Standoff: A Vin Cooper Novel (16 page)

Nothing.

“Hola,”
I repeated and waited.

“Vete a la mierda,”
growled a male voice. Or, in short, fuck off. No doubt someone was checking out my car and deciding that any person driving a piece of crap like that had no business ringing the bell.

“Juan de Jesús del Los Apostles de Medellín. He’s expecting me.”

“
¿Quién es usted?”
Who are you?

“Vin Cooper.”

Silence.

The green Renault drove past on the road behind me, the attractive non-Spanish-speaking Colombian woman with the non-flat tire. Her eyes flicked in my direction but only for an instant before they returned to the road in front of her.

“Wait there,” said a different voice – an American voice – through the intercom.

I waited, keeping half an eye on the driveway beyond the gate, watching for movement. A white golf cart eventually appeared, driven by a trim blond Scandinavian-looking type in his thirties, a Colombian goon in the passenger seat beside him large enough to compress the cart’s suspension so that it drove lopsided. The cart pulled up on the other side of the gate, which remained closed, and both men got out. The goon wore a coat, despite the heat and humidity. He pulled it away from his body a little to show the piece he carried in a holster below his armpit – why, I have no idea. Perhaps the warning was standard operating procedure in his line of work.

“
Buenos días,”
said the blond guy. “Can I help you?” I recognized his voice as the one in the intercom, an educated voice dressed in knitted shirt, shorts and boat shoes, no socks. We were a long way from any boats.

By way of an answer, I passed through the bars the now blood-stained note scribbled by the Tears of Chihuahua.

He scanned it. “You have some identification, Mr Cooper?”

I went for the folded newsprint in my back pocket, which triggered a response from the goon, the coat coming away from his gun in a hurry and his other hand reaching in.

“Easy, Mack,” I told him, slowing my movements. Producing the folded paper, I waggled it so they could both see it wasn’t going to shoot them and opened it out to show the front page of
El Diario.

A phone began to ring, some Beyoncé tune. The guy in the boat shoes took out his cell, decided not to take the call and put it back in his pocket. “Señor Apostles is not here,” he informed me.

“I was told he would be,” I said and motioned the note in his hand, the details scrawled on it by Perez.

The guy returned the note through the bars. His cell rang again. He removed it from his pocket a second time and turned it off, this time without checking the screen. “Change of plans. He wants you to meet with him in Bogotá. Tonight, eight o’clock at Dry 73.”

“Dry 73?”

“Go to the Marriott. There is a bar. They do martinis. You like martinis?”

“No.”

He shrugged before turning and going back to the cart, the goon following. The cart reversed into a bay and then accelerated silently, disappearing quickly into the trees.

I scoped the general area. Deserted. The only noise was coming from my tinnitus. Bogotá was a four-hour drive, six in my piece of crap, assuming it was even capable of going the distance. I walked over to it, got in, reversed back out onto the road and stood on the gas. Glancing into the rear-vision mirror, I saw a black Range Rover turn out of the Hacienda Mexico gate and accelerate onto the road behind me. It came up fast in the rear-view mirror, seemingly in a hurry. Slowing down I made a passing gesture out my window; the big black off-roader ignored the offer and instead just ploughed into the back of my car. My neck snapped back against the headrest and then jack-knifed forward.

“Hey!” I yelled.

The vehicle rammed the rear bumper a second time and the Kia swerved and bucked and threatened to skid sideways.

That’s when the shooting started. The window behind me shattered, filling the air with crystals of safety glass. Holes appeared in the roof, letting in daylight.

I pulled the Sig. What the fuck? Or rather, who? Was it the guy in the boat shoes? The goon? Blood was everywhere. Had I been hit? And then I realized that reaching behind for my weapon had inadvertently ripped the surgical tape and the scab clean off the wound on my hand and blood was pouring out of it, making the Sig’s handgrip equal parts slick and sticky.

Whoever was behind the wheel of the Range Rover knew how to drive. And in this heap I couldn’t out-accelerate, out-brake or outmaneuver it. The road ahead was clear of traffic. I couldn’t see a way out. As it pulled adjacent with the Kia’s boot, I shot out the front tire. A puff of dust on the sidewall indicated a bull’s-eye as air rushed from the hole, but it made no difference. The damn thing had run-flat tires.

