Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (24 page)

“... an yoo eer mi...”

The inflection is definitely that of a question, and in a moment, as she repeats it again, it pops into focus.

“Can you hear me?”

My mouth is so dry that my tongue keeps sticking to the roof of my mouth. I try to speak, but don’t succeed. Probably I’m making disgusting smacking noises, like a child eating, or a dog licking its chops, but I can’t hear it myself.

“Get him some water.”

A moment later another dark shape approaches. They’re still impossible to see clearly, but by now they both have a little color to them. Someone places a glass at my lips and begins to tip it slowly. I drink, but it’s hard to do. I can’t judge the rate at which the water’s pouring and my coordination is still off. A lot of the water ends up soaking the front of my shirt, but that’s okay, it feels almost as good as the water that makes it into my mouth. It’s hot in here. Stuffy. The glass is taken away.

“Is that better?”

“Eff,” is the best I can manage, trying to say ‘yes’. I nod to emphasize the point.

“Good. Practice speaking. I want you talking. I have questions for you.”

Her English is good, and only slightly accented.

“Whu em uh?”

“Stupid question.”

“Mmm. Too.” I have trouble with the letter ‘r.’ I try again, drawing it out and enunciating as clearly as I can. “T-r-u-e.”

“That’s better.”

It 
is
 better, and my vision’s improving as well. Her face is beginning to come into focus, although the bottom half of it is disguised with a bandana. I can’t see the men yet, they’re too far away, but I bet they’re wearing the same kind of camouflage. I feel comforted by the amateurishness of it. This woman is trying to act like a pro, but she’s not.

There’s something else: it’s clear they stunned me, but they did it sniper-style, from a distance. No pro would do that. Too much risk that you’ll miss and your target will take cover. Too much chance that you’ll get a partial discharge and your target can drag himself away. And even if you get a solid hit, some good Samaritan may interfere before you can get to your target to collect him. None of those things happened, but professionals would never have taken the chance. A professional stun is done up close.

With these thoughts I start to feel some hope. I flex my muscles without moving, testing them without giving the fact away. It’s clear that I’m not up to full strength yet, but my faculties are returning quickly—the wiring on a Forces shell will do that for you. My vision is returning but I pretend to remain unfocussed. Lolling my head around the room, pretending to be sightless, I take in its details.

More hope. We’re in a house, not some institution or military installation. You can tell by the type of door, by the flooring, by the architecture of the window, by the unevenness of the walls. The window is covered with a rough blanket hung from nails, so I can’t see outside, but I can hear traffic. From the sound of it, it’s not far away, so we’re likely on the ground, or maybe one or two floors up. Nothing that can’t be jumped anyway.

“Can you see me?”

“A littuh.”

Actually I can see her quite well, and the men too. They aren’t wearing shells, that’s for sure. Instead of the pumped, perfect forms the vats produce they have the lean, scarred bodies that come with hard living. Each one wears a knife on his belt and one of them is holding the stun rifle they used to knock me out. They’re wearing bandanas as I thought they would be.

Two possibilities present themselves. One is that these jokers are representatives of one of the many militant political groups in Mexico. There are socialist groups like 
Justicia
, 
Solidario
, and 
Todos Somos Uno
. There are also the newer, proto-fascist nationalist groups like 
Memoria
, whose name means simply ‘memory’ in Spanish, or 
Chicahuaque
, which is the plural of the Nahuatl word 
chicahuac
, which means ‘strong’ or ‘hard’. Roughly translated, then, the name 
Chicahuaque
 means “the tough ones” or, if you prefer, “the hardasses,” but in an aboriginal language chosen to represent the authority of the area’s original inhabitants. Whether rooted in Spanish culture or Indian, though, these groups mean to unite a greater Mexico, taking back the territory they lost in California, Texas, and elsewhere, and to rid themselves of the economic domination of the Enclaves to the north.

