Cartel Fire

by Tom Riggs

  “Ok,” said Munro slightly confused, “So if this guy got 150 years no parole four years ago, what the hell is he doing killing English backpackers in Venezuela last month?”

  “There, Jack, is the rub. Eight months into his sentence a convoy of police trucks turned up at the prison he was in, just outside Nuevo Laredo. Two of the trucks were towing howitzers, 155mm jobs. They weren’t real police, they were cartel men in stolen uniforms and stolen trucks. They let rip at the prison walls with the howitzers, blew a huge hole in it. Shot any guards who tried to stop them. Out of the hole in the wall comes one Hector Ortega, along with fifty-three of his prison colleagues.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “Deadly, I am afraid. It wasn’t the first time the drug cartels had blown their men out of prison and it’s happened several times since.”

  “This country,” said Munro.

  “I know,” said Rudd, “It’s ridiculous. But the upshot was that as of three years ago, Hector Ortega has been a free agent. He is obviously a wanted man in Mexico and hasn’t been seen or heard of in the country since the jail break. Interpol reckon he left Mexico almost immediately after, went to South America.”

  “Venezuela?”

  “No, but close. Colombia. They think he’s been working for a group there called the Black Eagles, Las Aguilas Negras. They’re a right-wing paramilitary headed by two brothers, Carlos and Vicente Castano. Like a lot of those right-wing groups they started out fighting the cartels and communist guerrillas. Now they’re heavily involved in the production and export of cocaine themselves. The Black Eagles have close links with the Mexican cartels. Interpol think that the Sonora cartel sent Ortega down there to act as a sort of ambassador slash hired gun. A sort of client secondment if you like.”

  “Now I see why you said this was serious.”

  “Exactly,” said Rudd. “My guy at Interpol was pretty excited when he found out that this was who we are looking for. They think he’s an important link between the Colombians who produce the coke and the Sonora cartel who ship it into the States. If they could capture this guy he’d be an information goldmine.”

  “I’m sure he could be Charles, I’m sure he could be. But that doesn’t really help us. I managed to speak to one of the cops in the clearing before he died. I asked him who sent him. Guess what he said?” He did not wait for Rudd to answer. “Hector.”

  “It would make sense I suppose,” said Rudd. “If he knows that Anna is a witness, he’ll want to tie up any loose ends. With his old links in the Sonora cartel he could presumably arrange to have someone arrested fairly easily, especially in Sonora territory.” Rudd paused as the full ramifications of what had just been said began to sink in. “This isn’t good, Jack.”

  “It’s not is it?”

  “It’s really bad. You now not only have the police after you for killing five of their own, you also have a Mexican drug cartel and possibly a Colombian narco-paramilitary group out to get you. And you’re on their turf..” He paused. “You’re in trouble old boy.”

  “Thanks for spelling it out,” Munro looked around him and out to sea. Thick jungle, pounding ocean. “We need to get out of the country, fast.”

  “I’m picking up the new passport for Anna tomorrow. I can meet you in Acapulco the day after tomorrow your time. Quick lunch on the beach, then hop on the first plane home?”

  “Sounds good Charles, sounds very good.”

  “Fine, I’ll see you then. Have you got anything more out of the girl?”

  “Not yet, but I think I need to talk to her some more. If this Hector guy really did kill Richard Lipakos and is now trying to kill her, there must have been a lot more going on than we know about. Guys like that don’t go round killing western backpackers unless they have a very good reason.”

  “Quite. But be careful Jack. Be very careful. This guy is very dangerous, all the reports say so. He’s a psychopath.”

  Just then his phone beeped.

  “Charles I have to go, Anna is on call waiting.”

  “She’s not with you? Bloody hell, Jack.”

  “I know, let’s speak tomorrow.”

