‘What’s in the middle of the jungle that’s so important?’ George asked Paola.
She could tell by the way they had started to bounce around the now empty truck that their route had shifted from a smooth road to somewhere woefully uneven and undeveloped. Though they were still sitting in the darkness of the cargo area, with no view of the world outside, George was certain they had entered the Yucatan jungle. They had been travelling for a while now, and the terrain had flattened out. Was Van den Bergen close? More to the point, might she find out more about her father?
Paola was busy examining her teeth using the selfie function on her mobile phone. ‘Maritza said el cocodrilo needs us to load a shipment of meth onto the truck and take it down to the beach. He’s had a submarine or some shit specially built to sail the drugs over to the Dominican.’
‘Why doesn’t he use his own guys?’
Paola shrugged, still staring into the phone’s display. Running her little fingertip over her eyebrow. Checking her chin for spots, as if she could actually see anything beneath the camouflage of her facial tattoos.
‘I don’t think he trusts them with meth that’s got a street value of hundreds of millions of dollars. Would you? These low-level guys are always out to con and double-cross each other. El cocodrilo’s not stupid. He maybe has a few men he trusts and keeps close like that greasy little asshole, Miguel, but the rest would sell their grandmothers for a new cell phone. And he’s used us before, don’t forget. All of the cartels use us because we’ve got the reputation. We don’t take sides. We don’t take crap. We get the job done. Everyone knows Maritza. Everyone’s scared shitless of her too.’ She chuckled, popped some chewing gum into her mouth and observed her leader with evident admiration.
‘A sub?’ George asked.
As the truck lurched its way down whatever dirt track it had taken, she wondered how likely it was that Stijn Pietersen would be cunning enough to kill two birds with one stone – kidnap her father, a skilled engineer, so that he might design an ocean-going smuggling vessel, and simultaneously destroy her family. George didn’t believe in coincidences and she was staking her life on the likelihood that those had indeed been the Silencer’s intentions all along.
Unexpectedly, the truck came to a halt. A thump on the partition that divided the cab from the cargo area jolted George out of her reverie.
‘We’re here,’ Maritza said. ‘We break for lunch first. Then, we load the truck. Delivery after sundown. Back on the road home tonight. Got it?’
The women all nodded, swinging their rifles onto their backs.
Dappled light suffused with a green glow flooded the truck as the shutters rolled up. She was faced with a backdrop of dense, lush jungle, where butterflies fluttered among the exotic flowers that hung in clusters from trees. A dragonfly as large as a man’s hand zipped by in staccato bursts, so fast that it left only a notion of its iridescent blue body and diaphanous wings behind before disappearing.
She had arrived in paradise.
George scrambled out, breathing in the fresh air. But the air was baking hot and damp, making her hair and clothes stick to her body. She had not felt clean since leaving Amsterdam. Now is not the time, arsehole, she told herself. You’re a transportista. Stinking armpits and bad hair are part of the job description. Don’t worry about the filthy fingernails. You can get a scrubbing brush on them if you make it through this alive.
She had arrived in hell.
‘This way!’ A tiny barrel of a man had appeared from the thicket and grunted the instruction at them, eyeing them warily. A stained white vest clung to his belly. Jeans that had been cut off at the knee hung from low on his hips. Flip-flops on his feet. He waved an Uzi at them. ‘I’ll show you to the camp. You sure you weren’t followed?’
‘We’re not stupid,’ Maritza said, clicking her fingers so that the rest of the transportistas fell into line.
Clutching her gun like a safety blanket, George walked at the back, wondering what the immediate future might hold for her. Would the Silencer be there? Had they been summoned to pack up the lethal batch of meth that was responsible for the floaters back in Amsterdam? Was this search for her father nothing more than a wild-goose chase?
In her peripheral vision, as she trod gingerly over tree roots and the brown giant leaves that had fallen from the palms onto the jungle floor, she caught sight of insects scuttling to safety. She shuddered. Had that been a spider clinging to a tree trunk? Spiders weren’t meant to be that big. What if there were snakes …? Stop this right now, you unutterable wimp. The wildlife is the least of your worries.
Up ahead, her compatriots came to a halt on the edge of a clearing that was guarded by two men who were similarly armed with Uzis. They engaged in a brief exchange with Maritza, whereupon the men stepped aside. Advancing into the clearing, George shivered as she felt the men watching her.
