'Muy bien, muy bien›' Paco said, heaving out a tortured sigh.
Spartacos Sococo, Emilio Hernandez, and Octavio Randhanie stood angrily, then pushed their way out of the booth.
'Where are the fucking receipts?' Jody asked. With no need of translation, the San Andresitos reached into their pockets and pulled out the delivery vouchers, handing them to Jody, who in turn handed them to Lester Wood. He read them and nodded.
'Yep,' he said, returning them to Jody, who put them in his back pocket.
Just then a phone started ringing. Nobody answered it. Paco shouted at the bartender.
'Telefono!'
The old man behind the bar crossed and picked up the phone. 'Como?' he said, and listened for a long moment. 'Si… Si. Gracias. ' He hung up and looked over at Paco.
'Que es?' Paco demanded.
'Cortez viene al pueblo. '
'Santa's coming,' Sawdust translated. 'This might be a good time t'blow town.'
Chapter 42
TREMAINE SAID, 'THEY'RE plannin' something. We need t'break hard on these assholes before it gets outta hand.'
They were standing on the curb outside the cantina. The San Andresitos were clustered over by their cars.
'How'd ya figure to do that, Inky Dink?' Jody said. 'There's four of us in a town of fifty-five thousand gun- toting pendejos'
Paco broke away from the others, approached, and slapped Jody on the back as he rattled some Spanish. Jody frowned and glanced over at Lester Wood.
'He says we gotta get going before Cortez returns.'
'So, let's do it,' Jody said. All five of them jammed into Paco's Toyota. He turned his bubble around and headed back toward his warehouse on Calle 16, leaving the three other San Andresitos standing in front of the cantina, staring down at designer-name watches as if their futures were ticking away on each dial.
'Where's he going?' Shane asked. 'We should be heading west. That's the only way out of town.'
Paco answered in Spanish, and Sawdust turned to Jody. 'He says we need to pick up some celadores at his business, for our safety. He says Santander won't attack us if we have enough protection.'
'Now he's worried about our safety?' Shane asked. 'Five minutes ago this prick was trying to hold us for ransom.'
'Good point,' Jody said, then pulled the P-7 out of his side pocket and put it against Paco's rib cage.
'Que es?' Paco said, glancing at Jody, then down at the gun.
'So you don't go stupid on us, amigo.'
They made a right onto Calle 16 but had to stop as soon as they turned because they were stuck behind a strange column of armed men and vehicles. A sole man pushing a wheelbarrow was leading the parade. Walking on each side of him, guarding the wheelbarrow, were four celadores, their machine guns aimed in all directions. An empty flatbed truck rumbled along behind.
'What is this?' Jody snapped.
'Por comercio… How you say? Dinero por trade, Hernandez no tiene dishwashers, de modo que va a comprarlos en mi tienda.'
Sawdust said, 'If one of them doesn't have what he needs for his market in Colombia, he buys it from one of the others.'
'Si,' Paco said.
'They going to your place?' Jody asked.
'Si, a mi tienda… '
'What's in the wheelbarrow?'
'Dinero Colombiano. '
Paco managed to pull around the column, and as they drove past, Shane looked out the window. Sure enough, the wheelbarrow was half full of stacks of Colombian pesos.
Paco stopped the Toyota in front of his warehouse. A moment later the wheelbarrow full of cash and the empty truck arrived. Two yellow forklifts zipped out of Paco's warehouse with pallet-loaded boxes of Maytag washing machines stacked three high. A dozen celadores stood out front, facing Hernandez's celadores over glistening new auto-mags. The man with the wheelbarrow upended it unceremoniously onto the Spanish-tile sidewalk in front of Paco's showroom.
'Cha-ching,' Jody said softly.
Three of the women whom Shane had seen in the office upstairs now rushed out of the building and bent over the bundles of cash, rifling through them, their nimble fingers counting. Calculators hummed and LCD screens printed out figures. Once again, Shane noticed that the calculators were the big twelve-digit Texas Instrument computers. He finally realized that when tabulating these huge sums in pesos, the regular ten-digit calculators ran out of decimal points.
Suddenly, from the end of the street, they heard the sound of big truck engines growling loudly. Shane looked over and saw two old army trucks with at least twenty men in them, rolling over the garbage-strewn street.
'Adentro! Adentro! Andeles!' Paco said as he began to move toward the warehouse.
'Not so fast, asshole,' Jody said, grabbing Paco by the collar, now putting the P-7 to his head. 'You're not quite through here yet.'
All of the celadores swung and pointed their weapons at the Vikings, but Jody ignored them and pointed up the street at the approaching trucks. 'Whose guys are those? Is that Santa?'
'Si, Santander viene' Paco said. Unreasoning fear was in his eyes and spreading over his face.
'Let's go,' Jody said, jamming his gun barrel hard against Paco's temple, freezing the army of celadores on the sidewalk.
Paco shouted at them, 'No disparar! No disparar!'
The women on their knees kept gathering and tabulating. They never looked up.
'Somebody get a piece on this guy,' Jody commanded, and Sawdust put his pistol to the back of Paco's head.
Jody jumped out of the Toyota SUV. Then he ran around and got behind the wheel, pushing the fat San Andresito over into the passenger seat beside him. Tremaine broke out the glass of the two fixed windows in the rear of the Toyota, using the barrel of his pistol. Gym-bag zippers ripped open in the car, followed by a chorus of forty-round mags slamming home and sliders being tromboned.
'Only one way out and that's past those guys up there,' Jody said. 'It's gonna be reckless, so hold on.' He backed up, turned, then headed up the street directly toward the approaching vehicles and twenty armed men.
'No! No, es loco… Somos muertos!' Paco said, sweat pouring down his round face, drenching his shirt collar.
A happy madness distorted Jody's features: 'We may die, but we're gonna take a few motherfuckers with us.'
In seconds, the first bullets rocked the Toyota. Fired from a half a block away, they thudded into the grille and shattered a side mirror.
'Get busy!' Jody shouted.
Shane leaned out one of the broken side windows and aimed his Polish MP-63 up the street at the column of army vehicles. The badly rocking SUV distorted his aim as its tires spun, looking for purchase on a street covered with decaying garbage. He started blasting, aiming blindly with one hand, the bolt clattering maniacally as the machine pistol fired, spewing hot brass out into the street.
