Cartel Fire

by Tom Riggs

  It was a ridiculous gun for a country cop to be carrying, especially with only five rounds in it. That was Mexico for you. It looked more macho to carry a big shiny American rifle than a more useful small weapon. Munro could really have done with a smaller weapon like an MP5. He remembered Eduardo saying that the cartel soldiers were using them and he did not blame them. Small, accurate and just as powerful as the AR15, MP5s were far more suited to urban warfare. After a moment’s deliberation, Munro emptied the bullets from the rifle’s over-sized cartridge and put them in his pocket. He then walked across the narrow road and threw the AR15 over the ledge and down the sort rocky incline. Its size meant that it would be easily spotted on a routine police stop. With only five rounds left, it was of limited use anyway. That just left the pistol.

  It was a Chinese-made, 9mm semi-automatic. It did not pack a spectacular punch, but it was light and easy to conceal. It held 16 rounds and luckily all 16 were still in the magazine. Munro cleaned it with a rag and then put it back together. One gun was enough.

  Gradually, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between Rudd and Anna, a face began to emerge from the blob. After half an hour, they were close to finished.

  “And now we do distinguishing features,” said Rudd. “Was there anything on this guy’s face that would mark him out as different from anyone else? Did he have any birthmarks or spots? Any particularly noticeable scars?”

  “You could say that,” said Anna, “His entire face was one big scar. There was not a square inch of it that was not pitted or chipped somewhere.”

  “Excellent,” said Rudd, “We love a few scars. What did it look like?”

  “Most of it looked like old acne marks. His face was pitted, like you imagine the surface of the moon to be. There was a teacher at school who had similar scars. We used to call him crater face.”

  “Excellent, excellent,” said Rudd. He tapped a few keys and then started shading the face using a mouse. Slowly, the face started to look scarred and pitted. When Rudd had covered the whole face in small scars, he said “Like that?”

  “No,” replied Anna. “It was worse.”

  So Rudd went over the face again with the mouse. After more three turns, Anna told Rudd to stop. The blob was now a man. A man with mean cruel eyes and a face pitted with craters.

  “So now we have our face?” said Rudd.

  “Very nearly,” said Anna. “Now we just have to add the other scar.”

  The other scar, the man-made one, took more time than the rest of the face. It was important to get it exactly right, Rudd explained. If the man that Anna saw had a criminal record, his scars would almost certainly be mentioned on them as distinguishing features. Scars and tattoos made cops’ lives a lot easier. It was helpful that most criminals usually had one or the other. The acne marks were worse than normal, but not completely out of the ordinary. It was the raw red gash across his neck, nice and visible above the collar line, that would be the most useful.

  Eventually Anna told Rudd to stop, saying, “That’s him. That’s the guy.” She looked relieved to see Munro walking back to the pick-up. He got back into the cab and looked at the face on the screen.

  “Is this our man?” he asked.

  “That’s him,” said Rudd’s voice from the phone speaker.

  “That is him, that’s the guy I saw,” said Anna as she shivered involuntarily.

  Munro looked closely at the face. “Ugly mother, isn’t he?”

  23

  Chappelmita did not have much in the way of public buildings. There was no town hall as there was no mayor. There was no public library, no civic centre and no youth club. On most maps the town did not exist. But there was a church. It was the largest building in town, although it was really little more than a concrete shed with a corrugated iron roof and a concrete tower at one end that served as a steeple. But it would do. It was usually empty in the middle of the day. But not today. Today it held most of the town’s men. No one was nervous, but everyone was slightly confused as to what was going on.

  That morning, after the police had caught two local boys with a car they had found by the baseball field, all hell had broken loose. The police had blocked the two roads leading into and out of town and were not letting anyone leave. They had been going from house to house and bar to bar asking about a gringo. Had anyone seen a gringo in town yesterday? Had anyone sold a car to a gringo? Had anyone had their car stolen? The questions were met with bemusement on the most part. Gringos never came to Chappelmita, and if they did they were unlikely to buy a car there. There were plenty of car sale lots in Guadalajara. You could buy anything you wanted there. There were hardly any shops in Chappelmita, let alone car sale lots. Most people had thought the police were loco. Things got more confusing when the police suddenly told everyone to meet in the local church. All the men that is. Not many people in Chappelmita worked, so it was no great hardship. When the only employer in town, a small cement factory, bussed its twenty workers to the church, people realised that there might be something serious going on. The foreman at the factory was a well-known cabron, who never let his men have so much as a break to go to the toilet. But no one really cared much. It was cool in the church and the men who were working were happy to have some time off. Those who weren’t working were happy to have something to do.

  What Chappelmita did have in the way of community leaders was standing at the entrance to the church, talking nervously. The factory manager, the local police sergeant and the town’s biggest landlord were not getting into the festive atmosphere. They knew who were on their way and they did not like it one bit. The town was out of the way, and they liked it like that. The various mafias and cartels that operated around them had no interest in little Chappelmita. There was not much to occupy them in the dusty little town. Until now.

