by Steve Curry
“What the hell? All this for one Gringo without ID?” I looked at the windows to the outside. That was fruitless. Those apertures were all head high and too narrow for even someone like Pedro to get through. My head might have made it, or maybe just my neck. There was no way I was getting even one shoulder through though. He stopped me with a surprisingly strong grip above the elbow while I was looking around.
“This one ain’t you. There’s a riot in the cafeteria. They’re going to lockdown which means we gotta get you out of here.” Almost as an afterthought, he added. “Me too.”
The door opened to admit my guard looking more frantic than I felt. He engaged my old smuggler buddy in rapid-fire Spanish and was answered in kind. I only caught a few words because of the pace probably. “Ok go with him. He’s gonna get you to the infirmary. You had a sharp pain in your chest and couldn’t catch your breath. Got it?”
Before I could answer the guard tugged me out of the room with an insistent grip on my upper arm. I didn’t resist when he checked my cuffs then hustled me out. It took a few minutes of dodging guards running down the narrow hallways. We finally made it to the infirmary where the guard passed me off to a harried-looking older doctor. He had me chained to an old battered treatment table and turned away. His priorities seemed to center around getting the pair of females in the clinic out.
I couldn’t really blame him. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to picture what could happen to women in a place like this. Many of these guys had no hope of ever seeing the outside again. One of the two was relatively young and not unattractive. The other one had probably been attractive in her youth but she was at the point where middle age was leaning away from youth entirely. I doubt some of the prisoners would have even noticed. For their purposes just about any woman would probably do.
I stayed quiet and out of the way while the doctor helped them gather their stuff and slip down a hallway with one of the guards as an escort. I noted his shotgun with some caution. If I had that weapon I could probably make it out with the women. He never even came close to me though. I watched the gun and the potential victims escape out of sight and hopefully out of harm’s way. At least I didn’t hear any shotgun booms echoing off the stone walls.
The old doctor didn’t leave. He probably figured he was safe compared to the women. Depending on what had set the prisoners off he might be right or he might be terribly wrong. Anyway, he managed to give me a thorough inspection considering the complete lack of equipment and generally shoddy environment. At least his English was good enough for us to communicate. His poking at my ribs got a few grunts and stunted breaths. I answered his questions fairly honestly. Apparently, beatings like mine weren’t the norm. They even seemed fairly rare. He knew about it and didn’t approve but we both knew there was nothing he could do about it. A doctor’s note saying “Please excuse Magnus from beatings for three days” was unlikely to garner much respect.
He had just finished taping the tenderest part of my ribs when the door burst open and a handful of guards pushed in. Two of them leveled weapons at me, one shotgun and one AR. The third lifted an old fashioned walkie-talkie with its stubby black antennae and spat a rapid-fire string of Hispanic words into it. The beat-up black box spat right back at him only to be interrupted by the doctor working on me. His Spanish was slower but barely less incomprehensible to me.
I caught that he was telling them I’d been there and he was almost done. Something like “shut up and let me finish” came across even though I wasn’t sure what the words actually were. It was close enough. The lead guard with his venerable radio spoke into it again a lot slower and with less spit and breathless excitement. I caught the reply from the crackling box. It amounted to “get him back to his cell ASAP.”
It turns out that a big enough brawl in the exercise area of such an establishment is considered a riot. Even in sketchier Mexican facilities, such an event means a lockdown. Most prisoners are locked in their cells or other secure areas if it’s deemed safer. I was moved from the infirmary to my cell quickly and just a touch furtively. It seemed like maybe they weren’t supposed to be moving me during the lockdown. From a few words I caught, it also seemed they didn't want to take a chance on losing me. Someone thought maybe this was a distraction for a prison escape and nobody quite knew who I was or what to do with me so they wanted me nice and tucked away.
I found out later that all visitors had been rushed out. That must have included the guests arriving via Cartel SUV’s. I never saw the guys looking for me. More to the point, they never saw me. Instead, I was back in the dark of my isolated cell. The best part was, due to the doctor, or the riot, or just random uncertainty, I didn’t have any sadistic visitors that night. For the first time since I saw that chopper, I got some rest and just lay there thinking about my situation until sleep took over.
8
Maybe it was all of the stress or the injuries. Maybe I had just exhausted some of my normally limitless vitality. Whatever the reason, I slept the entire night until the metal grate slid open to deliver my meal. It wasn’t even gruel this time. I mean it wasn’t good. It wasn’t even good for cheap food. But it had most of the required nutrients in one form or another.
You know you’ve had it bad when dry tortillas and runny powdered eggs seem extravagant and delicious. I was still sopping up eggs and some refried beans with a partially burned tortilla when a surprise visitor showed up. The door opened almost instantly with just the merest pause for unlocking. In filed a pair of the guards who had merrily pummeled me while I was either tied or handcuffed to a sturdy metal chair. Behind them, the fat police officer from the chopper waddled in. One of the guards grabbed my chair and held it for fats while the other pointed at the bunk with his unholstered sidearm.
