The Devil's Bounty: A Ryan Lock Novel

by Sean Black

  ‘Well, if it was him and he drugged her, maybe she hasn’t remembered it yet.’

  They headed back out to the Durango, scanning the parking lot as they made sure no one had followed them. At the rear of the vehicle, Lock shared what the American had told him.

  ‘You believe him?’ Ty asked.

  Lock nodded. ‘Yeah. But I don’t think Mendez’ll be back anytime soon. Not if he took a girl out of here.’

  ‘So where does that leave us?’

  Lock tilted his cell phone so that Ty could see the picture of the bodyguard. ‘Leaves us with one more face to pick out of the crowd.’

  They sat outside the bar for a while in the Durango, watching as patrons came and went. None was Charlie Mendez or his bodyguard. Exhausted from the long drive, they took it in turns to grab some sleep. After years of practice they were both accomplished at napping when they could. In relative terms, the back seat of a Dodge Durango was luxury compared to some of the places they’d had to sleep in the past.

  At around three in the morning, the lot had begun to empty. Their vehicle parked alone with both of them inside it might attract attention. Ty woke Lock.

  ‘He ain’t coming.’

  Lock sat up, rubbing his face. ‘Let’s hang on for a while yet.’

  Another half-hour passed and the last few drinkers staggered outside, climbed into taxis and headed off into the night. The staff began to leave. The last one out was the bartender who had served Lock. He walked towards his car.

  Lock opened the door of the Durango and got out. The man froze as he approached, no doubt figuring he was about to be mugged or forced to let Lock back into the bar to have that evening’s takings.

  Lock showed him empty palms. ‘I just want to ask you a question.’ The bartender stepped back, fumbling for his keys, but Lock placed himself between him and his car. ‘You speak English?’

  The man flicked his head up and down. ‘I don’t want trouble.’

  Lock pulled out the picture of Charlie Mendez as Ty flicked on the headlights of their vehicle. He angled it into the beam so that the man could see. ‘This guy was here last night?’

  The bartender looked from the picture to Lock and back again. Everything about the way he was holding himself told Lock that he didn’t want to say anything. His reluctance was understandable. ‘You know him?’

  The bartender screwed up his face.

  Lock reached out and tapped the man’s cheek. ‘Look at me. This is important. Was he here?’

  The bartender looked at him with pleading eyes. ‘Sí.’

  ‘He was with another man. This man here,’ Lock pressed, showing him the picture on his cell phone of the bodyguard. He studied the bartender’s face. There was a flicker of recognition, and he swallowed so hard that Lock saw his Adam’s apple bob. He didn’t answer. He pushed past Lock, trying to get to his car. Lock reached out to grab his arm but he broke away. He started to run. Lock took off after him, his hand falling on the man’s shoulder as he fumbled with his car keys, his hands shaking.

  ‘Who is he?’ Lock asked. ‘What’s his name?’

  The bartender just stared at him. ‘Please, I have a family, children.’

  Lock let him get into his car and drive away. He had the answers he needed.

  They headed back to their hotel. The elevator was broken. They climbed the three flights of stairs, rigged the door so that anyone coming in unannounced would cause a hellish racket, and fell, exhausted, into a dreamless sleep.

  Thirty-one

  LOCK WOKE AT seven on the button. He got out of bed as Ty slept on, went into the bathroom, took a leak, showered, shaved and worked through some stretches. By the time he came out, Ty was emerging from under the covers, his feet and ankles sticking out at the bottom of the bed. He got up, walked to the window, opened the curtains and looked out over the smoke stacks of a nearby factory.

  ‘Man, there’s nothing like being on vacation.’

  ‘I know, and this is nothing like being on vacation,’ Lock said. ‘Go get ready. We got work to do.’

  Ty shuffled towards the bathroom, scratching himself as he went. Lock watched him. ‘You’re going to make some woman very happy one of these days.’

  ‘Thanks, brother.’

  ‘When she divorces you and takes half your money.’

