Текст книги "The Execution"

Автор книги: Dick Wolf

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

CHAPTER 3

Fisk emerged from the trees, having traced a wide arc through them. Two killers on his trail, probably armed with AK-47s and who knew what other guns. Fisk had a sharp piece of plastic.

He was out of the tree cover and back into the maelstrom of snow. He was circling back toward the Jeep. At least, that was his hope. Had the snow let up a bit? He thought it had. Good for his visibility, but worse for him because now he was more visible, too.

Where was the road? Every facet of topography was smoothed over by the snow. They had been turning the Jeep’s engine on every twenty minutes or so for a few minutes of interior heat, but now he didn’t even have that sound to aim for.

Then he saw the snow craters. Faint, filling up quickly with freshly fallen snow, but there was a twin pattern, he could see it now. Faint skateboard-sized impressions: huge footprints.

That was why he had not heard the sound of the Swedes approaching.

They were on snowshoes.

He tried to match their stride, sweating through his North Face parka, but moving with renewed energy now that he felt he was on the right track. He checked behind him. Still no sign, but he knew they were there.

A broad hump appeared up ahead. Fisk paused before the snow-buried Jeep, steam from his huffed breath obscuring his view. Then he went at the windows with his forearm, clearing it in a broad swipe.

Holes in the cracked glass. The driver’s door open.

He checked the pulses of his comrades, because that was protocol, though it was clear there was no need. All had been sprayed with gunfire and dispatched with bursts to the head, execution style. The dash was cracked, the radio shattered, the smell of cordite hanging in the car. They had been ambushed at close range. Fisk suspected that not one of the agents’ sidearms had even cleared their holsters.

Stuffing was blown out of the backseat, such that Fisk wasn’t certain his Glock was gone until he searched. But it was gone. So was the satellite phone.

Fisk circled to the rear hatch, which had been left open. The ATF agent’s long guns were gone, no AR, no 870. Maybe they had hurled them away into the deep snow. Perhaps if he hunted around in the woods long enough he might find them. But he had no time.

Desperate, Fisk ran around to the front again. He felt under the dash. Sometimes cops screwed holsters to the firewall to hold a backup gun. But there was nothing there—no spare under the seat, no snubbie in the glove compartment.

Nothing.

Think. What did he have? The scraper.

What else?

Footprints.

Fisk looked around. He tried to remember the road in from I-87. There were more trees in the opposite direction, he was certain.

He looked at the dead agents one last time. He needed to make a noise. The anguish that came out of him was real.

“NO!”

No echo. His voice expanded into the snow, which quickly blanketed it like everything else.

But the Swedes must have heard it.

Fisk tightened his grip on the ice scraper and took off away from the Jeep, at an angle from the trees, away from the circle of footprints. These had to be easy to follow. He had to make certain that the Swedes didn’t give up on him and head back to their transpo rendezvous. They were moving faster than he was, thanks to their snowshoes. They were closing the gap. He let the images of the dead feds chase him into the snow, along with the Swedes.

One burst of gunfire shook him. He felt no displacement of the air around him, so the rounds never came anywhere close, but he didn’t want them shooting at him yet. He pushed himself as hard as he could, adopting a gallop-style gait that got his legs into and out of the snow as quickly as possible. And he never looked back. Gunfire would tell him if he was in range or not.

A roadside line of trees emerged out of the snowy curtain, a forward column of soldiers awaiting him. Fisk almost fell into the first black trunk, coughing into his sleeve so the sound would not carry. He pulled off his coat, and steam lifted from his soaked henley.

He stumbled several feet into the woods and found a low branch. The dark blue of his parka would stand out starkly from the snow. He hung it gently from a splinter on the branch.

Fisk hurried about ten yards away and dove headfirst into the ground cover. He used his empty hand to push more snow over his blue jeans and his green shirt, covering his knit cap as best he could.

The snow started to soak through his clothes immediately. In about one minute, his extreme body heat was gone, the sudden temperature change making him lightheaded. He lay as still as he could, slowing his breathing. Surprise was his only chance.

And then, suddenly, there they were. Vague colors moving through the snow curtain. Twin gray-black shapes. He heard the soft crunch, crunch, crunch of the snow beneath their flat shoes.

Then a voice of warning.

