by Sean Black
Zapatero smiled broadly at the crowd of people surrounding Managua as he lectured them about how the unions would destroy the prosperity of the area if they weren’t reined in. ‘Excuse me. I need to borrow our country’s future president. We will only be a moment.’
He led Managua off to one side.
‘Is she here? The American girl?’ he asked, as eager as a child on Christmas Eve.
Zapatero wondered what it was with politicians and situations they shouldn’t be within miles of. ‘No, she’s not here yet,’ he said, choosing his words with care. ‘But let’s go inside.’
‘Why? What’s going on?’ Managua asked, picking up on the tension.
‘Let’s wait for Federico,’ Zapatero said.
It wasn’t a long wait. Federico Tibialis, the boss of bosses, strode in, buttoning his shirt. He poured himself a drink. He seemed the calmest and most collected of them all. That was why he always made the final call. A man in his line of work who was unable to cope in a crisis usually lasted all of five minutes. The narcotics trade was one of perpetual crisis management, and his job as pressured as that of any Fortune 500 company CEO. He took big decisions every week. Decisions that involved life and death.
Managua shifted from foot to foot, apparently beside himself that he seemed to be the only one out of the loop. Zapatero felt like slapping him but instead he poured him a drink and told him to sit down. ‘There’s been an accident,’ was how he phrased it. ‘The girl and the other American. They’re gone.’
Managua’s brow furrowed. ‘Dead?’ And then he was off, spinning the whole thing in his mind before anyone had the chance to correct him ‘That’s not so bad in a way. I mean, if it was an accident, a real accident, it may solve many of our problems with—’
Federico cut in: ‘No, the chief means they’re missing. We don’t know where they are.’
Managua lapsed into silence. He took off his glasses and began to rub at the lenses with a silk handkerchief plucked from his top pocket.
Zapatero watched Federico as he walked towards the window. The villa was on a flat plateau with a single road that snaked up to the entrance. You could see everyone coming and everyone leaving. From this room you could take in the entire panorama of maquiladoras clustered along the border, busy twenty-four hours a day churning out products for the gringos.
Finally Federico Tibialis, the drug lord of all drug lords, seemed to have assembled his thoughts. He turned to Zapatero. ‘I heard there was a man with them. Hector somebody or other, one of our corrupt police officers, who are such a problem. I heard he was protecting the American.’
Even in private Federico always spoke as if there was a Federal prosecutor in the next room, listening to his every word. It was a good assumption to make. He never spoke directly, always left room for interpretation, and Zapatero knew all too well that in a courtroom that was all that was required.
‘This Hector, I have heard rumors that he is dangerous. A killer,’ Federico continued. ‘If I was a betting man I would wager that somehow he has got himself mixed up in all this. But I’m sure you and your men will be able to stop him, won’t you, Chief?’
‘What about the American man, the rapist?’ Managua asked, of Mendez.
Federico shrugged. ‘There was a crash of some kind. Perhaps if he was hurt in it and he has stumbled out into the desert, the coyotes will finish him off. There is only so much we can do to look after our visitors in this town. Sometimes nature must simply take its course.’
‘And the other matter? Surely we can’t ignore that,’ said Managua.
Federico sipped at his whisky. He whirled the ice cubes around in the bottom of the crystal tumbler. ‘The papers were signed yesterday. There’s no backing out for either party now.’
Police Chief Zapatero felt satisfied with what Federico was proposing. They had done everything they could to protect Charlie Mendez but he had brought this upon himself by seeking out the girl. His family would have to understand that. The time had come to draw a line under the whole affair. The girl had forced their hand. Of course, for their story to stick they would all have to die. Mendez. The girl. Hector could take the fall and, once he was safely in prison, he could be taken care of too. They had reporters who would be helpful in tying it all together in a neat enough bundle for the Americans to be satisfied. Of course, first they had to be tracked down and that meant finding Charlie Mendez, and the two men Rafaela Carcharon was supposed to have kicked out of the country.
