by Tom Riggs
Munro walked down onto the dirty sand and turned right, towards the rocks. According to the taxi driver, the trailer park was on the next beach along, on the far side of the rocks.
As Munro got to the rocks his phone rang. It was Eduardo.
“Jack, there’s a problem.”
“What is it Eduardo?”
“The people you asked me to find, the Neuberg family. You are not the only one looking for them.”
“What?”
“My contact in immigration has just told me that a police colonel from Sinaloa has asked for the same name – Anna Neuberg. There is no record of her but the office gave the man details of the only other Neubergs in Mexico – the grandparents in the trailer park. It is not a very common name unfortunately.”
“Any idea why the Sinaloa police want Anna Neuberg?”
“I have no idea old friend, but it’s bad. The police colonel is from Sinaloa. Sinaloa is controlled by El Cazon Salazar, head of the Sonora cartel. If the Sonora cartel want Anna Neuberg, it cannot be for anything good.”
“Thanks for the warning Ed.”
“Get the girl and get out of Mexico Jack. These people are very very serious.”
Eduardo hung up. The information was disturbing enough. But more disturbing was Eduardo’s tone of voice. He sounded genuinely worried. Eduardo never sounded worried. This was a man who risked his life just to eat a good steak. He was reminded of Eduardo’s earlier advice. Be careful in Sayulita. The whole of that part of the coast is controlled by a guy called Felix Salazar, “El Cazon” to his friends. The Sonora cartel.
Munro hoped that he was not too late.
He was.
17
Past the rocks the sand got cleaner as the development thinned out. This looked to be the cheaper end of town, the few cafes there were had large Indian sarongs hung up in them. There was a large campsite set back from the sand, small straggly tents in a wide dirty palm grove. The trailer park was next door. He walked off the beach and into the trailer park and it was immediately clear that something was wrong. Normally it should have been a fairly sedate place. Large RVs and camper vans were evenly spaced in two rows stretching back from the sand. Some of the trailers looked semi-permanent and had little vegetable patches attached to them. Others had awnings under which were little outdoor kitchens. One of them was called a ‘land yacht’, and the place did have the feel of a marina without the water.
Munro arrived to find at least thirty people crowded around one of the trailers. They were all old and North American and they were all in beach gear. They were also all upset. The men were shouting and many of the women were crying. Munro walked towards the group, trying to make out what they were saying. He could hear one of the men shouting “motherfucker” and “fucking Dago” among other things.
The group was crowded around someone and as Munro barged through them he saw that it was a man of about seventy, patchy grey hair, deeply tanned skin. The man was sitting on the ground holding a swab against his face. Someone had broken his nose and there was a pool of blood at his feet. Fresh, some not yet dried into the hard baked dirt. A woman was sobbing hysterically next to him.
“I am looking for Anna Neuberg and her grandparents, Ross and Sara Neuberg”, shouted Munro, above the noise.
The injured man looked up and the group went quiet. He said “I’m Ross Neuberg, who are you?”
Munro knew what had happened. He had known as soon as he saw the crowd.
“My name is Jack Munro, I don’t have much time to explain, but I urgently need to find your granddaughter, I think she is in trouble.”
On the other side of the crowd a tall man, in his late sixties, pushed through. He was wearing nothing but surf shorts and had a thick shock of white hair. For a man in his late sixties he was in good shape, a surfer no doubt thought Munro. He also had a large handgun on him. A large handgun that he was pointing straight at Munro.
“Ok motherfucker, you better start talking,” he said to Munro. “Anna’s just been taken by some police, and they looked like nasty fuckers to us. They beat the shit out of Ross here. And now you turn up.”
Munro looked him in the eye. Ice blue, but they were good eyes. The man was scared, but he was not going to shoot. He looked at the old surfer and the Neubergs.
“Look, as I said, my name is Jack Munro. I am a private investigator. Anna witnessed a murder in Venezuela. I work for the murdered boy’s mother. The people who killed the boy may now want to kill Anna…” It was an assumption, and as such may or may not have been true. But it was his best guess.
