by Glen Carter
Slowly, she exhaled. Tension seemed to weep from every muscle in her body. She closed her eyes, and after waiting for a full five minutes, Mercedes emerged from beneath Montello’s desk. Rubbing a cramp from her leg she looked towards the bookcases and saw that the Daddi painting was returned to its position over the wall safe. Puzzled, she walked over. She pulled the painting out from the wall and then released it. Slowly it swung inward till it covered the safe. The spring mechanism had saved her life.
Mercedes repeated the numbers she had in her head, and reaching up she punched an electronic keypad until a light flickered green. She turned a knob and pulled the safe open.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkened interior of the safe. Then she breathed sharply. Inside were thick bundles of cash. By the looks of it, a fortune in banded US hundred-dollar bills. Several watches, some encrusted with diamonds, were carefully laid out on a velvet tray along with an assortment of gold rings studded with large sparkling jewels. Farther. At the back. There was something else. Mercedes stood on her toes and drew closer. Careful not to disturb anything, she reached in, sweeping her hand along its dimensions. It took her a moment to understand what she was looking at. When she did, she nearly lost her balance.
Mercedes spent too long there. Shaking herself from her reverie she closed the safe, turned, and after listening at the door, she quickly exited the room.
That day in Selena’s apartment, Mercedes told her friend about the safe and its contents and then she went silent.
Selena studied her incredulously. “Now you’re scaring me,” she had said.
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
“Yes, but…” Selena shook her head, exasperated. “The last time you had that look–”
“We did a good thing,” Mercedes cut her off.
“Yes we did. But we could have gone to prison.”
“We didn’t,” Mercedes said too sharply. She apologized with her eyes.
Selena stared a long moment out the window. Storm clouds gathered like veins of rough granite pressing upon the old walled city. A premonition too bold to ignore. Selena turned, showing the futility of resistance. “It’s not prison that worries me,” she said with sadness in her voice.
Mercedes knew what Selena was thinking. This was considerably more dangerous than the brazen thing they’d done before. Prison wasn’t the downside. Death was. Mercedes sat quietly in her friend’s apartment and brought a hand to her throat. Her pulse jumped at the thought of his fingers – squeezing the life out of her. She shivered with disgust. Mercedes forced the thoughts aside, allowed the temptation to tickle her as it had that day in Montello’s study. Slowly, she told her friend about the contents of Branko Montello’s wall safe.
“You are crazy,” Selena whispered five minutes later, as if to have spoken louder would have alerted his thugs. “Crazy to be even thinking about it.”
Selena might have been correct.
Finally. “Dominique,” Mercedes said to Selena. Only one word uttered. It stirred a flicker of excitement in her friend’s eyes. Selena’s face lightened.
“So sweet,” Mercedes whispered. “Father Govia says she’s been asking for us again. Thank God, she’s getting stronger every day. And it’s thanks to us, Selena.”
A mist appeared in Selena’s large round eyes. An unspoken fondness seemed to swell in her chest.
“The money in that dead account,” Mercedes continued. “The heart surgeon and the hospital in Miami. It was Dominique’s only chance.” Mercedes allowed the moment to dissolve into silence.
Finally, Selena nodded. “We were angels once. Wasn’t that enough?”
Mercedes smiled impishly, but said nothing.
FOURTEEN
Mercedes checked her watch. It would take her several more hours to reach the place where Selena was waiting. The satchel’s contents excited her. But first they’d need a safe place to hunker down. Mercedes accelerated past the pickup truck she’d been following since Nestor’s abandoned logging road. It was early afternoon and she wanted to reach Tayrona before supper. Tayrona meant safety.
Mercedes understood why Selena had agreed to go along with it. It was her need to take something back. Why wouldn’t she? Her mother and father had been stolen from her by people like Branko Montello.
Ramon Santos had fallen hard and fast and there was nothing his brother Orlando could do about it.