  The convoy pulled up outside the church in a cloud of dust. Dodge Rams, Chevy Escalades. Big new shiny American cars, the likes of which were rarely seen in town. Black cars with black windows, their chrome alloy wheels looked like they cost more than most people in Chappelmita made in a month. The trio at the church entrance hesitated. No one wanted to go forward to greet the convoy, but not to do so would be rude. The police sergeant eventually stepped forward. It was he who had been told that two captains from El Cazon’s cartel needed information from Chappelmita. His commander had ordered the roads closed and the meeting in the church, but had stayed away. Suddenly the fat old man had pressing business in Guadalajara to take care of. It was left to the sergeant to deal with the gangsters.

  Two men had got out of the Ram that led the convoy. They were both in black military combat fatigues and both had guns clearly strapped to their thighs and their waists. The sergeant took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  “Señors, welcome to Chappelmita. At your instructions we have assembled the men of the town in the church.”

  Hector looked around him and spat. “Have you found out the information we need? What car did the gringo take?”

  The sergeant found himself alone. The factory manager and landlord had somehow disappeared into the church. Cabrons.

  “Captain, we have interviewed all the people in town. No one saw a gringo yesterday.”

  “What about the cars?” asked Silvano. “Has anyone in town sold their car or had their car stolen?”

  “No señor, we asked everyone. Not many people in town have cars, and those that do still have them.”

  “We will see about that,” said Hector as he walked into the church. On his signal the doors to the Escalades opened and the ten MS13 men got out. They followed Hector, Silvano and the police sergeant into the church.

  The Salvadorians stayed at the back of the church, unnoticed to most of the villagers inside, except a few at the back. Those that did notice them turned away quickly. They were clearly not Mexican and were all carrying small machine guns or pistols. These two facts made the farmers and cement factory workers immediately wary of them. They did not recognise their tattoos as
being those of the La Mara. MS13 did not operate in their area. But they could tell from their eyes that they were unfriendly. Their guns told them anything else they needed to know.

  Hector and Silvano, along with the now heavily sweating police sergeant, walked up onto the slightly raised platform above the pews that held the church’s altar. The men at the front went quiet as soon as they saw Hector. His guns and his face had that effect on people. But the men in the middle of the church, seemingly oblivious to both the gangsters at the back and the killers at the front continued chatting and laughing, still enjoying the novelty of the situation. Silvano went to shout for all of them to shut up, but Hector stopped him with a raised hand. Instinctively Silvano and the police sergeant took a step back as Hector drew one of his pistols. He raised it at the ceiling above the pews and, without taking his eyes off of the men below him, fired.

  The shot had the desired effect. There was an immediate stunned silence. That the scare in black had fired his gun was stunning enough to the campesinos. That he had fired a shot in a house of God was both sacrilegious and terrifying. The men were a mixture of old and young, but all of them were religious, all of them respected the church. They all knew that you did not fire a gun in the house of God. Everyone stopped talking, as they also noticed the ten men with machine guns who were now walking up the sides of the church.

  Indeed, the MS13 men, as if on some unseen gesture from Hector, had split into two. Five each walked up the aisles on the edges of the pews, one stopping every few meters . They then turned to face the pews. To the men sitting down, there was no room for doubt. The little Central American gangsters were spaced so that, if they wanted, they could probably kill everyone in the church.

  Once Hector thought he had everyone’s attention, he began.

  “Gente de Chappelmita. I thank you for coming to this church on such a hot day. My associate and I,” Hector motioned to Silvano with his pistol, “need some information. Information that you, the good people of this pueblo will provide. Yesterday, a gringo came to this town. A gringo came to this town and left his car here.” Hector turned to look at the police sergeant, who stepped forward and described the car in detail to the assembled men. It had been a grey Dodge, Nayarit plates, fairly new, a hire car. He gave the registration number, number of doors and even the type of alloys the wheels had been fitted with.

  “I think that is enough,” said Hector as the police sergeant finished a description of the wheels. The sergeant gratefully took a step back and Hector continued.

  “The gringo came to town yesterday, and left his car here. The car was stolen by two boys, that we have already spoken to.”

  The two boys in question had been taken to the local police station. When Hector and Silvano had arrived there, they had been so badly beaten that even Hector seemed satisfied that they had said all they had to say.

  “I need you, la gente de Chappelmita, to tell me where the gringo went afterwards. Did he get the bus out of town? If so you would have seen him. He was with a gringa, a very pretty gringa. Or perhaps he bought a car off of one of you? Gave you a nice wad of US dollars for it?”

  The men looked up at Hector with completely blank faces. It was clear that they had no idea what he was talking about.

  Hector holstered his pistol and took out his own wad of US dollars. 100 dollar bills, crisp and fresh. He peeled off a few and slapped them down on a table in front of the altar.

  “There is one thousand dollars here. One thousand dollars for the man who tells me how the gringo left Chappelmita.”

