Deadly Journey

by Declan Conner

  ‘Whatever you have ain’t worth diddley-squat,’ was his reply, stabbing at my brain.

  With a dig in the back, I had to kneel and he roughly handled me to lie face down. My face pressed against a flat surface. A smell of old-seasoned wood seeped through the sackcloth. More bonds wrapped around my body, which left me cocooned like a chrysalis.

  He growled, right up close to my ear. ‘Safe journey, dog breath.’

  With a rumble of metal on metal, I moved forward. My neck snapped and jolted my head as the motion juddered. Damned if I didn’t think I was on some kind of flatbed cart and travelling through a tunnel. What would Mary tell the kids, came to mind. Then, what if Mary thought I’d deserted her and the children? Mary could think I had run off with another woman, and she’d find another guy without even grieving.

  I shuddered. There was no doubt, the late-night stakeouts could lead her reasoning in that direction. I remembered my lost shoe and the night vision camera that was set up in the bushes that I’d left behind. The tripod had fallen over when they grabbed me. I prayed they’d been too busy to collect them. With luck, Rob my partner, or the relief team would find them and they’d work out that I’d been kidnapped. Maybe, if I hadn’t sent Rob out on a scouting expedition to find coffee and something to eat, none of this would have happened. The whole tunnel trip was turning into a guilt trip, as the “if only” syndrome started to take hold again. Ifs, buts, and maybes were driving me insane. Why did I freeze?

  Okay, at the time I was concentrating on the hooded punk, and tiring at the end of a double shift. I had every reason to think they were Rob’s footsteps. But they were excuses. I was trained better than most to fight back. All I could think was that my body had gone into physical and mental shock. It wasn’t like in training where they’d taught me to defend an attack from behind. You’re expecting that, and your mind is prepared, same as when you’re face-to-face with an opponent. I’d been found wanting, with the damned scene playing back in slow motion and imagining all the moves I could have made to turn the tables on the lowlifes. There was a possible truth circling that was harder to swallow. Maybe I’d acted the victim in the same way I used to set a passive stance with bullies at school, like some dumb nerd. At least I hadn’t wet my pants this time.

  Changing the subject in those circumstances was difficult, but a ridiculous idea came to the rescue when my ears popped and I could hear nothing. What if, when my neck snapped, he had shot me and I was dead. No one ever comes back to tell us if your mind still works through your spirit after the event. Don’t be so stupid, you could say. I know that’s what I thought at the time, but trust me, when you can’t feel your body and it’s blacker than black, it’s an easy deduction to make when you have no point of reference for where you’re going. It didn’t help when, out of the blackness, I saw a faint light, which was getting brighter. A flood of light and I began to laugh.

  When the movement stopped, voices jabbered in Spanish. Grasping hands released me from the flatbed and manhandled me to my feet. Absurd thoughts that they only spoke Spanish in heaven had me in uncontrollable fits of giggles and I couldn’t stop snickering. Even a blow to my head didn’t abate my stupor. The second blow connected squarely on my nose, and I yelped like a kicked puppy. Staggering, I stumbled and fell.

  ‘You think this is funny, gringo.’

  I knew that I was inviting them to do some serious damage as my groans returned to a snicker. Curling into a ball for protection, I prayed for the blows to stop. My gut exploded with a searing pain when what must have been a boot found its way through my defences. Winded, I gasped and searched for air. I finally took in a desperate lungful of air and I choked, coughing and spluttering on my own blood.

  Somewhere in the daze, my brain seemed to make a few logical deductions. I worked out that I was stoned, probably from an infusion of the cannabis fumes and whatever other drugs the bag over my head had held. But still I kept snickering and whimpering. Numb to any more pain, the blows kept arriving until my body shut down and my vision faded to black.

  Chapter 3

  No Way Out

  The feel and taste of grit on my lips, together with the dank smell of urine mingled in the air and my stomach churned. Somewhere along the journey, I had lost the blindfold sack, my jacket, shoes, wristwatch, and gun holster. Raising my head, I rolled around to survey the surroundings. The swollen and gashed bridge of my nose was visible and beyond that my upper lip. It felt and looked as if I’d had some kind of foreign object transplanted onto my face, acting like a projecting-gun turret on a tank as I looked around. The vision stayed with me at every turn and was annoying as hell. My head exploded with the pain.

