Djinn City, page 36
“Not a good time?” Rais asked.
“Man, turn that car around, I ain’t asking twice.”
“Relax. I’m an emissary. Get Elkran on the phone.”
“He ain’t here. And the big man in the house ain’t here either.”
“Okay, Josh? Josh. Look, I’m supposed to meet Beltrex, I’ve got an appointment with Elkran. Why don’t you relax and tell me what’s going on.”
“You know all of ’em?” Josh asked finally.
“I’m one of them, if you get my meaning.”
He turned away, consulted with someone who spoke in rapid-fire Spanish, and then pointed his gun. “Okay, you’re probably gonna regret this. Inside, the three of you.”
The gate started to retract slowly. He couldn’t see them, but Rais got the feeling that more than one rifle scope was now trained at them.
“Drive in slow, pull up to where them Escalades are parked.”
“Er, Josh, why are you taking orders in Spanish?”
Josh looked aggrieved. “’Cause them Baja mob’ve come up here for a meeting, but Mr. B and Mr. E took off earlier in the incident, leaving me in charge, knowing I’ve got a bad back, and how am I supposed to protect the ranch against all them killer Mexicans, huh?”
“Baja mob?”
“Gangsters, man. Baja fucking cartel.” Josh dropped his voice to a whisper. “The Aztec himself is here, and that means he’s gonna kill everyone. He eats their livers, man. Didn’tja learn that in school?”
“Tough luck, man.”
“I don’t even speak Spanish,” Josh said miserably. “They got me out here as cannon fodder, in case someone comes in shooting.”
Roger drove very slowly over the pebbled driveway to the hacienda-style mansion. The courtyard up front was indeed filled with haphazardly parked Escalades. There were gunmen on the roof and loud music coming from inside. Men and women in bathing suits were unloading crates of liquor and plastic floaty toys from the back of a van.
“Welcome to el rancho,” a guard similarly attired to Josh said. He had a bruise on his cheek, and someone had apparently taken away his sidearm, because an empty holster flapped against his hip. “The Aztec would like to welcome you as his guests and invite you to join the party.”
The front door led to a massive marble-floored hallway with high ceilings, at the far end of which was an open terrace leading to a central courtyard complete with swimming pool, wet bar, grill, and a dozen deck chairs. The party was in full swing here, people in various stages of undress draped around the deck lounging and dancing, men flipping burgers, dogs barking, Tupac at full blast, a Thai chef making satays and smoking a cigar, and a plump nude woman swimming laps.
A waiter thrust some champagne flutes at them, and several steps later a woman in a lime-green bikini stuffed a cigar into Rais’s mouth and lit it, laughing and chattering in Spanish, and then proceeded to somehow disrobe Roger without him noticing, his body bobbing like a pasty white flag among the tanned good health of the party crew.
The lady led them on, grabbing Roger by the hand, pulling them through various parts of the house, the music fading with each step, until they found themselves in a wood-paneled study. A shaven-headed man sat behind the desk, reading a book, his thin, ascetic face furrowed in concentration.
“Oy, Tenoch, your guests,” she said, kissing his forehead before sauntering out.
Tenoch rose courteously, shaking hands and ushering them into seats. He had the slightly distracted air of an academic, the holstered .33-caliber on his waist incongruous.
“I hope you did not find the party too obnoxious,” he said. “My colleagues are… exuberant. Would you like a drink? Coffee perhaps?”
“No, these are great.” Rais raised his cigar.
“Excuse the guns, people expect that sort of thing,” Tenoch said.
“That’s an Aztec name, right?” Rais said.
“Nahuatl,” Tenoch said. “My aunt christened me so I kept it, although it’s a terrible name for a cartel boss. Everyone else is called El Tigre, or El Chapo, or Serpiente or something.”
“The guy at the gate called you the Aztec.”
Tenoch sighed. “I can’t stop them from making up stories. They think I’m some kind of shaman because I read books.”
“He said you eat livers.”
“What?” Tenoch looked disgusted. “What kind of barbarity is that? I studied engineering in college, for god’s sake. I wanted to join NASA.”
“So what happened?”
Tenoch frowned. “What do you think? I came back for a vacation and somehow my dad suckered me into a month-long internship, which has stretched to eighteen years now, and he’s gone and died in the middle of it of course…”
“You guys are what, the Sinaloa? Josh said something about Baja.”
Tenoch bowed slightly. “We are an offshoot of the infamous Sinaloa. My family deals in some specialized aspects of the trade, beyond the regular business of MDMA, heroin, and cocaine.” He leaned forward. “We are what you could call a boutique firm.”
“Really? I wasn’t aware there were different kinds of cartels.”
“Well, you see, there are market segments naturally, in such a large economy. When I inherited my position, I exchanged our bulk processing assets for a more advisory role. Quite simply, we provide technical assistance to the Sinaloa and to the others, upon request. Our main portfolio offers solutions for surveillance, communications, cloud ware, and exotic weapons. And, of course, the specialty services, like alternate dispute resolution. That’s a very popular one. The murder rate among gangsters has gone way down since we started up.”