  As Ty took his turn in the shower, Lock sat on the edge of the bed. He stared at the number he’d found in Brady’s office. Now that he was here, he felt more hesitant about calling it. What if calling it had somehow hastened Brady’s death? Could a number summon death? He had no doubt that it could. He had kept the picture of the bodyguard as the screensaver on his cell phone. He stared at the man whose name was too terrifying for someone to utter. Lock clicked on his recent calls list and tried the number.

  The cell phone pressed to his ear to block out the hiss of the shower, he listened to the familiar trill. Someone picked up. Lock was so startled that he almost dropped the phone. He stood and walked to the window. ‘Hello?’

  A woman answered him, in English, but with an accent. ‘If you want to fuck me, why don’t you just come up to me like a man and ask me?’

  Of all the responses, this was one that he hadn’t been fully prepared for.

  ‘My name is Francis Brady. I found your number in the personal effects of my brother Joe Brady. He was murdered in Mexico.’

  Lock had no idea if Brady had had a brother or not, never mind what his name might be if he had, but he had figured that a family member wishing to ask some questions was about as plausible an explanation as any. Also, he didn’t want the person at the other end to know who he was. Her response, though, suggested that perhaps Brady had had a little more going on south of the border than the hunt for Charlie Mendez.

  There was silence.

  ‘Hello?’ Lock said again.

  He could hear the woman clear her throat. ‘You are his brother?’

  At least she’d heard Joe Brady’s name.

  ‘Yes, that’s correct,’ he said.

  Ty had emerged from the bathroom, a towel around his waist. He scratched his chest. ‘Think we got bedbugs or something.’

  Lock waved at him to shut up. ‘I found your number in his office. I’m trying to work out exactly what happened to him when he came down to Mexico. I thought you might be able to help.’

  More silence, more hesitancy.

  ‘Can I at least ask your name?’

  ‘Where are you now?’ the woman said.

  ‘Santa Maria,’ Lock lied, unwilling to give away the precise location to someone he didn’t know.

  ‘Are you crazy? You already know what happened to your brother, right? You want to join him?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I don’t. But I need to know why it happened.’

  ‘Go home, Mr Brady. That’s my best advice to you.’

  Lock took a breath. Beneath him he watched a crowd of workers clamber on to a bus. He picked out a middle-aged woman who took a seat by the window. She had the worn-out look of someone who didn’t so much live as exist. ‘I can’t do that.’ He paused. ‘You knew my brother but I don’t even know your name.’

  More silence. He could hear her, though.

  ‘Meet me in an hour.’ She gave him an address in Santa Maria. His lie had caught him out. The drive last night when the roads were quiet had taken an hour and ten minutes. Now it was rush-hour.

  ‘Wait, can we make it a little later?’ he said. But she had already hung up.

  Thirty-two

  AN HOUR WASN’T long enough for them to get there. But it was plenty of time to organize their execution. Under normal circumstances, whenever he met with someone he didn’t know and was unsure of their motive, Lock liked to check the location ahead of time, find the entry and exit points, have a plan for action on attack. All he could do now was show up. If he was walking into an ambush, he and Ty would have to improvise.

  Fifteen minutes after the call, they were only just clearing the outskirts of Diablo. They still
had forty plus miles to cover. Then they had to find the place. As Ty drove, Lock navigated.

  Ty had his foot pressed hard to the floor but they were still barely touching eighty miles per hour. As they closed in on the outskirts of the city, scrub desert shifted to dense urban jungle. Green and white taxis vied for space on the road with old American school buses ferrying workers to the factories.

  Blasting the horn, Ty navigated the crush of traffic as the minutes ticked down. Lock switched to a city map, his attention shifting between it and the vehicles around them. They were on city streets now. Ty swore under his breath.

  Lock glanced over the edge of the map to see road works and a road-closed sign. Ty immediately began to turn. It was a firm rule of close-protection work that it was always better to be moving than stationary. It might just be road works. It might be something else. Right now, even though Lock was sure that no one who mattered or wished them ill even knew they were in Santa Maria looking for Mendez, it was safer, and simpler, to assume the opposite was true. ‘Prepare for the worst’ was a good mantra if you wanted to stay alive.

