Ten Hours to Find Luca

Dead!??

The word hit me harder than I expected. My heart filled with sadness and anxiety. “Bloody bullshit! You left Luca like a piece of garbage in a rotten landfill!??”

“If Luca is dead, you can expect a whole lotta justice coming your way. Fast!”

I used the scalpel to cut the strips securing the pseudo-doctor’s arms to the operating table in this filthy basement, while Peter, my Dad, used my flashlight to create an illuminated space in the dark. A room within a room. I’d only had my Dad for two years. Thought I was fatherless until a clever cop in Detroit tracked him down in Thailand. He is the newest addition to our team.

I violently kicked the table. It collapsed with a resounding crash, sending up a cloud of dust from the floor. My ‘patient’ landed in a pile of year-old grime on the concrete floor in the underground operating room, with a few extra scratches.

“GET UP!” I snarled at him.

I wanted to kill him a dozen times already. But alive, he was still useful—especially if he could help us find Luca. And I think he could.

I violently pushed him back up the stairs and outside to the car.

“Dad! We bring these creeps to the landfill. But we need more eyes out there!”

I threw the ripper into my stolen Toyota Tundra while Dad escorted the second perp to one of the other cars. Handcuffed.

“Will you call Coach and update him? That landfill is a gigantic piece of wasteland, and we need all the hands we can get. Also, call the police and ask them to send a K9 unit. And an ambulance!”

I didn’t have to instruct Dad. He perfectly well knew what to do. He had a history with the Cocaine Import Agency in Nicaragua and Honduras under Ronald Reagan. He wasn’t exactly a novice in this bloody business. Proud to be his daughter and proud to have him on the team.

Len and Angel followed in their stolen cars with their perps securely locked up in the trunk. I fired up the GPS in my phone and we hurried to the landfill as quickly as we could.

My mood was lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut. Everything around me seemed grey except for the red traffic lights; I neither had the time nor the inclination to respect.

Luca dead??? How could this be true? I couldn’t believe it. I just wanted to wake up from this nightmare.

It took a little more than twenty minutes before we arrived at Poniente Landfill. It was huge. Depressingly huge. And closed. Looked like it had been shut down a long time ago.

Kicked my murderous, idiot passenger violently out of the car. My respect for people who steal kidneys from kids is nonexistent!

“Take me to the place you left him,” I commanded.

The quack got up from the ground and started walking around searching for something recognisable. We searched for ten minutes, and I was just about to lose my patience.

“I believe it was here,” he said, like he was trying to make up for his vicious actions. Or maybe he was stalling…

I looked around. Bikes, toys, plastic bags, bricks, tyres, cans, bottles, rats, barrels, rusty pipes… as long as I could see. It all looked the same. Dad, Alma, Len, Angel, and I searched, but it seemed like an unconquerable challenge. We needed more hands. A lot more.

Dave and Psycho were the next to arrive, and they immediately started searching. It was getting darker. If this was going to last much longer, we needed light. We all had flashlights as part of our tactical gear, and it helped to some extent, but visibility gradually diminished.

Rachel, Garcia, Goldie, Wes, Mason, and Owen also arrived, each with a mid-level cartel perp from the raids we conducted just an hour ago – either cuffed in the car or secured in the trunk.

Police also showed up. Only four of them. Dad had told them the entire story on the phone, and they arrived with two K9 units, and the dogs immediately started sniffing.

The ambulance also arrived.

So did a few more cops. They weren’t exactly in a hurry.

As the day grew, darkness began to slowly creep upon us.

Have no idea how much time we spent searching. Time passed by fast, and at the same time, it felt like time had stopped. It was getting darker. And colder.

And we still hadn’t found Luca.

One of the dogs froze, nose working. Then it dropped to a sit. Something was buried in the trash. She was very controlled and signalled to her handler that she found something. I followed the dog, hoping to find Luca.

We quickly started removing garbage, and some clothes appeared with a man inside. Deffy not Luca. This was most likely a homeless guy. He was cold and quite dead. Checked his pulse just in case. Turned him around. He was a bloody mess. And the smell. You know – that semi-rotten sweet smell. Looked like he bled out from a wound in his stomach, the crimson stain spreading across his clothes.

