Ch 15, Traveling Light

The trip to Brazil was long despite Marcel having found flights with only a 4 hour layover in Lisbon. By the time they were flying over the ocean, Teresa's exhaustion had taken over and she had fallen asleep. Her mind jostled around and showed her images of her Queenpin years when she had been striving for the top in an effort to feel secure and safe. She dreamt of people she had lost and people she had given up. She saw and heard George trying to convince her that she was talking enormous risks with the Russians, then she saw and heard Little T arguing that in school she wouldn't get the things Teresa had: power, money, respect. The things that had seemed important then!

Her sleep was tormented by the knowledge that she was once again going on a dangerous mission herself, that she had sent her family to the other end of the world on a mission no less treacherous, all in an effort to feel redeemed. She could hear Pote's accusatory voice talking about him caring for 'her' children's futures, and her mind showed her vivid pictures of her daughter waving at her as she had boarded a plane with Kelly Anne just a few days ago. Had she seen her child for the last time? What kind of dark thoughts were these? Her mind screamed and she woke up to realize that some turbulence had actually awakened her.

Marcel was watching a movie and took off his earphones the moment he saw she was awake.

"I just got juice and some cookies. Want some?" he offered.

Teresa nodded, sat up and helped herself. She had not spoken to him about the 'danger' of the trip and as they were landing in just a few hours, she decided to do it now.

"I was told there were some pretty dangerous situations in London." She said and waited.

"Yeah…It's a huge city…with a lot of folks working for Lancaster!" Marcel's response seemed like he wasn't happy to talk details.

"Besides Chicho getting the bike to fall on top of him….ahh…what else happened?" She ventured trying to stick to the humorous tone.

"Your son loved the fish and chips…they were...amazing!" Marcel smiled, but she wasn't sure it was a genuine smile.

Teresa wrinkled her forehead: "Stop it, Marcel!"

"You would have loved the food!" he pointed out.

"I actually….hate fast food, especially fried...it's for lazy people who don't know how to cook!" Teresa picked up the teaser herself.

Now Marvel smiled for real: "Creole cuisine has a lot of fried dishes!"

Teresa returned the smile: "Does it?" Then she added: "What else happened in London? Am I to expect the same here…after the car bomb in Tel Aviv?"

Marcel sighed deeply and said with a serious face: "I don't know. That's why I was surprised James didn't join us but opted to go to Goa."

"I convinced him that you grew up a gangster in NOLA and are fully capable of protecting both of us…keeping in mind that I shoot and fight very well myself!" Teresa was very serious, and Marcel got the message.

"I would guess …complements of your sniper and fighter trained …husband!" he asked.

"Hmm", she nodded. "Let's talk about a plan…Who do we approach first and …how do we keep a low profile?"

Marcel drank his juice, adjusted his seat and turned to her: " Sure…but before we do that…do you think you'll find a job for me…in your venture cap …if this story is the end of my business?"

She couldn't tell if he was serious or not, but she waived her hand and said: "I'd like to believe it won't come to that!"

They checked into a hotel and gave in to the jetlag. The next day they decided it would be safer to get a cab to the port rather than rent a vehicle and try to find their own way.

As the cab drove them to the port, Teresa stared through the window at the beautiful center, full of tourists enjoying their leisurely vacations. The restaurants with open patios were brimming with life and the picture made Teresa feel pangs of conscience again.

The port was quite different: busy and dirty. Marcel's investigator had been providing him with regular updates and as such Marcel knew who to look for. The contact was a middle-aged man with balding hair, going by Osvaldo. Osvaldo had been paid and was upset to hear that the investigator Ruiz had been shot dead. He felt suspicious at first but as Marcel knew everything Ruiz had been working on, Osvaldo finally pulled out some documents of 'wine' imports and a sample tested in a lab where the port authority did business. All was presented as the legitimate concern of a customs official checking on 'wine' imports.

The import from Israel was neither wine, nor fertilizer, but chemical waste, a specific by-product resulting from the production of rubber for the automobile industry. According to Osvaldo, who had 'years of experience', this made 'absolutely no sense'. Unless the facility in Tel Aviv was re-engineering waste from different manufacturing processes and then secretly shipping it abroad.

"We need to look into the previous landowners, the ones you bought the land from? Who were they? What other businesses did they have? Can this particular chemical compound be associated with them?" Teresa's mind was churning with ideas as Marcel called his wife in NOLA. She was a human rights lawyer but had the resources to perform research on the matter.

The visit with the investigator's family was worse. The wife was inconsolable and despite Teresa's best efforts at consolation, she just wanted them out of her hair. She gave them the address of the safe house her husband had rented to stay at in an effort to protect his family and his personal house. She took the cheque Marcel wrote to her and didn't hide her impatience to see them gone.

They rode in silence and once the cab dropped them at the address, Teresa started thinking that whoever killed Ruiz had to have tailed him to this safe house. She was late with her precautions as none of them noticed the man in the window of the building opposite to the safe house, who pulled out a cell phone the moment they had closed the door behind them.

