Deadly Journey

by Declan Conner

  I fished in my pocket and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill.

  ‘Do you accept American money?’ I asked the cashier.

  ‘Sure, if you have ID.’

  ‘Look, I don’t have it with me, but I desperately need to make a call. Just give me the equivalent of ten dollars in change and you can have the bill.’

  I slapped the bill on the counter. He picked it up and held it to the light.

  ‘What’s that stain?’

  ‘Oh, that. Cut my finger.’

  I held out my finger.

  ‘I’ll change it for you, buddy,’ said a guy with an American accent standing behind me in line. He snatched the note from the cashier. ‘I’m on my way home and I have a stack of change and some Mexican bills. I don’t need none of that ID crap from a fellow American.’

  The cashier looked pissed at losing a bonus. I took the change, thanked the guy and walked outside. As the glass door swung open, I could see the cashier glare at me in the reflection and pick up his telephone.

  Ignoring him, I picked up the handset and inserted some coins in the slot. I dialled the country code and my home number. Two rings and Mary answered.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mary, it’s me, I’ve escaped.’

  ‘Is this a joke?’

  Mary’s words weren’t delivered with the warm welcome I had been expecting. I wondered if maybe I had dialled the wrong number. The handset sounded as though she had dropped it and all I could hear was muffled voices. I guessed the shock had overwhelmed her.

  ‘Kurt, it’s Rob. Where are you?’

  ‘Mexico, near the border. I—’

  The phone went dead as a hand reached over my shoulder and tapped the cradle.

  ‘Put the phone down and turn around.’

  Chapter 43

  Back In Chains

  I dropped the handset on the cradle at the order and whirled around. Four police officers trained their rifles at me. Dread turned to relief. This time, there was nothing to fear.

  ‘Identification.’ The nearest officer held out his hand.

  ‘I don’t have any. I’m American. DEA agent Kurt Rawlings. Listen, I was just about to have our guys speak with yours. The Perez cartel kidnapped me in El Paso. I’m—’

  ‘Turn around, place your hands on the wall, legs apart.’

  His poker face and penetrating glare left me no choice but to comply. It all seemed undignified considering what I had suffered, but I did as ordered and he frisked me. He pulled out the second hundred-dollar bill and taking a plastic bag from his pocket, sealed it in the bag. From my other pocket, he took the pickup keys and tossed them to one of the other officers.

  The American guy who had changed the first bill walked through the door. The cashier followed him and pointed to him. One of the police officers stopped him and relieved him of the bill I had exchanged. The cashier smirked in my direction. I guessed he’d called it in to the police more out of anger at losing his bonus, rather than him considering me looking and acting suspicious.

  ‘Hands behind your back.’

  Despite my otherwise resigned compliance, I sighed at the absurdity of the situation as he cuffed my wrists.

  ‘Listen, please phone my headquarters. You’re making a mistake.’

  Poker Face ignored my request. One of the officers leaned into the pickup. Rummaging around, he withdrew an automatic assault rifle that I’d placed under the seat back at the barn. He waved it at the guy standing next to me. Poker Face pushed me toward the open trunk of their hatchback. Once he’d forced me inside, he closed the tailgate. I could feel my cheeks flush at the thought I had forgotten all about Sidekick’s rifle.

  Metal bars separated the back seat from the trunk. It looked as though I was going to finish my journey the way it started, albeit with a scenic view. A police tow truck pulled onto the forecourt. The crew jumped out of the cabin carrying crowbars and headed for the pickup. I guessed it had to be my luck to pull over near a roadblock looking for traffickers.

  They started to tear apart the door covering. I wasn’t too concerned, even if they found anything else. I was sure everything could be explained once they’d spoken to DEA headquarters.

