Roswell Fanatics

On school nights the Crashdown closed at 10PM and even on Fridays and Saturdays Liz and Marie would have it closed down shortly after eleven. Nobody closed down the Cabowabo, they went from nightime partying to serving breakfast. But it had been a long day for the intrepid trio of seniors, and at about 2 AM they headed back for the hotel. Except there were decidedly fewer taxicabs around at 2AM than there were at 10AM...so they decided to walk, what the hell, it was only a couple miles back to the hotel.

As the two policemen sat in their jeep, they saw the three Norte' Americano teenagers walking down the street. The girls were quite attractive. Had it been a normal night, they would have probably have arrested the boy on some trumped up charge to put him in jail overnight..then let him out when his parents paid the fines. The girls they would have taken...given them some drugs if they weren't already too drunk to need them. Then they would have...had their own party with them.

Unless the drugs didn't work, they wouldn't have really hurt them...there would be no need. Just two more los Estados Unitas teenagers who got drunk on spring break..had sex with someone while too drunk to remember. It happened all the time in tourist towns. Besides, it WAS a tourist town. Too much violence...especially if it were traced back to the policia, was bad for business, and everyone was getting quite prosperous in Cabos...the bars that sold tequila to the gringos, the policia who collected 'protection' from them.

But it wasn't a normal night, Miguel had given them orders..and Miguel was el jefe...at least, around here. It looked like it was going to be surprisingly easy...they looked lost...and were actually approaching the jeep. The two policemen looked at each other and grinned, shaking their heads. No locals would be that naive.

Five minutes ago:

Everything had seemed so much easier to understand during the day, but the garish lights and street noise of nightime Cabo was confusing. Within two blocks they were lost. After three more blocks, they gave up and decided to go back to Cabowabo and start over. A half hour later they couldn't even find that. By this time they just wanted to get back to the hotel....some quiet..clean sheets..

At last they got a break...a police jeep with two policemen. They couldn't get to them quick enough. If only they spoke English...although, Alex had been surprisingly good with his Spanish back at Cabowabo.

"Excuse me," said Maria, "Do you speak English?"

"Si, senorita...how may we be of service."

"Oh, that's great....can you tell us how to get back to the Hotel Solana?"

"The Hotel Solana? Si, senorita,... you go two blocks further, then cut through the alley on your left. That will bring you right out beside the Hotel Solana....you cannot miss it."

"Well that doesn't sound so bad," said Alex. "I almost got us there."

"Yeah...dumb luck if you ask me," said Liz. "I'd have been willing to bet we were nowhere near the hotel."

Of course, ...Liz was right.

Two more blocks of travel took them slightly out of the rowdy bar and nightclub area, toward a darker part of town. There were few people out, and even fewer open establishments, but they found the little alleyway...made the left, and were halfway down it when the three men jumped them.

Alex really had never been the jock-type, but he wasn't really a wimp either. And with his two best friends to protect...he figured that there was little sense in fighting by the rules. He took the guy who had grabbed him by surprise with the quick kick to the testicles, but even as the man crumpled, he knew they were going to lose the fight.

These were big guys, and the blow to her head had just sent Liz to the ground...most likely unconscious. Their only real hope was to get help and there was only one way to do it...one way with any chance for success at all.

He grabbed the guy holding Maria quickly, before his own assailant could get up off his knees from where he was puking in the gutter..."RUN!" he shouted at Maria, as he moved to block the other two from following her down the alley. "Run...and get help."

Alex heard the clatter of Maria's shoes on the asphalt of the alleyway has she rushed back the way they'd come, the two men were almost upon him. He wouldn't have left Liz, even if he could have, but realistically all he could do was slow these thugs down...hoping that Maria could find those two policemen quickly. He was actually putting up a pretty good fight against both of them, standing over Liz and protecting her...until the third guy came up behind him and clubbed him to the ground...then returned the kick to the groin...with interest.

Maria ran the whole two blocks…surprised she didn’t hear the sound of footsteps after her. Fortunately, the jeep was still there. She was gasping for breath when she got to them…barely able to talk…

“My friends…three men attacked them in that alley..they are still there, Liz…the girl with me…I think she was knocked out.'

The two policemen looked at her with obvious alarm. “Senorita..we must move quickly…get in the jeep…rapidemente'…!”

Maria piled quickly into the back of the open top jeep and it sped off down the darkened streets of Cabos, careening quickly into the little alley. There was no sign of either Liz or Alex, just a Lincoln Town Car with a man standing beside it.

The Lincoln Town Car had started life as the property of a little old lady in Austin Texas. She’d had it for three days, before the contract car thieves had taken it out of her driveway in broad daylight by busting the ignition switch and pulling out the steering wheel lock. In three hours driving it was in Nuevo Laredo, where official registration paperwork was made up for that VIN number and the broken ignition and steering wheel lock were quickly repaired. Two days later it was in southern Baja and the property of Miguel…for less than $5000 and four ounces of cocaine.

Miguel saw the jeep arrive with the girl…and smiled. He disliked loose ends, and the orders were to get at least three. He would be done in plenty of time to get the men back to do their real job…refuel the four planes coming in tonight. He got out of the car and walked to the jeep.

“May I help you, officers?”

“The Senorita here…she says she lost some friends in this alley.”

“I haven’t seen them…although I just got here myself.”

“They have to be here,” Maria said, the panic obvious in her voice. They were right there…”

As the man stepped from the darkened doorway, his hand reached out to cover Maria’s mouth. She started to struggle..her eyes pleading to the police for help…they merely grinned.

The man with the Lincoln handed them some envelopes and they got in the jeep, driving quickly into the night.

As the third man stepped from the shadows…carrying the ropes, Maria bit the hand over her mouth. As the man screamed “¡caramba!” the hand was briefly pulled away, allowing Maria to get off one short scream before a dirty handkerchief was shoved in her mouth. It was held there as she was lowered to the ground…hog tied, ankles and wrists tied together..than tied to each other. As the man in the Lincoln opened the trunk, she was thrown in quickly and the lid closed over her.

The trunk was lumpy and almost full, and the closing trunk lid banged her head, causing her to briefly see stars. She spit out the handkerchief cursing furiously. “The damn trunk is full you idiots. It’s real uncomfortable in here…”

She felt the movement beneath her, even before she heard Liz’s voice. “If you think it’s bad on top, you should be underneath yourself, Maria.”

“Or down here on the spare tire and jack handle,” said Alex.

