Everybody Pays (33 page)

“Quitasol means ‘parasol’ in Spanish,” Cross told the assembled crew. “It’s a tiny little place. Sits in a triangle, at the bottom, like it was covered by the others. Guatemala to the north, Honduras below, El Salvador to the west. Nearest jump-away is Belize. It’s right on the water. And they have commercial flights to Miami and Jamaica too, gives us a lot of options.”

“How much room will you need?” Falcon asked Buddha.

“I can get down pretty much on a dime. But getting
off,
at least a hundred meters . . . and that’s only if there’s a pretty low tree line direct ahead.”

“There is no way to ensure enough time,” Falcon responded. “We have to reach the zone, set up camp, and then start to work. It may take us . . . I don’t know, perhaps weeks. We can’t use power tools, and . . .”

“It’s mostly flatland,” Cross said. “Solid rock.”

“And you know this from . . . ?”

“A native. One that wants this to work. One that knows if you can’t clear the area Buddha never gets the signal to come in.”

“Ah.”

“And one who knows there isn’t that much time.”

“That leaves you, me, and Tiger to exit once we—”

“I know,” Cross told Rhino. “And we’re going to have to drive out. The place should be in turmoil. You know what it’s like where nobody knows where they stand. Like a goddamn prison riot. People use the chance to settle old scores, maybe. And there’ll be looting and burning and whatever. But the military, it’s not gonna try and stop people from
leaving.
More people, that’s the last thing they need. And we won’t be the only ones heading for the border.”

“Jamaica or Miami, it won’t make any difference,” Rhino said softly. “If I get on a plane, everyone’ll remember.”

“You’re not going to Jamaica unless things go wrong,” Cross told him. “That’s just a backup. All you have to do in Miami is get
off
a plane. Then you disappear. Only you never leave the airport. I got a Lear standing by.”

“I’ll have to wait to RDV with Buddha, then?”

“You want Princess to make it back to Chicago from Miami on his own?” Cross asked.

“All right,” the monster-man agreed, knowing the logic of the crew chief to be coldly correct, as always.

“Falcon’s going straight across to Oklahoma. He’s got his own people there. Ace is going to drive right up the highway. He’s already got relatives in Belle Glade who’ll cover for him, say he was there all the time.”

“Is Tiger gonna be okay?” Princess asked. “She didn’t look so good before.”

“Better not let
her
hear you say that,” Cross warned him. “Besides, that was almost three weeks ago, and she’s been rehabbing perfectly. She even has her stripes back.”

“I don’t like the idea of moving around unstrapped,” Ace said. “It’s not natural.”

“You won’t be in enemy territory and—” Rhino started to say.

“And you ain’t never been a nigger in the South,” Ace finished his sentence.

“Or an Indian, anywhere,” Falcon added.

“None of us can carry,” Cross said. “We have to play it meek and mild until we get back home—I mean, to this place. Sure, you’re more likely to get pulled over by some Klansman with a badge; but, without a weapon in the car, no drugs, no nothing, there won’t be a lot they can do. Why bother with a flake job if they don’t know you? And if they
do
try that, it just means a little time Inside until the rest of us can do what we need to do. We’ll have enough money to grease anything that happens . . . except icing a cop. All right?”

A full minute of silence was followed by Ace’s “All right” in response. Falcon said nothing. But he had not protested in the first place, merely supported the truth of Ace’s comments.

“Okay. Everybody has their route in. Everybody has their route out. Everybody has their money. We all have the plan. Buddha gets his go from Fal, we get ours when Buddha makes his first pass.”

“You sure I’m gonna be able to make this . . . rental, boss?”

“Already set,” Cross assured him. “And don’t be bargaining with them either. I told you the price—hand it over. You act like a decent guy, they might even give you some practice time, get familiar with it.”

“This time, everybody’s going,” Buddha said. “If we don’t come . . .”

“Then we’ll be in the same place we’d be if we didn’t agree to this deal.”

“Huh?”

“Not here,” Cross said.

“Man, I thought Chi-Town summers got ugly,” Ace groused, mopping his forehead with a camouflage handkerchief. “This place
stays
humid.”

“It’s a rain forest,” Falcon told him. “We’re actually under a canopy. It’s just about always raining overhead, because the moisture gets trapped in the overgrowth.”

“Whatever. It sucks.”

“Hey, come on, guys. This is fun, right?” Princess smiled. “We’re on a mission and everything.”