“That’s fascinating. I guess cartels can’t just walk into Microsoft and ask for cloud space.”
“They can’t take each other to court either.” Tenoch smirked. “Now, forgive me, but let us get to business. You are associates of Mr. Beltrex. I assume you are here to explain his absence?”
“Ah,” Rais said.
“No, we’ve come to find him, just like you,” Maria said. “Where the hell is he?”
“That is unfortunate,” Tenoch said. “We were counting on Mr. Beltrex.”
“Anything we can help with?”
“Are you able to magic items in and out of the country?” Tenoch asked. “Or perhaps you can return to me the astronomical sum I have paid in advance to Mr. Beltrex for such a service? I sincerely hope, for both our sakes, that you can answer yes to one of those questions.” The gun was somehow in his hand and pointing straight at Rais’s forehead.
“Okay, relax,” Rais said.
“You claimed to be one of them at the gate,” Tenoch said. “Now be one of them. Perform the job Beltrex was contracted for.”
“Look, what exactly was Beltrex supposed to do for you?”
“Mr. Beltrex arranges dark shipments of exotic items. He has ways to avoid radar, which, quite frankly, I want to know nothing about. We have been working on acquiring some military drone technology for the past eighteen months. To procure such a thing is difficult. To actually remove it from U.S. soil is practically impossible. I am here to hand it over for export. Imagine my regret, then, to find both of them gone under such peculiar circumstances.”
“Peculiar circumstances?” Rais asked. “Like what?”
Tenoch made an impatient gesture. “They were taken. Homeland Security? The CIA? Who knows. We will get to that later. First let us discuss how exactly you are going to solve my problem.”
“Do you mind if I confer with my colleagues?” Rais asked.
“By all means,” Tenoch said. He gestured to the couches at the far end of the room. “No violence, please. Just to clarify, there are men with submachine guns outside the door, watching through the closed-circuit camera. I myself am considered something of a marksman. You appear peaceful people, but in this line of work…”
“Of course,” Rais said.
They huddled together at the far bookcase. Roger was a pool of nervous sweat, more out of excitement than fear. Like many educated white men of his class, he seemed to expect everything to work out in his favor and considered the possibility of Tenoch actually executing him to be nil.
“I’ve got the Five Strikes,” Maria said. “It’s weird, I know it’s there, but it’s kind of hovering out of sight, waiting to be used. They didn’t find it when they searched me. I’m pretty sure I can kill him before he shoots all of us.”
“That plan seems to include at least one of us getting shot,” Rais said.
Maria shrugged.
“You got a magic weapon?” Roger asked. “Can I hold it?”
“What about Golgoras?” Maria asked, ignoring him. “You said he’s waiting for us. Call in an airstrike. Let’s bomb these guys.”
“Let’s not,” Rais said. “I think we can make a deal. Golgoras is running solo. What if we hooked them up? The Sephiroth can run Tenoch’s shipment, and Golgoras gets some free crew—he doesn’t trust Ghuls anymore. It’s a good deal for Tenoch; Golgoras can probably swing a clientship. What do you think?”
“Can’t hurt to ask,” Maria said. “I can always stab him if he refuses.”
“Look, Tenoch, I have a proposal,” Rais said, as they returned to the desk. “One of my partners has an airship. He’s waiting off the coast for us, he should be able to get over here pretty fast. I can’t guarantee it, but if he agrees to terms with you, he can get anything in and out for you without detection, one hundred percent.”
“Airship? Like a blimp?” Tenoch looked skeptical.
“Not really. It’s faster than any blimp you’ve seen, and it’s completely stealth—I mean radar-proof, sonar-proof. It could be floating in front of your eyes and you wouldn’t see it,” Rais said.
“I find this very hard to believe,” Tenoch said.
“Beltrex was probably using the same method,” Rais said. “I understand your disbelief. But the real issue is I don’t think you know exactly what you’re dealing with here.”
“I’d be very careful how I phrase the next sentence,” Tenoch said softly. “If I were you.”
“Beltrex, Elkran—what do you think they are?” Rais asked.
“Scary old men,” Tenoch said. “I don’t care how they do their shit, I don’t want to know. Elkran particularly. The dude is evil.”
“They’re djinns, man!” Roger said. “Djinns. They do magic! Can you believe it? Actual djinns!”
“Thanks, Roger, that’s probably enough,” Rais said.
“Djinns?” Tenoch asked. “Are you serious?”
“Like spirits, demons—”
“I know what the word means,” Tenoch said. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or insane.”
“All right, take a look at these pictures on my phone.”
Tenoch looked. “I see men in fancy dress.”
“The underwater ruins? The giant squid?”
Tenoch shrugged. “I’ve seen skinny-ass bitches turn themselves into JLo with Photoshop. Who trusts pictures these days?”
“Okay, you said Beltrex and Elkran were taken. From where?”
“He has an underground bomb shelter,” Tenoch said. “It was locked from the inside. I had to blow the wall. I had a peep inside, couldn’t find anything. I am waiting for my forensic expert to have a closer look.”
“Well, can we go see it?”
“Are you a forensic expert?”
“If I can’t convince you he’s a djinn, I promise I’ll take out my own liver.”
