by Glenn Ball
“Regardless, I am sure they are still here. And anyway, it doesn’t matter much.” Oscar looked at his watch. “Once the clean-up crew is done at the crash site, we’ll have them for backup, and they have all the tools we’ll need to find them: infrared, heat sensors, tear gas and plenty of ammo. With them here to help us it’s only a matter of time. We just need to make sure they don’t get away in the meantime.”
********
In the dark of the attic there was a glow as Susanna punched the speed-dial number on her smart phone. This time she left a message on her dad’s satellite phone, just before her smart phone went dead. The attic was again in total darkness.
CHAPTER 21
Hunt for a Hidden Pearl
Ochoa stepped off his private jet onto the edge of the runway near the hanger. They were at a small local airport on the edge of a town called Hammond, Louisiana. Antonio was looking at his smartphone. Judging from the nearness of the tracking signal source they could be there in some thirty minutes tops.
Jorge Sandoval was waiting in a black Hummer just a few hundred feet away. Sandoval was in charge of their New Orleans branch and had a crew waiting. Beside the Hummer there was an Escalade pickup and a black van.
Antonio turned to Frank, “You can stay with the plane. It won’t do for you to get mixed up in this. I know this f*cks up our schedule in DC, but if we don’t get this one back it could f*ck up a lot more. We’ll be back in a couple of hours. We’ll double-time it from here.”
“No problem Tony. Take care of business.” Frank replied with a wink. Adding with a slight smile he said, “I’ll make it happen either way, and you’re good for the money whether I’m sitting on the plane or doing your dirty laundry.”
With Salazar as his financial counselor Antonio had to laugh a little at the way Frank worded that. “Frank, you’re a funny guy,” he commented under his breath. Antonio was in a good mood thinking about getting Alicia in his clutches again. He could never seem to understand why her body felt so satisfying in his arms, her head in his grasp, or her lips pressed to his. He always had women to satisfy his urges, but none seemed to accomplish it completely like she did. Maybe that was what made him full of rage that she had deserted him like she had. Well now she was going to feel that rage!
Stepping up into the Hummer he skipped the usual salutations. “Jorge, I need you to follow this GPS signal now. No time to waste.”
“Let me see that.” Salazar responded rapidly. “I know where that is. It’s up the road from Pumpkin Center.”
And just like that they were moving.
It did not take them long to get to Pumpkin Center. From the outskirts of town, they took a farm road through the woods to the location they had pinpointed on the GPS. The road was bumpy and narrow and had branches on the asphalt here and there, but they continued to make good time. Antonio was not only anxious to get Alicia back in his grasp, but the meeting in DC was of the upmost importance, and he couldn’t afford to lose too much time recapturing Alicia.
They were getting close to their destination when the farm road abruptly ended. The hummer squealed its breaks, and their van behind them nearly plowed into them.
“What the f*ck!” Ochoa exclaimed. “Where the hell…?” He held his phone where both Sandoval and he could study the GPS. “You think this damned GPS is screwing with us? She should be like three blocks from here.”
“I don’t know Antonio. I haven’t seen a GPS yet that was full proof.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t seen a GPS like this one. I had it made special.” He paused for a few moments, pondering their next action. “Okay, we’re going to have to hoof it from here. I want you to take half your guys on my left and send the other half on my right. I’ll take mine and go up the middle, just ahead of you so you can follow my direction. If we find anything follow my lead.”
They snuck quietly through the woods. There was a lot of undergrowth, so their movements were hardly detectable. After having Alicia out of his possession for so long their march seemed interminably long, yet it actually only lasted about three minutes. Right where the signal indicated Alicia would be, they came upon a lonely little house. Their teams successfully surrounded it, arms loaded and locked on target.
Ochoa signaled for the others to watch him carefully and for three of his team to come up behind him as he stepped up to the door. He knocked loudly. A man with a plump face answered.
“Hi there, can I help you?”
“You can show me to Alicia,” Antonio abruptly responded.
“Excuse me?” was the curt reply.
Ochoa Machado lifted his pistol. Those behind him lifted their automatic rifles. Artie got the message and let them in.
“Just take me to her and nobody gets hurt.” Ochoa spit out his words like a machine gun.
“Sir, I’m a little confused.” Artie had a look of sincere consternation. “You can see I live here out in the middle of nowhere. I live alone. If you’re looking for somebody you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“Watch him.” Ochoa nodded to one of his men who kept his gun trained on Artie. Antonio proceeded to make a quick search of the house with his other two flunkies. They ransacked the place and still could not find her. After several minutes of turning the place inside out they crowded around Artie.
“Okay sir, you have till the count of five to tell me the f***g hell where she is.” Ochoa Machado put his pistol up to Artie’s temple. “After I count to five, I blow your f***g brains to hell.” He cocked the trigger.
Artie had a new appreciation for all that Alicia had suffered that would drive her nearly to her death to avoid this man.
“One….”
He could feel the pinprick of his nerves all over his body. Death was but a few breaths away.
“Two….”
