Blood Tide Read online

  “Miguel?”

  “I despise him. He has all of my father’s bad traits, and none of the good. My father was at least loyal to those whom he loved and trusted. Miguel only loves himself.”

  Teresa said she wanted to be alone for a while, and went back to Carl’s apartment.

  Carl ordered more drinks.

  “What happens next?” I asked, feeling mellow and content with the world. Drinking to celebrate life certainly has its upside, although Carl and I would pay with throbbing skulls tomorrow.

  “We go back to Mexico.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  IT DIDN’T HAPPEN that way. Instead Mexico came to us.

  We had no idea that would happen. Crossing into America, as far as we were concerned, meant that not only were we relatively safe from the narcos, but so was Teresa.

  Not that the evil arm of the sicarios ended at the border, of course. But the word on the street was that the Sinaloans had killed Teresa during the shootout on Don Geraldo’s estancia, so we figured she would be safe if she lay low in San Diego.

  However, what did concern us, albeit mildly, was the vehemence with which the Sinaloans denied this. Ovidio Loera de Guzman, Chapo’s son and heir, even delivered a taped message to the mass network Televisa claiming Teresa had been abducted by gringo mercenaries and taken across the border.

  Well, he would say that. But what we didn’t know was that this was given some credence as Pancho Guerra, before his death, mentioned to Miguel that I had phoned saying Teresa was alive. As a result, Miguel sent his sicarios out in force onto the streets of Tijuana to get to the bottom of the persistent rumors.

  It all came together when a neighbor in the condo Teresa owned told a CT gunman that about a week ago, Teresa had asked how to get to Calafia.

  Miguel sent a group of sicarios to the seaside village to investigate. The questions asked, sometimes with threats, were accompanied by photos of me and Carl taken from our ‘employment’ records.

  These they showed to all and sundry, and eventually some surfer said ‘si’, he had seen the Yanquis. They had rented a cottage on the beach

  After that, it went south for us, something of which we were blissfully unaware. Brett’s cellphone retrieved from his body, was checked, and sure enough, my number was listed after phoning from Pablo’s house.

  The number was handed to cartel contacts in telecoms, who put out an alert to be activated whenever the phone was used. From there, it was a simple matter of hacking the signal.

  Fortunately, I had not used my phone after contacting the DEA once I crossed the border. But Carl did. His battery was low, and I gave him mine to contact Alejandro Dumas.

  “What’s been happening?” the lawyer asked. “We are hearing weird things about the Sinaloans and CT fighting on Don Geraldo’s property.”

  “All true,” replied Carl. “But Kelly and I escaped.”

  “Andrea is with me. She urgently wants an update for her blog. Can you give her one?”

  “I’m going to hand her over to Kelly. He was in the firefight.”

  I gave Andrea a purple-prose description, leaving out Pablo personally executing Guerra as that would have every narco and his dog baying for his blood. I also omitted anything concerning Teresa, as the fact that we had freed a drug boss’s daughter while targeting said jefe was ‘complicated’. We also preferred to stick to the street story that she was dead.

  Andrea was ecstatic as only a journalist with a world-class scoop can be. Believe me, for them that’s more of a high than the stratosphere of crack cocaine. She said news of Guerra’s death had not gone public, and for the story to be broken by the phantom blogger Gustav Farques was priceless publicity. She headlined the cartel shootout with Henry Kissinger’s famous quip about the Iran-Iraq war: “Pity they both can’t lose”.

  We later heard the entire country chuckled about that, confirming Andrea’s belief that laughter is not only the best medicine, but a formidable weapon.

  The laughter did not last long. It was the last blog she wrote. The next morning, she was found with a rope around her neck, dangling from the pedestrian bridge at the border crossing. Her scrawny, naked body showed massive trauma from torture.

  The photos were splattered across the internet by the narcos, triumphantly stating the blogger Gustav Farques had been brought to ‘justice’ for lies about the cartels.

