“I see that I cannot convince you. You’re young. You’re an ideologue. I know what that’s like. I know you could never be persuaded. That is perhaps why the very young fight the wars. So I will give you this.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of printer paper and handed it to Els.
She unfolded it. Els could just make out an aerial photograph of a section of Eastern Colzorona in the dimness. In the center was a nondescript warehouse circled in red. She looked at Seve. “What is it?”
“They’re moving fast. A lot has changed since you crossed into the U.S. Even though you escaped, Calisto considers the operation a success. He’s abducting foreigners just like you as a primary means of drug transport. Only couples, like you and Neesha.”
She pointed to the warehouse. “And this is what, a base of operations? His headquarters?”
“No,” Seve shook his head painfully. “It’s where he’s keeping them. Half of them. When they get to a certain amount, the ones that stay behind in Mexico get shipped south to work in the fields and processing plants as slave labor. Others he forces into prostitution.”
Els’ eyes widened in the dark. “How many?”
“I don’t know. A dozen. Maybe two. Maybe more. The rest are at a house in the hills. Those get the surgery, they’re the mules. The others are only kept hostage for incentive until their partners are across the border, then he he ships them south.”
Els’ hand instinctively curled into a fist around the paper.
“I can’t help you anymore. You understand that don’t you? I have no men. Nobody wants to die fighting them.”
“You’ve done enough. I wouldn’t ask you to fight. Thank you for this.”
“It’s not much. I wish I could do more.”
Els picked her bag up off the floor. The weapons clattered and echoed off the high ceiling. “It’s all I could ask for.”
“You could ask for you life. For protection, but it seems like you are not interested in either.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“I know. It’s a long time till sunup. You want to see the doctor tonight?”
“No,” Els shook her head. “Tomorrow night. You can take me back to your place for the night if it’s okay. I think I have some things to do tomorrow morning.”
“Of course. Maybe you’ll change your mind after a good night’s sleep. Calisto will be looking for you, you know, he hasn’t forgotten.”
“I’ll be easy to find. I’ll be the one pointing a gun at his head.”
FIFTY THREE
It was morning on the outskirts of Colzorona, a rocky expanse of desolate sienna hardpan. A new day’s sun was just beginning to shine on a small camper trailer. Parked outside the camper was a dusty white pickup. The only other things besides brush and leafless trees were a rusted barbecue grill and a worn lawn chair patched with duct tape where the vinyl had torn.
Spears had been up before the sun, watching dawn crawl in through the windows. He was wedged into the built in dinette, sitting in a vinyl booth. A small battery powered stereo played Waylan Jennings at a low volume.
Spears had his water bottle and a freshly opened can of chicken soup in front of him. He ate it cold, slowly raising the spoon to his ruined face.
Next to the can of soup were a cheap pair of drugstore reading glasses, a pen, and a jumbo book of word search puzzles, pink cover with the word “easy” written across the top in yellow.
He was down to the last three puzzles in the book, and was looking forward to spending the next five hours or so completing them. He hoped he could finish up before the rising afternoon temperatures forced him to drive his truck around with the air conditioning blasting until the heat broke.
And suddenly his placid morning was interrupted by a sound like hail striking the outside of the camper.
He paused with his spoon halfway between the can and his mouth.
A tiny hole, maybe smaller than the end of his pinkie, had opened up in the wall, a perfect circle in the thin aluminum, mushrooming inward around the edges. Daylight streamed in through the hole in a narrow ray. He followed the beam of light and saw that there was a hole exactly the same size in the opposite wall.
Another sound like hail bouncing off a tin roof, and another pair of holes opened up.
The sound of hail striking again, this time it was accompanied by the unmistakable twang of a bullet ricocheting.
Spears calmly set the spoon down on the table.
All around him the camper was being ventilated, holes appearing, followed by the streaming light cutting thin yellow paths illuminating the dust.
His pale blue eyes moved around the interior to the far side containing his bed. There was a .38 sitting on the rumpled covers.
It wouldn’t do him much good even if he could get to it.
He sighed and leaned forward to twist the volume knob up on the stereo.
As he reached for it his hand exploded in a flash of red taking his thumb and first two fingers and shattering the stereo into shards of plastic shrapnel.
He held his bleeding hand out in front of him, crimson pulp and white fragment of bone.
Thick droplets of blood rained down and spattered on the tabletop.
Spears looked at his hand, his scarred face registered no emotion. He may as well have been looking at a stranger’s obliterated appendage.
“Fuck it,” he said, his voice drowned out by the patter of bullets slinging through the camper in a raging torrent of lead.
The windows burst inward and the hail chewed through the flimsy metal.
And finally one caught him dead center of his profile, just below his cheek.
The impact sheered the remains of his face off, finishing the job that machete-wielding gangsters had begun decades ago.
He slumped forward onto the table, lifeless, his face a gaping red hole from the top of his mouth to his eyebrows.
The silence that followed was as abrupt as the gunshots.
