Cartel (26 page)

Alias Smith and Jones.

Scott's pistol was in his hand. He had a score to settle with these two.

Benny laid a hand on his arm. "My daughter."

That stopped him. He looked at her and nodded. "Let's go." They started running toward the train.

Behind them, Scott heard a shout. He glanced back and saw that the two suits had spotted them and were chasing them. The end of the train was coming up. Scott and Benny ran beside the tracks, trying to keep pace with a boxcar. There were only half a dozen cars left. Time was running out.

Scott was two strides behind Benny. He eyed the lad-der welded to the back of the boxcar and tried to figure out how to time the leap he would have to make to reach it. Speed was the problem. Fifteen miles an hour was slow for a train, but it was an all-out sprint for a human, and the weed-covered ground they were running on was uneven and full of hidden obstacles. They would only be able to keep up with the train for about sixty seconds, maybe less, and that was if they didn't trip. Scott was well aware that a fall now could send them sprawling under the train.

Benny grabbed the ladder with one hand. She ran two more steps then jumped and got her other hand on it. She hung there for an instant, her feet dragging the ground as Scott ran to keep up with her. Benny pulled herself up two more rungs until she was high enough to get her feet on the bottom step. Then she scrambled onto the narrow deck at the back of the boxcar. She waved Scott closer and shouted, "Come on."

Scott was running full out, trying to catch the ladder, when he heard a soft pop behind him and simultaneously a sharp ping just in front of his face as something glanced off the steel side of the boxcar. Then another pop and another ping. Bullets ricocheting off steel. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the two men twenty yards behind him and running hard. The tall one in the lead, firing his pistol one handed. A bullet knocked the straw hat off Scott's head. He reached for the Glock at his back.

"No," Benny shouted. "Keep running." Then she started shooting, blasting an entire magazine of 9mm rounds at their pursuers in about four seconds of sustained fire.

Scott glanced back again. The tall one was down but not hit. He had tripped or gone to ground to avoid getting hit. Scott saw him rolling into a prone firing position, not giving a shit about his suit, just focused on presenting the lowest possible target profile, his military training no doubt kicking in. The other one, the dick who had called himself Jones, was also down but not all the way. Probably not ex-military and too fastidious to get down in the dirt. He was on one knee and raising his pistol.

Both of them opened fire.

Scott dove for the ladder and managed to catch the bot-tom rung. The movement of the train swept his legs out from under him. As his toes dug into the dirt he was sure his fin-gers were going to slip off the ladder or be ripped out at the knuckles. More bullets pinged off the side of the boxcar. Scott reached up and wrapped his fingers around the second rung. Then the third. Climbing hand over hand until he was high enough to brace his knees against the side of the box-car. He climbed one more rung and was able to get a foot on the bottom step. Then both feet. He clambered over an iron railing and onto the deck at the back of the boxcar.

Benny jammed a fresh magazine into her pistol. "You all right?"

"Never better," Scott gasped and reached for his own pistol, which he was pleasantly surprised to find had not fallen out of his pants.

The train car behind them was a flatbed loaded with heavy equipment under tarpaulins. Scott leaned out to the side of the boxcar and looked back along the train for the two men, but the tracks had curved in the opposite direction, and they were out of his line of sight, which meant he and Benny were out of their line of fire.

They had made it. Barely.

The two Cadillac Escalades were moving fast, faster than Rodrigo's old pickup could match. So he pushed the old girl harder than he had ever done before just to keep them in sight. Then he got lucky. The cartels may be above the laws of man, but they are not above the laws of physics. After flying down a narrow side street at something like sixty miles an hour, the two SUVs had to stop where the side street crossed a busy four-lane highway. There was too much traffic, too much steel coming broadside at them for the two Cadillacs to plunge through.

Rodrigo jammed the floppy accelerator pedal to the rusted floorboard and said a silent prayer that no one would step into the street in front of him. His grandniece's life de-pended on it.

