by M C Rowley
“Please let her go,” I said again. “She was only trying to find our son.”
Salvatierra stopped fidgeting with the camera and looked up at me.
“If it were my decision, Dyce, I´d kill you now. But you´re lucky, turns out we need to wait one more day. You should just pray that everything we need to happen, happens, and your wife might get out of this alive. You, not so much.”
Salvatierra had me turned to the side, and took more photos. Then, the other cops carried over Pep, and had him shaking a fed´s hand while they took more shots. Pep seemed devoid of life. He´d been saved with not a hair on his head harmed. And yet his features were broken and shattered. He looked ashamed.
After the photo session, they took Pep back out of the room, and came for me and lifted me out of the room too. Outside, they cut my ties and frog-marched me the rest of the way back to the portable office. Pep was already returned inside and sat in his old position again. I walked to the back and sat at the desk and Salvatierra stood at the door as we settled back in to our cage.
He stared at us, switching between Pep and me. Pep was sat on the sofa, arms resting on his knees, looking at Salvatierra like an old lady looks at a priest.
Salvatierra stayed like that for a whole minute before turning around and shutting our door, locking it this time. About thirty-seconds later, we heard a large SUV engine start up, rev once, then twice and pull away. Then silence. Pep did not even look at me and I was grateful for it.
I headed to the WC, retrieved the cell phone, opened the clam style front panel, clicked the messages button and composed a message:
“Tell me when and how to get out of here.”
After a minute the little screen on the front of the phone lit up in green to announce a new message. I opened it,
“You’re surrounded,” said Jason’s reply.
“Need to get out before tomorrow,” I wrote back.
I looked at the clock. 6:13am.
Ten hours before dusk.
A new message arrived from Jason:
“Ok. I can help. Follow my instructions.”
Chapter Seventeen
Jason’s instructions were simple. Our communications occurred when I could get in to the WC, pulling the phone out to check messages every hour.
Salvatierra had ordered a constant patrol of cops around the industrial park and since his visit, the numbers had almost doubled. This was the endgame for sure.
Jason agreed that we needed to get out that very night.
I asked him for assistance. He said no. Too many cops for an extraction operation.
Jason insisted our escape would have to be solo.
Then at around midday, I sauntered to the bathroom for my sixth piss that day and found Jason had messaged an idea:
“The cops change shift. It’s a ten minute window.”
I wrote:
“What time?”
“It varies. Wait for my go.” wrote Jason.
I wrote: “You’re watching us?”
Jason did not reply.
At around 1pm, rain started. As was always the case in this part of the world, it came hard, and fast. At first, it started beating the trailer with thick, heavy droplets. You could count them, and then you couldn´t. They came faster and more frantic. The windows became murky with pouring water and the dust, now mud, making it dark. Thunderstorms like this one would last whole days and whole nights.
By the late afternoon, the rain had become a constant and soothing hum. It meant that the silence between Pep and me was comfortable. Because silence was impossible. It had been robbed from the world by this downpour and I thanked the heavens for it. And in any case, Pep dozed like a cat almost the whole day.
The late afternoon gradually and slowly rolled into evening, and the rain did not let up. It was part of my plan now. Had to be.
When the last dim glow of orange faded from the Western sky, I felt the phone finally vibrate in my pocket and went to the bathroom to check the message.
It said, “Get ready to leave. In five minutes, make a run for it. To the hills in the South.”
I snapped the phone closed and came back into the main room.
Pep looked at me.
“We´re leaving,” I said.
He started shaking his head.
“I mean it,” I said. “We´re leaving. It isn´t safe here. And we are leaving now.”
He kept shaking his head, nervous and scared.
“No. I can´t do that. It´s dangerous to run. To run from these people.”
“No,” I said. “It isn´t. I am a dead man here, they will kill me and my family eventually. You won’t be safe for long. I don’t know what contract you signed with them, but trust me, it’ll expire.”
He looked down at the floor quickly, and then moved his mouth to speak, but he couldn´t. He just shook his head.
I walked past him to the door and stood in front of it. It was a thin metal frame that held a sheet of opaque perspex. Salvatierra had gambled the lock. And that revealed a lot about his and Esteban´s game plan. But now I had to gamble too. Was Salvatierra out there in the rain, waiting for this? Or one of his crooked fed colleagues? I didn´t think so. Firstly, Salvatierra turned up every three days. A long time to wait for someone close by. Secondly, they used an old señora to drop off food, which made no kind of sense. I decided to gamble and kicked the door hard at the lock.
It smashed open wildly, and outside was rampant. The rain lashed down like strings of iron, tearing the ground to mud. It was illuminated because the park´s street lights were back on and reflecting down from the thick, low, gray clouds above. It smelled iron-like, like when water soaks metal. Not the bloody kind of smell, but that´s what I thought of as I stepped down into the rain.
No-one jumped me. No figures stood in the rain awaiting me. Nothing.
I walked around the trailer, and found it clear too. I went back for Pep.
“I am not going,” he said.
