Border Crossings: A Catherine James Thriller (3 page)

The minutes that dragged by were filled with fear and apprehension.  Nobody knew if the little boy was dead or alive.  The man with the strange eyes and cigar began to grow impatient and angrier as the minutes stacked one atop another.  “What the hell is taking so long?” he cursed.

Suddenly, someone appeared from the darkness.  It was the young man who had taken off after the boy.  Directly behind him came the little boy, wrapped in his mother’s arms.  He was crying and she was hushing him gently.  He’d been saved.  Yesenia said a little prayer to herself, thanking God.

A few minutes later the other smuggler returned, but this time things were not so well.  He did not have the missing package with him.

“Well?” said the one with the cigar and straying eyeball.

The man shook his head.  “It’s gone.”

“What do you mean ‘it’s gone’?”

The fear on the other man’s face was evident.  He held his hands up, “I don’t know what happened to it.  I was running after it, but it was out in the middle of the river.  I was going in after it, but then it was gone.  It’s dark and they’re black, I lost sight of it.  I don’t know if the plastic got ripped and it sank or what, but I saw it one minute and then it was gone the next.”

“Damn it!” cursed the one with the cigar.

“Also, I’m pretty sure I saw some headlights in the distance.  I think we’d better go, boss.  We’re sure to have set off a sensor or something with all that noise and movement.”

The man chewed on his cigar and eyed the woman and her little boy like a lion sizing up wounded prey.  His right hand fell to the grip of his pistol and his fingers played upon the handle.  “That bale was worth more than you can make in year,” he told her.

The woman looked horrified.  She held her child close and eyed the smuggler’s gun.  Everyone held their breath.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “My son can’t swim.”

He stared at her with fire and death in his eyes, as though he’d love nothing more than to kill her where she stood.  “Stupid woman,” he spat, his body easing and his hand moving away from the gun.  The woman let out a slight sigh of relief.  Then, to the other two smugglers, he said, “Let’s go.”

One of them started pointing to people and told them to pick up a bale, continuing to use them as muscle to move the smugglers’ packages.  “No talking,” he said as they began to walk.

The young man who had saved the boy picked up his belongings and placed them on top of a bale he’d been told to carry.  The woman with the little boy, having lost her bundle, walked up to help someone else with their belongings, but the fierce one with the cigar saw her and held up his hand.  “Not you.”

“What?” she asked.

He walked up to her with a venomous stare and said icily, “I said not you.  No bale, no ride.”

“But . . .” said the woman, looking at everyone else as though hoping they’d say something on her behalf, but no one did.  Nobody could afford to lose his or her passage.  The woman’s eyes filled with tears, “But, I’ve already paid half,” she told him.  “My husband is waiting for me.  We’ve saved for two years.”

“No.”  He moved his hand back towards his gun for emphasis.

Some people in the group looked upon with woman with pity, while others, like Yesenia, felt too ashamed to look at her.  They wanted to help her, to demand that the smugglers take her and her children with them, but they were all too frightened.  With no help, the woman would have to return to Mexico, forfeiting the money she’d already paid.  Her husband would be smiling and joyously waiting for his family that was not coming.

The group began to follow the smugglers into the darkness.  The woman stood crying, her two children by her side, but the man wasn’t moved.  She watched everyone walking away and looked out into the darkness that was the United States, apparently contemplating her options.

The other smuggler who had given chase down the river had lingered and as he walked by guessed her thoughts.  “You won’t make it,” he said flatly.  “It’d be stupid to even try.  He won’t let you on the truck and without a vehicle out here . . .
" he looked at her children, then back at her, “just go back.”

Having no choice, she picked up two of the inner tubes that were left by the bank and told her children they had to cross again.  The one who’d almost drowned looked terrified and refused, but she told him they didn’t have a choice.  He began to sob fiercely.  The last thing Yesenia saw of them was the woman crouched down trying to comfort her child to prepare him to swim back across the Rio Grande.

