Coincidence - Alan May [41]
They had to rush now. They were losing precious time. The first thing was to take care of the bodies.
There was a staggering quantity of blood, far more than Juan had expected. Severo must have panicked and gone wild with the shooting, he fumed. Damn the man! He picked the tall guard up by his arms as Polo grasped the feet and they moved toward the pickup. Severo and Esteban approached the next body. It was lying face down in a pool of blood. When they picked it up, the dead man’s insides spilled out onto the road. Severo dropped the man’s legs and vomited.
More time lost, Juan thought as he, Esteban, and Polo struggled with the rest of the bodies. Severo’s strong back was canceled out by his weak stomach. Juan was never going to work with the bastard again. Ah, what the hell was he saying? He’d never have to work again, period. None of them would. They’d all be retired and living a life of ease in just a few more weeks.
By the time they had loaded the last guard into the pickup, Severo had pulled himself together to drive it around to the waiting pit behind the barn. Esteban followed in the other pickup, snd Polo in the SUV; they parked both vehicles inside the barn. Then they collected an assortment of buckets and rags from the house on their way back to the road.
Juan retrieved a broom and a shovel from the back of the Jimmy and began sweeping spent shell casings and glass shards from the SUV’s broken headlight into the ditch, covering the lot with dirt and leaves. That left three puddles of blood—one of them nearly two feet across—on the right side of the road close to the driveway to contend with. Polo appeared with the pail of water and began sluicing the blood. He finished the two smaller spots, then started back to the house to refill the bucket as Juan spread the wet patches with sand and dirt from the shoulder.
Juan suddenly picked up the low whine of a motor approaching from the north. Waving furiously at Polo to get out of sight, he raced for the Jimmy. He moved it forward, its right-turn signal blinking, inch by inch, gauging time and distance so that he was just beginning to turn into the driveway—and just obscuring the large puddle of blood—as a rattletrap old Ford lumbered past.
Whatever you might say about Juan, Polo thought, you had to admit the hombre could keep his cool under pressure.
They finished cleaning up the road, then went to help fill in the hole behind the barn. Juan was pushing them all hard now, trying to make up for lost time. It looked good in spite of their haste, he told himself, as they heaped the last shovelful of dirt and leaves on the grave. Hard to imagine that such a short time ago it had been the scene of brutal carnage. The earth was mounded and raw in the spots where it had been disturbed, but the first rain would take care of that. And within a few weeks, the rampant tropical vegetation would cover any remaining traces of the mayhem. No one would ever suspect.
They stowed the bloodied pickup in the barn and then squeezed into the Jimmy for the short drive to the beach.
Even without Stefano’s help Phillip had managed to unload the cocaine from the van and pile it on the beach close to the tender by the time they arrived. Severo and Polo worked with Phillip to load the cocaine into the tender and onto the Coincidence while Esteban and Juan drove the Jimmy and the van to the barn. As they neared the barn, the van’s two-way radio crackled to life. Above the static, Juan could make out that someone was inquiring about the progress of the cocaine shipment. Better to keep silent than try to fake a guard’s voice, he decided.
When both vehicles were inside, they locked the barn door for the last time, then climbed on the waiting scooter and sped back to the cove.
Phillip and Severo were loading the last few bales of cocaine onto the boat. Stefano was lying on the sand, his eyes closed, his face ashen. Juan decided to keep quiet about