He was fifty yards behind the two SUVs and switching his right foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal when the lead Cadillac found enough of a seam in the traffic to jump out and straddle both near lanes so that the second Ca-dillac could turn right. As Rodrigo neared the stop sign, the first SUV was backing up so that it too could turn right and follow its companion. A few drivers laid on their horns in protest, but most of them stayed silent and waited. Sleek new American SUVs racing through traffic almost always meant trouble. And very few residents of Nuevo Laredo wanted trouble.

Taking advantage of the break in traffic, Rodrigo didn't stop. Instead, he swung through a wide right-hand turn that made the truck shudder as it carried him across both near lanes and halfway across the oncoming lanes. This time the other drivers weren't so reluctant to register their anger, and horns blared all around him. Rodrigo ignored them as he downshifted into second and popped the clutch.

Up ahead, the SUVs were slicing through traffic, the second one riding the bumper of the first, like fighter planes flying in formation, or what Rodrigo imagined a pair of sharks might look like cutting through a school of tuna. So he kept the gas pedal mashed to the floor and tried to hold the shuddering steering wheel straight while the old truck screamed in pursuit. The speedometer hadn't worked in years so he wasn't sure how fast he was going, but he guessed he was up around seventy. Still, the SUVs were steadily pulling away.

Rodrigo didn't look at the other drivers as he passed them, but he heard their shouts and their horns. He ignored them. His entire world was reduced to the two sets of tail-lights ahead of him. He let go of the steering wheel with one hand just long enough to dig into the burlap sack and slide out one of the pistols. He tucked it under his right leg, with the handle sticking out so he could reach it in a hurry.

A hundred yards in front, two sets of taillights flashed red and both SUVs nosed down as the drivers braked hard then cut left, their solid suspensions and wide tires keeping them steady and hugging the street through the tight turn.

Rodrigo stomped the gas pedal but it was already on the floor. He knew the streets of Nuevo Laredo as well as he knew the reflection of his own face in the mirror. As a street urchin, later as a gangster, and finally as a priest, he had spent six decades in this city. And he knew that just a few blocks from where the two Escalades were turning, was the five-way intersection of two highways and three side streets. If the SUVs reached that intersection before he could catch up, he would lose them and lose any chance of rescuing Rosalita. But his pickup truck could only go so fast, and she was already giving him everything she had.

The left turn was coming. The two Cadillacs were al-ready through it and gone. He could still catch them if he didn't have to stop for oncoming traffic. There were plenty of vehicles coming at him, including a tractor-trailer rig. But there was a gap. Not much of a gap, but maybe just enough. Rodrigo swung wide into the right lane. He didn't look. He just eased the wheel over. Tires squealed. A horn blared. Something bumped his back right fender. He ignored it and kept his eyes focused on the turn and the slim gap through the oncoming traffic.

Rodrigo jammed down the clutch and shoved the gear-shift up into second. Then he cut the steering wheel hard over, but the wheel was sloppy and had a lot of play so the turn was loose. His tires screamed. The big truck towered over him, threatening to crash down on him like a tidal wave. So close he could see the shock on the driver's face.

Momentum alone was not going to carry the pickup through the turn fast enough to avoid getting smashed by the tractor-trailer. What Rodrigo needed was power. So he popped the clutch and stepped on the gas. The old tires bit the pavement. His stomach lurched as the back wheels broke free and the rear-end starting sliding. Still keeping his foot down on the gas, he turned into the skid, but the steering wheel felt like a rocking horse and the front end barely re-sponded. Rodrigo realized he had gotten himself into a situation that he was powerless to get out of.

So he prayed. Just two quick words. "Help me."

And someone must have heard him, or so he believed, because the tractor-trailer driver had time to put on just enough brake to miss the tail-end of Rodrigo's truck, and so Rodrigo made it through the turn and managed to straighten out on the side street...just in time to see both Cadillac SUVs stopped side-by-side in the street, blocking it from curb to curb.

Rodrigo slammed on the brakes and stomped the clutch, but he was going way too fast to stop in time. He wasn't sure which SUV his grandniece was in. A crash could hurt her. Or worse. So he jerked the wheel hard right and hit the curb at almost a ninety-degree angle. The front tires blew as the old truck bounced over the sidewalk and slammed into the cinderblock wall of a grocery store. Rodrigo dove down on-to the seat an instant before the jagged upper edge of the hole he had blasted in the wall shattered the windshield and peeled back the roof. The truck didn't stop until the entire cab and half the cargo bed were inside the store.

