by M C Rowley
I nodded. “They had me drugged for two then. Jesus.”
“Why?”
I shook my head this time. I suppose when you’re so used to talking to someone, even on Skype you rely on the slightest of motions and gestures to manage a conversation.
“I don’t know. But this place is weird. I—”
“Stop, Scotty. It isn’t safe. Don’t mention where you are. I can’t either.”
“What do we do?”
Eleanor shifted and glanced to her side very quickly. Something was bothering her. Something she wasn’t saying. I could tell by the way her hand shot up to push her black hair aside and scratch her neck. She always did that when she was stressed or nervous. I guessed she was both. It was undeniable. I knew my wife. She was holding something back. But as her gaze returned to me, she smiled.
“You need to get here. Find me. And we find the girls.”
“Jairo’s girlfriend and daughter.”
Eleanor nodded.
“But how do we find you?”
Eleanor shook her head. “I can’t say. There are places I would never go here. And there are places I know I’d be safe. You have to trust Jairo. He was never dead to me. He’s incredible.”
It pained me to admit it, but I felt jealous when she said that. Of my own son! He had missed twenty-two years with his parents. His mother. And I resented him for it?
“Okay,” I said, “I will.”
“We have to get our boy to his family, Scotty. I can’t let him lose everyone. He lost us already; he can’t lose his own child, and her mother.”
How much Jairo had suffered. Eleanor was right. Jairo losing his own daughter would prove this world was the hell I’d always suspected it was. We couldn’t let it happen. Not again.
“You’re damn straight,” I said.
Eleanor smiled. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said, and the screen went blank.
Chapter Fourteen
Jairo walked out of the room where his real father sat talking to his real mother. The moon was bright enough to see the track through the village, and he cut through another of the stout buildings to the back part, where the foliage was out of control. He knew it was the right time; he just had to wait.
It turned out to be twenty minutes in the end. Out of the bushes she came again, in her black ski mask and cap. Dressed in military garb, it was impossible to describe her in any discernible way. She was tall. She was slender. That was it.
“Are you ready?”
Jairo nodded.
“Good,” said the lady in black. “There’ll be a plane. It leaves in forty hours. If you don’t make it, we don’t take you. If your father arrives with you, we take you both. If he arrives without you, we leave him.”
“Got it,” said Jairo.
In the light of the moon, the lady in black seemed no more than a shadow. Featureless, her body offered the only glimpse of her real persona. She looked like a Japanese cartoon.
“This will be over soon,” she said. “Just be here in two nights.”
She handed Jairo a printed map. He held it up in the light. Two red crosses made of electrical tape were on the map. He traced the main Sierra highway and the curves of the mountain road. He traced the thin yellow line up to Miahuatlán, which sat an inch below the first red cross—which, Jairo now saw, marked the entrance to a military camp. That area of the map was clean and green. Mowed lawns, he supposed, spreading a vast distance, cut into the jungle. The second red cross lay almost in the middle of the military base; to its side, a long concrete runway.
“Okay,” he said.
“I mean it about leaving you behind,” said the lady in black. “This deal is temporary and subject to delivery.”
“Okay.”
“Good.”
And she turned and strode off back into the undergrowth.
Jairo folded the map up, pocketed it, and turned to walk back to his father, Scott Dyce.
Chapter Fifteen
The door opened and Jairo came back in. His face was sagging and he looked double his age. The uniform was reduced to just the base shirt, buttons open, filthy pants, and boots. His beard was matted and scruffy and wild. The only smart thing was his Marines-style haircut.
He shut the door, walked to the little table with the laptop, and sat in the chair next to me.
“Jairo,” I said. “Your mother—”
His face stiffening with frustration, he said, “She isn't my mother.”
“Well,” I started, but decided against it. “I spoke to Eleanor. She told me about your daughter. About your girlfriend.”
Jairo breathed deeply through his nostrils, as if he was disappointed, like when a parent offers a teenager help choosing an outfit for a party.
“Don’t bother,” he said. “She’s hidden. I don’t even know where.”
“But we have to get out of here.”
“We do,” he said.
“So?”
“We have a ride.”
He looked straight at me, pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, and chucked it at me. It fell on the floor at my feet. I picked it up and unfolded it and took it in. A map. Two crosses. Inside what seemed to be a military camp.
“The army?”
Jairo smirked, and his face cracked as he chuckled.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
“What?”
“It was army,” he said.
“Was?”
“Man, the country is gone. No president—not that it mattered anyway. And we lost our cartel. That leaves one. And they are the military. Well, were the military.”
“Código X,” I said, and Jairo nodded.
“Reynolds,” I said.
Jairo jerked when I said the name. He quickly slumped back, but I’d seen it. Reynolds meant something to him. Just the name had made him jump.
I decided to push it and said, “You heard of him?”
Jairo looked at me. “Who?”
“Mr. Reynolds,” I said. “That name mean anything to you?”
Jairo slumped further down the chair and closed his eyes.
