Now, without the vantage-point afforded by high ground, Lock stopped for a moment, scanning the dinner-plate flat landscape for Mendez. The desert breeze rustled through his shirt. He was five hundred yards out from the highway. Flashing lights near the jack-knifed truck announced the arrival of the authorities. Lock doubted Mendez would double back and risk running into cops who might not be aligned to the cartel. Lock couldn’t go back in case they were. That left no turning back for either of them.
He plunged forwards into the darkness.
Fifty-five
Police Chief Gabriel Zapatero listened quietly, put the phone down and walked outside to find the others. The atmosphere was light and festive. A mariachi band played on a raised dais over-looking the swimming pool. Waiters circulated with trays of food and drinks. There were no wives but lots of girls, beautiful but hard-faced professionals. The men were businessmen, lawyers, cops, one or two doctors.
The first person Zapatero saw was Manuel Managua, who was working the assembled guests like a true politician, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he already had the votes of everyone here, and that hookers rarely made it to the polls on election day. The problem with telling Managua was that in a crisis he panicked. He was the one who had most wanted the American girl, yet now that she was a problem he would no doubt deny he had ever said any such thing. A classic politician.
Zapatero smiled broadly at the crowd of people surrounding Managua as he lectured them about how the unions would destroy the prosperity of the area if they weren’t reined in. ‘Excuse me. I need to borrow our country’s future president. We will only be a moment.’
He led Managua off to one side.
‘Is she here? The American girl?’ he asked, as eager as a child on Christmas Eve.
Zapatero wondered what it was with politicians and situations they shouldn’t be within miles of. ‘No, she’s not here yet,’ he said, choosing his words with care. ‘But let’s go inside.’
‘Why? What’s going on?’ Managua asked, picking up on the tension.
‘Let’s wait for Federico,’ Zapatero said.
It wasn’t a long wait. Federico Tibialis, the boss of bosses, strode in, buttoning his shirt. He poured himself a drink. He seemed the calmest and most collected of them all. That was why he always made the final call. A man in his line of work who was unable to cope in a crisis usually lasted all of five minutes. The narcotics trade was one of perpetual crisis management, and his job as pressured as that of any Fortune 500 company CEO. He took big decisions every week. Decisions that involved life and death.
Managua shifted from foot to foot, apparently beside himself that he seemed to be the only one out of the loop. Zapatero felt like slapping him but instead he poured him a drink and told him to sit down. ‘There’s been an accident,’ was how he phrased it. ‘The girl and the other American. They’re gone.’
Managua’s brow furrowed. ‘Dead?’ And then he was off, spinning the whole thing in his mind before anyone had the chance to correct him ‘That’s not so bad in a way. I mean, if it was an accident, a real accident, it may solve many of our problems with-’
Federico cut in: ‘No, the chief means they’re missing. We don’t know where they are.’
Managua lapsed into silence. He took off his glasses and began to rub at the lenses with a silk handkerchief plucked from his top pocket.
Zapatero watched Federico as he walked towards the window. The villa was on a flat plateau with a single road that snaked up to the entrance. You could see everyone coming and everyone leaving. From this room you could take in the entire panorama of maquiladoras clustered along the border, busy twenty-four hours a day churning out products for the gringos.
Finally Federico Tibialis, the drug lord of all drug lords, seemed to have assembled his thoughts. He turned to Zapatero. ‘I heard there was a man with them. Hector somebody or other, one of our corrupt police officers, who are such a problem. I heard he was protecting the American.’
Even in private Federico always spoke as if there was a Federal prosecutor in the next room, listening to his every word. It was a good assumption to make. He never spoke directly, always left room for interpretation, and Zapatero knew all too well that in a courtroom that was all that was required.
‘This Hector, I have heard rumours that he is dangerous. A killer,’ Federico continued. ‘If I was a betting man I would wager that somehow he has got himself mixed up in all this. But I’m sure you and your men will be able to stop him, won’t you, Chief?’
‘What about the American man, the rapist?’ Managua asked, of Mendez.
Federico shrugged. ‘There was a crash of some kind. Perhaps if he was hurt in it and he has stumbled out into the desert, the coyotes will finish him off. There is only so much we can do to look after our visitors in this town. Sometimes nature must simply take its course.’
‘And the other matter? Surely we can’t ignore that,’ said Managua.
Federico sipped at his whisky. He whirled the ice cubes around in the bottom of the crystal tumbler. ‘The papers were signed yesterday. There’s no backing out for either party now.’
Police Chief Zapatero felt satisfied with what Federico was proposing. They had done everything they could to protect Charlie Mendez but he had brought this upon himself by seeking out the girl. His family would have to understand that. The time had come to draw a line under the whole affair. The girl had forced their hand. Of course, for their story to stick they would all have to die. Mendez. The girl. Hector could take the fall and, once he was safely in prison, he could be taken care of too. They had reporters who would be helpful in tying it all together in a neat enough bundle for the Americans to be satisfied. Of course, first they had to be tracked down and that meant finding Charlie Mendez, and the two men Rafaela Carcharon was supposed to have kicked out of the country.
It made for a lot of loose ends. By the end of this, they were going to have to dig one hell of a big hole in the desert. The police chief straightened and looked at the other three men. ‘Gentlemen, leave it to me. My men will find them, although you understand that I can’t guarantee their safe return. The border is a dangerous place. Especially at night.’
Fifty-six
Two Hours Later
Local and Policia Federal vehicles were massed along the highway, the wash from their lights turning the blacktop a deep crimson. Paramilitary black-clad cops swaggered back and forth. Two separate forensic units swarmed over the abandoned Escalade. Traffic had been halted in both directions, and road-blocks set up, not only on the highway but at all the off- and on-ramps in both directions for five miles. Federal and local police officers moved in pairs along the lines of vehicles, flashlights probing the interiors. A tarpaulin was ripped from the back of a truck carrying produce, the driver held at gunpoint as the tailgate was lowered, his wares spilling out on to the road.
Further down the line a bus disgorged its human cargo of exhausted women from a maquiladora. They stepped sleepy-eyed down on to the road while a search dog, which had already sniffed the Escalade, was led on to the vehicle by its handler.
Thick black hair tied back in a ponytail, Rafaela stood in the middle of the throng, her silver police ID clipped to her belt, an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over her shoulders, the barrel pointing to the ground. She watched the search unfold, her feelings a blend of anger, anxiety and awe. If a local woman had been found dead, never mind merely missing, Rafaela would have been there with, perhaps, one or two bored officers and a hard-pressed forensic team, who would have had fifteen minutes to gather what they could before they were called away. Her pleas for more resources and the time to conduct a thorough investigation would have been met with a resigned shrug. No one cared about dead factory girls by the side of the road. The contrast couldn’t have been sharper. The size and scale of the operation told her that the cartel wanted Mendez and the missing American girl bad.