by Dana Arama
“What happens if I don’t hear from you?”
“In that case,” I smiled, “I have left you another kind of weapon.” I pointed at the kid. “You have paid, and he is yours. You can do whatever you want with him.”
“No!” he answered, dissatisfied. “Your rifles are integral to start the procedure and the procedure is complicated enough as it is, so if I don’t hear from you tomorrow, and if, because of you my larger plan goes wrong, I will be very, very disappointed. And Murat, you know it’s not worth all that, because my disappointment will have global consequences.”
Guy Niava,
The middle of the Chiapas jungle,
November 14, 2015, 4:45 a.m.
“Something has to be done.” Laura sounded frightened. “We could die from the fumes.”
We heard voices arguing below us. By the light of the van we saw that Joaquin was protesting where the men wanted to build the kitchen. He asked, “Why not in our regular place?”
The Nose declared, “First of all, because the Civil Guard already has their eyes on our usual place. Secondly, the trail of the trespassers leads to this area, and thirdly… the new formula. The vapor is very poisonous, and it is more ventilated here. Do you want to waste an hour and a half driving to our usual spot? What for? So that we can walk straight into the hands of the Civil Guard?”
Without regard to Joaquin’s protests, the Nose began to build the fire and another man joined him, and, with the easy authority of someone who has done something many times before, bordered the fire with square bricks he took from the van.
The fire was soon ablaze and lit up the gloomy forest. Though I feared the light would make us more visible, it also helped us to survey the area.
The third man, who had taken the white bricks from the van, joined together two heavy boards and rolled a blue barrel atop them. With a nod of his head, he pointed towards Joaquin and threw the question in the air: “Maybe he is collaborating with them?”
Another passenger emerged from the van, a big-bodied man who moved with a wobbly kind of walk towards the light of the fire. I assumed he was the “Cripple” the men had spoken of before. “Joaquin,” he thundered towards the protester. “Is it true what your friends are saying about you?”
“Cripple, you have known me for more than twenty years now… Does this seem like it could be true to you?
“So, what is all this talk about?” asked the Cripple.
“It just doesn’t seem right to me, that’s all… We don’t know this area well enough.”
“We have been looking around this place non-stop, for over twenty-four hours … Have you seen any of the Jalisco?”
“No, Cripple, I haven’t,” Joaquin said. Something from his recent outburst aroused suspicion once again, this time even stronger. “But this place isn’t suitable. The river is too shallow.”
“The river is flowing and that’s good enough.” The Cripple approached him threateningly, and asked, “What have you prepared for us there, Joaquin? A squad from the Jalisco or the Policía Federal?”
I could hear Zorro giving an interpretation of her own, into the earpiece, “It’s not going to end well down there.”
“There are five besides Joaquin and Manuel,” I whispered back. “We can take them down.”
“What’s our angle?” Laura asked in a whisper. “El Desconocido will mark it as our debt and will kill us. They’re his people.”
“They are going to kill Joaquin,” I explained. “And then they will cook drugs under us.”
“I’m taking the one near the barrel,” Laura announced in a murmur.
“I will take the Cripple and the driver,” I said and asked, “Zorro, do you have an angle for the other two?”
“I will take them down as soon as you command, but maybe we should keep one of them alive?”
Underneath us things were progressing fast. Manuel spread some white powder on the hood of the car and sniffed it up his nose. The Cripple gave his driver an order, with his head and the driver removed his automatic rifle from the vehicle. Joaquin took three steps back, took off his hat and begged and pleaded as if he was in church, kneeling before the statue of Jesus Christ.
“Cripple, por favor, no. Por favor. I have a wife and kids. Serina just had a baby three months ago…”
“Who are you working with, Joaquin?” The lighting of the fire below made the Cripple’ looked exceptionally dangerous and frightening.
All those present were frozen in their places, except for the driver, who took quiet steps on the other side of Joaquin.
“When the Cripple gives him a sign to shoot, that’ll be our sign,” I whispered calmly, even though the figure of the Cripple was already in my sights. I moved the finder to the driver with the drawn gun.
“They’re not moving from here,” said Laura.
“We’ll wait…” The momentary blur of the telescopic lens disappeared and then the figure of the driver became steady.
Underneath us, Joaquin had evidently found a moment of self-respect and authority amidst the madness of the mortal danger he was in. He clapped his hat back on his head, pulled out some sort of ID and yelled, “You’re all under arrest!”
We didn’t wait for the Cripple’s cue. We all understood that Joaquin’s hopeless action was our sign. I saw the driver fall and the Cripple quickly gathered himself and, despite his disability, leapt and grabbed the gun from the driver’s hand. My next bullet shattered his skull.
The rest of them froze in their places. They were surrounded by directionless gunfire and they didn’t know which direction to shoot. They fell like marionettes whose strings had been cut loose. We were left with Manuel, Joaquin, and the Cripple’s loaded gun, which was buried under his heavy body. I thought maybe Joaquin could be relied on to cooperate, but then I remembered Zorro’s words: No way to know which of the police is corrupt, or to which of the cartels he belongs.
