Protector

by Diana Palmer

  The door closed behind them.

  “God, I’m sorry, Minette. I’m so sorry!” Hayes said heavily. “This is all my fault.”

  “No. I should have watched where I was going. I’m sorry,” she replied. She stared at him hungrily. “We were too careless.” She looked at the boy, Pepito. “If you have one ounce of mercy in you, please kill me.”

  “Minette!” Hayes groaned.

  Pepito sighed. “Señorita,” he said gently, “we are none of us free to do anything except what our boss tells us. I have a wife and two little girls,” he added, his face drawn. “They are kept in Cotillo, in a small house, in a village where there are armed guards. If I do anything that the boss does not like, they will be tortured and killed.”

  “Dear God!” Minette exclaimed, horrified.

  “It is the way they control us,” Pepito continued in a dull, heavy tone. “My brother was one of the head men in our organization. He works for Charro Mendez, who is our boss. My brother brought me into this. I would make lots of money, he said. So I was tempted and I agreed.” He glanced around the bare room. “My brother was killed by Mendez for losing a shipment of cocaine. So I sold my soul to the devil.” He crossed himself. “I am not even allowed to go to mass or to confession. Charro Mendez is afraid I would tell a priest things that might be discovered.”

  Minette had always assumed that people got into the business of drug dealing because they liked the danger and the wealth. She’d interviewed at least two men who told her they would never give up the trade because it paid so well. But this was a very different story.

  “Are your parents alive?” she asked the boy.

  “Only my mother,” he replied. “My father protested what my brother was doing, when he persuaded me to join him. My brother had my father...killed, before he himself was killed.”

  “Monstrous!” Hayes said curtly.

  “Yes. Monstrous. They hanged my poor father, right in our village, as a warning.” He swallowed. “So I am sorry for your trouble,” he added. “But I cannot help you. To do so would be to forfeit the lives of my wife and our children.”

  “I understand,” Minette said with true sorrow.

  “Your boss should be brought up on federal charges and put away for life,” Hayes said with cold contempt.

  “Chance would be a fine thing, yes?” the boy replied. “He has been arrested many times. But even people in law enforcement can be bribed. I have heard of a man who works for your DEA. He has been on the boss’s payroll for many years.”

  “Who?” Hayes asked.

  “Ah, that I do not know. And even if I did know, telling would get my family killed.”

  “Not if we could get them out of Mexico,” Minette was thinking out loud.

  “That is a fairy tale. Charro, or worse, his cousin Pedro Mendez, can hire assassins to find me even in Los Estados Unidos,” he pointed out. He looked at Hayes. “As the sheriff can attest, yes?”

  “Well, El Ladrón’s assassin missed, didn’t he?” Hayes asked belligerently.

  Pepito sighed. “Yes, he did, and he was killed for it.” He winced. “They say another one was hired, but since you are here, his services will not be needed.” The allusion wasn’t lost on Hayes or Minette.

  “They mean to kill us both?” Minette asked.

  Pepito shrugged. “I am just a mule,” he said, using the slang for a drug transporter. “I know nothing of the boss’s plans except what you have heard earlier. But I think they mean to kill both of you. Miss Raynor will die to torment her father, but you—” he indicated Hayes “—will be killed because you are with her, and also because you humiliated Charro by arresting him in your country. It would be too dangerous to permit you to escape.”

  Escape. Minette thought of it, hungered for it. The ordeal that was facing her would be infinitely worse than anything she’d endured in her life. She thought of Shane and Julie and Great-Aunt Sarah. She thought of her newspaper, her home. She’d taken safety and family for granted. If she got out of this alive, she promised herself, she’d never take anything for granted again.

  “Well,” she said after a minute, glancing at Pepito, “I think Hayes should read you your rights.”

  Pepito blinked. “Señorita?”

  “Your rights,” she emphasized. “You know, so that you’re aware of what they are before he puts you in jail.”

  Pepito laughed. “Lady, you and the sheriff are our captives in Mexico, where neither of you has any powers of arrest or even escape.”