It made for a lot of loose ends. By the end of this, they were going to have to dig one hell of a big hole in the desert. The police chief straightened and looked at the other three men. ‘Gentlemen, leave it to me. My men will find them, although you understand that I can’t guarantee their safe return. The border is a dangerous place. Especially at night.’
Fifty-six
Two Hours Later
LOCAL AND POLICÍA Federal vehicles were massed along the highway, the wash from their lights turning the blacktop a deep crimson. Paramilitary black-clad cops swaggered back and forth. Two separate forensic units swarmed over the abandoned Escalade. Traffic had been halted in both directions, and road-blocks set up, not only on the highway but at all the off- and on-ramps in both directions for five miles. Federal and local police officers moved in pairs along the lines of vehicles, flashlights probing the interiors. A tarpaulin was ripped from the back of a truck carrying produce, the driver held at gunpoint as the tailgate was lowered, his wares spilling out on to the road.
Further down the line a bus disgorged its human cargo of exhausted women from a maquiladora. They stepped sleepy-eyed down on to the road while a search dog, which had already sniffed the Escalade, was led on to the vehicle by its handler.
Thick black hair tied back in a ponytail, Rafaela stood in the middle of the throng, her silver police ID clipped to her belt, an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over her shoulders, the barrel pointing to the ground. She watched the search unfold, her feelings a blend of anger, anxiety and awe. If a local woman had been found dead, never mind merely missing, Rafaela would have been there with, perhaps, one or two bored officers and a hard-pressed forensic team, who would have had fifteen minutes to gather what they could before they were called away. Her pleas for more resources and the time to conduct a thorough investigation would have been met with a resigned shrug. No one cared about dead factory girls by the side of the road. The contrast couldn’t have been sharper. The size and scale of the operation told her that the cartel wanted Mendez and the missing American girl bad.
At a fresh wail of sirens she looked round and saw a motorcade muscling its way through the jam of black and white Dodge Chargers and Ford F-150s. A sleek black town car stopped less than twenty feet from her, the rear door opened and Zapatero stepped out, sporting full dress uniform and ready to take personal command of the search. He moved among his men, slapping backs and shaking hands. When he spotted Rafaela, his expression tightened.
As he got closer to her, he nodded towards the cell phone she had clasped in her right hand. She had been waiting for a call from one of the Americans. She had risked a call to both of them but Lock’s cell phone was switched off and Ty’s had defaulted to voicemail.
‘I’ve been trying to reach you,’ Zapatero said, business-like. ‘You’re on duty but you don’t answer the phone?’
She thought back to his late-night calls. The heavy breathing. The obscenities. And the following day he would talk to her as if everything was completely normal, even though they both knew what kind of a man he was. Carry on as usual, she thought. The whole country was like that: the crazier things were, the greater the denial. It was the land of the looking glass where an empty SUV drew more police officers than a ton of cocaine or a pile of dead bodies.
Zapatero was waiting for an answer. She feigned surprise. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear it.’
Clearly he didn’t believe her but he didn’t press the point. ‘Someone saw the American girl,’ he said. ‘She was
here.’
It was as much as Rafaela could do not to laugh in his face. The truck driver, whom she had already spoken to, had mentioned a girl fleeing the scene in another vehicle but he’d had no idea who she was. It had been dark and everything had happened quickly, he’d told her. Even if he had seen more, he would not have mentioned it: in this part of the borderlands, you gave enough information to satisfy the police but not so much that you were seen as too helpful.
‘We have a witness who said they saw a young woman. Who told you it was the American girl?’
Zapatero puffed out his cheeks. ‘It’s disappointing that I should be more aware of the situation than the officer I placed in charge, wouldn’t you say?’
Rafaela could think of many words to describe it but disappointing wasn’t one of them. She kept her mouth shut, deciding that she had already pushed too hard. Retribution wouldn’t come in the shape of a reprimand or a lack of promotion: it would come in the shape of a bullet to the back of the head.