It took a little over two hours to get to the refueling station in the Baja desert ...although it seemed far longer to the three teenagers tied up in the trunk.

Liz and Maria managed to get twisted around so they were side by side..still incredibly uncomfortable, but not really causing each other much pain…but both were still on top of Alex, driving his body down against the spare tire and the jack handle underneath him.

The first 50 miles were bad enough, but at least there the road appeared to be paved. The last hour of the trip the road got progressively worse, and the gravel road the last few dozen miles was repeatedly torn up by the big tanker trucks that delivered gasoline once a month and the rutted gravel was uncomfortable even for the three men riding inside the car, let alone the trio tied up in the trunk.

The three Roswell seniors tried to do something…to get to one another’s bonds and untie them, but between their own bonds, the close quarters of the car, and the movement of the car…that was impossible.

Even communication was difficult, as near as they were, because of the road noise. Mostly they just laid there and suffered, while parts of the car…and others elbows and knees…dug painfully into them and each wondered why this was happening to them and mostly endured their private little hell of fear over what would come next.

In the front passenger seat of the car, Miguel had his own worries. This operation had put them behind their usual schedule, and it was fortunate the two in the jeep had brought them the girl so fast. Even so, the airplanes would soon be arriving.

Each of the four AN-2s would be packed with over three tons of drugs…bales of marijuana to be pushed out flying low over fields where others working for the syndicate north of the border would be waiting with their trucks, and smaller bundles of cocaine that would either be parachuted to the men waiting below, or quickly off-loaded on some deserted road in the desert to syndicate personnel waiting for them in the darkness.

The lumbering aircraft were not fast, but they could land at 50 kilometers per hour letting them get into places that the DEA aircraft chasing them could never hope to go and besides, by having the four aircraft cross the border simultaneously along a widely separated front, the DEA aircraft would be stretched too thin. Certainly, a few of the syndicate personnel on the ground might be captured…but the casualty rate was acceptable to the syndicate, for the rewards were huge…in the billions of dollars annually.

But the Achilles heel of the big biplane was the thirsty engine, the big supercharged radial was a thousand horsepower, and all of them were needed to pull the massive lumbering aircraft through the air. That meant high fuel consumption, and that’s why the small airstrip existed and why Miguel and his five men normally lived in the desert…over seventy-five miles north of Cabos San Lucas. They were the last stop for those aircraft, the last chance to top off their tanks before crossing the border…and the first stop of the empty aircraft on their long trip south to Bogota.

The schedule had been arranged long before the unfortunate capture of Senor Velez by the US Coast Guard…and it was far too late to change it. So tonight he and two of his men would work double duty…first the capture of these three American teenagers, then there usual jobs…but Miguel didn’t mind that, for Roberto Velez had promised him the advancement he might have in the syndicate with the success of this operation….to ransom his brother Manuel with three American teenagers kidnapped on holiday….a promotion like that…well, it was worth a long hard night of work for him and his men. They would get the big biplanes refueled and headed north, then refueled again and headed south..and the three teenagers could go on the final aircraft to Columbia, where Mr. Velez awaited them.

When the trunk lid opened, they were pulled roughly from the car and dragged in to the building. They were dumped on the dirt floor of the room,..a room lit by a single light bulb dangling from a cord that seemed to glow dimly, fluctuating in time to the erratic noise of some distant motor running in the background…Liz guessed it powered the generator. The three of them were dumped on the floor…then dragged roughly over to the side of the room and placed against the wall, the largest man groping Maria’s breasts and saying something in Spanish, which apparently drew a rebuke from the smaller man who seemed to be in charge.

“Why are you doing this?” Liz asked. “Why did you bring us here?”

The man who seemed to be in charge looked at her and smiled…’Trading goods..”
He took out a digital camera and there were several flashes as he took their pictures...then he left the room. He could just send the pictures to Mr. Velez before the first of the big biplanes was scheduled to arrive.

There was more high-speed Spanish directed at the other two men, and they all left the room, leaving the three teenagers alone in the dim light of the dangling bulb.

Lieutenant Robert Anderson wouldn’t have been surprised to get a telephone call at 4AM…had he still been a SEAL team commander. They were usually about to get up then anyway…for their morning calisthenics. But it surprised him to get a wake-up call, as an administrative aide at the Pentagon, and surprised him more to get the cal from the Chief of Staff himself, Admiral William S. Brady.
“Lieutenant, we need you down here in the JCS briefing room in twenty-five minutes….time for you to start getting your education. You’re going to be going to a briefing in the basement of the White House in an hour…we don’t want you to make TOO much of a fool of yourself.”
Although the words were hardly a declaration of confidence in him, the voice seemed surprisingly friendly. Bob Anderson was in the briefing room in seventeen minutes.
“One of your jobs, son..” said the Admiral, “..is to take prebriefs in the situation room of the White House as a JCS representative.”

Seeing the lack of comprehension on the young Lieutenant’s face, Admiral Brady continued. “Typically when a sticky situation comes up that involves more than one branch of the Executive Department, there is a preliminary briefing called the prebrief, done by junior personnel with either the White House Chief of Staff or sometimes the Vice President chairing the briefing. That’s kind of an information gathering session, and a chance to feel out what the other departments are going to try to do politically to affect the outcome of the current crisis, if anything. After the prebrief you would typically come back and brief the JCS Staff on what the problem is…what the various options for handling it are, and what you think that the JCS position should be. We’ll listen to what you have to say, and decide how we want to work it at the real briefing, where the President himself will be taking the briefing.

This is kind of an excellent case for you to get your feet wet, because we have a little advance intel on this from outside the Defense Department. One source is the Commandant of the Coast Guard who is under Homeland Security, but the Commandant and I have been golf-playing buddies for years, and he’s got a personal interest in this case. The other source is …well, Lieutenant Commander Barlow is with the Defense Intelligence Agency, and they happened to pick up some stuff on the monitoring….you want to brief the situation, Commander?”


“Well Lieutenant, this started out a week ago when a Coast Guard Cutter off the US Virgin Islands intercepted a drug runner. The drug runner opened fire on the cutter, killing the skipper and wounding several of the crew. The Exec took over and captured the boat…which held some tons of cocaine, but also had Manuel Velez,…one half of the two men…along with his brother Roberto,..that run most of the drugs into the US from Columbia. We got these intercepts on phone calls, and this off the internet. What you see are three teenagers that he identifies as students on a trip from Roswell New Mexico to Cabo San Lucas. Roberto Velez has contacted the State Department and faxed them copies of these three kids Driver’s licenses and photographs of the kids tied up…threatening to kill them if his brother isn’t released in 72 hours.”