  Minette looked at Hayes with a faint grin. “Go on,” she said. “Do your duty.”

  He smiled, too, and shook his head. “Pepito, you have the right to remain silent,” he began. “Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law....”

  Minette burst into laughter at the sheer audacity of the statement.

  Chapter 13

  “What do you mean, you lost them?” El Jefe raged at his man.

  The man winced. “They were going to the sheriff’s office. He called me—” he indicated Lassiter “—and said to follow them. But my damned truck wouldn’t start,” he said furiously. “Of all the times...and I just had it in the shop!”

  “So I told Marist to go instead,” Lassiter told the boss. “He was going to pick them up at the sheriff’s department and follow them. But they didn’t show up in the time he figured it would take for them to get there, so he backtracked and found Minette’s truck on the side of the road.”

  El Jefe wiped his face with a spotless white handkerchief. “My daughter, in the hands of that...barbarian,” he groaned. “You know what will be done to her!” he raged.

  They did. They were silent. It was a failing that struck them to the bone.

  “We must get her back, we must do something!” El Jefe raged again.

  The front door opened. A tall man walked in. He had long hair down to his waist, black as night, silky and thick. He approached El Jefe without a second’s hesitation.

  “I need to borrow a few things,” he said.

  Muffled groans accompanied the entrance of two men who looked as if they’d been dragged behind a pickup truck for a mile.

  “He overpowered us...!” one of them raged.

  “I will shoot you!” the other one threatened and came close.

  The intruder fell into a balanced, leisurely stance. “Be my guest.”

  “Enough!” El Jefe commanded. He waved his bruised men away. He turned back to the intruder, who straightened up, oblivious to the angry men nearby.

  El Jefe gaped at him. “Who the hell are you? Borrow a few things? My daughter has just been kidnapped...!”

  The newcomer held up a hand. “Turn the page, I’ve read that one,” he said. “I know where she is. I need a helicopter, a good radio, a few hand grenades and him.” He pointed to the man standing beside El Jefe.

  “Him?” El Jefe stared at the stocky, impassive man beside him. “Ruy? What for?”

  Carson pursed his lips and grinned. “He’s going to sell you out to El Ladrón.”

  “El Ladrón has my daughter, he doesn’t need me!”

  “Wait.” Carson smiled. “I have a plan. Just listen.”

  El Jefe groaned. His distress was evident.

  Lassiter’s black eyes twinkled. “I’d hear him out, if I were you,” he advised.

  Carson’s eyebrows arched. “Do I know you?”

  Lassiter chuckled. “No,” he replied. “But I know about you. Word is,” he drawled, “that you were assigned to take care of a man who tortured a female journalist when Emilio Machado retook Barrera in South America. You helped a mercenary named Rourke dispose of him, I believe?”

  “I might have,” Carson replied coolly.

  “And?” El Jefe prompted Lassiter, curious.

  “I believe they found him later, distributed among at least three crocodiles.”

  Carson’s expression didn’t change. “Poor crocodiles were starving,” he commented. “I felt sorry for them.”


  El Jefe smiled. “In that case,” he said, “it will be my pleasure to put my finest helicopter in your hands, complete with pilot.”

  Carson smiled back. “Thank you.”

  “Just save my daughter,” he replied. “Please.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Carson assured him.

  * * *

  There was a little trouble at the border. DEA agent Rodrigo Ramirez, along with senior FBI agent Garon Grier, were arguing with a border patrol agent who was determined not to let them through the checkpoint that led across the border with Villa Montaña, the state where Cotillo was the capital.

  “Listen,” Ramirez said, moving a step closer, “this is official government business. There’s been a kidnapping.”

  The agent shrugged. “No surprise there. Cotillo is famous for harboring captured Americans for ransom.”

  “We need to get through to speak to the mayor.”

  “Border’s closed. Sorry.” The man smiled coldly, daring them to do anything about it.

  They moved away a few steps. “Hardball?” Grier asked Ramirez.

