A King's ransom

by James Grippando

  “There wasn’t supposed to be any negotiating. That was the deal.”

  “Your deal with who, Jaime?”

  He just scoffed and said, “This was supposed to be an easy one. What a joke.”

  “It can still be easy. There’s a sack full of money right over there. Take it, and give me my father.”

  He let out a mirthless chuckle. “Just let him go, eh?”

  “That’s what we agreed.”

  “Sure, I’ll let him go. If you come with me.”

  It was as if he’d punched me in the chest. “That’s not what we talked about.”

  “I don’t care what we talked about.”

  “You’re getting the money, no more.”

  “What’s the matter, don’t you love your father? Hasn’t he suffered enough? Be a good son. Come with me. Set your old man free.”

  Father Balto stirred. “Joaquin, please-”

  “Shut up! I’m talking to the yanqui.”

  I was out of things to say. I couldn’t possibly go with him, but I didn’t want to set him off.

  “Time’s up,” said Joaquin.

  “Stop playing games.”

  He shoved the pistol against my father’s skull. “You’re right. Forget the swap. Why don’t I just kill your old man and take you at gunpoint?”

  I was a split second away from reaching for my gun.

  “Wait!” Alex shouted, gun drawn. She’d given up her hiding spot and was standing in the open-not exactly what I’d had in mind when I’d asked her to cover us. I braced myself for a three-way gunfight, but Joaquin showed restraint.

  He tightened his grip on my father and said, “Get out of here, Alex.”

  She aimed her gun in his direction, but he was using my father as a human shield.

  “Give me the prisoner,” she said.

  “Go to hell.”

  “Give him to me, and I’ll give you the other one and a half million.”

  My heart was racing. I couldn’t possibly stop her, but this seemed like a dangerous bluff.

  Inch by inch she was moving closer to Joaquin, talking to him all the way. “Jaime didn’t kill himself.”

  My God, is she going to point the finger at me?

  “So he’s not dead?” said Joaquin.

  “Oh, he’s dead, all right. He was about to name names. I couldn’t let him do that.”

  I nearly buckled at the knees. Is she still bluffing?

  “You scammed me,” said Joaquin.

  “No. You scammed me. Killing the prisoner wasn’t part of the deal. Now, hand him over if you want the whole three million.”

  I could hardly speak, but I forced out the words. “Alex, what the heck is going on?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Joaquin said, “What’s the matter, yanqui? Did she fool you into thinking that Jaime acted alone? Did you really believe that a little insurance dweeb in Miami has guerrilla friends?”

  I looked at Alex, the former FARC girl. “My God, you know him. That’s why he agreed to a simultaneous exchange. He knew we wouldn’t call the police, because someone on the other side was on his side.”

  “Quiet, Nick.”

  Joaquin jerked my dad forward. “Everyone, shut up. I’m in control here.”

  “That’s right,” said Alex, speaking more like the calm negotiator. “And you can still be the big winner. All three million. No one to split it with.”

  My eyes darted back and forth from Alex to my father to Joaquin. She may have scammed us at the beginning, but when it came to the money, I knew that she was bluffing Joaquin. Was she trying to make amends?

  “Whose side are you on, Alex?”

  “Stay out of this,” she answered.

  “I’d like to know that, too,” Joaquin snapped. “Whose side are you on?”

  “Do you want the money or don’t you?”

  “Does this mean you’re not taking your cut?” he asked.

  “I said you could have it all.”

  “But I want to hear you say it to your client. Tell the yanqui that you’re not taking your cut.”

  “I was never getting a cut.”

  “What do you call fifty percent?”

  “Every penny of it was Jaime’s.” She was staring at Joaquin as she spoke, aiming her gun right at him, but I sensed that she was talking for my benefit. “All I wanted was for you and your thugs to leave my family alone.” She raised her voice, as if to make sure I heard. “That’s all I ever wanted, Nick. Just to buy a little peace for what’s left of my family in Bogota.”

  “Such a sad story,” Joaquin said with sarcasm.

