Chapter 21
“How could this have happened?” Don Aranas seethed, his hair standing up on one side of his head, matted from sleep. He paced the study wearing a white terry cloth bathrobe, screaming into the telephone as his head of security stood meekly by the door. “This is impossible. It ruins everything, do you not get that?”
He listened as the speaker on the other end of the line went on for twenty seconds.
“I want a hundred men in Chiapas by daybreak. Every town, every border crossing. Put out feelers to everyone we have in the military and the police. I want to understand our options. If we can find out where they are before they can make it to DF, I want the girl captured again, or killed.” Aranas hesitated. “I thought you told me that this location was unknown. Foolproof.” He listened again. “I understand, but if you don’t find her, this is a disaster. We will be hunted without remorse. Get photos circulated of her and pull out all the stops – there is no way a raid could have been coordinated without someone knowing about it. This is too big. You better pray that they don’t have her safe, or it won’t go well for you,” he screamed again, then slammed down the handset.
“Get everyone on the phone. Everyone.” He looked at his watch. “And get some coffee going.”
The security man darted down the hall, relieved to be out of Aranas’ proximity. When he was agitated, he was dangerous, and he had never seen the Don more disturbed than he was now. A crash sounded from behind him, and then another.
The Don was throwing things.
Time to focus on the coffee.
~
Dawn was just breaking when El Rey stopped and checked his GPS again. He looked around the tiny area and then studied the branches overhead. There was no sky to be seen. It was as good a place as any to make camp.
“We’ll stay here for the day. We only have one liter of water apiece, so conserve it. Later on, we can have breakfast. I hope you like granola bars.” He dug in his bag. “Catch,” he said and tossed her the insect repellant and a long-sleeved camouflage shirt.
“Why didn’t my father send more people? Can’t you call someone?” she complained, spraying herself down before donning the top. Maria was clearly not the outdoorsy type, judging by how she eyed her surroundings.
“We’re in a foreign country. I just killed four elite soldiers. Never mind that they were guarding you and helping the kidnappers. Unless Mexico wants a diplomatic incident leading to a full scale war with Guatemala, it can’t send troops in to rescue you.” He left out that while her father would probably have sent in the army anyway, that didn’t fit into his plan – the one where El Rey would be guaranteed to stay alive, and one that was near and dear to him at the moment.
“But the soldiers were working with the cartel,” she protested.
“I know. Things get complicated when big money is involved. But there’s nothing we can do about it, so let’s get some rest and save our energy, and tonight we’ll make it across the border and get you to civilization.”
“Are you sure we’re safe here?”
“As safe as anywhere.”
They were interrupted by a searchlight playing over the mountain from one of the big military helicopters a quarter mile away. Maria instinctively ducked.
“Don’t worry. They can’t see us, even with night vision gear. But we have to stay quiet, and not move around. We’ll be way more vulnerable during the day.”
He pulled a green tarp from his bag that he had used to cover the ATV and spread it on the ground.
“You can sleep on this.” He walked over to her and pulled out a set of black steel handcuffs from his belt case, slapping one closed on her wrist before she had a chance to protest and hooking the other to his left wrist. She instinctively pulled her arm away, and he jerked it back.
“This is not a democracy. My job is to ensure we both make it out alive. I can’t afford for you to take matters into your own hands and try to sneak away while I’m resting. No hard feelings,” he explained. “Now come lie down.” He motioned with his free hand.
Maria glared at him. “Are you crazy? How am I supposed to use the bathroom?”
“Very carefully. I only have one roll of toilet paper.”
She began to say something, then stopped.
“Don’t worry,” he shrugged, “I’ll close my eyes.”
~
Briones’ cell phone rang as he was putting on his uniform while gulping his first cup of coffee of the day.
“Yes.”
“We need to meet before you head into the office,” Carlos said.
“Wow. That was fast.”
“Same café? Eight thirty?”
“More or less. Traffic can be a bear at this hour.”
“Do the best you can.”
Briones put the phone on his dresser and took a swig of his drink, wondering what had happened. There was no way they could get surveillance in place that quickly. It had to be something else. But what?
He checked the time. It would be a small miracle if he could get to the meeting anywhere near nine, much less eight-thirty.
So much for an organized start to his day.
~
The sun slowly climbed above the horizon and the fog burned off, retreating over the hills before completely disappearing. When the heat arrived, it wasn’t as bad as the day before, but it was still unpleasant, and both the assassin and the girl were uncomfortable.
Maria, especially, seemed agitated, made more so by the incessant sound of the helicopters. El Rey hadn’t slept for almost thirty hours, so he tried to doze, but she was constantly shifting.
Eventually he sat up and noticed that she was shivering in the swelter, sweat beaded on her forehead, her tank top drenched.
“What’s wrong? Do you have a fever?” he whispered.
She shook her head.
He put his hand on her face to check, and she pulled it away.
“Leave me alone, would you?” she moaned.
El Rey was puzzled. Why was he suddenly the enemy? He took in her face, tense and drawn, the slight discoloration under her eyes, and had a burst of insight.
