777 - The Return from Quepos

The black Prado Land cruiser finally pulled up by the beach in Quepos. Afua, Dami, Deji and Samuel piled out of the jeep. As they stretched their legs from their long journey, they were met by the locals of the small beach town who immediately tried to sell them everything from jewellery to tour guides. But they were preoccupied by other thoughts. They waited some 15 minutes but there was no sign of Daniel, Brenda and Belinda in the silver Honda. They had taken a wrong turn soon after they left San José on the four hour trip to Quepos. Deji pulled out his cell phone and checked it. He had reception. He dialled Daniel’s number...

The date was 07/07/07. The seven friends had flown to Costa Rica on a Boeing 777 and the boys were staying in room 777 at the San José Marriott. They had risen at 7am that morning and paid $77.70 for gas for the trip to Quepos. While they may have ordinarily dismissed the recurrence of the number seven as freak coincidences, they could not dismiss the fact that Afua had a dream the night before predicting doom if they did not solve “the riddle” by 7pm. And Afua never dreamt amiss. Well, almost never.

Daniel picked up the call. “Hello?”

“Hi Daniel, its Deji. Where are you guys?”

“Well, we got lost. It took us almost 2 hours to get back on the road to Quepos. When we got to the mountains, Brenda and Belinda insisted we turn back! We’ve been hanging out in San José since.”

“Okay, please do me a favour – can you find a Bible and check what Judges 7:7 says?”

“Why? What do you need that for?”

“I’ll explain later. Please can you just check it and call me back?”

“Sure, will do.”

Samuel looked at his watch. 12 noon. They had exactly seven hours to find the scripture and figure out what it meant. Samuel spoke to a few of the locals in Spanish to find out where they could find a Bible. Afua, Dami and Deji tried their best to be useful – they went round to anyone they thought might understand their Spanglish saying “Biblia?” while holding out their hands in a book shape! Eventually Samuel came back to them. “Guys, I think we’re in luck, one of the tour guides said there is a church down the road”

The friends got back into the land cruiser and before long they had whisked themselves down the road, along the full stretch of the beach and to the bottom of a hill where they found a small church. They walked into the small brick building with a thatched roof. It seemed deserted. They couldn’t find a soul inside but they did find a few Bibles scattered on the benches not very far from the pulpit. Samuel picked one up to flick straight to Judges, but to his dismay, it had only the New Testament! He checked one after the other – they were all New Testament only. They went back to the beach but tried as they may, they couldn’t put the day’s events out of their minds and enjoy themselves.

“I just tried calling Daniel back, but there was no response,” Deji said, as they lay on their towels a few metres away from the sea shore.

“Let’s start getting back,” Samuel responded, “it’s obvious that’s all we’re going to be thinking about all day!”

It was unanimously agreed that Samuel would drive back, even though Dami had driven them to Quepos, given the dangerous nature of the mountain roads which they had to face once again. Samuel was the far more experienced driver and nobody wanted a repeat of the widespread panic that Dami had exhibited behind the wheel at 10,000 feet! Samuel sped down the highway towards the mountains as quickly as they could. They knew that navigating the mountain roads when it started getting dark was a proposition that none of them wanted to face.

It took them less than an hour to get close to the mountains. However as they approached they suddenly heard sirens behind them. Samuel looked in his rear view mirror and could see what looked like a police vehicle fast approaching them.
“It looks like they’re asking us to pull over,” Afua said, “what should we do?”
“Pull over of course,” Dami said, “it’s not like we’ve done anything wrong. Just remain calm and we’ll be fine. Samuel, you do the talking!”

Samuel pulled the Jeep over and the police car stopped a few metres behind them. Two men emerged from the vehicle wearing uniforms that likened them more to army officers than policemen. One stayed by their vehicle, while the other, hand near his hip, approached the land cruiser cautiously. Samuel wound down his window as the officer approached. The others looked on in silence as a conversation with the officer in Spanish ensued. After a couple of minutes Samuel reached for the globe compartment and handed the man some documents.

“What did he say?” Afua asked as the man walked back to his vehicle, “I hope everything is OK?”

“He said we were speeding. I tried to explain we were trying to get back to San José before dark. Anyway, he’s checking my driver’s license now.”

“Will they accept your UK license here?” Dami asked.

“They should do,” Deji replied, “I guess we’re about to find out.”

When the man returned his conversation with Samuel was much briefer. He didn’t hand Samuel back his papers, and the look on Samuel’s face worried his friends.
“What’s the matter?” Afua asked.

“Well, they’re not satisfied with my UK license; they want us to come down to the station!”

