David Lindsey - The Rules of Silence

Macias's phone began ringing in his pocket, but Titus's legs gave way, and he crumpled on the hardscrabble ground, slumping beside Macias's body, still holding the gun, heaving, unable to get enough air into his lungs, buffeted by the storm from the rotors of the helicopter.

Suddenly the floodlight went out, and very slowly the star lights came on again and the creature began to slip sideways, the wind and mystery of it drifting away over the tops of the trees. It stayed low. The muted pounding of its engine began to fade immediately, but the diminishing blue lights took longer, and Titus, exhausted, continued watching them recede until they were tiny bright dots and he couldn't even distinguish them from the stars.

The isolated airstrip was on a private ranch nearly fifty miles northwest of Austin. It was an expensive landing site in the dead center of a long narrow valley a mile and a half off Highway 71. There was a small hangar (empty) with a workshop attached. Two fuel tanks sat fifty meters away. Another fifty meters from the tanks sat an old Cessna Grand Caravan, painted a flat charcoal gray, lights out, doors open for loading, waiting. The pilot and helper were sitting in the dark to one side of the aircraft, smoking.

Baas was the first to arrive, the headlights of Titus's Range Rover flickering through the dense cedar brakes as he came down the side of the wooded hills into the valley. He pulled up to the Cessna as if he'd done it a million times and got out. Quickly the pilot and helper ran over to the Rover to help Baas with the body of Macias's guard. They wrestled him out of the Rover and carried him to the cargo door of the Caravan. The interior of the plane had been stripped for cargo transportation, and the body, already discoloring from the cyanide, was laid on the bare aluminum floor.

By the time the body had been loaded into the plane, Tito was arriving in the Pathfinder, followed by Cope in the car. The job of unloading the three bodies from the Pathfinder was more gruesome because of the profusion of blood.

After the three dead men were piled into the bare cargo hold with the body of the other guard, Tito drove the Pathfinder to the edge of the tarmac by the hangar. They opened all the doors and began sprinkling laundry detergent around the bloody interior. Cope had bought the detergent at a convenience store in Paleface, where the highway crossed the Pedernales River. Then they stretched the water hose from the corner of the hangar and began hosing down the Pathfinder, the suds boiling out of the interior in foaming pink billows.

When that was done, Cope and Tito took off their clothes, washed them with the detergent, too, and laid them over the limbs of the cedar trees to dry in the July night. They all sat down to more cigarettes while they waited for one more arrival.

An hour passed, and then another, with no communication with Calo or Burden. Then Tito's phone rang.

“Tito, ”Calo said, “I'm on the highway approaching the turnoff.”

“What? What's happened?”

“Nothing wrong. Just some unexpected developments. You'll see in a few minutes. Is Luquin there?”

“No. We haven't heard anything.”

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.