Deadly Journey

by Declan Conner

  ‘I need a shave. Is there a razor?’

  Two of the guards looked at each other, puzzled. I made the gesture of shaving, as they clearly hadn’t understood a word I had said.

  ‘No shave,’ one of them said, and grabbing me by the arm, he pulled me out of the en-suite and pointed his rifle at the clothing on the bed.

  The bright-orange garment was a one-piece overall. There was no underwear, so I pulled the overall on over my legs, stood to finish dressing, and fastened the buttons. One of the guards pushed me back onto the bed and picked up the wristwatch-type object. On closer inspection, I could see it was an offender tracking bracelet that he clasped around my ankle. As the fastener clicked into place, the bracelet started to emit a flashing green L.E.D. He stood back and threw a pair of flip-flops beside me. I glanced at my feet and then the flip-flops and back again. Shrugging my shoulders, I looked at the guard nearest me and pointed at my feet. He talked on a radio and shortly afterwards, the maid re-entered carrying bandages. She knelt in front of me and bandaged each foot in turn.

  Glancing up at me, she whispered, ‘Do everything they ask. You may be worth something to them, but they’ll shoot you like a dog if you don’t give them what they want.’

  She stood and walked over to the clothes closet and opened the door. After fishing inside, she turned and tossed me a pair of slippers. ‘Try these.’

  The guards hauled me to my feet, led me out of the bedroom, down the stairway and through the large doors in the foyer into a dining room. There was a long oak table with a dozen chairs. A gray-haired man of slight build sat at one end of the table, with his head bowed, studying papers. The canvas bags we had brought on our journey sat to one side of him, with one of them open.

  A guard forced me to sit to one side, halfway down the table. My host’s head remained buried in the file on the table and he began to read aloud.

  ‘Kurt Rawlings, drug enforcement agent. El Paso. Age thirty-four. Date of birth, December fifth, nineteen-seventy four. Wife, Mary. One son and one daughter, Craig and Claire. It says here you passed on promotion to stay with your existing team, following the recovery of twenty-five million dollars’ worth of cocaine. Black belt in judo and karate. Top scores in marksmanship, et cetera, et cetera.’

  He closed the file, raised his head, and gazed at me over half-rimmed spectacles.

  My heart sank and a cold wave washed through my body. He knew exactly who I was.

  And looking at him, I now knew exactly at whose mercy my life depended.

  Chapter 11

  Devil in Disguise

  It was hard to believe that I was sitting at the table with our department’s very own Ace of Clubs. A sigh escaped my lips, catching his attention, and without moving his head, he shot me a penetrating stare over his glasses. Averting my gaze at first, I glanced back to see him reading papers.

  His appearance was that of a genteel, amiable professor, rather than a potential dictator. Only the abnormality in his brow, giving him a Neanderthal ridge, created a primal signal that behind the mask might lurk danger. If I thought I had reached despair before, knowing who sat at the head of the table took events to a new low. Escaping and returning to my loved ones seemed more of an outside chance than ever. But why and what had brought me to this situation was beyond anything I could work out.

  The guy stared at me again, this time as if trying to guess what I was thinking. A disgraced Mexican politician, he had been hounded out of office for corruption and was suspected of having a connection to Panama’s former President Noriega and his money-laundering and drug-running operations.

  Always on the move, he had evaded justice over the years. But that was no surprise, given that the majority of the population he presided over considered him a hero of the impoverished. So many depended on a paycheque from him to put food on the table, or to supplement their public sector pay, or were fearful for their lives, that someone betraying him was a long shot at best. His politics might sound magnanimous to the population at large, but he was fast becoming the biggest threat to the established order.

  He lowered his gaze, flicking through more pages of what I assumed was my personnel record.

  I would have given anything to turn the tables on him and sit in his place. To slap cuffs on him would have given me pleasure. Department estimates were that his operation brought in more than thirty percent of the gross domestic product for his state. The Mexican army seemed to be reluctant to move against him. But then the top brass probably had one eye on the future. He employed ex-Special Forces soldiers and top brass at retirement, particularly those who had been born in his area of influence. His army and corrupt influence gave the mere mention of his name the air of his invincibility. Capturing him would more than likely result in a medal. Resting my elbows on the table, I shook my head.

  Defying belief, here he was, no more than a few feet from me and I was powerless to act. Francesco Perez Alonso, better known as “El Presidente”, head of the Perez cartel.

  Looking at him, it was hard to believe that the United States government would be cowed by his influence. Word was, the boys at the top were afraid he was planning to fund his old political party, or maybe a brand-new one, and he would take over the country as a dictator.

  Where or why I figured in his plans, I couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t as if I were a top executive in drug enforcement. All I knew was that for now, I owed him my life for buying out the hit. It left me certain that I had to spend my every waking hour coming up with a plan to escape.

  He rummaged in the open bag and pulled out a wallet that looked suspiciously like mine. Inspecting the contents he took out a photo and slid it across to me.

  ‘Your wife and children, I assume? Keep it, we have a copy.’

