Mapuche (41 page)

Rubén was breathing unevenly. He wiped the blade on the dead man's jacket, left the body behind the pile of logs, and crawled back to Anita, his adrenaline pumping full tilt: terrible cries were heard coming from the house.

The blonde was peering through the foliage, watching for him to return.

“Well?”

“There are a dozen of them. You're going to go behind,” he told her. “Go around the house through the jungle and be ready. How many cartridge clips do you have?”

“Three,” she replied.

“O.K. As soon as you hear the first shots, attack them from behind and shoot into the house.”

Anita grimaced.

“Is that it, your plan?”

“They're torturing her,” Rubén growled. “Create a diversion, I'll take care of the rest.”

“Don't you want to kiss me before I die?” Anita asked.

“You won't die.”

“Just in case.”

She smiled with all her strength but her hands were trembling. Rubén kissed her on the lips.

“You're not going to die, O.K.?”

“O.K. What if they kill you?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Then we'll have failed completely.”

The blonde with the asymmetrical face blew away her hair. The stress had weakened her muscles; her uniform was soaked with sweat. Rubén looked at his watch.

“You've got five minutes,
querida
.”

Anita stifled the fear that was paralyzing her, gave the man she loved one last look, and without another word took off stealthily.

Rubén sneaked up on the house. The guards seemed to be talking on the shady terrace. The pines were too far away from the house for him to be able to hide behind trunks or thickets. Anita would have a better chance behind the house—the jungle probably extended as far as the other bank, where the sea-plane was waiting. Three minutes had passed. A new scream came from the left wing of the house, drowning out the buzzing of the insects. Rubén took a firmer grip on the handle of his revolver. At least ten armed men; attacking the house in broad daylight was madness.

Sitting on a garden chair, Gómez was watching the dead branches float by, his submachine gun on his lap. The screams in the bedroom had stopped—the prisoners were having no fun. Pina left to listen to the radio inside. They were signaling to each other through the French doors—yeah, they wanted to get out of this Goddamned mosquito nest. Gómez was settling back on his folding chair when splinters of wood exploded a few inches from his head. An explosion that came from the left. He jumped up, pointed his automatic and retreated toward the house—fuck, they were being fired on! and received the impact right in the chest.

Pina sprayed the yard with bullets as he sounded the alarm. Other shots now crackled, coming from the other side of the house. They were surrounded. Parise was the first to burst into the kitchen, and gave curt orders to his men who rushed out of the bedroom.

“Get a move on, for God's sake!”

El Picador and El Toro posted themselves at the windows and fired a few shots at random while Parise was evacuating the general toward the bathroom. El Toro was swearing between his teeth, crouched down under the window—he hadn't even had time to stick it to the Indian woman. He'd left her there with her pussy bare, his dick still hard. Etcheverry looked out the little window in the vestibule and saw the silhouette of a cop a dozen yards away, hiding behind the oak that bordered the house. The shots she was firing were passing through the windows and the door and whistling into the kitchen. A lethal trajectory. Pina groaned with pain and bent over his thigh, which was spurting scarlet blood. Parise assessed the situation. The cop was going to shoot them like rabbits if they went out the back door. They had to try to make a counterattack on the east side. Etcheverry hunched down and signaled to the bald man who was firing salvos haphazardly, his body braced under the window. The cop stopped firing for an instant. Parise snorted. She was reloading.

“
Vamos!
” he yelled to his men. “
Vamos!
”

El Toro and his buddy burst out the door that gave on the yard. They were about to riddle the great oak with the submachine gun when they saw something that stopped them cold. The policewoman was kneeling on the ground, her hands behind her neck, and Del Piro's Glock was pressed against her blond hair. The pilot had taken her from behind.

Rubén had run toward the west wing of the house as soon as the firing started. He reached the French doors without being fired on, broke the lock with a kick, swept aside the rods and curtains, and pointed his Colt around the room, his brain white-hot. First he saw Miguel's body, a strange
banderilla
stuck in his back, and then Jana, spread-eagled on the table. She was naked, her face smeared with blood, but alive.

