The Frighteners (33 page)

I said, “As a matter of fact, Mondragon apparently never got his hands on the final payment, so he couldn’t have handed it over even if he’d wanted to.”

“No difference. Money, no money, take guns anyway. Like I say before, I tell Jorge first he big fool to get mixed up with man like the Cody you call Pierce. Much big dealer, use Jorge for risk while he for safe, always. But my Jorge no listen, he want rich. Shiny car for him; for me pretty dresses, shoes. I say to him, how many cars you drive dead, how many shoes I wear dead? You think deal guns with crazy
insurgente
s is game like baseball, football? But my Jorge no listen.” She gave her expressive shrug again. “So he want rich, I try make rich. I tell what he do, careful no hurt the big pride, you know. Very proud man, my Jorge. I make think idea all his, you know. Say how smart, how brave. Sit in peekup while he makes negotiate with Arturo. Negotiate, right?”

“Negotiate is correct,” I said.

“Sooch big word. Antonia no come with to Bahia San Cristobal to get weapons from ship, man’s work, ha! Wait at Piedras Negras with peekup hide in rocks. Wait. So much wait. But now come the four big empty
camiones
, Jorge signal all hiding done safe, such relief, imagine.”

She was getting to the tough part, and the narration was slowing down; I had to keep nudging her along.

“I can imagine,” I said.

“Jorge pay off men. Money for the load, the drive, the unload. And the keep quiet. Much money for the
silencia
, yes? Tell men leave trucks here at Piedras Negras, ride to El Mirador in peekup, never tell, promise. Much promise. Promise on the blood of the Christ, the nails of the Cross, the robe of the Virgin, the gray hairs of the mother, ha! I go bring peekup, stop twenty meters away, men turn from Jorge and come to ride, my Jorge shoot Miera first like I tell him, most big and dangerous. I, Antonia, shoot Ruiz who try to grab and use for shield. No more shoot from my Jorge on knees, cry like baby, sooch a gentle man. Bustamente run, I shoot not much good with little gun so far. I shoot Delgado very good and go finish Bustamente. Finish Miera, too, tough man, not die so easy. Leave moneys on dead men for Arturo like bargain.”

Well, it was what I’d sensed, wasn’t it? The kid was dangerous, a natural killer. Considering my own profession, I was hardly in a position to criticize. In fact, I found it an intriguing picture, professionally speaking: the slim, pretty, brown girl with the big dazzling grin shooting three men with her toy .22 and then calmly finishing off a fourth who’d been badly shot by her incompetent lover—not to mention working out the homicidal plan in the first place and selling it to the handsome, weak-kneed Medina. On the other hand, I’d learned that what I’d sensed about her, what had disturbed me, had apparently been the danger-aura of past deaths, not of deaths to come, including mine. At least I could hope so. As far as moral judgments were concerned, this was no place for them, and they’re outside my field of competence anyway.

I said, “You mean Arturo was in on it?”

She shrugged. “He find to drive
camiones
bad men he no like and promise no interfere, s
í
?
For that we leave the moneys we pay the drivers.” She giggled. “Better he should get from deads than me. Much
sangre
, blood, not nice. Jorge very much the sick, very much the unhappy, say he should never have let persuade—persuade?—such a terrible thing, we must leave terrible place
pronto
. I have much trouble make him finish plan, but is necessary, I make him see. He drive one big truck to place near Kino; I drive him back in peekup. Do same three more times, Jorge cry all the time, sick again, such a lovely, sensitive fellow. Call Antonia ugly names, leave Antonia in Kino, poosh out of peekup, say take bus, walk, fly, he never want to see Antonia again, bad, bad girl. Then he go with other drivers and be stupid kill. All kill.” She spread her hands in a questioning gesture. “Why Jorge say rich if blood make sick? Never rich without blood, everybodies know. Not peoples like us. Why hate Antonia only try to help? Sooch beautiful, foolish man I love, all dead now.” Her voice was harsh, and when I glanced at her, I saw that she was crying silently; then she sniffed, cleared her throat softly, swiped the rough
serape
across her face, and said, “You see the one by dead cottonwood?”

“I see him.”

“That one is
gringo
for you.”

