They waited eagerly, watching the brush for the headlights of Calo's car. Everyone was standing, waiting for him, as he drove the length of the airstrip and pulled up next to the plane.
Calo got out of the car, sweating profusely, and opened the trunk without saying a word. Cope, Baas, and Tito came up and looked in.
“Bloody hell, ”Cope said.
They just stood there.
Baas looked up. “What happened?”
While they unloaded Macias's body, Calo told them what had happened, of his arrival just as the strange helicopter was sliding away into the darkness and how he had thought he was too late and that Macias had abducted Titus. Then he'd heard someone coughing, and he'd stumbled through the darkness to find Titus. When Burden and Kal arrived with Rita, Calo left with Macias's body, racing for the airstrip to beat the departure deadline.
“The bloody mole, then, ”Cope asked. “What the hell happened there? Macias took it off? Where'd he put it?”
“We were still getting signals from it when everyone got there, ”Calo said. “Cain was stunned. He thought the thing had gone with Loza when he left with the gun. We found it tangled in the hair on Macias's stomach. Guess Cain hadn't put it on the gun good enough, and it came off when Macias stuffed it into his pants, or when he pulled it out and gave it to Loza.”
Calo checked his watch and then threw a worried look toward the far end of the airstrip. “Come on, ”he said, “let's clean out the trunk.”
By the time they'd finished, it was twenty minutes before three o'clock, the “go no matter what ”deadline for the Cessna Caravan's departure. The time came and went.
“Give it ten more minutes, ”Calo said.
“If he was anywhere near, you'd think he'd call, ”Tito said.
“Here we go, ”Cope said, and they all turned and saw the headlights of a vehicle pulling around the knob of the hill and heading toward the airstrip. Together they all watched as Cayeteno Luquin's black Navigator approached along one side of the tarmac. It was in no hurry.
The Navigator pulled up to the Caravan and stopped beside the six men who stood ready to help the driver with the bodies. No one knew who this man was, and they would never know. The driver's door opened and the man who stepped out was wearing dress trousers and that was all. Barefoot and shirtless, he was completely covered in camouflage paint- though his face had been wiped partially clean-which seemed to be mixed in even with his wildly matted hair. The whites of his eyes flashed spookily at them in contrast with his blotchy, marbled flesh.
He said nothing to any of them as he came around to the back of the Navigator and opened the door. But instead of the bodies that they had expected, the Navigator held a pile of black, heavy-ply, double-bagged garbage bags.
There was a moment of hesitation and surprise, but no one said anything. They began unloading the bags, two men to a bag, their lumpy contents shifting and falling around inside, making them difficult to handle.
When all eight bags had been loaded inside the plane, Baas said to Tito, “Don't forget, they can't stay in the bags. They've got to come out of the bags first.”
Tito nodded. “Yeah, I know. I've already thought about it.”
Cope whistled under his breath.
During the last of the loading, the pilot had been in the cockpit going through his checklist, and now he started the engines without anyone saying anything to him. The man who had brought the bags squatted in the door of the cargo hold. Apparently he was ready to go, too.
Tito looked toward the door reluctantly. “Shit. Okay, ”he said to the others.
“That's okay, I'll make the flight since I'm here, ”Calo said. “Tito, call Garcia and tell him we've got to have two more drivers out here. When they get here, drive everything to the San Antonio chop shop, just as we planned. Stay until they're broken down. Then you pick up the surveillance van from Norlin's people. You're clear on that meeting place, right?”
Tito nodded. “Right, ”he said.
Calo glanced at the plane, and the pilot gave him a thumbsup. He nodded. “And Tito, tell Garcia that Luquin made it after all.”
“Bueno, ” Tito said. He looked at the cargo hold. “I owe you one, Jefe. ”
Calo looked toward the cargo door, too. “Shit, ”he said.
When the Cessna Caravan cleared the runway at the end of the valley and climbed into the early morning darkness, the pilot cranked the Pratt amp; Whitney turbo prop to its maximum airspeed at the lowest possible altitude. Then, running in reverse the radar-laced air corridor favored by drug smugglers, he headed straight for the closest crossing on the Mexican border, midway between Del Rio and Eagle Pass.
It was still dark when they crossed into the Mexican state of Coahuila and entered the great, arid desert of northern Mexico. Turning slightly more westward, they held their course and climbed higher, passing over the Sierra Madre Oriental. As the darkness began to thin in the east, they approached a carefully charted spot just over the CoahuilaChihuahua border.
At a precise point of navigation, roughly in the most remote expanse of the north Mexican desert that covered well over a thousand square miles of desperate isolation, the Caravan cut its speed to minimum and seemed to hover in the fleeing darkness.
The lower cargo door opened, and bodies, and parts of bodies, began to fall through the predawn light. With the bare floor of the cargo plane slick with blood, it was a grisly chore, one that Calo and the other man had all to themselves. The pilot's helper stayed in the co-pilot's seat and didn't look back.
When the last piece of anatomy had been jettisoned, Calo reached for the lower hatch of the cargo door to pull it up. Suddenly the man grabbed his wrist to stop him. For a frozen moment Calo looked him in the eyes. Then the man let go of Calo's wrist, leaned forward, and made a lazy somersault into the cold dawn air.
Chapter 61
With two funerals back to back, there was no time to sit and brood about what had happened. In keeping with Burden's nothing-ever-happened design for the whole affair, Titus and Rita had to act as if nothing had. It would've been impossible to do if they weren't already in shock at having lost two close friends in as many days.
They had somehow gotten through the night, talking, talking, holding each other, catching snags of unconsciousness. It could hardly be called sleep. The next morning, nothing was right. They got up together and Titus made coffee. But he didn't know how to act. He had brutally killed a man less than twelve hours before. Despite what you saw in movies and read in novels, that was a hard thing to live with, no matter what the guy was like. Titus sure as hell didn't feel like making wisecracks and getting back to life as usual. In fact, if he knew nothing else, he knew enough to know that life as usual wasn't going to be there anymore.
The coffee tasted right, but there was no appetite to deal with. As much as anything, it was the nearly unbearable constraint pressed upon them to pretend that nothing had happened that created so much stress for them. If there could have been some kind of ritual aftermath of their harrowing four days, the police, the consolation of friends, the presence of attorneys or doctors… or something, they might have been able to handle it more easily. Or at least they might have begun to heal a little.
But there was no transition. Somewhere during the hours of ten o'clock and midnight nine people had died, one of them by Titus's own hand, and then immediately after that everyone and every body (literally) disappeared. Burden remained behind on the rocky hilltop while Kal drove Titus and Rita home. That was the last they saw of Garcia Burden. No good-byes. No one seemed to want to do it, and there was a kind of atmosphere of “we'll tie up loose ends later ”that everyone seemed to prefer. The bodyguards stayed the night, but by noon the next day, the three of them, along with Herrin and Cline, were gone. It was bizarre.
Charlie's funeral was on a bright, sunny Sunday. They buried him on his ranch, a breeze blowing through the
