Deadly Journey

by Declan Conner

  ‘An hour, maybe less.’

  ‘How’s the leg?’

  ‘Stiff. But maybe that’s me not wanting to bend it just in case the stitches come apart and the wound opens.’

  ‘No chance of that. The bandage will hold it good and tight. Wait, what stitches?’

  ‘When you were sleeping, one of the women removed the bandage and stitched the spear wound with a fish bone and some kapok floss, spun into a thread.’

  ‘That’s some tree they have. They should call it the tree of life.’

  He opened the flap of his pants to reveal the stitches. The wound was stained with the same green and purple slime the shaman had spit on the arrow wound in his shoulder.

  ‘You’d be surprised at some of the other uses of the kapok tree. The Indians use the trunks to fashion their boats. They trade the floss from the seeds for use in life belts on account of its buoyancy. So yeah, it should be called the tree of life.’

  I’d never really considered the lives of indigenous Indians before, other than to think of the rainforest tribes as savages. Why, I don’t know. Unless it was the tales I heard as a child of them killing their enemies and shrinking their heads to carry as trophies. But seeing them surviving in their natural habitat, in what we would consider a primitive life, they were flourishing and on the face of it happy with their lot. I just felt sorry for them that the cocaleros and the loggers were upsetting the delicate balance of all around them.

  Taking the combat knife from my belt, I turned to Carlos. ‘Let me cut away the flap from your pants. It’ll make it easier to walk and save you from tripping.’

  Carlos nodded. I cut away the surplus material and handed him his knife.

  ‘No, you keep it until we get on the dingy, same with the other weapons. I doubt I could use them if I needed them. Listen, you know when we get to the villa I’ll have to shackle you until you get to your room.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, I know.’

  ‘I’m not worried.’ He shuffled his butt on the bench. ‘Kurt, I have to tell you that you should be worried. Perez is unpredictable.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve seen.’

  I couldn’t be sure if he knew something that Perez had planned, but his expression told me he was fighting a battle not to spell it out to me. We had clearly bonded, man-to-man. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that if ordered to do so, he would take my life. The only consolation to that thought – however macabre – was that he wouldn’t let me suffer.

  Carlos said, ‘I suppose you’ve thought about taking over the trawler and setting a course for the U.S.?’

  His question had me sitting upright.

  ‘Are you suggesting that’s what I should do?’

  ‘Well, is that what you’ve thought of doing?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve thought about it, but like you, they know where my nearest and dearest live.’

  ‘I guess we’re all held for ransom one way or another,’ he said.

  ‘Yup, that’s about the size of it.’

  I hadn’t seen a radio on board the trawler, but there must have been one in the captain’s cabin. If the captain managed to get a signal to Perez before I isolated and took control of the cabin, my family could be toast. Then there was the problem of Leandra needing to get back to the villa. I wasn’t giving up on the idea, if only to get a message to my family. But then if I alerted the coast guard in South America to get a message to them, how would I know whether or not Perez had the coast guard in his pocket? Whichever way I looked at it, I kept getting snared. Perez was the key. Only taking him out of the equation would prevent him from declaring checkmate, but there was no chance of that happening.

  Leandra joined us and sat next to me. ‘What have you boys been talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘Just saying, we’ll be heading back to the villa soon.’

  Boat Boy walked up to Leandra and they exchanged words.

  ‘Looks like we’re going now,’ said Leandra. ‘I’ll get your backpack, Carlos.’

  Two of the Indians picked Carlos up bodily and set off walking.

  Safely on the long boat, we returned the way we came. The dingy was waiting and along with the crew, we helped Carlos get on board the craft. The crew didn’t even question that I had the rifle. All the same, I laid it at Carlos’s side and slipped his knife back in his belt.

  The return trip to the trawler proved uneventful, same as the journey on the biplane over the ocean and then the trawler back to the villa. Try as I might, there wasn’t an opportunity to get inside the captain’s cabin, so all of my worrying had been for nothing. It didn’t help that although they weren’t armed with guns, all the crew carried knives for gutting the fish.

