The Deep Zone: A Novel (46 page)

Carlos said something to the men and one of the drunks led off. The other shouldered her pack and stood next to her.

“You now.” Carlos poked her in the side with the muzzle of his rifle and she started walking. The heels of the leading
narco
’s cowboy boots, she saw, were worn almost flat. She remembered her own bare feet.

“My boots.” She pointed at her feet.
“Botas.”

Carlos smiled. “I think no. Is better to run. I go behind, protect you.” He pointed. They marched across the meadow and into the forest. They used no maps or compasses but clearly knew exactly where they were going. She tried to focus, to plan an escape. They had not bound her hands, either because they had nothing to tie her with or, more likely, because they could not imagine how she could be a threat. Once they got to the
narcos’
camp, wherever that might be, she knew she’d be lost. The head man would rape her and then let his lieutenants like Carlos rape her. They might keep her for days and days, making her do whatever they wanted, handing her down to the lower ranks, torturing her if she balked. Eventually she would weaken, get sick, and die. Raped to death. That might take a long time, though.

“Carlos.” She looked back, spoke over her shoulder.

“Eh?”

“When we get to the camp, your
comandante
will take me. We could do something first. You and me. Here.”

“Cómo?”

“Send these others on ahead. Then we can …” What was the word?
“Relaciones sexuales.”
His face lit up.
That
he recognized.
“Yo soy muy buena,”
she said, thinking,
If I can separate them, I have more of a chance. Not much, but better than three against one
.

“Sí?”
Carlos grinned, tongue slipping over cracked lips and yellow teeth. “But Comandante no like used. Fresh, he like. You see?”

She didn’t bother to answer, and they walked on. The forest floor, littered with pinecones and fallen
mala mujer
leaves, cut her feet, which left spots of blood where she stepped.

“Carlos!”

“Eh?”

“I need to go … to
piss
. Right now.”

He laughed, but there was no humor in his eyes. “My English bad. But I am no stupid. Go on,
puta
.”

She marched, dazed and despairing. Even with all the risky things she had done, not once in her life had Hallie known, beyond doubt, that she was going to die. She did, now. Part of her looked forward to it. She was so exhausted, and hurt so much in so many places, that relief would be welcome, even if it was permanent. She began to think of all the things she would miss: her brothers, her mother, the horses, the water in Ginnie Springs, the ocean … The list went on and on and she just let it keep playing, and tears began to run down her cheeks at last.

“Eh!” Carlos grunted and threw a quick glance over his shoulder, but did not stop.

She turned to look. The big
narco
was a hundred feet behind them, lumbering head-down through the deep forest gloom to catch up, bandoliers like a cross of gold on his chest, the AK-47 a toy in his huge hand. The drunk
narco
in front and the one beside her didn’t even turn around. “Keep moving,” Carlos said. “He catch us.”

She walked again, uncaring. Something would happen, some opening, and she would seize it. Or not. Maybe she would just have to run. They would shoot and she would die, but she was going to
die anyway, so she might as well do something, anything, that would give her even one-half of one percent of a chance. Better quick and painful than slow and painful. But not now, not just yet.

She plodded on. The thud of the big
narco
’s feet grew closer, his jingling bandoliers reminding her of the bells on the sleighs when they hitched the Morgans up in one of Virginia’s rare snowfalls. She heard an odd, soft, high sound, a yelp like a small dog might make when kicked, and turned in time to see Carlos fall on his face, the handle of a knife sticking from the soft place where skull and spine met at the back of his head. The
narco
carrying her pack was also facedown on the ground, a knife handle sticking out of the side of his skull.

In his left hand, the big
narco
held a third knife, one with a stainless steel hilt and a vicious serrated blade, the kind divers used. She had seen that knife before, strapped to Bowman’s lower left leg in the black plastic scabbard.

They killed him
, she thought,
or found him dead and took his knife. But why …

The other drunk
narco
, the one in front of her, was spinning around, the muzzle of his AK-47 coming up. Small details began to take on immense significance and clarity for Hallie. She could see his finger, like a fat white worm, searching for the trigger.

