The Rules of Wolfe (26 page)

I snatch up a carbine and lower my window, then reach over and cut off the engine and listen hard for the sound of a coming vehicle. But all I hear is a raven squall twice and then nothing but our own breathing. The tracker signal on the screen hasn't moved.

Frank's leaning forward, holding his bloody shoulder and breathing through his teeth. There's a big smear of blood on his seat back and a bullet hole in it. I ask if he can work the arm. He does so with a snarl of pain, then says he'd rather not do it again. But if he can work it, it's not that bad. I set the carbine against the door and tell him to let me see. He flinches when I wipe at the blood and see the humerus. Half an inch over and the shoulder joint would've been blown apart. “Mostly tissue damage but mighta chipped bone,” I say. “Bleeding's slow.”

He takes out the Beretta with his left hand and flicks off the safety, and I get out my pocketknife and cut off his shirtsleeve and tell him to man up. He grits his teeth and growls like a pissed-off dog while I quickly bind the shoulder with the sleeve.

“That'll hold it.”

He nods and blows a couple of long breaths, sweat streaming off his face.

No telling how many they are, but he agrees with my hunch that it's not more than two or they'd have hit us with a volley instead of just two shots. For sure they're waiting for us to peek out. The nearest outside cover is about ten yards away, a thick growth of prickly pear cactus stretching fifteen feet or so along the edge of the bank. If I can find a peephole through it and spot them before they spot me. . . . But they've got the edge. We don't know where they are on that rock but they know exactly where we are and know the cactus patch is our only cover. They're going to be fixed on it and ready to shoot at the first sign of movement behind it.

But you make do with what you got. I open the door and slip out with the M-4, hoping they don't have enough angle to see the top of the door and know at least one of us is on the move.

I hustle over to the cactus in a crouch and find a gap in it much like a rifle port in some old garrison—more than a foot wide and
almost as deep. Gives me enough latitude to scan their ridge and
prop my barrel on the bank without it sticking out of the cactus and giving me away. I set the selector on three-round and settle myself and start panning through the scope . . . slow left, slow right. . . .

42

Eddie and Miranda

He crawls on his side to keep the jutting shinbone from snagging on the ground, but every movement jostles the wound and evokes a small cry he isn't even aware of. He is almost to her hand now. Staring hard at him, she says, Chacho . . . I can't . . .
do
it. Her eyes bright with pain but telling him something more.

He crawls up to her until his face is almost to hers.

Damn you, kid, the thin man says behind him. You just cost me a thousand pesos.

Eddie looks over his shoulder and sees him a few feet away, regarding them with a small smile and again holding the rifle like a pistol. Pointing it at them.

Better move your head, boy, he tells Eddie. I haven't been shooting real good today.

Please, she says. Let him . . . kiss me. . . . Please.

Kiss
you? Pico says. Jesus, girl, you in a
movie
or what?

Ah, man, Eddie gasps.

Pico lowers the muzzle and grins. I am
such
a fool for romance, he says. Do it quick. Too bad you can't make it a last fuck. Be more fun to watch.

Eddie pulls himself closer to her and rises on his elbows and she partly turns her face up to his with a whimper. He puts his left hand to her cheek and kisses her gently. His back blocks Pico's view of his right hand sliding under her, feeling the heat of her blood. She groans.

“Ya, basta,” Pico says. Move your head, kid.

Eddie ends the kiss and gingerly starts to shift himself out of the line of fire—then whips out the Glock she lacked the strength to withdraw and shoots Pico three times in the span of a second, the first bullet hitting him just above the heart, the second in the junction of the collarbone, the third passing through an eye and removing a portion of the back of his head. As he falls, Pico reflexively triggers a round that ricochets off the stony earth a foot from Eddie's head.

On the outcrop the big man jumps up with an expression of shocked rage. Eddie fires at him and part of the man's left ear vanishes—and the pistol's slide locks back, all bullets spent. The man starts to raise his rifle and then makes a jerky sidestep to the distant chirp of an automatic rifle and he drops out of Eddie's sight.

