by Dana Arama
We marched carefully and away from human presence. Towards nightfall, our bodies had acclimated to the thin air, but Laura’s limp was getting worse and I knew that we had to let her rest her foot, so as not to create permanent damage. We were tired, we felt the cold and we had endured enough that day. We had to stop. Instead of sleeping by day and walking by night, when there would be fewer human risks, we had to put ourselves in danger of exposure and walk during the day in order to see El Desconocido’s signs. We’d walked for hours, until we could walk no more.
During the evening the temperatures dropped in the forest and the chill penetrated our bones. That was another reason why it was better to walk at night, because while walking during the heat of the day, we could feel the humidity in the air and the sweat that never dried on the body. The combination of the two made the cold, and the chills it brought, dangerous. They wasted valuable energy.
We continued a little further until we found a good spot to rest. A cluster of trees and between them a small flow of the river which would mask our sounds, even though we whispered to one another. We decided to settle for the night. We still needed to contact Gordon. We looked for branches which could be used for sleeping on. When we found a suitable tree, we then spread dry twigs around the tree and some on the pathway, so if someone were to come close, we would hear them in good time. I was the first to climb up the tree and check the branches. After I checked that there were no snakes and that the branches were sturdy enough, I climbed back down. By the time I came down, the telephone had been switched on and a communication was waiting. The news from Gordon wasn’t encouraging. There was no news about Jonathan. In Mexico, a few marijuana fields in the Chiapas region, near the Guatemala border, had been burned to the ground. Something seemed suspiciously familiar. To whom did the burned fields belong? Was someone setting us up? Was this third party using our pursuit to harm their competitors? The conversation left us with more questions than answers. We were consoled by two things: that the burned fields aren’t ahead of us, which meant we were ahead of our pursuers, and that we had a good few hours to sleep.
I tied Laura to me and climbed up the tree with her. She then laid down on top of me with her cheek on my chest and her hands holding onto my neck. I tied both of us to the branch and thought to myself that the next two hours are going to be an extraordinary experience.
Sleeping on a tree is not an easy challenge and it is harder when the humidity, the height, and the cold sweat on the body makes one shiver. Zorro was the first to say, “I can’t stop shivering.”
“Me too,” whispered Laura. I could feel her tremors through my body. She tried to press as close to me as she could, to warm herself up with my body heat. The curves of her body fit so well with mine. I wondered if she was cuddling up to me more than strictly necessary. It was possible, but the cold was good enough justification.
“I think you girls need energy candy. We haven’t had enough to eat today. Zorro, do you have any candies left?” I asked
“Yes,” she answered. I could hear her rummaging through her bag.
Carefully I put my hand underneath my head and reached into my bag. I too felt around until I found the fabric sack and took out a piece of candy. With the same care, and avoiding sudden movements, I slid my hand gently to Laura’s mouth and put the candy in her mouth. The last thing I needed now was the arousal I felt stirring within. The rifle was lying next to me, to remind me what we were doing here. Tomorrow would be another tiring day and we all needed a proper rest.
What didn’t help was Zorro’s hand, reaching out from the nearby branch. She was also shaking and searching for every possible source of warmth.
“I should be lying next to you now,” she said
I was trying to keep things light despite the unhappy state of things, and answered, “Girls, I have enough warmth for the both of you. What you both need is to rest comfortably after a long hot shower…”
“Oooh… I would kill for a hot shower now,” Laura whispered. I could hear her through the earpiece, but I could also feel the tickle of her breath against my neck as she spoke.
“Or a soft duvet,” Zorro murmured.
I took my arm and drew Laura closer to me. Slowly, I put my hand on her back. She shivered, snuggled up to me, careful not to move her injured ankle. I said, “These are the conditions we have, and we shall endure. Remember that there is a very scared boy in the hands of a disturbed mafioso. Come now. Let’s get some sleep and replenish our strength.”
The women didn’t answer. In short order, we were all fast asleep. When we awoke it was because underneath us, a dry twig snapped.
Guy Niava,
A tree in the middle of the Chiapas jungle
November 14, 2015, 4:30 a.m.
The girls woke almost at the same second I did. We tried very hard not to move. The rush of adrenaline warmed us. I slowly moved my head until my right eye caught a gap between the leaves. I could make out the silhouette of a person. I was thankful that it was a person and not some ferocious animal. The silhouette stood there, about fifty meters from us, on the pathway. It looked like a man. I wanted him to move so I could see if he was holding a weapon. That would be enough motivation to kill him, but he just stood still. It was frustrating. The humidity around me was drying up and I knew that the sun was about to rise. If he remained standing there, not only would it waste precious travelling time, but our footsteps and our preparations for the night would be recognized. I didn’t want to shoot someone whose only crime was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Soon we would have no option, because even if he was merely a citizen, he might still inform someone of our whereabouts. In the growing, pale light, I tried to determine if we could climb across the tops of the trees and disappear from here, but the light was too dim to plan such a risky escape.