Falcon and Ace exchanged looks but kept their silence. As they approached yet another narrow trail, they fell into the positions Falcon had mapped out for them before they started their march—Falcon walking point, a modified M-16 carried in his right hand; Princess next, hauling a rucksack that weighed over two hundred pounds without apparent effort, constantly running up on Falcon in his eagerness to get to their destination. Ace brought up the rear, walking drag, his scattergun on a rawhide sling around his neck and his senses on full alert. They were on the fourth day of their march. As they entered a clearing, Falcon held up his hand, signaling for silence. His eyes swept the area. The only sounds were those of insects and birds. Falcon’s innate sensors probed even as his eyes did, but there was no sign of humans. He was about to signal the others to move on when he finally spotted confirmation of what his internals had been screaming—a filter-tipped cigarette butt almost completely ground into the soil. Almost. Falcon walked silently over to it and unearthed it with his knife as carefully as if it were a prized artifact from an ancient civilization. Then he motioned the others to remain where they were and disappeared. In another half-hour, he was ready to report.

“At least four men, carrying light, maybe three, four hours ahead of us.”

“Are they the bad guys?” Princess asked.

“In the brush, everyone’s the bad guys,” Fal told him. “But these . . . I don’t think they got anything to do with us. According to the map, we’re on course to cross a traders’ road in about four klicks. What I think we’ve got here is a bunch of bandits.”

“They gonna do a Jesse James on a stagecoach or what?” Ace asked.

“Something like that. Best guess is they’re going to deploy along the sides of the traders’ route and just take tolls.”

“Or lives,” Ace replied.

“Maybe. Doesn’t really matter. I can already see where they left a clear trail. It’ll be easy enough to follow at a distance, make sure we cross at a different spot.”

“So we—?”

“Wait,” Falcon said.

The ancient truck labored to climb the slight grade in the one-lane dirt road, hauling its precariously tied down flatbed cargo of green bananas. Falcon watched impassively, invisible. He hand-signaled to Princess and Ace to keep their distance. It was a good quarter-mile ahead of where Falcon had calculated the bandit crew would set up its roadblock, but his sensors picked up human activity on the other side of the road. Had he been alone, Falcon would have vanished. Encumbered as he was, he decided to remain still and see what developed.

It wasn’t long in coming. A chubby man stepped into the road, holding what looked like an old British Enfield. He leveled the rifle at the truck’s cab as another man, younger and leaner, hopped on the running board brandishing a machete. The truck stopped. Three other men emerged from the brush, surrounding the driver, who looked as weatherbeaten as his truck. And older.

Falcon didn’t need to understand Spanish to decode the situation. The bandits didn’t want bananas, they wanted money. And the old man either had none, or wasn’t handing it over. Falcon watched dispassionately as the chubby one chopped at the old man’s face with the butt of his rifle, drawing blood. Then he felt breath against the side of the face and shuddered even before he heard Princess whisper:

“Why are they hurting the old man?”

“They want his money. Ssssh.”

“They can’t—”

“Yes, they fucking
can,
” Falcon hissed. “They’re thieves. Just like us. We have to be
quiet,
understand? Our mission is on the other side, not here.”

Princess lapsed into silence. The ugly tableau continued to play out, with one after another of the bandits kicking or slapping the old man. But then the game changed as the young man with the machete emerged from the far side of the truck, his hand twisted deep into the long black hair of a young girl. He threw the girl to the ground. She looked about twelve years old. The chubby man laughed and reached for the girl. She clawed at his face. He punched her sharply in the mouth and she collapsed in the road. The old man rushed to her side, hovering protectively over her body.

The chubby man handed his rifle to another of the bandits and stepped toward the girl, unbuttoning his pants. Princess screamed something incoherent and burst from cover, charging straight at the bandits. Falcon said “Fuck!” under his breath and put a bullet into the head of the man holding the rifle. The chubby man barked an order. One of the bandits leveled a pistol at the onrushing Princess even as Falcon’s bullet took out his left eye. The chubby man was scrambling to reach the rifle lying on the road when a shotgun blast took him from behind, shredding his shirt and his lungs. The two remaining bandits dashed for the safety of the trees, but Falcon’s next shot dropped one of them. And by then, Princess had the lone survivor in his hands. He didn’t remain a survivor for long.

Years later, the little girl named her first child Espectro. And when he was old enough to understand, his mother explained that he was named for the ghost who had saved her from horror.

“They started it,” Princess sulked as Falcon prodded him from behind, urging more speed.

“Gunfire brings questions,” Falcon told him. “You fucked up, plain and simple. You pull a stunt like that while we’re in place and—”

“My man ain’t gonna do any such thing,” Ace said soothingly, patting Princess on his massive shoulder. “This time we was just laying up, okay? But once we get across the border, we gonna be
undercover,
remember? You wouldn’t blow our cover, right, brother?”

“No way!” Princess promised, his voice restored to its usual childish tone. Falcon wondered if his eyes were still purple—the unhuman color they turned every time the child lost control.

Seventeen hours later, they crossed the border.