“Please Senor, have a seat.” The officer was much more pleasant while sitting than he had been after hiking around the sandy foothills near the border. He lit a slender brown cigar or cigarillo then offered me one. There are times that I think a good cigar or pipe enhances a situation. Sitting on a squalid and verifiably infested thin mattress in a dark and odorous Mexican jail or prison cell is not one of those situations. I shook my head and waited while he puffed a couple of times.
“Senor, I have come to negotiate. My men quite enjoy beating your Yankee ass. It’s almost like a break or...what do you call? Entertainment for them. Yes, that’s it. They find it quite entertaining. However, they have not been productive in their...entertainment. And I do not care one way or the other, except I want to be more productive.” He gave me what was supposed to be an encouraging smile. It didn’t do much to bolster my goodwill though.
He continued as if I was smiling back. “So I wish to ask you just a handful of questions, and then we will cease with the beatings for now if you answer truthfully.”
This time he waited and appraised me while I considered. “Depends on the questions El Capitan.”
“Very good. Now we are negotiating!” His smile was much more charming and perhaps a tad smug. “We must simply come to terms. So here are my questions. What is your name? Where are you from? What were you doing in my country? And who were you doing it for?”
He waited with that genial smile thinly covering a very intent awareness. I couldn’t help but think he already knew something. I just had no idea what. That’s one of the problems with changing your identification and paperwork several times in your life. It’s not always easy to remember who you are and what your papers say.
“Ok Senor Capitan.” I stopped when he waved a hand as if shooing away an insect.
“You may call me Senor Martinez or just senor. My rank is of no consequence here.” He beamed that friendly and oh so fake smile again then gestured with a rolling motion of his hand. I assumed he meant for me to carry on.
“Ok senor. My name is Magnus Gustaveson. I’m from Texas. Work in Austin as security at a bar. And I came down to drive with one of my boss’s friends. The friend was cautious about some kind of errand he
had to run down here. I was told his name was Armando but I’m not sure if it was or not.” I kept it fairly simple and gave him just enough truth that he could verify. The untrue bits were going to be harder to track down. I happened to know that my boss Roy had gone out of town for a few weeks. Some kind of family emergency and he wasn’t expected back for another few weeks. Normally I’d have been in charge during his absence. Now the bar was in the hands of the senior bartender and the senior waitress combined.
As for my own history, well I thought it was pretty well buried due to the considerable gifts my hacker friend Wild Bill had with computers and databases. Apparently, I missed something though. The officer shook his head with a sad look on his face.
“I’m afraid you are lying senor Guztav.” The name probably reminded him of Guzman or some such. He pronounced it with a decidedly softer z sound than I would have used. “We know you were with a known smuggler and scoundrel. We have no record of you passing any of our border checks. And you ran like the wind from my men. This does not make you look like an innocent man.”
“Hey, I can explain all of that!” My mind was racing and I had formulated about half a dozen possible answers to his accusations. He put a hand up to silence me before I got good and started though.
“Do not bother working on your lies today senor Guztav. We will, of course, check into your story. I have no doubt it is mostly a thin tissue of lies that will fall apart under scrutiny. For now, the men will cease their entertainment as well. Our little bit of excitement in the recreation yard has brought visitors that must not know about some of our, little activities. So...you can remain here and be silent to escape their notice. Or I can have my men drop your body off near the closest resort. Another tourist lost in the bad part of town. Such a tragedy.”
I looked at the floor and took a deep breath. Was it time to take a calculated risk? It didn’t seem like I could hurt my position much. “Okay so I’ll give a little and you think it through.”
A little dramatic pause seemed in order so I gave it a few seconds. Gotta let the bait dangle a bit sometimes. “I might know more about what my “associate” was doing down here. I might. If you kill me, well you’ll never know what I know. Will you?”
The silence grew heavy in my cell. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who put stock in the dramatic pause. But the old horse-trading rule is; never be the first to talk when it gets down to the final deal. He broke first. “You are very bold Yankee. We will give you a few days to think things over. In fact, I shall make sure you are fed well and get some time in the yard. Under close supervision with orders to kill no? You can see what your time here could be like. And you will think about what it would be like to have one of these men butcher you like a goat and dump the mess into the water eh?”
Martinez rose with a polite nod for me. His guards got more of a curt jerk of his head which had them scrambling. They hastily managed to get the door opened and their boss out in a manner to suit his apparently demanding nature. They had both been loud and aggressive, beating me when I was restrained. With this portly little police commander though they seemed, perhaps not terrified, but at least very anxious to please. It made me wonder exactly what position he held in the law enforcement hierarchy.
It must have been a fairly exalted position. Martinez was true to his word and I received edible and basic nutrition for three meals that day. There was maybe an excess of beans and rice. From what I’d read though, beans and rice were just about as good as meat for a protein source. I ate everything they gave me. Once I got out of this hole I’d need to be in decent shape for what came next.
Whenever possible I’d been doing basic exercises alone in my cell. Leg lifts were always good on the occasions when my legs and feet weren’t tied down. I’d managed some sit-ups and pushups a few different times. The day after Martinez and I had our talk though I was allowed out of the cell. It was an unusual time. First, two guards led me to the shower well before the sun rose.
