Hunt at the Well of Eternity (6 page)

“Cierra!” Señor Vladimir Antonio de la Esparza said with a big smile of welcome. “I was afraid you weren’t going to be able to make it!”

“I was delayed,” she said as he put his hands on her bare shoulders and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

“No trouble, I hope.”

“No, just business.” That was an outright lie, of course, and Esparza would realize it if the police showed up looking to question her about Carlos’s murder. Gabriel hoped it would take them a while to get around to that.

Of course, Esparza might already know it was a lie—if he was the one who’d sent the assassins to the museum in the first place.

Cierra turned and held out a hand toward Gabriel. “I hope it’s all right that I brought along a colleague of mine. This is Señor Gabriel Hunt.”

Esparza’s rather bushy gray eyebrows rose. “Of the Hunt Foundation?”

“You may be thinking of my brother, Michael, Señor Esparza,” Gabriel said coolly. “I don’t really get involved.”

“You are too modest,” Esparza said. “My business is communications, but my passion is history and archeology. I’ve been fortunate enough to help numerous museums acquire items for their collections, including our dear Cierra’s, of course, and naturally in the course of those efforts I’ve heard of both the Hunt Foundation and the illustrious Gabriel Hunt.”

He put out a hand. Gabriel shook it. “Illustrious,” Gabriel said. “That’s a new one for me. More often I hear ‘notorious.’”

“Well…one has to be a bit of a pirate to be a successful explorer, eh?” Esparza grinned. “Welcome to my villa, Señor Hunt. Please, make yourself at home.”

“Gracias,
Señor Esparza.”

Waiters were moving around the room, carrying trays of drinks. Gabriel’s jaw tightened as Esparza motioned one of the men over. This reminded him too much of what had happened at the Metropolitan Museum the night before. These waiters wore white jackets instead of red, but still, their presence made him tense.

He reminded himself that waiters carried drinks around cocktail parties all the time. It didn’t have to mean anything.

He accepted a margarita from one waiter and sipped it while Cierra made small talk with Esparza. From her appearance and manner you’d never have guessed that she’d gone through a shootout and a friend’s murder less than an hour earlier. He supposed that Cierra’s upbringing in a dangerous area like Chiapas had given her steadier nerves than most people.

Esparza turned to Gabriel and asked, “Are you going to be doing business with the museum, Señor Hunt? Selling some artifact you’ve acquired, perhaps?”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve recently put my hands on a nice item Dr. Almanzar might be interested in,” Gabriel replied. “Just last night, in fact.”

Was that a flicker of something more than polite interest in Esparza’s eyes, Gabriel asked himself, or just his imagination?

For a man who didn’t believe in coincidences, he thought, he was asking himself to accept a rather large one: that Cierra would bring him right to the home of the man who was behind the bloody attack at the Met and the ensuing attempts on Gabriel’s own life.

And yet perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence at all. The whole affair was tied in with those flags of General Fargo’s, and the flags’ trail led right to the Museum of the Americas. Esparza’s connection with the museum could have put him onto something that had prompted the violence. Esparza could have found out somehow that Mariella was taking the general’s personal standard to New York and been willing to go to any lengths to stop her from turning it over to the Hunt Foundation.

The hidden flags seemed to burn against Gabriel’s back as that thought went through his head. To incite the ruthless brutality Gabriel had seen since last night, the flags had to be very valuable indeed.

He wondered what Esparza would do if he knew that Gabriel had the flags on him at this very moment.

He didn’t intend for the man to find out. It would be better, Gabriel told himself, if he and Cierra got out of here as soon as they reasonably could.

“You and Cierra are in negotiations concerning this item, then?” Esparza asked, his smile never wavering.

“You could say that. My apologies for keeping her away from your little get-together until now, señor.”

Esparza waved a hand.
“De nada.
She is here now, blessing us with her loveliness, and this is all that matters.” He reached over, slid that same hand up Cierra’s bare arm, leaned closer to her. “Is this not so,
querida
?”

Her smile shrank a little, Gabriel thought. He wondered how far she’d had to go in the past to secure Esparza’s help for the museum…not that it was any of his business.

“You’re too kind, Vladimir,” she murmured.

