The Beasts of Juarez

by R. B. Schow

  “Apparently not all of them,” she said.

  “We rushed this I think.”

  “We didn’t rush anything,” Esty assured him. “Time is of the essence and so we’ll make do with what we have.”

  They drove a few more blocks down Federal Highway 45/Av. Tecnologico, and then at the last minute, Yergha made a left turn at Av. Del Granjero. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, which made it easier to see where they were going. They passed by several colorfully painted businesses, their rundown exteriors done in bright greens and oranges with permanent advertisement flags planted along the sidewalks. Lined up for miles along the cracked asphalt streets were crooked telephone poles interspersed with modern-day utility poles. Their various power and phone lines hung over the street in a kind of urban canopy that just might blanket the entire city.

  The SUV they feared was following them took the same left turn Yergha had taken. Yergha was moving pretty quickly, but the SUV sped up, tightening the distance between them without actually crowding them.

  “I’m pretty sure they know that we know we’re being followed,” Esty turned and said.

  Yergha put on a slight burst of speed, watched the SUV behind them do the same thing, and then he braked hard and hung a right on Calle Australia.

  The short residential street was lined with a dozen houses made from brick and stucco, each of them boasting iron security gates in the driveways and ornate iron bars over all of the windows. The cars parked along the street got really rundown for a second and then the left side of the street opened into a huge dirt parking lot. The lot was protected by metal pylons strung together with barbed wire fencing.

  “Go right up ahead,” Esty said as they came to a T in the road.

  Yergha hung a hard right at Nueva Zelanda while going too fast. The back end of their little underpowered hatchback kicked loose just enough for the tires to screech in protest.

  “This thing is an absolute bucket!” Yergha roared as the SUV bore down on them.

  He raced as fast as he could down the tight two-lane street. With daybreak fully upon them, the city and all of its detail began to unfold in even greater detail. He pushed harder on the accelerator but the pedal was already smashed against the floor.

  Sidewalk trees, utility poles, iron fencing, and graffiti-marred plaster walls passed by in a blur as they zipped down the bumpy asphalt street. In the distant light, just above the city, was the outline of the Juárez Mountains. They looked beautiful this time of the morning.

  “Intersection,” Yergha called out to her.

  Ahead there was a stop sign (alto) on the right, a purple building on the left (Las Cariñosas), and Av. Tecnologico once again. They’d just made a big loop. The traffic on Av. Tecnologico was light but present. He wasn’t sure whether to ride the accelerator into the thoroughfare or to stop and take the chance that the guys in the SUV weren’t trying to rob or kill them.

  “Get to the other side of the road,” Esty said, gripping the door and the back of Yergha’s seat for support.

  He stayed on the accelerator.

  “Are you seeing the traffic?!” he shouted as they bore down on what was the start of a Sunday morning in Juárez.

  “GO!” she shouted.

  He blew through the stop sign, jerking the steering wheel right and then left. He missed colliding with a subcompact car like theirs but clipped the back end of a Nissan pickup as he cut through the narrow opening in the avenue’s center dividers.

  “Stay to the left!” Esty said.

  “I know,” he growled, his knuckles bone white on the steering wheel.

  At the right moment, he cranked the steering wheel so hard to the left he bumped the inside wall of their back tire off the tall, painted yellow curb, nearly striking another car as they headed deeper into Juárez. When he found an opening in traffic, Yergha put on another burst of speed.

  Behind them, the SUV had to slow down to try to cut through traffic.

  “Take a right up there!” Esty said, pointing to the first available exit off of Av. Tecnologico.

  Yergha hung a hard right on Blvd Zaragoza passing what looked like a fenced-in toll booth that was, in fact, some sort of technology station.

  “Where the hell are we?” he asked.

  “How do I know?” she retorted.

  To the left and right of them were open fields of dirt and scrub brush. He felt exposed as he searched for somewhere to hide. Unfortunately, they got stuck behind two slow-moving cars, each car blocking a lane. Yergha rode up on them hard, tailgating the hell out of them, but they were slow to budge.

