PRECIPICE

by Leland Davis

  They had quietly floated past an eco-resort called Huasteca Secreta that Chip had heard of before—he had paddled with a couple back in the States who ran kayaking adventure trips though the place. Shortly downstream of the resort they had come to a familiar parking area; he’d used it before to access the next remote canyon of the river. There was no way they wanted to float any farther into that committing gorge, so they had pulled over and hidden the raft in the woods near the parking area. They’d spent the night camping and getting to know each other a little bit, making the best of the situation. Whatever her father might be involved in, Chip had soon realized that Sam was an innocent who had been swept up in all of this. The story of her kidnapping and transport to Mexico sounded harrowing, and he genuinely wanted to help the girl. After hearing her tale, Chip had silently added the guy with the ponytail and cowboy boots to his shit list of people who would pay for the deaths of his teammates.

  Finally, Chip saw an SUV with a roof rack full of kayaks pull into the parking area. He’d known the odds were good that American paddlers would show up here on vacation today—it was the day before Thanksgiving, after all. He noted from his hiding place that the truck had New Mexico plates. This area was particularly popular with folks from that state, and as they climbed out of the truck he was relieved to see that he didn’t know any of the five people in this crew. Twenty minutes later the group locked the truck, and Chip watched the driver hide the keys under a rock near the edge of the woods before the group got in their kayaks and paddled away. It had worked. He knew these kayakers would be paddling almost fifteen miles to where they had left another car. Between the paddling and the drive back here to get this car, they wouldn’t return to this spot for many hours. Chip planned to save them some driving.

  He called out to Sam, who picked her way through the woods from the campsite to meet him. He retrieved the stashed keys, then they both climbed into the truck and started it up. Widespread Panic blared from the speakers. Any taste of American culture was welcome at this point, but Chip wondered why so many paddlers were stuck in the 90s. As he turned around and headed up the rocky road toward civilization, Sam scrolled through the iPod to find something more modern to listen to. She finally settled on some electronic music that Chip didn’t recognize. He had heard plenty of that dubstep stuff from the younger guides that he worked with, and his lack of knowledge about it made him acutely aware of the age difference between himself and Sam. At least it was better than old hippy music, but it sounded like they were riding in a nightclub. Chip figured she must be a party girl to have music taste like that. They sat back and relaxed for the drive. It was over twenty miles of back roads past tiny rural communities and fields of tall sugar cane from the river to the paved highway. He hoped he could remember the way.

  After several miles, Chip noticed a drying line hung with clothes beside a small farmhouse. He surreptitiously hopped from the truck and snagged a shirt, pants, and a simple dress from the line. He pulled three hundred pesos from the pouch in his belt and hung the bills on the hangers that the clothes had come from. Then they quickly drove away. After another couple of miles they pulled over at a remote spot to change. Chip couldn’t go into town wearing his camouflage fatigues, and Sam looked only slightly less conspicuous wearing his blue plaid board shorts and bright orange paddling jacket. The new clothes were serviceable, although the Mexican farmers’ garments looked a little out of place on a pair of blond-haired gringos. The tan pants were a little bit too short for Chip. They made it look like he was ready to go wading, and he had to roll the sleeves of the shirt up above his elbows to conceal their lack of length as well. The light blue cotton dress fit Sam in the chest but hung like bulky draperies over her narrow hips before pulling up short somewhere in the middle of her long, slender thighs. The clothes would have to do. Chip stuffed his Sig Sauer into the back waist of his new pants and pulled the shirt down to cover it. It felt like they had escaped, but he knew there might still be people looking for them.

  It took them over an hour to reach the pavement. It was with great relief that Chip took a right onto the highway and into more familiar territory. He drove about five miles and pulled over on the left near a small white tienda with a blue Modelo beer sign perched atop it. Another outpost of the resort chain they had passed on the river was next door. He parked the truck in a conspicuous spot near the road. He hoped that the owner would notice it when he drove past on his way to retrieve it at the end of the day. If he did, it would save him over two hours of driving on the dirt roads. Chip placed the keys on top of one of the truck’s tires, hoping only the owner would notice them. Then he and Sam walked into the small store.

  The cramped store’s concrete floor was crammed with racks of junk food and coolers of drinks and bottled water. They each got a drink and some snacks, and Chip also purchased a prepaid phone card at the counter. It was time to sort out their next problem. Although he had plenty of money stashed in his belt, his false passport had been left with the driver, Carlos. The team had carried nothing with them on the mission that could directly link them to the United States, passports included. What’s worse, Sam had been smuggled into the country and had no passport at all. They had enough money for bus fare to the border but no way to cross once they got there. They stepped outside to a public pay phone.

  Chip had serious reservations about their next move, but he was left with little choice. They needed help to get across the border, and he didn’t know of anyone he could call. Sam had insisted that they call her father. The senator would have enough influence to contact a consulate and get their passport problems worked out. But Senator Moore was also involved in this somehow, and Chip didn’t trust him at all. Until he knew who had betrayed the mission and gotten his friends killed, everyone was a suspect. However, he couldn’t figure out any way to delicately raise his concerns to Sam. Part of him felt that the girl had been traumatized enough already without him criticizing her dad. So for lack of a better plan, he went along.