The safe house was a small apartment with a kitchen and a room, which had a bed, a couch and a desk stacked with boxes of documents belonging to the owner. Ruiz's laptop was on the couch still hooked to the power. His portable safe was there as well as some food supplies.

"If someone is observing this place, they must have been inside …and left things untouched as bait!" Marcel noted. To Teresa's surprise, he knew the safe's combination and opened it to find cash, guns and some of the documents Osvaldo at the port had already shown them. At this point Marcel's cell rang and he put it on speaker to introduce his wife Louise and Teresa to each other.

"The company you bought the land from is a local manufacturer of tires for the agricultural industry." Louise sounded just like Kelly Anne in her detailed listing of her research findings. "They had two manufacturing facilities to the east of Fortaleza that are now vacant. It looks like they didn't survive a government audit and closed their doors …about half a year after they sold the land." It was amazing the woman had been able to gather this information in an hour! Teresa thought.

Locating the owners in the hope that they may provide information about any possible connection to Lancaster was Louise's next logical and step and she promised to call when she had something.

As Marcel wondered if they had any reason to take the guns, while Teresa was checking the ammo supply, they heard a knock on the door. Then it exploded open, the chain snapped and flew across the room, while the man standing at the door took a step in and raised a pistol with a long black tube screwed into the barrel.

Teresa's mouth had gone dry. There was a strange distance between what was happening and her ability to process it. She felt like she was seeing death and she knew in this precise second that none of the risks they were taking was worth it. Then she saw Marcel, who had exited the bathroom to the side of the entrance, charge the intruder, and remove his gun as the two engaged in a heated exchange of blows. It lasted several minutes and as they were destroying the flimsy furniture, Teresa managed to grab the gun that had fallen on the floor and to smash it in the man's head.

Marcel used the opportunity to get up, then he looked outside to see if there were others, while Teresa grabbed a backpack that had been lying on the couch and filled in the contents of the safe.

Marcel's face was smeared and caked with dust and blood, and it made the whites of his eyes stand out. His hands were unstable, his fingers were curled in tightly, like they had been clawing desperately at something. He turned towards the street thinking that they needed a car fast, to get out before anyone decided to chase them. The gray SUV parked three sedans behind the entrance was just the right vehicle, so he pulled her by the hand and ran in its direction.

Not more than a minute later he was sitting in the driver's seat, trying to wipe his mind and emotional register of what had just happened.

Teresa had gotten in the passenger seat and her breathing was coming in fast gulps as she urged him to go! Marcel hotwired the SUV fast as his expertise in stealing cars had more than 20 years of practice. Then he realized that the windshield was so filthy, that maybe the car wouldn't start because it had been parked a very long time. But the engine came to life under his expert hands, and it took 10 seconds of pummeling with wiper fluid to scrape away the grime and the dirt and the plastered on leaves.

He drove off in the direction of the highway as best as he remembered just as two SUVs made the corners of the street in high speed. They ended up on a road that was definitely going out of town but was desolate for the late afternoon. This would make any chase very easy, he thought and the knot in his stomach tightened. Would they chase them? The group after them would be more people ..like 5 or 6...to come in two vehicles. There must be more operatives of this Blackridge than the ones the man in Tel Aviv had talked about!

The sun had set and soon dusk took over. Marcel drove and felt his self-preservation recoil in anticipation. His panic swelled as he noticed a pair of lights behind them. He hadn't done any of this in the last 20 years! Was he ready? Teresa noticed them too and turned nervously to check how far the other cars were.

Marcel took his foot off the gas, watched the speedometer needle swing counterclockwise. He heard a gunshot over the roar of the engine as he made a sharp turn into the first right.

A bullet hole stared in the windshield. Then another, then one ripped into the dash. Looking back, he saw the SUV now several hundred meters down the shoulder. The speedometer was at 80 km/h and climbing ,which was dangerous for this road. Teresa had taken her gun out and was ready to start aiming at the hostiles.

He was going a little over 110 km/hr now, the engine starting to maintain speed, the RPMs inching into the red. Fuck! Obviously, there was an issue with this car, that's why it had been left out for so long!

They blew past a sign giving notice that there was an industrial zone approaching, or that's what he figured out with his basic Portuguese. But at this speed they reached it in a matter of seconds. He hit the side street at 70 km/hr and broke hard. Neither of them was buckled in. Inertia slammed Teresa into the glove box and shoved him forward into the steering wheel.

At the end of the small street, he took a brutal left turn through a stop sign – tires squealing, rubber burning. It slung her against her door and sent him almost flying into her seat. He drove across a small overpass.

He counted three sets of lights behind him as they tore through the empty streets. Teresa leaned forward starting into the darkness as they sped past an empty bus station, then cleared the ghetto part of the town, alongside abandoned warehouses and trainyards.

"They're getting close", she yelled, and he looked in the mirror but saw only two sets of lights. Would the third car try to cut him off?

That's when a gun thunked into the trunk of the SUV. Followed by two more successions like someone taking a hammer to metal.

