Treasure of the Mayan King (2012) (11 page)

De Leon nodded his head. “I am aware of the consequences. But I suppose you didn’t come here to give me a lesson in economics, right?”

Hawkins waved some important-looking papers. “As you can see, I have my most recent reports here. It sure would be a pity to have nothing positive to say about your performance when our presidents meet next month!”

“My performance?” De Leon said, his eyes squinting at Hawkins as he slowly stood up. “Are you threatening me? Was this the sole purpose of your meeting? To advise me of my grades like some elementary school teacher?”

Hawkins smiled and raised his eyebrow again. “No, no, my friend, of course not, I have no authority or desire to make changes in your government’s assigned positions. I am simply a humble servant of the United States of America. Actually, I came as a friend; I am here to help you, to warn you, Mr. De Leon.”

“Warn me?” De Leon retorted, his hands on his hips. “Warn me of what?”

“The bottom line is this: we would like to see a deeper investigation into the internal affairs of your military organization. Cut the corruption, cut it out like a cancer, Mr. De Leon! There is a rumor circulating that if you can’t find the culprit, some people who are higher up than you or I may be looking for your replacement.”

“As I have already stated, Mr. Hawkins, I am deeply interested in getting to the bottom of this issue. I will find who in my department was capable of taking a military craft and rescuing Mr. Madrid. Kindly keep in mind that the investigation has just begun and it is too premature to start pointing fingers at anyone. Finding Madrid is and will continue to be my number-one priority. As for the ‘cocaine flowing across the border,’ if your government would educate its people to stop consuming the drug, then perhaps the drug lords would look elsewhere to peddle their poison. Now if you’ll excuse me Mr. Hawkins, I have much work to do. I do not have the luxury of time to sit here and take verbal abuses from you.”

“Yes, of course, I understand,” Mr. Hawkins said with a sardonic smile.

De Leon strode toward the door, signaling that the meeting was over. Hawkins put his papers away and walked to the door.

“Mr. De Leon, it was a pleasure talking with you. I will keep in touch. Good day.”

“The pleasure was mine, Mr. Hawkins. Good day,” De Leon said with a forced smile.

Once the door was firmly closed, De Leon snapped the pencil in two and glared at the couch Hawkins had vacated.

The next day De Leon picked up Arturo from his apartment and headed toward the prison. The traffic was heavy as always in Guadalajara; the trip was going to take a while. De Leon kept to himself, deep in thought.

“How are you today, Captain?” Arturo asked twenty minutes into the drive, more as a way to break the ice than a true bid for information.

De Leon sighed as he aggressively changed lanes in an effort to shave a few minutes off their travel time. “Not good. I need a solid break in this case, Arturo.”

“Did you find the reports of the helicopter flight schedules to be informative?”

De Leon nodded. “Yes I did, however, there was nothing earth-shattering in the reports to speak of. I will talk to you about those points later. For now, we need to coax information out of the prison guards and see if they can help in solving this situation.”

Up ahead the ancient towers of the prison jutted in sharp contrast to the modern buildings. As they drew closer, more and more details were visible: first the steel reinforcements built into the towers, then the old brickwork showing where the plaster had broken off, and finally even the vines clinging to the walls. De Leon parked in a reserved spot and got out, his mind focused and his steps brisk and sure.

After being cleared by the guards they walked up the stone steps to the building. As they moved, De Leon spoke quietly to his assistant.

“Let me do the talking, Arturo, this isn’t going to be easy.”

Mr. Verdugo had already been informed of De Leon”s visit. In minutes they were on their way to an interrogation room down the hall, a guard leading the way. De Leon fell quickly in step behind him as Arturo struggled to keep up. He was used to De Leon’s famous energy, but today it seemed overwhelming.

The floor had already been cleaned from what everyone was now calling “The Incident.” The fires had been put out, but a heavy stench of smoke and wet rags still filled the air. Guards were everywhere in sight, their guns at the ready, making sure nothing was amiss. Loud voices echoed in the hallways.

Pulling a set of keys from his pocket, the guard opened a heavy metal door and showed De Leon and Arturo into the room. Several ancient wooden chairs were the only furniture in the bare-block room. Thick iron barred the cracked and dirty window. De Leon appeared not to notice the grimy light and smell of sweat embedded in the walls.

