An Abduction (The Son of No One Trilogy Book 1)

by Rowley, M C

  I mapped the turns of the journey as I waited. Every single one I could remember. The first curve was easy, a long sweeping left followed by a series of winding curves. They were tough in the Transporter. I´d have to be steady for sure. And the package might make things complicated, depending on weight.

  I looked at my watch.

  3:52am.

  Eight minutes.

  My heart juddered and adrenalin began to swell inside my chest, washing my calm with electric tension and energy. I gripped, and re-gripped the wheel.

  The lower part of the Sierra was simple. A slow descent, passing a town, and then the highway.

  It turned 3:55am, and I started the Transporter´s engine, and listened hard to the night through the hum of the 6 cylinder motor´s steady roll.

  Those five minutes felt three times longer than the past five hours that had passed. I listened for anything, the sound of an engine besides my own, but nothing. Nothing for four whole minutes.

  The silence dragged and dragged. I started to wonder if this was a hoax. A way to get me out here.

  And then, somewhere in the distance, behind the black hills, the faint rev of a car engine came.

  I looked into the wing mirror and saw nothing. But the sound evolved into shifting noises, up, down, aggressive and fast.

  Gears crunching.

  I braced myself and eased my foot into the accelerator the tiniest bit. The Transporter revved its loyalty. I breathed out and looked back at the mirror.

  I saw lights. Still further back on the curves inside the mountains. I checked my watch.

  4:00am. They were on time.

  The lights began now to flicker out of the hidden roads. I listened harder. More than one car it seemed, but far apart. The lights I could see were white. They were almost at me. And then the whole space filled with noise.

  My heart was pumping hard. It hurt. I had been in enough compromising situations the last nine months; downloading files from CEOs´ laptops or embezzling money out of a foundation fund and framing some hapless accountant. But not this. This was a new level of intense.

  The lights in my mirror grew stronger. The engine roared. One more curve and they would arrive to me.

  Light burst into my view, and the furious roar of a V8 engine flooded my ears. I turned around and looked back through the Transporter´s hold at the two lights just before the driver killed them. A black Mustang GT lunged to the right and braked hard into a complete 90 degree handbrake spin so that it landed horizontally across the highway behind me. The stench of burning rubber hit me and the doors of the GT flew open and two large bald men in black military outfits jumped out. One came to the van, grimacing, and looked in. The other opened the trunk and pulled something heavy wrapped in black plastic from it.

  The package.

  Together the men carried the strange shape toward my truck´s hold. It was only when they began walking sideways, each holding one end of it, did I realize what the package was.

  A human body wrapped in black plastic.

  I looked at them after they had laid the body down in my hull, and hardly registered that they were pulling out large desert eagle pistols from their belts.

  “Move cabrón,” the one on the left shouted at me, “you got an hour before this entire place is on lockdown.”

  As he said it, police sirens and light filled the space behind him. He slammed the doors of the Transporter shut and banged the side of my van and I watched through my wing mirror as the two men ran back to their rudimentary roadblock and began firing at the oncoming cops. That was it for me, I looked forward and revved the engine, pushed down the clutch, put it into first and slammed the accelerator hard. As I looked back one last time, the gunshots were all over the scene.

  God knows how I didn´t take a hit. But I didn´t. The Transporter went up to 50 KM/h before I reached the first turn.

  Big blasts of yellow fire came from everywhere at my back. My adrenalin was so high, I zoned out and fixated on the driving. I took the first long curve at about 90 km per hour and straightened out. I was focussed, and I was scared shitless. And I did not have time to wonder who the hell was tied up in the back of my truck.

  The next curves were trickier. I took them cutting through the lane divider to make each turn shorter. The Transporter remained steady. I was humming to myself. I heard it after a while. It wasn´t music. Just humming. Just nervous, manic humming.

  Each turn pulled me and pulled my gut toward the abyss.

