“I think you’re losing your touch, my man,” Chris said. He was obviously as disappointed as Ted. “It’s been a long day. Let’s head home and get some shut eye.”
The Hotel Benito Juarez was as inviting as ever when they walked through the massive oak portal. They made their way to their room and promptly went to bed.
Ted was swinging from building to building, shooting his web, swinging through the canyons of New York. Down below him, he heard a commotion, lots of people milling around and men shouting.
“Abre la puerta,” a man’s voice shouted. “Open the door.” There was a loud banging.
“Huh?” Ted slowly returned to Cuidad Juarez. Flying through the streets of New York was one of his favorite dreams. The banging got louder.
Chris stumbled from bed and headed towards the door. “What time is it?”
“I dunno . . .” Ted fumbled for his watch. “Christ Almighty, it’s three am.”
Chris opened the door, to be met by two soldiers with M16 assault rifles.
“Afuera. Ahora. Todos in el Patio,” the kid with the rifle said. They both looked about twelve years old.
“What’s he saying?” Chris turned to Ted.
“They want us outside.” Ted grabbed a bath robe. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”
The soldiers led them to the large enclosed courtyard. All of the other hotel guests were huddled together in their night clothes too. Ted noticed a couple of young ladies that he’d seen by the pool earlier. They didn’t sleep in much.
Armed soldiers were everywhere, searching in and out of the rooms. Ted could see two Army trucks and a Humvee outside the open portal.
A crisp uniformed capitán stepped forward. “Cada uno, todavía ser mientras. Buscamos sus cuartos por armas y drogas.”
“What’s he saying?” Chris asked.
“He says that they’re going to search our rooms for guns and drugs.”
“Good thing we didn’t go off on your half-baked scheme to get guns,” Chris said.
“The owner must not have paid his monthly mordida,” a large bellied man in sweat pants and a T-shirt said. “If they don’t pay up, the Army harasses their customers. It’s real bad for business. They’ll pay up in the mornin.’”
“Shit,” Ted cursed. “Welcome to Mexico.”
The capitán smiled at the night manager. “You tell señor Martinez that he will be pleased to know that none of his guests are smuggling contraband.”
With that, the officer called his men to attention and marched them through the oak portal to their waiting trucks.
The hotel guests stood dazed for a moment, then one by one, they drifted back to their rooms.
Ted started to head back to their room, but Chris stood rooted to the spot, staring at the departing Army trucks.
“If the Army’s on the take,” Chris asked, “who can we trust?”
“My thoughts exactly. Do these jokers report to Jefe Lazaro? If the Army’s not clean and they’re policing the cops, who’s policing the Army?”
****
Juarez, Mexico
Jeff was gone when Catrina awoke. Hope was in the bathroom combing her hair.
“Where’s Jeff?” Catrina asked.
“He said he was going for a run. Then he was going to poke around a little. He said we shouldn’t wait for him.”
Catrina sat up in bed and wiped the sleep from her eyes. “What time is it?”
“Just after nine.” Hope came back into the room and rifled through her bag for clothes. “I think I need a baggy shirt today.” She held a throw pillow up to her belly. “What would you say, about six months?”
Catrina laughed. “We’ll see what kind of actress you are today.”
Catrina got up and headed for the bathroom. When she returned, Hope was fully dressed. She wore a loose sundress and did indeed look six months pregnant.
“Lookin’ good, girl,” Catrina said as she pulled on her clothes. “Let’s go get some breakfast.”
The hotel offered complementary continental breakfast. Coffee and pan dulce did it for both women and they were soon on the street.
“Where to, bwana Cat?” Hope asked.
Catrina laughed. She was wearing light khaki slacks and a safari shirt. The weather here was so darn hot.
“If you were an American drug dealer, where would you hang out?”
“Bars? Where do they sell drugs in Mexico?” Hope asked.
“Let’s start at the public market. Jeff did some research before we came down here. They used to have stalls there where they sold drugs out in the open.”
