Baldini sighed. ‘Nothing new there, bud.’
‘Have you got a penknife?’ Van den Bergen asked Gonzales, sensing that some vital piece of information might be just within his reach.
The Mexican Federale handed him his keyring which doubled as a Swiss Army knife.
‘There’s another label under here,’ Van den Bergen said, gouging at the thick German label. He abandoned the knife in favour of his thumbnail. ‘I know it.’
‘There’s nothing there. I don’t see it,’ Gonzales said.
‘It feels wrong,’ Van den Bergen said. Finally, he got a corner of the German sticker to lift cleanly. Carefully, slowly, he peeled it back. Beneath was a second sticker, as he’d anticipated. In black lettering, it showed the name:
Chembedrijf
‘I don’t believe it,’ Van den Bergen said. He stood too quickly so that his hip cracked audibly and the blood rushed from his head. ‘A Dutch chemical company is somehow involved.’
CHAPTER 31
Mexico, elsewhere in the Yucatan jungle, at the same time
The camber of the ground changed. They were heading upwards, running to escape the threat of suffocation in a death trap of a tunnel that had miraculously remained intact. He tried to brush the earth off, though it clung to the sweat on his face and in his hair. A long way above them, beyond the uppermost branches of the royal palms and frangipani trees, he could see the deep-blue velvet sky, streaked with the last of the red and scattered with the diamond brilliance of the first stars. ‘We made it through to the other side. I don’t believe it! I can smell the sea,’ he said, pausing to drink in the welcome fresh blast of air. ‘It’s cooler, isn’t it?’
A jab in the ribs from Jorge’s balled fist signalled clearly that his hope of a simple, optimistic exchange was a non-starter.
‘Shut your fucking trap,’ the guard said. He cupped his hand to his ear. With the traffic noise of the highway long behind them now, the lapping water of the Caribbean Sea was suddenly audible. Jorge held his index finger to his lips. ‘Silence,’ he whispered.
Two whistles came from the scouts who had gone ahead to check that the beach was clear of people. A further three whistles in short succession followed. A code.
‘Go!’ Jorge said. ‘It’s safe. Hurry!’
The guard kicked him in the back of his right knee so that his legs almost gave way beneath him once again.
At the front of the procession, el cocodrilo and Miguel were the first to disappear from the gloom of the jungle. Their muscle followed behind. Then, the sub’s trailer rattled down, beyond the treeline and onto the beach, the mules braying as they tugged their heavy twelve-metre load through deep sand.
‘Quickly!’ Miguel said.
Even in the lavender-grey light of early evening, he could see that Miguel’s pistol was drawn and pointed at the scouts who steered the animals. But the beach … the beach was magnificent. A curve of white sand, lit by the newly woken moon and the glittering stars that danced above them in the blackening sky. The calm waters of the sea washed gently ashore and then slid back out again, teasing the silken ribbon of slowly cooling sand with its foaming warmth. Crabs scuttled across their path, observing the strange procession of men, mules and sub, clicking their claws in some vain warrior’s dance. It was the first time he had seen the open sea in years. The first time he had felt a freshening breeze on his soil-encrusted face since he had been kidnapped.
The last time he remembered feeling the wind on his face, he had been hiking in the hills above Tegucigalpa. A lifetime ago, now.
Tears pricked at the backs of his eyes when he realised how close to civilisation they might be. Perhaps within yelling distance of the police officers who patrolled the highway, or some security guards who might be manning an exclusive development on the seafront. Perhaps there were tourists, walking hand in hand by the treeline, further along and out of sight of el cocodrilo and his men – tourists who could raise the alarm.
But there were none. At that moment, he felt like his heart might finally break.
So close … and yet, he was still as powerless to escape el cocodrilo and his men as ever.
‘Get the sub onto the sand!’ he heard el cocodrilo say, snapping his fingers.
King of all he surveyed, el cocodrilo lit a cigar and started to swig from a brand-new bottle of Scotch as the scouts and three of his gang members heaved the vessel onto the waterline. He watched them toil with apparent amusement – clearly someone who relished the notion that every other man was beneath him and existed merely to service his every whim.