  The men still looked completely lost as to what the hell was going on.

  “But let me warn you,” smiled Hector, “if any one of you is thinking of taking this money and telling me lies, pequenas mentiras, you will be making a mistake. If you lie to me, I will kill your family and then skin you alive.”

  The matter of fact way that Hector said this was not lost on the men. Any men who had been looking at Hector, or perhaps thinking of something useful to tell him, immediately found something very interesting to look at on their feet.

  Hector lit a cigarette. He seemed content to smoke it as his words sunk in. Meanwhile Silvano was thinking furiously. He knew that Hector would finish his cigarette and that none of the campesinos would have said a word in that time. He knew that this would enrage Hector. After that, he did not know what would happen. But it would not be good. His guess was that Hector would start shooting people until he got the information that he needed. Perhaps the Salvadorians would join in. He remembered stories of massacred nuns and priests from the civil war in El Salvador and others of villagers rounded up into churches and butchered. His own men were too superstitious to so much as bring a gun into a church. But Hector and these mercenaries were a different breed. If ordered to, they would shoot every man in this church. Silvano knew he had to do something. A church massacre would bring the army to the area and a lot of press. It would be a complete disaster and El Cazon would probably have him killed for having let it happen. He had to do something, but what? They were in public and to question a captain openly was an unforgivable insult. Hector was already unhappy with him. If he disagreed with him now, it was entirely possible that Hector would kill him too. Whichever way Silvano looked at it, he realised he would probably die.

  Fortunately for Silvano, the landlord of Chappelmita was thinking the same thing. He had sat down with his tenants, in the hope of avoiding any undue attention from the cartel men. Unlike the campesinos, he had dealt with men like Hector before, and seen what they were capable of. He had also been to Central America, and seen what the gangsters there could do. He did not know where these tattooed boys were from, but they were beginning to look edgy. He could see that some of them were itching to use their powerful weapons, their fingers kept going to their triggers. But it was the head sicario, the man with the bad skin, who scared him most. The man was clearly insane and useless at getting information. He had scared the villagers half to death with his shooting and his threats.

  The landlord was a small man, with a pencil moustache and cheap grey suit that made him look more like a door-to-door salesman than the richest man in town, and he was doing the maths. Almost every man in the room paid him rent. Not much, it was true, but enough. If the cartel men started shooting people, he would start losing income. But worse, if people started dying, there would be publicity. Newspapers would arrive, federal police, federal investigators. He had built most of Chappelmita on the cheap. The local governor had got to wet his beak of course, the land was all officially owned by the state. But he was long gone. The local police left the town alone after they got a monthly stipend and everyone was happy. Publicity would be a disaster. People would start asking who owned the land, where were the permits for the buildings, who paid for power. It would be the end of his business. A disaster. The little man in the cheap grey suit took a deep breath and stood up.

  “Señor, captain,” he said to Hector, holding his hands open in a gesture that he hoped would be regarded as non-threatening and respectful, “Señor, if you will allow me, I do not have the information you need. But I know these men señor, many of them are my tenants. They are simple men, but honest. If you will allow me señor, may I talk to them? I may be able to get some information out of them.”

  For several seconds there was silence as Hector and Silvano looked at the man in the grey suit. Then Silvano stepped forward, drawing his gun as he approached the little man.

  “Who are you?”

  “Señor, I am the landlord of this village.”

  “And you think you can get information from them?”

  “Señor, captain. These men are not intelligent men, but they will respond if you allow me to talk to them.”

  Silvano did not look round to Hector, who had not spoken yet. Now that he too had his gun drawn he felt stronger. Let the scarred psycho shoot him now. He would at least go down fighting.

  “Ok, give it a go,” said Silvano. He turned to look
at Hector, now that the order had been given. But Hector was not interested; or did not seem to be. He was smoking his cigarette, staring into space. Silvano motioned to the landlord with his pistol and the landlord stepped up onto the platform.

  “My friends,” he said, “please do not be afraid of these gentlemen. They mean you no harm.” He looked over to Hector and Silvano nervous in case he had overstepped the mark. But Hector was still staring into space, lost in his own world and Silvano motioned for him to continue. Emboldened, the landlord went on.

  “My friends, all these men need is a little information. They will not harm you for the information, and indeed may pay you some money if you give it to them.”

  The men looked up at their landlord, still seemingly confused. One of them, a ruddy faced man of about fifty spoke up.

  “But señor, none of us have seen a gringo in town. The policia have already asked us twice. We have nothing to hide señor, but we have not seen the man or the gringa.”

  “I understand that Pablo,” said the landlord, “but perhaps one of you has seen something that may be useful. Perhaps you have seen something without realising it.”

  The landlord looked at his tenants and realised that he was beginning to lose them. Hector and Silvano were now both looking him, their guns drawn. He suddenly realised that he probably had less than a minute before one or both of them shot him as a warning to the campesinos.