The women made their way to the public market on Calle 16 de Septiembre. The huge pink building took up a full city block. Inside, there was a warren of stalls selling everything from pottery to poultry to pirated videos. Anything and everything, if you could think of it, they were selling it.
But no drug stalls. Those days must have passed.
Everywhere they went, Hope stopped people and showed them Jimmy’ picture, asking if they’d seen him. She explained that he was her baby’s father and had disappeared.
Some people were sympathetic and others just looked at her in disgust and walked away.
For the most part, Catrina hung back. She walked a few paces behind Hope and made no effort to talk with her. Let Hope do this on her own. She was much more sympathetic as a single girl looking for a lost boyfriend that she would be if she had a tall gringa with her.
Catrina was so focused on keeping tabs on Hope that she didn’t see the man coming up behind her.
“Hey, señora,” he said as he grabbed her arm. “What ju lookin’ for?”
Catrina turned to find a middle aged man with horrible, yellow teeth. He was wearing a worn straw hat; dirty jeans and boots that had seen better days.
“Leave me alone.” Catrina tried to pull free of his grip.
He was surprisingly strong for such a wiry man.
“That pretty chica of yours is asking too many questions.” He grabbed her other arm. “Eet’s not healthy to ask too many questions.”
Before Catrina had a chance to react, the man’s hat went flying from his head.
He spun to follow his hat. It was pinned to the wall by a shining stainless steel knife. He turned back to see Hope strutting up to him.
She floated past him and pulled the knife from the wall. She handed him back his hat.
“I think you dropped your hat.”
The man stood open mouthed.
Catrina and Hope walked away.
“What in the hell was that?” Catrina asked.
“Hey, you mess with my friends, you mess with me.”
“A throwing knife? Where did you learn that?”
“Never underestimate a girl from the barrio.”
****
Juarez, Mexico
Ted and Chris sat out the front of Chile Pete’s in their rented jeep. The late afternoon sun was brutal, even with the Bimini top. They sat, waited and sweat.
“I thought the girls said to meet them at five,” Chris said. He grabbed a bottle of water out of the ice chest in the back seat.
“It’s half-past,” Ted said. “I wonder if they’re gonna show.”
They sat for another half hour before they spied the two lovely young ladies sashaying down the street. Instead of their revealing evening clothes, both girls were dressed in jeans, checked shirts, boots and straw hats. This seemed to be the uniform for most of the people in Juarez.
“Hi, guys,” Carmen shouted from down the street. “I hope you didn’t wait too long.”
“Only an hour,” Ted muttered under his breath.
Carmen and Angela climbed into the back of the Jeep. “Ready to go?” Angela asked.
“Go where?” Ted said, starting the engine.
“Just stay on this street. It’ll take us out of town.” Carmen made herself comfortable and rummaged around in the ice chest, finally finding a Corona.
It was a long drive. They passed through the city and the surround
ing slums. Ted had been to Mexico before, but he hadn’t ventured into areas of such hopelessness.
Plywood and tarpaper shacks huddled together in the dirt; not a blade of grass or a plant anywhere to be seen. The poorly constructed shacks looked like they would collapse if not for the ones next to them holding them up. A domino city, Ted thought. Give one a push and the whole community would come crashing down.
There was garbage was everywhere. Black trash bags lined the streets, most torn open by the packs of street dogs, their contents strewn about. Small children played with the old packaging and dirty diapers.
Children ,some of them barely clothed, ran and played in the twisting alleyways between the shacks. Men sat in lawn chairs in front of the houses and women carried jugs of water or did laundry in galvanized tubs with washboards.
“This could be nineteenth century Mexico,” Chris said, matching Ted’s thoughts.
“Most big cities have these kinds of slums,” Angela said from the back seat. “It’s sad. How much poverty there is only a few blocks from gorgeous mansions.”
