Crossing the Line (23 page)

I stopped and spent a long moment shaking off the hypnotism. With a force of will I drew back into myself and gathered my senses. I also slid my gun out of its plastic paddle holster.

I began to move faster, no longer shuffling my feet through the well-packed dirt. Lighter, too, renewed with purpose and a sense of self. The rumble grew louder. A generator, I thought. It had to be. No way to tell how far off, but I was definitely getting closer. The walls really had grown clearer, more visible. I could see the irregularities and the protruding stone. I could see where the tunnel wound gently into yet another curve up ahead.

I checked the time again. It was 4:30
A
.
M
., so I’d been jogging for only an hour and a half. Eight or nine miles, maybe—I was never much of a runner.
Jesus
. My sweat turned cold.
Eight or nine miles into the earth.

The rumble grew louder still. The darkness was receding. I switched sides, crossing the road, and climbed over the conveyor belt. Gun in hand now, I started to move more carefully.

The first room was enormous. As big as a football field, and a ceiling that had to be fifty feet high. I crouched behind the conveyor and studied it for a couple of minutes before entering.

There was no sign of life other than for a pair of enormous machines. They were tractors of some kind, but different from each other. Both machines were quiet and still. Sleeping, maybe. This was truly another world. Like
Land of the Lost,
a TV show I’d watched as a kid.

One machine resembled—in size and general shape—a yellow brontosaurus. Instead of a head, it had huge circular blades mounted on a long neck. It looked like it had been frozen in place while taking a bite out of the ceiling. There was a dark, narrow hole up there that was probably a ventilation shaft. The other machine was a bulldozer on steroids with a cab up a ladder at least twenty feet off the ground.

There were other holes in the walls of the great room. These were other tunnels rather than vertical shafts, and all but one of them were black. They led, I didn’t doubt, into a maze. But only one of them drew my attention. It was the one the numerous tire tracks headed into. It was also the one that both the light and the rumble of the generator came from.

I slunk along the wall, past the sleeping monsters, and entered it.

This side tunnel curved, too, but after five minutes I was braced behind a protruding slab of rock and then peering around it into another big chamber. The light was bright here, so bright it was like a surgical theater. The light came from freestanding posts with arms that held a blazing array of bulbs. There was a long camper/trailer that had been hauled down from the surface. Beside it was the hearselike Cadillac Escalade.

But there was no noise other than the constant chugging of the generator. No one walking or standing around. No sign of Roberto or anyone torturing him.

I couldn’t see into the trailer. And I couldn’t see anyone peering out at me. The windows were tinted, and it looked like the curtains had been pulled. Whoever was inside it was probably sleeping. Anyone wanting to sleep down here would have had to pull the shades to keep out the brilliant light.

I half ran, half tiptoed with my gun in my hand across thirty or forty feet of open ground to the front of the trailer. Crouching with my shoulder against the fiberglass, I listened and felt for movement inside. There wasn’t any that I could hear over the generator’s constant chugging. Still crouching, I moved around to the side the door should be on.

I lost interest in the door, though, when I saw what was beyond the trailer. A hundred feet away was a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. And beyond that were tables littered with laboratory supplies—vats and beakers and green Coleman camp stoves. Just like Roberto had said. There were cots, too, which from my view looked like they had body bags lying on top of them.

One cot was on my side of the fence. On it, too, was a body bag. Or what, I realized when my heart climbed down out of my throat where it had been choking off a scream, might be a sleeping bag. And hanging off one end of it was lank, black hair.

I knew it was him. Even though I couldn’t see his face or any part of him other than the hair. I knew the way he slept—like at any second he’d yank away the lip of the bag and be staring right at me. With a slight grin, saying, “Hey, Ant. Been waiting for you.” All-knowing, like, “Almost got gored by an elk, eh,
che
?”

I had the sense to check the trailer behind me once more before I went to him. I was horribly alone. There was no one to shoot.

I hesitated for a long moment before I touched the bag—it was a sleeping bag.
Please, ’Berto.
I touched it at the shoulder.

He rolled over to see who’d poked him. I could feel the relieved grin tightening my mouth at the first twitch. And I glimpsed the backpack on the other side of the cot. It had been dumped out, the contents strewn, but the foam insert was still in place.

