Resurrecting Midnight (52 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll make this quick, soldier.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Beast raised his silenced gun and aimed at Señorita Raven.

Her eyes widened with surprise.

Just as every other nonessential Horseman had done in the end.

Medianoche raised his gun, raised his faster than The Beast had raised his.

That back injury had slowed The Beast down.

Medianoche fired first.

He fired the same way the snot-nose kid had fired at him.

Medianoche’s shot sent brain matter flying against stark white walls.

Chapter 48

We remained secreted
across from the Thelonious Monk club.

It was close to seven in the morning. The club was winding down.

Buses. Taxis. Hundreds of people filed out into the damp and cold streets.

The jazz had died. But we were alive.

Trapped inside a small apartment. Sweating. Hearts beating loud and strong.

The packages had been connected. And once connected, the signal died.

That transmission had stopped with nine assassins standing right outside our door.

Had died as we kept our weapons aimed at the door.

Had died and left the three team members who had the sensors baffled.

The nine assassins had done an about-face and raced down the hallway. We heard them outside the door, walking from apartment door to apartment door, confused, their chatter in three languages. They called their leaders and told them there was no signal, then asked for instructions. Minutes later, they had bolted down the stairway, exited the building, and reconvened outside the club. The three men with three sensors came together.

The leaders had a meeting. Like they were three wise men.

They looked at each other, cursed, looked at the buildings.

There was no signal. Three sensors had gone dead at the same moment.

Four, if the Horsemen were out there somewhere.

Downstairs, frustrations mounted. Looked like they were accusing each other of treachery. Each team looked like they thought they had been double-crossed.

It looked like they were about to start gunning each other down.

We remained in the window. We remained locked and loaded.

It wasn’t over.

We were still trapped in Buenos Aires. Anything could happen.

Behind us, Arizona remained in agony.

What they had, they wanted so bad they were willing to skip immediate medical attention.

But having three international teams outside was too risky.

The three teams of assassins separated, moved back to their fleet of cars.

The signal was supposed to be as dead as a ghost, but they weren’t leaving, and I didn’t know why.

Arizona moaned, said the signal wasn’t supposed to get reactivated.

The way that it was set up, once the money began transferring, the signal ceased.

Konstantin asked her if she was 100 percent sure.

She wasn’t. Her information had come from Hopkins. A man who had conned her.

We stayed in the windows, peeping down at the streets while the assassins made phone calls and waited for the signal to reappear.

Jazz remained loud throughout the night. Each beautiful note striking a tender nerve.

Three hours later, the assassins got back inside their cars.

Ten minutes after that, they left the street. They circled the block at least a dozen times.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they had left representatives lurking in the shadows.

The room we were in had become a cave. A cave that stank to high heaven.

Shotgun still had sewage on his clothes and shoes, from the run through the
villa
. And my shit-smelling clothes were in the bathroom.

The stench covered us. Suffocated us.

An hour passed before Konstantin took the keys to the Peugeot and left too.

Konstantin wouldn’t stand out like me. Or Shotgun.

We needed food, water, medical supplies, and toilet paper.

An hour after that, I went to Scamz. He was with Arizona. He had taken her to the bathroom. Her leg was messed up, bruised. Face swollen like she had had too much plastic surgery. He closed the door and cleaned her up with what was in the cabinets.

While he did that, I took the soiled sheets off the bed, flipped the mattress, then found more sheets and made the bed as best I could. Was hard to do with swollen hands.

I said, “Everything was accomplished.”

Scamz said, “We bloody failed.”

“How did you fail?”

“It’s not as much money as we thought would be there.”

“Not our problem.”

He was angry. “Hopkins fucked us over.”

I dug inside my pocket and took out the Rolex I’d bought in Puerto Rico.

The Rolex had cost twenty thousand dollars.

