En El Medio Page 5

  "Purposely parked the van in a dirt lot because that rain was forecasted for the next morning. Remember?" Preacher bent and squatted, putting his forearms on his thighs. "The rain settled all that dirt. But there are three tracks of shoe prints leading up to the van. They circled it and then walked that way." He pointed toward the end of the building.

  "What do you think?" Meadows bent at the waist, putting his hands on his knees.

  "If I had to fathom a guess, I'd say the dude we bought the van from either called someone or was called by someone and told them he sold a certain brown Dodge Caravan to a couple of gringos. He probably told them that one of them was eight feet tall."

  "Six-six." Meadows replied.

  "Ocho." Preacher shook his head. "Might as well be eight feet. You tower over almost every Mexican by a foot, foot and a half."

  "We grow em' big in Texas."

  Preacher stood up and stepped back over to the corner of the wall to peek down to the end of the building. "I need you to stay here and keep an eye on the scene. I'm going to go see if there are eyes on the van." Preacher pulled a cell phone out of his bag and took two of the automatic rifles off his shoulder and set them on the concrete.

  He handed the phone to Meadows and pulled out another he'd snatched off a dead man and dialed a number. The phone in Meadows' hand rang. Meadows pressed the talk button. "Keep the line open. Much quieter than our $10 walkie-talkies."

  Spinning on his heel, Preacher stepped into the building. Meadows turned back to look out into the open lot and then to the surrounding buildings. He put the cell phone up to his ear and listened to Preacher's progress. Heard steps and then nothing for a while and some creaking and then more silence as the killer at the other of the line moved deeper into the structure.

  A minute later, he heard what sounded like fast steps, running and then a voice. But it was only a partial word, nothing distinct. A thud, another and then nothing. Silence. Death.

  "One down. Second floor, at the east end. Got another phone." Preacher went silent. Meadows listened. Not much he could decipher from the noises. Sounded like a door opening on old, creaky hinges. "Damn." A shout and the sound of a door closing followed by a dozen gunshots.

  Meadows heard the shots in the building and then through the phone.

  "What's happening?" Meadows shouted into the phone as he backed into the building.

  "It's not three guys. Looks more like three dozen surrounding the place at the east end. You need to get out of here. Out the back, head north up the street. Walk, don't run when you get out there." Preacher was running as he gave these orders.

  "What about you?"

  "Just go. Keep that phone on you. Walk. Don't draw attention baldy." Preacher severed the line.

  Meadows moved through the abandoned warehouse and reached the door on the north end they had come in five minutes earlier. He peeked outside and saw no one. He dropped the rifles, hunched his shoulders and stepped out into the street with other locals and tourists. He turned right on the sidewalk and walked at a steady pace, but looked back in the direction of the shots like the others on street did.

  The tall Texan looked only slightly out of place on the streets of Juarez. There weren't a great many number of tourists around this part of town, but he wasn't the only gringo. Just the tallest. He crossed the street and joined a crowd who had ducked around the corner of an office building. He eventually backed away from the crowd and walked down the street, putting several hundred yards between him and the continuing gunshots.

  Preacher stayed on the ground floor, even though he wanted to climb the stairs to the second and then third story and up to the roof to get a better view of below. But that was simply suicide. Simple suicide. The thought and the reality of that end echoed through his brain briefly. He'd considered suicide a couple of thousand times during that dark year in Europe when he believed Marta dead. He chuckled at the thought now.

  "Suicide. Huh." He said to no one as he crossed an open area heading for the north side of the building toward the door Meadows had exited two minutes earlier. The guy should have enough of a head start now. Preacher came to the door and found the two guns the pilot had dropped here.

  No time now to wait. He needed to move and needed firepower. He grabbed up the magazines from these guns for extra rounds. He closed his eyes and shot up 2,000 feet to look down on the streets and alleys he'd memorized hours earlier when they had arrived at the abandoned warehouse a quarter-mile down the street from where they had changed their clothes and cleaned up. He traced six, seven, no eight routes on the mental map that would work once he stepped out the door.

