by Matt Rogers
He made his way to the only rental car agency attached to the airport, which offered a range of vehicles for hire — all in similarly terrible condition.
First, he moved to the nearest ATM and withdrew a lump sum of Guatemalan quetzals from an off-the-record government bank account, the details of which had been provided to him by Lars to use at his discretion.
Then he strolled into the agency and worked out a deal with the dark-skinned man behind the counter, opting to pay the equivalent of a few hundred USD extra to avoid handing over a driver’s license or passport. The man begrudgingly accepted, ultimately swayed by the large bribe. He chose the cheapest car in the lot to hand over.
King could tell he was a pessimist. The guy wasn’t expecting the vehicle back.
Frankly, King wasn’t expecting to return it in one piece.
He eyed the Toyota Hilux pick-up truck at the back of the lot with an inquisitive eye, noting the botched paint job and the way the vehicle sat at an odd angle on its wheels. He wondered if it would even be capable of making the journey into the jungle. It looked to be close to twenty years old.
The rental guy flashed a smile full of rotting, yellowing teeth at King and handed over the keys.
‘Great,’ King muttered, returning the smile with a hint of sarcasm.
It started up all the same.
Reliable old bastard, King thought.
He heard the engine cough and splutter into life. With a twist of the wheel, he turned out of the muddy parking space and gunned it away from Mundo Maya International Airport. As he scrutinised the rusting signs above the wide, potholed roads for any sense of direction, the satellite phone still gripped in his left hand vibrated harshly.
He received the call without even glancing at the screen.
It could only be one person.
‘You made it?’ Lars said.
‘I made it.’
‘You caught a flight?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you have a gun?’
‘No.’
‘King—’ Lars started.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ King said. ‘I’ll improvise.’
He spotted a main road, simply labelled “5”, curving out of the city of Flores and into the rolling hills of rural Guatemala. It seemed to be pointing west. He twisted the wheel, turning onto what amounted to little more than a churned-up dirt track, and pressed on.
Almost instantly, the storm clouds seemed to grow thicker.
King let the chugging of the Hilux’s engine settle over him, basically the only sound in these parts.
The calm before the storm.
38
‘Can you track this phone?’ King said into the receiver as the Toyota ploughed through a vast puddle of mud, kicking up geysers of brown gunk on either side of the pickup.
‘Sure can,’ Lars said. ‘Keep doing what you’re doing. Did you see a sign that said “5”?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Stay on this road until you bear right onto a road labelled “13”. That’ll take you all the way up to the very edge of the Sierra Del Lacandón National Park. From there, it’s on you. I can get you to its perimeter, but the roads inside the National Park are pretty much uncharted.’
‘It’s not that archaic, is it?’
‘You didn’t understand what I was saying before, did you?’ Lars said. ‘That entire stretch of land is fair game for anything. Nearly half the murders in Guatemala are the work of the cartels. They do what they want out there. The few authorities that control Guatemala have basically given up trying to patrol the border. It’s hopelessly unregulated. No-one dares to go out there anymore. That’s what you’re heading into.’
‘Perfect,’ King muttered, his tone dripping with sarcasm.
‘It’s not too late to turn around and hand this over to a more experienced division.’
‘What will that make me look like?’
‘It’s not all about image.’
‘It is at this stage,’ King said. ‘You want to get this division up and running. You need results. You want me to succeed, don’t you?’
‘I want you to,’ Lars admitted. ‘But not if it gets you killed. Or worse.’
‘Can’t get much worse than dying.’
‘Ramos could take you alive.’
‘Touché. How far’s the drive?’
‘My program says just under three hours.’
‘I’ll aim for two. I want to make it there before it gets dark.’
‘Do you have a flashlight?’
‘No.’
‘You’re going to get yourself killed,’ Lars stated.
It sounded like he was speaking what he believed to be a universal truth. Like King would achieve the impossible if the dawning altercation went any other way.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he repeated, more to reassure himself than anything else.
He ended the call. There was nothing else that Lars could help him with. He had a set path in front of him.
All that was left was to see it through to its conclusion.
The sky growled ominously, threatening to crack and unleash a torrent of water across the state. King gave up on wrestling with the air conditioning, accepting that the Toyota’s interior wouldn’t cool. He rolled down the windows on either side of the vehicle, letting the hot, thick air swirl through the cabin.
He pressed the Hilux faster, throttling the engine. It made for a bumpy ride on the unkempt roads of rural Guatemala, but comfort was the last thing on his mind.
He was focused entirely on speed. In almost all aspects, he was at a disadvantage to Ramos. He was outmanned, outgunned, up against a trained killer and what would no doubt be an army of hired ex-soldiers.
Contract thugs. Mercenaries. Soldiers of fortune.
He had yet to experience the capabilities that ex-military had to offer. So far, his adversaries had been low-level street thugs and insurgents in the Middle East.
Both the setting and the enemies were unknown to him.
And this was the harshest learning grounds of them all.
