Escape from Playa Del Carmen
CHAPTER 1
My bride, Vicki, came down with a stomach problem on the first vacation we took in years. I suspected she picked it up from one of our grandkids. We always visit them before a trip.
We landed at the Cancún airport from D.C. around noon, located our bags, and cleared customs. Finally, we navigated the chaos of tourists and caught a bus to our resort.
Surrounded by palm trees, the place resembled a Mayan village, with a straw-thatched pavilion in the center. Slate stone covered a floor grand enough to hold four volleyball courts. Impressive in scale and filled with arriving guests.
We waited for our turn at the desk.
My wife reached the counter and announced, “Jake and Vicki Aureola.”
I walked away because of all the hassle she endured on my behalf to decline the sales pitch they want you to attend every time we stay in a resort. After our check-in, the sun barely peeked over the horizon, and golden light flashed through the forest of waving palm fronds.
My wife believed motion sickness and exhaustion caused her stomach issues and some relaxation would help her feel better. After dropping our bags in the room, Vicki made a valiant effort to deny being ill by eating tacos and consuming only part of one margarita while sitting on submerged barstools at a swim-up tiki bar.
We ate in their giant infinity pool that visually blended into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s the resort’s hallmark, with the bar as its centerpiece. More extensive than a football field, the designers divided it into quarters.
On the stools in bath-warm water, we absorbed the tropical onshore sea breeze, enjoyed the swaying palm trees and the fragrance of salty air mixed with the flowering plants. It finally sunk in; there were no ringing phones, no complaints, and no estimates to do. We were on vacation.
By nine o’clock local time, she surrendered to being sick. We retired to our room to hang out near a toilet as her stomach threatened disaster. Our turquoise-painted room felt cramped by our American resort standards. The color blended with the combined odors of cleaning disinfectants and mildew expected in tropical accommodations. None of it helped her distress.
She sat on the queen-sized bed covered in a Caribbean-themed blanket with colorful birds, palm trees, and water. Vicki, grey around her mouth, held a paper towel balled up in her fist and kept a trash bucket next to her feet.
“Sorry, I’m not up for a hike or any trip on a bus without a bathroom a few steps away.”
She stared at me through teary, blue-gray eyes. Disappointed, I worried about medical services in Mexico. I sat a few feet away in a green wicker armchair near the mirrored closet door thinking about this whole ordeal, how I didn’t want to take this trip anyway. My better half came up with the entire idea, and now she might be sick through most of it.
“I’m sorry you feel like crap. I’ll call the desk and cancel our excursion.”
“No. It’s the one thing you wanted to do. I planned to come along for the ride.”
“And for company.” I liked spending time with her, although history wasn’t her thing.
“I’m not a good companion like this. Go do your old stuff tour, and I’ll hang by the pool, read a Kindle book, and soak my feet. Somewhere close to a bathroom.”
We talked it over while she lay back in the bed, and I held a damp rag on her forehead. I would make the trip on my own to Chichén Itzá.
At 6:00 a.m., our small group of half-asleep, well-to-do tourists trooped out of the lobby into thick, muggy morning air and climbed into our shuttle van. It looked like a repurposed, short school bus painted dark brown. It would take us north to downtown Playa del Carmen to join another group on a luxury tour coach. It’s all a little highfalutin, but Vicki went first class with points from our timeshare program to use up.
In some respects, her absence wasn’t so bad since she lacked any interest in geography and history. She only showed genuine interest in the Walter Reed Medical Museum because it appealed to her as a nurse—a place where I went along for the ride.
I might have piqued her interest by mentioning the ancient locals invented heart surgery. It might be stretching the term a little too far. I suppose human sacrifice, where your heart was cut out without painkillers and with no intention of the patient’s survival, qualified as an extreme definition of surgery.
My jittery stomach and doubts about leaving my bride alone while waiting for the driver to board put me in mind of my bus ride to Army basic training. From my early teens, I planned on joining the Army and becoming a cop through the military police. Dad served during the Korean War in the Navy, and the ideals of service to God, country, and community set in early. My parents instilled those values as far as community and country went. They took me to church, but service to God came from personal experience.
