Acan, Naum, and Tepeu were approaching from the direction of the pyramid. It was this that had triggered Calque’s wake-up call to Sabir. None of the three were carrying rifles, and they had changed from their usual work clothes into simple white shifts.
Acan split off and came towards Sabir. Naum had clearly been detailed to mind Calque, while Tepeu walked up to Lamia and invited her and the mestizo to accompany him.
Sabir was still feeling awkward following his unintentional detachment from his companions. Even Lamia was staring at him as if he had recently undergone some disastrously botched plastic surgery. He decided to try and patch up their fractured bond with a little forced bonhomie. Plastering an artificial grin on his face, he said, ‘Everything’s sweetness and light, now. Do you see? They’ve even ditched their rifles.’
Calque shook his head in mild despair. ‘Sabir, you probably haven’t noticed, but there are maybe a thousand Maya surrounding us at this very moment. Who the heck needs rifles?’
70
Alastor de Bale sat in his car in the parking lot of the Balancanche caves. It was six o’clock in the evening. He had been there since four o’clock. At five o’clock all the staff had packed up and left. Only the elderly carwash man had stayed behind, hoping for one final commission. Alastor had given him one hundred pesos and told him to get lost.
The man had hung around on the periphery of the lot for a further ten minutes until Alastor had made a throat-cutting motion at him. Then he had fled. The carwash man had never been given one hundred pesos for doing nothing before, and he had been hanging around to make sure that the skeletal gringo was actually real, and not simply the fiend Paqok, come out at night to feast on hapless men and women after tricking them into a false sense of security.
Alastor glanced back at the entrance to the parking lot. The gun-running Mexican wasn’t dumb. There was only one road into the space, and that was hemmed in on both sides by forest and impenetrable scrubland. Behind him were the caves – sealed tight now that the tourists had gone home. And there was no caretaker. What would be the point? There was nothing here to steal.
Rudra and Oni had taken up their positions half an hour before, following Alastor’s all clear, at which time Berith and Asson had also taken their places in the Hyundai’s trunk. It was stiflingly hot in there, but the two men were used to waiting – they simply switched their brains on to autopilot and their lungs to shallow yogic breathing. The time passed quickly. It always did when action was in the offing.
At exactly 6.15 a white Suzuki 4WD nosed its way down the Balancanche track. It paused at the entrance to the parking lot while the driver looked around. Then it engaged in a jerky three-point turn until it was entirely blocking off the parking lot’s only exit, with its nose facing back in the direction of the main road.
Alastor smiled.
Three men got out of the 4WD. The Mexican he had met in the cantina was flanked by two other Mexicans, both carrying Mini-Uzis. The first Mexican was holding what looked like a Glock 18 in the hands-down position.
Now Alastor was full-on grinning. Three guns down – eight to go.
He got out of the car with his hands held high. ‘You guys going to shoot me?’
‘Not if you give us the money.’
‘You got the guns we talked about?’
‘We got these. Will that do?’ The men were walking slowly towards Alastor. The two men flanking the first Mexican were looking around themselves just like they’d seen it done in the movies.
‘That’s three. I asked for eleven.’
‘Eh, man. That’s too bad. I must have forgot the rest.’
Alastor hunched his shoulders. ‘Well okay then. Three is better than nothing, I suppose. But we’ll have to renegotiate the price.’
‘What will we have to do?’ The first Mexican raised his Glock to the firing position. He was ten yards away now.
‘Ah, shit. I see your point. Maybe we’ll just stick by our original agreement.’
‘Yeah. We do that. Where you got the money?’
‘In the trunk. You want me to open it?’
‘No. We open it. You stand to one side.’
‘Okay. Here’s the key. You press the middle one. The one with the open trunk drawn on it. The money’s in a cardboard box.’
‘What do think I am? Stupid?’
‘How do you mean?’ For one awkward moment Alastor thought the Mexican had changed his mind about opening the trunk.
‘You think I don’t know which button to press on an automatic key?’
‘Hell, man. No. I didn’t think that. I only wanted to make it easy for you.’ Now that the Mexicans were within three or four feet of him, Alastor could smell the liquor on their breaths. Maybe they’d needed to pump themselves up for the job of killing him? Give themselves Dutch courage? Either way, the alcohol would slow down their reaction times.
The men with the Mini-Uzis were flanking Alastor now, while the first Mexican was moving forward to deal with the car.
Alastor let the fighting batons slide gently down inside his sleeves, one into each hand. Then he crossed both hands in front of him, as if he had been handcuffed, or as if he were protecting his balls from a free kick at soccer. He could feel the adrenalin piping into his veins. Two at once. Christ. Could he do it? Could he pull it off?
The first Mexican tripped the trunk. As the hatch rose, Berith and Asson rose with it. Oni and Rudra reared up from their dugout positions on either side of the car, their groundsheets, and the sand which had been covering them, erupting into the air like the aftermath of a grenade attack.
Alastor threw his arms wide, the fighting batons at full extension. He felt the satisfying crunch of teeth and bone.
He looked back. Both men were flat out on the ground. In front of him, the first Mexican, not knowing which way to look, had succumbed, first to a blow behind the knee from Rudra’s baton, followed by a second, straight-arm jab in the sternum from Asson. He was choking and gulping for breath.
Alastor motioned for Oni and Rudra to pick up the Mini-Uzis. ‘Check out the car. Also back on the main road. They may have back-up.’
The two men jogged off in the direction of the highway.
‘You.’ Alastor pointed at the first Mexican. ‘Are you left-or right-handed?’
The man was still struggling to regain his breath. He shook his head, unable to string two words together.
‘Okay. You held the Glock in your right hand. I’ll assume that one’s the master. Berith, cut off this guy’s right hand. Just below the elbow will do.’
The Mexican began to scream.
Berith pulled a machete from the trunk of the car. ‘I’ve been sharpening this bastard thing all afternoon and I still can’t get a good edge on it. Why can’t they sell these things pre-sharpened? It wouldn’t take much, you know.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘What I’m trying to say is that I’m not sure I can make the cut in one. I might have to chop a few times. Three maybe. Otherwise I won’t make it through the bone. I’m sorry, friend.’ He said this to the Mexican. ‘But you can see my problem, can’t you?’
The Mexican, with one of his legs still dead from the baton blow, was trying to lever himself underneath the car.
Asson grabbed both his legs and yanked him out. Then he strolled over to one of the fallen men who was struggling to get to his feet and smashed in the back of his head with a backhand blow of his baton. He checked on the other man. ‘You killed this one clean, Ali. Heck of a shot. Did you really get them both at once? Or did you one-
