Near Death (35 page)

Vasquez loudly groused to Cyrus that he didn’t like the way things were progressing. “I’m not interested in a long affair,” he grumbled and instructed the pilot to land in a field near the factory.

Vasquez ordered his men to hold fire and, megaphone in hand, boomed out from behind one of the half-tracks, “This
is Colonel Vasquez of the Federal Police! You are completely surrounded. Throw your weapons through the windows and start coming out with your hands above your heads. Otherwise you’ll be killed. You have one minute.”

One of the security guards pulled a female employee over to a blown-out office window and held a gun to her head. “Get out of here!” he screamed. “We’ll kill everyone, starting with the women!”

“Don’t be crazy!” Vasquez replied through his megaphone. “Give up and it’ll go better for you.”

The gunman disappeared.

“How are you going to play it?” Cyrus asked the sweating Vasquez.

“If they don’t surrender in one minute, we’ll use tear gas and we’ll take the place. I don’t want to get into a standoff.”

In the lull, Miguel slumped onto the floor behind the desk of his bombed-out office and absently picked pieces of glass from his hand. No one could hear it but he was saying over and over, “Why did I start this? Why did I do it?”

Vasquez followed the sweeping second hand of his watch and with fifteen seconds to go said to Cyrus, “This is not a legitimate hostage situation. All the people in there are voluntary employees. Let’s end this.”

“This is your turf, Colonel,” Cyrus said.

In response to the tear gas fusillade, a handful of people ran out of the building and were captured. Vasquez ordered a full assault. His men donned gas masks and stormed the building. In the battle that followed, almost forty civilians and three policemen were killed before the operation was declared successful by Vasquez’s squadron lieutenant.

“Come on,” Vasquez, told Cyrus. “Let’s have a look.”

They went in through the rear. Inside, Cyrus blinked at the sight and caustic smells of carnage. Shot-down and blown-up bodies littered the factory floor. Medics ran among the survivors doing triage. Ruptured reactor vessels released slurry onto the floor and shoes and clothing were stained with a pasty mix of chemicals and blood.

One of the DEA agents came over, lowered his assault rifle and clapped Cyrus on the back.

“Do we have Cifuentes?” Cyrus asked him.

“I don’t know. There’s a shitload of bodies.”

Cyrus and Vasquez made their way to the front of the building, their guns held straight out before them, tactically. Outside one of the offices they heard a low voice, a man softly praying. Vasquez put his finger to his lips and tip-toed inside.

Cyrus came in behind.

A young man with a fleshy face and neat beard was cowering against the back wall behind a desk. He was pointing a gun at them, his hands violently shaking.

“Miguel Cifuentes,” Vasquez said in English. “Put the weapon down. You’re under arrest.”

“No!” Cifuentes exclaimed like a petulant child. “I don’t want to be arrested.”

“It’s not a choice. Put the gun down!”

Cifuentes instead raised the pistol higher. “No!” he shouted hysterically.

Vasquez kept his finger firmly on the trigger and his eyes on Cifuentes as he said to Cyrus, “It’s okay. For your daughter.”

Cyrus firmed his lips and without hesitation fired a single shot through the chemist’s forehead.

Forty-eight

9 DAYS

With one bathroom and five people, the small apartment was crowded and uncomfortable and Mrs. Rodriguez wasn’t making things any easier. She rebuffed Jessie’s attempts at bonding and wouldn’t allow her into the kitchen—and she refused to speak to any of her guests except for her son, whom she continually berated in Spanish.

“Sammy, when are these people going to go?”

“We’re making plans. We’ll be leaving soon.”

“I don’t want you to go with them.”

“I have to, Ma. I want to. Every time I take Bliss I talk to Dad—like he’s in the room. It’s the greatest thing. We’re trying to bring this to everyone, the whole world.”

“Every day, I talk to him too—but in my heart. That’s the right way to talk to the dead.”

“But I see him for real.”

“Faith comes from here,” she said, pounding her thin chest. “Your father’s in here. God is in here. That’s what faith is about. You can’t find it in a drug.”

“You don’t understand.”

“No,
you
don’t understand. I want them to go and I want you to go back to school!” she cried, slamming her bedroom door.

Sam retreated to the living room where Alex and the others were watching the news, monitoring the latest Bliss developments.

