Uncommon Assassins Read online

  Mike felt a cold wave wash over his body. “After? You’re just going to just watch? Look, I get it. Give me some time, I’ll sell some of the animals and get you a little something.”

  Sanchez smirked. “Do I look like I need any goats?”

  Now Mike felt desperation smother him. “You want the whole farm, is that it? You can’t give me anything to get out of town?”

  “We don’t want your money.”

  Vargas spoke. “But perhaps there is a way we can help each other.”

  After a long slog up the dirt road with the strap of his backpack digging into his shoulder, Mike stepped up to the gate. The guards had no compunction about displaying their AK’s, telling Mike they were the law around here.

  Two miles and a lifetime away he’d said a silent prayer for his wife and daughter. He thought about what Carlos had done to force him here, and it put steel in his spine. The guards grinned, no doubt looking forward to the opportunity to put him through the ringer when their boss beat him.

  “Open it.” They pointed to his bag. Inside there was water, an ice pack, and a tall glass bottle of milk. And a large Tupperware container. They were inside.

  Mike tried not to think about his “practice” two nights ago. The first try ended in coughing and puking. A little better the second time with some endorphins kicking, but he still didn’t know if he was up to this.

  He had to be.

  “The scorpions. Tell Carlos I have them and he can’t handle them. Or me.”

  They just laughed, and he heard them relay the message in Spanish.

  “Up the hill, pendejo. Don’t keep him waiting.”

  Outside a building that looked more like a cinder-block fortress, Mike saw a wooden table and two benches. It reminded him of a park picnic table.

  “Look what the gato brought.” Carlos stepped out from the heavy steel door. He wore baggy pants and a loose T-shirt with a print of flames across the front. His brown skin was dark from the sun, and he wore his hair close-cropped and a three-day stubble goatee. Some warlord. Two more guards flanked him, and they wore large-frame revolvers on their hips.

  “Still dressing to impress.” Mike reminded himself not to get beat up before he even got to the table. He took a sip of water because suddenly his mouth was cotton dry. He knew better than to touch water once they got started.

  “You got old since the last time. Are you sure about this?”

  And heavier, and probably crazier, Mike thought. He clung to the memory of Rosa and drew strength from her little face. “Maybe you’re scared of what I brought?”

  “I don’t know how you got them before me, but as you have seen, I have been practicing since the last time we met.” Carlos crossed the courtyard and a servant brought a tray out to the table. She set a pitcher of water, a bottle of tequila, and a bottle of milk on the table. A boy followed with a pail filled with red and orange peppers.

  Mike took out the water and placed the milk next to the other bottle; they were the same thick glass.

  Carlos nodded with approval. “You remembered. Do you recall the rest of the rules?”

  Mike held up a hand. “Let’s be clear. If I win, I get the $10,000 you promise everyone else.”

  “Of course.” Carlos grinned.

  “And it ends. You leave me alone.”

  “All I ever wanted was a chance to prove myself against the only man to beat me. And a filthy gringo, no less. That’s hard to live with, my friend.”

  “You got your wish.” Mike spoke through clenched teeth. “But I mean it. You leave all of us alone.”

  Carlos feigned insult. “And when I win?”

  “It’s yours.”

  “It?”

  “The farm. You and your brother can do whatever you like with it. Just give me a day to leave town.”

  “Did you leave an empty tequila bottle on the road to the house?” Carlos put out his hand. “But a deal is a deal, yes?”

  They shook and Mike felt the chubby man’s grip was stronger than he remembered. He returned the effort knowing farm life had hardened his own muscles, Carmen’s cooking notwithstanding.

  More men appeared and ringed the table when Mike and Carlos took their spots across the table. It looked like more than twenty and more kept coming. Not that it mattered. One of those thugs with an assault rifle was enough to send him to the next life.

  Carlos placed the two milk bottles directly between then. The servant girl set a plate in front of each man. She put on a glove and plunked an orange pepper onto each plate.

