The Bad Guys

Tapia's airstrip after the sunrise. The La Dora River is over the burm to the left.




That is the last thing that we hear from Jerry. If either Lou or I knew the scientific name for the generic form of Ketamin, then we would know that Lou had probably overdosed him on animal tranquilizer. The kind they give to horses. One of those would have been enough to take Ollie out for a few hours, two is near overdose for a guy Jerry's size.
We don't realize our mistake for about thirty more minutes. By that time enough of the drug is in Jerry's system to make him completely useless. After his short bout with consciousness, and a few questions about Abby, he is silent. I don't turn to look at him, and Lou is sitting beside me up in the cockpit. Like I say, after about thirty minutes of silence Lou decides to check on him.
"Uh oh..."
"What?"
"I think Jerry's is trouble."
Not what I want to hear at this point in time. Just when I thought we were out of the woods. "More would be nice."
"He puked on himself."
I can hear Lou slap him across the face a couple of times. "JERRY... come on Jerry, snap out of it."
"What did you do, Lou?"
"It looks like he puked up whatever he had in his stomach, so any extra medicine isn't going to make it into his system."
"Great, now your thinking. You better read that label on the medicine bottle."
Silence now, just Abby's one good engine and Ollie's timber rattling snore. Lou pokes his head inside the cockpit, "Can you read spanish?"
"Damn it Lou, you know I don't even speak spanish. Why can't you read it?"
"I'm an illiterate bastard when it comes to spanish." He looks back over his shoulder, "Hey, he's moving on his own."
I can hear Jerry puking again. Jesus.

An hour has passes and Jerry is still out of it. Dr. Lou has told me that both his pupils are responsive.
"Great, so you're telling me that he doen't have brain damage? That's encouraging. Who's going to land the plane, Lou? Want to give it a try?" I don't attempt to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
"No, I think you should land it. You're the co-pilot."
"NO... Lou, I am not the co-pilot, I am a mechanic who is going to get you and those other two guys killed. Tonight."

Another hour passes and I realize that we aren't going to make home on what fuel we have left. We either have a bullet hole in a tank somewhere, or just the way I have her trimmed up is not right and we are using more fuel to go the distance. Either way I have to find a place to attempt our landing. It is while I am on this train of thought that we cross over a familiar site.
"Hey, that's the Mujer Silvestre, the Wild Woman."
"Where? Big tits?"
"Down there, that river... its the Mujer Silvestre. You can tell because of the way it winds back and forth."
"You're gonna put us down in that river."
"No, we are going to Tapia's... he's a friend of ours. He is on the east fork of the La Dora River. The La Dora flows into the Mujer Silvestre." I do a quick sweep of my instruments as I talk. "Tapia has about the best stretch of runway out here, plus he is equipped to deal with both of the boys back there."
"How far from here?"
I look at the compass, then shake my head. "I don't know. I thought I was on the same heading Jerry took from the compound, but he must have changed course. Sometimes he does that just to keep the sun out of his eyes."
"So you don't know where we are?" Lou says with a tone.
"I don't think I would have to worry about where we are if you hadn't overdosed our pilot."
"So, where are we?"
I take a look out at the landscape. "The Mujer Silvestre really starts to straighten out the further you go into Guatamala. When it gets to Belize it is just a straight river. So at least we know we are on the right end of it."
Lou looks out of his window, "I see farm land out of my side."
"Me too, bean fields, I think. We are south east of Tapia's. We are going to have to head up river."
I slowly make a course correction, gaining a little altitude in the process. No danger out here of being spotted on radar. I would have to be a little higher anyway for my approach. I line Abby up on the river and we head toward salvation. It is late. We have been airborne for four and a half hours.
"Fuel is low, but that is good."
"How is that good?"
"Less chance of a fire when we crash."
Lou looks at me with the first worried look of the day. "Is there anything I can do to help you land this thing?"
"Just sit back and don't touch any controls"
He digs in the pocket of his shirt and pulls out yet another Walker. He fires it up and takes a long hit.
"Jesus, Lou, you think this is the time?"
"No better time to be stoned out of your mind. You're gonna take us down, I'm just along for the ride. Better to be stoned and dead than just dead. Besides it calms my nerves. Just takin' the one hit."

It is another forty minutes or so before we bank off and follow the La Dora, and another fifteen or so when the landscape starts looking really familiar. Before I know it, we fly right over the landing strip and Tapia's ranch. There are no lights on in the ranch house, but a helluva bonfire out in the back forty away from the airstrip.
"Well, someone is up."
We bank around. I am feeling more comfortable with each passing moment handling Abby's controls. I bank around wide, trying to guage my landing strip and any obstacles. That is the nice thing about Tapia's. The airstrip is made for big planes, so there is nothing in our way and plenty of room to stop.
Below us, there are headlights heading from the bonfire. "Good, we have a greeting party." I look over at Lou, who is craning to see out of his side window. "Is Jerry in a hammock or on the deck?"
Lou starts moving, "I'll get him in a hammock."
While Lou is setting up Jerry for landing, I take Abby back a ways to give myself a good approach. When Lou returns I bank Abby over and we line her up.
I start my checklist, and Lou is right there with me. "Flaps?"
"Flaps are up."
"Set them to ten."
"Flaps to ten." He moves the handle.
"Gear?"
"What about them?"
"Gear lever down." Fucking Lou.
Lou throw the lever down. I check the indications, all three show good.
With the increased drag Abby slows quickly and we start to go down. I hold her nose up and pull back on the throttle. To fast, she is dropping like a grand piano. I start to jam on the throttle but pull back on my panic and just give her a little juice. With that I pull back ever so slightly, extending our distance without too much descent. I can see the end of the airstrip in the moonlight. I am coming down short.
"Hey, man, you aren't going to make that." Lou tells me, like I don't know.
"No shit, Lou." At this speed its like trying to navigate an aircraft carrier up to a local fishing pier. "Come on Abby, you bitch, help me out here."
"Do you really think you should talk to her that way?"
"Now's not the time, Lou." I give her more throttle and flirt with a stall condition trying to make the edge of the airstrip.
"That's what I'm saying, man, don't call her names when we are asking her help to land."
"You're stoned, Lou. Shut the fuck up and brace yourself."
We cross over the edge of the strip and I cut the throttles. We are too high and she crashes down with a hard impact. Up again and then we crash down a second time, this one knocks the both of us out of our seats. I scramble to lift myself back into a sitting position so I can see where we are.
"HOLD ON."
We are bolting off the airstrip toward the La Dora. The tail isn't down yet. I tap the brake on the right rudder pedal and she straightens out. As soon as I see that we are semi-lined up I stand on the brakes and manage to get her stopped three quarters of the way down the strip.
"Yeah, JAKE... you did it, man."
I let out my breath. Didn't even know I was holding it. I take Abby to the end of the airstrip and before I lose my forward moment I spin her around just like Jerry would. She is all lined up for departure.

