‘It was the Mexicans that did it for me in the end,’ I continued. ‘Not their fault of course, they needed the work just like everyone else; but the company started shipping them in by the bus load, illegal workers who could work for less money, put in longer hours, completely unregulated. The management loved it, of course. Immigration did raids, but the higher-ups always caught wind of it early and sent those workers off for the day. And if they ever did get caught, they would take their little fines, get rid of those guys and just ship across more from over the border. I mean they literally did just that, bused them over on a daily basis, round-trips of hundreds of miles. They saved millions, and how could American workers compete with that?
‘A few of my buddies got canned, and I brought it up with one of the senior executives during a ‘shop floor’ visit. He got in my face, told me my medals weren’t worth shit, I should be grateful to be there, you know? So I got in his face and put him on his ass, broke the guy’s jaw.
‘And so they let me go too, what else could they do? They would have pressed charges, but they didn’t want cops all over the place, didn’t want their own operation looked at too closely.
‘But it left me without a job, right when I really needed the money. I went out looking for work, day after day, but there was nothing, and every night I returned to my trailer empty-handed. The boy was getting worse up in Alaska too, and I knew I had to go and see him before it was too late.
‘And then one day I got back home, and the place had been burglarized, totally emptied – including the money I’d saved to go and visit my godson, every last cent of it. A thousand dollars.
‘Well, I guess that was the last straw, you know? I’d been beaten up and put upon for too damn long, and I wasn’t going to take it anymore, not for one more fucking second.
‘I made up my mind to get my money back, and that’s what I set out to do. Spent a week looking for the lowlifes who’d hit my trailer, finally found them and put them in hospital for three months apiece. Sonsofbitches. Got my money back, plus plenty more besides.
‘Went and got myself a ticket to Alaska right away, but by the time I got there, it was too late. My godson, my buddy’s little boy, was dead. And I’d never got the chance to see him, to hold his hand, to be there instead of his own father. And all because of that lousy thousand dollars, and the bastards who’d stolen it.
‘It was then that I knew what it was I was going to do with my life. It was like a miracle, Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, a revelation.
‘I was made for war, and nothing else. It was in my blood, what I’d been trained for, what I was good at. And there was a war going on right here in America, from the scumbags who robbed me, to the big corporations pissing on the little people to make their own pile of money grow bigger and bigger. There was a war going on alright, and it was people like that, against people like me, like your mom and dad. Like Elena Rosales.
‘And I stood over that little boy’s body, and I vowed to fight that war, a thousand dollars at a time.’
The girl was silent for a moment, then her face softened ever so slightly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
I nodded my head, wiped the single tear from my cheek, and held her gaze.
‘Well, that’s my story,’ I said. ‘Now what’s yours?’
Chapter Nine
To my surprise, the girl talked; and when she started, it was like she never wanted to stop.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me; things she’d kept bottled up for all these years, nobody to share them with, only the prospect of death and pain ahead of her – either hers or someone else’s.
The first part of her story tallied with what Noemi had told me. She’d been a quiet girl, yes; but with a rebellious spirit that Noemi had awakened, and which found its release across the bridge, on the excitement-fuelled streets of Nuevo Laredo.
She’d smoked, she’d drank, and – without too much encouragement – she’d done drugs too. She’d not slept with her cousin Mateo but – at his direction – had certainly slept with plenty of his friends, including one Santiago Alvarado.
She’d fallen deeply in love with the low-level hood, been enticed by his bad-boy image, the way people deferred to him in the street. He was a somebody, a real man, and he wanted her. She didn’t want anyone else, and it didn’t even bother her that Noemi had also been involved with the man first; because what they had was real love, and she was going to end up marrying him.
‘But then he picked me up one day,’ she said, eyes closed, drifting back in time on the memories, ‘and took me to Miguel Ángel Sanchez. I told him no, I didn’t want to go, but he got real mad, told me to shut up and do what he said.’ She still looked hurt as she remembered that night, the night she had gone missing, and I couldn’t blame her. Betrayal was a hard thing to get over.