She did not understand what was happening here, but she knew that dealing with one of these men would be easier than fighting two. So just as the
narco
’s finger found the trigger, her hands found his eyes. She dug, felt her thumbs go in, heard him scream. She smashed her body against his, driving one knee into his groin, trying to wrench the rifle away. He pulled the trigger and the AK-47 fired on full auto, the recoil making the barrel writhe and jump like a crazed snake. Reports from the big 7.62-millimeter rounds sounded like dynamite blasts so close to her ears. Muzzle flashes burned her side, but she was not hit. The
narco
stumbled backward under the impact of her rush, blinded, doubled over by the pain in his groin. He dropped the rifle and clawed at his eyes. She scrabbled
for the gun, found its forestock with one hand, its pistol grip with the other, and spun to shoot the big one. The wound on her palm had opened and was bleeding, but she ignored it.

He wasn’t there. A forearm that felt like a steel bar closed over her throat. Somehow the huge man had moved quickly enough to get behind her. She threw her head back, hoping to butt him, but hit only air. She tried to swing the gun around to fire back at him over her shoulder. He grabbed it just above the magazine and ripped it out of her grasp as though taking a rattle away from a baby. But that freed her hands and she clawed at the forearm, scratching it, drawing blood, snarling and biting, fighting now with the last of her strength for the last of her life.

“Hallie.”

It took several moments for the word to punch through her rage and terror. But then she came back to herself.

“Bowman?”

The forearm loosened, fell away. She sucked in cool air, turned.

“I really thought you were going to shoot me.” Bowman, grinning, rubbed his bleeding forearm.

“Bowman!” She put her arms around him, dragged him toward her. “Bowman, god
damn
you. I thought you were dead.”

They held each other tightly, her head against his shoulder, his arms completely around her, both of them panting, not talking. Suddenly she remembered the third
narco
, the one whose eyes she had gouged but who was still alive and could kill them with a pistol or machete. But she saw that he would never kill anyone again. He lay on his belly with the third knife, the diver’s knife, driven into his skull up to its hilt.

“Bowman. How did you …?” she started to ask, but felt a wetness against her chest, looked at him, saw his right sleeve darkening with blood.

“You’re shot!”

“Spraying and praying. Just one.” Through his right pectoral muscle, between his shoulder and nipple. He touched it, looked down
without expression, shrugged. “Through and through. It’s okay. Missed the important stuff. Arm’s no good, though.”

“We have to do something for that.” She reached to take the shirt off, examine the wound.

He pushed her away, both hands on her shoulders. “Leave it. We—”

They both heard it then: a cacophony of shouts, men yelling, running, equipment clanking. Somebody fired off half a clip on full auto, a signal perhaps.

“That must be their main camp. It’s why I didn’t want to shoot these three and alert anyone else close by. Can’t be more than two hundred yards away. They heard that man’s AK for sure. We need to get back to the meadow. Do you have the moonmilk?”

“In the pack there.”

He retrieved the stainless steel cylinder, shoved it into her good hand, picked up Carlos’s rifle. “Run!” he yelled.

They took off back the way Hallie and the
narcos
had come. Bowman carried the AK-47 in his left hand, keeping his right arm tight against his belly. Louder shouts came now, mixed with the pounding thuds of booted feet.

“Run!”
Bowman yelled.

They ran. Hallie’s soles were cut, her body slashed and bruised, and she was so tired that she had been able to doze while walking with the
narcos
. None of that mattered now. She sprinted, cradling the steel cylinder in her right arm like a football, gasping, looking over her shoulder to make sure Bowman was still there. He could have run much faster, she knew, but would go no faster than she could.

A burst of automatic rifle fire, then another. Bullets snapped past, hissing and cracking. Others clipped leaves and branches, thunked into tree trunks. She looked over her shoulder to make sure Bowman was not hit again. More rifle fire. Rounds kicked up spurts of dirt.

