Chapter 11

De Profundis

They used to classify motor cars by the time it took them to get from zero to sixty miles per hour. The second-hand car I bought in Las Vegas was amongst the also rans even in its glory days. Despite that, I was traveling in excess of fifty miles an hour before I reached the end of the street. That was when my basic engineering training exerted its influence. My total journey was about three miles, according to Nando’s app, say six minutes at the legal limit. If I travelled twice as fast, I could save three minutes.

On the other hand, any delay would cost many more minutes. Even if the traffic cop only stopped me to say hello, which seemed implausible if he spotted me doing sixty down Main Street, I would still take longer to reach the girls than sticking to the traffic laws. There was also the question of having to cross the border into Mexico; checks were lax travelling south, but a speeding driver could hardly fail to attract attention. I still had to keep repeating ‘slow down’ to myself like a mantra.

The mind is strange. I left a chaotic scene at the house of pomegranates but, as I drove, I began to make sense of some of it. Mrs. Gonzalez was on the phone, presumably calling for assistance. I suppose that could have been simply a reflection of my expectations. Then I recalled Mark and Jim easing Phil onto the ground and Jim pressing his chest in what I believed is called CPR. That must be a true memory. My final memory was of Nando borrowing Angelina’s phone, frantically pressing buttons.

When I neared my objective, I had to slow down since there were several gates giving access to factories all along the street. A car coming from the opposite direction swung into a gate ahead of me at the moment I realized that it marked the end of my own journey. The car stopped beside the only building on the site and three men got out. By the time I pulled up about five metres behind them, they were bringing Caroline and Maria from the back seat.

Caro looked dazed but Maria was looking around. When she spotted me, she smiled and called out to me, but then she looked confused as she tried to wave only to discover that her hands were tied behind her back. The pair had evidently been drugged. I was focused on the two women, but I noticed movement in the doorway of the building and turned to see Rodrigo emerge into the sunlight. He looked back and forward between me and the girls, finally settling on me.

I was surprised but nowhere near as astonished as Rodrigo. I did not understand why the car bringing the women had arrived only seconds before I did; I quickly concluded that it hardly mattered. The more important question was: why are they here? Caroline is almost seventy and Maria was a chance find, so it was unlikely that they were captured for sexual purposes. They were bait and Phil was not the fish they hoped to land; they could have taken him as easily as they did the girls. Could Kurt be right in guessing that I was a person of interest to the leaders of the cartel?

“I assume I’m what you wanted Rodrigo.” The silence had gone on long enough and I did not want him to recover from the shock of me driving in on the heels of his captives. If he looked puzzled, I could always try another approach. “You can let the women go now.”

“Why would I do that when I can keep all three of you?” Bingo! I had hit on the purpose of the abduction. “First rule of war, my friend. Captives must be fed and guarded so why keep them if they are no threat to you?”

“Shut up!” That from one of the three men standing, keeping the girls upright beside the car. “He has a point, Erb (that is what the name sounded like to me).” Erb waved his gun around. I suppose it was the AK 47 that Kurt mentioned but it looked like something you would make with a kid’s construction kit. It certainly did not have the menace of a Colt 45, strapped to the thigh in its leather holster. More effective, probably, but a good deal less stylish.

Erb went into an expletive laden rant that questioned my parentage and my sanity. Standing there in the company of four armed men, I had to concede that latter point – I must be nuts! Maria was quietly giggling, and from the look on the face of the thug holding her, I think she used her bound hands to explore his groin. He stepped back hurriedly but then edged forward again. Erb and Rodrigo were arguing and the man standing beside Caro looked terminally bored.

Into the arena, without so much as a trumpet blast, came the cavalry. To be exact, three hot and sweaty teenagers on bicycles. They pulled up behind my car just inside the gate. “Are you Ok Dad? We couldn’t get here any sooner since Jim had to give Uncle Phil cardiac massage until the medics arrived. How’s Mum – I mean Maria?”