  The only refreshing part of the journey was that Carlos didn’t order either of us to be shackled. All that changed as the captain called for us to get in the dinghy, although I was the only one put in chains.

  Lowered into the dinghy and into the swell of the Pacific, I became anxious. Cold inside, my body shivered in waves, yet sweat formed on my brow and my hands were clammy. On the beach, I could see a vehicle waiting for our arrival. No one spoke on the journey until we landed on the beach. Guards greeted us, assisting Carlos out of the dinghy, taking him to one side and whispering to him. The crew helped Leandra and then me onto the sand. Carlos walked with a limp, but at least he could manage it without the crutch. The three of us climbed into the vehicle, sat on the back seat and we headed for the villa.

  ‘It’s ten a.m.,’ said Carlos. ‘Perez is on his way in the mini-sub to deal with the Cobra insurgents.’

  ‘You mean they have them alive?’ I asked.

  ‘They’ll have been interrogating them for information.’

  I shuddered at the thought. I doubted they’d have bothered with CIA type interrogations.

  The crop duster flew overhead and came in to land. Insurgents or no insurgents, it was business as usual for the flow of money and drugs. I was ordered out of the vehicle, with Leandra following. Carlos stayed inside and held the door open.

  ‘I’m going to the barracks. I’d stay in your bedroom if I were you and keep out of the way of Perez,’ he said and then pulled the door closed.

  The vehicle drove away, leaving a guard to escort us to our bedrooms. Staring at the vehicle as it headed down the drive, I dwelt on Carlos’s words and manner of delivery. His ominous tone made me wonder just what the guards had whispered to him.

  ‘I’ll take a shower and change,’ Leandra said, ‘then I’ll make breakfast and come to your room.’

  Arriving back was something of an anti-climax. Nothing seemed to have changed until I shuffled into the bedroom. The television had been removed. The guard had me lie face down on the bed. He clasped the ankle tracker into place and removed my shackles. Leandra stepped into the room as the guard opened the French doors. He walked out of the room and Leandra closed the door behind him.

  ‘My television has been removed.’

  ‘Yeah, mine too.’

  Leandra twirled to look at the space vacated by my television. It set me thinking why they would remove them. The only thing I could come up with was that there was news they didn’t want me to see.

  Leandra whispered, ‘I still have Carlos’s pistol in my backpack. Well, I did have. I’ve hidden it under my pillow.’

  ‘What? He must have known we hadn’t given it to him.’ I recalled Carlos saying that he owed me one, but I hadn’t expected him to act voluntarily. ‘That reminds me, do you still have the GPS transmitter in your pocket?’

  ‘Yes, if you mean that contraption in the plastic bag?’

  I couldn’t think what use it would be as it was only a transmitter with a pre-programmed auto-dial to Stony’s receiver. Still, I thought it would be worth keeping.

  ‘Look, don’t hand it to me now, but after you’ve showered and made breakfast, get the gun and the transmitter to me wrapped in some towels or something. Are you okay with that?’

  ‘Sure. Have you checked to see if the g
uard uniform is still in the closet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Quickly, take off your boots and hand them to me.’

  Slipping off my boots, I handed them to her. She turned and opened the closet door and placed them inside. My body shook as she twitched the pile of sheets hiding the uniform and then closed the door.

  Leandra sighed. ‘Praise be to God. It’s still there. Listen, I’m going, back soon.’

  She opened the door, walked out, and closed the door behind her.

  The sound of an engine and tyres crunching the gravel outside distracted me. Doors slammed and voices were barking orders.

  Hurrying over to the French doors, I peered outside. A guard opened the rear doors of a truck. A group of men huddled inside. One at a time, two guards dragged them out as other guards joined in to line up the men on the drive. Their hands were clasped behind their backs with short ropes secured to leg irons. The guards forced them to kneel. I counted twenty-two in all, but I could see another lifeless pile of bodies still in the back of the truck.