  Whitewashed walls in the room, no more than eight feet square, made me squint. Light shone through a barred window high up on an outside wall. A barred, rusting-metal door faced me. In one corner was a mattress on the moist and crumbling concrete floor. It didn’t look as though it could afford much comfort, barely one and a half inches thick and just about wide enough for the shoulders. It looked like the type that campers use to roll up and carry on their backpacks. The cuffs were gone, leaving red scuffmarks on my wrists. Using my hands, I pushed with all the strength I could summon to raise my aching body to the support of my knees. Looking at where I had lain revealed a six-inch opening to a drain in the centre of the floor. A cockroach scurried down the drain. The thought that my face had been partly lying on the drain, which, from the stench and look of the opening, those imprisoned before me had used as a toilet, brought an acid taste into my mouth.

  There was no light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Brown spots, low on one of the walls, caught my attention. The pattern was familiar and unlikely to be a former prisoner’s attempt at surreal art. Pins jabbing at me surged through my body. Upon closer inspection I found a human hair congealed in the thickest area of blood splatter.

  The urge to call out to my captors my need to urinate was hard to suppress. The last thing I wanted to do was to hasten my demise, so I did what others must have done before me and relieved myself over the drain. The sound of a cockerel crowing drew my attention to the window and I tried to reach for the sill, but it was too high. What did strike me was how thin the wall must have been, say five or six inches at the most. Where the cement had crumbled around the window frame, it exposed a red brick with a cavity. I’d seen this type of wall construction and bricks before... in Mexico.

  The tunnel ride made sense; they must have shipped me over, or rather under, the border in a drug smuggling tunnel. Why they would go to such lengths hung heavily on my mind. If I were in the hands of a drug cartel, chipping a way out through the wall wouldn’t be my only worry, especially if I didn’t succeed. It wasn’t as though they would need the money from a ransom. That wasn’t my only concern. Since I was a kidnap victim, the FBI would take charge of any investigation and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. Not after a recent altercation I had had with one of their senior agents, dumbass Agent Walters – what a dick. That was a heavy ride and turned nasty on a personal level. It had left me with a sour taste as far as the FBI was concerned. Their gung-ho attitude had fouled up many a rescue and the Mexicans wouldn’t give a crap if I died in any rescue attempt as long as they potted my captors. With over fifty thousand drug-gang related deaths south of the border, I doubted they would lose any sleep over adding one more to the statistics.

  Negative thoughts were not doing my psyche any good, and I reckoned I needed to make my own plans if I was ever going to see Mary and the kids again.

  ‘Hey... gringo.’

  The laboured voice seemed imaginary at first when the heavy Mexican accent called out and echoed in the corridor outside the cell door. A groan and the voice called again.

  ‘Hey, gringo... You alive?’

  It would have been a stupid question to ask if I was dead, but then how would they know if I didn’t answer?

  ‘Yeah, just about. Who are you?’

  ‘Miguel. I heard them drag yo
u in here during the night. I’m in the next cell. I heard them say you were American.’

  ‘Where are we?’

  There was a pause and I strained to listen for his reply. His breathing was irregular, interspersed with muffled groans.

  ‘Mexico. Somewhere near to the border as far as I can tell. You work for one of the other cartels?’

  Somehow, telling him I worked in law enforcement didn’t compute, so I answered him with a question.

  ‘Who are these people and what are you doing here?’

  ‘Facebook. I’ve been naming names.’ It sounded as though he was using the cell bars to get to his feet. ‘They must have paid some tech guy to track me down. I don’t know which gang is holding us.’

  ‘Have you figured a way out yet?’

  ‘Way out? There isn’t a way out. Say your prayers, mi amigo, and wish for a swift end.’

  He let out a groan and it sounded as though he fell.

  ‘Miguel, you okay?’