We are on the ground for a minute or two before we hear the trucks. Jerry and Ollie are still sound asleep, no idea how close they came to buying the farm. Me and Lou are celebrating with a couple of warm beers, smoking what is left of his Walker when the trucks come racing up toward us. As soon as they stop and the bright lights are on us, I know something is wrong.

"Don't move, Gringos." Not Tapia, not his men. They all know us, they know Abby. We would be knee deep in fucked up ranch hands by now. But here we are, frozen in the headlights. I am hoping they aren't Federales, friends of those guys we left behind at Ferdi's, or worse yet, they know about he plane that Lou shot down.
Lou is oblivious to the danger, or he just doesn't give a fuck. He takes a long hit off of the Walker and then passes it to me. I am going to object, under the circumstances, but then it occurs to me that we can't get into any worse trouble than we are in already. I take a long hit myself and as I hold it, a man crosses in front of the headlights and stops. It is impossible to see who it is, but what I can see is that he is holding an automatic rifle.
He motions to someone in the truck and a second person is shoved out into the glare of the bright lights. This person is not armed.
"Jerry? Is that you?"
"Tapia?" I would know his voice anywhere.
"Jake... you shouldn't have come."
Two men come from the shadows and into the light, grabbing Tapia, manhandling him back toward the truck. The elation we felt moments ago at not dying is now replaced with a dull nervousness. Man am I glad I took a couple of hits off that Walker. This sucks.

Dire Straits

The lights of Mexico city through encroaching clouds as we head south. I was too high here, not thinking. Might have gotten us into trouble.