Until you’ve been rolling around in filth and your own blood for a few days, you don’t really remember how good it is to be clean. Hot water washing the grime away seems to take some of the pain and stress with it. I probably would have been happy with just that concession. There was so much more though.
I was handed baggy cotton pants in a nondescript gray. There was a shirt to match and a pair of cheap canvas slip-on shoes. Somewhere they even found a pair of clean socks that felt like two weeks of vacation on an exotic island compared to the stained tatters of clothing I’d been forced to deal with. Once I was dressed and my damp hair combed back, the same two guards cuffed me again. Then we went ever so warily out into the recreation yard. The front guard stuck his head out and took a long look before turning and gesturing for his partner to bring me up.
Right there in the doorway, they removed my manacles. Everyone else seemed to be eating breakfast and I had the yard to myself. With no idea how long it would last, or even if it was some kind of trap, I concentrated on two things.
Half of my attention stayed with the guards in their tower. Fortunately, I had plenty of muscle memory when it came to exercise equipment. I went through the free weights quickly. After ten to twelve repetitions of each exercise, I would switch to the next. In that manner, the full circuit got done then rinsed and repeated. Once I was pretty certain the guards weren’t going to spontaneously shoot me to death, I could concentrate on my goals and results.
The same vitality that helped me stay alive was also good for helping me stay in reasonably good shape. Don’t get me wrong, we can let it all go to waste. We can also beef up like an action movie star. All I was shooting for was strength without sacrificing mobility. That’s the problem with putting too much muscle on. Not that I planned to be stuck in the place long enough to bulk up.
First off, it takes one of us a lot more effort to hulk out through exercise. After a few classes and a lot of reading, I’d found out how exercise and nutrition are supposed to work. When you exercise you effectively tear up muscle. As it heals it makes more of the same type tissue and you get bigger and stronger bundles of muscle. The problem was, we didn’t wound like other people, and we didn’t tear muscle down to be repaired and improved as fast as a normal person.
So while I appreciated a few days of respite and some toning up. I damned sure did not want to be hanging out in the Mexican correctional system long enough to build any excess muscle. Fortunately, I very much doubted that such a thing might happen.
I did not for a second doubt that Eachan would come through for me. Not only was he intensely curious about me, but he was also the closest thing I had to a real friend in many ways. He had never pried too much, but I knew he wanted to know my story. Like most researchers and educators he was pushed to uncover secrets. The fact that we shared some secrets, like rune lore and rune magick just made it more interesting to the professor. Eachan wouldn’t let me rot in prison if it meant he might never learn some of my secrets. He also had more money than some national economies.
I finished my workout in a positive mood for the first time in days. Some decent nutrition would help me recover from any lingering effects of my multiple recent traumas. I was also willing to bet that Eachan would come through with the money before the local authorities could uncover my murky and well-hidden past.
Lunch that day was more of the beans and rice with shredded meat of some sort. It looked like pork, or maybe chicken. It was also drowned in enough spice to prevent identification by taste. Then again I’d had worse, I think. I mean yea I must have had worse in some of those locked up memories. What I did remember was no tea party in wonderland. I can only guess at the bits still missing.
I ate all of the protein and did the same for the evening meal. In the intervening hours, I’d paced off my cell until I could find every wall, corner, door, and piece of furniture in the dark. It took some more time to try and ascertain whether I was alone down in what I assumed was some cut-rate version of solitary confinemen
t.
I called out in English. Then I tried my broken Spanish. Finally, it came down to knocking on walls to try and get a response. At one point I even tapped out the whole dot-dot-dot dash-dash-dash routine. As far as could be determined, there was nobody within listening range. That fit with the theory that they were keeping me secret. I still hadn't figured that one out. What did they suspect that made me such an interesting case?
Maybe it was just the lack of identification coupled with being very obviously non-Hispanic. Or maybe Perro had lied to me about the body I’d produced with a very large and messy hole in it. Most likely they had been put on our tail by the cartel guys and just hadn’t had the opportunity to get us all in the same room yet.
With nothing else productive to do, I decided to attempt some more of those memories on my own. Okay, so it probably wasn’t a great idea. What can I say? Sitting alone in a filthy cell full of shadows does not make time fly swiftly.
I tried to force my mind into the framework of a deep meditation. Not too surprisingly, being surrounded by grim dark building stone is not the best way to ground with mother terra. I could, only with a great deal of effort, find my own nodes of internal energy.
The pulsing well at my core was the easiest. Even that was difficult to find when my mind was racing around concepts like imprisonment and impending torture. Once I located that well of vital energy though I was pretty certain I could do some rune work with just a few materials. It also helped me trace the pathways of the life force within myself to the other centers of energy and awareness.
That was my limit though. Maybe the “sacred drink” was necessary or I needed a shaman or at least a skilled hypnotist. Whatever the lack was, I couldn’t venture into the otherworld alone in that cell. After an hour or two I gave up. That gave me several hours of solitary darkness to think about what I’d tried unsuccessfully to avoid just about every other minute between beatings.