And burst after burst of gunfire.

Fisk could not help but flinch. His parka danced on the branch.

And then, just as he’d hoped, the snow plummeted down from on high once again. It landed hard on him and all around, falling with the force and weight of dozens of heavy down comforters. His view was blocked and his hearing muffled. He had not expected quite that much snow.

He hoped the parka was also buried.

His scraper hand was near, and he picked away at the snow before it hardened, creating first some airspace around his head, then carefully reaching out, trying to poke open a hole to see through.

He stopped and listened. A soft mutter of whispered conversation. A disagreement between the two men, perhaps. Who would go first, or who would take point.

Impossible to tell. Fisk felt the snow weighing on his legs and back. He rolled a bit back and forth so as to create a buffer of space, and so he didn’t get packed in there beyond escape.

Again, he went still. He heard faintly the soft shushing noise of someone sliding through the snow as quietly as they could. He cleared more space in front of him and the snow above it settled into the void—and then his hand was free.

He pulled it back immediately. He could see. Not well, but well enough to watch the two Swedes advance. They were already at the area where they presumed him to be buried and dead.

One was near the mound. He was exploring it with his boot, the muzzle of his AK-47 aimed and ready.

The other one was the flank. He was shockingly near, just a couple of yards away, his back to Fisk.

Fisk pushed up out of the snow. It seemed to take forever in his head, speed at war with silence, and the crunching of the parting snow roared in his ears like artillery explosions.

He was on the near Swede as the man turned. Fisk buried the dagger edge of the broken scraper in the side of the man’s neck, just above the shoulder. He pulled out the blade fast, uncorking a spray of blood, and went for the Swede’s rifle.

Fisk twisted it from the falling man’s grip. The Swede had let out a strange cry, and his partner—spooked—fired a burst into the mound, thinking it the source of the threat.

Fisk barked at him. The man froze. Fisk had one boot on the Swede bleeding out below him.

Fisk barked again. Fisk spoke fluent Arabic—his mother was a Lebanese Christian—but the only language available to him at this moment was his native tongue. What he said, he wasn’t even certain. But the other Swede heard the murderous rage that translates fluently across language barriers.

He had hunted terrorists long enough to know that the chances of this guy winding up unarmed and spread-eagled with his hands clasped behind his head were slim verging on none. And on the one hand, that was fine. Fisk was ready to light this guy up for what he’d done.

On the other hand, nobody had any intel on where the bomb was supposed to be detonated, or by whom.

The guy was waiting. Maybe praying. Fisk barked at him again, and the Swede wheeled around.

Fisk opened up, firing on the man’s hands as he swung the AK around. He shredded the man’s forearms and saw sparks play off the chromium-plated chamber.

The rifle popped out of his hands, sinking muzzle down into the bloody snow.

The man stood staring at his arms and hands, howling in pain.

Below Fisk, his partner’s strength was fading, the arterial flow slowing to a dull pulse. He had pulled off his balaclava, exposing a short, strawberry blond beard, rimed with ice. The man’s blood was warm against Fisk’s pant leg.

Fisk felt him check out beneath his boot, relaxing into a lifeless heap.

“La ilaha illa Allah, Mohammadun rasulu Allah.” It was the other Swede. His howling had turned to praying. He was trying to chant his pain away.

Fisk rushed up to him and chopped him on the back of his head with the butt of the AK, just enough to put him down.

He cut open the man’s coat with the blade. In the inside pocket, Fisk found a small, stainless steel vial, carefully machined, about the dimensions of a small bottle of aspirin.

Fisk squeezed the vial in his fist. No sense of victory. No sense of achievement.

He pocketed the vial and tossed the ruined coat aside. No coats for anybody now. He pulled the Swede up by the collar of his thick sweater, and with him began the long march back to Champlain.

CHAPTER 4

July 23

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico

2.7 miles from the U.S. border

Ramon’s uncle stopped what he was doing. Ramon followed the man’s eyes—dark beneath his New York Yankees baseball cap—to a spray of bright red hibiscus flowers in the bushes next to the Palacio Municipal.

A tiny bird, hovering in the air. Brilliant feathers glinting in the pallid light of dawn. It darted back near Ramon for an instant, close enough that Ramon could hear the sound of its tiny wings thrumming, just barely audible over the sound of the men screaming.