“That’s one of the country’s biggest problems,” Carmen said. “The disparity between the rich and the poor. It makes the poor angry; it’s what makes it so easy for the drug lords to recruit gang members.”
Disparity? Ted thought. These girls sure don’t talk like your typical Mexican hookers.
Past the slums, they drove into the desert, flat land and rolling hills, covered with dirt and only the occasional cactus. Here and there a mesquite tree clung to the rocky soil. A never ending supply of tumble weeds blew across the road.
After an hour or so on the paved highway, Angela told Ted to turn off on an unpaved dirt road.
“Aren’t you glad you rented a Jeep?” Carmen asked.
They bumped and jumped down the road. Sometimes the ruts were axle deep; sometimes the road was like a washboard.
“How far do we have to go?” Chris asked.
“A ways,” Angela said, holding onto the roll bar, “Their rancho is in the middle of nowhere.”
After an hour and a quarter of bouncing around in the Jeep, they came over a rise and saw a collection of buildings surrounded by a high stucco fence below them.
“Finally,” Ted sighed.
A wrought iron gate big enough for a semi to pass through was the only opening in the wall. Two men in the ubiquitous Mexican cowboy uniform lounged in the shade of the gate, smoking and toting AK-47s.
As the Jeep approached the gate, the men stepped out of the shadows, pulling their weapons into firing position.
“¿Quien eres?” one asked.
“He wants to know who we are,” Ted translated for Chris.
“Let us handle this,” Carmen said. “Somos amigos de El Lobo,” she answered the guard. “El espera por nosotros.”
Chris looked at Ted and raised an eyebrow.
“She says we’re friends of El Lobo and he’s expecting us.”
Chris nodded his head.
One of the guards picked up a handset from the phone on the wall. He spoke into it for a few minutes, then waved the Jeep through.
“Wow,” Chris said. “You must have some good connections.”
“It never hurts to know the right people,” Angela said.
A large two-story house dominated the compound. A handful of other buildings were scattered inside the walls, some open, like the garages, and some closed, like some kind of warehouses.
Ted followed the circular driveway to the main house. He stopped at the entrance and two more men with automatic weapons stepped out of the shadows.
“Arriba su brazos,” one of them said and pantomimed holding out his hands.
Ted and Chris stepped out of the Jeep and held out their arms. One man covered them with an Uzi while the other patted them down. Neither man paid any attention to the women.
“Passe,” the Uzi man said.
The girls led them into the house.
A fifth man wearing an ornate leather holster with what looked like a Colt .45 greeted them and led them through the house to the patio where a small, powerful looking man sat in a chaise lounge next to the pool.
An American with sandy colored hair and blue eyes was talking to El Lobo in hushed tones. The gringo was not happy with how the conversation was going. He gesticulated with his hands and pawed at the terracotta tiles with his feet.
“You go now,” El Lobo growled. “I want to hear no more about your wife. The subject is closed.”
The American stood for an instant and stared at the drug lord, then turned and hurried off. He brushed past Ted, spinning him around, as he went.
“That boy’s not happy,” Ted said.
“Let’s hope we do better,” Carmen replied.
They approached the great man. How do you greet a drug lord? Ted wondered. Do you bow and scrape like he was Oz the Great and Powerful?
“Tio,” Angela said, taking off her hat and bowing to plant a kiss on the great man’s cheek. “We have visitors.”
“Who are these gringos?” El Lobo asked in English.
“This is Ted Higuera and Chris Hardwick,” Angela replied. She sat on the edge of El Lobo’s chaise lounge. “They’re here looking for Ted’s hermanito.”
Ted heard the rumbling sound of a truck coming into the compound.
“A shipment,” El Lobo said. “We have picked up a load of immigrantes trying to cross the border.”
“Immigrants?” Christ asked. “What are you going to do with them?”
“Oh, they will become part of the familia,” El Lobo said.
“They’ll enslave them,” Carmen whispered in Chris’s ear. “They’ll either become part of the gang, or they’ll be smuggled across the border. Then they’ll have to pay whatever they earn back to Los Norteños or their families will be killed.”
