by Sean Black
Lock studied the floor, apparently mulling over the offer, as the pieces clicked neatly into place. There had been one question to which he hadn’t fathomed an answer: why would a cartel risk all this heat over a scumbag rapist like Charlie Mendez? Now he knew.
His chin sank to his chest. He thought of Melissa Warner. He thought of the other dead girls. He thought of Rafaela’s indignation that two Americans, himself and Ty, would go to all this trouble over one dead and one kidnapped white girl without any concern for the legion of dead brown girls. Then, as the sun dropped towards the horizon and the room began to darken, he folded away his thoughts of the past.
‘Three million up front and you have yourself a deal,’ he said to Mendez.
Seventy-two
As dusk fell, Lock led an unbound Mendez out of the back of the shack, across the scrubby patch of grass, over a rickety wooden fence with missing slats and into a back alley. In an ideal world, they would have left later, but Lock had no way of knowing when the woman whose home it was would return. Even more crucially, his cell phone had been powered up: there had been half a dozen phone calls as Mendez had made the arrangements for the money to be transferred. Every minute they stayed conceivably brought them a minute closer to being found.
The scuff of sneakers at the end of the alley sent Lock’s hand to the butt of his gun. A few seconds later a soccer ball rolled into view. It was followed by two teenage boys. They froze at the sight of the two men. Lock trapped the ball under his foot and waved them forward. He peeled off two five-dollar bills and handed one to each of them. ‘You didn’t see us,’ he said, tapping the ball back to them.
They traded a look, shoved the money into the pockets of their baggy jeans and sloped off into the gloom. Lock tapped at Mendez’s elbow and they moved off.
At the end of the alley Lock hunkered down in the dirt and checked their position on his GPS. Three hundred yards ahead lay a marshalling yard, used to store containers before they were hooked up to trucks and taken off for loading further south or north. When he had come across the yard on an earlier recon, he had thought about holing up in a container but decided against it. Right now they were less than a quarter-mile from the border, but the containers could end up anywhere. Cargo moved across the border came from as far away as China and went back that way too. Get in a container and you could die in there. It wasn’t a chance he was willing to take, but if they could make it to the marshalling yard they could use that as cover and as a final staging post. Once they were inside and reached the north-eastern corner of the yard, all that would stand between them and America was a long sprint across open ground towards the river and the newly erected border fence.
Crouched in the dirt, he watched the moon rise, and they waited for a truck to roll towards the yard entrance. At last one did and they made their move, running in a low crouch behind it, and using its trailer as cover to take them inside the perimeter as a sleepy-eyed guard waved it through.
Safely inside, Lock found a narrow gap between two stacks of blue and red shipping containers, and Mendez sat down with his back to one. The yard’s security was minimal — the guard on the gate and one more inside. No casual crew of thieves would touch any of the containers: it was all too likely that they would pick one being run by the cartels, and the price for that kind of mistake was death. No cop would be allowed inside to check the containers either, not without a warrant. There was too much risk that they would find something they shouldn’t, something they couldn’t turn a blind eye to.
In the near distance, Lock could see America through a gap in the newly erected border fence. But they weren’t going anywhere. Not yet, anyway.
Seventy-three
An hour passed and the temperature dropped. Behind the marshalling yard, armed police had massed at the edge of the colonia, ready for one more sweep. Officers in riot gear were positioned at fifty-yard intervals, one facing in, the next looking out. Their vehicles were parked so close to the yard that Lock could hear the ticking of engines cooling.
Maybe the woman whose home they had invaded had made a report. Maybe the boys with the soccer ball had decided they could make more than five bucks. Or maybe the cartel had triangulated the position of the calls made from the cell phone. The reason didn’t matter. The cops knew he was close by. But they didn’t know where exactly. They must have assumed he was still in the colonia. They would figure out he wasn’t. The only question remaining was how long it would take them.
With the police so close, Lock spent the time trying to estimate their chance of surviving the dash from where they were to the border fence. At most he believed that a hundred yards out from their current position, they would likely be spotted. Fifty yards further they would probably begin to take fire. Keeping Mendez close to him would present the cops with double the regular body mass and double the target area.
It was possible that he and Mendez would get lucky. Shooting a man at range, or two men, was more difficult than it looked, especially given that the people shooting were cops rather than military. The ability to shoot to kill, more so than killing someone up close, was as much about switching off certain parts of the subconscious as it was about technical skill. Up close with a knife or your bare hands, millennia’s worth of survival instincts kicked in, overwhelming your mind. Killing another human being from a distance took training, repetition and a readjustment of your mindset to get to the point where you could accurately and coolly shoot someone in the back.
So, some things were in their favour, but Lock figured it was a seventy-thirty split against. A thirty per cent chance that they would make it in one piece, and a seventy per cent chance that they would be shot, and those were odds he didn’t like very much.
There was one other major barrier. A bad one. Bad because it didn’t conform to logic. It was a political consideration. Even if a battalion of US Marines was standing on the other side of the border, they wouldn’t be allowed to cross over to help him. They would have to stand and watch while he was killed. All kinds of US government agencies and operatives worked in Mexico with the tacit approval of the Mexican government. That wasn’t the case here.