At that moment, the diesel engine of a truck encroached upon the peaceful rhythmic sound of the breaking waves in the distance and the swish of the palms behind them. No headlamps, but he could see a large van approaching along the beach, driving right onto the sand where it had been compacted during the day by the changing tides.
‘Get the meth on board as quick as you can and get this thing in the water,’ el cocodrilo said to the transportista who emerged from the truck’s cab.
The woman was flanked by two of her female colleagues, who clutched rifles close to their tattooed bodies. Together, they unlocked the shutters at the back to reveal six more armed transportistas and a pallet, stacked to the ceiling of the truck, containing blocks fashioned from crystal meth, wrapped in clingfilm. Choreographed perfectly, they worked in unison like a colony of wasps, doing the bidding of their queen, to move the product from the truck into the sub.
‘Please ask him not to have them load more than the sub can take,’ he said to Jorge. ‘It’s not physically possible to take ten tonnes. We’ll both go down with the thing once we’re in open water. It’s not like there’s room for lifeboats! There’s barely room for life jackets. It’s a suicide mission, I’m telling you.’
But Jorge merely stood idly by, smoking a Marlboro cigarette; studiously ignoring him. Eventually he said, ‘If you’re feeling so fucking brave, why don’t you tell that to el cocodrilo? Because I’m not. That would be suicide!’ He crossed himself in the moonlight and gazed at the night sky. ‘I’ve got a good feeling, though. If we’re successful on this maiden voyage, I get a pay rise and you might get to live to build another sub. Consider yourself lucky.’
Frustrated, he watched the women load the parcels of meth into the sub’s hull. Finally, when he could no longer stand, he flopped onto the sandy ground.
The last package had been installed in the sub. The men of the cartel began a macho show of back-slapping and whooping. The fearsome-looking women fell back in line like trained militia, clutching their rifles and awaiting orders.
El cocodrilo was still standing and swigging heartily from his Scotch bottle. His body language had become loose and imprecise. ‘Wait! Wait!’ he said, interrupting his men’s self-congratulatory high-fiving. ‘We need to launch this baby in style. Mayan style.’
The young scouts and the cartel muscle turned to their boss wearing puzzled expressions. They lit cigarettes, exhaling plumes of smoke into the perfect night sky.
‘We can’t hang around, jefe,’ Miguel said, laying his hand on el cocodrilo’s arm. Thinking better of it once he was treated to a terrifying stare. ‘We’re already taking a big risk loading up on the beach. Look!’ He pointed along the coastline towards a floodlit ruin perched on a clifftop in the distance. ‘Tulum’s only a stone’s throw away and you know as well as I do that it’s teaming with tourists.’
‘Not this time of night,’ el cocodrilo said. ‘These conscientious scouts of yours have been scoping this beach for months. We’re good.’
But there was an urgency in Miguel’s normally placatory voice. ‘Seriously. It’s time to get it into the water and wave Jorge and el mecánico goodbye before the Federales show up.’
El cocodrilo dropped the glowing stub of his cigar into the dregs at the bottom of the Scotch bottle. The liquor ignited immediately, transforming the bottle into a fiery crucible, which he threw with some force at Miguel’s head. The glass smashed
, dousing his second-in-command in a deadly flaming cocktail.
When Miguel slumped to the ground, screaming, trying desperately to smother the flames with sand, the other men simply looked on. From his vantage point beside Jorge, he watched the way they stiffened, balling their fists, as though they were poised to do the right thing and run to the man’s aid. But nobody did. Apart from one of the transportistas, who took a step forward but was dragged back into line by one of her compatriots.
He got to his knees, unable to resist the natural urge to help.
‘Stay where you are, mecánico,’ Jorge whispered, grabbing his shoulder.
It was clear, however that the assault on Miguel had not sated el cocodrilo’s desire for violence.
‘I tell you what,’ he shouted. ‘The Mayans would have known how to mark an occasion like the launch of a beautiful feat of engineering in style.’ He swayed slightly, seemingly unperturbed by the now sobbing and charred Miguel. ‘You know what they used to do? Human sacrifice!’ He pointed to the clifftop Tulum ruins along the shoreline. ‘They’d take their prisoners to the top of those ancient pyramids, chop off their heads and cut out their fucking hearts. They watered the land with human blood so that it would be fertile and sustain their people. Now that’s showmanship. That’s how you establish and rule an entire civilisation. No mercy. No compromise.’
