Vaught reached forward to pull Valencia back between the seats.
“Ayúdame!” moaned the cab driver. Help me!
“Women and children first,” Vaught grunted in English, pulling Paolina from the backseat, with Valencia gripped in the opposite arm. “Good thing you’re so tiny,” he muttered, hefting the young woman over his shoulder.
Two more cars exploded as he ran toward the entrance to the tunnel, with the cabby shouting for him to come back.
Once clear of the tunnel, Vaught found a safe place to put down Paolina and Valencia, and then started back for the cab driver. Burn victims ran past him as the tunnel filled quickly with black smoke, obscuring his vision. He reached the cab to find the driver praying out loud for his life.
He jerked at the door but couldn’t open it, so he slid across the crumpled green hood and climbed in on the passenger side, seeing the firewall jammed up against the driver’s knees. “Goddamn,” he said, choking on the smoke. “You’re stuck!”
Burning gasoline on the pavement set the engine compartment on fire, and the driver began to scream, sweat pouring down his face.
“Keep calm,” Vaught told him. “I gotta think!”
But the driver did not calm down: he began thrashing around like a wild man as the flames licked up around the hood.
“Santa Maria! Santa Maria!”
Vaught grabbed the cabby’s shoulders and pulled, but his legs were caught fast, and the man howled. Smoke now filled the car, making it almost impossible to breathe, and Vaught knew he would have to let the man burn to death. Fleetingly, he considered knocking him cold and breaking his neck to save him the suffering, but he couldn’t do it.
“I’m sorry! I can’t get you out!”
“Please!” the man begged. “Please!”
The car in front them burst into flames, and the heat became intense.
“Don’t let me die!”
Vaught got out, standing beside the open passenger door. “I’m sorry!”
“Don’t leave me! For the love of God!”
That’s when Vaught realized for the first time how close the seat was to the steering wheel. He ducked back inside and reached beneath the driver’s legs, finding the release lever and pushing the seat back a full six inches. The driver gasped with relief, and Vaught yanked him free, heaving him over his shoulder and running for the entrance as the taxi burst into flames.
Paolina was holding Valencia in her lap when Vaught finally set down the driver beside them at the side of the road. As of yet, there were still no emergency personnel on the scene.
“I thought you left us,” she said, cleaning the blood from Valencia’s face with the little girl’s shirt.
“Why the hell would I do that?” he asked irritably.
She shrugged. “It would be easier for you.”
He glanced around at the injured and the people helping them to get clear of the acrid black smoke now billowing from the tunnel. “Well, you don’t know me, Paolina. You don’t know me at all.”
21
When the emotionally shattered Diego Guerrero lifted his head to see Crosswhite standing in the threshold of what had been his brother’s office, it was as though Saint Michael the Archangel had suddenly appeared before him with a pistol tucked into the belly of his jeans.
“I understand there’s been some trouble,” Crosswhite said in Spanish.
“Yes,” croaked Diego, now the de facto chief of police. “My brother is dead.”
Crosswhite shook a cigarette loose from its pack, pulled it out with his lips, and lit it. “It was the francotirador… the gringo sniper.”
Diego rose from behind the desk, trying to look like the chief of police without feeling it. “Estába espeluznante,” he said despondently. It was horrifying.
“That’s how it is the first time,” Crosswhite said. “And this won’t be the last.”
“I know. I will be next.”
Crosswhite nodded. “Possibly, but that’s not what you think about. What you think about now is keeping your police force together—your police force. The Ruvalcabas will be moving to take over the town again.”
Diego’s voice was thin and reedy, his eyes filling with tears. “I am afraid.”
Crosswhite drew from the cigarette. “Get angry,” he advised. “After that, the rest takes care of itself.”
Diego smirked despondently. “What good is anger against a man who kills from so far away — like a ghost?”
Crosswhite stepped into the room, dropping his ruck onto a chair. “Popular opinion holds that it takes a sniper to kill a sniper, but a sniper’s no different from any other predator. He’s got two eyes set in the center of his face. That means he doesn’t see what’s comin’ up from behind him — so that’s where we’ll be.”
“For that, we need to know in advance where he will be.”
Crosswhite smiled, squinting against the smoke of the cigarette. “Nothing worth doing ever came easy.”
Diego watched the American for the slightest hint of put-on bravado, but there was nothing phony in what he saw. “Why do you want to help this town? You are not even from this country.”
The American glanced out the window with a sigh. “Maybe it’s because I got debts no honest man can pay.”
The Mexican watched him a moment longer and then said, “That makes no sense.”
Crosswhite looked at him. “It means I cannot be redeemed, Diego.”
“We are all redeemable in the eyes of God.”
Crosswhite took another drag. “It’s not the eyes of God I’m worried about.” He moved the pistol around to the small of his back beneath his jacket. “Your brother was a brave man. His same blood runs in your veins. You remember that.”
Diego looked at the floor. “I will try.”
“You’ll do better than try,” Crosswhite said. “I guarantee it. Now let’s see to your men. Unless I miss my guess, Serrano’s gonna try to make an example of this town. That’s why he had your brother killed.”
Diego looked up. “Lazaro Serrano?”
“Right. He’s the real power behind the Ruvalcaba cartel.”
Diego dropped into the chair, sinking his fingers into his dark hair and pulling. “Oh, my God. Serrano is going to be the next president of Mexico.”
Crosswhite turned for the hall. “Don’t bet on it. Now get your butt outta that chair. We got work to do.”
22
“I want to know who this Gil Shannon is and what he was doing in Liechtenstein,” Sabastian Blickensderfer said to his German attorney, seated across the table from him in a private dining room. He was a calm man, handsome, blond, with blue eyes and an unmistakable air of importance. “A man who takes the fight to the Russians in Turkey does not go skiing alone in Malbun.”
“I’ve already had him checked out,” said the well-dressed attorney, stirring sugar into his coffee. “It’s not good. He is an American war hero, one of their navy’s elite — and he was in Malbun to kill you.”
Blickensderfer scoffed. “Nonsense. I’m protected by the CIA.”
“You were protected,” the attorney replied. “The CIA has a new director now, a man named Pope, and he fired nearly everyone at the executive level when he took over. So the old guard is gone, and it’s not likely any of their agreements will be honored.”
“But if Shannon is with their navy—”
“Shannon is CIA. I can’t find anything to link him directly, but he’s one of theirs. He was killing Russian mobsters in Turkey five months ago. And now he’s traveling with Lena.”