  He looked over his shoulder at the sound of a door smashing open and dozens of shots fired. They echoed through the empty, open interior space. But his ears were suddenly full of the opening guitar strums and then the lead singer of The Outfield. The song was one of the three or four, along with Don Henley, the Human League and U2, that define 80s music for Preacher.

  He stepped out the door, hugged the wall, didn't turn when shots were fired, burst into the street, zigged right, then zagged left, jumped between two parked vans, turned right and hugged the building as shots were fired from behind. Not too many shots, sounded like two guns only. One was another AK-47, "man, there are a lot of them down here." The other was a shotgun. A couple of the pellets struck him in the back or hit the guns he had strapped to his back. Most humans, in the heat of the moment, are not great shots. Automatic weapons and shotguns send more pieces of metal, which increases the odds of getting hit.

  He turned the corner and continued running past the crowd Meadows had been in a couple of minutes earlier and then into an alley to the left. All the while, he'd been listening to and humming along with the catchy Outfield tune and having a little conversation about 80s music with himself, well, with Lance up there.

  Anyway.

  Keep moving. Didn't matter whether he liked Madonna's early 80s songs or not, they were radio staples during the decade. Sure, the Cult had some great songs during the period, but did any of them really rise to the level of the best? Don't even bring up Whitesnake.

  Anyway.

  He picked up his pace as he rounded a corner into a tighter alleyway. Vehicles would be moving by now, heading this direction. He'd need to grab a vehicle quick-like himself to make a getaway. He couldn't afford to get into a firefight out here on the streets in the open. Not in the light of day. The plan from seven minutes ago, to take the van they'd stashed and head back for the border was out the window. These plans just kept disappearing, evaporating, like a basket of chips and bowl of salsa placed in front of him. Mexican food is an addiction he'd been fighting for days as well.

  He came to a cross street. Stopped and looked both ways. He sprinted across the two-lane asphalt strip. A few concerned citizens gave him a double take as he ran by loaded down with weapons and a backpack. Traffic was light right now. He stopped on the other side, pressed his body up against the wall and looked back to the left as a Ford F-150 truck, followed by a Ford Taurus swung around the turn. A guy stood in the back of the truck holding yet another AK-47. Very inconspicuous. Another dude had the barrel of his Uzi hanging out the rear passenger window of the Taurus. Pretty ballsy, out in the open with police certainly making their way to the scene. These damn drug dealers acted like they owned the place. He cracked himself up with is little joke.

  The vehicles proceeded his way, slowing down a bit to peer down the alleys. Preacher set three of the five weapons slung on his back down on the broken pavement. He left an AK on his back, grabbed another in his left hand and pulled out the silenced and re-loaded Berretta with his gloved right hand. He raised the handgun and waited, nodding his head to the final chorus and guitar solo wrapping up the Outfield song in his head. Good stuff.

  Seven seconds later, as the truck came even with his hidden alleyway position, Preacher took aim at the driver and passenger in the lead vehicle and pulled the trigger four times, killing both men with head shots.
He moved his aim to the silly sitting duck standing in the truck bed and relieved this poor soul of the burden of life with a shot that entered his forehead and exited the rear in a puff of blood and cranial debris. The vehicle coasted forward and crashed into a parked sedan. Four seconds elapsed.

  Inside the fourth second, he had already set the aim and squeezed the AK's trigger, sending nearly two dozens slugs into the glass, metal and flesh of the human passengers of the follow vehicle. The fella holding the Uzi squeezed off several dozen shots into cinderblock walls of the houses beside the vehicle. Preacher stepped over to the Taurus to put life-ending bullets through its passenger's heads. Eleven seconds elapsed.

