Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

Faroe smiled. “Good idea, amada. Then Ted wouldn’t have to worry about being someone’s prison bitch. Hector has shooters in Logan Heights. If I don’t get to Ted first, they will. Either way, he’s dead meat.”

More swallowing.

More ice clinking.

“Suck up something more useful than booze,” Grace said coldly. “Suck up some guts.”

“Fuck you,” Franklin said.

“She has,” Faroe said.

The silence spread.

“Okay, okay,” Franklin said. “She was useful but that’s over. What do you want from me?”

“Be ready to go south on very short notice,” Faroe said.

“Oh no. No way. I’ll cooperate, but I’m not going into Mexico.”

“You’ll do what we tell you to do,” Faroe said. “If we’re lucky, none of us will have to leave U.S. soil.”

“What about the FBI?” Franklin asked anxiously.

“String them along for a few more hours.”

“But-”

“Do it or die,” Faroe said ruthlessly. “Your choice.”

“I-God-okay. Okay. I’ll do it.”

NORTH OF ENSENADA

MONDAY, 8:30 A.M.

THE HELICOPTER DARTED STRAIGHT into a green-brown hillside bowl, then banked sharply and flared over a flat landing spot just outside a rectangle of crumbled walls. Sun-bleached grass inside the ruins flattened in the prop wash as the pilot skidded the machine to a hovering halt twenty-five feet above the ground, then began to settle stiffly to the ground.

Faroe let out a breath. He was glad that Steele had talked Grace into staying in San Ysidro in case Franklin or even Lane called again. The whole flight had been fast and furious.

And low.

Really low.

They’d been flying nap of the land to avoid Mexico’s air-control radar.

So far, so good.

A black Toyota Forerunner was parked in the shade of a scrubby oak tree near what once had been the front door of the mission church. Dressed in jeans, a guayabera, and a broad-brimmed Panama hat, Father Magon leaned against the front fender of the truck. Holding on to his hat with one hand, he turned his shoulder to the prop wash.

“He looks more like a campesino than a priest,” the pilot said.

“I should have told him to wear his cassock. But he knows what I want, and he knows the Pai-Pai. He must have thought civilian clothes would get the job done quicker.”

The pilot eased down on the power. The heavy blade spinning overhead slowed, but it still was going fast enough to cut through a man’s skull.

Faroe undid straps, set aside the noise-canceling earphones that allowed pilot and passengers to communicate, and popped open the door. A moment later he was on the dry, dusty ground, running out from under the chopper’s deadly, whirling umbrella.

“Glad you showed up,” Faroe said, shaking Magon’s hand. “Let’s go. We’re on a short clock.”

As soon as both men were strapped in, the chopper leaped for the sky.

Faroe tapped his headset, signaling Magon to put his own on.

“One of Beltran’s men, a cousin of a cousin of a cousin,” Faroe said, “will meet us. He knows the local dialect.”

“So do I,” Magon said. “As you guessed, I was born in the village. But Hector doesn’t know that. He thinks I’m a chilango who pissed off a cardinal.”

Faroe smiled.

“You really think this miner will risk his life to help you?” Magon asked. “Because if Hector finds out about this, we’re all dead.”

“True fact,” Faroe said dryly.

He dug into the hip pocket of his jeans and pulled out a chamois drawstring bag the size of his palm. Gently, shielding the contents as best he could from the helicopter’s rough ride, he opened the drawstrings.

Then he spilled a thin stream of white fire into his palm. The gems caught the late-afternoon sunlight before Faroe made a fist over them. He held his fist out to the priest, who automatically opened his own hand.

Faroe dribbled twelve diamonds one by one into the priest’s palm. Most of the stones were pea- or bean-sized. One was as big as a man’s thumbnail.

“They are real?” Magon asked.

“As real as death. Five hundred thousand Yankee dollars in very portable form. Here, take the bag. You’ll need it to keep the stones corralled.”

“But why are you giving the diamonds to me?”

“They’d frighten a poor miner even more than the prospect of death. You’re not intimidated by wealth. Take those, convert them into cash, and help the families of the seventeen men who were killed, and the one who survived.”

“And in return?”

“The tunnel.”

Narrow-eyed, Magon glanced from the stones to Faroe.

“Don’t worry, padre. I didn’t kill anybody for them.”

“The thought had occurred.”

“No blood on these so far.” Faroe’s smile was thin. “Not that church jewels have always been clean.”

Magon shook his head sadly. “You are indeed a cynic.”

“A realist. So how about it? Will you persuade the miner to help?”

Magon looked at the diamonds for a long time. “El Alamo has no well. That would be a good place to start.” He looked at Faroe. “You are very generous. I’m sure the miner could be persuaded for much less. Perhaps you are not as much of a realist as you think.”

Faroe didn’t answer.

The priest tilted his hand so that the morning sun fell on the stones, turning them into fire. Then, slowly, he poured the stones back into the chamois bag, tied it securely, and pushed it deep into a pocket of his jeans.

“I will do what I can,” Magon said.

“That’s all anyone can ask. Even God. Did you bring a dog collar? It might comfort the poor bastard we’re asking to risk his life.”

“No collar. Just this.”

Magon reached inside the neck of his cotton shirt and pulled up the heavy gold chain he wore around his neck. A splendidly baroque gold crucifix hung from the chain. The cross was almost as big as his hand.

“The gold in this cross was mined in El Carrizo a century ago. It is well known among the Pai-Pai. One of their martyred leaders wore it. He was my great-grandfather.”