“We leave in two days. From that base on the map. We don’t make it, the planes flies anyways.”
“Who is helping us?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“The authorities? I’m wanted. There’s no way—”
Jairo looked at me. “These authorities can help.”
I nodded. I knew I wasn’t getting anything else out of him. The important thing was to reach Eleanor. And Jairo was my only hope.
“How do we get in?”
Jairo shrugged. “Gonna figure that out.” And he seemed to go into an almost instantaneous doze.
“Take the bed,” I said, pointing to the thin mattress. “There’s a couch through in the other room.”
Jairo got up, eyes still slits, and fell onto the bed.
I walked through to the couch and lay down and fell asleep within minutes.
Chapter Sixteen
The faint but unmistakable aroma of brewing coffee reached the very depths of my nostrils and I awoke. I got up and put my feet down on the flat cement floor. It was light outside, but hazy.
Early.
I stood and walked through to find Jairo snoring like a cement mixer in the single bed. I snuck past him and left.
Outside, the village was deserted and silent. I smelled the fragrant wafts of coffee and I followed my nose.
The village was essentially a long strip of beaten-down dirt floor, with buildings opposite each other, lining the sides. The buildings were half-finished one-floor abodes, with square windows and often just an outside garden gate for a main door. Some of the doors were just left open. Behind the buildings, on both sides, the jungle encroached. I thought about how a house only comes alive when humans reside in it. It absorbs the work and energy a person is willing to put into it, and once left it deteriorates like a piece of rotting meat. These buildings were well used, but the jungle behind them p
rovided the protection. From detection and from the wind. Even bullets would find the going tough getting through the foliage and would hit cement.
I could see why they kept this place a secret.
I decided to turn right, because we had entered from the left, and the right path rose slightly to where I could make out a hill, and the coffee smell was coming from there.
I walked past five houses before I found the lady brewing coffee. She was young, about thirty, and wore denim shorts and a pink vest. Her hair was wet from a recent shower and she smelled of perfume. In front of her was a neat little fire, a single log burning at one end that she nudged more and more into the small, controlled orange fingers of the fire. Poised above the blaze was an iron cross from which was suspended a kettle full of café de olla, pungent with cinnamon and piloncillo.
“Puedo?”
The lady looked at me like I’d asked if the sun was out.
“Órale,” she said and handed me a tin cup. I filled it, holding the kettle by the tiny plastic protector on the handle, and thanked her.
I carried on up the path.
The ground started to rise and I turned back and looked at the village in its entirety. I counted the houses each side of the track. I reckoned fifty, tops, and then something caught my eye. One of the buildings, furthest away on the left side, was remarkably bigger. The roof stood at two stories and ran backward from the track a considerable way. Not a house. An industrial building.
I dismissed it for now. We’d be gone in two days if Jairo could work this out. That’s what I had to focus on. Not this place.
I sat on the rise for two hours and managed to stretch the coffee out for half that time. My heart pumped with the first caffeine it had received in weeks and I felt grateful. The birds and animals of the jungle began to make more noise, and slowly people started coming out of their houses. I watched them gathering and walking to each door. The men. Organizing themselves, I supposed.
I walked back and nodded at them, not that I received any nods back. The lady with the coffee had gone.
I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something wasn’t right. It didn’t matter, I kept telling myself. We’d be gone soon. But all the same, the thought would not let go.
I got back to the room, and Jairo started when I entered. He was sitting on the bed and the goatee leader guy was conversing with him from a seat at the table. Both men looked up at me.
“Morning,” I said. “I went for a walk.”
“We know,” said the leader in his gruff Spanish.
I noticed the small map on the table between them. “Figured it out?”
The leader glanced at Jairo and then at me.
Jairo spoke: “There is a way. Gustavo will help us.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling rejuvenated by his including me a little, and took the other chair. “How?”
Jairo looked at the leader, Gustavo. His left eye, I realized, was busted. It was misty like an old dog’s. He looked at me dead on. He had a face that looked like he’d just finished a fifteen-hour shift on a building site.
“Tomorrow,” he said, in Spanish, “they will meet. At the base. All of them. We have spies there, and it’s on.”
“Who will meet?”
Gustavo didn’t say anything, but instead got up and walked to the side of the door. I hadn’t noticed, but there was a pile of blue shirts and straps and pants and boots lying there. He stooped and grabbed one of the tops and flung it on the table.
The creases settled to frame two words: POLICIA MUNICIPAL. The uniforms Jairo and I had taken from the crash last night.
“Cops?”
Gustavo nodded. “We go dressed as them. Attend the meeting.”
Jairo took over. “And make sure we find the plane at the right time.”
He flipped the map over and scrawled on it was 21:00.
“We all fly?”
“No,” said Jairo. “Just us.”
“To the States?”
“Yes.”
I took it in. “So why is he coming?” I’d switched to English so Gustavo couldn’t follow.
Jairo seemed reluctant to reply at first, but then he grunted and looked at me. “He has his own business.”
