by Rowley, M C
“I want to see Pep.”
“He´s fine.”
“But where is he?”
“You saw him come in. We can´t stay here long. This is a safe house, but it´s cleared for a few hours more at most. We have a job to do tonight, and then we move.”
“Who is Mr Reynolds?”
Jason shook his head and looked down, “I can´t say, Scott. But like we said, you got no choice but to trust me.”
I knew it was true.
The kitchen door creaked open and the straw hair guy popped his head around it. He nodded and looked at Jason. Jason nodded back.
The straw hair guy was holding a satellite phone, big and bulky, even in his swollen hand, aerial extended, LED screen light on.
Jason got up and walked up to Aronson, and grabbed the sat phone, then looked back at me.
“Look, Scott. Grab some food. There are cans of stuff here. Help yourself. We´re safe here for a while, but we´ll be moving on later tonight.”
I didn´t move or say anything, but Jason just nodded again, and left. I heard him greet the caller on the phone, and then, just a tiny hint of a voice on the other end of the line. Something about it struck me, tinny and high pitched.
Jason´s voice faded away and I waited five minutes in the kitchen before getting up and heading to the door. I looked down the corridor. It was clear.
I walked out of the kitchen and turned left, instead of right, the way I´d come in. I walked slowly down the corridor and found a small door leading to a ceramic patio. I heard the weather raging outside.
I slid open the thin plastic door and stepped out into the night, closing the door behind me. Lightning flashed angry white light on rows of corn crops that danced like wild, black wet snakes shining in some crazed worship to the inky, swarthy clouds above. Here in the fields, lightning was the sole resource of light. The air stank of dampened soil and rotting leaves. The storm whipped the air around like a predator weakening its prey. The rain its lifeblood, spraying everywhere. I was getting wet again.
I headed back to the kitchen and went through the cupboards. I found some pasta soup. I hunted out a pan and turned on the gas ring, and threw it all on.
I ate alone.
As I was putting the dirty bowl into the basin, Jason came in with the Christian guy.
“We´ve located Salvatierra. And we need you for the mission.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Is Eleanor with him?”
Jason and Hernandez crowded around the table so that they formed a semi circle around me.
“Maybe,” said Jason. “But it´s our only shot. We strike before he finds us.”
Jason put his hand on my shoulder, “We´ll find her,” he said.
Then, Hernandez spoke up. “I´m the mole in Salvatierra´s operation.”
I looked at him. “You knew the governor.”
“Yes. I´ve been working remotely for Salvatierra. I think he might have your wife but we´ve got to go, Salvatierra expects me back soon.”
I looked from him to Jason.
“Hernandez is telling the truth,” said Jason. “Salvatierra will be hunting you down, right now. But he doesn´t know Hernandez is ours. He doesn´t even know about me, or Kyle, Aronson or Bayer. We have the upper hand tonight, and only tonight.”
“Okay,” I said. “ Let´s go.”
We were to head out through the corn fields and arable land at the back toward a neighboring village that was too small to have an official name but locals, according to Hernandez, called it Calabazas, owing to its pumpkin harvests, he had added. Salvatierra and his troop were based there, Hernandez told us. So we prepared ourselves. Jason gave me a thicker jacket which was a big step up from a bin liner. It was now midnight or thereabouts. We had no flashlights. The plan involved Hernandez of course, but he would set off in a different direction.
As soon as I had my chance, I would go for Eleanor. If we could save the Governor too, then great, but I didn´t give a shit about Pep anymore.
Hernandez, Jason and I walked out of the same back entrance I had found already and Hernandez shook hands with Jason and nodded at me and waded off into the corn field. The plants were still short enough to see him waist up swamped by crops. After less than 30 seconds his black outline faded into the night. I turned to Jason.
“And us?”
“Come on,” he said and struck off to the side of the fields. “Bit of a trek ahead.”
He wasn´t kidding. We walked two kilometers on pitted and stoney and slippery ground before we made our turn into the black plasticky reeds of corn. The soil underfoot like hungry clay, sucking at my feet, greedy for sacrifice. My shoes sank at least half a foot deep with every step.