“Not at all, not at all. Your beauty outshines that of any woman here…and your intelligence is far above theirs as well.” He looked at Gabriel. “I’ve always believed that intelligent women are the most attractive, Señor Hunt. What about you?”

“I can’t argue with that,” Gabriel said. “Unfortunately, Dr. Almanzar and I have to continue our business, so we’ll be leaving—”

“So soon?” Gabriel might have been mistaken, but he thought that Esparza’s grip tightened on Cierra’s arm. She kept her face carefully impassive, though. “That is a great pity. Are you certain it cannot wait until tomorrow?”

“I’m sure,” Gabriel said. His nerves had been crawling ever since he entered this luxurious villa, and by now his instincts were yelling for him to get out.

“Well, one cannot stand in the way of history, can one?” Esparza leaned in and kissed Cierra again on the cheek, then shook hands with Gabriel. “Farewell, Señor Hunt. I hope to see you again soon.”

“I’m sure we’ll run into each other,” Gabriel said. He took hold of Cierra’s other arm, and for a second she was caught between them, as if they were about to have a tug of war over her.

But then Esparza let go of her, and Gabriel steered her toward the door.

“What was that all about?” Cierra whispered to him as they weaved their way through the crowd.

“Esparza had something to do with what happened at the museum,” Gabriel said, keeping his voice low.

Cierra stopped short.
“What?
Are you really
loco
, Gabriel? Vladimir is the museum’s biggest benefactor.”

“Then he probably knows all about General Fargo’s flag and the legend of the gringo warlord, doesn’t he?”

Frowning angrily, Cierra stared at him for a moment, but then Gabriel saw doubt begin to creep into her eyes. She was smart enough to know that what he was saying made sense. Or at least that he had no reason to lie about it.

“And he fits the description of the other man who went to Florida to try to find out more about the general,” Gabriel went on. “Do you know any of his associates who look like the man I bayoneted?”

“Of course not! The very idea is insane.” She paused. “Of course, I don’t know everyone who works for Vladimir…”

“I didn’t think so.”

“But that doesn’t mean—” She stopped and looked back the way they had come. Gabriel did, too, and they saw Esparza standing on the other side of the room watching them. His affable smile had disappeared, and now he had the look of a predator about him, an intense stare that had locked in on his prey.

“Dios mio,”
Cierra breathed. “You could be right. He’s always been very generous when it comes to the museum, but he has a reputation for ruthlessness in his business.”

“And in getting anything else he wants, I’d bet,” Gabriel said. “Let’s get out of here.”

She clutched at his arm. “If he is who you say…will he allow us to leave?”

“I think he will. He won’t want any trouble in his own home, with all his fancy friends around.”

Gabriel was aware of Esparza’s hawk like gaze following them all the way out of the ballroom. As they passed the bodyguards, he had to wonder if either of them had been among the groups he’d traded shots with several times recently. It was certainly possible.

Danger seemed to lurk in the shadows along the driveway, but Gabriel and Cierra reached the jeep safely. “Hold on a minute,” he said as she reached for the door handle.

He knelt to take a quick look under the vehicle. When he saw nothing unusual there, he lifted the hood and checked under it, too.

“You thought he might try to blow us up?” Cierra asked in an astonished tone.

“Not really. Again, there would be too many awkward questions for him to have to answer, even for a man of his wealth and power. But it never hurts to make sure.”

As they climbed into the jeep, Cierra asked, “Where are we going now?”

“Take me back to the hotel and drop me off there. Your part in this is over. Esparza won’t bother you. He may suspect that I told you some things I shouldn’t have, but he can’t know for sure. And he probably thinks he can continue to make use of you in the future, so he won’t get rough with you.”

Her voice was chilly as she said, “No one uses me, Señor Hunt.”

“I just meant that he needs you to remain at the museum.”

Cierra started the jeep and backed up, then turned around and drove out through the massive gates at the entrance to the estate. She started down the winding road toward the bottom of the hill.

Gabriel heard the high-pitched growl of motorcycle engines behind them even before they were out of sight of Esparza’s villa.

“Son of a bitch,” he said as he reached under the seat for his gun. “I was wrong.”