They worked hard to cobble together the money they needed for their first airplane – a big step for a pair of ex-air force pilots.
The brothers were business partners and shared the flying. In their first year Santos Charters made enough money to pay half the outstanding loan on that first Cessna. But then there was too much money, too fast. Ramon made those deals.
The second aircraft was a twin engine and carried a lot more cargo.
That’s when Ramon started to change.
It wasn’t the easy money that killed Selena’s father. It was the coke. His shiny new Beechcraft punched through rain and clouds and ended up in the side of a mountain. Searchers waited two days for the weather to clear.
“Uncle Orlando said he should never have taken off,” Selena told her once. “He was too stoned to make the right decision.”
Her mother was gone too. A day after the crash she emptied the company bank account and disappeared. A couple of times she came back to scream at the nuns about her daughter while Selena hid under her bed. “Mi hija. Do with her what I want.” When she showed up it was usually Father Govia who chased the wretch away. Selena’s Uncle Orlando was a good man. Brought her jars of sweet melao and chirimoya and told Selena her mother was crazy sick with the coca and that Selena was better off where she was.
Further back, Mercedes kept another memory. Faint. Undefined in shape and substance. A time before Selena and the orphanage. Softly pulsing lights suspended above her. A forest. Someone is with her. Who are you? The answer was always beyond her reach, though it tickled her with an extraordinary feeling that she was not alone and never had been. Sometimes when she was a child, strange animal sounds woke her in the middle of the night. She’d throw the covers off and run to the window, her awestruck face a canvas of celestial radiance. She listened raptly to the coyote pups in the forest, howling like babies. She had had a family once. She couldn’t remember, but Father Govia had told her. They went to Heaven when she was only a baby, he said. To Mercedes the orphanage was home, Father Govia and the sisters were the only family she had ever known. Sometimes when the coyote pups howled, Mercedes sat frozen by her window, enthralled by fireflies in their erratic flight through Father Govia’s flower garden. Who are you? The answer teased her, until she eventually dozed off, usually to be awakened at her window by Selena or one of the sisters.
Mercedes thought about the day she told Selena about Montello and what she’d discovered in his safe. The cumbia faded and disappeared from the car’s tinny speakers, leaving the sound of wind and an uneven knocking from the engine to fill the void. Mercedes checked her rear-view mirror and saw the old farm truck far behind her. Taganga was where Selena was waiting. Where the work of angels would begin. But first they had to survive, and Mercedes knew the only way to do that was to become invisible.
FIFTEEN
The Bahia de Taganga sparkled like a sheet of crusted green emeralds in the hot Colombian sun. Around the horseshoe-shaped bay fishing boats pulled in evening catches, and here and there large orange buoys carved out parcels of water for scuba-diving schools that advertised coral diving at the cheapest rates in the country. Mercedes downshifted, wiped her hand across tired eyes, and reached for the half-empty bottle of water on the passenger seat.
As she descended into the tiny village along the mountain road she heard loud music from Taganga’s busy beach bars. Sun-drenched tourists enjoying ice cold beer and fried fish. Mercedes was famished and tired, but stopping was out of the question. She had another twenty miles before El Zaino, the gateway to the Parque Nacional Tayrona.
Mercedes checked her fuel gauge – half a tank – and was thankful she could skirt the busy village without having to stop for a fill-up.
Parque Nacional Tayrona had been a good idea. Mercedes remembered it. The bumpy bus ride that seemed to last forever from the orphanage to a campground just inside the park’s entrance. For two days Mercedes, Selena and the other children begged Father Govia to take them home. They were bored.
“But children,” Augustus would say, his laughter booming, “We are surrounded by God’s splendor. He would be unhappy that you are not enjoying it.”
The isolation and privacy that bored them as children was the reason Mercedes pointed it out on a map and assured Selena it was the best place in Colombia to hide from Montello.
Selena thought she was brilliant.
