“But, why Doug? Why not José? José has been here for much longer. It would make more sense for them to kidnap him then.”
“Did Doug have any interactions with them in the past? Did he mention anything?”
Noah shook his head. “Not that I know of. Just with Officer Ramón. And that’s been minimal.”
“So why Doug?”
He shrugged. “Bad luck? When the horses came, José was further down the beach with Rosie. He wasn’t there.”
“Yeah, I guess. But if they wanted José, they could have watched for him easily enough.”
“True.”
“So Doug was the target.” My eyes rose to meet his. “Or you.” My nerves hummed with fear. “It could have been you.”
“I suppose,” he said, thinking. “But they could have been watching me too.”
“And you weren’t with the group either. Just like José. So they just grabbed who they could?”
“I don’t know.”
We had to find the connection. “Let’s run through it again.”
He shrugged with resignation. “If you think it will help.”
“It will.” I drew in a breath. “This I do know. It’s an interviewing technique. We’re trained to have a witness describe the event multiple times. What they saw, then again, but the next time focus on what they heard or smelled or felt. It shifts their attention to different aspects of the event. It’s supposed to bring out new details.”
“Okay, but I’m not sure Chris is up to it.”
“I know. But we were there, too. Let’s just give it a try. Go all the way back to the beginning. We were on the beach, and we were kissing and—”
His eyes went to my lips. “Yes, we were,” he said with that husky voice.
“But you heard something. You—pulled away.”
He turned his attention back to the sand at his feet. “It’s not like I wanted to.”
“Okay, but, well, something stole your attention.”
He closed his eyes, searching his memory. “It was just sounds that didn’t fit, I guess. Something felt off. Must have been the horses. I’ve been walking the beach every night and that sound didn’t fit.”
“And you’d also been warned. So your subconscious was on alert.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“Then we ran down the beach toward the—wait a minute. The hueveros. The poachers. Where were they? You said it looked like they left in a hurry. Chris even thought that the group had scared them off.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Something Mr. Strix said. About the poaching being one part of the criminal activity of these cartels.” I nodded, excited now. “They’re definitely connected.”
“Right,” Noah said, starting to follow my logic. “There’s a hierarchy. The hueveros sell the eggs to someone. The middleman. What’d you call him in Costa Rica?”
“The buncher.”
I could see that look in his eyes. He was getting excited now. “They need to sell the eggs quickly to keep them fresh. Probably right away. And they’ll be back out there tonight. Maybe we could follow one. Get to the buncher and see what we can find out.”
I nodded, still thinking. “I guess that makes sense.”
“We follow them to the middleman, then up the ladder.”
“I understand the concept. But what’s our plan?”
“We find out what the guy knows, if he has a connection and, if not, who does?”
“But how? Are you saying we wait until he’s alone, then walk up and ask the questions? He’s not going to tell us. We need to find out how this operation works. How many men there are. If they’re armed. We need to figure out the best way to approach this guy. Blackmail, threat, appeal to his humanity?”
“We don’t have time for all that.”
I shook my head. That wouldn’t work. “There are too many unknowns.”
“Well, can you think of anything else?”
I heaved a sigh.
“I don’t know what to tell you. This is all we’ve got.”
“So we follow an egg collector to the buncher, who may, or may not, have any connection to the kidnappers? We”—I held up my hands and made quotes in the air—“talk to him and get the information we need.” My stomach churned with frustration. “That’s not a plan.”
Noah held up the ransom note. “I’ve seen on TV where they’d send this to a forensic science lab, have them analyze the fiber content of the paper, maybe trace the source, find every retail shop in west Mexico, then visit each and—”
“Right. We’ll follow the eggs.”
“I’m going, too,” Chris said, appearing from around a tree.
I shook my head. “Chris, I’ve been thinking that you should—”
“Not happening. I’m going.”
Great.
Chapter Nine
After gathering what tools and equipment we had that might be of use, we headed back down the beach to find a good place to hide before sunset when the turtles would come, and the poachers after them.
The two-way radios had wired earbuds. Not ideal, but at least we could cover more ground and be able to communicate. I took my cell phone, too, just in case. There was no cell reception on the beach, but who knows where we’d end up.
My plan was to set up a stakeout, identify one huevero who might be easy to follow, and go from there. We had one shot at this. We couldn’t risk being seen and scare them away, or worse, end up in a confrontation.
Not far down the shore, we started to see more turtles hauling out of the surf, and up onto the beach, to lay their eggs. I couldn’t help but feel for them; dragging those heavy bodies across the sand seemed so difficult for an animal whose entire life was spent weightlessly swimming in the ocean.
“This looks like a good spot to hide,” Noah urged, stealing my attention from the turtles.
I followed him and Chris into the bushes.
He handed me a pair of binoculars and I scoped the area. No sign of poachers yet.
“Now we wait.”
Chris scanned the beach with such intensity, if a poacher even thought of coming by, he’d know.