  “A warm up. We each eat our share and continue until one man surrenders. The first one to grab their milk, spit out a pepper or throw up loses. Clear?”

  “Yeah.” Mike was sweating already. He forced himself to concentrate on the pepper in front of him.

  “We will save yours for last if you make it that far.” Carlos pointed at the open Tupperware. He bent down and sniffed the golf ball-sized red peppers. “Dios!”

  “Let’s get on with it.”

  Carlos held up an orange habanero. The crowd murmured. He popped it into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. He opened his mouth to show it was gone. A slight sheen of perspiration was the only indicator he’d eaten it.

  Mike followed suit. He ate these for fun and the burn coated his mouth like a comforting balm.

  They each ate one more of those and Mike knew his sweating was pure nerves. The guards murmured and must have mistaken him for a lightweight.

  “Enough foreplay. What else do you have?” Mike felt the tingle on his lips.

  “Ghosts,” Carlos shouted.

  He’d asked for it. The Bhut Jolokia, one of the hottest peppers in the world. For the dedicated chili head, this would set his head on fire. He hoped the habaneros woke up enough endorphins.

  “Together.” Carlos called out. He held up a bright red pepper that looked like a fat, wrinkled pinkie finger.

  Mike picked up his and, at a million Scoville heat units, knew pain was on the way.

  “Not again, my friend. You won’t wear me down this time.” Carlos bit to the stem and Mike followed suit.

  The heat hit him immediately, but he knew it was a prelude to what was coming.

  His tongue burned and the fire seared down his throat and smoldered in his belly. He began to hiccough and the guards leaned closer, hooting.

  Mike rode the first waves of pain and thought of Rosa and Carmen. His head erupted in sweat and he felt it break out across his back. His brown hair matted down when he wiped his brow.

  “Holy ...”

  If this didn’t affect Carlos, he was going to lose too quickly.

  Mike spared a glance across the table. For an instant he thought his prediction was true. Carlos smiled at him and, other than a slick of sweat all over the man’s shaved head, he looked relaxed.

  Then Mike looked at the man’s arms locked in a death grip on the bench. Carlos’s muscles bunched and stood out. The sight of the stress took Mike’s mind away from the searing pain he felt, and he tried to draw as much strength as possible.

  Mike tried to say “Not bad.” But his throat felt like it was closing down to a straw and all he did was make a squeak.

  The guards roared with laughter and they started to chant “leche, leche,” urging him to buckle and take a drink of milk.

  Mike knew the moment he did they’d beat him like the others. He hoped by then he’d be in another dimension from the pain.

  When he thought the agony was beginning to plateau, he pointed at the container with the Moruga Scorpion peppers. He swallowed and felt his throat open enough to speak. “They call it the brain strain. Maybe it won’t work on you.”

  Carlos looked like he was in a different world. He turned to the servant girl. “Consuela. Medio.”

  She cut the pepper in half and placed a portion on each plate. A moment after the gold, ball-sized, gnarled red pepper hit the plate, she shook her ungloved hand like it was scalded. “Aiee.” She put her fingers in her mouth.
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  Big mistake.

  Seconds later, she waved her hands in front of her mouth and began to hop from one foot to another.

  The guards howled and let her suffer. Only when she lunged for Mike’s bottle of milk did they grab her. One big guy snatched her up and hauled her away.

  That was too close.

  “You are next.” Carlos popped his piece in and began to chew. “Not as hot as the Ghost Pepper.”

  “Just wait.” Mike ate his and a couple remaining taste buds that weren’t already numb registered the flavor. He’d already discovered the other night, this one came on strong but never quit. The burn just built and built.

  Carlos was finding that out, Mike saw. Adding this heat on top of the ghost pepper was insanity. When he beat Carlos a decade ago, he’d been a little drunk and they piled on the habaneros. It was all about volume.

  “Madre de Dios!” Carlos began to cough and a murmur went up in the crowd. Mike thought Carlos was going to puke. His own hand twitched for the milk.

