Mapuche (33 page)

“Let's get out of here, fast!”

Jana climbed out as he went around the car to get the bag out of the trunk. Ricardo Montañez crawled out in turn, moaning, his tunic spattered with blood: a bullet had broken his upper arm. Bullets were whistling through the cloud of dust that still protected them. Montañez grimaced, holding his wounded arm, disoriented. Rubén dragged him toward the Mapuche, who was running in the direction of the ruins, the revolver in her hand. The pickup came up behind them, five men clinging to the bed. They stopped next to the Hyundai and fired their weapons into the swirling dust that was now dissipating. Rubén, Jana, and Montañez had a hundred yards' head start. The
piqueteros
jumped down, divided into two groups and set out in pursuit of the fugitives.

Rubén let go of Montañez, whose arm was bleeding fast, and hurried to catch up with Jana, who had already reached the first butte. The ruins were a little higher up, after the dip. He ran after her, the military bag on his shoulder, without turning around: more bullets were ricocheting off the rocks. There was a steep slope in front of them. Jana and Rubén got to the low wall first. Montañez lagged behind, his eyes rolling at his open fracture and the bullets whistling around his ears. He lost a moccasin as he ran, tried to pick it up and let out a strident scream. His shoulder blade and lung perforated, he collapsed halfway up the slope. Panic! He clung to the stones that shifted under his hands, refusing to believe that his last moments were at hand and, spitting blood, slipped down onto the pebbles. The killers ran up behind him, six men divided into two groups who were making an assault on the butte. Rubén caught his breath, counted the bullets that were jingling in his pocket. Five. Plus the seven in the Colt's cylinder. The .38 was loaded. That made twenty-two.

“Take cover,” he said, nodding toward the ruins.

Firing at moving targets: his weekly meeting, with Anita. Rubén aimed at one of the two guys who were trying to circle around on the right and fired. The man slumped down, hit in the stomach. There was no cover for twenty meters around: he fired two more shots at the most heavyset of the men, a guy in dirty jeans, who stumbled back under the impact. Rubén bent over and ran under a storm of inaccurate fire. Jana was trying to open her ears, crouched behind the collapsing wall.

“You O.K.?”

“I can't hear anything!”

The ruins weren't the remains of an
estancia
lost in the mountains but a former hot springs building that had been destroyed by an avalanche a century earlier. The deluxe hotel had overlooked the Río de las Cuevas, twenty yards below it. Rubén pressed up against a window that had served as an arrow slit, and put down the canvas bag containing the skulls.

“Jana, can you hear me?”

“Yeah, it's getting better.”

Rubén put the .38 in her hands.

“Who do I shoot at?” she asked.

“The group on the left,” he said, pointing to the three men who were approaching.

The Mapuche had never used a revolver, only rifles: she lifted the hammer. Her cheek was bleeding; she'd been hit by a fragment of stone or windshield.

“Ready?”

She nodded.

“O.K.!”

They spun out of the opening and fired in the same movement. Jana missed her targets, who flattened themselves on the ground. Rubén took advantage of this to shoot the man who was reaching the building on the right side. Adrenaline was coursing through his veins; he grabbed the bag on the ground and fled with Jana through the passageways.

A waterfall was spewing into the canyon, pouring out water rich in iron and sulfur that gave a yellowish-orange color to the age-old rock: they ran under the cool vaults of the old spa and came to what must have been the baths. A wooden bridge crossed the green river flowing down below; they flattened themselves against the rock of the platform alongside the bridge, their hearts pounding. A cloud of spray from the summits plunged into the river, but cooled them hardly at all.

“Are you all right?” Rubén whispered as he reloaded his gun.

“Yes. Worry about these bastards instead.”