Be dead, be dead, Eddie thinks.

The man yells, Mother . . .
fuckers
!

Eddie cannot think what to do. There is no cover he can crawl to. The man is wounded but maybe still capable of getting up and shooting him from up there. He's got me, Eddie thinks. And waits.

Then comes the sound of an engine starting up on the other side of the outcrop and then a vehicle rumbling away.

43

Rudy and Frank

I've made only a couple of scans through the scope when I hear a distant rush of handgun poppings and a single rifle crack from somewhere ahead. I catch a movement of something at the rim of the outcrop as the scope passes over it and I cut back to it as the handgun pops again and I see the top half of a large figure silhouetted against the sky and I squeeze off a three-rounder. . . .

44

Eddie

He manages to get up and hops on one foot over to the thin man's Remington police rifle, oblivious of his own outcries at the pain of his maimed shin. When he stoops to pick up the weapon he loses his balance and screams when he falls on the wound. Then he's up again and hopping over to the outcrop, shrieking like a berserker. He flings the rifle up to the crest and then climbs the slope on both hands and one foot.

He sees the orange Land Rover winding away through the broken badland, angling around toward the border. Then looks northward and is puzzled not to see the vehicle that had been coming. And then it backs out of an arroyo, a dark SUV he would guess at two hundred yards, and it starts coming again.

He spots the Rover guy's rifle lying on the ground. A Sako. He hops over to it, whimpering, and carefully lowers himself to pick it up. He'll do what he can against the ones coming, but if they're going to kill him he can at least see to it right now that the one in the Rover doesn't get away from them either.

He eases himself to a prone position, yowling with his pain, then takes up the Sako and chambers a round and braces the barrel on a rock to steady his sighting. He peers into the scope but his vision is hazed and he wipes away the pain tears and puts his eye to the scope again.

He's certain the Rover has bulletproof glass and so concentrates on the tires. He fires and the left rear of the Rover abruptly sags. Yes! He chambers a round and wipes his eyes again and resights and with the next shot flattens the right-side back tire. The Rover presses on but its progress is perceptibly slowed, its weaving course more ungainly. He watches it in the scope and waits till it alters course enough to give him a sight line on a front tire. And with the next shot blows out the left one.

Still the thing drives on. Not gonna get too far on three flats, bubba, Eddie thinks, working the bolt. Then again, who knows? Better get that last one. But as he waits for a clear sight on the right front tire his focus begins to blur.

Don't fade, he tells himself, don't. . . .

His head slumps off the rifle stock and into the dirt.

45

Martillo

Oh, those cocksuckers! Those eaters of shit! Sons of mangy bitch whores!

A three-round burst, he'd heard it distinctly. M-4. Two hits. One in the left ass cheek which hurts plenty but the one through his lower ribs is the one he's worried about. Kidney's probably fucked. He's known worse pain and the wound's not a gusher, but it's red enough it could be a nicked artery. Need a doc fairly soon. Otherwise he'd circle back right now and put all those cocksuckers—

Bam!
The left rear tire collapses. Jesus. That's gotta be Porter, the Sinas can't be there yet. Fucking kid! Busted leg and kills Pico and still gets up there and—

Bam!
The Rover's right rear sags. Oh, you little bastard! You little rat cunt. Oh, you . . . He feels something on the side of his neck and puts his fingers to it and they come away bloody, then explores his left ear and learns a segment of it is missing. That little shit!

He would pay any price for the opportunity to teach Porter something about pain. But what chance of that? Those Sinas closing in will have the kid's head in Culiacán before the sun sets.

Well, no matter, Martillo thinks. He'll find out who they are, those bastards who shot him. Find them and at least get the satisfaction of giving them pain they've never even imagined.

Bam!
The left front dips.

p

His fury is of some avail against the agony in his side as he wrestles the crippled Rover over the uncertain ground. But now the shredded tires have come off their rims one after another and he thinks this must be what it feels like to drive a very shitty tank. Not even a Rover's going to get very far on three rims over ground like this. He calls Gómez on the satellite phone and the man makes him repeat himself several times even though the connection sounds clear enough to Martillo. He tells Gómez the coordinates of the border location where he can meet him, Gómez again making him repeat himself before finally saying he's on his way.