Five hundred feet above the desert on the outskirts of Mexico City, with an engine about to give way, an unconscious pilot with a shattered wrist, a stoned Viet Nam sharpshooter, and an Aztec giant with a gunshot wound and a morphine coma … I figure I might be in trouble.
I should be petrified, but I don’t feel afraid at all. I am still stoned, beer buzzed, and at this point flying straight and level.I don’t want to have my number two engine catching on fire so I back of the that throttle and Abby drops and yaws a little to the right. I make slow but firm corrections and she straightens up. We brush some tree tops before I realize we lost a couple of hundred feet.
“Up, baby, up we go.” I pull back a little more.
“How much morphine did they give to Ollie?” Lou calls from the back.
“Shit, I don’t know.”Lou comes up to the cockpit with the needle and the morphine. “If I draw some in can you tell?”
“What are you doing?” I look straight out the window, totally glued to the moonlit horizon.
“I was going to give Jerry some morphine.”
“No… we want him up and around, Lou. Not fast asleep like Ollie. I don’t know how to land this thing.”
“Nothing to it. You already landed once, didn’t you?”
“Listen to yourself. I landed once, with two engines and a qualified pilot telling me when to blink.”
“So, no morphine?” Lou seemed a little put off at not being able to stick Jerry with that needle.
“That nurse gave us some pain pills. See if you can get a couple of those down him. At least he will be able to function.”
Lou heads back into the cargo bay to tend to his “patients”. I do a quick check of the gauges and realize that there is definitely something going on with the number two. I shouldn’t have let Lou distract me.
I shut down number two, feather the prop, pull the fire handle… but I don’t activate the extinguisher, generator off, fuel pump off. She actually gains a little with that. An idling engine doesn’t help much when you are flying along at a over a hundred knots. We are slowly leaving the city behind us now. I have my head on a swivel just in case a chase plane is onto us. I am low, about two hundred feet. Nothing below us but scrub grass and desert now. Oil pressure on number one is good, good generator, temps are normal, fuel is good.
“We are running on one engine.”
“That’s not good.” Lou comes back up. “Jerry is out of it, man. Unless I stick those pills up his ass, he won’t be taking them until he wakes up.”
“Your sick, man.”
I reach out and tap the fuel guage. We should have plenty to make it back.Abby flies straight and level, trimmed out now to fly with one engine. I am going to have to get my “wings” from Jerry and get a little equal time in her if I complete this flight and land without killing us all.Lou joins me in the right seat with a cold beer for the each of us. Normally I would shy away from any more drink or smoke, or anything that might make me dive this plane into some mesa. But this isn’t normal and a cold beer sounds good.
“How you doing?” Lou cracks my beer and hands it to me.
“Fine, I guess.”
“Need a break?”
I take a quick look at Lou and then back at the horizon. “Why, do you know how to fly?”
“No, do you?”
“That’s not funny.”
“Yeah, I have flown here and there. Probably just like you, just while we were up. Never taken one off or landed, but there’s a first time for everything.” Lou takes a long pull off the beer and then lets out a long belch.
“Maybe later.”
Abby seemed content to fly at her present speed and heading. I turned on the autopilot system, but didn’t take my hands off the control wheel.
“Hey… tell me about Cooper.” I reach over with my right hand and grab my beer and guzzle it. Lou locks a serious gaze on me and then looks out the windscreen.
“Coop and me were on the same Lurp team in Viet Nam.” His voice drops to a whisper, “he saved my ass more than once.” He takes a long pull off his beer and finishes it. “Long range recon patrol, L-R-R-P, Lurp."
"I know what that is, pretty dicey stuff." I take a quick look Lou's way. He is looking at his beer.
"We would go a week a time some missions. All the way to hell and back. A lot of the time they wouldn't even know we were there. Hell, the deer didn't even know we were there." He finishes his beer, "Want another?"
"Yeah, grab me one too."He leaves the cockpit and is back in a flash with four more beers. "Just in case we get real thirsty." Lou settles in and then decaps his brew.
"So, you and Coop were on a Lurp team?"
"Yeah, for two tours. Then he went with the Airborne and I stayed on recon." Lou pulls the flashlight from its holder and walks the red beam around inside the cockpit. "Jerry got any cigars up here?"
I reach down beside the pilot's seat and find Jerry's stash. I pull up a stogie and hand it over to Lou. "Here... knock yourself out."
Before long the cockpit is full of smoke. I crack a side window so I can see the instruments.
"Yeah, met Coop in Da Nang and we were buds ever since. Our team would be out three days, sometimes seven days. We would get dropped in the middle of fucking nowhere. I mean I don't think anything, man or beast, had step foot where we were. Then we would follow a compass heading to some fucking river or what not, and get to where we were going."
I finish my beer and Lou has one open and is handing it to me before I have a chance to toss my bottle. "So how did Coop save your ass?"
"We were out for about five days watching a Viet Cong outpost, waiting for some officer to show up. He was our target." A couple of puffs off the cigar and he continues, "Motherfucker shows up in the middle of the night. We were too deep in enemy territory to shoot the bastard... to much noise. So we sneak in, me and Coop, with the rest of the team waiting in the shadows in case we fuck up."
"A lot of enemy soldiers?"
"I don't know off hand. You don't think about that because you aren't going to engage the whole bunch. You're just going after your target. Sneak in, cut him, and get out and away. No noise, no engagement. If you do have to shoot it out, you are doing it running. Seven guys aren't going to do shit against superior numbers, unless they really force your hand."
I take a look at the gauges, my heading, and then take a swig off my beer. "So you still haven't told me."
"Yeah, well, this bug-eater shows up in the middle of the night and me and Coop are on it. I sneak down first, with him right on my ass. We make it into their camp. As still as the trees, man, they walk right passed us a couple of times. Once we are at this guys little barracks, I go inside and do the deed. He was at his desk, doing some sort of paperwork. I cut the cocksucker and lay his head on the desk and turn his lamp off so no one will see him through a window or something before we get a chance to get the hell out of there."
Lou takes a couple of puffs and then draws one in. On the exhale he continues, "On the way out of the room, I run into his aide or whatever the fuck he is and he surprises me, knocks me off my feet and has me at the end of a bayoneted rifle. He drew in a breath to sound the alarm, but Coop had my back and had come inside just before I cut my guy. He slit that aide's throat quicker than shit and we both made it out of there."
"So that is how he saved your ass?"
"Yep."


We are cruising now for about an hour when I see the lights out to my left. A plane, it has been on our side for God knows how long.
"Oh shit."
"What's up." Lou sees me craning over my shoulder and he stands at looks out my side of the plane. "Oh shit. Are they cops?"
"How the fuck should I know. I can't see what they are. But they sure as hell see us. I hope they haven't given us away."
"Want me to get rid of them?"
"How are you going to do that?"
"I'll show ya." With that, Lou climbs out of the cockpit.
I veer off course slightly, just to see if they will follow. They do. I look back out of the port window once again, and that is when I hear the rifle shots.
Back in the cargo bay Lou has his sniper rifle and is at the cargo door. He is locked in with the safety strap. With the first two shots the plane on our side has an engine fire on the number two. Next two shots and it rolls over on its back.
I am too pertrified to turn Abby around and see what is happening, but Lou gives a yell when the plane impacts the jungle floor. The ball of flame lights up the night and I do see that.
"Jesus Christ, Lou. I didn't think you were going to do that."
"They aren't following us any more." He says matter of factly as he stows his weapon.
Jerry has stirred with the repetitive gunfire. "OWWwwww."
He sits up, cradling his wrist. "What the hell is going on?"
Before I can answer, Lou has the pain pills out and a beer to swallow them with. "Take a couple of these, they should kill the pain."
Jerry downs the pills and have the beer. "What were those?"
"I don't know, what ever the nurse gave to Ollie."
"Where are we?"
I hear him from the cockpit, "About three or four hours from home. I had to shut down number two. I think it took some gunfire on the way out of Ferdi's."
"Are you okay?" Jerry asks, wincing from the pain.
"Do you want some morphine?" Lou has the needle out again.
"Enough with the fucking morphine, Lou. You just gave him two pain pills that could be Oxycontin for all you know." I look down at he compass and steer back on course. "I am okay, but when we go to land I want you awake so we can all walk away from it."
"Sounds good." Jerry looks around, "Did I hear gunfire?"