“Surely the State Department isn’t going to recommend that…it’d put every American tourist at risk.”

“No,” said the Admiral, “even State’s not that stupid. They’ll just let the kids rot.”

“If we could just locate them…Hell, Admiral, my old team could do a snatch on them, and get those three kids away safely…it wouldn’t be much of a problem at all…”

The Admiral gave a sad sort of smile. “Go to the brief, son. You can recommend that…it even makes sense. But don’t get your hopes up. This is Washington DC and people don’t do what makes sense…they do what’s politically advantageous for them.”

“I can’t see that it would be in anyone’s political interest to let these three kids die, Admiral.”

Admiral Brady just smiled. He’d had to learn about politics in Washington DC the hard way, so would the young Lieutenant. “Talk to me after you’ve been to the prebrief, son…”

One hour earlier

“What did they say, Alex?” asked Maria. “Can you tell us what it’s all about…why they brought us here?”

“Apparently some bigwig in the drug syndicate was caught….they hope to trade us for him,” said Alex, telling the truth…but not all of it.

“They’re crazy,” said Liz. “The US government would never do that.”

Alex was pretty sure that Liz was right, but he didn’t keep the conversation going…he had more pressing issues on his mind. First and foremost was what he’d heard Miguel saying to the big guy….the one who’d fondled Maria. Both of the workers had griped to their boss about the extra work…refueling planes AND capturing the three teenagers. Miguel had told them that the aircraft came first..that there were schedules to meet north of the border. But that he’d delay the last plane that returned from its southbound journey a couple of hours…so the men could make use of Liz and Maria to compensate them for their extra work.

He didn’t explain that to either of his friends, that in five or six hours they were going to be raped as compensation for those two thugs working overtime…he really didn’t see how he could explain something like that to the friends he had known all these years.

So he was doing what he could, working on his bound wrists, struggling, heedless of the pain…heedless of the damage done to his wrists and forearms as he twisted and strained to get free.

Alex didn’t know what might befall them in Columbia…but he wasn’t concerned about that right now. He just didn’t want to sit there..knowing that both girls were soon going to be brutalized…defiled. He’d rather die than let that happen. As he worked and strained he could feel his blood start to wet the rope around his wrists.
‘Good,’ he thought, ‘..maybe that’ll let me slip out of them…’

As he worked at his bonds, Alex knew there would be no sleep for him tonight...no lovely dreams of Isabel...or of anyone else. If anything happened to Liz and Maria...well, it wouldn't be because Alex Whitman didn't try his best....

Normally Lieutenant Anderson would have taken the Metro to the White House, …he’d have enjoyed the exercise of walking from Lafayette Square and although at this early hour in the morning in crime-ridden Washington DC there was risk in that, there wouldn’t have been much for him. It wasn’t just the uniform he was wearing, few of the local addicts could have recognized a SEAL Team pin on their best day, but they would have nonetheless noted his fitness and the casual way he observed everything around him when he moved…and likely picked a less dangerous target to mug.

But this morning wasn’t ‘normally,’ he was on duty and expected to report back promptly, so he drove the GAO car, the military was under orders to decrease their visibility in the DC area, hence the absence of the grey Navy Sedan, to the underground parking lot next to the Executive Office Building and proceeded from there through the underground tunnel to the security position in the basement of the White House, where after a cursory glance at his identification, he was waved through to the Situation Room.

The room was half-full when Bob arrived, and over the next eight minutes it filled completely. As the Chief of Staff of the White House entered, the room became suddenly silent.

“Gentlemen,” said the Chief of Staff, then nodding to the lone female representative, an attractive woman from the CIA who appeared to be in her late twenties,continued, “..and lady,…we have a situation here and we need some input on how to contain the problem. Since State is the OPR (Office of Primary Responsibility), and the messages were sent to them, I’d like the deputy Secretary of State for Latin American affairs, Ambassador Larrabee to brief the situation to you.”

“Approximately 3 hours ago we received e-mails from Bogota Columbia, as well as these faxes.”
The photos from the e-mails showed three fairly disheveled teenagers, two girls and a boy, with their hands and legs tied behind them, leaned against a wall of some dirt-floored building. The terror in the faces of the three was all too real. The faxes were of New Mexico State Drivers Licenses for a Liz Parker, a Maria DeLuca, and an Alexander Whitman. The pictures seemed to match those of the individuals tied up and leaned against the wall, minus a few bruises that were present on the boy and the dark-haired girl.

“We have done some researching and these three students would appear to be part of a group…well, the whole senior class really, from Roswell New Mexico,… on a Spring Break trip to Cabo San Lucas. We have confirmed the identity of the three from an online website the high school has. They were apparently abducted tonight or early this morning in Cabos, ..we don’t think they have yet been moved to Columbia, but that is the intention announced in the e-mails. All three students will be taken to Columbia and held hostage for the release of this man…” and he flipped up another slide, “..Manuel Velez, who was captured recently by the Coast Guard.”

The Department of Treasury representative held up his hand, ..”Surely you can’t really be willing to turn this man loose? He killed the skipper of the cutter that intercepted him….injured a number of others.”

“Of course not,” said Larrabee. “We wouldn’t even consider that…that’s not the purpose of the meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to deal with the situation of the three captives.”

As a former SEAL commander, this seemed like a non-problem to Bob. There couldn’t be more that a half dozen airstrips within a two hundred mile radius of Cabo. The Defense Mapping Agency likely already had maps showing anywhere you could put down anything that needed more landing space than a helicopter, and likely a KH-13 would be going overhead every four or five hours, …and those things could damn near tell time by reading the wristwatch of someone on the ground. They ought to be able to make the airstrip….and since it was within a couple hundred miles of the US, a SEAL team could easily make a Halo drop…make the snatch..neutralize the bad guys.. …and return in the same C-130 that dropped them…after they had taken the airfield.

And it wasn’t like the Mexicans would even know about it. They had at last count ten, count em…ten, Vietnam era F-5s that were based down around Mexico City over 700 miles away. On any given day only a couple were flyable, and with no air refueling capability, it would take them over two hours to get to the Baja peninsula, even in the unlikely event they actually had one of the F-5s on alert. Then the F-5 would be in a stern chase on a C-130 that had two-thirds its speed and a seven hundred mile head start. Bob would take those odds any day.

