Puerto Vallarta Squeeze Read Online Free PDF Page B

the road a kilometer south of Las Varas. They sat there in darkness, big stars on the other
     side of the windshield, Vito idling like a slow coffee grinder with teeth missing. He turned the ignition key. Dead quiet
     except for crickets in the background and the riffle of night breeze around them.
    “Which way?”
    The shooter was looking at the map again, using his little flashlight. He folded the map, stuck it under the seat, and lit
     a cigarette. “Let’s hold off on the choice for a while. Take that coast road you were talking about, the one with less traffic.
     We’ll talk routes again at Mazatlan. I might want to head up to Sonoyta.”
    “Where the hell is that?” Danny had never heard of Sonoyta.
    “Stay on Fifteen up to Santa Ana, just like you’re going to Nogales. At Santa Ana, take Route Two west… goes right up to Sonoyta.”
    “What’s the U.S. border town there?”
    “Isn’t any. Ajo, Arizona, is a little north of the border, Gila Bend’s another forty miles past Ajo.”
    “That’s a long way from Dallas, if Dallas is where you’re headed.”
    “Sonoyta, maybe.” That’s all he said.
    Danny started the Bronco, turned left in Las Varas, and took the three of them northwest through the warm Mexican night. He’d
     hung a radio off the dashboard a year ago and flipped it on now; song he’d heard before was playing. Luz had told him it was
     based on an old Nahua poem from the days of the Conquistadors:
    Nothing remains but flowers and sad songs Where once there were warriors and wise men… .
    The shooter looked out Vito’s right side, into darkness. He looked that way for a long time, then put a worn desert boot up
     on the dash and slouched in his seat, ball cap pulled even lower than before, as if he were sleeping. But Danny was pretty
     sure he wasn’t.

SHADOWMEN
    R ecoil. Counterpoint. As Danny Pastor shifted the Bronco into third gear, running toward
el Norte
through the blanket-soft night of coastal Mexico, a Learjet 35 climbed out of Andrews Air Force Base through light rain and
     headed toward cruising altitude. Walter McGrane loosened his seat belt, pulled up the cuff of his safari jacket, and checked
     his watch: Puerto Vallarta by dawn. He settled back and studied the two men in the club seats opposite him. A never-ending
     line of them as the years went by, young and hard and confident. Always the same, young and hard and confident, while Walter
     McGrane just got older. Dressed in jeans and windbreakers, on temporary reassignment from a special ops branch of the army,
     they drank coffee and talked a language made obscure and privileged by the acronyms of their trade.
    Packed in two black duffels lying in the narrow aisle were the tools of that trade. The long guns: M-40A1 sniper rifle fitted
     with a 10X Unertl telescopic sight; M16A2 high-capacity assault weapon; Remington pump shotgun, full-choked and with seven
     inches cut from the barrel for close-in work. The sidearms: Smith & Wesson .40-caliber automatics.
    Each had a webbed vest with extra clips for the assault weapon and thirty rounds of match-grade hollowpoint ammunition for
     the sniper rifle, a handheld radio, minibinoculars, compass, canteen, extra pistol magazines, penlight with filter, Mace,
     camouflage paste, first-aid kit, plastic arm/leg restraints, notebook and pen, a clip-on thermometer for monitoring temperature
     changes and compensating for their effect on bullet trajectories. Those things, other things, neatly arranged in the vest
     pockets.
    The Lear bucked once, then again, and the men across from Walter McGrane held Styrofoam cups away from their laps, letting
     coffee slosh over the rims and onto the cabin floor. When the plane had cleared the turbulence and leveled off, McGrane opened
     his briefcase and unfolded one of several detailed maps of Mexico he’d been given at his briefing two hours ago. Son of a
     bitch, this would have to happen the day before his thirty-second wedding anniversary.