Lunging for one of the young scouts, el cocodrilo wrapped an arm around the wide-eyed lad’s neck before he had a chance to escape. Whistled to one of the cartel gang members, who had been tasked with hacking the way ahead through the jungle with a large machete.
‘Hey, you! Give me your blade.’
Transfixed by the gruesome spectacle that was unfolding, el mecánico clutched his knees with growing unease. Guessing what would come next. He closed his eyes, wishing he was anywhere but on this beach. Wishing he had never gone to work that fateful morning when the corporate shuttle bus had been hijacked by the tattooed maras. To think, he had been on the cusp of making the decision to stay in bed with a sore throat. But then el cocodrilo had hand-selected him months in advance of the kidnapping as the engineer who would build his semi-submersible, according to Jorge. The man who had just beheaded a scout, turning the idyllic perfect Caribbean beach into a bloodbath; the man who was cutting out the heart of that poor youngster – somebody’s son – and was squeezing the blood inside the extracted organ onto the keel of the semi-submersible, like some perverse rendition of launching a ship by smashing a bottle of champagne against the side … that monster would have found him, whether had he gone to work that fateful morning or had boarded the first flight back to Europe. Because el cocodrilo, rather like the crocodiles he kept fed with the dismembered bodies of his victims, was not the type of cold-blooded monster ever to let go of his prey, once he had it within his sights.
‘Hey, mecánico!’ his blood-soaked captor shouted, swaggering over to him, pointing the tip of the machete at both him and Jorge. ‘Get off your knees and get in that fucking sub! I’ve anointed it with blood from the beating heart of a virile youth.’ His speech was languid, his consonants slurred. ‘There’s no way it’s going to sink. Not now. The ancient Mayans are watching over you. So, on your feet! I want to see your bony Spanish arse at the helm of the vessel you built, I paid for and I’ve aptly named Ella.’
He swallowed hard, steeling himself to walk past the decapitated, defiled body of the scout and the howling, charred figure of Miguel, who looked like he might not see out the next hour. Marching through the phalanx of the transportistas. As he did so, he was sure one of them purposely bumped into him. He felt a hand slide onto his hip. Dispelled the sensation as the product of an overwrought mind.
Taking one last, lingering look at the beach that had seemed such an idyll only hours earlier, he felt certain that he would never return to those shores again alive. It was his fate to die inside the vessel named after his daughter.
CHAPTER 32
En route from Tegucigalpa, Honduras to Palenque, Mexico via Guatemala, 27 May
‘You don’t talk much,’ Paola said.
‘I don’t have anything to say.’ George was sitting on a wheel arch, intently watching one of the other women stripping down her rifle and cleaning it. Memorising her every move so that she might copy her convincingly if push came to shove. So many bits, though! George knew she would struggle to remember in which order they all went back together. ‘I’m just thinking about getting my money back from the slimeball that ripped me off.’
Paola nodded. ‘Have you got a guy?’
‘Yes,’ George said, thinking wistfully of Van den Bergen, who would almost certainly be chewed up by worry and annoyance at the way she had simply disappeared into the crowds of Cancun airport. Perhaps he would never forgive her. Perhaps. ‘You?’
‘Sort of.’ Paola smiled and pulled her vest up to reveal the portrait of a man, skilfully tattooed on her belly. ‘This is him. His name is Alejandro. He’s in jail back home.’ She chuckled. ‘Aren’t they all?’
‘Mine’s much older than me,’ George said, grinning. ‘He’s a miserable bastard but he’s my miserable bastard.’ She sat in silence a while, contemplating her implicit rejection of her lover in favour of her long-lost father, realising she could be left with neither and might also forfeit her own life by the end of this fool’s odyssey.
‘You got kids?’ Paola asked.
George shook her head. Then added, ‘A step-grandchild, I suppose. I told you my guy was old. You?’