The four-wheel drive shouldered the Kia’s fender, which pushed the car into wild oversteer. It skidded sideways, came up on two wheels, and hit the dirt and grass on the side of the road. A spin came next, swapping end-to-end, all control gone. Then the car was on its side, sliding, the cabin filling with dust and glass and noise. A collision with something. Sky, earth, sky. And then, for a moment, silence. Fluids began to gurgle and steam escaped from under the hood. I was dazed. Somehow the Kia had ended up on its wheels, right way up, almost swallowed by a thick shroud of unkempt bush.

“Get out of the car,” a man yelled. My brain was still spinning. “I said get the fuck out!”

The door beside me was wrenched open. An arm came across my chest, the seatbelt released, and I was pulled out of the seat by my collar and dragged along the ground.

“Well look who we got here. Vin fucking Cooper.”

It was Kirk Matheson, a Glock in his shaking hand. He stood over me, the sling hanging loose from his neck. He was excited, pumped up, shaking like a cop who has just caught himself someone drifting in a parking lot.

“I saw your face in the surveillance camera. How fuckin’ lucky was that? I tried calling it through, but the fool wouldn’t pick up. So you’re after a job with the Angel?” He laughed. “You and I both know that ain’t gonna happen, Mr Under-fucking-cover.”

I moved my jaw around. It’d taken a hit somewhere along the way. Where was my Sig? What day was it?

“Get up!” he demanded.

I managed to roll onto my front and take a knee.

“You’re coming back to the hacienda. Once the Angel finds out what you’re all about, he gonna have some fun with you, my friend. Might even get Perez over, peel you like a spud.”

The world came slowly back into focus.

“I said get up!” More yelling.

I got to my feet, feeling shaky. And then Matheson was gone. He had been standing right in front of me. And then he was snatched away by a green blur. I turned my head in time to see the guy complete an arc through the air and come down heavily in some thick scrubby grass and bush back from the road like a bag of trash thrown from a speeding vehicle. The green flash turned out to be the Renault driven by the woman faking a flat. The driver’s door opened and the woman in question got out and ran to the body lying in the weeds. With a hit like that, Matheson should’ve been dead but he moved slow, like a snake shifting its coils in the sun. I gave my head a shake to clear it and walked over, drawing the Sig.

“You hit him,” I said.

“Of course I hit him,” she replied.

Yeah, okay, not the sharpest opener.

She looked down on the half-dead body of the former El Paso County Sheriff’s deputy.

“Why’d you hit him?”

“None of your business.” She flicked her hair away from her face. “You are lucky I din hit you.”

I still didn’t get it. “You were staking out the Saint’s hacienda.”

She answered by pulling a black Ruger pistol from the back of her jeans, aiming it at Matheson and almost managing to get off a shot before I snatched the pistol out of her hand. “Hey!” she snapped at me.

I dropped out the magazine, ejected the round in the chamber onto the ground and handed the weapon back to her.

Matheson groaned.

“I need him,” I told her.

“And who are you?” she asked.

“A guy looking for a job,” I said.

“With the Shit of Medellín?” she sneered. “Yes, I thin’ I should have hit you also. You are like them!”

I thought of those CSI tents dotting the apron at Horizon and the misspelled word on a jungle airstrip and hoped to god she was wrong.

“Your hand is bleeding,” she observed.

I glanced at it absently. It was. I crouched beside Matheson.

“What are you gonna do with him?”

“Take him for a little ride.” I saw the 9mm parabellum round on the grass, picked it up and handed it to her. Then I grabbed Matheson’s wrist, the one attached to his bad arm, and hoisted him onto my shoulder. He groaned again, semiconscious. “You mind getting the trunk?” I asked the woman as I lifted my chin at the Range Rover, straining under the load.

“Get it yourself.” She flicked her hair again and strutted off toward her car. Strut was something she knew how to do. For a moment I thought she was gonna turn and pout, or maybe wink, and then walk back the other way.

The keys were hanging conveniently out of Matheson’s pocket. I snatched them and thumbed the trunk’s release button, dumped him in the empty space, and then went back to the wrecked Kia to retrieve my bag and cover the tunnel it had made in the bush with some loose fronds. The Renault drove off with a handful of wheelspin. I wondered what the woman’s story was. She had some beef with Apostles otherwise why have his place under surveillance? She was also prepared to do a hit and run on Matheson and didn’t act or sound like any kind of law enforcement I was familiar with.