  Chip spent several frustrating minutes trying to figure out how to use the pay phone with the Mexican calling card, and then Sam took over. Although he had spent a lot of time in Spanish speaking countries, he’d mostly stayed in the backcountry where there was little chance to practice his language skills. Sam had studied Spanish in high school and was fluent enough to get the connection made. She dialed her father’s cell number from memory. He would know what to do.

  The loud ringing startled Sheldon so badly that he almost lost his grip on the metal spikes and plummeted to the rocks below. It sounded like a trumpet blaring. His new phone didn’t have a marching tune installed, but this ringtone was the loudest he’d been able to find. He hurriedly tried to descend the twelve feet to the ground before the phone stopped ringing. He was on the bottom rung when he realized it had been too long since the last ring. He’d missed it. His boots finally hit the tumble of rocks under the deer stand, and he pulled the phone from his pocket and checked the caller ID. It was a foreign number, -52 country code. The call was from Mexico, and he quickly hit the send key to call the number back. All he got was a recording in Spanish that he couldn’t understand. He impatiently pushed the button again and was disappointed to get the same result a second time. He stepped from the uneven ground into the edge of the field and then stared at the screen on his phone, hoping to make the voicemail icon appear by willpower alone. He didn’t know whether to be hopeful or petrified by what the message might hold.

  After what felt like an eternity, the message indicator popped up. Sheldon quickly called his voicemail and typed in his password, struggling to hit the correct buttons on the unfamiliar Samsung with his wide thumbs. Then he breathlessly raised the phone to his ear.

  “Hi Daddy.” Her voice sounded a little tentative, but there was no sign of duress. Moore’s heart leapt at the thought that maybe his little girl could be ok.

  “I wanted to let you know that we got away. I mean, I got away from those guys.”

&
nbsp; Sheldon could barely contain his relief. He felt like he needed to sit down.

  “So I’m OK, I’m safe,” the message went on. “But we’re stuck in Mexico, and we don’t have passports.”

  We? Who did she mean? Sheldon wondered whom Sam could possibly be with. He didn’t know whether to be relieved that she was not alone or concerned about the company that she was keeping. At least she was no longer in the hands of the drug lord.

  “We’re gonna try to find a US consulate. I’m not sure where one is. I’ll call you later when we figure out where we’re going. I love you, Daddy.”

  Sheldon stood staring at the phone for a long minute as the automated voice explained a list of options to him through the tinny speaker. He fumbled through the menus to try and replay the message before finally hanging up in frustration and redialing his voicemail. He stood listening to Samantha’s words for a second time, tears welling up unbidden and trickling from the corners of his eyes. Maybe everything would be all right.

  Sam hung up the phone and looked at Chip. “He didn’t answer, but I left a message.”

  “OK. We can try again later. We can’t stay here, though. We’re still too close to that camp. They’re probably still looking for us.”

  Chip took Sam’s hand and led her across the street to a sign for a bus stop where several locals were patiently waiting on the side of the road. It was less than ten minutes before an ungainly vehicle wobbled down the mountain road and rolled to a stop in front of them, its air brakes hissing loudly as the bus settled to stillness. Chip’s fear of staying this close to the drug lord’s hideout far outweighed the trepidation he felt toward his first Mexican bus ride. They climbed in. Chip paid the driver with cash from his belt, and they walked between rows of dark haired, grim-faced Mexicans to take seats at the back of the bus, stepping carefully over several baskets, bags and couple of chickens along the way. Once they were seated, Chip furtively shifted the 9mm from the back of his pants to the front and tucked it under his shirt where he could get to it quickly if the need arose. Then the bus lurched into motion and rolled down the curvy mountain highway toward Ciudad Valles.

  *

  Harris startled to wakefulness in the covered bed of the truck. In his weakened condition he had simply been unable to stay alert. After waking up on the concrete floor of the garage twice last night while he was hiding in ambush, he realized he would probably be caught or killed if he kept up with this plan. He had crawled weakly back to his hiding place in the bed of the truck and lain there shivering and soaked with a feverish sweat all night.

  He heard the metal door from the house clang shut then the clapping of footsteps coming across the concrete floor of the garage. Before he could shake the fog from his mind enough to raise his pistol, the tailgate abruptly slammed closed. He felt the truck’s angle shift as someone climbed into the driver’s seat, then he heard the hinges of the large garage doors give a piercing squeal over the sound of the Avalanche’s motor grumbling to life. He was on the move again.

  *

  The first bus brought Chip and Sam to Ciudad Valles, where they were still worried that they were a little too close for comfort to the remote location where their misadventure began. It was the closest city to the jungle compound. They quickly caught a long distance bus from Valles to Ciudad Victoria and settled in for the five-hour ride.

  “So, are you in the military or something?” Sam asked as they rode at the back of the bus. After seeing his grace under pressure, his quick thinking, and his obviously honed physique, she assumed that he must be some kind of special forces guy.

