of here. Stay behind me. There are landmines everywhere around the coca fields. Don’t make a move unless I tell you. Do you understand?” he asked again. And again the boy nodded.
For once Ignacio was quiet, no screaming or crying or incessant chatter. If Torres had known all it would take was seeing two men murdered to shut him up, he may have been tempted to do it long before now.
Torres reached into his pocket and produced a long piece of string and a bolt. He made sure the bolt was firmly attached before he turned to Ignacio. “Follow me. Come on, Girl.” He motioned to the dog whose ears went up when she heard her name.
Torres ran towards the coca fields. There was no need to need to tread lightly until they reached the far side. He only looked behind him once to make sure Ignacio was following him. If he did something stupid that would get them caught, Torres would pull out the knife and slit his throat.
They ran until his lungs burned, Girl beside them. Torres pulled out another piece of meat and gave it to her. “Sit.” Torres surveyed the land that lay ahead of him. The most treacherous part would be the hundred feet that surrounded the coca field. After that, they would hit jungle again, and the IEDs would be less of a fear.
Torres took the bolt and threw it, holding the end of the string so he would not lose it. Once it hit the ground, he slowly dragged it back to trip any wires attached to the landmines. Once he had pulled the bolt back they were ready to move. “Go,” he said to Girl.
The dog ran ahead, stopping in the exact spot the bolt had fallen.
“Good girl.”
Torres turned to Ignacio. “Stay behind me.”
“OK.”
The first step was the hardest, when Torres’ stride took him from the safety of the coca fields to the uncharted periphery, but after that he was committed. There was no question: they were going.
When they reached Girl, Torres through the bolt again, repeating the process. It was painstaking; they only gained another ten feet with each treacherous cycle.
“They’re going to come for us,” Ignacio whimpered.
Torres shook his head. “We have an hour. They won’t look for the guards until they don’t show up for the handover.” He had planned it. This escape had been months, no, years in the making. First was training Girl, and then he had to find the bolt and string. He would have preferred metal wire, but that was in short supply in the jungle. The hardest part of the plan was getting the guards to trust him enough that their guns were not always trained on him, that part had taken years.
They were right to be wary of him.
“But,” Ignacio began again.
“Shut up,” Torres snapped.
He pulled the string back slowly. Again the ground was clear. But just in case, he had Girl. “Go,” he said.
“I can hear them,” Ignacio whimpered.
Torres shook his head. “You don’t. That’s just your mind fucking with you. Stay focused. They’re not looking for us yet.”
Ignacio began to cry. It was a quiet pathetic sound like he was trying to swallow the sobs. Torres put his hand on the knife. The blade was already sticky with drying blood.
“Keep walking,” Torres commanded.
“I can’t.”
“We’re almost back to jungle. It will be safe there.” He was lying of course. There could be landmines anywhere. But he would tell Ignacio anything to shut him up.
“I hear them!”
Torres’ head snapped round. “You don’t.” He spoke as calmly as he could. He didn’t want to kill Ignacio; he was just a kid. But he would. “Keep walking. Follow my footsteps. Put your feet exactly where I put mine.”
Ignacio’s lip trembled.
“No. No. Focus. We are getting out of here. We are going home. We have people waiting that love us; that want us back. We need to get back for them. Your grandmother. Tell me what your grandmother is going to make for dessert.”
“I can’t.” His face crumbled.
“Yes you can. We have twenty feet left. Stay strong. Is your grandmother going to make flan? Or maybe a tres leches cake.” What Hispanic grandmother didn’t have a recipe for those desserts?
“I can’t.” Ignacio began to shake. “I can’t.”
Before Torres could stop him, Ignacio began running for the jungle.
“Fuck.” Torres should have killed him. He was going to die anyway and at least Torres would have made it painless.
Ignacio was almost back to the jungle when an IED exploded.
“Fuck!” Torres screamed again as he ran to the boy. Fucking idiot!
Ignacio’s screams reverberated through Torres’ chest. They were a guttural sound; unlike anything the boy had produced before and unlike anything Torres had heard before. Except in Iraq…
“Oh, fuck. What did you do?” Torres dropped to his knees. There was blood everywhere. Girl barked madly.
“Oh, fuck,” Torres said again. It was Ignacio’s leg. It had been blown clean off, just above the knee. No, clean wasn’t the right word, it was messy as fuck, bits of bone and muscle hung off him with nails and shit imbedded into what was left.
He screamed louder and the dog matched the intensity with her bark. They were going to get caught. Torres reached into his waist. In seconds he cut the dog’s throat before he turned to Ignacio.
The boy was as good as dead. The explosion hadn’t killed him; the human feces in the bomb meant the wound would be septic in days if he did not bleed to death first. Ignacio was going to die. How he died was up to Torres.
The room was cold. It was August in Texas but Beth wished she had a coat. She could not stop shivering. Her whole body shook with it, even her fingers. She pushed her hands into the pockets of her suit pants to keep them still.
Was there a reason morgues were always in the basement? Like coroners’ jobs weren’t depressing enough, they got stuck in the icy bowels of buildings. This wasn’t her first morgue or her first body. She was somewhat of a professional at this point. When she first started at the DEA she could not even look at crime scene photos without flinching. She vomited when she had to identify her first body…and her second one…and all of them until she met Torres. She stopped flinching at photos when he left. She had no idea if the two events were related, but she no longer felt like she was going to be sick when she saw a dead body. She was hardened but not apathetic. She still wondered about their lives and the families they had left behind, she just didn’t feel anything any more.
“I haven’t seen you in a while. How have you been?” Alan smiled at her over his bifocals. He had a clipboard in one hand and a Styrofoam cup filled with coffee in
