Taking Chances

by Susan Lewis

  Chambers sucked in a mouthful, and passed the flask back.

  They sat quietly together, watching and feeling the night and listening to each other’s breath. From time to time Chambers saw a shadow move and tensed, though he knew it was another of the men shifting position. His heartbeat felt abnormally dense, and as the hours passed his skin began to prickle with the prescience of danger.

  It was an hour before dawn when they first heard the distant sound of an engine. All over the garden the thumbing-down of safeties and readying of machine guns made a short, muted resonance through the drooping trees and brush. The man with Chambers disappeared for a moment, and returned with another officer. They took position either side of him, then signalled for him to follow.

  As he moved Chambers could feel the stiffness in his limbs, and the dewy dampness that had seeped into his clothes. In one hand he carried the Beretta, in the other he held the grenade he had been given during the night. This wasn’t the first time he’d been in a situation like this, it had happened many times before in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Sarajevo, the Lebanon, but the fear never got any easier to handle. If anything, it got worse, for there was only so much luck a man could count on before it finally ran out.

  The rumbling of approaching vehicles was getting louder by the second. It was impossible to tell how many there were, though he heard someone guess six. By now he and his escorts were at the side of the house, edging backwards into one of the barns. More men were in front of them, retreating too as they swept the garden with eyes and guns.

  They drew into the barn, the rank, stale smell of old molasses and camphor clogging on their chests. The first officer pointed Chambers to the armoured Jeep, nodding for him to get in. Chambers did as he was told. The barn door remained open. The roar of advancing engines trailed through the valley as the front line of his guard moved forward towards the rusted chain-link fence and thorny scrub.

  His two escorts got into the Jeep with him, one in the back, the other in the driver’s seat. Their faces were taut and pale. Each was acutely aware that an attack was unlikely to come by road like this, alerting them well in advance with the blatant noise of engines. But six vehicles could hold twenty-four men and up – at least twice as many as at the finca. And with the constant betrayal, switching of allegiances and easy bribes in this nation, there was a very good chance that the detail of the finca’s set-up had been reported to Galeano’s men within minutes of being established.

  From where they were sitting they could see the swell of a nearby hill, visible now in the greyish light before dawn. Their eyes were trained on the road that looped round it. The vehicles suddenly burst into view, one, two, three, four of them, headlights beaming, speeding around the bend like evenly-timed missiles. Then they were gone, descending fast down the track that led to the finca.

  Chambers glanced at the man beside him. He was still clutching his gun, eyes rooted on the tangled sprawl of garden and open land beyond. They listened as the vehicles screeched to a halt, expecting gunfire, hearing none. There was the sound of men shouting, then running. The driver leapt out of the car and moved swiftly to the barn door. There was more shouting as someone called out, ‘Don’t shoot! Italo, César! Put down your guns!’ Two camouflaged figures appeared in the doorway. Behind them came half a dozen more.

  Chambers dived for cover, then spun round, ready to shoot, as the door beside him was suddenly yanked open.

  ‘Señor Tom! Please, come with me.’

  ‘What is it? What’s happening?’ Chambers asked, jumping down from the car.

  ‘We have orders,’ the man told him. ‘Valerio has come from the general. He is here. He will tell you.’

  Valerio, the man who had been one of his escorts for the past five days, was standing in the midst of the group, looking dishevelled and seriously hyped up.

  ‘Señor Tom,’ he grinned when he saw Chambers coming towards him. ‘The general will be relieved to know you are safe. But you must come with me now.’ He was already walking away.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Chambers asked, as they all started across the garden. ‘Where’s the general?’

  ‘He is safe,’ Valerio answered. ‘Please, get in the car, I will explain on the way.’

  The four vehicles turned out to be more armoured cars, this time three Chevy Blazers and a Ford Explorer. All were black or dark grey. Valerio pulled open one of the front passenger doors and gestured for Chambers to get in. As he did so two armed men climbed in the back, and Valerio got behind the wheel.

