The stranger stopped at the dry rack-clack of the action.
“That’ll do,” Miguel said, in Quechua. “Didn’t you hear me? This is private fucking property.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“So what the fuck are you doing down here, gringo?”
“I’m here to see the witch.”
That was when the stranger tipped up his head so Miguel could see his face properly. It was also when he realized he’d made a mistake. The white they’d seen flashing under the hat brim as he came down the path above was pasty and unreal, clotted and streaked on the face like a poorly applied clown’s mask or a half-melted Day of the Dead candy skull. The eyes were dark and impassive, and they stared out of the disintegrating white face with no more humanity than a pair of gun muzzles.
Pistaco.
Miguel had time for that single quailing thought, and then something erupted behind him in a string of firecracker fury. He locked up, tugged both ways at once, and the stranger’s long dusty coat split open and he had a flash glimpse of some stubby, ugly weapon cradled there in the pistaco’s arms.
Deep, throat-clearing cough, spiteful shredding whine.
Then there was only impact, a sense of being tugged violently backward, a split second of the sky and Colca’s steep-angled sides tilting and spinning, and then everything was gone.
Carl Marsalis sprinted past the ruins of the first familia gunman, closed the gap with the second while the other man raised his shotgun and snapped off a useless blast from the hip. This one was already panicked beyond any professional combat training he might have had, the remote-triggered firecrackers in the lead mule’s panniers, the sudden explosive death of his comrade. Carl ran in firing, too far out for the sharkpunch to have any serious impact yet, but the boy ahead of him flinched and staggered with the few shards that found their mark.
It wasn’t an ideal weapon for the circumstances, and out of the water it was too fucking heavy for comfort. He’d had to drape the long elastic sling it came with around his neck, and stick a cling patch on his right thigh to hold the damn thing still under his coat. His leg ached with the extra effort of walking with the weight. But the patented Cressi sharkpunch had the sterling advantage that it was classed as sub-aqua sports equipment, which meant he’d gotten it through security in his baggage without a second look, when second looks were the last thing he needed. And a gun that punched razor-sharp spinning slivers of alloy through water hard enough to eviscerate a great white shark did have some considerable reach in air, even if the spread made accuracy a joke. The young guard had blood running down his face as he fumbled at the slide on his shotgun, he was probably dazed from the sound of the explosions, and he was clearly terrified.
Carl closed the gap, pulled the trigger on the sharkpunch again. The boy slammed back against the side cables of the bridge. Large chunks of him slopped through and fell into the river; the rest collapsed skeletally onto the suddenly blood-drenched planking.
Over.
The mule carrying the firecrackers had, not unreasonably, panicked as much as anybody else. It was headed up the path along the riverside, bucking and snorting. No time to hang about. Carl loped after the animal, ears open for the sounds of other humans.
He met a third gunman a couple of hundred meters along the river, hurrying down the path toward the sounds of gunfire, a matte-gray Steyr assault rifle held unhandily across his body as he jogged. The man saw the mule, tried to get out of its way, and Carl darted around one side of the animal, threw out the sharkpunch, and fired more or less blind. The other man went down as if ripped apart by invisible hands. Carl scanned the path up ahead, saw and heard nothing, and stopped by the ruins of the man he’d just killed. He crouched and scooped up the Steyr left-handed out of the mess, dumped it immediately with a grunt of frustration. The guy had still been holding it across his body when Carl shot him, and the anti-shark load had smashed the breech beyond repair.
“Fuck!”
He picked and prodded his way around the shattered carcass, sharkpunch still leveled watchfully over his knee at the path ahead. Came up finally with a blood-soaked holster holding a shiny new semi-automatic. He tugged the gun loose and held it up to the light—Glock 100 series, not a bad gun. Pricey, shiny ordnance for backwoods muscle like this, but Carl supposed even here the power of branding must hold sway.
Tight, adrenaline-crazy grin. He put down the sharkpunch for a moment to work the action on the other weapon. It seemed to be undamaged, would be accurate to a point, but…
Still no decent longer-range weapon. The shotguns they’d been packing back at the river had no more reach than the sharkpunch, and he still had no clear idea how many more of Bambarén’s security there were between him and Greta Jurgens’s winter retreat. Outside of actual location, Suerte Ferrer had been hopelessly vague.
He shrugged and got back to his feet. Tucked the Glock into his waistband, hefted the sharkpunch again, and moved past the shattered man on the ground. Up ahead, the path seemed to rise slowly out of the rock-walled groove where it ran along the riverside. The mule had bolted on ahead, seemed to have finally found open ground off to the right.
Carl settled the leather hat a little more carefully on his head and followed. The combat high pounded through him. The mesh picked up the beat, fed it. The grin on his face felt like it would never come off.
“You need to get a sense of geography about this, Suerte.”
Suerte Ferrer glowered up from the holding cell chair as Carl walked around him. Immigration had cuffed him there. “Don’t need no fucking geography lessons from you, nigger.”
The insult twanged through him, freighted with memories from South Florida State. It was the first time he’d heard it since Dudeck.
Of course, he’d heard the word twist a few times in the interim.
“I see you’re acclimatizing to Jesusland culture pretty well.” Carl completed his circuit and leaned on the table at Ferrer’s level. Their captive was still grimy and tired looking from his border transit in a false-bottomed crate purporting to contain experimentally gene-modified rapeseed oil. He flinched back as Carl went face-to-face with him. “You want to go back there, maybe, Suerte? That what you want?”
“Quiros said—”
Carl slammed the table. “I don’t know this Quiros. And I don’t fucking want to know him. You think we pulled your autohauler out of the line for luck? You have been sold, to me, and by someone a lot farther up the food chain than your pal Quiros. So if you think you’re going get some slick down-the-wire Seattle lawyer come pull you out of here, you’re wrong.”
He went around the table and took a seat again, next to Norton, who’d done nothing but sit with his legs thrust out in front of him and stare somberly the whole time. Carl jerked a thumb toward the cell door, which they’d left promisingly ajar when they came in.
“Out there, Suerte, you’ve got a highway that goes in two directions. It goes west to the Freeport, or it goes east back into Jesusland and a bust for illegal crossover. Your choice which direction you get to take.”
“Who the fuck are you people?” Ferrer asked.
Norton exchanged a look with Carl. He leaned forward and cleared his throat. “We’re you’re fairy godmothers, Ferrer. Surprised you didn’t recognize us.”
“Yeah, we’re looking to grant all your wishes.”
“See, this identity is blown.” Norton gestured at the tabletop, where the documents Ferrer had been carrying were spread out. “Carlton Garcia. RimSec have a warrant out on you under that name from San Diego to Vancouver and back. Even if we hadn’t fished you out here, you’d get about three days into the Rim before you tripped something and ended up either busted or yoked to some gang-master who’d put you to work fifteen hours a day in a trench and expect you to suck his dick for the privilege.”