Holding The Line: A romantic suspense that will get your pulse racing

“I can’t,” he whimpered. “I want to go home.”

Torres closed his eyes. The boy wasn’t going home. But Torres wouldn’t torture him further by telling him that. “Just close your eyes and think about your home. Think about everything waiting for you. Think about what you are going to do.” The boy was going to die here, either at the hands of a soldier, or an infection, or, if he were lucky, Torres would do it himself. Torres would provide him the only humane ending out of the three so he hoped for the boy’s sake he had the chance.

“I can’t,” he cried. “I can’t remember.” He started to cry again, sobs tearing through his slim body.

Torres adjusted himself so he would see him but it was too dark to see anything beyond a dark shadow. “Yes you can. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. You just got home. Who is there waiting for you?”

After a moment the boy responded. “My grandmother is there. She waited for me. She knew I would come home.”

“Good,” Torres encouraged. “She hugs you. Feel her arms around you. Everything is fine now, you are home. Feel it. She is happy you’re home and she makes you a big meal. What does she make you?”

“Pork with chili and fresh tortillas.”

“Good. Taste them. The meat is tender. Feel it melt in your mouth. Taste the sting of the chili. It is hot but it doesn’t burn it just makes your mouth warm. Can you taste it?”

“Yes,” the boy answered. His voice was eager, almost frantic with the need to believe.

“Good. Think about your grandmother. Think about being home.”

The boy was quiet for a long time. Torres thought he was finally asleep but eventually he asked. “What do you think about?”

Torres did not answer right away. The place he went to in his mind was private; it belonged to him alone. The tastes and smells were his. Sharing them would taint them, make them part of this ugliness. He wouldn’t do that. “Home,” he said simply.

“Who is waiting for you?”

Torres’ gut clenched. That was a question he only asked himself when he was strong enough for the answer. He wasn’t sure who was waiting, maybe no one, but he lied to himself and let himself see her. He saw the deep crevice between her eyes that appeared when she frowned. He felt himself rub his thumb over the deep ridge and felt it smooth as her face relaxed into a smile. He smelled the apple scent of her shampoo. He felt her arms wrap around his neck and heard her voice saying “welcome home”. He closed his eyes.

“Are you awake?” the boy asked.

“Yeah.”

“What do you think about?” he asked again.

This time he did answer because the boy would be dead soon. “My woman,” he answered.

“Is she pretty?”

Torres smiled. “She is beautiful.” He vaguely remembered that there was a time when he didn’t think she was pretty. He thought she was plain, now he could not remember for the life of him how he had been so blind. How had he not seen it all along? She was beautiful. Even when he tried to be objective, he could not think of a more beautiful woman.

“What is she like?”

His smile deepened, requiring muscles he had not used in a very long time. “She’s not very tall but you wouldn’t notice because she is strong. Pound for pound she could take most men. You wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of her. She has a right hook that could shatter a jaw.” He warmed when he remembered her punching him square in the face, or more to the point the frantic needy sex that followed.

“What’s her name?”

Torres hesitated. That part he wouldn’t share. That was his. She belonged to him alone. He wouldn’t share her. “I call her Gatita,” he said instead. “Because she reminds me of a wild cat.”

The boy seemed satisfied. No more questions followed and no more crying, just the cacophony of the nocturnal jungle coming to life.

Torres closed his eyes and thought about Beth, about holding her, about her smile, 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.