The guy shoved Paolina away. She stumbled backward over a tree root and fell to the ground. Valencia screamed.
Vaught stood up, a wild look in his eyes.
The owner of the dog panicked and went for his gun, but before he could get his hand beneath his shirt, Vaught had him by the throat. The two were of equal size and strength, but Vaught knew a lot more about balance and leverage. He took the man down easily, planting him solidly on his back in the median and knocking the air from his lungs.
He snatched the 9 mm Beretta from the guy’s pants and quickly hid the pistol in the small of his back, turning to help Paolina to her feet.
The guy lay on his back, gasping for air, struggling to get up.
Vaught knelt beside Valencia and gently took the dog away from her. “We have to give the dog back right now, honey, before someone gets hurt.”
He stood up with the dog in one hand and was reaching to help the owner to his feet, when he saw the younger shopkeeper running across the street with his pistol thrust before him.
“Aw, shit!” Vaught hissed, dropping the puppy and grabbing the pistol. “Paolina, get down!”
Paolina leapt on Valencia, covering her with her body as Vaught opened fire on the young man coming at them. He fired twice, aiming low to hit the boy in the legs, and the kid went down, his pistol skidding across the pavement.
Vaught ran into the street and kicked the pistol away before the boy could get his hands on it.
“Fuck you!” the young man sneered as Vaught grabbed him by the shirt to drag him out of the street.
“Shut up!” Vaught said, giving him a kick to the face. “Don’t open your mouth again!” He spun around to aim the pistol at the older guy, who was finally getting his feet beneath him. “Sit back down—now!”
The man did as he was told, and Vaught gave the kid a kick in the ass to send him crawling. “If you either one of you tries anything stupid, I’ll shoot you both!”
A small crowd was gathering, and Vaught was in the process of assessing how much danger he was in, when a pair of Mexican army J8 model Jeeps rolled up, each vehicle loaded with four soldiers and equipped with a turret-mounted .30 caliber machine gun. Both machine guns were aimed directly at Vaught.
He dropped the pistol and put up his hands. “Where the fuck were you guys last night? The tunnel’s burned out, and we have a lot of injured people here!”
A lieutenant climbed out of one of the J8s and walked over, picking up the pistols from the ground. The name tag on his uniform said “Lieutenant R. Felix.” He looked over the injured motorists and then gestured with the pistols. “What’s happening here?”
Vaught nodded toward the men sitting on the ground. “Estan abusando de la necesidad de la gente.” These guys are profiteering.
Recognizing Vaught’s accented Spanish as coming from the United States, Felix glanced down at the kid bleeding from his knees and stood tapping the pistols against his legs. “For that you shoot them?”
“I shot him because he was going to shoot me”—he nodded at the Rottweiler puppy—“over a dog.”
“Whose pistols?” Felix asked.
“Theirs.”
“Who are you? Where are you from? Why are you here?”
Fuck it, Vaught thought to himself. “My name is Chance Vaught. I’m a foreign agent working with the Policia Federal Ministerial. Agent Mendoza is my commander here in the city.”
The lieutenant glanced around again at the injured people staring back at him. He pointed at the dog’s owners with one of the pistols. “Did these men start the trouble?”
Everyone confirmed that Vaught was telling the truth and that he had cared for them during the night. Felix then ordered both dog men taken into custody and walked Vaught out into the street, questioning him vigorously about his connection to the PFM. Eventually he forced the American to come completely clean in order to avoid being arrested himself.
At length, Felix seemed satisfied that Vaught was telling the truth. “Where are you going?”
“Toluca.”
“For what?”
“To meet with Chief Juan Guerrero.”
“Why?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Vaught said, deciding to make something up. “That’s who my commander in the PFM said to go see.”
“I have friends in the Toluca department,” Felix said. “Sergeant Cuevas and I grew up together.”
Vaught shrugged. “I’ve never heard of him.”
Felix grinned. “You’ll be very lucky to survive your mission. Lazaro Serrano is going to be the next president of Mexico.”
Vaught smiled back. “Not if the PFM has anything to say about it.”
The lieutenant chortled, turning for the J8. “El león cree que todos son de su condición.” The lion thinks everyone is like him.
“You don’t trust the PFM?”
Felix looked back, his eyes shining. “This is Mexico, my friend. All I can tell you for sure is that you are a long way from home. I will call for army ambulances to evacuate these people. Good luck to you.”
26
Rhett Hancock and Billy Jessup sat on the balcony of their luxury twentieth-floor hotel room overlooking Tlacopanocha Beach. A Mexican woman in her early forties sat in Jessup’s lap, finishing a cigarette while he fondled her breasts through her open blouse. She was a hotel employee and had come to the room earlier in the day to change the bedding and replace the towels. She’d no more begun to strip the sheets before Jessup offered her money to have sex with them.
She took immediate offense and was turning for the door when Jessup flashed four thousand dollars’ worth of Ben Franklins. This was more money than the single mother of two earned in a year working for the hotel. So, to her shame, she had returned to the room on her lunch break and allowed the two American men to have their way with her.
She crushed out the cigarette and stood up from Jessup’s lap, buttoning her blouse. “My money?” she asked in English.
Jessup led her back into the room and gave her the wad of folded cash from his bag.
She put the money into her pocket and left without another word.
Jessup returned to the balcony chuckling, “It ain’t every day you can turn a woman into a whore.”
Hancock glanced at him briefly and then back over at the next hotel three hundred yards up the beach. “You mean it ain’t every day you can take advantage of a woman with hungry mouths to feed.”
Jessup lit a cigarette. “How do you know she’s got hungry mouths to feed?”
“She didn’t get those stretch marks on her belly making beds, dumb-ass.” Hancock smirked and shook his head. “You just paid four grand for a piece of housekeeper pussy. Jesus Christ, you’d fuck anything.”
“I didn’t see you pass it up.”
“Hell, no. You were payin’.” Hancock looked back across at the hotel. “Go get the scope. It looks like the party’s starting.”
Jessup disappeared for a minute and then returned with an M151 spotting scope, setting it up on the table and taking a seat behind it. He glassed the rooftop of the far hotel as people were emerging from a glass-enclosed suite, mingling around a pool with drinks in hand. “I don’t see the guest of honor.”
“He’ll be there.” Hancock got up and went inside to the minibar, unscrewing the top from a small bottle of tequila and drinking it down.
“Don’t overdo it in there!” Jessup called from the balcony.
Hancock dropped the empty bottle into the trash bin beside the bar. “Just takin’ the edge off.”
He went to the closet and took out a guitar case, setting it on the bed and opening it to remove the dissembled Barrett XM500 sniper rifle. He assembled it and set up the bipod, resting the sniper system on the bed, aimed toward the balcony. Then Hancock stepped into the bathroom to take a leak.