Deadly Journey (26 page)

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 exchanged 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 pushed 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?’

‘Never heard of them.’

‘Let’s jog your memory.’

Otego took out a series of photographs and
spaced them out on the desk. I trembled with horror.

‘You can’t think—?’ The pictures showed the
dead bodies of Leila, her father and the two children. I turned away.

‘I don’t think. I only look at facts. We
have your bloodstained clothing at their home, together with fingerprints that
match yours and four corpses. Now, I’m not paid to think for you. What do you
think?’

I knew exactly how it looked and with a
full explanation, I could easily answer his question. However, I was in a
country whose legal procedures I had little working knowledge of, which told me
I needed to tread lightly.

‘Listen, there’s a simple explanation, but
can I make a phone call and speak with a lawyer?’

He leaned back in his chair and grinned. ‘What
is the simple explanation?’

‘It’s
–
no, wait.
Listen, I think it’s better if I talk with a lawyer to advise me.’

‘Ah, the American right to make a phone
call.’ He leaned forward. ‘Here’s what you get in Mexico. Within forty-eight
hours, we have to let you phone your consul, if we were to charge you with an
offense. If we don’t charge you within that time, we have to let you walk. If
you don’t have a lawyer, your embassy will give you a list of local lawyers who
speak English and who are familiar with our technicalities. You won’t be
allowed any other phone calls, but your consul will be able to contact your
family. In the meantime, you don’t have to say anything without your lawyer
present.’

‘How long will it take to get the Consul
here?’

‘They have a busy workload locally. You can
phone Tijuana. They will give you advice.’

‘So am I being charged?’

‘Yes. For now, the charges are drug
trafficking and possession of an unlicensed automatic rifle. You’re going to be
transferred to a high-security prison in the south of Chihuahua as soon as we
get some tests back from forensics later today.’

Otego picked up the handset, dialled a
number, and passed me the phone.

‘Your consul. You’ll need to ask him for a
small loan to buy food when you get to the prison. As I told you, prisoners
don’t get a free ride.’

All I could hear was the telephone ringing
at the other end of the line.

‘What about bail?’

‘Unlikely. In any case, you would have to
deposit cash if granted bail. We don’t accept personal sureties in our country.
However, that’s for a judge to decide and you won’t get to see one for another
seventy-two hours. You have to remember, here in Mexico, you're considered
guilty until proven innocent. The judge will determine the evidence and if he’s
satisfied there’s a case, you will go to trial.’

‘Why do I need a loan? I have two hundred
dollars.’

‘You mean you had. They’ve been sent off to
forensics.’

The consulate’s receptionist finally
answered and put me through. A woman answered and I gave her all the details.

‘How long before a consul can get to me?’

‘Difficult to say. We have the address of
the prison you are going to and someone will contact you there.’

‘What about letting my family know what’s
happening?’

‘We have to confirm your citizenship first.
Hang tight and discuss it with your consul. Have a nice day.’ The call ended.

‘Have a nice day?’ I put the phone down and
turned to Otego. ‘Incidentally, do I have to put up with your officer beating
on me?’

Otego raised an eyebrow. ‘You have to
understand, there is a war on down here with traffickers, and many innocent
people have lost their lives locally. Sometimes officers can get a little
over-zealous. I’ll have a word with him.’

That didn’t make it right for the officer
to act like a thug; still, I took him at his word. Otego left the room and the
door closed. Sitting back, I stroked the stubble on my chin. The bad dream was
now a nightmare. It didn’t seem as though I would get to see Mary and the kids
anytime soon. Once Rob and the FBI had tracked me down and I had explained
everything that had happened, I was sure they would have our Mexican
counterparts allow me to go home. I could just see the headline. ‘United States
drug enforcement agent charged with trafficking’. My spirits waned at the
absurdity at the whole situation.

The door opened and in walked Brute,
carrying coffee and a sandwich. He set the sandwich down on the table.

‘Gracias,’ I said, offering a truce.

He spat in the coffee. A surge of anger ran
through me, and I curled my feet around his ankles and butted his chest. Brute
fell backwards, sprawled on the floor and the hot coffee poured over him. Otego
rushed into the room.

‘What’s happening here?’

‘He tripped.’

‘Wait outside,’ Otego ordered.

Brute climbed ungainly to his feet and
glared at me as he left the room.

‘We’ve got the forensics back on the rifle
and the bullets in the magazine.’

‘And?’

‘The transport is on its way to take you to
the prison. I’m charging you with the murder of Eduardo Garcia, Leila Garcia,
her son and daughter.’