  “Definitely hardball.” He pulled out his cell phone and started making calls. After the fourth one, Ramirez walked back to the border agent and handed him the telephone.

  “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “Speak to the person on the other end of the line, of course,” Ramirez replied.

  The border agent put the phone to his ear. He gasped, looked at Ramirez and went pale. “Oh, yes, sir,” he said in Spanish. “Yes, definitely. Yes, I am sorry. I did not realize...no, no, sir, of course, I will do it immediately. Yes, sir. Yes! And, sir, congratulations on your great victory.... Yes, sir, at once!” He closed the phone. He handed it back to Ramirez. He was very pale. “You may go at once, señores, and many apologies for this delay! If I may be of any service,” he added hopefully.

  Ramirez looked as if he might suggest something patently off-color. Grier bumped shoulders with him.

  “Don’t rock the boat,” he advised under his breath.

  Ramirez gave him a harsh look. “Spoilsport.”

  They got back into the bucar, the bureau car that Grier had taken for the trip, and passed across the border into Villa Montaña while the Mexican border guard stood at attention and saluted.

  * * *

  Pepito was getting nervous. He was also hungry. He went into the kitchen and fixed himself a sandwich. There was no fresh bread. He missed his wife’s tortillas, so lovingly filled with good fresh beef and fine European cheese, not to mention imported coffee that he was given as part of his perks for the work he did. Those things were a luxury, but he had become used to having them with his new job. It would be difficult to go back to the old days of planting crops that were always at the mercy of the weather, to carving out a tiny living on the land which never fed the empty bellies of his growing children.

  There was, of course, the horrible jobs he had to witness and sometimes help with. Like what was going to be done to that brave little American woman in the next room. It turned him inside out to see such tortures as his boss inflicted for betrayal. Just recently several men who opposed his authority in Cotillo had been mercilessly tortured and then hanged on the side of the road. He wanted everyone to know that he, and not El Jefe’s bunch, held power here.

  Not two days later, a third smaller cartel had performed a similar act by beheading four men who belonged to El Ladrón’s camp. It never seemed to end. Somewhere in the mix was El Jefe, on the sidelines, watching. Pepito was certain that he, El Jefe, would wait until one faction or the other was victorious. Then, while the victors were weakened by the cost of their victory, El Jefe would strike and take over the state. It was the way of drug politics.

  Pepito told himself that he would not mind working for El Jefe. At least the man was religious and provided a chapel and a priest for his workers.

  He wandered back into the living room where the sheriff and the woman were speaking in whispers.

  They stopped talking when he approached.

  Minette searched his face. “Pepito—excuse me, may I call you that?” she added respectfully.

  Pepito had been called many things in his young life. But it was touching to be addressed with such care by a woman like that, who had wealth and power in her country. “Yes, of course,” he stammered.

  “Pepito, I have been here for many hours and I need, I have to—” She broke off and lowered her eyes, seemingly embarrassed. “Is there a bathroom?”

  He looked hunted. “Señorita, this is a poor place. We have no, how you say, indoor plumbing here. Only the finest families in Cotillo have bathrooms.” He hesitated. She did look desperate. “There is a—how you say in English?—an outhouse,” he said finally.

  “Could I...” She indicated her tied hands.

  He hesitated. Surely she wouldn’t try to escape. She was thin and slender and worn down by her capture. They would kill him if she got away. But she had to go to the bathroom, such was obvious. They might kill him if she soiled herself and was not presentable when the men came to, well, to kill her.

  “I can’t wait much longer. I’m so sorry,” she said huskily. “Please?”

  He could never resist a woman’s pleas. “Of course,” he said after a minute. He laid the heavy AK-47 across a table and helped her stand up. “Come with me, señorita.”

  Hayes felt his heart jump as the gun was placed almost within reach of his hands. If only he could get them free, even for a few seconds! But while he was tormenting himself with possibilities, Pepito casually picked up the rifle and escorted Minette out the door.

  That made it worse, because Hayes couldn’t see what was going on. What if that little worm decided that he wanted Minette before his boss got back? What if...

