I had stopped midway between the men and my truck, a hazed silhouette to them because of my headlights. If they hadn’t separated, I would have continued to assume they weren’t armed. But movement was all the warning I needed. So I maximized my Florida accent, saying, “I’m lookin’ for an ol’ boy named Harris Squires. You boys know where I can find him?”
That stopped them. I used their momentary surprise to take a long step back, then leaned a hip comfortably against my truck, close enough to get to the door fast if I needed to.
Calavero was the talker, and I listened to him reply, “
Amigo
, we can’t even see your face ’cause of them lights. How we supposed to answer a question like that? I suggest you get back in your truck and get the fuck outta here, man.”
I planned to. But not yet.
“It’s a pretty simple question,” I said. “He’s a great big guy, Harris Squires. I met him last night. He’s not the one who said it, but I heard he has something for sale out here I might want to buy. Why don’t you call him and let him know I’m here?”
I could only guess at what Squires might have to sell, but the
pandilleros
knew.
In Spanish Dedos said to Calavero, “He wants to buy steroids from jelly boy this time of night? Or maybe the V-man’s right. Maybe they been running our girls outta here. Call Chapo, tell him we got to speak to the V-man right now.”
Chapo—the voice on the radio and another nickname.
Shorty.
It didn’t tell me everything I wanted to know, but it told me enough—enough to get a rough estimate of how many people I was dealing with. Also, that there was an established pecking order. There were at least two more
pandilleros
beyond the gate, including a boss man named V-man. Plus Squires and, hopefully, the Guatemalan girl.
I had also learned that Squires wasn’t a friend of the gang—perhaps he was even their captive. It was unlikely but a possibility. Referring over the radio to a man the size of Squires as “jelly boy” required a controlled environment or some firepower to back it up.
It was time for me to get going, I decided. Time to drive fast to an area where there was phone reception because I’d walked into something bigger than I had ever anticipated. This situation required the police—a whole squad of pros, including a chopper. In another country where there were fewer laws, maybe, just maybe, I would have tried to handle it on my own. But not here. And not when there was a chance that Tula Choimha was alive and still in danger.
Because I didn’t want the men to know what I’d learned, I said, “I don’t have time to stand around listening to you boys talking Mexican. If you see Squires, tell him I stopped by. But don’t blame me when he gets pissed off ’cause he didn’t make a sale.”
I stood and turned my back to them, paying close attention as the two bickered about whether they should let me go or not. Because the exchange was in Spanish, they believed there was no need to keep their voices low. Dedos was the violent one, but Calavero was the boss.
“Stab him with a knife, that’s just stupid!” he hissed at Dedos. “For what, to rob him? He don’t have any money, look at his goddamn truck! We gonna have enough bodies to deal with!”
I almost stopped when he said that but forced myself to keep moving.
Dedos’s response: “Man, we can’t just let him go—the Gomer knows Squires! Call the V-man. The dude could bring the cops the moment he’s out of here. Then what’s the V-man gonna say?”
It wasn’t until my hand was on the open door, my foot on the running board, that I allowed myself to risk a glance over my shoulder.
My timing could have been better.
Dedos was fast and quiet. He had closed the distance between us, suddenly only one long stride away from the truck. His arm was extended, something in his hand. A cell phone, I thought at first, but his partner was yelling, “Don’t shoot him, you idiot!” so I knew that I was mistaken.
I threw my hands up, a defensive response, as I dived into the cab of my truck. At the same instant, I heard a percussion-cap
BANG!
then a brief whistling noise. A microsecond later, I felt a dazzling impact of something metallic that glanced off my left shoulder, then clanged hard against the truck’s cab.
It took me a moment to realize I’d been tasered with an electroshock weapon. The thing produced a crackling burst of pain that radiated through my spine, down the sciatic nerves of my legs. Zapped by several thousand volts, my brain flashed with what might have been the white schematic of my own cerebral synapses.
Then the wild sensation was gone.
