Monkey on a Chain (28 page)

As soon as the dust settled around us, I crawled out of the car. “April!” I called.

She came running from the front door and flung herself at me. I caught her and held her tightly. When I asked if she was okay, she nodded into my neck. Roy came up behind her, followed by three men carrying machine pistols. He had a pistol of some sort in a brown leather holster strapped to his belt.

“You didn’t have to worry, Rainbow,” he told me. “She’s just fine.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

He laughed at me.

Sissy limped around the car. “Hello, Roy,” he said.

Roy lost his smile. “You’re looking good, Sissy.”

“Still alive, compadre.” There wasn’t much friendliness in his voice.

“Well, let’s try to keep it that way.” Roy turned to me. “How long do you think we have?”

“I think they’ll get here around sunset, do a bit of scouting, and then wait. They’ll have about half a moon, starting after midnight. I think they’ll come in late, block the canyon after dark, and then hit us when they’ve got the moon, probably a couple hours before sunrise. That’s the way I’d do it, but Max may be playing by a different rule book. We have to be prepared for action anytime after sunset. That’s when he expects us to arrive. He won’t start shooting until he’s got all his fish in one barrel.”

Roy made a face. “Your imagery sucks, Porter.”

“Tough. Show me what we’ve got to work with. Start with the ordnance.” I tossed my keys to Sissy and told him to bring in our contribution. April stayed with him to help.

Roy led the way into the ranch house. It was an old adobe one story with walls two feet thick. There were only a few windows facing the outside. The main door was of heavy wood, hand-carved and stained a dark, almost black, mahogany. It opened onto a central courtyard that had been paved with native stone and decorated with trees and plants set in large clay pots. The rooms were built in a U-shape with doors and windows that opened off the courtyard. We followed Roy to the right and through an open door into a large den, about forty feet by fifteen, that seemed to take up that whole leg of the building. It was reasonably well lit by two large windows that opened onto the courtyard. The walls were white plaster, broken only by furniture in the heavy Spanish colonial style. It was a good room, comfortable.

The weapons were piled on a table in the center of the room. Four M16s, an AK47, an Uzi, two service automatics, extra clips for all of them. He also had a small stack of grenades, both concussion and fragmentation. I picked up one of the grenades and hefted it, feeling the old familiar weight.

Roy was watching me carefully. I winked at him. “It’s been a while,” I said. He just looked at me.

Sissy and April came in, moving slowly, with the .45 I’d brought and two 30.06s. Roy looked at them in silence, then said, “This is what you brought? Not what I expected, Rainbow.”

“The rifles are Sissy’s,” I told him. “I had confidence in you.”

He nodded, but looked puzzled. April was standing behind him. “Would anyone like a drink,” she asked. “It must have been a hot drive.”

Sissy asked for water. I said I was fine and went about checking the weapons. “I’m going to have a beer,” she told us. “I think I’ll have a Bohemia.”

I glanced over at her. She was staring directly at me.

“All I’ve got is Carta,” Roy said. “I told you last night.”

“I really feel like a Bohemia,” she insisted.

“No beer,” I said. “No drinking until this is over.” I went back to the job at hand, but my mind wasn’t on it. The last few pieces of the puzzle were bouncing around in my head, almost eager to fall into place.

Roy stood near me by the table, radiating tension. I finished with the weapons, selected one of the 16s for myself, and stuck my .45 in my belt. I turned to him.

“We have to get something out in the open,” I told him. “Sissy said you promised to keep an eye on Miss Phoung when he came home. She was killed. He’s pissed. So the question is, can you two work together? If the answer is no, he’s got to leave now, before we start this. I have to know where all the bullets are going.”

He looked at Sissy. “I’ve got no problem,” he said.

Sissy was antagonistic. “I’ve got a problem,” he said. “You promised to take care of her.”

“I couldn’t do it. She blamed me for your death. She wouldn’t have anything to do with me. With any of us.”

“He’s telling the truth,” I offered.

Sissy didn’t look away from him. Roy put his hand casually on his holster. “There was nothing I could do,” he said. “I tried, but she just…faded away. She kicked me out. I did all I could. Gave her title to the house. Money. But she didn’t want any of us around.”

“You could have told her I made it.”

He shook his head. “We agreed about that, Cisneros. Nobody was to know. Only Corvin.”