He pulled her arm towards him and pushed up the long sleeve.
“Wrong arm.”
He nodded. “How bad is it?”
“It’s bad. They were injecting me with heroin. I think I’m addicted now,” she said, then shivered again. Her horror and embarrassment at being dependent on the drug was palpable.
“When was your last injection?”
“Yesterday. Six p.m..”
“This is a hell of a place to go cold turkey.”
“I know. Don’t worry. I’ll be okay. It’s not like I had much choice about it.”
He took in her state. “I’ve seen heroin withdrawals before. It will last three or four days. Gets worse over time. Aches and pains, runny nose, shivers, then you’ll get the nausea and vomiting…” he observed.
“Great. I can’t believe this is happening to me.”
“There isn’t a lot I can do to help right now. You’ll probably have to get weaned off of it once you’re back home. The problem is that your body gets dependent on the drug fairly quickly. I’m not going to lie – this is probably going to be a tough period for you.”
“Like it hasn’t been already.”
El Rey nodded. “Try to get some rest. You’ll need all your energy for tonight.”
He lay back on the tarp and closed his eyes, sensing her shivering in small spasms next to him.
“Wake me when the nausea or diarrhea start. I’ll rethink my handcuff rule for that,” he said quietly and was asleep within a few minutes.
~
Briones pushed through the double glass doors at five minutes before nine and spotted Carlos at a table near the rear of the café. He brushed past patrons waiting for coffee to go and took the vacant seat opposite him, shaking hands as he sat.
“Nice time of day for a detour from work. Sorry about running late. Traffic was stop and go…�
��
“I kind of figured. I just got here a few minutes ago myself,” Carlos said.
“What’s the emergency?” Briones asked, but was interrupted by the waitress. He ordered a cappuccino. Carlos got an espresso.
“We started snooping around to set the bugs, but late last night I finally got his cell phone records. Took a little while through my contacts at Telcel. Anyway, first thing this morning I started running numbers to see if there was anything strange, especially around the last two weeks,” Carlos started and then stopped when a couple sat at the table next to them. The woman smiled at them both.
“I see,” Briones said non-committedly.
Carlos lowered his voice to a murmur. “How much do you really know about this guy? What do you want him for?”
“I…I can’t tell you. Sorry, Carlos. Security reasons.”
The waitress arrived with their drinks, setting them down on the little table before inquiring whether they wanted anything else. Carlos shook his head, and she moved to the new couple.
“Security, eh? Well, let me tell you something, my friend. Security is an interesting word because your man made and received a number of calls in a thirty-six hour period – several numbers that have me puckering. I just hope I haven’t triggered anything by doing the traces,” Carlos revealed quietly.
“What? Who?” he asked as he raised the coffee cup to his lips.
Carlos looked around the café again, then glanced at the waitress’ back as she confirmed the couple’s order.
“CISEN.”
“What?” he choked, sputtering. He sloshed his coffee onto the table and coughed into the small red and white checkered courtesy napkin. The woman glanced at him with curious disapproval, then returned to her partner.
“I printed them out. The ones with stars on them are, well, interesting. You want my advice, drop whatever it is you’re doing. I intend to. I want no part of it. The last thing I need is to get ‘disappeared’ on my way home tonight. Consider my part in this little adventure over.” He slid an envelope onto the table and downed his espresso in one swallow.
“Are you sure about this?” Briones was still trying to absorb the news.
“You have the ability to trace the numbers. Do it. But leave my name out of it. Whatever your altar boy is into, it’s too rich for my blood.” Carlos stood. “You owe me a big one, my friend. Take my advice. Be careful. This is a whole different league.” He turned and quickly weaved his way to the front of the shop, then out the glass doors.
The waitress came by within a few minutes and brought the bill, which Briones couldn’t pay fast enough.
The entire time on the drive in to work, his mind was racing over the implications of what he’d discovered. CISEN, involved with the driver.
What the hell had they stumbled into?
Chapter 22
El Rey jolted awake from the nearby explosive roar. A helicopter was no more than a few hundred yards from them, moving slowly above the hillside. Maria blinked at him in soundless fear. He held his finger to his lips, noting her running nose and shakes. She nodded, and he pulled her to her feet and then over to the tree trunk, the tarp in tow. He draped it over them, leaving only a small section where he could peek out.
The aircraft approached, and the tree tops tore in all directions from the downdraft. This was far too close for comfort. He reached for his pistol, pulling it from the holster and flipping the safety off. If they were fired on from the helicopter, it would be with a large machine gun – probably fifty caliber, spewing forth thousands of rounds per minute. The pistol was a joke against that kind of firepower, but if instead, soldiers dropped from the ship, it might be enough to buy them a few minutes of time so they could run.
The sound was deafening – a Sikorsky, he thought, doing a grid by grid search.
Their advantage was that the army had no idea what it was looking for, or even if whatever it was had gone in the direction of the border.