  “Call Leopold,” he said.

  “What for?” she asked, confused.

  “We just got into town and now we have company. We need to know if this is random or if someone got advance notice of our arrival.”

  She got out her phone, put it on speakerphone so Yergha could hear the conversation, then called Leopold. He answered on the first ring.

  “Leopold, it’s Esty. We picked up a tail the second we got into Juárez.”

  “Jesus, that was fast,” he said. “Driver, please pull over.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I just arrived in Virginia, but I’m about to go out of range.”

  “Is it possible that we were compromised already?” Esty asked. “Because this is a big city and we’re just two people out of one point five million.”

  “Unless there’s something wrong with the congressman and his bodyguard—” Leopold started to say.

  “There’s definitely something off with Congressman Fox,” Esty said. “He seemed a bit too detached, didn’t you think?”

  “He’s a politician,” Leopold reasoned. “Most of them are soulless pricks with no hearts and serious emotional deficiencies anyway.”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” she said. “Still, there was something off about him.”

  “I agree,” Leopold replied. “The bodyguard was on the level, though. He’s on his way to the hospital so we can likely rule him out. Do you feel like you’re in trouble?”

  “I’m not saying we’re in over our heads here,” Yergha said, “but this was pretty quick.”

  “I’m about to enter an ultra-secure facility,” Leopold explained, “so if something is on your mind, spill it now because I’m going to be out of range for a few hours.”

  “Are you picking up the other assets?” Esty asked.

  “One of them.”

  “Atlas or Kiera?” Esty asked.

  “Kiera.”

  “Is she much better than us?” Yergha asked.

  “Yes,” Leopold said without hesitation.

  Yergha looked at Esty and frowned. She frowned back then pointed to the road. Yergha put his eyes back on the road and said, “Is she better looking than Esty?”

  Esty punched him in the arm, causing him to groan and roll his shoulder.

  “If you’re into bald assassins,” Leopold said.

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” Yergha replied with a grim laugh.

  Leopold gave him a rare consolation laugh, then said, “Text me if you run into anything else. If it’s urgent, contact Cira. She’s already en route to pick up Atlas. I’m thinking we’ll need the whole team for this one.”

  The two cars in front of them were going under the speed limit by a mile or two per hour, which was not only slowing Yergha down, it was starting to piss him off too. He sat on the horn a bit too long.

  “Thanks, Boss,” Esty said. “Good luck with Kiera.”

  “Roger that. Talk to you soon.”

  Esty hung up, saw and felt Yergha’s frustration with the cars in front of him, then said, “They’re probably not even awake yet.”

  He glanced up at the rearview mirror, returned to the road then flicked his eyes back up in a snap. “Mother of balls,” he grumbled. “These idiots are back.”

  The SUV was closing the distance between them fast, causing Yergha to frantically search for more extreme ways around the two cars blocking
him. He laid on his horn again, but the cars braked in retaliation. That was not the reaction he had wanted.

  “Freaking morons,” he growled, hammering the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Get the guns ready.”

  “On it,” Esty said. She was already readying her pistol.

  “Not the pistols,” he said. “We’re going to need the carbines.”

  The SUV was getting much larger in the rearview mirror. All along the road, Yergha saw open fields secured by chain link fencing. There was almost no way around these jack hounds in front of him unless he pulled into the opposite lane of traffic. As light as the traffic seemed to be on the other side of the median, guys only charged into the opposite lanes in high-speed chases in the movies and only with lots of planning and under strong supervision.

  He and Esty were in a tin can on wheels with a beast of an SUV crawling so far up their ass, the backs of their collective teeth tickled.

  “You want to hurry it up there?” he asked. “I can’t see daylight in the rearview mirror.”

  She had hauled the large duffle bag over the seat and unzipped it. She looked up, saw the SUV, and pulled out the twin M4 carbines. Both assault rifles were outfitted with thirty-round mags and 5.56x45mm ammo.

