Shadows Across America Read online

  “We’re not going to kill you if we don’t have to,” Suarez said, removing the gag from the woman. “We don’t have much time, so let’s get this over with quick. I don’t want any trouble, so don’t bother screaming or making yourself difficult.”

  She felt the pressure on her mouth release and stretched the muscles a little before answering. “I . . . I’d like to thank you for behaving like gentlemen. My name is Johanna. I know there’s no need for anything bad to happen. I only ask that you remember that we’re human beings . . .”

  Suarez looked at Ethan and clucked his tongue. Ethan nodded. Then he took hold of the tape wrapped around her head and pulled roughly, peeling it away mercilessly. It took hair, eyebrows, and a few eyelashes with it. Johanna screamed, and her lover shivered, shuffling nervously. At a sign from Suarez, Ethan lifted him up until he was on his feet with the chair still strapped to his back. He was forced to walk stooped over, almost on all fours, like a penitent pilgrim.

  “Take him away. He won’t want to see what’s about to happen to his girl.”

  When he heard this, the man spun around, but Ethan nudged him with his gun, and he waddled along like a tortoise. Suarez returned his attention to the woman, who opened her throbbing eyes with some difficulty.

  “Unless she’s someone else’s girl, of course.”

  When she heard this, Johanna’s expression changed immediately.

  “Look, honey, I don’t know if you thought we were a pair of suckers, but the two other guys have left, and it’s just you and me now, all alone. You know that I have no problem treating you any way I like, don’t you? Tell me. Look at me, and tell me.”

  She didn’t answer but stared defiantly back at Suarez.

  Instead of using violence or threats, he just reached for the top of the balaclava and smoothly took it off in a single movement. “If that’s the way you want it . . .”

  “No!” Johanna looked away quickly and shut her eyes tight. “I didn’t see you! You know I didn’t see you!”

  Suarez held her firmly, struggling to lift her chin from her chest. She squeezed her eyes so tightly shut that a drop of blood ran down from her shorn eyebrow. He addressed her again in his habitual monotone.

  “I think we understand each other, don’t we?”

  She answered hoarsely in a near grunt that choked her a little. “The keys to the car are in my handbag. You’ll find everything you want in there; that’s where I keep the money. Take what you want and go.”

  Suarez hesitated a second before putting the balaclava back on and going over to the bag. He emptied it out and picked up the keys. Then he went out the front door and walked to the car. He checked the doors, the glove compartment, and the trunk before coming back with a pair of briefcases, the smaller of which contained a laptop. When he came back inside, he locked the door behind him and went back to the woman, who was waiting patiently.

  “There’s ten thousand dollars inside. That’s my laptop and phone; you can keep them. You’ve won the lottery, but there’s nothing else—there’s no point going on with this farce.”

  Now that she had gotten over her initial fright, Suarez admired her calm professionalism. He knew that it would be easy to get precise information about Michi out of her in exchange for her freedom, but then that would seal the fate of her family and very probably his own along with it. He opened the larger briefcase, and the sight of the bills gave him an ambivalent sensation: it was a poisoned bounty that would only encourage the gang to come after them. But now that she’d told him about it, he couldn’t leave it behind. He mused over this as he opened the other briefcase.

  He turned on the computer and barked authoritatively, “The passwords.”

  “The email is Mimbura1983. The telephone unlocks with an L shape.”

  Suarez opened the email and checked the messages as he continued his thus-far simple interrogation. Following the plan, he asked about each victim in turn, all apart from Michi. Johanna couldn’t remember the names but told him to open an Excel file, which documented each of them along with the money earned, saying he could have it along with the laptop. She even made a joke about her bad memory and how she had to write everything down so as not to get confused. It was as though she were talking about a shopping list or a work schedule. Finally, Suarez moved on to Michi and got the answer he expected: she remembered her because she was a recent job but not the sum they’d received.

  “There’s nothing written here.”

  “I must have forgotten. It happens sometimes.”

  “Who was the client?”