  Cars horns raged as the Durango blocked the intersection. Ty spun the wheel, reversed and roared back in the direction they had come from. They had lost thirty seconds they didn’t have.

  ‘Left here – we’ll loop back around,’ said Lock.

  They were parallel to a railway line when he realized he was taking them in the wrong direction, a rare mis-step. ‘Sorry, brother, we need to be over there.’

  Not missing a beat, Ty pulled the wheel down hard, the Dodge bumping straight across the tracks. Lock felt the blood drain from his face. His partner looked at him and laughed. ‘What? You said over there.’

  ‘I’m driving next time.’

  Ty shrugged. ‘The way you’re navigating, that might not be a bad idea.’

  They reached the address five minutes after the deadline. It was a shopping mall. As an RV, Lock liked it. Lots of traffic. Lots of entry and exit points. Lots of innocent bystanders, not that narco-traffickers worried too much about that, but an empty parking lot with nothing nearby would have had him more on edge than he might normally have been.

  The only question remaining was whether the woman had waited for him. His cell rang. It was the number.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘We got lost.’

  ‘I gave you an hour,’ the woman said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m on the third level. In the café opposite the elevators. You have one more minute before I leave. I don’t have time for this bullshit.’

  She hung up. Ty had his arm out, waiting to get a ticket from the machine and then for the barrier to rise.

  ‘Catch me up.’ Lock grabbed the door handle and jumped out.

  Ty called after him but Lock kept going, running hard towards the entrance, almost catching himself on the automatic doors as they glided open. Dodging around a woman pushing a baby in a stroller, he looked about. People were waiting for the elevator but the display signalled that it had only just begun its descent. He headed for the stairwell, exploding through the doors and launching himself upwards, heart pounding and gasping for breath.

  Head throbbing, out of breath, he made it to the third floor, pushed through another set of doors on to a walkway and out into an open courtyard of stores. Frantically, sweat running down his back, he looked for a café.

  Nothing. No restaurant. No cafés. Only stores. So many of the names were American that you might think you were still on the other side of the border.

  He began to walk past the stores, people shooting glances at the sweaty gringo. He called the number.

  ‘There’s no café on the third level,’ he said, when she answered.

  ‘And Joe Brady didn’t have a brother. So why don’t you tell me who you are and what you want?’

  Decision time. He took a breath. Whoever she was, she was smart. If she was linked to a cartel or someone protecting Mendez she knew that he’d lied, and would probably be able to guess that his intentions towards Mendez were unlikely to be favourable.

  ‘My name is Ryan Lock. I’m here to find Charlie Mendez and bring him back with me to the States.’

  ‘Who are you with?’ she asked.

  She was close by. She was watching him right now. He could feel her eyes on him.

  ‘You mean, like an agency?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not with anyone. I’m a private citizen,’ he said.

  ‘A bounty hunter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you want with Mendez?’

  ‘I told you already. Listen, I was contacted by one of his victims, a young woman he had raped. She asked me to return him to serve his sentence.’

  There was silence. He thought of how his words must have sounded to someone who didn’t know him. Absurd. A madman on a suicide mission on behalf of someone he hadn’t even met a week before. He scanned the crowd, trying to guess what she looked like from the sound of her voice. ‘Hello? Are you there?’

  ‘If you’re not a bounty hunter, then who are you?’

  ‘I work as a close-protection operative, a bodyguard. Will you tell me who you are? Hello?’

  ‘Be quiet. I’m thinking.’

  Lock was searching with his eyes for a woman on a cell phone. If she had a clear line of vision to him, which he was sure she did, he had to have the same.

  The mall had a semi-circular walkway with an atrium that extended the full height of all five floors. He looked up and saw movement as someone who had been leaning over a glass barrier looking down suddenly retreated. He had a flash of a tailored black suit, bright red lipstick, long brown hair, and then she was gone.

  ‘That was you,’ he said, into the cell phone.

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ she said, and hung up on him.