‘I’d always thought Santiago was strong, you know, a real man. But he was terrified by Sanchez, and gave me up in the blink of an eye.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Santiago left, couldn’t wait to get out of there, and Sanchez drove me up to this place out in the countryside. A horrible place.’ She shook her head again, perhaps still unable to believe it. ‘It was like a warehouse, right? And inside, there were people being tortured. And I mean really tortured, not just beaten up. Members of a small local gang who weren’t kicking back to the cartel. Sanchez wanted information, you know – who were they working for, was it the Sinaloa, the Gulf, the Tijuana cartel? Which one? Which one?
‘And everywhere I looked, there was blood everywhere, they were using everything they had on these guys, there were fingers on the floor that had been hacked off, one guy with a screwdriver right through his eye, they were using a blow torch on this other man, burning his dick, his balls – and the sound of screaming, damn, I thought I’d never be able to hear anything again.
‘Sanchez kept me there, made me watch as he tortured some of the guys himself. But in the end, there was nothing to it, they were just a local crew who hadn’t wanted to pay Los Zetas their cut. There was no other cartel behind them, none at all.
‘But the gang had still crossed the Z’s, and the men couldn’t live after that, you know? So all that was left was for them to be executed. Hell, most of them were half-dead by then anyway, and some of them were begging to be killed.
‘Anyway, Sanchez, you know, he puts this big old pearl handled pistol in my hand, and tells me to shoot them. I look at him as if he’s crazy, but he says I have a choice – I can either kill the guys he’s been torturing, or else I can join them, and he’ll let his men fuck me first, before they torture me. I can see the looks on his men’s faces, they want to do it, you know? They’re waiting to do it.’
She shook her head, a tear running down her cheek, across the tattooed tears that permanently marked her face.
She looked up at me then, as if daring me to defy her. ‘So what could I do? I just grabbed that gun and started shooting. One, two, three, four, five! Five men, and I shot them, I fucking shot them, just thirteen fuckin’ years old, what the fuck?’
The tears came in force now, her body wracked with sobs, and I moved toward her instinctively; the real Elena Rosales was here now, I was sure of that.
I took a knife and cut the duct tape that held her wrists and ankles, loosened the ropes that held her to the chair, and wrapped my arms around her, protecting her, letting the evils of her past ride out of her body, her mind, her soul.
‘I was taken for training after that,’ she managed between sobs, ‘like military training. How to kill, how to escape.’ I felt her tears on my shoulders, and held her closer. ‘I started again soon enough, started killing. Who’d suspect a teenage girl, huh? That was why Sanchez wanted me, someone the police there didn’t know, someone who could easily come and go across the border. He got me hooked on speed, then coke, and I killed for him again and again, kept killing to get my fix.’
She broke down again, her body shuddering with the force of her tears, letting it all out, the horro
r that had been her life.
‘I don’t even know how many there have been,’ she wept, hands gripping my arms, head in my chest. ‘I can’t even count the number of people I’ve killed. There’s no hope for me . . . no forgiveness . . .no mercy.’
‘Elena,’ I said, ‘don’t say that. You’re still young, you can get over this, you’ll see. It doesn’t have to be like that. Your parents will help you, support you. It’s over. It’s over.’
She giggled then, and the change in demeanor startled me. ‘You dumb motherfucker,’ she whispered. ‘It’s never over.’
The pain was as intense as it was instantaneous, her fingers snaking up my shoulders, nails ripping into my ears as she held my head steady, her face whipping up, mouth open, teeth sinking deep into my cheek, head thrashing from left to right like a dog with a bone.
I wanted to scream, but couldn’t even do that, the pain and shock were so intense, and all I could do was gasp as her nails raked their way across my neck, my face, my eyes.
I was starting to black out from the pain, lids firmly closed to protect my eyeballs from her sharp nails, and I saw stars behind them and felt myself slipping away.
But my instinct for self-preservation was more powerful still, and I refused to give into the pain and – even as she let go of my cheek and latched instead onto my already broken nose, the pain savage and nauseating as her teeth sank deep into the cartilage – I lifted her featherweight body off the floor and ran her backwards, smashing her into the wall.
I felt the breath escape her, but she was still biting, nose clenched tight between sharp teeth; I felt her nails drop from my face, and I opened my eyes, to be met with the horrifying sight of those lifeless tattooed eyeballs on her closed lids.
Inhuman.
Demonic.
