Deadly Journey

by Declan Conner

  ‘Is there a village nearby where I can get to a telephone?’

  ‘No, there’s nothing between here and the gas stations near the border.’

  She washed and dabbed at the wounds, applying antiseptic cream to my feet before bandaging them.

  ‘Look, write down your address and when I return home, I’ll send you some money for my keep and the gas.’

  ‘It’s not necessary.’

  The family’s kindness touched me.

  ‘How long did you live in Texas?’ I asked.

  ‘Two years. Ironic, isn’t it? My ancestors lived in Texas until the Americans stole it along with the star on their flag. Now they treat us like low-life dirt.’

  The words hit me like a barb sinking into my flesh.

  She took a single cotton sheet from the remaining drawer of the dresser and draped it over me. ‘I’ll get some of my brother’s clothes ready for your journey. They should fit. Try and rest.’

  ‘Are you sure he won’t mind?’

  ‘Mind?’ She laughed. ‘He’s been dead four years now.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘How did he pass away?’

  ‘Gunned down by a rival gang.’

  The way she said it, it was as though it was no big deal. She closed the door as she left, leaving me with my thoughts. Looking around the room gave me the impression that their plight was understandable. I began to wonder what I would have done, had I been born into a similar position on the wrong side of the border. Would I have turned to the safety of numbers in a gang and trafficked drugs to those who denied me shelter? Or would I have tried to flee to America for a new life of always looking over my shoulder? I prayed that in twenty-four hours, I would reach the safety of the border. But not before I had taken down their name and address to send them a big fat thank you through Western Union, to be collected at their nearest depot.

  Ten minutes had gone by when Leila brought a pile of clothes and some boots into the bedroom.

  ‘Try these for size.’ She placed the items on a chair next to the bed and left the room.

  I hadn’t worn jockeys since I was a child, but eagerly slipped them on. The T-shirt was okay, but the jeans were a little on the short side and wide around the waist. At least they were clean. I took the belt from my old jeans and buckled it around my waist. Easing myself from the bed, I stood and took a few paces. The bandages were comfortable to walk on, but I could still feel stinging in the soles of my feet. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I pulled the socks over my feet and then tried the boots. They were a size too big, but I would have given anything to have had them when I first escaped. Loosely tying the laces, I stood to try them. It was better with just the bandages, but I made it to the bedroom door and turned the handle. Leila was sitting at the table. Dried beans covered the surface and she was sifting through them, separating out the bad ones. She looked up and gave me a warm smile.

  ‘Thanks for the clothes.’

  ‘No problem. I’m preparing a meal – you look as though you could do with something to eat. Now go and rest.’

  The beans brought to mind shopping at Walmart with Mary and picking cans off the shelf. It made it easy to forget beans came from plants.

  Leila’s father walked in holding a chicken. He wrung its neck, tossed it in the direction of the children, and walked outside. Its wings were still flapping as the boy gripped it with one arm and started to pluck the feathers with his other hand. Closing the door, I went to sit on the bed, thanking God my kids didn’t have to resort to going native.

  Hens, sounding the alarm, scattered in the yard outside. I heard the crunch of tyres skidding on the dirt. I moved to the window and peeked outside. Four men carrying guns jumped off the open back of a pickup truck and charged toward the house. Another pickup came to a halt, with more men joining the invasion. I quickly moved away from the window. My vision danced around the room. My initial reaction was that the family had betrayed me.

  A woman screamed. My head jolted in the direction of the sound. More screams, but this time the shrill sound of children facing terror. The bedroom door burst open. A pistol thrust at my face. I struck the guy’s gun arm with mine to deflect his aim. A shot rang out. I brought my other hand with straight fingers into the soft flesh of his neck. He dropped to his knees clutching his throat. A well-aimed kick snapped his head backward. He fell as if his spine had deserted his body. A rifle butt swung toward me and I ducked. I sank my fist into my attacker’s ribs with all the force I could muster.

