No Remorse (2 page)

“Holy fucking Christ!” Termite exploded, his voice still a whisper.

Mac felt like a great claw was ripping apart his stomach. He’d waited too long to give the order. But there’d been nothing to suggest they would harm the girls. Regardless, he now realized he’d fucked up. Even so, killing the kidnappers now wouldn’t get Sophia and Danni back, and that was the objective. He spat out the pebble and said, “Hold your fire.”

“They’ll kill the fathers, Mac,” Scotty said over the radio.

“Hold. We have to give them one more chance to find out where the girls are.”

“No! God Almighty!” Marvin was screaming over and over. “Oh my God!”

Bob stood paralyzed for a moment, as though unable to comprehend what he’d just witnessed, then sank to his knees and covered his face with his hands.

The kidnapper with the bandana was doubled over, laughing at the fathers’ reaction. Knife Man just stood there, watching them.

“And now,
yanquis
, you get to dig their graves,” the leader said. “And while you are doing this, you will think about what will happen to your pretties if you don’t bring us another two hundred thousand in seven days. We call the Stewmaker.”

“No! We’ll get more money. Just show us that our daughters are all right,” Bob said. “We just need to know they’re okay. Let us speak to them on the phone.”

The man with the bandana was running from the car yelling, holding up a small device.

“Found one of the trackers,” Termite said.

Fuck
. “Stand by to fire,” Mac said on the radio, his voice calm and detached. He switched aim, placing the leader’s head in the crosshairs. “We need one of them alive. The least threat is the guy in the van.”

“Affirmative.” This from Scotty.

The leader ran to the van and grabbed binoculars. Scanned the surrounding hills. Then turned to Marvin and held up the GPS, his face contorted with rage. “What is this? You take us for fools? You think you can play this game?”

“No! Of course not. We just—” Marvin spluttered.

“You tried to deceive us. Now you lose.” He started to raise his pistol.

“Execute.” Mac spoke the word calmly, then squeezed the trigger. Felt a satisfying buck in his shoulder. The leader’s head exploded. His body was still dropping to the ground as Mac put two rounds in Knife Man, who crumpled like a blown out bag.

Running towards the meeting point, Mac could see that Scotty had shot the man leaning against the Land Cruiser and wounded the one with the bandana, who was writhing on the ground, screaming from a bullet in his gut. Freckle had blown out the front and back tires of one side of the van. The terrified driver had bolted, with Bob running after him firing the leader’s pistol in the air. The man stopped and raised his arms. Bob marched him back and handed him over to Termite.

“Nothing to indicate where they’ve taken the others,” Scotty said. “Sick fucking bastards. My daughter’s not much younger than those little girls.”

Mac took off his sunglasses and held Bob’s arms, fixing him with a resolute gaze. “We’ll get them back. I swear to God, Bob, we will find them. The two kidnappers still alive will know something.” As he said this, he realized he owed Bob that much at least, for saving him from the slippery slope he had been on after his father died. His own peace of mind would depend on finding Sophia.

Bob nodded, then bent over to vomit. Over by the van, Marvin was sitting down on a rock, face in his hands.

Striding over to the wounded kidnapper writhing on the ground, Mac grabbed his hair and leaned close. “Where are the other girls?”

The dying man opened his eyes and spat blood in Mac's face. Closed his eyes and groaned. No joy there.

Glancing over to where Termite had cuffed the young driver and sat him on the ground, he could see the kid was terrified. Would he have balls and clam up too? Mac pulled out his pistol and spoke at the wounded man, loud enough so the kid would overhear. “You’ve got five seconds to tell me where you’re keeping them. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.” He fired two rounds into the man’s head and then turned to the kid and snarled. “You’re next, kid.”

“I do nothing! I only drive the van that my uncle asks! Now you kill him!”

“Yeah, I did. What’s your name, kid?”

“Mamexi.”

“Mamexi, you have five seconds. Where are the girls being held?”

Mamexi looked over at the dead man and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

He held the pistol against the youth’s left ear. “One, two…” For a moment, he thought the kid was going to stay clammed up. It was one thing shooting a dying man, another killing an unarmed teenager, even in these circumstances. There were other options he could try first…

“Okay! They sold them.”

