was directed to unchain Marcella. He removed the chain that had
her chained to the seat but with a trembling voice he claimed he
didn"t have the key to unchain the prisoners from each other.
Only the prison and the courthouse had those keys as a security
measure. Clearly annoyed by this the man lifted the gun again
and pointed at the driver as if to give him a second chance to
revise his answer. The man fell to his knees and begged for his
life claiming he really didn"t have the key; another loud noise
and more blood.
The man named Sandro looked at the chains that connected
Kim to Marcella and then looked at Kim. He raised his gun and
pointed it at Kim. She cowered and saw nothing but coldness in
his eyes. Marcella pushed the gun away and told him that she
wasn"t going to run around tied to a corpse. He seemed to
understand and dropped the gun. Then he headed outside and Marcella followed him dragging Kim along. Kim almost tripped
over the corpses of the guard and the driver when she got out of
the bus but managed to keep her balance. Everything was going so
fast that she hadn"t been able to register what was going on but
two men had just been shot right in front of her and she felt
like she was going to be sick.
One thing she did know was that Marcella knew these guys
and they had come for her. She also quickly figured out that the
slightest resistance was enough reason for them to shoot her. So
as long as she was cooperative she might live. If she would
resist and become easier to handle dead then they would shoot
her without hesitation. Puking right now was not going to be a
good idea and she focused as hard as she could on keeping the
content of her stomach down with success.
The van pulled out from behind the bus and the rear doors
opened wide. Marcella got in the back and Kim followed right
behind her. Some of the men that had been working on the truck
also got in. Through the open door she saw the man named Sandro
get back into the bus. Then more gunfire and some women
screaming, then a few more rounds and everything was quiet.
Sandro came out of the bus and got into the passenger seat in
the van. The doors of the van slammed shut and the van sped off. Kim just sat there horrified at what had just happened. Ten
lives had just been extinguished and the mood in the van was
great. These weren"t people. They were monsters. Marcella was
the happiest of all. Kim could only think of the guards and the
women in the bus and their families. She just wanted to scream
about the madness of it all but thought better of it. She fought
to hold down the tears to avoid drawing any attention to
herself. Sandro opened the window in the divider of the van and
asked Marcella if she was ok.
“Never better” she had responded.
Then he looked Kim over. When she noticed his stare she
tried to shrink even smaller and he looked away leaving the
window in the divider open. In the back of the van she was to
her relief unnoticed. The men were too busy greeting Marcella
like she had been a long lost friend.
Finally she couldn"t hold it anymore and when she noticed
Sandro staring at her again she asked “Why did you have to kill
them all?” in a sharp tone.
The van got really quiet and everyone just stared at her
like she had just insulted their mothers. It was quiet for a few
seconds before Sandro responded. “I don"t care for witnesses” he said as if it was the most
obvious thing in the world.
The rest agreed and went back to chatting with Marcella.
They drove for two hours and then stopped. They stayed at a
house in a remote location and there they had a blacksmith come
and release Marcella and Kim from their bonds. At first Sandro
had wanted to shoot through the chains but much to Kim"s relief
Marcella had heavily protested against it. Three men stayed with
them until the blacksmith arrived while Sandro and two others
left. Kim was happy that he left. She did not like him one bit.
He was cold and ruthless and she did not trust him. On second
thought she did not trust anyone in the group she was travelling
with. The blacksmith came and it took him a good thirty minutes
to release them from their bonds. After he was done he was paid
and he left with a word of warning about his family or something
if he talked. Kim shuddered.
One of the men looked at Kim and then asked Marcella
“should I shoot her now?”
Kim looked back in shock and then at Marcella with begging
eyes.
Marcella glanced at her as she was eating and said “Nah,
she"s not going anywhere and she certainly won"t go back to the police. They just put her back in prison to finish her sentence
and she escaped. They would never let her out. And she has
helped me in the past. Thanks to her I was able to be on that
bus. Now we are even.”
Kim felt relieved but only for a second. Marcella was right
she was a convict and an escaped one at that. Why would they
believe she had been forced to run? She certainly had not
resisted. Really she had nowhere to go. She had no money or
papers and if she went back to the United States she wouldn"t
get past the border and if she did she would just be extradited
back to Mexico. Again in a sick twist of fate her life had taken
a turn for the worse. This time people had even died and she
wasn"t sure when it would be her turn.