There were three killers, better armed. He could hear them getting closer under the vaults. A strong odor of sulfur rose from the river, but they no longer smelled it. The
piqueteros
were only a few yards away, shadows moving along the walls, making the terrain secure as they advanced. Rubén gripped the handle of the Colt .45. Jana was crouching next to him, jammed into a crevice, her revolver pointed toward their assailants—she still had a few bullets. The killers were hiding in the darkness of the baths. Rubén kept his finger on the trigger, anxious. The
piqueteros
knew where they were: if they attacked the bridge, firing at such short distance would cause real carnage, and Rubén had only five bullets left. The water flowed toward the abyss, filling the air that had suddenly become unbreatheable. Jana held her breath, her hands sweating. Rubén thought about firing two shots blindly to disperse the killers long enough to jump off the bridge: a drop of twenty yards before hitting the water of the river. It was the end of summer, and with the water low they might very well break their necks.

A cell phone rang, incongruously, out of the grotto. Jana looked at Rubén, who signaled to her to get ready to jump into the void. They waited, a few seconds that lasted an eternity, but nothing happened. The killers seemed uncertain what to do. One of them had retreated to the damp room to take the call; there was a moment of hesitation as the waterfall rumbled, the echo of a muted voice from the vaults of the old spa, an obscure silence, and then the sound of a pebble grating under a shoe. Footsteps. Footsteps that were moving away.

Their eyes met again, waiting to see what would happen. Rubén waited a few more seconds, then signaled to Jana to stay put and slipped off like a cat. He climbed along the wall like a tightrope walker, looked down on the river and the bridge far below: three figures were hurrying down the hill, dragging the bodies of their companions. They were retreating.

Montañez, the witness to the double murder, was dead. That was enough for them, obviously. But not for Rubén. He evaluated the topography of the site, saw Jana hiding near the bridge, her hand gripping her gun and giving him questioning looks.

“Take the bag!” he called to her from his perch.

Then he went around the rocky outcrop.

Jana saw him flirting with the drop-off as he made his way along the ridge, climbed down, and ran toward the slope that led to the road. He charged down the talus in a trail of yellow dust, slipped on the pebbles, and almost fell headfirst but caught himself on the clouds.

On the other side of the outcropping, the killers were climbing into the pickup, carrying their wounded. One of them was no longer moving, and two others, who could barely walk, were hurriedly hoisted onto the bed of the truck. The 4x4 bounced over the terrain until it reached the asphalt road. Rubén ran to cut them off, but understood that he would be too late and suddenly changed course and climbed back toward the little slope on his left. A dead tree stood at the summit of the butte; the killers were passing by it, ten meters below. He took aim. They were driving at top speed toward the curve in the road. Rubén emptied his clip onto the bed of the pickup, his hand cold in order to contain his rage.

Hit in the chest, a
piquetero
slumped against the cab; the one holding a red banner put his hand to his jaw, which had just been broken. One of the wounded seemed to jump under the impact, while his neighbor, already dead, took a bullet in the face. Rubén exhaled, his eyes fixed on his moving target, and swore: he hadn't hit the driver and his clip was empty. They were getting away.

A small cloud of powder blew away in the desert breeze. He had one last glimpse of the pickup disappearing around the curve, blood sprayed over the cab and dead men in the back. Rubén gritted his teeth, dirty and panting.

The rotten bastards.

Jana had observed the counterattack from the ruined bridge of the former spa. An icy breeze accompanied her as far as the rocky outcropping where Rubén was grumbling, the hot revolver still in his hand. His clothes were covered with dust, his face pale despite his run and the sweat running down his temples.

“Did you get them?”

“Not all of them.”

They had scratched their hands going down the scree slope. Jana put the bag on the ground, saw the cartridge casings scattered in the brush, and met the detective's feverish eyes.

“I like being in bed more.”

Rubén didn't flinch. Their bodies stank of sweat, fear, and death. They took each other in their arms to be sure that they were together, alive. The tension moved back down their legs. The killers had fled, as suddenly as they had appeared. Rubén caressed the Mapuche's wounded cheek, just a scrape. She felt the muscles in his arm that were protecting her, the tenderness of his hands on her, and breathed more easily. In the meantime, the situation wasn't great: a dead body halfway up the slope, Montañez, whose bloody tunic was sending olfactory signals to the vultures, the cartridge casings from their weapons all over the area, and the Hyundai off the road, planted like a biplane in the desert. He let go of Jana's hand, which was still squeezing his.

