Kidnap and Ransom (38 page)

Upriver there was a boom, followed by a series of similar percussions. It sounded like firecracks. Kelly froze.

“Mierda,” Landa spat.

A wave appeared around the bend.

Landa issued orders to his men, then turned to Kelly and yelled, “Hold on.”

The wake lifted the boat up, the propellers churned air. Kelly clutched the siderails, fighting to keep her balance. As the skiff slammed back down in the water, the propellers caught. The boat bucked wildly from side to side, nearly capsizing. The cop at the wheel powered down the throttle, shouting as he tried to keep them afloat.

The waters surrounding them stilled.

“What happened?” Kelly asked.

Landa ignored her, calling out another command. The boat accelerated again, jetting upstream.

The canal ahead was clotted with debris. The driver slowed the boat as they approached it. Kelly recognized brightly painted wood from trajineras, now in jagged pieces. More boards, plain this time. A shoe. As they passed it, Kelly was horrified to see a leg, but no body.

“Oh my God,” she said. “We’re too late.”

Forty-Six

Jake came to with a jolt. Disoriented, it took a second to remember where he was, what had happened. Something hot ran down his face. Swiping at it, his hand came away red: blood. He craned his head. He was floating in the canal—thank God he’d landed faceup. The water surrounding him was filled with chunks of concrete, plastic chairs, brightly colored logs.

A massive cloud of smoke shrouded everything. Through it he could see the boardwalk. It looked like a giant had punched holes through it. Burning boards canted up at all angles. Some sections had collapsed completely into the canal. The remaining docks were filled with hordes of panicked people running in every direction.

But that was only the right half. The rest of the piers were unscathed. He’d been able to stop the chain reaction before it progressed too far. Jake blew out a sigh of relief.

The sound of a baby crying. Jake spun himself around. It was hard to see over the junk floating around him, he was almost completely penned in by it. He crawled on top of one of the thicker logs nearby, then carefully sat up to look around.

Jake spotted a woman treading water with one hand, her other arm wrapped around a baby. She was frantically fighting to keep the child’s head above water. Just past them another body floated facedown. The canal churned with people, some swimming for shore, others motionless.

Fighting through the debris, Jake made his way over to the woman. As she slipped beneath the water’s surface, he managed to grab hold of her collar. He towed her to a large hunk of floating wood.

“Grab hold,” he said.

She didn’t appear to speak English, but tucked the wood under her arm and leaned on it, raising the squalling baby farther out of the water. Jake pushed on the slowly guiding them through the glut toward a flight of stone stairs that had probably served as a launch before the docks were built.

As soon as her feet hit the steps she was out of the water. She dashed up the stairs, clutching the child to her. Jake turned back. An elderly man ten feet away clumsily paddled toward him. Jake swam over and assisted him to the stairs. Other people descended the staircase and helped him to the top.

Many of the victims had struck out for the opposite shore. Most appeared to be all right.

The sound of sirens approaching. Good, he thought. Help was on the way. He dug out his cell phone to call Kelly and tapped the first few keys before noticing the blank screen. Submersion in the water had destroyed it. He could wait around for the authorities to arrive, try to convince them in broken Spanish to help him pursue Stefan. He dismissed the thought. The scene was too chaotic, no one would bother with a crazy American.

Jake’s view was obstructed, he needed to find a better vantage point. He fought a wave of exhaustion as the adrenaline rush abated. His feet seemed to weigh a hundred pounds each as he staggered up the stairs. The flight ended at an alley that sloped slightly up. The buildings on either side were undamaged. An ambulance skidded to a stop at the far end of the alley. Jake turned and scanned the scene behind him.

Paramedics had arrived and were bent over the most severely injured. Across the canal, Jake spotted the boat Stefan had been on. Now empty, it bobbed against the opposite shore.

In the confusion, it would be easy for Stefan to slip away. Jake couldn’t allow that to happen. This act of madness probably only marked the beginning of what he had planned.