After the Army, back in the early ’80s, when I joined the Anchorage Police Department, they were short-handed on officers due to budget constraints. Anchorage sorely needed our academy graduates. The Alyeska Pipeline construction approached completion. Crews came to town for R&R, including drugs, prostitution, booze, and occasionally a donnybrook with a foot patrolman.
All the vices were readily available in our oil-rich boomtown. An affiliate of the Hells Angels found Alaska’s Last Frontier a place to do rousing business. Adding to them a couple of new upstart gangs out of California, the Crips and Bloods, kept us busy.
After graduation and probation, new officers received orders to work overtime to cover areas for those older cops who deserved a much-delayed vacation. Our first month out of probation, I referred to as “Felony July.” Working the midnight shift and ordered in on all my days off for four weeks straight, I averaged two felony arrests and six felony reports a night.
Our bus hummed with murmured conversations, mostly between aging couples, as if waiting for church services to begin. I watched the driver talking to a clerk inside, and he lifted his arm to check his watch. Not yet departure time as he returned to his conversation with the dark-haired young woman.
Thinking back on my early days at APD, when I was assigned to the quiet Eagle River area, those numbers for reports and arrests were monthly stats for local officers, and somehow, I managed to work them into a single night. Soon, only other department shit magnets wanted to be anywhere near me because they liked action too.
After five years of patrol service, my friend John and I were seasoned officers, more so than others with twice our short time in uniform. Our reputation for mayhem often preceded us.
The bus tipped, and I jerked my head up. Our driver boarded, snapped the door shut, and we began to roll. Glancing outside at the predawn darkness, the lack of streetlights made it difficult to take in the scenery as we drove north. There’s not a lot to see. Vegetation, in the headlights, looked green to greenish-gray. The whole area appeared as flat as Kansas from the air.
Coffee sipped from paper cups mixed with an array of cologne and perfume. Passengers chatted in low tones, barely audible over the noisy differential and humming tires. I’m officially an old geezer since it pleased me that no bratty kids rode along on this leg of our trip.
Counting the time to pass through our resort gate and to wait at a traffic light, it took about ten minutes to drive to Carmen. No vehicles came toward us, and none followed. We passed several sleepy tourist meccas hidden in the woods to our right as the Riviera Maya slowly came to life.
Our bus turned off the freeway to downtown and into a police roadblock. My first experience with one in Mexico, but I understood they happened. Local police tended to avoid offending tourists who spent their money, which funded the resorts.
Two marked, blue-and-white Federal Police cars turned in to funnel traffic to a single lane. Four heavily armed officers with automatic rifles reminded me we were not in Kansas. Due to 9-11, we endured heightened security back home at airports, but we were not yet in open warfare with drug cartels.
Streetlighting was poor, and parking areas separated the bus from buildings or residences nearby. Headlights from the two police cars and a military vehicle, maybe a Humvee, made it possible to see.
One man with a white hat and sports jacket stood silhouetted in front of the vehicles and appeared to be in charge.
I studied the situation and assessed my status, partly because instructors at APD stressed awareness. In addition, my life growing up in Alaska as a guide, a pilot, and a military policeman all served to train me to stay vigilant.
The sky lightened over the Gulf, but it remained dark around us. I watched one car the officers waved around the roadblock and listened to muted voices as several officers spoke among themselves outside. A loner stayed separate from the uniformed cops while they kicked an empty can around like a soccer ball.
Inside, we waited, resigned to a delay. Passengers chatted quietly and peered around. Someone outside indicated it was showtime as the cops came to attention.
Mom raised me to believe officers of the law were good guys. My life experience as an MP overseas, and with some corrupt stateside departments, taught me to be cautious. These cops were armed and posed a possible immediate threat. Mexican authorities were considered iffier than most, and I kept a close eye on them and considered options.
