by M C Rowley
He answered in his usual gruff tone. “What is it, Santos?”
“We got confirmation. It’s starting. Jairo Morales was telling the truth.”
“Reynolds is operational?”
“More than that,” said Santos. “It’s already in motion.”
Her director didn’t say anything for a few seconds. He was thinking. Santos could hear his breathing slowing down and getting heavier.
Then he spoke.
“Okay,” he said. “Initiate the capture.”
Chapter Two
Topo Chico Prison, Northern Mexico
The crisscross design of the mattress springs on the bunk above made me sick. After hours of staring, they began to swirl and judder. I was sick of looking at them. I was sick of waiting. They reminded of where I was, more than the smell of old food and concrete and sweat.
Mr. Reynolds had told me to be ready between ten and eleven o’clock, any evening, any night. So for two weeks, I’d waited then. And nothing passed. Not that I had anything better to do. My cellmate fell asleep early and ignored me like I was a moth in his room. He was a big guy, from up north. Gang violence, like most of the rest. Not that he’d spoken much. I looked at his outline pressing through the mattress and how it distorted the springs. I checked my watch: 10:46 p.m.
I closed my eyes and remembered the command: “Be ready. Any night. After ten, but no later than eleven.”
My real-life, non-metaphorical get-out-of-jail-free card.
I rolled to my side and my bed creaked. Outside the cell bars, only a few dangling industrial bulbs glowed in the gloom. I could hear voices coming from the three stories of cells: whispers, fights, deals, plots. The shuffling and tempered moaning rose up in the sticky air like airborne disease, spreading aggression and violence everywhere.
But soon, I’d be out.
Thing was, there was no hole in the floor dug by spoons. The toilet bowl was well in place. The small air vent was still lined with thick iron bars. And no guard had made a deal with me. What the hell was Mr. Reynolds planning? What would happen, any night, any evening, between ten and eleven?
I sighed and rolled over once more and looked back up at the bed springs.
God, they made me feel sick.
It was hot too. My overalls were still damp from the afternoon’s heat and subsequent perspiration. I’d been in this godforsaken place for five weeks. The call had come two weeks back. And to be honest, I was surprised that I hadn’t been raped, beaten, tortured, and killed by now. It was a miracle. Like I had an angel looking over me. But Mr. Reynolds was no Gabriel or Michael. I knew less about my new employer and controller than I did about the real bosses of this prison. Except that neither were official or elected.
Here in Topo Chico, one cartel ruled all. Código X was their name. Started out as a paramilitary outfit, merely protection for the leader of the Gulf cartel, but they decided they could run things better. So they murdered their employer, then all his competition, and took control of almost all illicit means of earning money in twenty-three of Mexico’s states. Código X had become the most powerful illicit organization in the world. More money than ISIS, more weapons than the Mexican police force per capita. And they lusted after blood. To call them sadistic did not scratch the surface of what lay behind their philosophy. Making absurd amounts of money was not enough for them. They liked violence, and human suffering, and used any means necessary to enforce their rule upon whoever had the great misfortune of crossing paths with Código X.
And they ruled this prison as if it were a small family business handed down through generations. There were high-up inmates, they said. Here, running the place. I’d seen women around, even with newborn babies. I’d heard rumors of a bar that hosted a pole-dancing night for them.
And yet I—an ex-spy, British, and jailed for being involved in the abduction and subsequent killing of a Mexican state governor—didn’t bother them. No one had touched me, harmed me, threatened me, or anything. And yet, they all stared. Stared at me like I’d murdered their favorite niece. But someone’s order held them back. The same someone who promised my escape. Mr. Reynolds.
I checked my watch again: 10:57 p.m.
As on previous nights, I began to give up hope of seeing any action as 11pm loomed. But then, two things happened.
First, the dim lights outside in the communal area between all the cells were extinguished, plunging all of us into darkness.
Then, one second later, a shrill cry of pain came from below us. A man screaming in agony.
