glow of the reverse lights, still advancing, I saw Zafado and the banger fly by, one on each side. The lights blazed red as the brakes were stomped. Tires skidded on dirt and rock. The bumper was on my shins, but just touching, not breaking.

For a moment I was too shocked to comprehend what had just happened. How the tables had suddenly been turned. Jesús Hidalgo was groaning in my arms, where Lydia had been ten minutes earlier. But his were definitely not groans of pleasure. The tailpipe was cutting into my ankle, the pain lighting me up with something like exhilaration.