  He swallowed, hard. He was completely helpless. No cell phone, no gun, no knife, nothing to get him out of this damned predicament. He cursed his own idiocy for letting them be kidnapped in the first place. But there was nothing he could do about their situation. He was going to have to sit here and watch Minette die. Unless he could come up with a plan, something, anything, that would get him free of his bonds!

  * * *

  While Hayes tormented himself, Minette walked toward the outhouse, her posture slumped, her head down.

  She stopped at a rude, tall, narrow shack which smelled of terrible things. She saw white powder under it in back and realized that quicklime was used as a sanitation measure to control the odor and break down the byproducts of human elimination. She shivered delicately as she noted that quicklime was also used to help bodies decompose faster. There were two bags of it leaning up against the outhouse. For her and Hayes, afterward? she wondered.

  She swallowed her fear. She paused at the door and looked at Pepito pleadingly. “I can’t...well, I can’t do what I have to do with my hands tied...”

  “Señorita, I cannot release you,” Pepito said sadly. “I am most sorry, but if you were to manage to escape, my wife and children will surely die.”

  “I understand.” She sighed. She opened the door with her hands bound and pulled it closed behind her, grimacing as she prayed that rattlesnakes hadn’t denned up under the structure. It was almost winter, she reminded herself, and cold even in northern Mexico. Surely snakes would be hibernating?

  She had to go. She maneuvered her jeans down enough to allow her to use the foul-smelling toilet. She was going to die, she knew it. Hayes was bound and there was no way to free him. He would die, too.

  No! There had to be a way, something she could do, a way to save him! She looked around desperately. There was a magazine with explicit photographs of women, crumpled and lying on the ground. There was, incredibly enough, toilet tissue on a roll dispenser. The dispenser was made of gold and had jewels embedded in it. She had to force herself not to laugh at the irony of the valuable item in a place like this. But then, she noted that some of the jewels looked like diamonds...

  “You must hurry, señorita,” Pe
pito urged at the door. “They will return soon. You must not be seen missing from the house!”

  “I’m almost through!” she called back.

  She fumbled the toilet tissue out of the holder. She turned the cylinder in her hands and began to rub it against the nylon cord with which she was bound. Thank God it wasn’t the handcuffs Hayes was wearing or this would never have worked! She moved the cylinder feverishly, delighted when she saw it quickly fraying the nylon. Those stones were really diamonds, and they would cut through anything! She only needed to get one...hand...free! There!

  She was free! She had the use of both hands now. Pepito was young and strong, but she had the element of surprise on her side. And she was trained in martial arts. She wasn’t expert, but she knew enough to, hopefully, get the advantage of an unsuspecting opponent. She felt a brief sorrow for his family, but Hayes was her first, her only concern. She had to save Hayes. And she was going to.

  She went over the scenario in her mind. How she would approach him, what she would do. Her heart raced like mad. Her breathing was so quick she felt as if she was smothering. Her mouth was dry, her hands clammy. She pulled up her jeans.

  “Señorita!”

  “Just another minute, please, I can’t help it...something I ate,” she pleaded.

  “Oh. I see. Okay. But hurry.”

  “I will.”

  She gripped the jeweled toilet-roll holder in her hand. Through the gaping crack in the door, she saw Pepito staring toward the horizon.

  Okay, girl, she told herself. Now or never.

  She threw open the door so hard that it knocked Pepito down. Grasping her advantage, she jumped over him, retrieved the AK-47 and held it on him.

  “Get up,” she said in a tone that threatened death.

  “Señorita, please, do not kill me! My family...!”

  “You should have thought of your family before you got into this damned racket,” she raged at him. Her dark eyes were blazing with anger and indignation. “Get going!”

  She gestured toward the house with the barrel of the gun. “Now!” she demanded.

  She prodded his back with the barrel, but took care to stay far enough behind that he couldn’t turn suddenly and disarm her. In a struggle, he might win. She only had the advantage while she held the rifle.