Puerto Vallarta Squeeze (23 page)

The shooter again amazed Danny; now he was citing Mexican history. Worse, he was beginning to see himself as Hernan Cortes
when the Mexica tried to stop him by breaching a causeway linking his island redoubt to the mainland. That mapping made Luz
into Cortes’s concubine, Malinche. And Danny… Danny into what? Driver, foot soldier at the worst. Chicago had never been like
this. There, Danny had gone back to his apartment at night after interviewing the local wiseguys. This was different—he couldn’t
go home and put on his pajamas and Dave Brubeck.

The shooter was still talking, little grin on his face, almost as if he were enjoying this. Christ, maybe he is, Danny thought.
He started wondering if Clayton Price had put himself into this situation just so he could work his way out or maybe he didn’t
want to get out at all. Danny took refuge in the thought that Cortes had made it across the causeway with at least some of
his force intact and listened to the shooter talk.

“Here’s how it lies. I don’t think there’s a chance in hell we can get out of this by road. According to my source in Monterrey,
the main highways are roadblocked and anybody who even looks suspicious is being hauled in. I had to call in all my chits,
but I’ve managed to arrange for a chopper to pick me up. That’s why I made the call last night, to get confirmation. It’s
coming in about twenty minutes. It’ll fly me up over the border, refueling on the way, and set me down outside of Brownsville.
From there I’ll make a run for wherever I can get to.”

He was talking crisp, giving a military briefing, getting his endgame under way. “The chopper will come in from the east over
the mountains and land in a clearing at a mine entrance below the village. Luz and I were down there the other day.”

Danny remembered what Luz had said on Saturday, that the shooter had made a telephone call and kept saying, “LC, silver mine.”
She was close. What he was saying was, “LZ, silver mine”—landing zone at the silver mine.

“You have a choice.” He was looking at Danny. “Come along on the chopper or try and drive the Bronco out of here. By the time
they figure out what’s going on, you should be back in Puerto Vallarta, telling people you took a little trip around the countryside
to see some places you’d never seen, had a scrap with your girlfriend, and she went off somewhere on her own. Oh, yes, one
other thing. Taped to the back of your toilet in Puerto Vallarta is the gun I used to make the hit there, “fou might want
to get rid of it.”

”You mean you were going to frame me with the killing?”

“It wasn’t a bad idea. You saw me make the hit, I tip off the cops about the gun after I get to the States. They find the
gun and arrest you, throw you in the slammer while they sort it out. I doubt if they would have actually believed you did
it, but if they couldn’t find anyone else, the gun would be more than enough evidence to put you away or hang you or whatever
they do down here. That way they could say they’d found their man and close the book on it.”

“You
bastard“

The shooter smiled. “Like I said before, it’s a tough, cruel game. But you’ve done your part, and I’m giving you absolution
and freedom. By the way, Luz wants to come north with me.”

“Like
hell!”

“Ask her.”

Danny looked at Luz, and she nodded, clear eyed and ready to go with him. “Why, for chrissake?” He already knew—Luz wanted
el Norte,
and the shooter was her postage—but asked the question anyway.

She didn’t say anything, glanced over at the shooter.

He said, “I’m not sure
I’m
capable of loving at all. But, Danny,
you
love too timidly. I don’t know which is worse, You have this offhand way of treating her most of the time, as if she’s a
partially reformed street whore… . She told me about her past. She says I treat her with respect, “You figure it out.”

Danny took a long, shaky breath and looked out the window for a moment, then over at Luz and noticed she was wearing the shooter’s
bracelet.

He saw where Danny was looking. “The bracelet has a four-ounce gold nugget under the blue coloring. If things go bad, she’s
got traveling money.”

The shooter hesitated for a moment, letting the new arrangements sink in and settle down, then dug in his pocket and handed
a roll of bills to Danny. “Here’s the rest of the five thousand I owe you. Make up your mind, Danny Pastor. I scouted around
for a few minutes and didn’t see anything out there, but I’ve learned to trust my gut, and my gut doesn’t feel good this morning.
Come with us if you want. We’ll blow up the Bronco with gasoline on our way out. If that doesn’t work for you, take the Bronco
and make a run for it. By yourself you’ll probably make it; nobody’s looking for a lone gringo.”