Then I felt the grin freeze.

His eyes were wet and glassy, the pupils mere pinpricks. All around them his flesh was blue-black and swelling. Dried blood lay caked in the creases of his eyes. He didn’t look at me. Instead he looked past me. Behind me. And for once he wasn’t smiling.

“Shit, Ant,” he groaned.

I turned my head.

Zafado was standing not ten feet away. He had the chrome-plated oversized automatic in his hand. It was all shiny angles except for the small black hole. The smallest of any I’d journeyed through lately, but drawing me into it nonetheless.

“Put down your gun,
mi amigo,
” he said.

TWENTY-THREE

T
he guy from the restaurant . . . Juan, right? Not that it’s your real name. I told you that you should come work for me. And now here you are. You come to fill out an application, no? Take me up on my generous offer?”

Zafado was grinning widely, showing me diseased gums as well as crooked teeth.

My head was reeling with too many ideas, with too many possibilities, with too many terrible outcomes. I couldn’t get them lined up or sorted out. But I made a try.

“I came looking for you, boss. To see about that job. Saw you drive into the mine and so I walked down here—”

His nasty grin was growing impossibly wider as I talked. He was shaking his head, laughing a little, not believing a word of it.

“I thought . . . oh, forget it,” I said. In English I added, “And fuck you.”

I looked back down at my brother because I didn’t want to look at those teeth or, especially, at the black hole on the muzzle of his gun.

Roberto was shaking his head, too.

He said again, quietly and with a small chuckle, “Shit, Ant.”

“You even brought your own pistol,” Zafado said. “That was ambitious of you, no? You must have been very sure I would decide to hire you. Or maybe you are a cop.”

The passenger door of the shiny Escalade opened. Bruto stepped out. His nose was misshapen and his eyes were blackened from the vicious head-butt I’d seen Roberto deliver three hours earlier. It made his features even more menacing. He cradled a sawed-off shotgun in his huge hands.

Zafado kept on talking.

“We’ve been waiting for you, of course. We knew this fellow Roberto had friends who would come for him. And Bruto did a beautiful job of placing a line in the tunnel and connecting it to an alarm. It was fishing line, thin as a spider’s web. Absolutely beautiful.”

Bruto didn’t smile at the praise. His face remained locked in that deep, dark scowl.

There was some movement on the other side of the fence. There were seven or eight people there on cots. They lay in sleeping bags or were wrapped in blankets, not the body bags—I could see now—that I had feared. I saw some dirty faces peer at us through the fence. They disappeared quickly when Bruto glanced their way.

“So this is your brother, no?” Zafado asked. He was speaking to Roberto now, who was sitting up and squirming in the bag. “We heard you had a brother with the state
policía
.”

Roberto got the bag down to his waist but kept on wriggling. I realized his feet were shackled as well as his hands.

“This dude? Never seen him before in my life,” Roberto said.

Zafado laughed.

Then to me he said, “Kick that gun over here, brother. Then that small sack around your waist, too. After that you can put your hands up above your head, okay? That’s right. Keep them right there. Reach for the sky. Isn’t that what they say in the American West? Only I’m afraid there is no sky down here.”

He was circling around us, keeping the chrome-plated automatic on us both. Checking to see, I realized, that there was no one else in the side tunnel backing me up. That was probably why Bruto had waited a little while before getting out of the Escalade. He had me lift my pant legs and then my shirt, too, to prove I didn’t have another weapon concealed.

God, these guys were good.

Bruto remained sullen and silent by the truck. I realized I’d never heard him speak—not in the bar, not on the long-range microphone, not now. I wondered if he was damaged in the head somehow. He certainly looked like damaged goods. And he scared the shit out of me. Even more than grinning little Zafado did.

Still watching us, Zafado picked up my gun and then my hip pack. He talked while he went through the pack. His eyes darted from us to the items he was examining, but Bruto’s never faltered, or even seemed to blink. He seemed to know exactly how desperate I was. Or how desperate I should be.