The SEAL team would be back in North Island in San Diego popping brewskis with the liberated teenagers long before the F-5 could even get near them…well, the SEALs would have brewskis anyway, they might have to get some soda pop for the teens. Hell, those kids were as good as home…

“It would seem like a pretty easy operation to drop a SEAL team in there and get those kids out. With the Presidents go-ahead, we could have Seal Team Five take off from San Diego within 30 minutes. Flight time to southern Baja would be less than two hours..the HALO jump and finding the kids would be maybe twenty minutes…another twenty to neutralize the opposition…land the C-130, take-off….we’d have the kids back in San Diego ..hell, before mid-afternoon.”

The CIA woman gave Bob an indulgent smile…the kind that indicated she might be amenable to a cup of coffee after duty hours..just to get to know him. But the other faces in the room….they were looking at him like he’d just dropped a turd in the collection plate at church.

“Well, we might have expected that from the …military,” said Larrabee, the contempt rolling off his tongue on the last word. The others seemed almost equally shocked..except for the CIA lady, who slipped him a folded note with her name and telephone number.

“Well…what else would you propose we do to rescue the three kids?” asked Bob.

Ambassador Larrabee looked at him like he was lecturing a particularly obtuse five year old child, and the tone of disdain in his voice was obvious.

“Lieutenant,’ he said with an obvious distaste for the use of a military title, “..this meeting is not about rescuing the three tourists…and certainly not about violating the sovereignty of a valued ally like Mexico.”

“Well then…what ARE we here for?”

“We are here, Lieutenant,” said the White House Chief of Staff, to come up with a plan to deal with the adverse publicity that will be caused by the deaths of these three people,…to deal with the potential that their deaths will cause some sort of a public outcry that will hurt our relationship with Mexico or Columbia.”

“Yes,” continued Larrabee. “the tourist dollars going into the Baja peninsula and other resort areas are vital to the Mexican economy. The oil revenues from PEMEX are dropping and the country will be destitute if they lose US tourist revenues as well. It is important that we..manage…the news of these deaths properly.”

“Manage them???” asked Bob Anderson, “…when we could prevent them?”

“It’s attitudes like THAT,” said Larrabee, “..that have led directly to the idea of the world’s citizenry that we are the Ugly American’s, the people that think only of ourselves.”

“I’m not thinking of myself…I’m thinking of three kids who are going to die if we don’t do something. And the SEAL Team that went in there wouldn’t be thinking of themselves, they’d be putting themselves at risk, to protect these innocent kids.”

“Well, we don’t even know that they WERE innocent, do we?” retorted the State Department Rep. “How do we know what they were doing down there…and at that hour?”

“On the one hand you say you WANT US tourists to go down to these resort areas, but on the other you say our only responsibility when they get in trouble there is to try to cover up what happens to them? What the hell kind of policy is that?” Bob asked.

“It is the policy of your country…and you will support it, Lieutenant.” Said the White House Chief of Staff. “I think we need a short break now…for the Lieutenant to get his emotions under his control.”

“I certainly agree,” said Larrabee. “..and it isn’t like the foreign service hasn’t lost people also in the support of this country. The State Department has lost over 200 personnel in the course of this country’s existence….over 140 since the end of WWII alone.”

‘You got to be shitting me…,’ thought Bob. ‘..the Navy lost over a thousand men in one twenty-one minute night engagement at Savo…and the Marines had lost over 140 men an HOUR through most of the first days of the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Bob was clearly the odd man out during the recess, only the attractive young woman seemed willing to even look at him. Finally she approached and offered him her hand, “Welcome to the politics of Washington DC, Lieutenant. It’s like a different world, isn’t it? I’m Jenny Bradley…CIA. You must be the new JCS aide.”

The attractive young woman smiled up at him.

“Bob Anderson, Ms. Bradley. Pleased to meet you too.”

“Oh, that’s Miss Bradley, …not Ms. I fear that I too am not really politically correct enough for today’s Washington, DC. When I heard you give a reasonable plan on what to do about those kids, I figured I’d just met a kindred soul….not many of those around this town anymore.”

“And what do you do at the CIA?”

He saw a twinkle in her eye as she said, “Well I could tell you, but then….”

“Then you’d have to kill me..I understand,” Bob had tried that line once or twice himself.

“Seriously, I’m just an analyst for Latin American affairs. But I’ve been doing this for a couple of years and I can tell you, they aren’t going to do anything for those three kids. State doesn’t give a damn about a few US tourists. They’ll come up with some scheme to blame the girls, just so they don’t have to address the real source of problems in Mexico and most of Latin America.”

“And those are?”

“Official corruption…at all levels. I mean look at Mexico for example. They put PEMEX together by confiscating the capital holdings of a half dozen companies, then ran that into the ground by siphoning off its revenues to fill the pockets of all the government officials. It’s about to collapse…despite still having enormous untapped reserves. In fact. Mexico shouldn’t be poor at all, they have vast mineral wealth..a lot of arable land, people who certainly are industrious enough once they sneak across the border.”

“What’s the problem then?”

“Two things, really. One is the continuousgovernment corruption that is really the legacy of the Conquistadores. These guys were soldiers of fortune…little better than pirates. Their normal practice was for the leader, el Jefe, to take all the plunder he wanted..in riches…in women. When his arms were to full to take any more, his second in command would take his plunder..and so on, down to the lowest ranking person.

The other problem is the classic tragedy of the commons. Once you socialize something it really belongs to no one. Everyone trys to exploit it..get all they can from it before the others get theirs. Until there is a revolution tofix those things…Latin America will never improve, and as long as they can relieve the social pressures by exporting their most energetic and industrious people to the US illegally, the revolution will never happen. So the corruption just goes on until the final breakdown when the oil runs out.”

“But why do they,” Bob indicated the others in the room, “not understand that…why don’t they care about those three kids? “

“Oh, they care alright…a little. But the corporations care more about the cheap illegal labor, the politicians care about the Hispanic vote, the liberals don’t want the US Military…or CIA to even exist, and like in the Thirties, the State Department just wants to believe that they can deal rationally with irrational thugs. You and I get to sort out the mess when they finally allow it to break completely. Welcome to Washington.”

“So what happens to the three kids?”

“Well, the girls will soon be raped…if they haven’t been already. We won’t trade for them, and Velez must kill them now that he has threatened it. It’s the old Latin American machismo thing. The only way he stays in power is to keep face, and if he let the kids live now, he’d lose face, and his competitors would go after him, hell, his own people might. When you survive by being a thug, the one thing you can’t afford to appear is weak.”