"It's machine guns", she yelled.

"Get on the floor", Marcel yelled back. Two more rounds pierced the window and the backseats. The old SUV was no match for what was coming. The next shot ripped through the middle of Teresa's seat. Marcel saw the sea straight ahead through the bullet ridden glass, "Hang on!"

He made a sharp right onto the next street, and as the bullets continued to pepper the rear passenger door, he cut the lights. The first few seconds of driving without headlights felt like they were flying through total darkness, then their eyes began to adjust.

Teresa could see the pavement ahead and the black building silhouettes around them. He took his foot off the gas but didn't touch the brake. Glancing back, he saw the two SUVs make aggressive turns onto the street, then they started gaining fast, but he was sure their high beams had not touched them.

He saw a fence as their speed kept dropping. He steered across the road, the grille smashed into the locked gate, splitting the door apart. They rolled slowly into the parking lot, and as he maneuvered lightly around a toppled light pole, he looked back at the road. The SUVs streaked past the gate, trailed by a Humvee with machine gun turrets mounted on the roof.

Teresa climbed up from the floorboard and Marcel grabbed the backpack from the backseat. The slams of the doors bounced off the brick building straight ahead in the surrounding silence.

Then they heard a revving engine as a black SUV skidded sideways across the street as they ran towards the building. They were able to shut the door behind them before the high beams illuminated the rundown front office.

They moved fast down the corridor, the light from Teresa's cell piercing the darkness, their footsteps pounding the rotten floor. Sweat ran down Marcel's face and stung his eyes. His heart was beating so fast it rattled his chest and he felt he was gasping for breath. But he heard no voices after them and that was a good sign.

Almost 30 minutes had passed after they had found a hiding place in the run down building with several other abandoned large vehicles at the front whose presence perfectly hid their SUV in plain sight.

Marcel touched his neck as he felt a tickle and his fingers became wet.

"What the hell is this?", he mumbled as Teresa turned towards him and shone the cell light on him.

"You've been hit, carajo!" she said and lifted herself to see better.

His ear had bled all over his clothes. As she set the cell on the floor, something inside of him released, the strength, the tension, the anger, the fear. Everything flooding out at once in a stream of uncontrollable tears and sobbing. He crumpled down against the cold wall and she pulled him over to her lap.

He had started on this journey hoping to get justice, but it seemed the adversary was too well trained and too well prepared. He had left his family alone in NOLA, with no protection because he had stopped employing a security agency once he had gone legit. He had accepted this woman's help, despite the realization that she had paid her debt to him a long time ago, and now he had no plan how to get them out of his shitty place. The expectation that they'd face one or two Blackridge operatives had been wrong; they had been chased by three SUVs, one armed with machine guns. Everything was falling apart in front of his eyes!

"Everything in life has a price, Marcel…everything…I found out this long time ago…hopefully this one isn't too high!" she said to the impossibility to deny their helplessness, all caused by human greed and inability to stop!

"How are we gonna get out of here? Wait them out?" he mumbled.

"They will have the area blocked…then they'll start going through the deserted industrial buildings…I think." She sounded uncharacteristically calm.

"Once it's morning, they may recognize the SUV…we gotta try to escape now!" he said urgently as she was applying gauze from the backpack to his wounded ear.

"And go where…on foot?" Teresa shook her head. Every thought seemed a dead end. They were not close to a city; there was no one from her family close by…no one on this damn continent to call for help! Her mind felt the pressure but somehow, she didn't break. Maybe because Marcel had already done that!

She pulled her cell and checked the battery. 70% full. It was great her phone was less than a month old. She had bought it right before the family vacation to Paris! Then she opened her contacts and dialed.

"Who are you calling?" Marcel's voice sounded anxious.

Teresa couldn't answer as she heard a click and then Little T's lively voice said: "Hey sister! Did you sell all the coke I sent you for the prison gang and now you need some more?"

Just three months ago Teresa had asked Little T to send her 'product' as she needed to bribe the prison officials to ensure James's safety inside. Little T, who Teresa had seen back in Dallas five years ago, had been placed to run Sinaloa for Castel Fioto's cartel as part of a CIA operation to clean up the Mexican distribution channels. Teresa's introduction of the two women had been a smart move to ensure contacts in high places, as well as to have Castel drop her efforts to recruit James for the Sinaloa position.

"Oh God!" Teresa never imagined she would be so happy to hear the voice of someone who was still very much in the middle of the narco life. "I'm in deep shit in Northern Brazil and need you to get me out. I may have a few hours until they find us! Do you have connections in Fortaleza?"

There was a moment of silence, then Little T said: "I'm actually in Medellin. You're …lucky sister…very lucky…hold on for a second!"

Teresa didn't know if to laugh or cry. If Little T was in Colombia, she was closer to her geographically, but that meant that other parties from her former life would get involved for sure.

Then she heard Castel Fioto's melodic voice in her ear: "Teresa Mendoza! No puede ser! (It can't be!) Where exactly are you, how many of you …and how many hours have you got?"