Just Deserts (Hetta Coffey Series, Book 4) (17 page)

When the men jumped from my VW, any benefit of my earlier Valium vanished. If Jan, and even battle-proven Ted, were any indication, we were all in a state of jaw dropping shock, unable to absorb that, like some action movie, masked, armed men were rushing our plane, obviously intent on a hijacking.

Or worse, hijacking the plane, and killing us.

I watched dumbly as my emptied VW rolled forward on her own for a few feet, then rocked to a stop, blocking the runway.

While Jan and I exchanged a look of pure horror, Ted went into a flurry of hitting switches on his console.

With great effort, I croaked, “So, Ted, you have a plan for this sort of thing?” even though it was pretty clear our options were nil to none. The men wanted the plane, and they were going to get it. At least I hoped that’s all they wanted.

As if we weren’t breathing our last, he calmly asked, “Hetta, does that car of yours have a manual or automatic transmission?”

“Manual.” Was this really the time to talk cars? Men.

“Get into the backseat with Jan.”

I unbuckled and inspected my high seat back with dismay. There was only about a foot of clearance above the headrest, and the split between the seats the same, both spaces way shy of my butt size. Somehow, though, I shinnied through with all the grace of a pole vaulting elephant, kicking Ted in the head before landing with a thump in Jan’s lap.

She shoved me into the other seat, none too gently. “We’re good,” I told Ted, although I didn’t know why. Good? Hell, we were screwed.

“Buckle in, and keep your heads down. These bastards are not taking my plane,” Ted told us as he loosed the brakes and gave the engines power, all the while closing on the rear end of my car. With a gentle nudge, Ted centered on my VW’s bumper and began pushing her.

Jan, who had been trying to keep an eye on the bad guys, shrieked as one of them materialized outside the window next to her. Ted hit the gas, and the masked man lost his wing perch and tumbled from sight.

While Jan and I stretched and craned our necks, trying to see what was happening, Ted concentrated on keeping the nose of the plane centered on the VW’s bumper. If we slipped to one side, we would catch a prop and make mincemeat out of my car, and it probably wouldn’t do us much good, either.

I wasn’t exactly sure what the consequences would be, but I instinctively knew that one of us was unstoppable, and the other immovable.

For some reason, possibly because the men didn’t want to harm the plane they were hell bent on stealing, no shots were fired. Yet. As a matter of fact, they now followed us at what seemed an insolently leisurely pace because they had the advantage, and they knew it. Unable to scoot the VW very fast, or very far, we would have no choice but to stop.

When Ted built his runway, he had to cut a big notch into the side of a mountain, leaving three sides with steep drop-offs. Okay, cliffs. He was now pushing my car, and us, toward one of those sheer drops where, in short order, we’d take a five-hundred foot plunge. The bad guys could afford to bide their time.

“Ted, we are going to stop, right?”

“We’d better, because this ain’t no stinkin’ glider. Right now, I’m buying time, giving the ranch hands and Nanci a chance to react to all the commotion. By now I should have buzzed the house, so they’ll know something’s wrong. Our people are armed, probably something these guys didn’t plan on. See any of the good guys yet?”

“No, just those jerks. They’ve fallen back some, probably because they can see we’re running out of runway. Wait a minute, there’s someone crouched down behind them. I can’t…yes! It’s Sonrisa, so others can’t be far behind. Uh, you don’t happen to have any firepower on board, do you?”

“Not much. Reach under your seat. There’s a latch release for a storage compartment.”

I fumbled around and finally found an emergency flare gun case. Not the ideal weapon, but one I’d used to good effect in the past. I loaded a cartridge. “Got it. What do you want me to do?”

“Slow those bastards down. Jan, open your door so Hetta can get a bead on them.”

“I’m on the move,” I shouted as Jan worked on the door, and got it open. I wiggled over her, then she slid into my seat. “I ain’t much of a wingwalker, but I’ll do my best. Jan, hold my feet, make sure I don’t end up head first in the dirt, okay?”

“I’ve got you.”

Ted slowed more. “Okay, guys, this is it. We’re at the end of this rope. Sorry about your car, Hetta.”

I twisted around and caught a final glimpse of my bumper taking a swan dive into space. I gaped until Jan yelled, “Hetta! For God’s sake, shoot someone!”

Pushing onto my knees, I launched forward, then slid my upper body out onto the wing. Jan, true to her word, not only held my legs, she sat on them.

“Okay, make my day,” I growled.

I’d always wanted to say that.

Taking aim on the closest attacker, I was determined to take him out without blowing a hole in our own plane. It wasn’t going to be easy, even though we were now fully stopped, because my firing angle was off.

“Shoot ‘em, dammit,” Jan demanded again.