Our tedious progress was made more agonizing when I looked back, and still, in spite of the darkness and curtains of rain, was able to see where the crop met the path we had left.
We walked on for an hour. We couldn´t hear each other talk over the patter of rain drops hitting young corn leaves. After thirty minutes my pants were soaked to the thigh. But my body remained warm, as we stomped through the mud.
By the time we saw the dim light of a house reflecting from the clouds above a half kilometer off or so, and then saw Hernandez wading out of the shadows toward us through the corn, I had almost forgotten the plan. I had to piece it together, moving back to when we were warm in the house. Hernandez would meet us. We would go with him as his prisoners.
Hernandez´s features were finally outlined by the dim light, pistol hanging in his right hand.
He headed straight for Jason. Nodding as Jason breathed out heavily, Hernandez grabbed Jason by the back of the head and pulled him to his chest, like he was giving him a hug, except the arm that should have been pulling in the embrace around Jason´s shoulders instead was holding the 9 mm pistol against Jason's shoulder.
He fired a shot and the sound was thunderous. It cut through the rain like a hundred axes chopping clean through a trunk of oak. Jason let out a wild cry of pain. And then Hernandez turned on me. Although I was a foot taller than him, he was leaner and more triangular. He raised his arm with the pistol in hand and that was the last thing I remember seeing in the fields.
Chapter Twenty-Six
My head pounded, implacable.
I was laying face down on a sofa and I was indoors. My arms were tied, again.
I rode the waves of pain as they gushed backward into my skull, like my brain had turned to fluid that was being sucked though some malevolent pump and flooding my nerves. I gritted my teeth until I tasted iron until it regularized, not subsided, but regularized. The pain kept a steady drumming beat. I could breath in between the beats, taking short, sharp breaths for air, like an olympic swimmer. I kept my eyes shut. And I focussed on my breathing. The sofa stank of sweat, and I felt like puking.
I held it and controlled the pain.
After four or five minutes, I tuned my ear to exterior noises, and I heard Jason talking Spanish with someone.
The other voice was Salvatierra´s. Jason´s voice was strained. He was in a lot of pain. I still didn´t open my eyes. I focussed on what they were saying while riding the waves of pain coming from my head.
“¿Donde estaban?” said Salvatierra, Where were you?
“We were out there,” said Jason, in Spanish, “We were running. The rain made it tough, that´s all.”
“Where is he?” asked Salvatierra, “or I´ll shoot your other shoulder, and then your knees.”
“We don´t know. I took Dyce. Got him free, we left the governor at Polysol. I don´t know where he went.”
I heard Salvatierra rise to his feet, then a few steps, and then a hellish scream of agony. I decided to risk opening my eyes.
Salvatierra had his back to me. We were in an old living room, decorated in what was normal in 1960s Mexico. Light orange walls now covered in cracks and damp patches, brown sofas placed in a square facing each other. Salvatierra stood over Jason in the center of the room still dressed in his
Fed uniform, but with the jacket hanging open. Jason was lying on a green rug which filled the floor space. There was a burnt out fireplace behind them. On the walls were black and white prints of men drinking pulque, drunken sniggers, beaming down at the scene. The house smelled of wet cement. There was one window and thick, stained drapes covered the view. The rain continued to beat down outside.
Salvatierra stood over Jason. He had his pistol poked into the bullet wound Jason´s right shoulder held.
“Where is the Governor?”
Jason howled with pain.
“The only thing keeping you alive is the fact you know where the governor is. That´s all. And we will kill you, and all of your family, your kids, before we find out where he is.”
My head banged and thumped. I wriggled my arms back but the ties were done up tight. I looked again, and saw that Jason was tied up as well, and his shoulder was bleeding badly. His face was toward the floor.
“Or perhaps,” said Salvatierra, still in Spanish but pointing at me. “Perhaps this guy is so important to you. Maybe we should focus on him.”