A pool of blood spread out beneath his head and dripped down the tabletop and onto the floor. No one was left to hear the drops falling and smacking on the linoleum.
FIFTY FOUR
Later that same day, Susan Poehler wondered when she would die. She didn’t know where she was, only that she was being held captive in a dingy warehouse with concrete floors. She could feel every rough grain and imperfection with the bottoms of her bare feet.
It had been day for a few hours. Her fifth day. Light coming in from the high windows cast shadows against the chain link, little diamond patterns projected across her body.
There were rows of cages there, like dog kennels lined against a wall. Most were empty, but she could see women like herself occupying at least a dozen. And they were bringing more in every day.
The cage next to hers was empty. It had been inhabited by a teen-aged, dark-haired girl from Quebec named Meagan until yesterday when they dragged her out, screaming.
Where? She wondered. Where did they go when they disappeared through that bright square of light at the end of the building? Someplace worse. She didn’t want to find out. She was sure that wherever Meagan was, she was still alive. And she was sure of another thing: she didn’t want to be.
She looked across the massive room at the three men sitting in folding chairs, smoking and chatting with assault rifles hanging from shoulder straps or leaned against their thighs. One tapped his foot and pulled out a cell phone to check the time. Just another day at the office. Waiting for 5:00.
She shouldn’t look at them, she knew. They didn’t like that.
She wished she couldn’t see anything. But that was worse.
The nights in the warehouse were pitch black. There was nothing but the sound of crying, the senseless begging and the smell of shit and piss that the men grudgingly hosed out of their cages every few days if they were lucky.
Suddenly the men stood up. There was small commotion as they headed to the open door.
It was
a familiar sight to Susan and to most of the women that had been there longer than a day or two. They were bringing in another.
Susan watched as they shoved her through the door and slammed it behind them.
Two more men had joined the others, and they marched a butch-looking woman in her fifties across the floor. She was broad-shouldered and had a gray crewcut, matted with a dark bloodstain on the right side.
They slung open the cage door next to Susan’s and threw the butch woman inside.
She hit the concrete hard and curled her body around into a fetal position in the corner, howling in a chaotic jumble of rage and fear that made her sound inhuman.
One of the men shut the gate, pulled a chain around it and snapped a padlock on the chain.
He took a moment to listen to her sobbing and screaming before laughing at her. He kicked her cage and Susan heard him speak in Spanish. “You sound like a fucking bear that got shot in the cunt. Why don’t you stop screaming, you ugly fucking faggot bitch?”
The woman did not respond. Susan guessed she didn’t speak Spanish, or didn’t hear him over her own cries.
The man in front of her cage laughed again and he pulled the zipper down on his pants. “It’s been a long time since you seen one of these, eh?” He pulled his prick out and stuck it through one of the diamond-shaped spaces in the fence. “Does it make you wonder? Aren’t you ever curious what one of these could do to you? What you could do to it? Maybe if you had some dick in you you wouldn’t want to look like such a faggot. Do you hear me?” He kicked the fence again. “I think you do. I’ll bet you wish you had one of your own, huh? You can have this one anytime you like, bitch.” He unleashed a stream of piss that arced through to the back of the cage and splattered over the woman. The instant she felt hot liquid touch her skin she sprang up and rushed forward to the gate in a single motion and made a wild grab at the soft part of the man hanging through the cage. He pulled away and she tore the skin of her hand on the fence. She was in a rage now, wet and stinking of cooling piss. She pounded against the chain link with her bleeding hands while the man outside just laughed at her.
He turned to Susan. “I see you looking at me, too. Don’t worry, baby, there’s plenty of cock for all you girls.” He zipped his pants up. “But watch out for that one, though,” he motioned at the furious woman in the cage next to her. “I think the smell of your pussy drives her wild.”
Susan looked down, trying to break eye contact until the man walked away to join the others at the far end of the warehouse.
When he was gone, Susan spoke to the new captive. “You shouldn’t do things like that. You shouldn’t provoke them. They’ll just make it harder on you.”
The woman looked over at her, red-faced, bleeding fists clenched. “How much worse could it get?”
“I try not to imagine,” said Susan.
“What do they do here? What do they do with the women?”
“I don’t know. They took my friend, too. She’s not here though.”
“I was with my partner. We were taking photographs of the desert. She’s not here either. I don’t know where she is.”
“They’ll let you talk to her in a while. That’s what they did for everyone else. I don’t know why, but they’ll give you a phone, and you can talk to her.”
“What did you say. When they gave you the phone?”
Susan shrugged. “I said I was alive. That they kept me in a cage. She told me they wouldn’t kill me if I cooperate, but that’s a lie. When you get the phone, just tell your partner to run if she can. You’re not getting out of here. None of us are.”
The butch woman sat down with her back against the fence.
They spoke no more after that.
And sometime later- none of them could say if it was hours or minutes, time was meaningless in the dim hell they inhabited- something sudden happened that threw their indifferent world of cold concrete and thin steel into disorder.
