Well In Time Part 7

"For G.o.d's sake, Walter! Come!"

Hill reemerged at a gallop. "I'm here," he shouted. "Lead on!"

The three raced across the courtyard. Behind them, all along the sides of the house, shouts of men and women and the wailing of children arose as the inhabitants of the workers' village pressed inside the sheltering walls. Ahead lay only the abyss of the canyon with its four-thousand-foot-drop to the river. They ran down the stone path until they were brought to a halt by the low stone wall that protected the very lip of the cliff.

Hill looked wildly at Calypso. "Now what? Do we grow wings and fly?"

Calypso, her face closed and taut, only jutted her chin indicating Pedro on the other side of the wall, who already was working a gray nylon climbing rope through an iron ring set into the bedrock of the cliff.

"No," she said, "we're going to rappel." She scooted over the top of the wall as she spoke.

Hill felt his face go white. "To what?" he gasped.

"Rappelling uses a rope for controlled descent down a rock face. It's a technique climbers use when a cliff is too steep and dangerous to descend any other way. Put on your backpack, Walter. Good and tight."

As she spoke, Calypso was donning her backpack and then a climbing harness of nylon webbing with attached D-rings and steel adjusting buckles that fit around her thighs and waist. Pedro tossed the anch.o.r.ed rope over the cliff.

"Watch how I do this because you'll be next."

Hill felt his chest tighten. "You've got to be kidding!"

Just as Calypso opened her mouth to answer, a volley of shots echoed from the front of the house. "s.h.i.+t! Listen, Walter, I'm not kidding. Watch me when I go over. I'll send the harness back up, then Pedro will set you up."

She stood, leaning over the cliff edge on the attached rope with her back to the drop. "You'll make sure the women and children are secured in the house?" she asked Pedro.

"Of course. I know what to do," he snapped. "Now, check yourself. Your harness doubled back?" Calypso checked the harness buckles and nodded. "Carabiner screw gates closed?" Again, Calypso checked the metal figure eight around which the rope was looped and that attached the rope to her harness through a locking carabiner. She nodded. "Okay then, Boss Lady. Over you go!" And with that, Calypso pushed off the edge of the cliff and disappeared.

"Holy s.h.i.+t!" Hill threw himself over the wall and, taking a wide-legged stance, bent to peer over the edge. There, only about ten feet below him, was Calypso, hanging by the gray thread over thousands of feet of pure s.p.a.ce, her feet braced against the cliff.

She looked up at him and grinned. "It's not rocket science, Walter, but it works," she called up to him. "Watch this." She pushed off from the rock face and descended another five feet. "Just hold the rope like this. Keep your right hand down by your hip like I have it, and don't let your left get close to the figure eight. Keep it above there as you descend. It'll do the rest. I'll be down there to catch you when you arrive."

She gave another shove with her legs and bounded into the air, landing ten feet lower on the rock face. Craning her neck and squinting against the sun, she called up to him, "There's a bulge here. You won't see me once I've gone over it. There's a ledge just below it. See you there!" Then she pushed off the rock and sailed out of sight.

Hill backed away from the edge, his breath coming in short gasps. "No way am I going down there," he said to Pedro, then ducked as another volley of shots sent lead ricocheting across the courtyard. "s.h.i.+t!"

Pedro was busy hauling up the climbing harness. "She's down," he said. "Your turn."

"I told you, I'm not going." Gunfire almost drowned out his voice.

"Look, a.s.shole, I made the Boss a promise to get Calypso to safety and that's what I'm gonna do," Pedro snarled. "But the Boss isn't here, so I'm in command, you dig? That means it's up to you to take care of Calypso."

"I am not going over this cliff."

Pedro gave him a disgusted look. "We can do this two ways," he said. "Either you go over conscious or unconscious. Your choice." His face was hard and uncompromising.

"I said no."

Quick as a ferret, Pedro was in Hill's face. "If you're gonna waste more of my time, I'm just gonna do it my way." The fist he doubled looked hard as a sledgehammer. The two men stood glaring at one another.

"Show me how to get into the harness," Hill sighed finally. He was convinced that death awaited him either way: Pedro would punch him unconscious and toss him over the cliff, or the rope would break while he was fully conscious and he would have almost a mile of free fall during which to consider his sins and make amends. "It's as good a day as any to die."

