by R. B. Schow
She heard her girls’ little noses working to inhale and exhale against their fear and whatever pain they were in, and again, she was grateful that as bad as the situation had become, they were still together.
When all four of them were inside the van, the heavy doors were shut and sealed, and there was nothing but the sounds of the four of them breathing and the muffled noises of the men outside the van.
Even though she could not understand their conversation, she listened intently, catching a few of the familiar words and phrases she learned during her three years of high school Spanish. The words she made out, however, were not very encouraging. One thing she understood clearly was “Avénida dé las Américas”—a.k.a. the border. Other than that, she thought she picked up something about them taking a specific lane.
If what she heard was right, they were leaving El Paso and heading into Ciudad Juárez, one of the scariest places on earth, and home to some of the most horrific drug dealing, child trafficking, and gangland activity in the world.
The men then got in the van, started it up, and pulled out of the warehouse. The instant she heard the sounds of a Spanish pop group playing on the radio, she began to cry.
Sydney knew the minute they approached the border because the van slowed down, she heard other cars idling around them, and they were moving forward for a long while but at a snail’s pace. When they finally arrived at what she thought might be the predetermined lane, the driver turned off his music to speak to a man outside the van. What transpired was not a typical exchange of dialogue for people passing through toll stations or border lanes. It was a shorter conversation, more clipped.
A moment later, when they were let through without an official inspection of the vehicle, Sydney felt her heart skip a few beats. No one was going to stop this from happening. That much was becoming clear. Now, with the border checkpoint likely behind them and America in the proverbial rearview mirror, she felt the last of her hope being dashed away. Soon she would be in the belly of a new, terrifying beast.
They hadn’t driven very far when she felt the van changing both speed and direction. She heard a few horns blaring, radios from other cars playing, and the general but identifiable sounds of stop-and-go traffic. Based on what she heard and felt, she reasoned that they were in Ciudad Juárez.
They drove for a long time after that, so far in fact that she felt the steady and soothing vibrations of the van and the exhaustion of the endeavor trying to lull her to sleep. This would not work though, because she was still wrapped in a carpet, stuffed in the back of a van with her daughters, and in another country with men whose intentions were unclear at best and diabolical at worst.
Eventually, the driver turned off of a paved road and onto a dirt road where the ride became bumpy and nearly unbearable. When they finally came to a stop, the driver rolled down his window and had a short, to-the-point conversation with a man who spoke in no-nonsense tones. A moment later, she listened to the sounds of a retracting metal gate opening. Wherever they were going, it seemed that they had arrived. A short drive on what sounded like pea-gravel took them to what became a paved driveway. The driver shut off the engine and that’s when Sydney’s fear came rushing back with a vengeance.
When the van doors were opened, the carpet she was wrapped in was dragged out of the van with no care or concern for her exhausted, abused body. No one bothered to catch them as they hit the ground in their rolls of carpet. The impact was hard enough to have her gasping for breath. Grunts from the children landing on the concrete followed, sending her into a firestorm of worry. Their captors unrolled the girls’ carpets first, and then they freed Sydney.
“Please stand,” an unfamiliar voice said in English. He had a Spanish accent, but when he spoke it was softly and with the sort of kindness one would call hospitable.
She was lying, face-down and depleted, her energy all but drained from the difficult trip. Rolling over, she pushed herself to her feet, standing before a man she could not see. Sydney managed to remain standing but on unsteady legs. Her balance was hampered by her inability to see anything. Moments later, she heard the sounds of feet walking toward her.
Someone suddenly wedged a fingernail under the edge of her duct-tape blindfold. When he got an edge, he ripped it off, causing a low groan of pain inside her. He did the same thing with the silver strip smashed over her mouth.
With her eyes now open, she expected to be looking at a pack of monsters. Instead, she laid eyes on a Hispanic man in an expensive suit with styled black hair and a handsome face. His eyes, however, were so dark and unbelievably empty that the mere sight of them had her wondering if she was looking at the devil himself.
She snuck a quick look around and saw a gorgeous house in the middle of nowhere, a desert landscape in all directions, and enough armed guards to number in the double digits. Another glance over her shoulder showed her Callie, Zoey, and Maisie. They were standing near each other, their mouths and eyes still duct-taped shut. After a snapping of the fingers from the man in front of her, the guards pulled the duct tape off of the girls’ eyes but not their mouths.
Sydney nearly broke into tears at the sight of them but she held her composure and instead turned back to the man standing before her.
For a second, he merely smiled at her, taking all of her in. But then the very air around him seemed to change, to darken, and crackle with energy. Without a word of warning or notice, he grabbed her face roughly, jerking her head forward so they were eye to eye. The act of domination and disrespect shook her to the core. If what he wanted was her full attention, he sure as hell had it.
“Welcome to Juárez, Sydney Fox,” this creature with dead eyes said. “My name is Santiago Cardenas and you no longer have to die to go to hell. This is the front gate, I am your gatekeeper, and you are about to leave this world for another that will scare you, maybe even to death. Are you afraid to die, Sydney?”