The meeting continued for another 40 minutes. But it finished much as Jenny Bradley had predicted. The US government was going to do nothing, other than keep it as quiet as possible and express their official belief that Mexico was doing every thing possible if the story spun out of control to the newspapers. The senior consular official at the US Consulate in San Lucas was going to be told to do what he could to cover the whole situation up.

It was a thoroughly disgusted Lieutenant that parked in the reserved space under the Pentagon to give his report to the Admiral. The single positive thing to come out of the meeting was that he was going to be meeting Jenny Bradley for coffee on their next free morning.

Admiral Brady saw the downcast look on the young Lieutenant as he entered the room.

“Tough morning at the office, son?”

“Tell me sir,…how do you put up with bullshit like that?”

“Well son, what makes this country different from a lot of others is that the military does put up with bullshit like that. We don’t do military coups or crap like that, we honor the oaths we’ve taken to the Constitution. And we hang in there at times like this because sooner or later these guys will foul up badly enough they’ll need us to put it right to save the country. So go ahead and give your briefing.”

Bob briefed the Chairman and his immediate staff, even telling them about his faux pas in suggesting the HALO mission.

“Hey, you can ops plan that if you’d like,” said the Deputy Chairman, “..It might be an interesting exercise for the warplanners. Tell them to put a KH-13 on the airstrips down there, see if they find anything. But I’ll tell you right now, the civilians will never buy off on the operation…not for three teenagers who, diplomatically speaking, the State Department views as expendable. So tell me Lieutenant, other than your first real look at the reality of work here, did you get anything positive out of the experience?”

“Well, I got a coffee date with an attractive young lady, a Miss Bradley,…an analyst at the CIA.”

Both the Chairman and Deputy chuckled. “Be on your best behavior with her, son. She used to be a field agent before she got assigned as an analyst. She’s run a few ops that would be impressive even to a SEAL commander.”

“Really? She only told me she was an analyst, not a field agent.”

“Oh, she could have told you son,..” said the Admiral, his Deputy joining in the refrain as he added, “..but then she’d have had to kill you…”


Alex had struggled for over four hours as he heard the four aircraft come and go. As the noisy radial engine of the first returning aircraft came in for a landing, he struggled with all of his might, heedless of losing hair, tearing skin, even breaking bones if it would somehow free him…and finally it worked.

It was a myth that Houdini was double-jointed, but the fact that double-jointed people could more readily wiggle out of bindings was not. The thing that had made Alex a playground celebrity in grade school, and had lead to some kids disparaging him as a freak in high school, ultimately let him get one hand…torn and bloodied, free from his bindings.

After that it was only a matter of time, as he worked blindly behind his back to feel the knots and untie them, his entire right hand cramping with the effort as he worked frantically to get himself free. In another half hour, he was able to stand, free of encumbrances.

It was easier for Liz and Maria. Alex untied Maria first and had Liz untied before Maria’s muscles had truly gotten over the cramping caused by hours of being tied up. It was still dark…but the first light of sunrise was just starting to brighten the eastern horizon as they crept from the shack to find a safer place to develop a plan.

They found shelter in some moderately heavy vegetation at the top of a small rise above the hut they had been held in overlooking the airfield. It quickly became apparent that they were surrounded by desert…except for the small collection of buildings and the dirt runway, it was all open country along the single road leaving the base…and a car sat ominously along the road facing outwards over a mile distant, a soft glow igniting as one of the occupants lit up a cigarette..apparently guarding the sole road in or out.

“We need a plan,” said Liz.

“How about run like hell out into the desert?” asked Maria.

“In Baja? The temperatures get over ninety…we have no water…and we don’t know exactly which way to go or how far it will be. We’d be better off staying captured,” said Liz.

Alex didn’t think so. “Look…we can’t go out the road…there are guards there. We can’t go out into the desert…we’ll die. And we can’t stay here…especially you two.”

“And you could?” asked Maria.

“Those two guards…they worked overtime yesterday. You two were going to be their…compensation. I don’t think I’m there type…, but you guys can’t stay here…and I have an idea.”

The girls listened to Alex..their mouths growing wider with each word he said.

“I can’t fly a plane,” said Liz, “..and I didn’t know you could either.”

“Liz, it’s a Piper Cub…it’s real simple, my uncle has one. I’ve flown with him in his a lot of times…and he let me fly it. It isn’t that hard.”

That wasn’t precisely true. He’d flown in his uncles plane five times, and only touched the control stick on four occasions. But taking it off and flying it really wasn’t all that difficult. He’d never successfully landed his uncle’s plane, his uncle had to take control away from him each time he’d tried to avoid damaging the aircraft, but he was right about the aircraft being simple.

“Look, Liz…you’re the science whiz. It isn’t all that hard. It has a throttle on the left, a control stick between your legs, and pedals to steer with. You and Maria get in and strap in, seatbelts and shoulder harness, I’ll start the engine, and you just push the throttle all the way forward and hold it there while you keep the plane going down the runway with the pedals. After you get going thirty miles an hour or so the tail will come up, let the plane continue to accelerate until you are doing about sixty, then pull the stick straight back just a little..raising the nose about five degrees. At sixty-five miles per hour, you’ll fly right off.”

“Fly right off and crash you mean,” said Maria.

“It’s an easy airplane to fly, Maria. If it starts to bank….that is roll to the left, just move the stick directly to the right, and vice versa. The important thing is that you never want to go less than sixty-five miles per hour, or more than one hundred. Give it full throttle for takeoff, then pull it back about an inch to cruise. But never ever go less than 65 until you are just about to land.”

“Alex, really. How would I land it?”

“It’s easy, Liz. Just find a beach or a wide open field and pull the throttle all the way back. Keep the nose back until the plane is doing sixty-five, then let it glide down. Level it out a couple of feet off the ground and just hold it there until the speed bleeds off and it’ll land itself…it’s easy.”

In fact, Alex knew that was a lie. It took real skill to land the little plane, something he’d never quite acquired. If you touched down just a few miles per hour too fast, as the wheels tried to slow the airplane the rear end of the airplane would start to race the front and do something called a groundloop. If you landed and put on the wrong brake…it’d do the same thing. If you landed just right…and put on the right brake, but too hard, it’s also do it. But usually by the time it went out of control and either switched ends or rolled over, it would be slowed up to about thirty-five, and if both girls were in the shoulder harnesses, the plane would slow up more as it started to come apart, and they probably wouldn’t be hurt. Alex knew damn well what would happen to them if they stayed and were caught.