They were dumbstruck by the breaking news from Mexico that Miguel Cifuentes was dead and that arguably the largest worldwide supplier of Bliss was out of action. Yet Alex remained unperturbed. “Don’t worry,” he told them. “My guess is that half the peptide synthesizers on the planet are being used to crank out Bliss. It’s too lucrative. It can’t be stopped. We can’t be stopped.”

They were also hoping for word on Cyrus O’Malley. As usual, Steve furiously worked the remote control, skipping all over the dial before finally settling on one channel again. “Do you think Art and Lilly were able to get to him?” he asked.

Alex nodded. “Art’s resourceful. Maybe it’s done and O’Malley’s seen the light.” He said that mischievously. “Maybe we’ve seen the last of him.”

Sam sat on the carpet, cross-legged, opened his laptop and waited for a cellular signal.

“Your mom sounded pretty upset,” Jessie said. “I feel bad.”

“She’ll be okay,” he answered tersely.

“We need to get out of here,” Alex said. “We’ve only got nine days to go. We need to settle on our destination.”

Steve stood and irritably paced like a tiger in a tiny cage. “Alex, we’ve been through a lot and I trust you completely, you know I do, but isn’t it time you told us what’s going to happen when the countdown’s over? Don’t you trust us enough for that?”

Alex resisted an autocratic urge to silence Steve with a sharp rebuke. Wasn’t it obvious? If he’d been loose with his intentions, the authorities would’ve already sweated the info out of the survivors in Bar Harbor. Sam and Jessie understood that. Why couldn’t Steve?

“In good time, Steve. I’ll tell the three of you soon. Let’s get to where we’re going first. So Sam, where are we going?”

Sam worked his track pad. “I’m just seeing if we got a follow-up message from that guy, Erik.”

“If everything’s cool, that’s still my first choice,” Alex said.

Sam looked up. “It’s here. From Erik. It’s cool. He says it’s a go.”

Alex clapped his hands once, producing a happy, staccato sound. “Sam, go meet your friend tonight and we’ll hit the road in the morning. I’m excited. The name says it all, almost like it was fated. My friends, we’re going to Rising City.”

“How dangerous is this?” Steve asked, locking the van.

“On a scale of one to ten?” Sam paused. “I’d say eleven.”

Steve swore. “I’m sure as hell not scared of dying but I’d rather not get tortured first.”

“Just let me do all the talking. Keep quiet and look badass.”

“I’m a schoolteacher,” Steve groaned. “What am I gonna do, threaten to send these guys to the principal’s office?”

It was near midnight on a dark moonless night and East One Hundred-seventieth Street in the South Bronx had scant foot traffic. Two young men in puffy jackets appeared in the doorway of a brick housing project.

“Who’re you?” one of them called out.

“I’m Sam. I’m here for Jorge.”

The men scanned the street and motioned for them to come inside.

“Turn ’round,” one of them said, pointing to the bank
of mailboxes.

They were frisked. They found the bottle in Steve’s jacket but left it alone when Sam told them it was for Jorge. They were led up two flights of stairs to a long bare hall where sounds of TVs and bursts of laughter spilled from behind closed doors.

The puffy jackets knocked on one of the doors, the peephole went dark and the locks unbolted. Sam and Steve followed them inside.

A young man with bronzed skin and deep acne scars was sprawled on a leather sofa, alone. He raised his hands like he was welcoming royalty. “Oh my god, Scholar Sam! What the fuck, man!”

“Hey, Jorge, what up?”

“You still look wicked smart. I couldn’t believe it when I heard you wanted to talk to me. Who’s that, your muscle?” he laughed, pointing at Steve. “That big guy’s scared shitless. Don’t worry, dude, I ain’t gonna fuck you up ’less Sammy tells me to.”

They’d been two kids in elementary school, Sammy the brain, Jorge the dunce, a screwup. Sam instinctively looked out for him, defending him verbally, and Jorge repaid the favor by punching the daylights out of anyone who messed with Sam’s glasses or his book-filled backpack. Sam went on
to become one of the bright stars of the South Bronx while Jorge thrived on the streets, rising to head up a chapter of the violent Latin Kings gang. There was no contact between the two since childhood but much in the way that Androcles and the Lion remembered each other, they now shared a slice of childhood memories.

“How’s life, man?” Sam said, looking at the expensive electronics lining the walls of the modest apartment and the long-legged women flitting in and out of the bedrooms. “You look prosperous.”

