As assassins stood on a crowded street and had no idea what was going on, their three leaders nodded.
Scamz sweated and cursed, his British accent grating on my nerves.
Debris fell from his soaking-wet frame as he struggled with both packages.
Nine men came toward this building.
They left six outside, one holding a sensor.
Smart move.
If we managed to exit the building, we would do so under a hail of gunfire.
One of them moved a car and blocked the exit of the building.
That meant we would have to leave on foot.
Across the street, the band began playing a Lionel Richie song.
The one about dancing on a goddamn ceiling.
The last song all of us might ever hear on a cold night in South America.
Shotgun made sure his weapon was loaded.
Konstantin did his best to hold a gun.
I clenched my teeth and readied myself as best I could.
But no matter how a man prepared, he was never ready for Death.
Scamz remained frantic as Arizona continued her suffering, doing her best to give Scamz instructions, instructions that she had no doubt kept to herself. There wasn’t as much trust on that team as I had assumed. Arizona told him the parts had to be there. Scamz flipped the packages around, searched like a madman. The smaller package that had been inside Arizona had a pop-out connecter made for a USB port, a well-hidden pop-out connector that blended into the case like a secret room. It was a male connector that fit into a female connector on the larger black briefcase, the one we had taken from the
villa
. That connector was easier to find. Then there was a third connection that went to the laptop. That cable was already attached to the laptop.
That cable ran back to the smaller package.
Scamz struggled, rushed, and daisy-chained them together.
Arizona told him passwords.
There were three levels of goddamn passwords.
The first two were phrases in Latin.
The first was
Faber est suae quisque fortunae
.
Konstantin whispered what that meant. “Every man is the artisan of his own fortune.”
The second was
Audaces fortuna iuvat
.
I whispered, “Fortune favors the bold.”
But it was the third password that made Scamz pause.
The final password was Gideon.
Scamz paused. “Gideon.”
Arizona repeated my name. Told him to type in Gideon.
It was as if she had moaned my name while they were in the throes of passion.
His pause didn’t last long. Not as long as my muted surprise.
Scamz played the piano like he was a pro, but his typing was shit.
I stood near the door. Shoes moved like marching ants. I heard them.
I guessed this was what it felt like to be on death row. About to walk that green mile.
Shotgun’s heart beat like the drums across the street.
I said, “How are you liking South America?”
He nodded. “At least I got to see winter in the summertime. Got to see a few pretty women. Even the ugly women down here are pretty. Seeing them was worth the trip.”
I smiled at my buddy.
Then I nodded at Konstantin.
He said, “Always thought it would be the cancer that took me off my feet.”
I said, “You have your white shoes back on.”
“Of course. Put them on in the car.”
He smiled. I did the same.
I glanced back at Arizona.
She wallowed in fluids, was as helpless as a newborn child.
Arizona made another painful sound, then said, “Gun.”
I shook my head.
Sweat ran down her swollen face. She grimaced said, “Give me . . . a goddamn gun.”
I handed her a nine, the one that Scamz had brought in with him and pointed at me.
Arizona raised up on her elbow, positioned herself the best she could.
For a moment she looked like the innocent girl I had met in North Hollywood. I imagined that would be my last time looking at her, my last vision of her would be with her face like that.
Not that my damaged mug looked any better.
The look on her face said that before she died, she’d take at least one with her.
Through my undamaged eye, grating my teeth, I frowned at Scamz. I watched him sweat, struggle, and race to complete a task Arizona would have mastered in seconds.
My life was in his hands. Once again he controlled the plastic bag over my head.
Eighteen footsteps came down the opposite end of the hallway.
They were like tigers moving through the bush and approaching their prey.
Wounded prey, thin on ammunition, guns in hands with broken claws.
The slow footsteps of nine heavily armed men sounded like a cavalry.
Nine guns that would explode like a civil war.
Capítulo 46
la próxima guerra
Medianoche thought
he heard gunfire in the distance.
He sat in an armless chair, lights off, facing his bedroom window.
Alone.
Naked.
Angry.
He held a gun in each bandaged hand. Had his knees wrapped and packed in ice.
His feet were flat against the wooden floor, toes flexing and releasing like a boxer’s fists.
The sensor was in front of him.
No green or yellow or red light. Not one iota of illumination.
He stared, waiting for a blip.
Anything. A faint light. Anything that signaled there was a pulse.
But there was nothing.
Nothing
.
It had flatlined.
Medianoche sat motionless in his darkened apartment on the seventeenth floor.
Eighteen floors above Buenos Aires, a vertical city that never went to bed.
An empty queen-sized bed was behind him.
The scents of four women fading from his sullied sheets.
Fading like the light had faded not too long ago.
Body in pain, a throbbing pain that he ignored, his mind on other things.
He moved his tongue around his inflamed mouth, still tasted blood.
He tried to figure it out. The signal had been there. The goddamn signal had been there. It was strong when the pregnant woman named Arizona stood before them at the monument.
The Four Horsemen had defeated those also-rans and had obtained the package.
They had the portal to hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars.
Maybe a billion.
Even the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
When they returned to the stolen van on that ragged road on the outskirts of the shantytown, when their grueling run had ended near Avenida Gendarmería Nacional, as they stood in the rain, battered with the stench of a foul war dripping from their clothing and clinging to their skin, as they looked like they had crawled through trenches lined with the inner lining of a South American nightmare, The Beast had frowned and held up the sensor.
