An Abduction (The Son of No One Trilogy Book 1)

by Rowley, M C

  We made our way through the terrain and the slope was manageable, but Pep kept slumping to his knees, which I found strange. That in the cabin, even faced with Salvatierra´s visits, Pep hadn´t been scared. Yet now, he was beyond even that. He´d given up. He had no fight. I myself felt stronger. No better in my mind, but stronger physically, like the outside was stripping me of my body, leaving me just bones, with bits of flesh hanging off it, and the bones moving themselves propelled by some freak energy source. I pounded up the hill like a man set free.

  But when Pep dropped for the sixth time, I stopped too and looked back down the hill. We had travelled about two kilometers from Polysol, and we could see the entire park. The lamps glowed incessant, and brightened the thick streams of rain.

  We were out.

  My gamble had paid off, was what I thought.

  Until I heard a voice come from behind us.

  “Stop there, Dyce,” said the voice.

  It was a woman, and it was American.

  I put my hands up. Pep looked around to see its owner.

  “You´re coming with us,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I turned around to face the voice.

  She was short but she had an athletic and lithe build. She was wearing black combat pants, a black military style top and headband. She had a ponytail tied up tight above it and her face was stretched backward slightly. Her jaw was chiseled and serious. I guessed she was in her forties. I could make out her eyes were blue and they stared me down, laser like, even through the unending rain.

  Two men stood either side of her. Both of them the same height as each other, and only a little taller than the lady. They were all soaking wet like us but much better prepared for it.

  One of the guys were wearing all black, black tee-shirt and black combat pants with big boots laced right up to the shins. He and the lady had utility belts with bullets, knives, and walkie talkies hanging off them. The guy´s face was uncovered, but painted up with black lines.

  They looked like those Blackwater security firm that did jobs in Baghdad, probably were the Blackwater security firm that did jobs in Baghdad.

  The third man was hispanic and was in “civilian” clothing, a gray hooded top and beige cargo pants. His face was familiar and he smiled and it clicked, the guy at Pep´s playroom. Christian.

  “I know you,” I said to him. He smiled back.

  “My name is Ruth Kyle,” said the lady, and she gestured to her right, to Christian, “And this is Hernandez,” then she switched sides, “and this is Bayer.”

  The two men pulled masks over their faces and rested their fists down by their sides, clenched.

  Pep got up beside me, his arm was shaking hard. His plastic bag anorak was brushing against mine. Maybe it was the cold, but it was more likely the fear.

  Kyle and her men approached us. The guy named Bayer grabbed Pep and put his arms behind his back and tied them with a cable tie. But they left me alone.

  I looked at Kyle.

  “You made a mistake, making a move like that,” she said.

  Pep shot a glance in my direction.

  “Aren´t you gonna tie me up?” I asked.

  “No. But we are out of here. You forced our hand,” she said.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  She waited, and nodded at Bayer holding Pep. He started to pull Pep away into the night. The nopales provided an impressive cover from the downpour. Here in the undergrowth, only a third of the water the skies were throwing at us actually hit their target.

  I watched Bayer haul the Lujano governor, stumbling and sliding, into the darkness. When they were ten meters or so in front, Kyle turned to me, “I told you already,” she said, and she moved away and started walking behind her colleagues and Pep.

  “I don´t mean your name,” I shouted. And I went to grab her arm. She stopped me by the wrist and pulled me sideways so my face slammed into her shoulder. My legs had twisted, my other limbs useless, squeezed against her chest. Krav Maga or something of that ilk.

  “No time for that right now,” she said. “We´re friends. And we need to go. Now.”

  She flung my wrist aside with an incredible strength, and turned to follow her colleagues. I followed her. I had no choice. I needed Pep.

  The storm did not let up, and walking down the slope rather than up it was tougher. After an hour or so, we began to level out, we turned left, away from the direction of the industrial park.

  We followed what would usually be a dirt track, and which was now a mud river, and we entered black night. The night sky illuminated just enough to see the four outlines in front of me. I noticed that they were keeping Pep ahead and separate from me. The lady called Kyle and her team were pros. Even if I were to take one of them by surprise, I guessed the other two would snap my neck. The way that Kyle had grabbed, flicked and discharged my wrist had the feel of an ex-soldier about it. They were certainly dressed for the part.

  I picked up the pace and managed to catch Kyle up. I was panting as I spoke.

  “Listen, Miss,” I said. “I need Pep with me. I don´t know who you are, or who you´re working for, but I need him. I am in danger here.”

  In the dim light, Kyle kept her head facing forward but I sensed her smiling, the vague outline of her cheek bone rising.

  “People call me Kyle,” she said.

  She wasn´t panting at all. And that made my rasping sound louder.

  “Did you hear what I said?” I asked, between breaths. “This is serious.”

  But Kyle just kept walking. And she walked fast. My legs hurt, and my chest felt tight, and I was drenched from below where the plastic stopped. I stooped with my hands on my knees to catch my breath, and I watched Kyle and her crew until ten meters separated us, and they started to fade. I picked myself up straight from my crouching position, and jogged a little. Lactic acid flooded the thin splints of muscle in and around my shins and burned them numb. But I reached close enough to see their gloomy figures again, and slowed to a walk.

