And then, just when I was ready to grab the knife with my left and punch him with my right, he rolled back onto his heels and stood.
I was puzzled for a second, but then I saw. He was undoing his belt and pulling down his jeans.
“You, too,” he said excitedly.
“Ok,” I said.
I pulled my jeans and underwear to my ankles. I slid them off.
Half naked.
The fear a river.
My arms shaking.
“Come on then,” I told him and offered another smile.
He leered back.
Yeah. He liked this better. He wasn’t getting off on the terror. He wanted a fantasy in his head. The willing victim. The fiery Latina. The sex-starved maid. Just like in his DVDs.
His jeans came off.
“Come on, honey,” I said in a voice that was half willing accomplice, half frightened victim. Evidently the right mix.
“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered. He spread my legs with his feet.
“Hurry up, Ray,” Bob said.
“Don’t worry, man, you’ll get your turn,” Ray said.
“Just fuck the bitch,” Bob grunted.
I opened my shirt.
“You’re gagging for it,” he said. “It’s going to be like making guac, Maria, we’re gonna scoop all the love right out of ya. Show you a trick or two. I’ve had compliments from pros.”
I nodded.
He kneeled between my legs and put down the knife to take off his boxers.
There would be one play.
I knew that he had the capacity to kill me. I knew that as a wetback my life wasn’t worth anything and more than likely if he did kill me, he’d have to kill all of us. Six deaths for what?
No two ways about it. A commitment. A trade. Your lives for ours. In advance I ask forgiveness.
His tossed his cartoon-covered boxers and when they were gone he grinned and reached for the knife.
The knife that wasn’t there.
“Huh?” he said.
Watching his brain tick over was like watching a dinosaur step on volcanic glass. Confusion showed between his eyes and before he could say or do anything his own treasonous hunting knife slashed him across the belly.
Maroon venous blood, stomach fluids, coffee.
A deep laceration, nothing punctured, but enough to sear his nerve endings and get his attention. He reacted faster than I was expecting. His fist hammered into the ground a few centimeters from my swerving head. I slashed at his face and the serrated blade opened his cheek like a sushi knife into yellowtail.
“Christ,” he screamed, lurched back, and fell.
With his weight off me, I got to my feet, and before his head had hit the ground I slashed him again. Gut shot. The blade cutting vertically from his belly down through his urethra and into his scrotum-gravity helped and this one was deeper, piercing his bladder, cutting a chunk from the head of his penis and opening his epididymis. Blood, piss, one of his testicles rolling onto the ground.
I scooted away from him, kicking up a tornado of dust with my hands and feet.
“Fuck! Fuck! She cut my balls off,” he managed between screams.
Bob was horrified. It had happened in about four seconds. He couldn’t compute it. I kicked up more dust and he didn’t even see me running at him until I was three meters away. He tried to raise the shotgun but in his panic discharged both barrels into the ground in front of me. Pellets struck me in the legs, burning like fat flying from the pan. Didn’t stop me at all.
He looked at the gun. Had he really shot
Yes, Robert, and on such things turn the world. We’ll live and you’ll die.
I jumped at him like a fucking puma. He didn’t even think to hit me with the seven-kilogram wood-and-metal shotgun. He just sort of crumpled, absorbing the blow and falling.
The dagger entered his throat, my momentum so great that the serrated edge tore through his larynx and embedded itself in the cerebellum at the bottom of his brain stem.
He was probably killed instantly, but when we crashed into the ground I removed the knife and stabbed him hard in the forehead just to be on the safe side.
A crunching sound as the blade wedged itself into his skull.
I left the knife between his eyes, broke open the shotgun, and took fresh shells from his gun belt. Everyone was up now and the deaf woman had started to scream.
I pointed at Francisco.
“Calm her down,” I said.
He nodded, put his arms around her.
I found my underwear and jeans and pulled them on. My skin was crawling. It was ninety degrees but I was shivering. I gagged back vomit. No one had ever touched me like that. I wanted to lie down and cry. I wanted to shower for ten hours. I wanted Hector, Ricky. I wanted to swim in the current. I wanted moonshine or a fix. No time for any of that.
I pulled myself together, loaded the shotgun, and walked over to Ray, scrabbling like a redneck Uranus among the blood and sand for his missing testicle. His voice had taken on the high-pitched whining so familiar to those of us who have worked in abattoirs or the torture chambers of the police headquarters on Plaza de la Revolucion.
He yelled when he saw me coming and threw an arm over his face.
“No, wait, no,” he said.
Despite the pain he scrambled to his knees and brought his hands together in a gesture of supplication.
“Please, I’m a family man,” he said.
I gave him both barrels from a foot away.
His head disintegrated.
His body quivered and fresh oxygen-rich blood spouted like a fountain from his neck. It flowed for half a minute before slowing to a trickle when the heart had no more of it left to pump. His torso kept kneeling there, spookily, until finally I kicked it over.
I looked at the crew. They were pretty junked.
I was pretty junked.
I walked to Francisco, who had calmed the deaf woman. I took the pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.
“Lighter?”
His eyes glazed.
“Lighter?” I asked again and snapped my fingers in front of his face.
“Oh,” he said and reached into his pants.
I lit three cigarettes, put one in my mouth, gave one to the deaf woman, gave him the other.
“We’re gonna need to get these bodies in the pickup. I’ll bring it over,” I said.
He nodded. I passed out smokes to the others, walked to the red Chevy, got in the cab. Keys were in the ignition. I moved the seat closer, turned the key, hit the gas. I drove it next to the Land Rover, wiped my prints from the wheel, and got out.
Pedro was looking at me.
“Why did you move the car? Are we going to call the police? This was self-defense,” Pedro asked.
“What police?” I asked dismissively.
I left him to think things over and went to the Guatemalan kid. He was sitting on the ground with his arms wrapped around his knees, crying hysterically. He was freaked. He’d never seen anything like this, not even in