I shook my head this time. “No choice, Governor,” I said, and grabbed him by the arm. I had found two plastic bin liners, like the ones Pep had been wrapped in, and now gave one to him. I put mine on like an anorak, and made him do the same. He was weaker than he looked, and I thought about how politicians are always tall, and athletic looking. No-one votes for fat short-asses. But the veneer proved just that. His arm was skinny and fleshy. It was soft and padded under my pull and he rose to his feet with ease. He pulled back but I shoved him toward the door. He looked at me, and for the first time since I saw him under the plastic of those trash bag liners, real fear permeated his features. His eyes were wide enough to make his pupils look like brown M&Ms, and his jaw was grinding like a machine. He had lost control. The control he used in his professional life - to face questions, or crowds, or narcos - had gone. I pushed him hard, and he stumbled and tripped out of the trailer into the rain soaked floor below.
“I am sorry,” I said. “But this is my only option.”
He stayed sitting, resting on both his arms, looking at his hands. Rain was collecting in the puddles his limbs were making in the soft mud.
I stepped down and hauled him up. “Let´s go.”
Avoiding the side perimeters was the first part and the only way to do that was head straight down the central road of the industrial park. We set off through Polysol´s lot and out on to the tarmac. No-one was around, but we moved quick through the sodden streets anyway. Within two minutes, we were soaked to the knees but the plastic was doing a job up top.
We crossed one large factory, a giant black hulk in the darkness and I froze, and held Pep back.
In front of us, a patrol car was slowing rolling across the T-junction, horizontally across our line of vision about 100 meters ahead.
“Don´t move.”
It was dark enough to be hidden from the cops´ view but sudden movement would alert them.
“Hold it,” I said.
We were stood like statues in the middle of the street, totally ex
posed. The cop car was about to hit the point at which a right turn would be executed.
“Hold it,” I said again. I could feel Pep shaking in my grip. The rain would muffle a shout, but I realized the risk just before Pep snapped out of his trance and slammed my hand over his mouth. He dropped to his knees and I held him there, keeping him silent.
The cop car paused a second. The rain was hammering my face but I stayed looking. Ready to run.
The cop car started up again, and rolled on down the street to our right, and out of view. Ahead lay the metal fence dividing the park´s border from the start of the hills, where the taxi had left me a week or so ago.
I pulled Pep back to standing position, “Now run,” I said and I pulled him across the remaining tarmac, glancing for more red and blue lights the whole way. But there were none, and we made it.
I lifted the flimsy metal fence, so we could scramble under it. I kept a hold of Pep, though I wasn't as worried as I had been about his running off. He was resigned, and wouldn´t get far. I knew now I was stronger, and therefore faster than him.
We moved out and the slope of the hills began. The shrubbery began to thicken and before long we were under the cover of huge mutant cactus plants that had been growing and drinking this yearly rain for fifty years. The ground under the huge nopal trees was clammy but not slippery. Above us the circles of the nopal shaded out the black purple sky. Above, tiny flashes of violet lightning filled the thick cloud, and the rain continued, relentless and furious.
We made our way through the terrain and the slope was manageable, but Pep kept slumping to his knees. In the cabin, even faced with Salvatierra´s visits, Pep hadn´t been scared. Yet now, he was beyond even that. He´d given up. He had no fight. I myself felt stronger. No better in my mind, but stronger physically, like the outside was stripping me of my body, leaving me just bones, with bits of flesh hanging off it, and the bones moving themselves propelled by some freak energy source. I pounded up the hill like a man set free.
But when Pep dropped for the sixth time, I stopped too and looked back down the hill. We had travelled about two kilometers from Polysol, and we could see the entire park. The lamps glowed incessant, and brightened the thick streams of rain.
We were out.
My gamble had paid off, was what I thought.
Until I heard a voice come from behind us.
“Stop there, Dyce,” said the voice.
It was a woman, and it was American.
I put my hands up. Pep looked around to see its owner.
“You´re coming with us,” she said.
Chapter Eighteen
I turned around to face the voice.
The woman was short and had an athletic and lithe build. She was wearing black combat pants, a black military style top and headband. She had a ponytail tied up tight above it and her face was stretched backward slightly. Her jaw was chiseled and serious. I guessed she was in her forties. I could make out her eyes were blue and they stared me down, laser like, even through the unending rain.
Two men stood either side of her. Both of them the same height as each other, and only a little taller than the lady. They were all soaking wet like us but much better prepared for it.
One of the guys were wearing all black, black tee-shirt and black combat pants with big boots laced right up to the shins. He and the lady had utility belts with bullets, knives, and walkie talkies hanging off them. The guy´s face was uncovered, but painted up with black lines.
They looked like those Blackwater security firm that did jobs in Baghdad, probably were the Blackwater security firm that did jobs in Baghdad.
The third man was hispanic and was in “civilian” clothing, a gray hooded top and beige cargo pants.
“My name is Ruth Kyle,” said the lady, and she gestured to her right, to Christian, “And this is Hernandez,” then she switched sides, “and this is Bayer.”