  Andrea’s last act of heroism had been to speed-dial Dumas seconds before she was captured. He jumped into his car and sped to the San Ysidro border. The queue was several hundred yards long, and overweight, fifty-year-old Alejandro sprinted the terrifying gauntlet for his life with CT gunmen in pursuit. He took two bullets in the back, but an exceptionally courageous U.S.A. border guard defied international protocol, left his post and braved the raging gunfire to drag him the final yards onto American soil.

  We heard the harrowing news of Andrea’s death from John Peters. I swallowed hard and long to stop a choke in my throat. She was one of the bravest people I had ever met. Just as Caysee had been.

  Both had died on our watch.

  ...

  THE PHONE BUZZED in my pocket. It was my mom. She was yelling.

  “Kelly — we’re being shot!”

  “What?”

  “Five Mexicans came asking for you. Dad slammed the door and grabbed a gun, but there’s shooting going on all around. I’m in the cellar.”

  “Phone 911. Now!”

  “I have. I can hear police sirens.”

  Everything clicked into place. The CT had got my folks’ details from my phone records, just as they had got Andrea’s and Alejandro’s. Now that my mom had phoned me, they would know where Carl and I were. And Teresa.

  We were at Carl’s apartment. He saw the look on my face.

  “What was that about?”

  “The narcos are onto us,” I said. “They’ve found my mom and dad.”

  As I spoke, there was a knock on the door. I looked through the spyhole. A Mexican.

  I drew my gun. “What do you want?”

  “Delivery for Carl Wilson.”

  I instantly swiveled sideways behind the wall as bullets perforated the door. Then stretched my arm and shot the spyhole out. The stupid narco was so confident he hadn’t moved. His face exploded.

  Carl grabbed Teresa and we raced down the fire escape. Fortunately, we were only one story up.

  My pickup was in the closest parking bay and we sprinted towards it. The narcos had by now broken into the apartment and spotted us from the windows, opening fire.

  “We’re going to my folks,” I said, putting my foot flat on the accelerator.

  We were too late for the actual gunfight, but the aftermath of bullet riddled-cars and splintered wooden walls was starkly evident.

  Then I saw someone being wheeled into an ambulance. It was my dad.

  I ran up and grabbed his hand. “You OK?”

  A nurse shook her head as paramedics struggled to push me out of the way.

  Seeing there was nothing I could do for him, I ran inside for my mom. She was sitting on the sofa with two nurses. She rushed towards me, hugging me ferociously.

  “Is dad OK?” I asked.

  “He’s alive. Sort of. The cops got here just in time.”

  “What happened?”

  “Two men came to the door asking for you. Dad asked why, and they said they were friends from Mexico. There were three other men in the car, and dad was suspicious. Said he would go and call you. Instead he got his old army Beretta, and told them to leave or die. That’s how it all started with everyone suddenly shooting. Dad shouted at me to go to the cellar.”

  “Did he get any of them?”

  “I saw one being dragged to the car when they drove off.”

  I hugged her again. Just couldn’t let go. “Everything’s going to be OK.”

  At that moment John Peters arrived. His face was grim. “Give me your phone and we’ll try and feed them some false information. But there is no doubt the
cartel knows everything about you. Your friends, who helped you — the lot. We may have to put you and your family into witness protection.”.

  I shook my head. “That’s not going to happen.”

  Peters knew that would be my answer. I think he would have been disappointed otherwise

  “We’ll lie low, and take all our families with us,” said Carl. “I know the exact place.”

  Alaska.

  PART THREE

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  DOCTORS EXTRICATED THREE bullets from my dad. Two in the abdomen, and one in the thigh.

  The most serious was the lower gut wound, and it was touch and go during eight hours of intricate surgery. But my dad is a tough nut to kill. He’s lived hard all of his life. Even when he came into money (thank you Saddam) he lived hard on the beach.

  In other words, he pulled through.

  Sadly, we weren’t there to cheer him on, as a DEA plane flew my mom and me to Anvik. My sister, thankfully, was out of the country, travelling in England with her new husband. Carl and Theresa were also on the plane.