I cleaned up the general area, finding Matheson’s handgun in the weeds as well as his wallet. I threw the pistol into a nearby muddy pool and checked his wallet. A wad of pesos but no business cards or phone numbers so I stuffed it in his back pocket. A few cars came and went along the road, but none stopped. I pulled a couple of sets of cuff locks from my bag and hog-tied him with them. The guy was drifting in and out of consciousness but he’d come around soon enough and when he did I didn’t want any trouble.

Patting him down, hoping to find his cell, all I came up with was some loose change. He must have left it back at the ranch. I trotted to the driver’s door, hopped in and found a nice surprise: a cell phone sitting in a cradle. It had to be Matheson’s. The lock screen showed a default pattern. Thumbing the slide revealed the request for a passcode. I shrugged. Having the cell was better than not having it, but it was no help to me.

The Range Rover purred into life at the touch of a button. Making Bogotá in the time remaining suddenly didn’t seem like such a big deal.

“Cooper …”

Matheson had finally come to his senses.

“Cooper … !”

I turned on the radio. “China Grove” by the Doobie Brothers was playing.

“
Cooper!”

That’s what I like about these Brit cars – great sound systems.

“HEY! MOTHERFUCKER!”

Pumping up the volume, I slipped the shift into drive and wondered if this was the model rover they sent to Mars.

I watched a United 747 take off and struggle for altitude while I waited for Panda to answer the phone. The air was thin here. Just walking around made me feel light-headed, like being a little drunk. Not near as much fun, but free. The call went through.
“Si?”
said a tentative voice down the line.

“Panda?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Cooper.”

My name took a moment to register while he attached a face to it.

“Cooper,” he repeated aloud.

Matheson was quiet for the moment. Duct tape over the mouth and a Sig to the head will guarantee that. “Something I need picked up.”

“Where from?” Panda asked.

“El Dorado International, Bogotá.”

“What’s the package?”

“Kirk Matheson.”

After a lengthy silence, he said, “It can be arranged.”

I gave him the details of the Range Rover as well as the car park and bay numbers where it would be found and told him the keys were on the front right-hand tire. Then I followed up with a brief rundown on the past week.

“Anything else?” Panda asked like I hadn’t done nearly enough and really should pull my finger out. Maybe he was right. I’d had my chance with Perez and blown it. And I remained outside of the Saint’s operation.

“A sweeping generalization,” I said. “These people – and I use the term ‘people’ loosely – have opted out of the human race.”

Panda wasn’t interested. “When are you meeting Apostles?”

“Tonight.”

“It’s management that sets the tone for a corporation. Don’t let the charm fool you.”

He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. With Perez as the managing director of the business, Apostles, the CEO, had to be a complete whack job. At least when he wasn’t building orphanages.

I heard a groan from the trunk. “When are you gonna make the pickup? The package is about to get restless.”

“On their way. Fifteen minutes out.”

Fifteen minutes was fast. CIA usually needs more time to tear itself away from the mirror. Maybe it was subcontracting in Bogotá. “One last thing. Tell Chalmers I could’ve sent Matheson home in a bag.”

More silence.

“He’ll know what I’m talking about,” I said. The call ended without goodbyes and I cleared the phone’s history. Checking on Matheson, I could see he was in a fair amount of discomfort, which suited me fine. With a little more time up my sleeve I would have questioned him about events back in El Paso, but time was something in short supply. I doubled the duct tape, checked his hands and feet one final time, locked the vehicle with the remote and placed it on the front right-hand tire.

*

I bought clothes from a shop in the Marriott lobby, all of it Gant except for the Timberland boat shoes, taking my cues from the help back at the Saint’s hacienda, the Yacht-Owning Hamptons Wannabe look. I didn’t do a lot of undercover work but I do know it pays to blend in. The disguise was working. No one gave me a second glance.

The concierge told me that Dry 73 was tucked away beside the Marriott’s restaurant. He also told me the name stemmed from the fact that it served 73 different flavors of martini – banana, strawberry, lime and so forth. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to find one I liked unless it was Glen Keith-flavored.

The entrance to the bar was roped off along with a stand that announced F
UNCIÓN PRIVADA
, the words
Private function
in brackets beneath. “You are a guest at the
función
, sir?” asked a young male waiter in gray suit and Marriott tie hovering beside the sign.

“Yep,” I replied. He hesitated, wrestling with this matter-of-fact answer, trying to decide which was more dangerous: pull the rope aside and let me pass or turn me away. After a few seconds of inner turmoil he unclipped the rope and said, “Welcome, Señor.”

