Stephen Leather - Breakout

The customs officer opened the wallet, took out one of the business cards and glanced at it, then tore it into quarters and tossed it into a waste-bin. ‘Trafficking undeclared cash, bribery and corruption, señor . These are very serious crimes and no reputable company would be a party to them. So either your company is not a reputable one, or they have no knowledge of what you are doing, and in either case, I see no need to speak to them.’

‘If you won’t speak to my company, then will you at least notify the British consul that I am being held here?’

The officer remained impassive and unmoving, other than to give a slow shake of his head.

‘I know my rights, ’ Scouse said, trying to keep his fear from showing in his voice. ‘I demand to speak to the British consul or a lawyer.’

‘You are not in a position to make any demands, señor . You have committed serious crimes and there are consequences of such things.’ He glanced at one of the policemen and said ‘ Sabes qué hacer - you know what to do.’

He handed the $500 from Scouse’s back-pack to the policeman, who pocketed it at once, while the customs officer stood up, picked up the flight case and walked towards the door. ‘Don’t worry, señor ,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’ll see that this reaches the right people.’ He laughed, and a moment later, the door clicked shut behind him.

Scouse watched with mounting fear as one of the cops took off his jacket, folded it and placed it carefully on a chair. He took a set of brass knuckles from one of his pockets, slipped them onto his fists and walked towards Scouse. The other cop pulled a night-stick from his belt.

‘Do you speak English? Habla usted Inglés ?’ Scouse said, panicking. It was the only Spanish phrase he knew. ‘I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’

‘We already know everything we need to know, gringo, ’ the cop said and the next moment the brass knuckles smashed into Scouse’s face. He heard the crack of a bone and tasted blood in his mouth. More punches and blows followed, one upon another, the cop with the brass knuckles working over his face and upper body while the other one beat Scouse’s legs and arms with his nightstick. The blows came so fast and so frequent that before long he could no longer tell where one ended and the next began. All he knew was an unrelenting agony that was only ended with a final blow to his head with the nightstick, like a flash of blinding light through his brain, and then he blacked out.

As Scouse came back to consciousness, he let out a groan. He had a pounding headache, every bone in his body seemed to ache and he had the metallic taste of dried blood in his mouth. He ran his tongue over his bruised and swollen lips, then slowly opened his eyes. He was in a dark cave or cellar that, as far as he could tell in the dim light, seemed to be carved out of solid rock. The wall he could see was stained and green with mould, and there were names, dates and phrases in Spanish crudely scratched into the stone. There was also a stench of sewage so powerful that it was almost palpable and when he stirred and moved his arm, he heard the dry scraping rustle of cockroaches as they retreated into the even darker shadows at the foot of the walls.

As he struggled to sit up, pain from scores of cuts and bruises stabbed at him and he let out a yell of shock and revulsion as a blood-red millipede fully three inches long that had been hiding in a fold of his clothes, slithered to the floor and scuttled away. As his head cleared a little more, he looked around. The only light was coming from a tiny metal grating set in an ancient looking door, studded with iron bands, at the head of a flight of a dozen stone steps leading up out of the cellar. Slowly, each movement agony, he got on to his hands and knees and then his feet, and pulled himself up the steps.

He put his face to the grille and peered through it. Outside it looked to be late afternoon, with a low sun reflecting from the blue-painted walls flanking a dusty yard. Twenty or thirty men, all Latino-looking, and dressed in filthy, nondescript clothing, shuffled aimlessly through the dust, or leaned against the walls, or sat cross-legged on the ground.

He called out, his voice cracking from the dryness of his mouth and throat. ‘Hey! HEY! Anyone? Help me?’

There was a movement nearby and a powerful figure loomed over the door. His arms were tattooed with gang symbols, his nose had been broken and never properly re-set and his shaven head was criss-crossed with scars, both the neat white lines of razor cuts, and the jagged, puckered marks left by clubs or broken bottles. ‘ Cállate gringo ! - Shut the fuck up.’

‘Water please. Water.’

‘ Agua, gringo? Quizas más tarde - maybe later.’

‘Where am I?’ Scouse asked.

The man laughed. ‘ En el infierno, gringo - in hell.’ He spat in the dust and turned away.

CHAPTER 2

Lex Harper was in the gym on the ground floor of his condominium building, working out with weights. He generally preferred exercising outside, but in recent months the air pollution in Pattaya had reached seriously unhealthy levels and it had been a while since he had run along the beachfront. The appalling air quality was the result of farmers burning agricultural land prior to planting new crops, a construction boom and pollution from the growing number of cars that were gridlocking Pattaya’s roads. Pattaya was a beach resort and the wind coming off the sea generally kept the air moving, but most of the country was now wreathed in smog and the Government regularly issued warnings for elderly people and at-risk groups to stay inside. Harper didn’t consider himself in an at-risk group, at least not from air pollution, but he figured that exercising indoors was definitely the healthy option.

He held a twenty kilogram weight to his chest and did thirty squats, then sat on a bench and did ten arm curls, left and right. He was just getting ready to start his sit-up program when his mobile phone rang. It was in his bum bag, along with an Irish passport, two gold chains, and a wad of currency, Thai baht and American dollars. The bag was always close by in case he had to leave at short notice.

He wiped his face with a towel and answered the call. He didn’t recognise the number, or the voice of the girl, but he definitely recognised her name: Myfanwy. She was the girlfriend of an old mate of his, Scouse Davies, and she was clearly distraught.

‘Lex, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know who else to call, and Scouse always said that if he was ever in trouble you’d be the guy he’d come to.’

Harper put his towel around his shoulder and sat down on a weights bench. ‘Calm down, Myfanwy,’ he said. ‘Just tell me what’s happened.’

‘I don’t know what’s happened,’ she said. ‘That’s the problem. He’s just disappeared.’

‘And you’re sure he’s not just on a bender? He has been known to go walkabout.’

‘We’ve got a kid now, Lex. A daughter. He doesn’t do that any more.’

‘Okay, so what can you tell me? What makes you think he’s disappeared?’

‘He always rings me when he’s away working, every day without fail, even just a text message, just to tell me he’s safe and to check if me and Grace - our daughter - are okay. But I’ve not heard from him in well over a month.’

‘So what was he doing? Where was he? And who was he working for?’

‘He told me he was doing Top Secret work for a company that was involved in kidnap negotiations.’ The silence from the other end of the line made her pause. ‘I know he could sometimes exaggerate things, Lex, but this was the real deal. He flew all over the world for them, but he was mainly in South America.’