A growing dread gnawed at the insides of my stomach. I’d never been nervous on a stakeout before. Not like this. Maybe I was just used to Dalton. With him, I knew my back was covered. He wouldn’t falter. He would do exactly as he’d promised.
Noah was capable, but a bit of a wild card. I wasn’t sure what he might do. His logic took him to greater extremes, but it was logic, of sorts. At least I knew he wasn’t volatile.
Chris, on the other hand, was proving to be unpredictable. I had to figure out what to do about him.
As the sun dropped below the horizon, more and more turtles emerged from the waves. Soon there were so many that they were crawling over each other, fighting for any patch of sand, some digging nests where another nest had just been made. For as far as we could see, the smooth beach had turned into an undulating mass of turtle shells.
Since this was the second night of the arribada, the slower turtles were arriving—the old, the sick, the injured. I spotted one with an abnormal hump in its shell, then another with a chunk torn from its backside, probably from a shark. Some of the more feeble ones didn’t make it very far up the beach and started digging before they even got past the tide line.
The heat and humidity from the jungle seemed to envelope us. We were only a few feet off the beach into the foliage, but any breeze wasn’t getting in here. A trickle of sweat made its way down my spine.
Before I knew it, darkness had settled in and Noah gave me a nudge. There was movement among the turtles. Two men. Then three more arrived. I couldn’t be sure. It was so dark; it was hard to even make out shapes. The sounds of the surf drowned out everything we might hear.
“I wish these binoculars had night vision,” I whispered.
“No kidding,” Noah whispered back.
Every once in a while, I’d get a glimpse of movement.
The men worked with fervor, digging, filling sacks with eggs. Then they’d disappear into the bushes, then back out again to fill more bags.
“This is pointless,” Chris said. “We can’t see anything from here.”
Noah leaned closer to me, his warm breath on my neck, and whispered, “I can’t tell if they’re stacking the bags or handing them off to runners. What do you think?”
“I’m not sure.” I turned to ask Chris, but he was gone. “Dammit! If he exposes himself, it will all be over.”
Noah spun all the way around. “He was here a second ago.”
“He must be headed that way. Let’s go.” I pushed through the bushes, making a beeline for the spot where the poachers were taking their bags.
I shoved my way through a palm branch and ran right into him.
“What the hell?” he whispered.
“What the hell is right? What are you doing?”
“I’m finding Doug, that’s what. Look.” He pointed in the dark. “That one is using a wagon. We need to follow him.”
“Fine, we will. But we’re not going to just run after him. We’ll do it from a distance, in a coordinated formation, so he doesn’t detect us. We need to back away and get into place.”
“But what if he—”
“That’s enough,” Noah said with a command I’d never heard from him before. “You listen to me. You need to get your shit together. You just ran off, half-cocked, chasing the guy in the dark. What the hell were you thinking?”
“We need to—”
“No, we don’t,” Noah shut him down. “Poppy’s a trained federal agent,” he went on, angry now, “She knows exactly what to do and how to do it. If she says jump, we jump. If she says sit, we sit. If she says to back away and wait, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Chris huffed. “You’d better be right.”
Noah didn’t back down. “You need to start trusting Poppy, right now. Or I’ll put you on a plane out of here myself.”
“Fine,” Chris growled, and we backtracked to settle down among some bushes about fifty feet from the wagon.
We didn’t have to wait long. With so many turtles, the man quickly filled it to capacity. As he took hold of the handle, the clank of a rusty hinge rang out, and the wheels squeaked as it started to move.
“We can follow the sound,” I said. “Noah, try to stay ahead of him. Not too close. Chris, stay to his right. At least thirty yards away. I’ll follow behind. Radios on channel six. Let’s go.”
As soon as they were out of my sight, I pressed the call button on my radio and whispered into the mike, “Radio check.”
“I gotcha,” Noah replied.
“Me too,” said Chris.
“Okay, I’ll call for check-in at regular intervals. Poppy, out.”
I crept along, my head down, ready to dash back into the bushes if there was any sign of someone coming toward us or from behind me.
We followed the wagon for what must have been two miles into the forest, walking in the pitch dark. I hoped my sense of direction didn’t fail me now.
The wagon made a sharp change in direction, to the south. Then the creak of the wheels stopped. In the thick of the jungle. There was no sign of anything here. No lights. Nothing.
The chatter of the night insects took over, buzzing in my ears.
I inched forward, my finger on the radio button. “Tell me you’ve got him.”
“He stopped,” Noah said. “But I don’t see him.”
“Chris?”
No answer.
“Chris.”
No answer.
From ahead, I heard a thump.
“Chris!”
No answer.
The creaky wheels started to turn again.
“Noah, something’s wrong.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Standby.”
I crab-walked in the direction I’d heard the thump, as fast as I could without revealing myself, and found Chris lying on the ground in a heap.
I dropped to my knees in the sand next to him.
“Omigod! Chris. What happened?”
No response.
I whipped my pack off my back, yanked the zipper open, and dug around for a flashlight. Where was it? Finally, my hand found it, and I switched on the red beam.