My body lay immobile on the seat for an instant, as my brain worked it through. Dedos had used an older taser, with a steel dart attached to a wire. But the dart hadn’t hit me squarely. It had plowed a furrow of blood across my left shoulder, then skipped out, hitting the truck, steel on steel.
Now Calavero was calling, “Grab him,
pendejo
! We got no choice now!” as he also yelled into the radio, calling for help, but didn’t seem to be getting a response.
I was dazed, my glasses hanging by fishing line around my neck, as Dedos grabbed me by the ankles, trying to pull me out onto the road. I kicked back hard ... missed ... then kicked again and heard the man make an encouraging
Woofing
sound that told me I had connected with his groin.
I got my left hand on the steering wheel and was pulling myself into the truck when Calavero joined the attack. He used his boots to kick my calves and thigh muscles numb as he ordered Dedos, “Get on your feet, you drunken fool! Use the radio, tell them we need help ’cause you did something stupid again.”
My equipment bag was in the middle of the seat, not quite within reach. The palm-sized laser was close enough, though. I grabbed the thing as, once again, I felt my body being dragged out of the cab.
I had experimented enough with the laser to know that the rubberized cap was an instant-on switch, much like a flashlight. But the system was far more complex. There was another switch that cycled through various ranges of effectiveness, from one yard to almost a quarter mile.
To impress Emily, I had dialed the thing to three hundred yards and then painted distant mangroves with its luminous green beam—“searchlight mode,” according to the literature. Stupidly, I hadn’t taken the time to switch the laser back to close-quarters-combat range. Would searchlight mode have any effect on men only a few yards away?
Calavero had a gun in his hand now, I realized. A little chrome-coated derringer, with sizable over-under barrels that told me it was heavy caliber. He was using the butt of the gun to bang at my knee, looking for an opening to put a bullet into me. My truck was about to become a killing field, and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of there and start over.
Probably because I have never been shot in the stomach or chest, an odd, slow thought moved through my mind, oblivious to the panic I felt
. Pain or impact?
Which would I feel as a bullet splintered my ribs?
I tried to kick my legs free so Calavero couldn’t get a clean shot. It caused him to pocket the weapon long enough to concentrate on his grip. As he pulled me from the truck, my head banged hard on the running board, then I landed, back first, on the asphalt.
I fumbled the Dazer upon impact but managed to recover as Calavero gave me another numbing kick to the thigh. My glasses were still around my neck, but I could see well enough to know he was reaching for the derringer again. If I didn’t disable the man soon, he would shoot me, then keep shooting until I was dead.
I used the laser.
When I brought the Dazer
up to fire, I told myself,
Keep your finger off the damn switch until you’ve aimed!
I had been told that surprise was an important aspect of the laser’s effectiveness. So I waited ... waited until I had the weapon in both hands, leveled at the man’s face. I was sighting down the little metal tube as if it were a gun when I touched the button.
When contact was ignited, I got my answer about the Dazer’s effectiveness. The
pandillero
was stunned.
In Calavero’s corneal reflection, I saw a bolt of green fire that flared like a welding torch. There was an instant of shocked silence, Calavero’s eyes wide, his face contorted, then a scream as he released his grip on me and tried to claw his eyes free of the pain.
I jumped to my feet, hearing Dedos yelling, “Pull him out from behind the truck, I’ll shoot him!”
The partner was armed now, I realized. I couldn’t deal with both men at the same time, so I ducked low behind the door, holding the Dazer like a roll of quarters. I drew my arm back and swung hard from the hips, hitting Calavero twice in the ribs with my fist, hearing the distinctive
pop
of thin bones breaking.
Making a grotesque wheezing noise, the man collapsed beneath my left arm, blind and unable to take a full breath. To make sure he was disabled, I gave his eyes another laser burst, his scream not so loud this time because he was semiconscious.
It took a moment to balance Calavero’s body against my chest, then get the Dazer positioned correctly in my right hand. When I was ready, I dragged Calavero away from the door, using him as a shield, until I had a clear view of his partner, Dedos, who had taken a few steps back.