“The notorious Gabriel Hunt, wrong?” Cierra said. “About what?”

“Looks like Esparza wants me dead bad enough that he doesn’t care if you have to die, too.”

Cierra stared at him for a second before Gabriel said, “Punch it!” Her foot came down hard on the gas and sent the jeep spurting ahead. She hauled hard on the wheel as the vehicle skidded around a bend in the road.

Gabriel had the Colt in his hand now. He twisted around in the seat to look through the rear window. Four headlights came into view behind them, bobbing and weaving a little as the speeding motorcyclists fought to keep their bikes on the road.

“Déjà vu all over again,” Gabriel muttered. Instead of being pursued across the Queensboro Bridge by an SUV full of killers, now he had four assassins on Harleys chasing him down a Mexican hillside.

The big difference was that he wasn’t alone tonight.

Cierra Almanzar was with him, and her life was in danger, too.

“Take the turns as fast as you can without sending us off the road,” he told her as he started to clamber over the seat into the storage area in the rear of the jeep.

“What are you going to do?”

“Try to even up the odds.” He unfastened the flexible rear window and flung it up out of the way.

“Gabriel!”

She sounded alarmed, like something bad had just popped up in front of them. He jerked around to face front again. “What is it?”

“You can’t just start shooting at them! They may be innocent—”

The bullet that suddenly shattered the right-hand side mirror ended that argument. Cierra screamed and jerked the wheel involuntarily, sending the jeep in a screeching skid toward the edge of the road.

The drop-off wasn’t that far, but it was steep and Gabriel knew that if they went off the road at this speed, chances were neither of them would survive the crash. He was about to lunge back over the seat to grab the wheel and try to right the jeep, but before he could do that, Cierra tightened her grip on the wheel and pulled the vehicle back to the center of the road.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m still not used to being shot at.”

“You just keep us on the road,” Gabriel said as he turned back to their pursuers. “I’ll see what I can do to get them to stop shooting.”

He saw muzzle flashes from the bikers, who had closed the gap to about fifty yards. They were able to take the turns faster than Cierra could in the jeep. The bikes leaned far over as their riders careened around the bends in the road.

Luckily, they hadn’t run into any other traffic so far on the descent from Esparza’s villa. Gabriel hoped it stayed that way. He stuck the Peacemaker out the back of the jeep and squeezed off three shots as he moved the barrel from right to left. Accuracy was next to impossible under these conditions, but the way the motorcyclists were spread out across the road, he thought he had at least a chance of hitting one of them.

One of the bikes suddenly spun out of control. Gabriel didn’t know if he’d hit it or its rider or if the gunman had just lost control of the motorcycle. Either way, the rider slammed into the ground and then the bike landed on him with crushing force before bouncing and skidding along the road, sending up sparks. The rider didn’t get up.

Then the jeep was around another turn and all of the killers were out of sight for the moment. Gabriel looked around the back of the jeep to see if there was anything else he could use as a weapon.

He spotted a plastic gas can, picked it up and shook it. He heard a sloshing sound. Not full, but maybe half. That would do. He set the can down on the floorboard, pulled the tails of his shirt out of his trousers, and ripped off a thick strip.

“What are you doing back there?” Cierra called over her shoulder.

“Getting ready to set off some fireworks,” Gabriel told her. He stuffed the piece of shirt down into the gas can’s spout, then tilted the can so that the gas would soak the end of it and seep up the makeshift fuse. When he could smell the sharp tang of it, he knew it was ready.

He had a vintage Zippo lighter in his jacket pocket. He didn’t smoke, but he’d found it handy to carry a lighter anyway. There was always a chance you might come across a beautiful woman who needed a light—or a Molotov cocktail. And because they were designed to withstand the rigors of combat, Zippos were extremely reliable. He fished his out now, flipped open the top, and spun the wheel as he held it to the gas-soaked piece of shirt.

The flame caught instantly, flaring up. Cierra glanced over her shoulder and cried out in alarm.

Gabriel was already tossing the gas can out the back of the jeep, though. He heaved it hard, knowing that it would explode in seconds and wanting to be as far away when it did as possible. The can hit the road, bounced once as the motorcyclists saw it and tried to steer around it.