  She adjusted her aim. “Someone should have killed you a long time ago.”

  “A long time ago I should have let you bleed to death on the side of the road with a knife in your back.”

  “You don’t own me just because you pulled me out of a ditch. And you can’t make me come back to you by threatening my family.”

  “But I could make you scam the yanqui.”

  Even in the dim light I could see the anger on her face. One look at my father confirmed that we were sharing the exact same fear: Alex was about to squeeze off a shot at Joaquin, but anything less than perfection would kill the hostage, the human shield.

  “Alex!” I shouted, reaching for my gun.

  In the same instant my father broke free from Joaquin’s grasp. A shot rang out as he rolled to the ground, but it missed and shattered a clay pot. I dived to the ground and fired repeatedly at Joaquin. Alex was shooting, too, as she and Father Balto ran for cover behind the big statue. Joaquin fired back, as did someone else from behind a dirt pile, and the barrage of bullets erupted as if it were a war zone. My father was out of sight, having slid behind a gravestone. Joaquin fired a few more shots in his direction, but Alex and I pinned him down with gunfire. I crouched low behind my marker, bullets whizzing over my head.

  Suddenly all was quiet in the darkness.

  I sat crouched behind the headstone, breathless from the exchange of gunfire, my back against cold granite. Darkness had completely overtaken us, no moon or stars in the night’s overcast sky, just a dim glow from distant city lights. I listened carefully for any movement about me, but I heard only the sounds of my own erratic breathing.

  “Brothers, please,” shouted a brave Father Balto, but three quick gunshots sent him scampering back into hiding.

  That son of a bitch just tried to kill the priest!

  My hand shook as I dug the cell phone from my pocket. I dialed the police and tried to speak to a dispatcher in Spanish, but the wireless reception was terrible, and my scattered thoughts produced only fragmented sentences, partly in English.

  “Las pistolas. Los kidnappers en el Cementerio Central.?Ven aca, por favor!”

  Bullets sailed over my head. In my panic I was making no sense, and my talking was giving away my position to the enemy. The dispatcher hung up on me, and I held little hope that Colombian police would actually come charging into the cemetery at night to stop an ill-described gunfight.

  I crouched low to reload my weapon. My first shoot-out, and it was going to be to the death of one of us. But who would fall? And who was on which side? In my mind I quickly replayed the last exchange of gunfire. Alex had fired at Joaquin. That meant she was in my camp, despite anything she’d said. But someone else with Joaquin had been firing what sounded like an automatic weapon. That made it two against two, at best. Father Balto was unarmed, but he was with Alex. The only unprotected player was my father. A sick feeling came over me, as I knew what I had to do. Somewhere in the darkness among all those gravestones, my father was hiding, praying for his life.

  I had to find him before Joaquin did.

  74

  Matthew thanked the Lord for darkness. In the confusion of gunfire, slithering across the grass like a snake on his belly, he’d found his way to an overcrowded collection of tall markers that stood one beside the other, almost on top of one another, a veritable forest of towering stone crosses and
statues of patron saints.

  His hands were cuffed behind his back, his ankles tied, and his mouth gagged. It was a bit of ironic luck that Joaquin had removed the blindfold to torture his eye. The left one had blistered and swollen shut from the cigarette burn, but the right one gave him the precious advantage of sight.

  He lay perfectly still, almost afraid to breathe. The slightest movement could reveal his whereabouts, which would be deadly. He knew that Joaquin had brought him here to avenge the death of Cerdo, to execute the prisoner right before his son’s eyes. Matthew was ready for that. For weeks he’d been preparing himself for the possibility of his own death. One thing, however, he hadn’t prepared for: the death of his son in a botched rescue effort.

  He burrowed into hiding at the base of a huge stone marker, pleading with his Maker to take him and not Nick.

