The Return: A Novel (47 page)

Statch turned to her father, who had approached in the trail of the big man, and said, “Dad, what the hell is going on? Who are these people?”

“They’re Templos. You just met El Gordo, the
jefe
thereof. As for what’s going on, I’m afraid that you and Lourdes are being kidnapped.”

“What!”

“Yeah, El Gordo wants his guns. Don’t worry, I don’t think he means to hurt either of you.”

“What if he doesn’t get his guns?”

“I’ll pay a ransom. That usually works.”

Statch felt her knees start to tremble, so she sat down on the edge of the VW’s floor, in the open doorway. The priest was on the other side of the street. He seemed to be arguing with El Gordo.

“Well, this is a kick in the pants. No sooner have I made a noble speech than I get the snap quiz: Does the girl really have serious guts or is she a bullshitter? It doesn’t usually work that way; usually you get to keep your wonderful illusions for a while.”

“It’s Mexico,” said Marder. “It doesn’t work that way here.” He pulled out his wallet and handed a wad of currency to his daughter. “Here’s all the money I have. I don’t know what good it’ll do, but…”

She took it, a thick wad of violet five-hundred peso notes. “It’s okay, Dad. It’ll be fine,” she told him, although she didn’t think it would be fine at all, but rather to make him feel better, so that her panic did not add to his. She’d always thought her father was the acme of cool, but with his crack-up at the tomb and now, this pale and sweating, this trembling figure before her, she felt the axis of her life starting to go eccentric.

“It’s okay,” she repeated. “I have a gun.”

“Oh, no, you don’t want a gun! Give it to me!”

He looked around frantically to see if they were being observed, and they were—more than observed. There were two men coming toward the truck, and Marder had to stand by helplessly while they took his daughter and Lourdes away. He heard Lourdes ask, “What’s going on? Are these guys taking us to the airport?” before the sound of revving engines from all the Templo vehicles drowned out any response that might have been made.

*   *   *

In the VW, both priest and reporter demanded explanations too.

“Drive,” said Marder. “Drive fast.”

So they flew down the sierra, the priest’s foot to the floorboards over long stretches, scattering chickens in the tiny settlements, and Marder told them the situation. Pepa was leaning forward in the backseat, clutching Marder’s seat, her face close to his so she could hear above the sound of the poorly muffled engine and the wind.

“But you’re going to give him his stuff, aren’t you?”

“I don’t think I will,” said Marder. “Skelly told me once that any group with those weapons could just grab Casa Feliz and toss everyone out, which is why he arranged for us to take them. As long as we hold them, we hold the land. And, of course, there’s no guarantee that Gomez will return the hostages even if he has the weapons. We’re not going to take him to court. And he’d be worried that a couple of guys who’ve shown the ability to import heavy weapons and heroin into Michoacán would go over to La Familia or even one of the other cartels. He’d shoot us both out of hand and probably kill anyone he thought might be a popular leader in the
colonia
.”

“But your daughter,” she said, “she’s your
daughter.
You’re risking her life for a
house
and for people you don’t even know?”

“I’m terrified,” he said, turning toward her, and she could see it in his face, pale beneath its tan, white around the lips, the pain in his eyes. “But the point of this whole thing is
not
to surrender to the terror. I’m not going to act like a typical kidnap victim’s parent, giving up everything to buy back the child, frantic, totally controlled by the kidnappers. I’m not doing that, even though I
feel
that way. I get you don’t understand this, but I’ve learned to accept whatever God sends. If it’s a disaster, I’ll mourn the loss. If not, I’ll rejoice. It’s not in my hands. I didn’t ask for this fate, but it’s the one I’ve been given, and so I intend to hold the land and protect the people in my care as long as I have life and let come whatever. I had a thought also, speaking about fate, back at the cemetery; the thought was that years ago I stole a girl out of Mexico and now Mexico wanted one in return. It’s an absurd thought if you think life is just one thing after another, with no meaning, but not if you think there’s a deep plan going on in every life. Which I do.”

Pepa had nothing to say to this, and they drove on, not speaking, wrapped in the roar of the engine and the scream of the tires on the mountain curves.