  Minutes later all four vehicles were speeding back towards the mountain road. The sun was half over the horizon by now, and a steamy mist was beginning to rise from the ground. For a while no-one spoke, and the further they got from the finca the more unnerved Chambers became. Twenty-four hours ago he’d been in no doubt that Valerio was the general’s man; now he remembered that it was only a fool who didn’t doubt.

  ‘It said on the news that the general was missing,’ he ventured.

  Valerio glanced at him, then leaned over as he took a sharp bend fast. ‘They say many things on the news,’ he answered. ‘They know nothing.’

  ‘But the raid. It did happen?’

  Valerio grinned. ‘Sure, it happened,’ he confirmed. ‘We took the Zapata boys. They are in custody now. By tonight we will have their confession that they killed your girlfriend.’

  If he was telling the truth about the arrests, then Chambers had no problem believing him about the confession. He knew more than he wanted to about their methods of extraction. ‘And Molina?’ he asked.

  Again Valerio grinned, and this time threw him a look. ‘I am taking you there now,’ he responded.

  ‘He’s in custody?’

  Valerio shook his head. ‘No, but we know where he is.’

  Chambers waited and Valerio started to laugh.

  ‘At ten o’clock this morning,’ he said, ‘our friend Molina has an appointment with a man who makes bulletproof jackets. The man, he is a good man, has a fine reputation, and he doesn’t like to provide jackets for guerillas or traficantes or lowlife scum like Molina. So when he gets someone like that approach him, he always tells them no, then he informs us so that we can protect him from the offences these men take. In Molina’s case, because the general has asked him, Señor Gavira has agreed to make an appointment. But he won’t be there. It will be just us. Already we have our people in place, at the sewing-machines and in the offices, looking like Señor Gavira’s staff. When you arrive Salvador Molina will be all yours.’

  Chambers turned to look out the window. The Beretta was back in his belt, and he could feel his palm itching to hold it. Just thinking of Molina incited the urge to kill. But not only to kill, to hurt and mutilate, terrorize and humiliate too. Four years had done nothing to deaden the need for revenge, nor to lessen the loss that between them Galeano and Molina had inflicted. How many nights had he lain awake longing for the woman they had taken; torturing himself with images of the way things might have been, of the way things were when they had loved and laughed, shared dreams and passions, known anger and outrage and such a depth to their love that few ever got to experience. She was the only woman he had ever loved, was probably the only woman he ever would love. He wanted no closeness with others; he wanted only her and the life she had been so brutally deprived of.

  But that could never be, and because of it he knew what he wanted to do to Molina – had known since the day he’d discovered that it was Molina who had sent him the photographs of her rape and torture, that it was Molina who had killed her. The only emotion that surpassed his hatred for this man was the love he still felt for Rachel. He was so torn apart by the force of both that he sometimes despaired of ever knowing peace again. In his heart he knew she wouldn’t want him to take this revenge, that she would fear the damage it would ultimately cause him, but this knowledge couldn’t prevail, for she wasn’t having to live with the daily guilt of the fact that he had taken a gamble with her life and los
t. For more than three years he had lived with the blame for her death, truly believing that had he done as he was told she would have been allowed to live. But then he had learned the truth, that Molina was the one who had abducted her, so no matter what he had done, what ransom he’d offered, or deal he’d struck, Molina would have taken it all and killed her anyway. So he owed Molina, he owed him not only for the trickery, the deceit, the rape, the murder – but for the dreams of a future that could now never, ever come true.

  It was a quarter to ten when the three escorting vehicles broke from the convoy and left them to continue on alone to the jacket-maker’s on Carrera twenty-six. By now they were well inside the city limits of Bogotá, driving through an area Chambers didn’t know, but one like so many others on the outskirts of town, crumbling, uncleansed and as dangerous as hell. Every window and doorway was barred, every store had a spyhole to vet clients before allowing them in. Few walked the streets, several lay hunched up against walls, flattened cardboard boxes acting as blankets. It was as run-down as any place Chambers had seen anywhere in the world, so much poverty, tragedy, abuse and addiction that it seemed to be eating the streets like a cancer.