  I ran through one of the small towns and the small houses were all in darkness. As I turned around one of the corners, a flash rebounded off my wing mirror. Not a gun muzzle flash, more like a camera flash, but there was no time to think about it.

  I bombed through the village and carried on.

  I reckoned each turn was about 30 degrees at first, I leaned into to each one and the Transporter rocked onto its suspension, screeching into the night. The wrapped up body slid across the hold floor and thumped into the van´s wall. No time for that now, I got faster. The turns were getting more intense. The Transporter´s tires squealed.

  I took one last sweeping 30 degree turn and saw the hairpins ahead. Much, much harder on the suspension and tire tread. I used the gears to break, shifting down to second as the motor groaned and rattled. The burning smell of rubber filled the cabin, each side lifted ever so slightly off the blacktop each time the edge came close.

  I made it to an hour into the Sierra part of the return to Polysol. Still no light or cops. Apart from the ones I´d seen get peppered by my two new colleagues.

  When I reached the main highway my heart was pumping like an engine in unison with the Transporter´s 10 year old pistons. My head thumped with concentration as I tried to control my breathing.

  I got on to the highway and out west, the sun was starting to break through the hue of the horizon. It would be light in thirty minutes and I still had to get down the toll road.

  I steadied my speed to 100 on the 57 highway and my head pumped less, my hands stopped shaking. There was traffic around me, three lanes of it. Early morning commuters cruising into Lujano, massive trailers trekking south to North. I calmed a little, and waited for the toll road exit to come.

  Then I ran into a problem.

  Ahead of me, the entrance to the toll was blocked. Not closed off, but there was a State Police patrol car with his red and blue lights flashing parked right at the entrance.

  I slowed. I was still a kilometer from him and ran through my options. I could pass him and try to go around Lujano but that would take too long. Going through the city was definitely not on the table. What was it the guy in the mountains had said? You got an hour before this entire place in on lockdown

  I had no option but to go for it.

  To the left of the Statie lay around 5 meters of space to the barrier. I figured at 110 km/h, he would be way behind me within minutes. I started to accelerate at the exit and aim for the gap.

  At around 200 meters away, the cop noticed me, came out of the car and held up his gun. I drove straight at him and at the last minute, he fired two shots but not at me, into the air. I swerved hard and passed him so fast I thought the rush of wind would blow him over.

  I cranked the gears up to fifth and took the Transporter up to 180 km/h and behind me the cop followed, his sirens blaring.

  It dawned on me that I had made a mistake, a big mistake. Even if I could outrun this guy, he was bound to call in back up now. And I was on a forty km long straight road. As straight as they come. Like the Romans had built in Northern Europe. And the patrol car was already making ground up.

  I kept steady at 180 km/h down the straight toll road and the police car followed, siren screaming, lights going wild. Ahead, I saw the toll approaching. I had no change, I thought, and I smiled a smile that must have looked deranged. I felt deranged.

  The road rose and I slowed a little, but I still had enough momentum to smash one of the barriers, that was for sure.

  I aimed f
or the middle one.

  The people around the toll didn´t see me coming, 100 meters, 50, 20. And boom!

  I hit it so hard the barrier came off in an instant and stayed stuck to my front for about 50 meters after the toll booth.

  The cop came through behind me, sirens blazing. And to his left, a second cop car started up.

  Now I had two problems. Two cop cars, against me.

  The three of us drove on and the sun was up now. I could see the two cars clearly in my mirrors. They were driving side by side, which I thought was strange. It looked as though they were talking to each other. I could see the windows were down. I shook my head and looked forward.

  The road was unrelenting. No curves, or side roads. No escape.

  I looked back at the cops and something strange happened.

  From the sunroof of the second cop car came a man dressed in black holding a semi automatic rifle aimed at the first cop car. He was swaying in the struggle to keep his balance against the rifling wind, his machine gun pointed at the colleague in the other patrol car.

  Then he opened fire.