I looked back at Gustavo. “Why the meeting?”
He tilted his head to the side, showing the patience he was clearly utilizing to keep up this conversation with me. “Their leader is coming.”
“Leader of the municipal cops?”
Gustavo snorted an emphatic “no.”
Jairo cut in. “Mexico has fallen. There is no government. There are no cops. Just factions. He’s talking about the leader of Código X. The man they call X03.”
I managed to control my facial features. Not only had I met the famous X03, but I’d actually escaped prison with him about three weeks previous.
Behind us, the door opened and in stepped a man in his late twenties, with a similar goatee to the leader and short hair too. He was wearing khaki combat pants and a black vest.
“This is my son, Gustavo,” said Gustavo.
I nodded at him, but the son just stared at us with a moody and serious face that betrayed his years. To describe him as antsy would discredit ants everywhere. He shuffled from heel to heel, arms swaying to and fro constantly, like he wanted to punch something, or someone.
“He will also be coming,” said Gustavo Sr.
“Okay,” I said. “When do we leave?”
“Meeting’s tomorrow night. Eight p.m. Our ride out leaves at nine p.m.”
“Got it.” I looked at Gustavo Sr. “You’re building a resistance here, right?”
He shrugged.
“How many men? A hundred? Two hundred? You’ll need more. Where I was, they had thousands. And that was one little town.”
“Shut up,” said Jairo, switching to English. “That’s not your concern.”
I lifted my hands. “Okay, okay. I just want out of here. I just want our family back together.”
I meant it, but Jairo was clearly not impressed. He scoffed and got up and starting saying his goodbyes to the two Gustavos, who blanked me as they left.
Once they’d gone, Jairo and I shared an awkward silence.
“Jairo,” I said, no longer able to handle the atmosphere. “I mean it. I want to find your kid and your girlfriend. I know you don’t see us as your parents. But that child, she’s yours. Have you met her?”
Jairo shook his head. His face was sullen and he stared at the floor in front of him, his mind a million miles away, remembering something. Something I hadn’t been around for. I thought for a second what it would have been like if he had been born in the States, or even back in England. He’d be working at a bank, or studying art and getting high all the time, or playing football. Something like that. Not putting bullets into the back of police officers’ craniums, that was for sure.
“We’ll find them,” I said.
But Jairo didn’t break his gaze and he stayed quiet. I left him and walked to the other room and slumped on the couch. If everything went as planned, we could be landing in the States in less than twenty-four hours.
Chapter Seventeen
I had thought that a day in the safety of a hidden village, away from the bad cops and Código X gangsters, would have been the ideal tonic, but it was far from it. Instead, I felt tense the entire day, worrying about Eleanor and hoping to find her. I recalled, from some random Nat Geo or History Channel show, that the U.S.A. spanned nine-point-eight million square kilometers, and Eleanor was in one. Those were pretty bad odds.
She had told me to trust in Jairo. But he didn’t seem to have the slightest clue as to where his mother was located, much less his daughter and girlfriend. In fact, Jairo’s attitude was a core reason for my continuing bad feeling. He didn’t seem to care at all about getting to the States, instead treating it like a night shift he had to do. When I asked about his child, he clammed up. When I mentioned Eleanor, he sneered at me. I began to question his motives, especially g
iven the way these villagers acted. To call them unfriendly would have been an understatement. They were disdainful toward me. And when I went exploring, I was physically blocked from certain areas and told to go away—one of those being the larger building I had spotted from the hill.
But Jairo went there. I followed him from a distance in the afternoon of that day, and saw him and the two Gustavos heading in. Something about the place was wrong, and secretive. I understood that they were hiding, and of course building some sort of resistance, but there was something else.
By early evening, I’d decided to take a walk. With the sun up high, most people were in the shade of their houses, and I passed along the main track and back into the jungle. I walked through until I found the canyon and, looking sideways, saw the rope bridge had been re-strung. I walked with care on roots and foliage, pushing back plants and leaves that were like angry little arms trying to hold me back. I got to the bridge and walked across, out of the Badland.
The other side had no path, something I supposed the people were careful to maintain. So the going was slow and laborious. But after a time, I heard the distant sound of a car maneuvering along the Sierra road, and I realized that I was standing in the crash site. Like the SUV before it, the cop car had been cleared away and almost no evidence remained, except for the broken branches that, if you studied them closely, showed the path along which both cars had come flying down off the road. It was a bowl-shaped clearing, and I stood and spun slowly in a circle. Nothing was left of the cops. I saw again Jairo putting them down, like some grim war scene out of a movie. The way he’d done it, ice cold and disconnected. Fast and efficient. It had chilled me, as it did again now, thinking about it.
I completed my circle and was about to step back up the side and head back to the bridge when a glint on something caught my eye. It was just to the edge of the clearing, under leaves. Something black.
I walked to it, crouched, and picked up the phone that Luciana had given me from Reynolds. I’d totally forgotten it.