Here, the local authorities with the supposed approval of the Federal authorities, were engaged in the hunt for a convicted rapist, and the man they were probably by now claiming was his accomplice. In all likelihood, that was how it was being spun, and if it wasn’t, it would be a variation on that theme. Whatever had changed behind the scenes, and the shots from the helicopter told Lock that something definitely had, they wanted Mendez dead — himself too, probably. It was classic spin-control for the cartels. If a situation gets out of hand, let the bodies pile up, shut things down and limit the number of those who can relate to the rest of the world what has gone down.
The land ahead was flat. No points of cover: it was exposed to the east, west and south. Not the kind of terrain you’d want to make a break over if your life depended upon it. Yet they would have to. But not now. They would need an edge and there was no better edge than the one he had in mind. The only snag was that his edge lay another sixty minutes in the future.
Seventy-four
Fifty-seven Minutes Later
Torch beams slashed their way across the darkness of the marshalling yard. A soundtrack of clanging metal accompanied the light show as containers were prised open, checked and slammed shut. Lock sat in the darkness next to Mendez and listened as the searchers worked their way methodically towards them. He rolled back the sleeve of his jacket to take another look at his watch, the seconds creeping slowly forward.
They still had a full three minutes before he’d planned on breaking cover. But in less than three minutes he could be staring down the beam of a flashlight, with a bullet slamming towards him on the exact same trajectory.
He surveyed the route to the barrier and reconfigured his plan. Crunching footsteps echoed through the narrow gap where he was hunkered down with Mendez. He needed at least another two minutes but he wasn’t go
ing to get them.
Shit happens. Deal with it, he told himself.
He brought the index finger of his right hand up to his mouth, a final caution to Mendez. He picked out his features in the gloom and saw that the gesture had been needless. The blood had drained totally from his face.
He tapped Mendez’s shoulder then pointed forwards six feet to where he had already rolled up a section of chain-link fence, ready for them to crawl under. He started to duck-walk towards it, motioning for Mendez to follow him.
The back of his thighs burned. His every shuffled step sounded like an explosion as he inched his way to the perimeter. A babble of excited Spanish seemed to erupt almost directly behind them, but he kept the same careful pace. If they’d been seen, they were already dead. If they hadn’t, a panicked burst of speed would seal their fate.
At the fence, he moved to the side, dipping his hand to indicate that he wanted Mendez to go first. He was treating Mendez as a principal now, a person whose life he was charged with protecting. It was the only way to make this work. His feelings were sealed away, as they always were when he was carrying out close-protection work.
He lifted the sheared strands of wire. Mendez snaked his way under, crawling on his belly, using his elbows and knees for forward momentum. The voices behind them grew louder. Close by, the boom of a container door being slammed made the hairs on the back of his neck shoot to attention.
The soles of Mendez’s shoes cleared the last tendril of wire. He pulled himself clear of the fence, sat up, and turned to Lock, staring at him for a long beat, one side of his face bathed in light, the other lost to the darkness. He reached forward and held up the bottom of the fence so that Lock had room to crawl under it.
Lowering his head, Lock fell into a shallow dive, ass in the air, and keenly aware of his own vulnerability. His head cleared the gap under the fence. Then his shoulders. He stretched out his hands, fingers digging into the dirt to propel him forward.
Suddenly he felt Mendez’s foot stamp hard on his right hand, crushing his fingers and sending a sharp jab of pain up his arm. He tried to twist it free but the pressure was too great. The next thing he knew, his weapon was plucked from his holster.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Lock said.
‘Saving myself five million bucks,’ came the reply, as the pressure on his hand was released and Mendez took off.
Lock thrashed about, kicking against the ground on the other side of fence, trying to use his feet to thrust himself onwards. He wriggled forwards as hard as he could, a strand of fence wire raking his lower back as he pushed through.
As he cleared the fence, he raised his head in time to see Mendez’s heels flicking up from the ground ahead of him as he made his break for freedom.
Pushing himself up and on to his feet, he took off after Mendez at a sprint, oblivious to the growing clamour of voices from the marshalling yard as the beam of a flashlight snapped across the break in the fence and a single voice, shrill with excitement, called out in Spanish.
Lock focused on the crunch of footfalls ahead of him as he powered after Mendez, rage driving him. Rage at Mendez for jeopardizing their chances of survival. Rage at himself for believing that he was smarter than he was and Mendez dumber.
Behind him, the shouts from the marshalling yard were louder. He didn’t dare look back. Whatever happened next, happened. Knowing that death was on its way didn’t stop it, not that he’d ever seen. You could brace yourself for a punch but not for a bullet.
The sweat that had beaded on his forehead started to trickle into his eyes. He blinked them clear. He could see Mendez approaching a dip in the ground and hurtled after him.
Mendez was slowing, and Lock, more used to pacing a foot race, was gaining. The gap closed. He was within twenty feet. Then twelve. Then ten. But Mendez was almost at the dip now. He would reach it before Lock, that much was certain.