The canal and surviving docks were a mess, but maybe he could cut through the surrounding streets to reach the opposite shoreline. Deciding, Jake headed up the alley. He emerged on a narrow street clogged with emergency vehicles. He dodged and clambered over them. The road arced right. Jake peered into each alleyway as he passed, trying to find one that was clear. Five minutes in, he spotted one and turned down it, passing two men bearing a teenage girl on a stretcher. She wailed while clutching a broken arm, her face covered in burns. Jake kept going.

At the end, he took a second to get his bearings. The collapsed docks were to his right now. It looked like Stefan hadn’t bothered with this section, probably because it appeared residential, mostly rickety apartment buildings. Farther down the buildings that had been perched on stilts weren’t as fortunate. The roofs of a few poked above water, while others tilted down as if they’d dropped to their knees in submission.

A small footbridge led to the spot where Stefan’s boat had been beached. A group of survivors were using the trajinera to fish casualties out of the canal. Jake raced across the bridge.

It terminated in marshy grass. There was a smaller channel here that hadn’t been visible from the other side. Jake followed it, ducking through a copse of trees. He emerged on the edge of a boggy field. Tufts of grass sprouted plastic bags, cans, other signs that life on the canal had spilled over here. Incongruously a cow grazed in the center of it. It turned its head to regard him, then lowered back down and grabbed another mouthful of grass. The idyllic scene stood in stark contrast to the chaos and destruction less than a hundred

The canal branched off into two channels: one ran north, the other east. Stefan could have stashed a boat and headed down either of them. Or he could have taken the land route across the fields.

Jake debated. It had been at least fifteen minutes since the docks blew. Stefan had a hell of a head start. He scanned the ground for footprints, anything to suggest which way Stefan had gone.

He had a clear line of sight across the field for about a half-mile in either direction. The field was muddy, more bog than anything else. It would have taken Stefan time to traverse it, probably long enough that he’d still be visible.

So Jake struck a course parallel to the larger canal headed north. A few hundred yards in, he was ready to give up. There was no sign that a boat had been left here, no fresh footprints or other indication that someone had recently passed through. If Stefan had stashed a motorized boat, he could be a mile away by now.

But before he headed back to the docks, Jake figured he had nothing to lose by venturing a short distance down the other canal. As he approached the first turn, a bright red bird flitted out of the sky, landing at the base of a tree twenty feet away. It appeared to be bathing, ducking its head and shaking off droplets. After a minute, it flew away with something bright clutched in its beak.

Curious, Jake went to check it out. When he got closer, he saw a small bowl tucked among the protruding roots. A tiny set of blue-green paper wings floated on top. It looked like some kind of offering, different from those he’d seen back in Mexico City. The water was clear. Someone had set it there recently.

Jake straightened and scanned the surrounding area. Maybe Stefan hadn’t been able to resist witnessing his handiwork before taking off. There might still be time. It was a long shot, but if he headed back for reinforcements, chances were they’d never catch up.

Jake moved as quickly and stealthily as possible, sticking close to the river’s edge. His eyes panned back and forth between the still waters of the canal and the fields alongside it. The foliage grew thicker, palm trees ceding way to others he didn’t recognize. The canal sank away beneath him, banks steepening. Tree branches arched over it as if reaching for their brethren on the other side.

Jake was about to give up when he spotted a footprint in the mud beside the canal. He slid down the embankment for a closer look. He was no expert, but it appeared fresh, water was still pooling inside it.

Jake frowned. The canal was empty, not even a ripple marred the surface. It was wider here, easily thirty feet across. He tried to peer into the depths, but the water was brackish and murky, the surface slick with patches of oil casting iridescent rainbows. He wondered if this canal led to a road.

There wasn’t much more he could do—the trail seemed to have gone cold. Kelly might be back at the docks by now. He should go see if they could persuade the locals to join the search, maybe set up some roadblocks. It was frustrating. No matter what they did, Stefan always seemed to slip through their grasp.

Jake took hold of a tree root jutting out from the side of the embankment, preparing to haul himself back up.

When a hand reached out and grabbed his ankle, dragging him below the surface of the water, he was too surprised to cry out.

