Deity (22 page)

They
scrambled into the Jeep as the stranger fired up the engine, catching the
attention of the Zapatistas who were in mid-charge toward a ferocious pillar of
fire spewing at the far end of the village. The nearest Zapatistas raised their
rifles and began firing, sinking several shots into the tailgate just behind
Father Ruiz’s seat. He ducked, huddling with KC in the back seat as the Jeep
spun around and fled out of range.

“What
just happened?” Peet asked from the passenger seat in front of them.

“The
village gas well exploded,” the stranger explained as he trained the Jeep onto
a two-track road dodging back into the trees. “Chiapas is rich in natural gas. Some
villages have electricity. This one has gas. Or at least they did.”

A
spurt of gunfire sounded from the jungle behind them. Together, KC and Father
Ruiz twisted in their seats to find a lone pickup racing through the trees
behind them. “They’re still after us,” Father Ruiz announced.

“Hang
on!” the stranger ordered, urging more speed out of the Jeep.

Father
Ruiz dug in again, clutching his rosary and chanting a quick Hail Mary as the
vehicle bounced perilously through the jungle. He heard more gunshots behind
them. The Jeep took a hard bounce and then there was a loud pop that stole his
breath.

A
rear tire was blown, either from a bullet or a sharp root, he didn’t know. Still,
the stranger pressed the Jeep on until the rubber wrenched itself free from the
rim. Father Ruiz clenched his teeth against the jarring ride, his stomach
nearly heaving into his throat when the vehicle tore onto an intersecting
two-track and fought a short way in a new direction.

Then
they came to an earth-ripping halt.

“We
can’t stop now,” Father Ruiz protested. “They’re coming fast!”

Leaving
the engine running, the masked stranger jumped out of the Jeep with rifle in
hand. “Change the tire,” he ordered as he slapped another clip into his weapon.
“I’ll hold them off.”

Stunned,
Father Ruiz watched the man march back toward the intersection, keeping himself
hidden behind the trees. Meanwhile, Peet and KC were already in action. Without
so
much as a word of coordination between them Peet loosened
the lug nuts on the barren wheel while KC gathered the spare tire and
positioned the jack. If Father Ruiz hadn’t known any better he would have
thought they’d changed tires together on a regular basis, like a speedway pit
crew.

Father
Ruiz anxiously thumbed his rosary beads as KC began hoisting the Jeep, her
sleeveless arms expertly working the lever of the jack. The rumbling of the
pursuing pickup echoed through the trees, drawing ever closer.

“Hurry!”
he pleaded. “They’re coming.”

“We
might get this done a little faster if you got out of there,” KC growled as she
cranked on the jack.

Father
Ruiz scrambled out of the Jeep just as the first shots pierced the forest like
staccato accents to the pickup’s engine. He spun around in time to spy the
pickup barreling down on the masked stranger. More shots were fired. The
stranger’s rifle flew through the air. He fell back as the pickup bounded by,
and then he was lost behind the brush.

Frozen
in terror, Father Ruiz merely watched three Zapatistas spring out of the pickup
as it ground to a halt behind the Jeep. Peet and KC needed more time. There was
only one thing Father Ruiz knew to do.

“
Paz, los hermanos
!” he cried, stepping
toward them with his arms raised.
“In the name of Jesus
Christ, peace!”

The
first Zapatista raised his rifle. Father Ruiz held his breath. But the man
didn’t shoot. By God’s blessed intervention, he didn’t shoot. Instead, he slung
the rifle over his shoulder, twisted Father Ruiz around and wrenched an arm
behind his back. The last two Zapatistas headed straight for Peet and KC who
continued to work at the wheel as though they hadn’t noticed their peril.

How
could they not notice?

And
then Father Ruiz suddenly realized something. Only one of the two Zapatistas
was armed!