Roadblocks are designed to control stops, and in the drug wars here, officers position themselves with overlapping views, so if shooting starts, they don’t kill each other. It’s a safety practice, and the location looked appropriate, but it left an inevitable blind spot. In this case, the area directly behind our bus remained out of their view. My training kicked in, and I hunted for a way out and spotted the emergency back door exit. It is not difficult to spot with yellow and red stripes.
The White Hat guy boarded, and the sense of comfort inside shrank by half. In Spanish, he introduced himself to our driver as Inspector Morales.
I gathered the Federal Police were searching for a fugitive narco-terrorist. Morales peered with dark roving eyes over his shoulder while he spoke. Our driver listened intently and kept his hands in view on the wheel. He visibly paled in the weak light shining over his head.
The inspector promised to check everyone onboard, which should only take a moment. Morales eyed us again.
The hair on my neck and arms raised. Something in his tone or demeanor didn’t fit his body language. I didn’t understand every word, and my Spanish was poor. Other passengers who understood at least some Spanish stole furtive peeks towards their fellow travelers, wondering who might be a terrorist among them.
I sat in the back because I didn’t want anyone behind me. It’s a cop’s paranoia thing. Morales wore a small- brimmed hat, lightweight tan jacket, yellow polo shirt, khaki pants, and highly polished western-style boots. He was not tall, maybe five foot eight, and had a stocky build.
I estimated his weight at around 180 pounds or more, with a slight paunch. Morales had short black hair, brown eyes, copper skin tone, and some facial features suggesting Native heritage. An average Mexican male, in my view.
Morales started his search. He held a picture in his left hand and studied each male passenger.
My early warning radar went active. It is unlikely that anyone on this bus was a narco-terrorist. Drug running is a dangerous business, and a boss would never travel without security and avoid public transportation.
I survived my years on patrol by instinct and God’s good graces, as much as my formal training. A crawling in my gut wasn’t from missing breakfast. We were tourists, but this inspector seemed too sure his man rode on this bus. My police experience didn’t calm my nerves when I noted that what little traffic existed the officers outside detoured around us.
All appearances indicated they quit searching after stopping us. Whoever they wanted was onboard.
Everyone else acted blissfully unaware, chatting between couples, heedless of potential danger. Our white-hat- wearing cop continued towards me. There were operations where specific information existed, but Morales needed a picture for identification. Why? Obviously, he was hunting someone he did not know by sight.
Ten and a half years of my life was spent working for Anchorage. I moved up from patrol to uniformed investigator and Major Crimes Scene Team Investigator. I finished my career with a few years as a detective in the Crimes Against Children Unit and Robbery. None of my experiences jived with what I expected.
My gut said trouble, and it appeared I would be right in the middle of it—this time, without John for backup.
Passengers Morales bypassed acted relieved. One woman had dyed her hair to maintain a youthful appearance. She wore a purplish blouse, and as he passed by, her shoulders relaxed, tension drained from her face, and she exhaled a long-held breath.
Other riders tried to appear unconcerned, alternating between glancing at their significant other or their hands as they waited. Furtive peeks around, nervous whispers prevailed, and only a few of us remained to be scanned. I eased back in the seat, hands on my lap and feet under me.
Two rows up, Morales stopped and glanced from his photo to a man sitting by the window. An odd fellow who sat tall in his seat, thin with a beak-like nose, protruding front teeth, receding chin, and short haircut. A professor or academic sort of presence.
Putting his picture in a jacket pocket, speaking authoritatively in Spanish, Morales ordered the man to accompany him. Instead, the man replied in an accent and language I took to be German, protesting loudly and emphatically, no! His emphatic refusal brought everyone’s attention to him.
Apparently, it was not the response he expected. Morales grabbed him by his shirt collar and jerked him violently out of his seat. The cop summarily beat the man’s head with his pistol, knocking him to the floor.
Wiping blood from his gun barrel on the pant leg of his prisoner, Inspector Morales holstered his weapon and hiked his belt, pulling up his pants.