  The thunder rolled every couple of minutes and every five or so, a flash to the South. This storm absorbed the atmosphere like some panoptic takeover of the planet, even though the clouds most likely spread less then thirty kilometers across, and instead shared a scale with our small drama carrying on below. All relative, I thought.

  We must have walked along the muddy track a further 5 kilometers. My bearings told me that we had traversed the big hill behind the park by walking around its base toward the South. We now looked out to a long valley floor. I recalled the map I had used to find the pick up spot. It was the great valley that nestled behind the hills that formed a circle around Lujano. The other side of this valley were the Sierra Mountains, and an hour´s drive into them, where I had collected the governor wrapped in bin liners four days before.

  Times had changed.

  At last, we came to a clearing at the side of the track. I could see the bushes part and the stormy sky, purple and tumultuous come into view. Parked in the clearing were two trucks. I could only see their silhouettes. Theirs and that of another person. I measured the person´s height by guess work using the truck to the side of the figure as reference. I made him around 6 foot, but it wasn´t Salvatierra.

  As we approached, the figure stepped forward. It was a man about forty years old with shabby, strawy yellow hair. He was dressed like Kyle and the guy called Bayer, in black military garb.

  Kyle walked faster toward him and they met between us and the trucks. We stopped while they spoke quietly. Pep glanced at me. His face saturated with terror. His jaw slack from exhaustion, and his eyes wide open again. Then, Kyle turned to us and looked at Pep, who was still being held by her two guys.

  “Governor,” she said. “Are you well? Have you been treated badly?”

  Pep looked back at her, bending down for breath like me. “No. I am fine. They treated me, us, fine. I want to go back, señora, please, I don´t know who you are. Please take me back.”


  Kyle walked slowly toward him until she squared right up to his face, “Are you not happy, Governor? That someone has saved you?”

  Pep closed his mouth and stood up straight, dented pride in his eyes. “I apologize, señora, but you must forgive me for not trusting everybody I meet, given the circumstances of recent events.”

  Kyle kind of shrugged, but it looked like a nod of the head.

  Pep continued. “And him,” he said, pointing at me.

  “He is Mark Kersteen, not this other name you say.”

  Kyle didn´t even glance at me. Instead she stood back and addressed us all.

  “No time for this now. We have to go.”

  She pointed at the straw haired heavy guy.

  “Aronson will take you and Bayer and Hernandez. Dyce, you ride with me.”

  The guy called Aronson opened the doors of the first truck, and Bayer and Hernandez hauled Pep into the back cab. The trucks were Toyota Tundras with double cabs. Kyle gestured me to the co pilot seat of the second truck. The thing was enormous. Kyle started it up and the huge V8 engine pulled us up and out of the mud. The truck in front started moving too. It was so dark. The rain pattered the cabin roof of the truck while I thanked the stars for the dry warmth it provided.

  We pulled out and for the first five minutes, I hadn´t noticed that we were both driving without lights. Kyle found the heater dial and put it on full. I felt my wet feet go soggy and warm as the fans kicked in.

  “I guess there´s no point asking you where we´re headed,” I said, as the truck bumped and jumped along the huge stones, rocks and holes of the track.

  She smiled, “I will explain. I´m following protocol. It´s a risk to release information until things are secured. You were right back there, what you said. This is serious. Make no mistake.”

  She spoke with a southern US accent. Maybe Louisiana, I thought. Rounded, smooth and therapeutic.

  I nodded. “But why can´t I know who you are?”

  “Let´s say we don´t make it there,” said Kyle. “Let´s say the Feds capture one of us. And it happens to be one of you. You or the governor. They will press you for information. So it´s best you know as little as possible, for as long as possible. Standard procedure.”

  I nodded. So they were pros.

  “Right now, every man and his wife in Lujano is looking for the Governor.”

  We stayed quiet for an hour. I lost my bearings after thirty minutes. We were climbing a hill on a country track, and we´d passed one very sleepy pueblo. Other than that, we were alone on the road. After the hour passed, a dim glow appeared ahead, from within the hills. The road leveled out, and before long, I could see small, square buildings, each with a single yellow light floating above it. Small Mexican towns that local people called “ranchos”. They weren´t ranches. But the residents used to work on the land, which is where the name comes from. The town was a “rancho” and the people, “rancheros”.

  The rancho road thinned and turned into white cobbled path. Each house was large, but unfinished. The majority of them were still the crude gray of concrete block and even the painted ones had windowless upper rooms, all of the houses I saw there had wire splinters shooting out of their supportive columns on the roof.

  We trundled through the town on the wet cobble stones in silence, Kyle hunched at the wheel as we snaked our way through the deserted town, all doors shut, and windows shuttered, until we turned off the main road at the edge of town and went down a curving driveway. That led us downward into a wider driveway that circled a large two-story building set at the edge of small woodland.