But if he could keep surprise on his side, then maybe he had a chance. He reached up and drew a coarse sleeve across his forehead. It came away soaked through, coated in sweat. He blinked through the sheen of perspiration and concentrated on the uneven road ahead.
On either side of the Toyota, rugged terrain ran for as far as the eye could see, dense with vegetation and choked with overgrown weeds and bushes. King caught sight of a bare field dotted with dirty sheep. At random points through the rural landscape, rusting tin houses appeared, all on the verge of falling apart. There were no other vehicles on the road.
King had never been in a place quite like it.
He could sense the poverty from inside the car. It seemed to hang thick in the air, mixing with the humidity. It was an air of desperation, as if everyone in this part of the country was clinging to survival by a thread. He knew very little about Guatemala itself, but something told him that if he made it through the coming night, his best work would be done in settings like these.
Poverty-riddled, desolate locations, where good men and women could be exploited by anyone looking to earn blood money.
King found himself fuelled by the prospect of gunning down Ramos. Nothing would bring him greater personal satisfaction. He thought again of Juan, and how crippled the man had been by the emotions surrounding the death of his sons.
Fury swelled in his chest.
39
The hours passed slowly and quietly. The Hilux’s radio had seemingly died years ago — in fact, most of the electronics on the dashboard had been stripped free. King got the sense that the rental car agency didn’t ordinarily have this car available for hire. It was junk.
King shrugged to himself.
He was going to have to abandon it at some point anyway.
Just under two hours into the drive, the sun — barely visible behind the murky storm clouds above — drooped below the horizon. The dark grey clouds turned a shade of na
vy, trickling down into total darkness. The lack of light cast vast shadows across the rural plains, plunging the vegetation into night.
King reached out and switched on the headlights. Only one of them worked, cutting a lone path through the swirling darkness. Far above, thunder rumbled again. King cast his gaze skyward, but he couldn’t see a thing.
If there was a downpour set to begin soon, he wanted to cover as much ground as he could before the terrain turned to swamp.
In the distance, lightning flared, illuminating the scenic landscape in all its moody ambience.
‘That’s not good,’ King whispered to himself.
The nerves began to set in, more from the theatricality of his surroundings than anything else. He didn’t fear confrontation, or death, for that matter. If he died in service of his country, he would rest easy. He would know that he’d perished while trying to do some good.
But the approaching tropical storm, combined with the sickly warm air and the eerie silence of the unpopulated countryside, sent shivers down his spine.
He found himself more afraid of the unknown than anything else.
Sierra del Lacandón National Park presented itself moments later in terrifying fashion. King spotted the literal wall of trees looming on one side of the road. The thick, low wall of bushes that had flashed past for as long as he could remember shifted into jungle. The broad leaves of the rainforest canopy hung over the road, like a natural ceiling for the twisting, turning path.
King followed the perimeter of the National Park for a couple of dozen miles, searching for an opening that would lead into the sprawling forest.
When the light vanished entirely from the sky and a nervous itch sprouted at the base of his neck, he tugged the satellite phone free from his belt and dialled Lars again.
‘I see you,’ was the first thing Lars said when he answered.
‘Good,’ King said. ‘I’m lost as hell. Please tell me you’ve found something on this place. It’s enormous.’
‘I did some digging. There should be a long-abandoned trail just a couple of miles ahead. It’ll lead all the way through to the border, if it isn’t overgrown by now. It passes Piedras Negras, which was where we last heard from Ramos.’
‘Fill me in on that again.’
‘It’s a collection of ancient Mayan ruins that happens to rest right near the Mexico-Guatemala border. In the Usumacinta region. Archaeologists have been desperately trying to protect it, but it hasn’t been much use. Rumours are that there’s close to eight groups of drug-runners and gangsters occuyping that small stretch of land. The ping we received from Ramos’ device showed him practically directly on top of the ruins. He has to have a facility right nearby.’
‘Will you direct me to it?’
‘I’ll do my best. You have to understand — these are old maps. Times have changed.’
‘I know.’
‘This won’t be easy. You’ll either be caught in the middle of a territorial dispute, or you’ll bump directly into one of the cartels. They all convert coca leaves into pure cocaine along the border. It’s big business.’
‘Don’t worry,’ King said, still guiding the Toyota through the humid night. ‘I need to run into someone anyway.’
‘W-why?’
‘I’m still unarmed.’
‘Oh, Jesus Christ…’
‘Just tell me where to go. I’ll take care of the rest.’
‘Stop right there,’ Lars commanded.
King stamped on the brakes, which took a few seconds to kick in given the ancient nature of the Toyota Hilux. The tyres bit into the mud, squelching to a halt in the middle of the road. It didn’t cause any kind of traffic jam — in fact, King hadn’t seen another vehicle for over an hour.
‘If the ping from your satellite phone’s accurate,’ Lars said. ‘You should be right on top of the entrance to the trail. There won’t be signage of any kind. All that would have been removed when the area became volatile. It’s not a tourist destination anymore.’
