Recluse:The Induction by Philip John Walibba
Chapter Seven
Monday, 1:53pm
A Boeing 737 passenger airliner lifted off the Galeao International Airport runway on Governador Island on the shores of Rio de Janeiro. The plane was heading to Benito Juarez, México. Inside the fully parked economy section, sat an anxious Rodriquez pressed next to a window staring out into the clear afternoon skies. He hadn’t taken Antonio’s advice –‘Take these next few days off. Don’t do anything stupid.’ But this was his fight not Antonio’s.
Placing both hands inside his pale grey hooded cotton sweater’s side pockets, a sense of relief ran through him when he felt the 32GB white flash driver. He was headed to México Mexico City, from where he would board another carrier to his final destination, the City of Culiacan in the Sinaloa province of México, the world’s most violent city. The odds of making it out of Sinaloa alive were very slim and he knew it but, this was also his only shot at getting even with Marcelo. Rodriquez was scheduled to meet with a man said to be more powerful than the Mexican President. Joaquin Guzman Loera, the Sinaloa drug cartel Boss. Guzman, who also carried the tag of the world's most wanted man now that Osama bin Laden was dead, was also named in several indictments in the United States and México for marijuana, cocaine and heroin trafficking, as well as racketeering, money laundering, kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder.
Rodriquez had read that the drug lord had been brought up in Badiraguato, Sinaloa and had begun his career working for powerful drug lord Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo. He later had founded his own cartel, quickly establishing outposts in a number of states before eventually inheriting some of his mentor's territory. It was also rumored that a few years back, Guzman had escaped from a high-security México prison reportedly hiding in a laundry basket. Guzman had later gone on to dominate the entire western half of the U.S.- México border through fighting bloody battles for supremacy with rivals Tijuana and Juarez cartels. Guzman’s drug empire now dominated drug shipments around the world from china to Australia. Rodriquez had also read the Sinaloa Cartel boss was a very intelligent and very violent man.
Aware that the plane had settled into a steady rhythm, Rodriquez glanced at his wrist watch, ten hours of uninterrupted thoughts. He closed his eyelids. Yesterday, he had hardly slept. He’d tossed and turned in his bed, his dreams had been frightful and fragmented. He’d seen visions of Natalia, Mariana, and the dead woman in the Rochina. Suddenly, he’d been accosted by more violent images of him fighting the priest, numerous other disfigured faces grabbing at him and then he had seen Marcelo. He’d awakened, his heart throbbing and his face drenched in sweat. Before he had gone off to bed, he’d plugged into his laptop the flash disk. What it had revealed had sent his mind swirling. The information on it startling. He had immediately telephoned his colleague Criminal Expert, Constable Selton ‘Selli’ Mello.
‘Hey Selli, you’re still at the ‘damp’? He had asked. Rodriquez often referred to his work station as the damp, something which irked his boss Antonio.
‘Yeah, loads of work still to be done, papers to push. What’s up?’ Selton had answered in reply.
‘Great. I need you to make me invisible.’ Rodriquez had said.
‘No!’ Selton had protested. ‘You need clearance from Delegado!’
‘Just think of it as a small favor from one friend to another.’
After a long silence, Selton had finally agreed.
‘Okay, but you still need clearance from Delegado.’
‘I know. Thanks, I owe you one.’
A request of this kind was a request for the highest level of covert clearance which meant all traces of him in the country’s data bank were now temporarily inaccessible including his phone contacts and email records. In other words, he had vanished. Such measures were only employed in emergency situations only. Asking to be taken off the grid was a prerogative reserved for the Police Delegate who in this case was his boss Antonio Francisco Oliviera. But this was Brazil, and in Brazil, there were always other means of getting around such delicate matters. Rodriquez smiled to himself.
‘Excuse me sir,’ a soft female voice aroused Rodriquez from his thoughts and he opened his eyes. It was the flight attendant. The rosy cheeked, bright eyed young lady bent over, smiling. Her fresh fragrance crept into his nostrils. Rodriquez could see she wore a dark blue short sleeved crisp dress, a Jaunty red Arabian hat, a red belt and a light blue scarf with bright red lines at the edges neatly wrapped around her long neck.
‘Would you like to order anything?’ She asked smiling at him.
‘No, no, am fine. Thank you.’ he replied. He wasn’t in the mood for interruptions. He let it be known, by the expression on his face. She seemed to get the message and hastened to inquire from other passengers seated in the row behind him. He quickly glanced at his neighbors. Closest to him sat a brunette engrossed in a magazine. She wore a sharp stingy fragrance. He reckoned she was a tourist. Next to the woman sat a young man with sizable sideburns. He was wearing headphones. He had on a thick coffee brown leather jacket and light blue denims, a drug dealer. Rodriquez allowed a tiny curl of a smile across his face. He let his eyes sweep across the entire cabin. He could see rows upon rows of heads facing ahead. Two people, both male, a few rows ahead were fumbling with the luggage compartments above their heads. He again glanced at his watch, it was still eight hours before his first stop, México City. He felt for the phone touching its hard surface inside his sweater. Satisfied, he leaned back on the head rest, tilted his head to face the window and again, he closed his eyes.
Rodriquez had been careful not to carry his own phone instead opting to carry the phone whose owner was the dead girl from the Rochina. He also hadn’t revealed his location when he made initial contact with the Mexican drug cartel from inside his flat the previous evening. He had logged onto the Sinaloa Cartel website using the untraceable deep web network using an alias- El matematico-The mathematician. He had gone on to enter the dead girl’s phone contact and waited, his heart pounding hard. A second later, he’d received a text message on the phone’s screen requesting for authentication. Beads of sweat had appeared on his forehead as his hands reached for the computer buttons typing into the space the verification code -Tengo prisa – ‘I am in a hurry.’ A few more seconds had gone by although it felt like forever. A short sentence had then appeared on his computer screen in Spanish. Ovejas perdidas?-‘Lost sheep?’ He had breathed a heavy sigh. He was in.
He was awakened by a sudden loud bang startling him. He looked around but no other passenger seemed alarmed.
‘The Captain says the sound is coming from one of the engines but,’ the brunette seated next to him said, ‘he also says that we need not to worry, the other three engines are perfectly okay.’ Rodriquez noticed that she spoke with a smile on her lean pale face. ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘we’re only left with ten minutes to land, so you better fasten up.’
Rodriquez hastened to fasten his seat belt. Outside through the plane’s window in the distance, he saw flashes of lightening illuminating the darkness. The darkness was also occasionally dissipated by the Boeing’s strobe light which flickered brightly onto the plane’s wings and turbines.
‘What time is it?’ he asked the brunette. She stared quizzical at his face and then at his wrist.
‘It’s just past nine.’ She replied. He remembered he was wearing a watch.
‘Oh, am sorry, I forgot.’ He said feeling embarrassed.
He noticed she had changed into army green Capri pants, and a black tank top which had a silver Marijuana plant plastered at the front.
‘Ramona.’ she said extending her hand. He shook it.
‘Juan Manuel.’ He lied.
‘El Chapo- ‘Shorty’ is expecting you, and I’ll be your escort.’ She said as Rodriquez’ heart began to thump hard inside his chest.
On the ground, Ramona swiftly led him through the Benito Juarez International Airport terminal, out again onto the wet airport tarmac through a drizzle into a waiting bl