“Tell them they are surrounded and to get down on their knees with their hands behind their backs, facing the path,” I said. It was important to get them far away from the rifles.
Zorro repeated my words in her impeccable Spanish, and if they believed what she said or not, they clearly preferred to cooperate.
“We’re coming down from the tree, keep them in your viewfinder,” Zorro ordered.
“No, let me go down first. That way I can catch Laura,” I said.
We slid down quickly and carefully from the tree, ignoring the bodies around us, and went straight over to our two captives.
“Laura, retrieve the gun from under the Cripple’s body,” I ordered her, without removing my eyes from them. Only after she had done so, did I acknowledge them.
“Manual, Manuel, Manuel…” I could see he was wasted, but not totally. There was still a spark of awareness left, for him to comprehend what I was saying. Most probably the amount of drugs he had inhaled was smaller than the quantity he was used to. “I want to keep you alive, but my friend here thinks you are garbage and it is a waste to keep you breathing in clean oxygen. She also thinks Joaquin is a justice fighter and that is why he should keep us company.” I paused dramatically, then drew closer to him and asked, “Can we trust you to show us the way?”
Behind me, Zorro translated and also added in my dramatic pause.
“Si, señor,” he answered quickly. “I will take you wherever you want to go…I know this place better than anyone.”
“And you, Joaquin?” I asked
“I am a representative of the law,” he answered in heavily accented English.
“What does that have to do with cooperating with us?”
“That my cover has been blown and I have nothing to lose. I will be happy if you could ensure my safe arrival home.”
“And where is your home?” I asked. Joaquin didn’t answer.
“I have to know whose side you’re o
n,” I insisted. Joaquin glanced at Manuel, then answered, “I am a representative of the law. I am on the side of the law.”
With each passing moment, I liked his answer less and less. “The law tends to be flexible according to the reward the representative receives. Who is paying you, Joaquin?”
Manuel suddenly became interested as well. “Yes, Joaquin, who’s paying you? El Jalisco?”
Instead of answering, Joaquin tried to knock down our weakest link. Laura was leaning on the tree, her wounded foot hovering over the ground, the rifle slung over her shoulder and the gun steady in her hand.
With agility that was surprising given his looks, Joaquin leaned left towards her, held onto the barrel of the rifle and tugged sharply at it.
Laura cried out in pain, but the momentary imbalance worked to her benefit and she landed on her good foot. But it wasn’t enough to hold her up on the soft wet leaves and she fell on her side. Because Joaquin adamantly clung to the rifle, Laura’s sudden toppling caused him to lose his own balance, and he slipped on the ground beneath the tree. As they fell in a jumble of limbs, underneath the barrels of Zorro’s gun and mine, a single shot rang out, and the whole pile stopped moving. Our hearts stopped, too.
Zorro and I stared at each other. Neither of us were injured. “Laura?” I asked the still tumble of bodies next to my feet, my heart in my throat.
“I’m okay,” she answered. “Get him off of me.”
Joaquin groaned and cursed in Spanish. He was alive, and still held onto the barrel, but at an angle that wasn’t threatening to anyone.
I approached them and caught him by the scruff of his neck, pulling him off her. “Joaquin, Joaquin…” I clicked my tongue. “That wasn’t a clever thing to do. How will you build our trust if you keep acting like this?”
“I don’t know who you are,” he said, his voice loud and unnatural. I thought that maybe his ears still rung from the noise of the shot. “You have killed Mexican citizens and as far as I’m concerned you should also be under arrest.”
“Get up slowly with your hands above your head,” I ordered him. To emphasize my words, Zorro kicked him in the stomach, which made him wheeze and cough, and, more importantly, turn away from the barrel.
Zorro hissed at him, “We are not your friends and we are not playing with you.” Laura, who hadn’t taken her gun from his head during the whole exchange, said to him, “And for your sake and others’, consider a shower once in a while.”
Joaquin almost tripped again as he attempted to stand up, and then put his hands down to support himself on the tree stump. Laura also used the tree stump to pull herself up, and said, “We should check to see if there are any more weapons in the van.”
Zorro replied briefly, “You’re right. I’m on it.” She abandoned her spot next to me.
“We still haven’t received a clear answer from you. I suppose we can’t expect one and it isn’t really relevant. As far as we are concerned, you are just as dangerous as your doped-up friend next to you… and despite that, your cooperation could bring you home safely.”
Joaquin thought for a moment, and then asked, “What do you need?”
“For you to bring us to El Desconocido’s home along the safest and shortest route.”
“Then you can kill me now, because there is no way I will get out of there alive.”
“You won’t have to go there. Just guide us in the right direction and then go on your way.”
Joaquin thought about it once again and with a look of resignation on his face he said, “Okay, I will bring you as close as possible and then get the hell out of there. I think I will be the most hunted man in all of Mexico after I help you.”
“Manuel. What about you?”
“What about me?” he questioned.
“Can we trust you too?”