My heart beat against the sofa and reverberated back through my chest. I tried to speak, but couldn´t control my throat, like those nightmares that steal your motor-neurone ability. Salvatierra´s footsteps approached me and I looked up at him. His eyes were on fire. Black fire. I felt scared again. My courage had faded and I looked at Jason for answers, but his head stayed slumped. His hand reached down and rested in front of my face. It was haggard. Stories and deeds that his well maintained hair, and skin could not disguise. Small cuts, larger scars scattered on sunburned dry skin.
“All I have to do,” he said, switching to English, and looking at me but addressing Jason, “is call a number.”
He took out his phone. Jason looked up.
“Please,” I said.
Jason stared at me, trying to communicate something. Something in his eyes.
“We´ll tell you,” I said.
Jason was burning me with his stare. But I didn´t give a damn. Pep could rot in hell, or end up buried alive for all I cared. He was most likely a dead man anyway, and he was my only card, and I was playing it.
“Don´t make the call,” I said. “We´ll take you to him, okay?”
Salvatierra looked down at me and smiled an abominable grin as his finger ran across the phone opening its home screen, and he stayed looking at me but glanced a millisecond as he pressed once – that was the phone function, then second – to access the contacts, then third, perhaps a search, then fourth, the person´s name – the person who had Eleanor, I supposed, and then fifth, dial. He put the phone to his ear, and I stared at him like a child.
I knew it was over,
“Please—
But I didn´t finish my sentence. An explosion came from behind us. Or more a snap. That´s what I heard, a fraction before Salvatierra´s head split into two, ripped apart by a bullet. A bullet that passed through his cranium, and took out his hand, and the phone it was holding and slammed into the wall above Jason and the fireplace.
Noise flooded the room, my ears rang and Salvatierra´s body slumped to his knees, then fell flat on his exploded face, two feet from me on the sofa. But it made no sound. I turned around and at the door, was Hernandez, black beretta in hand, poised, and ready to shoot a second.
I stared at him, his face stone cold. Steady, and ready to fight. But his single shot had been true. Salvatierra´s head wasn´t there anymore, instead, it was a bloody stump kind of shaped into a V. His left hand too was gone, as was the phone.
As the ringing of the shot died away, Jason released an epic sigh. Of relief, of pain. I looked at him and he grabbed his bloody shoulder and his face tightened. His eyes were closed the entire time. “Damn shame,” he said. “That phone could´ve helped us.”
“Didn´t have time to consider it,” said Hernandez. “You okay boss?”
Jason nodded. “I need Aronson to look at this,” he said, gesturing to his shoulder, “but we´re fine. Let´s move tonight. Feds will be all over this place by dawn.”
Hernandez nodded. “I´ll take care of this,” he said pointing not at Salvatierra but the bullet hole in the wall. “You´ll take him, right?” and now he pointed at Salvatierra´s corpse, not me.
Jason nodded.
Hernandez drew a knife and cut us free.
“Take the truck outside,” said Hernandez.
“Hang on,” I said. “What happened to his men?”
Hernandez smiled, “They were offered a better deal. They had zero loyalty for this scumbag. They are unimportant now. Gone.”
“And my wife?”
Jason stepped up, “She´s not here, Scott. But now, Esteban knows less. That´s an advantage we have.”
“Where will we go?” I asked. “I need to find Eleanor:”
“We´re heading to a town,” said Jason. “We´ll be safe there. As of now, you have to understand that all Federal Police are working for Esteban. All military, all officials. And we have the Governor, so we are now the most wanted men in Mexico. And we´re foreign. Simply Scott, we cannot get caught.”
I moved to look around the house but Hernandez told me he´d checked it. Eleanor wasn’t here. I shouted her name all the same, inside, outside. But they were right. After my fruitless searching, Hernandez asked me to help pick up Salvatierra´s corpse, and take it outside in the rain and slump it into his truck. As we did so, I looked down at Salvatierra´s inert body, his legs artificially straight, his arms splayed out to form the shape of a morbid Christmas tree. One of his hands missing, and the blood oozing from his two new orifices now congealing.