“I’m tryin’, dammit. Okay, okay, I’ve got him lined up.” I braced my arm as best I could and was squeezing the trigger when the guy suddenly stopped in his tracks, spun, and sprinted away from us, toward the other end of the runway.

“Ha, I scared them off. They’re turning tail.”

Ted left the engines at idle and unbuckled. “Fantastic. Everyone out of the plane. If I have to, I’m going to push this baby over the side, because they are
not
getting it. Hetta, you first, then cover us. Go, go, go!”

We went, went, went.

Jan held onto my feet as long as she could, but when she let go, I still had a goodly headfirst drop. Luckily my fall was broken by a large bush, but then Jan knocked the air out of me when she landed on my back. We rolled aside just in time to avoid being flattened by Ted. All three of us scrambled behind that puny bush, as if it would stop a bullet.

Ted pried the flare gun from my clenched hand and knelt in a classic firing position. I closed my eyes, because everyone knows that keeping one’s eyes clamped shut stops not only bullets, but also monsters that snatch you by the feet from under your bed. I missed my blankie.

Inappropriate laughter shoved me back to reality. Had Ted gone round the bend?

Opening my eyes I saw him standing, gun lowered, pointing with his other hand. “Oh, yeah, baby. It’s my man, Booger Red, and he’s got those assholes on the run. And, here comes the cavalry. Time for us to split, because those guys are way too busy to mess with us anymore. Hetta, you lead. Over the edge, for now.”

We scrambled for the bluff and crouched on a ledge to watch the show. When I looked back and down, only a plume of dust marked where my car ended up. Sigh.

A brigade of farm trucks, tractors, Jeeps and an ATV or two had arrived, and armed ranch hands sped toward the center of the runway, while Booger Red charged from our end. Caught in the middle were the three assailants, who threw their guns down and hands up.

Booger Red, who evidently missed that class regarding the rules of the Geneva Convention, and the niceties of surrender, didn’t even slow. Two thousand pounds of red-speckled fury mowed the kneeling, terrified men down with a bone-crunching wallop heard even above the airplane’s engines.

Bodies flew, but not so far that six-foot horns couldn’t reach them. Tossed over and over into the air like rag dolls, the would-be hijackers endured several more minutes of abuse so violent that Ted actually called for the brindle to stop.

Finally hearing Ted’s voice above his rage, Booger Red went suddenly still. Standing over his victims, bull snot dripping on his foe, he bellowed a victory bawl or two, stomped a hoof, and was turning to leave when one of the men on the ground made a bad mistake. He moved. Once again, the bull head-butted that man, then bulldozed all three for several feet before giving their unconscious bodies a final toss. Stomping one last time, his hoof perilously close to an unconscious attacker’s head, he then casually loped off, tail held high, bloody pieces of camouflage cloth streaming from his horns like Milady’s scarf on her gallant knight’s lance.

“Good bull,” I cheered.

He stopped, turned his head my way, stuck his nose in the air and, I swear, took a bow.

The wounded assailants, bound with rope, had been placed, none too gently, onto a wooden truck bed, then hauled off to the winery barn, since Nanci absolutely, positively refused the bastards a bed in her home.

She did, however, go along with rendering what first aid we could until a local doctor arrived, mainly because we all wanted them alive and explaining. When we went to check on the plane and get our belongings, all the battered men were still breathing and even letting out an occasional moan, but they were in sorry shape.

“What a freakin’ mess,” Ted lamented, pretty much summing up our day. “Well, at least the plane is undamaged, but can’t say the same for your car, Hetta. And now we’re gonna have to call the damned cops for sure, like it or not.”

I know how much people hate sending for the law in Mexico, but it was unavoidable, whether the men who attacked us lived or died. If they live, what do you do with them? Likewise, if they die? Okay, you could bury them out in the desert, but in this case there were way too many witnesses.

“Since they tried to steal your plane,” I said, “I doubt the police will be very sympathetic with them. Besides, it was Booger Red who attacked them, not us, and they did have automatic weapons.”

“What automatic weapons?” Ted asked.

“The ones…oh, I see.”

Jan didn’t get it. “The ones they shot at us with.”

Ted grinned. “Nope, never a shot fired. Not a hole anywhere on the plane, or elsewhere. We must have just imagined they had guns, right?”

Jan still looked puzzled. I think the shock of the incident left her unable to grasp subtleties. “Jan, Ted is right. No guns. There. Were. No. Guns.”

Her frown finally relaxed. “Oh. Oh! Ted’s keeping the guns, right?”

“Keeping what guns?”

A quick meeting was convened, all players in attendance except those guarding our captives and a couple of men posted along the road to guide the doctor, and make sure we didn’t have any more unwelcome company.

Most of the Mexican workers looked to be in shock, none more than Sonrisa. She was literally quaking. I almost felt sorry for the tiny turd. Nanci put her arm around the little Indian and spoke softly in Spanish, reassuring her she was safe, the danger had passed.