“So you took his organs too?” I spat, every word dripping with accusation.

He didn’t answer, but unfortunately, it made perfectly good sense to harvest organs from homeless people. There are half a million of them in CDMX. Bloody Business!

“How fucking many more people are left for dead here?”

“I… I haven’t … Not me. I am new to this,” the ripper excused himself.

The visibility was getting severely limited, and as time went by, I felt desperation and hopelessness creeping upon me along with the increasing darkness.

I stumbled over waste and debris numerous times and got scratches on my arms and legs trying to navigate in the twilight.

That’s when I saw it! Fifty yards away. A sparkle from the very last sunbeams that reflected in something. Glass, I think. A small rusty lorry almost entirely buried in trash. With a yellow five-pointed star on the door. I instantly remembered what Celestine told me to look for.

“Over here!” I shouted. “It’s here!” I was seized by a compelling enthusiasm and got goosebumps down my neck. A boost of new energy filled me.

I ran as fast as I could. Fell a few times more and hurt both of my arms and my right shinbone, but finally, I reached the truck and started looking around it.

I removed a lot of plastic bags as fast as I possibly could. He had to be here! I wanted him to be here!

One of the K9 dogs was on its way over. And it found something.

After turning fifty or sixty plastic bags, two handfuls of broken bikes, a door, and some plastic toys in fifteen secs, I finally noticed something that didn’t fit in. An arm.

“He’s here! MEDICS!” I screamed, my throat tearing with the effort.

I ripped away the last scraps of debris, and suddenly—Luca was free.

I dropped to my knees, hands already moving. Breath check. Pulse check.

Nothing.

“Fuck me!” We are too late.” The words hammered inside my skull.

I hauled him onto the old wooden door I’d pulled aside earlier, laid him flat, and locked my palms over his chest. Push. Push. Push. The ribs shifted under my weight, and the sound was obscene. I sealed his blue lips with mine, forced air into him. Again. Again.

His skin was cold, a dull grey. Death had already brushed him.

Hope surged. If he’d been left open, he’d be dry by now. But maybe—just maybe—I wasn’t too late.

Len was over Luca as fast as a hurricane and started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while I tried to assist his little heart.

I felt the tears welling up along with my worst fear, and Len noticed.

“Deb! We can do this,” she said, teeth clenched, voice sharp with determination. “We can do this.”

We had to keep going until the medics could take over, but we couldn’t move him until his heart started beating. Moving him would mean we had to stop working on him while carrying him to the ambulance, and that could easily be fatal. Would take 10 minutes. Not the best circumstances. So, we continued.

One of the paramedics quickly connected Luca to a defibrillator while Len and I continued working on him, and Angel held his tiny hand. After placing the pads on Luca, Angel let go of his hand, and we watched while the Automated External Defibrillator did its job for a few secs.

No pulse.

More compressions. The machine instructed us in Italian, but we already knew what to do.

Luca had lost a lot of blood, and the paramedic quickly prepared an IV drip, trying to stabilise him. He had to stand up and hold the IV bag high to make it drip.

We took turns holding his hand, performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, CPR, and defib. We aren’t exactly strangers to injured or lifeless people. We have all done this before. But it is tough when it is an innocent nine-year-old kid! It’s not fair! The world is messed up by selfish morons who couldn’t care less about other people. At that moment, I hated half the world. Probably even more.

The defibrillator was ready to fire again. I leaned back while it fired.

Still no pulse.

Time went by fast. But I could NOT give up! This is sooooo unfair! A nine-year-old defenceless boy! And some jerkoffs stole his kidney and left him for dead in this lousy dump!

Cockburgers!

Still no signs of life.

The defib was ready for the third hit.

No response.

On the verge of panic, but repressed it.

Now, this is not a movie where medics give up after three attempts. I was determined like hell to go on.

I know! The longer it takes, the smaller the chances become. But it’s not impossible. And as long as Luca had just a slim chance, I was determined to fight for his life. Besides, I hadn’t traveled 1500 miles just to give up. So, I continued.

The defib was ready for number four.

For a short moment, it looked like the monitor registered a few weak heartbeats, but it stopped.

The situation appeared grim, and I couldn’t help but notice the resigned look in the paramedics’ eyes…

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