  Munro was at the back of the bar now. He had been walking subconsciously as he spoke to Rudd and now found himself by a toilet block. It was a concrete bunker with two open doors leading into a dark and dank interior. A rickety wooden screen separated the two entrances and opened out to a pair of dirty basins. An exposed light bulb hung above one of the sinks. It was now dark and its puny light had attracted a swarm of insects. He pressed the left button on his phone to connect to Anna.

  “Anna, are you ok? Where are you?”

  “I’m on the main drag, and don’t worry I’m fine. It’s all pretty relaxed round here.”

  “Ok, stay exactly where you are and I’ll come and find you. Stay hidden.”

  “Stay hidden? I really think it’s ok round here, Jack. I haven’t seen any cops, or anyone without a surfboard for that matter. I’m just calling because I thought you might be hungry. There are basically two restaurants here. One’s sushi, the other’s Argentinean barbecue. I am thinking this is a pretty weird place to have a sushi restaurant. There are a couple of Mexican places too, but to be honest I am a bit bored of tacos and beans.”

  Munro sighed. Was he really having this conversation? “Look, we’ll eat later. I just need to know where you are. Some more information has come in about the guy you id-ed. I need to talk to you.”

  Munro was back at the pick-up fast. It had gotten dark quickly, there were no long dusks in the tropics. But the moon had risen fast too. Its glow reflected off the light sand of the beach to light his way back to the palm grove. The area was empty now, bar one other car at the far end. A small fire had been lit close by and three dark figures stood around it, talking and smoking. The car doors were open and music played from the car stereo speakers, although it was not loud enough for Munro to tell what it was.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Anna walking into the open parking area from the road. He opened the door of the pick up and took out his torch to guide her in the rest of the way. It was dark in the palm grove.

  “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure,” said Munro. He noticed with slight dismay that she had showered. Washed her hair, put on fresh clothes. She was in baggy white linen trousers and a loose-fitting t-shirt with the name of a Canadian university emblazoned across the front. He looked at her again, admitting to himself that the hippy in Isla Margarita had been right. Despite the loose clothes and lack of makeup, she was beautiful. Not in a magazine cover way: her eyes were a little too big for her face, her jaw line broken by a slight scar that had been whitened by the sun. She was not a model, she was far more interesting than that. Stay on point, he told himself. Keep this professional.

  “So,” said Anna, “as I said, there’s an Argentinean restaurant. It looks pretty cool, they have this huge barbecue, I mean absolutely enormous. The charcoal is all in a pile now, burning away. But the guy said that they’ll flatten it out soon and start grilling. They’ve got steak, chicken, pork. Lots of meat. Just what we need after a hard day’s driving.”

  Munro looked at her. Where the hell had she managed to shower?

  “Look Anna,” he said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea that we are in public too much. We still have some biscuits, bananas and water. The best plan is for us to stay here, eat what we have, and get some rest. We should be on the road by sun up tomorrow. I shouldn’t have let you go into town alone, it was a mistake. This isn’t the time for eating out.”

  Anna took a step back and looked around. “Look … please. I can’t explain this very well …” She paused looking for the words. “After yesterday … what happened. What almost happened. Please Jack … I think I need … I think I need to do something vaguely normal just now. Eat some normal food like a normal person instead of hiding in that pick-up like a criminal. I don’t really know why. Does that make any sense?”

  Munro paused.
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br />   “I’m sorry Anna. It’s just too much of a…”

  She stopped him by taking a step closer. “Please Jack…? I’m not sure I can take any more time in that car. We don’t have to sit in the restaurant, but I just can’t be in that truck all night.”

  Munro sighed. What the hell, it did seem safe in Santa Rosa.

  La Parilla did smell good, that was for sure. By the time they got there, the coal had indeed been evened out. The Argentinean barbecue was a huge fire pit, almost two metres square and at least ten inches deep with white hot coals. One of the grills was full end to end with whole spatchcocked chickens, lying flat on the grill. Every couple of minutes the chef lathered them with some kind of thick marinade he had in a large clay pot. Munro breathed in the sharp smell of blistering meat, garlic and coals and realised that it been a while since he had had a proper meal. Since Mexico City all he had had was tacos and biscuits.