The bar itself was small, a feature wall lined with black salt bricks dug out of the rock, which also accounted for the name of the adjoining restaurant – La Mina, or the Mine. Yellow boxes of light suspended from the low ceiling contrasted with the bar’s seating, individual chairs of a blue so electric they almost hummed. But I was less interested in the interior decorating than I was in the people occupying a group of those chairs: a couple of exquisitely manicured Chinese bookends dressed in red satin cheongsams and the man sitting between them, the Saint of Medellín Juan de Apostles. I took a few steps toward them but was immediately intercepted by a broad Mexican tough wearing an expensive navy suit and an earpiece. His shaved brown head was so glossy I could see those yellow lightboxes perfectly reproduced on his dome in miniature. This was a shine you usually only drive off a showroom floor.

‘I’m invited,’ I informed him, in case he thought I was some random sneaking in for a cheesecake martini, and showed him the note from Perez. He skimmed it and then his hands were inside my jacket, searching around my beltline, where they quickly found the Sig. Removing it, he expelled the mag, ejected the round in the chamber and handed the lot back to me. In case I had any ideas, he opened his own jacket to reveal a machine pistol concealed nice and snug under his armpit. There was nothing else to interest him and the pat-down finished, but he gestured to a dark corner of the bar where another man stared back, unblinking, just to let me know that the odds were heavily weighted in their favor if I was thinking about doing some bad.

I left the Mexican security goon behind and walked toward the bar. One of the Chinese women turned her head. She had light-gray eyes with heavy linework to make them appear almond. Her full, heart-shaped lips were painted bright red. If she was Chinese, I was Pekinese. Her black hair, which shone with blue highlights, was worn up and sculpted into loose coils held in place by a pair of gold chopsticks. The red cheongsam, embroidered with small gold and blue dragons, was buttoned at the base of her smooth neck and short sleeves revealed long slim olive-skinned arms. She shifted slightly in her seat, which was an arm of the chair occupied by Apostles, revealing more of a crossed leg framed by a split that ended mid-thigh. It would make my day if she had another leg just like it. On the end of her smooth olive calves were red lacquered stilettos, the heels four-inch spikes.

Those gray eyes dropped down my body and then back again, weighing up the unknown male about to invade their space. I read in those eyes that while intrigued and not altogether displeased by what they saw, she was still unconvinced. At least that’s how I read it. She sipped something brown from a martini glass, managed a coy smile, and telepathically communicated my presence to the other piece of bread in the Apostle sandwich – the woman who, like the meat in the middle, had her back to me. This woman turned her head slightly and revealed the gray eyes and red lips of a twin who was, at least at first glance, in every way identical to the other. I was seeing double, a first while stone-cold sober. The only way to tell the two of them apart was that the gold dragons on this sister’s cheongsam were embroidered with green thread rather than blue.

Apostles had a thing for twins. I knew that – it was in his bio. Envy isn’t something I do all that much, but I was seeing it.

Apostles leaned a little forward to catch what the distraction was, and that gave me a look at his face. His hair was thick and straight and salt and pepper, layers of it swept from a high brow that suggested brains back there somewhere. The eyes were dark and framed by heavy black eyebrows yet to gray. His nose was long and generous and there was a bulb at the end of it with a vague cleft that reminded me of a head of garlic. A week of ragged salt and pepper stubble occupied his neck and cheeks, framing a thick old-style moustache. Yes, the Latino Don Johnson force was strong with this one. He wore a gray flannel suit with light-blue business shirt open three buttons at the throat – one button too many in my opinion – revealing a tuft of salt and pepper chest hair.

With one eye on the goon for reassurance, he asked “
¿Quién coño eres tú?”
Who the fuck are you?

I handed over the note from Perez. “A cop killer.”

“Did I hear about you?” he said, scanning the note, switching to English with a hint of Oxford about it. “Were you at the hacienda this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“And you want a job.”

“If you’ve got one.”

“Get lost before my boy kills you.”

“He can try,” I said. Apostles took another look at me and so did the slices of bread in the cheongsams either side of him. The one with the blue and gold dragons glanced over at the bar and raised a finger, and a waiter sprinted over.

“I’m having a chocolate martini,” she said with a vaguely Texan accent. “Would anyone care to join me? Mister … ?” She turned those gray eyes on me fully. They were like lenses with lights behind them and I experienced a moment of vertigo like the floor had dropped away beneath my feet.

“He doesn’t have a name,” said Apostles. “He is nameless until I say it can be otherwise.”

“Two,” said Green Dragons to the waiter as she drew figure eights on Apostles’ thigh.
“Cariño?”
Darling?

