“Can you drive?” Rapp asked as they joined a group of pedestrians waiting to cross the street.
“No problem” came the less-than-convincing reply. Blood was dripping from the cuff of his shirt and the people around them were starting to back away. When the light turned red, traffic came to a stop. The car in front would be easiest to take, but Rapp was fairly certain it had a manual transmission that would be impossible for Carlos to operate. The second in line was a late-model Hyundai sedan, which would have been fine, but the windows were rolled up and the woman inside was eyeing them suspiciously. Undoubtedly locked up tight.
The third vehicle turned out to be what they were after: a well-cared-for Toyota Yaris. The only person visible inside was the driver—an oblivious young man holding a cigarette out the open window.
Rapp angled right, keeping a casual pace and taking advantage of the fact that he’d look like a tourist to most people. The man in the car was so focused on smoking and the music blaring from his radio that he didn’t see Rapp until he found himself being dragged from the vehicle and onto the pavement. The kid looked like he was going to fight, but his motivation faltered when he saw Rapp’s bloody, tattooed companion. In the end, he wisely decided to run for the relative safety of the sidewalk.
Rapp slid across the hood and got in the passenger side while Carlos struggled to squeeze behind the wheel. The light changed and the two cars in front left a little rubber during their escape. Behind, a few horn blasts rose up and a siren sounded somewhere in the distance.
A moment later they were accelerating smoothly up the road.
It seemed like the correct turn, but GPS instructions were open to interpretation in this part of rural Guatemala. Rapp steered the Yaris up a steep dirt track and slowed to less than ten miles per hour. The vehicle he’d carjacked wasn’t exactly ideal, but he managed to coax it along without snapping an axle or flatting. Another minor miracle to add to the fact that the local cops had never managed to mount a pursuit.
Forty minutes later, he found what he was looking for at the top of the climb: a Cessna turboprop that had been optimized for hauling narcotics. The pilot was standing just beyond the reach of the headlights, illuminated only by the glow of the cigarette in his mouth. According to Claudia, he was one of the best—a prodigy behind the yoke and a man who had spent decades calmly battling darkness, storms, and the DEA.
Rapp stepped out of the car and into the cool mountain air. Light rains had passed intermittently overhead during the drive, but at the moment only the humidity remained.
“Benjamín?”
The man nodded. “Mitch?”
Rapp went around the back of the plane and approached, pointing to the cigarette between the Guatemalan’s lips. He pulled out a pack and shook one out before retrieving a lighter. Rapp cupped his hand around it, closing his eyes against the flame.
“Is there something wrong with your friend?” Benjamín said, pointing to Carlos slumped in the passenger seat of the car.
“I think he might be dead.”
“What?”
“He was bleeding pretty bad and hasn’t said anything for a while.”
He seemed uncertain that he was picking up the nuance of Rapp’s English.
“Should we… Should we do something?”
Rapp took a light drag on the Marlboro. He wasn’t really a smoker, but over the years he’d discovered that it was a surprisingly effective bonding exercise. Not to mention a pretty functional way to kill time.
“Nah.”
Another twenty minutes passed before the dull glow of headlights became visible to the west. Rapp raised a hand to shield his eyes from the approaching Ford F-350’s roll bar–mounted LEDs, lowering it again when the vehicle turned one hundred and eighty degrees. Both he and the pilot started forward as the driver maneuvered the pickup’s bed into a position next to the plane’s open cargo door.
The wooden crate in the back was significantly larger than Rapp expected, hanging over the open tailgate and rising a good two feet above the box sides. A hydraulic crane had been mounted to the bed and its cargo hook swung lazily as Scott Coleman cut the lights and stepped out.
“You look like shit,” he said as he approached.
“I feel like shit,” Rapp responded. “How’d your night with Carlita go?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then why don’t we talk about that?” Rapp said, pointing to the truck.
“Nice, huh?”
“Not exactly compact.”