It would take Mercedes another hour to drive from the Bahia de Taganga to the mouth of the Rio Piedras where she would enter the park at the foot of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. As she left Taganga the landscape hardened into an arid terrain dotted by light-brown hills and xerophytic plant species – the most common of which were the cacti which were denied rainfall for all but two months of the year.
It took Mercedes less time than she expected to reach Calabazo, the mid point along the highway where the river turned sharply right to run parallel with Tayrona’s southern rainforests.
Soon, she thought.
Mercedes needed food and a good night’s sleep, but she knew Selena would be too excited to do anything but discuss their daring plan. Mercedes couldn’t blame her, really. Selena was fearless, and Mercedes was thankful some of that was rubbing off on her.
FARC rebels controlled most of the national parks and Mercedes prayed she’d avoid their roadblocks. That’s where they were fond of “miracle fishing.” Everyone was netted, and the big fish were kept for ransom – gringos fetched the highest prices. If she was caught by the paramilitaries they’d likely just shoot her. If you were fortunate enough to avoid both of those warring armies, there were bandits to worry about, and they were normally more bloodthirsty than any of the murderers who wore uniforms.
So far she’d been extremely lucky. Until that moment.
When Mercedes mounted a rise in the highway, she saw them, and cursed.
Three armed bandits were blocking the road fifty yards ahead. Mercedes gasped when one of them leveled a rifle at her car. She slammed on the brakes. Two rusted heaps were parked nose to nose across the highway. Quickly she looked behind her just as a third vehicle darted onto the road to block her escape. Heading to the ditch wasn’t an option. Mercedes’ lips parted in a moan. She was trapped. Alone. Her stomach collapsed into a knot when she saw the looks on their faces, mean hungry stares that had already begun to devour her. No. God, no.
The bandit with the rifle swaggered to the car, slammed his palm against the hood and shouted, “Get out!” Mercedes sat. The pounding of her heart created a thunder inside her head that excluded everything except the excruciating screech of the door being ripped open. Greasy hands reached in and tore her frozen fingers from the steering wheel. Mercedes lost her voice, her ability to breathe. Paralyzed. A rabbit cornered by wolves. She stood shaking, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.
They took a moment to study their prize. “Pretty, pretty,” the leader said, dropping a hand to his groin. Groaning. “Toco el gordo.”
The others laughed through blackened teeth. Inched closer.
Mercedes tried to scream, but the air caught in her throat, causing a choked cough.
Another member of the gang got out of the car that had blocked her retreat. He was huge, with a Mohawk cut and black eyes to match his jeans and T-shirt.
Mercedes shivered at the sight of the lead pipe in his large hand.
She was going to die.
The leader thrust a stubbly chin in the direction of her car and a second later his three cohorts eagerly descended on it.
Everything was slipping away, including her life. The satchel was stuffed beneath the driver’s seat and Mercedes knew they’d find it. Stupidly, they’d have no clue about the value of what they were looking at. “I have money,” she stammered, touching a pocket in her shorts.
The bandit leader flicked his tongue, looked at her salaciously and turned his attention to her car.
The fat one with the Mohawk pulled out the Louis Vuitton bag and grunted. He dropped it on the trunk of the car and with stubby fingers ripped the zipper open. A moment later he was hooting like a man arms deep in treasure.
Mercedes could see the cream lace of her panties wrapped around filthy fingers as fatso brought her silk underwear to his face and inhaled deeply. Everyone was laughing now, snorting loudly.
The leader poked the end of his rifle into Mercedes’ throat. “Sexy lady, eh.”
Mercedes felt the strength draining from her legs, willed herself to remain standing. The pounding in her chest beat a cadence for the onslaught of dread.
The leader moved closer, the smell off him as sickening as the garbage bin behind DeMarco’s. “Show me how sexy,” he hissed. His serpent-like tongue tasted air at her ear.