  One of the car-wreckers jumped up, holding aloft what looked like two cocaine packages. The other wrecker followed, holding three packages. I could see how it must look to them, but I still wasn’t too worried. The first wrecker tossed one of the packages back into the car, and walked to his tow truck. He sliced the package and took a sample on his penknife blade, then sprinkled it into a tester. It wasn’t a shock when it tested positive and the chemical in the vial turned purple. He gave a thumbs-up sign to the police officers. At his signal, they climbed in the hatchback. As we pulled off the forecourt, the wreckers hauled the pickup onto their tow truck with a winch.

  ‘Listen, I can explain.’

  ‘Explain back at the station,’ Poker Face said.

  With me wearing black combat gear, in possession of an unlicensed automatic assault rifle, and goodness knows how much cocaine hidden in the pickup truck, the officers must have been thinking that they had hit the mother lode. All they had to do was to make the call and I could have saved them a heap of trouble.

  At least Mary and Rob knew I had escaped. They knew I was in Mexico, so I felt sure the FBI would send an alert to the police down here. With Perez out of the picture, there wouldn’t be anyone to order a hit on my family. It was more of an annoyance than anything that my telephone call had terminated. There would be plenty of time to talk with Mary and Rob once the situation was resolved with the Mexican police and I had returned home. Leandra had a stack of money and simply needed to pay for transportation to her consul and she could be on her way home, especially if I found myself overly delayed by the police. Overall, I felt reasonably relaxed.

  We drove past their inspection point, toward the border. As we approached a small border village, we turned off to the right, and after a few miles picked up a freeway, signposted for the city of Ciudad Juárez. Travelling away from the main border crossing at the city, it seemed like a backward step. After driving for about ten minutes, we turned left into a small village and parked outside a police station.

  They helped me out of the vehicle, then escorted me into a reception area. Poker Face sat me down next to a counter. He sat next to me with a clipboard.

  ‘Please, I need to make a phone call.’

  ‘This isn’t the United States. First you’ll need to be processed.’

  ‘There’s no need for that. Just phone DEA headquarters in El Paso. They’ll tell you I’m not a drug trafficker.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Tell that to the investigator. For now I need your details.’

  I was enraged by his indifference to my request and I could feel my temperature rising. Then again, I knew he was just doing his job. Like me, he’d probably heard every cockamamie excuse and time-wasting ruse. I guessed he was acting no different than if I’d said I was Mickey Mouse and I needed to phone Walt Disney. As far as he was concerned, they had caught me with a pickup packed with drugs, headed for the border – end of story.

  He wrote down my details and then stood up, ripped the completed form from the clipboard, and handed it to an officer behind the counter together with the confiscated bills. At around six feet tall, with a body builder’s frame, the man behind the counter was a brute. He looked as though he’d be better suited to the front line rather than pushing paper behind a counter.

  ‘Stand next to the white board, over by the wall.’

  Brute handed Poker Face a wooden board with an arrest number.

  ‘Hold this in front of you, face forward and then turn sideways, first right and then left.’

  With the photographs taken, Brute took the camera and connected a cable, downloading the pictures to his computer. He pushed a digital fingerprint pad toward me on the counter.

  ‘You don’t need all this. Just make the phone call.’

  Brute and Poker Face exchan
ged words in Spanish. Brute laughed and then fixed me with a stare. He reached over and grabbed hold of my wrists. I knew the procedure, and as difficult as it was with the cuffs, he rolled each of my fingers in turn on the pad. With all the flourish of a piano tuner, he pressed enter on his keyboard.

  ‘Open your mouth,’ said Poker Face.

  He took a cotton bud from a container and wiped it inside my cheek, then placed it back in the container and handed it to Brute.

  Poker Face said, ‘Follow me.’

  Back at his computer, Brute initiated a database search of the fingerprints. Then he flipped the counter and followed Poker Face, carrying a bunch of keys. Walking along the corridor, Brute kept pushing me on with the flat of his hand against my shoulder blade.

  I stopped and turned. ‘Hey, no need for that.’

  He gripped me by the throat, pushed me against the wall, and drew his pistol. Poker Face shouldered his rifle.

  ‘Let’s not have any trouble,’ said Poker Face.

  Brute released his grip and stepped back, waving me onward with his pistol.

