by Glenn Ball
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Alicia Espinosa was a voluptuous woman with silky black hair and radiant black eyes that made one feel caressed by her mere glance. Her baby-soft skin would allow her to pass as a teenager if it were not for her exceedingly curvaceous figure. Her striking appearance was something she hated about herself.
Espinosa grew up in the marketplace in the city of Oaxaca, in what is known as the “Mercado de Abastos”. Her mom sold on the outskirts of the market. Every day they would walk to the market early to set up shop for the day. From the time she was a girl Alicia was put in charge of putting up the metal tubes that made up the framework of the shop. Then she had to tie the canvas to the tubes to form the walls and ceiling of the shop. Once completed she had to set up the display: a “patate” for the floor (a straw mat that she unrolled), and a wooden shelf. These she had carried to the market.
There were many things she loved about the market; like walking through the chili section with all its extravagant spices and thirty plus types of dried chilies that tingled the nose. Seeing the artisans weaving their straw hats and baskets always fascinated her. She relished the fresh smell of chocolate, and of just-baked bread. On open market day the variety of color was staggering as every kind of flower, fruit and vegetable was on display. The market was eye-catching, like the never-ending file of interesting and unforgettable people passing through the aisles. Musicians of all types would set up their instruments to serenade the people. The unusual sights and sounds unique to the market had forever made its indelible impression on her memory.
But along with the many things she loved about the market, there were also many things she hated.
Most of the people in the market were rough and crude, but some were downright dangerous.
The “rateros” (thieves) worked in many forms. Aside from children, anyone running through the marketplace was usually a thief that had stolen something. They were known to rob the earrings right off an unsuspecting woman, leaving her earlobes bleeding. Another method of thieves was bunching together and blocking the walkway, so others could come from behind and pickpocket, or put a knife or gun to the victim.
Worse than all the petty thieves, was the syndicate. It controlled much of the market, and typical of any mafia made the shop-owners pay them taxes for “protection”.
This same syndicate also had its prostitutes stationed along many borders of the market, where they had their hotel rooms easily accessible behind them. Most of these women were not there by choice but had been kidnapped into prostitution. Yet whenever Espinosa would pass them leaving the market her mother would murmur “dirty tramps” under her breath and admonish Alicia never to be like those sluts.
After all these years she could still hear her mother’s murmurs of condemnation echoing like curses ripping at her insides. Her mother never understood. She made her work like a slave from before dawn to well past dusk, made her earn her own food from the time she was a young child, slapped and scolded her whenever she was not satisfied with her performance, and only permitted her to go to school because some meddling neighbors in the market forced her to by getting the authorities involved. Her mother was always resentful of that, saying that the neighbors were only interested in getting her business.
One of those neighbors had the shop adjoining theirs. She was a witch named Doña Zen. Her wrinkled face had the features of a monkey: hollow cheeks that made her mouth protrude slightly, with a tiny nose and beady black eyes. Her hair was gray and looked the texture of straw. Her back was hunched at the shoulders. Barely the height of a ten-year-old child, she was scrawny, weighing less than thirty-five kilograms. But her power did not come from her physical strength. She relied on her witchcraft.
Late one October night, Alicia had stayed extra late at the market with her mom. They had many more customers than usual, because it was the hallowed eve before Day of the Dead. It was a chilly night, and Espinosa couldn’t wait to get home and get warmed up. She was tired and disheveled, and she was not feeling very well. Just as they finished closing shop, Doña Zen peered at her through her candles on display with a deep sadistic glare, like she could see straight into her soul. “Death is out to get you little one.” It was almost like she gleaned a secret satisfaction out of cursing Espinosa. Alicia wanted to run, but her mom held her back.
As they left the market, they came upon a crowd blocking the street they had to pass to get to their house. It seemed almost impenetrable at first, like a giant organism with its own dull thumping heart in the middle. It was a parade of the Santa Muerte, but she did not know that.
Alicia could take no more delays and began plowing into the crowd roughly pushing at their legs to get through. The thumping got progressively louder as she approached the center of the crowd. Then all of a sudden, she was stopped in her tracks by an unexpected space in the crowd. Her heart seemed echoed by the drum now full in her ear. There just in front of her stood the tallest man she ever imagined she would find. He was a good three meters tall at least. For the first time since she entered the crowd she looked up. And as she did, she had to continue to raise her head to capture the ugly skull of a face way above her.
It was a “mono” (a man in a costume) of the Santa Muerte. He reached out his staff towards her, and all the processioners stared at her, chanting their death song. Everywhere she looked the people were wearing masks of the Santa Muerte.
Years later that same witch Doña Zen had grabbed her wrist and hissed, “Mark my words: you will grow up to be nothing but a dirty prostitute! And when you least expect her, the Santa Muerte will be there waiting for you.” When she left the market that night it seemed that the prostitutes were everywhere. Fear and repulsion rose up on her inside. She did not want to grow up.
Yes, she had loved many things about the market, but there were also so many things about her life there that she had hated. And that seemed to be the story of Alicia’s life: love/hate relationships.
