Cartel Fire

by Tom Riggs

  “Let me put it like this, my friends,” he said to the men quickly. “Has any of you, or your wives or your children, seen or heard anything in the last two days that is not normal? Think very carefully my friends. Has any of you heard anything that seems a little odd? Has anyone been acting strangely, has anyone had more money than they normally have…” As soon as he mentioned money, he saw one of the men, a young cement factory worker move slightly. It was an almost imperceptible move, but the landlord knew his tenants, and he knew when one of them knew something. He had been squeezing money out of them for long enough to know when they were hiding something. And this young man was hiding something. He stepped down off of the platform and approached the man. He was little more than a boy, with a straggly moustache and stained workers denims on.

  “Hijo,” the landlord said as kindly as he could. The boy was new in town he remembered; he could not recall his name. “Hijo, if you know something you have to tell me. You have to tell me now.”

  The boy looked away and the landlord placed a fatherly hand on his shoulder. He recalled that the boy’s novia had just given birth. The poor guy was probably terrified about what the gangsters might do to his young family.

  “Please hijo, you must tell me if you know something,” he looked up at Hector and Silvano. They were both looking at the boy too but were several meters away. He said in a low voice to the boy “I promise hijo, these men will not hurt you if you tell me what you know.”

  The boy looked up at his landlord. He was clearly terrified; but reassured that his landlord seemed to be on his side. He looked as if he was about to speak and the landlord crouched down next to him. He sensed that the sicarios were about to approach too and held out his hand to stop them. Silvano and Hector stayed on the platform.

  “There was a ranchero on the bus yesterday,” said the boy in a low voice to the landlord. “I see him every week when there is a baseball game on, he comes to town to watch it.”

  “Go on, son,” said the landlord, like a priest at confession.

  “This ranchero, he normally drives a pick-up, but yesterday he was on the bus. The bus that heads south to San Cristobal. I see him at the game and we have shared a beer or two before. So I asked him where was his pick-up…” The boy hesitated.

  “Go on.”

  “He did not say really. He kind of ignored me, which was fine. I sat on the seat behind him and ignored him too.”

  The landlord paused.

  “Was there anything else?” he asked.

  “That’s the thing,” said the boy. “There was. He was acting really strange; he couldn’t sit still. So I kind of kept an eye on him for the journey, I was visiting my sister who lives in San Cristobal.”

  “Did he do anything else; did you see anything?” The landlord was getting desperate. He could feel not just the sicarios but the Central American gangsters and all the other campesinos staring at them, straining to hear what they were saying.

  “That’s it, boss. He did. When he went to pay he dropped his wallet. He looked really nervous and jumped down to pick it up.”

  “And?”

  “And boss, that’s the thing. I saw his wallet when he dropped it. It was full of 100-dollar bills.”

  24

  They had been driving for two hours after the taco stop. Anna had fallen asleep again. With the computer-generated face now with Rudd, they had enough to be getting on with for the moment. He had friends in Interpol so if the man was wanted anywhere in the world, they had a good chance of finding him. Acapulco was still several hundred kilometres away and Munro was following the beaten-up old highway to the coast. It continued to snake its way through the high mountains, steep slopes that eventually turned into the Sierra Madre. His GPS told him that once on the coast road, highway 200, it was a straight line all the way to Acapulco. That was the good news. The bad news was that the coast road ran along the narrow coastal strip between the mountains and the Pacific. Few if any roads ran over the Sierra Madre, its slopes were just too steep. No there was no escape from highway 200.

  Slowly the road began to lose elevation as the mountains started to drop to the coastal plateau. On the high road they were still surrounded by jungle but the fields below them were more cultivated as the slopes got less steep and the soil became better. Rows of maize stretched out as far as they could see. It was a tall crop and looked almost ready to harvest. Unlike the scorched crops inland, these plants were well watered and well tended, almost industrial in scale. Corn being produced on a colossal scale to feed a colossal population.