“Ready?” said Hernandez.
I nodded. But I was far from ready. The disappointment of Salvatierra´s death depressed me. I felt no joy, or satisfaction. I only thought of Eleanor more. She was alone. With God knew who.
I grabbed the corpse´s ankles while Hernandez held the shoulder area. At least I didn´t get the bloody stump-end.
We stumbled to the front door of the cottage, and Jason had gotten up and opened the door for us.
We walked out into the rain. The cottage was a one story cement cube set into a dirty and cluttered yard, from what I could make of it in the darkness. Two big dogs stood upon seeing us and began barking. They were chained to a tree. There were three old, raggedy-ass trucks rotting into the mud around the periphery, and enclosing the whole place was a thin wire fence. No outhouses, no places to hide Eleanor.
Salvatierra´s truck was a Ford Lobo. The military Hummer was nowhere to be seen.
We stumbled up to the back of the truck and Hernandez, balancing the stump on his knee, managed to open the tail gate. We then lifted Salvatierra´s corpse up and into the truck bed, and Hernandez covered it.
Hernandez walked back to the house, and held out his hand up, “good luck finding your wife,” he said.
I nodded and thanked him. I felt a tiny bit of relief that they hadn´t forgotten my goal here. Jason´s face was just visible in the darkness, but I could see the outline of his grimaced features. He had not stopped holding his shoulder since we were freed.
“You need a doctor,” I said.
He started walking toward the truck´s passenger side. “I need medical attention.”
He had mentioned Aronson looking at it. I began following him toward the truck when I realized something. I stopped dead in my tracks. Jason walked on for a few meters before realizing I had ceased my steps.
“Hold on,” I said. And I turned to run back to the house.
I hadn´t asked Hernandez if he´d actually seen Eleanor during his time with Salvatierra´s gang.
I jogged up the house, and Jason was yelling weakly at me. I couldn´t make out what he was saying. I reached the steps of the porch, ran up them and then stopped at the door. Hernandez didn´t seem like the type who would react kindly to be taken by surprise, so I stopped at the door and went to shout my greeting, when I heard his voice coming from inside. I stayed still and listened.
I heard his words,
“He´s secured. The local narco is dead….No….That´s right….No, he´s secured.”
And then I heard the sound again. Coming from the other end of the line. The same tinny inhuman sound I heard Jason talking to back in the safe house.
And then nothing.
I straightened up and knocked on the door, and shouted that it was me.
Hernandez opened the door. He had a phone in his hand.
“What do you need?” He asked.
The phone in his hand was still connected to the other side.
“I need to know,” I said. “If you ever saw my wife.”
Hernandez stared at me, he was looking tough, but I could see behind his initial features, he felt for me.
“No, Mr Dyce, I never saw her. I´m sorry.”
I turned back into the rain and toward Jason in the truck. The ground squelched under my shoes and I felt cold for the first time that night. The adrenalin had calmed and now the bitter wind cut through my damp clothes and down into my bones.
I got to the truck and Jason was leaning across the passenger seat trying to get a view.
“What was that?” he asked.
“I forgot something.”
“Forgot what?”
I shrugged and got in. “Nothing. It doesn´t matter. Where do I drive?”
Jason leaned back into a slump and closed his eyes, “We need to get back to the safe house, pick up Kyle, Bayer and Aronson, so I can this fixed up, and then head to the new location.”
“Okay,” I said. “Where is it?” I asked.
But Jason rolled to his side and groaned. “Not now, Scott. Not now.”
I started the heavy engine and put the stick into Drive and released the brake. We started to move and I turned out of the driveway onto a small dirt track. I had to put the wipers on but not full speed.
“Why another safe house?”
“It´s not a house, it´s a location,” said Jason. “It´s been too long now. Esteban will have activated full search. It´s been hours since you took Pep from Polysol, the location he had ordained, and his local narco helpers are all but dead. So he´ll have got his people to make the calls, local cops, state cops, feds, traffic cops. Everyone.”