  Without delay or the consideration of the holes, black holes really, that would be left in the lives of these men's families, he stepped back between the two vehicles to grab up his weapons from the alley and then around to the driver side door of the F-150, opened it and pulled the dead driver out to the street. He turned back and reached into the truck bed to pull out that dead guy and leave him on the street. He climbed up, threw his backpack and guns into the dead passenger's lap and hit the gas. He had his stolen vehicle, for the moment at least. Twenty-three seconds. The people around and in earshot barely had time to begin their screaming and running.

  The song faded through its ending and he thought, "a lot of people consider Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns and Roses to be the definitive song of the 1980s."

  Huh. Good point.

  He looked down from 1,500 feet at the spider web of streets and roads and highways comprising Juarez between his current location and the bridges over the Rio Grand to the north. The question now was, do the currently living members of the Juarez Cartel and the evidently ruthless punk at the helm care enough to try to stop and kill him? Probably.

  And just where are all the police?

  Were they all so on the take that they were staying out of this fight? Could be. Money and fear and beheadings speak louder than the call of duty and a tiny little paycheck.

  Hell, the police might only be interested in stopping him. Killing him.

  And that little slice reality stuck. Preacher looked in his rearview and then in all directions. He was definitely on his own here. Not smart. Not cool. She'd be pissed. And that image, the one of Marta holding something tiny, someone tiny, in her arms hit him.

  The same laser focus that came over him standing in the back of the Toyota truck earlier this morning came back.

  Think.

  Chess.

  The next seven moves. See them; make them. Adapt to a changing playing board.

  The approximately 17,000 items on his mental to do list blasted through his brain like a supercharged Rolodex. Synapse fired and cognition exploded. The universally accepted belief that humans only use 10 percent of their brain's capacity at any one time is just that, a belief. A misconception.

  It all gets used, but most, something like 99.8 percent of the billions of upright biped mammalians known as homo sapiens, who are the only surviving species of the homo genus, are trapped in a linear mental progression. They can literally only do one thing at a time, only think about one thing at a time. It is incredibly, amazingly, lightning fast in this progression. But it is still a linear, or sequential, one-after-one-after-one process.

  The remaining point-two percent of humanoids gifted with bi- or co-linear mental progression can do two or three or more things at once. This connected cognitive computational process within the brain allows for more processing. Faster processing. Preacher had discovered this clinical description during a barrage of late night and early morning reading during his second stay at Harvey Point in the marshlands of eastern North Carolina.

  The CIA training facility for the nastiest of nasty deeds had an extensive library on human psychology. Preacher read every single one of the books or manuals. They confirmed a lot of what he had perceived, both about himself and the populated world around him.

  Seventeen thousand to-do items flashed and were winnowed down to hundreds then dozens and a final list of three. These included Marta, ever Marta; tracking and killing the now one-eyed Chinese super mole Stuart Braden and meting out eternal retribution for Geoffrey Seibel.

  Done. Two and a half seconds elapsed. A left turn onto a major Juarez thoroughfare executed.

  Preacher let the black with grey-tinged edges of tunnel vision take hold. A plan, with its algorithmic, programmatic steps fell into place. If this, then that. Done.

  As the tunnel vision collapsed to expose the functioning external world and he signaled and changed lanes, the final step in the chess board plan that just exploded into place in his messed up head brought a smile to his face.

  "Huh, didn't see that coming." Preacher turned to the dead guy slumped over and bleeding all over the place from the two bullet wounds through his head. "I'll bet you didn't see that coming either, huh buddy?"

  He shoved the body over to the other side of the front bench seat and grabbed the backpack to open it. He checked the rearview and didn't see anything in particular tracking him. He estimated that the shot-up Taurus and bodies in the street were probably being discovered about right now. That gave him a full minute and 22 seconds head start.

  He reached into the backpack and fumbled through the four cell phones inside to grab the one he needed. Preacher didn't need to look at the dashboard to know it was 19 minutes after noon, Mountain Daylight Time. He pulled out the phone and hit redial before putting it to his ear. Nine seconds and two rings went by.