Chris was out cold, blood gushing from a gash in his forehead, running down his face.
“Chris, Chris, are you all right? Chris!” I gave him a little shake. “Wake up!”
Oh Chris! What was I thinking? We shouldn’t have done this.
Okay. Okay. Focus. First things first. I had to stop the bleeding.
I rummaged through the backpack with a new fury. There must be a first aid kit. Something.
Tape measure. GPS unit. Headlamp.
I switched on the headlamp and shoved it onto my head.
Mesh bags. Notebook. Nothing. No first aid kit.
“Noah!” I called into the radio. “Chris has been hit. He’s bleeding.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“How bad is it?”
“Bad. Get back here.”
“Okay, I just, I can see the meet-up spot. A little fishing shack up ahead. I recognize it.”
Chris moaned.
“Get back here!”
“Roger that.”
I pressed my hand to the gash at his forehead. I had to stop the bleeding.
Chris’s hand moved, reached for his head. “What…what happened?”
“It’s all right. Just relax.”
“Doug. Where’s Doug?” He shifted, trying to sit up, but got hit with a wave of nausea. He leaned over and retched.
Noah arrived. “What the hell happened?”
“I think the guy hit him with his shovel. Maybe he thought he was trying to steal his eggs. I don’t know.”
Chris lost consciousness again and slumped in my lap. My fingers slipped from his forehead, sticky with blood. “We’ve got to stop the bleeding. And he probably has a concussion. Do you have anything in your backpack? Gauze, tape, anything?”
“No.”
“We’ll use your shirt, if I can tie it tight enough. No, that won’t work. Not on his head. I’ll hold onto it.”
Noah crouched down next to me. “There’s a full first aid kit back at the cabin.”
“He can’t walk all the way back to the cabin with that gash in his head. He’ll bleed to death. Right now, he’s not even—” I shuddered “—conscious. We’ll stay here until morning.”
“I can go. I know where we are. José thought that shack was an old fisherman’s place. I can get to the cabin, grab the first aid kit, and be back long before daylight.”
“No, it’s not safe.” I shook my head. “Chris got clobbered with a shovel. Who’s to say that won’t happen to you? We need to stay together. I can hold off the bleeding.” I squeezed harder.
“Hey, I’ve run a few ops in my time, you know. I can take care of myself. I’ll be there and back before you know it and we’ll have him patched up.”
“I don’t know, Noah.” I didn’t want him to leave. This was all falling apart.
“Take care of him. I’ll be right back.” He gave me a kiss on my forehead and was gone.
I held Chris’s head in my lap, my hand pressed to his bloody forehead and rocked back and forth.
Omigod, omigod! What have I done? I never should have let you come along. You could have been killed.
Chris was my best friend in the world and I’d let him down.
Chapter Ten
By the time Noah returned, Chris had stirred. He seemed more sleepy than brain-injured, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I made him stay seated.
“Everything go okay?” I said to Noah. “You all right? You didn’t run into anyone?”
“I’m fine,” he said, his voice calm and reassuring. He knelt down next to me and flipped open the first aid kit. “There’s some of those butterfly suture thingi
es.”
“Open some alcohol swabs. We need to clean the wound first.”
Noah gently swabbed Chris’s forehead. Then one at a time, I applied the sutures. The gash was a good three inches long, and deep. “You’ll need stitches. But for now, those little plastic tabs will have to do.”
I took hold of his hand. “It will be morning soon. Then Noah will go get the four-wheeler and we’ll get you to a clinic.”
“No way.” Chris shook his head. “I’m not leaving.”
“Chris, listen to me. You’re hurt. Badly. You need stitches.”
“I don’t care. We have to keep going.” He planted his fists in the ground and shoved himself upward.
“Sit down,” I said, gripping his shoulder. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“But we’ll lose him.”
“It’s all right,” Noah said in a low voice. “We’ve found it. The shack. It’s right over there.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Look at him. We’re heading back to get him to a doctor.”
“I’m fine,” Chris said, trying to get up again. “It was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing. You’ve been unconscious.”
Chris turned on me. His eyes glowed in the red light with an eerie intensity. “Well, I’m conscious now, and as long as I’m breathing, I’m going after Doug.”
And get yourself killed, I thought. But I didn’t say it.
“If you were me.” He faltered. “If Doug were your…” Tears started down his cheeks.
I wrapped my arms around him. “I know. I understand.”
“We’re so close,” Noah said. “I saw it. There’s a shack, right up ahead. That’s got to be the place. We can still get over there and see what we can see.”
“How far?”
“Maybe a hundred feet and we’d be close enough to see.”
“I can do that,” Chis said.
There was no talking him out of it. I knew that much. “But you need to stay down, hidden.”
He nodded in agreement.
Noah helped him to his feet. He wobbled, but started walking forward.
Operation Turtle Ransom: A suspenseful, wild-ride-of-an-adventure on a tropical beach in Mexico (Poppy McVie Mysteries Book 4) Page 11