Munro looked at his audience, he felt slightly ridiculous talking about murders and witnesses to a group of pensioners in their swimming trunks.
“I know this sounds odd and scary. But just understand this. If you don’t tell me who took Anna, when they took her and where they’re going, Anna will be killed.” He paused to let that sink in.
Anna’s grandmother looked up. Her eyes were red from crying. “Can you help her? Can you save her?”
Munro paused. He was in a foreign country, with no vehicle, no weapon and no idea how many men he was up against.
“I can certainly try ma’am. I can try my best. ” It was the truth. He could try his best and nothing more. Anything more would be making promises that he might not be able to keep. He had sworn long ago to never do that again. He then turned to address the whole crowd. “But I need information and I need it fast.”
The surfer looked at him, the ice blue eyes slowly assessing him. Whatever criteria he was using, Munro had passed.
“Ok son,” he said to Munro lowering his gun. “There were a bunch of them, state police it looked like. They came in two police pick-up trucks. They arrived and went straight to Ross and Sara’s RV. Kicked in the door and grabbed Anna. Beat Ross to a pulp, smashed me pretty good in the stomach too. They bundled her into one of the pick-ups and sped off. Don’t know where they were going, but they turned left.”
“Only way left is the highway and only reason you would turn left is if you’re heading north,” continued the surfer.
“State police are headquartered in Tepic, thirty miles north of here” said one of the women.
“Correct,” continued the old surfer. “So they should be heading north.”
“When was this?” asked Munro.
“Just happened,” said Ross Neuberg, still holding the bloody swab to his nose, “five minutes ago.”
Five minutes lead. Not long, but enough. They were in pick-ups, police issue, so not fast. That might help.
“I need a vehicle, something fast.”
“Take my quad son,” said the surfer, “It’s 500 cc, will do 80 no problem.”
Munro and the surfer walked fast towards it. The Neubergs did not move, they looked to have gone into shock.
Munro got onto the quad. It was a beast, no doubt. The army used a similar model in Afghanistan. Munro felt more than comfortable on it.
“Take a left out of the park and keep going. There’s a dirt track that takes you up onto the hill. That should save you some time. The track runs along a ridge above the highway. Get up on the ridge fast and you should be able to see them below you pretty soon.”
“Thanks.”
The old surfer waved his thanks away. “Just wish I could join you. You’re ex-forces aren’t you?”
Munro looked at him and saw ‘75th Rangers’ tattooed on his hard brown forearm.
“Twelve years.”
“I thought so,” said the old surfer. “In which case, you better take this too.” He handed Munro his gun, grip first. A magnum .45, six shooter. Dirty Harry. “Good luck son. And be careful, those Mexicans were tooled up.”
Munro turned the quad and sped out of the trailer park in a cloud of dust. The pistol was tucked into his belt at the back. His mind was clear, his adrenalin pumping, his body running on instinct and training. If he had had time to sit back and assess his feelings at that point, he would have realised that he felt good
. Very good.
The quad had a 500cc engine, twice as big as was strictly necessary for a four- wheeled motorbike. But it meant that Munro was up on the ridge in minutes. The trailer park was on the edge of the village, at the less developed end. What houses there were looked to be large villas, invisible behind high concrete walls. Otherwise there was still a lot of space. A large sports field, surprisingly green, wide dusty streets with lots of closed down market stalls. No doubt it came alive at night when it was cooler. It was the middle of the day and hot, few people were around. Quickly the hard-baked sand road started to rise. The edge of the hill had obviously been set aside for development and for the first five minutes Munro was climbing the steep slope, away from the trailer park, through a mini town of half-built condominium blocks. No one seemed to be around to continue the building work that day. If Munro had had time to stop and turn around, he would have seen that the eventual owners of the condos would get a beautiful view of the village, beach and bay stretching out below them.