The unconscious man groaned and bled from several gashes near his left temple area. Morales dragged his captive out by his shirt collar, bouncing him down the steps, and dumped him on the pavement. Two officers cuffed the prisoner and tossed him in a Humvee like a sack of dirty clothes.
The violence happened fast with a very predictable effect on everyone, not to object and to be afraid. Several women cried, leaned against their partners, eyes closed, and suppressed screams. Their husbands tried to console them and appear brave. Pale faces, trembling lips, and shaking hands told a different story. I suspected the assault was more violent than they had ever witnessed in person.
Everyone understood to do what was asked, but this struck me all wrong. It stunk to high heaven. In Mexico, they must work with rules similar to German policemen. It was a little excessive, but their law read whatever force a cop used for an arrest was required. The arresting officers decided how much was necessary. It angered me then and still did.
What happened next caused my hand to reach for my gun, but it came up empty as my Glock 22 sat securely locked in my safe at home. Morales nodded to a tough-looking cop with dark skin and Native features who stood away from everyone else.
Something in the cop’s manner, cold and unmoved. A weathered, sunbaked face, emotionless with an aura of a slaughterhouse killer. He carried an automatic weapon, probably an UZI. I wasn’t sure because of poor lighting and distance. Not a weapon I associated with police work.
He checked and tapped his magazine, flipped off a safety switch with his thumb, and started for our bus. Other passengers talked nervously, some still in tears, and our driver tried to calm everyone. He realized the bloody apprehension wasn’t faring well for his business, let alone chances for tips.
Time for me to exit. I reached to my left and behind me, twisting the emergency door handle down. It opened with a loud pop as a plastic seal snapped away from the frame. I pushed it out, keeping an eye up front.
A buzzer sounded by the driver. Jumping from his seat, he turned to yell at me.
Rapid slaps of concussion banged against my body, and explosions filled the small space. Time slowed as a small row of red dots stitched up our driver’s side. Every round flowered into an eruption of splashing blood and doused a cringing couple seated behind him.
The man fell headlong down at the shooter’s feet and onto the steps. It caused the gunman to back away. The officer yanked the dead man’s arm like a bulldog pulling on a rope, backing up, and thrashing back and forth to clear a path inside.
The distraction provided my chance. I grabbed my day bag and darted out.
Between a door alarm going off and the panic in front, it focused everyone’s attention, cops and passengers, on the mayhem near the driver. No one saw me as I dove to the pavement.
I stumbled on my landing and came up into a crouch with one knee down. I recovered my footing, remained bent over, and ran for cover, angling to leave the death trap between me and any potential shooter. In the alley, I ducked behind a building and glanced back.
Gunshots continued as the wiry guy calmly annihilated everyone onboard. Unable to comprehend the sight, I stood transfixed as windows shattered and bullets pinged off cars and buildings. Blood splattered against unbroken panes and ran in rivulets. The woman in purple pressed her face against a window, mouth open, frozen in a silent scream.
Why, in Jesus’s name, were cops killing everyone? My earlier relief about no children turned to pure thanks to God.
It hurt physically to run away as years of experience taught me to advance towards trouble. However, unarmed, another lesson learned in the Army was to live and fight another day instead of senseless self-sacrifice. I took my only option, which would be hard to live with later.
As the sole survivor and witness, I needed to escape. Or was that true? The man dragged off was hurt but alive. Did they need him alive?
Turning away, a uniformed officer directing traffic spotted me and pointed. With a thirty-yard head start, I took off as fast as my feet allowed.
The backs of one- and two-story buildings joined or fitted close together lined both sides of a garbage-strewn alley. Suddenly, I found myself thankful that I lived a hard life.
Maybe I could count one or two guys my age who were fit enough to run and work as hard as some twenty- and thirty-year-olds. As an owner of a construction company, supervisor, and chief laborer, I worked as hard or harder than anyone on my small crew.
It was still early morning and deeply shadowed between buildings. I kept running for blocks, relying on training and instinct to choose a path. An all-points bulletin will be broadcast soon. They wouldn’t have much description beyond what the ol’ White Hat in charge would remember. Since I wasn’t his target, I figured not much stood out beyond my gray hair or a blue floral shirt.