  “Hurry up!” he barked.

  “Almost there. I see them watching me, Yergha. They have their guns ready.”

  With no time to spare, he made a bold last-minute decision.

  “Hang on,” he said.

  She quickly jammed the duffle bag in the foot well, pinned both carbines to her lap with one hand, and grabbed a handhold for what was coming next.

  Braking hard, Yergha spun the wheel and ducked into one of the few bare lots he could access. The subcompact bottomed out on the curb then bounced into a dirt lot the size of a fenced-in football field. He stood on the brakes and spun the wheel. The baby blue tin can slid sideways to a stop in a cloud of dust. He grabbed the carbine, kicked open the door, and fired on the SUV the second it followed them into the lot.

  Over the back of him, propped up on the roof of the car, Esty unleashed her M4. They’d cleared only half their mags when the mystery party returned fire.

  Esty stitched the SUV’s windshield with a half dozen bullets before taking two shots to the chest. Yergha heard the thumping sound of bullets hitting center mass. He turned in time to see her topple over backward.

  “Motherfuckers!” he roared, opening up.

  There were too many of them, though. He hit one of their men in the face, but before he could take out another, he was punched in the chest with at least four rounds. His knees buckled and he found he couldn’t breathe. His fingers went numb for a second as he struggled for air. The M4 fell from his grip as he slid down the side of the car.

  Five hard-looking Mexican men stepped out of the SUV and walked over to him. One of the guys aimed his gun at Yergha and said, “Vaya con Dios, pendejo,” and then he fired a shot, hitting Yergha center mass.

  Yergha couldn’t hang on much longer than that. Slumped over with red saliva drizzling out of his mouth, his vision blurred as pain radiated through his torso and down into his legs. Incapacitated, outmanned, and outgunned, he watched them drag Estella through the dirt right past him. They had a hold of her ankle and were taking her back to the SUV to do God knows what with her body. Thinking he was already dead, they ignored Yergha completely.

  He told himself to man up, to not let them get away with this, and then he summoned the last of his strength and picked up his M4. Much of the feeling hadn’t returned to his fingers, but he’d come this far, so he would fight for that one last chance.

  The men loaded Esty’s body into the back of the SUV then they climbed inside. The driver backed up the SUV and was turning around when Yergha lifted the M4, aimed at the passenger windows, and squeezed the trigger. The first few rounds blew out the glass in the second-row seating. The man in the seat had a red bloom on his cheek. Yergha wasn’t sure if he hit him with a bullet or if the glass had cut him. Either way, he cleared the rest of the magazine, pumping every last round into the head of the asshole with the bloody cheek. He had missed at first, but then he managed to put three or four rounds right into the side of his face.

  There was nothing more he could do. He dropped the carbine and watched the SUV tear out of there.

  As he lay slumped against the car and listening to the sounds of passing traffic, his chest felt like he had been kicked by a pissed-off mule at least half-a-dozen times. Fortunately, he was coherent enough to get the SUV’s plates. They might be real or they might be stolen; he had them nevertheless.

  Flexing his fingers, blood and feeling returning to them, he dialed Codrin Pichler, thankful that the hacker answered within a couple of rings.

  “Yeah,” Codrin said.

  “This is Yergha; I need you to run a plate for me. Forward it to the entire team. Well, not Esty. Don’t forward anything to her until I say otherwise.”

  “What happened?” Codrin asked, as serious as he’d ever been.

  “They shot her and took her body.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “I don’t know; just write down this plate number.” He gave Codrin the number together with a brief description of the SUV, hoping neither the plate nor the SUV was stolen. “Text me what you have immediately.”

  “I have you grouped but I’m pulling Estella’s number now,” Codrin said. “Why do you sound out of breath?”

  “Esty wasn’t the only one who was shot.”

  “You’ve been hit?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How bad?” the Romanian asked.

  “Four or five to the chest, I lost count. Don’t worry about it, though. We’re wasting time.”