“Where are they?”

“They kill me if I say. They have important connections.”

Freckle scratched his rather large ear. “Christ! The Cartels. Let’s just fucking shoot the bastard.” He took out his pistol, playing along.

Mac glared at the kid. “We don’t give a fuck about anyone’s connections.”

Mamexi said nothing, but shook his head.

Mac detected a hint of a smile. That needed to be dealt with quickly and firmly. “You think I’m bluffing?”

The smile turned to a smirk. “You American. Not allowed shoot unarmed kids.”

This was a situation they had encountered in the ‘Stan and Iraq, and they had developed numerous creative ways to counter such an attitude. Giving Mamexi a severe stare, Mac went over to a pile of boulders and dislodged a rock about the size of a human head. A black scorpion underneath scuttled away to find another place to hide. He lugged the rock back. “Hold him,” he said.

Scotty grabbed the kid’s feet and Termite held his arms so he was stretched out on his back.

“Mamexi, this rock weighs about fifty pounds. When I smash it onto your kneecap, it’ll cause at least as much damage as a bullet fired from my pistol.”

The kid’s eyes bulged. “You wouldn’t—”

He slammed the rock down, crushing the kneecap into a mash of ligament and tendon. Mamexi blacked out. His knee swelled to four times its normal size. Bob turned away, a strangled sound coming from his throat. When the kid came around, he screamed so loudly they had to move away until he’d recovered a semblance of normality.

Mac spoke in a calm voice. “Now, Mamexi, if you’re smart you’ll believe me when I say I will do the same to your other knee.” He stooped to pick up the rock. “Maybe the Cartel will find you. Then again, the wild dogs and Gila monsters might finish you first.”

Mamexi leaned over and retched up a foul-smelling muck, groaning.

Mac raised the rock above his other knee.

“No! Please! In God’s name! I tell you,
señor
! All what I know…” He took a short breath, groaning from the pain. “They take them in a truck to Juarez. They fly them out. I not know where. Please… That is all I know.”

“Who did they sell them to? Who?” He wiggled the rock, about to drop it.

“Wait!” Mamexi screamed. “I…I hear them talk about a gringo. ‘The Frenchman’, they call him. No name. Just ‘The Frenchman’.”

“Please… no,” Sophia sobbed, all of her energy drained.

The man ignored her.

She felt like she was going to be sick again, but there was nothing left to retch up. She tried to pray, tried to take her mind away from the restraints binding her arms and legs, from the fact that she was naked and vulnerable to the man who was now inserting a cold metal instrument inside her.

“Please, God...” Sophia had tried to convince him she was a virgin, but he had insisted on violating her to check for himself. He’d undertaken more intrusive tests, too, including drawing blood. He was old, with gray hair, and he’d told her in English that his name was Dr. Gammal.

She glanced at the olive-skinned man in white shorts and a golf shirt who stood by the door staring, occasionally growling words she couldn’t understand. Another shiver rocked her body as the instrument was withdrawn. The dark, beady eyes and cold smile reminded her of a shark. So devoid of humanity, so cruel, looking at her like she was an animal, or worse.

The long journey had been a nightmare, bouncing along in trucks and noisy cargo planes. First, they had thrown Sophia and Danni into the back of a truck filled with crates of vegetables, barely enough room to move, struggling to breathe in air that reeked like steamed cabbage. Crammed in with them were two others, Jeanette from Toronto, and Erika, from Sweden, who explained in stilted English that she was an exchange student, taken in Mexico City. Jeanette cried as she told them three men grabbed her as she was walking through the grounds of her hotel to the pool. The two bottles of water they’d been given were soon empty, and they sucked water from the lettuce leaves in one of the crates. Sophia tried to reassure the others, to talk her own confidence up. Air trickling in through a small ventilation grill couldn’t disperse the heat and fumes, and after a while Jeanette began to retch. The stench was revolting, and soon all four of them had emptied their stomachs into a plastic bucket they found in the corner.

"I'm so sorry, Sophe." Danni said, as the truck lumbered along. "I wish I'd never suggested we go shopping by ourselves."