“So what do you think I can do for you?” El Lobo raised a glass to his lips.
“My brother was at Adelita’s the night it was raided. They never found his body. The police think he was kidnapped.”
“Yes. But I don’t see how I can help.”
“You own Adelita’s,” Ted said. “You can tell us who might have done this. How to find them.”
“You don’t want to know.” El Lobo got up and walked to the bar. “It was . . . how do you say obviamente?”
“Obviously,” Ted said.
“Sí, it was obviously Los Conquistadores. They are bad people. You don’t want to mess with them.” He poured himself another drink and sat in a poolside chair.
Ted sat in the chair next to him. “We don’t have a choice. They have my brother, or they know what happened to him.”
“If El Posolero has him, he is soup by now. He would not keep him unless he had a good reason. Do you have a lot of money?”
“A little,” Ted replied.
“Sometimes, El Posolero, he holds hostages for ransom.”
“We haven’t heard a word from him yet.” Ted leaned forward. “Can you tell us how to find this El Posolero?”
An explosion wracked the air. El Lobo rolled off of his chair to the floor. Both girls dropped. Chris stood frozen and Ted sat in his chair. What’s happening?
Chapter 17
The Sonora Desert, Mexico
“Get down,” Carmen tugged at Chris leg. “NOW!”
Ted ran for the front door. Chris didn’t hesitate. He followed.
“Careful, bro,” Chris yelled as they tore through the house.
Men with automatic weapons rushed back and forth.
Ted saw the wrought iron gate smoldering on its hinges. He got there in time to see several pickup trucks blow through the opening, the men in the back with assault rifles firing at any target that presented itself.
“We gotta get out of here,” Ted shouted to Chris. “This isn’t our fight.”
Ted and Chris, without another spoken word, slipped out the door and around the side of the building.
The sound of gunfire came from all around them.
/> They sprinted to the closest outbuilding, a garage. Ted dropped on the ground and crawled under an SUV. Chris followed.
“I don’t like it here,” Chris said. “We’re too exposed. Do you think we can make one of those warehouse buildings?”
“Let’s go.” Ted rolled out the other side of the SUV and dashed for the cover of the warehouse.
They made it to the door. Gunfire continued throughout the compound as Ted tried the latch.
“Locked,” he said. Then he backed up a step and kicked the door. It didn’t budge. He backed off a couple more steps and charged the door, smashing into it with his shoulder.
“Yow!” He shouted. “Caramba.” He rubbed his shoulder. The door was still intact. “That always works on TV.”
“C’mon,” Chris shouted. “Let’s keep moving. Let’s get as far away from the fight as we can.”
The two took off running. They passed the relative cover of the warehouse and dashed for the wall beyond. At the wall, they crouched down, trying to figure out where to go next.
“The gringos,” a young voice shouted. “They’re here”
Ted looked up to see a teenager with an AK-47 grinning at them.
“No moverse,” the young thug said. “Arriba sus manos.”
Chris didn’t need translation. He froze and slowly raised his hands over his head.
The young thug kept looking over his shoulder. He shouted, “I’ve got them. They’re over here.”
Why is he interested in us? Ted thought.
No one responded. Apparently no one could hear the boy’s shouts over the constant gunfire.
Ted looked at Chris. What now? He hoped that Chris was reading his mind.
Chris looked at him, looked at the young rifleman, then back to Ted and shook his head.
They would have to wait to see what developed.
Then he heard it. A sound like he’d never heard before. It sounded like a big cat, a roar that terrified Ted and froze the young gunman in his tracks.
There it was again, a primal roar that stirred a genetic memory. It was the sound of approaching death.
From out of nowhere, the largest, blackest panther Ted had ever seen appeared behind the gunman. What in the hell was a jaguar doing here? Jaguars are jungle cats.
The Mexican Connection: Ted Higuera Series Book 3 Page 13
