‘I’m going to kill you, mecánico. You’re a lying, sneaking son of bitch.’ Jorge had pulled the trigger a second time, with the bullet embedding itself this time in the fibreglass ceiling. As the sub had lurched ever downwards, water had started to trickle onto the grappling pair.
‘We’re going to die, anyway!’ Michael yelled. ‘Drop the gun! We need to plug that hole and get this sub back to the surface fast. We’re going down.’
Instruments on the navigational dashboard had started to ping loudly in alarm. Michael had lunged for the gun again, encircling Jorge’s wrist with his own bony hand. But though Jorge had tried to throw him off, pistol-whipping him hard on the mouth so that Michael had balked at the unsavoury metallic taste as his mouth had filled with blood, the guard’s energy had seemed to dwindle rapidly, like a leaking fuel tank on an old car.
‘I don’t feel so good,’ Jorge had said, suddenly relinquishing the gun. He had rolled over and vomited.
The sea had started to force its way in through the bullet hole in earnest, replacing the trickle with an insistent spurt, which had showered down onto the prone Jorge.
Snatching up the weapon and stuffing it in the waistband of his shorts, Michael had realised that he had three almost insurmountable problems to contend with. If he didn’t bind his shoulder immediately, he would bleed to death, perhaps inside five minutes. The sub had been sinking, causing the hull to groan in complaint. The painful pressure in his ears had told him that the descent was too rapid. The vessel would break up. But the main problem had been the water ingress.
He had staggered over to the pile of meth bricks and had unfurled a long piece of clingfilm, binding his shoulder tightly as best he could so that the flow of blood had at least been stemmed. Shooting a glance at Jorge, it had been clear that his guard was out cold, lying in a watery pool of his own vomit and the encroaching sea. Determined that his humanity should not leave him, Michael had knelt by the man, feeling for the pulse in his neck. But there had been none. The grey tinge to Jorge’s lips and his unseeing eyes had told Michael that he was now alone. Mercifully still breathing and with his own life still to fight for.
‘Come on, for God’s sake. You’re el mecánico. You made this tub. You can fix it. Dear God, don’t let me die.’ He had rammed a ball of clingfilm into the leaking hole made by the bullet. Had at least stemmed the flow enough to turn it from a spurt back into a trickle, though he had known it was nothing more than a temporary fix.
Saying a prayer silently, he had made for the pinging nautical instruments. The digital displays had been flashing apocalyptically at him, showing that the vessel had dived some twenty-five metres already and had drifted way off course.
‘Shit!’ He had closed down the sub’s computer, feeling his hope and his own energy ebbing away. The blood had still been flowing defiantly from his wounded shoulder, beneath the clingfilm, but he had ignored the increasingly light-headed sensation, knowing there was no time for self-indulgence.
The propellers had fallen silent. The sub had been plunged into darkness.
Flipping the switch, he had prayed that the system would rectify itself automatically. With no laptop to tinker with the on-board computer’s programme, it had been his only hope.
Nothing.
He had flipped the switch again, thumping the dash. There had clearly been a fault with the computer’s power supply. Had the first bullet that had passed through his shoulder caused damage to the reams of delicate cabling that ran in a fat tangle through a pipe embedded inside the Kevlar? ‘Reboot for God’s sake!’
A third time, and he had held the button down.
Finally, the lights had come back on and the engines had whirred back into life. The navigational instruments had all been working, except the reboot had wiped the sat nav’s memory. The co-ordinates of their destination had disappeared.
‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ He had held his fists to his forehead, running through the implications of having a malfunctioning sat nav.
Lost at sea. Great. And Jorge had died, taking the co-ordinates with him.
‘Pockets.’
Rifling through Jorge’s pockets, gagging from the smell of the dead man’s vomit, he had, at first, been hopeful of finding the slip of paper. But his search had revealed nothing. Then, sifting through the ashes from Jorge’s smoking materials by his mattress, he had spotted the remnants of a singed slip of paper. They had showed only a fragment of the information he needed. It had not been enough.
‘Great. So I’m stranded in the Caribbean Sea,’ he had shouted at the ceiling. ‘Thanks, God. Thanks for nothing.’