  Someone grabbed me from behind. I gripped his head in my hands and threw him over my shoulder. A rifle lay on the floor and I dived for it, but someone’s leg lunged, kicking the rifle under the bed. A blow to the back of my head brought stars to my eyes.

  Though I was aware of being manhandled and shackled, I was powerless to do anything. After they’d dragged me to my feet, they pushed me into the living area. The old man stood with his arms outstretched in front of Leila. She clutched the children to her and covered their eyes. One of the intruders trained a rifle at them. The children wailed. Blood trickled down Leila’s forehead as she comforted her children, ignoring what was happening. Hands grabbed hold of my shoulders and forced me to sit on a chair.

  Footsteps on the veranda outside sounded familiar. The shadow entered first and then the man. Squat stood at the door and spat his disgust at the scene. He nodded to the guard pointing the automatic-assault rifle at the family. The guard’s finger moved to the trigger and he raised his rifle barrel. I lunged forward, and it took two of them to force me back and pin me to the chair.

  I screamed out long and hard. ‘No...!’

  A deafening crescendo of shots rang out. The pungent smell of gunpowder hit my nostrils. It wasn’t much different from the drifting smell of a firecracker display on the 4th of July. Only this was no celebration. It was all over in seconds. When I opened my eyes, the family lay in a pile on the floor. The little girl’s body still twitched, as the half-plucked chicken had; the bird lay there beside them. Squat pulled a pistol from his belt, walked over to her, and shot the young girl in the head.

  A primeval scream escaped my lips. Pinned to my seat, every muscle in my body tightened as I tried to stand. But I couldn’t break free. Averting my gaze, I noticed a letter on the table addressed to Leila. Despite the tears in eyes, I was able to commit the address to memory.

  I had brought death to their door. I should have told them the truth.

  My body fell limp and my chin hit my chest.

  Squat walked directly in front of me. He leaned forward so that I could smell his foul breath. Grabbing me by my hair, he lifted my head.

  ‘Their blood is on your head, American. Prepare yourself, because you’re going to hell.’ He glanced past me. ‘Get him in the truck.’

  Through gritted teeth, I screeched into his face. ‘Bastards!’

  Squat grinned, his lips curling to one side as he let go of my hair. My head dropped. But for my presence and their good nature, Leila’s family would still be alive. The guilt I experienced at having caused their deaths took me to unimaginable depths of despair. I made an oath to avenge their deaths, if I ever managed to make it to freedom.

  Squat’s words bounced around in my mind. I couldn’t imagine that hell would be any worse than how I felt looking at their twisted dead bodies on the floor. Lifting my gaze and looking at the evil in the depths of Squat’s eyes, I guessed I would soon find out.

  Chapter 9

  Onward Journey

  I expected them to take me back to the prison at the farm and make me pay for my escape. But instead we headed north and then west. All the while, visions of the fate that had befallen Miguel and Leila’s family plagued me with every bounce in the road, and tore away at my insides. The scum had me hogtied in shackles.

  After an hour’s drive, lying mostly face-down in the back of the pickup truck and with my captors using my back as a footstool, we went off-road. That’s if you could call
what we had been driving along a road. Ten minutes or so and we stopped. One of them dragged me out of the back of the pickup. They had parked next to the crop duster I’d seen earlier. The duster solved the problem as to how they had found me at Leila’s house. Yet more guilt pained me as I remembered thinking Leila and her family had betrayed my sanctuary.

  Two motorized hang gliders were visible through the open doors of a large building. Wherever we where, this was clearly part of the supply chain. I guessed we had to be near the border for the hang gliders to be near enough to drop their loads on the other side. Thinking their ingenuity for getting contraband over the border knew no bounds, it also worried me. They weren’t stupid. The fact that they had not blindfolded me seemed like a bad omen, considering what fate had befallen Miguel.

  Squat came up alongside me and grinned. He handed two large canvas bags to the pilot. I caught a glimpse of the contents as the pilot inspected them. My butt cheeks tightened and my eyes popped when I saw what the bags held.

  Squat gave me a sideways glance and snarled, ‘They should never have bought out the hit. I hope they cut your tongue out and feed you to the buzzards.’