"Just walk backwards." Pedro was clearly trying to sound rea.s.suring but Hill wasn't buying it. "You won't fall. The figure eight'll slow the descent. It acts as a friction multiplier."

"I was always bad at multiplication." Hill's toes hung on the last margin of the cliff.

"Just sit back. Get your b.u.t.t down lower. Good. Now, just step off."

Hill stepped backward, his hands gripping the rope with insane strength. What madness, to suspend his life over an abyss by this slender thread! Sweat trickled down the bridge of his nose but he was too paralyzed to wipe it off.

"Kick off the cliff!" Pedro's dark, vulpine face appeared over the edge of the cliff a few feet above him. "Kick off and let the rope carry you down." Hill remained frozen. "Or maybe you'd like me to just cut the rope and get it over with. I haven't got all day." Behind him, sounds of all-out war had erupted. Pedro drew a .357 from his belt and aimed it at Hill. "Get the f.u.c.k down this cliff or I'll give you a shortcut."

Hill kicked off the cliff, flew into s.p.a.ce, and slammed his feet back into the rock again. Pedro and his .357 were now a good ten feet above him. He kicked again and the rope sizzled through his fingers as he descended again. He tried not to think of his rear end sitting on nothing but air, almost a mile above the Urique River. He concentrated instead on kicking the cliff as he swung against it and on learning to control the tension on the rope with his right hand.

His feet found momentary purchase on the bulge of rock over which Calypso had disappeared. Then momentum and desperation took over, and he bounded off the curved face and found himself swinging through air. Red canyon walls flashed through his peripheral vision. A glimpse of the aqua thread of the Urique below him made his stomach turn. Then, powered by weight and gravity, he swung with tremendous speed toward the cliff again, careened off it with his left shoulder, and catapulted again into s.p.a.ce.

He was turning a pirouette in midair when he heard a familiar voice calling, "All right, Walter. Enough of the Peter Pan act!" He spun on his tether just in time to see Calypso standing on a narrow ledge, a sheer drop below her, and then he slammed into her full force.

Calypso's arms came around him like steel pincers as she dragged him to the cliff and held him against backward momentum. Hill's knees gave out and he slithered down her body until he lay collapsed on the cool stone-panting, while Calypso's fingers dug at him, unbuckling the harness. Vertigo reduced him to complete submission as she removed it.

"How did you do that?" Hill finally was able to gasp. "I could have pulled you off the ledge."

"I'm roped in. See?" Calypso showed him a short tether that pa.s.sed through an iron ring set in the rock face and then to another harness buckled over her torso.

"Where did that come from?"

"We keep it here for just this kind of thing. It's our escape route, Walter. We've had it in place ever since I was kidnapped by El Penacho's henchmen." She began reeling in the rappel rope. "That's it," she said, as the end of the rope came sailing down. She coiled it under the iron ring. "No going back, now-but no one can follow us either."

"Great," Hill said, with feigned enthusiasm. "Is there, perchance, also a way forward?" He leaned on his elbow and glanced outward briefly at the yawning red canyon and its airy interior and then reeled back, overcome with vertigo.

"There is." Calypso took Hill by the elbow. "Just turn toward the cliff and crawl, Walter. Don't look at the canyon or the vertigo will get you." Hill turned onto his side and scrambled to his knees, while Calypso extricated herself from the harness and snapped it to its metal ring with a spare carabiner.

"It's like I'm iron and the canyon is a magnet pulling at me," he rasped.

"I know. I've experienced it myself. Just crawl."

Hill crept along the ledge, with Calypso walking beside him to guard the drop-off. About twenty feet ahead of them where the ledge widened was a leaning flake of stone, big as a garage door. As Hill crawled under its shelter, the powerful pull of vertigo lessened. Then his mouth gaped in amazement. Hidden behind the stone was the opening to a cave.

Hill pulled himself into sitting position, his back to the cliff, and his view of the canyon shuttered by the leaning slab. He found he was panting and over the steam engine puff of his own breath, heard volley after volley of gunfire echoing through the canyon from above. He realized it had been a constant backdrop to his efforts ever since stepping off the edge of the cliff. Somehow, he had interpreted it, in his rattled state, as the hammering and exploding of his own nervous system.