  Poker face opened a cell door and stood to one side. Brute’s boot connected with my backside. I stumbled headlong into the cell to the sound of the door slamming behind me and the key turning in the lock. By the time I turned, Poker Face had gone. Brute stood at the barred cell doors swiping his keys on the bars.

  ‘You’re mine now,’ I translated.

  ‘Do you speak English?’

  ‘No Inglés.’

  I smiled directly at him. Having a jailer who couldn’t speak English just about summed up my luck – but it still had its advantages.

  ‘Good, because when I get out of here I’m going to kick your butt, you steroid-pumped jackass.’

  He spat on the floor and walked away.

  As I looked around at the eight-foot square cell, my shoulders drooped. There was a concrete base for the bed and a torn plastic mattress. The room stunk to hell of urine. An aluminium sink basin and a toilet stood at the far wall underneath a barred window. I pressed the flush, but all that did was to flood the crapper, releasing an obnoxious smell from the last prisoner’s bowel movement.

  I sat on the corner of the mattress and buried my head in my hands. It was as though I had gone full circle. Only hanging onto the thought that at some stage they would confirm who I was gave me some comfort.

  Business must have been slow. I couldn’t detect anyone in the other cells. In the solitude, I kept running over events in my mind. It all seemed unreal. Not getting to speak to Mary had been a killer. Then my thoughts turned to Leandra and I felt a pang of guilt that she would think I had deserted her after all the support she had given me. Everything that had happened had been, and still was, like a bad dream and I was waiting to awake. My stomach ached at the anticipation that at any minute, the key would turn in the lock and I would be on my way home.

  The seconds turned to minutes, the minutes to hours. Daylight turned to twilight and then to darkness outside. Each tick of the clock in the corridor built my levels of anxiousness to the boiling point.

  Tick, tick, freakin’ tick.

  Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Brute arrived, carrying a plastic garbage bag. He pointed to an opening in the cell door and signalled for me to put my wrists through the hole. At last, I thought he was going to remove the cuffs and release me. With my spirits lifted, I placed my hands through the opening and he removed the cuffs. He stuffed a sealed plastic bag through the opening and made signs for me to open it there and then. I ripped eagerly at the package and unrolled a lightweight plastic overall. He tugged at his shirt and then his pants. It was clear he wanted me to change into the overall.

  I stripped and put on the overall. Brute passed through the garbage bag and I put my clothes and boots inside the bag. He placed his wrists together, indicating he wanted to replace the cuffs. I hesitated under a cloud of confusion, until he whipped his gun from his holster, waved it in the air and cursed at me in Spanish. Reluctantly, I placed my hands through the opening and he cuffed my wrists.

  More footsteps in the corridor and two guys appeared, wearing suits and ties.

  ‘Leave the bag by the cell door. Move to the far wall and turn around,’ one of them said.

  The key grated in the lock and the door creaked open. The door closed and I turned around as Brute locked the door.

  The two men were looking at a Mexican newspaper and then at me. It had to be a report of my kidnapping with a photograph.

  ‘Please, I need you to phone my headquarters. They’ll confirm I’m Agent Kurt Rawlings, kidnapped by the Perez cartel two weeks ago.’

  ‘We know exactly who you are. First, we have some questions for you.’

  ‘If you know who I am, why the cuffs and why am I still in the cell?’

  Chapter 44

  Under Suspicion

  The people in suits turned and walked away, leaving my question as to why they had me incarcerated, unanswered.

  ‘Food, I need food and water,’ I said to Brute in Spanish.

  He held out his hand. ‘Dinero?’ he laughed.

  Brute knew I didn’t have any money, only the bills in the evidence bags. It was hard to believe he would be asking for money for something as basic as food and a drink. He made a slash across his throat, turned and walked away. The lights extinguished.

  Sitting on the mattress in the dark, I didn’t have a clue what he meant by his sign, other than that he still had me marked as a trafficker.