The Getaway

Ferdi's goat just off the barbaque











We are in for a big meal. We can smell it when we bring the car up to the main house. Ferdi is a wonderful host. Even better once we pay him for his troubles out of Nester’s share of the loot. By the time we are into his beer and tequila he is about five grand to the black. He has had his men kill one of the goats and it is roasting on a spit over this massive brick fire pit.
Ferdi has two daughters, old girls in their thirties. They tend to Ollie, who refuses to go inside and lay on a bed. He is content with his morphine and the one beer he has been holding since we placed him on a recliner where we are all sitting.
The goat smells awesome. There is salsa and tortillas, and a radio that has been playing dance music in the background.
“What are we going to do with Ollie?” I ask Jerry.
“He is coming home with us, if that is what you mean.” Jerry intercepts a bottle of tequila that has passed from Ferdi to one of his men. He takes a swig and makes a face. "Not quite what I expected." He holds the bottle up to his nose and takes a sniff.
“That’s cool. I just wanted to make sure it was alright to move him. You know, doctors and all. We don’t have any doctors there in Nogales.” I kind of state the obvious.
“First off, although Ollie likes us, he isn’t going to watch us fly off with all that loot that he was shot over.”Jerry takes another pull off of the tequila and hands it to me. “Second, Nester’s got a brother who was a medic or something like that. Plus the missionaries have a doctor with them once a month. If he isn’t healed by then, we have them take a look.”
I take a hit off of the tequila. It tastes like citrus, kind of sweet. All of this shit tastes different when it comes from family recipes. “He could be dead from infection by then.”
“Hey, we let Nester take care of that side of it. If we need to fly him to a hospital, then we do that.”
Lou had grabbed a Walker from the plane when we were stashing the bags. He pulls it from behind his ear and fires it up. Ferdi is like in his fifties, but he takes the first pass. He smiles and nods at Lou, who takes the chair next to him and they start talking about “fusiles”, something to do with guns.
Jerry takes his turn with the Walker. It comes to me and I take a deep hit and hold on for dear life. On the way out I choke on it and send myself into the stratosphere. Unfortunately the “babblefish” translation I got that last night doesn’t seem to be working. I am just an observer now. To drunk and stoned to get into any deep conversation. I would rather just sit, smile, and drink my beer.

The view toward Ferdi's airstrip from the ranch, Abby is parked with her back to the rock mound in the distance.

"Hey guys.”
Lou turns and smiles, “Hey Jake, just doing a little target practice. Gonna try Ferdi’s SR60.”
“What are you shooting?” I look to see if they are actually firing at something down there, or at the torches themselves.
“Let me show you.” Lou tucks the weapon into his shoulder. It is still except for the boys talking back at the fire. Lou is as still as a statue, and then he peels off a shot. Down range, the torch on the right explodes in a small fireball.
“Wow”. It looks real impressive.
“Damn it.” He turns to Ferdi and then me, “Just wanted to put it out.”
“Well, you did that, didn’t you. Kinda like killing a butterfly with a hammer,” I tell him.
Ferdi shoulders Lou’s rifle, tells him something with a smile, and lines up his shot. Another round smokes off and the light goes out… no explosion.”
“Son of a bitch.” Lou says. “This guy can really shoot.”
“Esto es un rifle agradable.” Ferdi says, turning the rifle in his hands. He cycles the bolt a few times. “Suavice.”
“Did he say that this is a nice rifle and then that the action is smooth?” I ask Lou.
“Yep.” He turns to Ferdi. “Fully bedded stock, match grade barrel, two and a half pound trigger pull," he reports on the build of his rifle.
Ferdi seems to know what that means and he takes a closer look in the waining light of day. I am done here. Can’t compete with the Mexican Olympic shooting team. I’ll be lucky if I can make it back to the campfire after I piss.
When I finally make it back, after looking to the stars for some extended period of time.. it was a trip, Jerry waves me over. Something is wrong.
“We’ve got trouble, Jake.” He gestures to the long road up to the ranch house. There are three sets of headlights coming up the road.
“Who are they?”
“Cops, Feds, who the fuck knows.” He points to one of Ferdi’s men who was still on the dirtbike. “This cat was questioned at the roadblock and it’s like they knew that we were here. I think they are coming now because of the gunfire.”
“Let’s get out of here. We don’t need any run in with cops. I think we used up our luck this afternoon.”
Jerry turned to Ollie, “Puede mover usted?” Ollie nods, he can move.
“Get Lou, we gotta go.” Jerry says, helping Ollie up from the recliner.
The cops were a ways away, plus there are a couple of arroyos that they have to get through. We have five minutes at the most.
Ferdi sends some of his men to meet them down the road. As far as he knows they are trespassers. The airstrip is actually on the neighboring property, and Ferdi can claim he knows nothing.
We collect our crew and have Abby opened up. Jerry is in the cockpit and he calls down to me to pull the chocks before he even starts her up.
“Your clear.” I call to him.
He spins number one and Abby sputters a couple of times just before she catches and runs up to idle. I look back and see the three sets of headlights stopped on the road where Ferdi’s men have met them.
Jerry rolls on number two. It takes a little longer, and when she fires there is a little more smoke than usual until she gets to idle. I give him a thumbs up and run to climb into the plane. Lou is standing off to the side taking a leak.
“Lou, come on.” I call to him. He has his rifle slung over neck and shoulder. I turn to see the feds have finished with the greeting party and are now coming up the road at us. Jerry stands on the brakes and pushes both throttles to the stops. Lou and I jump in and Lou takes a spot by the door, rifle off his back and into position. Off the brakes and we power roll now, the whole plane is shuddering under the thrust of Abby’s engines.
The vehicles are heading straight for us now, rushing up the road to cut us off. Abby lurches forward. We roll about a hundred feet and the tail is up now. I look from my place in the cargo bay and can see forward to the cockpit, Jerry, and out through the windscreen at the lights of the lead vehicle as it makes the dirt strip. There are flashes of light as the muzzle breaks on their rifles mark their fire.
You can hear the rounds impacting as we pass two of the three vehicles. Lou fires back from the door. I run for the cockpit when I hear Jerry call out.
“Son of a bitches.” Jerry growls. “Help me get her up.” I look quickly as I climb in to the right seat and see that his wrist is bleeding and he is only flying with one hand. “Pull.” I pull back and Abby rises. This is where he always tells me not to pull back too much or we will stall it. But there is a large truck blocking our path and as Jerry yells I pull with all my might. Abby rises abruptly and is on the verge of a stall as we clear the truck.
"Ease off or we'll lose it." Jerry says calmly, working the rudder pedals to clear the high trees on the right. With his good hand he wraps one of the cleaning rags we keep in the cockpit around his bleeding wrist.
As we turn, Jerry tells me how much to clock the wheel, how much lift, how much throttle. I can tell he is in great pain.
In the cargo bay, Lou is firing wildly with our M-16. He has traded the marksmanship of his sniper rifle for an all out blanket effect of automatic fire. Ollie is sleeping in the hammock, oblivious to anything that has happened since he climbed into the plane.
Abby continues to circle around and now we are heading back toward the strip and the trucks. It is only now that I notice that Jerry has passed out from the pain. I am flying Abby.
I see where we are headed and take evasive action. I straighten out the rudder pedals and Jerry' feet move with them, lifeless.
"LOU... Get up here." I check the throttles, both up all the way. Lou appears in the cockpit.
"Jerry's hurt, get him out of here and wake him up."
"Oh shit." Lou manages to slide him out of his seat and pull him into the back of the plane, lifting him into the open hammock.
I start to climb and then remember Jerry's low approach into this territory. It might already be too late. I remember the compass heading we followed to get up here, and just take the opposite heading away from Ferdi's. Just when I start to breath easy, just when I feel that I can fly her for a while... until Jerry comes to, I see the the low oil pressure on number two and the high temp.
"We've got trouble."