I’d already determined that, mostly by the hat: Yankees seem to crease and wear their hats differently from Mexicans, who manage to make everything they put on their heads so squarely look like stock movie
sombreros
. The range was too long for a shot with the .243, although a well-sighted-in 7mm or .30 Magnum could possibly have reached that far effectively; but it was too early to start shooting anyway.

“Lead the way,” I said. “Take us well behind your nearby countryman; we don’t want to risk alerting him.”

The radio on my belt cleared its throat. “Alpha, Alpha. This is Gamma calling Alpha.”

“Come in, Gamma.”

Fortunately the gent from whom I’d got the thing had set the intercom volume quite low; but it was still a startling amount of sound to be hit with when you were trying for stealth. I should have anticipated it, of course. Blame the crack on the head, or just plain stupidity. I sank down among the rocks and fumbled with the controls, reducing the volume of the next transmission. I saw that Antonia remained standing, in the shelter of a bush, glassing the nearest sentry, the Mexican, to see if he’d been disturbed. Well, at least somebody in this idiot expedition had a few brains.

The radio whispered, “Gamma reporting. Stationed at pass, keeping red GMC truck under surveillance, as instructed, heard vehicle approaching. Maintained cover, watched four-wheel-drive Subaru station wagon appear, color silver; although how the hell anybody got such a low-slung little heap up that lousy road is beyond me. . . .”

“Never mind the irrelevant comments; continue report. ’’

“Yes, sir. Vehicle stopped, driver got out, female. High brown boots, snug white jeans, loose blue shirt; lots of Indian jewelry. Examined GMC, tried door, found it locked. Studied ground, started to follow tracks of subject and female companion, which unfortunately brought her too close to my station. Figured I’d better get the drop on her before she spotted me. Took her by surprise, no trouble, although she was packing a loaded Beretta nine emm emm. ID in the name of Joanna Charles Beckman, M.D. Instructions?”

“Handcuff her and hold her there. Don’t come in. Repeat, don’t come in. Subjects should be getting close to us here; indications are they left the pickup you’re watching several hours ago. We don’t want any suspicious traffic on the road to spook them. Stay clear.”

I had the voice identified now, even though the fidelity of the tiny speaker left a good deal to be desired, particularly at the low volume I was using. Alpha was Marion Rutherford, the big, boyish gent called T\ink whom I’d first seen through the telescope at Cananea and later encountered very briefly, at close range, in Hermosillo before young Chades blew the lights out—well, my lights, at least—with the same 9mm Beretta that had, apparently, just been taken from his sister. I realized that I was disappointed; I’d been hoping for another voice.

“Received and understood. Gamma out.”

The radio went silent. After a little, Antonia, who’d come to crouch beside me, asked, “What Alpha, Gamma?”

“They’re using the Greek alphabet for code names. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, and that’s as far as I remember it. Why they don’t just call the guys Joe and Bob, I don’t know. Some people simply have to be fancy.”

She was studying my face intently. ‘‘We go help your medical lady?”

I drew a long breath. I said, “We don’t perform heroic rescues of irrelevant females around here, small fry. She got herself into trouble; she can get herself out. That goes for you, too, as I told you. Nobody invited either of you babes on this picnic; you’re both just excess baggage as far as I’m concerned. Now let’s see about the
gringo
under the tree. . . . What the hell are you grinning about?”

“Good man,” Antonia said.

It was clear that she’d expected me to chicken out; she’d thought I’d drop everything and rush off breathlessly to get the nasty handcuffs off my beloved. Well, I wasn’t sure how much love was involved—after all, except for a sweet quickie in front of the fire, I hardly knew the woman except as my stem doctor and efficient nurse—but the impulse had been there, all right. I’d tried to kid myself that I should find out what the hell Jo was doing here, but it really didn’t matter, and it was impractical anyway. I had more important concerns right here. Didn’t I?

“Good man, hell,” I said. “Just pure golden bastard clear through.”

“Good bastard,” Antonia said. “We go kill
gringo
now?”

Crouching behind a rock, watching the man under the dead tree, I wondered how many other lookouts they had stationed around—three seemed already redundant, indicating either that somebody was pretty nervous, or that he didn’t trust his observers not to go to sleep, or both. Then I wondered how the kid planned to go about it.

“Is my turn,” she’d said.

We’d paused for breath in a little stand of aspens that overlooked the skeletal cottonwood that was our target, over a hundred and fifty slanting yards below us. I’d taken out my knife to recheck the edge; but she’d placed a hand on my wrist.

