The Bones of Wolfe. James Carlos Blake
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Название: The Bones of Wolfe
Автор: James Carlos Blake
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Триллеры
isbn: 9780802156969
isbn:
“Then you’ll have to deal with them.” She points at us at the end of the counter, where Frank and Eddie and I have stepped away from the bar in readiness to engage with the three of them, Frank putting a hand to Captain Harry’s chest to keep him out of it. But when the rangy guy turns his head to look our way, Lila does a nimble little move with her feet and drives her knee up between his legs. He hunches forward and his mouth drops open, and she stiff-arms him hard in the chest with both hands, propelling him backward into one of his pals, who tries to support him by the underarms, but the rangy one’s legs quit him and he sags in the man’s grip and almost pulls his pal down with him.
Onlookers cheer and laugh, and a woman shouts, “All right, girl!”
“Get him out,” Lila tells the rangy one’s buds. “He chucks up in here, you’ll clean the mess.”
They half carry, half drag him out the door. In keeping with his duty, the Professor goes to a front window to make sure they go away. Whenever somebody gets booted from a bar, and especially if he’s drunk, there’s always a tense interval afterward because there’s no telling if he’s one of those guys who’s coming right back with a gun. The Professor stands watch at the window for a minute, then looks at Frank and gives him a thumbs-up. He’ll continue to keep an eye out for a while in case their vehicle returns.
Lila goes behind the bar and is grinning big when she comes over to us. Captain Harry tells her he’s never seen man nor woman deliver a knee to the cojones with such grace and asks if it was pure luck or what.
“Pure execution, Captain,” she says. “Rayo taught me. It’s all distraction, timing, and speed.” She points off to the side as she says, “Distract, set, do it,” fluidly shifting her feet and whipping up her knee.
“Be damned if the women around here aren’t getting downright dangerous,” Frank says. He tells Eddie he better never piss off Lila again unless he’s wearing a cup.
Our laughter’s strained. But still, it’s a minor respite from the bad tidings about Alberto and his guys.
A half hour later, Lila and the other barmaids have gone home and the only ones still in the Doghouse are Frank and me, Uncle Harry, Eddie, and Charlie. We’re in Charlie’s office, and he’s given us the details about the ambush and hijacking and told us about Donasio Corona and the all-out search for him by the Jaguaros’ army of informants.
“I’ve promised Rigo that, if necessary, I can have a replacement load ready in five days. He’s talked to the Zetas and they said okay, but if they have to wait longer than that they’ll demand a late-delivery fine of twenty percent of what they paid for the original load. Rigo didn’t have any choice but to agree, and if we end up having to pay the fine he and I will split it. He’s pretty sure, though, that Mateo will find the rat quick, and as soon as he does, they’ll let us know. When the word comes, you two”—he looks at me and Frank—“are going down there. I want you with the Jaguaros when they brace the bastard and find out who jacked our load, and I want you with them when they get it back and into the Zetas’ hands in less than five days. If it’s a close call in timing and the Zees give Mateo any shit about a late delivery of just a few hours, I want you to remind them who sells the Jaguaros the guns they sell to the Zetas. They should be made to understand that any disagreement they have with the Jaguaros could become a problem with us and therefore a problem with one of their main lines of arms supply.”
“Maybe we should call them motherfuckers while we’re at it,” Frank says, deadpan. “Just to make extra sure we piss them off enough to kill us on the spot.”
The word comes from Mateo the following afternoon. He tells us the rat’s in Monterrey, holed up at his brother’s house. Mateo’s taking off from the capital in twenty minutes with a three-man team in a company Learjet. He gives us the coordinates and code letters of a private airfield on the outskirts of Monterrey. He’ll take care of our landing clearance, but he won’t wait there for us longer than an hour.
Frank and I have been ready to go since last night. We’ve got our Mexican documents—passports, driver’s licenses, gun carry permits, and ID badges as employees of Toltec Seguridad, a private security business owned by the Mexican Wolfes and headquartered in Cuernavaca, its high-powered legal department always prepared to render whatever assistance we might require. We slip into shoulder holsters holding Beretta nines, put on ultralight waterproof windbreakers to conceal them, and grab our ever-ready gym bags holding short-trip essentials, three extra twenty-round magazines, and a pistol suppressor, what the movies like to call a “silencer.” We call ours a “Quickster” because it’s custom-made for us by Jimmy Quick, who is a firearms genius. Though it’s only three and a half inches long, roughly half the length of most suppressors, it muffles a gunshot better than the bigger ones. And it’s a lot easier to carry a Quickster-equipped pistol on your person than one with a standard-sized suppressor.
A driver takes us out to the Spur Aviation Company’s airstrip and hangars, where Wolfe Associates keeps its two twin-prop aircraft, one a four-passenger model, one that carries six. Harry Mack’s provided us with the smaller one. The pilot is Jimmy Ray Matson, an amiable, red-haired young man out of Mississippi who claims to be twenty-six but doesn’t look old enough to drive a car. He’s an ace pilot and has ferried us before, and he’s already got the engines running when we climb aboard. The cockpit’s in open view of the cabin, and Jimmy Ray—dressed as usual in denim shirt and pants, hiking boots, and a gray Confederate army cap—greets us with “How do, fellers, good to see ya.” He puts on his earphones, tells the tower we’re ready, and in minutes we’re airborne.
Mexico City is about three times farther from Monterrey than we are, but a twin-prop is no Learjet and Mateo got the jump on us. He’ll get there before we do.
The sun has just begun to settle behind the mountains when the little airfield appears below us, Monterrey spread out in the near distance beyond it. There are two runways, three hangars, and a two-story building containing the control tower. A Learjet is on the apron, four men standing next to the plane. The only other people in sight are two guys in mechanic overalls at the entrance to one of the hangars. We touch down and taxi up close to the apron. Three of the men get into the Lear and one starts toward us. I recognize him as Mateo. Officially, he’s chief of security for various of the Mexican Wolfes’ legitimate businesses. Under the name of Mateo Dos Santos, he’s also the operations chief of the Jaguaros.
We lower the cabin stairs, and as we exit the plane Mateo calls out, “Tell your pilot he can refuel at that truck by the far hangar, then go home! His flight’s cleared!” He has to shout for us to hear him over the rumbling idle of our plane’s engines and the high whine of the Learjet as it turns about on the apron to face the runway. Frank leans into the cabin and relays the instructions to Jimmy Ray, who yells back, “Okeydoke!”
We each embrace Mateo in turn and he says, “Excellent timing! We haven’t been here half an hour! Soon as you guys started making your approach, I told my pilot to fire up the jet again! Come on, let’s get aboard! I’ll tell you everything on the way!”
As the Learjet levels off at cruising altitude, the last of the СКАЧАТЬ