Sounds of Silence (15 page)

Pablo approached the table and laid his palms flat in order to make his well-developed muscles bulge against his shirt. “You were going to be sure she died in the house fire, and look how
that
turned out. If you’d done your job right, we wouldn’t be in this fix right now, with my ears numb from listening to this kid ask questions!”

Camino scowled. “What am I, a certified arson specialist? I’m a
bodyguard.
Here, you can fix your problems with a gun. In
el norte
it’s not so simple.”

Pablo ignored this ridiculous, whining excuse. “And when I tell you to take care of the Border Patrol agent what do you do? You give him a bump on the head.”

“A bump that would have killed any normal man.” Camino gestured wildly with a cigarette as if it were a conductor’s baton. “I tell you, Pablo, these people have some sort of magic charm protecting them. I do not know what you think you can do against such luck.”

“Luck, bah!” Pablo slammed his hand against the table, making Camino jump. “I make my own luck. I have one more job for you.”

“I’ve been out all night. I’m hungry.”

“You can fill your fat stomach after you find a place to put the boy while I talk to the woman.”

Camino glanced at the boy. “Why? She’ll be more likely to do what you want if she sees the kid.”

“I, unlike you, plan for all eventualities,” Pablo snarled. “I don’t trust her to leave the police out of it, and I’m not taking a chance on losing my hostage if things go south.”

“Oh, all right,” Camino said, heaving himself out of the chair. He lumbered over to the boy, picked him up, and slung him over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, I know just the place.”

The Escort jolted over the bumpy streets of Ciudad Acuña as Isabel twisted and turned her way through the city. At the fork on the south side, she chose the westbound highway.

The terrain grew more and more rocky and desolate, the highway winding between dark, looming hills. The waning moon cast small, broken shadows at the feet of the occasional cottonwood tree or mesquite bush as her headlights flashed across them. Houses and barns—poor, tumbledown buildings made of cinderblocks or plywood—were few and far between. What livestock Isabel saw reminded her of the starving cows in Potiphar’s dreams.

Watching the odometer, she slowed when she’d driven about nineteen miles and started looking for the cement factory mentioned by the kidnapper. There it was. She checked the clock on the radio. She was about thirty minutes early, which meant she had a long, nerve-racking wait in the dark on this deserted highway.

Father, I’m sorry for being angry with You earlier. I don’t know anything. I don’t know why You’ve let me go through this valley of fear. All I can do is hang on to You. All I can do is—

She heard a sneeze. A muffled, but distinct sneeze coming from the back seat. Heart bumping, she pulled into the gravel road leading to the factory and stopped. She knew what she was afraid of, but prayed she was wrong.

Getting up on her knees, she leaned over and reached down. Her hand came in contact with a silky mass of hair and two small hands over a face. She closed her eyes in dismay. “Mercedes, you didn’t…Oh, what am I going to do now?”

Chapter Fourteen

I
t was nearly four a.m., with the sun beginning to turn gray over the eastern horizon, by the time the chopper lifted off with a jerk and a sway. Eli’s stomach lurched. He wasn’t exactly acrophobic, but he’d never enjoyed the adrenaline rush of flying the way Owen did.

By aerial view, the Rio Grande twisted through the hills, outlined by spots of weak light that resembled the markings of a rattlesnake. Closing his eyes to shut out the nausea-inducing sight of the ground receding into a black dot beneath, Eli adjusted the headphones to a more comfortable position. He could hear Owen talking to the control tower in Piedras Negras, discussing wind shear, altitude and flight pattern, but he tried to concentrate on how he was going to find Medieros.

Artemio had discovered that Medieros’s boss, Governor Avila, had a military base in the hills west of Acuña, where militia groups trained at odd seasons. Nobody could prove it, but DEA had long suspected they hired out as mercenaries for the drug cartels operating on both sides of the border. Medieros was apparently pretty high on the organization’s food chain.

Eli certainly had enough to occupy his thoughts. Still, he had a hard time keeping his mind off Isabel.

Phyllis had radioed through headquarters ten minutes after cutting him off, to say that Isabel had left a note in the kitchen. Unhelpful at best, it had simply said she would be back in a day or two. An equally vague note, addressed to Eli and unfinished, had been found in the trash. Phyllis didn’t know what to make of the fact that Mercedes had disappeared as well.

He knew having his attention divided was dangerous, but he couldn’t control the worry that gnawed at his stomach. Where could Isabel and Mercedes have disappeared to?

Hampered not only by the darkness, but by the natural camouflage of the hills, they kept having to fly lower than even Owen, cowboy that he was, found comfortable.

“I think Artemio’s playing pin-the-helicopter-on-the-map-of-Mexico,” Owen growled, banking left, a hair’s breadth away from a flat-topped mesa that had seemingly sprung up out of nowhere. “Get him on the radio again.”

Eli squinted through the binoculars. “The GPS says we’re close. Make one more pass—”

Suddenly the radio crackled in the headset. “Headquarters to Broncbuster, come in.”

Marlon Dean
. Eli clenched his fists.

Owen lifted the chopper and set it to hover. “HQ, this is Broncbuster.”