  Chris, showing us much business sense as I have, cancelled a lucrative client’s booking to give my mom a luxury room, but for the rest of us, it was the yurt for fishing guides hidden behind the kitchen and latrines.

  Chris didn’t ask whether cartel sicarios were still tracking us. He didn’t query if we were bringing danger to his and Debra’s piece of paradise. He just stepped up to the plate and did what had to be done.

  But it did worry me. The last thing I wanted was to drag Chris and other innocents into this imbroglio, and it gave me sleepless nights. So much so, that I eventually voiced my concerns to John Peters, who had now returned to Mexico. He agreed it was unlikely the cartels would abandon the hunt for us, but doubted it would extend as far north as Alaska. In any event, he said he would email me lists of all passengers flying into Anvik with South American names or known Mexican connections.

  However, there are plenty of rich South Americans. Many of them like to fly-fish. A lot have also heard of Chris Stone, particularly as he was once kidnapped while fishing in Colombia and managed to survive the nightmare. *

  So … the first ‘suspicious’ name I checked was a man called Santana. Only a dumb sicario would come up with the name of Mexico’s most famous rock star, I reckoned, and sped out to Anvik airport to dispose of the hitman.

  It turned out that Santana was a Colombian with a ramrod military posture and one of Chris’ more frequent clients. And yes, he was a Santana rock fan. The end result was that I phoned Chris and said no need for him to fetch his new client as I was already at the airport.

  Mr. Santana was duly impressed that his outfitter not only had someone meeting him the instant he disembarked, but could also discuss the mysticism of his luminary namesake. Well, sort of. My music is country rock, but I had bunked in Afghanistan with a Santana fanatic who played the rock legend’s most iconic album, Abraxas, non-stop. He had also tried to explain in words a notch above sign-language the meaning of the lyrics.

  “You know, of course, that the cover quote on Abraxas comes from Herman Hesse,” I said with a sage expression.

  Thankfully, he did, and I dodged a bullet by not being asked to explain further. For all I knew about Herman Hesse was the band ‘Steppenwolf’ was named after his cult book.

  After that intellectual rather than physical close shave, in future I cross-checked the bookings register with all names on my DEA list.

  As it was, the threat did not emerge with Latin names. It was four Texans, who booked the moment Chris got a cancellation. That should have rung alarm bells, not to mention that they were not interested in hiring guides, something necessary if you wanted to catch fish in the Anvik. They just wanted a boat.

  What also should have jingled Mayday buzzers was that as soon as they dumped their gear, they sent up a camera on a drone to “check out river conditions”. But the drone went nowhere near the Anvik. Instead, it flew in the opposite direction over the camp, giving whoever was flying it a bird’s eye view of the setup. That included the guides’ quarters, where Carl, myself and Teresa were staying.

  Perhaps we could be excused for not being suspicious, but in our game, those mistakes cost lives. Also, what further put us off our guard, was that Nick, Sandra and Caitlin arrived that evening. Chris wanted it to be a surprise, so had not told us. As he had no spare rooms with the arrival of the Texans, Carl and Teresa were booted out of their yurt and moved in with me. Even better, in my opinion, was that Caitlin also said she would bunk with ‘us youngsters’ to give Carl and Sandra privacy. Chris grinned. Maybe he knew something we didn’t.

  It was a raucous reunion, celebrated at the lodge’s bar with other equally raucous anglers. At a table next to us were the Texans, smiling good-naturedly at our banter and even joining in on occasion.

  “You guys fishing tomorrow?” one asked, as they got up to leave.

  “Sure are,” Caitlin replied.

  “Which way are you going.”

  “Probably upriver,” said Carl. “That way the home trip is easier. And you guys?”

  “Downriver. But we may change our minds. If so, we’ll see you upstream.”

  When we adjourned to our yurts, I noticed that Teresa had moved her stretcher to be close to Carl’s. More surprising, Caitlin had done the same with hers and mine. In fact, it was for all intents and purposes a double bed.