His best bet, he had calculated, would be to bob on the surface and pray that he was picked up by the coast guard. El cocodrilo had expressly demanded that no facility for transmitting an SOS signal be incorporated into the design, so that his men would not be captured by the Federales, should they run into trouble. It had always been designed to be a semi-submersible on a semi-suicide mission. It had dawned on Michael then that he had unwittingly colluded in his own demise.
‘Shut up! Shut up!’ he had shouted. ‘This is loser’s talk. Enough!’
He had had to try harder.
Having re-programmed the semi-submersible to climb once more, he had realised the vessel was not heading fast enough towards the surface. The water had been starting to come through again in earnest and was now gaining pace, gushing, rather than just spurting. Already, Michael’s ankles were submerged. He had pulled off his boots and had studied the tightly packed pallets full of crystal meth, destined for the cargo ship in the Dominican Republic. If he had only been able to jettison the load, he knew he would have been able to bring the sub safely to the surface.
But it had been impossible to open the hatch on such a basic piece of kit without flooding the entire vessel within minutes.
After a while, he had brought the reluctant sub up to fifteen metres below sea level. But it had refused to rise any higher. He had calculated that his only option would be to wait until the sub had filled with water with the intention of opening the hatch at the last minute, once the pressure would have equalised with the outside. Then, he would have to pray that he would be able to hold his breath long enough to swim for the surface without getting the bends. And then, there was the small matter of not drowning in the open sea or being eaten by a shark, mistaking his bony shell of a body for a disappointing dolphin. It had been flawed, but it had been his only plan.
And so, Michael Carlos Izquierdo Moreno had resorted to allowing the sub he had built over the course of two years to fill with water. Lying on his back, he had waited until the water level had been only six inches or so away from the top. At least the water had been warm and Jorge’s body had remained somewhere on the bottom, pinned to the floor of the hull in perpetuity beneath the weight of the meth that had killed him.
When he had judged the water level was just high enough to give him sufficient air to breath, he had started to manoeuvre the wheel that allowed him to open the hatch manually. But his arms had been weakened by blood loss and the wheel was jammed. The faster his heart had beaten with rising panic, the more light-headed he had grown, his energy leaching from him entirely.
Eventually, he had accepted that he was not going to escape this watery sarcophagus after all. It had been ordained that this would be the end of him; the end of his hopes for freedom; an end to his aspirations to reforge contact with his long-lost daughter and to make amends for the decades when he had not been there for her.
‘Goodbye, Ella,’ he said to the darkness.
Consciousness was leaving him. He knew it was over. He had, at least, fought valiantly to stay alive this long. Perhaps Ella would be proud if she ever found out the truth about her papa and his epic tale of trial and redemption.
CHAPTER 46
Mexico, Yucatan jungle, 1 June
Poking her head out from the shack’s threshold, George checked the way was clear. Twilight was not far off now. She could smell sundown in
the air and hear it in the sounds of the jungle’s insects and animals, as the dayshift started to change hands with those that were of a nocturnal disposition. Pulled her rucksack on her back and checked again that the pistol she had conned from Maritza was loaded. It wouldn’t do to make a mistake now. This was her last chance.
‘Good luck, Jacinta,’ Paola said.
George turned around and took one last glance at the woman she had bunked with for a week. Wondered if the girl would ever make it past twenty-five. ‘Thanks. You too,’ she said.
‘I hope you find your guy and get your money back.’ Paola dragged on her cigarette and exhaled as the old television with an execrable reception hissed away on the wall, showing some telenovela.
‘Oh, I will,’ she said. ‘Safe journey home. Tell Maritza thanks again. For everything.’
Without looking back, George advanced across the clearing, ducking past the gang members who were all assembled around another television, jeering at some football match, judging by the sounds. She needed to get away from this place without hindrance.
Her run-in with Maritza had been a close call. The leader of the transportistas had pulled her to one side and had accused her of being a wild card.
‘You’re no team player, Jacinta,’ she had said, scanning George’s face for the truth. Glancing over George’s shoulder at her sleeping father. ‘I don’t think I can have you working in my group of transportistas anymore.’