I sat up. My cellmate must have woken, as the mattress above me squeaked and creaked.
I looked out of the cell bars, but couldn’t make anything out. It was pitch black.
I heard the rattle and scraping of cell doors opening. My cellmate’s feet dropped down from his bunk so that they swung in front of me. They stank to high heaven.
And then our cell door began to roll back on its automatically controlled rail system. I stayed quiet. What did Mr. Reynolds expect? That I’d just walk out, avoid the sure-to-be-coming riot, and leave through the front door?
As the thought crossed my mind, the shouting and fighting began. First from the communal area three floors below. Men shouting, jeering, and hustling. Then more shouts, and screaming, until it became a big mess of noise.
My cellmate stayed where he was. I wondered why he wasn’t making a run for it. Then I realized why.
I heard footsteps. Coming for us.
I shuffled on my bed until my back hit the wall. The footsteps got louder and reached our cell and someone entered.
I froze. The footsteps approached our bunk, and a voice said:
“Lárgate, gordo.”
Which translated to “Get out, Fatty.”
I couldn’t make out any more than the figure of a large man, standing in front of me.
My cellmate’s mattress squeaked and strained as the big man got down. Although I could see nothing in the dark, I heard him pad out of the cell.
I sat as still as my nerves would allow. The mystery figure seemed to be alone. The noise outside the cell increased, and the screams grew more intense. Then, suddenly, the figure spoke, in English.
“Not long, gringo. Ten minutes maximo.”
“Mr. Reynolds?”
The figure chuckled and the bed above shuddered as he climbed onto the vacant bunk.
It turned out to be more like twenty minutes. The riot had become rampant, and in the middle of all of it, after twenty minutes had passed, there was an enormous explosion—somewhere close to us, but not in the cell block itself. It was huge. It sounded like an explosion from a movie. Big, fiery, and dangerous.
My new friend jumped down from his bunk and put his face close to mine. I couldn’t make out a single feature, but I felt his breath as he spoke.
“Let’s go, gringo.”
I didn’t hesitate. I jumped up from my bunk, put my shoes on, and stumbled out of the cell after him. Out in the open space between the cells, it smelled strongly of smoke. From below, on the cell block floor, came hellish sounds, groans and whimpering. It was like walking beside some lake of the dead, bodies clambering out of it, trying to grab your ankle. I kept close behind my new friend. The metal under our footsteps banged and echoed until I ran into his back.
“Careful, gringo,” he said.
“Sorry,” I said, and as I did, a line of light blinded me and opened into a square.
“Let’s go,” said the man, and we walked into the lit corridor.
My eyes burned as my sight adjusted. I heard the door shut behind us and I rubbed my eyes. The space phased into view. Concrete floor, pipes, another heavy door at the other end. I turned and looked at my new friend.
His face was stocky, with large cheeks and a thick double chin. He was in his forties. His eyebrows were small and stood up in slants. His mouth was defined and curled into a sneer. Under his eyes, the skin was scarred and hosted a bruise or ten. He was dressed in regular clothes, a blue Ralph
Lauren shirt, opened at the third button on his chest, and Levis. On his neck, just left of and below his right ear, was a tattoo of an X and a 03.
I knew this man. Not personally, but from the news. He was known as X03, current leader of Código X, and the most wanted and most dangerous man in Mexico. Right there, standing in front of me.
“You know me, then?”
I nodded. I also knew he was not an official inmate at Topo Chico. And the way he was dressed.
We walked down the corridor to the other door, and X03 leant against it. He looked at me and his mouth twisted upward into a kind of smile. There was nothing amiable about it, but a whole load of evil.
“You’re lucky, gringo,” he said. “Mr. Reynolds has looked after you.”
He peered through the small glass pane in the security door. Then he looked back at me and winked.
“Not long now,” he said.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
X03 smiled. “Needed a hiding place for the night.”