“We won’t go without you, Alex…and that’s final,” said Liz.

“You have to Liz, there are only seats for two, and the engine’s only sixty-five horsepower..it would never carry three. And if nobody goes, nobody can bring help for the one left behind.”

“Then we draw straws for it,” said Maria. “Better yet, Liz and I draw straws, because you know how to fly it.”

“That won’t work, Maria. The aircraft doesn’t have a starter, you prop it…that is, start the engine by turning the prop. If you do it wrong, it won’t start. If you do it real wrong, it starts and chops your hand off. If we can sneak down to the plane I can set it up to start, then prop it myself, but I don’t have time to show anyone….it has to be me.”

“We don’t even know where we are, Alex. How would we ever find Cabo?”

“We’re on a peninsula Liz, …Cabo is the southern point. You can fly toward the sun and hang a right at the water…follow the beach to Cabo..it’s at the southern tip. Or fly west and hang a left at the water…whatever you want. Just head south and you’ll eventually get to Cabo.”

“But what happens to you, Alex?”

“I hide out and wait for the two of you to come back with the cavalry.”

Somehow Liz doubted that. There were at least five guys here, and not that much cover. As soon as the plane left it would be obvious that one person was left behind. They’d start looking for him almost immediately..and find him pretty soon thereafter.

“Liz, it’s the only chance we are going to have. You know the US won’t trade for us. If you can bring help before they find me and ship me to Columbia…it’s really my only chance.”

As Liz and Maria looked at each other, they realized it was true. It was frightening, but the survival of all three depended upon their ability to steal that plane and somehow pilot it to Cabo, and then live to tell the story.

”Let’s do it,” said Liz.

“OK,” said Maria.

“Follow me…keep low, and be real quiet” said Alex.

The Piper Cub was sitting unattended in the darkness at the end of the runway, almost 200 yards from where the ground crew was laboriously hand pumping gasoline from 55 gallon drums into the big biplane. Alex quickly got the two girls into the cockpit of the little yellow airplane, turned the magnetos switch to both, made sure the fuel was on the fullest tank, and primed the engine. He checked their seatbelts and shoulder harnesses, and adjusted Liz’s seat so she could push fully on the pedals.

“Remember, Liz…when you push on the left pedal..it’ll go left…push on the right pedal, and it goes right. Don’t try to bring the stick back from neutral…that’s about..here…until you have 60 miles per hour on your airspeed indicator…that’s the speedometer..here. Once you are flying, don’t ever let the plane get slower than sixty-five..unless you are just a few feet above the ground…and don’t bank ...that’s move the stick to the side..so that the plane is more than fifteen degrees or so tilted to the left or right..…and then just to turn.
Trust me…you’ll get the idea quick on the takeoff, and flying isn’t any big deal really.” ‘and of course,’ he thought, ‘ you’ll crash when you get there…but hopefully you’ll both walk away from it.’

As he closed the lower hatch and talked to them one last time through the little window he repeated. “remember…do not…not for any reason, go slower than 65 miles per hour…unless you are just about to land…like within two feet of the ground. Be careful.”

“Oh Alex, you be careful too. We’ll get help, we’ll go to the consulate, and get them back here as soon as we can. Good luck, Alex,” said Maria.

“Good luck, Alex,” repeated Liz.

“OK, as soon as the engine starts, I’ll jump to the side and you give it full throttle. While you fly by them I’ll be heading for cover. Good-bye now.”

Alex pulled the prop through and on the second pull the little engine loudly came to life. He quickly moved aside as Liz advanced the throttle and the small plane pulled out onto the runway and turned down toward the refueling biplane. Liz advanced the throttle rapidly and the plane swerved right and left as she fought to figure out the rudder pedals, over controlling at first, then settling down somewhat as the small plane gained speed.

One of the men refueling looked up and saw the plane, running out to try to stop it. It looked like he was trying to get in position to grab a wing, but at that point the airspeed was enough to lift the tail. As the tail went up the aircraft pulled abruptly to the left, away from the man, but as Liz pushed the right pedal she overcontrolled, sending the plane back to the left.

Suddenly the man saw the little aircraft coming straight for him at thirty miles an hour, the two bladed propeller turning at 2400 RPM…revolving forty times a second..and ready to do a pretty good imitation of a deli cold-cut slicer. He dove aside at the last minute and the wing passed over him..ten seconds later the aircraft staggered into the air, porpoising badly and rocking from side to side as Liz figured out the controls.

The aircraft climbed unsteadily toward the East and disappeared over the hill at the end of the runway.

Miguel screamed at the pilot of the biplane…but he screamed right back. The aircraft needed oil, the fuel caps were off for gassing….it would be five or ten minutes before the AN-2 could be started. The little Piper Cub was already out of sight in the darkness…there would be no finding it this morning.

Angrily Miguel looked back toward where the little aircraft had been parked. There had to be at least one still here…he ordered his men to cease fueling the aircraft and find whoever was left. Mr. Velez would not be pleased. Miguel damn sure wasn't. Someone was going to pay....

The little plane had done s-turns all over the dirt runway until Maria finally told her that they were going 60 miles per hour and the first tentative pull back on the stick just caused the little yellow aircraft to hop a few feet into the air before settling back into the dust of the dirt runway. But as speed continued to gather, the aircraft finally flew off, wobbling right and left, and climbing unsteadily toward the east.

Alex hadn’t explained about trimming the aircraft, so it never did really settle down into comfortable flight, but it wandered on a generally easterly heading (give or take 30 degrees) at about 2000 feet altitude (give or take 300 feet) at 90 mph (more or less) and after 15 miutes came to the Sea of Cortez. The airplane made a wobbly turn to the right..southbound, and in about another 40 minutes the tip of the Baja peninsula came into view…and with it, Cabo San Lucas.

Liz spotted the largest field she could and pulled back the throttle, letting the aircraft glide down at about seventy-five miles an hour. By this time she’d been flying the little plane for almost an hour, and thought she was getting the hang of it. At about ten feet she more or less leveled off and let the plane gradually settle into the field at seventy miles an hour.

As the main wheels touched down things seemed to be going fine and she almost relaxed…when the aircraft started to veer sharply to the left as the tail tried to pass the nose of the aircraft. She pushed hard on the right brake, and the nose veered just as far to the right, the aircraft starting to raise up on the left wheel as if to roll over. She stopped pushing on the right brake and got back on the left, and the nose swung dizzyingly back. When she thought she was going straight down the field she said’ enough of this,’ and jammed on both brakes abruptly. The result was unexpected….but the seatbelts and shoulder harnesses held, and Liz and Maria crawled shaken but unharmed from the overturned aircraft.

