A King's ransom

threatening my family.”

“But I could make you scam the yanqui.”

Even in the dim light I could see the anger on her face. One look at my father confirmed that we were sharing the exact same fear: Alex was about to squeeze off a shot at Joaquin, but anything less than perfection would kill the hostage, the human shield.

“Alex!” I shouted, reaching for my gun.

In the same instant my father broke free from Joaquin’s grasp. A shot rang out as he rolled to the ground, but it missed and shattered a clay pot. I dived to the ground and fired repeatedly at Joaquin. Alex was shooting, too, as she and Father Balto ran for cover behind the big statue. Joaquin fired back, as did someone else from behind a dirt pile, and the barrage of bullets erupted as if it were a war zone. My father was out of sight, having slid behind a gravestone. Joaquin fired a few more shots in his direction, but Alex and I pinned him down with gunfire. I crouched low behind my marker, bullets whizzing over my head.

Suddenly all was quiet in the darkness.

I sat crouched behind the headstone, breathless from the exchange of gunfire, my back against cold granite. Darkness had completely overtaken us, no moon or stars in the night’s overcast sky, just a dim glow from distant city lights. I listened carefully for any movement about me, but I heard only the sounds of my own erratic breathing.

“Brothers, please,” shouted a brave Father Balto, but three quick gunshots sent him scampering back into hiding.

That son of a bitch just tried to kill the priest!

My hand shook as I dug the cell phone from my pocket. I dialed the police and tried to speak to a dispatcher in Spanish, but the wireless reception was terrible, and my scattered thoughts produced only fragmented sentences, partly in English.

“Las pistolas. Los kidnappers en el Cementerio Central.?Ven aca, por favor!”

Bullets sailed over my head. In my panic I was making no sense, and my talking was giving away my position to the enemy. The dispatcher hung up on me, and I held little hope that Colombian police would actually come charging into the cemetery at night to stop an ill-described gunfight.

I crouched low to reload my weapon. My first shoot-out, and it was going to be to the death of one of us. But who would fall? And who was on which side? In my mind I quickly replayed the last exchange of gunfire. Alex had fired at Joaquin. That meant she was in my camp, despite anything she’d said. But someone else with Joaquin had been firing what sounded like an automatic weapon. That made it two against two, at best. Father Balto was unarmed, but he was with Alex. The only unprotected player was my father. A sick feeling came over me, as I knew what I had to do. Somewhere in the darkness among all those gravestones, my father was hiding, praying for his life.

I had to find him before Joaquin did.

74

Matthew thanked the Lord for darkness. In the confusion of gunfire, slithering across the grass like a snake on his belly, he’d found his way to an overcrowded collection of tall markers that stood one beside the other, almost on top of one another, a veritable forest of towering stone crosses and statues of patron saints.

His hands were cuffed behind his back, his ankles tied, and his mouth gagged. It was a bit of ironic luck that Joaquin had removed the blindfold to torture his eye. The left one had blistered and swollen shut from the cigarette burn, but the right one gave him the precious advantage of sight.

He lay perfectly still, almost afraid to breathe. The slightest movement could reveal his whereabouts, which would be deadly. He knew that Joaquin had brought him here to avenge the death of Cerdo, to execute the prisoner right before his son’s eyes. Matthew was ready for that. For weeks he’d been preparing himself for the possibility of his own death. One thing, however, he hadn’t prepared for: the death of his son in a botched rescue effort.

He burrowed into hiding at the base of a huge stone marker, pleading with his Maker to take him and not Nick.

Nothing moved, not anywhere. I was peering out over the top of my marker, some dead stranger’s resting place. Somewhere across the grounds, hiding behind one of those countless slabs of stone, were Joaquin and his well-armed buddy. I’d been waiting for one of them to break toward my father, or at least in the direction I’d last seen my father go. Maybe they were being patient. Or maybe they’d already made their move, and I’d missed them. I couldn’t risk it. I had to take the offensive. But to where?

Had I been my father, I would have crawled toward the cluster of old monuments beneath the two sprawling oak trees. Compared to the rest of the cemetery, it was like midtown Manhattan, towering granite everywhere, lots of little places to get lost. On hands and knees, keeping low to the ground, I headed in that direction, one monument at a time.

Matthew’s heart nearly stopped. He hadn’t budged from his hiding spot, hadn’t made a sound. Lying in the darkness with hands and feet bound, he felt invisible and vulnerable at the same time. He knew it was only a matter of moments before Joaquin would spot him.

He knew, because he could see Joaquin.

Joaquin was kneeling behind the dirt pile, the lower half of his body hidden in the half-dug grave. His pistol at the ready, he raised his head just high enough to see over the tops of the gravestones, searching for the enemy.

It would have been an easy shot for Matthew, a steady target at just fifteen meters. The kill shot would have been to the side of Joaquin’s head, as Matthew was perpendicular to him on the same row of graves. If only his hands were free, if only he’d had a gun, a knife-anything. So many times he’d thought of giving Joaquin exactly what he’d deserved for the murder of his friends on the boat in Cartagena, for the gang rape of Nisho up in the mountains, for countless other atrocities that he and his buddies had bragged about. Matthew had no regrets for having killed Cerdo; it sickened him to think that Joaquin might walk free, a wealthy man.

Joaquin looked in his direction, looked away, and then did a double take. Their eyes met in the darkness. Matthew had been spotted.

Neither man blinked, neither looked away. Matthew refused to cower to his executioner.

Joaquin smiled slightly, then raised his pistol and aimed between the eyes.

I was just a few meters from the forest of monuments when I heard Alex shout from somewhere in the darkness.

“Joaquin, take it!”

The knapsack sailed through the air and landed with a thud. A volley of gunshots erupted, both Joaquin and his accomplice reacting with pointless fire at the sack full of money. It was exactly what Alex had intended, I presumed, and she’d startled Joaquin into revealing his position. Alex and I fired repeatedly in the direction of the half-dug grave, me from my position at the forest of monuments and Alex from farther away, near the statue of the Blessed Virgin.

Return fire ripped through the night, mostly in my direction, as I was the closer threat, just a few meters away from them. I scampered into the maze of taller monuments for better cover, a trail of bullets rattling off the stones with the beat of a jackhammer. I rolled several times to avoid the spray of gunfire, collided with a large stone pedestal, then froze at the sight of the body two graves away.

Dad!

I crawled as fast as I could to his side. He was facedown in the dirt but raised his head at my touch.

“It’s me!” I said in an excited whisper. I yanked the gag from his mouth. “Are you hit?”

“No, no. They’re so coked up, they shoot worse than you do.”

I hoped that someday we’d laugh at that. “Thanks a lot.”