Chapter 117
FOR AN INSTANT I felt sure that the police officers were going to go for their weapons, but then Cordova prodded them from behind with his sawed-off shotgun and growled, “You want to join your ancestors on the Day of the Dead, se?ores?”
Chief Fox broke first, turning and lurching into the van.
“You’re making a big mistake,” Commandant Gomez snarled as he followed his colleague unsteadily inside the van.
“On your stomachs,” Justine said, making her voice hoarse and pointing her gun at them from the shadows.
Cruz climbed in after them, took their weapons, and emptied them of bullets as I slid the door shut. Cordova jumped into the front seat. Mo-bot started driving again.
“Nice easy pace,” Cordova said.
Cruz and I meanwhile threw zip-tie restraints around the men’s wrists and ankles. They reeked of tequila and sweat but showed surprisingly little fear when we sat them up.
“You’ll spend many years behind bars for this,” said Commandant Gomez in an angry, drunken tone. “If you’re lucky and I don’t kill you first.”
Cruz gagged them. I blindfolded them.
No one spoke during the drive. South of Guadalajara, near the town of El Zapote, Mo-bot turned off onto a two-track dirt road and bumped up it for several hundred yards next to a condemned building that we’d scouted earlier in the day. Sci pulled up in a second panel van.
Still wearing the skeleton masks, we got the two men from the van and took them inside what had once been a tool and die operation, using red-lensed flashlights to lead them through the debris that had been left behind. In a high-ceilinged space deep inside the structure, we sat the two men in chairs.
Cordova said, “We cut off the wristbands. But if you move, we will shoot you with your own guns, se?ores. Nod if you understand.”
Both men bobbed their heads. Cruz used a pocketknife to slit the ties. Sci set glasses of water in front of them as they undid their gags. The second the gags were off, Mo-bot threw a switch and high-intensity spotlights glared down on them.