Everybody Pays (37 page)

“If something happens . . . ?”

“Look, pal. This is cover. Deep cover. We spent a long, long time setting it up. Our base is there. If this
regime
of yours decides they want to close the place down, the game’s up, understand?”

“
Sí.
But could we not . . . ?”

“Your guys, they’re radiomen, right? I mean, not amateurs? Rhino wouldn’t have to start from scratch?”

“No. Of course not. It is just that we have never seen such a—”

“Get the rig inside another truck. Not a pickup, something with a covered back, okay? Bring it behind the house. Tonight. Right after midnight. Don’t
move
after that. Make sure there’s a piece of red cloth tied onto the antenna. And when you hear three raps, open the door. No smoking, no talking, no piss breaks. You
stay
in there until you hear the raps. You let Rhino in. He’s gonna have maybe a hour to show you
everything.
In the dark, with a flashlight.”

“We can do this.”

“You got the weapons, I’ll give you that. All right, tonight. And give us an extra man on the door, just to be sure.”

“You sure this’ll hold?” Cross asked Rhino, indicating a four-bolt configuration screwed deeply into the wooden floor, with a thick black Perlon climbing line looped around it in a boxed-X pattern.

“My weight times ten,” Rhino assured him. “And it’s only dropping one floor. Too short to even call it rappelling—I can get down in one hop.”

“All right. You know they’re not going to speak English, unless Jorge is there too.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rhino squeaked. “None of the switches are marked with words anyway. I can hand-sign it all, no worries.”

“Tiger will have you covered on the way down. With a silenced piece. If there’s any trouble, the one thing we
don’t
want is noise. . . .”

Rhino nodded, realizing that Cross was on full-auto now, reciting mechanically, not telling anyone anything they hadn’t heard a thousand times. The pre-battle ritual. Meaningless now.

“This two-at-a-time thing doesn’t really work with only three for coverage.” Tiger smiled at Cross.

“Huh?”

“Well, let’s say two of the three want to . . . get together privately . . . No way to do that, is there?”

“I guess not. When we get back . . .”

“Maybe women are different from men,” Tiger said.

“Maybe?”

“All right.” She chuckled. “We’re about to . . . do something. I don’t know how men get ready. Me, I’d kind of like to . . . let some of this energy go someplace, if you get my drift.”

“Tiger . . .”

“Cross, stop playing. There’s nobody watching. But you’ve been watching
me.
And don’t even pretend it’s because you’re afraid I’m going to go off. I’m just as much a pro as you.”

“I know.”

“So?”

“So . . . what?”

“Can’t we . . . be together and watch the pressure point at the same time?”

“One of us at least has to—”

“And you want that to be you, right?” Tiger whispered huskily, grinning.

“Actually, I want it to be you,” Cross said, flat-faced. “But I don’t know if you can keep your concentration.”

“Me? I can do it better than you could.”

Tiger leaned over the railing at the top of the stairs, bent slightly forward at the waist. She was nude. Cross stood behind her, already inside her. Tiger’s silenced pistol swept the area below. “Looks good to me,” she whispered.

“Looks better from here,” Cross replied.

Tiger giggled. “I hope
so.
”

“And you can stay like this until . . . ?”

“Question is, how long can
you
stay like this?” Tiger chuckled, wiggling her hips back against Cross.

It was no contest.

“They can use it,” Rhino said.

“No question?”

“None. They already knew ninety percent of it. Probably could have worked it out by themselves, but it’s not the kind of thing you want to test. A signal that strong, you could triangulate on it in minutes.”

“Then all we’re waiting on is word from the field.”

“I know.”

“Look, Rhino, if Princess had lost it, we probably would’ve heard an alarm—we’re hooked up, and Fal has the transmitter.”

“All we can do is wait it out,” Tiger said gently, putting one hand on Rhino’s gigantic forearm. “You’ve got your five hours coming. Two of the girls aren’t working now. . . You want to . . . ?”

“No offense,” Rhino told her.

“None taken,” she said.

“There’s a pattern,” Rhino said to Cross. It was three days later, and both men were sitting in the kitchen on the first floor, a vantage point that gave them full sound coverage without sight. Good enough for their purposes. The girls were above them, Tiger on the floor above that, asleep.

“To what?”

“We get
heavy
traffic some times; almost none at others.”

“Not so surprising. This is a whorehouse, not a bus station.”

“I know. And this ‘siesta’ thing takes its toll, too. But Buddha has to make his move in daylight, right?”

“I don’t know. That’s the smart way. But it’s got the highest risk . . .”

“He won’t want to fly at night without air-to-air,” Rhino said, certainty in his voice. “Not Buddha. And he won’t want to miss the pickup, either.”

“He’s not coming back alone,” Cross told Rhino, finally picking up on the source of the huge man’s anxiety.

“If he does, he’ll never spend the money,” Rhino said, his voice so low it sounded almost normal.

“I think it’s finished,” Princess told Ace, looking out across a clear-swept area of rock and dirt.

“One more day,” Ace said sourly. “I don’t want to give that fat little motherfucker no excuse not to land.”

“Oh, Buddha wouldn’t do that,” Princess assured him. “We’d all be stuck here if he did that.”

“Sure,” Ace said. And went back to work with his machete.

“Do you believe these men can do as they promised?” a slim woman with a scar that bisected the empty socket of her right eye asked Jorge.

“They are not our people,” he said. “They are not men of honor. They have no cause except money.”

“And what does that mean?” an older man asked from the far corner of the darkened basement. “We have risked much for this.”

“We have risked
nothing
,” the woman hissed at him. “Some . . . money, what is that? A run across the border? Some of our soldiers in their little house of whores? This is nothing. And what we fight for, it is everything.”

“
Sí,
Rosita. I do not mean to—”

“They only took one of my eyes,” the woman said, her voice harsh in the quiet air. “And even if they took both, I could still see. I ask Jorge because, unless these men do as they promise, there will be no risk at all. And no change for our people.”

“I believe they will do it,” Jorge said finally.

Greeted with silence, he continued: “This man Cross, his name is known to the drug lords. And you know, they have armies greater than those of El Puerco. They know his name. And they fear it. Not because he is a man of honor. But because he always delivers. Not merchandise. He and his . . . comrades . . . are not mules. They are soldiers. All of them, like some army. He has his own reasons for doing this. And it is true that we do not know them. But what does it matter? La Casa de Dolor alone—if
that
should fall . . .”