She just stared at him, his hand still gripping her face. “Yes,” she managed to say.
“That is the right feeling,” he replied, shoving her face away. “I trust you are happy to see your daughters?”
She felt herself starting to shake inside, the gravity of the situation never heavier than at that moment. He wiped her wet eyes for her and then she nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I am.”
“Are they afraid to die, do you think?” he asked, looking not at her now, but at Maisie, Zoey, and Callie.
She turned around, cautious but desperate to face her children. She imagined the men holding the girls at gunpoint were low-level cartel members, maybe even some sort of street gang that got pushed out of the drug or weapons trades and was now resorting to kidnapping. But then she put her assumptions and her fears aside to instead focus on her three girls. They looked exhausted and afraid, their cheeks stained with tears, their eyes red-rimmed, swollen, and bloodshot. Just making that visual connection with them was everything to her, her only way now of bonding.
She fought to mask the fear she felt for she didn’t want her daughters to see her cracking lest they might fall apart as well. But then her eyes landed on little Maisie and everything inside of her came to a crashing halt. Her eight-year-old was so scared she had wet her pants.
To his men, Santiago said, “Take the two younger ones to the maquiladora and turn them into stars. I want them on the boards by tonight, tomorrow at the latest.”
“No, wait,” Sydney said, fresh panic shooting through her. “Where are you taking them? Where are you taking them?”
The men hauled both Zoey and Maisie away. Zoey kicked and fought her man, but Maisie simply walked to the van with the one who had taken her. In her defense, the fiend had a tight grip on Maisie’s hair. It seemed more like an insurance policy more than anything, but she couldn’t stop wanting to scream at the man to let her go.
Sydney fell into fits of wailing and swearing. She even tried to break away and go for them, but Santiago grabbed her and punched her in the kidneys so hard she felt her kne
es go weak. Right then her entire world collapsed. Sobbing on the ground, in more pain than ever, she had but one question for this heathen, this godforsaken monster: “What do you want with us?”
“What about the oldest one?” one of Santiago’s men asked about Callie. “There are better places than the textile mill for her.”
Santiago ignored Sydney’s question. Instead, he walked over to Callie and looked her over as though she were a piece of merchandise. Sydney got to her feet despite the pain. She could only watch as this creep sniffed around Callie’s neck like he was a dog. Then he stopped and seemed to think about the smell of her. What is he doing? Undecided, he leaned in and sniffed her one more time.
“This one is almost a woman,” he announced as he stood up straight. “She’s too old for Arturo, but Guillermo…Guillermo is going to love her. When does the auction start?”
“Tomorrow,” a very large man said in English.
“Please,” Sydney pleaded, her body giving in, her mind terrified despite her will to keep her family together.
“You beg like what you want even matters to me. Do you think you’re human beings down here in Juárez?” Santiago turned and asked her. Before she could answer, the godless prick said, “You are but a dollar figure to me, a way to fund this life. Something to import and export as your country figures out what to do about your ridiculous border.”
The car with Zoey and Maisie started up and then drove off. Sydney felt like her heart was going to explode. Mewling noises formed in the back of her throat at the sight of her girls being torn from her. Entire parts of her brain—those parts in charge of her sanity—were sparking, flailing, short-circuiting.
“Please don’t take them all,” she cried.
Behind her, one of the men mocked her, and the others laughed. She didn’t care. Her girls were being separated like cattle to be taken off to market, except the market was not central to any one location. This was a human market and it was everywhere that there was an internet connection. She knew this because Camden knew this. What she didn’t know was what kind of auction Santiago and his men were talking about. What were these boards on which they intended to put Maisie and Zoey? Who was Guillermo and why would he want Callie? Would she ever see her children again?
“I can see the wheels turning in your pretty head,” Santiago mused.
The brute stepped forward and ripped open her blouse, the buttons jumping this way and that as their threads snapped. He looked at her, a broken woman who was too terrified to give even an ounce of concentration to her appearance. As if this wasn’t bad enough, he then snuck a peek inside one of the cups of her bra and smiled.
Standing there crying, feeling totally helpless both as a woman and as a mother, Sydney could hardly grasp the situation.
Santiago pulled her ruined shirt back over her chest and said, “You know what’s happening, don’t you? You know it but you can’t admit it to yourself because that would crush you, end you, put your purpose on this earth to rest.”
He was right. She knew what this was all along. Juárez had a reputation for being one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico, one of the most important drug hubs for the distribution of narcotics into the US, and a place where women and girls were not only trafficked but killed in what the locals called “femicide.”
When girls in Juárez went missing, they were seldom found. And if they were, it was not by police, it was by advocacy groups, men and women helping each other find their loved ones. These were people who devoted their entire lives and all of their resources to seek closure for those whose daughters had disappeared without a trace.
“Take her to Guillermo’s place,” Santiago finally said.
As Callie was dragged off, her eyes and Sydney’s eyes met, both of them tear-soaked and jumping with fear. Both women were too horrified to speak; the experience was so surreal and unimaginable, words alone could not convey the moment.