One of the window panes high above them shattered inward and a small black cylinder sailed down, rolling as it hit the floor.
The men stared at it, held in stunned disbelief.
None of them moved.
And then a cloud of smoke poured out of the cylinder.
They stood, all five at once, as sharp pain like blazing needles dug into their faces and eyes. They scrambled, overturning the table and chairs in a mad rush for the door, each halted breath like sucking down burning embers.
They could not see, but they all heard as more glass burst over their heads and more canisters rolled along the floor.
The first one at the door twisted the knob and pushed in, but it only opened enough to reveal a chain had been locked around the handles from the other side.
“What the fuck are you doing? Open the fucking door!” someone shouted from the back.
“I fucking can’t, asshole. It’s locked up.”
“It’s a raid,” someone else shouted. “We’re trapped in here!”
“The back door, then. Let’s fucking move!”
They turned and fought their way through the fog as another cannister clattered onto the floor. The fog was so thick now that even if their eyes weren’t sealed shut by hot pain they still wouldn’t be able to see through it.
They ran across the warehouse blindly, with their shirt collars pulled up over their mouths and noses.
One of them stumbled and hit the ground, his assault rifle slid away from him. He reached out for it, feeling in the fog with his fingertips, but he couldn’t find it. He got up and followed the others.
In their cages, the women were screaming, eyes and throats searing. Some of them kicked desperately against the gates, but they would not give.
The first man found the door and was almost surprised when it swung open. He felt fresh air rush across his inflamed face, but it was little comfort. And when he felt the ground beneath his feet, he took the rifle hanging from his shoulder and fired it, holding the trigger down and swinging the barrel back and forth in a wide arc.
The next man followed him out the door and into the hazy light. He heard gunshots and he too began to fire wildly. The other three men stumbled out after him, choking and blind. All but one of them began to fire at the unseen enemy.
And when the last one had exited the warehouse, they began to die.
Amid the din of their own shots, they were vaguely aware of the steady roll of gunfire from somewhere far away in front of them.
The first two men were hit full on, hot lead ate holes into them and they both collapsed near each other in a blood-soaked heap.
The other three men, hearing the gunfire of the other two fall silent, recognized the hazard of their handicap and took off in different directions.
The first one fell with a row of bullet holes opened across his back, shredded skin and the material of his shirt mingling together and was held fast by his own hot blood.
The next one took it in the back of his skull as he fled. He hit the ground, already lifeless, blood and brains scattered across the dirt in a thick red spray before his corpse.
The last man, the unarmed one, in his blind confusion had somehow managed to run toward the gunshots. As he ran, his vision became slightly clearer and he saw a figure clad head-to-toe in black emerge from the desert.
He could not stop, he had gathered too much momentum. So when the figure slowly raised the M-16 to his shoulder and fired a single shot into him, he was running to meet it.
It tore into his stomach and through his back and he hit the ground rolling, both hands over the wound in his stomach, trying to hold in the blood.
The figure stood over him and he looked up at it, crying, “Don’t. Please, don’t! Please!”
The figure’s only response was to put the barrel of the rifle to his head. He felt the hot terminus of rounded metal burning his skull. And then nothing more as the figure pulled the trigger.
Inside the warehouse, the women were in agony, consumed by the thick pall of burning smoke.
Their eyes and skin burned, lungs seemed as though they were inhaling flaming rubber. Women were tearing at their faces in pain, breaking nails and spraining fingers trying to pry apart the fences that held them. A woman in her thirties named Allison lay on the floor of her cage, dry heaving with enough force to send up flecks of blood and mucus from her gaping mouth.
Susan was trying to keep calm. She had her shirt balled around her nose and mouth, trying to breathe slowly and evenly. She didn’t want to hyperventilate while she was inhaling this toxic fog.
She heard a noise outside her cage, the clinking of metal, like someone was worrying the chain. She forced her eyes as wide as they would open and wiped at the constant stream of tears flowing. In the acrid haze she saw something terrifying, something black and insectoid standing outside the gate. It’s eyes were perfect round circles as wide as her outstretched hands and its face ended in two grotesque round protrusions at the bottom. She watched as the thing took something with two long handles from a bag and fit it over the chain. They were bolt cutters! The fog was beginning to dissipate a little and she could see that it was a small person in a gas mask outside, and he was setting her free.
The chain fell away and Susan lingered for just a moment, but as soon as the metal links hit the concrete, her savior was on to the next cage, snapping off another chain.
Susan kicked open the gate and headed for the dim light of the open door.
They were all outside now, standing in the shadow of the warehouse. There were fourteen women in all, panic-stricken and in incredible discomfort, but they were alive.
The black clad figure passed around two gallon-sized jugs of water and some towels so the women could wash their faces. The water alleviated the worst of the pain, but their faces were still raw and swollen. But they could all see now. The men that held them lay scattered on the ground, dead in pools of blood soaking into the dirt.
Mules:: A Novel Page 26