After an hour and a half of navigating the darkness, the group hit upon a worn path where a truck was waiting.  It looked like a small moving truck, one used for transporting fruit or furniture.  The smugglers directed the people inside the trailer.  “No noise,” said one as the group had begun whispering among themselves, thankful the walk was over.  He told them to stack the bundles in the back and then when everyone was inside he closed the trailer door.  A thud and click could be heard as the door was secured.  Then they were all left in darkness.

When the engine groaned to life and lurched forward, Yesenia leaned over in pain, clutching her arms.  They burned and ached from carrying her load.

“Who are they?” asked Silvia, who was also rubbing the muscles of her arms trying to chase the burning sensation away.

“
Palleros
,” said the man who had talked to them by the river.  “Coyote smugglers.  They get paid to sneak people across like this.  These are moving drugs, too.  They’re dangerous people,” the voice said.  “I wouldn’t have agreed to this if I knew they were moving drugs, too.”

“Is that what these are?” asked Yesenia.  The bales were now stacked at the back of the trailer and she could smell a deep, leafy smell coming from them.

“Marijuana,” spoke the voice, “worth a fortune north.  That woman is lucky they didn’t shoot her for losing one.  If they weren’t so worried about the border patrol, they probably would have.  If we get caught with these, we’ll all be in big trouble.”

“Shhh,” came one voice.

“Stop talking about it,” said another.

As the truck bounced along, someone else whispered, “I hope they make it back across okay.”

Yesenia did, too, and made a little prayer for the woman and her two children.  Then she sat huddled with Silvia against the wall.  They looked at each other, both thinking the same thing, but saying nothing.  Their new life in America had not began well.

Jamie swung her bag on the bed and fell in behind it.  “Spring break in Cancun,” she said.  “How awesome is this going to be?”  They had been planning it for weeks.

Kendra put her own bag on the other bed in the room, followed by Taylor, who looked at the two beds already claimed and asked, “Okay, so who am I sleeping with?”

Jamie rolled her eyes with a playful smile, “I’m sure the guys back in the elevator would love to hear you ask that.”

“Funny,” Taylor responded.  Three guys in the elevator, all complete with a beer in one hand and a set of Cheshire grins, had eyed the girls like hyenas licking their chops over a dismembered wildebeest.

“They were such pervs,” Kendra added.

Taylor stretched her arms out and walked onto the balcony.  They were on the 12th floor of the Hutton Cancun hotel, right off the beach with a view like a postcard.  “Wow,” she told her friends.  “
You’ve got to come check out this view.  I mean, just wow, look at this place.”

Jamie and Kendra stepped out to the balcony to a pristine blue ocean brushing against white sand with a blue sky void of so much of a wisp of a cloud.  It was utterly perfect.

Someone whistled and Kendra looked up and to the right to see two guys standing on another balcony.  “Hey!”

“Oh, great,” said Kendra.  “There’s more of ‘em.”

“We got a case of ice cold beer up here if you girls want to come up!” said a friendly voice.

“Maybe later,” said Jamie dismissively.  “Oh, they’re just boys,” she told Kendra.  “Besides, it is spring break.  Boys are kind of the point, right?”

As they looked around they saw plenty more partygoers at their best; either standing on their balconies, down at the pool, or spilling out to that beach Taylor just couldn’t believe was actually right there in front of them.

“This is gorgeous,” she said.

“I told you!” said Jamie.  “And you didn’t want to come.  I bet you’ve changed your mind now, huh?”

As much as she hated to admit it, Jamie was right.  Taylor had been planning on going home for spring break and the idea of being crowded into a hotel with every drunken college kid who’d seen one too many MTV Spring Break specials hadn’t exactly struck her as the best of times at first.  But she’d been persuaded and looking at the view from her balcony now, she was glad.  “It’s pretty damn cool,” she admitted.

“Oh, Taylor, did it hurt?” Jamie asked sympathetically.

“Did what hurt?”

“When they finally removed that stick you’ve had up your ass for the last two weeks,” she said with that same contagious smile.

“Ha, ha, very funny.”