  Some of the men groaned, some cried and others looked straight ahead, expressionless. All of them had bloodied faces and bloodstained T-shirts. Perez appeared from the maze with two guards carrying canvas bags. I stepped back and pulled the net curtain to hide from view. The guards with the bags walked on into the villa. Perez marched up and down the line of prisoners, ranting, his words inaudible, carried along with the breeze out to sea.

  Perez reached underneath his jacket and drew his pistol. A gunshot echoed. The bullet passed through from the front of the prisoner’s skull, exiting along with a mist of brain cells, and he keeled over. Perez hadn’t even afforded him the luxury of an unseen bullet from behind. Looking through the nets was like watching a movie from World War II unfold as he walked down the line dispatching each prisoner in the same style. He reached the last of the prisoners and shot him in each leg in turn, then in his arms. The prisoner rolled onto his side, screaming. Frozen where I stood, I was strangely detached from the events.

  Perez knelt at the man’s side, opened his mouth, forced the barrel inside, and fired. Then he stood and fired more shots into the prisoner’s body until he ran out of ammunition. Slipping his gun back in his waistband, he turned and marched into the villa.

  The horror I had witnessed had me wishing I were still in the rainforest. The pit of my stomach tightened and I retched. Rushing to the bathroom, I threw up the contents of my stomach down the toilet.

  I picked up the bar of soap. Stuck to the back of it was a piece of paper. I turned it over to find a smudged message.

  ‘You’re going to die tomorrow’ it read. I scraped the paper off the bar of soap with my fingernails, then dropped the message into the toilet and pressed the flush. The message couldn’t have come from Carlos. I grasped the washbasin with both hands, my knuckles turning white. There wasn’t time to consider who could have left the warning. I couldn’t even be sure if it was some sick psychological joke.

  I heard the door to my room open.

  ‘Kurt, where are you?’ Leandra called out.

  ‘In here.’

  Leandra’s ashen face appeared around the doorframe as I turned the tap and cupped my hands under the water at the washbasin. She rushed up to me, tears streaming down her cheeks, and flung her arms around me. I turned off the tap water and dried my hands.

  ‘Did... did you see what just happened outside?’ Leandra asked.

  ‘I saw it. Try and compose yourself.’

  ‘But it could be you next.’ She sobbed with abandon.

  I held her head, drew it to my chest, and placed an arm around her waist, my fingers trembling. ‘Shush. There now. I have a new plan I want you to think about tonight. I’m definitely going tomorrow.’

  Chapter 36

  Surprise Ally

  There’s justice through the criminal-judicial system and then there’s doing the right thing. Perez was nothing more than a murderous psychopath. But did that give me the right to take his life? It would sure get all of us out of trouble. After tossing and turning until daylight arrived, I still didn’t have the answer. There again, maybe I did have the solution and my moral compass was trying to deceive me.

  One part of me kept saying it was not in my power to be judge, jury, and executioner. The reality was, besides his cartel being responsible for thousands of murders, I had personally witnessed Perez committing mass murder and ordering the killing of others. Then there was the guard whose brains Perez had blown out simply for taking fruit from a tree. El Presidente deserved death by execution. I just didn’t think I could be the one to end his life, without him having a gun in his hand and my life in immediate danger. I had to ask myself, what would that make me, if I executed him?

  I guessed that if I were an ordinary John Doe, kidnapped, with even only inferences and veiled threats against me and my family’s lives, or a soldier with rules of engagement to kill the enemy, I wouldn’t have to think twice. However, I was a United States law enforcement officer. How would that look in any inquiry leading to a trial if I killed someone other than in self-defence? I could tell a lie I suppose, but in homicides, lies have a way of catching you out. There were mitigating circumstances, sure, but try to get that through the thick skull of some upstart prosecuting lawyer wanting to make a name for himself. Add to that, a ‘what-if’ that the scenario happened in a Mexican court, with some judge and a bunch of jurors pissed at not getting their monthly backhanders and they would likely throw away the key.

  My ears prickled at the sound of Leandra’s door opening, closing, and then hearing her exchanging words with the guard outside my door. Without a television, I could only guess at the time. Leandra’s heels clicking down the marble steps and fading gave me the idea it must be around 9:00 a.m.