The Mission Clinic

The Mission Building with the clinic








“How bad are you hurt?” Lou leans forward to see Ollie’s wound. “Oh shit.” Lou looks back over his shoulder at me, “He’s bleeding pretty bad.”
Jerry speeds up on hearing that. He doesn’t want to get crazy and draw any cops down on us, but we aren’t going to make it back to Ferdi’s without doing a little triage.
“Ollie, lift up your shirt.” Lou was up and over the bench seat. “Tear off some of that shirt your wearing.” He looks back at me, “Now.”
Oh... me. I tear a strip off my shirt and hand it to Lou. He wipes the blood from the wound. “It’s all the way through.” He wipes again, “Ollie, hold this tight.” He takes Ollie’s hand and pushes it down on the bloody wad of shirt cloth. Ollie grunts hard and then holds it tight.
“Jerry, we need a doctor. I know of a clinic in an old mission that is about five minutes from here… on the way to Ferdi’s.”
Lou points Jerry in the right direction. We are far enough away from the business district that I can’t see the buildings any more. That doesn’t mean that we are out of trouble.
Lou directs us to this scary looking mission. It is in the worst part of town, on the edges of the slums the climb up and into the hillsides.
“This place?” Jerry slows and turns in to the courtyard through old rusted gates. “This has got to be from the eighteen hundreds, man, what makes you think there is a clinic here?”
“I know because I was treated here once about three years ago. Coop took me. They don't ask any questions."
“Treated for what?” Jerry stops the car in front of an old wooden door that has “Dispensario” painted in white wash.
“Got stabbed in that bar we were drinking in.” Lou says as he gets out of the car.
“You got stabbed in the middle of the business district?”
“Turns into something else entirely at night.”

We hustle Ollie into the “clinic”. It is really spartan inside, just a couple of wooden picnic tables, a metal table hanging under a bare lightbulb, and an old woman in a nurses uniform sitting behind a barred window in the small office.
“Nos puede ayudar usted?” Jerry calls to her.
She scurries out of the office and directs us to put him up on the table. Ollie has lost some blood, but he is still fully functional. He heaves himself up on the table.
“Qué sucedió aquí?” She asks.
I turn to Jerry who translates, “She wants to know what happened.”
“Cazando el accidente.” Lou tells her.
“Hunting accident.” Jerry tells me.

Lou goes outside to keep an eye on the car and to make sure we weren’t followed. We watch the old nurse clean the wound, first with some type of antiseptic, then she puts some kind of powder in it. Ollie is a tough son of a bitch, doesn’t flinch, even when she started stuffing a long strip of gauze inside the wound.
“Ha atravesado,” she says while she stuffs the gauze in. “Esto lo permitirá curar.”
“The gauze will help him to heal.” Jerry tells me. We watch her dip the gauze in more antiseptic and then stuff more into the whole.
When she finishes, she puts bandages over the entry and exit wounds. She goes into the office and comes back with a small plastic bag with a bottle of the antiseptic and quite a few strips of the gauze. “Cambie su aliño dos veces al día.”
“We have to change the dressing twice a day.” Jerry translates.
Ollie hasn’t made a sound since he realized he had been shot. But he looked like shit, like it hurts like hell.
“Can’t she give him something for the pain?” I ask Jerry.
Jerry turns to the woman, who seemed to understand what I had asked. “Hágale tiene algo para el dolor?”
He puts his hand in his pocket and pulled out a thousand peso note and hands it to her, a little less than a hundred bucks. She nods and disappears into the office.
When she returns she has a syringe and a bottle of Morphine. After sizing Ollie up she draws in the appropriate measure of the drug into the syringe, shows us how much, and then puts it in his arm. The effect is immediate. Ollie smiles widely.
“Gracias, Mama.” He says sleepily.
The nurse smiles and then wipes the needle with alcohol and coveres it with a safety tip. She puts the bottle and syringe in a bag and throughs in a bottle of pain pills of some kind for after the morphine is gone.

