It all started with a bad idea, to save two hundred dollars. I had done all the calculations and even with the cost of the bus tickets, to cover the eleven hundred kilometers that separated me from that distant airport, I could save two hundred dollars by taking the plane in the neighboring country.
I said goodbye to my family and set out on the long trip, in about ten hours I arrived at the border post to cross to the other side. At that time the Interpol authorities had already issued instructions to take blood samples from all border posts to facilitate any identification through DNA testing.
At the border post everything went very fast, they checked my passport, took my blood sample and I continued my trip, I had successfully completed the first stage...
After about three hours of waiting I took the other bus that would take me to the city where the departure airport was. I remember that we boarded the bus in the late afternoon. The seat next to me was empty so I fell asleep peacefully. I don't know how many hours passed but suddenly the bus lights came on and the first thing I saw was the tip of a rifle pointed at my face...
Without saying a word, they pushed me off the bus along with ten other men. They put us on a truck covered with a tarp... The nightmare had begun.
After two days of driving we arrived at a mountainous area, the atmosphere was cold and rainy. There was a large facility on the site and I soon learned from the smell that it was a coffee packing plant.
The work at the site was exhausting, from sunrise until early afternoon a group of twenty men were dedicated to load sacks of beans to the mills and from there to take the ground coffee to the packaging machines. We would stop at noon for lunch and then for dinner. Sometimes we would take turns, some would load and others would pack...
A group of armed men guarded us all the time, led us to the sleeping hut, took us to the toilets and guarded us in a playground where we went out to sunbathe on Sundays. There was no possibility of escape... I had become a modern slave...
Time went by and before I knew it, ten long years had passed. I had lost all hope when on one of my packing shifts I saw a small piece of paper and a small pencil in a wastebasket. Stealthily I put it inside my stockings...
I thought that if I managed to put a note of help in a package someone might see it, it was like throwing a bottle into the sea, but it didn't hurt to try...
I wrote the note and was careful to scratch my nails against the paper, I also bit the tip of my finger until it bled and stained the paper with my blood... The following shift I managed to introduce the note in a coffee package...
Mrs. María Rodríguez wanted to surprise her husband Manuel with a new coffee. She looked on the shelves and saw a name that seemed familiar to her, she remembered that some time ago one of her friends had recommended that brand. She took the package, continued her purchase, paid and headed home...
She prepared a cup of the new coffee and found it very good, her friend was right... She went to prepare another cup and was surprised to see the tip of a piece of paper sticking out. That seemed very strange to her and she remembered her conversations with her husband, an expert police officer in the missing persons division. She reached for some rubber gloves and finished pulling out the piece of paper. When she read the contents she ran to the phone...Someone was asking for help...
—Manuel...it's urgent...you have to come home...I think there's something for you....
Agent Manuel did not doubt his wife's word, started his vehicle and in a few minutes arrived...He read the note carefully and noticed the blood stain on the paper....
—Maria, you did very well not to contaminate this message...It may be a macabre joke...Or maybe it will lead us somewhere...
The next day Agent Manuel took the sample to the police laboratories. The blood stain and fingernail scrapings were sufficient for DNA testing. With the results in hand, Manuel went through the databases. Hours passed and nothing... but almost at the stroke of midnight his face lit up, he had found a match, a foreigner who had been kidnapped ten years before on a bus trip...
Manuel contacted the other police divisions. They had a good lead with the packaging. When they checked the brand name, they realized that it was a company that had been under investigation for some time for having links with organized crime...Until now they had found nothing against it...But this finding changed everything...
They processed all the available information and realized that there was a facility in the mountains that they had never visited, nobody had reported anything abnormal there...
Manuel coordinated the operation together with the army forces...In gunship jeeps and helicopters they arrived at the site. At first there was resistance in the factory but when the criminals were overrun, they surrendered...
They took the twenty workers to an open field. Manuel showed them the paper while they were getting into the trucks that would take them to freedom.... But they did not comment anything, they looked at it with indifference...
But the last man stared at the small piece of paper...his eyes filled with tears and he hugged Manuel...Thank you...Thank you...
Thank you for your time.
Cover edited in Canva. Images edited in HDR Max App.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Logo creado por @themanualbot