Then a ball of fire bloomed in the night like a red and orange and blue flower, covering the road almost from one side to the other. Gabriel caught a glimpse of two of the bikes being engulfed in it, and then he couldn’t see them anymore.

The fourth and final man zoomed his bike toward the hillside, though, driving up on the slope to avoid the burst of flame. Gabriel grimaced as he watched the man wrestle the motorcycle back onto the road, past the fire. The pitch of the bike’s engine rose even more as its rider accelerated in pursuit of the jeep.

A horn blared from the other direction, and Cierra said, “Gabriel!”

He twisted around, saw some sort of big, heavy luxury car coming up the hill straight at them. During the last turn, Cierra had been forced to drift out of her lane and into the facing one. They were seconds away from a head-on collision, with a vicious killer coming up behind them.

“Brake!” Gabriel shouted. “Stand on it!”

Cierra slammed both feet on the brake pedal. Rubber screamed against the pavement. Smoke rose from the tires as they locked and skidded. The other vehicle was trying to stop, too.

But the motorcycle was going too fast. Gabriel saw it coming and ducked. At the last second the rider tried to lay the bike down, but he was too late. It slammed into the back of the jeep but the rider kept going, soaring into the air and flying completely over Cierra’s
niño
, screaming every bit of the way.

That scream was cut off as the man crunched into the front grille of the luxury car. The car was still moving, and the impact must have pulped every bone in the assassin’s body. The car finally rocked to a stop, but not before running over the man as well.

“Go around them,” Gabriel told Cierra. She sat hunched over the wheel, breathing heavily.

“What? But shouldn’t we check on those people in the car?”

“More of Esparza’s men may be on their way. Go around them.” He stuck his head out the back window and checked the damage the motorcycle had done when it rear-ended the jeep. The fender was bashed in, but that appeared to be the extent of it.

“Go!” he said again to Cierra, and this time she complied. The jeep was still running. She gave it gas, veered around the stopped car, and shot down the hillside.

A minute later they reached the bottom of the slope. Paseo de la Reforma was nearby, and once they got onto the boulevard, they could blend into the heavy traffic that hardly ever let up, night or day.

“We need a place where Esparza can’t find us,” Gabriel said.

“Us?” Cierra repeated.

“I didn’t want you in the middle of this, but you are. Now that Esparza’s seen you with me, he’s written you off. Clearly he told those bikers to kill us both.”

“Then we should go to the police. We can tell them what happened…” Cierra’s voice trailed off, and after a moment she said in a dull tone, “That won’t work, will it? As much money as Vladimir has, the authorities would never believe us. Even if they did, they wouldn’t go against him.”

Gabriel nodded. “That’s right. I’d say our only chance is to get out of Mexico City and beat Esparza to whatever it is he’s after.”

“You mean…”

“I’m sorry, Cierra.”

“We’re going to Chiapas, aren’t we?”

“And wherever the trail leads us from there.”

“Chiapas,” he heard her mutter as her hands tightly gripped the wheel. “You know how to make a girl’s night, Gabriel Hunt.”

Going back to the hotel would be too risky, Gabriel decided, and returning to the museum was out of the question. The police would still be there, and Esparza might have men watching both places. Cierra’s apartment wasn’t safe either, since Esparza knew where she lived.

“He’s never been there, though,” she snapped. “So get what ever you were thinking out of your head.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything,” Gabriel lied. “Is there somewhere else we can go that he wouldn’t know about?”

Cierra thought it over for a moment, then said, “The old man who was the foreman on the plantation when I was a little girl lives here in Mexico City now. I’ve tried to keep in touch with him. He’s really the closest thing to family I have left from that time. I’m sure I’ve never mentioned him to Vladimir. And he retired from the plantation so long ago, even if Vladimir investigated my background he wouldn’t have turned up Pancho’s name.”

Gabriel nodded. “He sounds perfect. That is, if you don’t mind involving him in this.”

“I don’t know where else to go.” She laughed softly. “And Pancho is a fierce old buzzard. He would feel insulted if he ever found out that I was in trouble and didn’t come to him.”

“All right. Let’s go there now, before Esparza has a chance to pick up our trail again.”