She wrestled for years with her love/hate relationship with Antonio. As her pimp, he kept her as if he cared for her. And as it had been with her mother before him, she was his slave. But in his case, he also made love to her. He aroused feelings of love and passion in her. Not like those who paid her for the service. He treated her as if she were important to him. She sometimes felt safe with him. And she always knew where her next meal would be coming from. But God forbid she should ever cross him, or disappoint him, or have a bad night. Then he turned into a ruthless tormenting tyrant. And that’s why she had wanted desperately to escape, to be free. But like the night she ran from the witch, only to enter the arms of the Santa Muerte, she wondered now what awaited her.
CHAPTER 2
The Pentagon
Captain Adam Valencia Dominguez’s palms sweated with nervous anticipation in the plush leather arm rests as he sipped a rich cup of coffee from a vacuum-sealed mug. Whatever the meeting was about, it was important enough for the big brass to isolate them for several weeks of intense testing and training to prepare them before meeting with them.
General Hague’s Pentagon office combined the ultramodern workspace with the traditional basic military motif. Valencia and the two other Special Forces soldiers summoned sat at the round part of a semicircular conference table facing the general and the Deputy Director of the CIA at the flat side of the table. On the wall behind the general was a sixty-inch high definition touch screen. It served for international videoconferencing, sketching battle strategies, displaying PowerPoint presentations and videos, as well as showing any type of documents necessary.
The remaining portion of the general’s office was behind the soldiers. In it sat a massive mahogany executive desk with matching writing desk. Flags lined one wall, and portraits of famous generals lined the opposite wall, including one of George Washington. One could feel the eyes of history-makers on them in this room measuring their level of loyalty to the country.
Although the room had no window it was well-lit with halogen lighting. Noth
ing was to be done in public, yet nothing was to be done in the shadows.
“We have Intel that has our pants on fire: Dallas is in for the worst terrorist strike our nation has ever received.” The general fell quiet while he surveyed the room to observe the reactions to his outlandish claim. When the general’s gaze came to a long rest on Valencia it became clear to Adam that his doubt was written all over his face.
“You’re all thinking about 911? Thousands killed from the destruction of the twin towers and hundreds from the airliners. Hell, we lost one hundred and twenty-five when our Pentagon was nearly destroyed that day. So how could this be worse? Right…?” This time heads nodded as the general made another quick sweep of the room.
Clearing his throat, the general went on. “We’re looking at a generation for Dallas to recover if the attack is successful. This could put the US in rags. Dallas has one of the most thriving markets since the 2007 crash. It’s a leader in manufacturing production and foreign trade. The loss of DFW alone would be crippling. Dallas is a hub, strategically central. That also makes it a target for spreading plagues and deadly chemicals.
“Yes Sergeant,” the general recognized the lifted hand.
“Like Wuhan in China. Wuhan is a central province in China and the coronavirus spread like wildfire,” the soldier asserted.
“I see your point. But Wuhan was not an attack,” the general rejoined. “It was bad luck. Unlike this it was not engineered by man.
“Our informants have only learned of this impending attack in the past few weeks, so we are scrambling to get a handle on all this. What little we know so far will make your hair stand on end. Nevertheless, we have a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of holes to fill in, which is why you are here.”
Touching the large tablet screen on the wall he opened a video file. “We have been keeping our eyes on a new terrorist movement that has sprouted up in Iraq: ‘RAMKAJ’, which is an anacronym for ‘Raeb Allah Min Khilal Al Jihad’, which loosely translated means ‘terror of Allah through jihad’. You may have heard its common nickname ‘RAH’. Much like the name ISIS, RAH is offensive to the Moslem extremist. So, we like to use it.
“With the intel that we have gathered so far, there is still no indication what type of delivery system RAH plans to use. When your opponent swings a punch, you darn well want to know where it’s coming from so you can block it. But we don’t know if the attack is coming from the sea, the air or the ground.”
Even as he spoke the screen began to display horrifying scenes: there were hundreds of people falling down, shaking and foaming at the mouth; there were clouds of gas; there were people screaming, grabbing at their eyes and mouths, choking; there were barrels falling from the sky and bursting as they collided with rooftops and street pavement; there were children vomiting; there was a woman running with her choking baby in her arms till she herself was overcome with the deadly agent, collapsing and dropping the baby as her hands desperately grasped her neck, strangled from the inside.
The video ended. The general began in a subdued tone.
“This could be Dallas.” He paused. There were pained looks.
“RAH’s attack would make these scenes look humane.” Pointing at the screen he went on. “These people have never known any other type of life but war. What’s more the chemicals used were known agents and therefore more easily treatable. What has us shaking in our boots is that RAH has a chemical weapon more terrifying than sarin and plan to release it on our peace-loving citizens.
“If our intel is correct this weapon is the most diabolical SOB that has ever been let loose on our planet. It causes death by mere contact, first attacking the nervous system through the victim’s skin, then going to work on the respiratory system. Once it has been breathed in death is assured and results quickly.”