“See it hover,” said Ramon’s uncle, marveling at the bird. He was a small, compact man, with an expression of earnest concentration on his face. He was one of those men, Ramon noted, who took up very little space. The Zetas around the plaza, the ones now pulling naked corpses out of a stake-bed GMC and throwing them onto the ground, were generally loud, bullying men. Not Ramon’s uncle.

He noticed things like birds. They were beautiful to him, or at least, in his world, rare. But they also came as signs. Omens. And Ramon’s uncle paid great attention to them.

Not all of the bodies were corpses: not yet. Several of the people lying in the back of the truck were still alive, howling piteously now, begging for their lives, but mainly making a lot of noise.

Twenty armed Zetas occupied the square in front of the long white colonnaded government building that lined the west side of the Plaza de Something-or-Other. (Ramon’s uncle had told him the name of the town square, but Ramon had already forgotten it.) The government building had rounded arches running along the entire front, such that it looked like a cheap stucco version of a Roman aqueduct. Most of his uncle’s men were lounging around smoking, their AR-15s hanging from their necks on black nylon slings. Some wore bandannas over their faces, others balaclavas. But not all of them. They didn’t seem overly concerned about being caught. And the masks were sweaty in the early morning heat.

One of the Zetas, a fat, powerfully built man with a blue Tecate T-shirt stretched over his pendulous gut, was cutting the heads off of the bodies. The fat man used a strange tool for the beheadings, a sort of spade-shaped blade attached to a heavy, rough-hewn piece of wood about three inches thick and six feet long. The tool was crude and appeared to have been handmade, perhaps by a blacksmith. But the cutting edge was very sharp. The fat man used the tool much like a post-hole digger. He straddled the bodies, one foot on either side of their chest, lifting the heavy tool up in the air with the blade pointing down. Then he would drive it straight down with a heavy thunk on the necks of the dead and the not-yet-dead, severing their heads with one stroke. With each cut he muttered curses under his breath—coño chinga puta madre pendejo, an unconnected string of obscenities—the way a man might curse his work while digging a well in stony ground.

Then another Zeta grabbed the head by its hair and tossed it back onto the truck bed, where it thudded and bounced like an American football before settling still.

“Won’t someone hear all the screaming?” Ramon said to his uncle. The desperate howls of the three or four live prisoners were starting to wear on Ramon’s nerves. He was sweating and feeling a little like he might throw up, and he did not want his uncle to know.

His uncle seemed to read Ramon’s distress in the way that he shrugged. “Take some water if you want.” The hummingbird zipped overhead again, returning to the red hibiscus flowers. “You are among friends here in Nuevo Laredo. And we have work that must be completed.” He turned away from the grisly work being done behind the truck, briefly more interested in the flight and habits of the hummingbird. “Selasphorus rufus. The rufous hummingbird. The only bird capable of hovering. So still, and yet so alive with movement.”

Ramon thought: This is why you identify with them, Uncle.

“They only feed in the earliest morning and the latest afternoon,” his uncle said, continuing. “Feeding and hovering takes so much effort, you see, that they must spend most of their time resting.”

Another thunk behind them. Ramon tried to listen to his uncle, he wanted to learn . . . but it was impossible to concentrate while the fat man was beheading bodies. Ramon’s eyes cheated back to the fat man; specifically, his blade. Ramon wanted to look at hummingbirds instead, but he could not.

Who were these dead and near-dead people? And why desecrate their bodies with such workmanlike efficiency? His uncle had not said, and so Ramon did not ask. Some had been burned or beaten. Some had had their eyes gouged out. Some were already missing their feet and hands. After the fat man cleaved the heads from the bodies, two other Zetas would drag the headless corpses by their feet over near the front door of the Palacio Municipal, where they laid them in a shoulder-to-shoulder line.

At one point Ramon’s uncle looked over and called irritably to them, “Please! Neatly! Have some pride in your work.”

“Sí, patrón!” the men said, bobbing their heads nervously. Country boys, with the habit of obeisance to authority. And yet Ramon’s uncle was not their boss. But none would cross him.