It didn’t surprise me, but merely confirmed what I knew already from five weeks here: Código X ran the prison. They controlled every aspect of it. Who came in, who went out. Extortions on the inside, the drugs, the women. Everything. The irony was not lost on me that the prison was the safest place to hide your wanted leader. In the very place his enemies wanted him.
X03 checked the window again, and I watched as his smile cracked open into a snigger.
“Ready,” he said.
And the door began to bang and shake.
“Andale cabrones,” shouted X03, who had started bouncing on his heels like an overexcited child, or a dog about to get its food. He clapped his hands and rubbed them together.
His energy was frightening. There was a great threat about it, like latent violence awaited within, desperate to get out. X03 was infamous, and so too were his methods. The decapitations, the human stews, the piles of bodies. And as I watched him getting worked up, the reality of my situation sank deep into my being. Any of the clichés could have worked: I was swimming with sharks, running with wolves. I was involved with real criminals, men who deserved to be locked up and removed from civil society. But I was on their side of it all. I was among them. Just like my lost son, Jairo.
The door shuddered and finally creaked open. Through it came four police officers. State police. They nodded at X03, but he pushed past them and through the door, hollering back “Vamanos” to me.
The police officers—one woman and three men, all in smart dark-blue uniforms and armed with semiautomatic machine guns—followed X03, and I followed them.
We walked down another corridor, and through another door, and reached a thicker, and far more heavy-duty, blue door. One of the cops stepped to the side of it and began punching codes into an access panel. We waited until he’d gotten the green light and the door opened. Then the woman cop pulled out two sacks and handed them to X03 and me.
“Está bien,” said X03, gesturing to a security camera in the corner, and he put the sack over his head.
The lady cop looked at me and indicated that I should do the same. I did.
From there, two cops grabbed both of my arms, and we walked. I felt us go downstairs, through various doors, through open spaces and smaller ones. All the time, the noise of the riot got quieter and quieter, until it was gone, and only the hum of building remained. We walked, and stumbled in places, until I felt the irrefutable feel of fresh air hitting me. It was cold, and smelled beautifully of nothing. No shitty drains, no trash that stank out the prison yard at recess. Just fresh, clean air.
We walked into it. The ground outside was dust and dirt. And then we stopped. And then the sack came off.
We stood in a patch of open land, next to the prison’s wall. We had come from a security door and were still inside a fenced-in area. But up on the top of the prison wall, where the lookouts would have been, no lights shone. Someone had cut the prison’s power.
We stood in a circle, X03, the four cops, and me. Then we heard a gate being opened, a hundred meters away, and two vehicles came through into the yard. One was a dark-blue Jaguar, a new model. The other was a matte-black Hummer. The cars drove and arced out around us until they parked, one either side of our circle.
I looked at X03, and then the cops. He was relaxed. They were not.
From the Hummer, a man climbed down. Dressed in black, tattoos visible even in the dark on his right cheek and his neck. In his hand, a pistol. He walked over to X03 as if the cops and I didn’t exist, and whispered something to his boss. X03 nodded, and in one sweeping and swift movement, the man shot each cop in the head.
It took just a few seconds. I didn’t even have time to shout out before the bodies hit the dirt. The pistol had a silencer attached and the only sounds were the four short, sharp snaps to the cops’ heads. I stared at X03. He was smiling.
“Adios, gringo,” he said, and he and his mate walked to the Hummer, and climbed up, and I watched them drive away.
I had almost forgotten about the Jaguar behind me.
I turned to it, and the back door opened, seemingly on its own.
I walked to it and got in.
The car was executive, and had been modified to hold four people, like a limo. Inside was a lady. She was dressed in a black outfit, pants and a shirt, with her hair pulled back in a bun. Her face was stern and skinny. She wasn’t Latin, but she could have passed for Indian: Her skin was a perfect caramel-brown, her hair jet-black. She wore gold earrings in the shape of pearls. She stared at me with what appeared to be contempt.