A Patek Philippe Sky Moon Tourbillon cost one point five million. A Vacheron Constantin Tour de I’lle cost about two point five. A Hublot Black Caviar Bang was one million and a Louis Moinet Ma gistralis or a Blancpain 1735 cost about one hundred to two hundred thousand dollars less. A Girard-Perregaux Opera Three cost three hundred thousand.

Compared with those watches, a Rolex didn’t get honorable mention. By those standards, a Rolex wasn’t an expensive watch, it was a common watch. Not the priciest in the world.

Low-class, opportunistic, undereducated rappers wore them. That said a lot right there.

The Rolex had been in my pocket while I battled my way out of the
villa
.

I looked at a twenty-thousand-dollar cliché.

Then I looked at Scamz. He was nothing more than a cliché.

I said, “Maybe this will offset some of your expenses.”

I tossed him the Rolex.

He caught the watch, looked at it, then tossed it back.

He had been insulted.

I smiled.

He wiped his hands on his torn clothing.

I said, “Just make sure our funds are transferred, Scamzito. Make sure we get paid.”

Scamz maintained eye contact.

My face swollen, one eye black-and-blue, I did the same.

I said, “Problem, Scamzito?”

That was Spanish for Little Scamz.

My insult got to him. He made fists like he was ready to run at me.

We stopped bulldogging when there was a tap at the door.

Konstantin had returned with a dozen bags.

Three of those bags were filled with fruit, water, croissants, and
medialunas
.

Everything we needed plus fresh clothes.

The clothes were ill fitting and modest. But they were clean.

 

Shotgun left
with me.

We loaded up our guns, mixed with the pedestrians, and flagged down a Radio Taxi.

Our next stop was Village Recoleta. Had to get there before the day was crowded.

I was early and walked the block carrying an umbrella. I took in the area before I waited outside Cúspide Libros, a swank bookstore sitting between a two-level McDonald’s and Cine Recoleta, their high-end movie theater. Nine millimeter resting in my waistband, I took in the crowd congregated near the Sahara Restaurant and Café. I expected Medianoche to reappear. Then I checked out the people walking along the back wall of the Recoleta Cemetery. I looked up. The tops of the mausoleums stood higher than the twelve-foot-tall brick wall. The architecture was astounding, so staring up there wouldn’t draw any attention. I was looking for a shooter. That wall was high enough to give a sniper the perfect advantage.

I didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t on my team.

Shotgun was down on the corner of Presidente José E. Uriburu and Vicente Lopez, sitting on a metal bench in front of Locos Por El Fútbol, a sports bar that had at least twenty flat-screens facing the streets. He sat down so he wouldn’t look so large in the land of little people.

A thin middle-aged man in jeans and a beige coat walked up to me.

He said, “Gideon?”

I nodded. “
Soy Gideon
.”

He looked me up and down and handed me a set of keys.

I said,
“¿Vos sos el medico?”

He nodded. “Yes, I’m the doctor. I speak English. I lived in New York for ten years.”

I said, “How are things?”

“Everything will be okay until you can get the proper care.”

“Do you have time to see Arizona?”

He shook his head. “I am scheduled for surgery. Many surgeries.”

I had a feeling that those surgeries were due to the destruction that had been laid on Buenos Aires over the past forty-eight hours. More than Arizona’s brother had died.

Many more. And I had no idea how many more were injured.

I nodded, then handed him a roll of U.S. dollars. All hundred-dollar bills.

He told me where to go to retrieve the final package.

He said, “Tell Scamz to follow my instructions. I left them written in the vehicle. And there are two boxes that have antibiotics, antiseptics, morphine, a leg splint, and bandages. If any one of you needs stitches, that is included too. Just sew the injury like you’re sewing clothes.”

Then he pulled up his gloves, opened his umbrella, and walked away.

He turned right at McDonald’s, waved down a Radio Taxi, and vanished.