Her surroundings comprised several small corrugated iron shacks that had been camouflaged with palm leaves and other foliage. At one end of the makeshift complex, there was a solid-looking Portakabin, complete with a door and a properly glazed window. Smoke curled upwards towards the jungle canopy from a flue that poked out of the roof. The stench of sulphur wafted over towards her. She grimaced but steeled herself not to hold her nose or pass comment.
‘Food first,’ Maritza said, rubbing her hands together in the face of the man who had been their jungle escort, much to his obvious chagrin. ‘My girls need a good meal inside them. And you’d better not poison us with that stink coming from your lab. We don’t get paid for that.’
As they trooped over to a large shack where men came and went through a curtain of Perspex flaps, George studied the complex’s inhabitants. The rough-looking, dark-skinned gangsters, small in stature and sporting thick black hair, were all locals. That much she could tell. Shabby clothes. Flip-flops on their feet in the main. But there, inside the dining shack at the far end, seated at a long trestle table opposite a guard who was idly toying with the ammo clip on a semi-automatic handgun, was a Caucasian man. Rail-thin, his fair skin singed an angry-looking pink on his nose and cheekbones, with unkempt, curly red hair that clearly hadn’t seen a pair of scissors in a year. His wrists were ringed with red scabs. Had he been cuffed? George held her breath. Clearly, this man was not her father, but an outsider, nonetheless. Why else would he be eating with an armed guard watching his every move?
She helped herself to a plate of refried beans, salsa, guacamole and a couple of small tortillas from a buffet table at the end that was manned by a bored-looking old woman who wore a traditional embroidered dress, covered in food stains around the belly. Took a seat next to the European man and his guard, who was now miming shooting at his charge’s head.
‘Come over here,’ Paola said, patting a seat at another table.
‘No. I’m good thanks. I’ve got a headache. I’ll just sit tight for a while.’
The European balked at the sight of her. He pulled his plate to the left; shuffled over, putting space between them, and, for the first time, George became aware of how she might appear to others – covered in fearsome tattoos and sharing her lunch with an AK-47.
‘Hurry up,’ the guard said to him. ‘You gotta get back in the lab and finish up, or el cocodrilo will wanna know why you screwed up his shipment.’ His English was spoken with a heavy Mexican accent. ‘You fancy being croc food? Cos I ain’t gonna clean your fucking teeth and that weird gringo hair of yours up off the floor when they’ve finished with you.’
‘I’m coming, man,’ the chemist said, staring down at his plate which seemed to contain only scraps. He started to shovel what was there into his mouth at speed, speaking with a cheek stuffed with food. ‘Give me a break, for Christ’s sake. El mecánico was snoring all night.’ His speech had a Texan twang to it. Or perhaps a flavour of New Mexico.
‘He’s been ordered to rest. He’s sailing to the Dominican tonight with Jorge.’
Locking eyes with George, the guard suddenly leaned over and punched the chemist in the side of the head.
‘Ow! What the hell was that for?’
Still searching for some acknowledgement in George’s face, the guard waved his pistol at his charge. ‘I don’t give a fuck about el mecánico, hombre. You gotta job to do. Time to go.’ He winked at George as he rose from the table. Kicked the heels of the shuffling chemist.
But George wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in this show of machismo. She was interested in the mention of a mechanic – or had it been a euphemism for an engineer?
If the chemist shared accommodation with el mecánico, it was likely they slept in one of the huts that was positioned around the fringes of the clearing.
‘I’m going to stretch my legs,’ George shouted over to Paola, who was sitting with the other women. She grabbed her bag and her rifle and headed outside before anybody could object, least of all the steely-eyed Maritza who seemed to miss nothing.
Donning her shades, George stalked around the compound as if she owned that place, despite the incessant flutter in her chest. There was no sign of the Silencer thankfully, but gang members were everywhere, idling away their afternoon, sitting on upturned beer crates, smoking marijuana or meth pipes.
‘Hey, chica,’ one of the men said, amid wolf whistles from the others.
Adrenalin coursed through George’s body, heightening her senses. Lewd comments being shouted at her. She could feel sexual threat coming from every direction. These were men who were used to taking women by force or being rewarded for their violent services-rendered by their boss with trafficked girls who had been drafted against their will into sexual slavery. Under normal circumstances, they would surely think nothing of dragging her into a shack and sating themselves. But a transportista? Would they really pick a fight with her in this guise?