“Shut the door please, Mr. Dyce,” she said.
I did so, and the car pulled away. The windows were tinted, but I made out the fact we were leaving the prison’s boundaries.
“You’re from Reynolds?” I asked. “Where is my wife?”
The lady was looking out of the window and did not move her head. She was beautiful but stern-looking. She said, “My name is Luciana. I work for Mr. Reynolds.”
“Where is Eleanor?”
Luciana pulled out a phone, tapped it a few times, and handed it to me.
“Mr. Reynolds can answer that,” she said.
I held the phone to my ear and heard rasping breathing on the other end of the line, then a scratchy manipulated voice.
“Hello, Mr. Dyce,” said Reynolds.
“Let me speak with my wife now.”
The line stayed quiet. In front of me, Luciana was unfolding a large map. She flattened it out between us. It was a close-up of the south of Mexico. The large brown line of the Sierra Madre lay in the center.
Reynolds said, “I’m afraid your wife returned to Mexico, Mr. Dyce.”
A flush of blood washed through my face.
“But you told me she’d be taken to the States.”
“She was. But she escaped and returned to look for your son.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“You see, your son is a most wanted man, Dyce.”
“What do you need from me?”
“I need you to go the Sierra and draw him out. We’ve received information that he’s there. Luciana has rough coordinates, but that’s all.”
“When?”
“Tonight,” said Reynolds. “This is time-sensitive.”
“Why do you need him?”
“That’s between him and me.”
I stayed quiet.
“Luciana will take you there. You’ll find your wife, I’m sure. And you’ll turn Jairo over to Luciana to bring to me.”
I thought for a moment. “And what if I refuse?”
I heard a snort, then Reynolds said, “Remember your fellow escapee, X03?”
“Yes,” I said.
“He’s also on his way there.”
“To get to Jairo?”
“I like to minimize risks,” said Reynolds. “Your instructions are to capture your son. X03’s instructions are to kill him if you fail. You will head to the jungle and bring him back to me. Luciana will take
you to your wife.”
I went to ask something else but the line went dead. I looked back at the map. A swathe of green that spanned the same amount of land as a small country. Somewhere in there were my son and my wife.
And unbeknown to them, X03. On a mission to kill.
Chapter Three
I dropped the phone to my lap, and Luciana gestured to take it. I passed it to her. My heart was hammering my chest from the inside like a tiny ironmonger working an anvil.
“We need to get there now,” I said.
Luciana turned to face me, calm. “Yes. I set you up now with a new identity and we take a short flight to the jungle.”
“And you know where they are?”
Luciana nodded.
“Eleanor is alone,” I said.
“Unless she found your son already.”
“You think that makes me relax?”
“I don’t care.”
“You’re heartless.”
Luciana shrugged.
“How far is it? Do you know where they are exactly?”
“No,” she said. “We know the area.” She pointed just off-center on the map.
“Damn,” I said, my head falling into my open palms.
As had been the case for the great majority of my life, my actions and my immediate future lay in the hands of others. Reynolds owned me. Now, in this moment, Luciana owned me. I scoffed internally at the idea that breaking out of prison made me free. It didn’t at all. I was wanted in Mexico for abduction. Eleanor was wanted for murdering the businessman Matias Esteban. Jairo was wanted by everyone. Between a rock and a hard place, I had little choice but to go find my son. I wanted to, I really did. But I wanted to do it with Eleanor this time, not alone.
For the first five hours of our drive, Luciana sat opposite me like a government official and briefed me on my identity. I was Andrew Cochran, a British Embassy staff member who worked with the British Council, consulting with education officials in Latin America. I was impressed with the depth of Reynolds’ people’s research and invention. The pack that Luciana passed to me had a full history of Andrew Cochran, everything from the name of my first dog (Wolfie) to my primary school name and address in the south of England. I turned each page of the document and took mental notes. I felt Luciana looking at me as I did.