A small crowd of onlookers gathered while Liz flagged down a taxi. The man indicated that he wanted 400 pesos to take them to the US Consulate in Cabos. She tried to explain to him that they had no money, that their purses had been taken, but that the Consulate would pay them. The taxidriver refused. She tried to solicit funds from several passer-bys without any luck. As she was pleading a second time with the taxicab driver Maria walked up and handed the man 500 pesos.

Four minutes later they were at the US Consulate, which it turned out was only about five blocks away. The taxi driver kept the change and drove off. Maria seemed philosophical about it.

“Where’d you get the money?” asked Liz. looking at her friend.

“Sold the airplane for a thousand pesos to some guy in the crowd. When in Rome….”

As they pushed frantically on the doorbell, a Marine sentry opened the door. “May I help you ladies?”


Miguel was scared and angry…not a good combination anywhere, but certainly not in the land of the machismo alpha male. He watched the big biplane depart as his men refueled the second aircraft. The pilot would no doubt tell Roberto Velez the whole story of the girl’s escape tonight when he arrived back in Bogota. Miguel had very little time. He needed those girls back…and quickly.

Miguel walked into the hut where the prisoners had been held and saw Carlos standing over the lanky Americano with his rifle. It had taken only an hour to catch him, there was very little cover in the desert. Alex was sitting in a chair….his right wrist was scraped and bloody…the two bindings lay on the floor untied, the other partially untied, partially blood soaked but intact..it was obvious what had happened.

The boy was in handcuffs now, padlocked to a chain…and the chain was being secured to the pole that held up the corner of the building with a large spike driven through the end link into the timber. When Luis was done, he tested the chain…no one was pulling that away from the wood.
Miguel took the small mallet from Luis, and grabbed the chin of the boy, forcing him to look him in the eyes.

“Where are the girls going? What is their plan?”

“Uh…they said that Cabo was too rough for them. They were going to go north…thought they might try…Disneyland,” said Alex.

Miguel frowned. “So you are like the man Houdini…eh? You slide out of ropes? These shackles should prove more difficult, I think. But just in case…perhaps we should slow you down. ”

He brought the hammer down quickly on the right knee cap. Pain exploded through Alex’s leg as the kneecap fractured, and he fell off the chair gasping for breath, nauseated and choking back gorge. As Miguel stormed out with his two men, Alex smiled.

‘He wouldn’t be that pissed if they hadn’t gotten away.’

Lance Corporal Arturo Johnson was a third generation Marine, but the military history in his family went back much farther than that. His great-great grandfather had been in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry during the US Civil War, then continued on as a Buffalo Soldier in the US Cavalry fighting Cherokees in Oklahoma…at least until he’d married one. He settled down after that .

The first Marine in the family had been Art’s grandfather, who had fought and nearly died at the frozen Choisin reservoir, been evacuated to Japan for medical treatment, then reassigned to Guam where he’d managed to meet and marry a young Chamorro girl…Art’s grandmother was still living in Alhambra, California although his grandfather had passed on.

His own father had been a Gunnery Sergeant at Khe Sanh, for most of the siege there, …although his dad claimed he’d have gotten out if he could…they just didn’t have much of a choice. His mother was half Mexican-American and half-Thai, herself a military brat….Dad had met her on leave in , of all places, Los Angeles. She’d been attending USC.

When anyone asked Art Johnson what ethnic group he belonged to, he could have honestly answered African-American, Native American, Micronesian, Hispanic or Asian,…but he didn’t. His ethnic group was The Corps, and he had far more in common with any other Marine than he did with most civilians…and certainly the people he guarded in this Consulate. And he also knew the only reason he’d been selected for this assignment was so the damn State Department could tout his ethnic background.

He hadn’t wanted this assignment as a MSG and in fact had argued quite a bit with his resource manager at the Marine Personnel Center when he’d been picked for it. He knew that the State Department really didn’t give a rat’s ass about combat Marines…they just wanted someone who they could use as an equal opportunity exhibit, and since he incorporated about as many minorities as it was possible to get into a mere 46 chromosomes, they had picked him as a token everything.

Arguing with the assignments people was usually quite one-sided, but he’d been near his end of enlistment so they couldn’t actually force him to take the assignment, he’d needed to re-enlist to do it, so he could at least threaten to leave the Corps…not that he would…to try to get a better deal.

The resource manager had gotten upset when Art had told him that this was a shit assignment for a Recon Marine, trying to blow smoke at him about how wonderful it was. Art had done his homework though, the resource manager was a senior NCO whose record he’d looked up…the guy had been a junior troop at the Embassy in Tehran when it was taken over. He and the other Marines had been ordered to lay down their weapons, when they could have forced the ‘students’ off the grounds at the start of the attack. The Ambassador had assured everyone that he had everything under control..that the government of Iran would quickly get the invaders off US territory. The Marines had been ordered to stand down..so they’d spiked their weapons and let themselves be held captive…for 444 days.

Art could tell that even after all these years, the Master Gunnery Sergeant had still been pissed, but he’d finally acknowledged that, yeah, the job did have some drawbacks, and cut him a deal. If he got another forty-five credits of college by correspondence course during his tour, he’d get a follow-on assignment to OCS through the enlisted commissioning program. This was still a shit job for a Recon Marine, but he only had eighteen months to go, and he already had 40 of the college credits.

When the two girls showed up at the front door of the Consulate Arturo Johnson didn’t need to ask them what was going on. He’d already reviewed the morning intelligence report from the Corps…even though he and the two other MSGs were on detached duty, that didn’t mean the Green Machine had forgotten them. They regularly got intel sent that the Corps judged would be helpful for them, and although a little disheveled, these were clearly the missing students. He ushered them quickly into the Consulate and put them in an office, asking them if they needed food, water, or medical help.

Foreign Service Officer Arthur Atwater’s life history couldn’t be much different from that of the young Marine. There had been an Atwater on the Mayflower, and the family had initially made a fortune in the export import business, initially with England, then after the Revolution, with all of Europe. There had been an Atwater in the State Department since the late 1920s when the family fortune had taken a slight hit in the Great Depression, and the family had started to look on the Diplomatic Corps as sort of an upscale Civilian Conservation Corps for it’s junior members, once they had finished their prep school, Ivy League, and grad school at the Georgetown University School of International Relations. The family philosophy had over the generations boiled down to, ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ His great grandfather had cautioned FDR that Hitler was basically a thug, but that if he was only given the Sudetenland everything would be alright, and that the US should have no interest in what the Japanese did in China…that was just Asians handling Asian affairs.