More likely, though, they’re just kidnappers looking for cash. Kidnappings run at five or six a day in Mexico City these days, and those are just the ones that are reported. The most popular format is the low-key grab: pick someone who’s not rich but not destitute, snatch them, and demand the equivalent of two-hundred, maybe five-hundred dollars, from their family. The family runs around emptying bank accounts, digging money out of hiding places, selling things, pawning things, borrowing, and scraping together the cash. They pay, and the person’s set free.

With the level of poverty in the city, a lot of people resort to minor crimes like this, and yesterday’s victim, now utterly without means, can easily become tomorrow’s perpetrator. Generally the kidnappers have no intention of harming anyone, they just need money, but of course you get a few crazies and accidents, so once or twice a month someone will get hurt or killed. The kidnappings that go badly keep the threat real, which helps to ensure that the rest go smoothly—a system in equilibrium.

Whichever is the case, there’s one thing I don’t understand: the Ghosts arranged my safe passage, backed up by the 
Suerte
. Suarez would surely have made sure that everyone who was potentially a threat to me knew that I was protected. Neither the political radicals nor small-time criminals would ever violate a 
Suerte
 edict. That one detail is confusing, and it makes me uneasy. No matter how I think about it, I can’t fit it into the rest of the picture.

Still, that’s not the immediate problem. I try to assess the three stooges: height, weight, and position. At the same time, my fingers are subtly feeling the chair I’m bound to, trying to figure out what it’s made of. Maybe after the sniper-style attack and the bandanas I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am, when I find that it’s painted wood. 
Wood
, for crying out loud. They’ve used good, solid handcuffs to hold me to it, one set per hand, attaching each of them to a spindle in the chair’s back. But that’s like setting an expensive lock in a fragile door: what’s the point? And my hands aren’t cuffed to each other, just to the chair.

“I see you’re waking up,” the woman says. “Time to get down to business.”

And it is. In one motion I compress my body into a ball with a sudden, hard lurch, drawing my heels up to my ass and pulling my arms forward and together. The result is that the chair’s legs snap off its base and the spindles that held my hands pull free from the seat. I fall to the ground in the process, but so what?

Before the guy with the stunner can aim, I’m rolling to one side and coming to my feet. The stunner is up now, but I’m careful to keep the woman between me and the guy with the gun. He fires anyway, like an idiot, and hits her in the back of the head. At this range it doesn’t stun her, instead the charged metal disc tears away half her head and sprays me with brains. The shooter is the one who looks stunned. I rush toward her and catch her falling body, heaving it back toward him. Instinctively he raises his arms to protect himself. As he does, I swing low, sweeping my leg out and knocking his feet out from under him. I stand quickly and kick him hard in the head. He’s out now, but the last guy is at me with his knife.

I don’t have time for much evasion. He slashes at my face, misses, and opens up a long cut on my shoulder. Seeing me hurt encourages him and he charges me, aiming for the belly this time. I twist to the side, lean back, and extend my right leg, as though I were executing a side-kick. Instead, though, my leg comes up under the man’s knife arm and wraps around it like a snake. My foot is planted against his chest, stopping his forward momentum. Then I yank downward, so that at the same time I snap my torso upright and the man is pulled down, hitting the ground face-first. Along the way his knife cuts my thigh without him even intending it, it’s simply pulled against my leg as I drag him down. It’s a smaller cut than the one on my shoulder, though, and well worth it to have the last man out of the picture. At least I hope he’s the last man. I kick him in the gut, breaking a rib or two to make sure he’s incapacitated. I take his knife, then search the others, finding my kaikki and headpiece in one of the woman’s pockets. I don’t bother with the stunner.

I go to the door and try it cautiously. Not even locked, it opens directly into the street. In a moment I’m outside. It’s still daylight. I haven’t had a chance to learn the neighborhood, but I can see the Suerte compound in the distance. They were holding me barely two blocks from the spot where I fell. Unbelievable. It hardly seems like the work of the 
Suerte
, especially given how little luck my kidnappers had, but Suarez has, if nothing else, failed to ensure my protection. I want to have a word with him.