It takes the three of us to get Ollie into the car. It is like trying to move a drugged bull into a barn stall. When we finally get him settled, he is snoring up a storm.
Jerry pulls out of the mission and back toward Ferdi’s. It has been two hours since we got in the gun battle. By now they would be looking for us. Jerry had Lou and I get down as low as possible so it looked like there were only two people in the car, not the four they were looking for.
We drive for another thirty minutes and get out into the country, close to Ferdi’s. Just when it seems we are home free, the shit hits the fan.
“Damn it.” Jerry says, taking a quick right when he sees the guns and the uniforms up ahead. He pulls up next to a pond or lake or whatever the hell it is and tell me and Lou to get out and follow his lead.
It is a good thing we drank as much beer as we did, because we all had to piss anyway. While we are taking care of business the cops come flying up in a Bronco and three of them jump out like they caught us doing something.
“And then the bitch wouldn’t even come home with me.” Lou says with a slur.
“That fat bitch didn’t even want to have anything to do with you, eh?” I add. Lou turns to me with that steel cutter look. Didn’t think that was too funny.
“Fuck yerself.” He takes a lazy swing at me and I step back, fall back, and land on my ass. The cops are on us now, “No mueva!”

Jerry turns, “Oye alguacil, nosotros tuvimos que ir, el hombre.” He says to them, then turns to me, “I told them we had to piss.”

The cops take us all back to the car where Ollie is snoring away like a hibernating grizzly. “Usted es un peso tan ligero.” He says to Ollie, who doesn’t stir.

We continue this way for another second or two until the cops tell us to shut up and listen. They want to know where we have been. Jerry tells him that we had gone to the bar to celebrate Lou’s birthday. He tells them that Lou is sixty. Lou takes drunken offense, staying in character, and takes a swing at Jerry and ending up on the ground.
“No más luchando.” One of the Federales yells as he drags Lou up by the collar. There will be no more fighting.
“You are American?” The only cop in civilian clothes asks. He is in jeans and a red and white striped shirt. He has a weapon that looks like it could take down the space shuttle.
“Well, truth be told we haven’t been there in a long long time.” Jerry tells him.
“You were in Mexico City today.” He tells us.
“No, not all the way there. Wouldn’t mind, though, probably would have seen some nice tits and ass instead of that shit we saw at the bar.” He says back.
Red stripe looks in at Ollie, who smells like tequila and armpits. His mouth is wide open and he is drooling. “What is wrong with this man?” Red stripe turns and looks at me.
“It was his idea to go to that bar up the road. Shit place, it really is. But the beer was cheap and the tequila cheaper. He wet himself in the bar, so we had to go.” I thought that was a nice touch.
The other two cops laughed, and it seemed as though we may be getting out of this.
“Hey, man, we’re sorry we pissed in your pond. We had to go, you know?” Lou tells them.
They start to leave, and I ask them if I can take a picture. I tell them I haven’t seen real Federales before. They stand for a second with their thumbs in their belts, and then red stripe orders them back onto the road.
Once they are gone, Lou slaps Jerry on the back of the head, “Sixty?”
We pile back into the car and head up the road. Our three Federales are back on the road and wave us through. Ten minutes later we are on Ferdi’s ranch and safe. We pull up to Abigail and put the bags in the lock up, then head to the ranch house to get Ollie comfortable. It looks like we will be staying the night.

The Business District

Looking out of Coop's window into the heart of the business district.










The top floor of this building is fourteen stories up in a small elevator. The four of us and our “luggage” are a work out for the lift. When the doors open we step out into a long hallway.
“Down here on the right.” As Lou speaks, his friend Mike pops his head out of an office half way down the hall. We huff the bags into the office.
This is a newer building with a nice design on the outside. That must have been where they spent all their money because the inside looks like shit. It is just kind of plain with very little interior decorating. It doesn’t feel quite right.
“Louis, how ya doin’ man?” Mike Cooper grabs Lou in a big hug. He is a head shorter than Lou. Probably picked last for every team in his school years. To hear Lou talk about him you would think he was as big as Ollie and a stone cold killer. He looks like a used car salesman, one that could kill his own deal.
“Coop, these are my bros from down south. The hippie is Jerry, that’s Jake next to him, and the big guy is Ollie.”
“Pleased to meet you guys.” He makes the rounds, shaking all of our hands. He has a firm handshake, which puts him back up a notch in my book.
“Why don’t you all come in to my office and we can take care of some business.” He steps into another doorway and ushers us into his office. We set the bags down between us. Now this is what I would expect from someone who is dealing with the kind of money that buys a couple of hundred pounds of gold.
The inner office is trimmed out in mahogany, brass, and maroon leather. There are volumes of books, many of them first editions upon closer examination. He has a crystal brandy or whiskey decanter, a walk in humidor with what looks like a few hundred cigars.
“Cigar?” Coop lifts the top of the smaller humidor on his desk.
Lou steps up and takes one. He rolls it in his fingers and then runs it under his nose. “That’s nice.”
Ollie takes one too. Me and Jerry pass.
Once the smokes are rolling, Coop gets down to business. “Is that it? That’s quite a bit more than last time.”
Lou looks at the three big bags and then his. “I told these boys that you would be able to take care of them, same deal as me. Is that a problem?" Coop says nothing, just draws in some smoke and lets it out slowly. "They were my ride up from Santa Cruz.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem." Coop leans forward and tips his cigar ash in a huge black ash tray. "Sixty five percent?”
Lou smiled this quick smile and then his mouth was a straight, firm line. “Seventy five, Coop. You get a twenty five percent cut for just handing out money.”
"Hey, I have to split with the bank, Lou, and then it still has to make it to market."
Coop picked up the phone and spoke softly into the receiver. Before he hung up three men walked in, one carrying an electronic freight scale. These guys are Ollie’s size and totally without any sense of humor. I mentally go to the gun in the back of my belt.
Coop walks into the other room and comes back with a five pound bag of sugar from the coffee station and sets it on the scale. It reads five pounds on the nose.
“Let’s see what you’ve got.”