“What’s your gut telling you?” Danny asked.

“Not sure. I thought I heard something up on the highway, what sounded like gears grinding on one of those old deuce-and-a-half
troop carriers. I walked around a bit, didn’t see anything. But, doing what I do, there’s a sixth sense you develop over the
years. And you pay attention to those feelings.”

“What do you
think
is happening?”

The shooter looked at his watch. “The chopper’ll be here in fifteen minutes. Like I said, not sure. If I had to guess, I’d
say those cops last night recognized me. You saw the way they looked…”

Clayton Price never finished his sentence, pausing and cocking his head toward the sound of boots in the interior courtyard
below the room. He tugged up his pant leg and pulled the Beretta, cracked the door, and looked out.

Then, turning for a moment toward Luz and Danny, with that half-and-hard smile of his, some old bowstring inside him coming
back taut enough to snap, and said, “It’s gonna be a sonuvabitch.” He went down on his belly and opened the door, crawling
toward the edge of the balcony.

Danny could hear voices below and see the shooter holding the Beretta in both hands, steadying it. The sound of it going off
in the enclosed courtyard was like a howitzer. He shot three more times and jumped to his feet. “Now! Follow me!”

Danny’s decision point, another branch in the complicated tree that had begun in El Niño six nights ago. He could have just
hunkered down behind one of the beds and tried to explain his way out of it later on. But he never considered that for some
reason and obeyed the shooter’s orders without hesitating. It seemed like the right thing to do then, the force and energy
of time-present subverting other alternatives.

They ran along the balcony and down the stairs. Three men dressed in uniforms of the Mexican army were lying on the tile,
rifles scattered around. Two had holes in their faces, the third was bleeding from the chest and was tossing about, moaning.

They made it to the cantina doorway and looked out. More uniforms were moving through the plaza trees, across the narrow street
directly in front of them.

The shooter was talking fast. “There’s a side door out through the kitchen. Take the hillside path to the silver mine. Luz
knows where it is. Wait for me there. Stay low; there’ll be some serious people outside who’ll take down anything they feel
like.”

He grabbed Danny’s shoulder, looked at him straight on, and grinned again in that strange, hard way of his, face crinkled
but eyes serious. “We should’ve bought the goddamned ocelot… should’ve done that, Danny Pastor. See you at the silver mine.”

He gave Danny a get-going push and turned to the front door of the cantina. Danny grabbed Luz and followed orders. They went
out through the kitchen and hunkered down behind some bushes. Four soldiers came off the plaza and walked toward the cantina,
three of them with rifles leveled at the front door and the fourth carrying an automatic weapon. Having watched the shooter
work before and knowing he prioritized the enemy’s firepower, Danny said to himself, “The bozo with the automatic weapon will
get it first.” He did and went down, clutching his throat with bloody hands as the shooter’s gun snapped.

Then a high, hard fist slapped Zapata, setting free again all the ancient furies a mountain village had seen in its long past—the
French, the Spanish, the Mexican army. And once again Zapata exploded into a dust storm of noise and chaos and cruelty.

Of the four soldiers who had approached the cantina, the remaining three ran back toward the trees in the plaza. The Beretta
again, and one of them fell, spinning around as he hit the cobblestones. At the same time more soldiers and what looked like
federates
were running up the street from the west, coming by
el centro
where Luz and Danny and Clayton Price had danced last night.

As Danny Pastor will tell you, if he hadn’t been so damned scared at the time, he could have seen it all as a thing of beauty.
The images are still crystalline, and he eventually has come to see it that way, as a thing of terrible beauty, when he thinks
back on what occurred.

The shooter came off the cantina porch, running low to the ground and firing. He made it to the corner of the plaza and took
out one
of the federates
galloping along in cowboy boots. From there, it became a violent ballet. Shooter running… and jumping… running and jumping
gracefully over the fence surrounding the plaza… through the trees. Sound of weapons firing every which way. Bullets digging
into adobe walls around the plaza or slicing leaves and bark from trees, windows shattering.

