about her laugh. If he were lucky, he would dream about her. He didn’t very often but every night he thought about her and hoped he would.
It was almost time to make an escape. Girl was trained. He had one chance.
Tomorrow.
*****
His skin burned. The sun sat directly above him, radiating heat across his shoulders. Torres willed the sun not to move. Once the morning capitulated and let itself be conquered by the afternoon, his time in the fields would be over for the day. Coca leaves were supple in the morning when they were still wet. As the day wore on they dried and it became harder to pull them from the branch without tearing your skin in the process.
When he was first brought to the jungle, he had to wrap his hands in scraps of material to protect them. Even then, they blistered and bled but now he did it with his bare hands. It only hurt if he caught a branch the wrong way and it ripped off a callus, even then he rarely noticed until he saw the blood dripping from his hands.
It was worth it, the blisters and blood, just to feel the sun, but it was always over too soon and he was moved back into the jungle, under the dark canopy to continue the process of turning the simple coca leaf into the deadly white powder that entrapped millions.
A guard shouted that it was time for Torres to prepare yesterday’s leaves. They were dry now, ready for the powdered cement to be sprinkled over and then put into the 50-gallon drums and soaked in gasoline. That part wasn’t so different than his time in Los Zetas. They used 50-gallon drums and gasoline too – to burn bodies. At least the cocaine didn’t have the stench of burning flesh.
“El Capitan is coming. I think tomorrow. I heard them talking,” the boy said. He followed Torres around more closely than the dog. He couldn’t shit without the boy. He was by his side in the field, as they stood over the drums, and at night.
His name was Ignacio. Torres didn’t want to know his name, but he told him anyway. He also told him the name of his grandmother and his sister and the girl at the supermarket that Ignacio was sweet on. Torres didn’t give a fuck about any of it but he listened because the talking meant Ignacio had stopped crying at night. There was no more screaming just incessant talking. Occasionally Torres would nod but he wasn’t even sure that was necessary, Ignacio just wanted to talk.
“I think they’re scared. No one has ever seen him. What do you think he looks like?”
Torres shrugged his shoulders. There was always talk of El Capitan coming. The guards would get worried when a visit was imminent, the beatings would become more brutal, more frequent, but the time would come and go without an appearance. It was a cycle that played out every few months but Ignacio was too new to appreciate that El Capitan had the same chances of appearing as the Easter Bunny.
Like Ignacio, Torres had been anxious the first time he learned of an impending visit. He had not been able to sleep as he waited for the elusive leader to appear. Torres had waited a long time to come face to face with him. He knew him by another name: El Escorpion, but there was no doubt that it was the same man.
Torres wondered if he knew the DEA called him El Escorpion. He wouldn’t like it. He clearly had illusions of being a great military leader, that is why he called himself the captain and made his guards wear camouflage. They weren’t soldiers; they were gang members.
The time had come. All the other prisoners had been taken away to be fed. It was just Torres and Ignacio and the two guards that watched over them. Torres still wondered if he had made the right choice in asking that Ignacio be allowed to help him with the clean-up.
The job of dumping hundreds of gallons of toxic chemicals into the water supply belonged to Torres for no other reason than he was the strongest. He could lift the drums so he got to help destroy the fragile ecosystem of the Amazon. The chemicals had to go somewhere; making cocaine was a dirty business, so why not pour them directly into the river? It wasn’t like mothers got water for their babies out of the rivers, or farmers got water for their fields…but actually they did. And it was all poisoned thanks to a demand for an addictive white powder.
He hadn’t told Ignacio his plan, he had only said his back hurt and he needed his help to dump the waste. It showed just how stupid the guards were that they thought nothing of Torres asking for the scrawny boy to help him. The prison camp was full of men but he would ask for the runt to help him? Idiots.
When it came to Ignacio, Torres had two choices: he could murder him in his sleep or he could take him with him. He couldn’t leave him behind. Leaving him to fend for himself would require a cruelty he didn’t have. He could shoot people at point-blank range, but he wouldn’t leave anyone to suffer. He might very well get the boy killed in the process, but at least he wasn’t leaving him behind.
Torres took out a piece of meat from his pocket and fed it to Girl. Her time had come. He gave her a quick pat on her head. She was a good dog.
He shot a backward glance at the guards. They were sitting on the ground smoking cigarettes. Their machine guns were slung behind their backs, out of the way. Torres patted his pockets, making sure he had everything. There was no point in trying if he didn’t have everything.
He needed to be fast. Speed was the only thing that separated him from freedom, that and hundreds of miles of jungle and several dozen landmines.
“Here,” he said to Ignacio. “Help me pick this up.” He pointed to a blue drum filled with chlorine. The gas burned when it hit the lungs. He was careful to turn his head to the side so as not to breathe it in directly.
The boy nodded. Together they bent to pick up the container. Torres waited until Ignacio’s fingers were below the drum and then he dropped it, crushing his fingers.
The boy screamed. Now was his moment. As he hoped, Ignacio’s cries were enough to distract the guards.
He pounced.
In an instant he was behind the first soldier. He took the man’s knife and slit his throat. He tried to scream but there was just a strangled gargle. Before the other soldier could react Torres was behind him. With one slash of the blade, his artery was cut. Blood spurted from his neck in pulses. Every beat of his heart brought him closer to death, and Torres closer to freedom.
Torres wiped the knife on his trousers and then slid it into his waist band. He may need it later. He searched through the soldiers’ pockets, taking everything he could find. There was no telling what he would need.
Ignacio continued to scream. Torres had to shut him up or the other guards would come.
“Stop,” Torres commanded.
The boy’s eyes were wide. His jaw shook.
He thought Torres was going to kill him too. Torres lifted his hands, palm out. “I’m not going to hurt you. Stop screaming or the guards will come and they’ll kill us both.”
The boy nodded his head. His mouth remained open like his body was not sure what to do next. His hands were still trapped under the drum.
“I’m going to move this off you. It will probably hurt more as your blood flow returns. Don’t scream. If you scream, you’re dead. Do you understand?” Torres did not specify who would be killing him if he screamed but they both knew it would be Torres. The boy would be dead before the soldiers even registered his cry.
The boy nodded.
Torres