The whole weigh in takes about twenty minutes. Ollie has to pull everything out of each of the big bags and weigh them separately. When the grand total is added up and verified by Ollie and Jerry, it comes to two hundred and six pounds ten ounces. Lou’s is a little more than twenty eight pounds. That is a lot of gold.
Coop turns to his goons and says something under his breath, then turns to us. "We will need to transport this to another building and then it will have to be verified."
"And where is this other building?" Lou seems a little tense at this point. He didn't realize that Ollie had brought so much gold from Nester's keep. It made things dangerous.
"Just across the street, Lou, relax." He draws another breath off of the cigar and then talks while letting the smoke go. "You don't think that I have that much money in this office, do you? And you don't think the people I deal with are going to make a deal without checking every last ounce of this shit to make sure that we're not getting hustled, do you?"
Lou's stance changed ever so slightly, like a leopard that was about to jumps its prey. Coop quickly added, "I trust you and your twenty-eight pounds, Lou. But I don't know these guys from Adam."
It makes sense. I don't know what we were thinking when we arrived here, but who the hell is going to hand out a couple of million dollars without going over the merchandise.
"How long will this take?" I ask Coop.
He keeps his eyes on Lou and answers
"Several hours I'm afraid. I can get your twenty eight pounds verified first, Lou, and you will be free to go."
"We came together, we go together. And that goes for the gold too. We need to watch this inspection or whatever you call it."
"Lou, you surprise me with this shit. Now, all of a sudden, you don't trust me? Fuck you, Lou. Take this shit and get the fuck out of here." He looks over at his boys, as if to tell them to get ready for something.
"Just hold on here." Jerry puts a hand on Lou's shoulder and feels nothing but tensed muscle.
"We are all friends here. There is no trust lost. You don't know us, and I can respect that. Take your time and verify this shit. It doesn't do us any good until we get that part of it done."
Coop relaxed a little, and with that so did Lou. "I should have never saved your scrawny ass in that jungle." Coop says with a smirk.
"If you didn't, then you would have had your nuts blown off and been walking on a couple of pieces of oak."
Coop pulls the drawer to his desk open and brings out a hand blown bottle of tequila, no glasses, and uncorks it. He takes a swig and passes it to Lou, who takes a guzzle and passes it on. "Been a long time, Coop."
"Two years and eight months."
"Thought I would make it up here for Jessup's funeral."
"We missed you at the reunion."

The little drinkfest in the offices goes until the bottle is nearly empty. We are told to leave our hardware in Coop's office and then we all head across the street through an underground passage that runs between the buildings. When we come up on the other side, we are in the Mexico National Bank. It's legit.
Coop introduces Lou and Ollie to the bank president, and the three of them go into the office to talk over a few details.
"That was some good stuff." Jerry says to me, referring to the tequila.

We stand in the outer office for a while longer, then the door opens and all of them are smiling, all of them except Ollie who keeps that "don't fuck with me" look on his face.
"Okay, we are going to leave these gentlemen to verify the lot, and we can come back in an hour or so." Lou says with a smile. Now he smells like Scotch.
"An hour?"
"It won't take long. This is the day they make the transactions for the Mexican gold corridor. They'll be paying out a lot more than what we're cashing in."
Ollie says something to Lou, low so no one else can hear.
"The big man here doesn't know if he should leave. They won't let him in the counting room because there is more than just our gold being figured." Lou puffed on his cigar, but it was out.
"Bank president says every assayer in Mexico is here today. Most of the mines have their own assayers working with the bank to get their gold in the market. The bank will provide assayers to figure our tally."
He looks at Ollie and nods, "Estos tipos son bien." (these guys are okay)
Ollie whispers something else, then turns and walks back to the bank president's office.
"The big guy isn't too trusting. We'll leave him here."
"Where are we going? I ask him
"El árbol colgante."
"And what the hell is that?
"It's a bar right around the corner. They make a mean taco."

We leave Ollie and head outside the building. Lou is temporarily lost before we remind him he is on the other side of the street from where we came in.
The bar is a stand alone building in the middle of these semi-high rise buildings. It has a knarly old tree growing in the middle of it. There are several seedy looking characters inside for being in the business district. Turns out they just work here.

We are on our second round of beer and tequila shooters when Lou cuts loose with the story of this place. It turns out that this tree was used to hang desperados and outlaws of all types for hundreds of years. You can see the branch they used. I wonder how many ghosts are tripping around here. Just as I am trying to figure out how this thing lives inside, they open the roof and let the sun in.
"Now that's cool."

We eat tacos, drink more beer, but slow down on the tequila. We still have a lot of work to do before we can relax and party. Lou orders four tacos to go for Ollie, and brings a beer for him. The hour passes by and we head back to the bank to see how things have progressed.

Ollie is in with the bank president once again. Mike Cooper is in there with him. Lou excuses himself and steps in there as well. Jerry and me are standing there alone, but even through the closed door, Jerry can hear what is being said. They are haggling over percentages. Lou's voice is booming now, siding with Ollie. Now the bank president tries to calm them. Now Coop is siding with the boys against the Bank President.
"The market is dropping today." Jerry translates, "Gold has lost about thirty bucks American since the market opened." He squints a bit while he listens... like that helps. "The best he can do is seventy percent of market."
"I thought Coop was offering seventy five."
"Coop is just a middle man. He is using his connections for Lou. You probably would have had to make arrangements weeks ahead of time to get this kind of service. He probably takes five percent for his side."

