Green Ice: A Deadly High (12 page)

Chapter Thirteen

“Get the car started, Trey,” Mancini barked, covering the four guys with the handgun. “Lock the bags in the trunk first.” He was aware he could be seen by passersby aiming a loaded firearm but the alternative situation was to lose their ride and the cash to the gang members.

Trey
opened the trunk and hurriedly piled the bags inside the compartment. He locked the hatch and jumped into the driver’s seat. Jorge clambered over the passenger door and slumped into the rear seat. Trey gunned the engine and rolled the car forward. Mancini rounded the rear of the car, still aiming his handgun at the four guys and slid into the passenger seat.

“Go, go,” he spat at Trey. “Take a left turn.”

Trey pumped the gas and the tires squealed on the blacktop as he pulled out of the parking slot. Vehicles already rolling down the road jammed on their brakes and honked their horns when Trey pulled out across the stream of traffic. The four gang guys shouted inaudible threats and rushed to a blue SUV, parked up on the roadside a few yards further down the highway.

Jorge nervously glanced behind him
, beyond the following traffic.

“Those guys are going to come after us,” he
stammered.

“Forget about them. Let’s just get out of this town before the cops bring down some kind of quarantine area. We won’t be able to get out if we get snared in a road block.”

“Where we headed?” Trey asked.

Mancini sighed. “We’ll have to take that road trip all the way down to La Paz.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously,” Mancini groaned. “More guys will come on down there
, if we need them.”

“How many miles are we talking here?”

Mancini shook his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet but we’re talking about a few days on the road to get down that way.” He unfolded the map and pointed Trey the route out of the city.

The traffic thinned in volume the further they drove from the city center. Jorge kept glancing at the road behind the Thunderbird, checking on their pursuer’s progress.

“They are still following,” he groaned.

Mancini ignored him and continued plotting the route to La Paz. “Stick to Highway
1 and that’ll lead us all the way down. It’s going to be a hell of a drive but we have no choice. We have to try and take that whole batch of green shit from Luiz, before it hits the streets.”

“Ah, man. This really sucks ass,” Trey groaned, slumping his head back against the seat rest.

“What are we going to do about those guys following behind?” Jorge sounded insistent.

Trey glanced into his rear view mirror and Mancini twisted around in his seat. They both saw the battered, blue
SUV following behind with a few vehicles between them.

“This baby will easily outrun that piece of shit,” Trey said, patting the dash. “Don’t
worry, we’ll put some space between us when we hit the open road.”

“There you go, Jorge,” Mancini muttered
, turning back to face the front.

Jorge worried his cohorts weren’t taking yet another threat seriously. His mind was awash with all the possible outcomes of his current predicament. None of them seemed favorable and he decided to take his chances and make a bolt for it at the next available
opportunity. Ernesto was dead, Luiz would probably follow the same way soon enough and he himself wouldn’t survive Oreilles’s wrath, even if they did somehow manage to recover the batch of green crystals from the cartel. His usefulness would immediately evaporate once Mancini had located Luiz. Jorge began to plot his escape in his mind. He didn’t care about the merchandise but one of those bags of cash would allow him to get someplace miles away.

Trey snaked around the roads on the city limits surrounding Ensenada. He ignored the speed limits, figuring the cops would be preoccupied with the events back at the apartment block.
He glanced in his mirror and saw the SUV falling behind. Several cop cars and ambulances flashed by, heading in the opposite direction with their sirens wailing and lights frantically blinking.

“Looks like you’ve created quite the shit storm, Jorge,” Mancini said, watching the
emergency vehicles zip past. 

“Oreilles better be paying us some big bucks for this job,”
Trey said. “Driving all the way down Mexico deserves a bundle bonus in my book.”

“Tell him that to his face next time you see him,” Mancini snorted.

Trey thought about the bundles of cash in the holdalls inside the trunk. He glanced in the mirror at Jorge. “So, what were you guys doing with all those rolls of dead presidents?”

Jorge looked confused
and leaned forward in his seat. “Excuse me?”

“He means the loot, Jorge,” Mancini sighed, stifling a slight grin.
He was also curious why Oreilles had entrusted them with such a large amount of ready cash.

Jorge shifted on his seat and looked uncomfortable. “
Luiz had the knowledge of how to produce and manufacture the product. He is the chemist. Ernesto was in control of the distribution side of the network and I was the money man. Mr Oreilles supplied us with the money to build up the business on a larger scale, to purchase property, equipment and trucks for manufacture and distribution. I was going to launder the money in much smaller, legitimate companies, which were in effect all going to belong to our manufacturing organization.”

“And the three of you got greedy, Jorge,” Mancini sighed. “You tried to cut Oreilles out and go it alone with the cartel. What the hell were you thinking?”

Jorge squirmed in his chair, glancing down at his lap and muttering to himself. The plan to flee and go it alone had seemed watertight at the time but now he was seriously regretting his own involvement. He turned around to view the road behind him, checking if the blue SUV was still in pursuit. The vehicle containing the rough looking gang had vanished from sight but Jorge continued staring at the road, hoping Trey and Mancini would cease with their humiliating inquisition.    

