Viktor and Alena exchanged another frightened glance.
Aurora sighed and checked her watch. “All right, amigo — have it your way. Garza, take the woman somewhere private. And be kind — it’s her birthday.”
“No, please!” Viktor yelled. “Leave her alone!”
Aurora silenced Viktor’s screams by ordering Delgado to plant a solid punch in the soft flab of his stomach. Then she ordered Garza to stop dragging Alena toward the bedroom. The commands had the desired effect, as she knew they would: Viktor was broken, and would now do whatever they told him.
People always react the same way under pressure, she thought. They were as predictable as a trapped pig. Now she watched as Delgado cut the rope holding Viktor to the chair and barked at him to stand. They were loyal men, and sharper than Silvio’s brother Jorge. Poor Jorge, she thought… he believed that Wade had a direct line to the gods.
Viktor rose wearily to his feet. He raised his trembling, cuffed hands to his face to wipe some of the sweat from his eyes.
“It’s okay, Viktor,” Alena said.
Aurora’s black-painted lips bent up into a grim smile. “After our trip to Los Alamos, we’re going on a little vacation, amigo — south of the border… and you’re coming with us.”
“What about my wife?”
“She’s right behind you, Viktor. Stay calm now. You have important work to do.”
After glancing through the window to ensure the street was clear, Aurora led Viktor through his front door and out to the drive where the GMC Vandura was parked beside Alena Sobotka’s Toyota Prius.
She swung open the Prius’s driver’s door. “Get in. You’re driving.”
Aurora watched the street as the old man got inside and then Garza climbed in beside him. She sat in the back behind Viktor and closed the door with a chunky thud. “I have a gun pointed at the back of your seat. That’s all you need to know.”
“What about my wife?”
“She’s going in the van with my associate.”
Behind them, Alena Sobotka struggled up into the Vandura. Delgado helped her on her way with a heavy, unwanted slap on her ass.
“They’re going to follow us, Viktor. Now, drive to Los Alamos.”
Viktor Sobotka fired up the Prius and reversed out of his drive.
As they cruised through the neighborhood, Aurora lit a cigarette and casually surveyed the houses on either side of the street. Expensive, well-maintained properties where those with too much money idled away their weekends trimming lawns and dropping chlorine tablets into their swimming pools. She thought about her mother raising her back in the favela and felt the anger rise in her heart. The hatred she felt for these people, who lived in such luxury, burned inside her. How hard she would laugh when the Hummingbird gave her poison to the world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Thousands of miles away in the tropical heat of the Yucatán Peninsula, Jorge Mendoza pulled a crumpled pack of Delicados from his shirt pocket. He fumbled for a moment with his lighter before firing up the unfiltered cigarette and taking a long drag. Lighting a cigarette was not normally a problem for Jorge, but today his hands were shaking, and with good reason. At least his brother Silvio wasn’t here to see his fear.
Jorge was sitting in a cartel Silverado parked up south of the dunes on the Calle de Arena, watching the supertankers transport oil across the Gulf of Mexico. All very boring, but one ship had his interest. It was a Greek container ship registered in Antigua and Bermuda and it was slowly making its way toward him as he waited at Progreso Port.
He glanced in the rear view mirror at his men. They were parked up behind in a Mercedes Atego, a light-weight truck from the Wade carpool. All ready.
He turned to the woman at his side. Juana Diaz was younger than Jorge, and wore a fresh black eye on her face as a reminder not to argue with him. He looked at her and sneered. She should know better than to make trouble. It was Jorge who rescued her from the favelas and pimps of Iztapalapa and this was the thanks he got — backchat and disrespect. He hoped the purple shiner on her cheek would teach her who was boss.
“I want a drink,” was all he said, his eyes fixed on the horizon outside the windshield.
She reached inside the glove box and pulled out a half bottle of Espolon. Jorge glanced at it.
“Open it.”
She unscrewed the bottle wordlessly and held it out to him. It shook in her fingers.
Jorge snatched it with a greasy hand and greedily swigged at the earthy, peppery liquid. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and handed the bottle back to Juana.
“Put it back.”
She did as she was told and Jorge returned to his business, studying the sunlight as it danced on the intermodal containers. They were stacked like multicoloured bricks on the ship’s vast deck. These ships carried endless amounts of junk from one side of the world to the other, and this one was no exception. On board were cars, trucks, processed food and electronic equipment among countless other commodities. But there was one important difference — one special factor that made this ship different from the others.
Only this ship carried the Hummingbird.
Jorge tried not to think about the Hummingbird. He might be the man who helped one of the country’s most feared drug cartels in the notorious Guerrero massacre, but some things unsettled even him, and the Hummingbird was one of them.
A second deep drag on the Delicado. He held the smoke down for slightly longer than usual before releasing it into the clammy air of the Yucatán coast.
Guerrero.
His mind drifted back to the massacre. Visions of hangings and decapitations and terrible punishment beatings blew through his mind as if they were carried on the humid breeze. He hadn’t paid for those deeds in this world, he mulled, but maybe he would in the next.
But not even that concerned Jorge Mendoza. Like his brother, he was a serpiente — a snake… as if he could ever forget. Until they were smashed by a joint exercise between the Mexican Federal Police Drug Division and the American DEA, the serpientes were one of the most ruthless drug cartels in Mexico.
As he recalled the memory of his initiation ceremony into their unyielding, cutthroat ranks he shuddered with disgust. Had he really done such a foul and unforgivable thing? As the tequila burned down his throat, he shook his head in denial. It’s not my fault… Silvio told me to do it.
Maybe the gods would strike him dead, or had they enjoyed watching him? In any case, a lot more people would be journeying to the next world very soon, he mused — more than anyone could count — and he wondered if they were as ready for it as he was. Jorge had never worked out why, but he’d never been afraid of death.
If anything, he mocked it. Not like those people he’d tortured back in Guerrero. He winced at the thought of all the begging and pleading. He would never beg for his life like that, not Jorge Mendoza. And yet… Señor Dios, sé muy bien que soy pecador, y sé muy bien que he pecado… Dear Lord, I know well that I am a sinner, and I know I have sinned…
Slowly the container ship pushed through the tropical waves and moved closer to the shore. Jorge hung the cigarette off his lower lip and turned the engine over. He shifted the stick into drive and spun around in the dunes on his way toward the port.
He made good time, driving in silence with the Atego just behind him. Now, in the heavy, humid air of Progreso Port, Jorge watched anxiously as the towering container crane lifted the deadly cargo from the deck of the Paralus and lowered it with a gentle crunch on the dockside a few yards from his men.