The fat man had finished with the dead. Now he was dragging one of the live men off the truck. The prisoner was very hairy, and he screamed and squirmed continuously . . . until, as he fell from the truck, the back of his head bounced off the pavement with a sharp crack. It was an awful sound, but then for a moment the plaza went blessedly quiet. Ramon heard only the whir of the hovering bird. It sounded ominous now, and horrible, like the sound of some machine-beetle designed by American military scientists, ready to drill its beak into Ramon’s body and feed.

The stunned man who lay on the ground stirred, then moaned. His hands and feet were bound with heavy black zip ties. The fat Zeta dragged him over to the work area. Chunk! went the spadelike tool. The man’s body went limp as his head flopped off.

Blood gushed out for a moment, then ceased. The dead man’s eyes stared unblinkingly at the sky.

This work was easier on the dead.

In the distance, Ramon heard a thin whine. For a moment he thought it was another hummingbird, perhaps a flock of them.

But then he realized it was a siren. First one, then another, then another.

His uncle heard it, too. He glanced at his watch—it was an elegant and thin timepiece, to which his uncle had given a fancy foreign name, “Patek Philippe”—and scowled. “The lesson here, Ramon? Never trust a policeman. They were supposed to wait until seven thirty sharp. You see what time it is?” He held out the watch on his thin brown wrist. “Seven oh nine.” He shook his head in disgust. “Incompetence.”

“We should go then,” said Ramon, trying not to sound too eager.

Ramon’s uncle neither agreed nor disagreed, turning instead to watch the fat man decapitate another prisoner. One more to go.

Ramon’s uncle called to the fat man. “Bring that last one over here, Carlito.”

Ramon shuddered. He wished the sirens would speed up.

The executioner dragged the final prisoner over to Ramon’s uncle, dropping his legs there. Up close, Carlito was even more powerful in appearance. Even with a custom tool, it took strength to chop off men’s heads.

Ramon’s uncle nodded toward the spadelike tool. He said, “Give the blade to my nephew, Carlito. The time has come for him to see what this business is all about.”

Ramon’s uncle’s life had always seemed romantic and exciting. His estate, his fine things, his commanding attitude. Just being in his presence was seductive.

But now that he had seen his uncle’s work up close, Ramon felt sickened. His uncle, he knew, was not paid by the head. The job was already completed. This was more of a flourish. And Ramon had seen quite enough already, thank you.

But before Ramon could think of an honorable way to protest, the fat man shoved the tool into his hand. Extremely heavy, the wooden handle smooth and worn from having seen so much use. Its crude fan-shaped blade dripped blood onto the ground.

“I made this tool with my own hands,” Ramon’s uncle said. “Mesquite wood. Very tough. And the blade was hand-forged from steel from an excavator tooth. A Caterpillar 321, if I’m not mistaken. American steel, the highest quality.”

Ramon held in his hand the weapon that had beheaded dozens of men. “What is it called?” asked Ramon, stalling desperately.

Ramon’s uncle eyed him, shaking his head. “It has no name.”

The last prisoner rolled from side to side on the ground, his flex-cuffed hands covering his crotch. He was a thin, hairless young man, not many years older than Ramon himself. He had pure Indian features. And all Ramon could think, looking at him, was: Why do you not scream?

The prisoner just stared up at Ramon, his eyes dark and frightened . . . and yet he did not break Ramon’s gaze.

Ramon’s uncle motioned with his hand, a precise downward motion. “Let the weight of the thing do the work. Half of the job is just lifting it up and dropping it.”

Ramon said, “What is the other half?”

“The muscle this task requires is not mere body strength. You must commit to the act. You must drive the blade down and make sure it finds its mark. The thing knows its job. If you do it carefully, and decisively, the thing will do its job kindly. Otherwise . . .”

“Otherwise?” asked Ramon.

“Otherwise you will bungle the job, and try again. Do not take many hacks where one is sufficient.”

The sirens were getting louder. Ramon knew he did not have much time. He also knew he did not want to do this. And he knew that his uncle knew.

“Now is your time,” said his uncle, the brim of his ball cap shading his penetrating eyes. “This tool is a special object. It will find you out. It will do the command not of your grip, but of your will. Of your commitment.”

The tiny hummingbird flew between them, zipping right, then darting away, heading in an upward arc toward a long row of palm trees on the far side of the plaza.

Ramon’s uncle said, “Do you see? Even our little friend knows. It is time to go.”