Rodrigo heard screams and prayed he hadn't hurt any-one. He was on the floorboard, wedged between the seat and the dashboard. A pile of cinderblocks lay on top of him. Warm liquid ran down his face into one eye. The truck seemed to be spinning, but he knew it was just his head that was spinning. He couldn't breath, but he could taste the air inside the cab. It tasted like cement dust. He tried to sit up but couldn't move. The concrete blocks held him down.

He heard voices but couldn't see anyone. His head hurt. He was tired. The concrete was crushing him. He tried to shove the cinderblocks off but they were too heavy. He prayed to God to look after Rosalita now that he had failed her.

Metal shrieked against metal.

Rodrigo looked up with his clear eye and saw a man yanking on the driver's door. He was dressed in black. A fel-low priest? Pulling and pushing the door, back and forth, the steel grinding against itself as the man tried to reach him. Maybe the truck was on fire. But Rodrigo didn't smell any-thing burning, didn't hear the crackle of flames.

The man kept yanking and shoving, yanking and shov-ing.

Someone else was shouting.

Then the door ripped away.

Rodrigo reached up but the man ignored his hand. In-stead, he leaned into the cab and yanked out the cin-derblocks one by one. When he was finished, a second man appeared. They each grabbed one of Rodrigo's legs and dragged him out of the truck. He landed on his back on the hard floor of the grocery and heard himself scream as pain sliced through his left side.

His ribs were broken.

The two men stared down at him. He saw their tattoos and knew who they were. Los Zetas. He tried to say some-thing, but the pain in his side had driven the air from his lungs and all that came out was a wheeze.

More men appeared. Rough hands jerked him to his feet. The pain was unbearable. The man who had ripped the door open, the one dressed in black, reached back into the cab and grabbed the pistol and the burlap sack with the extra gun and the cell phones from the gangsters who had come to the rectory. Then the two men hauled Rodrigo back out through the hole his truck had knocked in the wall of the store and toward the waiting SUVs.

Halfway to the vehicles, an old man wearing work clothes stepped into their path. He said something to the two men, but Rodrigo couldn't make out his words. Beneath the brim of his hat, the old man's nut-brown face was rough and weathered but there was some kindness etched into it. The man dressed in black tried to push the old man aside, but the old man stood firm. The man in black punched the old man in the nose, toppling his straw hat and knocking him to the ground. From the corner of his eye, Rodrigo saw the old man start to get up. Then the man in black laughed and shot the old man in the face with one of the pistols he had taken from Rodrigo's truck.

The crowd of people that had gathered around the crash site screamed and fled. The two cartel men shoved Rodrigo into the back of one of the Escalades. Rosalita wasn't there.

Jones stroking out seemed even more likely now as Gavin drove the Suburban out of the neighborhood where they had barely missed getting their hands on Scott Greene. Jones sat in the passenger seat, eyes closed, palms pressed against his temples, like he was literally trying to keep his skull from exploding.

"You all right?" Gavin asked.

"Yes," Jones said without moving.

"You don't...look all right."

Jones lowered his hands and took a few deep breaths. "I'm fine."

"Okay," Gavin said. "So now what?"

"I assume that train is headed to Mexico."

Gavin nodded. "That would be my guess." He pointed. "The border's only a couple miles by air."

"Or train," Jones said.

"Or train."

Jones picked up his iPad and studied the map display.

Gavin looked over and could see the flashing blue dot that represented their targets. The dot was getting closer to Mexico and farther away from them with every pulse.

"We need to get ahead of them," Jones said.

"World Trade Bridge is only two miles from here."

Jones nodded. "And get the bird in the air."

* * * *

Scott punched the button to end the call and handed the prepaid cell phone back to Benny.

"I can't believe you just did that," she said.

"I didn't do anything," Scott said. "That was an anony-mous call."