“You sure took a big risk crossing the border with all that stash
and cash, man,” Trey added.

Jorge glanced up and wiped his face with his hand. “When you have that kind of money, bribery is easy.
Luiz knew the right people who looked the other way. Tell me one thing, how did you find us so easily?”

Mancini shook his head and turned slightly in his seat.
“Three amigos partying hard, with a large bundle of loot and flaunting a new narcotic product on the market? It’s not all that difficult to spot, Jorge. You knew Oreilles has eyes and ears all over the damn place. The kid here was right. It was a hell of a risk. But not crossing the border into Mexico. The risk was getting caught with your pants down, which is exactly what’s happened.” He reached into his pocket and took out his pack of smokes, offering them around. Jorge refused, shaking his head but Trey accepted.

“And Oreilles sent you here to kill me, yes?” Jorge muttered.

Mancini lit his and Trey’s smokes with his lighter. “First and foremost, our job is to recover the merchandise and the money. Once that job is taken care of, Oreilles might look favorably on the fact you helped us out finding Luiz and let you live. Who knows, Jorge?”

Jorge sighed and slumped back in the backseat.
He knew Oreilles would order his execution once the task was completed. He had to escape, or at least try.

Chapter Fourteen

“Here’s what’s going to happen, Jorge,” Mancini said, turning in his seat. “We’re going to stop once we’re way out of town and clear of Ensenada. We’re going to buy a prepaid cell phone and you’re going to call Luiz and tell him you’re on the way down to join him. You can tell him any bullshit story you want but mention us or alert him in any way and you’ll catch a bullet with your face.”

“I don’t have his number,” Jorge
groaned. “You threw my cell off the balcony, remember?”

“Luckily for you, Jorge, I picked it up on the way out of there.” Mancini tapped his pants pocket. “We can retrieve
Luiz’s number somehow, I’m sure.”

“He said he was having some trouble of his own, down in La Paz. Exactly what the problem was, I’m not sure. You cut me off when he was trying to explain what was happening over there. I was also telling him about the girl in my apartment.”

“You better hope we get there in time, Jorge,” Mancini said, shaking his head. “Looks like that new shit of yours is a total monster.”

“I knew there was something like, weird about those guys and that chick we saw on the way into Ensenada,” Trey said. “That was some freaky shit.” He turned to glance at Mancini. “It wouldn’t be such a problem if that green ice only made the users fucking gaga but it looks as though the craziness or whatever the hell it is, is passing on to people they bite. I
’m
mean…what the hell, man? It might even be infectious just to breathe the same air as these crazy bastards. We might even be infected now ourselves.”

Mancini took a last
pull on his smoke and tossed the butt out onto the road. Trey had a point. How could they be sure they weren’t affected by the disease?

Trey turned back to Jorge. “Is there some kind of come down cure for this shit, man? What the hell did you guys put into that stuff?”

The Thunderbird drifted across the lane and a white pickup truck headed straight towards them. The oncoming vehicle screeched on its brakes, honked its horn and swerved into the dusty roadside.

“Jesus Christ, Trey!” Mancini yelled, grabbing the steering wheel and attempting to steer the Thunderbird away from the truck.

Jorge squawked in the backseat and gripped the front headrests. Trey turned the wheel left and right, trying to gain control of the car. The Thunderbird narrowly missed a collision with the pickup by a few inches. Mancini caught a brief glimpse of the irate driver, his face creased in anger while he hollered at them across his cab.

“Fuck, man!”
Trey yelled when he finally regained control of the steering. He slowed the Thunderbird to a more comfortable speed as they crossed back onto their rightful lane.

“Watch what you’re doing, Trey,” Mancini groaned. “I know we’re all a little pumped right now but we have to remain focused. We’re no good to anybody if we’re dead in a car wreck.”

“Sorry, man, sorry,” Trey mumbled, raising his hand in admission.

Mancini glanced at his watch. The time rapidly approached five p
.m. They’d been on the road almost constantly since the early hours of the morning.

“Maybe it’s time to take a break,” he sighed. “I’m sure we could all do with some downtime.
You good with that?”

Trey nodded. “
Yo, I guess. How many miles to La Paz?”

Mancini looked at the map and calculated the distance. “We’re talking around
eight hundred miles.”

Trey groaned and held his hand to his forehead. “Shit, man. We’re talking, like another whole day of driving tomorrow, if we’re lucky.”

Mancini nodded. “When we stop, we better check the ride is topped up with fluids and gas. Is the engine good?”

Trey nodded. “It’s fucking tip-top, man. Like I said, the whole thing is totally reconditioned. This car could drive around the world without
wiping out, man.”

Mancini didn’t share Trey’s confidence. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” he muttered. “La Paz will do for now.”

“Where do you want to stop? I’m hoping you’re going to say someplace with a hot tub, pool, cable TV, room service and palm trees.”

Mancini smiled. “Sorry, that’s not going to happen. We need someplace which is a little
more low key. More like a cheap roadside motel.”

“I somehow thought that’s what you were going to say, man,” Trey
groaned.

The route further south of Ensenada swerved away from the coastline and the two-lane road followed a path between successions of
barren, cascading hills. Trey glanced around the landscape for any sign of potential accommodation.