“Rubén . . . ”

Her nose was broken, her body was sticky, but she was alive. He took out his knife and, keeping his revolver pointed at the door and an eye on the corridor, he cut her bonds with four furious slashes that set her free. The explosions in the adjoining rooms had stopped; Rubén grabbed Jana like a bouquet of fear, and put her on her feet.

“Can you run?”

Her limbs were stiff and numb, and she could hardly stand up.

“Yes . . . Yes.”

“Get going, then,” he whispered. “Go quickly.”

Their hearts were beating as if they were at the muzzle of a gun. A head appeared in the hall, at the corner of the wall next to the torture chamber: Dr. Fillol, obviously disoriented by the gun battle.

“Look out!” a voice behind him shouted.

Fillol immediately put his hand to his mouth, but he no longer had a mouth, half his lower jaw had been torn away by the Colt's bullet, pulverizing his teeth. His finger on the trigger, Rubén pushed Jana toward the broken-in door.

“There's a boat three hundred yards away, on the shore,” he told her feverishly. “Hurry, I'll meet you there.”

Jana was naked, had no weapon, and a stream of blood was flowing from her broken nose. Rubén picked up her jumpsuit and T-shirt, which were lying on the floor, and put them in her hands.

“Damn it, Jana, GET OUT OF HERE!”

A shot was fired near them that perforated the wall. The Mapuche met his electric glance one more time, then disappeared through the curtains that a draft was blowing inward. Rubén fired three times into the hall to cover her escape, saw Jana running like a fawn through the pines, and regained hope. A smell of gunpowder hovered in the room. He backed up over the glass fragments and was getting ready to run toward the yard himself when a woman's scream stopped him.

“Rubén! Rubén!”

It was Anita's voice.

“Drop your gun,” thundered a voice from the hall. “Drop your gun or I'll snuff her!”

The killers had taken her hostage. The detective swore between his teeth, his hand clutching the Colt .45. One of them was trying to negotiate while the others went around the house. No more cover, no way out: it was a matter of seconds.

“Drop your gun or I'll shoot her!” the voice repeated.

Etcheverry appeared at the corner of the hall, protected by his human shield. Anita raised her arms, terrified, the Glock's barrel against her temple.

“I'll blow off her head!” Etcheverry threatened. He moved forward a few feet, his pistol still pressed against her skull. “Drop your gun, do you hear me, Calderón?”

The killer was a good six inches taller than Anita. The others were hiding behind the wall, close to the bathroom. Rubén gripped his gun—it was too late to escape, he heard footsteps approaching behind him, at least two men who were now blocking any retreat. He leaped toward the hall, met in a fraction of a second the frightened eyes of his childhood friend, and shot her at point-blank range.

Hit hard, Anita fell back against Etcheverry, who still had his finger on the trigger. A fatal second for looking forward. The .45's bullet had passed through the blonde's shoulder, emerged above her scapula, and continued its deadly course: it hit Etcheverry right in the heart. A look of surprise crossed his face; he heaved a last sign as the cop collapsed at his feet and slipped with her down the wall of corridor. Running up behind, Parise fired from the debris of the French doors. Rubén jumped over the bodies on the floor, threw himself against the opposite wall, and emptied his clip on the moving targets. Fillol, reeling near the kitchen and holding the remains of his jaw, was slammed into the sink. Ardiles's bodyguard, hit in the stomach, sprayed the floor with his submachine gun. Splinters of bone flew up in a cloud of dust; hugging the bathroom wall, Pina was dragging his leg—Anita had hit him a little earlier. Rubén fired into the chaos: the last bullet in the .45 fractured the arch of the killer's eyebrows. Adrenaline was burning in Rubén's veins. He stood up, drew his knife, and sensed danger on his right. He looked for the enemy and in an instant located him at ten o'clock and drove the blade home in a single movement. General Ardiles was waiting for him near the bathroom, a Browning in his hand: the knife went into his arm all the way to the bone.

Rubén was pulling out the blade, his eyes shining with hate, when he was hit with fifty thousand volts.

The Taser XREP could shoot small paralyzing cartridges up to fifty yards. At close range, it could cause cardiac arrest. Calderón had a strong heart. He was writhing on the floor littered with bodies, his brain fried by the electric shock. Parise sniffed, the weapon in his hand. Del Piro was moving toward him as if he were crossing a minefield.