The man was crouched in a shooter’s stance, hands gripping a black semiauto pistol. Its laser sight created a smoky red beam that I realized connected the pistol with a dot that painted my forehead. I ducked lower, closer to the door, as the beam bounced, then searched for me.
Dedos’s hands weren’t steady. He was probably spooked by how easily I had disabled his partner. Yes ... that was the reason, because he decided to bargain.
“Man, I don’t want this kind of trouble,” he called to me. “Tell you what. You throw that green-light thing you got on the ground, I’ll do the same. I promise, man. You can stand up now—
seriously
. You want, I’ll count to three. I count to three, we both throw our shit on the road at the same time. How about that?”
From behind the door, I said, “I don’t want to have to kill you. Put your weapon on the ground and put your hands behind your head. Show me your hands, you won’t get hurt.”
The man answered with a forced laugh, saying, “You sound like a cop, the way you say that. But you ain’t no cop. You just a cowboy redneck, talking big.”
I didn’t respond. Instead, I switched the Dazer’s range to close-quarters combat, then took a second to check Calavero’s pockets. I found an ornate pocketknife and the VHF radio—lucky for me because I realized that the volume had been turned low. I adjusted the volume so I could hear the
pandilleros’
friends if they called, then jammed the knife and the radio in a pocket of my fishing khakis.
A moment later, Dedos hollered, “Kill me with a light, man? How dumb you think I am? A light can’t kill nobody, man!”
I’d kept my left arm locked around Calavero’s throat. To keep him from responding, I squeezed his windpipe closed as I replied to Dedos, saying, “Then why’s your friend dead? You tell me.”
Calavero’s body thrashed briefly until I reduced pressure, listening for his partner’s quiet feet. I heard nothing, so I risked a look.
With one eye to the driver’s-side window, I watched Dedos take another nervous step backward before he yelled in Spanish, “Calavero, hey! You okay?
Answer
me.”
I watched until I saw that Dedos had lowered his weapon just enough for me to make a move. Using the door as a shield, I stood, aimed the Dazer at the man’s face and pressed the button. As I did, I averted my own eyes, but not until I witnessed Dedos’s face contorted by a searing, ocular virescence. It was simultaneous with his shrill scream.
The pistol went flying as Dedos covered his eyes. It didn’t help because I kept the laser beam focused on his face, using the door to steady my aim. Dazer literature claims that green is four times more visible to the human eye than other colors. It claims that a laser of this wattage could pierce human flesh, including finger and eyelids.
“It feels like a knife through the orbital socket,” one of the Dazer techs—who had experienced the pain—told me. At the time, I had assumed it was a mild exaggeration to get me interested in testing the company’s product.
I believed the tech now, particularly when Dedos began to roll on the ground. After a few seconds, he gagged and then vomited. Nausea is a common reaction to being blinded by the laser, according to what I had been told.
I felt confident enough to take a quick look at my shoulder. The dart had plowed a small furrow of flesh. It was bleeding but not badly. Next, I switched off the Dazer long enough to crawl into the truck and grab my equipment bag. In those few seconds, I formulated a plan. I needed information
now
. Where was Tula Choimha? If the men didn’t volunteer that information, I would have to force it out of them.
And I knew exactly how to make that happen.
Bag over my shoulder, I dragged Calavero to the front of my truck, positioning his head under the bumper. Alternately, I zapped both men with the laser even though they showed no readiness to fight back.
Next, I kicked Dedos’s pistol away, then dragged him near his partner, but closer to my truck’s right front tire. When he saw where I’d positioned him, the man became combative. To quiet him, I hammered my elbow into his nose. After one blow, Dedos pretended to be unconscious.
Then I stood and looked far down the road, first to the west, then to the east. How close would a driver have to be before he noticed the two men?
Not very close, I decided, which told me I needed to get moving When the
pandilleros
had first attacked me, I’d desperately hoped a car would turn down this remote road. Not now. An eyewitness was the last thing I wanted. Unless I was willing to detain an innocent passerby, the plan forming in my head would have to be abandoned.