“I can’t complain. So, what the fuck are you doing back in the hood?”

“Just some business.”

“Business.” Jorge laughed. “I thought your business was gonna be running Microsoft or some shit.”

“I had a change of plans. You heard of Bliss?”

“Yeah, course I have. You into that?”

“Big-time.”

“On what level?”

“All levels.”

Jorge sat forward, interested. “Yeah? I wouldn’t mind getting a piece of that shit.”

Sam asked Steve for the bottle. “This is Bliss, a lot of it. It’s got a street value of a quarter million bucks.”

“No shit. Let me see.” Jorge unscrewed the bottle and sniffed at the mouth. “So what do you want me to do?”

“I want to give it to you,” Sam said.

“For how much?”

“For nothing.”

“Why, because when I was eight I kicked butt for you?”

“I need a couple of things in return.”

“What?” Jorge asked suspiciously.

“I want you to spread it around the streets, ’cause that would be cool. And I need guns and ammo. Everything you can put your hands on tonight.”

Jorge laughed again. “You going to war, Sammy?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Sam and Steve were back at Walton Ave by 2 A.M. toting two extremely heavy nylon carry bags. As soon as Sam unlocked his door he saw that something was wrong.

His mother was up when she should’ve been long asleep. She was in the living room, sitting beside Jessie on the sofa, her cheeks streaked with tears.

“Ma, what’s wrong?”

She sprang up, ran to him and flung her arms around his neck. “Sammy, I was with Papa. He looked so good. He was happy, like you said. Sammy, I can’t believe it, I
can’t believe it.”

He extricated himself from her grasp and turned to Alex, who was coming out of the kitchen with a cup of tea. “Alex, how could you do that? Give my mother Bliss without her permission, without my permission?”

“Look how happy she is, Sam. It’s for her own good—and I need to know she’ll be our friend when we leave tomorrow. We can’t risk getting caught when we’re so close.”

Sam bitterly shook his head but held his tongue.

“You’re right, I should have talked with you first,” Alex said. “But the end justifies the means, Sam. You should know that by now.”

Forty-nine

8 DAYS

Thirteen hundred miles. At the speed limit, driving straight through, with Sam and Steve alternating shifts at the wheel, they figured they could make it in about twenty-two hours.

They were on the flats, Cleveland in the rearview mirror, Chicago ahead, then Illinois, Iowa. If all went well, they’d be there before dawn.

In the backseat, Alex propped his feet on one of the gun bags. If things didn’t go well, if they got stopped along the way, then they’d litter I-80 with spent casings, that’s for sure.

Next stop, Nebraska. Nothing is going to prevent that
.

Jessie awoke from a nap. “Hungry?” Alex offered a bag of sandwiches and fruit.

“A little.” She picked a banana.

“Are you excited?” he asked her.

She nodded but then admitted, “I’m a little scared.”

“All adventures are a little scary.”

“Just don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone.”

“I’ll never leave you.”

Rising City, Nebraska. Population: pushing 400. It was still a couple of hours before sunrise when they skirted south of the tiny town without even knowing it. The blackness on both sides of the state road was cornfields that wouldn’t be planted for a good month.

Steve was navigating. “I think we’re almost there,” he guessed. “About three miles.”

They’d had the road to themselves for the past hour but Sam began to squint, dry-eyed, at a bothersome pair of headlights in his mirrors. “Just pass me, okay?” he complained, slowing a bit.

The trailing car slowed too.

Sam looked over his shoulder. “I don’t like it,” he told Alex. There were half a dozen cars behind that one.

Alex unzipped the carry bag and started passing out guns, keeping the battered TEC-9 machine pistol for himself. “We’re so close,” he said wearily. “It’s a pity.”

“If he’s police or FBI, he’s unmarked,” Sam said. “There’s no light rack on its hood.”

“I think that’s our turn ahead,” Steve said. “Do you want us to take it or drive by?”

“Take it,” Alex said. “If they’re following us, we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”

Sam signaled and made a slow right turn at a mailbox stenciled with the name Bolz. The drive was pitted dirt. There was a yellow house ahead, its lights on, then a cluster of unlit barns and beyond the buildings, the nothingness of farmland.

“Shit … the car’s turning.”

Alex snapped back the bolt handle. “I’ve never fired a gun before,” he said grimly. “I wish Joe were here.”