“Sure. And I will be happy to take you to his door. They have drugs for free there.”
“I don’t promise you that you can come with us all the way to his door, but you will definitely be closer to the drugs than you are now.”
Zorro got out of the van with two guns and twirled then round her finger like a sheriff in a western movie. “It’s just like the Wild West here.” We were on the same wavelength.
“Is the vehicle clean?”
“Yes. I found these in the floor, under a false panel.”
“Check for other false panels in the walls, glove compartment, weapons hidden in the car ceiling,” Laura instructed. “We found those in cars the Anti-Drug Authority confiscated and we can’t allow for sloppy searches to disrupt our plans.”
Without saying a word, Zorro turned on her heel and went back to the vehicle.
“Do you know where the weapons are hidden in the van?” I asked the two men, as if this was a friendship test.
“Underneath the driver’s seat,” Manuel answered.
“Check under the seats,” I called out to Zorro.
In the end, Zorro found a several more weapons. We left them hidden under a pile of leaves, and then we got into the vehicle. Laura and I were with Manuel, in the backseat. Zorro sat in front with Joaquin. This way she could watch his driving and make sure we were going in the right direction. From time to time she stopped, got out of the car and checked for the signs. Only after she was happy with what she saw could we carried on driving.
“Ask him to tell us when we are four or five kilometers away from the target,” I said to Zorro.
After more than two and a half hours of driving on dirt side-roads, Joaquin stated, “This is the last ranch before El Desconocido’s estate.”
“Drive into the forest and stop the car,” Zorro ordered him. She got out of the car and checked out the area. She gave her assent into the earpiece. “We are really getting closer. Do you prefer going in by car or by foot?” she asked.
I ordered Joaquin to get out, and I followed him. Laura was left with the Cripple’s rifle on her shoulder and the gun pointed at Manuel. We were swallowed up by the surrounding silence. A slight breeze moved the outer leaves of the tree canopy and a cloud of dust billowed over the earthen path. Not enough for me to suspect an oncoming car, but enough to remind me that we are not alone in this world.
“I want to call and see if there is anything new before we go in,” Laura said.
“We’ll have to go to an open area, so do it quickly.” I gave her the satellite phone and switched places with her, guarding Manuel and Joaquin.
The call was short and, it seemed, intriguing. “The boy managed to connect to his computer and had sent his location to the New York Police Department. That narrowed down the scope of the search. But by the time they got to the correct apartment -- the supposedly correct one -- they weren’t there anymore.”
I saw by the look on her face that she had more news for me. Maybe not the kind I wanted to hear, but not the kind that could remain hidden.
“What else do you want to tell me?” I asked.
“What they did find in the apartment were two women with expired tourist visas. They were working as prostitutes for Murat Lenika…”
“And?”
“They were taken in for questioning. We found out that Jonathan has been transferred to a different keeper.”
“Do you think he has been transferred to the hands of the terrorist group?”
“It is our assumption,” Laura confirmed, reluctantly.
Guy Niava,
En route to the El Desconocido estate,
November 14, 2015, 8:30 a.m.
We left Laura behind, with a weapon and two handcuffed captives. Zorro and I marched the last kilometers quickly. The height and the air took their toll. So did my thoughts. How had I let this happen? What could I have done differently? And how did we get to the point where Jonathan, a good boy, had become currency to be used as a trade between addicts and terrorists? I didn’t let Zorro in on my
thoughts. We marched along with increasing effort, side-by-side, in total silence.
We moved through the forest to reach the neighboring farm, which doubled the distance we had to travel. We passed the farm without any difficulties. As we covered the last few meters, the fence surrounding the whole area became noticeable. I lay flat on my stomach with Zorro next to me, and we hid ourselves in the bushes. It was nearly ten in the morning, but the sun had already heated the ground. We looked through our binoculars and surveyed the building.
“Look we’re in luck,” Zorro whispered and pointed south. “They haven’t finished putting up the whole electric fence.”
“And still I foresee problems.” I noted what was obvious with the glasses. “There are at least three of them on the roof and two walking in the yard.”
“How many can you shoot before they figure out our position?”
“The three on the roof,” I estimated. “But if they have five men on guard duty, just imagine how many men are inside. If we just had enough time to check out their routine, to know how many of them there are, and how many are armed. How much ammunition they have and what kinds… If we had enough time, we could infiltrate the compound at night.”
“But we don’t have enough time. Who was it that said to me just a few hours ago that this is what we have, and we have to make do with it?
I moved the binoculars to check the surroundings and focused on the metal poles mounted with cameras. “They also have electronic tracking. This is not an estate,” I noted.
“It is more like a fortress,” she finished my thoughts.
“That’s true, but…” I carried on surveying the building.
“Is the but a good ‘but’, or a bad one?”
“I hope it is a good one. I don’t think this house was built with too much planning behind it. There are a lot of blind spots.”
“Blind?”
“As far as the scouts are concerned. Large balconies that one can hide underneath. And did you notice that they stall on the west side while they’re scanning the area?”
