Chapter 20
Into the Dark
Feeling strangely reckless, El didn't worry overmuch about trip wires and other traps. Moving fast was one way to leave Fatso behind. Besides, in seeking the path of least resistance he had fallen into what was probably the route used by the Orozcos themselves to move from the building to the ruins.
Sensing a thinning of the vegetation ahead of him, he slowed. He peered through the curtain of green at a small mound of yellow-white bricks, tumbled and weed-invested, with nothing to recommend it in terms of carvings or interesting inscriptions. The remains of a low wall banded the base of the mound, intact for only three or four meters. Other than that and the regular shape of the bricks, it could almost be a natural rock fill.
Even his brief sprint had left the Delgado watchdogs behind. El broke cover cautiously, bent down. When nothing happened, he crept forward as quietly as he could.
Not quietly enough, apparently. A burst of semi-automatic fire from somewhere above him parted his hair, ripped his jacket, and sent him face down, painfully, among the rocks. With little cover it was vital that he return fire, and he did, reflexively, but he couldn't afford to let this become a siege. He set both his guns on fully automatic, and rushed the top of the mound behind a hailstorm of shots, arriving with the clip of one gun completely exhausted. There was no one in sight. El whirled, searching the edges of the small clearing, but still saw no one.
A stinging feeling in his shoulder grew to the pain a full-blown wound, but El had had enough experience with bullet wounds before to know nothing had entered his arm, only creased it. He'd check the damage later.
He threw aside the empty gun and began a feverish search of the top of the rubble. He had just located the hole, somewhat disguised by a clumsy application of the ancient bricks, when the Delgado men joined him.
"In there?" Fat Man asked.
"After you," El said with an inviting motion of his uninjured arm.
"Get in the hole, Chingado," sneered the man.
El shrugged, suppressing a wince at the pain in his shoulder. He had no objection to finishing this fight.
Except that someone down there was expecting him. Too bad he didn't have a grenade.
The worst part, he decided, would be the initial drop into the unknown. Despite himself, his skin crawled at the anticipation of bullet wounds. Shrugging, this time mentally, he sent a small prayer to Carolina, and jumped into the hole.
The hole sloped almost immediately, and El let the slant of the earth slide him onto his back. He fired, on principal, into the darkness, and could tell by the sounds of the slugs which direction was open. Toward the bunker, of course. At the bottom of the slope, only about two meters below the opening, he rolled to the side and pressed against the stone and earth wall, so as not to be where a shooter would expect him or where his shots had just come from.
He waited in the silence, for his eyes to adjust. Or for someone to shoot him.
After a moment he found himself, yet again, to be alive, and he could see in the gloom. He took a minute to muffle all his chains with the Velcro straps Carolina had made for him. The tunnel was high enough for a man to walk bent over, so El started forward, cautious. A half dozen steps brought him to where the tunnel was mostly blocked by piles of what looked like yellow boxes. El crouched low, thinking his shooter might be on the other side.
They were not boxes. They were packing-box sized, plastic-wrapped blocks made up of single kilo "bricks" of cocaine powder, stacked neatly on wooden industrial pallets. There were things El didn't know about cocaine, but he did know the street value of a single kilo - around 120,000 pesos. He was leaning against an unimaginable fortune and the ruin of countless human souls.
But it might have other uses. El knew his shooter, or possibly, shooters, were in this tunnel somewhere, and they knew he was here, but he decided to take the time to invest against an uncertain future. He used one of his razor sharp spurs to slice the plastic sheet wrapping, and removed one kilo brick. He opened it and poured the yellow-white powder into his boots, surrounding his ankles with the stuff. The powder poured well enough, but a hazy residue wafted upward in the gloom as he poured, and El had to struggle not to sneeze. He snorted out, hoping not to absorb any of the stuff into his own bloodstream.
He thought of Sands, hooked against his will, his psychotic but brilliant mind enslaved to the provider of the drug, but still able, perhaps on an almost subconscious level, to plot his enemy's downfall. El was startled to realize the conclusion he had come to while he hadn't seemed to be thinking about it. Agent Sands had many levels. One level was unquestionably loyal to Delgado, the source of the drug he craved, but another level acted reflexively to manipulate, betray, and destroy. Whether Sands had memorized the sound of Marco's phone number for his own use or for El's, he had certainly not done it to serve Delgado in any way. El felt an odd pang of regret that, if his plan for the day worked out, Sands would be left behind, in his bar-less prison he was powerless to leave.
