by Sean Black
He took the shot anyway, the mark of an amateur, and a three-round burst fractured the air, threatening everyone but Mendez. The downside of the manoeuvre was that the searchlight lost Mendez as he sprinted towards the colonia.
Lock went after him, temporarily holstering his weapon, and charging over ground littered with broken glass. Mendez slipped through a gap between two houses as the downdraught from the aircraft blew up a thick cloud of dust.
In the narrow alley, as the helicopter climbed, Lock looked around. There was no sign of Mendez. He walked slowly now, trying to block out the noise of the thrashing rotor blades and pick out his target, but it was an impossible task.
The alley, if it qualified for alley status, was about three feet wide and ran for about eighteen. It seemed devoid of life. Lock slowed before he stepped out into the street — and from nowhere a fist slammed into the side of his face just below the right eye, throwing him off balance.
Lock stumbled, taking two steps back, then found his balance and moved on to his toes, like a boxer. He shook his head, centred himself and looked to his left. Charlie Mendez was right there, but he had frozen again. Lock rushed him, driving his shoulder hard up into Mendez’s chest, catching him slap-bang in the solar plexus. He followed with two quick but full-force elbows to the man’s face. By the time the second landed, Mendez had his hands up but Lock hadn’t finished. Stepping in close, he butted his opponent full in the face, hearing the satisfying dull crunch of the cartilage in his nose cracking with the force of the blow. Mendez let out a whimper as Lock stepped back, fished in a pocket for some plastic ties and went to work securing his wrists. When they were cinched tight enough to be painful, Lock gave him the fastest of pat-downs.
With the helicopter directing reinforcements straight towards them, Lock propelled his prisoner forwards, down the street, as a sea of small brown faces peered from the houses, only to be dragged away from the windows by mothers and grandmothers.
He felt no sense of accomplishment. If at all, it would come later. He had Mendez but the chances of being able to keep him long enough to get him back across the border were slim. And if the action of the gunman who had fired from the helicopter was anything to go by, Mendez’s protectors had experienced a change of heart. If they both stayed alive long enough, Lock might even discover why.
In the meantime, he pushed the whining Mendez down the narrow street, praying for a miracle with every step he took.
Sixty-one
The American consulate was housed on the third floor of a downtown office building. Once they had stepped inside no one outside could do anything to either Ty or Julia. Consulates and embassies counted as American soil so, to all intents and purposes, they would be on home turf. But there was a snag.
The consulate didn’t open for another hour and, right now, reaching it in one piece was looking about as likely as fashioning a rocket out of baking trays and flying to the moon. Hunched over the steering-wheel, Ty watched as the traffic snaked along the road towards a police checkpoint. Twenty vehicles ahead, a squad of local cops were interrogating a smartly dressed man, who was leaning out of his car, no doubt protesting at the lengthy delay.
Julia shuffled forward from the back seat. ‘Can’t we just ask those cops there to give us an escort?’
‘We could,’ Ty growled. ‘The only problem is they might just escort us somewhere else instead. Like right back to the people who were looking after Charlie Mendez.’
‘The police?’
Ty thought back to when he’d been that naive about the world. Nope, his memory didn’t go back that far. Not that he blamed Julia: we were all products of our experience and her experience, growing up as a white, middle-class American in a loving family, had left her lacking the necessary insight into just how messed up large parts of the planet actually were. In her world, cops were on your side. Down here some of them were, and some of them were with the bad guys. The problem was that they both wore the same uniform, so there was no knowing for sure which type an individual was.
A few feet ahead there was a side street. Ty waited until he was sure the cops running the checkpoint were busy, then spun the wheel and turned down it. Cars parked on either side meant that he had to squeeze past yet another Policia Federal Dodge Charger, driving in the opposite direction. The driver was in a hurry and didn’t check them out.
‘What are you doing? Why are you turning off?’ Julia asked, her voice panicked and rising in pitch and volume as he tried to stay aware of everything around them and get round the checkpoint.
‘What does it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to get us there safely,’ Ty barked. The road was widening but any extra room was taken up by food stalls and street vendors. Even at this early hour, crowds of people milled around. Something about the area was beginning to look familiar to him, but his mind might have been playing tricks.
He glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw that Julia’s face was pressed against the window. ‘Sit back. Someone might see you.’
It was already too late. The SUV, even with the tinted glass, was drawing gawkers on either side. This was hardly a tourist area. Two small boys, brothers by the look of them, raced over to Ty’s window, jumping up to tap on the glass, smiling excitedly and motioning for him to lower the window. He kept it closed. Give them a few pesos and it would only draw more kids and more attention. An old man wearing a straw hat and drawing hard on an unfiltered cigarette eyed them warily from the corner.
Ty nudged the RAV 4 forward, but the car ahead of him had stopped to allow an old lady to cross the road. Dressed in black, perhaps fresh from morning mass, she took her time as Ty’s long fingers drummed on the steering-wheel and he searched for an escape route. Barring mowing down the old lady or squelching the kids, who were still running alongside and tapping at the glass, there was nothing to do but wait.