Kelly’s chest clenched at the sight facing them. The police skiff slowed as they inched their way through a floating debris field. One of the cops stayed in the bow, using a pole to clear the larger items from their path.

Landa stood beside her, jaw tight as he surveyed the damage. “Do you see this man Stefan?”

Kelly shook her head, although Stefan wasn’t who she’d been looking for. She scanned the water, the docks, then the shoreline. A few people still flailed in the canal, but most of the survivors had already made it to shore. Still, the water was littered with bodies surrounded by dissipating pools of red. She prayed that Jake wasn’t one of them.

“We should help these people,” she said.

“There are already men doing that.” Landa gestured toward men in uniform maneuvering boats across the canal. “Do you know where he might have gone?”

“No,” Kelly said, defeated. She sank down on the bench seat at the rear of the boat. “I have no idea.”

They pulled up alongside a trajinera filled with shivering people dripping water. Survivors were still climbing on board and the sides had sunk dangerously low. Landa called out to the passengers. A few chattered over each other in response, excitedly pointing toward the deserted shoreline opposite the docks.

“Gracias!” Landa said. Without warning, the police skiff roared away.

“What did they say?” Kelly asked.

“A crazy man left the trajinera and got in a smaller boat. He went that way.” Landa pointed to where a narrower channel snaked through the trees.

“He could be anywhere by now,” Kelly said.

“He will head back to the city along the main canal. We will have another boat come from that end. He will be trapped.”

“Okay.” Kelly hesitated. “I should go back to the docks to look for my fiancé.”

“We have no time. If he was hurt, they already are taking him to hospital. If not, he will wait for you.” Landa turned away, cutting off any discussion.

The skiff swung around a corner into a narrower offshoot of the canal. As they rounded the bend, Kelly saw that it split farther: a wide channel headed north, the smaller one east.

“How can you be sure which way he went?” Kelly asked doubtfully.

“The main canal leads back to Mexico City. It is deeper. A boat would run aground on the other one,” he said dismissively.

“Maybe someone should check it just in case,” she suggested.

Landa shook his head. “I cannot spare men for that.”

“I know this guy. I’ve dealt with him before,” Kelly argued.

“The other canal ends in a marsh. No road, nothing. You want to go see, fine. But we are going north

“Drop me off,” Kelly said. It would be just like Stefan to thwart authorities by taking an unexpected escape route. And if they were right, she’d double back to the docks to look for Jake. For some reason she couldn’t quell an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

The driver throttled down, easing the boat into the shallows. Landa waved impatiently for Kelly to jump off. She did, landing in a few inches of water. Without pausing, the boat gunned back into the center of the canal and roared away, churning the water white-green in its wake.

Kelly awkwardly made her way to dry ground, her feet sinking in the boggy mud. A cow in the middle of the field gazed at her. “Did a big white guy come through here?” she asked.

The cow stopped chewing for a second, then lumbered away.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Kelly said. With great care, she picked her way through the mud and headed east.

Forty-Seven

Jake’s attacker dragged him backward underwater. Jake lashed out, kicking, but the vise grip around his throat was relentless.

His feet brushed the canal bottom. Jake drove his weight back and down, pinning Stefan. After a second, the pressure released. He pushed up and away, kicking hard. Stefan grabbed his leg again, but this time he was prepared. He landed a hard blow, felt something crunch under his heel. Paddled as hard as he could until his head broke the surface.

Jake gulped in air, swimming frantically until his knees hit solid ground and he stood. He eyed the water as he backed toward shore, braced for another attack. His hand went to his belt for his knife, only to realize he’d lost it in the explosion. He’d have to hope Stefan wasn’t armed.

A bald head emerged from the water ten feet away. Jake tensed, arms by his sides, ready to fight. Then he saw the nasty-looking knife clenched in Stefan’s hand.

Stefan didn’t speak. He eyed Jake, sizing him up.

“What you tried back there—it didn’t work,” Jake said. “Most of those people survived.”

Stefan approached slowly. He was talking under his breath, a steady murmur of what sounded like Danish again.