Gómez will get him to a Sinas doctor in Nogales and that'll be that. A little healing, then start hunting for the fuckers who shot him.

p

He's driving over a series of rocky rises, from the crests of which he can now see the border fence just fifty, sixty yards ahead. The horizon already quivering with ground heat. Then he hits soft sand at the bottom of a rise and the Rover mires.

God
damn
it! Now he's got to walk to the fence and wait in the sun for Gómez. He manages to get his door open but when he starts to step out the world tilts and he falls headlong.

What the hell? It takes all his effort to sit up. His hat. He needs his hat from the front seat. And his pistol. Hat and pistol and he'll be set. Fucking desert sun. Ni modo. Another fifty yards and there you are. Fence. Border. He tries to stand and falls over. . . .

It's a labor to open his eyes. The lids gummy. His right cheek burning in the sand. He can't make sense of the black shape he's seeing in front of him. Then recognizes it as the horizontal form of a huge raven standing very close to his face, black feathers gleaming. And now another beside it. He hears the raucous calls of still others close by. The two ravens step closer, black eyes bright, bills parted. One of them croaks and Martillo would swear it said, “Cuato.” Then the other bobs its head at him and Martillo's left eye goes black.

He gasps in shock and tries to lift his head but is unable. Can shift it only somewhat to better see with the remaining eye as the other raven pecks into the left socket too and he sees the red slime extracted on its beak. He wants to scream at them. Frighten them away. But he cannot summon the breath. . . .

p

Gómez will not find any sign of Martillo at the coordinates he was given. But he will have in mind that there was great pain in Martillo's voice and perhaps the man was not very clear in the head. So he will drive on, slowly, keeping a sharp eye, and after a time will see at a distance the low swirl of buzzards. He will finally arrive at a spot on the fence about fifty yards south of a high sandy rise, behind which the buzzards are alighting and where ravens are hopping about. He will consider the situation for a minute or two, then turn his car around and head back for Nogales. And all the way back he will be looking forward to his wife getting home from her job at the maquiladora and to kissing her and taking great pleasure in whatever she will cook for their supper.

p

Seventeen days will pass before anyone discovers the Rover. A trio of Papago scavengers on one of their regular truck searches along the most isolate areas of the border will happen upon it. You never know what you might find jettisoned by border crossers in these badlands, or, sometimes better still, in the packs and pockets of the dead. The Rover will be their largest bonanza in years. The vehicle in excellent condition but for the lack of three tires. A pair of Magnum revolvers. Two tracker receivers. Four binoculars, two of them infrared. A satellite phone. A Rolex wristwatch and excellent boots and a fine suit needing only a thorough cleansing to rid it of the various stains imposed on it by the half-withered corpse. Nearly five thousand pesos and more than seven hundred dollars in its pockets. Four gold teeth in the dead man's mouth. After stripping the body they will bury it, but on their return from Tucson with the tires and a generator pump to inflate them they will find that the corpse has been exhumed by coyotes and reduced to a ragged thing of bones hung with a few scraps of black flesh. Even the skull largely flensed. They will not reinter these remains, which a few hours later are all that will be left behind in the fiery light of the setting sun.

46

Rudy and Frank

We find six of them behind the rise, all shot, five of them dead—four men, one woman. The ants already busy at eyes and mouths. The dead woman missing half her head. Man, those Magnums. The other woman's still breathing but hit bad and unconscious. Younger than the dead one. Maybe the one he was running with.

There's a Glock lying there and I pick it up and tuck it in my belt. The only other weapon in sight is a Remington cop rifle in a guy's hand. Frank stands over him and says, “Look familiar?”

The dead man's missing an eye and it takes me a second to recognize the bullethead Félix almost got into it with in Nogales. World's smaller all the time. There's a money belt beside him and I pick it up and see it's holding a bunch of hundred-dollar bills, then fasten it around my waist.