Rodrigo turned to the boys and then to me, looking shattered. “That pretty well settles things, don’t you think? You might have got away with holding us before but now you have two women and three boys on your hands. Why don’t you let them go and keep me? I’m the one your boss wants to talk to after all.” Erb started ranting again but Rodrigo told him to shut up while he thought. The boys and I had edged together without any of the goons commenting.

“I know you’ve only been out a couple of times with Maria and Connie, but I need you to drive the ladies to the hospital in El Paso for me,” I told Mark in a calm voice. He began to argue that their job was to stay with me. “We’ll discuss this another time, I promise, but for the moment the vital task is to get the two drugged women to safety. I’m counting on you three. That lot need my brains so I’m in no danger.” I am not sure they believed me which is hardly surprising since I seriously doubted it myself.

Erb had come forward to argue with Rodrigo who was looking irritated. Finally, he turned, pushing Erb aside, and spoke to me. “I have your word that you’ll give me no trouble. “I’m as anxious to talk to Pablo Albert as he is to talk to me.” I did not actually promise anything, but he did not notice in his surprise that I knew the name of his boss.

Ebo responded angrily to the brief discussion, renewing his verbal assault on his brother-in-law. I had gained some control of myself as a result of the exchange with Rodrigo and I began to take stock of our situation. We were standing in a roughly rectangular yard perhaps three car-lengths long and two across. There were buildings on three sides and a chain-link fence on the fourth side bordering the road. There were no people on the road; my attention had been focused inside the yard but surely I would have noticed the movement of passers-by or noticed the sound of a passing car.

The clincher for me was that there were no small boys clinging to the fence enjoying the entertainment provided by Erb and Rodrigo. With that thought, I became aware that in the lulls of shouting I could hear distant music. I guessed that they had chosen a local fiesta to stage the kidnap. Even so, it was stupid to remain out in the open with two obviously drugged women. Perhaps this was why Rodrigo had remained close to the door into the main building, and why he had talked to me in reasonable tones.

Most of the energy expended was in the form of sound but there was a certain amount of movement which could best be described as edging. There had been a flurry of activity when the boys burst through the open gate on their bikes. They threw them down and dashed towards me before they had appreciated that Caroline and Maria were being held by men armed with guns. I had taken a step towards the lads before we all froze. Since then, I had eased myself a step closer to them so we could talk.

Rodrigo had taken a pace towards the front of the car that brought the girls while Erb had moved from the driver’s door to the front bumper bringing the two main protagonists within a couple of metres of each other. The man holding Maria was on the far side of the car from me, but I was only a couple of strides from where the fourth thug was holding a drooping Caroline. Her condition had deteriorated, and I took an instinctive step towards her.

Her guard was holding her body upright by clutching the back of the summer dress she was wearing; her head was hanging forward on her chest and I was not sure that she was conscious. I stopped but there was no reaction from the guard, so I took the final step, enfolding the old lady in my arms. The thug let her go, giving me a small nod and easing himself towards the front of the car. As I turned supporting Caro’s weight, Nano and Mark joined me relieving me of my burden. Jim was behind her cutting the tie that was binding her wrists.

I stayed where I was within touching distance of the kidnappers’ car just behind the open rear door. I stood absolutely still watching Rodrigo, while the boys gently eased Caro into the back of my car. For the first time in what seemed like ages, I tuned into the argument that was still as fierce as ever. Leaving out the foul language and repetitions, the topic would have been familiar to any low-level employee arguing with his foreman, the next level up from his own.

Top management was useless, ruthlessly exploiting the workers and caring nothing for their needs and desires. The two men agreed on this proposition loudly and frequently, getting muted but fervent approval from the guards holding the women. There was also broad agreement that it was up to the workers to take what they needed by fair means or foul. In the present case, top management wanted me, preferably undamaged, although they did not appear to be too concerned about that condition.

