You’re the one gets it, pal, Hinge thought. You sick-eyed spic pig, you go down first.
‘Please, my case.’ Hinge nodded toward his briefcase. ‘It was a gift. From my wife. Uh ... de mi esposa.’ Gray- Eye looked back at the case and sighed and picked it up.
The other gunman, who was younger and had his long hair tied in a pigtail and wore a gold earring in his right ear and was very jumpy, yelled ‘Pronto, pronto.” at Gray-Eye, then got in the car and pulled up to them. He was heading back, toward Falmouth.
‘Oh, goin’ back the way we came?’ Hinge said, in as loud a voice as he dared.
Gray-Eye pushed Hinge into the car and threw the attache case on the back floor of the Pontiac. They drove off in a whirl of dust, leaving Gomez standing beside the road with his hands still high in the air.
Falmouth had heard Hinge’s last remark above the roar of the getaway car. ‘Jesus,’ he said to Angel, ‘they’re coming back this way!’
Angel slammed on the brakes and spun the steering wheel, whipping the car around in a perfect one-hundred- and-eighty- degree spin, dropping into low gear as he did, digging out, as the car completed its half turn, and heading back in the opposite direction. Fast.
‘Beautiful,’ Falmouth said.
Angel drove back to the paved road and took the first turn, U-turned and parked. He was ready for them when they came back.
‘Magnifico.” Falmouth said with admiration. He slid down in the seat and took a 9-mm Luger from its armpit holster and slid it under his thigh. If there was trouble, the Game would be over, anyway. It would be survival tulle.
The blue Pontiac came down the dirt road a minute later, squealed around the curve and headed away from them, back toward the main road to Caracas. There were three people in the car.
‘I give ‘em couple blocks, okay?’ Angel asked.
‘No, there were only two of the pistoleros in the car. There should be two more coming right behind them. Let’s give them a minute or so. We don’t want to get in the middle.’ The beeper was going crazy beside him on the seat.
Another minute dragged by and then a black ‘76 Chevy came down the dirt road and followed the first.
‘That should be them,’ Falmouth said. ‘Let’s roll.’
Angel eased away from the curb and followed them.
The beeper was singing loud and clear on the seat beside him as they wound back through the El Este section toward the highway into town. The Chevy was in view, moving at exactly the speed limit. They weren’t taking any chances.
They were almost to the highway when it happened: a kid roaring suddenly out of a driveway on a motorcycle, seeing the BMW too late and veering to miss it, the bike sliding out from under him and the two skidding crazily in front of Angel, and Angel, slamming on the brakes and swerving at the same time, missing the kid and his Honda by inches, fishtailing for a moment too long and the BMW hitting the curb, teetering for a moment as though it were going to turn over, then righting itself, and as it did, the back right tire exploding like a bomb. Angel wrestled the car to a stop and jumped out. The tire was hanging in shreds from the wheel.
Angel kicked the car. ‘Shit,’ he bellowed. ‘Shit, shit, shut!’
In the back seat, Falmouth listened as the tone on the beeper grew fainter and fainter and finally beeped out. Hinge was on his own now. He was not in any immediate danger, but the whole switch operation depended on Falmouth’ s snatching one f the terrorists as they left the meeting. Hinge’s trip was now a total waste.
‘You’re right,’ Falmouth said. ‘Shit.’
*
Falmouth was sitting on the balcony sipping a gin and tonic and watching the
A few moments later the Texan joined him on the balcony. The younger man was obviously surprised and distressed. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘How come you’re back?’
‘A kid pulled out in front of us on a motorbike. Angel hit a curb and blew a tire.’
‘Well, Je-sus Kee-rist!’ Hinge snapped.
‘Easy,’ Falmouth said. ‘Get yourself a drink and we’ll talk about plan Baker.’
The hard-faced Texan went back into the room. He was edgy, but he was not a complainer. Like Falmouth, he was already thinking about their next move. He poured a generous slug of gin over ice cubes and returned to the balcony.
‘You mean we got a plan Baker,’ he said.
‘There’s always a plan Baker,’ Falmouth said, still watching the cable car as it reached the peak of the mountain.
‘Problem is, we ain’t got one of theirs, we ain’t got shit,’ Hinge said. It was not a pointed remark, he was thinking out loud.
‘What happened at the meeting?’ Falmouth asked quietly.
Hinge sighed. As Spettro had said, there was always the unexpected. Hinge reported in a kind of abbreviated rote, an emotionless summary of the facts.
‘Four of ‘em, like you figured, plus the driver, Gomez. Four creeps, spent a month or so with Gaddafi’s bunch,