King stared out the driver’s window, peering at the literal wall of vegetation on the other side of the road. Between two towering trees, he thought he could make out a dangerously narrow mountain trail twisting away into the pitch-black night.
He gulped.
‘Looks fucking sketchy, Lars.’
‘You went into Guatemala’s jungles thinking it was going to be anything other than sketchy?’
‘I don’t know if I can make it through. It’s narrow.’
‘Give it your best shot. We’re fairly screwed otherwise. And — as much as I hate to admit it — you may have succeeded in what you were doing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m looking at the timeframe now. There’s no way Ramos thinks you’re in-country. It’s only been half a day since he made it to his facility — and he was probably flown into one of the private airstrips along the border controlled by traffickers and illegal settlers. You would have had to drop everything and race cross-country to make it there so quickly — which was exactly what you did. He won’t expect you to come so soon.’
‘I still need a gun,’ King said.
‘You might be in luck. All the cartels use mobile laboratories to dry their coca leaves faster. They throw their gear onto the back of pick-up trucks and run it round the jungle all day and night. It’s an important part of the process. See if you can intercept one of the trucks on the way. Act like a lost foreigner and then take them down.’
‘You read my mind.’
‘Good luck, King.’
King ended the call, stared at the dark hole in the rainforest in front of him, and took a deep breath.
It was time.
40
With a single, flickering bulb in a lone headlight paving the way for him, King entered a nightmare with a touch of the accelerator.
The Toyota Hilux rumbled over the pockmarked ground, its suspension groaning with each new obstacle it traversed. The driver’s seat shuddered underneath him, threatening to collapse just seconds into the journey. King kept his foot down, pressing through the worst of it. The headlight bounced off the jungle ahead, cutting briefly through the wall of darkness to illuminate what lay ahead.
None of it was pretty.
The terrain wasn’t going to smooth out for a long time. King kept a steady path, guiding the Toyota into the National Park. Lars had told him back in Tijuana that the park was large enough to consist of a number of different biomes. He hoped that the sub-tropical rainforest was the hardest of those biomes to venture through.
If the entire journey was like this, he didn’t think the Toyota would make it to Ramos’ complex.
Thankfully, the ground evened out roughly fifteen minutes into the journey. King tried his best to stay on the path, but at times it was difficult to assess where the trail ended and the jungle floor began. There was barely any indication of where the boundaries were — at one point, he had to screech to a halt and throw the Toyota into reverse to compensate for a wrong turn.
Finally he made it onto a flatter stretch of land, still just as dense but with less dents in the trail than the previous section. King was able to shift in his seat and stretch out his aching muscles. The bones in his fingers and wrists ached sorely from riding out the rattling suspension, gripped tight around the wheel at all times to keep the Toyota on course.
Slowly, but surely, the tiredness began to set in.
At first when he entered the jungle his adrenalin had been through the roof, anticipating confrontation at every turn. But as the minutes turned to hours and the dusk turned to the blackest of night, his lids began to droop as the road smoothed out.
Then the Toyota hit a root on the side of the trail, throwing all loose objects around the interior.
King darted upright, suddenly awake and alert all at once. He squinted, narrowing his eyes in an attempt to make out what lay ahead.
He had lost all track of time. The moon — in fact, almost all of the night sky — had
been masked throughout the journey by the canopy of leaves above his head. It could have been hours since he first set off. He had been in constant motion since early that morning, and almost died several times during the day itself.
He needed a rest.
It would come after his work was done here.
After a few more minutes of wrestling with the steering wheel, he snatched the satellite phone off the passenger seat and called Lars.
‘Where am I?’ he said, his tone dejected.
‘Everything okay?’ Lars said, noting the intonation in his voice.
‘Yeah. Long trip.’
‘You’ve only been driving for thirty minutes.’
King sighed. His mind was playing tricks on him out here. ‘That’s just perfect…’
‘Are you crashing?’
‘What?’
‘Energy tanks depleted?’
King paused. ‘Somewhat. I feel heavy. Can barely keep my eyes open. I’m worried if I come face-to-face with Ramos, I might not be in the right state.’
‘If you make it inside his facility,’ Lars said. ‘You could use some of his product.’
‘Are you insane? You want me to die of a drug overdose out here?’
‘Just a suggestion.’
‘What if I’m tested en route back to the States?’
King could almost sense Lars smirking through the phone.
‘If you knew what some of our guys were hopped up on, you wouldn’t be making a word of protest.’
‘I’m not protesting anything.’
‘Then keep your options open. If it’s between snorting coke and staying alive, I think you know what you should go with.’
‘Once again,’ King said, ‘where am I?’
‘You’ve made decent progress,’ Lars said. ‘You’ll reach the border itself within the hour. Piedras Negras can’t be more than twenty miles from you. How’s your gas?’
King glanced at the fuel meter. ‘I’ve got enough to get there.’
‘And to get out?’
‘Probably not.’
‘You’re not an extensive planner, are you, King?’