  “I can dispatch an ambulance your way.”

  “Not here, I’m fine.”

  “I’m sorry, didn’t you just tell me that you were—”

  “Codrin, run the damn plate!” he barked, quickly paying for the outburst. So as not to tempt the man to ask any more questions, Yergha hung up the phone and sat there for a long time trying to stabilize his breathing.

  He glanced down at himself, not sure he wanted to see the damage he’d taken. His legs lay there useless before him, the bend at his waist abnormal. Slowly, he turned and looked at the superficial damage to the embarrassment on wheels, a.k.a. the baby blue Chevy Spark.

  Pulling himself up, breathing a little easier, he managed to work his way back into the car. There, he took a few shallow breaths, followed by a few more that were deeper than the last, and finally a few very deep breaths just to assess any damage.

  “No broken ribs,” he said to himself. “Well, there’s a plus.”

  Glancing over at the passenger side of the car and then into the back seat, he saw broken glass. It was everywhere. The two back windows were gone, but the hatchback was intact. He turned the key in the ignition and the Spark started right away.

  Sitting there, praying for a return text to come back from Codrin, he waited. The longer he had to wait, though, the more he wondered just what the hell they were doing to Esty. Breathing shallow, his chest an absolute mess, he wiped the sweat from his eyes then gingerly shifted his butt from side to side. He wasn’t sure if he’d soiled himself in the exchange. A moment later, he had confirmation.

  “Looks like it’s a shit-free Sunday,” he said with some relief.

  The text from Codrin came in a few minutes later: PLATES NOT STOLEN; SUBURBAN NOT STOLEN; LAST KNOWN ADDRESS. To his relief, Codrin provided him with an address in Juárez.

  He looked up the listed address on Google maps, took another breath then checked his Sig Sauer P226. He had a full mag. He charged the slide then set the gun on the seat where Esty should be sitting, unconcerned with the broken glass for now.

  “I’m coming to get you,” he said.

  Before taking off, he took off his shirt, unstrapped and removed the lightweight tactical vest he had picked up at Richie’s before crossing the border, then set it on the
seat so he could breathe. He forced himself to look down at his chest. This was a stark reminder that he was now neck-deep in the shit.

  “Good God,” he said.

  His entire chest was one nasty, inflamed bruise. He glanced down a second time, found five welts rising, the one closest to his armpit maybe an eighth of an inch inside the vest’s protection zone. He was not just lucky, he had been blessed.

  “Good guys always win, assholes,” he said as he buttoned up his shirt.

  Using Google’s built-in navigation system, he indicated that he wanted directions to the house where they were holding Estella. From there he would try to save her. He prayed she wasn’t already dead. If her vest took the rounds and not her body, he had a chance. Besides, she was too beautiful of a creature for that kind of damage and too finely-tuned of a weapon to lose her life to a pack of low-brow chumps. That had to count for something with the big guy above.

  On the road again, he called Cira, who answered right away.

  “It’s me, Yergha.”

  “Why are you calling so early?”

  “You know about the kidnapping, right?” he asked.

  “I’ve been brought up to speed.”

  He told her about the ambush, the shoot-out, Esty getting taken. She let out a long sigh, then said, “This is not only really bad, Yergha, this is worse than bad.”

  “Have you been training?”

  “For the last six months, yeah.”

  “You need to get down here,” Yergha said. “I’m only half a team without Esty and now the job just doubled.”

  “How did it double?” she asked.

  “Are you even listening?” he shouted into the phone. “They took ESTY!”

  “I hear you, Yergha, but this is Leopold’s team, not yours. Besides, I’m in California, right about to get Atlas.”

  “Look, I’m sorry for yelling,” Yergha said, sweating. “If I don’t get Esty fast, we may find her on the side of the road somewhere with her head cut off.”

  “What are you thinking of doing?”

  “I’m thinking, forget the wife and kids, I need to get Esty back.”

  “Do you even know who took her?” Cira asked.