Beautiful Sacrifice

the shell-shocked look of a man fresh from a bloody battle.
    “You sure they didn’t just cross the wrong narcos?” Hunter asked very softly.
    He didn’t need to glance around to discover if anyone was listening. He’d been checking since the instant he sat down. So far, all the patrons were more interested in chow than nearby chat.
    “When the cartels kill,” Rodrigo said, head down, in a voice too low to for anyone but Hunter to hear, “they either hang the body from a bridge or shove it into a mine shaft or a mass grave.”
    Hunter nodded.
    “But not these bodies,” Rodrigo said, a sheen of terror coating his eyes and throat. “My compadres were prepared with great care, in the old way.”
    “Sacrificed?” Hunter asked very softly, remembering a filthy Houston basement.
    Rodrigo looked up. “If you go to Tulum, you keep away from the temples. You stay in the town. You don’t stand near nobody you don’t know like your own cock. Then you watch the skies and the jungle and your back. Death is out there. A hard death.”
    Hunter palmed another Ben, put his hand on the table so that only Rodrigo could see the money. “You hear of anyone called El Maya?”
    Rodrigo wanted the money enough to sweat, but he shook his head. “I don’t hear nothing.”
    For a moment Hunter thought of pushing hard. But he’d known Rodrigo long enough to know when he would talk and when he wouldn’t. Apparently the subject of El Maya was taboo here as well as in Padre.
    Yet it wasn’t a name in his uncles’ files. Since most narco types thrived on notoriety, the usual sources of information were coming up dry.
    “What else can you tell me about Tulum?” Hunter asked finally.
    Rodrigo took the bill and sagged back in his chair, looking haunted. “You ought to talk to that pretty lady so lonesome a few tables over. The one you came in just behind. She has that Tulum look about her. The eyes. See the regal shape? And the cheekbones. She’s a queen among peasants.”
    “You’re drunk.”
    Abruptly Rodrigo’s eyes sharpened, making Hunter wonder if he’d really worked his way through a bottle of tequila after all.
    “You believe what you want to,” Rodrigo said clearly yet very softly. “Maybe I see you again sometime. Maybe you die on the twenty-first. Bet you wish you believed me then.”
    “Did your buddies get anything out of the temple sites?”
    “A hard way to die.”
    “No artifacts?”
    “Not a peso,” Rodrigo said bitterly. “That’s why I waited for you. Need money to fly. Another three, and you can have my pistol. Clip is full.”
    “Two. If I like what I see, and you throw in your boot knife, I’ll give you another hundred.”
    Rodrigo started to protest, then decided he wanted money more than an argument. He reached beneath his loose shirtand pulled out a flat black pistol, square and chunky. He passed it under the table to Hunter.
    A casual look, plus the feel of the gun itself, was all it took for Hunter to know what was for sale.
    H and K Mark 23, SOCOM variant . Nice piece.
    “Is it hot?” he asked quietly.
    Rodrigo gave a liquid shrug. “Isn’t it always? But I never fired it. I never had a chance to. They were dead when I got there.”
    Under the table, the pistol and another hundred changed hands. Hunter concealed the weapon the same way Rodrigo had, under his shirt at the small of his back. The gun felt hard, heavy with potential death. Slowly Hunter’s body adjusted to the presence of the weapon. It wasn’t the first time he’d worn gunmetal under his shirt, but he’d never learned to like it.
    “Knife,” Hunter said softly.
    Rodrigo bent, pulled the knife out of its boot sheath, and gave it to Hunter. A flick of his thumb tested the edge. Clean, hard, sharp. Hunter passed over another hundred.
    “Two hundred more if you talk about El Maya,” Hunter said very softly.
    “If you get out now,” Rodrigo said, “I’ll see you again.”
    “Three hundred.”
    “Vaya con Dios.”
    With that, Rodrigo stood and walked out the back door, staggering just enough to make any watchers believe he’d been drinking hard.
    No one looked up as he passed. No one seemed to care.
    After a few more minutes of watching, Hunter went to Lina’s table.
    “Your ‘friend’ is a drunk,” Lina said.
    “That’s what he wants you to think,” Hunter said softly as he sat near her. “You try to roll him, you get a nasty surprise. Being tricky is how he survives.”
    The waitress came over