The next morning they left early but this time the vehicle
was no longer the old run down van but a sleek black Cadillac
Escalade. Kim had not been able to sleep as she had spent the
whole night thinking about the poor people in the bus and ended
up crawling into the third row of seats as far away as possible
from everybody. There the motion of the car finally put her to
sleep. It was late afternoon when she finally awoke and they had
stopped at another old shack of a house. The camp they were
going to was at least ten more hours and they stopped for the night. Just to be safe they chained Kim to the bed with a pair
of handcuffs.
They ate microwave meals and Kim got homesick thinking of
being back with her mom and sister. Being chained to the bed
made for an uncomfortable night and when morning came around she had slept for two hours at the most.
Chapter 28:
They traveled further north and into the mountains and the
road got rougher and more desolate. By night fall they reached a
valley over a road that nobody would really recognize as a road.
There in the valley was a small settlement. Kim figured it there
were about ten little huts and one bigger much nicer house. The
valley was surrounded by mountains and the road appeared the
only access way. Next to the house a few very nice cars were
parked and on the other side of the house the valley stretched
out. The valley looked odd though. Unlike the rest of the
mountains it looked flat and a lot darker than it should have as
night had not fully set in yet but the valley looked comp
letely
black except for where the huts and house were. When they got
closer she noticed that the valley wasn"t black but there was
black netting that covered crops and the crops covered the whole
valley.
The car passed a checkpoint and two armed men let them
through. When they got to the house the car stopped and a man
came out of the house. The man was a short, heavy set Mexican with a balding head. He was smoking a big cigar and had a
friendly look on his face. Marcella jumped out of the car and
ran toward him and yelled “Papi!!!” The man wrapped his arms
around her and hugged her tight. Kim got out of the car and
looked around not knowing how to act. The man stepped aside and
motioned for Marcella to enter the house. Then he looked Kim
over. The friendly expression gone but he nodded in approval and
barked a command to one of his men to house her in one of the
huts. The man led her to a hut and opened the door.
The hut had one room and a bathroom with a shower and
toilet. There were six beds in the main room, a table with six
chairs and there was a small stove and sink in a corner that
appeared to function as a kitchen. Four women were sitting at
the table having dinner. The women looked strong and had stern
expressions on their faces. They reminded Kim of women who
worked the land and didn"t look like they had ever been to a big
city. The man introduced Kim to the women, told them she was
their new roommate and left.
Kim just stood in the middle of the room not sure how to
act. As soon as the man closed the door behind him, the women"s
faces turned from stern to warm. They welcomed her with warmth
that took her completely by surprise. They grabbed another plate
and filled it with food and motioned for her to sit down. It was actually a nice situation and she felt herself relax. One of the
women asked her where she came from and Kim explained how she
had been chained to Marcella when they busted Marcella out of
prison. This made them feel a little unnerved and they inquired
what she had been in prison for. She told the story of how Jake
had set her up and the fact that she claimed to be innocent
seemed to relax the women a little.
Then another asked if she and Marcella were friends. Kim
looked at them not sure how to respond. The four women just
stared at her in great anticipation of the answer. She finally
told them that she had met Marcella in prison but they had not
been friends. She had helped Marcella with something in prison
and they had been chained together in the bus when Marcella had
escaped but that was the extent of her relationship with
Marcella. They weren"t friends. This was received with a big
sigh of relief from all four women at the same time and the
tension dropped as she was motioned to eat.
She ate a few bites and then asked where she was. The women
just looked from one to another almost seeming like nobody knew
how to answer that.
Finally one woman spoke and said “This is a plantation of
the Nunez cartel. The man you saw at the house was Fernando
Nunez and he is in charge. Marcella is his daughter. He is a ruthless business man but he treats people fair. If you cross
him though, you will be dealt with swiftly. Marcella is not so
nice. She is a spoiled brat that always gets her way and then
there is Sandro. He is Fernando"s right-hand man and takes care
of most things here. He is a cold blooded killer and a sadist.
He will use any reason to shoot someone and you can see he
enjoys it”.
Kim nodded, “I noticed” she said thinking of the incident
in the bus.
“What do you do here?” Kim asked.
“We work the plantation” the woman responded, “This is the
main production facility for Marijuana for the cartel. They make
a lot of money from this place. That is why Fernando hangs out
here. He wants to make sure nothing goes wrong with his cash
cow.”