  Nothing moved, not anywhere. I was peering out over the top of my marker, some dead stranger’s resting place. Somewhere across the grounds, hiding behind one of those countless slabs of stone, were Joaquin and his well-armed buddy. I’d been waiting for one of them to break toward my father, or at least in the direction I’d last seen my father go. Maybe they were being patient. Or maybe they’d already made their move, and I’d missed them. I couldn’t risk it. I had to take the offensive. But to where?

  Had I been my father, I would have crawled toward the cluster of old monuments beneath the two sprawling oak trees. Compared to the rest of the cemetery, it was like midtown Manhattan, towering granite everywhere, lots of little places to get lost. On hands and knees, keeping low to the ground, I headed in that direction, one monument at a time.

  Matthew’s heart nearly stopped. He hadn’t budged from his hiding spot, hadn’t made a sound. Lying in the darkness with hands and feet bound, he felt invisible and vulnerable at the same time. He knew it was only a matter of moments before Joaquin would spot him.

  He knew, because he could see Joaquin.

  Joaquin was kneeling behind the dirt pile, the lower half of his body hidden in the half-dug grave. His pistol at the ready, he raised his head just high enough to see over the tops of the gravestones, searching for the enemy.

  It would have been an easy shot for Matthew, a steady target at just fifteen meters. The kill shot would have been to the side of Joaquin’s head, as Matthew was perpendicular to him on the same row of graves. If only his hands were free, if only he’d had a gun, a knife-anything. So many times he’d thought of giving Joaquin exactly what he’d deserved for the murder of his friends on the boat in Cartagena, for the gang rape of Nisho up in the mountains, for countless other atrocities that he and his buddies had bragged about. Matthew had no regrets for having killed Cerdo; it sickened him to think that Joaquin might walk free, a wealthy man.

  Joaquin looked in his direction, looked away, and then did a double take. Their eyes met in the darkness. Matthew had been spotted.

  Neither man blinked, neither looked away. Matthew refused to cower to his executioner.

  Joaquin smiled slightly, then raised his pistol and aimed between the eyes.

  I was just a few meters from the forest of monuments when I heard Alex shout from somewhere in the darkness.

  “Joaquin, take it!”

  The knapsack sailed through the air and landed with a thud. A volley of gunshots erupted, both Joaquin and his accomplice reacting with pointless fire at the sack full of money. It was exactly what Alex had intended, I presumed, and she’d startled Joaquin into revealing his position. Alex and I fired repeatedly in the direction of the half-dug grave, me from my position at the forest of monuments and Alex from farther away, near the statue of the Blessed Virgin.

  Return fire ripped through the night, mostly in my direction, as I was the closer threat, just a few meters away from them. I scampered into the maze of taller monuments for better cover, a trail of bullets rattling off the stones with the beat of a jackhammer. I rolled several times to avoid the spray of gunfire, collided with a large stone pedestal, then froze at the sight of the body two graves away.

  Dad!

  I crawled as fast as I could to his side. He was facedown in the dirt but raised his head at my touch.

  “It’s me!” I said in an excited whisper. I yanked the gag from his mouth. “Are you hit?”

  “No, no. They’re so coked up, they shoot worse than you do.”

  I hoped that someday we’d laugh at that. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Untie me.”

  I unknotted the ropes at his feet, but his hands were in cuffs, which would have to wait.

  “There’s two of them,” he said. “Who’s with you?”

  “Just the priest and Alex.”

  “Who’s this Alex?”

  I thought for a second about all the things she’d just said. “Damned if I know.”

  We ducked at the explosion of gunfire, but it wasn’t coming our way. They were shooting in the opposite direction at Alex.

  “She must be making a move,” I said. “If I attack from this flank, we might take them. Stay here.”

  He nearly tripped me in his zeal to keep me down. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  I looked him in the eye, hoping that he wouldn’t take it the wrong way. But it was something that I’d wanted to say for fifteen years, since that day on the fishing boat that had driven us apart.

  “Acting like my father’s son,” I said.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “If I don’t, neither one of us is getting out alive.”

