Susan reached up and slapped me across the face. I felt nothing. It was as if she hadn’t touched me at all.
She screamed at me. “Help him, for god’s sake!”
I watched the jet move to the far end of the runway.
Now it was several hundred yards away from us, its engines blasting a whirlwind of dust behind it. It turned onto the strip and began its takeoff roll. The twin jets were now at full scream, a high-pitched hurricane of noise that battered deafeningly at our eardrums, and then the plane picked up speed and was racing down the dirt strip toward us.
I pulled my left arm away from Susan’s grip. I lifted the .44 Magnum and grasped my right wrist with my left hand, bringing the gun up to eye level, lining up the bar of the front sight in the vee notch of the rear sight.
As the plane came abreast of us, it was almost at maximum takeoff speed, and in that minute before the nosewheel began to lift, I squeezed off a shot. The left tire exploded, blown apart by the heavy slug. The left wing dropped. Its tip caught the ground, cartwheeling the plane around in a great, tortured scream of metal breaking apart. The wingtip tanks split open, spewing fuel into the air in a black, greasy spray. Almost in slow motion, the tail of the plane lifted higher and higher and then, as the wing broke off at the root, the plane went up and over onto its back, twisting down the runway in a cloud of black fuel spray and brown dust, broken bits of metal wildly flinging themselves out in bright fragments.
I fired again at the aircraft, and then a third time and a fourth. There was a quick flash of flame; a ball of orange-red fire expanded outward from the broken, crippled metal of the fuselage. The plane came to rest, flames shooting out from it as a thick, oily black smoke poured out of the holocaust of leaping fire.
Still without the faintest sign of emotion showing on my face, I watched the aircraft destroy itself and its occupants. I lowered the gun and stood there on the floor of the valley, tired; lonely. Susan slipped to her knees beside me, her face against my leg. I heard a whimpering sound of despair creep from her throat, and I reached down gently with my left hand and touched her softly on the top of her golden hair, unable to speak to her or to comfort her in any way at all.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I made my report to Hawk via telephone from El Paso and finished by telling him cynically that he’d been fooled by Gregorius for years. That he’d had me out on loan from AXE to one of the master criminals of the world.
I heard Hawk’s dry chuckle over the line.
“Do you really believe that, Nick? Why do you think I violated all the rules and let you work for him? And let you know you couldn’t call on AXE for help?”
“You mean—?”
“I’ve wondered about Gregorius for years. When he asked for you, I thought it was a great opportunity to smoke him out in the open. And you did it. Nice work, Nick.”
Once again, Hawk was a step ahead of me.
“All right,” I growled, “in that case, I’ve earned a vacation.”
“Three weeks,” Hawk snapped. “And give my regards to Teniente Fuentes.” He hung up abruptly, leaving me to wonder how he knew I planned on going back to Acapulco again?
So now, wearing beige slacks, sandals, and an open sport shirt, I sat at a small table beside Teniente Fèlix Fuentes of the Policia Federal de Seguridad. The table was on the broad terrace of the Hotel Matamoros. Acapulco had never been prettier. It glistened in the late afternoon tropical sunshine, washed clean by a rainstorm earlier in the day.
The waters of the bay were a rich blue, the town on the far side, almost hidden behind the palm trees that lined the malecon and the park, was a smudge of gray along the base of the brown ridged hills.
“I’m aware you haven’t told me everything,” Fuentes remarked. “I’m not sure I want to know everything, because then I might have to take official action, and I do not want to do that, Senor Carter. However, I do have one question. Stocelli?”
“You mean, has he gotten off scot-free?”
Fuentes nodded.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Do you remember what I asked you to do when I telephoned from El Paso yesterday afternoon?”
“Of course. I personally notified Stocelli that my government considered him persona non grata and re-quested him to leave Mexico no later than this morning. Why?”
“Because I telephoned him right after I talked to you. I told him that I’d taken care of things for him and that he could go back to the States.”
“You let him off?” Fuentes frowned.
“Not quite. I asked him to do a favor for me and he agreed.”
“A favor?”
“To bring my luggage back with him.”
Fuentes was puzzled. “I do not understand. What was the purpose of doing that?”
“Well,” I said, looking at my watch, “if his plane is on time, Stocelli will be arriving at Kennedy airport sometime in the next half hour. He’ll have to go through Customs. Among his luggage is a black fabric suitcase with no markings on it to indicate it belongs to anyone except Stocelli. Now, he might claim it’s one of my bags, but there’s no way for him to prove it. Besides, I don’t think Customs will pay much attention to his protests.”
Comprehension lit up Fuentes’ eyes.
“That is the suitcase Dietrich sent to your room?”
“It is,” I said, grinning, “and it still contains the thirty kilos of pure heroin that Dietrich packed into it.”
Fuentes began to laugh.
I was looking past him at the doorway that led in from the lobby of the hotel. Consuela Delgardo was walking toward us. As she approached, I could see the expression on her face. It was a mixture of joy and anticipation, and a look that told me that somehow, somewhere, in some way she would get back at me for what I’d done to her at Garrett’s hacienda.
She came up to the table, a tall, regal, full-bodied woman, her oval face never looking more beautiful than now. Fuentes turned in his chair, saw her, and got to his feet as she reached us.
“Senora Consuela Delgardo, Lieutenant Fèlix Fuentes.”
Consuela held out her hand. Fuentes brought it to his lips.
“We’ve met,” Fuentes murmured. Then he straightened up. He said, “If you are going to be in Mexico for any length of time, Senor Carter, I would appreciate it if you would both be my guests for dinner some evening.”
Consuela slid her arm possessively through mine. Fuentes caught the gesture.
“We would be delighted,” said Consuela in her husky voice.
Fuentes looked at her. Then he looked at me. The faintest flicker of some unreadable expression glowed for a moment in his eyes, but his face remained as stolid and severe as ever — a nut-brown carving of an ancient Toltec god.
“Enjoy yourself,” Fuentes told me drily. And then he closed one eye in a slow, lascivious wink.