by Karina Halle
Me, Diego and one of Evaristo’s men were to go in through the tunnel – this was my decision of course. It was my home and I should be the first one to step foot in it and reclaim my property. I knew the tunnel would bring us up to a space behind the pantry in the kitchen. I had no idea if our entry was going to be quiet and undetected but the kitchen was as good of a place as any. We were also armed to the teeth, which helped. I alone had a grenade, two pistols and a hunter’s knife, while Diego was armed with an AK and who knows what else up his sleeves.
While we were coming up from the inside, Evaristo would be leading the other men to come at the house from three different sides. Everyone inside would scramble and I would catch Este, hopefully while he was heading toward the very tunnel I had just come out of.
Now that we knew for sure that he was inside – Evaristo had been monitoring the site through government satellite images in the morning – I could feel the same anger from earlier simmering deep inside me.
I was going to take him down. I was going to make him pay.
Evaristo gave us the go ahead.
Diego and I hoisted up the flat board that had been covered in giant waxy leaves and peered down into the tunnel. We pulled down the agency-issued night vision glasses Evaristo had given us and proceeded to climb down the metal ladder and onto the dirt floor below. The tunnel had no lights and was far cruder than the one at the finca, but at least this way we could see without drawing attention to ourselves. Our communication between each other was kept to a minimum as well – we had all had earpieces but weren’t allowed to use them until the time was right, just in case Esteban and all his high-tech glory was having the place monitored for frequencies.
Diego and I stared up at Evaristo through the tunnel hole, back lit by a vibrant night sky. He held up his phone. “I’m tracking you. When I see you get into the house, we will ambush. After that, you’re free to use your radio transmitters.”
I didn’t care how efficient he was being, I didn’t like being bossed around.
“Remember, I want Esteban alive,” I told him.
He saluted me. “Yes, patron.”
At least he still knew his place.
He turned back to my new army, an army of depravity, and Diego and I started jogging down the long tunnel. It wasn’t a quick journey but luckily I’d been keeping up in shape during the Puente Grande stint. The only reason the 1.5 km run felt longer was because with each second that passed by, I was gearing myself up to unleash utter destruction.
With every breath I took I thought of Alana.
With every footfall I thought of Luisa.
Back and forth, the two of them, until there was nothing but ugliness inside me.
It was the perfect insurance to ensure that I wouldn’t hold back tonight.
Finally the tunnel started to slope upward and curve sharply to the right and I knew that we were under the house now. We paused before the ladder and listened. There was nothing but dead air and the sound of our own breath.
I jerked my chin at him to say, You first this time.
He nodded and climbed up, his hefty weight making the ladder wobble slightly, shaking loose dirt from the tunnel wall. This was where we had nothing but a hope and prayer that there wasn’t anything stacked on top of the cover.
Diego pressed his hands along it and slowly began to push up. I held my breath as he struggled for a moment, so sure that something was going to immediately crash in the pantry.
But he kept pushing and he was able to slowly slide the cover over, fresh air smelling of flour and tin wafting down toward us. There was a slight clank as it knocked into something solid but other than that we were as quiet as possible.
Diego eased himself up the ladder and looked around once he was fully out. I quickly came up after him and together we were squeezed in the narrow space. If I hadn’t been so strung out, I would have made a joke about his breath but as it was, nothing was funny at the moment.
My gun began to feel heavy in my hands. I needed to use it and soon.
Light was seeping in underneath the door, so I pushed my goggles up on my head and slowly pushed the door open.
The kitchen was empty. The only light came from above the stove. The fridge hummed and the house was silent except for muffled laughter coming down the hall.
A terrible scream splintered the room.
A man’s scream.
Had the ambush already begun?
I exchanged a worried glance with Diego as we heard doors further down the hall being flung open. Footsteps.
People ran past the kitchen heading up the stairs toward the scream, not bothering to look our way.
All of them except for Juanito, that was.
He stopped dead in his tracks at the archway, staring at us like we were ghosts. I couldn’t help but grin.
He snapped out of it, reaching for his gun, but mine was already aimed at him. I shot him in the kneecaps, both of them, just as his gun fired, bullets cracking the ceiling.
Then, as if on cue, all of the outside erupted in gunfire. The sound shook the walls and through the wavering windows bursts of light filled the sky. My army was here.
I ran over to Juanito who was screaming in pain and picked him up by the collar, shaking him.
“Alright you little fuckface,” I sneered at him, trying to fight the urge to strangle the fucking life out of him. “Tell me where Esteban is and I’ll make your death painless. Don’t tell me and I’ll break your bones with a hammer. Which one is it?”
His screaming wouldn’t stop. I shook him again. “You can’t protect him now, you’ll never fucking walk again and he sure as hell won’t give two fucks about a pathetic piece of garbage like you. So talk.”
But before he could, Diego was calling out my name and I let go of Juanito, rolling over him just in time as the air above me burned with bullets. Diego fired back at the assailants and I kept rolling until I was behind the kitchen island. I quickly reached for the grenade which I knew could take out enough of them without damaging the structural integrity of the house, and tossed it out of the kitchen. It rolled down the hallway.