And then it arrived. The familiar smell of cigarette smoke. Along with the smoke I could hear the voices of two men. Now there were three. The one standing, the smoker, and someone in a light-colored cowboy hat. I wondered if it was the same smoker from yesterday or they’d brought along another friend, and then my question was answered. They spoke in Spanish, and I picked up the rough meaning of their words.
“We have been searching for them for over twenty-four hours. I think they were killed while landing. Either we managed to hit them, or they fell off the cliff.” That was the smoker. “We saw the skid marks.”
“So what?” asked the one in the cowboy hat. He looked almost ridiculous, like an American cattle rancher.
The first one just stood still. Then, he said suddenly, “They’re here.” He turned around and looked up into the trees. “I can smell them!”
“Your nose smelled them before, and they weren’t there. I need a hit.” The smoker was showing signs of unrest. He started scratching at his skin and fidgeting around.
“Maybe if you wouldn’t smoke next to me, I would find it easier to smell them.”
The smoker ignored him and repeated, “Joaquin, I need a hit.”
“Díme, Manuel, are you crazy?”
“I need a hit,” he repeated once more, with conviction.
I was more convinced now than ever that I would need to shoot them.
“If we go back without them, we’re as good as dead. Entiendes? Get it into that drug-addled brain of yours. Dead!”
“Let’s go back to the village and kill three people and say it’s them. Who would know?”
“El Desconocido would know and we will have the pleasure of smelling the flowers from their roots.” The man named Joaquin took off his hat and fanned himself impatiently. He could have also used the movement to take another look around. “If the Nose said they’re in the area, estan aquí.”
On the tree above Zorro pressed my hand and translated their conversation more precisely. She’d mastered the language better than Laura and me. I thought it wouldn’t
be a wise idea to kill them, in the event that they were El Desonocido’s messengers. At least not all three of them. But if we left Manuel the addict alive, he might, for the promise of drugs, lead us to the right place.
The problem was technical. I had been lying in one position for over two hours without moving. The hand I used as a pillow for my head I needed, in order to draw my gun silently, cock it, and pick off one shot -- most probably the man they called the Nose. Then afterwards, we would have to untie ourselves, quickly climb down from the tree and neutralize Manuel and Joaquin before they managed to shoot back.
The odds weren’t in our favor, but I was willing to take the risk. Zorro could shoot from the tree and eliminate the threat. But our chance was ruined, as more men from the cartel arrived at the scene.
I whispered into the earpiece, “We’ll wait for them to leave and then follow them.” And after a moment I added, “I am untying the knots. Hold me.”
Laura did so and whispered, “They are going to hang around here and we need to go south.”
“We have no choice. We need to wait.” But waiting was about to become just as hazardous as remaining in the trees.
In the beginning I didn’t comprehend what was about to happen. First, we heard the sound of a monotonous, exhausted engine and then the van appeared. It parked, and its door opened. Two men with red bandannas on their faces rolled out of the van, two blue barrels in tow. Two others took out more equipment, and the reason for all this became apparent very soon, when one of them announced, “The cripple said that if we don’t find them, we should prepare the stuff for shipment where the Nose smelled them, so that El Desconocido does not feel as if we have been wasting time for nothing…” He also lifted his head towards the treetops, where we were hiding, and scanned them.
All three of us held our breath.
“If the nose is right, then they are somewhere hiding in the treetops, and the steam from the cooker will finish them. And if not, then at least we will have the stuff cooked and ready.”
Someone in the van said, “Nose, you have to get out of here.”
The guys down below had calculated that we must be somewhere in the area, and that it would be a good idea to start a kitchen right here to cook crystal meth. It was a brilliant plan. The poisonous fumes would reach us directly, smoking us out of the trees.
Murat Lenika,
Washington, D.C., November 14, 2015,
6:00 a.m. local time
We first met when I was sent to a boarding school at fifteen. That was the only thing my mother had managed to do before she died. It was a chance for me to grow up differently. The requirements to be accepted to this boarding school were meant to filter out anyone but the uber-wealthy, or those with ties to English Royalty. We didn’t have either, but we had another kind of strength. The physical, intimidating kind. I have many memories of him from the distant past, none of them included sleep. That’s why I wasn’t surprised to hear from him at five in the morning.
We organized ourselves quickly, and woke the boy, who looked stunned, and an hour later, I was sitting across from him. I was quite certain he hadn’t slept much over the years. I once thought it was some sort of sickness, but lately I realized that he was a phenomenon. An energy bomb that only gained momentum as it hurtled along. That was part of the secret of his charisma. The second secret was that he was shrouded in mystery, which hid his dark plans.