The
man with the rifle grabbed Peet’s arm and just as he did, the professor spun
around with the mangled tire rim and slammed it bluntly into the Zapatista’s
mask! The man’s head snapped back from the blow and his body dropped to the
ground. At the same time, KC spun upon the Zapatista’s defenseless partner. With
the fluid swing of a baseball player, KC flung the jack handle squarely into
the Zapatista’s gut.

Father Ruiz felt his captor move behind him. He’d been
released but the Zapatista was lifting his rifle to his shoulder.

“Profesor!”
Father Ruiz yelled,
but his words were drowned by a gunshot.

BANG!

Father
Ruiz fell to his knees, too scared to think out anything beyond his own gut
reaction. Once again he was shocked to find himself still alive. Most
surprisingly of all, he wasn’t even hurt. But there was heat upon his cheek and
when he touched it, he found that he’d been riddled with blood and gore.

But
it wasn’t
his own
. His captor lay lifeless beside him,
blood pouring into the forest floor from a crater where his face used to be. Just
beyond, the tall, masked stranger approached, lowering his rifle.

“You
killed that man,” Father Ruiz accused as he rose with trembling knees.

“In
your defense,” the stranger reasoned. He found the other two Zapatistas, the
first whose mask was now soaked in blood, but still breathing, and the other
gasping for air, not yet breathing. The stranger lifted his rifle again,
placing the muzzle against the groaning man’s head.

“Parada!”
Father Ruiz demanded. “Don’t shoot!”

The
stranger looked up at him with a quizzical cock to his masked head. “They were
going to kill you.”

“We
don’t know that. That man was unarmed.”

The
stranger hesitated. He glanced up at Peet and KC who simply stood beside the
idling Jeep. “They could have easily shot us,” Peet agreed. “But they didn’t.”

KC
nodded.

The
stranger lowered his rifle for the last time, and as he did, the gasping
Zapatista’s lungs finally opened, sucking and gulping for air.

“Get
that tire on and let’s get out of here,” the stranger finally said, collecting
the two rifles lying amongst the three Zapatistas and retiring the weapons to
the back of the Jeep.

Peet
and KC obeyed without question and moments later, as they drove on along the
jungle two-track, Peet broke the strained tension with one burning question.

“Who
are you?”

Father
Ruiz actually heard the stranger smile through his mask.

“I
thought you’d never ask,” the stranger said.

With
one hand perched on the wheel, he finally tugged on his black balaclava and
peeled it away from a shock of sweaty blonde hair tugging in the wind.

All
expression escaped Peet’s face. He was clearly at a loss for words.

“How…”

Father
Ruiz dug for the rosary in his pocket as Peet exclaimed the name he least
expected to hear. It took a moment, but all anxiety suddenly drained away
beneath a welcome realization.

This
was no stranger at all.

They
sped ever deeper into the jungle with none other than Matt Webb behind the
wheel.

Gulfstream

Tarah
sashayed across the mauve carpet like a rookie supermodel—rough around the
edges, but still putting on an eye-popping show for an audience of vacant,
white-leather cabin seats cozied up to their white pine tables gleaming in the
sunlit cabin. This wasn’t the same woman Lori first met in the dark confines of
a Red Cross trailer. It was as though she’d been transformed by the black
cowl-necked matte Jersey dress hugging her
figure. She convincingly looked the part of a business executive, completely at
home in the luxurious cabin of the Gulfstream G650 now darting them forty thousand
feet above Mexico.
As if to bolster the impression, she kicked off her black, strappy heels and
curled her legs beneath her as she perched down upon the nearby leather divan
and accepted some mixed concoction of the alcohol variety from the attendant
who’d followed her from the galley.

Lori
gratefully accepted her glass of iced tea.

“It’s
really no bother if you want something with a little kick,” Tarah said,
stirring the ice in her drink with the little straw. “There’s practically a
full bar in the galley.”

Lori
took a sip of her tea. “This will do just fine,” she said.

“But
not without these.”