“You really couldn’t do anything?”

“Not a thing. Believe me, I tried. But she slowly cut us all off. She was even hanging around with Corvin.”

“You’re a fucking liar!” But he was no longer certain.

“We all tried, Sissy,” I said. “I saw her with Corvin myself. Nothing could be done.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Something should have been done. Something.”

“What happened, happened.” Roy said. “We’ve got to put it behind us.”

Sissy nodded slowly and I took my hand off the butt of the .45 in my belt. “So you’re okay?” I asked.

“For now. Let’s get this over with. I want to see the last of this son of a bitch.”

I distributed the weapons. April got one of the pistols. I told her I’d give her a lesson later and took Roy outside to look over the terrain.

He started to tell me how we should play the coming battle. I cut him off. “I’ll tell you how it’s going to go,” I said, “after I’ve seen the land.” He bristled. It was his land and his troops I was using.

“You remember why you hired me?” I asked. “You think you’re better at what has to be done than I am?”

It took a moment, but he calmed down. “No.”

“Then let me get on with it.”

His men were standing under one of the trees, smoking. We walked over and Roy introduced us. Jorge, Nestor, and José. Hughie, Dewey, and Louie, I thought. They were all in their late thirties, lean and tough. They handled their weapons with casual familiarity.

We walked around the property, scouting positions. The canyon was about eighty meters wide at that point. The central forty meters, where the house and stable had been built, were flat. On either side, the ground sloped up to the yellow cliffs. Jumbled rockfalls lay at the foot of the cliffs. They would provide good cover. I gestured toward the path I’d seen behind the house.

“What’s up there?”

Roy was terse. “Landing strip.”

“Let’s look it over.” I told Hughie, Dewey, and Louie to put together food, water, and blankets. Three packs. They looked to Roy for confirmation. He nodded at them. I started for the path. He hurried along behind me.

“What’s the idea?”

“We’ll have to spend the night in the rocks. We don’t know when Corvin will get here.” I took the path at an easy lope. It was almost like jogging up my mountain back home. The side canyon narrowed quickly and soon we were twisting through a deep, winding cut in light brown stone that zigzagged as it climbed. Roy was breathing heavily and sweating when we reached the top.

The land above the canyon was flat, broken only by clumped sagebrush and mesquite. The landing strip paralleled the edge of the canyon, set back maybe fifty meters. It was only about ten meters wide. Good enough for small planes. There was a fuel tank near the top of the path, hidden under some camouflage netting. I walked the length of the strip looking for signs of another road, or anything that might force a change in my plans. Nothing. Roy walked along beside me, sweating heavily. I noticed that the flap on his holster was open.

“Get much traffic, Roy?” I asked when we were done.

“Enough.” He looked wary.

“You can button your flap,” I told him.

“Oh?” He kept his hand well away from the holster. Smart of him.

“What are you running?”

“Commodities.”

“Like the old days?”

“No. Newer stuff.”

I nodded. “Your operation?”

“I just trans-ship the shit, Rainbow. You got a problem with that?”

“Your business is your business,” I told him. “Much money in it?”

“Enough.” He was tense, sweating too much. “Interested?”

I shook my head casually. “Not my field,” I said. “Take it easy, buddy. I don’t give a shit what you do. I’m here to kill a man. Then I’m gone.” I turned and walked away from him. My ears hurt, I was listening so hard. All I heard were his footsteps on the packed earth behind me. He caught up with me halfway down. I noticed he had closed his holster.

“How do you want to play it?” he asked.

“Later. After supper. We’ll talk.” I meant that I’d talk. He’d listen.

When we got back to the hacienda, I put Roy, Sissy, and April on kitchen duty and inspected the packs his men had prepared. To them, food seemed to mean beef jerky, but other than that, the packs were okay. They had included enough water. I took the men with me and went for another tour.

There were a number of good positions. I picked three rock falls that were easily defensible and offered good fields of fire. Two were under the cliffs on the western side of the canyon. They were already in shadow and were cooling quickly, as things do in the desert. The one farthest north was behind and above the house. The second was a couple hundred meters closer to the mouth of the canyon. The third was across the canyon from the first two positions. Together, they marked the points of a triangle. If Corvin and his mob reached the center of the triangle, they’d be trapped.

