Cartel (36 page)

It didn't hurt much. Almost like he'd been hit with a big stick. Then he felt a flood of warm liquid, as if he'd urinated on himself. Maybe he had. He reached down with his right hand and felt. His pants were wet. But when he raised his hand it was dark red and dripping.

The third man stood in the middle of the small kitchen, pointing his rifle at Rodrigo. Pointing it, not aiming it. The plastic stock was tucked under his arm. He was smiling.

The pain was getting worse now. Rodrigo took a deep breath. Something gurgled inside him. Then he was surprised to see the old Colt revolver that had belonged to his grandfather-his abuelo-still in his left hand and pointed at the gunman.

Rodrigo pulled the trigger again and the man's smile disappeared, wiped clean by the 250-grain chunk of lead that exploded from the end of his grandfather's revolver. The bullet struck the gunman square in the teeth and snapped his head back.

For an instant, Rodrigo thought he saw a halo encircle the man's head. But it was bright red. He didn't think halos were red. Red was the devil's color. Halos were bright, that was true, but they weren't red. They were white or gold or maybe silver. Not red. Then the halo or whatever it was dis-appeared. And the man collapsed.

The revolver slipped out of Rodrigo's hand and fell to the floor, clattering as it landed in a thick, dark pool that was spreading across the tiles. He was tired. He looked at the three men lying on the floor of his kitchen, of God's kitchen. It was God's house, after all. He felt something crawling up the back of his throat. He coughed to try to get it out. Then he spat up blood.

Rodrigo was so tired. And the pain was bad now. He focused on the three dead men. If God had not called to him all those years ago, if God had not shown him that he was on the wrong path, he would have ended up just like them. But maybe it wasn't too late for them. Just as it had not been too late for him.

So Rodrigo gathered his strength and again extended his right hand to the men and made the sign of the cross. He prayed aloud for them. "Rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let your perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in your eternal peace and in your everlasting glory. Forever and ever. Amen."

Then the earthy light faded and Father Rodrigo felt his chin slump to his chest. He felt nothing else. Saw nothing else. Except a single point of pure white light moving toward him.

The tunnel was a decent piece of engineering, Scott thought, braced every fifty feet with a pair of stout wooden posts and a thick cross beam. Its quality attested to by the fact that it was still here after a hundred years.

They traveled in single file, Benny leading the way with the flashlight, then Rosalita, Jake, Samantha, and Victoria. Scott was last in line and still carried the empty Beretta, alt-hough he wasn't sure why.

They had traveled maybe a hundred yards, when they heard gunshots behind them. There were no flashes inside the tunnel, and from the muffled quality of the sound, Scott could tell they had been fired inside the rectory. He could distinguish both the high-pitched crack of .223 rounds and the lower-pitched boom of the .45 revolver.

As soon as she heard the shots, Benny stopped and turned around. "Tío," she said. The line stopped behind her. Scott bumped into Victoria. He looked past her and saw Benny's face in the beam of the flashlight. She was crying. Rosalita hugged her.

"We have to keep going," Scott said.

Victoria glanced over her shoulder at Scott. "Are you sure there's a way out?"

"Yes," he said. But, of course, he wasn't. He wasn't sure of anything. Looking at Benny, he said, "There's nothing we can do for him. But we can save these kids."

She nodded, then wiped her face and turned around.

They kept walking.

Scott tried to pick up counting his steps where he had left off when they heard the gunshots, but he couldn't re-member what number he was on. So he gave up. The tunnel would end when it ended, and it really didn't matter how far that was. They had no choice but to keep moving forward.

Then they were there. The tunnel stopped at a dirt wall that was buttressed by a couple of oil-soaked railroad ties standing upright and countersunk into the wall. There was no vertical shaft like at the other end. Just the wall and the low ceiling.

Scott squeezed past Victoria and the kids and stood as straight as he could beside Benny. The top of his head brushed the trapdoor, which, like the one at the other end of the tunnel, consisted of a two-foot by two-foot square of rough-cut wood. The remnants of a wooden ladder were nailed to the railroad ties, but the years had eaten away most of it and left only a couple of disintegrating rungs. Scott tilt-ed his ear up toward the trapdoor. The buzzing in his head had mostly faded away, but he still couldn't hear anything above them. "Do you hear anything?" he whispered to Ben-ny.