I headed past Monaco Café. Shotgun joined me as I passed the fountains. We hurried by Pagana Disco Bar, Porte Zuelo wine bar, crossed Azcuénaga, and hurried past more bars and a museum. Down near the corner, in front of a fruit store and flower stand, was where the doctor had left a small white van. He had parked next to the curb and walked two blocks to meet me.

We hurried and got inside the van.

Shotgun said, “That woman in the crowd looked just like Catherine.”

“Where?”

“She’s gone now. She was crossing the street with some more people.”

I looked back at the cargo. She was on a makeshift bed with an IV in her arm.

Her face was swollen. Left arm broken. Bullets removed. Her body stitched up.

It was Sierra. Her hair was matted. Her lips dry and chapped. Her face was battered and bruised, lips and cheeks swollen like her sister’s. Her gunshot wounds had been treated, her body given the proper care. She was in no shape to get on an airplane.

She’d almost died.

She looked at me, wordless. Emotionless. As cold as the world she had grown up in. She was drugged up. And shivering. She needed more blankets. And we didn’t have any.

Her world had to be like being under water, water filled with ice cubes.

I said, “Your brother is dead. But Arizona is okay.”

I don’t know why I said that. Felt like I had to say something.

Even though she had never spoken a word to me, I had to say something.

I wanted to ask those fuckers if this shit was worth it.

Sierra shivered. Her teeth chattered, and she stared at me the same way she had stared at me in Amsterdam. I was the man who had been sent to Holland to kill her, once upon a time.

Now I was the man who had been sent to Recoleta to save her. She closed her eyes. Tears fell. Wasn’t sure if those were tears of pain or grief.

 

We met Konstantin
in Puerto Madero on Calle Victoria Ocampo. We bundled up, moved through air that felt like ice, and boarded a private yacht at the Puerto Madero Yacht Club. No sign of trouble. But it was too soon to relax. We were out in the open, just outside the Reserva Ecológica. Scamz and Arizona had already been loaded. Once again, we needed Shotgun’s power to help carry Sierra and her makeshift bed, to get her loaded onto the yacht. Then we went back to the Peugeot. We opened the trunk and looked down at a dead man.

We carried that dead man onto the yacht, put him in the same section with his wounded sisters. Arizona cried. Her expression told me that this had cost more than she had expected.

I went up top. We were where the waters from the Atlantic Ocean flooded the cul-de-sac between Argentina and Uruguay and created Río de la Plata.

After that, we took to the brown waters that divided the two countries.

It was a one-hundred-and-thirty-mile journey across water as brown as the Mississippi River. An ugly ride that had Shotgun on deck with his head hanging over the railing.

But we made it to Uruguay and docked at a pier in Colonia del Sacramento. Two men were waiting on us. Both doctors. The men hurried on board. One for each woman.

I tended to my team, looked at Konstantin’s wounded arm, at Shotgun’s injuries.

We patched each other up, closed up stitches, cleaned up our mess.

I climbed off the yacht, had to get my feet on solid ground.

I felt nauseated. My head ached. I was dehydrated.

Konstantin came down and stood next to me, his left arm in a sling.

Shotgun left the yacht, stood in the crisp air next to Konstantin.

Shotgun asked, “We done or we got more work to do in this country too?”

Konstantin said, “We’re done.”

Shotgun looked around at the winding cobble streets and the stucco homes and buildings. There were large hostels, churches, restaurants, military cannons, lighthouses, and parks in the distance.

He asked, “Where are we now?”

“Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. This used to be a smuggler’s city.”

Shotgun asked, “We safe now?”

Konstantin shook his head. “Once you get into this business, you’re never safe.”

Shotgun nodded. “Kinda figured that.”

I took a deep breath.

Konstantin said, “We’re at the old port. We can catch a bus about two miles from here. Buses run every hour until about ten tonight, and it’s a three-hour ride to get into Montevideo. We could get some rest in another safe house, but I’d suggest we keep moving and rest on the bus. The passports we have already have visas, so we might be able to catch a small plane into Brazil. From there we either connect through São Paulo or fly directly back into the States.”