  His words tumbled around in my mind as I tried to grasp the meaning other than the threat. He gave me a parting dig in the ribs. Two of them manhandled me into the crop duster and fastened me into the passenger seat with duct tape. I knew better than to ask where we were going, but from what he’d said, I knew it likely involved a ransom. Not having a blindfold still bothered me.

  The thought that someone had put a hit out on me drowned out the subject of the blindfold and nagged away at my mind. Sure, there was the gang I had put behind bars for the drug bust recently, costing them a loss of millions in street value. My deliberations muddied as I thought about the many others I’d put behind bars over the years. None of it made sense. I’d heard of gambling and drugs debts being bought out before, but I’d had never heard of anyone buying out a hit. If I ever managed to escape and return home, would someone restore their contract to kill me?

  The answer to that question would have to wait. My current situation and a way out of it was the priority.

  XB-UVW, I kept repeating over in my mind until I came up with a way of remembering the crop duster’s registration number. X-men, Border, Ultra Violet Wings. Once I had a handle on it, I kept alternating it by reciting Leila’s address in my mind, in the hope that if I ever got out of this mess, these details would lead me back to Squat so I could make him pay for slaughtering Leila’s family.

  The pilot started the engine and we set off down the dirt runway. In no time, we were airborne and took a flight path no more than fifty feet above ground, probably to avoid radar. The thing that struck me was the pilot’s lack of concern for being caught and arrested. Maybe the white powder he snorted every once in a while gave him courage. But more than likely it was the stack of automatic rifles and guns stowed behind me and the bags that Squat had handed him. I’d never seen so many hundred-dollar bills in a bag before. No doubt the guy would be making a killing on his return with a stash of cocaine in return for the goods and money, and that would make up for the risk. More than likely, they had all the local officials in their pocket, but I still didn’t get why a pilot couldn’t make an honest living.

  I soon found out why. Besides snorting coke, he reached under the seat and pulled out a bottle of JD. Screwing the top off, he took the first of many long swigs he would take along the journey.

  Mexican music blasted through speakers, and annoyingly tone deaf, the pilot sang along to the beat. At no time had he attempted to talk to me, so I thought would give it a whirl.

  ‘How long before we arrive?’ I shouted over the drone of the engine and the music.

  He turned and snarled. ‘No English.’

  After that, I left him to it, and retreated into my mind. Mary would be getting the kids ready for bed. What seemed like a million scenarios passed through my mind as to what might be happening at home. I guessed that if my kidnapping had been announced, or my colleagues had found my shoe, they would know I had been taken. The FBI would be crawling all over my house setting up wiretaps. Mary, I imagined, would be screwed up inside, but putting on a brave front for the kids. We had taught the kids never to lie, but I had the idea Mary would have to give them some kind of initial misinformation. Then again, the story would be likely be on all the news channels. I always said to anyone who would listen, lies will always catch you out. I now knew the truth of that sentiment, at the tragic cost to Leila’s family and my own guilt at their deaths.

  I just hoped that my situation wouldn’t screw with my kids’ heads and cause lasting damage.

  Poor Rob – I imagined he would be up to his neck in his own guilt by now at having left me to get coffee. He would have gone wild and started banging a few of our snitches’ heads together to come up with some answers. Someone on the street would know what had been planned to go down. All it would take was someone who needed a favour; in exchange for our turning a blind eye, he or she would start singing. They always did. If it weren’t for snitches, half the damn cases we took on would never find their way to a conclusion.

  I knew we were travelling west, and after three hours, I reckoned we couldn’t be far from the coast. The pilot fished in his pocket, pulled out a Stanley knife and placed it in a cup holder next to his seat. Not that I could move; I froze anyway, with cold shivers running through my body. I looked out of the window as the aircraft banked and I could see the coastline up close and personal. I feared he was going to throw me out over the sea as shark bait. With my arms shackled, there was nothing much I could do to prevent it from happening.

