JET - Escape: (Volume 9) (3 page)

Matt led the way, and after several minutes they climbed up a steep grade to a two-lane strip of asphalt. Near a far bend the first rays of dawn glinted off glass – a window set into a building, barely visible in the shadows.

“We must be close,” Jet said.

“Let’s hope so.”

Twenty minutes later they were on the outskirts of town, the area all recently plowed fields, the air redolent of fresh earth and dew. A single cart drawn by a swayback horse bounced along the road. The farmer at the reins in faded coveralls looked ancient, his skin the texture and color of rawhide, a hand-rolled cigarette smoldering between his thin lips as he waved at them in passing.

Day broke over a sorry collection of sorry dwellings arranged haphazardly around the town center, marked by a towering church spire. A few motors sputtered to life in the distance as morning in the rural river town began. Jet and Matt were surprised as they made their way toward the church – the primitive hovels transitioned into a neighborhood of stately two-story homes, and then into a commercial area, the architecture colonial, but the cars surprisingly new.

“There’s more money here than I would have guessed,” Jet said as they walked the quiet streets.

“That’s good, right? It means the likelihood of finding transportation and an Internet café is better.”

“Speaking of which, looks like there’s one on the corner,” she said.

Matt nodded. “Right. You call Carl. We don’t want to risk me being seen. I’m afraid with this cast, I kind of stand out,” he said, holding up his broken hand.

“That and your skin color, white boy. Stay here with Hannah. I shouldn’t be long. You sure he’ll answer his phone?”

“I haven’t talked to him in a couple of years, but he should. I mean, where else is a seventy-year-old going to be at this hour in Cuba?”

Jet handed Hannah to him and stroked her brow with obvious concern. The little girl’s eyes fluttered open and she appraised her mother sleepily. Jet offered a smile. “I’ll be right back, honey. You go back to sleep.”

Hannah coughed and closed her eyes. Matt held her head against his shoulder protectively. “You’re on. Let’s hope they’re open.”

“They are. They’ve already set out a couple of tables on the sidewalk.”

Jet made her way to the café and pushed open the door. A thick man with a mop of unruly gray hair looked up from the counter, surprise painted across his hangdog face. He quickly recovered when she ordered a cup of black coffee and asked about the computers.

“I need to call a friend on Skype. Do you have it here?” she asked in fluent Spanish.

“Of course. There’s a headset hanging on the side of the case. You can call and I’ll bring your coffee to you, if you like.”

“Ah. That would be perfect.”

“Take the station nearest the wall. It’s the newest.”

Jet strolled past four makeshift computer stations, whose flimsy partitions offered slim privacy, and sat at the end unit. To her eye it looked prehistoric, but after a few mouse clicks she was connected, and the line was ringing in her ear. A few moments later, when a gruff male voice answered, the sound was as clear as though he was standing next to her.

“
Si
?” the voice growled.

“Carl?”

“Who’s this?” the voice demanded suspiciously.

“A friend of yours told me to call. Victor,” Jet said, using the code name Matt had said he’d recognize.

“Who?”

Jet’s heart sank. Either he didn’t remember the sequence, or this wasn’t Carl.

“Victor.”

He hesitated. “I can take a message.”

Bingo – that was the correct response. She was speaking to Carl. “Victor really wants to ask about a fishing charter today.”

“He does, does he? Then why doesn’t he call me himself?”

“He’s indisposed. But he told me that if I mentioned Bangkok and a card game, you’d be able to help.”

Carl didn’t say anything for several long seconds. “What kind of trouble are you in?”

“We’re in Colombia. Need to get somewhere safe, where we won’t be asked for a lot of paperwork.”

“Colombia? What part?”

She could hear computer keys tapping in the background as she described their location and situation, and when he spoke again his voice had lost any trace of irritation.

“Looks like you’re about fifteen hours’ drive time from the Ecuadorian border, and maybe twelve to Venezuela. Think you can make it to Venezuela?”

“We’ll do whatever we need to do.”

“How many?”

“Three. Our friend, myself, and a little girl, almost three.”

“Victor’s gone nuclear family on me?”

“A long story.”

