What happened?” Felipe Matamoros said into his mobile phone. He was in his San Luis Potosí hacienda, the urgent call taking time out from working with his cadre of compadres to integrate the local Sinaloa into Los Zetas.
“It’s still such chaos here, five men dead, the police and the Federales swarming like ants,” the female voice on the other end of the call said. “I—I don’t really know.”
“What d’you mean you don’t know?” he shouted. “You were her nurse—I’m paying you to know everything that happens to her in the hospital.”
“I told you everything, Señor Matamoros. First a man named Colonel Sun claiming to be from the Chinese embassy got through your guards—”
“Colonel Sun. You’re certain that was his name?”
“Absolutely, señor.”
That means Minister Ouyang has seen fit to stick his piss-yellow nose into my business, Matamoros thought sourly.
“All right. Then what?”
“Then the chaos started,” the nurse said. “Your guard, Tigger, yes? There was shouting from the room, the señora and Colonel Sun were having sharp words, and he rushed in. There was a shot. Then the doctor who had been coming to see the señora entered the room. The other guard—Tigger’s partner—came running down the corridor, gun drawn, and went in. Another shot, then the sound of glass shattering. More shots from outside.”
“And this doctor, you said he went with her?”
“With her and the child, yes.”
“This is what I don’t understand.”
“Well, I’m afraid it gets stranger, señor.” There followed a brief hesitation. “The doctor—Francisco Javier—he doesn’t exist.”
“You mean he’s from another hospital.”
“No. I mean, yes. I found a doctor of that name, but he’s a pediatric surgeon. He was in surgery when I called. He’d been there all day.”
“What?” By this time, Matamoros wanted to punch his way through a wall. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know who this Francisco Javier is, that’s what I’m saying. I think he may have abducted the señora and the child.”
“I don’t give a shit about a child,” Matamoros said, massaging his temples beneath which a vicious pain had begun to form. “The woman—the señora—”
“Is gone,” the nurse said, clearly off her even-keeled game.
“Gone,” Matamoros repeated, as if it were an incantation. “Gone where?”
“No one knows, señor. Just…gone.”
“And Carlos’s two men dead.”
“Yes, señor.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“Plus the Chinese man from the embassy. And outside two soldiers—”
“Stop! My only concern is the woman. She was your charge—in your care.”
“Señor?”
“Expect a visitor.” Matamoros abruptly disconnected.
Turning, he shouted to Juan Ruiz and Diego de la Luna. “Get the plane ready! We need to be in Mexico City as soon as possible.”
Carlos Danda Carlos had awakened that morning from a nightmare of indescribable horror. He could no longer conjure up the details, which only made the lingering emotions all the more anxiety producing. Then the nightmare extended its long black arms into his waking world with the call informing him that two of his guards had been shot dead, two soldiers had also died under more mysterious circumstances, and Maricruz was missing. As if that weren’t enough, a Chinese foreign national—an army colonel, for the love of God!—had also been shot to death in Maricruz’s hospital room.
After fielding an exceptionally unpleasant call from el presidente while he was still in his pajamas—an old habit he refused to let go of—he showered, shaved, dressed, and had his driver take him to the hospital.
He arrived amid a shitstorm of uniformed men, all running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The hospital administration was in an uproar, as was the Chinese ambassador, who was threatening to decamp from Mexico with his entire staff after delivering a guardedly threatening statement to the worldwide press. Within twenty minutes Carlos understood that the international conflagration dwarfed his own concerns regarding Maricruz. He met with the ambassador, who made it clear in no uncertain terms that he needed to find the perpetrator of the colonel’s death, a man who was closely connected with Minister Ouyang Jidan.
Inwardly, Carlos shuddered at the name. He needed Minister Ouyang—and his wife—if he was to continue to line his pockets with the proceeds of the cartels’ drug sales. He needed to find out what Sun had said to Maricruz to make her kill him and his men, for surely she was the one who had pulled the trigger. Who else? He needed to find out where she was and who was with her. After canvassing the floor staff, it seemed clear that she had been in the company of a seven-year-old girl patient and a mysterious man who had palmed himself off as a hospital doctor assigned to her case. Could he have shot Sun?
None of the facts—or partial facts, since the scene was still in chaos—made much sense to him. The only person he knew who had all the answers was Maricruz herself. Where had she gone?
One line of inquiry seemed promising. It appeared the trio had fled the scene in an official cruiser, which had subsequently been discovered abandoned near the shopping mall in Coyoacán. Approximately thirty minutes later a white, late-model SUV was reported stolen out of the same lot. The owner had provided the license plate number to the police. That was less than twenty minutes ago. When Carlos followed up on this, he discovered that a dozen cop cars had been dispatched to scour the streets for the vehicle in question. He ordered the police captain in charge to triple that number.
When the captain asked how he was going to get that many vehicles in so short a time, Carlos shouted, “I don’t care! Pull them out of your ass if you have to! Just get them rolling now!”
He wiped his sweating face down. Then, realizing he had done all he could at the scene, he returned to his waiting car before he had a nervous breakdown. The international element, always a potential menace lurking at the periphery of the plans he had been enacting, had now jumped front and center, threatening to completely derail his career, not to mention his very life. In Mexico people in disgrace fared about as well as prisoners.
“Sir?” his driver said. “Where can I take you?”
I have to pull myself together, Carlos thought. This situation might be a major fuckup, but use what little you have been given to grab the tiger’s tail and shake it until its teeth rattle.
“To Coyoacán.”
“Yessir!”
As the driver rolled out onto the street, Carlos made the first of many calls coordinating his people in a dragnet around the district of Coyoacán.
Bourne drove the SUV down Caballo Calco, but did not stop at No. 23. Instead he circled the block several times, checking to see if the immediate environment held any dangers. Then, two blocks away, he pulled into a parking spot, climbed out, and exchanged the SUV’s plates with a vehicle’s at the end of the block. As he pulled out, a cop cruiser turned the block, moving in the slow, deliberate manner of a shark approaching a reef filled with fish.
“Down!” he ordered, and Maricruz slid low in her seat while Angél crouched on the floor. For a seven-year-old, she was remarkably adept at hiding herself, possibly the only positive consequence of her terrifying experience.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “The cops are only coming close enough to read our plate. They’ll soon see we’re not who they’re looking for.”
Moments later, proving his comment prophetic, the cruiser peeled off, making a right as they passed an intersection. Maricruz pulled herself up to a sitting position.
“If I had any doubts about what you’re proposing, they’re gone now,” she said in a low voice she hoped wouldn’t travel to the backseat. “I can’t keep putting her in danger.”
Bourne nodded.
“You’ll make the introductions, yes?” Maricruz seemed nervous, suddenly unsure of herself, in need of assistance, clearly an odd state for her to be in.
“There’s no need,” Bourne said. “My time is better served finding us a new vehicle. This white SUV is too conspicuous.”
“But I don’t know anything about her.”
“Then you’ll be on equal ground. Now, go on. She’s in apartment eleven. It’s on the second floor.”
Maricruz, in the Mexican-style clothes he had bought for her, opened the door and slid out. She was about to take Angél in her arms, but at the last minute thought better of it. Instead, she took her hand, so that the girl, in her pale yellow dress and patent-leather Mary Janes, walked beside her. A mother and daughter like any others one might see in Coyoacán, heading down the sidewalk. They entered number 23.
Bourne watched them until they were swallowed up by the building. Then he wiped down the interior of the SUV and exited. Unscrewing the license plates, he slid them through the bars of a nearby sewer grate and went in search of a vehicle that would better suit their needs.