Kurt had made the point in his call that the top management of modern drug cartels wished to be recognized as sophisticated businessmen. Listening to their minions arguing in a dusty yard in Ciudad Juarez it was clear that the message had not penetrated down to the rank and file. Rodrigo was arguing that they and their families would be destroyed if they went too far. He wanted to set the women free; Ebo argued that no one in the organization would give a thought to the rape and defilement of any woman other than his own mother.

Since none of them had stopped us rescuing Caroline, it was obvious that the discussion, once the rhetoric was removed, was about the risks of using Maria as a sex object. I glanced across the boot of the car to the subject of their crude speculations. Maria was still upright although she required some support it seemed. Her eyes looked unfocused, and it was clear that the drug was in control. From the blissful look on his face, I guessed that her bound hands were still in contact with the trousers of her guard. They had moved towards the back of the car; we were now separated by the width of the vehicle. Maria winked at me.

When I tuned back into the argument, Rodrigo was recounting tales of the horrific revenge taken on earlier paeons who had misjudged the tolerance of the bosses. Erb was trying to dismiss the stories as apocryphal but the guard who had held Caro had edged away from the car to align himself with Rodrigo. Having chosen his side, he began a long and convoluted tale of what had happened to his uncle’s father-in-law when he picked a bouquet of roses while tending the garden of a minor boss.

Ebo turned to the guard holding Maria to plead for his support, just as her knees collapsed and she fell forward. Instinctively, I stepped forward and caught her, turning so my body was between her and the man who had been holding her. Mark and Nando were at my elbow and took her from me. It takes longer to describe than it took to happen but, by the time I turned back towards the front of the car, Rodrigo had Erb in a bear hug yelling at him to calm down and let her go. Caro’s guard took the gun from Erb’s hands. I looked at the man who had been holding Maria; he had not moved, and his face showed nothing but mild surprise. It was the lump in his crotch that helped to explain his rather detached view of the proceedings. Turning further, Mark was getting in the driver’s seat of my car and the back door was being hauled closed by a grinning Nando. They reversed out onto the road and drove off.

I wondered for a moment if I could have made it if I had run to the car but, when I turned back to the front, Rodrigo had let Erb go and had levelled his gun at me. I put my hands in the air in the cinematic gesture of surrender – the cinema was the only place I had seen a gun before today. Maria’s captor stepped forward and pushed my face onto the boot of the car, none too gently. Perhaps he was embarrassed at the ease with which she fooled him by groping his groin. I do not suppose that more than ten seconds had elapsed since Maria’s legs appeared to buckle under her.

I wish I could stop the story at this point and jump straight to the end. The hours after Mark drove off were far from my finest. I did not do badly during the hors d’oeuvre. Maria and the boys were the real heroes, of course, but I came out quite well in what they call a ‘supporting role’ at the Oscars. Before the noise of the engine had faded, Rodrigo had taken control of the situation. I was held down over the boot of their car while they checked to see if I had any means of recording their conversation.

In my mind I tried to laugh at them at this absurdity. In the first place, I arrived seconds after their hostages so I would have had no time to arrange for a recording device. Even if I had, it was just as likely to have been in the car in which case it was already over the border into the United States. With much waving of guns, I walked towards the door that Rodrigo had exited a lifetime before, behind Erb and between the two guards. My watch was on the bedside table of my room in the house of pomegranates, but I will swear that the sun had not moved since I stepped out of my car.

We entered a dimly lit corridor with cubicle-sized, windowless offices opening off it. I glimpsed a workshop at the end, but we turned into a door about half-way along. Erb turned on a light illuminating narrow stairs going down. I should have been reassured by the totally cliched cellar at the bottom, but the truth is that I was terrified. Rodrigo had gone off somewhere and I could feel the vicious lust in Erb to inflict real pain. He had lost his chance to molest Maria and it was clear that I would have to pay the price.