Stahl pivoted with his short automatic rifle raised, its sights still trained on the moving vehicle as it passed.
A man in the backseat popped up and raised a weapon that looked like an AK-47, but before he could fit the long weapon out the window, he bumped the muzzle against the window frame. The half second gave Stahl time to fire a shot into the man’s forehead.
Stahl saw the dome light of the car go on and held his rifle sights steady.
The car swept by, but the man who had jumped from the far side door was left behind, kneeling with a rifle rising to his shoulder. Stahl’s sights settled on him first, he fired, and the man fell backward onto the cobblestones.
Stahl grasped Glover’s arm again and said, “Come on, as fast as you can manage.” He began to run, dragging Glover along with him. In a moment they made it around the corner of the church into the dark lane that led up the hillside. Stahl pushed Glover into the wall and they both stood with their backs against it in the shadow of the big building. Stahl used the moment to remove the magazine of his Steyr and replace it with his spare, then cycle the first round into the chamber.
He took out his handheld radio. “We’re at the pickup location. What are you waiting for?”
“We heard shots.”
“Me too. I fired them. Get here now.” He sidestepped back to the corner of the church and craned his neck to look out at the plaza.
The car with three of the dead men still inside completed its drift across the empty plaza and slowly pushed its way into the glass front of a long-closed restaurant, bringing the glass down on top of it and coming to rest among a forest of tables and upturned chairs.
In a moment another vehicle with no headlights emerged from the street beside the church and stopped. Stahl threw open the back door and pushed Glover onto the seat, then got in beside Garza. “Go.”
Antonio Garza accelerated quickly, his lights still off.
Stahl said, “Stay away from the restaurant on the other side of the plaza, and don’t run over that body.”
Antonio skirted the plaza, using the open space to gain speed, and passed by a row of ornate government buildings. As he drove, they heard sirens and then saw the lights of the police cars illuminating the upper parts of buildings they passed on the way to the square. Antonio reached the mouth of a side street just before the police cars pulled up in front of the restaurant.
Glover said, “Didn’t you see those police cars?’
“We sure did,” said Stahl.
“Aren’t we going to stop and tell them? They could help us.”
“Not on this trip,” Stahl said.
Glover was incensed. “That stuff about all Mexican cops being corrupt is nonsense,” Glover said. “This isn’t some remote village. It’s a busy town. Come on.”
Stahl said, “One of the men holding you was a police detective. He wasn’t there to help you, Benjamin. He was there to be sure that when your ransom got paid the police got their honest cut.”
“Look, I know a couple of police captains.”
“Then we don’t have to wonder about who picked you out for the kidnappers.”
Garza drove to the vegetable canning plant where he’d left the other car, and they made the trade. When Stahl helped Glover into the backseat, there was already a middle-aged woman waiting there. She was pretty, with large, lively brown eyes and long black hair with a streak of gray.
She began to talk to Glover rapidly in Spanish, but Glover said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand you.” He said to Stahl, “Who is this woman?”
Stahl glanced over his shoulder and saw the garment Esmeralda was holding up to Glover. “She’s asking you to put those on so she can get started on your hair and makeup.”
“These are women’s clothes.”
“She’s giving you a disguise. She’s very good. She gets lots of work for movie studios.”
“Is this necessary?”
“Only if you want to get across the border alive,” said Stahl. “At some point they’re going to get your picture into the hands of guards at the airports and border crossings. She can make you into a different person, but it takes time, so let her get started.”
“What if I don’t want to cross the border in drag?”
Stahl half-turned and looked at him. “I haven’t had time to explain the whole situation. You’re probably really good at what you do, manufacturing things in places where nobody has money and selling them in places where people do. That’s a great talent, and I wish I had it. But instead, I learned a trade. I can find and extract a kidnapped American businessman. The bump in the road this time was that I couldn’t get you out of the building where they had you without killing the three men who were holding you. That’s not something I’d normally do. And you saw what happened at the plaza. Those four men are dead too.”
“But—”
“If the police stop us, we die or go to prison for life. I picked that disguise because I knew they would starve you, and being skinny would help you pass for a woman. That’s the plan, and I’m afraid I have to insist.”
Esmeralda began to work, first pulling Glover’s filthy T-shirt off and then pulling the silky blue-flowered dress down over his head. She fitted the wig and looked at him critically. She shaved his face with an electric razor and then began to apply foundation makeup.
Glover said, “What made you do this?”
“A whole lot of money.”
“Who’s paying you?”
“You are,” Stahl said. “Your wife already put up the money with my security company.”
“She paid you in advance?”
“It’s company policy.”
“That’s quite a policy.”
“It saves my clients from the unpleasant experience of seeing me again.”
Glover lapsed into silence while Esmeralda applied foundation and then blush to his cheeks. She said in Spanish to Garza: “Tell me when you’re on a long, flat stretch so I can do the eyes. The eyeliner is the hardest.”
In a few minutes she finished, and then Glover fell asleep. Esmeralda used a small makeup light on a compact to study her work, and then said, “I like him better as a woman.”
Stahl shrugged. “You’re the expert.” After an hour of fast driving Garza said, “We’ll be up on that bridge before long.”
“All right.” Stahl unloaded the Steyr and then broke down the weapon. When they came to a bridge over the Rio Colorado, Garza stopped. Stahl hurled the receiver over the side to splash into the river. Then he threw the barrel, the trigger, and sear and springs as far as he could, followed by the ammunition and magazines, his pistol, and his knife; got back in; and buckled up while Garza went on.
They drove into the long morning line at the Mexicali-Calexico crossing just before dawn. The line of cars inched forward, nose to tail, their engines idling under the gray, rainy sky.
When they approached the customs booth, Stahl nodded and Esmeralda woke Glover. At the booth, Garza handed the four passports to the uniformed customs officer. As the man’s eyes focused on each passport in turn, his expression remained sleepy and bored. When he reached Glover’s passport, he studied him for a moment, and then said, “Mrs. Glover. Where were you born?”
Glover said, “Cleveland, Ohio,” in a soft, nearly feminine voice.
The customs man closed the passport and handed all four back to Antonio. Then he stepped back and waved the car into the United States.
When they pulled away, Glover leaned forward and said, “Let me see that passport.” Stahl took the stack from Garza, then handed one to Glover. He looked at it, scowled for a few seconds, then laughed. “It’s my wife’s passport. I can’t believe you got me across the border on my wife’s passport.”
When they were leaving Calexico, Esmeralda pulled off Glover’s wig and put it back in her kit, and then used wet wipes to remove all of the makeup from his face. She said, “Be careful with the dress. I want to give it to someone.”