There within arm’s reach was the smartphone attached to the belt of this wicked man who kept referring to it in his search for Alicia. Artie was no techno genius, but he had used a GPS somewhat like that before to go fishing. And he was a sharp man who quickly connected the dots. If he was going to die, he might as well make the most of it.
“Three….”
Antonio had been caught totally off his guard. Artie charged him at the waist, grabbing the smartphone as he did so. With the full force of his body Artie pushed into this wicked pimp, pulling him down to the floor in a classic football tackle. Artie smiled to himself. He had been a defensive lineman in high school, and he still had it in him.
But the smile faded as the blood oozed out of him. Ochoa got up mad as a hornet.
“You didn’t have to shoot him till I stepped away you M***r F***g idiot! You could have hit me!” After slugging the offender, Antonio felt for his phone in a reflex action.
“Hey, where’s my phone!?” Seeing his temper boiling all three nervously helped him look for the phone.
Jorge Sandoval had come racing in with a couple more men after hearing the shots. For three minutes they all ransacked the house some more. Then it dawned on Antonio that he had still had it on his person when he had the gun up to the man’s head. “That son of a b*tch must have grabbed it from me.” Turning the body over he found the prized possession…covered in blood and with a bullet hole through it.
********
Before Antonio had entered the house, Artie hid Alicia in a hole beneath the kitchen floor. It was a small cellar of sorts, where he kept some food items so they would not spoil. “Stay here till they’re gone, and for God’s sake don’t make any noise.”
The cellar was tiny, and Alicia felt as if she had been buried alive. She hoped to God that she was not locked in. Something smelled a little rancid, like spoiled onions.
Knock, knock. That would be Antonio knocking. He would never let someone else knock for him, and he always hit a door as if it were a sparring partner.
A few tense moments of silence…. Then she heard the footsteps in the kitchen above her as they passed right overhead; then the banging and scraping as they ransacked the place l
ooking for her.
She held her breath and her silence. Silence was both her enemy and her friend. She felt so alone, trapped, cut off from the world. Up there was a man she had learned both to love and to hate. A part of her wanted to talk to him, to reach out to him, to touch him. But her reason reminded her of the terror he would rain down on her should he find her. His was a vengeance that had brought him from the ends of the earth to ferret her out and make her suffer.
Her hot breath her only company, she kneeled in pitch darkness. The only sound louder than the thumping on the wooden floor was the thumping of her heart. It felt as if it would explode with the fearful anticipation. At any moment they were sure to find the trap door and burst through the floor, hauling her to a grisly fate.
But then the thumping receded. The footsteps had gone to another room. After several terrifying minutes it got quiet. The quiet extended minute after minute, seemingly indestructible. It was as if the whole world had gone away and left her. The unsettling notion got into her brain: maybe she had died and just didn’t know it. Silent minute after silent minute, until…a gunshot ruptured the silence with a violence that shook the house all the way down to the dungeon of her soul.
Somehow, she knew. Artie was dead. Whatever trace of love Alicia thought she still felt for Antonio disintegrated at that moment. Artie had been the only person in her whole life besides her grandmother that had truly shown love to her, caring for her unselfishly. He had rescued her, and spoon fed her, bringing her back to health. She had no doubt that had he lived she would have left his home a whole, complete person. Now she would be left weak in body and fragmented in soul. She began to sob but caught herself. She could not afford to be heard. Concerned by her own fate her emotions were paralyzed. Self-control was her road to life and freedom. Once they were gone, she would have a reprieve. And somehow—she did not know how, but somehow—she would gain her freedom from Antonio forever.
All that she had to do for the moment was wait in perfect silence.
CHAPTER 22
Stories in the Dark
Never had Susanna Perle dreamed that she would be a prisoner in her own house, but that is exactly what she had become, at least for the moment. She and Pedro stood near the door for several agonizing minutes prepared with irons from Adam’s golf bag, straining their ears to hear any sounds indicating an intruder, ready and waiting to club anyone that should bust through the door.
As the minutes dragged by their eyes gradually adjusted to the dim gray light that snuck in by the skylight. There were plastic and cardboard boxes stacked all around them. They had been neatly organized in rows. Adam had helped her years ago to place them in order of their contents so they could be easily found. His military training had taught him how storage units should be set up, and that his training should pervade every portion of his life. There were times when his strictness annoyed her, but she had been happy with the results in their attic and had appreciated the order many times over.
They stood on either side of the door, clubs gripped tightly, when a lightning flash revealed two figures to them. One was right behind Pedro, and one right behind Perle. They both nearly jumped out of their skin. Romero was actually beginning to swing when Susanna grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Manikins” she told him.
Thunder reverberated through the walls and the roof. The din of rain on the roof grew louder. There was a tree that overhung part of the skylight and appeared to be peering in. Its shadow moved menacingly about the attic, looking like so many twisted arms with their deformed fingers clawing at anything within its reach.
As the minutes wore on their hands were beginning to tire of clutching the golf clubs so tightly. The rain gradually let up some. This enabled them to hear better, and both eased and strengthened their anxieties as the silence beyond the door continued.