Jamie, ever the outgoing one, threw her hands over her head and let out a loud “Whoo!”  She was echoed by no less than four guys.

“Oh, my God!” said Kendra.  “Check them out!”  The hotel rose like a pyramid with sides jutting out adjacent to one another around the pool below, and somewhere around the sixth floor were two girls who had ventured out unto their balcony completely topless.

One of the guys above who had invited them up for a beer yelled out to the topless duo, “Oh, baby, I love you!”  The girls waved and blew him a kiss.

“What a couple of hookers,” said Kendra.  “Hey, look at him,” she said, pointing at one pale fellow down at the pool, “He looks like someone stuffed the Pillsbury dough boy in a pair of surfer shorts.”  The young man, who obviously traveled from somewhere way up north with very little sun, stalked the pool down below with his buddies, his bulbous belly quivering as he went.

“Check out that one over there,” said Kendra, pointing to another young man.  “Is he wearing a T-shirt or is that his tan lines?”  Closer inspection revealed it to be a farmer’s tan.

“Yikes.”

“That looks painful,” Taylor noted.  “Sun screen.  Get some, dude.”

“Look at the hoochie in the ass-floss,” said Kendra, pointing to a girl who was parading around the pool in her thong.

“Hey, I brought a thong,” said Jamie.

“Oh, Lord.”

After they put their things away in the room, Jamie asked, “So what do we do first?”

“I think we should go check out the beach,” said Kendra.

“I’m all for that,” agreed Taylor.  “That water looks unbelievable.”

An hour later the girls were spread out on beach loungers and drinking large frozen margaritas.  Jamie, absent a thong but wearing instead a flowered two-piece with sufficient coverage for her curvy frame, turned onto her stomach and unsnapped her top to tan without lines.  “This is the life,” she said.

Taylor was staring out at the water, her green eyes dazzled by the blue of everything she saw, and took a long sip, “Mmmhmm.  Are we going swimming later?”

Kendra raised her sunglasses and looked out to the water.  “I d
on't know.  I don’t want to get saltwater in my hair before we go out.”

Taylor licked a bit of salt from the rim of glass as she took another sip.  “Speaking of which, what are we going to do tonight?”

“I say we grab a couple of cute and semi-sober guys and hit a club,” offered Jamie.

“Sounds fun,” said Kendra.

“Bah!” answered Taylor.  “Do we have to?  Let’s just go ourselves and have some fun, a girls’ night out.”

“Okay,” said Jamie, “but boys will be part of the equation this week, just so you know.  You can’t avoid them forever and I’m not picketing just because you’re on boycott.”

“I know, I know.”  It wasn’t exactly a boycott.  Taylor had had a long-term relationship that recently went down in a spectacular ball of fire and wasn’t particularly fond of the male gender at the moment.  Her boyfriend decided they were getting too serious and broke up with her right before midterms. 
Asshole,
she thought to herself.  It wasn’t that she was so much in love with the guy, but just that he dropped the bomb right before midterms, like she didn’t have enough to worry about.

“You should have a fling,” Jamie announced.

“What?”

“Yeah, it would make you feel better.  Just find some cute guy, let him flatter and gush about how awesome you are . . . and you are awesome, by the way . . . and you’ll feel way better.”

“Thanks, but I’m not really feeling the fling thing,” said Taylor, "particularly not in Cancun on spring break.  Sounds like a pop queen gone actress bad movie.  ‘She was the girl who had it all until her heart was broken,’” Taylor recited in her best movie announcer voice, "'until a chance encounter on spring break showed her how to love again.’”

“Oh, God, that is bad,” laughed Kendra

“Oh, you know what I mean,” said Jamie.

“Ooh, there’s a leading man for you now,” said Kendra, as a fat guy walked by with two arrows drawn on his large belly, one pointing up towards his face, the other down to his crotch.  Next to the arrows he’d written, “Free rides for hot chicks.”

Jamie looked over and started cracking up.  “Wow.”

“Gross,” said Taylor.  “That is absolutely disgusting, and JAMIE! . . .” she raised her finger and pointed it towards her friend, “If you whistle at that guy to come over here I swear to God all your clothes are going in the pool.”