"Gunfire," he said inanely.

"Yes."

Something in Calypso's tone made him look up. Her face was contorted with grief and Hill was instantly ashamed. He struggled to his feet.

"This must be hard for you. Let's go inside." He took her by the arm and pulled her toward the entrance to the cave but she resisted, as if she could not bear to leave this last, disastrous contact with home.

"What will come of this, Walter?" Her voice teetered along the ragged edge of breaking. "What if Javier comes home in the middle of this? I can't lose him, Walter! I couldn't bear it!" Her eyes met his, wild with anxious tears.

Hill swept her to his chest and held her tightly. "Calypso," he breathed into her hair, "Javier will survive this. You've got to believe it." He felt her body go rigid and knew she was fighting to control the fear that was overpowering her. Then, with a wrenching sob, she broke. Leaning into Hill's chest, clinging to him like a drowning woman, she wept.

Rancho Cielo

Javier drove straight through for sixteen hours. It took three hours just to extricate his truck from the lattice of barely visible tracks that lead from the Huichol village out of the hills toward the highway. Once on the paved road, he sped through the mango groves of Jalisco where the tall, s.h.a.ggy trees were laden with ripening fruit. He drove too fast over the Devil's Spine, a perilously narrow twist of road winding vertiginously atop dizzying cliffs. In crossing the mountains, the road crossed the Tropic of Cancer as well, before descending to the deserts and scrubby hills of Durango.

As he traveled, he knew he was pa.s.sing through the very growing fields of the cartels, where marijuana and opium poppies occupied every growable s.p.a.ce in the near-vertical mountains. The little village where he stopped for gas was hostile with paranoia and secrecy.

Once back in Chihuahua, he wheeled his truck up the Boca del Lobo, the Throat of the Wolf, far too fast, his tires squealing on the steep, looping turns. Once on the high plateau with still almost a hundred miles to reach the ranch, he floored the truck, streaking down the narrow highway heedless of wandering cattle, and slowly lumbering trucks.

Caught in a vortex of worry and dread, it was as if Wind Person were speeding him along. All he could think of was Calypso's safety. He went over the preparations he and Pedro had made for the defense of Rancho Cielo, looking for any c.h.i.n.k in their armor. He reviewed the promise Calypso had made to vacate if trouble should erupt and followed in his mind the route they had set up if she should have to flee.

They had thought things through so carefully, but he had always a.s.sumed he would be present if things went bad. What if everything had gone wrong while he was away? The thought maddened him and he drove on into the dawning day like a dark wind howling across the Sierra.

Just as the sun rose, Javier pa.s.sed through the neighboring town of San Juanito with its ambient smell of pine sap and diesel from its sawmills. Outside the vividly turquoise and white church, women in black were already congregating for early ma.s.s beneath its square bell tower. The interior of the little corner restaurant where he and Calypso often enjoyed empanadas, a specialty of the house, was invisible behind steamy front windows, indicating breakfast was ready to serve.

Outside of town, he turned at last onto the dirt road leading to Rancho Cielo. His hands felt bonded to the steering wheel and the gas tank was nearly empty. Pus.h.i.+ng the truck mercilessly over the washboards in the road, he roared toward the ranch with mixed relief and foreboding.

At last he entered Rancho Cielo property, jolting across the first of several cattle guards of railroad rails welded over concrete pits. Cranking the wheel to the left, he took the road to the house, snaking up the long drive as if devils pursued him.

Ahead, he could see the high defensive walls of the courtyard where, instead of a solitary guard, men were swarming, further raising his sense of alarm. As he slowed for the final, circular drive centered with a tall, three-tiered fountain, the big double gates swung open. He skidded around the right hand arc and swung the nose of his truck through the opening, barely missing the gatepost as the tail end whipped through. He heard shouts as the gates clashed shut behind him.

Slamming on the brakes, he threw himself from the cab. The entire courtyard was frenzied with movement. Men were running, carrying weapons, while the women and children from the workers' village were being herded through the kitchen door of the main house. He ran toward the house, thinking only of Calypso.