  ‘Quiet in there, you two crap heads, or it’ll be sooner than you think.’

  A tinkling sound on metal followed the statement. A small in stature, squat-looking guy appeared at my cell door and rapped a machete on the bars. He had the appearance of a Buddha figure with his shaven head. It was hard to figure where his chin ended and his chest began, save for a moustache connected to a goatee beard. Over his shoulder, a strap held an AK-47. He wore a sweat-stained string vest and jeans, his waist hidden by a well-fed and -watered potbelly. His face contorted into a growl.

  ‘Stand back from the door and face the wall.’

  This time, there weren’t any shackles or blindfolds. If he was to enter and approach, I decided that I would take him on. Hearing the sound of a bolt sliding and a creak and then the sound of something skimming on the floor, I prepared mentally for action.

  ‘Make the best of it, scumbag. There’s no more today.’

  I turned around in time to see a small-hinged opening at the bottom of the bars close and a tin-foil plate of food sitting in front of the door. A moment of pleasure from the pleasant aroma of the food soon turned to disgust when Squat pulled out his dick and urinated on the food. A hot flush in my cheeks and tension in my clenched fists sent a tremble though my body that made it difficult to hold back from wanting to charge over and rip his appendage from his body. He pulled up his zipper, belched and walked away laughing. His footsteps stopped. I counted ten footsteps. A door opened and closed, followed by the sound of bolts engaging.

  ‘Did he give you food?’ Miguel asked.

  ‘Yeah, but then he pissed on it. Were you blindfolded when they brought you here?’

  ‘No, but then I doubt I’ll live to tell the tale. What about you?’

  ‘Blindfolded most of the way and possibly all the way. I was out cold when I arrived here.’

  ‘Maybe they’re going to let you live. They haven’t fed me or given me water in twenty-four hours. My fate is sealed. I’m as good as dead. I know we’re at a hacienda, but I don’t know how many of the gang is here.’

  ‘So it’s a farm?’

  ‘Si. There’s a single farmhouse, and this cell block.’

  ‘What made you come out and name names?’

  ‘They murdered my two older brothers and my sister, and put their heads on spikes in the village centre. She was only ten years old. My brothers couldn’t pay for the shipment of drugs the police took from them. Damned chotas.’

  ‘Jesus, shit, why your sister? And why didn’t the cops arrest your brothers? It could have saved their lives. Anyways, what’s a chota?’

  A picture flashed through my mind of my own daughter and my heart went out to Miguel.

  ‘Arrest them? You never heard the Mexican term chota for crooked cops? That’s life and the corruption here in the border towns. Lessons are learned by fear and the strong take. You Americans should stop and think about that before snorting coke. The dollar bills handed over fuel their part in the genocide that’s going on down here, when all it does for them is to give them a moment of pleasure.’

  His lengthy sermon deserved applause.

  ‘Amen to that, brother. I’m on your side. I’m with you all the way on that score.’

  ‘My side?’ He laughed. ‘You’re not my freakin’ brother. You know nothing about my side. I’ve killed more men, women and children than I can remember for the gangs and the chota. How do you think I could name names?’

  My mind turned into maggots. I staggered against the cell wall before sliding into a haunch on the floor. There I was feeling sorry for him, and all the time he was no different from the murdering scum buckets who had taken the lives of his family. His statement defied logic for a contract killer. I could only think that with his family dead and him facing death, it was his way of avoiding responsibility for his career choice, by blaming others. Still, he had a point about the users. I stared at the wall opposite me. A question burned in my mind, as if someone had branded my brain with the thought. Just who were these people who were holding me captive, and why had they kidnapped me?

  Chapter 4

  No Way To Die

  Miguel must have known his words had sickened me and silence ensued. My insides twisted with hunger. The plate of food had lost none of its appeal to look at, so I shuffled toward it on my backside and picked it off the floor. The knowledge that I couldn’t survive without water for very many days worried me, but I knew I could go without food for a month before my organs gave up the fight. It has to be one of the hardest things I have ever done, when I tipped the food over the drain and used the edge of the plate to poke some of it through the grill to make sure all of it was out of sight. I hoped there was a method to my madness.