They yelled to move but it was too late and I pressed my hands over ears as the blast went off.
“Jesus, Javi,” Diego swore as pieces of plaster rained down on him. “You haven’t even moved back in yet.”
I didn’t care if it was sloppier than my usual methods – it was efficient. I scrambled to my feet and stared at the wreckage. There was a ragged hole in the wall, smoke and flames licking the edge.
I shrugged. “I wanted to open up that room anyway.”
Miraculously, or something of that nature, Juanito was still alive, holding onto his bleeding and blasted knees as he writhed on the floor.
He was missing half his face though, so it’s not like he escaped the explosion unscathed. He was very scathed and crawling for freedom.
I covered my nose and mouth with the crook of my elbow and walked into the smoke, letting it wash over me. Juanito looked up at me with what was left of him, begging for mercy with an outstretched hand.
I stepped on his hand instead, crunching the bones beneath my boot.
“That was for my sister,” I seethed. “I know you intercepted her call when she was calling me, for help.”
“Javier, we have to go,” Diego said, coughing and coming over to stop me. A war was raging around me but none of it mattered. All that mattered was an eye for an eye.
This time I stomped on Juanito’s arm, driving it in with all my might, like I was squashing a cockroach, until I felt it break beneath me.
He screamed.
I smiled.
But I was the furthest thing from happy.
And Juanito couldn’t even speak at this point. His mouth was a flap of burning skin, covering a gaping hole. He was useless.
I slid the hunter’s knife out of its sheath and with one swift motion, stabbed it downward into the top of his skull.
The screaming stopped.
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“Javier,” Diego warned again, pulling at me. “That had been Esteban’s scream, he’s upstairs.”
I nodded, trying to keep focus, and yanked the knife back out, wiping the brain and blood on my pants. They weren’t my pants anyway.
Diego led the way into the smoldering hallway, stepping over the dead bodies of Esteban’s fuckheads. Some of them were missing body parts, a foot here, a torso there, others were just a splash of guts on what was left of the wall.
We made our way up the stairs, firing at anyone who came at us and using the cover of smoke to our advantage. We kicked open doors, checked the rooms, searching for Esteban.
It wasn’t until we came to the last room, what had once been Luisa’s prison, that I realized what I was going to find.
Of course this would be her prison again.
Of course she would be in there.
With my heart already in a vice, I paused before looking in the room.
The door was already open and with what little light was left in the hallway, blurred by smoke and flickering from waning power, it illuminated Luisa lying on the floor.
I didn’t recognize her at first.
She was nothing more than a pile of blood-splashed limbs, a corpse.
Her hair was all gone, shorn off in clumps around her. She was bleeding and cut, mangled and bruised.
Naked and burned.
I immediately lost my breath, like someone had thrown brick at my gut and I grabbed onto the doorframe to steady myself. I couldn’t feel my knees.
My angel.
My queen.
Ravaged.
Ruined.
I’d never wipe the sight of her from my mind, never forget the horror.
A sob choked in my throat but I didn’t know if I was going to vomit right here or cry.
Diego dropped to his knees beside her, his hands hovering above her but he couldn’t bring himself to touch her, as if touching her would break her into a million pieces.
“Javier,” he said without looking at me. He didn’t say anything else. I could only hold on as if that doorframe was the only thing keep me from descending into complete madness.
She was so beaten, so broken, by life, by everything.
My queen.
My queen.
“Javier,” Diego said again, clearing his throat. He finally lay his finger underneath her purple and black chin. “She’s alive. Barely. But she is alive.”
He looked to me and I saw my own hate reflected in them. “I’ll take care of her,” he said. “You get Esteban. He’s the one who did this.”
He didn’t have to tell me that. I already knew. He’d done this and who knows what else to my wife, showing off for the world to see. Now, he’d discarded her here, alone in the dark, to die.
I wasn’t put away in Puente Grande just so that he could try and take over the cartel. I was put there so I couldn’t protect the one thing that mattered to me. I was put there so I and the whole world would see just how far he would go.
And he succeeded.
I couldn’t protect her.
I failed.
But I would do what I could now, while I could.
I gathered up strength, burying my sorrow and shock in some cold, hard place inside me. I knew Diego would keep his word.
I turned and ran back down the hall, slamming on my earpiece as I went.
“Where are you?” I yelled into it, shooting at someone just as they had come out from the burning hallway at the bottom of the stairs. The man fell with a yell and I ran past, heading for the back of the house.
I heard Evaristo’s voice crackle in my ear. “Front lawn. Be careful, your own men are around the corner and they shoot first, ask questions later.”
I’d forgotten he was tracking me. I shoved the back door open and ran across the grass, heading toward the koi pond and staying low so that neither friend nor foe could get a shot. “I found Luisa,” I said, surprised that I could say her name without my voice cracking. “Diego is with her. I want Este.”
“I want him too,” Evaristo said. “But he’s not here.”
“That’s not fucking good enough!” I yelled just as someone took a shot at me from the roof, the bullet missing me by a few feet and going into the pond.