“Catch the girl,” he told the pilot. “Liquidate her and meet us at the seaplane. El Toro, you secure the area. You,” he said, turning to his buddy, “take care of Calderón and get all you can out of him. You've got ten minutes. I'll deal with the general.”

“O.K., boss!”

The smell of gunpowder was diminishing in the house. The soles of the killers' shoes crackled on the glass shards and cartridge casings lying everywhere. El Picador dragged Calderón's stunned body toward the bedroom while Parise assessed the damage. Six men were down, one on the terrace, four in the hall, another in the kitchen. Dead or dying. Streaks of blood and bits of flesh speckled one corner of the door and the walls, which were perforated by bullets. Etcheverry was no longer moving, collapsed against the wooden interior wall. On the other hand, the policewoman accompanying Calderón was still breathing: she was moaning in the middle of the hall, semi-conscious, with a dark hole over her heart. Parise pushed away the weapons on the floor, stepped over the bodies, and reached Ardiles, who was lying in the bathroom doorway, pale as a sheet.

“Will you be all right, General?”

Ardiles had a nasty wound in his forearm, which he was hugging to him as if to protect it.

“No,” he said, his eyes bloodshot. “No . . . ”

The blade had broken the bone. Parise passed his hand over his sweating face and put away his Taser. Ardiles was losing blood, and his friend the doctor was blowing bubbles near the sink, his jaw lying among the glass fragments.

“I'm going to patch that up,” Parise said.

He dug through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and found bandages and disinfectant. He had to cope with the most pressing things first, then get rid of the bodies, and take off before anyone else got there. Calderón had tracked them to the house in the delta, at least one policewoman knew about it, and perhaps others did as well. They had to throw the bodies in the river, and maybe set the house on fire. The seaplane was on the other side of the river, five minutes' walk away. The old general was grimacing as he cleaned the wound.

“You've got to go back to the plane as soon as possible, sir,” Parise told him as he opened up the bandages. “You mustn't stay here.”

The cut was clean. The old man was still bleeding and he was showing signs of weakness.

“Are you going to be able to do this?”

“Yes . . . Yes.”

“You'll need stitches. We'll take care of that at the monastery, not before, I'm afraid.”

“Where is Dr. Fillol?” Ardiles asked.

“Sorry, sir. He was killed in the firefight.”

Parise put a bandage on the wound and attached it to the general's arm with adhesive tape. Ardiles gritted his teeth; all he was thinking about was getting out of this house. El Toro returned from his tour of inspection, his clothes covered with thorns and pollen.

“I found an old man hiding in a boat, not far down the bank!” he reported. “He's the one who brought Calderón and the cop here. He told me they were alone,” the fat man added, as he caught his breath. “If there were other cops, they'd be here!”

“O.K. What about the guy in the boat?”

“Sleeping with the fishes.”

Parise grasped his superior's good elbow to help him get up.

“O.K.,” he said. “Go see about your buddy while I take the general to the seaplane. Make Calderón tell us everything he knows and then kill him. We'll meet at the dock in ten minutes. Get going!”

El Toro nodded mechanically, stepped over Etcheverry's body, and disappeared toward the bedroom. Parise supported Ardiles, his red polo shirt soaked with blood.

“Can you walk?”

“Yes,” the general said with annoyance.

“In that case, go ahead. I'll meet you there.”

He let the general make his way past the dead men, checked his Glock's clip, and turned to the blonde lying on the floor.

Anita was regaining consciousness after the chaos of the firefight. Rubén's bullet had passed through her without hitting any vital organ, but a sharp pain was radiating from her shoulder. The hall where she was lying stank of hemoglobin and gunpowder, and a great chill was invading her numbed body. She tried to get up but the hydrostatic shock had nailed her to the floor. She shuddered when she saw the bald giant coming toward her. An ugly face and a feeling of emptiness that urged her to act. Anita stretched out her right arm, looking for a weapon, but found nothing but blood and dust. Parise briefly sized up the blonde lying at his feet.