The discussion in the bank president's office is over and now they all file out, the bank president is talking a mile a minute, trying to mend whatever fence he kicked down in there.
"Sounds like a cluster fuck."
"It is a cluster fuck." Jerry looks at Ollie, who looks even meaner than when we walked in here. "He thinks he is getting fucked."
Jerry walks up to the big guy and Lou and they had a little discussion on there own on whether they should just take the gold and walk. Apparently Coop had held the bank to the seventy five percent, but they were light on the price they were going to pay. Lou would walk with just under eighty grand, Ollie would bring back around one point eight million, and we would get our little bit.
Jerry comes back with the guys and tells me "We are done here. We take the money and get the fuck out of Dodge."

Coop pulled in about sixty grand for answering a phone call and walking us over to the bank. I didn't even want to know what the bank was taking off the top, but it was enough to piss our Aztec off. We ended up back in Coop's building to pick up our hardware. He apoligizes for the trouble, pulling the tequila up for one more round before we hit the road. Ollie takes an extra hit before passing it on. He seems a little calmer now. He wolfs down the tacos, the beer just one continual pull until it was gone.
We have the cash in bags now, doesn't seem any lighter. Jerry took our payment and put it in his pocket. Lou took a few minutes in the shitter and when he came out he looked a little thicker around the waist.
"Money belt?" I ask him. He nods.

Just as we are about to grab our guns from the desk there is a hell of a noise in the hallway. Coop's boys are down, hit hard by the five men that have just blown into the office. Their faces are covered, except for one, who's face is hidden behind a dark beard.
"Queremos nuestro dinero." He tells him.
"Oh shit." Jerry whispers to me.
"What?" I say out of the corner of my mouth.
"They are shaking him down. He must owe them some... " Jerry's words are cut off by the barrel of a sawed-off pump shotgun that is pressed into his back by one of our visitors.
Cooper tells them that they have to come back, that he doesn't have the money until Friday.
Apparently that is the wrong answer. Blackbeard checks him with the butt of the rifle he is holding and down he goes.
While Cooper is checking for loose teeth, the banditos pry the bags out of Ollies hands and drop him.
"Fácil, no lo dolió." Lou says, putting himself in the middle of all of it.
"Don't hurt him" Jerry translates for me.
Cooper tries to sit up, "That is ten times what I owe you. This is not my money."
"You are right... " Blackbeard hisses with a thick accent, "it is our money."
They quickly pass the bags among the three men in the office and then out the door to the two men that backed out to guard the hallway.
"On the floor, arms out." The sawed-off shotgun shoves me to the floor where I stay, along with Jerry and Lou. Ollie is sitting up, rubbing his head where they clocked him.
Now all but sawed-off are out of the room, and when he looks to the door, Ollie grabs the barrel of the gun and catches the man off balance. With a quick sweep of his legs, Ollie has the man on the floor and beats him hard across the face.
"El dinero." Ollie shouts as he gets to his feet and jacks a round into the shotgun, ejecting the shell that was already there.
We scramble for our pistols in the desk drawer. Coop is up now. "They probably came up in the service elevator from the garage. No one would have seen them," he tells us through a bloody mouth. "It's slower than shit. Take the stairs on the left."

We are out the door. Ollie is fast and is through the stairwell door, taking the steps four at a time.
"That crazy fuck is going to get himself killed." Lou says in the echoing stairwell. We are all jumping as many steps at a time as we can. We hear the door fling open at the bottom of the stairs. Before we can get to it, there is gunfire and shotgun blasts.
"Shit, here we go." Lou blows through the door, gun at chest level, right arm straight, the other cupping the grip. He pops off four rounds before I can get through the door way. Another shotgun blast and you can hear one or more of the banditos howling. Someone is hit bad.
"Deme el dinero." Ollie shouts from the side of the elevator.
Jerry and I are now out in the garage, pressed up against the wall, guns held out like on some cop show. Jerry fires a couple of shots and moves up. This has got to bring the Mexican Policia running. Not what we want to see.
Ollie rolls off the wall and is standing right in the doorway. He peels off a shot and then you can hear a weak surrender from Blackbeard. A couple of pistols come sliding out of the elevator as we meet up with Ollie, holding what is left of the banditos at gunpoint.
Two look like they are probably dead, and Blackbeard and the other guy are shot up pretty good.
Ollie grabs the bags and the other men's guns, handing them back to us. We toss them to the other end of the garage.
"We better get the fuck out of here." Lou says. There is a distant sound of sirens.
The four of us tuck our weapons. Ollie grabs both bags and we turn toward the garage exit.

Up the ramp we make it out to the street where we came in. It is torture to walk slow when you know you want to run like hell. Lou laughs and punches me in the arm, "Now that was fun."
"You are a sick bitch, you know that Lou?"
The cops are coming, you can see them. I quicken my pace, but Lou grabs my arm in an iron grip, "take it slow, they don't know."
Just then Jerry turns and laughs, slapping the top of my head. They are all nuts. Ollie is the only one who looks like he is running away.
Jerry tells him something in Spanish, I am hoping it is slow down and look like a tourist, but who knows.
Ollie looks at him and laughs, then points up at an old church between a couple of the buildings... just like a tourist.
We turn the corner and see the Green Machine. Keeping our composure, we load the bags in the trunk, along with the weapons, and drive slowly out and away from the business district.
"Pienso que he sido el disparo." Ollie says, slumping in his seat. He runs his hand down by his left side and then holds it up for inspection. It is crimson with blood.
Lou looks at him, "Awe shit, Ollie's been shot."