  “What client?”

  “Come on, honey. We know you do jobs to order. I want the list of clients.”

  “We . . . we don’t have any clients.”

  “Aww . . . you’re going to force me to get tough.” Suarez put the laptop down on a chair, got up, and took hold of her hair.

  “I don’t know—I don’t know—I don’t know. It’s Greivin, my boyfriend—he deals with the orders.”

  “And what do you do? Don’t lie to me; we’ve been watching you. We know you’re not a fool.”

  “I deal with the kids. I organize the surveillance, and then I arrange the pickup and transport if needed. But we barely get any orders: one every year or two. That’s it. I don’t know; we hardly do any.”

  “The pickup, right . . . what do you mean by transport?”

  “If . . . if they don’t come here or to the city . . .”

  “You’ve taken someone from the city?”

  “That girl.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. We had a very rich client, and that’s what they asked for.”

  “Go on.”

  “I don’t know. It was on the instructions of some Europeans with a lot of money. Some lawyers who deal with Greivin. They came a few months ago and gave him the job. Money was no object; they gave us the job, and that was it.”

  “Go on.”

  “That was the job with the girl, and I don’t know any more. I don’t know why they wanted her.”

  “I don’t care about the girl. I care about the client. How was she transported?”

  “I don’t know; they had their own transport guy. A shitty truck driver they work with. He’s a strange guy—he travels around a lot. He told me that we might see each other again. That if he had more business for me, we could talk. He seemed to be trying to impress me. Said he was very important, but nobody paid him any attention. He said he took shadows across America, from one end to the other, that the continent belonged to him. He was very ugly, nasty. I didn’t like him. I gave him the girl, and he took her away. I don’t know where.”

  “I don’t give a shit about him or the girl. I want the client.”

  “Greivin handled that, really.”

  Suarez examined her closely. She wasn’t lying. “OK. The truck driver. How do you contact him?”

  “By email. He says that he has a hideout in Colombia where he goes when he doesn’t have any jobs. He wanted me to come visit him—you get the idea.”

  “Who’s the client?”

  “I don’t know. I told you. Greivin knows them. I don’t.”

  “Have they made any other orders?”

  “No, they didn’t want any more. It’s just money, you know?”

  Suarez looked at his watch. “Tell me about your other clients.”

  “What do you want to know? I’ve never dealt with them.”

  “Just like you told me before. I want all the information.”

  Johanna tried to share all the information she could think of with a willingness that amazed her captor, but he’d stopped listening. He knew what to look for on the computer. Finally, he found it: the conversation with the driver who’d taken Michi to another country.

  “How many orders have you had in the past few years?”

  “Well . . . about five or six. Yes, the girl was the sixth.”

  “Which of them?”

  She listed them plainly, without a hint
of shame, pity, or regret, like an office worker reciting a list of purchase orders. “And the girl the Europeans wanted.”

  “Fine, now let’s talk money.”

  Ethan was waiting impatiently by the back door next to his charge, who was slumped in the chair, his chin on his chest, blinded, gagged, and with his ears muffled, straining to hear the sounds he imagined must be coming from the room in front. Nothing could possibly reach him, as the conversation never rose much above a murmur. Ethan was walking up and down, almost tempted to remove the gag just so he’d have someone to talk to. He wondered what they’d do with the victim before they left and how to ensure her safety. He was running through different possibilities when he heard a rumbling sound that soon grew louder until it was unmistakable: one, maybe two, vehicles were approaching. As soon as he heard it, the prisoner lifted his head like an eager dog. Ethan looked at him and listened hard; the guy knew that someone was coming, and he knew exactly who it was. Ethan’s breath quickened, and the adrenaline started to pump in anticipation of what was to come. Keeping his eye on the prisoner, he walked carefully to the main door. Once there, he clearly heard the sound of two large vehicles.

  Suarez closed the computer as soon as he heard the sound and immediately asked Johanna who it was.

  “I don’t know.”