The sounds of agony started in Sydney’s throat again, but when the wailing sounds rushed out of her once more, they transformed into the most ferocious of screams. Her eyes bled tears and her body shook as if charged with electricity, but for all of her rage, this outburst of emotion changed nothing.
Callie shook with fear, tears streaming down her face, but she was brave, brave and beautiful.
“Callie!” she screamed. As her daughter was taken away, Sydney fell to her knees, her body rocked with tremors. Whatever strength she had left inside of her was fast diminishing. “Please, please,” she begged, the agony in her voice unyielding.
If it was the last time Sydney saw her oldest child, she wanted to memorize her face, lodge it so deeply into her memory that not even death itself could pry it loose. Instead, all she did was memorize the fear in her sixteen-year-old’s eyes.
The moment Callie was shoved into the trunk of a nearby car, Sydney wanted to die. When the men got into the car and drove off, the last light inside of her winked out completely and she felt nothing but the pall of death hanging over her.
“Look at you, Mrs. Fox,” Santiago said in that soft, smooth voice. “I do believe you are ready to become the slave.”
Chapter Seven
OTIS FYKES
The trooper whom Otis thought was pulling him over wasn’t coming for him after all. The highway patrol unit with the flashing lights changed lanes and raced by the Ford Ranger, sirens blaring, the engine at a high roar.
Otis let out a deep breath and tried to still his mind. “You’re still early, everything is fine,” he told himself.
He had planned to arrive at the prearranged location a few minutes early. He wanted to make sure there was nothing awry, that he wasn’t being tailed or surveilled in any way. The meeting he was attending was really just a handoff of sorts.
It was easy, simple, uncomplicated.
He had arranged with the courier to meet just outside Modesto Gomez Park off of Edna Avenue along the side of the road where a dry gully separated the park from the nearby neighborhood.
As he approached the road leading into the park, he scanned the squat one-story homes looking for anything out of the ordinary. He checked the residential windows for guys peeking through the blinds, eyeballed the vehicles parked curbside or in short driveways wondering if the feds were working surveillance inside of them, and let his gaze fall on any and all possible places where one could set up a sniper’s nest or the staging grounds for local narco task forces. Nothing stood out, allowing him to relax even further.
Most of the homes he passed were set behind two-foot rock walls, decorative iron fences, or sliding iron gates. Everything felt dry, dust-blown, and baked. Case in point, the asphalt streets, the concrete sidewalks, even the stucco finish on the decorative walls and the sides of the homes. These many surfaces were marred by cracks and fissures, some wider than others. Although this kind of wear and tear was emblematic of a neighborhood in decline, Otis was overcome by a yearning for his childhood years, that’s how strong the nostalgia had hit him.
He pulled the truck alongside a dipped section of the road where it cut through a dry stream bed. Behind him there was a long run of power lines, the sagging black wires feeding the neighborhood; before him stood an industrial yard as well as an open field where kids and dogs could run freely, or a family could have a picnic.
With the old Ford idling roughly but strong, he rolled down the crank window and let that warm air inside the cabin. He loathed the heat, but it was important to be able to hear what was happening in the neighborhood.
Through the dirty windshield, he studied a stretch of chain link fence with sheer green netting behind it. The industrial yard’s privacy net shifted slightly in a warm breeze, entire sections of it worn away from the elements. Through the holes, he saw garbage piled here and there, old scraps of metal and lumber tossed about, and a few abandoned vehicles dead where they sat with the rust to prove it.
Otis lit a cigarette, checked his watch again, frowned because the courier was two minutes late.
Punctuality was critical in these kinds of transactions. There was nothing worse than jumpy criminals, for they tended to do some pretty stupid things when spooked. He was no different. As he smoked his cigarette, he stared at the border wall. Beyond that, the mountains of Ciudad Juárez stood in direct contrast to the clear blue skies.
When his paranoia finally broke through the trance, he checked his watch again. “Pinche cabrón,” he grumbled.
Anxiety and apprehension wormed their way into his every thought. What if the family didn’t make it over the border? What if they were stopped because the flow of traffic fed the driver into a different lane? What if this whole operation was belly up and he didn’t even know it yet?
A few cars moseyed past him, people heading up to the park. This didn’t bother him. Not on a Saturday. During the weekdays, after the COVID lockdowns, fewer and fewer people visited the park. Talk about sad. Modesto Gomez was once a beautiful place. He and Tanya had spent more than a few weekends there with Janie. Tanya even brought her on Thursdays to watch Otis play softball with some of the guys from work. Of course, that was back when the world was more normal and Tanya wasn’t off living her best life without them.
The courier was now seven minutes late. Otis couldn’t help fearing the worst. Trying not to let his mind leap to false conclusions, he flicked his cigarette butt on the asphalt, lit another, then took a deep drag and tried to remain calm. He hung his elbow out the window and filled the cab with a long exhale of smoke. He turned and watched as a dog shoved his body under the residential fence line then trotted out into the park a few feet before breaking into a full-out run.
“Freedom,” Otis said as he watched the black lab go.