Mercedes was overwhelmed by hopelessness. They were going to rape her. Her body would be discovered days from now, or what predators had left of her.
For a fleeting moment, Mercedes thought about Selena. She’d be found and killed by Montello’s men. Branko would win in the end. Mercedes sadly decided that fighting her attackers would only hasten her grisly fate of rape and murder.
Behind her came a sound that caused her to turn. They’d discovered the satchel. Damn! Everything was lost now. Desperation turned to mourning. Sadness numbed her instinct to survive. For an instant she considered her only option, to run, though in her imagination she pictured herself being cut down within twenty feet.
One of the thugs was opening the satchel, muttering something. Curious.
That’s when Mercedes mustered something in her gut which felt like courage. She whispered, “Go to hell.”
The leader cocked his head as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard, pushed the rifle barrel deeper into Mercedes’ throat, and chuckled. “What you say amiga?”
“Go to hell.”
The others stopped what they were doing.
Mercedes could no longer control her shaking.
The leader smiled, revealing a toothless black hole.
The others ignored the satchel and came around the car. Something was going to happen. Cojones were on the line.
The leader hefted his rifle to the fat Mohawk. Paused. A storm gathering strength. “No. You go to hell,” he said calmly and in a flash shot an oily hand to Mercedes’ belt.
Mercedes struggled to get free but he pulled her tighter into his body, pinning her arms to her sides. He was immensely strong and Mercedes had no doubt that in seconds she’d be on the ground, beneath him. There had to be something she could do.
Bastard.
There was. She knew it was her only chance. Her knee had a clear path to his groin. She grunted from the exertion, and in a jackhammer reflex Mercedes made hard contact.
The leader doubled over in pain, his face a mask of surprise and rage.
His boys found it funny. They were laughing, cupping their own testicles.
Mercedes knew she had to run, and she would have done so, except at that moment the fat one grabbed her quickly from behind. As Mercedes fought to break his grip he slid a hot greasy tongue across the back of her neck. Even from behind, a fetid stench reached her nostrils. Stale cherry candy and sweat.
“Bitch,” he grunted, thrusting the rifle towards his boss.
Mercedes felt dread when she saw the look of deadly rage on the face of the bandit leader. Despite his injury he bolted upright, grabbed the rifle and leveled it at her head. “I’ll fuck you when you’re dead,” he wheezed, a finger tightening on the trigger.
For a second Mercedes thought the rifle had gone off, and somehow, miraculously, she was still alive. The report of gunfire re
ached them as an echo. The bullet that slapped into flesh came from much farther away.
The bandit leader jerked sideways and screamed in pain. A red blotch appeared against his thigh as he fell to the ground.
Mercedes spotted the open jeep at the same time as the others, racing towards them from the dry barren tract that ran parallel to the main highway.
Chaos erupted.
Mercedes broke free of Mohawk and ran to the front of her car. She dropped to the ground while the bandits fired at the jeep. They hoisted their wounded leader and pulled him towards their rusted vehicles. He was losing a lot of blood and Mercedes doubted – by the look on his face – that he was going to survive.
No. You go to hell.
The jeep sped towards them, leaving a rooster tail of dirt and dust.
The bandits stuffed the wounded man into the back of one of their cars and spun their tires to escape. Mercedes ran to the back of the car and crawled in. The satchel was half open, but thankfully none of its contents had been disturbed. She closed the zipper and pushed the package under the seat, then pulled herself from the car as the jeep skidded to a stop at the side of the road, shrouded in a cloud of dust. The two men who jumped from the jeep wore uniforms.
“Are you all right?” The one who spoke first had a swagger that matched perfectly the deep resonance of his voice.
Mercedes was still shaking as he reached her.
“Thanks,” she said, doubling over to catch her breath.
The man studied the fleeing vehicles while his partner sprinted to the spot where the bandits had been blocking the road. He dropped to one knee and touched the pavement.
“Good shot, Juan,” he shouted.