The old surfer was right. Once Munro was up on the ridge, he had a good view of the highway below him. It hugged the hill line, following the line of the shallow valley in which it lay. On the other side the ground rose slowly into rolling hills, thickly wooded. But on Munro’s side the ridge was steep and bare, south facing, so that any trees there were had dried and burnt in the sun. Nothing to obscure his view.
But the highway was empty, no police vehicles. He put the quad into fifth gear and gunned the accelerator. The old surfer said it could do 80 no problem. Munro decided to see if he was right. It was the middle of the dry season so the dirt road was baked hard. There had been no rain in months, which also meant there were few potholes. Even so, going 80 miles an hour along a narrow dirt track on a quad required all Munro’s strength and concentration. The fall to his right was steep. He would have been unlikely to have survived it going at that speed.
After a few minutes of fast driving, Munro caught sight of his target. The two police pick-ups were not driving particularly fast. One had two men on its cargo bed. Munro was about three hundred yards above and behind them and could not make the men out particularly clearly. But they did look armed.
Munro slowed his speed. The quad was kicking up a lot of dust that would be clearly visible from the highway. He tracked them for several miles from above as the road continued to snake its way along the shallow valley. But after a few more miles he began to lose height. Looking ahead he saw that the ridge was starting to fall away. It would soon give way to a flatter coastal plain as the road split and the highway turned inland. He would lose sight of the road below. The three hundred yards between the track and the highway was now made up of a field of large corn plants, most at least ten foot high. It looked as if an enterprising local farmer had decided to make a few pesos out of some unused common land. But they were blocking his view. He slowed his speed more and turned right hard, into the field, through the corn. The huge quad ripped and shredded the flimsy plants as Munro tore through them. He gunned the quad up the bank between the cornfields and the highway. Once back on concrete, Munro twisted the accelerator hard and climbed back up through the gears fast. In less than ten seconds he was back in fifth and doing seventy. But he had lost time coming off the track and lost sight of the police convoy. He turned a long corner just in time to see the back of the second pick-up turning right off the highway. Turning right onto a road track that looked like it led nowhere.
He slowed down more and followed cautiously. There were few other cars around, and he was aware of how loud the 500cc engine now sounded. The road that the police pick-ups had taken was little more than a dirt track, although it looked well used. Not signposted, it led steeply up into heavily wooded jungle. Munro slowed the quad to a crawl and turned onto the track. It was narrow and the jungle either side was thick with creepers and vine thicket. The air got thicker, more oppressive, as the track rose on an unseen incline. He got to the top of the hill and saw that it went down on the other side, into a deep valley. A low brackish river was just visible at the bottom. Munro had lost sight of the police pick-ups. He drove slowly along the track, down into the valley. Staying in first gear, trying to keep his revs as low as possible. The track started to wind down into the valley, zigzagging its way down the steep slope. But his visibility was low – the jungle was thick here.
Suddenly Munro caught sight of a flash of white below him. He parked the quad at the edge of the track, pushing it into a small patch of wild banana plants. He lowered himself into the precipitous jungle on the right side of the track and began to slowly make his way down, using the exposed roots of trees and vine thicket as a ladder. After twenty yards, the ground became less steep and Munro went into a crawl. Stay low, stay out of sight. Quickly he saw them. A hundred yards below and ahead of him, at the bottom of the valley. The police pick-ups had stopped in a large clearing by the river. There were several piles of rubbish, empty plastic water bottles and beer cans at the edge, and lots of old tyre tracks in the deep brown dirt. A popular spot. The thick jungle all around meant that only streams of sunlight got through. Munro crawled into the low thick vegetation at the edge of the clearing to get a better look.
He did not like what he saw.