  He didn’t argue, and there wasn’t time for it anyway. Another burst of gunfire erupted on the far side. I glanced up and saw Alex running from the statue of the Blessed Virgin to another monument. She was definitely on the offensive, and she was definitely outgunned.

  “This is it,” I said, then sprinted forward, zigzagging from monument to monument.

  I moved in short bursts to avoid getting hit, but I didn’t fire a shot, as the exchange was all in Alex’s direction. The noise was deafening, one shot after another without interruption. Alex had come on so strong that both kidnappers had turned their weapons on her. I was just ten meters away, approaching from the side, when Joaquin’s sidekick took a bullet from Alex to the forehead. His head snapped back as he tumbled to the ground, his gun silenced.

  Joaquin kept firing his pistol, stopping only briefly to reach for his slain friend’s AK-47.

  “Freeze!” I shouted. I had him from behind.

  “?Manos arriba!” shouted Alex. She had him from the side.

  He raised his arms, still on his knees behind the pile of earth from the half-dug grave.

  “Stand up!” I shouted.

  He rose as commanded. The pistol was still in his hand.

  “Turn around slowly and drop the gun.”

  He turned to face me but kept his weapon.

  “Drop the gun!”

  It was pointed in the air, but he wouldn’t let go.

  “Drop it right now, or I’ll shoot!”

  “How many men have you killed before, yanqui?” He was clearly mocking me, reminding me that the dead guerrilla at his feet was Alex’s work, not mine.

  “You’d be a good start,” I said.

  His hand moved in a blur as he fired off what seemed to be a wild shot. I squeezed the trigger again and again, firing off as many shots as possible. His body jerked with each hit as he fell, landing in a heap in the open grave.

  I took a half step forward, close enough to confirm that he looked very dead. The body was twisted, the limbs angled in every direction, like a mangled spider. I’d hit him at least three times, twice in the chest and once in the face. I moved closer and checked for a pulse.

  “He’s gone,” I said, loud enough for my father to hear.

  I turned away from the grisly sight. As I rose, out of the corner of my eye I saw Alex stagger and fall to the ground.

  “Alex!”

  She didn’t answer. I ran to her, weaving between monuments, jumping over the last one
to find her lying on her side between two gravestones. She was shivering as I rolled her onto her back. Blood had soaked through her sweater at the rib cage, just below the heart. Joaquin’s last shot had hit its mark.

  “My God, you need an ambulance.”

  “Don’t bother. Nobody survives this. I got what I deserved.”

  I just shook my head. “So it’s true? You killed Jaime.”

  “I never thought it would get this crazy.”

  “Damn you. I trusted you. I believed in you.”

  A trickle of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth, her voice barely a whisper. “Funny, I thought they’d hold some rich guy for a week or two, get the insurance money, and let him go. That was the deal. Get Joaquin a nice chunk of money, and he’d leave me and my family alone forever.”

  “I can’t believe you’d do that.”

  “Live in fear for fifteen years. You’d be surprised at what you’ll do.”

  “I’d never sell out another human being.”

  She grimaced from the pain and took my hand. I pulled back, but she squeezed harder and wouldn’t let me go. “Please don’t hate me.”

  I was trembling, still shocked. “I just wish this weren’t true.”

  “Then let’s just leave it that I was. . a friend.”

  She looked at me and tried to smile, the life draining from those dark, mysterious eyes. She started to say something more, but it passed. Her body went limp in my arms. I held her for a moment, my emotions running the gamut. I lowered her head to the ground, then looked up and saw my father standing over us.

  “Was she a friend of yours?” he asked sadly.

  The question made me think back to the anonymous note that had led me to Jaime’s door, the way it had been signed, and the way Alex had just used the same words to say good-bye.

  “In a weird way, yes. I guess she was ‘A Friend.’ ”

  I rose and embraced my father so tightly that our bodies shook. He was sobbing cathartically into my shoulder as I opened my eyes for one last look at Alex, her beautiful face, the sad expression, the troubled life. If she hadn’t told me herself, I would never have believed a word of it.

  From her lips it all made perfect, horrible sense.