  He walked across to the escalator and rode it up to where he had seen her, all the while scanning the crowds. Looking down he saw Ty doing the same, searching for him. He found the spot where she had been standing. She was long gone. All he could do now was wait and hope that she was as good as her word.

  Thirty-three

  WHILE THEY WAITED for the woman to call back, Lock and Ty drove around Santa Maria, using the time to get a sense of the city. Outwardly, as far as Lock could see, it didn’t look like the most dangerous city in the world but, then, on a good day neither did Kabul nor Baghdad. Violence came in spasms, and then it was gone, leaving wounds that were mostly invisible to the naked eye: broken hearts and minds. In between times, people worked and ate and made love and went to school and raised their kids, all the while hoping they wouldn’t be sucked into the swamp.

  They drove round a rectangle of main roads, first heading north, then east, then south and then back west. They were on Hermanos Escobar Street, passing a Pemex gas station, when Lock noticed a black and white Policía Federal Dodge Charger moving up to overtake them. Ty eased off the gas to let it pass but it stayed directly in front of them.

  Immediately Lock had a bad feeling. In the labyrinthine world of Mexican law enforcement, where most cops were lucky to clear five hundred dollars a month, the cartels had infiltrated certain sections of the police to the extent that the government tended to rely on the army when it needed to get things done. There were clean cops but there were a lot of dirty ones too. Once you added into the mix the fact that this part of the world had a history of suspects disappearing before they even made court, his bad feeling had some foundation in fact.

  ‘What d’you want me to do?’ Ty asked.

  The Policía Federal vehicle had slowed slightly, almost willing Ty to try to go round it. ‘Sit tight where we are.’

  They weren’t going to outrun them and even if that was a possibility it would have been a bad idea. The city was saturated with police and army units. They could turn off and hope that they weren’t followed but this was a busy main artery with lots of people around and that was good, as far as Lock was concerned. If they wer
e going to be stopped, he wanted witnesses.

  He reached down, unfastened his holster, and threw it into the back of the vehicle. Ty did the same. Glancing into the side mirror, Lock saw two more Policía Federal vehicles bearing down on them. One was an SUV, the other a pick-up truck. Both had their lights on. The pick-up tucked in behind them as the SUV moved out and pulled up alongside.

  It was a textbook stop, leaving them nowhere to go. The Dodge in front slowed and Ty braked, easing their vehicle to a halt. Ty, with his upbringing in Long Beach, was well versed in being stopped by the law. He switched off the engine and kept his hands on the wheel.

  The door of the Federal pick-up snapped open and the barrel of a Heckler & Koch UMP popped through the gap between sill and door to cover the rear of their vehicle. More doors opened. More cops emerged, all of them kitted out in black body armour. They began to move in, slowly at first, then more rapidly.

  A cop faced Lock, who had his hands at shoulder level, palms open, fingers wiggling in the air to make it clear as crystal that he wasn’t carrying. The passenger door was wrenched open, and before he had a chance to step out, a gloved hand gripped his shoulder and hauled him out, forcing him face down on to the blacktop. Boots kicked at his feet, forcing his legs apart. His hands were grabbed and pulled painfully behind his back, then cinched with cuffs so tight that the metal was crushing his wrists. Hands delved into pockets, fingers jabbing against thighs and chest, before his wallet was taken, along with his cell phone and the picture he had been carrying of Charlie Mendez.

  He lifted his head long enough to glimpse Ty getting the same treatment. His friend followed his lead, not saying anything and offering zero resistance. The sole of a boot squashed the back of his neck, forcing his back down on to the road. He heard their vehicle being opened, and shouts of excitement from the Federales as they went through their bags.

  Pain screaming from his wrists and up into his shoulders, he was hauled to his feet and marched across to a black and white meat wagon. Two bench seats ran either side. He slumped down into one, his back to the metal panel. At least now he could get a better view of what was happening. Above, he heard chopper blades thrashing the air. The metal cage door of the wagon swung open and Ty was pushed in. He sat opposite him and flashed a smile.