  Not yet. Carlos rallied.

  Mike rode the pain to another plateau, then it kicked higher and his stomach wrenched. “Shit!”

  The group of guards was whipped into a frenzy; they sounded like animals. Mike fought the stomach cramps and willed himself not to spew.

  The guards even looked like hyenas. Literally. Mike realized he was beginning to hallucinate from the endorphin rush that tried to compensate for the warped levels of agony that cooked his frame.

  Hold on. For Carmen, for Rosa, for Carosa. Their faces merged in his mind’s eye but it still gave him something to focus on.

  He felt like he couldn’t breathe, but he had to or he’d pass out.

  He looked at Carlos. Another illusion. The man’s face seemed to be melting like a wax figure in a fire.

  Neither spoke. They stared at each other, locked in self-imposed torture. Salvation at arm’s length. Not really, but the milk would help.

  Which milk, which milk, which milk ran through Mike’s brain. Move soon. He could swear Carlos was about to break.

  What was he supposed to do? It was getting hard to think. There was the pain and the pain was there.

  Mike remembered and, with a big swipe of his arm across his own gushing forehead, grazed his fingers over his eyes.

  “Shit, my eyes! Too hot, sonofabitch. Where’s the milk?”

  But he could see. A little. Enough to make sure he grabbed Carlos’s milk bottle.

  “I’m out!” He ripped the top off and chugged as much as he could before anyone could react. Then he let out a scream and dropped the bottle. “Crap.”

  The glass shattered and the last of the milk splashed his pants.

  Carlos let out a drunken sounding whoop and the guards roared. He jumped up and Mike squinted through his good eye and blinked away the tears from where his finger touched. It felt exactly like when he got pepper-sprayed by a cop one time in college.

  He saw Carlos dive on the table and take the remaining milk bottle and drain it like a man possessed.

  Carlos belched and Mike’s heart stopped when he thought the man was going to vomit.

  He tried to will the man to keep it down.

  Somehow he did, and Carlos staggered toward him.

  “You made me earn it, but today I am the better man.”

  Mike fell to his knees. All the strength seemed to have left his legs.

  “Don’t bother to beg me, gringo. You made a deal and I will put your land to good use.” Carlos laughed and the sweat continued to pour off him. His shirt was soaked through like he’d broken a fever.

  Carlos leaned over Mike. “You will be gone tomorrow, sí?”

  Mike nodded. “You won’t see me again.”

  Carlos held his stomach. “Those were the devil.” He kicked Mike in the side and knocked him over.

  Mike barely noticed the kick because his entire body felt like a throbbing tooth.

  But the kick was a signal and the guards fell on him.

  He felt plenty before he passed out.

  “Hold still.” At the sound of the strange voice Mike woke up again, feeling a bit more clarity than the first time he clawed back to consciousness. Everything was a blur, and he felt like he dreamed the car ride to the hospital.

  He opened his eyes and saw a homely nurse apply a fresh bandage to his face. In his confusion he wondered if the nurse was really one of Carlos’s guards in disguise and had come to finish him off.

  She hissed at him. “You will break your stitches. Hold still.”

  He did. Where could he go?

  “That’s enough.” Mike recognized the voice of Sanchez. “Leave us.”

  The nurse disappeared without another word. Mike saw Vargas behind the federale. He closed the door to the small room that Mike realized wasn’t a hospital after all. His “bed” was a couch. The color of the wall matched the police station, so maybe he was in a back room somewhere.

  “You are awake?” Sanchez said.

  Mike blinked and wondered why he’d say that when they were staring at one another.

  “You can understand me?” Sanchez’s tone grew sharp.

  “Yeah.” Mike was surprised how weak his voice sounded.

  “Well?”

  “What?”

  “He drank it?”

  Oh right. “Yes. But it didn’t work.”

  The cops shared a look. “He threw up?”

  “No. That’s what I’m saying. He kept it down. I think it was a macho thing even after he won, but he seemed fine. Well, as fine as me, anyway.”

