Scarcity (Jack Randall #3) (13 page)

They were moving her? Anita’s heart leaped at the news. Had her father paid the ransom? Was she going home, or were they taking her somewhere else? Were the police closing in? Was she going to be rescued and the kidnappers somehow found out? What was happening?

A horn sounded outside the garage and the men moved around her to open it. A blanket was thrown over her and she heard the sound of the spinning chain as the door was cranked open. The van entered, only to stop just inches from her spot on the floor, and the door was hurriedly cranked down once the van was inside. She could feel the heat of the engine on her face even after it was shut off. The doors on both sides opened and more footsteps joined the others.

“She is ready?” the new voice asked.

“Right there.”

The blanket was yanked from over her and she sucked in the fresh air. She listened and flinched as the board she lay on was nudged by a foot.

“Good, get her loaded up.”

Hands grabbed the board and she felt herself roughly loaded into the van. She couldn’t help but cry out through the tape as her head bounced on the board.

“Be quiet, little girl. I won’t tell you again.”

She was shoved across the floor of the van until she met the wall and the back of the driver’s seat. She felt a boot holding the board in place as blankets were piled onto her. She struggled to remain calm, but soon the lack of air forced a panic and she struggled and cried against the restraints.

“I said be quiet!”

“You idiot! You want to kill her? She can’t breathe.”

The blankets were pulled away until her nose was exposed and she sucked in the cool air in rapid breaths.

“Calm down. You can breathe now,” she heard a voice tell her. She recognized it as the young one. She soon smelled his cologne.

“Just pile them on but leave her head exposed. I can cover it quickly if we get stopped. Stack the laundry bags around her.”

A grunt was the only reply. She heard the men labor and felt the impact of several soft bags hitting the floor of the van. The smell of bleach and detergent was evident.

“That’s good enough, let’s go.”

The van was started and put in gear before the sound of the rattling chain raising the door was heard once more. The van pulled out into the street and was soon in heavy traffic. After several turns, she lost all sense of direction.

She smelled the cologne stronger before she heard a whisper from the young one in her ear.

“Open your mouth as wide as you can and pull your tongue back.”

Not understanding, she did as she was told and soon felt the blade of a knife pierce the tape. She sucked in the night air through the narrow slit as a thirsty man drinking water. She heard him chuckle.

“You’re welcome. Now be still until we get there. It is not far.”

The muffled sounds of Mexico City traffic made their way through the layers of blankets, but she had no idea where they were. They traveled on a highway for some time, but soon were back on the city streets where the bumps and turns had her in pain on the hard board. Some of them severe enough to produce involuntary grunts of pain that prompted a tap of a finger on her arm as a warning. The tape began to pull on her skin. Her legs, which hadn’t been shaved for some time, felt as though they were on fire.

“Almost there,” she heard.

It was the reverse of their departure. The van stopped and sounded its horn. A door was opened manually this time before the van pulled inside and was quickly shut off. This time only three sets of hands grabbed her, and she was once again set on the floor and covered as the van departed. The remaining hands grunted as they hoisted her up and soon she was swaying as they mounted three flights of stairs. This time she was placed on a bed. Two sets of feet left the room. The young one spoke to her.

“Hold very still. I don’t wish to cut you.”

He quietly cursed the tape as he cut her free with rapid slices of the knife. She froze in fear as she slowly felt the pressure ease. Next the straps were undone and she lay free but still blindfolded.

“You are in a new room. The same rules apply. Don’t break them, Anita. These men, they are worse than the others. I’m sorry for the tape. I don’t know why they have to use so much. The lotion works to get it off your skin.”

She heard him walk across the room and there was a pause as he turned on the ever present radio. The music barely covered his footsteps as he left the room. This time she heard only two locks being thrown before the steps continued on. Only when she heard the sound of the TV coming on, did she dare to move.

She first peeled the tape from her mouth and took her first unlabored breaths in over an hour. The towel came off next and she gazed about at her new prison. It was smaller than the previous room, but cleaner and with fresh paint. She lay on a double bed that was pushed up against the corner. A single window, with the now familiar blanket nailed over it, let in the cool night air. She saw a small bathroom in the opposite corner—surprisingly cleaner than the last. Searching the bed coverings for blood, she was relieved to find none. A box on the nightstand contained some toiletries and a bottle of lotion. She remembered what he had said and pulled the lotion from the box. She set about pulling the tape from her skin.

She held the sobs back for as long as she could. The pain of the tape removal was nothing compared to the pain in her heart. If he heard, the young man never said a word.

More than 8,000 people are waiting for organ transplants
in the New York Organ Donor Network’s service area.
New York Organ Donor Network
 

—NINE—

A
ngel shifted in the chair and re-crossed his legs. The panel before him on the large TV screen was made up of three men and two women, each of them better dressed and sitting in a much more comfortable chair than he. He had no doubt his handlers had given him the metal folding chair on purpose. It was just another petty way for them to kick him again. He had been in the chair for two hours already and was growing tired of the questions. He had already given them every name and address he could think of. Tunnel locations. Corrupt government officials. Ship’s names. What more did they want? Didn’t they realize it would all be replaced within months? It was an exercise in futility. A total waste of time. But he really had no choice did he? So he sat in front of the camera in the basement of the row house and spilled his guts.