18
The pick-ups had parked up and the police had got off. Two uniformed cops held Anna Neuberg against one of the pick-ups as a man in jeans and black leather jacket talked to her. Munro saw with disgust that his hand was under her skirt. He crawled closer, on his hands and knees, towards where the bush turned abruptly to open dirt. He was now within fifteen yards of the group, but still invisible. As he went low, onto his elbows and knees, he heard a scream. A woman’s scream. Anna Neuberg was being pinned to the ground by the two uniformed cops. Pinning her arms and legs to the floor. The man in the leather jacket was undoing his trousers. Around the girl stood another three uniformed cops, smoking and laughing. Watching.
Munro had to act quickly. There were six men. All armed. The three men watching all had guns, big guns. An AR15, an Uzi and a semi-automatic rifle of some sort. The rifle looked old, like something out of a Vietnam film. But the AR15 and Uzi looked brand new. Old or new, they all had bullets and they all could kill.
Munro had the advantages of surprise and a slightly elevated position. He had the disadvantage of only having four bullets in his Magnum. Four bullets, six men: not great odds. One of the men holding Anna Neuberg’s arms slapped her in the face as she continued to scream. Munro began to crawl through the remaining undergrowth, fast. The odds weren’t great, but he had played worse.
Two of the three cops watching were facing Munro. They were also the ones with the biggest guns, so he went for them first, crawling to a good vantage point. Once he was within ten yards of the group he went into a crouch and fired at them. The Magnum was a hand cannon and let off a huge crack as he fired. But it was fairly accurate and did not jam. The first man went down in an explosion of blood as Munro hit him square in the chest. The other two men had instinctively ducked and turned towards him, guns raised. So Munro had to go for a headshot. Ten yards was a good kill distance for a handgun, and he got the first man no problem. The top of his head exploded on impact. The third man raised his rifle to shoot. He was still crouching so Munro got him in the side of his stomach. No matter, the .45 shell downed him. Munro guessed it tore through one of his lungs, perhaps a kidney, maybe some liver too. One bullet left. Munro came out of his ambush position into the open clearing, running now. The men holding Anna down had let her go and were going for their holstered pistols. But they had reacted slowly. The shock had slowed them. Munro had taken out the first three in seven seconds. Three men, seven seconds. Not bad, not bad at all. The Munro of three years ago would have done it in six. But still not too bad.
The man in the leather jacket was also reaching for his holstered gun. His trousers had fallen down by his ankles and his member was exposed. He looked ridiculous, but he was reaching for his gun. Munro ran to within five
yards of him and fired the Magnum at his crotch. Shock and awe. Last bullet.
The two uniformed cops hesitated when they saw what Munro had done to their boss. Hesitation costs lives. Munro rolled down to the closest fallen cop. He grabbed the dead man’s Uzi and turned it onto the other two.
Two men left. And Munro now had an automatic with at least ten bullets left. Better odds now. One of the men turned and ran whilst the other continued to pull his pistol. He had been the one who had just slapped the girl and he now held the gun to her throat. The man running had dropped his gun but he was still in range. Munro went to shoot him but then lowered his gun. He could not shoot a man in the back. He was no longer a threat. Munro turned to the other man and levelled the Uzi at him, saying in Spanish:
“Let the girl go and I’ll let you live.”
“No way,” replied the cop, pushing the barrel further into her neck.
Munro raised the Uzi. It was not a particularly accurate weapon - he would have preferred to have the AR15. But beggars can’t be choosers. He aimed and fired, one shot, at the man’s exposed shoulder. The cop spun back, and Anna dived to the floor. Munro emptied the rest of the clip into him, fifteen bullets. His chest and stomach disintegrated in a red mist as the 9mm shells tore him apart.
Anna was staring at Munro, her loose-fitting summer dress half off, as she tried to stand up.
“Who are you?” she managed to ask, before passing out.
Munro ran over and caught her and laid her gently onto the floor. The running man was long gone. A mistake, thought Munro, definitely a mistake. Too late. But the man in the leather jacket was still alive, Munro’s bullet only having blown out his crotch. With Anna safely on the floor, he turned to her would-be rapist.