  She clearly did know and had been trying to keep the conversation going until they got there. He quickly shoved the cloth back into her mouth and assessed the different options. A few moments later he saw Ethan appear in the passage. Ethan held up two fingers. Suarez answered by waving at him to go back: they had to cover the two entrances, as well as the hostages. Ethan nodded and went back down the passage.

  Moving with extreme stealth, Ethan crouched down to avoid being caught in the headlights that shone through the windows as the cars pulled in to park. When he got to his prisoner, he put the gun to his forehead and hissed, “Ssshhh.” The prisoner nodded slowly.

  Suarez considered his options. They had no idea how many people might come: Just two or three others? Or had they brought more? He knew that if he and Ethan became trapped in there, it would be a massacre. These people weren’t going to trade the lives of their colleagues for safe passage. They’d rather see them all dead. The rumbling of the new arrivals’ engines disappeared simultaneously, and the lights beaming across the passage turned off. Suarez quietly crept away from his captive, took the cushions off the sofa, and went over to a metal column to take cover. The silence was intense. He counted his steps, checking the ground for anything he might trip over, calculating the exact distance. He checked the sitting figure again; she hadn’t moved. When he got to the column, which didn’t protect him completely but was something at least, he set up his improvised sandbags and lay down behind them as best he could, aiming at the door. From then on the seconds seemed to pass slowly, like drops of oil, as he tried to work out what was happening outside.

  Suarez listened for the sound of a fourth door closing, but it never came. It was the three others, the deputy chief and the other two underlings. Or at least that would make sense. Then he heard it: a fourth door. But an appreciable period of time had passed since the third. Were there several people in the back seat? No, they’d come out the two doors. Why the delay? It could be a fourth person, or they might have picked something up from a seat. If they had computers or some other package, that would explain it. Suarez felt his chest tightening, speculating on how many there might be.

  He looked at Johanna, who was staring straight at the door, gagged and unmoving, as though she were trying to control it with her mind. She knew—he had no doubt about that. She knew, and he saw the sweat on her forehead. She had the information, and he could see her doing the same calculations as him, planning something to get her out of a desperate situation.

  He wondered whether they might have found his car. They’d hidden it well, but these were professionals. He dismissed the paranoid thought from his mind: they weren’t looking for him; there was no reason they would even notice it. The silence grew thicker still, heavy, almost tangible. It was broken by the double beep of a car being locked and then another one. Why had it taken them so long to lock up? He could hear voices growing louder. Suarez tried to focus on the number of footsteps, ignoring the conversation, which didn’t tell him anything about how many there were. How far was it from the cars to the door? He tried to estimate the distance, step by step, the number of feet on the ground. How many people? It was impossible to tell. Johanna was still staring intensely, almost obsessively, at the door. Suddenly the footsteps came to a halt.

  Ethan also heard the beeps from the cars. They were followed by two male voices talking and an indeterminate number of footsteps walking away from him. They were heading for the front door, which was only to be expected. Should he take advantage of that to go outside or wait there with the hostage? The tension grew as he heard them move farther away, until suddenly they stopped, and one of the voices could be heard behind him, next to the outer wall. It was coming through the grate in the room where the kidnapped girl was being kept.

  There’s no way they can know, Suarez said to himself. They’re not making any effort to hide; they can’t know. Their conversation seemed relaxed, unless it was a trick. He waited. Nothing. The silence was all encompassing.

  The voice started up again near Ethan, who followed it with his gun all along the wall while still keeping the door covered. He traced out its path with the gun pointed at what he estimated would be the chest of a large man. The prisoner remained still. The voice moved away.