“Roberto, Roberto, you are a ridiculous piece of shit,” Zafado went on. “I told El Doctor you were up to something. I told him that the very first night you showed up. Why would you choose this moment, when we’re having all this trouble down in Mexico, to come visit your old friend El Doctor? ‘He’s come to kill you,’ I said. For the money being offered up by his competitors. But did he believe me? No. He said I was being paranoid. He said that Roberto Burns was his friend. How can you protect a man like that, I ask you? A man who believes in friendship?”

Roberto had managed to get all the way out of the bag. He was wearing just his shorts. His hands were cuffed in front of him. Two pairs of handcuffs had been used on his ankles so that he could walk a little if he had to. His face looked awful, and there was more bruising all over his chest and stomach and thighs. The bruises were shaped like a fist. A big fist, as big as Bruto’s.

Zafado found my wallet.

“So, who’s your little friend, Roberto? Tell me he’s your brother. Tell me who this guy is, wearing these military clothes, okay?”

He shook open the wallet with one hand. My badge flashed brightly in the light from the spotlights, like a glittering chunk of gold. Zafado held it up and studied it.

“Ah, Special Agent Antonio Burns. The same surname as yours, Roberto. A certain resemblance, too. Although the special agent doesn’t have your mad eyes, Roberto. And he’s not so handsome, of course. This is really quite shameful, no? Tsk-tsk. Shameful. Working with the
policía
!”

Roberto cocked his head and squinted at me.

“That you, bro? Didn’t recognize you. What the hell are you doing down here?”

This really cracked Zafado up.

“You are a funny man, Roberto. A little crazy, but really very funny. So, do you want to tell me what you fellows are up to? I’d really like to know who you’re working for.”

I said in my most confident voice, “The FBI, asshole. There is a team of agents surrounding the compound right now. Put down your guns and step back. You’re under arrest.”

Now he thought I was even funnier than Roberto. He slapped his leg with his free hand as he laughed.

“You two are really funny. Terrific. You should be on a stage somewhere. Now stop making me laugh like this. Of course you are here for the money that’s on El Doctor’s head. I’m afraid, Special Agent Antonio Burns, that I know something about you. You are
not
the kind of man your FBI would like to work with, no?”

He was right. It did seem unlikely. And these guys, being former murderous cops themselves, thought they knew the whole story.

“Roberto wasn’t too talkative last night,” Zafado said. “That’s why we decided to wait for his friend to show up. The one I saw in that old truck when he was picked up at the trailhead. But I couldn’t see who he was. The invisible man, no? You are him, of course.”

He was packing my wallet and the other items back into the hip pack as he talked. My gun included. He walked over to Bruto—careful to stay out of the shotgun’s line of fire—and put the small pack in the Escalade.

“You see, Roberto doesn’t like to talk when you beat him. No matter how much you beat him. He’s stubborn that way. But he’s the kind of guy who might talk if we beat someone else. Especially if that someone else is his brother. And Bruto can really make them sing. Let me tell you, he’s one hell of a conductor. This is very wonderful, Special Agent Antonio Burns. I’m so very glad you could join us!”

He climbed into the truck behind the driver’s seat.

“Now you two stay right there, okay? Talk with Bruto to pass the time. I want El Doctor to be here for this. I want to show him I was right about Roberto Burns. He’ll enjoy what we do after that. And maybe, if the two of you put on your comedy show, and if you beg and plead convincingly, maybe he’ll show some mercy.”

He laughed again before closing the truck’s door. Then he rolled down the window as he started the engine.

“You know El Doctor’s rule, right? The whole family must die. To make a point, yes, and to make sure there are no blood feuds. Simple and effective, okay? You have made it very easy. Thank you. The two brothers right here, having come to us. Someone will have to fly down to Argentina, I suppose. Maybe Bruto and I will be the ones to visit your parents. I’ve been praying to Saint Malverde for a vacation, after all. Would you like for us to give them a message before they die?
I’m sorry,
perhaps?”

TWENTY-FOUR

N
otwithstanding the other prisoners on the other side of the chain-link fence, we were left alone with Bruto when the truck accelerated into the tunnel and then disappeared.