  A bloated stomach was giving me grief, with gas rumbling around inside. I reached to unfasten the button of my jeans only to feel the buckle of my belt. It was hard to believe they had left me with my belt. Now I had something to work with to chip away at the cement and make an escape. As hard as it was with swollen lips, I managed a smile, whipped off the belt, and hid it through a tear in the mattress.

  ‘Miguel, what’s outside the window?’

  ‘A twenty-foot drop. We’re above a stable. Do you have a plan?’

  Telling him I had a plan would give him something to bargain with to gain favour. Teaming up with a murderer wasn’t an option, so I ignored his question.

  ‘What about the terrain?’

  He groaned in pain, but managed an answer ‘Maybe twenty yards and there’s a creek. Beyond that, it’s all scrubland and a dirt road, if you can call it a road. Do you think there’s a way out?’

  ‘No, but if they let us out to exercise, maybe we could make a run for it.’

  ‘Exercise!’ He snickered. ‘This isn’t one of your American prisons with human rights. Besides, a bullet shattered my kneecap and I’m shackled. I—’

  He stopped talking. My ears strained at the silence, and then I heard footsteps on a stairway.

  I heard a bolt sliding, a door opening, muffled voices, and then clicking heels that gave me the creeps before they stopped some way down the corridor. Startled, my ears exploded at a gunshot, intensified by the confines of the corridor. Ducking to a haunch, I froze to the spot. I heard a piercing scream, followed by a grunt and something hitting the floor, which released me from my stance. Survival mode took over and I rolled to the side of my cell door, out of sight to anyone outside.

  ‘That’s your other knee, snitch,’ Squat said and then laughed.

  Miguel’s voice screamed out. ‘No, please no. I have money.’

  ‘You mean, you had money. We’ve sacked your bank account.’

  Two more shots rang out to Miguel pleading. A cartridge tinkled on the concrete floor. Wisps of smoke drifted through my cell door, along with the familiar odour of spent powder.

  Someone choked as if drowning. A final rasping breath trailed off to silence. Then I heard hacking sounds.

  It was hard to get a handle on what was happening, but it s
ounded as though they had entered Miguel’s cell and they were now dragging Miguel’s body down the corridor.

  There was silence for maybe ten minutes, and then footsteps returned along the corridor. The clicking heels stopped briefly and then continued toward my cell door. The walls of my room spun as my eyes danced, looking for a safer position. As I wished for the powers of a chameleon to blend with the wall, the palpitations in my chest grew ever faster and louder in intensity.

  The lethal injection they gave to murderers in some states sprang to mind and seemed like a better option, but it was doubtful something like that was within their resume. I had second thoughts, when the recent botched executions came to mind. Cold shudders ran through my body and I pressed my back to one side of the door, craning to see who was approaching. If I was to meet a similar end, they would have to open the door to get to me and I would go down fighting.

  My eyes rolled to the ceiling and I mouthed a plea in a whisper.

  ‘Oh, Dad, what the hell do I do now?’

  Stripped bare of any protection, like a naked youngster, I’d not felt as vulnerable since I was bullied in middle school. Gone was the protection of my badge and sidearm.

  ‘Suck it up, son,’ Dad had said. ‘It’s part of life. Okay, I can go and have a word with the school authorities.’ Which he did. ‘But really, it could make the situation worse.’ And it sure did that; I shrugged at the memories. ‘The only escape will come from within. Think about how some animals protect themselves. Take the cat family; they puff up their coats to make them appear larger than they are.’

  I didn’t understand his analogy at first, until he enrolled me in judo and later karate. After word got around about my gaining my first-belt grade, it all became clear. Sure enough, I seemed to walk a little taller, with my stature growing at every grade I achieved without having to fight back. Most of my tormenters gave me a wide berth, but funnily enough, some wanted to be my buddy.

  What good my prowess at hand-to-hand combat would do in my current situation, I couldn’t work out. I would have given anything to trade in my judogi for body armour and my black belt for an assault rifle with a stack of high-velocity clips of ammunition.