  Munro left Anna in a dark lay-by 30 metres out and ventured in. Ordered two T-bone steaks, chips and salad off a stoned waiter. To go. And a six pack of beers, Pacifico, cold. Ten minutes later, he found Anna in exactly the same dark spot he had left her in.

  There was no one around so they sat down on a felled tree that was set back in a small clearing off from the road. It was pitch dark in the clearing but lighter on the road. Munro could see for fifty metres in either direction, nothing but jungle behind them. It was a good spot. They devoured their food in silence, quickly putting the flimsy plastic cutlery aside. Easier to eat steak with your fingers.

  Anna finished her last mouthful of steak and Munro noticed with some admiration that she had not left so much as a chip. The T-bone was stripped dry and she was on to her second bottle of beer. With every sip of cold Mexican lager her confidence seemed to be returning.

  “Shall we try the small talk thing again?” she ventured.

  Munro smiled. “We could, but I am bored of talking about me. How about you?” replied Munro. “How did you come to be in a scummy guesthouse on an island just off the coast of Venezuela?”

  “That one’s easy. I’ve just finished my postgraduate course, well not finished exactly. I’ve got a dissertation due this June, but my lessons were over. I’ve been studying psychology for the last four years, I thought I needed a break.”

  “I am sure you did. Why Venezuela though?”

  “I hadn’t planned to go there…Brazil was my first choice. I had always wanted to see the Amazon, so I went and booked myself onto one of those boat trips that go up the river… between Belem and Manaus. It was, shall we say, an interesting trip. Two weeks on an old paddle barge that looked like it would keel over and sink at any time. I spent most of the time avoiding mosquitoes as big as your thumb and an over friendly captain who was blind drunk half the time.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  “It was hell. That part of the Amazon is actually quite built up, at least along the river. And believe me, you’ve seen one riverside slum village, you’ve seen ‘em all. The pristine jungle is all inland, but we were never allowed off the boat for more than twenty minutes, so I never saw anything very wild. But the worst of it was the other people. There was a large group of Germans who just sat there not talking for the entire trip. They all had dysentery, and just sat around pale and long-haired, looking mournfully at the water. A week with them, and the drunk lechy captain started looking like a good prospect.” She took a long slug from her beer, emptying the bottle before continuing.

  “After two weeks of hell we arrived in Manaus and were allowed to stay on dry land. The boat was continuing up river, but I had had enough. I went out to a load of bars that night and that was when I met Richard.”

  “So it was a recent relationship?”

  Anna looked at Munro closely and took a swig from her lager.

  “What kind of relationship do you think Rich and I had?”

  “I don’t know,” said Munro, “How long had you been seeing each other before he was killed?”

  Anna laughed a short inward laugh and put her beer bottle down. “We weren’t seeing each other at all,” she said. “If only you knew.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Anna looked at him and smiled.

  “Richard was gay, Jack…I’m surprised you didn’t know. He was pretty open about it.”

  Munro paused and looked at Anna as he took in the new information.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said, “I’m very sure ... but anyway.”

  “Of course,” said Munro, “go on, you were telling me about how you met Richard.”

  “Yeah, right. I met Richard that night. Manaus is actually quite a sophisticated city, but it was still Brazilian and my Portuguese isn’t great. I saw a western guy and I made a beeline for him. I hadn’t spoken much English in weeks. Richard was sitting on his own at a bar and was pretty drunk by the time we started talking. But we got on well. It turned out we were staying on the same street, which isn’t such a coincidence in Manaus because all the backpacker hostels are on the same street. But anyway, we got talking and got on well. He’d been working in the city for a few months, for some kind of NGO. It was nice to be on dry land again, so we just kind of hung out. He knew loads of cool places to go and some nice people. The people at his NGO were mainly Brazilian but they spoke English and there was a girl from London called Gabby there for a bit too. She was really nice.”

