Arturo Fontaine - La Vida Doble

Then we got out of the Toyota, walked to an alley and climbed up onto a roof that didn’t have a steep incline. The terrain had been studied. Iris and I went up. Macha helped us, but he stayed below. We crawled, Iris ahead of me, until we were on the house next to the Spartan’s. I don’t know how no one woke up. The zinc roof made noise. From our position we could see the yard, lit up by two street-lights, and a wing of the L-shaped house. We saw a light on at the back. Iris was very attentive. “The bathroom,” she told me in a tiny voice I could barely hear. “The pension’s shared bathroom,” she said.

Do you want another glass of raspberry juice? It’s good, go on, have another one. Now, as I tell you this, one thing stands out to me: the Spartan had to share a bathroom. And what did I feel at the moment? Nothing. Except I was nervous, except I was shaking. That light went out and another one came on next door. “The bedroom,” Iris told me. The second light went out. Iris looked at her watch. We waited for a long minute to go by. Iris stood up without making a sound and flashed a small flashlight to signal. She looked at her watch. And the wait continued. “Now, thirty minutes,” she whispered to me. “Until he’s asleep.” We couldn’t talk or move. In situations like that my back starts to itch, a leg will go to sleep, I yawn or start sneezing. All of that happened to me on that damned roof. Not to Iris, of course, who chastised me with the disdain in her oily eyes.

Suddenly, she checked the time, stretched out her neck, and slowly stood up, flexible and silent as a panther, until she was crouched behind the cornice. I imitated her. From her new position, she drew her CZ and removed the safety. At that same instant, a footstep scraped the sidewalk. After another silence, a slight metallic groan sounded. Iris didn’t take her eyes from the room with the light turned out. You couldn’t see anything. The house was silent. But any experienced ear could clearly hear the sound of a lock pick searching for the combination. Until the lock gave way and the door opened. Light, very soft steps barely sounded on the wooden floor. A single, small circle of intense light flickered, advancing through the interior of the house. It was getting closer to the room where the light had been extinguished minutes earlier. Iris stretched out her neck and took her weapon in both hands, her nose sniffing at the night, her eyes scrutinizing the movements of that solitary beam of light.

A thud, a kick to the door suddenly broke the calm of the night. Then we heard a revolver fire, a window was smashed to smithereens, shouts; the circle of light turned, searching, and there was another shot. There was a tense pause during which I heard only my heart reverberating in its cage. And then, machine-gun fire from an AKM.

“They fucked us!” Iris shouted without looking at me.

Another burst of fire.

Iris raised her arms unhurriedly, aiming her gun with both hands, and waited. I saw a shadow run through the yard toward the back. It knelt down and covered the others who were following, shooting. Then it was relieved by another shadow and it took off running. They weren’t just students, those two students. They knew how to fight. Iris calmly took aim. There, with her sharp face, she looked like a fox. I think I’ve told you she was an expert shot. The best of the team. When it reached the wall, one of the shadows seemed to take a wrong step, stopped short, faltering close to a streetlight, and slammed onto the pavement: Iris. I wanted to imitate her.

Just as we’d been taught, I didn’t put my sights on the precise spot of the other figure, but rather a little ahead; I fired, but my shadow kept running. I had missed. In the middle of the noise and confusion I recognized the Spartan from his way of moving. He had already climbed the wall and he was getting away over the roof of the house behind. It was him. I didn’t feel any guilt, none, not even when I pointed him out to Iris. My heart was pounding as I imagined what would happen next. The other shadow let itself fall, sliding down over the zinc roofing. And the Spartan kept going; unstable, taking hesitant steps, he kept moving over the treacherous roofs. I wanted to see how they got him alive. I laughed, a peal of uncontrollable laughter I couldn’t suppress. Then he disappeared, followed by a burst of gunfire. We slid down from the roof and took off running. A red Datsun passed us at full speed toward Avenida Dublé Almeyda. “I’m sure he stole that Datsun,” Iris told me. The Spartan had broken through the cordon.

Macha was waiting for us in the Toyota with its motor running. He was dirty, his hair was disheveled, and he had a cut on his forehead. The traffic on Dublé Almeyda, though scarce at that hour, protected the Spartan. He was alone. We chased him southward down Vespucio. As he drove, blood dripped down from Macha’s eyebrow and into his eye. Iris tied a handkerchief around his head. The cars we passed seemed to be standing still. That’s how fast we were going. The Spartan seemed to be about to turn east, but then he broke fast to the west, tires squealing, and took off down Avenida Grecia. We couldn’t shoot at him because of the other cars. We couldn’t. I would have liked to get him with my still-virgin CZ. My heart was in my throat. I was someone else; I was unhinged, blinded. Before we reached Vicuña Mackenna, the Spartan threw a hand grenade out the window, and it exploded just a few yards from our Toyota. The splinters smashed our windshield. At the corner, he turned left, tires screeching, across four lanes of cars going in the opposite direction on Grecia, and he headed south on Vicuña Mackenna. He left a swarm of horns, brakes, and tangled cars behind him. Smoke and the smell of burnt rubber.

We lost him, and that’s where he made a mistake: he should have turned onto a different street. For some reason he kept going full speed down Vicuña Mackenna. As soon as we managed to get free of the tangle of cars, Macha floored the accelerator of that beefed-up 4×4 with its big pistons and augmented carburetor, and soon we saw the tail of the Datsun again. We were gaining ground. Iris drew her gun, looking for the right angle with half her body out the window. We got close to the Datsun, and on his second try, Macha managed to bump it close to the rear wheel. It was a technique they’d taught us at the training camp in La Rinconada, though I never thought it would be useful in action. But it worked.

The Datsun went up onto the sidewalk, sped a few yards farther, barely missing a tree, scraped loudly against a wall, veering side to side. Just then we heard a peremptory voice on the car’s radio that startled me: “You are under orders from your superiors to stop the Toyota immediately and cease the chase. Do you copy? You are under orders from your superiors. .” it repeated. The Spartan’s Datsun made it back onto the street and lost us, fleeing southward.

A silver Volvo pulled up in front of us. Macha got out and went over to it, his black leather jacket half open. Iris turned off the motor. Macha slammed the Volvo’s windshield with the butt of his CZ. The door opened very slowly and a slender, distinguished, serene form appeared — Flaco. I had recognized his voice, of course. Macha tucked his gun behind him, under his belt. We could hear his dark voice as he looked up at Flaco: “We’ve got some fucking scared shitless, fat-ass generals around here. And you, Flaco, you’re one of them now? Are you listening to me?” Flaco was looking over Macha’s head with a vague, indefinite expression and a cold, steady smile that I didn’t recognize. But his gestures had the same calm as always as he began explaining something to Macha.

“I’m telling you. .” Iris was saying to me. “Let’s see, how many times has this happened to us? Macha always does this shit. He goes off on his own, and then they de-authorize him from above. Why did we go in with so few people?. .”