His great grandfather had helped write the Potsdam treaty, assuring Harry Truman that Joe Stalin was a nice guy…that he could be trusted. His grandfather had risen to prominence in the Diplomatic Corps during the late Fifties and Sixties, counseling junior diplomatic Service personnel that International Socialism was unstoppable, and they shouldn’t even try.

He had retired shortly after telling President Gerald Ford that he had personally met Politique Potentielle in grad school in France, that he was a hell of a nice guy, and that the stories of him being violent were simply the result of anti-Asian bigotry on the part of the New York Times. Arthur’s father had been an Ambassador to the USSR who had assured his junior fellows in the Diplomatic Service in 1990 that the reports of economic troubles within the USSR were greatly exaggerated.

Like most people in the Diplomatic Service, Foreign Service Officer Atwater believed that there were no really bad people…simply misunderstood ones. He too had gotten word from the State Department in Washington DC about the three kidnapped teenagers…and had instantly wondered what stupid thing they had done to offend someone enough to have kidnapped them.

Arthur rather enjoyed the job in the Consulate in Cabo…it didn’t have quite the cachet of the Mexico City Office, but it did have advantages Mexico City didn’t have in its proximity to Ciudad Acuna…locally known as ‘Boy’s Town,’where he would occasionally go on ‘official trips.’ But his greatest aspiration was to someday be UN ambassador. He loved cocktail parties…it was pretty much what the Diplomatic Corps did best, and he envisioned being a UN Ambassador as the ultimate job, where he and like minded sophisticates could sit around and discuss endlessly how the world could be improved over Beluga sturgeon caviar, fine wines, and meals prepared by the best chefs in New York and Geneva.

The gentle knock on his door disrupted him from his dream of partying on Manhattan with the world’s elite, and brought him back to the reality of a small Consulate in western Mexico. ‘What does that damn …half-breed soldier…want?’ he asked himself.

In all fairness, Arturo thought even LESS of Arthur Atwater than Arthur thought of him.

Part of that was institutional...Arturo was a Marine, and Marines deeply dislike having to take orders from anyone who isn't a Marine..and particularly from someone who wasn't in ANY branch of the military. It was only on Embassy security duty that anyone not in the military...other than the President himself, could give him legally binding orders, and that of course worried Arturo, for the real world, he knew, was absolutely not like the everybody-come-sit-in-a-circle-and-sing-Kumbaya place that the US State Department seemed to believe it was. Sometimes there really were bad guys, and sometimes you really couldn't reason with them and sometimes...if you weren't going to be a victim or even a slave, you really did have to kill people and break things....and the Marines were rather good at that.

But the OTHER reason that Arturo didn't like Arthur was personal. Arthur had ordered Arturo to guard him...chauffeur him, really, on his twice monthly trips to Ciuadad Acuna. Arturo wasn't a prude by any means, in fact there was a long and generally quite congenial relationship between the Profession of Arms, and the Oldest Profession. But this congenial relationship was one of consenting adults....albeit consenting after a business transaction. But according to rumor, the particular brothel the Foreign Service officer used wasn't quite so picky about either the consent or the adult status of its girls, and the only share of the proceeds the girls received was in the form of drugs...to keep their wretched lives bearable. Arturo wasn't 100% sure of that...or he would have already taken some serious action about the situation...he had two sisters who were in their pre-teens...and a lot of empathy for the sad little children he saw on the streets of Mexico City who were often swept up into the sex traffic. If Arturo ever found out for sure...well, if he could prove it he'd turn him in...if he couldn't...he wasn't sure what he'd do...but it would be very unpleasant for Mr. Atwater.

"Sir...we have a situation. Two of the three teenagers that were kidnapped by Velez have escaped...the two girls have come here. They were held at a dirt airfield and managed to slip away, but they had to leave one behind. They may be able to give us information that will let us find the missing boy. Perhaps Corporal Jacobs and I could reconnoiter north of here 60 or 70 miles...I could get maps and some sattelite photos faxed to us from the Marine Unit in San Diego. There couldn't be many airstrips within that range...we could probably find it."

Arthur Atkins always felt somewhat ego-stroked by the Marines calling him 'Sir' like they did. He needn't have. Marines will call a flagpole 'sir'. Unless they think it's female...then they'll call it, 'm'am.' The only ones they talk to less formally are family...and other Marines. And while Arthur was already contemplating how he could turn this development to something that would help his career in the Diplomatic Service, to help him move one step closer to that UN job in New York or Zurich, he was horrified by the prospect that the young Marine actually wanted to go to that airstrip. There were likely people with guns there...besides, it wasn't THEIR job.

"We WILL NOT do anything of the sort. This is a Mexican problem...they are a sovereign nation. We'll notify the police...they'll handle it."

Marines take orders...sometimes they don't like them, but until they change the Constitution, they take them.

"Yessir. What should we do with the two young ladies then?"

Arthur wasn't just too sure...he needed time to think about how to milk this...get the most he could out of it, in terms of helping his career.

"Well, I suppose I must talk to them...find out what kind of stupid thing they did to get themselves in this mess....then a report to the people at Foggy Bottom...oh, and contact the senior chaperone on their trip...have him get over here immediately."

"Yessir."



Miguel's cell phone rang and he saw instantly from the number who was calling him. Apparently that damn biplane pilot hadn't even waited to get back to Bogota, probably called in at the next fueling stop. He felt the fear rise in him even before he heard the voice of Roberto Velez.

"So you think it is alright that I look like a fool to the US government? Yu think my competitors will not see this?...will not laugh at me? You think THIS is the way you get promoted in the syndicate?"

"Jefe, I have already punished the man who let them escape...and I can get you others....as many as you need."

"I do not need OTHERS. Those are the ones whose faces and whose identification I sent to the US State Department...THOSE are the ones I have told them I would trade for my brother. You will get THOSE ones back, do you understand?"

"Si...si, Jefe. It will be done. You may trust me."

"Trust you, Miguel? No...I trust no one...not even my own brother...certainly not you. I will be leaving her in 8 hours with other men...to bring back those three, or to recapture the two who escaped if you have not already done so. But if you have not done so...If we must do your job for you..."

"No, Jefe, do not fear. I will have them back...all of them...I swear."