She shook her head.

He pointed to the pistol in her hand. "How many rounds do you have left?"

She tucked the flashlight under her arm, then thumbed the button on the side of the grip and dropped the magazine into her hand. In the glow from the flashlight, Scott could see there was only one round left in the magazine.

"How about you?" Benny asked.

Scott shook his head.

Two shots. That was all they had. And no idea what they would be facing on the other side.

Scott considered hunkering down in the tunnel until morning. They were safe for now, but how long could that last? If anyone discovered the trapdoor in the rectory and came after them, two bullets weren't much of a defense and there was no cover inside the tunnel. They were fish in a bar-rel. Soon a dark barrel, because the flashlight couldn't have more than a few minutes of juice left, and once it gave out, they would be in pitch blackness. The kids would panic. Vic-toria would panic. Maybe Benny too. Hell, he would panic.

So he tucked the empty pistol into his waistband and pushed both hands against the wooden hatch. Nothing hap-pened. It didn't budge. He pushed again, really getting his legs into it this time. Still nothing happened. He pushed once more, this time getting everything into it, arms, legs, shoul-ders, and back. The trapdoor rose an inch. Then dropped back down.

"Why won't it open?" Victoria said.

As Scott took a moment to catch his breath, he looked at his wife and saw the growing fear on her face. Since he had known her, she had been terrified of tight spaces. An elevator was her limit, but even then she got nervous if the doors didn't open fast enough, and she would have a fit if the lights flickered. "Something is on top of it," he said.

"Can you get it open?" Victoria asked.

"Yeah," Scott said. "I just need a little more leverage."

"I'll help you," Benny said. She handed the flashlight to Victoria and tucked her pistol into the back of her pants. She stood face to face with Scott and pressed her hands against the trapdoor.

"Me too," Victoria said. Then she handed the light to Jake and squeezed in between Scott and Benny and got ready to push.

Scott counted to three and they all pushed together.

The trapdoor again rose an inch. Then stopped. The three of them kept straining and pushing. Jake tried to help but he wasn't tall enough. "All right, all right," Scott said. "That's enough." They relaxed and the trapdoor snapped back down.

"What do you think's holding it down?" Victoria said.

Scott shook his head. "Something heavy."

"What are we going to do, dad?" Jake said.

Looking at his son, Scott said, "We're going to open it."

"How?" Samantha asked. She was really scared, Scott could tell, but she was trying to hold it in, to be brave for her parents and in front of her big brother, who frequently called her a chicken when she refused to go along with some of his dumber schemes.

Scott dropped down to one knee beside his daughter. "We're going to try harder."

"But how are you-"

A loud scraping noise came from above them as some-thing heavy was dragged across the top of the trapdoor. Jake dropped the flashlight. It hit the hard-packed dirt floor and went out.

Total darkness.

Samantha screamed but Victoria got a quick hand over her mouth. Still, anyone above them had heard it.

"Victoria," Scott whispered, "get all three kids back down the tunnel at least twenty feet."

Benny whispered to Rosalita in Spanish. Then Scott felt his wife pulling all three children deeper into the tunnel. "Benny?" Scott whispered.

"I know," she whispered back. "I only have two bul-lets."

"Then I guess you better make them count."

Another loud scraping sound came from the top of the trapdoor. Then a man's voice spoke in Spanish. Scott took a step back into the tunnel and pulled Benny with him, just in case someone fired straight down at them. Then he saw a thin line of light on one side of the trapdoor.

The man spoke again.

"What's he saying?" Scott whispered to Benny.

"He's asking who's down here?"

The man said something else.

"He says he has a gun," Benny whispered.

"Tell him we're trapped," Scott said. "And we need help."

"Scott?" Victoria's voice came from behind him. "What if he's...one of them?"

"We don't have a choice," Scott said.

The man repeated what he'd first said, only this time he shouted. Scott could tell by the tone that the man was scared. It gave him hope. "Tell him," Scott said to Benny.

