Remi sat on the ground and put on the sneakers that Sam had placed in the waterproof bag for her. Then she took two of the pistols from the bag, handed one to Sam, and stuck the other in the waistband of her shorts and pulled her shirt down over it. She said, “I think I know who those men who attacked us were.”
“Me too,” Sam said. “They must patrol the area to be sure outsiders don’t reach the fields.”
“Let’s see if we can call home,” Remi said. She tried her phone, then Sam’s. “The batteries are dead. We’ll have to walk out of here.”
“If the drug farmers let us,” Sam said. “They’re not going to like us any better than the men at the cenote did.”
They heard the sound of an engine. It was distant at first, but it grew louder. After a moment, they could hear squeaking springs as a stake truck bounced along the dusty road between two fields of crops.
Sam and Remi ran into the forest of tall cannabis stalks and moved away from the sounds. They crouched low and watched. The truck bounced up and coasted to a stop, and a middle-aged man in blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a white shirt got out of the passenger side of the cab. He walked one row into the field and selected a marijuana plant. He looked closely at a bud and tested it. He stepped out toward the truck and nodded, and a dozen men jumped from the back of the truck to the ground. They moved along the rows of plants, harvesting the ripe buds.
The harvest proceeded quickly. Sam and Remi had to stay out of sight. When they were sure it was clear, they ran across a gap to the next field. After they had slipped into that field, they heard another engine sound approaching. This time, it was a tractor towing a wagon containing more men, who jumped down and began to harvest the second field.
For hours, Sam and Remi moved from one field of the huge plantation to another, avoiding the harvesters, their trucks and tractors.
The trucks began to pass them again, moving in the other direction. Sam and Remi made their way down a long row of plants in the middle of the field, walking parallel to the roads and maintaining their distance. They came to a forest of bushes, all seven to ten feet tall. “Interesting,” Remi whispered. “They look a lot like a blackthorn, don’t they?”
“Could be,” said Sam. “All I know about the blackthorn is that it’s what the Irish use to make a shillelagh. Also that it looks like a coca tree. And this is a coca tree.” He picked a leaf. “See? You look for two parallel lines on each side of the rib.”
“How do you know about that?”
Sam shrugged and gave Remi a sly smile.
When they reached the end of the coca grove, they could see a single-file line of about twenty trucks and tractors waiting to pull up to barnlike buildings. Sam and Remi kept to the fields as they moved to the side and around the buildings.
Sam pointed at the trucks and whispered, “I think that’s our way out.”
Remi said, “Maybe, but look at all the guards.” Walking the perimeter of the tie-down area were men who carried rifles that looked like AK-47 assault weapons on slings. Sam and Remi could see the curved, thirty-round magazines.
“Interesting,” said Sam. “They’re all facing inward, watching the guys covering the loads of marijuana. They’re not protecting the operation, they’re making sure the farmhands don’t steal any of the product. It’s inventory control.”
Remi said, “Maybe we could just sneak to the road and walk out of here.”
Sam shrugged. “Would the men who tried to kill us in the forest neglect a road?”
“Probably not,” she said. “I guess it’s got to be a truck.”
“Let’s pick one that’s already been loaded, covered, and parked.”
Sam and Remi made a wide circle around the compound, staying among the tall plants and watching the activities in the center. They avoided the spots where a turning truck might sweep its headlights across them, and they stayed far from the buildings where men were hanging, bailing, and loading marijuana.
Sam and Remi stayed under their cover until they were beyond the parked trucks. It looked hopeless. There was a guard standing by the front bumper of the first truck in line, which was fully loaded and tied down. From his tired slouch, he seemed bored. The sling that held his rifle went from his left shoulder across his chest to his right hip, so he would need an extra second or two to bring it around and fire.
Sam and Remi put their heads close, whispered for a few seconds, and then separated and left the woods at the same moment about ten feet apart. They walked silently, but quickly, and converged on the guard from both sides at once with their pistols drawn. The guard turned in Remi’s direction, saw her, and began to tug at his sling to lift it over his head to free his rifle, but Sam was beside the man too quickly and pressed his gun to the man’s head. Remi stepped closer, grasped the sling, and took the rifle away from him. Without warning, Sam hooked his left arm around the man’s neck from behind in a choke hold and held it until he lost consciousness. Sam and Remi each took an ankle and dragged the man into the nearby woods. Sam took the man’s pants and put them on, then put on the man’s straw hat. Remi held the rifle and watched the trucks while Sam took the man’s shirt, tore it, and used it to tie and gag him, then bind him to a tree.
They stepped out of the woods together, Sam holding the AK-47 rifle the way the guards held theirs and wearing the guard’s hat and pants. They walked between two of the already loaded trucks, then picked one, quickly letting their silhouettes be engulfed by the silhouette of the truck. They looked in each direction, trying to see where the other guards were, but couldn’t see any of them from there.
Then, coming along the front of the trucks, was another guard. “Guard,” Sam whispered. Remi crouched beside one of the big truck tires. Sam held the AK-47, his left hand on the forestock and his right just behind the trigger guard, pushed the safety off, and stepped a couple of paces in front of the truck in a bored, slouching posture, his eyes turned in their sockets to watch the guard’s behavior.
The guard kept coming along for a few steps, stopped, then raised his right hand to wave at Sam.
Sam imitated the gesture as exactly as he could, waving back at the man and assuming it meant that he was alert and all was well. He pretended not to be studying the man for his response, just walked a bit closer to the front of the truck and waited. If he was going to have an automatic-weapons fight, he was going to use the truck’s engine as a shield. He took a few breaths and prepared himself. The other guard turned and walked off along the perimeter.
Sam moved back to where Remi waited. They stayed low as they climbed over the gate of the truck to its bed, lifted the rear canvas cover enough to let them crawl under, then pulled it back down to hide. Once under the tarp, they moved some of the marijuana packages to build a cushioning layer beneath them.
Soon they heard footsteps and voices coming to where their truck was parked. Then Sam and Remi felt the truck sink on its springs a little as a man stood on the left step and sat in the driver’s seat, then another came from the right side and sat beside him. The doors of the cab slammed, the engine started, they began to move, and very slowly the truck joined a line of trucks on the gravel road.
Sam listened to the engines for a couple of minutes, then put his head near the canvas. He whispered, “It looks as though five leave at once.” The truck moved up about five lengths and then stopped again.
This time, Remi moved her head close to the bottom of the canvas on the left side. “We’re sitting beside a sign,” she said.
“Can you read it?”
“Estancia Guerrero.”
There was a sudden surge of movement around the truck, on all sides at once. Sam gripped the rifle, and Remi drew her pistol, and they faced away from each other. Men were climbing aboard, sitting on all sides of the canvas behind which Sam and Remi hid. The men laughed and talked, while Sam and Remi, only inches away, held their fire.