She was led back to her cell. That night, for the first time, she felt herself start to freefall mentally. She turned toward the wall, prayed, thought of home, the long road that had led her here, and she cried for hours. She prayed that some force – human, God, Jesus, anyone who could save her now – would somehow intercede and get her out of here. She thought of her fiance, Robert, whom she had lost on the bloody streets of Kiev, and she thought of growing up in California and her grandmother’s funeral in Mexico where they prayed and sent paper lanterns down the river. She knew she was getting delirious, but it didn’t matter because the delirium was a mechanism that would take her out of this hell on earth. If she couldn’t leave physically, at least she could leave mentally.
Then she wondered if that was what had happened to Roland Violette. Had his sanity been a sane reaction against the insanity of the life he had led? She didn’t know and had too much time to think about it.
Then came another night in solitary.
Alex must have been sleeping, she realized with a start, sleeping in a sitting-up position on her mattress, because the rattle of keys awakened her. There was the grating, creaking, banging noise, of the door being opened. Then she was looking at three guards who were staring at her without saying anything. She had never seen them before, and they looked unpleasantly official.
The first two were female, one a thick woman with grayish hair pulled back and a thick middle. The younger one was slimmer and looked as if she might be part Russian. Behind them was a man. He carried an automatic weapon across his chest. The weapon was chained to his belt so that no one could grab it from him and run.
One of them threw a pair of rubber thongs on the floor.
Alex stood. She was hardly in a position to resist. Emotionally, she was flying blind. She hoped that somehow the police had contacted the Mexican government and some steps were being taken to get her released. But she had no reason to believe anything of the sort.
She stood and slid the thongs onto her feet. She held out her hands for cuffs. The older woman curtly said that the manacles wouldn’t be necessary. They indicated she should walk. The matrons went first, followed by Alex, and finally the guard with the automatic rifle followed.
They went through two checkpoints. Alex tried to remain alert and observe as much as possible. She caught her first view of a courtyard. It was night and the yard was empty. Her eyes went to the walls. They were old, maybe fifty feet high, and patrolled with guards who commanded heavy searchlights. There was a flock of gulls far beyond, circling, and from the tone of the sky she guessed that she was somewhere near the water.
After the checkpoints, they walked her along a corridor. The path was long and dim. There was a ceiling fan that didn’t work. The paint was peeling off the concrete walls, which were yellowish, discolored, and wet with humidity. She stole a glance at a wristwatch on one of her guards. It was 2:00 a.m. It occurred to her that it was around this time of morning that she had been on her way into this island, twelve days earlier, she calculated, unless it was thirteen.
They took her through another gate. This one was metal and more modern. It led to another building: modern, glass, and steel. A walk down another corridor, this one with linoleum, and her keepers led her into a small room. They ordered her to remain standing.
“Now you wait,” the male guard said in Spanish. Quietly, she stood and waited. In her mind, a prayer was never far way.
They left her alone and closed the door. The room was stuffy and humid, even at night. There were windows with lateral bars. The building had an imprint of Russian architecture from the 1970s. There was a dreadful condemned feel to it and it leached quickly onto her.
Her tunic was scratchy. At this point, it occurred to her, she would have given a year of her life for some soap, deodorant, and clean clothes. She tried to distance herself from the thought because she knew that she didn’t want to start measuring things in years of life.
There was an animated conversation on the other side of the door, so brisk and profane in Spanish that she could barely understand it. Then the door flew open, and a very angry man rushed in. She recognized Major Mejias immediately. He was in a military uniform now. He wore a sidearm that could have brought down a charging elephant. He was dangerously agitated.
His eyes fixed quickly upon her.
“You!” he said to her in Spanish. “I curse the day I first saw you!”
“I can say the same for you,” she said.
“Shut up! Hold out your hands!” he said.
She obeyed. The guards didn’t think she needed cuffs, but Mejias did. He cuffed her hands. Beyond the doorway, two of her guards stood, watched, and smirked.
“They pull me out of bed in the middle of the night,” Mejias raged. “You’re my prisoner so
“Transport?” she asked.
“Maximum security. Middle of the island,” he said loudly and with a snarl. With a sharp yank, he tested the cuffs to make sure they were secure. They were tight. He was so rough that the sockets of her shoulders ached.
He took a blindfold out of his pocket. He wrapped it around her eyes.
“Army base in Santa Clara,” he said. “They’re going to bury you alive so deeply that no one will ever find you.”
“Is the blindfold really necessary?” she asked.
“Standard,” he said. “Ugly place you’re going to. You’ll see when you get there.”
He yanked at her arm to get her moving. She cursed back at him and he yanked harder. Then they were moving quickly down a corridor. She felt extra hands upon her, and the next thing she knew they were helping her down a short flight of steps.
“A transport van’s waiting,” he said. “Get in and keep quiet.”
They led her to a vehicle whose engine was running. There was a female with the vehicle, a guard or a soldier, Alex guessed. She could hear her voice. The driver probably. Then Alex heard a door open and she was pushed into the backseat. Someone put a manacle on her right ankle and cuffed her to the interior of the car. The doors slammed, and she heard two people jump in.
One of them, she knew by his voice, was Mejias. The other was the female. The vehicle started to move. It stopped and started. Alex guessed it was going through prison checkpoints. Then it was out onto an open road. She could tell it was accelerating, moving onto a highway, probably the one that led to Santa Clara.
Mejias and his female associate talked in hushed voices that she couldn’t hear. There was an occasional crackle of a longwave radio on the dashboard and a GPS that operated in Spanish. Every few minutes, Mejias took a call to confirm his location. The vehicle bounced as it moved along the highway. Alex managed to brush her blindfold against her shoulder so that she could develop a narrow sight line. But that gave her very little. It was an official vehicle of some sort, with boxes and crates next to her. The woman in the front seat was wearing a military uniform. That was all she could see of her: just dark hair and a shoulder with an epaulet. In front of the vehicle, all she could see was the night and the headlights along a winding highway that cut through the center of the island. Maybe it was best that she couldn’t see more, she told herself. Mejias was driving like a wild man. The vehicle hurtled forward at a mad speed. What his urgency was, Alex could only guess.
Guess, hope, and pray.
Another incoming message crackled across the two-way. Mejias answered it and signed off. Then Alex heard him speak to the woman.
Something had changed. Or plans were being jerked around. All Alex knew was that the vehicle came to an abrupt halt. She heard a window come down. She peeked through her sliver of sight and saw both of Mejias’s hands on the two-way GPS.
She saw him pull it from the dashboard. She heard a clatter and guessed that he had jettisoned it. Then the car was in motion again. He ripped a vicious U-turn and from the feel of the tires, it seemed they were cutting