  Nothing. Some footsteps and someone saying something. Something about coming back. Laughter. How many of them were there? The footsteps were very close. Something in Suarez’s peripheral vision caught his eye. He saw Johanna rocking back and forth as though she were mentally disturbed. She was still staring at the door. She had started to make noise. Little by little she was getting the chair legs higher and higher, determinedly, making a clatter on the concrete floor. He wanted to motion to her to stop, but he knew it was useless; he couldn’t stop her without making more noise. If they kept on talking outside, they wouldn’t pay it any attention. Johanna was rocking as hard as she could, backward and forward. The chair creaked. They’d think it was just a normal sound. The clatter on the floor continued: tap, tap, tap. The chair creaked. The steps came up to the door and stopped. Tap, tap, tap. Louder and louder. Suarez looked at Johanna, the stupid bitch. Her whole being was focused on the movement. The chair was creaking a lot; the legs looked as though they were bending. Outside, they’d stopped talking. Suarez aimed at the door, or rather the space that would be there once it had opened. He heard a clinking sound. The chair almost tipped over. A key. He looked at his prisoner, who looked back with hatred in her eyes. A key slowly being inserted, each ridge slipping almost inaudibly into its slot. The chair buckled, and Johanna closed her eyes. The lock turned. The chair fell onto the floor with a bang, and she hit her head. The door began to open but stopped with the sound, revealing a thin vertical black line through which several bodies could be seen. Suarez didn’t hesitate.

  The interior of the warehouse exploded with a deafening roar accentuated by a metallic echo that expanded concussively into the space. Simultaneously, a flash burst from the end of the shotgun, blinding eyes that had grown used to the dark. Suarez was firing instinctively into the gap left by the half-open door, filling the metal with little dark holes. He fired again, and the second report merged with the echo of the first, making an earsplitting noise that was continued by the third and fourth shots. Anger, confusion, and chaos reigned. The door swung back against the frame again and again until it had almost been blown off. It was spattered with holes, giving it a moth-eaten look.

  After the fifth shot he waited a second for the smoke to clear and his ears to stop humming. In all the noise he’d been unable to tell whether there’d been a scream, but he was sure he’d hit his target. Hoping to take advantage of the surprise attack, he left his sh
elter and ran to the door to finish them off before they had time to react, but in the general chaos he’d lost sight of Johanna, who’d managed to shake off the hastily tied gag.

  Still deafened by the roar, she screamed with all her might, “He’s going to the door! To the door!”

  In reply a shot flew almost vertically from the outside up into the roof of the warehouse. Suarez dropped down and took shelter behind the column. The shot had obviously come from the ground. They might have been knocked down, but he’d lost the advantage. Two more wild shots accompanied the first, and Suarez crawled along the floor to avoid taking any more risks.

  While the echo of the second shot could still be heard, Johanna shouted again. “There are two of them! Another’s waiting by the back door!”

  Suarez turned to her and fired twice at point-blank range, instinctively, without thinking. The shot ripped open her blouse, making it billow like a parachute as her body, tied to the chair, arched back, absorbing the force of the shot. Then it fell limply forward as tiny shards of fabric rained down over it. In answer, a full salvo spat back from outside, forcing Suarez to crawl into a safe place while the bullets clanged against the metal around him. This was followed by a hail of sparks and explosions that echoed around the metal walls. The volume of fire increased. Now there was more than one gunman, and Suarez had only a few shells left. He fired at the door again to give himself cover and thought of Ethan, who might not know what was happening. He heard a whispering followed by the sound of footsteps running away and shouted, praying that his partner would understand.

  “Ethan: now! Now!”

  Ethan tried to decide where best to position himself. If they came in, he’d have to cover Suarez from the passage, but if Suarez repelled them, he should take them on outside, before they had time to react. The two different paths crisscrossed in his mind’s eye like rays of light. He had seconds to decide. He left his position and crawled to the room next to the one the hostage was in, the one that was closest to the cars. He listened hard and heard a weak dripping sound, as though from a faucet. He stopped in surprise. What was Suarez doing? Then he heard a bang, as though some furniture had fallen over. Following that, the passage lit up twice with flashes and roars, and he ran to the window. It had a screen, and when he opened it, he heard two shots from outside, shouting inside and out, people running around. He looked for the clasp to open the window but panicked and just forced it. Then he heard Suarez’s shout.