  A four pronged star of fire came from the muzzle of his machine gun and I saw the glass shatter from the windscreen of the first cop.

  The first car then swerved away from the blast and left the carriageway to smash somewhere below. I turned back to look ahead.

  The second cop car, a federal police car, sped up and started flashing his lights at me.

  I debated what to do for two seconds. I had little choice. I slowed down and so did he.

  I pulled into the hard shoulder and behind me the Fed car stopped and the guy who got out was dressed the same as the guys in the mountains, black para-military gear, machine gun hanging from his shoulder. He ran to my cab.

  “Change cars,” he said. “Get in mine.”

  I nodded and got out.

  “Speed up,” he shouted at me. I nodded and ran to the back. We opened the Transporter doors together and pulled the body out. The dead weight was incredibly heavy. We struggled with it to the Fed patrol car put it down on the hard shoulder as the new guy opened the trunk.

  “Is it dead?” I asked.

  The guy stooped down to grab the head end of the body. “Drugged, so be careful.”

  We lifted the body into the cop car´s trunk, and I got in to the passenger side.

  Behind, on the back seat was another guy. He nodded at me blankly. The first guy then ran to the Transporter, climbed into the cab for a few minutes - I guessed he was cleaning my prints - and threw something small into the back. Then judging by the way he ran back to our car, and pulled away, I realized it was something dangerous. Sure enough, as we sped toward the industrial park, the Transporter behind us exploded into a black plume of smoke, which silhouetted against the burning orange of the 5:30am sun.

  I sat back in the leather seat. My body hurt. I looked at the landscape zooming by. It was good not to be driving.

  “Who´s the body?” I asked after five minutes. The two guys just stared forward. I asked again, “Who is it? At least tell me that.”

  But they kept quiet. I asked again but they ignored me so I gave up and looked forward. We were nearing the end of the toll road.

  Up ahead was another police roadblock, and the real reason these two had intercepted my getaway. Five squad cars were waiting, with at least fifteen cops holding guns aloft, aimed at us.

  We slowed and the first guy killed the lights. He rolled slowly until we reached the block and wound down his window.

  A cop walked over to us holding a semiautomatic and spoke to our driver. Our guy held up a piece of paper and a badge and spoke rapidly. I caught a bit of it. He mentioned special unit. Full permission. Something of the like. The cop waved us through. The cars parted and we drove at 40 km/h the rest of way, until we arrived at the park. It was dead. Not a single company had opened. We entered the park and drove through the streets until we got back to Polysol. They pulled up next to my office. I got out and opened the door, and prayed Jason was hiding while the two guys opened the trunk and picked up the body and moved it fast into the office and laid it onto the sofa. They then turned around, stepped out of the office, into their fake squad car and tore away, leaving two towers of dust in their wake.

  I walked into the office and shut the door behind me. The body lay inert on the sofa. It was wrapped in bin liners but the face had multiple holes torn into it for breathing. The body was laid on its side. It was moving slightly under the plastic.

  I stalled for five minutes, I had seen at least four police officers gunned down. I had seen three vehicles destroyed and now I had a human body in my office, with no plan or direction.

  I walked slowly to the body and pinched the black plastic with my finger tips at where the face was. I winced before I tore it open in one clean pull. The plastic split and revealed an unconscious face.

  I knew the unconscious face.

  It was the face of Governor Pep Augusta.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Governor Pep´s face should have belonged to a corpse. His cheeks were gray and marked with deep creases, a gleaning layer of cold dank sweat covering them. But he wasn´t dead. His chest, despite being covered in bin liner, heaved up and down, an engine still running.

  My ankle hit the side table as I backed away, out of instinct more than anything, distancing myself from this crime. I hadn´t known, I had definitely not been prepared, not for this. The Governor´s limp body lay in a fetal position with only his head free where I´d ripped it open. The sterile lights of the office porte-cabin shined off the black plastic and made it appear wet. For a moment, I imagined it wet with blood. Blood on my hands.

