Brett Battles - The Collected

“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, US,” she said, not missing a beat.

Moreno stared at them for a second, then forced out a laugh. “Is that what this is about? Money? You want my money?”

“Oh, we’ve already taken your money. The one hundred fifty thousand, plus the other one point seven million.”

Now the captain was starting to look nervous. “You’re lying.”

Quinn shrugged. “Could be. I’m sure you’ll check later. I mean, if there is a later. But you’re wrong. This has nothing to do with your money.”

“So you didn’t take it?”

“Oh, we took it. We’re just not going to keep it. That’s dirty money. Bad karma. None of us wanted any part of that. We’ve already spread it around to a half dozen charities that will make your old cash feel better about itself. Your money’s gone, and it’s not coming back.”

Moreno’s jaw tensed. Through clenched teeth, he said, “If this isn’t about money, then what is it about?”

“Are you dense? The manhunt. What happened to the man you apprehended in Reynosa?”

“We didn’t catch anyone. The manhunt failed.”

Quinn shook his head. “Try again.”

“I’m telling you, we didn’t catch anyone.”

Quinn pulled the GLOCK’s trigger. The cop screamed in pain as the bullet tore into his ankle.

“Go ahead. Yell as loud as you want,” Quinn said. “No one can hear you.”

“ ?Puta madre, hijo de la chingada! ”

“Now, about that man you captured,” Quinn said, his voice calm.

Moreno grimaced with pain. “I…I don’t know who he was.”

“But there was a man?”

A hesitation. “Yes.”

Quinn pulled out his phone and showed the man a picture of Nate. “Is this him?”

Moreno squinted at the image, then nodded. “Yes.”

Not that Quinn expected any other answer, but actually hearing it made him pause for a second. “Where did you fly him to?”

“Outside…outside Tampico. Please, you have to get me to the hospital.”

“Where outside Tampico?”

“Please!”

Quinn pointed the gun at the man’s other ankle.

“Okay, okay,” Moreno said. “There’s…a facility there, north of the city…maybe twenty miles.” A pause as a wave of pain rushed across the cop’s face.

“That’s where you took him?”

“Yes.”

“Why there?”

“It has a private…runway.”

That wasn’t good news. “What happened when you got there?”

“We took the prisoner into one of the buildings and locked him in a room. Then…then…oh, God.” His eyes shut again and his face pulled taut. There was a hiss as he sucked in air through his teeth, and his head began to wobble.

Quinn, careful to avoid the growing puddle of blood on the floor, stepped closer and slapped Moreno’s cheek. “Stay with us.”

He glanced at Orlando and motioned down at the man’s wounded foot.

Orlando nodded, cut off a piece of the cord, and tied it around Moreno’s leg a few inches above the shattered ankle, stemming the flow of blood.

Quinn grabbed the cop’s chin and gave it a little shake. “Hey, what happened after you put him in the room?”

A few seconds passed before Moreno’s eyelids parted. “We…waited.”

“For what?”

“A plane.”

Exactly the possibility Quinn had been concerned about.

“And then?”

“The man who…hired me was on it. He had us help his people load the prisoner…on board.”

Again, Quinn held his phone up in front of the cop again, this time showing him the picture of the bald man.

“Yes, that’s…that’s Mr. Cameron.”

“Then they left?”

“Yes.”

“Where to?”

“I don’t know. My job…was done.”

“Which direction did the plane go when it flew off?”

Moreno looked at Quinn as if he didn’t understand.

“Which direction did it go ?”

“East. After it took off, it turned and…flew east.”

The only thing east of Tampico was the Gulf of Mexico.

Moreno’s head started to loll forward. Quinn put a palm on the cop’s forehead and pushed back. “Tell me about the plane. Everything you remember.”

For the next few minutes, he extracted as much information out of Moreno as he could. The aircraft was a prop-driven cargo plane, not too large. When pressed, Moreno was able to recall part of the number on the tailfin, and the color scheme: white with two stripes-one blue, one black. There was also some kind of logo near the door. A black bird sitting on a blue branch. That was all Quinn could get before Moreno passed out.

They field-dressed the man’s ankle, then pulled off his shirt and wrote with a black marker across his chest CORRUPTO -corrupt-and below that, the number of Moreno’s Cayman account with the name of the bank. While they had removed a good portion of Moreno’s money, they’d left enough in it so that there would be no mistaking that the cop had been on the take.

Fifteen minutes later, as they neared the airport to catch the first available flight to Tampico, Orlando called the personal cell phone number of a Federal she had previously identified as on the up and up.

“Who is this?” the man asked as he answered.

“Unimportant,” she said. She gave him Moreno’s name and the address of the building they’d left him in. “You should probably hurry. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing he didn’t deserve.”

“What?” the man asked, surprised.

“You’ll figure it out.”

She hung up.

Liz was sure that at some point she would be discovered. If her brother had just stuck to the city, it probably would have been easier for her to stay hidden. But instead, he, Orlando, and Daeng had driven out into the countryside, stopping at some sort of industrial building before heading farther out on the highway, and turning off the road and driving into the wilderness.

Liz had motioned for her driver to follow them, but he refused.

“ No hay camino ahi. Yo no voy alla abajo ,” he said.

She got the gist of what he meant, so she had him continue down the highway for a quarter mile then pull off to the side.

He’d been shooting her suspicious looks in his rearview mirror since not long after they’d left the airport. In an effort to placate him, she’d handed him a thousand pesos-about seventy-five dollars. It helped for a while, but now the look was back.

Liz tried to ignore it while she kept her attention focused on the place where her brother had left the road. When the other car finally showed up again, it turned back toward the city.

“Okay, go, go. Um, vamonos ,” Liz said.

Once more she and her driver took up pursuit.

It wasn’t long before Jake turned off the road again, this time driving behind several cinderblock buildings. Liz had her driver turn down the road between the buildings and a gas station, and drive slowly past the road Jake had turned on.

She spotted her brother’s car parked along the back of the buildings.

“Stop,” she told her cabbie. She glanced back at the Pemex station. “ ?Necesitas gas? I’ll pay.” She mimed giving him money.

“ Si. Gracias .”

He drove back to the gas station and pulled up to the pumps. While he filled the tank, she climbed out of the car and walked to the back of the lot so she could see behind the other buildings. The rental car was still parked at the side of the road, but unlike before, Jake and his friends were standing outside.

She wished she could hear what they were talking about, or, at the very least, knew the reasons for all these stops. They had to have something to do with Nate, but what?