I slip on the headpiece and start walking toward the compound, which is easily visible above the rubble and makeshift, single-story homes. I’m outwardly cool, but the pain in my shoulder and thigh is feeding my anger. This time I’ve come uninvited and no one comes out to greet me. I find an intercom panel beside the door and touch the plate, activating it.

“Yes? Who is it?” the kaikki says harshly in my ear.

“It’s Gat Burroughs to see Vicente Suarez.”

There’s a longish pause. Presumably the person on the other end is checking to see if my visit will be permitted. Eventually he answers.

“Come in,” is all he says, but I hear the lock in the door click open. I pull on the knob and step back inside, closing the door behind me. A young man is hurrying over to me from one of the nearby buildings.

“I apologize,” he says in Spanish “we had no idea you would come back... you’re hurt!”

He’s gaping at me and it takes me a moment to realize that I’m still covered in someone else’s blood.

“Not badly. This is from someone else,” I say, gesturing at the gore.

“But Vicente’s order?”

“Yes, what about it?”

He seems to realize that he’s in over his head and decides not to address the issue.

“Please follow me.”

He leads me back to the courtyard where Suarez’s people are training. The sparring is still going on, this time with a different set of combatants, two young women. Suarez approaches me from the other side of the courtyard, clearly forewarned that I’ve come back. I stop and watch the fighters for a moment, marveling again at their skill, and perhaps at their luck. I’m not quite a believer yet. Suarez approaches and I see his face harden as he notices my state.

“This is not your blood?” he asks, expertly assessing my fitness as compared with the amount of sticky red blood that’s coating me.

I shake my head.

“Nevertheless, I take it you were attacked. I commend you on surviving, but nonetheless this was not supposed to happen. I will take care of it, you can be sure. Come and get cleaned up.”

I ignore the offer for the moment. There are more pressing issues to deal with.

“It had nothing to do with you, I take it?”

“You think I would break my word to the Ghosts?”

“I don’t know you well enough to decide if you would or not.”

“You’re here, though.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been cut I see, but you’re not dead.”

“No.”

“Then it wasn’t the 
Suerte
. It’s the same thing I said about Max Prince: if we wanted you dead, you’d be dead. It applies to him, it applies to you too.”

“You say that. And people say that kind of thing about you. But people say a lot of things.”

“You doubt our abilities—the power of our 
suerte
.”

I take a moment to wipe my bloody hands on my pants. The blood is drying and doesn’t come off easily.

“Yes, honestly, I doubt you. So far all I have is rumors and your word.”

“You were content to rely on my word regarding Mr. Jerome.”

“That was a suggestion based on logic, not magic based on luck.”

He looks mildly irritated, as though I’m misunderstanding things that are obvious to him. After a moment his face calms, though.

“Fine. You are a rational man, you require proof. Something like a scientific experiment. Am I right?”

“If you can provide it.”

He smiles a little at that. Then calls out loudly without taking his eyes from mine.

“Adalia!”

A young woman leaves the group watching the sparring and jogs over to where we stand.

“Yes Vicente?” she asks in Spanish.

“Get nine of the others and bring them over to the west wall. Tell them to bring throwing knives.”

“Right.”

She leaves again, conferring with some of the others. I haven’t seen Suarez interact with his people before, and it surprises me that there’s so little formality. He uses no title. They even call him by his first name.

“You’re pretty informal with your followers.”

“They don’t follow me, they follow the way that I’ve shown them. I follow it too. We’re something like a family, but based on our philosophical outlook rather than blood ties. I may be older than the others, and I have more good fortune than anyone here, but I am not fundamentally different. I’ve never wanted to be a 
general
.”

Adalia returns with a small group of fellow 
Suerte
, all of them carrying flat, sharp throwing knives. Suarez turns to them.

“You see that door over there,” he says, indicating the door to the outside. “I’m going to count off. On ‘three,’ all of you will throw your knives. You will each pretend that there is someone standing in front of the door, a man of my height, and you will aim at his heart. You will do your absolute best to hit that spot. Are you ready?”

The ten Suerte arrange themselves in a line, all facing toward the door.