She felt herself going anaerobic, chest burning, muscles flooding with lactic acid, and it was as if she were running through mud, but there was no possibility of stopping. She heard a long burst of fire,
Bowman shooting left-handed from the hip as he ran backward. Through the forest ahead she could see the meadow, then ran toward the light, pain blossoming in her chest.

She looked back at him again. He was clutching the AK-47’s pistol grip in his right hand, pressed against his body. In his left he held a black, softball-sized grenade, one of several that had been hanging from the big mercenary’s harness.

“Pull the pin!”

Without breaking stride, she reached back with her left hand, grabbed the ring, yanked. The pain in her hand almost knocked her down. He opened his fingers, letting the spoon fly loose, turned, threw the grenade underhanded without missing a step.

“Go left!” he shouted, and she veered in that direction. She heard the grenade blast, heard screams, curses. The meadow had to be close. A hard blow in the middle of her back slapped Hallie down. For an instant she thought she had been shot. She hit the ground face-first, so hard that it knocked the breath out of her and made her vision blur, but she did not lose her grip on the canister. She felt no pain in her back, felt no blood pouring out of her.

“Don’t move!” Bowman was yelling, moving, pressing her down all the while. Fifty feet farther on, between them and the meadow, two
narcos
materialized out of the forest gloom. One was having problems with his AK-47. The other was not. He fired off a short burst on full automatic—
spraying and praying
—and bullets cracked the air around them. Bowman threw himself on top of Hallie. The
narco
fired again, correcting his aim, coming closer, bullets kicking up spouts of soil on the trail as he walked his rounds toward them. It was happening in microseconds, too fast for Bowman to fire back.

Though Bowman had his arms over her head, she had a slice of vision between them and could see the
narcos
. And then she saw the strangest thing. A quick silvery glint, like light flashing off a mirror, and the
narco
stopped firing. The barrel of his rifle drooped, slow and easy as a dying flower, until its muzzle was pointing at the ground. Another flash of light, and the second
narco
dropped his rifle.

She watched as the two fell slowly forward, like men who had suddenly gone to sleep standing up. Before their bodies hit the ground, both heads toppled from their shoulders, fell to the trail, bounced, and rolled away. Then the bodies flopped down onto their chests, spouting blood from their headless necks.

She glimpsed something white slipping from the trail into the forest. Then nothing except the two headless corpses and one small, white dog with eyes like red coals. He walked to one of the decapitated heads, sniffed, and disappeared into the forest.

Running again, they broke out of the trees, into the meadow. The cave mouth was two hundred yards away. She was running harder and harder but moving slower and slower, her muscles tying up, face contorted with the pain flooding her body.

Bullets snapped and crackled around them, whined off rocks. It was not easy to shoot accurately at a dead run, she knew: the only reason the
narcos
had not brought them down already. That and
aguardiente
and God only knew what kind of drugs they’d taken. Bowman must have thrown another grenade, because she heard the explosion, closer this time, felt pieces of soil and rock pelt her head and back.

Halfway across the meadow, Hallie realized that Bowman wasn’t behind her. She stopped, turned, saw him kneeling, firing single shots from the AK-47, hitting men with every one. He yelled, “Keep going! To the cave!”

The
narcos
had come running out of the tree line into the open meadow, exposing themselves, and Bowman had six of them down in three seconds. There were a dozen others at least, but they understood what was happening, spun on their heels, and fled back toward the trees. Bowman got two more, fired the rest of that magazine in one long, ripping burst, and sprinted toward the cave’s mouth.

A line of boulders formed a natural wall a hundred feet from the cave, and Hallie was there, on hands and knees, gasping, when Bowman jumped over the rocks and landed beside her. “Stay here!”

He ran, crouching, back into the cave mouth, bullets spanging
off boulders, spraying chips and splinters of rock. Hallie could see that his right side was soaked with blood, which was now running down over his pants as well. He disappeared into the cave, and for a few horrible moments Hallie was alone there. She inched her head out to look across the meadow, but the
narcos
were holding in cover, sheltering behind trees, spraying and praying, the bright muzzle flashes of their rifles reminding her of Fourth of July sparklers. Their wild firing made one continuous, ragged, wavering blast.