“
Si
, okay,” he replied, not taking his eyes off me.

“Four,” Blue Dragons informed the waiter and he ran off to see to them. She looked at me again but I was prepared for it second time around. “So you were saying you kill police?”

“I try not to make a habit of it,” I said, wondering whether I should sit or keep standing. I was having a drink now, evidently. A chocolate martini. I shuddered.

“An associate of mine has gone missing,” said Apostles. “You were at the hacienda at around the same time. Did you happen to see anything?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“He was driving a Range Rover – black. He drove off and hasn’t come back.”

“Maybe he ran away.”

“Do you want a job or do you want my people to take you outside?”

I made out like I was searching my memory. “Yeah, now that you mention it … A black Range Rover almost ran me off the road. Doing a hundred miles an hour, going somewhere in a hurry. He was a friend of yours?” I shook my head. “He was around the bend and gone. No way I was going to catch him, but I wanted to, you know, tell him to slow down.”

“He was a cop,” said Blue Dragons. “If you’d have caught him, would you have killed him?” She smiled. It was a smile I could get used to being around.

Apostles cut Blue Dragons off. “So I’ll ask again. Who the fuck are you?”

“Ex-Special Agent Vin Cooper, OSI.” I handed him the
El Diario
front page.

“OSI – what’s that?” He held the page away from him to read it.

“United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations.”

“What do I do with you? I don’t have an air force.”

“What do you call the planes that fly your cargo into the United States?”

He regarded me, head tilted on a slight angle, intrigued. “What about them?”

“How many do you lose? And what does that cost you?” I let those questions hang in the air for a pregnant moment, giving him time to add all those zeroes. “I can get ’em into the US – guaranteed.”

He twisted in his seat to get a better look at me. “How?”

“Before I was an Air Force cop, I was a special tactics officer. They’d drop me behind enemy lines to set up beacons for the bombers. But first we had to penetrate air defenses, which was also my job. I’d say that the United States is your enemy. Pay me right and I’ll get you inside, behind the enemy’s lines.”

He was interested.

“Go on.”

“Your market’s not US–Mexican border towns, it’s San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston … What if I can get your aircraft safely on the doorsteps of those cities? And get them out again. No DEA, no seizures, no loss of income.”

Apostles’ eyes glittered. “What’s it gonna cost me?”

“I’m not greedy,” I said.

“Greedy gets you dead.”

“How much revenue have you lost in the US over the last twelve months? Thirty million? Fifty? Now think about losing nothing. I figure five percent of every shipment I successfully take into the States is reasonable.”

He gazed at me, balancing my offer in some kind of mental scale. “One percent,” he said finally.

Bingo, we were negotiating. “Four percent.”

“Don’t waste my time. You want two and a half percent,” he said. “If we were to agree on that, you’ll also train several others to do your job.”

“And once they’re trained up, you’ll make them do it for nothing and have me killed.”

“Not if you find ways to make yourself indispensable.”

“Is anyone?”

His features slid into a position that could be called a smile. I took that as a no.

“And what if those shipments are delivered unsuccessfully?” asked Green Dragons, her back to me but her head angled in my general direction.

“As I’ll be riding in there with them, you could say I’ll have skin in the game. Get it wrong and it’ll be a long stretch in a federal penitentiary for me.”

Apostles didn’t say anything, not immediately. “I’ll think about it,” he said eventually. “I’m going to ask around. Get you checked out.”

The waiter arrived with four chocolate martinis on a tray and offered them to the twins. Blue Dragons took two, stood up and walked mine over to me. She was tall, maybe five-eleven. It was difficult to tell – those heels were high. But I was happy to see she did have another leg to complement the other one finding its way through that slit with every step. Her perfume swept over me, an erotic caress. “You ever had one of these before?” she asked, handing me the drink, her perfect nails painted with black lacquer. She talked and moved with a venomous sexuality.

“No.”

“Try it.”

I took a sip. Hmm … cleaning fluid with chocolate aftertaste.

“What do you think?”

“Yummy,” I told her.

“I don’t believe you. What do you usually drink?”

“Single malt.”

“A man who likes scotch,” she said as if it was an invitation, turning to walk back to her perch. I couldn’t help but notice her long back or the swell of her ass and the way it moved against the silk. I put the drink on the table.

“Come to the hacienda tomorrow,” Apostles said as he placed his hand on Blue Dragons’ leg and chased it up the split. “Before you leave, where are you staying?”