Haunted

CHAPTER 58

“MAX!”

I scoot myself under the plane, ignoring the flashes of white-hot pain that shoot from my arms, my shoulder. I leave a crimson path as I crawl forward. I don’t worry about the blood. The blood could be mine, it could be my victims’.

But I do worry about the blood around Max.

I look for the source. I have to raise him up to find it—center back. My breath catches at the severity of the wound. He coughs and I lower him again, gently.

But at least he’s alive.

I cradle his head in my arms. His mouth is ringed with blood, dark, viscous. For once, the sight and smell of blood does not tempt vampire to reappear. I think she’s sleeping it off.

I listen to what’s going on around me. It’s quiet inside the hangar and only an occasional stray bullet whizzes outside. I won’t try to move Max until I know it’s safe. I’m debating whether to leave Max and look around when a familiar voice calls out, “Anna. Where are you?”

Culebra.

“Here. Max is hurt.”

In a moment, Culebra, back in human form and dressed, is kneeling to look under the belly of the plane. “Can we move him?”

“I don’t know. He’s been shot in the back. It looks pretty bad.”

He scoots down to join me. After he’s examined the wound, he sits back on his haunches.

I respond to his grim expression, heart racing. “Don’t say it. Max is strong. His buddies are outside. They can call that helicopter, can’t they?”

“Let’s get him out from under here,” is Culebra’s curt reply.

We do our best to move Max as gently as we can. I keep expecting him to rouse and ask us what the fuck we’re doing.

But he doesn’t.

When he’s out in the open, I look around.

Bodies. Everywhere. Some I know I’m responsible for, others dead from gunfire or the fangs of a huge rattlesnake.

Adelita is still in the corner where I left her. Only now she holds a revolver on a trussed-up Pablo and a weeping Maria. They are tied back to back. And Adelita is smiling.

Until she looks our way and sees Max. “Dios mio. ¿Es él vivo?”

From beyond the hangar door, a voice interrupts. “Agent Avillas! Max? Buddy? Where are you?”

“In here,” I shout back. “He’s been hurt.”

Max still hasn’t made a sound except that cough and even now, his eyes remain closed, his face relaxed. Like he’s sleeping. It’s not a good sign.

I watch for the man who called out. He’s approaching with two armed men behind him, speaking into a radio on his collar. He looks Hispanic, dark skinned, dark eyed, built like a man who likes his beer. All three are dressed the same—khaki shirts and cargo pants, black DEA jackets. The one in front has a baseball cap and he’s the one Culebra moves toward. He explains the situation. Baseball cap looks in our direction, but directs the two agents beside him to take Pablo and Maria outside. Then he hurries over to us.

He kneels down beside Max. “Did he stop breathing?” is the first question he asks me.

It only takes a heartbeat to know the reason. The blood around Max’s mouth.

And around mine.

“No. But he’s lost a lot of blood. He needs to get to a hospital.”

The guy speaks into the radio. He uses the clipped, acronym-filled lingo of one agent to another. But when the answer comes back, it’s something I can understand.

They will have the helicopter here in thirty minutes.

I look at Max. He doesn’t look like Max anymore. He’s gone from pale to ashen. I can see through his eyelids. The pool of blood under him is too big, too thick. His breath is so shallow, it hardly flutters his chest.

I touch his cheek. I hope he has thirty minutes.

FOR THE FIRST TIME, CULEBRA, ADELITA AND I ARE ABLE to sit together without a gun or the threat of violence hanging over our heads. We sit close to Max so we can watch one of the agents, a medic, attend to him. The medic packs the wound to staunch the flow of blood, runs an IV to replenish liquids. He won’t give us a prognosis. And Max still hasn’t regained consciousness.

The medic looks at me, bloodsoaked but apparently unhurt, and raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure you don’t need medical attention, too?”

I shake my head. I can feel four bullets, one in each arm, one in my left shoulder and a fourth (which I didn’t know about until it started moving) in my right thigh. I’ve been shot before, but it’s always been through and through. I don’t know what to expect with these wounds. Will the bullets work their way to the surface of my skin and have to be squeezed out like metal blackheads?

A charming visual.

I’ve had a healthy infusion of blood so I’m not worried about my body’s ability to heal itself. Actually, I’m not even in much pain.

I dip my head in Culebra’s direction. “What about you? Were you hit by any of those bullets zipping about?”

He shakes his head. Out loud, he says, “Lucky, I guess.” Internally, he says, Hard to hit anything when you’re shaking so bad, you can barely hold a gun, let alone aim it. No human is prepared for the sight of a rattlesnake as long as two men.

Adelita wrings her hands. “Max will be all right, won’t he?”

She addresses the question to no one and everyone. I wish I could give her an unequivocal yes, but she’s seen so much death today, unless Max opened his eyes and told her himself, I doubt she’d believe it.

Open your eyes, Max. I want to believe it, too.

Outside the hangar, the agents have rounded up the survivors of Pablo’s gang and have them bound and gagged, awaiting the Federales. Only Pablo and Maria will be flown back to the border. I suspect most of the gang will be back on the streets in twenty-four hours. And with Luis and Pablo out of the picture, they’ll be jockeying for leadership of the cartel.

So what exactly have we accomplished?

I look at Max, lying pale and still on the ground. What did he tell Luis? We might not have made a dent in the drug trade, but we’ve taken two predators off the street.

If he dies, was it worth it?

Adelita is leaning over Max, wiping his face with a damp cloth. She’s alive.

There are four young girls in a safe house—unmolested and alive.

Max’s body suddenly jerks. His back arches, his chest heaves as if his lungs can no longer draw air. The medic shoulders Adelita aside and listens to Max’s chest with a stethoscope. “He has a collapsed lung.”

He goes to work with items he pulls from his bag—a scalpel, a tube, something that looks like a manual suction pump. He makes an incision in the skin above Max’s rib cage, inserts the tube and works the pump. Pale liquid flows into the tube and almost instantly, Max relaxes. The medic places an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. He drops the suction pump and yells to his buddies by the hangar door, “How much longer ’til that chopper gets here?”