  With an hour to go before my planned exit from the villa, my nerves took hold. Going over the plans in my head, I tried to blot out anything going wrong and concentrated on how it should unfold. Easier said than done; everything that could go awry played out like a damn horror movie.

  Throwing the bedcovers to one side, I eased my legs over the side of the bed and stood. My head pounded, and my legs hardly had the strength to stand. Taking a deep breath, I walked to the French doors. The breeze gave me an instant rush of soothing cold air. When I looked out to the maze, it seemed further away than the twenty paces I had measured. Doubts about my plan took root. Needing to keep my mind occupied, I stepped back inside, and I started my daily exercises.

  I was just about to start another round of push-ups when the door opened and I jumped to my feet. Leandra wheeled in the breakfast cart and closed the door.

  ‘What time is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Just after nine-thirty.’

  Her face flushed and her hands trembled.

  ‘Did the guard outside or the guy in the CCTV room remark about you being early?’

  ‘No, but they noticed my hands shaking. I said the first thing that came into my head. Told them I was having my period. They laughed and seemed to accept the explanation.’

  ‘Let’s hope the powder from the sleeping pills works on time,’ I said.

  ‘It should work, all right. I put two doses in each of their coffees. One dose is enough to put me to sleep inside twenty minutes. Incidentally, Perez is in the dining room with Carlos.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s Carlos doing there?’

  ‘It sounded like he was asking for a sick pass.’

  ‘Damn it, I hope he goes before ten. You sure you’re up for this?’

  Her lips twitched into a nervous smile.

  ‘It’s too late to change my mind now.’

  ‘Good, go back to the kitchen, like we planned, so you don’t get caught up in anything if something goes wrong.’

  ‘Kurt?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come here out of sight of the camera.’ I walked over to her. She gave me a hug, kissed me on the cheek, and whispered, ‘Good luck.’

  Returni
ng her squeeze, I kissed the top of her head and said, ‘Good luck to you, too. Better go – quickly.’

  As soon as she was out the door, I stepped back to the balcony at the sound of a vehicle braking and the tyres crunching to a halt on the gravel. When I peered out, I saw a four-by-four sitting alongside the villa entrance. On cue, the driver and a guard exited the vehicle and sat on a low wall, facing away from me. The engine was left idling as usual. I moved over to the camera’s blind spot and removed my bandage. Taking hold of the key to my ankle tracker, I slipped it into my pyjama-top pocket.

  My head jerked to the door at the sound of something crashing on the ceramics outside. I pressed my ear to the door. A cold shiver ran down my body and my heart rate rose to alarming levels. The minute I listened seemed like an eternity, but I heard no other movement.

  It was then, or never. I opened the closet door to obscure the camera, then moved outside and dragged the guard into the bedroom, gagged him and bound him with strips torn from the pillow. Grabbing the bedside chair, I jammed it against the door handle. The last thing I wanted was an unwelcome guest. Then I hurried to the closet holding my stash and pulled out the guard’s uniform.

  As quickly as I could, I fumbled out of my pyjamas and into the uniform, almost tripping in panic. Fully dressed, I jammed the Glock in the waistband of my pants and took the tracker key from my pyjamas, slipping it into my pants pocket. Reaching into the closet, I ripped sheets from the shelf and tied two of them together. I then quickly moved to the balcony.

  When I looked across at the villa entrance, the guards still sat with their backs facing the balcony. I pulled the key from my pocket, but the damn thing dropped to the floor. Wishing I hadn’t trimmed my nails the night before, I struggled with thumb and finger, and finally managed to pick up the key. The moment I placed it in the lock, the bracelet sprung open. I closed it again and the LED started to flash. I was thankful for the doctor’s check up, because if my heart had raced any faster I would have expected it to explode.

  In the stance of a baseball pitcher, I glanced toward the villa entrance to make sure the guards were still in position. With all the strength I could muster, I launched the tracker in the direction of the maze. Happy it was on a trajectory for somewhere inside the maze, I turned my attention to the sheets and grabbed them from the bed. A look at the guards told me the tracker landing hadn’t caught their attention.