Benny shouted in Spanish. There was a long silence. Then the man said something back. Benny responded, her tone sharp.

"What did he say?" Scott asked.

"He said he was going to call the police. I told him not to."

"Why not?" Victoria asked. "We need the police de-partment or the fire department or somebody to help us get out of this hole. Tell him to go ahead and call the police."

Scott and Benny each said an emphatic "No" at the same time.

"But why not?" Victoria said.

"This is Mexico," Benny said.

"But aren't you a police officer?" Victoria said.

"I am," Benny said. "But not all-"

"One of the men in the church was a police captain," Scott interrupted.

"I don't understand," Victoria said.

"Are you Americans?" the man shouted in English.

"Yes," Scott said. "Some of us."

"How many of you are there?" the man asked.

"Three adults and three children," Scott said. "We need to get out."

"How did you get down there?"

Benny said something to him in Spanish. There was a long pause. Then the trapdoor lifted off. Light flooded into the tunnel. Benny aimed the Beretta at the opening. There was no one there. Then the business end of an old double-barreled shotgun peeked over the edge of the hole. Benny tensed. Scott laid a restraining hand on her shoulder. "We don't mean you any harm," he said to the man. "We just need your help."

A man's face appeared as he stood over the hole, aiming the shotgun down at them. The gun trembled in his hands. "Who are you?" he said in English.

"I'm an American police officer," Scott said. Then nod-ded at Benny. "And this is my partner, from the Policia Fed-eral."

"You have children with you?" the man asked.

Scott nodded. "Three."

"Tell them to come out."

"They will," Scott said. "But let's put the guns down first."

"I heard shooting," the man said. "Lots of shooting." He pointed in the direction of the church. "That way."

"There are men looking for us," Scott said. "Bad men."

The man stared at Scott and Benny for a long time. Then he knelt down and set the shotgun on the floor. He reached into the hole with one hand. Benny glanced at Scott. He nodded. She shoved the Beretta into the back of her pants and grabbed the man's hand. Scott cupped his hands into a stirrup. Benny stepped into it and Scott heaved her up and out of the tunnel.

He boosted Victoria up next, and the man helped her climb out while Benny stood over him. Then Scott lifted the kids up one at a time. Getting himself out was a little harder, but with Benny and Victoria pulling, he managed to scram-ble out of the hole...and found himself in the kitchen of a small restaurant.

A clunky refrigerator stood at an odd angle beside the square hole, which had a thick coating of grime around it on an otherwise clean floor, suggesting to Scott that the refrig-erator had stood on top of the trapdoor for quite a long time.

"I didn't even know that was down there," the man said, pointing at the hole in the kitchen floor and the tunnel underneath. He looked to be in his fifties, with black hair tinged with gray and the weather-beaten skin of someone who had worked outside most of his life.

"Thank you," Scott said and shook the man's hand, which was as tough and dry as old shoe leather.

The man nodded. "De nada."

"How long have you owned the restaurant?" Scott asked.

"Two years," the man said. Then he turned and called to someone. A woman stepped tentatively into the kitchen. She was short and plump and looked to be a few years younger than the man. "Mi esposa," the man said. "We bought the restaurant for our retirement."

The man's wife nodded.

Scott glanced down at the shotgun. The man caught the look and picked up the old double-barrel. "It's not even loaded," he said. Then he flipped a lever on top and broke open the barrels to show Scott the empty breeches.

Scott smiled at Benny.

"Good thing I didn't shoot him," she said.

The restaurant owner glanced at his wife. They looked nervous. The wife said something to Benny in Spanish.

"She wants to know if the children are hungry," Benny said.

"I'm starving," Jake said.

"Me too," his sister added.

Rosalita said something to her mother in Spanish, which Scott was pretty sure meant his kids weren't the only ones who were hungry.

"Sí, gracias," Benny told the woman.

Scott helped the man close the trapdoor and slide the re-frigerator back into place. Benny watched them. She didn't say anything, but Scott knew she was thinking about her un-cle. "Do you know the priest," Scott asked the man and pointed, "at the church?"