“And how did you get here?” Kim asked.
The woman shrugged “Where we come from there is no work and
even less food. We work for the cartel to survive but it is
dangerous work. If they think you are doing something wrong they
won"t hesitate to kill you. When they can"t find enough people
to work for them they just kidnap people” she said. Kim listened intently as they explained how things worked
around the plantation and paid careful attention when the women
told her whom to stay clear of. Sandro was the biggest threat
and should be avoided when you could. Most of the others were ok
but one word from Sandro, Fernando or Marcella and they would
kill you in a heartbeat. As it got later the women cleaned up
and said they should go to bed. They always got up early to work
the land and they were sure that Kim was expected to do the
same. Since she had only slept two hours the night before, she
did not have much trouble falling asleep. The women had been
very welcoming and a pleasant change from the killers she had
spent the last two days with.
The next morning started with roll call. The cartel members
made sure everyone was accounted for and after that people were
assigned to a section. She was assigned to one of the women from
her hut that showed her the ropes. The main task was the
checking of the plants for bugs and white colored webbing. That
would indicate a disease in the plants which could ruin the
crop. In the complete daylight she finally saw the magnitude of
the plantation. Plants stretched everywhere. She estimated there
were about two hundred acres of plants and the plants reached
about four foot high. The woman explained that they would start harvesting in a
month or so and each harvest was about eighty tons of marijuana.
She heard rumors that each crop was worth over a billion pesos
or over one hundred million dollars. Kim marveled at the numbers
but when she thought about it, it really didn"t matter. It
wasn"t her money and right now her only thought was survival.
They worked in the hot sun until lunch. At lunch a woman
joined them. Her name was Lucia and she was astonished at how
much Kim looked like her daughter Gabriella. Gabriella had been
born in the United States when she and her husband had lived
there illegally. Gabriella had been a US citizen but they were
deported and even though Gabriella could stay she had nobody
there so she had come back to Mexico with them when she was
eight. Now they were all stuck here at the plantation. Gabriella
had a job in the house.
She had learned English at school when they lived in the
United States and that had given her the position to handle all
of Fernando"s communication with dealers in the United States
the woman explained with some pride. Fernando had never learned
to speak English and thus he had looked for someone who could.
Gabriella was two years younger than Kim but her mom insisted
that they could be twins. Kim laughed at the idea and waived it
off. Lucia
told her they had come to work for the cartel to get enough money together so they could send Gabriella back to the
United States to get a college degree.
After lunch they went back to work and they worked until
sunset. On their way back to the hut Lucia stopped them. With
her was Gabriella and she introduced her to Kim. The girls
looked at each other in amazement. They were the same heigth and
build and they looked very much alike. Kim had a larger nose
than Gabriella and Gabriella"s skin and hair was darker but
other than that they did look identical. Gabriella and Lucia
invited Kim over to their hut for dinner and to spend the night
as it was not allowed to leave your hut after dark and the women
she had been staying with urged her so she would have someone
her own age to hang out with.
The hut Gabriella and Lucia stayed in had two other women
and they all greeted Kim warmly. Kim helped with cooking and
cleaning up. After dinner she chatted with Gabriella. Gabriella
told her all about her work inside. It was a lot better than
work in the fields which Kim could easily imagine. Gabriella had
said that Fernando was not a bad guy to work for and as long as
you kept your head down things were good. She complained about
Marcella for a bit because Marcella was a spoiled bitch and
since she arrived the day before she had been bored out of her mind and had spent today coming up with useless things for
Gabriella to do.
She couldn"t wait for Marcella to leave again which
shouldn"t be long as Marcella never lasted more than a week. Kim
asked about her father and Gabriella explained that he worked in
the field too but men and women were not allowed to share huts
so he slept in a men"s hut.
The next day was much of the same. The sun was hot but the
netting had prevented Kim from being burned and she made sure
she was always under it. In the evening Gabriella complained
more about Marcella and they had a few good laughs at Marcella"s
expense which Lucia shushed afraid someone might hear. A week
went by, roll call in the morning then breakfast and off to
work. Lunch for twenty minutes, back to work and by night she
was ready to fall over.
Kim and Gabriella became good friends and Gabriella
reminded her of Annie. They both had the same sense of humor and
the same sharp tongue. Gabriella knew when to hold it since the
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