  There were no sounds. My heart thumped in the silence, and when the door banged hard three times, I thought it might have exploded. I turned and opened the door.

  Salvatierra stood in the creeping light, his face scowling. He was wearing a dark blue Federal Police uniform. He looked taller, and meaner and more intimidating than I had seen him before. He said nothing as he pushed up passed me into the office and slammed the door shut.

  “Well, don´t leave him like this you idiot.”

  “Where is my wife?” I asked. “ Let her free now at least.”

  He turned slowly. His features were grimaced. “You haven´t done shit yet. I couldn´t care less about your wife.”

  “Leave her be,” I said, my voice sounding calmer than the internal screaming inside my head.

  Salvatierra looked at me. “Shut up,” he said, and turned to the Governor´s limp body and in one pull ripped the remaining plastic from him.

  Pep was dressed in elegant black silk pyjamas with tiny red patterns cross-stitched in. His thinning hair was wild with static and his wrists and legs were tied with plastic ties. His face slumped downward in a battle between muscle strength and gravity, the latter winning by far. He looked ugly as hell now.

  Salvatierra moved him back to recovery position, stood up and looked back at me.

  “Food will arrive soon, for both of you. If you leave the park, you are framed for his abduction. Got it? The perimeters are crawling with the authorities. Right now, no-one knows you did this.”

  I stood up to him, “I did this?” I said, “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Shut up,” said Salvatierra again. “Like I said, there´s no way out of this park. The companies have been informed to shut down production for a few days. Lujano State´s emergency alert has been activated. Do not do anything stupid.”

  There was no talking with him. He was psychotic and psychotic people don´t converse. They can´t reason. It´s not the violence in which they reside with ease that makes them that way, it is the lack of reason. Putting a bullet into another person´s skull fails to move them. Maybe they suffered abuse and violence as a child, or maybe they were in love with their cousin. But something made them that way. Of course, my own flesh and blood stood as evidence of that.

  “I have to go,” said Salvatierra. “I will be back
but I don´t know when. We´re watching you. Keep him here, and fed and watered. Do not let him leave this trailer. Things will get hot over the next few days. The whole place is on lockdown. Give me your belongings. Cash, phone, whatever you have.”

  I gave him what he asked for. There was little point in resisting. I knew what he could do.

  “But what about me? He knows me. He´ll recognize me," I said.

  Salvatierra´s face turned sardonic, “Well, you shouldn´t have gone to meet him. I told you. But it doesn´t matter really.”

  “It does matter,” I said. “This won´t be over for me afterward. My cover´s blown.”

  Salvatierra smiled again and walked to the door, but said nothing.

  “But what about the park´s security? What if people come asking questions?” I asked.

  “No one will come, Dyce. Just stay here, and keep an eye on him.”

  And he left the trailer and stepped down into the dust. I looked out across Polysol´s lot. The sun was protruding over the distant hills and yellow light carpeted the building sides, and sandy floor. The wind swirled around Salvatierra and his uniform flapped up to his waist. He had a camouflaged HumVee waiting for him. He climbed up to it, started the massive engine and drove off without looking at me.

  I sat on the steps and felt my guts wrench, they had been clenched all morning. The feeling swelled inside my abdomen and pushed my heart forward into my chest. Eleanor had never asked for any of this. She was left wondering about it all. She had been forced into this by me, and by what I had done. And for what? Our son. I could have fought more to see him, to meet him in a controlled environment, talk to him. But I didn´t know where he was, or where Eleanor was, and so it had all ended up worse than I could have ever imagined. And so my lies and hiding had come back to me, like they always do. I ignored them for years, but deep inside myself, I knew this would happen one day.

  Truth be known, Eleanor stood very little chance of survival. Nor did I. We were witnesses to something enormous, and treacherous. The kidnapping of an active governor was a big deal, even in Mexico. They hadn´t just killed him. We would be hunted.