“Okay, I’m not sure I want to know. Here’s what you need to do to get to Venezuela. Looks like the closest crossing point is a town called Cúcuta. Northeast of you. Probably take all day to travel there, depending on what you’re driving. Call me once you’re on the ground. In the meantime, I’ll see what I can do. You going to need passports, the whole works?”

“Yes.”

“Won’t be cheap.”

“Nothing in life is.”

“How hot is the water you’re in?”

“Hot enough that we need your help getting to wherever.”

“All right. You have my number. Call when you can. How are you fixed for cash?”

“We can come up with whatever you need.”

“That could run in the quarter mil range. Figure, buck apiece for adults, half for the kid.”

“I understand.”

“Sounds like you do. I’ll get to work and see what can be done on a rush basis.” Carl paused. “I’m assuming this is a rush job?”

“Good guess.”

“I’m intuitive that way. And who should I look forward to speaking with when you call back?”

“Me.”

“Right. And what’s your name?”

“Victoria.”

She could hear a trace of a smile in his voice. “Of course. Okay, Victoria. Safe travels.”

The line went dead just as the proprietor arrived with a steaming cup of fresh brew. Jet thanked him, took several sips, and then pulled up a map of Colombia onscreen and studied the roads leading to Cúcuta. It looked like there weren’t too many options – either head north toward Medellín or east toward Bogotá. Either way, they’d have to get over the Andes Mountains to reach the border, which no doubt accounted for the long drive-time estimates she was seeing online.

She finished her coffee and ordered a cup to go for Matt, bought a bottle of orange juice, and paid. Matt and Hannah were waiting at the end of the block, which was still deserted. She approached and swapped Hannah for the coffee. The little girl didn’t wake up, and Jet let her daughter sleep. The stress of the night escape and being in an open wooden skiff on the river had taken its toll, and if her daughter could catch a few winks before things got crazy again, so much the better.

“I reached him,” Jet said, and gave a quiet report of Carl’s instructions. When she was done, Matt frowned.

“So all we have to do is cross the country without being caught, with the cartel and the authorities actively searching for us.”

“That about covers it.”

He drained his cup and straightened. “Then we better start looking for something to beg, borrow, or steal.”

“I…” Jet froze as a police cruiser rounded the corner at the end of the block and pulled to the curb. “We’ve got company,” she warned, her hand moving automatically to the pistol at the small of her back – a memento from the monastery shootout.

“Easy. Could be routine,” Matt said, gathering Hannah up and handing her to Jet. “Let’s just go on our way.”

“Which is?” Jet whispered as two uniformed officers got out of the car.

Matt looked up the street. “When in doubt, go to church.”

Chapter 3

Matt led them away from the policemen with calm, measured steps, the cast enveloping his hand hidden by his windbreaker, which he’d draped over the plaster. Jet could feel the eyes of the officers scanning her as she followed him down the cobblestone street with Hannah in her arms, the little girl’s head on her shoulder.

Another police vehicle, this one a pickup truck, swung onto the street ahead of them, and Jet stiffened. They were boxed in. If she hadn’t been carrying Hannah, she’d have felt more confident, but as it was, if there was shooting, her daughter would be at risk – which meant that gunfire was off the table.

“Easy,” Matt cautioned from ahead. “Nice and easy. Just a family out for an early morning walk, that’s all,” he said as the vehicle neared.

Jet fought the urge to draw down on the truck as it rolled to the curb just ahead of them. She kept her expression blank as she passed the front fender, unable to make out anything through the filthy windshield, but stiffened when the driver’s door swung wide as she drew alongside. Her hand crept to the pistol nestled in her waistband.

“
Buenos días
,” a scratchy male voice said from within the truck cab.

“
Buenos días
,” Jet replied softly, hoping that she didn’t look too rough from her night of monastery assaults and river escapes.

A plump man with sergeant’s stripes on his short-sleeved shirt climbed from behind the wheel and stood next to the truck as his companion stepped out and stretched. Neither looked particularly alert, and Jet kept walking.

The policemen sauntered over to where the squad car was parked. A surreptitious glance over Jet’s shoulder found the other cops leaning against it, smoking, waiting for the newcomers to arrive. After some jocular greetings, they all made for the café she’d only moments before exited, laughing about needing extra-strength coffee to fully recover from the prior night’s excesses.