  Around three in the afternoon, Anna woke up. She stretched in the passenger seat and took a long slug of water from one of the bottles that Munro had stockpiled. She seemed more alert than she had been, but still cautious of the man sitting next to her. She opened their map but quickly put it away.

  After a few more minutes looking out of the window, she turned to Munro. Hesitatingly, she started talking.

  “That map says we’ve got another five hundred miles to go…”

  “Correct” answered Munro quickly. Perhaps too quickly. He didn’t quite know why but something told him that he needed to keep his mind on the road.

  Another ten minutes of uncomfortable silence passed as Anna looked out the window. Every now and then she would turn to Munro to say something but then give up and turn back to stare at the hot, dry landscape passing them by.

  “Please,” she said suddenly still looking ahead. Her eyes had gone moist. Munro turned to look at her quickly.

  “Are you OK? Do you need to stop?”

  “No,” she said embarrassed. “Sorry. I … I just don’t think I can sit here in silence ... I need …”

  “Of course,” replied Munro quickly. He knew victims often needed to talk about what had just been done to them. He just wasn’t very good at it.

  “I know you’ve just been through a traumatic event Anna,” he said woodenly. “Talking can be a good first step. Do you want to talk?”

  Anna smiled sadly. “Not about that, no ... Not yet.” She paused. “Please, can we just talk … you know … small talk. I can’t do … this.” She gestured with her hands at the small cab, the road, the journey.

  “Of course,” replied Munro unconvincingly. ‘Small talk.”

  There was another pause. Anna sighed.

  “Okay, can you maybe tell me a bit about yourself?” she ventured nervously.

  “Well…” started Munro.

  She smiled for the first time. “And I thought I was socially awkward..”

  “Sorry” said Munro composing himself. “What do you want to know?”

  “Errrm, how about age. How old are you?”

  “Thirty-six”

  “Married, children? That kind of thing?”

  He paused and looked away.

  “Once.”

  Anna said nothing, waiting for more. Eventually Munro continued.

  “It didn’t work out, it’s not easy being an army wife.”

  Something in his tone made Anna move on.

  “Did you have any children?”

  “No… no children. I wasn’t married for long.”

  She changed the subject. “You were in the army.”

  “I was. Twelve years.”

  “What were you, a sergeant? A colonel?”

  “I ended up a captain.”

  “Captain Munro,” said Anna to herself, “Ok captain, were you in a regiment? That’s what they call it in the UK isn’t it? Or were you in that secret unit, the SAS or something?”

  “No … I was never in the SAS. Planes aren’t really my thing, I hate jumping out of them too. Never really felt natural.”

  Anna looked at him, her large eyes still nervous.

  They had a clear stretch of road ahead and Munro was warming to his subject, on safer ground now. “I joined one called the Green Jackets, they’re riflemen, one of the best outfits in the army. But I didn’t stay in the regiment long, just two years. My commanding officer saw I
had other skills … skills more suitable to intelligence work. So I was seconded to a military intelligence unit called the DET. We were in Northern Ireland then. The troubles were just coming to an end, but there were still a few renegade republicans who wanted violence over peace. Our job was to gather intel on them. Lots of wire taps, phone records, stuff like that.”

  “Crikey,” said Anna, “Sounds like that TV show. What was that … fun?”

  “Not fun, no. I wouldn’t say that. It was actually pretty dull. We spent a lot of the time in vans, listening to people’s conversations about what they were going to have for dinner.”

  “You don’t strike me as a sit in the van kind of guy.”

  “I’m not. After six months in Northern Ireland, I found out about a new task force being put together. An intelligence unit, but with combat capabilities. They were going to be sent to Sierra Leone, in West Africa, to help find a rebel commander there.”

  Munro paused. They had come up behind an ancient truck, laden with goats packed in to small crates. Their snouts were just visible through the wooden slats. The stench was almost unbearable, even going at speed. Munro shifted the transmission down to third and pulled out into the oncoming traffic lane. A car was approaching but he figured they could make it. He gunned the accelerator and the old pick-up lurched into an overtaking speed, every valve straining at the pull being put on the engine in such a low gear.