"What's going on?" he shouted to the first man he came to, a ranch worker named Jose. Before the man could answer, shots were fired somewhere outside the courtyard and an answering volley came from atop the walls.

"The mafia, senor," Jose yelled.

"Where's Caleepso?"

Jose shook his head. "No se, senor."

Javier pushed past him. The interior of the house was a chaotic ma.s.s of swarming women and children. He couldn't make his way through the crowd and shouted, "Where is Caleepso?"

A woman sitting near the door with her two small children nestled against her responded, "Senor Pedro took her away, senor."

Javier spun through the door and raced along the side of the house toward the cliffs, just in time to see Pedro running up the walkway toward the house.

"Where's Caleepso?" Javier shouted.

"She just went over the cliff." Pedro ran up to him, winded. Another burst of gunfire drowned out the rest, and Javier grabbed his arm and dragged him down next to the foundation of the house. "She's okay," Pedro gasped. "And Hill."

"Hill?"

"He came yesterday."

Javier slumped against the foundation stones in relief and reached to give Pedro's shoulder a pat. "Good work, Pedro. Now, what's going on?"

"It's the mafia, Boss. The guard saw them coming. He sounded the alarm. We got everyone in I think. When'd you get here?"

"Five minutes ago. They must have come up from the canyon because I didn't see them on the road from town."

"Yeah. We saw them when they were still deep in the canyon or we wouldn't have had time to get everyone in."

Their eyes met as the volleys of shot increased. "Let's get up on the walls and give these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds h.e.l.l," Javier said.

"You got it, Boss."

They crouched, ducking their heads, and ran.

From the walls, they could look down into the road where several black SUVs with darkly tinted windows were cl.u.s.tered, just out of rifle range. Men must have poured out of them, because it looked as if at least forty were milling around the vehicles, throwing occasional shots in the direction of the walls. In between, they were pa.s.sing plastic bags from which each man pulled a handful of something and then sniffed deeply. The remainder they flung from them and clouds of white powder floated in the damp morning air.

"They're c.o.ked-up to the max," Perdo hissed. "Chingada cabrones. They're gonna think they're Supermen."

"Hideputa! That perico's worth enough to run the government of Mexico," exclaimed one of the ranch's cowboys. He spoke with his eye squinted for his first opportunity at a good shot, his rifle muzzle resting on a crenellation of the wall.

"s.h.i.+t, man!" Pedro responded. "Cocaine does run the government of Mexico!" A shout of laughter went up from the men and that plus Javier's presence did much to steady and unify them.

The men on the ground must have heard them laughing, because they suddenly looked up at the walls, pointing. Bags of cocaine were shoved into pockets or thrown back through open SUV windows. Suddenly, every hand was wrapped around an a.s.sault rifle and one man, obviously the leader, was signaling them to spread out and surround the walls.

"Here they come, men," Javier said softly. "Wait until they're in range and then hit them hard." He crossed himself and the men followed suit.

At that moment, Calypso did not exist except in that sacrosanct place where she always lived in him. He felt his muscles tighten, his heart rate quicken and his fingers dig into the stock of his weapon like steel hooks. Everything he held dear lay behind him-Calypso, the workers and their families, his home, and his ranch. Before him was only death. He took aim. There would be death coming from his direction too.

The men on the wall fired first. The response was a blanket of automatic fire from the ground that kept Javier's men ducking, crouched on the catwalk. Fortunately, Javier had antic.i.p.ated this during the building of his fortifications and had included gun ports at that level. His men thrust their muzzles through these and sent out a solid wall of lead that dropped several of the invaders in their tracks and sent the others scurrying back out of range, dragging several wounded and dead with them.

They took shelter behind their vehicles where Javier watched them holding an excited powwow, arms gesticulating. Javier used the interim to check his men. "Everyone okay?" he called. Shouts went up along the wall, a.s.suring him that his men were still at their posts.

All the preparations he had made over the years were paying off. His men were all well trained in handling armament. Three had been sent to Ciudad Chihuahua to study to be medics and were well-supplied and ready in case of injuries. Some of the younger teenagers were trained as runners who would bring ammunition up from the armory at the base of the wall and keep ammo clips loaded, supplying their fathers and uncles. He knew that in the house, the women would already be preparing pots of beans to keep their army fed.