  “Gabby?” asked Munro, interested. “Did you catch her surname?”

  “No,” replied Anna, “we only over-lapped for a few days before she went home. But she seemed really nice. But anyway … I ended up staying a week in the city, it was actually a lot of fun.”

  “So how did you two end up in Venezuela?”

  “Richard was really nervous about something. Something serious. He kept on going off for these hushed conversations on his cell phone. After a week in Manaus, he suddenly announced that he had to get out of Brazil. I needed to head north anyway, as my flight back to Vancouver was out of Mexico City. I had been thinking about doing the trip overland, up through Costa Rica and Central America, but I hadn’t really factored in the time everything takes down there, and the distances. Richard said he was going to this Caribbean island he’d heard about that was really cheap and a bit off the normal backpacker route. I was as white as a sheet after two weeks hiding in my cabin on that boat, the idea of a suntan and a nice beach was pretty appealing.” She paused. “So that’s what we did. We flew up to Isla Margarita. Me and Richard.”

  Munro paused and finished his beer, cold and crisp, he reached for another one immediately.

  “You said he was nervous about something in Brazil. Did he ever talk about what?”

  “No, he was really secretive about it. But every now and then, in the middle of breakfast say, he would get a call and rush off to take it. He never said who it was, but it was obvious he was involved in something.”

  “Did you ask him who was calling him?”

  “I did the first couple of times, but he just ignored me and changed the subject. It got worse in Margarita. He started getting really nervous then.”

  “And you had no idea what it was about?”

  “No, he never told me anything. He was that kind of guy. He was really friendly and good company, but he could just retreat into himself at any point. Classic Freudian self-internalisation.”

  Munro smiled. “Sounds more like Jungian introversion to me.”

  Anna smiled back. “So they teach you psychoanalytical theory in the army do they?”

  “We learn basic psychology, it helps when learning to resist interrogation, how to keep your spirits up when you’ve been lying in a ditch for four days.”

  “You did a lot of that?”

  “I did unfortunately. It’s not about being the toughest, the guy with the biggest biceps. Any Muscle Mary can lift a pack and jog up a steep hill. It’s dealing with the inactivity that’s the real killer. That’s what knocks most people off the Special Forces sele
ction courses. Anyone who turns up on those things is going to be tough in the first place. You don’t apply if you’re not very physically fit. But the thing the boys always found most difficult was the waiting. Sitting in a bunker for seven days, looking at one house, recording every coming and going, every curtain twitch. Most guys, especially tough army guys just can’t handle that. Knowing a bit of basic psychology and a few meditation tricks really helps you deal with that.”

  “Protective isolation theory?”

  “Exactly, but enough about me. Look Anna, I’m sorry to press you on this, but did Richard ever say anything about what he might have been involved in? The reason I ask is that we got an id on the man you saw, his murderer.”

  She put down her beer. Until now her mood had been light. She had seemed happy enough to laugh about her holiday in Brazil and enjoy her steak.

  “So who is he? Who is the ugly bastard?”

  Munro put his food container on the floor. He had not eaten as much as Anna but it had been enough.

  “His name is Hector Ortega. He’s a gangster, and quite a serious one. He’s Mexican, but works for a Colombian drug gang. He’s a very nasty piece of work.”

  “You could tell that just by looking at him,” she said. “A really nasty piece of work.”

  “So what I need to find out, is why this senior South American gangster would want to kill Richard Lipakos, young British environmentalist.”

  “I really don’t know about that Jack, I’m sorry,” said Anna finishing her beer and, like Munro, reaching for another one straight away. “As I said, Richard was really secretive about some things. But whatever it was, it had something to do with his laptop.”

  “His laptop, what do you mean?”

  “Every time he went off for one of his secret little chats, he would take his laptop with him. I saw him a few times speaking on the phone and looking at his laptop at the same time, as if he was explaining what was on screen to the person at the other end of the line.”