He watched two of them have a whispered conversation while they chose the next topic for their endless questions. He had shocked them a number of times when he reported the actual quantities of drugs crossing the border and had to smile at their naïveté’. They really had no clue. He had thrown out the figure of eight hundred tons of cocaine and they had simply refused to believe it. He had simply shrugged. Screw ’em. He didn’t really care if they believed him or not. Reality can be a real bitch when you’re on the losing side.

The older woman, with her hair pulled back so tight it seemed to raise her eyebrows, loudly shuffled some papers and brought everyone’s attention back to her. She hadn’t made any attempt to hide the fact that Angel repulsed her, and he had decided to treat her in kind. He braced himself for her condescending tone. She talked to him like he was a child and she had caught him misbehaving.

“Mr. Sanchez, we would like to steer away from the drugs for a moment and talk about the human organs you had on board with you. Our information says that you had a total of two human kidneys on board destined for people in an Orlando hospital. The cooler had the seal of Doctors Without Borders and the transplant was in the UNOS computer, yet they claim to have no knowledge of the transplant organs’ origin. What can you tell us about this?”

Angel took a deep breath. They were gonna love this.

“The smuggling operation needed a legitimate cover to get the product through customs. We noticed that medical flights are hardly looked at, and even receive preferential treatment. So we started an air medical company and used animal organs at first to get through customs. The seals on the coolers were easy to forge and the paperwork was even easier. People wanted the organs so bad they were willing to believe anything. Somewhere along the line someone needed a real kidney, so they found a donor, some peasant farmer down in Oaxaca, and a doctor that would do the operation. The recipient paid a fortune for it. So we saw it as a bonus. It gave the flights credibility and another source of income. Sometimes the cooler was worth more than the drugs we brought in. We could pay some farmer five k for a kidney, and sell it for a hundred times that in the States. The problem was always time.”

“Time?”

“I don’t know a whole lot about the science end of it, but evidently a kidney is only good for so long once it’s taken out of someone. On top of that, it has to match the person it’s going to. We didn’t really have a source that would provide us with a list of people and their blood types. It was kind of a custom-order type business.”

“So you found a solution? How?”

“The surgeons we had weren’t really top of the line and there were a few deaths, so the peasants weren’t really eager to take the money, no matter how much we offered. The bosses needed to find another source. Evidently they did, because we soon had all we needed coming out of Mexico City. I wasn’t privy to the source myself, but I would meet the plane, load it with product, and an ambulance would just show up with the cooler and a legitimate destination. I just wore a flight suit and acted the part. An ambulance would be there to meet us when we landed, and that was it.”

“So where did the organs come from?”

Angel squirmed again. Drugs were bad enough, but this was really unsavory. At least he had immunity.

“I can’t say for sure, but I have an idea.”

“Go on.”

“The cartels are tied in with a lot of Mexican gangs. It’s mostly just to move product and buy influence with the police and government. Most of these gangs have a kidnapping business going, also. It’s become a big money maker for them. They’re mostly small, very compartmentalized sections. One group does the actual kidnapping, another transports the victim to a safehouse, another guards and takes care of the victim, and another makes contact and negotiates the ransom. These people never see anybody else within the group. If one is caught, the trail ends with them. It’s very hard to catch them, and the police have basically given up on it.”

“They’ve given up on it? You mean they don’t even look for the kidnappers?”

“Exactly. They refer the families to professional negotiators. Most families with money in that part of the world have K and R insurance. The kidnappers count on it.”

“K and R?”

Angel rolled his eyes and shook his head with a smile. These people were truly naive.

“Kidnapping and Ransom. Most of the big insurers are out of London these days.”

He paused while they all made notes on their ever present legal pads. He felt as if he were giving a lecture on the true nature of the world to a group of children. He played with the laces on his cheap shoes until they were ready.

“You were saying that the police do nothing?”

“A kidnapping negotiation is a month’s-long process. The police have neither the time nor the resources to pursue kidnappings. They’re too busy chasing drug runners, eh? And the army is now engaged with the gangs on the border. They have no time either. It has become a rather safe and profitable business.”

He watched them as they once again had a whispered conversation among themselves, each of them holding his hand over his microphone. Angel shifted in his seat again and fetched the bottle of water, now warm, from the floor beside him. Finally the uptight woman in the power suit took her hand off her mic.

“So how do these kidnappers get the organs?”

Angel traded a look with his handlers sitting against the wall. My God, were these people really that stupid?

“I would assume from some of their victims. Maybe they somehow know their blood types before they snatch them, or maybe they test them after they have them, but since not everybody gets released, even after the ransom is paid, I’m guessing that’s where they come from.”

“You’re saying that people are being kidnapped just for their organs?”

Angel shrugged. “I guess I am.”

“How do you know this?”

“I don’t for sure, but I can tell you that a couple of the gangs have grown very brutal in the past year. The police think they just had bad negotiators, or that the gangs killed a couple of them just to prove that they would and force the other families into higher ransoms. I don’t know. But the bodies that were found were never complete. It was always just a head in a box, or a hand or something, never the full corpse. Makes you wonder.”

“And these gangs work for the cartels?”

“They’re independent gangs, but yes, they work for the cartels.
Everybody
works for the cartels. If the cartels need someone kidnapped, the gangs do it for them. I think the organ thing is just a bonus, so to speak.”

He waited again while they made more notes and talked with each other. Angel scratched an itchy spot on the side of his head. The damp basement made his skin crawl.