  “No,” Chip chuckled. “Not even close. I’m a whitewater raft guide.”

  Sam looked at him in confusion. Chip just looked back at her and grinned. It certainly wasn’t an answer that she heard very often, and he enjoyed her stunned reaction a little bit.

  “So what were you doing out there?” She was obviously referring to the camp in the jungle, and Chip wondered how much information he should share.

  “I’m not really sure,” he finally answered candidly. “I just wanted to kayak the river. Those guys needed help, so they asked me to come along. I guess I had no idea what it would really be like when we got there.”

  He was beset again by images from that fateful morning, memories flashing like a twisted slideshow through his mind’s eye. He could see the bloody bodies of his friends and the raging drug lord framed in his sights. He saw blood spout from the man’s mouth again and heard his scream echoing in the back of his mind. He shivered as he relived the death of the first and only man he’d ever killed. How could things have gone so wrong?

  Sam saw his eyes darken as he thought, so she tactfully switched the conversation in another direction.

  “So where do you live?” That seemed innocent enough.

  “I’ve been living in West Virginia—that’s where I always live in the fall. I work in different places during the springs and summers. I’ve done the Southeast, Colorado, California, and Hood River out in Oregon.”

  “Don’t you have a home?”

  It seemed everybody asked him that question, and Chip never knew how to respond. He knew that ‘I live in my Toyota pickup’ is not the answer that most girls are looking for. But that’s the way it was.

  “Not really. Most of the rafting companies have some place that you can camp, and I have a bed in the back of my truck.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “They still live in Atlanta. I visit sometimes, but I usually can’t handle it for more than a week.”

  “Yeah, me either,” Sam said, struggling onto common ground.

  “What about you?” Chip asked.

  “I go to Stanford,” she started cheerfully, and then her eyes fell. “But I think I’m gonna fail out. My parents still don’t know.”

  “So your dad’s a senator?”

  “Yeah. He’s from Alabama, but he lives in DC. I grew up in DC.”

  “Don’t you have to live in that state to be the senator?” Chip couldn’t remember his American Government class from high school very well. He would say anything to change the subject away from the apparently sensitive topic of her failing grades.

  “Not really. You just have to technically be a resident. Dad’s got a house in Alabama on the Little River Canyon where he goes to hunt.”

  Chip smiled in recognition. The location rang a bell for him. The Little River Canyon was only two hours from where he’d grown up on the north side of Atlanta. Many of his early kayaking adventures had taken place in that beautiful gorge, and he had a lot of fond memories of it.

  He snapped back to their conversation. “So all he has to do is have a house there, and he can be the senator for that state?” He was still a little bit confused by the fact that maintaining a vacation home was the only requirement for being senator for a particular state.

  “The house is listed as his legal residence, and he has an Alabama driver’s license. He has to keep the place, but he’s also obsessed with hunting. He goes there all the time in the fall and winter to hunt for doves and deer.” Chip could hear the thinly-veiled disgust in her voice as she listed the animals her father liked to kill. “Mostly I think he just goes there to get away from DC and Mom for a while. Mom can be a real bitch sometimes. She’s gonna be really pissed when she finds out I’m failing out of school.”

  “Hey, you were kidnapped and brought to Mexico. I’m sure she’ll just be happy that you’re alive,” he tried to reassure her.

  “Yeah, but it’s all my fault. That’s not why I’m failing school. It’s just…” She trailed off, not wanting to tell him the rest of her story. He was such a nice guy, and she didn’t want to scare him away.

  Chip saw her face cloud over and he worried that she was about to cry. He knew there was more to the story. He’d seen her shaking for hours on end, and he’d been around long enough to know what that meant. How had this beautiful girl, a senator’s daughter, gotten mixed up in all of that? She was obviou
sly smart if she’d been accepted into Stanford. It struck him that his mission might indirectly save many more like her, and it made him feel better about what had happened and the man he’d killed. He wished there was something more he could do to help her, though, and to ease her mind. He settled for awkwardly putting his arm around her and pulling her against his side.

  “It’s OK,” he said reassuringly. “It’s all gonna be OK.”

  He was starting to believe that was true.

  *

  Sutherland was startled by the ringing of one of the row of cell phones arrayed on the oak desk in his home office. It took him a moment to figure out which phone it was coming from. It was one that seldom rang—a prepaid throwaway that only a few people had the number to. It wasn’t a call he was looking forward to.

  “Yes,” he answered guardedly.

  “Where do we stand?” Senator Wesley Craig’s Texan drawl boomed through the line. Sutherland held the phone away from his ear and looked around for the volume on the unfamiliar handset. He turned the volume down a few notches and then held the phone back to his ear.

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss it at this moment,” he answered cautiously. There was no reason that he couldn’t talk other than that he knew absolutely nothing. In truth, he was worried. The operation had launched two days ago, and he still hadn’t heard from the team. He had called the satellite phones for both Harris and the driver and received no answers. He knew the men were the very best, but he could think of no good reason why they wouldn’t call unless something had gone horribly wrong. Now was not the time to break this news to Craig, however. He would put it off as long as he could and hope that he heard something soon.