“Hey, Krill, I know who these guys are. They’re Sholokoff’s people,” Negrito said.
“No, we have no interest in these people or the business they conduct,” Krill said.
“Ain’t that right?” Negrito said to his captors. “You work for that Russian prick. We know all about you. I hear a couple of your guys are missing their noses. Be nice to me, and maybe I’ll tell you where their noses are and you can glue them back on.”
Negrito, Negrito, Negrito, Krill thought.
The man behind Krill stepped back and looked at both Krill and Negrito like a photographer arranging a studio portrait. “This is quite a pair,” he said.
“What do you want to do?” said the man holding the knife to the little girl’s throat.
“Take the girl in the kitchen.”
“And?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know if this gig has parameters or not.”
“There’s a key sticking out of the lock in the pantry door. What does that tell you?”
“Lock her inside?”
“Brilliant,” the man with the gun said. “Then take the woman to the chopper.”
“What about these two?”
“That’s a good question,” the man with the gun said.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Negrito said.
“You’ve got a question? Wonderful. What is it, greaseball?” the man with the gun said.
“If you’re born without cojones, does that mean you’re automatically a queer, or is it something you learn? ‘Cause I believe every guy who ever called me a greaseball was probably a maricón. Know why I think that? ’Cause when I was in jail in Arizona and Texas, it was always the Aryan Brotherhood guys who were trying to get me in the sack. That’s right, man. Macho gringos like you was the main yard bitches in every joint I was in. I tell you what, man. ’Cause you look like a nice guy, I’m gonna do something for you. You surrender to me and Krill, I’ll fix you up with some punks that ain’t got a feather on them. You gonna dig it, man.”
“We’re wasting time here, Frank. What’s it gonna be?” one of the other men said to the man with the gun.
“We split the difference,” Frank replied. “Krill is the guy who kidnapped the Quaker. Josef will want to talk to him. The ape seems to have a death wish.”
“Listen to me, hombre,” Krill said. “Negrito is a good soldier. He can be of value to you. He will never give up information to the FBI. Pain means nothing to him. His only defect is he runs his mouth when he shouldn’t. But he can be a valuable man to your employer.”
“I see your point,” the man with the gun said. “We’re all just making a buck. We shouldn’t let it get personal. I totally understand where you’re coming from.”
No one in the room moved. In the silence, Krill could hear the little girl whimpering. The man who had been holding a semiautomatic on Negrito put it away and looked at the .357 he had taken from Krill. It was nickel-plated and had black checkered grips, and each chamber in the cylinder was loaded with a hollow-point round. “Your name is Negrito?” he said.
“That’s my nickname. It’s ’cause I’m mestizo.”
“Do you mind riding in a helicopter?” the man asked.
Negrito shrugged and gazed out the window, his eyes dulling over, his mouth downturned at the corners.
“Because we don’t want you to be uncomfortable. Can you handle heights? You don’t get airsick or anything like that?”
Negrito looked at Krill. “We had some fun, didn’t we, amigo? They’re gonna remember us for a long time. Don’t let this guy get to you. We’re better than any of them. We’re stronger and smarter and tougher. Guys like us come back from the dead and piss in their mouths and shit in their mothers’ wombs.”
Krill stood frozen, the sound of the helicopter blades growing louder and louder in his head, the dust swirling in the downdraft, the rain clouds forming into blue horsetails, the windmill shuddering against the sky, all of these things happening simultaneously as the man with the .357 lifted the barrel and fired a solitary round through one side of Negrito’s head and out the other.
HACKBERRY HOLLAND WAS reading a biography of T. E. Lawrence under a lamp by his front window when he heard thunder rolling in the clouds far to the south, reverberating in the hills, where occasionally a flash of dry lightning would flicker and then die like a wet match. The book was written by Michael Korda and dealt with the dissolution of empires and a new type of warfare, what came to be known as “wars of insurgency,” all of which had their model among the sand dunes and date palms of Arabia. As Hackberry read the lines describing the white glare of the Arabian desert, he thought of the snow that had blanketed the hills south of the Yalu the first morning he had seen Chinese troops in their quilted uniforms, tens of thousands of them, many of them wearing tennis shoes, marching out of the white brilliance of the snowfield, heedless of the automatic-weapons fire that danced across the fields and the artillery rounds that blew geysers of snow and ice and dirt and rock in their midst.