“Put down the gun,” I said in Spanish, doing my best to sound commanding. “FBI agents will be all over this place soon, Bruto. If you cooperate I’ll see to it that—”

“Don’t waste your breathe,
che.
That
pendejo
isn’t going to help us out.”

The
sicario,
his face as impassive as ever, used the shotgun to wave us toward the nearest rock wall. I assumed he didn’t want us anywhere near the trailer, which one of us might be able to duck behind while he was shooting the other one. I spat in the dirt but then walked when he pointed the twin barrels at my groin—it almost made my gut heave. Roberto, with his shackled legs, shuffled and staggered along in the dirt beside me.

“Christ, Ant. You’re like a chick, you know? No patience. Can’t wait worth a damn,” he joked in English. “If you’d hung on and really raided this place, you might’ve been able to do something.”

Reading my thoughts, he added, “Don’t worry about shithead over there. He doesn’t speak English. Probably can’t even speak Spanish.”

“What the hell happened, ’Berto?”

He shook his head ruefully. “Who would have thought that Zafado could run and track? That the skinny-fat little fucker could keep up? He followed me when I rendezvoused with you. To go see the judge. Saw me get into your truck when I said I was going climbing.”

There was broken rock on the ground by the wall. I pushed some out of the way and sat down heavily.

“I’m sorry, bro,” I said. “I messed up.”

He was facing me, his back to Bruto. He was too amped up to sit.

“Don’t sweat it,
che.
This whole thing was messed up from the start. Your pals Mary and Tom don’t have anyone behind them, you know. Those guys are freelancing. Mary told me.”

“I know. So why didn’t you walk?”

He shrugged and laughed.

“I kind of like that Mary. She’s got some depth to her, you know? I wanted to see what she’d do.”

I wondered if he was on something right now. Maybe they’d given him something to increase the sensation of pain while Bruto was using him as a heavy bag. His eyes were so swollen that I couldn’t really tell. I couldn’t see his pupils.

“You know I’m solo, right?” I told him, wanting him to be serious. “Mary and Tom didn’t follow me. They said it would be making an
illegal entry
.”

I said it bitterly. I was angry. Angry at Roberto for obviously liking the federal agent who screwed him and then sent him to get screwed. It had been sort of cute when I’d caught them, but it sure as hell wasn’t cute anymore.

“They might wait a few days before they try to do something,” I went on. “Even then, they’re going to have a hard time doing anything. They can’t get a warrant. They aren’t likely to get much support from their colleagues. They’re too chickenshit to come in here themselves. We’re pretty much on our own.”

Roberto shrugged. He didn’t seem to mind.

“So we’ve got to do something. Now,” I said in the same aggrieved tone although I wanted to whisper it. I hoped Roberto was right and that Bruto couldn’t speak English.

The big monster had moved up behind Roberto. He was standing at a safe distance, about fifteen feet behind my brother, twenty or twenty-five from me. I studied him as he stared back at me. He held the shortened shotgun loosely in both his hands, pointing it in our general direction. I couldn’t really read any malevolence in his massive pumpkin face. There didn’t seem to be much there. And that made him even scarier.

“We’re damned if we do and way more than just damned if we don’t,” Roberto agreed.

I broke off my gaze with Bruto and tilted back my head. Bouncing it off the rock wall a couple of times and gritting my teeth in obvious frustration.

“Did he do that to you?” I pointed at my brother’s chest, indicating all the massive bruising.

Roberto turned his head and grinned at Bruto, nodding. Bruto stared back at him.

“Yeah. Guy can punch. I’ll give him that.”

I put my hands behind my butt to shove away some of the uncomfortable stones I was sitting on. I palmed a long rock about the size and weight of a stapler. As if clearing more stones, I pushed it into the back of my pants.

When I looked up again Bruto was still staring blankly at Roberto. I tried to figure out what I would like most to do to him. I wanted to punch the shit out of him like he’d done to my brother, but I doubted I could do enough damage that way to his enormous body, sheathed as it was with so much muscle and fat. With his shotgun, maybe, I could really hurt him. Hold it by the barrel and use it as a club. That’s what I would do, I decided. If I ever got the chance.

