John Gilstrap - Damage Control

The crowd fell quiet as the team advanced, its curiosity about the crash no doubt trumped by their sense of impending danger. Just loudly enough to be heard, Jonathan said, “Tristan, I want your hand on my rucksack. I want physical contact, and don’t let go unless I tell you.”

He felt a pull on his shoulder straps. “I’m there,” Tristan said. “This is a lot of people.”

“They’re not threatening us, so we don’t threaten them,” Jonathan replied. “Just keep moving and avoid eye contact.”

You could see the confusion and the unasked questions even in the wash of the yellow streetlights. Every person wanted to know what was going on, yet the presence of the team’s body armor and weapons rendered them all silent. In the distance, Jonathan heard the first siren.

“This is about to get interesting, Boss,” Boxers said. “Any chance we can pick up the pace a little?”

It was a difficult balance. They could walk a little faster, but if they started to run, they could ignite a panic. The people ahead of them would fear that they were running toward them, and the people behind would assume that they were running away from the authorities. Even in a shithole like Ciudad Juarez, people were jingoistic enough to resent lawbreaking by foreigners.

On the other hand, the sirens were drawing nearer, and their arrival would be sure to ignite a shit storm.

Ahead of them, the crowd that had formed a wall of curiosity separated as Jonathan approached, and allowed them to pass through unmolested. They kept their distance, but not by the margins that Jonathan would have thought. It was almost as if they wanted to see the faces of these foreign invaders.

“Thank you,” Jonathan said to one of the gawkers as he stepped out of the way. He made sure to smile, and the gawker smiled back.

In a few more steps, ninety percent of the crowd was behind them.

“Okay,” Jonathan said. “Tristan, let go of my ruck. It’s time to run.”

Ernesto Palma hadn’t anticipated so many people awaiting his arrival at the small military airfield on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez. There must have been thirty soldiers there, all in uniform, and all from La Justicia. Palma had long suspected that his commanders were likewise on Hernandez’s payroll, but the fact that this many soldiers had been mobilized removed all doubt. He wondered if the president himself had been informed, if only to begin preparing his denials if things went badly.

Hernandez’s Learjet had made tremendously good time, covering the distance in just under two hours. Palma had no idea how much a jet like that cost, but it was a lot of money. The fact that Hernandez even had one gave context to what all he was trying to protect.

As he climbed down the stairway from the jet, the lack of military bearing among the gathered soldiers bothered him. He waited at the bottom of the stairs for Sergeants Nazario and Sanchez. He pulled them aside.

“I want you to relieve the soldiers’ current unit non-commissioned officers of their commands, and assemble the troops for formation in twenty minutes,” Palma said. “Any questions on that?”

Nazario said, “No, sir. No questions at all.” He snapped a regulation salute, spun on his heel, and headed off to do his job.

Of all the tasks faced by soldiers every day, none was as demoralizing or soul-stealing as idle time. Vigorous firefights raised morale, while awaiting orders merely built a sense of dread.

Palma believed that the solution lay in vigorous training in military things, even if the training was nothing more than standing formation and marching. Such basic military drills also gave Palma some idea of the mettle and competence of these troops who were newly under his command. The task that lay ahead for them fell outside the normal bounds of military activity, so he needed to know that these men could be flexible under fire, and that they would perform their duties without question.

That was a tall order, given the fact that Palma had no idea when his prey would come into range. He was utterly shocked, then, when his phone rang so soon.

“Palma,” he said, bringing the phone to his ear.

“It’s that bitch Maria Elizondo,” Hernandez growled.

Palma recognized the name, but it took a few seconds to process the significance.

“She betrayed me, Ernesto. I gave her everything, and she betrayed me.”

Palma waited for more. When it didn’t come, he said, “What would you like me to do?”

Hernandez gave him the address.

Palma wrote it into the notebook he pulled from his shirt pocket. “I presume you want me to kill her?”

“Absolutely not,” Hernandez said. “You are not to hurt her, merely take her into custody. Bring her to me. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Palma closed his eyes against an image of the last traitor on whom Hernandez had taken his revenge. He remembered his disgust as the man’s flayed skin hung from his waist like bloody drapes, the muscle and nerves of his upper body fully exposed and relentlessly tormented. By Hernandez’s account at the time, that traitor was on his third day in the hacienda’s torture chamber.

“And what about the Yankees?” Palma asked.

“What about them?”

“If your intelligence is right, they will be coming to join her. I believe we should surround the house and wait until-”

“No,” Hernandez said. “Get her and bring her to me now.”

The line went dead.

Tristan wasn’t much of a runner, even on a paved track wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Loaded down with the flopping and rattling gear that felt like it doubled his weight, every step hurt. How these old guys did it so easily was beyond him. The fact that Scorpion could do it didn’t surprise him so much, he supposed, because he had that wiry athletic look about him that suggested he jogged a lot just to keep in shape, but that the Big Guy could jog with so little effort was pretty incredible.

And as shitty as flip-flops were for hiking in the jungle, they truly sucked when running for your life.

“Keep it up, Kid,” Big Guy urged from behind. “Forward motion is what’s keeping us alive now.”

Tristan didn’t have the spare breath to offer up an answer. He just forced himself to keep up with Scorpion.

God, would it ever stop? He didn’t know how long they’d been at this, but he’d run far past the stage of

Tough it out, you can do this, and was now in the stage where every additional step was a forceful command from his brain.

They’d been running a kind of a zigzag pattern, a block or two east followed by a left turn that would take them a block or two north, followed by a right-hand turn and another block or two east. He’d long ago lost track of how many such turns they’d made, and he’d now stopped even paying attention to his surroundings. They just ran. He found himself focusing on the distance between his toes and the heels of Scorpion’s boots. If the distance opened up, which was happening more and more now, then he’d throw another log onto the fire and push himself a little harder.

Hey, if living wasn’t a strong enough motivation to give a little more, then what was?

His lungs screamed, and sweat poured into his eyes from the soaked tendrils of his hair.

He’d heard athletes on television talk about some transitional phase where running triggers endorphins or whatever and then running is like the greatest high there is.

What utter bullshit.

If there was anything good about this much discomfort, it was the fact that it displaced a lot of fear. Through the thrumming of the blood in his ears, he could still hear a growing chorus of sirens, but they didn’t seem to be getting any closer.