Wild Card

Ricci took his duffel, reached for his rifle case, and slung it over his shoulder. Then he turned to where Lathrop was on his haunches studying one of the maps, and walked over to him.

“We’re basing what we’re doing on something some small fry Quiros ringleader south of the border told you,” he said. “You sure you weren’t duped?”

Lathrop glanced up at Ricci. He had put on dark mirrored sunglasses that gleamed in the sunshine.

“It’s late to be asking again,” he said.

“Not too late yet.”

Lathrop continued looking into the brightness.

“He knew what was at stake,” he said. “I knew he was too scared to have lied.”

Ricci stood there.

“Still haven’t told me how his stake paid off for him,” he said.

“And maybe that’s how I want to keep it,” Lathrop said. “But if I’d gone to Juan with anything besides the goods on Marissa Vasquez, he’d have laughed in my face. Instead he confirmed every piece of information I got and filled in blanks I left to see how it all fell in line.”

“Because he thinks I’m the man who did whatever you won’t tell me you did to his cousin down there in Baja,” Ricci said.

Lathrop nodded.

“And because he thinks I hired you to help me grab the Vasquez girl back for her father,” Ricci said.

Lathrop nodded.

“And because he thinks you’re pulling a double-cross on me,” Ricci said. “Setting me up for an ambush on that Indian trail. Dumb blanco that I am.”

Lathrop nodded again.

“Except,” Ricci said. “It isn’t me who’s being set up.”

Lathrop’s head went up and down a fourth and final time, the sunlight slipping across his lenses like quicksilver.

“Role reversal,” he said. “With a twist.”

Ricci looked at him awhile without saying anything more. Then they both heard Salvetti slam the door of the Tiger’s baggage compartment.

Rising from his squat, Lathrop folded the map, stuffed it into his shirt pocket, and lifted his packs off the ground.

“We better get on the move,” he said.

* * *

Sunset, the western sky bleeding red across the horizon. Ready now, the guerrillas increased their vigilance, the stocks of their HK G36 submachine guns tucked against their arms.

A last Camel was ground out in the scrub, dirt kicked hastily over its charred remnant.

The smoker cleared his throat of phlegm and swatted helplessly at the tiny winged biters as they swirled in, attracted to some chemical in human sweat.

“God damn this job,” he said in a hushed tone. “I only want it to be over.”

The man beside him nodded.

“What spares Lafe from coming out here?” he whispered. “Or even Manuel? It’s as if his softness is being rewarded.”

“He’s already gotten his reward, or haven’t you taken a look at the girl he seduced?”

“Of course I have. And between us, Pedro won’t be satisfied until he takes his turn with her.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed.”

“He’ll have it before all this is done, too, I would bet.”

“Yes. You can see how he waits. In his eyes, you can see. It could happen very soon.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes,” said the man who’d brought the cigarettes. “Yes, I do. While we’re out here getting eaten up by bugs.”

The other man frowned.

“You’re right when you say this job stinks and must be gotten over with quickly,” he said.

“And,” said the man with the cigarettes, “keep in mind it hasn’t even really begun.”

* * *

Lathrop scuffed down the embankment, Ricci taking the moderately steep grade a little to his side, the two of them pausing there to orient themselves and catch their breaths, the weight of their gear pressing their backs and shoulders. Rocks and grit lay scattered around their boots. Within a few dozen feet of them to the left, the creek bed, more mud than water, serpentined north and east over the humped terrain. Straggly plants grew in a kind of apron around its banks, and higher up the valley ridges through which it wound its slow, undulant path away into the distance, ponderosa and blackjack pine grew in intermingled and surprisingly dense terraces.

Not for the first time since they had left the mesa, Lathrop pulled his map out of his shirt pocket, studied it, then studied the ground. The paper was damp with his perspiration.

Several moments expired. Ricci waited in silence under the lengthening shadows of the buttes as Lathrop raised his eyes from the map and stared out toward the creek, his lips slightly parted.

Then Lathrop turned to him, his finger pointing at a slight angle from the languid waterway.

“Over there through the brush,” he said. “That’s where I think we’ll find the trail.”

On inspection minutes later, he proved to be correct.

They didn’t take it.

* * *

Crouched above the trail with his heels deep in a carpet of pine needles, Lathrop peered down between the evergreen trunks with his binoculars, then handed them off to Ricci.

“How many men you see?” he said in a hushed voice.

“Five,” Ricci whispered. “Three on this side, two on the other. Bunched close together.”

Lathrop nodded.

“Checks with what I saw,” he said.

Still holding the binoculars, Ricci brought their focus up from the stony Indian trail, swept them across the cut it followed through the blunt hillcrest. Then he dropped the lenses from his eyes.

“You were on the money about the guns they’d be toting,” he said. “They’re HK carbines. Five point five-six mills.”

Lathrop nodded. “Good thing I told you to bring one of your own, isn’t it?” he said.

Ricci looked at him, then motioned to the cleft’s opposite shoulder.

“I’ll make my way around this rise, take out the two from over there,” he said. “You stay back and handle the three.”

Lathrop nodded again, lowered the strap of his rifle case, tapped the face of his wristwatch.

“We’d better synch up before you move off for your boys,” he said. “Does that UpLink watch you wear tell time, or is it only for communicating with Moon Maiden in her space coupe?”

Ricci was impassive.

“I’ll need ten minutes,” he said.

* * *

One minute and counting, Ricci thought. His eye was against the scope of his carbine, taking advance measure of his targets.

Down below in the near twilight, their backs to him, the pair of men in camouflage outfits was barely hidden from sight in the thicket. Your boys. The trick for him was to nail them exactly when Lathrop sniped the others. Do it in a couple of accurate bursts, three at most, and mask Lathrop’s rifle shots from however many of the kidnappers had remained behind with Marissa Vasquez. If the plan worked the way it was intended, they would mistake the sound of Ricci’s HK firing at the ambushers for that of their guns shooting him as it echoed through the valley, think that Lathrop had led him into their ambush and he’d been the one who was erased.

He checked his watch now. Thirty-five seconds. Thirty-four, thirty-three…

Ricci’s jaw tightened. A plan for success, he thought.