As the old lady cleared the road, Ty pressed down on the horn. The vehicle in front stayed put. He pulled out, trying to get an angle to see if he could get round it. It looked too tight a squeeze. It inched forward again and he dropped back in behind it, eyes flicking from rear-view to side mirrors as he watched for any sudden movement from the crowd.
In the back seat, Julia was growing agitated. Ty had seen it before in Iraq: some people made it through the most traumatic situations by surfing on a tide of grit and adrenalin, only for the wheels to come off as they neared safety. The mind simply wasn’t built to contain what Julia must have endured at the hands of Mendez.
‘Why don’t we just get out and walk?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Hey, be cool for me, ’kay? The traffic will clear in a minute.’
She was rocking back and forth. He saw her arm move. ‘I can’t breathe in here. I need to get some air.’
As she reached for the handle to open the door, his hand shot out and the central-locking clicked into place with a thunk.
‘What are you doing?’ she screamed. ‘You’re not taking me to my parents, are you? Who are you?’
Inching forward, Ty hit the brakes then the button to unlock the doors. ‘You want to get out? Be my guest. But you’re on your own. Now, I know you’ve been through hell. I get that. But if they catch us, you might be safe, you might not, but I am definitely going to be dead. So, if you don’t trust me, go. You’re not the only one who’s scared here. You hear me?’
He eyed her in the mirror. His words seemed to be having an effect. Her chin slumped to her chest and she lapsed into silence
Ahead the traffic was moving, not in fits and starts but at a steady clip. They were getting past the last of the street vendors. Ty glanced at the GPS. They had less than a mile to go before they reached the consulate building. Less than a mile to safety.
He settled back into his seat, and checked the sat-nav screen in front of him, plotting a route through the side-streets that would take him close to the consulate. His plan was to leave the vehicle somewhere close by, make the phone call, and then, before word could leak from anyon
e at the consulate to the local authorities, walk her in. If he was stopped, he would inform whoever was doing the stopping that the consulate officials already knew they were there. He doubted any regular cop, no matter how corrupt or plugged into the cartel, would have the balls to block their safe passage at that point.
His eyes flicked back to Julia just as she glanced to her right. Her pupils snapped from pinpricks to full dilation faster than he had ever seen. She opened her mouth and began to scream.
Sixty-two
The hollowed-out eye sockets of Santa Muerte stared back at Julia through tangles of damp white hair. A part of her rational mind knew it was just a shrine, just a skeleton dressed as a woman, but that part was a lost, lonely voice drowned by a cacophony of others screaming at her, telling her that she had to get the hell out of there — now.
She opened the door and stepped out into the road. The people clustered around the shrine turned to look. A heroin-thin man shuffled towards her, eyes as vacant as those of the saint he had come to worship. A fat girl with a baby wedged against her hip whispered something to an older woman. All the while, Santa Muerte shot that demonic smile in Julia’s direction.
She jumped as she felt a hand in the small of her back. Someone giggled at her reaction, the laughter rippling through the crowd. She spun round to see Ty.
‘We have to get out of here, Julia. You understand me?’
Her eyes flicked to the row of gifts laid at the skeleton’s feet. Cigarettes and bottles of beer and tequila jostled with baby bootees and tourist-tat jewellery.
‘Who is she?’ she asked Ty.
He hesitated. ‘It’s some messed up bullshit is all. Now, let’s go.’
She didn’t move. ‘I asked who she is.’
‘Santa Muerte,’ he said.
Muerte. She knew that word. Muerte was Spanish for ‘death’. Santa Muerte. Saint Death.
The junkie had stepped from the semi-circle of the crowd towards her. He had his hand out, asking her for money. Ty took a step towards him, ‘Back off, asshole,’ his hand resting on the butt of his handgun. The junkie lurched back into the crowd, spitting at Ty’s feet as he went.
‘Okay,’ he said to her quietly. ‘You have until the count of three. When I hit three you are on your own, Julia. You got me?’
She said nothing. She knew she had to leave, that she had no choice if she wanted to stay alive, but the shrine was drawing her towards it.
‘One.’ His voice betrayed the weakness of a parent who has threatened a sanction they’re not sure they’ll be able to deliver.
‘Two.’
She turned back towards the SUV, ready to get back in but his hand grasped her elbow. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Too many people have seen us now. Seen the vehicle we’re in. We’re going to have to walk.’
Tears bulged at the corners of her eyes. Her lack of control had made the hole they were in even deeper than it had been. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Save it,’ said Ty. A huge arm folded over her back and he led her meekly away from the shrine. She glanced back at the vehicle, abandoned in the middle of the road, the rear passenger door still open.
Ty set a brisk pace but eventually he had to slow down. The only way she would have been able to match his long, loping strides would have been if she had jogged and she was too tired for that. Beyond the shrine, he shepherded her down a side-street, away from the prying eyes of the crowd, who, no doubt, were still discussing the behaviour of the two crazy Americans who had offered up an SUV to Saint Death.
The GPS clasped in his hand, Ty was busy recalculating their route. He turned down the volume and zoomed out, trying to commit the new route to memory, aware that he would need his eyes on the girl and the surrounding streets rather than the screen.