“Was I ever any good at baseball?” I asked my brother as I stood up and dusted my hands on my pants. Arching my back and rubbing it, as if the stone floor were too uncomfortable.

Roberto broke off the stare fight with the monster to turn to me. Hopping with his handcuffed ankles to change directions. His expression was curious and amused.

“No. You sucked. Only kid I ever saw strike out at T-ball.”

“Thanks for reminding me. I could throw, though, couldn’t I?”

“You were all right at that,” he allowed.

He lowered his head and raised his eyebrows. As if to ask,
Now?

I nodded.

Roberto lost his balance, half shuffling and half staggering to one side. The shotgun twitched to follow him. That was when—trying like hell to live up to my hated nickname—I whipped out the rock and threw.

My movements seemed to take an ungodly long time. It was like slow motion, like being underwater. Getting my hand up under the tail of my shirt. Lifting out the rock. Cocking back my arm. Throwing while making sure to get a lot of hip into it. I almost couldn’t believe Bruto didn’t point the gun at me and fire. It seemed like he had all the time in the world.

The rock flew truer than I had any right to expect. It covered the twenty or so feet between Bruto and me without arcing, without even dipping. It caught him flush in the mouth. The breaking teeth made a distinct crunching sound an instant before the room exploded.

The noise in the cavern nearly crushed my eardrums. My hands instinctively clasped my head. I don’t know if I screamed or not.

With the gun still aimed in the general direction of my brother, Bruto had reflexively pulled the trigger. At the periphery of my vision I saw that Roberto was no longer there.
Blown back by the blast?
But no—he was in the air, flying forward. Like a rock himself. He’d stumbled into a crouch then leapt toward Bruto the moment I went for the stone. He’d been trying to keep the gun on him instead of me.

Roberto speared Bruto’s gut with his head. The monster doubled over and dropped the shotgun. Then I was on him, scooping up the gun and swinging it by the hot twin barrels—just the way I’d fantasized. The oak stock smashed into the side of Bruto’s head. I felt the blow reverberate all the way through me. I swung it so hard that the gun broke apart in my hands.

I wanted to swing it a second time but I only held two skinny, awkward pipes. There wasn’t any need, anyway. Examining him, Bruto’s big head was severely dented at the temple. He was still breathing, but I doubted he’d be doing so much longer. Blood was leaking out of his ears, nose, and mouth. It was pooling beneath the wound.

Roberto pushed himself to his feet with his still-shackled hands. When he spoke it was hard to hear him over the roar of adrenaline and the high-pitched ringing in my ears.

“You don’t suck quite as bad anymore,” he said. “Maybe you can swing after all.”

“You okay, ’Berto?”

He worked his neck around in a circle, then nodded. “Shit yeah. You?”

I nodded more carefully. My head felt like Bruto’s because of the shotgun blast. But at least I was conscious. At least I wasn’t leaking onto the floor.

But we were still in a lot of trouble.

Bruto had a big ring of keys in one of his pockets. Using them, I helped Roberto take off the handcuffs. He stretched out his arms even wider than his grin. Despite the bruises and swelling, he looked like he was feeling good. I was going the other way—I was starting to feel pretty sick.

“Well?” Roberto asked. “What’s the plan,
che
?”

“Are there any weapons in the trailer?”

“Don’t know.”

We looked. There were filthy dishes, filthy clothes, filthy magazines, and some filthy beds. But no guns. No knives, even, other than kitchen utensils.

Roberto brandished a butter knife, slashing the air and trying to make me laugh. It didn’t work.

“We need to get out of here,” I said. “Is there another way other than that main tunnel?”

“Nope. Not that I know about, anyway.”

We obviously couldn’t just go running up the road. Zafado and Hidalgo and who knew who else would be coming down it anytime now. And they’d be armed with a lot more than butter knives. The other choice, it seemed, was to hide somewhere in the mine. Hide and wait for Mary and Tom to do
something
.

This chamber that we were in only had one entrance and exit, but I’d seen a bunch of others in the big cavern with the machines in it. I tried not to think about what hiding would get us. We had no flashlights, no weapons, no food, no water, no idea of where to go. It felt like one of those dreams. Where you can run but not very fast, where you can’t fight because your arms feel like lead. Those were the worst dreams. Mom called them
sueños de parálisis
. Paralysis dreams.