  “Where were we?” said Munro once they had safely cleared the goat truck. The highway was starting to gain height now, going into what his GPS told him was the last range of hills before they hit the coastal strip.

  “You were going to tell me about the man you went to find in Sierra Leone.”

  Munro paused. It had been his first mission and it had gone well. But slitting the throat of a rebel leader in the jungles of West Africa was not a story he wanted to tell.

  “There’s not much else to say I am afraid.” End the conversation

  Anna looked confused. Eventually she said, calmly, still looking out of the window.

  “So you what were you, a kind of … assassin?”

  Munro paused. The road had passed into a contorted, thickly forested valley. He had slowed the pick-up to forty and the sounds and smells of the surrounding forest were now with them in the car. Birds screeching, strange calls, odd rustlings and the slightly fetid smell of rotting vegetation. He wound down the window and breathed it in. It was not dissimilar to the forests of West Africa. Eventually he continued.

  “We weren’t assassins. We were never tasked with killing people. Our job was to find people. Bad people. War criminals, mass murders, terrorists. We were hunters. For a few years we spent a lot of time in Africa. We did well and managed to get some very bad men back to the Hague to face their victims and be punished in a court of law.”

  Some, but not all. By no means all.

  Anna was quiet for a few minutes, lost in thought. Suddenly she said to him softly.

  “Is that why you shout in your sleep? Because of what you saw in Africa?”

  Munro turned to her suddenly, alarmed and surprised.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Last night, I was drugged but I woke up in the middle of the night. Woke up and you were muttering, shouting things. Words I couldn’t understand. I was terrified and almost ran away there and then. But then I realised you were asleep. I came outside to look at you. You were drenched in sweat and shivering.”

  Munro was hit by a wave of exhaustion and nausea as she spoke. He had an almost overwhelming urge to stop the car and get out. Run as far as he could. But he kept on driving, kept his eyes on the road.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he whispered.

  Anna looked at him closely.

  “We all have our demons Jack, whether we like it or not. I studied psychology so I could try to kill mine.”

  Munro looked at her interested.

  “Did it work?”

  “It helped. My parents died in a car crash when I was twelve. I was in the back,” she paused and slowly exhaled. “It helps to be able to talk about it.”

  Munro said nothing as he pretended to concentrate on the road, the nightmares of the previous night and so many before that coming back to him. Images he fought all day to forget. He just needed to keep moving. Keep moving and stop thinking.

  25

  The sun was low by the time they saw the sea. The vast grey Pacific was just visible over the low rolling hills. The jungle here was still thick and completely undeveloped. They were now hundreds of miles south of Puerto Vallarta and hundreds of miles north of Acapulco. Far enough away that neither resort’s sprawl had yet reached them. They drove through the hills, along the barely metalled road, following signs for Highway 200. The transpacific highway. It ran all the way from Patagonia to Alaska, most of the way hugging the narrow coastal plain between the mountains and volcanoes and the ocean that was anything but peaceful.

  They came to a junction in the road. To the right, a state highways sign for Highway 200. To the left, a hand painted wooden board said that ‘Santa Rosa’ was four miles off down a narrow track. Munro stopped the pick-up and looked at Anna.

  “Why have we stopped?” she asked.

  “We have a choice,” replied Munro. “The sun will set in an hour and a half. It’s not really advisable for us to be on the road after dark. There’s more chance of the police stopping cars then.”

  “But surely the police don’t know we have this car? Didn’t we change cars? I was pretty zonked out but I am sure I remember us changing cars.” She seemed nervous at the mere mention of the police.

  “We did, and that should put them off for a while. But it’s only a matter of time before they work out that we’re in this car.”

  Anna looked at him in terror.

  “Then shouldn’t we change cars again?”

  “We will, but not round here. It’s too quiet, we would be too obvious.”