But, back to business. Should he go around the pallets or climb over them? More surprise in climbing over them. In fact, if he were the other man or men in this tunnel, considering how long El had crouched here in silence, he would already be crawling over the . . .
El looked up, just in time to see and shoot the man above him. The body tumbled headfirst to the ground, blood spraying the cocaine.
With a bound, El was on top of the priceless packs of powder, crawling forward, swiftly. To his right he saw now a second tunnel, intersecting this first one and vanishing into darkness. That's where he would be, if he were a defender here. He set one gun on automatic and fired into the tunnel. He heard something the size of a body hit the ground.
His instincts told him there was no one else. Already he had killed one man more than there were chairs in the concrete building. Still, he was cautious as he descended the pedestal of kilo bricks and entered the side tunnel. He found the second tunnel man easily. It hadn't been a clean kill and the man was wheezing out his final breaths. El found his head in the dark, whispered a benediction, more, admittedly, for his own forgiveness than for the other man's, and shot a single shot into his skull. He then moved uneasily down the tunnel, reminded once again of being blindfolded.
The tunnel ended before long, somewhat to El's surprise. He had expected another exit, but found no sign of one. However, while searching, he tripped over what had to be a cache of weapons. Well, well. His groping hand encountered a flashlight, and, in its beam he confirmed that the Orozcos had stored a small arsenal in this tunnel. How helpful.
"Mariachi!" a voice called from a distance. "Are they all dead?"
"Sí!" he answered back, cheerfully.
"Come out, then!" The voice belonged to Vasquez, not to the Fat Man.
So El's enemies were now in two places, not in three. If they came in the tunnel, from either direction, he would shoot them. He had no food or water, but the Delgados couldn't afford a siege; the Orozcos could arrive at any moment to defend their property. El had probably already used all of their explosives, besides, explosions risked burying or irrevocably scattering the merchandise. No, El fervently hoped Lorenzo's plan had worked, because he liked his position here.
"You come in!" he invited pleasantly, moving to the intersection of the two tunnels. "There's enough cocaine for everyone!"
He smiled at the pause his announcement engendered.
"Come out, now," said Vasquez. "I'm ordering you."
"What's the matter, don't you trust me?" This close to freedom, El felt light-headed.
"Mariachi," said Vasquez in an ominous tone, "you know the rules. If you disobey me your friend suffers. If you betray us, he dies."
Was it because of the Señora, El wondered, that they made no threats against Maria? Well, the threat to her was implicit, he reasoned. He prayed they were both safe.
"You don't have my friend."
"Idiot! You saw him!"
"I don't know that you have him now."
"Que . . ." Vasquez made a strangled sound and then El heard distant angry voices, but couldn't make out what they said.
El calmly checked, loaded, and arranged for ease of use, at least a dozen guns from the Orozcos' cache while the Delgados debated what to do. He was in very good spirits and his injured shoulder didn't hurt at all.
"Mariachi!" Vasquez called. "I'm getting your friend on the phone. Then you'll know we still have your cojones!"
El nodded. "Go ahead!" he called. One hitch in the timing of Lorenzo's plan was that there was no way of knowing when someone would come into his room for something. If Lorenzo had not already ambushed some messengers, this would finally send some in to get him. Good luck, my friend.
El readied more guns.
"Mariachi!" Vasquez called again, and El's heart sank. He could hear the smirk in the man's voice. The ancient masonry, though in disrepair, focused sound down the hollows of the tunnels. A cell phone on high volume tinkled.
"It didn't work, Amigo," he plainly heard Lorenzo's voice. "The asshole with the whip is right here, ready to kill me."
"Lorrie," El called, in despair.
"You got that, Mariachi?" Vasquez called. "Get your ass out here!"
"Amigo," sounded Lorenzo's tinny voice. "They knew. Somebody told them . . ."
He was cut off by the click of the cell phone snapping shut.