I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness, felt the skin of my nose breaking and tearing, the entire thing threatening to come off; and then with one last, frantic effort, I drew my head back, her teeth still attached to my nose, and then drove it forward as hard as I could, smashing the back of her head straight into the wall behind her.
Pain raced through my face as her teeth clenched even tighter at the moment of impact; but then her mouth opened and her teeth let go, blood dribbling down onto my chest, covering her face, and her body went slack in my arms.
I looked behind her, saw the bloody smear on the wall where her skull had made impact, and knew she was out for the count, perhaps permanently.
I let her drop to the floor, and – blood still leaking wildly from my damaged face – I checked her pulse. It was weak, but still there; she was still alive.
At least, the cold-blooded sicario known as Z13 was still alive.
But Elena Maria Rosales was dead and gone.
Epilogue
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Emilio Rosales as he looked from his unconscious daughter to my half-ruined face, and back again. Camila just sat on the bed crying, head in her hands.
I’d called them up as soon as I’d administered a bit of first aid to myself, telling them to get down here. They’d told me that Kane was at their apartment, and I’d told them to bring him along too. I could use a friend, I told myself; it had been a hell of a day.
Emilio hadn’t even recognized the girl who had once been his daughter, at first point-blank refusing to believe it was her. Where had his little Elena gone, the apple of daddy’s eye?
But Camila had known, and had immediately started to break down and cry – and that was before I’d told them my story.
After they’d been told about the fate of Elena, their distress had been too great to imagine, the polarity of the day’s experiences too much to reconcile. Here she was, the girl they’d been searching for, hoping for, praying for, every hour of every day for the past three years and more. Here she was, safe and sound, returned to them at last.
But what was she, really? A killer, a monster – and a seemingly unrepentant one at that. It might have been better if I’d found her dead body, in a grave out in the Mexican countryside.
It would have perhaps been less painful than what they were faced with here.
My story told, my job done, I left them alone there in that room, alone with their daughter as they waited for her to wake up.
I left the room, left the hostel, Kane at my side, licking my hands. I stopped in the street outside, bent at the knees to rub him under the chin. With a look of what seemed to be concern he leant into me and licked the wounds on my face, but it was too painful and I pulled back, stood up.
‘A little early for that,’ I told him. ‘But I appreciate the gesture.’
I walked across the street with him, bought a cup of coffee from a street vendor and sat down in one of the collapsible metal chairs stationed next to his little stall.
I was curious.
Would Emilio and Camila do the right thing?
It all depended, of course, on what they thought the right thing was. It can be confusing for parents sometimes. Emotions get in the way.
I stayed to watch, to see what would happen, just in case a more logical train of thought was needed.
Just because I’d carried out the job successfully didn’t mean that my interest in the case was over – I sure as hell didn’t want a killer like Z13 walking free about the streets.
The only question would be who made the call first.
I was on my third coffee by the time I heard the sirens, and had finished it by the time the squad cars arrived outside the hostel.
I saw the cops enter the building, guns drawn, and felt myself relax.
Minutes later, the cops returned, the violently resisting body of Z13 between them, wrestled into one of the waiting cars as her parents looked on, Camila’s head on her husband’s chest, both of them weeping uncontrollably, unable to process what had happened, what they had learnt that day.
I nodded in satisfaction, paid my bill, and stood.
Elena’s parents had done the right thing.
Good for them.
I whistled, and Kane popped up by my side, ready to follow.
We meandered through the streets for a time, and I considered getting medical attention for the bites. But I didn’t want to come across any radar screens, and just bought some supplies to take care of the wounds myself.
I patched myself up in the train station men’s room, then retrieved my backpack from the locker.
I stepped out onto the streets of Laredo, the sun still high in the sky, and sighed.
It had been a hell of a couple of days, that was for sure.
And I still wasn’t sure if they had been successful or not.
But ours is not to reason why, I decided as I set off down the road, Kane by my side.
‘Come on boy,’ I said. ‘It’s only fifty miles or so to the next town.’
If we got a move on, we could even be in Corpus Christie within a week, resting up on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.
Successful or not, we’d definitely earned it this time.
THE END
. . . but Colt Ryder will return in a new adventure, out late 2015!!!
THE THOUSAND DOLLAR MAN: Introducing Colt Ryder - One Man, One Mission, No Rules Page 15