Lock raced to estimate the countdown but time had fractured and spun away. Was there a minute to go? More? Less?
As he planted his left foot on the ground ahead, the answer came in the form of a sky-splitting clap of thunder to the east.
Lock dove for the ground, making himself as flat as he could. High above him, the sky lit up like the Fourth of July as a blaze of white light from a parachute flare obliterated the moon. He began to count.
Fifteen seconds later — the precise amount of time it took for the flare to explode and burn down, like a dying star — he raised his head.
Seventy-five
The flare had been set to go off a half-mile to the east of the yard, the idea being that any pursuers or searchers would read it as a signal that this was where the American rescue party was, and that they were signalling this as the point at which to cross. The Mexican cops would be drawn swiftly towards it, while Lock crossed the border with Mendez almost directly opposite the marshalling yard.
That had been the plan, anyway. And, from the sounds of men tearing out of the marshalling yard and the colonia, it was working like a dream. The only problem was that Mendez was gone too.
Lifting his head clear of the ground, Lock watched the stream of excited men running hard in the direction of the flare. A couple of exploratory three-round bursts blew past him in the same direction, as a couple of trigger-happy cops let loose with automatic weapons.
Slowly he got to his feet as they moved off into the distance, his path ahead clear. He broke into a run, praying that Mendez hadn’t doubled back on him. Within no time, he could see the great span of the corrugated-steel plate barrier looming ahead. There was more gunfire to his left. Then shouts in Spanish. A regular cluster fuck, as they chased each other’s shadows.
He stopped and looked around, his eyes struggling to readjust to the gloom after the intense burst of light from the flare. Ahead, he heard something move in the darkness.
He dropped down, aware that Mendez had his weapon. Staying low, he moved forward, listening, his senses dialled up full. The sound came again. A person. Their movements slow and laboured.
He stayed quiet and inched forward. He was coming to the dip in the ground before the barrier. He radared in on the sound. The person was below him. Except now he could see that it wasn’t a natural hollow where the land fell away. It was a trench, ten feet deep and six feet wide — it had been dug out with heavy plant. A barrier before the barrier. An additional line of defence — perhaps to stop the people from the colonia taking a run at the border fence with a car.
Carefully, he leaned over the edge, his movement releasing a tumble of loose earth. There was a sudden break of movement to his right. Mendez was lying at the bottom of the trench, his left hand clasping a twisted right ankle. That was fine. It wasn’t his left hand Lock was worried about. It was the right, which was coming up fast, holding the gun.
Lock dove back from the edge, a round sailing past where his head had been a split second before. A lucky shot? Or did Mendez have some skill?
Rushing him was out of the question. He’d probably take a bullet before he was halfway down. And the shot was drawing some kind of chatter from the distracted posse running after the flare. Sooner or later they would come looking in this direction to check it out.
‘Charlie?’ Lock whispered into the darkness, being careful to stay out of sight. ‘Charlie, you can’t move and you can’t stay there either. If we’re both going to get out of this there has to be some trust on both sides.’
A voice came back from the darkness of the trench: ‘Why should I trust you?’
‘Because you don’t have any choice. If I wanted you dead all I have to do now is get out of here and leave our compadres over there to deal with you. I lose the money, but if I don’t care about the money it makes no difference to me. I should just get out of here.’
It was a hard sell and he didn’t have time to make a winning case.
‘So, go.’
He needed something else. A distraction. Something for Mendez to chew on, however briefly. Something to buy
him the moment of doubt he needed. He patted down his jacket and something crinkled under the fabric. He reached inside and pulled out a wad of paper, waving it over the edge of the trench.
Mendez’s voice came from the void. ‘What’s that?’
‘Your mother gave it to me to give to you. It’s a note. You want it?’
‘What’s it say?’
‘How would I know? Look, do you want it or not?’
Lock edged forward until his head was back over the lip. He tensed, ready to spring back, but Mendez lowered the gun by a fraction.
‘Throw it down.’
‘Okay,’ he said, shuffling forwards on his elbows.
He swung his legs over the lip so that he was sitting on the edge of the trench. ‘I could bring it down to you,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Mendez. ‘I don’t trust you.’
‘Hey, you’re the one with the gun but, okay, I’ll throw it down.’
He folded it up, first into halves and then over again so there was a bit more weight to it. He reached down and tossed it towards Mendez. It fell about a foot from his reach. He looked up at Lock, eyes out on stalks, finger back on the trigger, waiting for him to try something. But Lock stayed perfectly still.
Mendez shuffled on his hands and knees towards the paper. Still Lock didn’t move. Not a muscle.
Withdrawing his left hand from his ankle, Mendez grabbed the note, struggling to unfold it with one hand.
‘Can you read it?’ Lock asked.
Mendez screwed up his eyes as they tracked the white piece of paper, the gun loosening in his right hand.
Heels already dug into the side of the trench, Lock pushed off as hard as he could, launching himself into the air directly above Mendez, the air rushing around him, the ground and the barrel of the gun, which was coming up fast.