Paola took out a crumpled photo from one of the pockets in her cargo trousers and showed it to George. ‘This is my daughter, Ximena,’ she said. ‘Isn’t she beautiful? She’s got her papa’s eyes.’
George saw the smiling face of a toddler who sat in an older woman’s arms. ‘She lives with your mother?’
Nodding, Paola sniffed, her mouth arcing into a downturned smile. ‘I work as a transportista and send the money home. You know what it’s like for young women like us in our shitty villages. What else are we gonna do for money unless we sell our bodies or work in the fields for next to nothing? I don’t want to spend my life on my back, getting beaten up, catching diseases and being treated like an animal by some ugly, fat sons of bitches. I don’t want my family to starve. And besides, this pays well and we don’t get any hassle from men. Way better. I’d sooner risk getting shot and make sure my kid’s fed.’ She gnawed at fingernails that were already down to the quick. ‘What about you? Why are you in this game?’
‘Same reasons,’ George said. ‘I don’t like men telling me what to do. In fact, I don’t like anyone telling me what to do.’ She shot a furtive glance over at Maritza and realised the matriarch of this little band of mercenaries was watching her every move and eavesdropping on every single word that came out of her mouth. The naivety of what she had said wasn’t lost on her. Maritza was as fearsome a taskmaster as any mid-level gang boss she had ever met. She could see it in the set of the woman’s jaw and in that brutal scar – a terrible wound she had sustained and survived. What’s the bet the other guy came off much, much worse? George pondered.
It was a tight squeeze in the truck with so many of them perched on crate after crate of guns.
‘What happens if the truck gets stopped by the police?’ George asked Paola.
The girl paused thoughtfully in the middle of tying her long, black hair into a bun. ‘If they can’t be bribed, we use our womanly charms on them, of course!’ She winked. Pushed George’s thigh. ‘I thought you said you were experienced at this game?’
During the uncomfortable twenty-hour journey from the Honduran capital to Palenque Chiapas, George felt Maritza watching her regularly. The older woman didn’t trust her, she was certain. Every time a bead of sweat rolled down George’s neck, she was fearful that her temporary tattoos would peel and wash away. It wouldn’t take much to uncover the truth. If they found her phone and the GPS tracker, gaffer-taped into the lining of her rucksack, or her watch, secreted inside her vagina, wrapped in
a condom, there would be rather more than just questions.
Just follow their lead, George told herself, trying to keep her ragged breathing steady. Keep your mouth shut wherever possible. Sleep with one hand on that hunting knife. You can do this. You can, because you believe you can.
After only three stop-offs to refuel at some gas station in the middle of nowhere, where they bought snacks and used the filthy facilities, which under any other circumstances, she would have refused to do, George began to feel herself drifting off to sleep. An urge that she mustn’t allow herself to give in to, while the others were all gathered around her and her bag was vulnerable. Jerking herself awake every time she felt her lids getting heavy, she tried to think about childish songs Letitia and her father used to sing to her at bedtime when she had been a toddler. Silly rituals and rhymes that she had adored and which had made her feel utterly secure in her little world. Hadn’t her father recited ‘Cinco pequeñas ranitas con lunares’ – ‘Five little speckled frogs’? She could still remember the words fondly. Her own fate seemed to mirror that of the rhyme. All the speckled frogs in her life were vanishing into the pool, one by one, never to be seen again. How long before she was the only frog left? The thought was saddening and sobering enough to help her beat sleep.
Where the other women engaged in conversation, talking about their lives, spent juggling mundane family commitments with the insane level of risk and violence associated with gun smuggling, George held her tongue, preferring instead to stare sullenly at a dent in the side of the truck. Perhaps these weren’t such fearsome fighters after all. Perhaps it was all tattoos and bluster. Perhaps she was safer than she thought.
She could feel it when they finally began to ascend in earnest. Her ears were popping as they climbed higher and, though she could not see the road ahead, she could tell they were negotiating hairpin bends as they lurched from side to side periodically. The metal box that constituted the cargo area of the ex-army truck was suffocatingly hot under the Central American sun. As dusk snuffed out the sunshine, it was still a sweltering sweatbox, cooped up with all those women.
The Girl Who Had No Fear Page 21