  Soon they passed on to a neighbourhood that had more people on foot, fewer in doorways, some freshly painted storefronts and garbage dumped in piles rather than strewn about the sidewalks. Still there were bars on everything. They came to a stop behind a dark blue Toyota that was parked outside a tall, purple-fronted building with green-painted bars that protected a bulletproof door.

  Valerio got out first and went to ring the bell. Chambers watched him speak through the intercom, then turn to gesture them out of the car.

  ‘He is here,’ he said, grinning as Chambers reached him.

  Chambers felt the knots tighten inside him. Despite the many fraught and dangerous situations he had been in in his life he had never yet killed a man, and was now beginning to wonder if when it came to it, he could actually go through with it.

  The few neighbours hanging about watched with small interest as four men in combat fatigues and carrying M60 machine-guns crossed the pavement and disappeared inside Gavira’s purple shop.

  The door clanged shut behind them, leaving them facing a steep concrete staircase. They mounted swiftly and quietly, stopping at the third floor where a middle-aged, suited man opened a door and stood back for them to enter.

  The room beyond was a medium-sized rectangle, with a half-dozen or more hanging rails stuffed full of vests and jackets of all sizes, colours and descriptions, pushed down one end. There were a couple of desks where a receptionist and secretary were seated, and beyond them through an open door were the machinists and cutters, apparently intent on their work.

  Valerio looked at the middle-aged man who nodded towards a closed door in the opposite wall. ‘He is with a sales representative,’ the man said.

  Valerio turned to Chambers. Chambers looked at him, his grey eyes glowing in his unshaven face, which was showing cruel signs of the stress he was under. He knew these men would think him a coward if he started to back off, but goddammit, now he was here he just didn’t know that he had what it took to kill. The shame he felt at this sudden weakness was as bitter as the anger, but right now he was finding it impossible to move.

  Then the door opposite opened and a man, a stranger, came out. He took no notice of either Chambers or the armed officers, but went to a hanging rail and took down a smart brass-buttoned blazer. Then he re-entered the office, leaving the door wide open. There were two men inside, both seated, one with his back to the door, the other with his feet up on the desk. This man must have been able to see them, but that he showed no sign of it indicated he was one of the general’s men. He and his companion appeared relaxed and confident, enjoying their coffee and the importance they obviously felt at their need for bulletproof clothing.

  ‘This is one of our newer designs,’ the salesman was saying, as he took the blazer from its hanger. ‘It is a little expensive, but it is of excellent quality and with this Kevlar padding it will stop .357 magnum, .45 calibre or 9mm sub-machine bullets.’ He opened the jacket to reveal the inside. ‘These pouches here are for the steel plates which, should you choose to insert them, will protect your vital organs even against 7.62 NATO rounds. Perhaps you would like to try it?’

  Molina put down his coffee and got to his feet. The other man walked behind him, helped him off with the full-length leather coat he was wearing, then took the blazer from the salesman. As Molina slipped it on, Valerio walked into the office.

  ‘Salvador Molina,’ he said.

  Molina’s head snapped up. ‘What the–?’ He stopped, almost physically shrinking at the sight of the combat gear and heavy artillery.

  ‘We have someone here to see you,’ Valerio told him.

  Molina swung round. His tall, muscular frame was dwarfed by the blazer, his wide-set eyes were slits of terror and confusion.

  ‘You remember me,’ Chambers said. ‘I’m the man you sent photographs. The man whose girlfriend you raped and murdered.’

  Molina started backing off, eyes darting from side to side as he tried to assimilate this sudden change in his surroundings and work out who everyone was. His large face was yellowing with fear; his shaking legs stumbled into a chair. He was trapped and he knew it, but still wasn’t quite accepting it. He began reaching inside his jacket, then squealed and flung his arm against the wall as Valerio fired at his wrist.

  ‘What the hell?’ he cried. ‘Who are you? I don’t know who you are.’

  ‘He just told you who we are,’ Valerio reminded him.

  ‘I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before in my life.’