  She saw me look at it and smiled. “Just trying to make the yurt less cramped. Don’t get any ideas.”

  I couldn’t sleep, and it was not just the fact that Caitlin’s head was on my shoulder, hair glinting in the moonlight streaming through the chimney gap. I was strangely on edge. There was something gnawing in my gut, a sixth sense I have learned never to ignore.

  Then I a heard something softly scraping at the canvas door. It was closed from the inside, latched loosely like a shoelace, and someone outside had slid a hand into a gap trying to untie the cord.

  I silently got up, gently moving Caitlin’s head, and crept to the door flap. The hand was still moving when I stomped down on it hard. Unfortunately, I was barefoot, so it was not as hard as it should have been.

  The hand wriggled free, and I heard footsteps pounding off.

  I woke Carl. “We’ve got company,” I whispered. He grabbed his pistol, and we loosened the door, creeping outside.

  Silence. Whoever it was had escaped. Using flashlights, we picked up two sets of tracks leading from the door to the forest. It would be pointless giving chase in the night, and we assumed they must be local Athabascans looking for opportunistic recycling of goods.

  However, when we told Chris and Debra that the next morning, they shook their heads.

  “It’s not locals,” said Debra. “They’re as honest as the day is long. We have excellent relations with them, and half of all proceeds from the lodge goes to a community trust fund. This is a genuine people’s project.”

  “It’s more likely to be some homesteaders on the run,” said Chris. “Some of those guys living off the grid do so for a very good reason.”

  We left it at that, but Nick — old warhorse that he was — said he was coming fishing with us, but not with a fly-rod. We knew what he meant, and both Carl and I packed HK416s — Delta’s favorite weapon — before setting off.

  The Texans arrived at the riverbank to load their dory as we set off and confirmed they were going downstream.

  “Good luck. See you in the bar this evening,” one shouted as I pulled the oars.

  None of us were over-energetic, thanks to the previous night’s alcohol combined with the fact that Carl and I had been skulking around trying to find intruders well past midnight. As a result, Caitlin and Teresa did most of the heavy lifting and caught a salmon apiece. That was enough for lunch, so we decided to beach on a white sandbank that would have done a Caribbean cove proud, apart from towering birches instead of palm trees. I placed my backpack against a rock, moved the hard metal butt of the rifle
out of the way, and within moments was asleep.

  So was Carl. Nick and the two women started grilling salmon fillets.

  I woke with a screaming ricochet zinging inches from my ear. Instinctively, I grabbed the backpack and pulled out the HK, then looked around for Caitlin. She and Teresa were still by the fire, shocked at the sudden violence, but Nick was already returning fire, shouting at us to lie flat.

  I let loose a volley, then dived towards Caitlin, pulling her behind the nearest rock. In the corner of my eye, I saw Carl doing the same to Teresa.

  We had been surprised, but the fact no one was injured while scrambling for cover was something to work on.

  Carl was about five yards away. I hissed, “Can you see them?”

  He shook his head.

  “In the woods to the left,” whispered Nick, crouching behind a rock ten yards to our left. Carl checked to see if I had heard. I nodded and let rip with another volley.

  A maelstrom of lead answered my burst, and Carl put up two fingers. Two gunmen.

  Caitlin jerked my arm. “I saw something move just behind us.”

  I swiveled, and noticed a small willow branch shifting slightly. I fired two shots. There was a muffled grunt. But no return fire.

  “I’ve got this,” hissed Nick, and slid backwards behind another rock.

  These guys were professionals. They had split up into two groups surrounding us. But the fact we now knew roughly where they were evened the odds slightly.

  Nick then fired. Silence. He raised his head for a moment and nodded. One was down.

  That left the attackers in front or on our flank. We knew there were at least two. I scanned the riverbank, trying to work out where I would attack from if I was in their shoes. It was just a guess — pretty much everywhere favored an ambush. However, we had some solid rocks providing cover. That was the good news. The bad was we were pinned down. Any shift from our current position could prove fatal.