He was outside the van, armed, fuming, drooling, distressed.
He had stood up, crawled out of the van, weapon in hand, in severe pain, his face telling that it hurt like hell to breathe, blood seeping from his wound, down his leg, into his right shoe.
The Beast was able to stand but unable to run, and barely able to take two steps.
That blade had barely missed The Beast’s spine. Had just missed major arteries.
The package was behind The Beast, on its side, next to Draco’s dead body, sitting in the dead soldier’s blood. The Beast had been left guarding the package.
Russians. Slavs. Germans. Serbs. More Jamaicans.
They all had trackers. Soon well-armed hostiles were expected to rear their ugly heads.
But no hostiles had come in search of the key to the pot of gold.
That should have been the first clue.
When they had made it to the van, The Beast growled that the goddamn signal was no longer green. The goddamn signal had gone yellow. Like the package was moving away.
Impossible.
Fucking impossible.
Medianoche had picked up the briefcase. Shook it like something might be loose.
Then the impossible gave way to what was possible.
Señorita Raven stood at his side and screamed into the rain.
The briefcase they had obtained was a phony. Rigged to look like the second package.
Medianoche refused to believe it was over. Not when he knew the war was only beginning. But the signal. The way it had reacted to the package when they were at the foot of the monument. When they were at the monument, the signal was strong and bright as high noon.
Medianoche nodded.
He replayed the firefight at the monument in his mind. The same conclusion each time.
The fucking signal had been strong.
When Arizona stood in his face, briefcase in hand, the signal was strong.
Before they had left those tangos dead and dying in the middle of beautiful explosions at the base of General Justo José de Urquiza, the signal had declared them as being victorious.
At the monument.
The beeps were accurate, had sounded the bull’s-eye tone when Arizona had stood inches away with the package. When the briefcase was in front of then, the goddamn sensor responded, had sung that the battle had ended and the war had been won.
The victory had been as false as the one the second President Bush declared when he landed on the aircraft carrier
Abraham Lincoln
and said the war with Iraq was over.
Back when that war had barely begun.
Victory
was a fluid, misused word. It took many victories to win any war.
Medianoche ran ice across his swollen face. Rubbed his aching temples.
Then he cursed and spat against the white wall. His mouth hurt. He cursed again. And again. Knocked a clock and lamp off his nightstand. Threw books. Broke pictures.
Scamz hadn’t been a man, hadn’t stepped into the line of fire and brought the package.
Nor had the other man, the sonofabitch who looked like Cary Grant.
Or the other young woman, the other slant-eyed Asian they had gunned down.
Arizona had wobbled from the wreckage, came into the freezing rain, and offered up the package. The safe one. The pregnant one. The one they thought they wouldn’t put down.
The one who played with knives.
He played it again and again. Eliminated everything extra. Erased the impossible.
The package had to be within two feet to yield that response from the sensor.
Two feet. Twenty-four inches.
In his mind, Medianoche saw Arizona, standing at arm’s length, briefcase in hand.
But the signal said that it was all a lie. The sensor wasn’t faulty. It had been verified.
When a man eliminated what was impossible, what was left was the truth.
He followed irrefutable logic and removed the briefcase from the equation.
The only thing left within two feet was the pregnant woman.
Medianoche nodded again.
He whispered a quotation by Sun Tzu, “All warfare is based on deception.”
There was our perception of reality. And then there was reality.
There was what we thought was true. And then there was the truth.
Arizona. Smart bitch. Slick bitch. Had to be a dead bitch.
After they sped away from the slums, they’d fought traffic, driven back to the roundabout. They went back to the base of General Justo José de Urquiza, returned to see if the package had been buried underneath the destruction they had left behind. Then they had picked up the signal and raced toward Avenida Santa Fe, sped into Barrio Norte. Then the signal vanished.
Now he stared at the goddamn sensor the same way he had stared at it then.
When it had gone dark.
It remained as dark as the hole in his head, that cavern where an eye used to be.
Before North Carolina. Before that snot-nosed Guacho.
Before Gideon. Before that sonofawhore. Son of a dead whore.
Medianoche dressed. Put in his glass eye. Put on another Colombian-made suit.
He grabbed another fedora, then put the useless sensor inside his coat pocket.
He opened his small container, put white powder on his fingertip, sniffed.
He loaded both of his nine millimeters. He put on his black gloves.
He was going to see The Beast.
Capítulo 47
engaño
The Beast.
The man with plenary power over The Four Horsemen.
He was dressed in a long white robe made of cotton with golden stitching.
A glass of scotch in one hand. Cuban cigar in the other.
Lips tight. Face so tense his eyebrows almost touched.
His face was painted with disappointment as pain emanated from his lower back.
Medianoche watched him as he moved slowly. The Beast cursed, said that he didn’t want to move at all, but he had to go to the bathroom. Had to get cleaned up. Had to shower.
Medianoche sat at the dining table. A
Buenos Aires Herald
was on the table. Turned to the front page. Brazil’s president blamed white people with blue eyes for the world economic crisis and said it was wrong that developing countries should pay for mistakes made in richer countries.
Medianoche put both guns down, business end pointed away.
He faced The Beast. The man who had come to North Carolina to rescue him.
The sensor rested between them.
Medianoche said, “Time to talk.”
The Beast sipped his scotch. “I picked up chatter. At least three fucking teams showed up since the battle at the
villas
. Three different organizations. All with guns. All with sensors.”