From his hiding place, Danny could somehow admire the shooter at that moment, saw him as an old lion surrounded by jackals
or maybe a bull at one of Coria’s bloody festivals, take your choice. He was hedged in, but under control and fighting, no
panic that Danny could see. It was a place he’d been before. Danny lost count, but Clayton Price was knocking down soldiers
as they ran toward him, killing some, wounding others.

Places his shots… one at a time… not every shot is a

killing shot… but every one of them seems to hit a man.

… Clayton Price moving… shots from left… spin… return fire…

That low-crouching run of his… through the trees,

sputter of automatic weapons… no quarter given… final stuff… hard stuff

… hard and cruel and no quarter taken… sunlight… bright morning…

two burros, wild in streets… one of them running through a machine-gun

burst… falling… kicking on the cobblestones and screaming a dying

burro scream, horrible sound…

shooter in behind gazebo

… windbreakered man in the church doorway, bracing an unusual-looking

rifle against the stone next to him and thinking one

shot, one kill…

The soldiers retreated and began taking the gazebo apart stone by stone with automatic weapons fire. A white van roared into
the plaza area. The burro lying in the street caused the driver to swerve, and Walter McGrane covered his face as the van
smashed through the plaza fence and into a tree. Another man in a windbreaker crawled out the rear door of the van, staggered
to his feet, and began a hobbled run, swinging a short-barreled Remington shotgun in an arc before him. A Mexican soldier,
wild and panicked and shooting at anything approximating a hostile target, opened up on the man in the windbreaker, who took
him down with one blast from the Remington. An internecine fire-fight erupted, with other soldiers turning their guns on the
windbreaker, thinking he was the man they’d come for. The Remington blew apart another soldier, before the wind-breaker shouted
loud enough in expletive Spanish that he was not the target.

The shooter was crawling fast, away from the gazebo and south toward the fence surrounding the plaza. Danny could see a man
in the church doorway, looking down the scope of a rifle pointed toward the plaza fence only thirty yards away. At that moment
the rifle jerked upward without firing, the village priest struggling with the rifleman, screaming about the desecration of
the place where Jesus lived.

Clayton Price saw the priest and the rifleman and knew he’d come within a second or two of dying there in the grass. He made
the fence, staying low and looking over his shoulder, hearing the automatic weapons still firing at the gazebo, splinters
of stone flying into the air from hundreds of bullets. The sniper finally disengaged himself from the priest and hit him full
across the nose with a quick hand chop. As the priest fell, the man brought the rifle up again and was scoping for his target
when the slug from Clayton Price’s Beretta slammed into his chest. He staggered back into the church darkness as Clayton Price
came to his feet and ran for the door where the sniper had been standing.

Danny saw the shooter running toward the church, saw him make the door and dart inside, probably heading out the side entrance
and down the hill behind the church.

Luz and Danny began running along the hillside path, hidden from the plaza area by trees and houses. They hurdled a sow and
her piglets lying in the middle of the path. The sow got up, grunting, piglets squealing.

The path forked. Luz pointed right, and they ran that way, starting to go downhill. She stumbled and fell on loose gravel,
rolling fifteen feet down the slope, tearing herself on rocks and ripping her blouse. As Danny pulled her up, he heard the
thuk-thuk
of a helicopter coming in low through a cut in the mountains. They were above the main part of the village, and Danny stood
there for a few seconds, trying to get a fix on what was happening. Below him and Luz,

and closer to the landing zone than they were, he could see the shooter down on one knee, reloading clips. Christ, one little
short-barreled pistol. He was holding off a small invasion force with it, but Danny could see it was going to be over soon
unless they made the chopper. There were too many on the other side, too many bad guys, even for Clayton Price.

A gringo in a blue windbreaker was creeping toward the shooter, shotgun held ready. Soldiers were following the shotgun man,
being cautious now. Danny was sure the shotgun was going to get Clayton Price, who was still pushing ammunition into clips.
And it was curious… curious how Danny’s allegiances were somehow shifting, away from the forces of light and toward something
else. He had the feeling he should call out to Clayton Price, warn him about what was coming behind him, be part of the old
American custom favoring the underdog in all things.