I kept searching the trailer while Roberto opened a padlock on the fence with Bruto’s keys. He yelled at the men on the cots. A few of them looked at him then ducked back down into their bags or blankets. I heard Roberto yelling at them in Spanish. His words echoed off the walls. Over the generator that was keeping the huge lights lit, and over the ringing in my ears, I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

“They’re like sheep. They say they want to stay,” Roberto said disgustedly when he returned.

“What will happen to them?”

“They’re Jesús’s little moneymakers, so he probably won’t hurt them. If they run, he’ll kill their families.”

“We’ve got to move. We don’t have that kind of choice.”

With me leading, we jogged into the central chamber. The light was much dimmer here after the brilliant glow in the other room. There was no sign of headlights coming down the tunnel, but I knew it wouldn’t be long. I took a second look at the huge, sleeping machines. And I had another fantasy, kind of like the one about clubbing Bruto.

This one involved the yellow tractor with the long neck. The one with the rock-cutting blades on the end. In my fantasy, I started up the machine and then used the whirling blades to chop apart the Escalade when it returned. I cut up Hidalgo and Zafado, too.

I ran for its ladder and climbed up to the Plexiglas cab. The flimsy door was unlocked. I ripped it open and slid into the dusty seat. In front of me were dozens of levers and switches and pedals. I had no frigging idea how to use them. There was an ignition box, too, with a keyhole, but no key. I stared at it stupidly for a minute.

Roberto appeared outside the cab.

“You think this is some action movie,
che
? Get real. Just follow me, okay? It’s been too long since we did a real climb together. Time to feed the Rat.”

Instead of climbing back down the ladder, or even jumping to the ground, Roberto started shimmying up the machine’s long neck. Up toward the ventilation shaft in the high ceiling.

The notched blades on the end of the neck stopped short of the shaft. You couldn’t just stand up and climb up into the rock—instead it took a long reach. To do it, Roberto had to balance on the big circular blades and stretch one arm all the way out. Feeling his way as he searched for a good edge to grip.

He found one, because suddenly he was hanging with his body parallel to the ground. Feet still on the blades, but with both hands now in the black hole. Then one of his hands dropped back out. But the other one held. He looked at me down the length of his body and chuckled. He showed me his free hand, which held a rock.

“Little loose,” he said.

“Oh shit,” I replied.

“Feels kind of like the Big Horns, you know? Same kind of crappy rock. I think it’ll go, though.”

He tossed the stone down. It fell for what seemed a long time before it hit the ground fifty feet below. We hadn’t even started climbing, and already we were a long way into the coffin zone. I definitely didn’t want to do this. But I didn’t have a choice.

Roberto pulled himself up—both legs kicking free before they swung up and in and found purchase—and then he wormed out of sight.

Sweating, I made the same long, awkward reach from the blades of the machine. The edge I felt was surprisingly good. But there was no way to see it, to test it. I just had to hope it was the same one that had held my brother’s weight. I grabbed it with both hands and let my feet drop off the blades. Doing a pull-up, and at the same time twisting my body and swinging up my legs, I managed to wedge myself into the shaft. Small stones pelted me from above.

There was no little speck of blue far off in the distance. That meant that either the cylindrical shaft curved like the tunnel below or that it dead-ended. Or maybe it was still night. I didn’t push the indigo button on my watch—I didn’t want to know. All I knew was that the shaft was blacker than anything I’d ever seen. Just four or five feet wide, it seemed to go on and on forever, ever farther from the light instead of toward it.

But the rock didn’t feel that bad. Despite being a little loose, it was full of edges. And the texture was rough, like good sandstone. Perfect for climbing, as if the rock had been coated with grip tape. The sticky rubber of my approach shoes grabbed well when I began smearing and edging with my feet as well as my palms. After that first move off the blades, when there was nothing for your feet, the climbing wasn’t all that technical or strenuous. All you had to do was stem—put one foot and one hand on each side of the shaft. Even without a good edge or hold, your weight alone held you in place.