The two men pulled masks over their faces and rested their fists down by their sides, clenched.
Pep got up beside me, his arm was shaking hard. His plastic bag anorak was brushing against mine. Maybe it was the cold, but it was more likely the fear.
Kyle and her men approached us. The guy named Bayer grabbed Pep and put his arms behind his back and tied them with a cable tie. But they left me alone.
I looked at Kyle.
“You were lucky to get out,” she said.
Pep shot a glance in my direction.
“Aren´t you gonna tie me up?” I asked.
“No. But we are out of here. They forced our hand,” she said.
“Who are you?” I asked.
She waited, and nodded at Bayer holding Pep. He started to pull Pep away into the night. The nopales provided an impressive cover from the downpour. Here in the undergrowth, only a third of the water the skies were throwing at us actually hit their target.
I watched Bayer haul the Lujano governor, stumbling and sliding, into the darkness. When they were ten meters or so in front, Kyle turned to me, “I told you already,” she said, and she moved away and started walking behind her colleagues and Pep.
“I don´t mean your name,” I shouted. And I went to grab her arm. She stopped me by the wrist and pulled me sideways so my face slammed into her shoulder. My legs had twisted, my other limbs useless, squeezed against her chest. Krav Maga or something of that ilk.
“No time for that right now,” she said. “We´re friends. And we need to go. Now.”
She flung my wrist aside with an incredible strength, and turned to follow her colleagues. I followed her. I had no choice. I needed Pep.
The storm did not let up, and walking down the slope rather than up it was tougher. After an hour or so, we began to level out, we turned left, away from the direction of the industrial park.
We followed what would usually be a dirt track, and which was now a mud river, and we entered black night. The night sky illuminated just enough to see the four outlines in front of me. I noticed that they were keeping Pep ahead and separate from me. The lady called Kyle and her team were pros. Even if I were to take one of them by surprise, I guessed the other two would snap my neck. The way that Kyle had grabbed, flicked and discharged my wrist had the feel of an ex-soldier about it. They were certainly dressed for the part.
I picked up the pace and managed to catch Kyle up. I was panting as I spoke.
“Listen, Miss,” I said. “I need Pep with me. I don´t know who you are, but I need him. They have my wife.”
In the dim light, Kyle kept her head facing forward but I sensed her smiling, the vague outline of her cheek bone rising.
“People call me Kyle,” she said.
She wasn´t panting at all. And that made my rasping sound louder.
“Did you hear what I said?” I asked, between breaths. “This is serious.”
But Kyle just kept walking. And she walked fast. My legs hurt, and my chest felt tight, and I was drenched from below where the plastic stopped. I stooped with my hands on my knees to catch my breath, and I watched Kyle and her crew until ten meters separated us, and they started to fade. I picked myself up straight from my crouching position, and jogged a little. Lactic acid flooded the thin splints of muscle in and around my shins and burned them numb. But I reached close enough to see their gloomy figures again, and slowed to a walk.
The thunder rolled every couple of minutes and every five or so, a flash to the South. This storm absorbed the atmosphere like some panoptic takeover of the planet, even though the clouds most likely spread less then thirty kilometers across, and instead shared a scale with our small drama carrying on below. All relative, I thought.
We must have walked along the muddy track a further 5 kilometers. My bearings told me that we had traversed the big hill behind the park by walking around its base toward the South. We now looked out to a long valley floor. I recalled the map I had used to find the pick up spot. It was the great valley that nestled behind the hills that formed a circle around Lujano. The other side of this
valley were the Sierra Mountains, and an hour´s drive into them, where I had collected the governor wrapped in bin liners four days before.
Times had changed.
At last, we came to a clearing at the side of the track. I could see the bushes part and the stormy sky, purple and tumultuous come into view. In the clearing were the silhouettes of two trucks. Theirs and that of another person. I measured the person´s height by guess work using the truck to the side of the figure as reference. I made him around 6 foot, but it wasn´t Salvatierra.
As we approached, the figure stepped forward. It was a man about forty years old with shabby, strawy yellow hair. He was dressed like Kyle and the guy called Bayer, in black military garb.
Kyle walked faster toward him and they met between us and the trucks. We stopped while they spoke quietly. Pep glanced at me. His face saturated with terror. His jaw slack from exhaustion, and his eyes wide open again. Then, Kyle turned to us and looked at Pep, who was still being held by her two guys.
“Governor,” she said. “Are you well? Have you been treated badly?”
Pep looked back at her, bending down for breath like me. “No. I am fine. They treated me, us, fine. I want to go back, señora, please, I don´t know who you are. Please take me back.”
Kyle walked slowly toward him until she squared right up to his face, “Are you not happy, Governor? That someone has saved you?”
Pep closed his mouth and stood up straight, dented pride in his eyes. “I apologize, señora, but you must forgive me for not trusting everybody I meet, given the circumstances of recent events.”
Kyle kind of shrugged, but it looked like a nod of the head.
Pep continued. “And him,” he said, pointing at me.
“He is Mark Kersteen, not this other name you say.”