They had under a mile to cover. Given the traffic, walking wouldn’t take much longer than driving. They might be more mobile too, and it would be easier to adjust their route, to duck into a doorway if he saw the cops. The drawback was that they were both exposed. You could hide in a car. Now everyone they passed could see them.
As they walked, he scanned the buildings. He and Julia drew interest but it lasted no more than half a block.
He wondered how long it would take the cops to find the abandoned RAV 4 and work out who the occupants had been. Less time than it would take him and the girl to cover the mile, that was for sure. And if they knew he had her so close to the consulate they would be able to figure where they were headed.
At the end of the block, he spotted a store with racks of clothes left out on the sidewalk. As they reached it, he guided Julia in as a Federal Policia car sped down the next street. ‘What are we doing?’ she asked.
Three minutes later and fifty dollars lighter (twenty for the clothes and thirty for the owner’s silence), they emerged from the store, the girl’s long hair tucked up under a baseball cap, both of them wearing long sleeves, the tall man with a wind-breaker zipped up to his chin. Hand in hand, they strolled across the street, without a care in the world.
Looking ahead, Ty swore that if he pulled this off he would head back to that old witch Santa Muerte and leave her the biggest goddamn spliff he could find, with a whole goddamn case of tequila.
Sixty-three
Lock hunkered down next to the thin plywood door of the one-room shack where he was holed up with Charlie Mendez. Outside, a group of children were busy kicking a soccer ball. Behind him, Mendez was sprawled on a threadbare floral couch, his chest rising and falling as he slept. Sunlight splashed lazily through a Perspex window, etching a yellow square on the bare floorboards. The facilities were meagre — a chemical toilet out back, but no electricity.
After a nerve-shredding night spent one step ahead of the police search party, they had chanced upon the owner, a heavy-set middle-aged woman, as she was leaving for work at around four in the morning. As soon as she had turned the corner at the end of the street, Lock had snuck them inside, figuring they would probably have the place to themselves until early evening when she would return from one of the factories or a day spent cleaning rich people’s houses.
Mendez had fallen asleep quickly, the exhaustion of the pursuit and the consequent huge dump of adrenalin taking its toll. Lock had kept guard by the door. A cursory check of the GPS on his cell phone, before he had powered it down, had given him their position.
They were approximately five miles north of the city centre, and south of the Rio Grande by less than a mile. To the west lay the highway they had fled. To the east lay the desert. But to the north lay another highway where headlights twinkled in the distance, and that highway lay in the United States. They were closer than he would have dared believe possible, but it was an agonizing proximity.
Though the distance may have been less than a mile, more and more cops were pouring into the colonia with every minute that passed, and even if they could make good their escape, they still had to cross the border. Ten, even five years ago, it would have been a matter of wading the river. But now they faced not only the river but a whole host of defences aimed at keeping people out of the United States. The irony of an American trying to break back into his own country wasn’t lost on him but that was what he faced, and the plain fact of the matter was that they wouldn’t be able to achieve it during daylight. They would have to sit out a long day and wait until night fell again.
On the up-side, he had Mendez, and the shots aimed at him from the helicopter had made him broadly compliant. Mendez knew that, on his own, he was most probably dead. The knowledge had served — it often did — as a calming influence. Lock wasn’t sure how long it would last but Mendez was aware that, at this very second, the only person who appeared even vaguely interested in him staying alive was Lock. If it hadn’t been for him, he’d already be dead.
Sixty-four
Ty stood at the edge of the crossing, directly opposite the office building that held the consulate, and gave Julia’s hand a reassuring squeeze. He had talked to her the whole way there, as they play
ed the part of a happy couple, trying to keep her calm. He had asked her about her family, about her memories of growing up. Safe stuff designed to reassure.
The walk had gone quickly. There had been a moment when, darting through traffic, a motorcycle cop had stopped to stare at them. Ty had bluffed with a friendly wave, and that single nonchalant act had been enough to satisfy the cop’s curiosity as he took off with a macho twist of his handlebars.
It was as they started to cross that Ty noticed the two men. Both Hispanic, both wearing wrap-around sunglasses, each man posted within twenty yards of the two entrances to the consulate building. They might have been working for the Americans — US consulates were often staffed by locals and now, with military resources stretched, regularly used private security. As they hit the opposite sidewalk and Julia made towards the nearest entrance, a set of glass double doors, Ty pulled her in the opposite direction towards a row of stores on the ground floor of the building.
He cursed his own stupidity. If the cartel and their buddies had guessed that he wasn’t going to risk the border crossing, where they could easily be detained in Mexico on a pretext, and instead head straight for the the consulate, they wouldn’t have cops on show to scare them off. They would be watching from the shadows. A spider didn’t sit in the middle of a web waiting for the fly: he clung to the edges.
Ty studied the storefronts. ‘Here,’ he said, guiding her towards a nail salon as one of the men swivelled around to watch them.
Inside, the salon was quiet. The owner bustled over and, without asking, got Julia to sit down. Ty pulled out his cell phone and motioned towards the back of the salon. ‘Okay if I make a call back there?’
‘What’s wrong?’ Julia asked, as the owner shrugged in agreement.