A door opened on the other side of the room and four men in handcuffs were led in. De Leon paced like a caged lion, a hard look of disgust in his eyes as he spoke to the seated men.

“I hope you all understand why you were put under arrest. You were assigned to guard this prison. The incident that occurred recently has shamed our nation. It has demonstrated to the world our weakness and corruption! This is intolerable! I want you to explain to me why you behaved the way you did that morning of the rescue. First you,” De Leon kicked the chair of the first man seated on the left. “Tell me what happened!” he yelled.

The man did not raise his head as he spoke. “Captain…when I saw the helicopter flying above our prison I immediately rang the alarm.”

“So? Why didn’t you shoot at the helicopter?”

“I - I panicked, Captain, but I did shoot a few rounds at the helicopter.”

“Panicked?” De Leon barked. “It’s your job to defend the prison. We don’t pay you to panic.”

The guard sat silently, staring at the floor.

“And what about you?” De Leon said as he turned his attention to the second guard.

“I ran, sir. I also panicked, but I did fire at the aircraft too.”

“You did?” De Leon asked, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “You missed by two kilometers. Aren’t you a trained sharpshooter?”

Without waiting for an answer, De Leon turned to look at the other two, his eyes fiery. “Is that the same story for the rest of you men? You panicked, you ran?”

They nodded, none looking at the Captain.

“That’s your story?” De Leon asked, waiting in vain for a spoken answer.

De Leon shook his head, his disgust completely evident on his face. “Allow me to tell you what really happened. The truth is that you are all cowards, yes, but you are also liars! You should have defended the prison with your lives. The least, the very least you should have done is put up a good fight and fire at the helicopter. But your rifles were inspected, and not a single bullet had been fired from them! You want to know why? Because you sold yourselves out to Jose Madrid, that’s why. His men paid you off to let the helicopter in! What did this betrayal gain you? I’ll tell you. You will spend the rest of your days on the other side of the prison walls. I hope you all rot in there.”

De Leon took a breath and turned toward the guard that had brought them into the room. “Get this scum out of my sight.”

When the men had been hauled away, the guard returned, a perplexed look on his face. “How did you know they were bribed?” he asked.

“My assistant, here, Arturo, made some background checks on these men. About two months ago those four guards suddenly started to live ‘the good life.’ They bought fancy cars and trucks, parading them around their neighborhoods. Three of them moved into nicer homes. Now, you and I both know quite well that there is no way those guards could afford that, not on the wages they are paid here. With that knowledge it wasn’t hard to put the pieces together.”

De Leon and Arturo left the prison and headed back downtown through even heavier traffic. The trip to the laboratory was made in silence; De Leon was deep in thought and Arturo was disinclined to interrupt.

Once inside the modern glass and steel skyscraper, the two men took a secured elevator down to the basement. When the doors opened they proceeded briskly to their destination: a sprawling forensics and ballistics lab.

A man with thick glasses spotted them as they entered. “Ah, Captain De Leon, it is good to see you back.”

“Doctor Ernesto Rubio,” De Leon acknowledged, shaking the other’s hand vigorously. “This is my assistant Arturo Benavidez.”

The tall, thin doctor peered through his glasses at Arturo. “Ah, so this is the one I have heard good reports about - a pleasure to meet you, young man.”

De Leon quickly got to the business at hand. “I’m aware that you are a busy man so I will make this brief. What do you have for me? Any results yet?”

“Yes, yes of course. Follow me.”

The three men walked through a maze of humming, clicking equipment. Along the walls dozens of men examined vials of chemicals. Everywhere, information flickered from computer screens or spewed from printers.

Dr. Rubio tore the printout from one. “Here are the results of the metallurgical tests, Captain.”

As De Leon read the report, a smile came to his face, the trademark smile that meant one of his hunches had been confirmed. Folding the report up carefully, he placed it inside his coat pocket and turned back to Rubio. “The ballistics reports, Doctor? Do you have those?”