A major loose end was that he didn’t know who knew what – how far up did the rot go in the Guatemalan military? If they had kaibiles guarding the girl, was that a rogue faction earning extra money or was it a profitable sideline at the cabinet level? He knew that roughly seventy-five percent of the country was under Los Zetas control, with the other twenty-five percent under Don Aranas. El Rey’s bet was that this was a local commandant making some easy money leasing his soldiers out, who knew little or nothing, but he couldn’t be sure. Otherwise he would have just played the role of a backpacker out with his girlfriend – although the presence of a fresh bullet wound would have rendered that pretense fragile.
Like it or not, he would have to fight his way out, if it came to that.
The noise increased even more, and Maria leaned in close to him. She was trembling, but he wasn’t sure how much was from terror, and how much from the effects of the drug leaving her system. In the end he supposed it didn’t matter.
The trees shook crazily from the turbulence, and then the chopper moved on, having seen nothing. They stood frozen under the tree for a few minutes, until the noise diminished into the distance, and then he lowered the tarp from their heads.
The jungle was still again.
He dropped the tarp on the ground and checked his watch. He’d been asleep for three hours. More than sufficient. But the heat of the day was building, and he was parched – probably due to the blood loss from the wound, as well as the near constant perspiration. He moved to their packs and retrieved the two liters of water, offering one to Maria, who accepted it without comment and then drank half of it greedily.
“Careful. That’s all we have. It’s got to last us all day, and probably most of the night,” he cautioned.
She threw him a blank look and took another swig before twisting the cap back on. He shrugged and drank a third of his before forcing himself to stop.
“Conserve your energy, Maria. The worst is yet to come. The heat is going to get miserable within another few hours, and you’ll wish you’d listened to me about the water then,” he warned.
She coughed twice, then threw herself down on the tarp.
“Is it my turn to sleep now?” she asked, and then without waiting for an answer, closed her eyes and tuned him out.
~
The day wore on, and by six thirty Maria was out of water. He’d watched her walk unsteadily to a cluster of bushes and vomit a few hours before and had said nothing. No words of comfort existed that could soften the blows of detoxification, so what was the point?
“Hey. It’s dinner time,” he called to her and tossed two granola bars onto her side of the tarp.
“I’m not hungry,” she snapped.
“You’re going to be hiking five miles through jungle. You’ll need energy,” he advised.
“No. Just the thought makes me want to throw up.”
“That’s the cold turkey. Try one. You’ll be glad you did.”
“No.”
“Suit yourself. We’ll get moving in a few more minutes. I haven’t heard any more helicopters anywhere near for a few hours, so we can probably get going without risk."
“The faster I’m out of here, the better.”
He sat back down and reached for her breakfast bar.
His hand twitched.
Once.
Then again.
The muscles in his forearm began cramping.
He shook it off and then tried again. Nothing. Steady as a rock, although the headache he had started the day with had gotten progressively worse as time wore on. He grabbed the bar and unwrapped it, popped half in his mouth, and then drank a few swallows of water. He was just dehydrated. That was all. Classic symptoms.
Maria watched him and then sprinted a few yards before vomiting again. She continued heaving, dry, the contents of her stomach long ago expelled.
He drank another quarter of his water and then stopped.
“Here. You can have the rest of my water. You’ll need it,” he offered, holding the bottle to h
er.
She swallowed the remainder greedily and then tossed the bottle aside.
“No. Pick it up. We may need it later. You never know what you’ll need, so you don’t waste anything,” he ordered.
She gave him an indifferent look, but complied.
He busied himself with repacking the backpack and spent a few minutes studying the satellite footage on the tablet.
“We’re less than a mile from the–”
He stopped mid-sentence, cocking his head and gazing at the tree tops.
She stared at him quizzically. “What?”
He didn’t say anything, then held up his index finger.
“Listen. Do you hear it?” he asked, sotto voce.
She listened intently, then shook her head.
“No. What are you talking about?”
He turned his head, first one direction, then the other, and then slid the tablet into his sack before shouldering it.
“Come on. Grab your bag. Move.”
She staggered over to the grenade bag and reluctantly hoisted it.
“I still don’t know what you–”
He cut her off with a curt hand movement, then gestured to her as he glanced at his GPS.
She approached him, and he pointed in the direction they would be moving before saying one syllable that struck terror into her heart and galvanized her into action.
“Dogs.”
El Rey took off at a moderate paced jog, weaving between the branches, and she struggled to stay with him. Within ten minutes, he was having to slow his pace so she could keep up, as the last of the sun’s rays fought to penetrate the overhead canopy of vegetation.
The distinctive baying of hounds sounded from the east, no more than a thousand yards down the mountain. If they had found the ATV with its bullet scars, El Rey and Maria would be trying to outrun a radio. That was an absolute nightmare.
Now every second counted.
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her roughly.
“You need to give this everything you’ve got. Now. We have maybe nine hundred yards to go and we’ll be in Mexico. But with the dogs having picked up a scent, every helicopter and patrol within twenty miles is going to be on top of us, and this will all have been for nothing.” He looked into her eyes and saw understanding, but also resignation. The withdrawals had sapped too much out of her. They were never going to make it.
Return of the Assassin (Assassin Series 3) Page 19