‘No matter,’ Zapatero continued. ‘But we must find her. And the men she was with. They were all American.’
She tried to keep her face set. How did he know about Lock?
‘Two of them had been arrested previously,’ he continued. ‘I believe you dealt with them, Detective Carcharon,’
She flushed, and was glad of the darkness as he stared at her.
Fifty-seven
TY PULLED INTO an alleyway behind a row of shacks, killed the headlights and switched off the engine. The girl was curled up against the passenger door. She had his jacket wrapped around her and her eyes were closed. He pushed the button to crack the window for some fresh air. The stench of rotting food and bad sanitation, the smell of poverty, wafted in on a cold breeze. He closed it again.
After leaving Lock to go after Mendez, he had got off the highway as quickly as he could and pulled into a residential neighborhood. Driving at night, with so many police cars tearing around and no way of knowing who they were really working for, he’d decided that their best chance lay in waiting for sunrise before he contacted the American consulate or made a dash for the border. Anywhere in the world, a strange car in a poor neighborhood was less likely to go reported than one parked in a rich area. A phone call to Rafaela had only confirmed his worst fears. Half the police department had been pulled from their beds with instructions to find him, Lock and Julia.
Conversation with the girl had been minimal. Ty had told her that he was here to return her to her parents but that it was too dangerous to do it directly. She seemed to understand. He didn’t ask much about her ordeal. It wasn’t his place and, in a way, he didn’t want to know the details. Knowledge might cloud his judgement, just as it seemed to have tipped his partner over the edge when he had darted off after Mendez.
It seemed cruel to wake her, but he leaned over and tapped her on the shoulder. She started and opened her eyes.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We’re going to park here until sunrise.’ He gave a nod towards the back seat. ‘I thought you might be more comfortable there. You can stretch out.’
She eyed it with suspicion. He didn’t blame her. It would be a long time before she trusted another man.
‘Don’t worry, I’m going to be right here and staying awake. Don’t want anyone sneaking up on us,’ he said.
The thought of him standing watch over her while she slept seemed to reassure her. ‘Okay, thanks,’ she said, clambering into the back. ‘I’m so tired.’
‘You’ve been through a lot. Don’t worry, I’ll wake you when we need to get moving.’
She lay down, knees tucked into her chest. Melissa had slept in a similar position at the hospital in Los Angeles. Ty wondered how many of Mendez’s other victims slept like that now, or still had nightmares about their ordeal.
‘Tyrone?’ the girl asked, as outside a rat scuttled across the alleyway, stopping briefly to size up one of the SUV’s tires.
‘Yeah?’
‘Thank you.’
In the dark, Ty shrugged. He was wondering if this went some way towards atoning for past mistakes, past misdeeds.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.
‘Sure, go ahead.’
‘The man you were with.’
‘Ryan? What about him?’
‘Did he go after Charlie?’
Ty didn’t say anything at first. He was still unsettled and angry at Lock’s change of heart. He had been right in the first place. They should have forgotten Mendez. It was too risky to try to take him and rescue the girl at the same time. But something had changed in Lock when he had seen Mendez across the highway. A dark flame had burned inside him since Carrie’s death. He kept it hidden but Ty knew it was there. It had blazed up momentarily when they had been watching the house. It was like a pilot light, burning low but with the capacity to explode into an inferno at any moment – as it had when he had seen Mendez.
‘Yes, he did,’ Ty said finally.
‘Why?’
Ty sighed. ‘How long have you got?’
‘You said we can’t move anywhere until sunrise.’
‘You know you’re not the first person Charlie Mendez has hurt, right? I mean, you know who he is.’
She nodded. ‘I didn’t at first. But after, yes … I felt so stupid. I’d read about him and heard about what he’d done on the news. I just didn’t connect him with the man I met in the bar until it was too late.’