The doctor nodded and motioned them to follow as he moved to another room. Once there, he opened a folder and handed a report to De Leon. The captain searched the list until he found what he was looking for, and his telltale grin grew even larger.

“Ernesto, my compadre, you have done a wonderful job, as always. You have copies?”

“They are in a secure location, as per your instructions.”

“Excellent, excellent, again, you have done a most glorious job, doctor!”

Ernesto bowed from the waist. “I am always at your service, my captain.”

As they left the building, Arturo could tell that De Leon was in excellent spirits. It wasn’t long before the captain spoke.

“Arturo, I’m buying lunch today. I have much to tell you!”

In the heart of downtown Guadalajara, the two men sat in a remote corner of a posh restaurant. De Leon waited until after the server had brought their food before speaking.

“This is what we know so far: According to the flight reports, there were no helicopters scheduled to fly in the state of Jalisco. There were, however, a couple north of us in Sinaloa transporting a platoon of soldiers who were burning marijuana fields. Also, south of here in Chiapas three helicopters were scouting the mountains for rebels, but again, there were none here in Guadalajara. So the question is: where did the helicopter that rescued Madrid come from?”

Arturo took a sip of his cola before venturing an answer. “Perhaps the report was incorrect, or had been modified.”

De Leon nodded. “So you’re saying that someone inside our military modified the reports?”

“Yes, that has to be it!” Arturo said, looking pleased.

“That’s a possibility, but remember that some of the material is dated and your request included data several days prior to the incident.”

“True, true - but let’s say that someone changed the report once I went snooping around.”

De Leon grinned widely with satisfaction. “Recall, though, that I have the results from the lab concerning the metallurgical tests.”

“Oh yeah, what were the results?”

“Well, permit me to refresh your memory. When we first entered the prison, I saw some debris that caught my attention. The guards who had not been paid off had indeed fired at the helicopter, and pieces of its hull shrapnel were littered about the courtyard. When I picked up this shrapnel, however, I immediately realized that it was lighter than usual. I’ve been to several helicopter crash sites and have examined similar material, but this felt quite out of the ordinary. However, I needed the expert opinion of a metallurgist to confirm my hunch.”

Arturo raised his eyebrow in an expression De Leon knew well. After taking a drink De Leon continued. “Enter Ernesto Rubio, the metallurgist. He is an expert at studying the internal structure of metal and alloys; we do not have too many of those types of scientists in Mexico. There are only two laboratories with the equipment needed, one being in Mexico City and the other, thankfully for us the one here in Guadalajara. Dr. Rubio extended his studies and became a forensic ballistics expert. Now allow me to demonstrate the results of his analyses.”

De Leon held up a small and twisted piece of metal that had been in his jacket pocket.

“You’ll recognize this as one of the samples I directed you to send to the lab. It turns out that my hunch was correct! According to Dr. Rubio’s report, the metal debris that fell from the helicopter that rescued Madrid is not the same type of metal that our national helicopters are made of.”

Arturo’s eyes widened slightly. “What? How can that be? Hundreds of eyewitnesses claimed that it was most definitely our national aircraft that hovered above the prison!”

“I know, but the helicopters currently in use by the Mexican military are older models, and many of them can barely fly. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but it is only officials in the higher ranks, such as myself, that use newer helicopters. But all of them are accounted for. The helicopter in question, the one that invaded the prison, was supposedly an older model. It was, in fact, a very late model aircraft.”

Arturo rubbed his chin. “So you’re saying that the rescue helicopter was disguised as one of ours. Correct?”

De Leon nodded. “Indeed! The helicopter that came to the prison was manufactured in another country, but which one I am not sure. Somebody purchased it via the black market, smuggled it in somehow, and disguised it to look like one of ours. Clever, don’t you think? A concerted effort was put forth to make it look like our military was responsible for the rescue mission.”

De Leon leaned back, a look of satisfaction on his face.

“But are you absolutely certain of this? What about the ballistics reports?” Arturo asked.

“A qualified yes for the first question, as for the second question, the shells that were fired from the rescue copter’s Mini-gun were also among the samples studied by Dr. Rubio. He confirmed that they are not the type of bullet we use in the Mexican military, being of a larger caliber.”