Jamie cackled.  Her friend knew her too well.  She’d been just about to throw a “Hey, hot stuff,” out there.

A half hour later the girls were still lying out when a young Hispanic man with a handsome smile and muscular build approached.  “Good afternoon, ladies.”

Kendra leaned up and pushed her sunglasses up again.  “Hel-loo,” she said in a singsong, relaxed sort of way.

“Are you enjoying your stay in Cancun?” he asked them in a smooth local accent.

Jamie re-snapped her bathing suit top and sat up, “Yeah, it’s gorgeous.”

“As are you three,” he responded.  The girls knew it was a corny line, but he pulled it off with such confidence they forgave him for it.  It was entertaining if nothing else.  He reached into a duffle bag he had slung around his shoulder and retrieved three yellow pieces of paper, handing one to each of the girls.  “There’s a party tonight at
Noche Salvaje
just down the strip.  It’s the place to be in Cancun and I would like to invite you lovely ladies to come as V.I.P.’s”

Kendra looked the paper over, “V.I.P.’s, huh?  How much is the cover?”

“It’s twenty dollars cover and we have an option for open bar at forty, all you can drink,” said the man.  “And we throw the best party in Cancun.  All the celebrities party at
Noche Salvaje
when they come here.  You don’t want to go anywhere else.”

Taylor huffed and Jamie immediately handed the paper back to him, “Thanks, but I’m pretty sure we can find some place without cover.”

“Ladies,” said the man, disappointed.  “Oh, ladies, you don’t know what you’d be missing.  Here,” he pulled a pen from his pocket, took Jamie’s flier, and wrote something on it, “Give this to the man at the door, and you three will get in free.  V.I.P.’s also get their first drink free.  You can’t come to Cancun and not at least visit
Noche Salvaje
.  Once you see what I’m talking about you’ll be thanking me.  Our club is rated one of the best in the world.  There’s no other place like it here or anywhere.”

Jamie took her flier back, “Well, maybe.” She told him.  “We’ll see.”

Taylor read her flier over.  Fifty-cent beers, dollar tequila shots, two dollar you call it shots, a million dollar sound system, and the most bumping spring break party in Cancun.

As the man strolled away down the beach to court more potential partygoers, Kendra looked her flier over as well.  “I think we should go.  It sounds like fun.  Do you think they pay that guy to go around looking for pretty girls to invite to make the place look better?”

“Well, yeah,” said Jamie, her mischievous smile ever present.  “I mean we are looking pretty good, if I do say so myself.”  She eyed her friends.  “Taylor, how the hell are you already tan?  We’ve only been out here like an hour and you’re already darker than me.”

“I tan fast,” she said.  She left out she’d been studying by the apartment pool in preparation for wearing her bikini in Cancun.  She leaned back and sipped the last of her margarita down with a gurgling noise emanating from the straw, “So let’s go, then.  Sounds good to me.”

They sat out and enjoyed one more round until a gray-haired European couple took two chairs near them.  The elderly gentleman wore his Speedo as though he was at home in front of the television, the most natural thing in the world to him.  Taylor was horrified to see Jamie’s eyes fixated on the man’s weenie-wrapper, red-faced and laughter threatening to escape at any second.  The old man’s equally rotund wife didn’t hesitate to strip off her bikini top and proceed to tan stomach up with her sinking breasts resting sadly upon her belly as though they knew they belonged to an old woman and were ambivalent to anyone’s opinion about their never-ending struggle with gravity, which they were clearly losing at an alarming rate.  The old woman must have been a habitual tanner as her breasts looked like brown, leathery saddlebags someone had burdened her with.

Jamie boob-checked herself.  “I’m done,” she announced to her friends.  As they walked back towards their room she added, “Did you see his . . .”

Taylor cut her off, “Jamie, please.  Don’t even say it.”

“He looked like he was smuggling a tater tot in his
Speedo,” shot Kendra.

Taylor couldn’t help but laugh.