Faroe looked at the antique crucifix and hoped it would be enough.

EL ALAMO

MONDAY, 8:58 A.M.

BELTRAN’S COUSIN OF A cousin of a cousin was a thin man named Refugio. He met them at the dirt runway in a black Dodge crew-cab pickup that gleamed despite a coating of back-road dust.

Faroe recognized the smuggling type, if not the individual. Refugio had the blunt, hard features of an Indian. The two halves of his mustache didn’t meet on his upper lip. Wispy hair curled down to both corners of his mouth. He was dressed jalisqueno style-cowboy boots, jeans, a wrangler’s shirt, and a sweat-stained Stetson with a single tassel on the back brim.

He carried a Colt semiautomatic pistol, cocked and locked.

The slab-sided barrel was thrust through his ornately tooled leather belt, but outside the waistband of his jeans. The pistol was as much a part of Refugio as his hat, and worn just as casually.

Faroe shook hands in the gentle style of Mexico rather than the firm, you-can-trust-me gringo style. But when he spoke in Spanish, he was as direct as any Yankee.

“We have very little time to save a boy’s life,” Faroe said, urging everyone toward the truck. “What can you tell me about this miner?”

“His name is Paulino Galindo,” Refugio said. “He is a very frightened man. He lived most of the last year in an old mine shaft. I brought him food but only recently convinced him it was safe to move to the house where I am taking you.”

“So you and Beltran have been holding this trump card for some time,” Faroe said.

Refugio smiled. “But of course. Paulino is a symbol to the people here. They know what he has endured. We find it useful to have the support of the village because many of them grow fine sinsemilla marijuana.”

“Yeah,” Faroe said. “I can see how Beltran would want to keep his sources happy.”

Refugio looked sideways at Magon. “Are you truly Father Magon? Should I talk of these things outside a confessional?”

“Yes, I’m Father Magon,” the priest said. “And I do not judge any of these people harshly. They are simply trying to survive in the leftover places of a world owned by the wealthy and the powerful. For the poor, it has always been that way.”

“I am happy you have come,” Refugio said. “Paulino trusts nothing but the church, not even me. You will be the key in his lock.”

Faroe sure hoped so.

As Magon settled into the truck, he fingered the gold cross around his neck. It had been worn by others before him and had taken on the patina of their sweat. And his.

The ride was short and bumpy. Galindo’s house was hidden a hundred yards off the road in a grove of dusty green oaks. The house looked like a fortress built of round cobbles from a nearby stream bed. The stones had been cemented together into thick walls with very few windows. More like rifle slits than real windows.

They parked a hundred feet away and approached on foot. Faroe noticed that Refugio made enough noise for a mariachi marching band. Obviously the man didn’t want Galindo to think that enemies, rather than friends, were approaching the stone fortress.

Even so, the barrel of a long shotgun covered every step of the path they walked.

“Paulino, it is Refugio,” he called out in the local dialect, which was a creole of Pai-Pai and Spanish. “I bring a priest for you. See his cross?”

Magon held the cross up.

The barrel wavered, then withdrew.

After a few moments the heavy wooden door swung open. A small, stoop-shouldered man wearing dirt-caked jeans and a World Cup soccer T-shirt stood in the doorway. He had a full head of dusty black hair and hands full of a shotgun. He stared at the strangers for a long moment, particularly at Magon’s cross.

Finally Galindo set the shotgun aside.

Refugio embraced the little miner in the Mexican style, then introduced Faroe by name and Magon by his honorific, el padre. Galindo’s glance never lifted from the crucifix that hung around Magon’s neck.

The disbelief and awe in his eyes told Faroe that the miner recognized the cross as something more than a symbol of Christian faith.

Galindo talked quickly to Refugio.

Even before Refugio could translate the dialect into a more understandable form of Spanish, Magon lifted the heavy chain from his neck and handed the crucifix to the miner. Hesitantly, Galindo took the cross. He held it in the morning light, then slowly turned the crucifix over to examine the small maker’s marks on the back.

Galindo whispered a few hushed words, crossed himself, and looked at Refugio. “I hear of this crucifix.”

Magon nodded, not waiting for the translation. His creole was rusty, but it was his birth language, not easily forgotten. “I am from these mountains. Your grandfather probably found the gold that was beaten into this cross.”

Faroe understood just enough to be grateful for Refugio’s running Spanish commentary. It told Faroe that he could trust Beltran’s man, at least when it came to translating.

Reverently, the miner lifted the crucifix to his lips and kissed it. Then he returned it to Magon with a torrent of words.

“He tells me that since I am from these mountains, I know how dangerous they are,” Magon translated for Faroe. “Now that you outsiders know his secret, the rest of the world may soon know, too. Then he will have to leave, maybe go to some godless place like Chile, where men die in the copper mines from the acid in the air.”

“Tell him that I understand his fear,” Faroe said. “Tell him that I am afraid for my own son, who has only hours to live.”

Magon put his hand on Galindo’s shoulder and spoke earnestly to him for several minutes. Faroe caught some of it. Refugio filled in most of the gaps.

The rest became clear when Magon pulled out the chamois bag and spilled diamonds into Galindo’s hand.

Refugio gasped what could have been an oath or a prayer.

“I told Paulino that these would belong to him and to the seventeen families who suffered a loss,” Magon said in English to Faroe. “I promised to help them turn the stones into a new life here, one that doesn’t have to revolve around fear.”

“Did he believe it?”

Magon shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“Did you?” Faroe asked.

“At least as much as he does.”