  "Hola." The punk answered.

  "Hola, mi amigo. I've got just two questions for you."

  "Sure, but hey, first, man you are the real thing aren't you?"

  "How's that?" Preacher looked again in the rearview and turned right at an intersection.

  "All this stuff, the killing, the running, the getaway. You are really something. Uncle Sam sent the real deal to this party."

  Preacher looked through the phone line at the face saying the words. He couldn't really, of course. But he could take up a miniscule part of his brain and put in motion and action the photos he had seen of the kid. He could see the attractive, inviting facial features speaking with the natural smile some humans present with every spoken word.

  He could see the cognition behind the eyes. The photos Meadows first showed him gave an indication. The kid was like him. It was in the eyes, inside them.

  And that's not a good thing.

  Being like Lance Priest meant the kid was much more than a small time 19-year-old drug-dealing punk. Much more.

  Further evidence came to him now through his right ear. The words chosen by the kid were far too comfortably spoken. He was processing, seeing multiple iterations of the current situation and was probing the surface for the hole or tunnel that would allow him inside the mind of his counterpart. Age played no role in this equation.

  The kid was 19 in years only. He was born deadly and dangerous and full of unrivaled potential. Funny. Preacher knew a guy like that.

  Chapter 6

  He pushed his deceased passenger down to the floorboard as he parked in an alley behind a hardware store - drogueria in Espanol. He jogged around the front and stepped into the store and found a few needed items, including a large canvas tool bag. He paid with cash and stepped back out and around to the rear. He grabbed up three of the five rifles and stuffed them and magazines from the other two in the duffle bag, along with the backpack.

  He stepped away from the truck, into the alley and disappeared.

  "Are you across?" Night had fallen in Juarez. Preacher looked out a filthy window of a vacant apartment he had broken into.

  "Yes. Came across this afternoon. No problem." Meadows replied. He told Preacher he was looking out a motel room window in Las Cruces, New Mexico, 45 minutes northwest of El Paso.

  "Bueno. I'll join you over there in a little while."

  "I'll meet you where we planned."

  "See you there." Preacher hung up. He didn't think any of the memb
ers of the Juarez Cartel had snooping gear good enough to listen in on cell phone calls. But they are basically radio conversations. So better safe than stupid. Keep conversations short.

  He turned back to the floor and the guns and phones and money laid out. He lied down beside it all and closed his eyes. A couple hours of sleep would help. The focus returned in the blackness.

  Dropping, falling, he swooped in from a million feet above. The earth lay out below in a concentric grid. He came in like an inter-continental ballistic missile. His payload would bring destruction to those targeted. He fell closer, flying into Juarez, Mexico like a hawk with eyes trained on the field mice scurrying. He sought one mouse in particular. This mouse was staying out of view, so he floated through the night seeking any traces, any details.

  At the edges, the fringes, was a nagging sense of necessity. Not doom. Preacher knew doom and death and killing and drowning in emptiness. He'd lived it. No, this need, this impending necessity was turning over, flitting across the back recesses, but creeping, creeping forward. Edging toward conscious and concerned thought.

  He flew from smoldering ruins of a desert warehouse facility to the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez and then deep into the rambling ramshackle city of poverty and struggle and crossing to the other side and realizing hopes and dreams. He floated over and then circled the Castle, el Castillo. He looked from main building to surrounding houses.

  And the nagging, the nipping at edges continued. He sought any angle, an exposition of the underlying answer.

  Finally, it bubbled, surfaced and emerged whole. It was reality and this reality showed where a young killer's mind was going. How thought was evolving inside the young killer's brain. And the conclusion was obvious and unfortunate. The punk had a scent, a trail, a voice, a target. This would fester within the kid as he grew into a man and would one day metastasize as full-blown vengeance as he hunted, forever hunted, the voice and the human attached to it.