George had been at pains to look as wounded as possible, carefully controlling her breathing so that her abject fear of discovery wouldn’t be obvious. She had been well aware that her luck must surely have been due to run out at any minute. ‘Oh, but Maritza. Really?! This has been great for me after working in Europe. You guys have made me feel so welcome. I’ve been the lone wolf for too long. Know what I mean?’ She had deliberately strolled as far away from her father as possible, not wanting to put his relative safety in jeopardy. Maritza would have had no compunction about putting a bullet in him as he slept, she had been certain of that much.
‘I saw how you handled that guy who disrespected you,’ Maritza had said. ‘I admire you, Jacinta. You’ve got balls. You remind me of myself as a younger woman.’ The transportista had laid her hand on George’s shoulder and had squeezed her affectionately. ‘But my girls are like a military unit and it’s going to be disruptive if you stay. You’re too much of a free spirit. You need to go and find the bastard who owes you money, but you and I have to part company here, I’m afraid.’
George had nodded stoically. She had treated Maritza to a warm, appreciative smile. And then, she had got her to agree that she could stay that night, after the semi-submersible had been loaded up, and hang around for most of the following day, leaving with a rifle and a handgun, as well as her pay, as a parting bonus. With the letter safely stashed in her father’s pocket and Van den Bergen informed of an ideal time at which to raid the camp, when George was fairly certain all the major players would be there, watching the second half of the football match between Brazil and Argentina, George had known she must leave and track down her father, before Jorge found her letter or their sub got too far out to sea for her to stand a hope in hell of finding them.
Now, with the inhabitants of the camp ensconced in the same shack, drinking beer and screaming at the injustice of an early goal from Argentina, George slipped into the treeline, knowing she had to put some distance between her and that place before Gonzales and his men descended upon it in approximately one hour’s time. She knew instinctively that it would be a bloody battle. As she turned her face towards the canopy of the jungle, spying the ghost of the moon in the early-evening sky, she said a silent prayer that Van den Bergen would emerge from the raid unhurt, and that they would be reunited at the airport. She had less than three hours to find a needle in a haystack.
This is bullshit, she thought, trudging through the tangled thicket, waving away clouds of bloodthirsty mosquitoes that were coming out to play at her expense. I’ll never find my dad. I’ve timed it all wrong. He’s too long gone. What the hell was I thinking? I’m going to get eaten alive by a fucking jaguar or a giant spider and this will all have been for nothing.
But then, remembering the pitiful sight of her emaciated father, sleeping on the filthy mattress with his legs chained to the shack’s wall, George chastised herself inwardly.
I’m not giving up. Enough of this loser’s talk. There’s a speedboat moored at the far end of that beach where the sub launched from. I’ve seen it for myself and I’m having it. Hang on in there, Papa. I’m coming to get you.
When she reached the beach, there were some locals having a picnic. A family, by the looks. They shrank away from her as she stepped out from the treeline, the mother hugging her two children and the father putting a territorial arm around all three of them. George remembered how she must look, armed and dressed as a transportista. Part of her was horrified that decent family folk should be so intimidated by her. Part of her found the power intoxicating.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, holding her hands aloft. ‘Just get on with your picnic.’
Would they call the police? No. Most of the locals would be petrified of retribution from an apparent gang member. This was a culture where crimes went unreported for a reason.
Advancing down the beach, she spotted the speedboat, moored in shallow water only a few metres out.
‘What the hell do you know about speedboats, Georgina?’ she asked herself, imagining Van den Bergen quizzing her like the curmudgeonly, logical old fart he was. ‘Nothing,’ George told the lapping waters of the Caribbean Sea. ‘Not a sausage. But I’ve got my provisional licence and I’ve done the roundabout at Elephant and Castle during rush hour without crashing. How hard can a boat be?’
Wading out, she realised it was bobbing on the surface in water that was deeper than she had anticipated. She held her rifle above her head and threw it into the boat. Tried to jump up to grab the side. Her hands slid uselessly along the fibreglass hull. Tried again.