  I rolled over onto my side and contemplated what might be happening outside. I convinced myself that now that they had identified me, they would be contacting headquarters to have someone come and pick me up after they had gleaned some intelligence from me in the morning. But then, why the cuffs? I’d heard that Mexican law enforcement procedures were like night and day compared to our methods, but it seemed far from logical given the circumstances.

  As I turned things over in my mind, through sheer exhaustion, my eyelids closed and I must have drifted to sleep.

  I awoke to car doors slamming and horns honking outside. Easing my legs off the bed, I sat up. My neck had a crick and down one side, my body was sore. I pushed myself to my feet, walked to the washbasin with a hell of a thirst, and turned the tap. Pipes clanked and the tap gurgled, spewing out bursts of brown water.

  A door opened in the corridor and footsteps headed my way. It was one of the shirt-and-tie brigade.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘My name’s Diego Alejandro Otego. I’m what you would call a federal district attorney in your country.’

  ‘Just what the hell’s happening? Why are you holding me in cuffs? I should in a hotel being wined and dined, not stuck starving and thirsty in this pigsty you call a cell. I want to make a phone call.’

  ‘Calm down, Mr Rawlings. I’ll explain your rights in the interview room, and then you can make a phone call. As for the food and drink, I’m afraid we don’t provide room service. You either have to get family or friends to bring you food, or pay for it.’

  ‘But that’s inhuman. How am I going to get my family to fly food down here before I starve to death?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you some breakfast.’

  He clicked his fingers and Brute appeared holding ankle shackles.

  ‘You’ve got to be joking. I’m not a trafficker. You obviously know who I am.’

  ‘Humour me, Mr Rawlings. We’ve sent your details through to the FBI. Once we’ve received their confirmation of your identity and you’ve answered a few questions, I’m sure things will be clearer to us all. Now please sit. The sooner we get to the interview room, the sooner you can make your call.’

  Brute unlocked the cell door. Mention of the phone call was all the motivation I needed to act passive. Brute fastened the leg irons and hauled me to my feet. Otego was already out of sight when Brute’s fist dug into my stomach and I doubled over, gasping for breath. He stepped behind me and grabbing my overall by the scuff of the neck, then push
ed me out of the cell. The leg restraints dug into my ankles as he ushered me down the corridor. Official confirmation of my identity couldn’t come soon enough for him to answer for his lousy attitude.

  In the interview room, Otego sat at a table, tapping a ballpoint on a buff file. ‘Please take a seat.’

  I shuffled over and sat. Otego unfastened the coat button of his Armani pinstripe suit jacket, revealing a heavily starched white shirt and a thin blue silk tie. His attire looked on the expensive side for a district attorney’s salary south of the border, until I noticed a safety pin holding his pants’ button flap. His black hair complemented his olive skin and five o’clock shadow. Close-cropped hair at the sides, combed back on the top, flattened down with hair cream, and sporting a central parting, together with a pencil-thin moustache, gave him the look of someone out of the thirties.

  ‘Where were we?’ he asked. ‘Ah, yes. Let’s get straight to the point.’ He opened his folder, tilting it so I couldn’t see the contents. ‘We’ll start here.’ Otego passed over a photograph of some clothing laid flat on a white surface. ‘Do you recognize any of these?’

  I didn’t need to study the picture for long. Seeing the bloodstained clothing gave me a stark reminder of my kidnapping, the journey to Squat’s farm and on to Leila’s home.

  ‘It looks like the clothing I was wearing when I was kidnapped, but I would need to see it physically to be sure.’

  ‘Where do you think we found it?’

  ‘Look, why don’t I just start at the beginning with the kidnapping? That’ll explain everything.’

  ‘The kidnapping is not my concern. I’ll repeat, where do you think we found this clothing?’

  A flashback to Leila taking my clothes out of the bedroom started me thinking. It nagged at me that he didn’t want to know about the kidnapping.

  ‘You must know where you found it. You tell me.’

  He crossed his legs and sighed. ‘Yes, I know the answer. What can you tell me about your connection to Eduardo Garcia and his family?’