“Tell your man to put his weapon down, or we will kill you both,” said Comal.
Medina swallowed. “Aleman, did you hear him?”
“Oh, Mother of God,” Aleman said softly. Medina dared not turn his head but it sounded as if Aleman had shuffled off to one side.
Comal’s smile had, mercifully, come unglued and slipped away now, but Medina did not much like the nervous glances that replaced it. “Tell him,” Comal insisted, shoving with the barrel of the revolver.
“I don’t think he will, whatever I say,” Medina said. It seemed that Comal was a man who wanted talk, and Raoul Medina was happy to comply. “He’s not my man, I’m, uh, only a pilot, as I said. But you’re not Julio’s cousin.”
“Hands up, but first lower that strange gun to the floor. Do not move from the doorway.” As Medina obeyed, he kept hearing Aleman’s breathing behind him. Comal, or whoever he really was, had not been smart to stand so close. Medina had seen men who could actually disarm a gunman positioned this waybut Medina was not one of them, at least not today. Too far from a hospital, and a terrible risk even for fucking Bruce Lee.
“I am a man who takes great interest in strange happenings,” said Comal, still nervous, using one foot to scrape the Mac Eleven to one side. “I can fly an airplane. I heard about the old man who guarded something wonderfully strange here,” he said, the smile threatening to reappear. “And so I asked my friend, ‘Why, if this strange thing is on my land, should I not investigate it, perhaps fly it?’ And so we investigated. Imagine my surprise when the place filled with mist that makes one breathless and took two days to clear.”
“It’s not your land,” Medina bluffed. Aleman’s breathing was no longer audible. Standing in the doorway, Medina could hear things that Comal might not; and it sounded as if Aleman was easing into the next room but the wall facing that room was piled with metal bins and spare lumber.
“Perhaps it might be,” said Comal, shrugging, “given enough money.”
“Who’s going to give it to you? I haven’t got it. Look, take our car, take the damned gun if you want to,” Medina said, and heard a foot scrape echo faintly in the hangar. He spoke louder now. “You think you can fly this airplane away?”
“I have studied it carefully. It is no heavier than the Piper and the Aeronca I have flown, and it has two seats so that you could teach me its manners. Yes, with a teacher I think I can. I have told my friend that I can. And so I will,” said Comal, with the finality of a man who will fulfill a boast or go to hell trying.
Though Raoul Medina’s mouth was dry as Melba toast, he had to keep talking to cover the sounds he heard behind him. “I’m telling you, this isn’t an ordinary airplane.”
“That was my thought,” said Comal judiciously. “By the way, tell your man that if he keeps his weapon, my friend will kill him instantly.”
“I’ll do that,” said Medina, realizing that it was probably another bluff but, all the same, something for Aleman to keep in mind. And maybe if he said it loudly enough, Rodrigues would hear. He started to shout the warning, but Comal silenced him with a backhand across the face. “Quietly. He can hear you. Did you think we did not see the three of you approaching?”
Medina called out more softly then, wondering why Rodrigues hadn’t become suspicious of the long silence. Licking blood from the edge of his lip, he said, exasperated, “You would kill yourself in that airplane the first time you tried to land it,” and then he realized that the truth was more awesome than any lie. “It’s a chingada CIA airplane! I fly it for the CIA,” he burst out, jerking a thumb downward at himself. “You take this airplane and they’ll get you, they’ll get your family, they’ll get your friends, they’ll get your whole damn town!” He saw a shadow of credulity in Comal’s face as he broadened the exaggeration, realizing that to many latinos the Company was synonymous with Satan and perhaps more powerful as a bogeyman of the here and now.
“Where do you think we get weapons and airplanes like these, Comal? We’re big, the biggest thing you ever saw! We’re so big, we could erase your town so nobody would ever know it had existed.”
Then a sort of disappointment crossed Comal’s features. Whatever belief he had entertained, he was discarding it as he spoke. “They are big. Yet here you are, only three men, not in three helicopters but in a small Chevrolet. Not to fly an airplane of steel but one of wood. Not guarded by an army in a new building, but by stinking smoke and an old fool in a firetrap.” He snarled, perhaps infuriated by his moment of obvious indecision, and moved to pistol-whip this liar claiming to be CIA, but to do it he turned the revolver sideways.
Medina grabbed for the pistol with both hands and kicked Comal as hard as he could, aiming for the kneecap but connecting with a shin. Comal was already twisting, snatching the pistol out of reach, and the kick whirled him around so that he fell on his face away from Medina, whose sense of timing said that Comal would shoot him before he could grab the Ingram and cycle a round into its firing chamber.
Medina leaped out into the hangar and ducked behind a low-slung rudder of Blue Sky Three. “Aleman,” he shouted, “get him as he comes out!” Then, with every decibel at his command: “Rodrigues! Help me!” He began to back away farther, realizing that he might get shot by his own man if he made it through that side door. The man who trotted from the next small room was not Aleman but an unkempt stranger in the shabby garb of a farmer. He carried a machete in one hand and a shotgun in the other, and the machete glistened with fresh blood.
Comal, limping into the hangar with both revolver and Ingram, saw the other man too. “Where is your man?” he barked.
“He did not put down his gun, so I carried out your promise,” said the farmer, showing the blade of the machete. “He never saw me.”
At that moment, Medina saw a shadow fill the rectangle of light at the side door. “Take them, Rodrigues, they got Aleman,” he called, but the farmer’s machete clattered to the concrete, and as Rodrigues showed his head for a fast glimpse inside, the shotgun bellowed. A portion of the door’s upper half disintegrated, leaving a hole the size of a kitchen sink. Medina, who had reached the seam between the big hangar doors and was trying to slide one of them open, could see the farmer sliding the shotgun’s pump but could not hear it among the echoes. Comal stuck the revolver in his belt and swung the Ingram up, aiming toward the side door, and then began to shake the weapon in a frenzy when it refused to fire. It had been Medina’s idea to dart outside to safety but that big half-open door moved easily and Comal obviously did not know how to cycle the Ingram’s bolt. Medina kept hauling the hangar door wider, watching the men inside, ready to plaster himself against the outside of the doorframe.
Rodrigues, who knew better than to stand guard without a round in the chamber, had no problem with his own Mac Eleven. His first spray, a half-dozen rounds, ricocheted from the concrete in front of Comal who bent double and dropped the useless weapon. Another blast from the shotgun ripped the doorframe near Rodrigues as Medina hurled himself against the opposite hangar door in the effort to slide it wide open. Reeling from a wall, Comal ducked into the office in time to avoid the next stuttering burst from Rodrigues.
The farmer spun to face Medina as sunlight flooded the hangar, and knelt to get a clear shot beneath the nose of Blue Sky Three. Medina stumbled and fell, and wood splintered over his head as shotgun pellets perforated the hangar door.
“I need that one; he is harmless,” Comal shouted, squatting near the doorway, and risked a shot with the revolver as he peered around the office door. The long burst from Rodrigues sent hunks of old wood flying in the doorway, and Comal rolled into the hangar, his head thudding against concrete as his body twitched.