  The aircraft straightened out, and the pilot turned in his seat, placing a bag over my head. I thought it was a small mercy that I wouldn’t see the drop. The engine spluttered and coughed as it slowed down and then we hit the ground with a thud and a bounce, then rolled onward and taxied to a stop.

  The door opened. I heard slicing and tugging at the duct tape. Hands grasped me and pulled me out of the seat. My legs buckled under me, but strong hands kept me upright.

  ‘Welcome to my humble abode, Kurt.’

  Chapter 10

  The Villa

  I was jammed in between two people in the back seat of a vehicle, listening to my new captor chat in an accented but cultured voice from the front passenger seat. He rambled on about the upcoming presidential elections in Mexico. His stance on the state of the Mexican economy and the need for better social housing, schooling and health care for the poor clearly defined his politics. If he was the one who was going to look after my welfare, at least I knew he had a conscience. At least I dared hope.

  We had only driven for around ten minutes when we stopped and someone helped me out of the vehicle. An arm either side of me gripped and guided me in a shuffle along a pathway. My host quietly gave his orders.

  ‘Take off his leg irons at the door. I don’t want the ceramics damaged.’

  I was brought to a jarring halt and, someone fumbled with the chains and removed the ankle shackles, leaving me with an itch from hell. The toe of my boot stubbed against a protrusion. I assumed it was the threshold and I could feel a welcome blast of cool air from an AC unit.

  ‘Remove the sack.’

  I scanned the opulent surroundings, and my jaw slackened at the contrast with the poverty of Leila’s home. We were in a large hallway facing two stairways running either side of the walls, leading to a balcony supported by two marble columns, and framing a large doorway. The feminine pink and cream decor and Greek-style ornate reliefs seemed at odds with the heavily armed guards. They wore black Special Forces-type uniforms. Glancing down at my feet, I could see my reflection in the ceramic floor tiles and I could smell floor polish.

  From behind me, my host called out orders.

  ‘Take him for a shower and remove all his shackles. Give him a change of clothes and then bring him to the dining room.’

  I noticed camera domes in th
e foyer and on the ceiling at the top of the stairway. He was obviously relaxed about any attempts I might make to escape, but then with the armed guards and the security system, I would have put my chances on a scale of one-to-ten at a big fat zero.

  A rifle barrel digging in my back guided me up the stairway and into a bedroom.

  The room was far removed from the one at Leila’s home. A chandelier hung from the centre of the ceiling. There was a flat-screen television facing a king-size bed. French windows led out onto a balcony. In the corner of the ceiling next to the clothes closet there was a CCTV security camera.

  A guard removed my waist and wrist shackles while two others watched and pointed their automatic rifles in my direction. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a young maid enter the room. Maybe in her in her early twenties, she was wearing a black skirt and a white starched blouse with a huge black bow tie. Her black hair was fastened in a bun. In her arms, she carried a bright orange bundle with what looked like an oversized wristwatch perched on the top. She set it down on the corner of the bed.

  ‘I need your clothes,’ she said.

  She had the appearance of a native Bolivian with her narrow eyes and high cheekbones. The rest of her was all Hispanic, especially her fulsome lips. My cheeks flamed and I hesitated, until the prod of a rifle butt prompted me to undress. Stripped of my dignity, I stood there in my underwear. Her hand gestured in a wave. An impish grin formed on her lips and a glint in her dark, almond-shaped eyes told me she enjoyed watching me squirm. One of the guards stepped forward. I slipped off my shorts and stood with my hand covering the source of my embarrassment. The maid laughed, picked up my clothing from the floor and breezed out of the room.

  The shower felt good, and I wished it could go on forever. When I removed the bandages from my feet, I saw they were far from healed.

  ‘Enough,’ someone called out.

  Stepping out of the shower, I wiped the steam from the cabinet mirror and rubbed myself down with a towel. The reflection staring back at me looked like a stranger. The swelling had almost gone from my upper lip, but both lips were raw and split. The gash on my nose sat at the top of a bend that said my nose was probably broken. Black casts in the skin around my bloodshot eyes reminded me of just how much of a beating I had taken.