  It was detached and the surrounding wood provided good cover. The rain had almost stopped, and I could make out the cubic shape of it. It looked like a concrete version of a Canadian wood cabin. The trees were pine, tall and spindly. There was a light on in one of the windows. Besides that, it was camouflaged in the woods.

  Kyle turned the Tundra into a complete stop. She killed the engine and only the rain sounded.

  “Stay here,” she said.

  She got down from the Tundra and nodded at her colleague driving the other, who was pulling up alongside us.

  Kyle walked up to the house and put her head sideways at the door. Then she knocked it and stood still for a while.

  The door opened and she stood up straight.

  There, standing and framed by light, was Jason.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jason stood aside to let Pep pass into the house with Bayer, Hernandez and the blond guy, arms still tied behind his back. Kyle and I walked behind them.

  I looked at Jason as we trundled up the path and I couldn´t figure out if I wanted to hug him or punch him more. He was smiling at us and then kind of saluted Kyle.

  “Jason,” she said. And walked past him.

  We stood in the honey colored overhead lamp hanging in front of the door. It lit Jason´s features downwards so the shadows made him look like a goblin.

  “What the hell, Jason?”

  His smile dropped a little, but he was still merry. “Scott. We had to save you there. Salvatierra and his friends could have been around.”

  “But they weren´t.”

  “And we were. And we found you easily right? I mean, you´re here before 11pm, so it must have gone well. The governor´s looking okay. You too.”

  “But you´ve been watching us?” I asked.

  Jason looked back at me. “From a distance, yes.”

  “I need to get Eleanor, Jason.”

  Jason nodded and ushered me in to the house and shut the door. “Come in,” he said. “We´ve got a lot to talk about.”

  I followed Jason´s sauntering figure down a cold concrete corridor. The walls were a dark cream color, with small framed paintings of the Mexican Sierra hanging every four steps. The cheap beige tiling clinked and chinked with our footsteps. We turned left into a large kitchen. It was bare. There was minimal furniture besides four breakfast stools, placed around a large inbuilt concrete island. The kitchen was half finished and half raw concrete. The light was just a bulb dangling from a large hole in the ceiling, large enough to put your fist through. The bulb´s wiring hung stiff and brittle and burned. There were no windows, and the fixtures were ancient and unused. There was a small stove in the corner, with some pans on and connected to it, a small tank of propane gas.

  Jason gestured for me to take a stool.

  He sat down next to me, like we were in a bar.

  “So what are you?” I asked.

  He shook his head and flashed a wry smile. “Not exactly a journalist.”

  “Explain that.”

  “I work for an agency,” he said.

  “Mr Reynolds?” I asked.

  Jason nodded, “I can´t say anymore about that. I just can´t. He is as big a mystery to us as he is to you. But I do work with newspapers occasionally, so it´s not all a lie.”

  I stayed still, and listened.

  “Mr Esteban is a threat to more than you think,” he continued. “The agency I work for has had him as a “main target” for many years. All that stuff I told you about him is true. We´ve been looking for an “in” for years too. Eventually we landed on his espionage activities. Which is where you come in.”

  “So I´m a prospect,” I said.

  “Listen, we didn´t set this up. It was an opportunity. We just looked for people who might want out. Someone we could convince of the truth. We identified you among others. I swear to you that I had no idea that the package turned out to be an undercooked politician. And we didn´t know about them holding your wife. Although he has done this kind of thing before. Not the kidnapping governors thing so much, more the using his employees for his own ends. You´re our second flip since we started this mission.”

  “Flip?”

  Jason nodded and seemed to realize how stupid he sounded when he´d said that.

  “You´re in a spot,” he said. “But like I said in the first place, we can help you.”

  “No,” I said.
Jason looked puzzled.

  “You didn´t say we, you said you. You could help me. As a journalist for god´s sake. How can I trust anyone now, Jason? You or this Mr Reynolds.”

  “You can´t really,” he said. “But what are your options?”

  He leant down to the side of the table and pulled up a laptop bag, and from that, an Apple laptop. He opened it up and typed something I couldn´t see, and then flipped it around and placed the computer on the table, screen facing me. It had a USB internet dongle feeding it 3G internet connectivity.

  On the screen was the home page for CNN. In big bold letters in its lead story read the following sentence,

  HUNT GOES ON FOR KIDNAPPED GOVERNOR

  And then, below in the sub-edited second line,

  Search spreads further.

  Jason was looking at me straight, like a teacher who busted a kid with cigarettes red-handed and now wanted their confession.

  “The story is national and international. And before today, it was under control. Under Esteban´s control. But now you have that control.”

  I stared at the screen. Under the headline, was Pep´s picture.

  “Do the media know I´m involved?”

  Jason shook his head quickly.

  “No, but that´s Esteban´s next card to play. We´ve figured it out. We think he´ll set you up as prime suspect. He´ll have tons of dirt on you.”

  I thought about the impromptu Federal Police photo session, and conceded that much.

  Jason was right. I had zero options.

  “But we can´t release Pep,” I said. “They might have Eleanor.”

  Jason nodded. “Of course. We need her free, Scott. She is an American citizen. Rest assured. You played your cards early by getting out of there. But it was the right move.”