Somehow, we always seemed to meet at different points in my life. And somehow, he had always taken a liking to me. Maybe because he thought we had something in common. Much more than I thought to be true. It was true that we had both lost our mothers at a young age. In my case, my mother had died quite young, whereas his mother was too busy, as is often the case in high society, to pay much attention to him. I had been somewhat lucky; my grandmother filled the void. His void was filled by au pairs. Besides that, we both had strong father figures, who overshadowed any other authoritative influences surrounding us. Both of us tended to break the boundaries our father’s set for us. Amidst a sea of Anglican Christians, we were also both the only Muslims who didn’t leave to go and study in Switzerland, each for our own reasons. We shared a room for a long period of time.
When I had learned that he was behind it all, I understood that it wasn’t by chance that they found me. I asked myself if I had known it was him, would I have done things differently? I could have just taken the money directly from him and given him the guns and then used the money to buy the drugs. It would definitely have simplified things a lot for me, but it would have simplified things for the authorities as well, and I could have been caught with my pants down. Those Americans excelled at finding financial transactions, even if they were well hidden. That was a risk I wasn’t willing to take. The drugs, on the other hand, were far harder to locate, especially once it reached the streets. The money from those drugs was yet another story. It was usually transferred to anonymous accounts on far-away islands.
“How long are you staying for?” I asked, after exchanging a warm hug.
“As long as it is required,” he answered, with a mysterious smile.
“One can never get a straight answer out of you,” I said. And then I added, more seriously, “I need to know how to contact you. It has happened before that I have left messages and you haven’t returned my calls. Someone too high on drugs to make sense answered the call or you weren’t available.”
“I will call you. I don’t see the problem here.”
“The problem is that at the moment, I am left with excess merchandise. Because of the kid, I am being forced to hide. The rifles aren’t available, and I’ll need a few days heads-up to source them, and need to know how to contact you.”
“I don’t like it at all!” he said. The madness in his eyes was more prominent than ever. The blue eyes were open wide, and his reddish beard only accentuated the redness of his corneas.
“There is nothing to get excited about,” I answered, as calmly as I could. “In the meantime, take this.” I gave him an untraceable disposable cell phone. “This will be our line of communication for the next few days.”
He reached out and took it without looking at it, then threw it with disgust onto the nearest couch.
After a second he stood and walked over to the elegant desk standing in the corner of the room. “I hate devices which allow the world to monitor me,” he said, and took out a yellow pad, wrote something down on it, tore off the page and gave it to me. “This will be our communication line when I call on you.”
I looked at the piece of paper. It was just his signature. “Why would you call on me? I am telling you that in a couple of days everything will work out. At most a week. I will contact you.”
“Our timetable is not flexible at all.” He still complained in the same spoiled tone he had used his whole life when talking to people. “A week late or even a day late would be a total disruption of our plans, and I don’t like it at all.”
“In two or three days the container should be arriving and twenty-four hours after disembarking you will have the weapons.”
I expanded the timetable a bit, to gain some time to solve another problem -- the one that might occur with the Red Mafia. I preferred to think positively. “In the meantime,” I pointed at the kid, “I have a bonus for you.”
“What have you brought us?” His British accent, acquired from the exclusive boarding school he went to, gave him a disdainful tone. “I prefer women…” He said the word ‘women’ but he looked at the boy calculatingly, as if he was the card that cinched the deal in a winning hand.
“I know…” I went along with him. “I have already organized a few women for you…” I said as if I hadn’t already known for years his habits of preferring women, in order to beat them brutally. If he wasn’t a friend and such a predictable client, I wouldn’t have sent him the little whore from Texas, the one that helped the kid escape from
the casino. I wanted to tell him that the kid was not a sex toy, but that would have been too big a hint. Instead I added, “He is an excellent hacker. You are smart, Yassin,” I said, complimenting him. “Think about information you lack for your mission and he will find it for you. And he has another advantage -- he is Israeli. He speaks their language.”
“Can he get into their sites, to their timetables, to their secrets?” His question was directed toward me but all the while, he was devouring the boy with his stare.
I began to think that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, because the boy could get hit on the head and become useless so I quickly added, “He will do as you say. The boy will stay with you until the weapons arrive. He will be your insurance against us being late. In a few days everything will have calmed down, you will have your weapons and I will get the kid back.” Just to make clear that I expected to get the kid back in good shape, I added, “I see him as your guest, Yassin.” For emphasis, I lifted the little cup of bitter black coffee, took a little sip, and said, “So you have a few days to make use of his abilities.”
“And if after the ‘few days’ I would like to keep using him?”
“In that case my friend, unfortunately, I would have to refuse you. The boy has already been promised to my Russian friend who is looking for unobtainable information.”
“Is he that good?”
“Try him and see. Try him.” I got up from my seat and gathered myself to leave. The boy looked at me, frightened, as if I was his big brother leaving him with a strange neighbor in the middle of the night. “As soon as I can, I will notify you where to come to retrieve the weapons and then you’ll return the boy to me.”