Ted, having secured his plane in the hangar, joined us. He spoke in Spanish, with asides to Jan and me as necessary. The gist was that he was reluctantly calling in the law, so anyone who wanted to should scram before they arrived. He would stay put out of necessity, but Nanci, Jan, and I were to hightail it for Bisbee in Nanci’s SUV, pronto. Anyone who chose to stay were not to answer questions from the authorities, but to refer all inquiries to him. From the looks of dismay on the workers’ faces, Ted was going to be a very lonely guy for the next few days.

Sonrisa, once she understood that we three women were driving to the border, asked if we could drop her off in Naco to see her brother. Maybe she was smarter than I gave her credit for.

By the time we were loaded up and ready to roll, the doctor arrived. The would-be hijackers, conscious and belligerent, were pronounced by the doc fit enough to be beaten up by the police when they arrived. He then took a powder before the heat showed. Mexican police, it seems, are highly unpopular, avoided by both bad guys and the innocent alike.

Ted double-secured the hijackers with tie wraps and searched them. They carried no identification, and sullenly refused to talk, which, Ted assured us, would change with a little police brutality, Mexican style.

Before leaving for Bisbee, we drove to the end of the runway, peered over the bluff, and said a final farewell to what was left of my poor Volkswagen. Losing her was like losing my dog, RJ, all over again. Oh, how I longed for one more Sunday afternoon drive with him, his head hanging out the passenger window, splattering drool over cars behind us, and me with my window down in a futile attempt to dissipate seriously lethal  dog farts, a direct result of our weekly Mexican food brunch.

We gals left Ted with the perps and a rapidly vaporizing employee pool.

We spoke little during the trip northward. I drove, because Nanci was too upset. We were almost to Cananea when we met two Mexican police cars, lights flashing, headed south, most likely for the winery. Sonrisa instinctively slid down in her seat, and Nanci ducked her head.

Nanci was rattled, worried about what would happen at the winery when the cops arrived, and fretting over the missing Rosa. Ted, as
patrón
, would be treated with more respect by the fuzz, but she also knew that others, the few men who loyally remained with Ted, would fall under a veil of suspicion in both Rosa’s disappearance, and the attack by hijackers. In a country where everyone is considered guilty until proven innocent, is it any wonder witnesses are hard to come by?

On the other hand, justice is swift and evidence need not be too conclusive. For example, there was the case of the Canadian tourists who were robbed at gunpoint in a Puerto Vallarta park, and the perp was handily caught because he was “not from around here,” and deemed guilty by virtue of the five-hundred peso note found in his pocket. Police were quick to point out that a man of his sort had no business with five hundred pesos. Case solved.

Sonrisa sat in the backseat with Nanci and never uttered a word the whole trip. I glanced at her in the rearview mirror a few times, sizing her up. Those eyes, black and, in my mind, snakelike, fit well with her pulled down lips and chiseled features. Stone carvings of her Mayan ancestors came to mind. Credit where credit is due, though, as shaken as she was immediately after witnessing the hijack attempt, she was now downright stoic, while I was still weak in the knees.

We dropped Sonrisa off near the church, then headed for the gateway to Heaven, or so the US border seemed to us. Eager to be on good old safe American soil, I pulled up next to the customs agent and was handing over our passports when all hell broke loose. Suddenly ordered from the car by yelling agents, we were quickly herded into that now all-too-familiar holding room and left, stunned, to puzzle out what went wrong.

“Damn, Hetta, think they realized who we are?”

Nanci tilted her head. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Oh, nothing, really. Jan and I had a little misunderstanding at this border before Christmas, but it was all cleared up.”

“So you say,” she said dryly, “I can’t wait to hear this story.”

I was recounting our bird smuggling incident when a female officer stuck her head in and told us we’d set off CBP’S PRD. In English, that’s the Customs and Border Patrol officer’s Personal Radiation Device, and we would be individually scanned. She left us more bumfuzzled than ever.

“Uh, Nanci, we did consume a lot of irradiated wine the past two days.”

Nanci shook her head. “If that were the case, every baby in Mexico would set off the sensors. The milk is irradiated.”

“Have you transported cobalt rods in your car?”

“Never.”

The agents returned and escorted me to another room for further scanning, They were closemouthed, but since I didn’t register as hot, I was taken outside. Nanci’s SUV had been moved into an area normally reserved for trucks, so I assumed it, too, was being given a going-over on a larger scale.

Nanci was next to be released, but after another hour we still had not seen Jan. By now, Nanci’s SUV was swarmed by all sorts of agents with mysterious instruments, then, as suddenly as we’d been detained, Jan appeared and we were all let go. Not ones to question freedom, we loaded up and hauled ass for my house.