“What’s your twenty?”

“We’re about fifteen miles south-southwest of Acuña.”

“Good. Get your brother on the mike.”

“I’m here,” said Eli. “What’s up?”

“How much do you know about the situation at the Hatchers’?” asked Dean.

Not knowing how far Dean could be trusted, Eli hesitated. “I’m aware of a problem there,” he said carefully.

“It’s more than a problem.” Dean paused. “It looks like your lady has taken things into her own hands.”

“What do you mean, sir?” Eli looked at Owen, whose mouth hung open.

“Berto Guillermo passed her through the checkpoint on the bridge an hour or so ago. He almost didn’t report it, but something she said didn’t ring true, so he did some checking. Thank God he called me. I don’t know where she’s going, but if she’s in contact with the kidnapper, things are going to get dicey.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“I’m going to send you straight to Avila’s camp. I want you to bring them both out alive.”

“How do you know—”

“Carmichael, I admit I’ve given you a hard time because I didn’t quite trust you, but I’ve been keeping an eye on this situation all along. How do you think you got permission to take that chopper across the border?”

Eli exchanged glances with Owen. “Hold on a minute, HQ,” he said, and flipped the transmitter so that only Owen could hear him. “You think he’s straight up?”

Owen shook his head. “Don’t know. My gut wants to trust him.”

Eli stared out into the slate-blue sky. The thought of Isabel driving into Medieros’s camp, with or without Mercedes, made his blood turn to ice. He didn’t want to believe it was possible. “Owen, Dean could be leading us into an ambush. The guy’s been trying to get rid of me ever since he transferred in.”

“Say the word and I’ll turn the radio off. We’ll keep looking.”

What it boiled down to, Eli supposed, was faith. There were very few people on the planet that he’d trust his
own
life to, much less that of Isabel and Danilo.

Since he was probably going to get fired anyway, he readjusted the radio so that Dean could hear him. “Give me one reason to believe you.”

Even over the radio, Eli could hear the tenseness in Dean’s voice. “You know Petrarca reports directly to Avila,” he said. “I’ve been working with them for nearly a year, trying to bring down Medieros. I know exactly where he is.”

Before she got out of the car, Isabel surveyed her surroundings. She’d halfway expected the kidnapper to have somebody waiting for her here. But there was not another vehicle in sight. All she saw, looming above her like a horror movie set, were the steel-and-concrete towers of the factory. Thank God, she still had some time before the kidnapper would call.

Okay, deal with Mercedes first
. Opening the back door, she helped Mercedes out of the car. Isabel pulled the little girl close, dismayed at the rigid, defensive posture. “It’s okay, I’m not mad,” she mumbled, mostly to herself, stroking Mercedes’s hair reassuringly. “But what am I going to do with you?”

There was no way under the sun she could bring the child with her any farther. If she did, the kidnapper would have no incentive to release Danilo.

It followed, then, that she would have to somehow hide Mercedes before he called.

Isabel’s gaze was drawn again to the monstrous shape of the factory. It looked like it hadn’t been in use for quite some time. One entire wing had collapsed, and huge sections of the roof were ripped away. Only the central tower seemed intact.

Is that where I should take her? Oh, God, she’ll be so terrified if I leave her here. Why couldn’t she have stayed with Pamela like I told her to?

With sudden clarity Isabel realized that her own self-protective behavior often got her into trouble as well.
Father, is this the kind of obedience You get from me? Please help me know Your will right now
.

She didn’t get a bolt of lightning or a pillar of cloud to lead her, but somehow peace filled her as she led Mercedes by the hand toward the building. She stopped in front of the steel double-door and stood there looking at it, squeezing Mercedes’s hand. What would she do if it was locked?

Just a little bit of faith, that was all she needed. She grabbed the door handle and yanked. It opened easily, and she looked over her shoulder to make sure they were really alone.

Yes. Taking a deep breath she entered the building with Mercedes. She found herself in a cavernous concrete entryway with a broken front window that revealed dust motes circling in a shaft of early-morning light. The foyer rose at least three stories, with a set of iron stairs leading to a railed mezzanine circling the second floor. It was truly a bizarre structure, but Mexican architecture was often almost free-form, compared to modern American engineering.

She looked down at Mercedes, forcing a confident smile. “Let’s find a place for you to wait.” When her voice bounced back at her, she looked around nervously. She didn’t see or hear anybody else.

Shuddering, Isabel led Mercedes toward a door labeled
“oficina,”
opening off the entryway. She tried the door, found it unlocked, and walked into a small office sparsely furnished with a cheap desk and chair. A couple of rickety crates sat under a tiny window which admitted just enough light to make the dingy room depressing, but not scary.

Mercedes slipped her hand out of Isabel’s and signed,
I wait here
.

Yes. You wait
. Isabel knelt and hugged Mercedes again, then did her best to explain in sign language that she had to be a brave girl and pray for Danilo.

Mercedes’s bottom lip trembled, but she looked up at Isabel with trusting brown eyes.
I’m sorry I not obey
, she signed.
I love you
.

Isabel repeated the sign back to Mercedes, trying hard to smile.
I forgive
, she signed.
I’ll come back. Don’t leave for any reason
.