Then his uncle turned, made a circle in the air with his hands, and began walking away. Suddenly the Zetas around the plaza weren’t lounging anymore. Everyone stood and began sprinting for their trucks: two armored Humvees, an Escalade, and a Ford pickup with a heavy tube frame welded to the back, on which was mounted a belt-fed machine gun.

The fat man, however, stayed with Ramon. He stared at him with black, expressionless eyes. “Come on, you little pendejo. Get it over with. Your uncle is not someone you want to disappoint.”

Ramon looked into the face of the decapitator. He saw pleasure there. “Leave me.”

“You can’t do it.”

“Leave me now,” Ramon said. “I’ll do it. And then I will tell my uncle how you doubted me.”

The fat man shrugged, but didn’t give up on taunting Ramon with his eyes. He walked back to the big GMC and started closing the gate to the bed, obstructing Ramon’s view of the litter of heads lying there.

What had become of his world? Ramon felt his entire body trembling. His armpits and face were slick with sweat, even though the sun was barely higher than the buildings at the edge of the square.

He was aware of the eyes of the man at his feet, looking up at him. Ramon did not look down.

He had to do it. He had to. If he didn’t kill this man, his uncle would never respect him.

Or worse.

Let the weight of the thing do the work. That’s what his uncle said. Whether he was referring to the weight of the object or the psychological measure of the act, it was all the same. If Ramon could just let the weight of the thing do the work, he would not have to get involved at all.

His hands would be clean. And it would be done with.

“You don’t have to,” came the voice.

Not Ramon’s own voice. The young man’s beneath him.

“No one will care if you don’t.”

“Shut up!” said Ramon, kicking his bare shoulder.

The sirens grew closer. Ramon felt eyes on him, real or imagined. The eyes of his uncle, the eyes of the dead, the eyes of the fat, taunting Carlito . . . and the eyes of the young man at his feet.

In that single moment, Ramon could see his entire life ahead of him. Why had he ever wanted this? He had not been forced into it. He had sought it. His older brother was a simple farmer like their father. His younger brother was going to the military school in Mexico City.

There was no need for this, he realized. There never had been.

“This is insane,” said the young man on the ground. “You see that, can’t you?”

Yes. Maybe it was. But perhaps it came to this: Who would Ramon rather be in this insane situation, the man at his feet, or the man wielding the blade?

It was too late to stop this. Ramon moved toward the young man. The man tried to roll away, but Ramon got his feet down on either side of his chest, straddling him. He did not want to look at the man’s face, but there was no doing the job without it.

The young man was looking up at him. Not at the blade: at Ramon.

Ramon raised the blade all at once. He lifted the spadelike tool high into the air—and smashed it downward. But as the tool plunged toward the ground, Ramon realized he’d done exactly what his uncle had warned him not to: he had tried to muscle the blade into the man, instead of simply letting the tool do the work.

His hands and arms attempted to do what his heart could not.

And so he missed—the blade twisting slightly in its descent, whacking the man in the upper shoulder. It opened up a gaping, smile-shaped gash just above his clavicle.

But it was no killing blow. Ramon saw white flashes of bone in the moments before the wound filled with blood.

The young man grunted like he’d been punched. His eyes went white and teary, his eyelids fluttering, his mouth grimacing.

Ramon looked around. He thought he saw his uncle on the running board of the Escalade, a ball cap shading his face, obscuring his expression. But it was another man. This man gave Ramon a simple wave. A summons. A hurry-up gesture.

From that distance, it must have looked like a killing blow. The young man lay still.

Ramon checked for the fat man, Carlito, but he was loading his own bulk into the driver’s seat of the truck.

But he could not step away without being sure that his uncle . . .

There he was. His uncle was up at the front door of the Palacio Municipal, kneeling over one of the beheaded corpses. He was writing something on the body’s bare back.

No—a writing gesture, but not with a pen. A knife. Cutting swiftly yet delicately.

For a moment Ramon wondered vaguely what he was doing. But the sirens were loud now, and almost upon them. Ramon knew that, whatever he was going to do, it had to be done now.

On the ground beneath him, the young man gritted his teeth as though biting down on his pain.

Ramon quickly leaned down. “Don’t scream,” he said.

Then he began to run toward the knot of Humvees.