Lightning flashed. It was followed by a pounding of something in a room to the side of them. They both held their breath. Then there was a pounding on the wall in the room opposite the first.
Susanna’s mind was racing uncontrollably. What were the intruders trying to do? Had they discovered the attic? Were they trying to bust through the walls? What would they do should they find them? This young man Pedro seemed to be sure they would kill them, or worse. Worse how? A shiver went up her spine.
Thunder rumbled. Perle’s nerves were unravelling. She had been through a lot in her life and knew how to handle a crisis. But she had never been in a crisis this extreme before. “If only Adam were here. Only God and the government know how many situations like this he’s been in.” The thought filled her with both an ache for his presence and anger at his absence.
The pounding moved away from the walls. There was a considerable racket in the rooms on both sides, but it was becoming apparent they were not attempting to enter the attic…at least not yet.
After what seemed an interminable amount of time the noise in both rooms ceased. Susanna had to put her golf club down. She could no longer maintain the tension in her arms. Pedro followed her example. He was beyond exhaustion. All that held him up at this point was the adrenaline that now had pumped through his body hour after hour.
Another flash startled them. Susanna’s mind was playing tricks on her. “Did that dark form move closer? Was it really Adam’s uniform she saw, or was it a man?” She kept the corner of her eye on it, but the tree shadows played havoc with her perception.
Deciding to get a better look she practiced what her dad Sky had taught her. “When in darkness do what they teach pilots in the military,” he had said. “Don’t focus on what you want to see. Instead move your eyes in a sweeping motion back and forth across the direction you want to observe, and your eyes will be better able to capture what you are looking at.” Determined to put her mind at ease she had begun a sweeping look, but at that instant the door to the closet outside the attic opened.
Both she and Pedro lifted their clubs. Standing rigidly, prepared for anything, they listened.
There was a rustling beyond the door. They could both make out a faint mumbling of some man sifting through the clothes, screeching the metal hangers along their bars. They both looked at each other with apprehensive faces. Susanna held her breath, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t find the door to the attic. The scraping of hangers grew louder for a moment, as did the grumbling. Then quick steps and the door sounded shut.
Their attention had been riveted on the man in the closet. It wasn’t until the door shut that Perle realized they were still looking at each other. Both of them relaxed and let down their clubs.
Considering their predicament Susanna realized there might be no way to know when it was safe to leave the attic. It would certainly be a while. They had better make themselves more comfortable and come up with a plan of action.
But first…and then she saw it. The uniform moved.
Like lightning Pedro stepped toward it and thrust his arm below it, catching it before it crashed to the floor. He had accidentally bumped the manikin behind him. The noise of it hitting the floor would almost certainly have given away their presence. Both let out a sigh of relief when the manikin was standing upright again without making any loud noise.
Perle whispered in Pedro’s ear, “We may as well get comfortable. We may be here a while. I’ll make a spot for us to sit down.”
“Thanks. I need sit,” he responded.
Stepping ever so lightly and carefully she found a place among the boxes where there was enough space to spread out an old yoga mat. Doubling it up to give it more cushion and to fit in the snug little space she had made, she sat down and signaled for him to do so as well.
Now seated at floor level with the boxes stacked around them it was almost as if they were in a secure little fortress. All the scary shadows were set at bay. The boxes surrounded them, absorbing the sound of their whispers, giving them more assurance to communicate more at length, although continuing to do so in each other’s ear. Susanna had found a blanket to wrap around them, co
vering their heads. It would help to conceal their whispers even more; and should one of the intruders enter by surprise their heads would be hidden.
“I think we can converse better here,” she said. The storm rumbled like an angry giant, yet it somehow seemed more subdued in this blanketed refuge. They were shielded from the lightning flashes here, hidden away from the constant battering of the rain.
“Yes, I think we whisper here with no risk they hear. But we need be very careful. These guys only want kill.” She could hear the urgency in his voice, even in his whispers.
“What is it you say they did? And why are they after you?”
His face glowed slightly in the subdued neon flash of lightning that filled the room. “They kill everyone but me in trailer…”
“Yes, but why?”
“We come across without papers, and they make us carry their drugs. Many of us not want do it. But they force us.” The earnestness was obvious in his voice. “The trailer truck crash. Some of us escape. I think they not want that their drugs be found. They kill everyone in trailer. I hear them. Then they kill all who run but me. And they try kill me too but miss many times. They are very dangerous!”
The sky grumbled as if to reinforce his assertion.
Susanna lifted the blanket slightly to glance around. Seeing the manikins again gave her the creeps. The atmosphere in the attic was dismal and suffocating. She had a flashback of when she was a little girl and terror had struck her of being left alone in a department store. Her mother had disappeared from her view, and she had wandered around lost for almost a half hour till a store clerk reconnected her with her mother. During that half hour she had seen a lot of people leaving, and the lights being turned off in certain sections. Being just old enough to understand that department stores close at night she was struck with an uncontrollable fear that her mom had left, and all the people in the store would leave also, and that she would be all alone with the manikins.