Turning around, she marched back to the wolf-whistling pack of lustful henchmen. Held her rifle to her shoulder and peered at them down the sights. ‘You want to tell me how much you love me, boys? Write me a love note on a bullet. How’s about that?’
The men balked visibly. The wolf-whistling stopped. George lowered her weapon and started to walk away towards the shacks.
‘Dyke,’ one of them said.
Keep going or respond? Keep going. You haven’t come here to pick fights. You’ve come here to find Papa. But George didn’t like disrespectful men. She turned back and marched up to the man who had called out. Rifle aimed at his forehead.
‘Call me that again,’ she said, breathing heavily through her mouth to keep up with her frenzied heartbeat.
The man leaned into the rifle, grinning maniacally at her. High – that much was obvious. His brown eyes shone with malevolence. ‘Dyke. I called you a pussy-munching dyke.’ He grabbed his crotch. ‘You need to be shown how it feels to be fucked by a real man.’ He threw his head back and laughed raucously.
George assessed the situation as coolly as her red mist would allow. The others weren’t joining in. She lowered the rifle swiftly and shot at the man’s feet. He yelped. Then, switched her grip on the AK-47, bringing the butt up in one slick move to make contact with his jaw. It struck him with a nauseating crack. The man fell back off his crate, howling. A well-aimed kick to the balls was all she needed to add a full stop to this particular conversation.
‘Jesus!’ he said, clasping at his crotch. ‘You crazy bitch! I can’t believe what you just did.’
Placing a boot on his ribcage, George pointed the rifle anew at his head. Rested the sights on his nose, squashing the cartilage to the side. ‘Apologise,’ she said.
The man’s face had crumpled with obvious shame. Not because he had been disrespectful towards her, but because he had been embarrassed by a woman in full view of his friends. George realised this much.
‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ he shouted. ‘Okay? Leave me alone.’
The other men started to laugh, sensing the shift in power.
As George realised how foolish she had been, she took a step back. Spat at the ground, trying to maintain her hard edge. Turned and walked away quickly. Passing the dining shack, she saw Maritza standing in the doorway, arms folded, smiling wryly at her. The head of the transportistas winked and nodded. A show of respect. Good.
Perhaps there was just enough of Letitia in George, after all.
Before matters could take a turn for the deadly, she stalked over to the smallest of the shacks, reasoning that prisoners would hardly be afforded spacious accommodation, no matter how important their work was. The first shack was empty, but for two filthy mattresses and a scattering of pornographic photographs on the floor. The second shack contained a man who sitting on a wooden chair, cleaning the components of a gun. But the third was home to two filthy mattresses. One was empty with dishevelled bedding. A pair of handcuffs hung level with where feet might ordinarily lie, soldered to the corrugated iron walls. The other contained a man who was curled up into a foetal ball. No sheet covered him. His stick-thin arms and legs were tanned almost to the deep mahogany of the local men. His shoulder blades stuck out in sharp triangles that perched like wings above his emaciated torso.
Without warning, the sleeping man rolled over onto his back, snoring loudly. Stretching out with his arms above his head, revealing a rack of prominent ribs beneath a hairy chest. His only clothing was a pair of ragged, washed-out shorts.
Feeling emotions start to engulf her like tsunami moving shoreward from the open sea, George took a step inside to get a better look at the sleeping man’s face. But she already knew what he would look like, though given the full slops bucket in the far corner of the shack, it was impossible to ascertain whether or not he still smelled the same as he had smelled when she had been a small child, sitting on his shoulders, clutching at his head.
‘Papa,’ she whispered, wiping a tear from her eye as she took in the detail of her father’s face. He had aged. He was perhaps only half his normal body weight. His black hair was greying and had receded sharply. But she recognised that same nose that she had inherited from him. Ran a finger along her own and smiled wistfully. Those thick eyebrows that she had remembered during childhood as being reminiscent of eagle’s wings were unchanged.
‘What are you doing in here?’ a voice said behind her. A woman’s voice.
George spun around to see Maritza standing in the threshold to the shack, hand on the hilt of her machete.
‘I wanted to see if this guy is the arsehole who owes me money,’ she said, thankful for the sunglasses that concealed a film of tears that threatened to fall and betray her emotional investment in this sleeping man.
‘Oh really?’ Maritza said.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve been watching you. You’re not one of us.’
Stifling the urge to swallow hard and give away her trepidation, George said, ‘What do you mean?’
Maritza gestured with her chin toward the clearing. ‘Come with me. I want to speak to you.’