Vice(78)

Ocho hovers off to one side, clasping hold of his Walkman headphones in one hand, a rifle in the other. Plato studies him warily, looking like he’s about to hurl himself at the man any moment.

“It’s okay,” Laura says. “He’s one of us.”

One of us. One of the broken. One of the wounded. Plato grunts, struggling to his feet. He approaches my sister, slowly taking both her and Natalia in his arms. They stand like that for a long time, while Ocho and I simply watch them.

An hour later, we’re on the road. Ocho drives, while I sit beside him in the passenger seat of the Humvee, which he had stashed three hundred meters down the mountain, already waiting for us. None of us have a cell phone. God knows where the f*ck mine went, lost at some point while we were all fighting for our lives. Ocho takes us to a small, run-down shack in the village as soon as we reach the foot of the mountain, and through a series of grunts and gestures manages to persuade the owner of the only landline in Orellana to let us use it.

“Hello?” Jamie’s voice is on edge. He already knows it’s me calling, and he’s bracing for the worst.

“We’re out,” I say simply. “Any chance you might be able to organize a ride?”

“How many seats?”

I look at the faces of the stunned, exhausted, blood-covered people surrounding me, and I say, “Five.”

We drive through the night, and into the next day. Around two in the afternoon, Laura insists that we stop off somewhere to buy medical supplies. She says I look like dog shit, and I can believe it. I feel like dog shit. I’ve lost a lot of blood. Just because I’ve taken bullets in the past doesn’t mean the experience of being shot is any more pleasant. Natalia argues with an old man in a pharmacy just outside of a small settlement called La Frontera, The Border, aptly named considering it’s proximity to the crossing into Peru.

The old guy in the pharmacy doesn’t ask any questions as he inspects my shoulder. He says it’s a through-and-through, that the bullet traveled straight out the other side of my body, and then he cleans the wound, stitching me up and handing over a couple of antibiotics. The wound is almost one hundred percent going to get infected, but I’ll be able to receive more comprehensive medical treatment once I’m back in New Mexico. The painkillers the guy gives me are legit, and soon I feel like I’m f*cking flying as Ocho drives us through an unmanned checkpoint into Peru.

Colombia would have been closer, but planes entering the States from Bogota or any other port out of there are monitored so rigorously, we would never make it back into the States. Jamie decided departing from a tiny airstrip in Peru would be safer, so we head south instead of north.

We’re on the road for forty-eight hours. A heavy, tense silence settles over the car, no one really feeling the desire to discuss what we all just went through. Occasionally, I feel Natalia’s cool touch on the back of my neck, and I can’t help but wonder what the f*ck is going on in her head. The life she knew is now over. Nothing can ever be the same again. Is she happy to be running from Ecuador, ducking off highways every time we see a cop car, sleeping in snatches whenever we can? Is she happy that Fernando’s dead? I’m too f*cked up on pain meds and pain itself to ask her right now, in front of others, where she might be too upset, worried or ashamed to admit otherwise.

We arrive at the tiny airfield Jamie picked out just as the sun is going down. It’s not really even an airfield. It’s a flight school, of all things, and the place looks like it’s been closed for years. Full-blown trees are growing out of the cracked blacktop, and the control building looks like it’s about to fall down. If it weren’t for the single, pristine white single prop Cessna sitting at the far end of the runway, I’d think we’d come to the wrong place.

There’s no one to stop us from driving out onto the blacktop. No one to ask us for passports, or confirm our visas. Ocho guns the Humvee’s engine, and then we’re pulling up alongside the small aircraft, and Carnie, one of the Widow Makers’ recently promoted members, is hopping down out of the plane.

“Took you long enough, motherf*cker,” he says, punching my arm. I wince, trying to hide how painful the light tap is, but Carnie notices.

“Another war wound, man?”

“You could say that.”

“Oh well. Chicks dig scars. And speaking of chicks…” His eyes are all over Laura, appraising her, devouring her hungrily from the ground up. Such a f*cking *. I give him a warning glance so caustic it could strip paint.

“Don’t even think about it, shithead. That’s my sister.”

Carnie’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “No f*cking way! You’re Laura? You’re alive?”

She nods.

Carnie can’t stop looking between the two of us, shaking his head, grinning like he just won the lottery. “That is bad ass, man. Bad. Ass.”





CHAPTER NINETEEN





REUNION





Since the Cessna’s such a small plane, we have to refuel in Mexico. Only Carnie gets out of the plane, though, and the airport officials don’t ask questions. Pick the right town in Mexico, and a ten-thousand-dollar bribe can buy you anything.

Soon, we’re flying over New Mexico. The wheels touch down, and the Cessna bounces once as Carnie aims the plane’s nose directly toward the Widow Makers’ compound in the distance. In the back of the plane, Laura’s forehead is pressed up against the seatback in front of her, and she’s white as a sheet. Anxious, by the looks of things.