  The nape of my neck felt an icy blast. Not only did he have my service record and address, but also a photo of my family. Acid started to burn away at the lining of my stomach at the thought they might be stalking and considering harm to my family. Instinct told me to start asking questions like a good agent, but logic told me it was better to act dumb, and hopefully the silence would get him to open up.

  He held up my wedding ring.

  ‘I’m so pleased we have this. It saves sending them a piece of your anatomy as proof we are holding you. All we need now is a swab of your DNA to go with the ransom note, together with a speech from you on camera.’

  He picked up a hand bell and rang it several times. One of his security guards opened the door and in walked the young maid carrying a small specimen bottle. She was wearing gossamer kitchen gloves.

  The maid came up to me and smiled as she took a swab from the sample bottle. There was no need for instructions. I opened my mouth and she tickled the inside of my cheek with the swab and then replaced it in the bottle.

  Perez put on a pair of latex gloves in the manner of a surgeon preparing for an operation. He glanced at me with a smirk as if to show me how intelligent he was at avoiding transferring any evidence. I couldn’t help but curl my lips at the thought I already had his prints on the photograph of Mary and the kids.

  He opened the file in front of him and teased a typed letter out of an envelope. He slid it across the table to me. ‘Read it. I’m sure you need to know what we think your freedom is worth.’

  He took a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the ring, and slipped it inside the envelope. When he snapped his fingers, the maid passed him the sample bottle and it followed the ring inside the envelope. The letter was addressed to the head of my department and dated. I cringed. The only thing that was missing was the sender’s name and address and a signature.

  My eyes honed in on a figure in words and writing. Twenty-five-million dollars. I couldn’t contain my silence any longer. That sum of money was beyond my family’s means if the government failed to pay the ransom. I was looking at a death warrant. When did negotiations with bank robbers holding hostages ever end in them being given a getaway airplane?

  Never.

&nb
sp; The government would rather spend twenty-five million sending in Black Hawks and teams of Special Forces operatives. I decided to act dumb, with the intention of finding out why they had chosen to kidnap me.

  ‘Why twenty-five million? My family can’t raise that!’

  ‘I’m not asking your family. You and your government stole an equal sum from me and my country when you confiscated our shipment of cocaine. It’s simple: I want my money back... one way or another.’

  The last part of the sentence, he’d almost spat out through gritted teeth.

  ‘But why me? I only work for them for a paycheque to support my family.’

  ‘Now, that’s not really true, is it? You work for drug enforcement because of your ideology concerning drugs. To me you are a terrorist. I hope the orange overalls will not be lost in their meaning to your government when they see your film.’

  ‘A terrorist?’

  ‘What’s so strange about that? We are war with the United States in the same way that you are at war with the Taliban or Al Qaeda.’

  ‘But Mexico isn’t at war with the United States. You have the same laws against drug trafficking.’

  ‘For now, maybe, but laws that are against the public interest are meant to be broken. Otherwise, your laws on prohibition would still be in place. Just think about all that wasted beer the FBI poured down the drain. I may be your Al Capone today, but in years to come I will be the darling of Wall Street. At least some of your states have seen sense on cannabis.’

  In my mind, the guy was more than two cents short of a dollar. He was getting agitated, so I thought it better to zip my lip.

  He called over the maid and whispered to her. She left the room and returned with two security guards carrying a model of a hospital which they placed on the table. A guard took hold of my sweaty hand and pressed it firmly palm down on the letter. Perez took the letter and added it to the envelope.

  ‘You know they’ll have to legalize cocaine again at some time in the future?’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Come on, you work for the DEA. Surely, they teach you the history of the drug? But then I guess not.’ He rolled his eyes and continued without waiting for a reply. ‘Cocaine was used in the United States for many medicinal purposes, from alleviating toothache, to weaning people from heroin. In its original recipe, even Coca Cola, your famous American soft drink, used extracts from the coca leaf, including cocaine. Hell, your industrialists used to hand out free pills to workers as a pick-me-up.’

  ‘Well, yes, but that was before scientists discovered the side effects and the harm it caused to mental health.’

  ‘Scientists? Bah. You mean those same scientists who learned how to extract cocaine from the coca leaf to turn it into a narcotic. Still, I guess I owe them a debt of gratitude. Your government and its agencies are hypocrites. They browbeat fifty-one countries into banning the growing of coca and advocate eradication, yet grant a license to only one company to import the leaf. Then they give permission for them to extract the cocaine from the leaf so that your precious world-dominating-soda company can put what is left into their syrup recipe. Anyway, enough of that, we need to move on.’

  He pushed back his chair and stood. Moving the canvas bags to one side revealed a laptop. Fumbling, he removed a pen drive. Aptly named, it actually resembled a round fountain pen when he applied a cover with a clip and placed it in his top jacket pocket.

  One of the guards placed his hands on a large framed painting on the wall behind Perez. It depicted Adam and Eve at the tree of knowledge; he opened it on hinges to reveal a wall safe. The guard stood to one side. Perez entered a code and opened the safe. He placed the laptop inside and then the canvas bags, followed by the ransom envelope.

  Perez closed the safe. He turned, looked directly at me and then at the model.

  ‘This is what your government has made me put on hold because of your actions. It’s a state of the art emergency hospital with a pharmacy that my people badly need.’