Samuel started the car and followed the police to a quaint little town called Jacó. When they arrived at the police station, they were surprised by how run down it looked. They were led through the front door and into the reception where they were motioned to sit on benches packed with dozens of other people who seemed to be waiting their turn to report or resolve one altercation or another. On the right of the room towards the back, there was a corridor leading jail cells which were visible from the reception – they could tell they were packed with prisoners and very noisy too. It appeared no one here could speak English. Samuel was left to do all the talking. He had a few words with an officer by the counter while the others were seated. At this point the group was fully dependent on him to get them out of this mess!

Afua shifted uncomfortably on the bench, sandwiched between a woman twice her size and a man sweating through his pores like he was in a sauna. She needed any excuse to leave the bench. “Samuel, I need to go to the bathroom. Can you ask them where it is?”

After Samuel said a few words to the man behind the counter, he motioned towards and open door on the left of the room which led to a long corridor. She found the bathroom at the end of the corridor on the left. There was no door, just a large entrance where a double door should have been. She was sure that she must have walked into the gents because all she could see were three urinals lined up next to each other against the wall. She checked again but there seemed to be no ladies room. Perhaps no female inmates, she thought. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved by that or terrified! She was still deep in thought when she heard a noise from the other side of the restroom. She noticed a small crack in the wall so she went to take a look.
She peered through the crack in the wall to see a hidden room, and there were lots of people. At first she couldn’t make out what they were doing but then suddenly it became startlingly clear to her. Oh my goodness, she thought as she ran as fast as she could back to the reception.

“Guys, we need to get out of here. I don’t think this is a police station at all...”

“Of course this isn’t a police station,” she was interrupted by a husky deep voice.
Silence descended on the room as a tall man walked into the room from the corridor Afua had just fled. He was dressed in a sharp grey pin striped suit and red tie, had a visibly deep scar running all the way across his left cheek to his lower jawbone, and towered above almost everyone in the room. He was intimidating to say the least, and he spoke perfect English, though in a deep Hispanic accent.

“Samuel, I’m disappointed,” he said, breaking the brief silence his entrance and profound revelation had caused. “I thought you would have figured that much out by now.”

The friends were dumbfounded. Samuel startled. How did this man know his name?
“Okay, I don’t know what type of sick game this is,” Samuel said, “but it needs to end now!”

“Of course this is a game – and it’s only the beginning. And the four of you are my little helpless pawns in this game!”
He motioned to the people sitting on the packed bench and they got up, picked up their belongings and hurriedly left. He spoke to his “policemen” who grabbed Deji and Samuel, handcuffed them and started to take them away.

“I saw what you’re really doing back there,” Afua shouted, “You’re not going to get away with it!”

“In case you didn’t realise,” he retorted, “I already have, and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it!”

“Drug trafficking is a serious crime,” Afua shot back, “and now you’re about to add kidnapping to your list of offences! Look, we’re British citizens. Our government will find us and then your petty drug peddling is going to be shut down!”

“Actually,” Dami tried to speak to Afua with a whisper, “Deji and I are not red passport holders; we only have the green of Nigeria!”

Ouch, Deji thought as he was being led away. He could see the headlines on the morning news back home – ‘Two Britons have been kidnapped in Costa Rica, The British consulate is doing everything in its power to negotiate the release of its citizens. They’re being held with an unknown number of other hostages whose nationalities have not been identified!’

Samuel wanted to shout to the girls not to worry and that everything would be fine, but of course he didn’t know if that was true. Two men who were big enough to be sumo wrestlers, yet built enough to be bouncers, took Deji and Samuel to an empty cell, threw them in and locked the door behind them. They were locked up for a while so they had time to contemplate their dire situation.

After conversing for an hour or so Deji said “So how do you think this will play out?”
“I have no idea,” Samuel responded. “This is absolutely crazy! Do you think this has anything to do with the July 7 bombings in London?”

Before Deji could respond, there was a loud explosion! The cell they were in shook violently, the lights went out, and before they knew it, they could hear gun shots. Machine guns. The rounds of shooting went on for what seemed like an eternity. Samuel and Deji buried their heads under the bed as they could see rounds of fire fly past the door of their cell. After about 10 minutes, there was a brief respite. The shooting stopped. They pulled their heads out from their hiding place to assess the situation but suddenly there was another explosion at the entrance to their cell. It startled them, but it was a more controlled explosion than the first one. The door of the cell flew open, and men, dressed in black commando gear trooped in. Samuel and Deji looked at each other in bewilderment. They were picked up and led out of the room by the men in black!

Look out next week for the next instalment of the 777 saga. Will the friends make it back to San José before 7pm? Will they finally solve the 777 riddle? Who is the scar-faced drug cartel baron and who are the mysterious men in black? Find out next week in 777 – The Final Destination!