“Precisely. How is your Spanish?”
Decent conversational as long as it isn’t too complicated, Ellen thought. I understand it better than I can speak it.
“Mine’s fully fluent, but European, with a bit of an accent,” Adrienne said.
“What sort?”
“Occitan; I sound like a Catalan trying to be Castilian to someone from Madrid. Come along, then.”
“What… do I have to do?”
“The last shipment of refreshments has come in, and Paco-he’s a coyote by trade, but jackal would be more appropriate-didn’t listen to my instructions.”
“What… instructions?” Ellen mumbled, her mouth suddenly dry as she stood and plucked at the shawl.
I tried so hard not to think about this.
“I told him I wanted young adults-young, healthy, good-looking.
The imbecile has saddled me with half a dozen mothers with children-all trying to get into the country to join their husbands, no doubt. Or convinced their husbands have conveniently forgotten them in this land of liberty. He probably thought I wouldn’t object if he brought them just before the deadline. I want you to be reassuring so we can separate the children without a screaming scene. Reassuring is something I find oddly difficult.”
“Why… me?” Ellen asked.
Please, God, those poor people…
Adrienne smiled like a cat. “Because you’ll hate it, but do it anyway and feel horribly degraded and dirty afterwards, which is interesting emotionally,” she said. “Third time’s the charm; sadist, remember? Vite! ”
God, I hate you!
Adrienne was dressed in riding gear in an English jodhpurs-and-tweed style, including a crop. The steel-cored leather landed across the seat of Ellen’s skirt with a hard cracking sound. That was no braided silk; it hurt, hard and sudden.
“Ouch!”
“Vite means quickly. It’s the imperative form of the verb, too.”
She hit the save button and followed the Shadowspawn out to the TARDEC utility vehicles. Adrienne swung in beside the driver of the first. A rather subdued Monica was in the rear seat, dressed in a pleated skirt and a tight low-cut crimson bodice. She helped Ellen in; it wasn’t the sort of transport designed for long evening-dresses. They went through the gate in the perimeter wall of the casa grande and around a roadway that looped towards the hills westward, along a well-kept gravel road that crunched under the wheels. The lights of the vehicles came on, as the sun sank in an orange glow behind the hills.
They stopped at a building she would have said was a well-kept large stable or medium-sized rectangular barn with plastered walls, set back among the lawns and live-oaks where the gardens turned into sweeping pastures with clumps of trees and white-board fences. Servants were lighting a trail of torches in iron holders along a brick- paved path that wound down to the main house. A half-dozen Gurkhas stood inconspicuously outside, or as inconspicuously as you could while wearing body-armor and carrying an assault rifle.
Inside, Chief Mendoza and four of his subordinates stood by a wire-mesh barricade that divided a long space floored in textured concrete. Garlands of flowers on the walls gave it a grotesquely festive feeling, and the lights were on under the high ceiling. Behind the wire were eighty or so people; she could smell their fear-sweat a little. All of them looked Mexican, half males and half females; most of the women were dressed in loose white tunics like short dresses, and the men in tunics and pants of the same cloth. Around a score were in ordinary clothes, dusty and travel-stained, and looking less frightened but more bewildered than the others.
“Paco,” Adrienne began crisply to another man standing free-in his thirties, and…
Handsome in a sleazy way, Ellen thought. Hairnet and all. Just what you’d think a people-smuggler would look like.
“You are an idiot. And I am not pleased,” she went on.
“Do?a,” he said, in rapid-fire Mexican Spanish. “Here they are, the last of them, delivered on time!”
Adrienne answered in the same language, but Ellen could hear the difference in dialect, the hard k and trilled rr sounds.
“I said young, healthy, good-looking, and no children, Paco. What part of that was too difficult for you to understand?”
The Shadowspawn pointed with her riding crop. “That one, she’s forty if she’s a day, five feet tall and five feet broad. And six… seven of the women have young! That one is still nursing!”
“I am very sorry-”
“No, you’re not. You’re just sorry I’m making a fuss about it. My guests will be arriving momentarily and we are not ready!”
“I will take a little less for each, perhaps-”
“You’ll take nothing for the ones who don’t meet my specifications.”
She turned her head to Monica and Ellen: “You two get the children out… and that older woman. The transport for them should be here by now. Vite!”
Mendoza unlocked the gate; the people within surged forward, then back again as two of the policemen drew their automatics. Monica wet her lips and called out in understandable but clumsy Spanish: “Los ni?os… the children should be brought out now. Nothing bad will happen to them. Van los ni?os a la guarderia, no se preocupen. They will stay with good families while you are… are busy with the Do?a’s guests. Please, bring the children right now. And, you, se?ora. There are things… there are things it is not good for children to see.”
There was a desperate earnestness in her voice; Ellen nodded wordlessly and beckoned. The prisoners murmured among themselves for a moment; then one of the mothers decisively pushed her six-year-old forward. The others followed suit, some crying silently, and the heavy-set middle-aged woman shepherded them through the gate, carrying the nursing infant. One was a girl who looked to be somewhere between eleven and thirteen, the breasts just showing under her T-shirt. A young man who was probably her brother held her back, then shoved her forward at the last moment.
“Vaya con Dios, carnala! ” he called. Then: “Go!” as she hesitated.
Mendoza stopped her at the gate.
“Do?a?” he asked, looking at Adrienne.
Her nostrils flared for a moment, and the man who’d pushed her forward closed his eyes and crossed himself.
“A little too young for feeding,” the Shadowspawn said. “Doesn’t smell quite ripe yet. She can help with the other youngsters.”
“Come, little ones,” Ellen said, her voice trembling. “Some nice ladies will take you to a good place.”
Getting the children out was like herding sobbing cats, and several of them tried to break back towards their mothers; outside SUVs driven by Monica’s friends were waiting. Ellen stood, clenched her hands, and made herself turn around and walk back in.
Don’t wait to be ordered or dragged. Just do it. The vicious bitch is going to make you watch anyway.
Adrienne produced an envelope that probably had high-denomination bills and tossed it to the coyote. He counted it, and flushed.
“This isn’t two thousand each!”
“Hey!” someone shouted from within the pen. “We paid him two thousand each, lady!”
Adrienne snarled. “It’s the full amount for the ones who met my request. This is your last chance to walk away, little man.”
“I want my money-” he began.
The riding crop slashed across his face. He stood for a moment in shocked surprise, clutching at the bleeding weal. Then his hand darted under the tail of his shirt.
It came out with an automatic. His face showed an ooops reaction even before he leveled it, then a frantic determination.
“Nobody hits Paco!” he said.
There was a ringing silence. Ellen could tell that he hadn’t expected Adrienne’s grin, or the indifference of the policemen. The prisoners were stock-still, watching breathlessly. The Shadowspawn’s smile grew wider, and she lifted the riding crop again, slowly and deliberately. Paco’s lips tightened, and his grip on the pistol. Ellen’s breath
