Part 23 (1/2)
”I don't like the high-speed drill and gas idea, ”Cope said. ”This has to be b.l.o.o.d.y quick, and with the windows open we can't guarantee we'll get b.l.o.o.d.y quick.”
”Then it's got to be the CS grenade, ”t.i.to said. ”We drive by and I'll toss it in, bam. They won't be able to get another breath for about thirty seconds. It's like getting slapped in the face with a board. But then it wears off quick, so we have to get in quick and do our thing.”
”What kind of noise does it make? ”Cope asked.
”None.”
”Flash?”
”None.”
Cope thought a moment. ”We can't risk them getting a shot off, not even one.”
”Their throats and lungs are locked up, man, ”t.i.to a.s.sured him. ”They can't even draw a breath ... for thirty seconds. After that, they're going to start coming around.”
Silence. Cope looked at his watch. ”Okay, then I'll just pull up and you toss the bomb. I'll jam on the brakes, and we bail out. The second you know it's okay, jump in and get behind the wheel, and I'll go into the back.”
That was it.
Cope pulled away from the curb and slow-rolled to the intersection. He eased out, looking right. Two blocks ahead they could see the Pathfinder up the slight rise in the street, looking like a sitting duck. He turned into the street and started up the hill.
Suddenly the taillights of the Pathfinder came on.
”s.h.i.+t. ”t.i.to leaned forward over the dash, but then the taillights went out again. ”Guy's just s.h.i.+fting in his seat.”
Cope was watching his rearview mirror for approaching traffic, but they were so far off Bull Creek Road that there was no through traffic, and at this hour the neighborhood was quiet.
He noodled along, not wanting to change pace when they pulled past the Pathfinder. Then they were there.
He looked to his right just as they were even with the Pathfinder driver, and t.i.to lobbed the CS grenade as if he were tossing back a wadded piece of paper into a trash can. The little canister sailed right past the surprised face of the driver.
Cope slammed on his brakes, stopping just past the front left fender of the Pathfinder so that t.i.to could fling open his door. Cope scrambled around the back of the car to find the Pathfinder's opened windows swirling with gas.
”Wait, ”t.i.to barked. They stood there three beats, and then: ”Go!”
As t.i.to was opening the door, he reached in and shot the driver in the face twice with his suppressed USP, then shoved the dying man from under the steering wheel as he crawled in. At the same instant, Cope plunged into the backseat and shot the gagging guard in the mouth twice, crawled over his body, and shot the pa.s.senger-side guard three quick bursts in the left ear as he pushed him down into the floorboard out of sight. Then he was out and back into the idling car.
In less than fifteen seconds it was over. Inside the Pathfinder, three men were in various stages of dying as t.i.to slowly pulled the SUV away from the curb and eased out into the street. Cope followed him at a distance.
The man had crouched in the pocket of deep shade among the cedars and settled in to endure the stifling heat of the afternoon. The sun beat down on the thick canopy of the woods above him, sucking all the air out of the underbrush. Forty meters away, the lake water lapped against the rocks. Cicadas throbbed in the hot trees, and their drone blended with the occasional drone of ski and pleasure boats plying the long, narrow lake. Peering through a break in the brush, he had found a spot across the lake halfway up the sloping hillside, a terracotta tile roof, and he concentrated on it, using it as his gateway out of time.
Everything else that happened for the next four and a half hours happened in his parallax view and in his head. He was fully aware of the changing light, but not in the gradual way that an observant person might be aware of it. For long periods of time his eyes took in nothing-that is, nothing of which he was aware. He was gone, traveling in his mind.
Then, as if playing catch-up, his eyes registered the changing light of the past hour or so all in the s.p.a.ce of just a few moments, like a timelapse film. The clouds skimmed northward across the valley, and the sunlight flickered rapidly as the clouds flitted past, and then underlying it all was the changing light resulting from the angle of the falling sun.
And then again everything held still while he pa.s.sed through terra-cotta into other worlds.
He got up once to remove his clothes, jamming them into the small canvas duffel bag. He turned aside and urinated into the gra.s.s, then squatted on his haunches and returned to the tile roof.
Another hour or so pa.s.sed and the mosquitoes had gotten so bad that he turned to the duffel bag again and took out two round, plastic containers holding charcoal and olive body paint. Methodically, without any attention to time at all, he began to smear his body with the camouflage paint. He didn't pay much attention to what he was doing, as if it didn't matter much how it was done. But he was thorough, head to toe, inside his ears and nostrils, between the crevice of his b.u.t.tocks, and even his genitals.
Dusk.
Now he squatted among the weeds, invisible. With the dying light, the swarms of mosquitoes grew exponentially. Frustrated by the repellent in the paint, they formed a cloud around him. He heard them, a high-pitched whining sound enveloping him in its harmonics, exactly like the dusk in Espiritu Santo when he was waiting to kill the man from Andradina and was astonished to hear the sound of time pa.s.sing. It was an aural sensation precisely the same as the cloud of mosquitoes. It was so odd to discover that.
Time pa.s.sed. A long time ... in a darkness blacker than old blood.
When the telephone vibrated in his hand-he had held it throughout, laying it down only to put on the body paint, and even then carefully resting his toes on it so that he would feel the vibrating if it should happen-he answered it by saying only, ”Yes.”
”Macias has left, ”Burden said. ”I believe that only a guard, Roque, and Luquin remain. That's the best we can figure it.”
”Macias won't return?”
”No.”
”I have the rest of the night, then?”
”No. You have to leave by two o'clock, at least. You have the directions to the airstrip.”
”Yes. But nothing has changed?”
”No.”
Silence. He wasn't sure how long it lasted, but he was aware of it, which meant it might have been a long time. But Burden didn't hang up. He was there.
”You want to know something, Garcia?”
”Yes. What is it?”
”I didn't think this would ever happen. I thought I would die and this would never have happened.”
Silence.
”I won't thank you, ”the man said. ”I will spare you having to have that on your conscience.”
Silence.
”But if I could thank you, I would do it. And if I believed in G.o.d, I would thank him for it, too, but he wouldn't want my grat.i.tude, either. Gracias a Dios, Gracias a Dios, but he would stop it from reaching him. Such grat.i.tude.” but he would stop it from reaching him. Such grat.i.tude.”
Silence.
”Do you hear the insects?”
”Yes, ”Burden said.
”I am engulfed by mosquitoes, ”he said. ”A cloud of them. They are singing time at me.”