‘Come on, you fat clumsy twat. It’s going to be dark in an hour. And you’re going to miss your sodding flight. Aunty Sharon will kill you if you miss Skyping during Bake Off for another week.’
Hurling herself out of the water, she finally gained a purchase on the edge. Her arms screamed in complaint as she tried to drag herself upwards. Her breasts were painfully flattened against the side. She kicked her legs up, finally managing to hook a foot over the lip of the boat. As she threw her body into the vessel, she heard shouting from the beach.
‘Oh shit. Here we go,’ she muttered.
‘Hey! You! That’s my boat!’ An American voice. A man was running towards her, coming from the direction of a beautiful white, two-storey villa that was nestled in the treeline. A tourist or ex-pat, no doubt. ‘Get out of my fucking boat or I’m calling the police.’
George could see the anger in the man’s face. Then she watched his aggression dissolve clean away as she stood and he saw her in all her tattooed, transportista glory.
‘I need to borrow your boat,’ George said in English. She picked up her rifle and clasped it to her body.
The American held his hands up. A change in his attitude once he had heard her speak English. A mixture of surprise, resentment and loathing in his face. ‘Okay, you crazy bitch! Take it. But I’m calling the cops. I don’t take any shit from you beaners.’
She pointed her rifle towards the man and shot up the sand to the left of him.
He leaped backwards. ‘Jesus! What was that for?’
‘Beaners,’ she said simply. ‘Say it again and I’ll put the bullets in your racist dick. Now, I need your boat. I’m an undercover cop from England,’ she lied. ‘Call the coast guard and get them to get a rescue helicopter out to sea. Tell them I’m looking for a semi-submersible that’s heading towards Santo Domingo in the Dominican. Tell them it’s got drugs and a kidnapped Spanish national on board.’
‘You’re full of shit,’ the boat owner sa
id. ‘Get out of my fucking boat, bitch.’ His hand was planted firmly on his hip. His face was etched with fury. Was this guy some kind of psychopath that he wasn’t cowed by a fearsome-looking woman holding a semi-automatic rifle? Or maybe he just didn’t believe a woman could have cojones bigger than a man.
George let off another round right by his feet. ‘Fuck you. Give me the keys or I’ll kill you.’
This time, the man glared at her, reached inside his shorts …
‘Easy,’ George said. ‘Don’t try anything stupid.’
… pulled out a bunch of keys and threw them to George. ‘Don’t wreck it,’ he said.
‘I’ll try not to,’ she said, plucking the keys out of the air. ‘And don’t forget. Call the coast guard and tell them about the semi-sub headed from this beach to Santo Domingo. It can’t have got more than a hundred nautical miles, tops. And tell them to go easy with the firepower. There’s an innocent man on board.’
The boat owner didn’t move.
‘Go!’ she shouted, raising the rifle to her shoulder and peering down the sights.
As the man sprinted back towards his villa, she took in the array of buttons and dials on the dash of the motorboat in confusion. Started the engine. Noticed there was a sat nav. She programmed in the co-ordinates for Santo Domingo: Latitude – eighteen degrees 30’00’ N, Longitude – sixty-nine degrees 59’18’ W. Pushing aside naysaying, nagging concerns of her sensible alter ego that she didn’t yet even have her driver’s licence, George hit the throttle. The boat lurched forwards, ripping its anchor from the seabed. Spun around violently.
‘Shit, man!’ she shouted, thumping the dash. ‘How hard can this be? Come on, McKenzie. You’re a fucking PhD for God’s sake! Use your loaf.’
Gathering her composure, she pulled up the anchor. A little less throttle this time and soon she was jerking forwards, at least in the right direction. Checking the fuel gauge, she saw that the boat only had half a tank. Not good. Silently, she gazed out to the horizon, calculating that her father’s vessel must be travelling around eight nautical miles per hour. Reasoning that this motorboat going at full throttle might hit fifty. She was no mathematician, but she realised that half a tank of gas, travelling at speed, would not get her very far and certainly wouldn’t get her back to shore. Still, what option did she have but to try?
The Girl Who Had No Fear Page 28