“Is my turn,
hombre
. You go down to big gray stone, easy shoot if I have
problema
, okay?”

There was a nice eagerness in her small face. She wanted the job very badly; but I wasn’t happy about her request. This wasn’t a training mission put on to break in the rookies, for Christ’s sake. The fact that she’d once been lucky enough to overcome some unarmed men in a few blazing seconds of gunfire didn’t mean she was qualified to tackle a trained, armed agent like, probably, the character under the dead tree. If I let her go, and she goofed and forced me to shoot to bail her out, we’d wind up in a general firefight sooner than I’d planned. On the other hand . . .

On the other hand, she was a unique specimen in a world of tender ladies who couldn’t bear the thought of guns or violence. Keeping her leashed would be an offense against nature, like calling a beagle off a rabbit or asking a good pointer to ignore a covey of quail. Besides, I might as well learn if she was really up to the job before I sent her off to deal with General Southpaw.

I said, “Okay, I’ll be by that rock if you need me. Good hunting.”

Now I was waiting to see her or hear her, but the mountainside remained undisturbed. Well, I told myself, that just meant she was making her approach properly, meaning invisibly and silently. The man under the tree made a careful sweep with his binoculars, which seemed to be identical to the ones I’d taken from his colleague. He leaned forward to pour himself a cup of coffee from a camouflaged Thermos that I also recognized—hell, they might as well be wearing uniforms, the amount of standardized equipment they were packing, but the weapon leaning beside him was an automatic M-16 assault rifle, not a scope-sighted Ruger bolt-action. This was a dark-haired specimen who kept it cut fairly short, as opposed to the flowing George Armstrong Custer hairdo of the other. No hat.

He threw his head back and raised his elbow high to drain the coffee cup. There was a small, solid thud, the sound of something hard and sharp burying itself in something moderately soft. Well, to be honest, I’m not that good at sounds; I’d caught the glint of the throwing knife before it struck. The man dropped his cup. His mouth opened, but no scream came out, just a barely audible—at my distance—gasp of pure agony. Then there was a rattle of dislodged stones beyond him, and a blanket floated into sight, spread out like a cast net. It dropped over his head. Antonia was right with it, wrapping up his head like a presentation grapefruit and holding the muffling
serape
in place with one arm while the other hand groped for and found the weapon buried under the armpit, wrenched it free, and drove it home a second time. By the time I reached her, she’d laid the man down, freed the
serape
, and put it back on. She was squatting beside him, wiping her blade on his shirt. She looked up at me. Her eyes were strange and shiny; fora moment she was just another dangerous predator crouching over its kill, not quite human. Or very human, depending on your definition of humanity.

“So,
amigo
?” she whispered.

“
Muy bien, guapa
, ” I said.

She giggled abruptly. ‘ ‘Your Spanish accent, it is much awful! And I am not your guapa. But I do okay, you think?”

I didn’t feel it was the right time to point out that she’d been very lucky—we’d been very lucky—that the man hadn’t screamed; and that we don’t like that throwing-knife routine even when silence is not required. There’s a lot of bone in a human body, and slipping a blade accurately between the ribs is difficult enough at contact range. From ten or twelve feet away, it’s strictly a game of chance.

“You did fine,” I said.

But she’d been testing me; now she lowered the boom. “So much boolsheet you talk!” she said scornfully. “No give more sooch crap, never! Antonia do all wrong, yes? Is plan to come in fast, use
serape
to confuse, blind, make silent, then
cuchillo
, knife, but last five meters all loose rock, impossible to move quiet. So instead make big gamble with the throwing, sorry. A little fright, maybe; very nervous girl, Antonia.”

I said, “Sure. Terrible girl. But the job got done, which is what counts, right?”

She shrugged. “If you say.” She looked down at the body. “Why we kill him, anyway?”

She was really, as I’d said, a terrible little girl; here she’d killed a man simply because I’d told her the season was open on Yankees of a certain persuasion without really understanding why he was needed dead.

“I told you,” I said, “I want to get a certain gent good and mad. Mad enough to commit himself openly instead of hiding in the woodwork the way he’s been doing. In the meantime, it reduces the odds a bit, and they surely do need shrinking. Horatius at the bridge facing the whole Etruscan army had nothing onus.”