  A man behind Chambers fired a handgun into the wall next to Molina. Molina jumped. His face was starting to twitch.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ he cried. ‘Jesus Christ, look what you did to my hand.’ Blood was dripping from the wound and running into the sleeve. ‘What are you doing? Who the hell are you?’ he demanded, as Valerio delved inside the leather coat and pulled out Molina’s ID.

  ‘Just wanted to remind you who you are,’ he said, thrusting it at Molina. ‘We didn’t have any doubt. But you said you were the wrong man. Seems not. So, why don’t you start by getting down on your fucking knees and begging Señor Chambers here for your life, the way you made his girlfriend beg for hers, cochino!’

  Molina’s eyes were flat with horror. The nightmares he’d had that the bitch’s boyfriend would one day find him were suddenly right here in this room. He knew already that he was going to die, and if he was then he had nothing to lose.

  ‘Beg nicely,’ Valerio advised him, ‘because all the decisions around here belong to Señor Chambers, and he doesn’t have a lot of reason to like you.’

  Molina’s eyes darted back to Chambers. ‘Are you out of your mind?’ he sneered. ‘I don’t beg no scumbag gringo. Let him beg me. Let him ask me what she did those three days we had her. Let him get off on how we all fucked her and how she begged us for more and more.’ He put on a female voice. ‘“Oh Salvador, Salvador, please come and fuck me, Salvador. Oh, Gustavo, I love your cock. Give it to me Gustavo.” The bitch just couldn’t get enough,’ he snarled. ‘This asshole here wasn’t man enough for a moza like her, so we gave her what she wanted, up her cunt, in her ass, down her throat …’

  He flew back hard against the wall as the first bullet hit him with all the might of a boxer’s fist. Seconds later, the echo of the gunshot still ringing fiercely in his ears, he looked at Chambers and grinned. ‘You want to hear how many of us fucked her?’ he jeered.

  Chambers fired again. And again, and again.

  Molina danced and jerked, grunted and twisted and attempted to keep on laughing. He was like a punchbag inside the blazer, the bullets hitting him with punishing force, but none could reach him. ‘Asshole! Lily-livered gringo cunt!’ he spat.

  Chambers suddenly grabbed his throat, glared into his eyes, then head-butted him in the face, breaking his no
se. The man screamed. Blood poured from his nostrils. Chambers stepped back and aimed his gun at Molina’s groin.

  Immediately Molina’s hands dropped from his face, the terror of Chambers’s intention registering hard in his eyes.

  ‘You’ll never rape another woman in your goddamned life,’ Chambers growled. His heart was thumping fast, his loathing was tightening the trigger. ‘I don’t know how many women or children you’ve beaten, abused, or got working on the streets for you even now, but this is going to be for them. Every single one of the poor bastards you’ve corrupted, victimized, tormented, and killed. And when I’m through, when your cock is on the floor and your balls are all full of bullets, you’re going to pick your cock up and you’re going to fucking eat it, do you hear me? You’re going to shove it down your own fucking throat, the way you did to Rachel.’

  Molina’s eyes were glassy with panic. He was shooting glances at the others, seeing if there was any help to be had. ‘He’s crazy!’ he yelled. ‘He’s a fucking madman. You can’t let him do this. She was just a whore. A no-good fucking whore, who couldn’t mind her own fucking …’

  Chambers fired.

  Screams tore out of Molina as he slammed back into the wall. Blood and urine burst from his groin. He clutched it frantically, his face twisting in shock and agony, his skin rapidly turning grey as he slid, whimpering, down to his heels. ‘Aaaay, no, hijoeputa! Mis huevos! No. No.’

  ‘I think my friend here means what he says,’ Valerio remarked mildly.

  Shaking uncontrollably, Molina looked up at him. His breath was fast and shallow, shredding his voice as he struggled to speak. For the moment it was only possible to groan as he rocked forward in pain, jerkily fumbling with the end of his tie as though to bandage his wound. ‘You’ve got to stop him, dios mio. Please, stop him,’ he choked. ‘I am a man. He cannot do this to me.’

  Valerio looked at Chambers, whose face was ashen and strained as he stared down at the man in loathing.