I put one of Roy’s men at each position with a shovel and showed them where to dig. I wanted shallow trenches, each big enough for a man to rest in. Then I went down to the valley floor and verified that the positions would be invisible. I left them to work and walked up the main canyon. I hadn’t found what I wanted yet.

The canyon narrowed rapidly. By the time I’d gone two hundred meters, the walls had closed in on me. The cliffs were no more than twenty meters apart and I was walking in cool shade between two smooth rock faces. The floor was sandy. There was some brush and a few lichens growing on an occasional rock, but otherwise the way was barren. Five minutes later, the canyon narrowed to a crack, no more than five meters across. There were still some tracks in the sand, so I kept going. The canyon opened up suddenly and I had what I was looking for.

I was in a large room of stone, open to the late afternoon sky. The far side of the room was blocked by an enormous slab of stone that had fallen from the eastern face. It was smooth, but climbable. I made my way to the top and looked around.

A dune buggy sat under a camouflage tarp next to a clump of sage. I pulled the tarp back. The keys were in the ignition. I removed the distributor cap and hid it under some brush where I could find it easily if I needed it, then headed back. I’d known Roy would have a back door, but this was my party and I didn’t want anyone leaving before the last dance was over. Also, it was good to know which way he’d run if things got tight.

On the way back, I stopped at the corral, opened the gate, and shooed the horses out. They milled around in front of the stable. I grabbed a set of reins and whipped them until they took off down the canyon. Then I moved the two vehicles parked in front of the house as far up the canyon as I could and disabled them both. The Mexicans watched me and looked at each other, but they said nothing.

Dinner was ready when I returned. Steak and beans. Roy watched me furtively as we ate. He was probably wondering where I’d been. Hughie, Dewey, and Louie sat together under the trees. The rest of us ate on the patio. April sat beside Sissy. They watched me too. Everyone was getting nervous as the hour approached.

After dinner, I waved them all over and told the assembly how I wanted things to happen.

“They’re going to come up the road,” I said. “They won’t be on it. They’ll stick near the brush on either side. They’ll move up in small groups, depending on how many there are and on their discipline. I figure there will be two groups, with three or four men in each. One will take cover while the other moves up. They’re going to be hard to see. You’ll probably hear them long before you see them, so keep both your eyes and ears open. When they see the house, they’re going to stop and wait. They won’t move right away.”

Roy interrupted me. “Why did you turn my horses loose?”

“I didn’t want to shoot them,” I said. “Too noisy.”

He just looked at me.

“If Corvin reaches the house or stable, he’s going to know he’s in a trap. I didn’t want to leave him any way out. Not even a desperation run on a horse. We’d probably get him, but we might not. And we’d have to shoot the horse anyway, just to stop it. You can round the horses up tomorrow. They’ll survive a night in the desert.”

I waited until he nodded.

“Here’s the setup. We’re going to take three positions. Sissy and April will be on the west side of the canyon, just behind the house. They are the least mobile, and they’re going to block the back of the canyon. They’ll provide general fire and take any targets that present themselves. In addition, their job will be to stop anyone trying to reach the hacienda or the corral and block the path that leads up to the airstrip. We don’t want a siege if we can avoid one, and we don’t want anyone escaping up to the mesa. It’d be too hard to chase them down up there.

“Roy, you’ll be on the same side of the canyon, two hundred meters closer to the mouth, with one of your men. You will be responsible for blocking their escape back down the canyon. The other two will be opposite you, but a little closer to the house and slightly above it. Between the two of you, the road and the canyon from the house and stable will be covered.”

“What about you?” Roy asked.

“I’m going to float. My first position, while Corvin makes his approach, will be in the rocks a hundred meters down the canyon. As soon as they pass me, I’ll drop closer to the road. When they are even with Roy, I’ll open fire. That should push them forward into the trap and turn them around to return my fire. At that point, they’ll be exposed to the positions on either side of the canyon. The survivors will take defensive positions in the rocks and brush near the road. They’ll be boxed in without much cover. Remember, you’ll be shooting down on them, so try to aim a little high. If they move up the canyon, April and Sissy will force them back. If they move back, I’ll tie them down and you and your men can work on them. Once they’ve taken cover, we fire for effect until no targets present themselves. At that point, Roy, his men, and I will have to close with them.”