Mercedes nodded; then, with a poise staggering in one so young, she walked around the desk to sit in the chair.
I obey
.

Choked with tears, Isabel shut the office door behind her. There was no way to lock it, so she’d have to trust God to guard Mercedes until she could come back for her.

As she left the building, a chilling question occurred to her. What if she didn’t make it back? And what if the kidnapper searched the factory?

What if she and Danilo both were murdered, leaving Mercedes abandoned in this godforsaken place? Isabel swallowed against a lump of dread.
You can’t have brought me this far to leave me
.

But how could she make sure Eli would be able to find Mercedes if, God forbid, Isabel didn’t make it out alive?

She could try calling him again.

The kidnapper had said no law enforcement interference, but there was no way Eli could get here before she went in. Her hand was being forced, though she couldn’t say whether it was by God or the adversary.

Call him
.

She hadn’t been able to reach him earlier, and she was in an even more remote area now.

Try, Isabel
.

Only fifteen minutes remained before the kidnapper was to call. Shaking in her haste, she pulled the phone out of her pocket and dialed Eli’s cell phone number.
The cellular customer you have dialed is currently unavailable
….

In tears, she canceled the connection. Okay, now what?

Phyllis. Maybe she could find him. Eli had made her save the number before he left.

She sagged in relief when Phyllis answered immediately. “Beatty here.”

“Phyllis, it’s Isabel. I need to get hold of Eli, but he’s not answering his cell. Do you know where he is?”

“Are you all right? Where are you?” Phyllis demanded.

“I’m…perfectly fine,” Isabel said. “I just had an errand, an emergency. Please help me find—”

“He’s looking for you, hold on and I’ll patch you through.”

To her astonishment and joy, a minute later she heard Eli’s voice.

“Isabel, where are you?” His voice was rough with anxiety.

“I’m in Mexico. Mercedes is with me—I have to put her someplace safe. I want you to know where, in case—”

“Yes, but wait for me, I’m coming to get—” His voice was interrupted by static, and Isabel panicked.

“I can’t wait, he’ll kill Danilo.”

Apparently he heard her just fine. “Isabel, don’t you dare go in there by yourself!” She’d never heard Eli raise his voice before. He sounded like a crazy man.

“I have to. Listen, I didn’t mean to bring Mercedes, but she hid in my car. So I’m leaving her in an abandoned cement factory on the southwest highway, nineteen miles outside town. You can pick her up here when this is all over.”

“Isabel—”

“I’ve got to go now. Eli, I—I love you.”

“Wait!”

Isabel closed the phone.

Lord, please help him forgive me
, she thought as she walked back to her car.

“She loves me,” Eli said numbly, staring at Owen. “I’m going to kill her.”

“News flash,” his brother said irritably, “everybody in Texas got that message but you.”

“Owen, she’s going into Medieros’s camp alone. Apparently she’s almost there. We can’t get there in time.”

Owen’s expression turned grim. “Then we’ll just have to hurry.”

Isabel’s cell phone rang at the exact moment the clock on the radio changed from 4:59 to five o’clock.

She somehow managed to find a calm voice to answer. “Hello?”

Now that he had her on this side of the border, the kidnapper had apparently decided voice distortion was no longer necessary.

“Mrs. Valenzuela. I am looking forward to meeting you,” he said in Spanish-accented but clear English. His friendly tone made Isabel want to hurl the phone out the window. She took a hissing breath through her teeth, and he chuckled. “I am going to give you instructions on how to get here. You are at the concrete factory, correct?”

“Yes.” She couldn’t make herself be polite, indeed saw no reason to.

“Ah, perfect. You are a most resourceful young woman. I congratulate you. I trust you have taken good care of my little friend Mercedes. I can’t wait to see her again.”

Isabel closed her eyes, breathing hard. “I want to speak to Danilo.”

“I’m deeply sorry, but that is not possible right now. You will be able to speak to him soon enough. Wait in your car. My men will arrive shortly.”

Fifteen minutes later a battered green pickup drove out of the mountains. Already frozen with terror, Isabel hardly registered the barrel of a rifle pointing at her from the passenger window. The truck rattled to a stop beside her car, and the driver—a wiry Mexican dressed in brown camouflage—got out. His taller companion kept the gun trained at her head.

“Good morning,
señora
,” said the driver in English. “I am Ortiz, and I will be your escort today.” He laughed as if he had made a fine joke. “Delgado, if you will please tie the
señora’s
hands I will—Wait.” He looked around, frowning. “Where is the
niña?
”

“I left her in the trunk as I was told to.”

He seemed not surprised that Isabel would be the kind of person who would tie up a seven-year-old child and leave her in the suffocating heat of a car trunk. “All right, just leave her there. I will drive your car. We do not want anyone to steal it, heh?” He grinned at her. “Delgado, look in the trunk to make sure the good
señora
is telling us the truth.”

Isabel nearly vomited. She had prayed he would be too lazy to look. She got out of the car, ready to try to grab the gun or some equally foolish stunt, but Ortiz grabbed her hands as the taller man wrenched her keys from the ignition and popped the trunk.