“All right, I’ll play along,” Tenoch said, getting up. “I’m openminded, but you’re really stretching it here.”
The basement was a bunker running under the house and partially into the hill behind, a large suite of rooms protected by steel doors, still intact. Tenoch had blown a hole in the reinforced concrete wall instead. Two men in Kevlar guarded the wreckage.
“The staff swear that Elkran and Beltrex were both in here. They woke up in the middle of the night to strange noises. They came down but found the door locked, with no one answering. They tried the phones, the coms, the walkie-talkies—everything. Then they went back to sleep. We came yesterday, couldn’t get in either. I sent to San Diego for explosives, my people got in this morning. I just blew the wall an hour before you got here,” Tenoch said.
“Did the servants throw up that night? When they came to check?” Rais asked.
“Yes. All of them apparently,” Tenoch said, surprised. “How did you know that?”
“Distortion field,” Rais said. “Aftereffects of djinn magic. When they use it, we get sick. I puked every day on the Sephiroth until I got used to it.” He put on his glasses. The visible surfaces were covered with runes, all of them pulsing, potent. There were no breaches on the outside; the lines continued unbroken even over the hole in the wall. “See.”
Tenoch took the glasses, saw, and then cursed in Spanish.
“Believe me now?”
“It’s giving me a headache,” he said finally. “What are those?”
“Spells. Protective runes. Permanent structural changes to the matrix that djinns call the field. The djinn can see these markers with the naked eye. Beltrex didn’t need protection from men—normal weapons can’t really kill him,” Rais said. “These wards are to keep djinn out, and I’m pretty sure it’s djinn who took him. Let’s go inside. I’m guessing we’ll find a breach.”
“Is it booby-trapped?”
“Not for humans. Beltrex wasn’t worried about us.”
The rooms inside were undisturbed: a luxurious foyer, followed by an office, a kitchen, and several bedrooms, this inner sanctum furnished more in the djinn style, with brass and polished wood, many ancient artifacts scattered haphazardly, a few rooms filled like a museum. The annex reeked of magic; wherever Rais looked, dark powers crowded his eyes. Beltrex had been potent.
“Thousands of years of loot,” Rais whispered, thumbing a scrimshawed mammoth tusk, shaped into a horn.
The others were ambling around, awestruck despite themselves. There were priceless things here: jeweled swords, old porcelain, several chests of bullion, a head of Anubis with glinting emerald eyes. In one alcove was a gigantic double-handed war hammer resting on the ground, the oversize flat head balanced by a thick, curving spike on the other side.
Rais followed the runes, unbroken lines of protection, until he got to the final room, burrowed flush into the adjoining hill, the walls and ceiling of the room fashioned from the actual volcanic rock that formed most of the geological structures in Sonoma. The breach was here, the wards weakened or unraveled, creating an impossibly perfect circular hole in the middle of the roof, as if someone had drilled down through the hill above.
“Are you trying to tell me that you think the U.S. government somehow drilled through the hill into this room and snatched Beltrex? Without him noticing?” Rais asked.
“It’s that or djinns.” Tenoch borrowed the glasses again. “I guess I’m leaning toward djinns now.”
“See the breach?”
“Yup.”
“The runes were weakest here, because Beltrex thought he was safe. On account of the hill on top of his head.”
“So djinns came down this hole? And what? Kidnapped them?”
“No signs of a struggle,” Rais said. “Beltrex was a beast, and Elkran was a famed duelist. I don’t know how they could be overpowered.”
“How powerful are we talking about?”
“I don’t know. They keep saying they’re more powerful than nuclear bombs,” Rais said. “Not sure whether that’s just shit-talking or they’re being serious.”
Everyone passed around the glasses, until they were all convinced by the breach. Then they sat on the thick carpet like children and just stared at the hole.
“Wow. Christ. So it’s all real,” Tenoch said. “Djinns are real. So spirits, demons, angels—everything is real?”
“Blows your mind, right?” Roger said.
“I don’t know about angels,” Rais said. “I don’t think djinns are supernatural. I think they’re just like us—wandering around lost, trying to make sense of everything.”
“Are you guys going to sit here all night looking at the hole, or are we going to get the hell out of here?” Maria asked finally. “This place is just creepy.”
“You still inclined to kill us, Tenoch?” Rais asked.
Tenoch shrugged. “Safest thing to do, really. Djinn or not, I still have a drone sitting over here I have no way to get out. Getting caught with it means a one-way trip to a dark room in Gitmo, no trial, no lawyer.”
“Let me make the deal then. The airship is hovering over the Pacific as we speak. I’ll take you and your shipment out, drop you in Baja, same way Beltrex would have. And you get to see a live djinn.”
“What’s the catch?”
“Golgoras owns the ship. He’s going to want something,” Rais said.
“What, like cash? I’ve already paid.”
“He won’t take cash. Djinns don’t take human currency normally. What deal did you have with Beltrex?”
“All kinds of weird drugs, women, men, electronics, you name it,” Tenoch said. “Those dudes had appetites.”
“You have men here, right? Sicarios? Got any you can spare?”
“What?”