Tarah
tossed a bottle into the air from which Lori snatched it with her free hand.
Aspirin, extra strength.
Just what the doctor ordered.

Although
she’d slept hard through the night, Lori awoke early that morning feeling
groggy with a nagging pain between her eyes. But it wasn’t just the pain that
kept her from catching another hour or two of sleep. Her mind quickly powered
up and rolled though a ceaseless round of thoughts that swarmed inside her
head.

What
was she doing?

She
was certain Dr. Peet and Chac had met their terrible fates, but what about Dr.
Webb and Dr. Friedman? Were they still alive? If the Zapatistas really were to
blame for their disappearances, what was she doing going after them with a
couple of strangers she barely even knew?

Tarah
took a sip from her drink with a forgery of refinement Lori hadn’t suspected
she could pull off in Tunkuruchu village. Those firm hands that had restricted
her movement in the cot now softened delicately around the glass. Her cloak of
servitude to the villagers had certainly taken a confident about-face within
the privacy of Abe’s jet.

“Comfy?”
Tarah asked over the rim of her glass.

“In
all honesty,” Lori confessed, “I feel out of place.”

That
was an understatement. It was easy to watch Tarah float about the beautiful
cabin. It was much more awkward to do it herself. Lori just didn’t transition
well with drastic change in environments. Furthermore, she wasn’t dressed for
the part. Tarah had retrieved from the Red Cross donations a small pair of
men’s jeans that fit Lori reasonably well. Unfortunately, there’d been nothing
left in the way of shirts, so a native Tunkuruchu woman offered a traditionally
embroidered huipil, similar to the extravagantly woven one she herself wore
with her navy wraparound skirt.

Surprisingly,
the jeans didn’t offset the loose cotton blouse much at all, but that was in
Tunkuruchu. “We’ll buy something more suitable to the modern world when we get
back to Mérida,” Tarah offered, but given the morning’s rural delays and Abe’s
rush to get to Chiapas,
the only stop they made was at the Mérida airport where Abe’s flight crew had
the Gulfstream ready for take off. There was a chance they could shop in
Tapachula, but in the meantime, Lori sat like an eye-sore in the aft seat of
the plane, the window shade drawn to dim the piercing sunlight that flooded the
cabin through the rest of the twenty-eight inch portals.

There
was a regal line to Tarah’s lips as she smiled. “Don’t worry, Lori. There’s no
need to impress here.”

Lori
couldn’t decide if she was joking. Tarah’s change in demeanor left her feeling
out a whole new personality. It was like getting to know a whole new person.

She
popped a couple of Aspirin and chased them down with the tea. She decided to
test a moment of bluntness with Tarah’s new character. “I can’t help but wonder
,
if you don’t mind me asking, how does Abe afford all of
this? I wasn’t expecting a million dollar plane from a couple of humanitarian
aides.”

Tarah
laughed. “Seventy-four million dollars actually,” she corrected. “Abe doesn’t
meet many expectations. Most people sorely underestimate him. I think he likes
that.” She raised her drink to draw attention to the rest of the cabin. “He’s
made his fortunes but he doesn’t like to sit on it for very long. He travels
the globe with any number of humanitarian organizations. Africa, China, Haiti,
Mexico,
you name it, he’s been there lending a helping hand. He’s truly a man of the poor.”

“Wow,”
Lori said, impressed. “That’s amazing.”

And
seemingly strange for a man who custom ordered his plane with a private forward
cabin between the flight deck and the stainless-steel galley. Tarah had
explained that Abe preferred his privacy when he flew.
That,
and he liked to be near the controls between the pilots’ hands.

Tarah
leaned forward playfully. “He seems to enjoy helping the poor but between you
and
me,
I think he’s saving up Brownie points. You
know, earning his way into heaven.”

Lori
shared her smile. “So, are you and him…together?”

Tarah
laughed, throwing herself into the cushy back of the divan. “No,” she said.
“Not at all.”