*   *   *

Statch and Lourdes were shut up in the back of a windowless truck furnished with a pile of blankets, padded shipping mats, a bucket, and a two-liter plastic container of water. A faint gleam of light penetrated the interior from small holes in the roof. The truck jounced into motion and Lourdes said, “We’re going to the airport, right?”

“Actually, no. The Templos are kidnapping us.”

A small frown marred the matte perfection of the girl’s brow. “You’re joking.”

“I wish I were. The thing of it is, El Gordo wants something from my father and Skelly, and they’re holding us until they get it.”

“Well, they’ll give it and then I’ll be able to go to Defe. How long will it take, do you think?”

“I don’t know, Lourdes. It could be a while, because I don’t think Skelly wants to give up the stuff.”

“It’s drugs, right? I knew Skelly was a
narcotraficante
. He said no, but I could tell. But, you know, he’ll give it because he loves me, even if they kill him.”

“Well, perhaps—”

“No question,” said the girl. “And Don Ricardo, your father, will pay for you too. It’s a common thing; everyone understands how it goes, although usually they take the boys. People will pay more for a boy, they say.”

She stretched luxuriously and tossed the shipping mats and blankets into a simple pallet. “I’m going to take a nap,” said Lourdes, arranging herself on the floor. “I was up all night—who would think that an old man like that would want to do it all night long? It’s the Viagra or something, I don’t know.” She looked up at Statch. “So, do you have a boyfriend?” “Boyfren,” not
novio
; Lourdes was a modern girl.

“Not at the moment.”

“What, you don’t like it with boys?”

“I like it fine,” said Statch. “I just have a lot of other stuff to do, and a boyfriend takes up time and energy.”

“Yes, that’s what Pepa says too. She says don’t let the boyfriends mess up your career. Pick someone who can help you out and stick with him until you can stand on your own. That’s good advice, don’t you think?”

Statch thought briefly of Dr. Schuemacher and the lab at MIT. “Yes, good advice,” she agreed, and thought, Would I trade places with this kid? Quite apart from the dazzling looks, could I ever achieve that unthinking physical
being
, without all the thoughts and plans, the continual self-appraisal, the measuring of every action? She hadn’t been anything like Lourdes since the age of six, and now here she was, all plans and control having been taken from her. And, to her surprise, she was riding on top of the whole thing; being kidnapped was apparently a natural extension of having kidnapped herself from the life she’d thought she wanted. Again she decided that, whatever happened, she would not have changed the path that had led to this strange and more intense life.

The truck drove on, and from the angle of the bed Statch could tell that they were climbing. They’d taken her bag but hadn’t searched her, nor had they taken her watch, so she knew, when the truck slowed, made some intricate turns, and then reversed and stopped, that they had been traveling for about two and a half hours; somewhere in the
tierra caliente
, then, up in the hill country.

The doors swung open and a man called for them to come out. It was dark and warm, and the air smelled of dust and, faintly, of horses. They were in a stable. Two men led them across a concrete floor to a side door, across an alley, and into another building. Lourdes wanted to know where her bags were—she had all her stuff for Mexico City in those bags, her clothes, her makeup—but the men didn’t answer her. They moved through a large kitchen smelling of lye and frying grease and down a hallway. A ranch house, thought Statch, and wondered if it was the same one in which her father and Skelly had been confined. The men put her in a room by herself. It had a hasp and padlock on the door, and she heard it being fastened. Throughout this brief walk she’d heard the sounds of roaring engines and of a crowd of people, and she assumed that there was someone in the house watching television, perhaps an auto race. For some reason this made her feel better. No one had yet said a word to her.

The room contained a pipe bed with a bare mattress, a covered bucket, and a washstand with a white enamel basin. The single window was barred with a wooden shutter, which, on inspection, proved to be wired shut. But one of the slats was cracked, and by prying at it with her pen, Statch was able to snap it in two, so that she could peek through and see what was going on outside. Like many such mountain
ranchos,
this one was built around a walled courtyard, and Statch’s window provided an oblique view of that area. The sounds she had heard were not from a television broadcast at all, she now found. The courtyard was full of vehicles, pickups and SUVs and sedans, revving engines, moving around, arranging themselves into columns, and around them were scores, perhaps hundreds, of men, all wearing black baseball hats and dark shirts, many of them carrying assault weapons. It looked, and Statch thought it probably was, an army about to go to war.