A few minutes later Cierra left Paseo de la Reforma and turned onto a highway that led out of the city. “Pancho lives in a
colonia
on the southern edge of town,” she explained.

“Does he live alone?” Gabriel asked.

Cierra laughed. “Oh, no. His wife and their children and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren live with him. It’s a very extended family.”

Gabriel hated to get that many more innocent people involved. “It would probably be a good idea to tell this old friend of yours as little as possible about what’s going on,” he suggested.

“I’d trust Pancho with my life,” she said.

“That’s exactly what you’ll be doing…but I was thinking more for his sake than ours. If he can just give us a place to stay for the night, in the morning we can leave for Chiapas.”

Cierra nodded. She was still taking things awfully well, Gabriel thought, considering that just a few hours ago she hadn’t thought that the night held anything more than another boring cocktail party among the rich and beautiful at Esparza’s villa. The possibility of being surrounded by violence and death had surely never entered her head. Normal people just didn’t think about such things.

Which just went to show you, Gabriel thought wryly, how far from normal his life was…

It took quite a while in the heavy traffic to reach the
colonia
where Pancho Guzman lived with his large family. It was a lower-middle-class neighborhood with narrow, winding streets but what appeared to be fairly spacious, well-kept houses behind narrow lawns. Cierra brought the jeep to a stop behind a rusty old pickup, in front of a house where one light still burned in a front window. Most of the houses along the street were already dark, because this was a working neighborhood where people turned in early so they could get up and go to their jobs the next morning.

When Gabriel and Cierra got out, Cierra went to the back of the jeep and examined the damage the motorcycle had done when it crashed into the vehicle. With a look of dismay, she shook her head.

“This jeep has been on digs all over the country, in all sorts of wilderness, and never got a scratch on it. Look what happens to it in the fanciest part of Mexico City!” She glared at him for a second and then said, “Come on.”

The man who answered her knock stood tall, straight, and broad-shouldered and didn’t appear old at first glance. Then Gabriel saw how his face had been darkened to the color of old saddle leather by years of exposure to sun and wind and how hundreds of tiny wrinkles had seamed and gullied his skin. The man’s voice boomed out, though, as he said in Spanish, “Cierra! Little one! How are you?”

He threw his arms around her and gave her such an energetic hug that her feet came up off the porch for a second. She laughed as she returned the hug.

“I’m fine, Pancho, but…I need help.”

The old man let go of her and turned toward Gabriel, his hands clenching into big, knobby-knuckled fists. “Is this gringo bothering you?” he asked in an ominous voice.

“No! No, not at all. This man is a friend. Gabriel Hunt, meet Pancho Guzman.”

Gabriel realized now that Pancho had only one eye; the right socket was empty and sunk deep in the weathered face. But the man’s left eye glittered with life and intelligence. He stuck out a big right hand and shook with Gabriel.

“Señor Hunt, welcome to my home,” Pancho said, switching to English. He looked at Cierra and quirked an eyebrow. “You and this hombre…?”

“We just met tonight, Pancho,” she said. “It’s not like that. We’re…business associates, I suppose you could say.”

Pancho nodded. “Ah.”

“And we need help.”

“You said that, little one. Tell me, what can Pancho do?”

“We need a place to stay for the night. Some bad men are after us.”

“Bandits?” Pancho growled. “Like in Chiapas?”

“You could almost say that,” Gabriel said. “But the less you know about it, the better for you and your family, Señor Guzman. Cierra and I are leaving on an expedition tomorrow, but first we need some sleep and some supplies, and a place to get the doctor’s jeep off the street and out of sight, just in case anyone comes looking for it.”

Pancho nodded. “I can provide all these things, and I ask for no explanations. The word of this
niña
is good enough for me.”

“Thank you, Pancho,” Cierra said as she laid a hand on the old man’s arm. “I knew I could count on you.”

“Always,” Pancho vowed. “Your father was a good man, and your mother was a saint. I should have been there to protect them from the evil that came to the plantation.”

“Then you would have died, too,” Cierra pointed out.

“Yes, but it would have been a good death, fighting those
bastardos
!”

Gabriel hoped that Pancho wouldn’t get a chance to die fighting the bastards who were stalking him and Cierra now.