CHAPTER 3
Smuggled
Pedro Romero del Mar sat in the dark of the semi-trailer. He could feel the vibration in the floor as the semi-truck traveled down the freeway. The air was close, suffocating, from the large number of people rasping for air.
The cramped quarters were not too much of a problem for Pedro. He was short even by Mexican standards. But as a fisherman he loved the fresh air and the open sky that kissed the horizon.
He tried to keep his mind off of his problems by remembering his childhood.
********
He had grown up in Puerto Escondido, a coastal city of Oaxaca, about ten hours south of Acapulco, Mexico. He could remember his father calling him to his fishing boat that he kept anchored just offshore of the public beach. There was a slew of boats anchored that way, but his father’s was always one of the closest. He would pass people playing on the beach and in the waves, and swim out to the boat, where he would practice throwing out a line or a net with his father. He became a very adept swimmer, boatman and fisherman that way.
There were many happy memories from those early years. He would follow fish underwater just to see what they would do. The fish near the beach were somewhat plain, but near the reefs they were all different shapes and colors. Many glowed like neon signs, with yellow, purple or blue lines or dots. Sometimes he would pass whole schools and would stay stationary as hundreds of fish passed all around him.
He would go with his father out into the deep, and they would fish for “huachinango” (red snapper) and other favorites. There were times out there that he would catch giant turtles, though these they had to let go.
********
The semi turned sharply. His body slid along the wall of the trailer, held somewhat in place by the body next to him. “The road must be a different one,” he thought to himself. “This one is bumpy and seems to have a lot of curves.” He wasn’t the only one experiencing nausea from the curves; he could hear the dry hacking of a number losing what little food they had in their system, making the air even more rancid.
Every now and then the tires would kick up rocks that sounded almost like gunshots.
His mind flashed back to his first shootout.
********
He was only ten. He and his older brother had been with their father in their boat while it was anchored just offshore, each bragging about who would catch the biggest fish, when the shots rang out. They both asked their father, “Are those firecrackers Papa,” and he had responded, “No. They are gunshots. Quick, get to shore and run for the hotel.”
The gunshots echoed within the walls of the municipal center less than a block away as the three dived into the water and swam rapidly to shore. In less than thirty seconds the beach had become deserted as all the vacationers and fishermen ran for shelter.
Pedro and his brother hid with their father in one of the rooms of the “Hotel las Palmas”. Fortunately for them, their father was friends with the owner and the current manager. The manager kept them informed, because he was listening by two-way radio. From the room where they were hiding, they could see both the beach adjacent to the hotel, and the road which ran straight through the middle of the beach hotels and restaurants.
The shots continued to echo in the street outside. Yet simultaneously they could see police chasing a few individuals who had escaped by beach. The pursuit was growing hot. The police were weaving in and out of skiffs parked on the beach ducking their heads under and around the sides of the boats to see any hidden escapee.
Pedro was watching when one of the men came running up the middle of the parking lot toward the street. One of the police spotted him and came bolting up the beach in pursuit. The policeman was rapidly closing in when he took a shot at the man in flight and hit his leg. The man collapsed at the street end of the parking lot, which was opposite the beach, and directly under the room where Pedro hid with his family.
He could never forget the sound of the bullet entering that man’s leg, or the sight of him collapsing and tumbling out of control.
Looking around the hotel, Pedro could see faces peering through various windows at the man that had been shot. Their heads turned to wa
tch the approaching policeman. But just then other shots reverberated just outside in the street and the watchers backed out of sight of the windows.
The fighting continued for another half hour that day. All the restaurants and shops along the strip closed, the beach remained deserted, and the only people on the strip were the growing numbers of villagers with clubs, machetes and guns arriving in groups for a showdown to take place that night.
Once the original battle calmed down, Pedro’s dad took him and his brother home. There would be no fishing that day.
Pedro Romero del Mar often wished his father had been killed in the shootout that day.
********
The road was becoming increasingly bumpy with more and more curves. A woman and a child both fell over, rolling over and over and colliding with several people near them. This trip had been an endless test of Romero’s endurance. Was it really worth trying to get to the “promised land” to make his fortune? After all he had been through, he was beginning to have his doubts.
He pondered over what he had heard awaited them upon their release from the trailer, his mind going back to the conversation in the “comedor” (diner) in Nogales, Sonora. There they met with some who had previously made the crossing but had been deported. The deportees warned them of the night drones with heat cameras, of the radar, and the patrols constantly roaming. He also recalled the warning about the drugs the coyotes would make them smuggle in. One man told them, “I got caught with drugs on me and had to spend five years in prison. I thought I was going to die in that prison, but they finally decided to deport me, and here I am.”
Pedro could feel the bags well-hidden inside his pants. He wondered what would happen if he tried to ditch the bags in the trailer. But then the warnings came screaming back at him, “So far you’re good; you’ve paid us to get across. But you still have to pay them on the other side. These bags are your money. No drugs, you don’t want to see what they will do to you.”