  The men smiled.

  Mike looked for a clock. “How long have I been here?”

  “Not long. Just a few hours.”

  “Why didn’t I go to the hospital?”

  “We thought it would be safer for you to come here. And you should leave town as soon as possible.”

  “Why, if it didn’t work?”

  “Señor. Ricin is not instant and, unfortunately, the ambulances are all broken if some urgent calls come through.”

  Mike sat up. “So they’ll know? I have to get my family.”

  “You will. As soon as we receive confirmation about an unfortunate reaction to a dangerous game.”

  Mike felt strange, but then he remembered the whole reason for the challenge. “Are you sure?” He swung his legs off the couch. His entire body felt covered in bruises.

  “We will make sure you get to a new town where you can be safe,” Sanchez said.

  The fog was lifting in Mike’s mind. “Where will that be? I need to get back to the states. Even there might not be safe. When they figure out that it was me, they will send hit men all over the world.”

  “I don’t think so.” Sanchez shook his head.

  “They just got through kidnapping and threatening my family and after our contest Carlos turns up dead? Suspicious, don’t you think?”

  Sanchez gave a thin smile. “No. And neither will they, because they never threatened your family.”

  “Of course they did. My daughter—” Mike felt sudden cold. “You bastard.”

  “Perhaps, Señor. But rest assured that you performed an invaluable service.”

  Vargas whispered. “And we won’t say anything if you don’t.”

  Mike balled his fists but the guns the men carried told him he’d have to ride out a bigger burn than the scorpion’s.

  EVERYBODY WINS

  BY LISA MANNETTI

  ANXIOUS? DEPRESSED? THINKING OF SUICIDE?

  Now, there’s help.

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  ONE ON ONE

  With a New York State Certified Suicide Counselor.

  That was as far as Sally Grimshaw read. She punched in the phone number.

  “We’re here for you,” a young woman on the other end said. Sally began explaining, talking faster and faster. Her black moods, her low self-esteem. (And what good did it do to know it was low self-esteem? As if knowing could make her feel less like shit.)

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nbsp; “I want to die,” Sally finished.

  “Mr. Vinny can see you in twenty minutes—”

  “See me?”

  “Certainly.” The woman rattled out an address in the West Eighties. “Can you get here?”

  “Yes. Thank you. God bless you, yes—’’

  “Don’t worry about your hair, your clothes—don’t worry about a thing. Just get in a cab and come right now.”

  Sally hung up and rushed into her old trench coat, throwing it on over a flannel nightgown. She snagged an oversized worn black leather pocketbook from the hook inside the closet door.

  Five minutes later she walked into a cold, gray day and wishy-washy December flurries. But she had hope, she told herself. Now there was hope.

  “I’m forty-seven and I’ve never even had a date.” Sally snuffled into a white Kleenex tissue. “I hate my job. I think they’re going to fire me because I call in sick a lot. I can’t help it.” She twisted the soft paper to shreds, as if it might prevent her from breaking into hysterical sobs. “Four years ago at my high school reunion, not one person remembered me—”

  Mr. Vinny (“No last names here, please”) held up a pudgy hand. “It’s a tough old world, that’s God’s truth, Sal.” Gold pinky ring gleaming, he was paging through the three or four sheets of paper that were Sally’s file.

  Mr. Vinny’s office was painted dark salmon. A huge aquarium built into the wall behind his antique desk added turquoise sparkle. He closed the folder and walked toward her.

  “So, Sally, how were ya gonna do it? Huh?” Mr. Vinny sat on the edge of his desk, one loafer dangling. “Pills, a gun, a dive out the window, what?”

  “Pills, I guess—”

  “Shit, you take pills, maybe you’ll get the job done. More likely you’ll wake up one morning in Bellevue, and you’ll be lucky if you don’t end up a vegetable in a wheelchair.” He got up and paced a step or two, hands clasped behind his back. “Nope, it’s not efficient.” He stared at her. “I don’t like inefficiency.”