At the extreme corner of her field of view was a big ten-wheeled truck, curiously modified. Steel plates had been welded to its side—overlapping plates, like the scales of a pangolin—and a kind of cupola had been built on the top of the cargo hold, protected with sandbags held in place by cyclone fencing, leaving dark slits that could only be meant for gun ports. The front of this vehicle bore a steel plate that covered the windshield and the hood, with a narrow opening cut into it to allow the driver to see. The bumper had been extended by another thick steel plate, and an I-beam was welded to that, to make a heavy ram. Above this shelf, sandbags had been piled, secured by more cyclone fencing. The sides of the cab had been similarly armored and there was a hinged hatch where the window had been, to give access to the cab’s interior. As an engineer, Statch could not help admiring the design—it was the first narco-tank she’d seen in real life—although her heart quailed at the thought of its obvious target. The thing would go through the gate of Casa Feliz like a bullet through a Barbie doll, and the front wall of the house wouldn’t slow it down much either. In one charge, it would deposit fifty armed men in her father’s command post.

As she watched, engines roared, the men mounted their vehicles, and the convoy rolled out of the yard, leaving behind a cloud of yellow dust that hung in the air for a long time. Panic touched her with little electric jabs in the belly; chill sweat bloomed on her face. She had to escape from here. She had to find a phone and get through to her father and warn him, and she had to call Major Naca and get the army involved. They’d taken her bag, so the cell phone and the money were gone, but she still had a number of interesting things in her pockets. And, of course, the pistol, pressing against her spine. Maybe she should have handed it over to her father, but there hadn’t been time. She had never shot anyone, and although she was an excellent target shot, both her father and Skelly had impressed upon her the difference between target shooting and shooting people. She recalled Skelly’s advice about pointing guns: never point a gun at someone you don’t intend to shoot, and if you do point it, shoot them. It’s not like the movies, where the two guys have a conversation at gunpoint. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself shooting a man and also saw herself freezing and having the man take the gun away from her. She moved her thinking away from that dire topic and looked at the stuff she’d taken from her pockets: a small leatherbound notebook, a black Rotring rollerball pen, a tiny flashlight attached to the keys to her motorcycle, a thumb drive, twenty-seven pesos in coins, a red Bic lighter, and a miniature Swiss Army knife containing a tiny scissors, a nail file/screwdriver, a toothpick, and a thirty-two-millimeter blade.

The question of escape: in the movies, the hero always tries to escape, but Statch was not sure if this was the correct solution. Getting out of the room would be trivial. A quick inspection told her she could unscrew the bed frame and that the steel levers provided by its parts would be more than sufficient to break out the shutters. But what then? She had no idea if there was a guard looking out into the courtyard. She could shoot the guard (could she,
really
?) and then skip lightly over the wall and use her transparent airplane to fly a couple of hundred kilometers to Apatzingán, where Major Naca would immediately put his forces at her disposal, assuming he was not someplace else by now.

No, it was too stupid to move without more data, and, besides, she had some responsibility for the idiot child, Lourdes. She couldn’t leave without learning where she was and what they planned to do with her. On the other hand, there was the night. Depending on what she learned during the next few hours, she might try to slip away in the darkness. She could hot-wire a car—an older model, without all the security crap in it—disable any other vehicles, and drive away. Interesting fantasy, anyway—did anyone actually ever escape from kidnappers? She didn’t know, and although it was now unfashionable, Statch never liked committing to anything in the absence of evidence.

So she waited. In all this consideration, it never occurred to her that she might be in danger of death. Her whole life was a record of success and obstacles conquered, and so she thought she had an advantage over anyone who might wish to harm her and was able to scotch most negative thoughts. And as one who despised the wasted minute, she now lay down on the bed, propped her back against the wall, and picked up her notebook and pen. Turning to a fresh page, she began to design a twenty-first century leapfrog energy and manufacturing economy for Colonia Feliz.