What a terrible shot, I thought as I turned to look.
And there he fucking was.
Esteban was standing on the roof, alone, gun in one hand, his body lit by the lights below.
His other hand over his eye.
No wonder he missed, the fuck could barely see.
I didn’t have to tell myself to shoot back, I was already pulling the trigger but a deafening roar filled my ears and I was shoved to the grass by a gust of whirring wind that whipped my shirttails.
I rolled onto my back, gun raised in time to see a Lama helicopter slowly rising from the other side of the pond, hidden by a clump of trees that I knew Luisa used to hide behind.
Luisa.
The image of her was burned in my brain.
The vicious ugly burn on her delicate skin.
I bellowed in anger and tried to get to my feet, to get a clear shot of Esteban but he was already running to the edge of the roof, ready to hitch a ride, while the chopper was now fully warmed-up and flying toward me, the guns of the men on board taking fire.
“He’s on the roof!” I managed to yell to Evaristo before I rolled away. I went right into the pond, swimming deep into the reeds and lily pads that would provide cover. Bullets plunged alongside me.
My leg exploded in a bright explosion of pain and that’s when I knew I’d been hit, but I still had to stay under. I stared up through the murky water at the lights of the chopper as it continued on its way, stirring the pond into waves, heading now for the house.
I burst up through the water, gasping for breath, and wasted no time in climbing out of the pond. Esteban was so close to getting on the helicopter. I ran as fast as I could with my damaged leg, trying to get a shot but they only hit the rotors.
Esteban leaped, making it on board and the chopper quickly pulled away into the night.
“Motherfucker!” I screamed.
I tapped my ear piece but the water had ruined it. I tossed it away in anger and then limped around to front of the house, cautiously approaching as I was sure the war was still going on.
Thankfully, the battle had been in our favor and while many of our men were dead, we were still the last ones standing. The gunfire and mayhem was over.
“I saw him get away,” Evaristo said gruffly as he saw me staggering around the corner. “We had a rocket launcher ready but it stuffed fucking up at the last minute. Piece of fucking shit.”
He was mad. Really mad. And that’s when I knew he was legit. He wanted Esteban as much as the rest of us did. It must have been eating at him all this time to know that it was his own government assholes that made the deal with him.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter, we’re getting him. Now. Every day after this. For the rest of my life, we are getting him. I want his head on a fucking plate.”
Evaristo exhaled angrily and then eyed my leg. “You’re shot.”
“It happens,” I said, not willing to dwell on it, not now. With the adrenaline still running through me, I could ignore the pain. “We need to deal with Luisa first.”
He snapped his fingers and his main man, Paolo, came over. “Get this place cleaned up,” Evaristo ordered him. “Find a place to burn all the bodies.”
“We usually just feed them to the pigs,” I pointed out. “But who knows what they’ve been eating lately.”
Paolo went and gathered up the rest of the men for the dirty work while Evaristo and I went back inside the house, hurrying now to get to Luisa.
“We’ll get you both taken care of as much as I can,” he said as we made our way upstairs and to the room. “There are a lot of clinics I know, even out of the country where no one can watch you.”
I nodded absently, unable to ignore the une
asiness in my chest. Diego was at the end of the hall, holding Luisa in his arms like some sort of action hero. He’d taken off his jacket and wrapped her in it, her head was back, arm swinging limply beneath her.
But he didn’t need to be a hero right now. I did. Even though I was the opposite of one. An anti-hero was still a hero in the end but I would never be more than a villain.
“Shit,” Evaristo swore under his breath as we got closer. “You’re sure she’s alive?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Even when smoke billowed down the hall, enveloping us, I could see her through the haze, clear as day. Her beautiful skin, broken down like a bruised peach.
“She’s barely holding on,” Diego said and the tremor of worry in his voice told me we didn’t have much time. I also could have hugged the damn man for taking care of her like that.
“Give her to me,” I said, reaching for her.
“Your leg, Javier,” Evaristo reminded me.
“Fuck my leg,” I snapped as Diego handed her over, placing my wife in my arms. She was lighter than usual and beneath the blood I could see her ribs jutting out. She’d been starved on top of that, but I should have never expected anything less from Esteban.
The more I stared down at her in my arms, the more that empty space inside of me increased, spinning outward, invading every corner of which I was alive. She’d undone me many times in the past but I wasn’t sure I could piece myself together again. Not now. I was ruined over what she’d done to me and I was ruined over what had been done to her.
Our marriage had been obliterated and this was all that was left.
I was going to hold on to that until my fingers were raw.
“We have to go,” Diego said to me and I managed to say something back, I don’t know what, but somehow I put one bad leg in front of the other. We walked down that hallway of what used to be our house, of what used to be a pretty good life, and I could almost hear her bubbly laughter, her intoxicating grin, from memories past. Fire and smoke filled the air, the stench of burning bodies, while my wife’s bird-like body, her fragile life, was in my hands. I could have given into that thick rage that had gotten me here, I could have killed her – put her out of her misery, even – and had my revenge on her. It would have been so easy and the others would have looked away.