Again, she spared him the details, and he was thankful. He settled into his seat and told her about Melissa, and how he and Lock had come to bring Mendez back to the United States to face justice. At the end of the telling, she raised her head and stared at him. ‘That still doesn’t explain why he agreed.’
He didn’t have it in him to tell her about Carrie’s death and Lock’s guilt over it – his own guilt about what had happened. Instead, he said, ‘You should get some sleep.’
She closed her eyes, and within a minute she was asleep, leaving Ty alone in the driver’s seat with his gun, enveloped in the darkness of a place where people too poor to afford dreams made their lives.
Fifty-eight
WITH THE DESERT landscape still cloaked in darkness, Lock continued his search. A four-armed saguaro cactus loomed over him, spines ready to spear him. He skirted it as the land dipped, then levelled out. For the most part the terrain had been flat and even: ground he could cover at a rapid clip. It was cold but not freezing, and dry.
He could see the outline of a man ahead on a ridge. He was standing perfectly still. Lock held his position. There was no way of knowing whether Mendez knew he was there and was watching him or whether he was simply catching his breath.
The outline moved over the ridge and out of sight. Lock took a bearing from the point he had last seen him and broke into a jog, splitting his attention between the ground beneath his boots and the far horizon. His chest felt tight as his heart protested at the continued exertion. The sweat on his back had cooled and now ran uncomfortably into the crack of his butt. In contrast, his feet were hot and swollen. His boots chafed at the back of his heels and he could almost feel the blisters as they formed. He switched his mind to Melissa, staggering into the hotel lobby, bleeding and so close to death that he had felt its presence as he had rushed her, cradled in his arms, to his car. The image pushed away his fatigue. He doubled his pace, taking measured breaths, every stride drawing him closer to Mendez.
At first he took the distant wash of noise he could hear to be the pounding of the blood in his ears but then it grew louder and more persistent. He stopped for a moment, and turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees, searching out the sound. It was coming from behind him – the distinctive thwump of rotor blades slicing through the air. A helicopter was buzzing low overhead, searching them out. A near-celestial arc of light from a front-mounted searchlight swept the landscape.
Lock was closing in on Mendez, but someone up there was closing in on both of them. He’d thought he had hours to hunt down his qua
rry, but now he realized he had minutes. He broke into a run. The ridge where Mendez had stood moments before was empty. Behind him, he watched the helicopter sweep sharply to his left, then double back.
He scoured the terrain for movement. Nothing. Not that it was barren. Far from it. They had come further than he had imagined. The edge of the city was within striking distance, and with it the urban camouflage that would shield him from the aircraft. But it was also a place for Mendez to find refuge if Lock didn’t reach him first.
Fifty-nine
A LONE CLOUD swept silently across the moon, plunging the land into darkness for the briefest of moments. Charlie Mendez watched it pass as the helicopter faded into the distance. The man following him was gone, swallowed by the vast landscape. He had kept moving, putting one foot in front of the other, until his pursuer had been lost in the shadows, and with him Charlie’s fear.
He had made it and now straight ahead he could see a row of low buildings. He dug into his front pocket and pulled out a roll of dollars. It was more than enough to buy him sanctuary, a place to hide out until he could be picked up. No one would ask too many questions. No one around here did. People like him, crazy gringos in trouble, simply materialized, and then they were gone.
Tired after the long trek, and on the down slope of an adrenaline rush, he started forward. Less than two hundred yards away there was a tiny one-room shack, one wall made from cinder blocks, the others cobbled together from pieces of wood with a corrugated-iron roof. A child’s bicycle lay on its side. Next to it were two large cooking pots, left out for the rats and mice to clear. Charlie picked up the bicycle and stood it up. It was too small for him even to attempt to ride it. He let it fall back to the ground.
He kept moving. There were more shacks and, beyond them, he could see lone pairs of headlights signalling a road. Sooner or later he had to find someone who could give him a ride, and if the money didn’t cut it he had a back-up plan, something he had rifled from the Escalade.