Sophia shook her head and held Danni close and said words she was not so sure of herself. "They'll get us back, I'm sure of it." Still, she cursed herself for nagging their parents to let her and Danni go shopping. It should have been safe, only ten minutes from their hotel. But it wasn’t. She’d read enough to know about pedophile networks and sex slavery, and the haunted faces of the other girls, visible in the rays of light coming through the ventilation grill, filled Sophia with dread.

Jeanette stopped crying, and her voice took on a resigned, stoic tone: "We're all girls... Even if they intend to ransom us, they'll probably rape us. Lock us up somewhere, maybe torture us… They might never let us go."

"Please," Sophia said. "Let's try to stay positive. We have to survive this journey. Help each other."

"Who are these people? How can they treat us like this, worse than animals?" Danni said.

"I think maybe it is the drug gangs," Erika said.

"How were you taken?" Jeanette asked Sophia.

"Just walking along the street back from the Plaza Mall in Tijuana. Two cops in a car stopped us. Made out we had drugs in our bags, and arrested us. They drove us out of town and dumped us in this truck."

Jeanette shook her head. “Oh my God. Cops? Even the freaking cops can’t be trusted here? What hope have we got, then?”

After what seemed like a lifetime, the truck stopped to refuel. They cried out for help, for water. The rear door opened. Two men stood there, holding guns.

Sophia pulled Danni close, determined not to be separated from her. "Try to stay together, okay? No matter what happens," she whispered.

Jeanette yelled: "Hey! I'm a diabetic! I need insulin!"

Sophia added, "She needs medicine. Please…" She tried to speak calmly. "You understand?"

The two men spoke briefly in Spanish. The one with a moustache said: "I understand." He threw four bottles of water at them, then slammed and locked the door. The truck took off again. Gradually, the sulphury smell of diesel filled the compartment. Despite their attempts to keep her awake, Jeanette lapsed into unconsciousness, heaving labored breaths. The droning of the engine and the fumes made Sophia drowsy, and at some point she passed out. She awoke to Danni shaking her, whispering her name. The truck had stopped. She could hardly turn her head because of the thumping, shooting pain inside her skull.

After a few minutes the truck’s rear door was opened. Warm, fresh air flooded in. Sophia breathed deeply and squinted at the daylight outside. It looked like they were inside an old aircraft hangar. The distant roar of an aircraft taking off echoed off the walls and seemed to reverberate inside her head. The hangar door was closed, and two armed men stood guard.

Four smelly, unshaved men jumped up into the truck and roughly pulled the girls out. The hangar had several holes in its roof so she could see the blue sky, and even the brief glimpse of freedom was enough to give her a little heart. The men here were not dressed as police, like those who had kidnapped them, but they spoke Spanish. They must still be in Mexico.

They watched as Jeanette’s limp form was laid on the floor of the hangar. Sophia went to go to help her but was pushed back by a short man with fat hands. Danni and Erika were sobbing inconsolably. Two of the men shouted and waved their arms, apparently in an argument about what had happened. As the girls stared in horror, the two men carried Jeanette’s body to the back of the hangar and threw her into a dumpster.

The short man ordered them to strip, in plain sight of the leering men, then turned a fire hose on them as the men laughed at the spectacle. They whimpered as the hard, cold water pummeled them. Sophia closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself back home, safe in her room, but the force of the water knocked her off her feet and sent her reeling on the concrete.

When the dousing was finished, another older, balding man tossed them some grubby towels and cotton robes, and once they had dressed, he handcuffed them to a chain. They sat on the floor and waited, wondering what would happen next. After a while, the balding man brought some tortillas and water. Exhausted, the three girls finally fell asleep, huddled together on the concrete floor. During the night, two more trucks arrived, each carrying kids, one who looked only about seven or eight. In all, ten girls and three boys were loaded onto a cargo plane that took off, heading east. On board, the terrified captives spoke in whispers, speculating about their destination and their fate.

"Do you think our parents have been contacted by the kidnappers? Danni asked.

Sophia shrugged. "I just hope they don't end up dealing with the cops who snatched us."

"Do you think they’d have taken us if our brothers had been with us?"

"Probably. They were cops. And Wade and Franklin are only fourteen, like that boy over there. They’d have probably taken them, too. Thank God Maddie decided to stay at college for Spring Break."