Cops would expect me to stay low, too old and too weak for climbing. My gray hair would indicate remaining at or near ground level and none too fast. I found a trellis made of patterned concrete blocks going up the side of a two- story building. Whatever grew there at one time was long gone. I climbed carefully.
The sharp edges of the blocks scraped at my hands. Years of accumulated dust and dead bug bodies crushed under my fingers as I climbed. I used it like a ladder, up one story to the roof next door. I crawled over onto stone pavers covering a black rubber roofing. With a yowl, a couple of stray cats dashed for cover. I turned west because I didn’t want to be trapped against the ocean.
My previous experience as a fugitive amounted to Army escape and evasion training, with some practice as a runner for our SWAT team and K9 units. It gave me some idea of what I faced. Part of finding a wanted man is understanding who he is and how he thinks and avoiding assumptions.
An average American tourist is not in shape, and I admit a decade or more passed since I trained for a marathon, but I ran some all my life until a hip replacement stopped me. No matter. I work outdoors, climbing up and down ladders, in and out of ditches, and shoveling yards of dirt. Despite complaining about letting my younger men do the work, I was proud that their boss, Jake Aureola, stayed in fair shape.
Climbing down the front of the building on a bundle of cables and wires, I crossed another paved street pocked with potholes. I glanced at small closed-up shops on either side and cut across at an angle to another alleyway.
Sucking in the air like a man about to drown, I climbed one more building hugging a painted tin gutter. I used it like a climbing rope, inch-worming my way.
Crossing a roof with a black plastic water tank and a clothesline on top, I hopped onto a tin shed roof over the other side, then dropped to a sidewalk.
A lot of men in Mexico wore white “wife beater” tank-top shirts. I had one under my Jimmy Buffet concert shirt. I slowed to a jog. My lungs were searing like I inhaled fire. With trembling fingers, I unbuttoned and pulled off my shirt, hoping to blend in better in the non-tourist portion of town.
A good farmer’s tan from working outside in the Virginia sun helped. Although I wouldn’t be mistaken for Mexican, I might pass a cursory glance. I stuffed my sweaty shirt into my day bag and kept moving west.
Based on manhunts I remembered as a cop, the best chance of escape came from moving outside any perimeter net before it formed. I wanted half a mile more behind me ASAP.
Whoever directed the search would want a perimeter established far enough out to have me still inside. A stopped UPS truck sat idling at the curb ahead, and the driver jumped in and started rolling off in my direction. Lunging up on his back bumper, I grabbed a door handle. Catching my breath, I scanned parked cars, and otherwise empty, dirty streets went past.
A police car zoomed by the truck slammed on its brakes, and made a squealing sharp left turn. Holding my breath, I peeked over my shoulder, expecting him to complete a U-turn, but he continued and disappeared behind a corner shoe store.
We went a quick four blocks before the truck stopped again. Jumping down, I ran and barely missed colliding with the driver as he popped out his door. Dodging right, I set out at a fast jog.
A street sign read AV Benito Juárez. Early morning sunlight shone on my back, so I continued directly west. It was the quickest and safest way to distance myself from the town. My heading would cross two major highways. Roads made mental barriers for both bad guys and cops. I wanted beyond them and into an area with fewer eyes to spot me.
An old red Chevy pickup with one black fender and a homemade stake bed belched smoke and turned in front of me, struggling to accelerate. I jumped on a rusty back bumper, grabbing a rickety side rail. We crossed the highways. One of them, our bus took to come to town.
The truck traveled west into an industrial area. Over the rattling of the stake bed walls, I listened as many police sirens converged on the bloody massacre scene. Watching over my shoulder, I didn’t spot any. No one paid attention that I hitched a ride, so I turned around and sat on the cobbled-together bed. Other men in Mexico rode to work that way. I kept my head down, trying to appear sleepy while struggling to catch my breath.
Sweat ran from my head and trickled down my back. The tank-top stuck to me as I fought to control my panic.
Chapter Two...
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