Turns out, Jan forgot to get a note from her doctor.

“Let me get this straight, Jan,” I said. “That nuclear stress test they gave you at the Mayo Clinic set off a Geiger counter, adding to our already impossibly crappy day?”

“Yep.”

I rubbed my tired eyes. So far we’d been attacked by would-be hijackers, held as possible threats to national security, and then, to top it all off, locked out of my house. My garage door opener was still in my VW, now at the bottom of a cliff, and the front door key was inside the house, in a drawer, because I always entered through the garage. After a couple of false starts, however, I finally remembered the code for the garage door keypad and we got in.

Once in, Nanci placed calls to several high-ranking folks in Mexico City, apprised them of the hijacking attempt, and asked them to use their clout to help her and Ted out of this sticky situation. In Mexico, victims of crimes are held in high suspicion, no matter how innocent. If someone attacks you, they reason, you must have something to hide, otherwise, why would you be attacked?

We all took long hot showers, grabbed some wine and cheese, and headed for the verandah, where Nanci called Ted for an update. The police had, at first, bullied and hectored everyone in sight, but after a phone call originating from Mexico city, they turned downright solicitous. They hauled the bad guys off and promised to make inquiries about the missing Rosa.

Nanci laughed as she told us the story. “You know, I almost feel sorry for those thugs. They probably know nothing about Rosa, but by the time the cops get through with them, they’ll make something up.”

I had my own calls to make, namely to the prince and the Trob. Hmmm, sounds like the title to some new off-off-Broadway production. Maybe by now one of them knew where in hell Jenks got off to.

The Trob did not answer. In all the years I’d known him, this was a first.

I called Allison, his wife, my friend and sometimes lawyer. No answer.

I called the prince. Ditto.

Frustrated beyond belief, I let loose a primal scream, which of course scared the hell out of Nanci and Jan, who rushed in to find out what was wrong, then gave me a good cussing for the fright. I apologized and told them we all needed a good howl, so we headed for the verandah to do so.

Several late afternoon putters threatened us with great bodily harm, which we found hilarious.

Coyotes in the brush yipped answering calls. Neighborhood dogs responded in kind.

Blue trotted up for a treat, cocked his head at our howls, threw his bushy tail into the air, and sashayed off as if to say, “Someone around here needs a modicum of dignity.”

We laughed, drank our wine, and howled ourselves silly in some kind of posttraumatic hysteria, until the cold drove us inside.

I turned on the fireplace, asked if anyone was hungry, but all agreed wine and more Brie was sufficient. Not a great idea, but by then we were way beyond good ideas.

The phone rang and I dove for it. “Hetta?”

“Trob?”

“Is she there yet?”

I tried to think, but wine overload has a way of making that difficult. She? Who?

“She? Who?”

“Allison.”

“Your Allison?”

“Yes.”

“Hang on for just a minute.” I put down the phone, drank a large glass of water, thinking it might dilute some alcohol. Didn’t work.

“Wontrobski, start over. Slowly, please.”

“Is. Allison. There. Yet?”

This was beginning to have a who’s on first Abbot and Costello flavor.

“You know, I can normally translate your language, no matter how esoteric, but help me out here. Where is Allison supposed to be?”

“She should be at your house by now.”

“Why would—?”

The doorbell rang and Jan  trilled, “Allison, what on earth are you doing here?”

“Ah’ve left Wontrobski.”

“Trob?” I said into the phone.

“Yes.”

“Yes,” I said, leaving him with a good dose of his own cryptic medicine.

We hustled Allison before the fire for a grilling. Since she was several months preggers, she refrained from joining our quest to drink all the wine in the house, but she didn’t seem to mind that we were half-past tipsy. I made her a cup of tea before we settled in to hear her story. More surprising to me than her marrying the Trob in the first place was that she’d now left him.

I waited until she took a sip of Earl Grey, then demanded, “Okay, what’s wrong?”

“D-d-dubai,” she blubbered.

Jan handed her a tissue. “
Gesundheit
.”

“No, Dubai. He wants us to move there.”

Now that was a shocker. Wontrobski, leave the city of San Francisco? My God, I can remember when he’d hardly leave the Baxter Brothers building. When I first met him, he worked eighteen hours a day, then walked a short distance to his hotel room. That was the sum total of his world. After he married Allison, however, he’d expanded his horizons slightly, but actually getting on an airplane? No way.

“Allison,” I took her hand, “you can give us the details later, like when we’re sober enough to remember them, but for now, I don’t think you have a thing to worry about. Fidel Wontrobski will never, ever, board an airliner.”

“You’re right, he won’t. They’re gonna take us there on a big ship, along with everyone else. Baxter Brothers is moving their headquarters to Dubai.” She suddenly looked alarmed. “Oh, crap.  That’s a major secret. You can’t tell anyone, okay?”