Matt disappeared around the corner, and she followed. Two blocks down the smaller street lined by bright green and red buildings, they arrived at the town church. Matt slowed as Jet caught up to him, and they wordlessly approached the bell tower, a beige monolith jutting into the air with an ornately crafted iron clock just below the spire’s roof, showing six forty.

“Now what?” Matt asked.

“We either steal a car or hitch a ride. Either way, we need to be well clear of this dump. They’ll figure out we’re not on the mountain, if they haven’t already, and then the search will be on.”

“Maybe we should split up?” Matt suggested.

Jet shook her head, her emerald eyes flashing. “Not a chance in hell.”

“Okay then. Just a suggestion. Because if they’re looking for a white guy with a cast and a little girl, we wouldn’t be that hard to spot…”

Jet moved to the park across the street from the church, where a decades-old split-axle bobtail truck with Venezuelan plates was parked. As she neared, she saw a short man wearing a sweat-stained baseball cap, eating breakfast from a paper plate. He was standing beside an old woman in peasant garb, whose makeshift cart held several large pots and an assortment of containers. Jet sniffed cautiously and was rewarded with the mouthwatering aroma of pastry and some sort of egg stew.

She struck up a conversation with the man as the crone loaded a polystyrene bowl with the breakfast concoction, and quickly learned that he was headed back to Venezuela with a cargo of produce and coffee purchased from his cousin in the nearby town of Cartago.

Fifteen minutes later, Jet and Matt were crowded into the truck cab with Hannah in Jet’s lap as the truck lurched along the winding streets toward the main road. The driver, Oliveros, had been amenable to making some easy cash by giving them a ride as far as Cúcuta, where they’d be on their own – he’d hinted that he had a relationship with a particular customs inspector who would be working the following morning, and Jet knew better than to ask whether they could cross the border with him, jeopardizing his transaction.

He killed time by describing their route, which would take them north toward Medellín, and then cut over toward the Andes a hundred and thirty kilometers before they reached the city. From there they would be on Highway 45, which ran north, paralleling the mountain range until they veered east to Pamplona, a burg on the far side of the summit that was known for its university. From there it would be north again, a few hours’ drive along torturous roads, and then they’d be in Cúcuta, with any luck at all, by sunset.

They learned that Oliveros, married with three children, hailed from Valera, a hill town built in the ridged valley that ran between the Cordillera de Mérida mountains, and had lived there his entire life. His modest import shipments paid for a simple life in Venezuela, but he wished he had more money so he could move – the country had changed radically since Chávez had died, and was now run by criminal cartels that used violence and murder as their stock-in-trade, extorting simple businessmen like Oliveros by threatening his family if he didn’t engage in smuggling for them.

“You…you aren’t carrying anything we could get in trouble for, are you?” Jet asked after he’d told his story.

Oliveros laughed, displaying a flash of primitive dental work, gold-crowned teeth catching the morning light. “Oh, no. I wouldn’t give you a ride if I was playing mule. No, I refused after my last shipment – it was a close call, and I don’t ever want to repeat that.”

“What will happen now that you refused?” Matt asked.

“I plan to sell this load and see about moving, maybe to the coast. Wait for things to calm down. These gangs come and go, and if you have time, the best thing you can do is let them kill each other and then return once it’s safe. The group that I’m tangled up with is relatively new, less than a year. I give them six more months before their rivals wipe them out.”

Jet nodded quietly. She understood perfectly how Oliveros must feel – in danger, through no fault of his own, torn by powerful forces he couldn’t control, his family at risk, and difficult decisions that could cost them everything a daily occurrence.

It wasn’t an unusual story in the region, but one that was poorly understood in first world countries, she knew from personal experience. She’d experienced firsthand the culture shock of going from a society where death was a daily, unremarkable companion to a civilized area of Europe or North America where the annoyance of slow Internet or unpleasant rush-hour congestion was more real than being summarily executed by the side of the road. It was impossible to explain to someone from a modern society how precarious life was in much of the world, how random and pointless it could seem.