  I heard his words, but all the time I was thinking what the department would give to have a search warrant to blow the safe for the information it contained. His feeble attempt at indoctrination to win me over failed.

  Thinking it best to humour him, I attempted to gain some empathy.

  ‘Sorry to mess up your plans, but shouldn’t the government be building the hospital?’

  ‘They should, but they won’t.’

  ‘What you have planned is a magnificent gesture. I hope you get to build the hospital.’

  Thinking about the pharmacy gave me the idea it was a perfect front for getting the medication used to make crack cocaine. I suspected those were his motives, rather than a philanthropic gesture.

  ‘Do you play chess, Agent Rawlings?’

  ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Good. Maybe you will indulge me when you’re settled in. I could do with a new victim.’ The laugh that followed grated, interspersed as it was with pig-like grunts.

  I glanced around the room, mentally noting every detail.

  He turned to me and smiled. It was as if he could read my mind. ‘Don’t even think of escaping. The bracelet on your ankle contains explosives. Move outside a three-hundred-meter perimeter and you’ll lose a foot. The guards each have a remote control to set off the charge.’

  A gulp stuck in my throat. He reached out and patted me on the back. Clearly, he had me in check, but I hoped not checkmate.

  ‘Don’t worry. For now I’ll offer you my hospitality to give you time to recover from your ordeal. After that, providing you cooperate... no problem. All I want to know from you is... Well, let’s save it for later, shall we? Once I have the information I need, you can live a life of luxury until your government caves in and pays me what I’m due. Any questions?’

  I wanted to ask who had placed the original contract on my life, but there and then didn’t feel like the right time to broach the subject.

  There was another question I dared not ask… What if I don’t cooperate?

  Chapter 12

  Insurance Policy

  The start of my third day of captivity began with me blinking at the light piercing through the slats of the shutters covering the glass doors to the balcony. I shielded my eyes. As comfortable as it was wearing silk pyjamas and being shrouded with silk sheets, on a soft mattress and with duck-down pillows, sleep had proven difficult. My aching limbs were not the only thing that kept me awake for long periods. Thoughts of what my captors wanted from me had circled a constant stream of scenarios as to how, if ever, I would gain freedom.

  There was a tap on the door and the young maid entered pushing a cart holding a cooked breakfast of bacon, eggs and hash browns. The aroma of the food and wisps of steam from the coffee carafe fought for the pleasure senses in an otherwise blocked nose. Stony Face, the guard, rose from his chair and unfastened the shutters, throwing them open to a burst of light that made me squint. Reaching over to the nightstand, I picked up the photo of Mary and the kids by the edges. Their innocent smiles gave me warmth and comfort. Distracted as the maid arrived at my bedside, I replaced the photo against the lamp stand, positioned so I could see their happy faces.

  ‘Buenos días, Señor Rawlings.’

  ‘Good morning...err?’

  ‘Leandra.’

  Her smile was infectious.

  ‘You can call me Kurt.’ I returned the smile.

  ‘Please eat. You need to build up your strength.’

  Stony Face stepped forward and grabbed her wrist as she was about to place a steel knife and fork on the tray.

  ‘Idiota. Tenador de plastico.’

  Releasing his grip, he raised a hand in the gesture of a backhanded slap. Leandra stood akimbo and gave him a petulant stare before she cut the bacon into portions. She smiled directly into my eyes, as if she were trying to tell me something. Swivelling on a heel, she turned and scuttled from the room, taking the steel knife and fork with her.

  The aroma of the food made it impossible
to resist, and I delicately picked up a piece of the bacon between my thumb and forefinger. Dropping the bacon into my mouth, I savoured the salty flavour, wanting to make every chew count. Leandra returned and handed me a plastic fork.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘He was afraid you would use the utensils as a weapon.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Stony’s perception was right. It was the first thought that had come to mind when I saw them in her hands.

  ‘Señor Perez has arranged for his doctor to visit you. He will arrive in the next fifteen minutes,’ Leandra said. Her smile continued to radiate warmth as she poured a cup of coffee. ‘Is there anything else I can get you?’ she asked.

  I thought about Perez’s prints on the picture for when I escaped. I knew we didn’t have them in his file.

  ‘Yeah, I could do with a small picture frame for my photograph.’

  ‘That’s easy. I have one spare in my bedroom. I’ll get it for you later.’

  ‘What’s the itinerary after the doctor?’

  ‘Itinerary?’

  ‘Sorry... plan.’

  ‘Ah, I understand. They have a full day planned for you to relax at the poolside. Maybe you can watch some television, or read a book? The film has been cancelled until the wounds on your face heal.’

  I tried not to let my disappointment show at the delay of them sending the ransom note to confirm I was alive. So far, Perez had been true to his word. I hoped it would stay that way.

  ‘I’ve left you some boxer shorts and a towel on the bedside cabinet. When you’ve finished with the doctor, I’ll see you at the pool.’

  Leandra turned with a twirl, and in her usual unfazed manner, she stepped lightly out of the room, her skirt swaying to the wiggle of her backside. Damn if I didn’t think she was flirting with me.