“Let's not stay here.”

They hurried down the slope, keeping an eye on the ridges and the road that wound through the rock. Although the radiator had survived the crash, the hood had been crushed. The inside of the car was full of broken glass, and the rear seat was still sticky with blood. Bits of rubber clung to one wheel; it seemed possible to drive on the other three, and the keys were still in the ignition. Rubén climbed in and hit the starter. The motor ran normally.

“What shall we do with Montañez?” Jana asked.

“No time to bury him. We've got to get out of here before the cops show up. Come on, help me.”

Shade was in short supply in the middle of the afternoon. Rubén put on the spare tire while Jana flattened out the crumpled metal of the hood with her Doc Martens. The road started winding a hundred yards farther on, past the wasteland where they had crashed. Rubén was still trembling. He didn't know how the false
piqueteros
had been able to set a trap for them so quickly, in the middle of the mountains; he knew only that he'd almost lost her.

“Any idea where those guys came from?” Jana asked while he was struggling with the wheel.

“No. Montañez might have been under surveillance. The theft of his military record must have been reported, and the info was forwarded to the boss, who sent his henchmen after us. Unless we were tracked.”

“Tracked by who?”

“The provincial border posts.”

“You mean the cops are in on this?”

“I don't see how the medical examiner could have falsified the autopsy report on María without Luque's permission. He's the one who's handling all this, and he has clearly lied to the Campallo family.”

She frowned, leaning against the hood.

“I thought Campallo was a friend of the mayor; it was Torres who set up the elite police force, wasn't it?”

“Yes,” he conceded, his scratched hands now black with dirt. “Something's wrong in this business.”

He changed tires.

“Shit, somebody's coming.”

Coming down from the pass, a truck slowed and pulled over, an old blue Ford. Two farmworkers in straw hats were in the front seat.

“Need a hand?” the driver asked from the dented door.

“We're fine, thanks!”

Jana made reassuring signs to them to get them to leave. The workers set off again in their jalopy, making a friendly gesture in lieu of a goodbye, without noticing the body that was drying in the sun in the distance. Rubén finally stood up, his forehead dripping with sweat. The spare would hold until they reached the next town, but the axle seemed to have been bent. They dug out the car and got back on the section of paved road that led to the main highway.

“Uspallata 22 km” the sign read. Rubén lit two cigarettes, put the first between Jana's lips as she drove, and reloaded the two revolvers, which were still warm. Fortunately, it would take the local police some time to find the hotel owner's body: with a little luck, they would be far away. The vague testimony given by the farmworkers they'd met while he was changing the tire would be useless; on the other hand, despite the threats he'd made, the testimony of the guy at the brothel in Rufino worried him. They followed in silence the road, which wound through steep canyons as it threaded its way through the passes of the Aconcagua. An eagle was turning in lazy circles high above. Rubén was replaying in his mind, for the tenth time, the gun battle fought shortly before.

“Was it your brothers who taught you to shoot?” he asked as they came out of a long curve.

“Yes.”

“What were you hunting with your rifles?”

Jana shrugged.

“Carabineros.”

He gave her a questioning glance, to which she did not respond.

Route 7 meandered through the slopes of the Andes: a line of trucks going in the opposite direction had piled up, blocked by a convoy. Jana drove prudently, afraid that she would come upon a police patrol. A warm wind was blowing through the pulverized windows, and Rubén was keeping an eye on the sides of the road and the entrances to canyons, the revolvers within reach, but the killers had actually vanished.

Uspallata, “the teeth of the earth,” a village sound asleep on this hot Sunday afternoon: the stands in front of the shops were empty, the terraces deserted at siesta time. The Hyundai crossed the main street and slowed in front of the closed casino that marked the intersection of the three roads. A little farther on they saw the pennants of a garage, a service station half-covered with brush.

The mechanic who came out of the workshop frowned when he saw the car that had pulled up in front.