  “So what is our choice?” she asked.

  “The choice is this. We can either push on and try and get to the next large town along the coast, a place called Manzanillo. It’s about eighty miles from here so we should just about make it before dark. The problem with Manzanillo is that it’s a busy place, and busy for all the wrong reasons. It’s Mexico’s biggest port and sits right on the border between the territories controlled by the Guerro and Sonora cartels. There’s a war going on there, so there will be lots of gangsters and lots of police. I’m not sure, but I have a strong feeling that those police who took you might have had some sort of link to the Sonora cartel.”

  “I don’t like the sound of Manzanillo much,” said Anna looking uneasy.

  “No, nor do I, but it is big. We should be able to change cars again unnoticed pretty easily. It’s then a clear few hours drive the next day to Acapulco.”

  “What’s the other choice?”

  “Right down that track,” said Munro pointing to a dirt and sand road that led down a steep wooded hill and away round a corner, “is a small village called Santa Rosa. I’ve never been there, but it’s a well-known surfing spot. It’s meant to have one of the best beach breaks on this stretch of the coast. It’s small and it’s not the surf season at the moment so it’ll be quiet. But we won’t stick out too much there. They’re used to foreigners. We can camp for the night and then head to Acapulco in the morning. The risk is that we won’t be able to change cars there so easily.”

  “I vote surf town, let’s take the risk. Manzanillo sounds scary.”

  “I agree,” said Munro. “We can be at Manzanillo by eight tomorrow morning and change cars then. That still gives us plenty of time to get to Acapulco.”

  “Agreed then,” smiled Anna, “night in the surf village it is.”

  Out of season, it was hard to tell if Santa Rosa was ever popular. It was not exactly a village, more a sand track that ran along a beach. It was fifty meters in from a huge wide sandy beach. Either side of the road should have been thi
ck jungle, and in places still was. For the most part the jungle had been partially cleared to make room for restaurants, bars and guesthouses. But little was visible from the road itself apart from signs for the various establishments. Instead there were thick hedges and high fences, all being slowly engulfed by the jungle. The signs were wooden, hand painted and beaten up. If you looked closely you would notice that many of the signs had a surfing theme to them. ‘El Surf Café’, ‘Posada Pointbreak’. But you had to look closely. The encroaching vegetation was slowly tearing the signs apart and had all but hidden some of them. The effect of this was that if you drove through Santa Rosa at any speed, you might not even notice it was there at all.

  Munro did not take the road that ran along the beach. Instead he followed a small track that led off it with signs for ‘la playa’. He was quickly brought to a cleared palm grove that sat at one end of the huge beach. Although there were probably over fifty people on and around the beach, it looked empty. It stretched out for what could have been miles in one direction, north he guessed. The spray from the pounding surf hazed with the afternoon sun so that it was hard to see whether the beach ended or just turned a corner in one direction. In the other direction, a desolate promontory was visible a few hundred yards on. It should have been a tropical scene: the Pacific lapping onto a wide sandy beach that immediately turned into jungle and palm grove. But the effect was actually quite desolate. The sea was pounding at the sand and did not look inviting. Plus there was a strong wind blowing that whipped up any loose sand, which made any sunbathing look uncomfortable.

  They both got out of the truck and immediately began stretching, it had been a long drive. They then wandered onto the beach. There were a few cars parked up at the clearing. Mainly pick-ups like theirs. Some had US plates, mainly from the West coast states, California and Oregon, others had Mexican plates from Guadalajara or Mexico City. Few locals. Mainly surf bums working their way down the transpacific highway, following the waves. The people hanging around the palm grove certainly looked like they had spent a lot of time in the sun. Mexican or American, everyone was a deep brown. The men and women mainly had matted or dreadlocked hair and a lot of ink on their skin. The hardcore surf contingent. But no-one was surfing. Some people sat on the beach, wrapped in blankets to keep out the chill wind. Others stood around their pick-ups, idly smoking. Everyone was staring out to sea.