“Everyone stay put,” Cutbirth said. “I’ll be back shortly.” He headed off through the woods toward the river.
Adriana looked at Diego. He shrugged.
In a few minutes Cutbirth was back.
“What was that all about?” Diego asked.
“I attached that tracking device to a piece of driftwood and sent it down the river,” Cutbirth said.
“Who has the locator?” Yong asked.
Cutbirth said the bounty hunters and the National Police were in the possession of the GPS locator devices.
“That should keep them guessing,” Yong said.
“It will probably get snagged by one of the nets,” Cutbirth said, “but it might buy us some time.” A series of industrial-strength wire nets stretched across every body of water along the 38th latitude—rivers, lakes, and seas.
“You said Rosie won’t be talking to anyone,” Adriana pressed. “What did you do to her, Mr. Cutbirth? I think you owe us an explanation. I think $320,000 gives us a right to know the details of this little adventure.”
Cutbirth heaved a long, frustrated sigh, his eyes sweeping over each of them. “Would it make everyone feel better if I told you I simply tied her to a tree?”
“Yes, it would,” Adriana said promptly, relieved.
“If it were the truth,” Yong said.
“Okay. I tied her to a tree,” Cutbirth said.
Diego and Cutbirth locked eyes. In that instant, Diego realized that Cutbirth had seen him.
17
“Tell me something, Cutbirth,” Diego said. “How’d you discover this cave?”
Sweat dripping down their foreheads and stinging their eyes, they were hiking single-file through the dense woodland thicket. The trail was faint and the air was gummy. Cutbirth led the procession. Diego and Adriana followed. Sissy, Emily, and Henry came next. Yong and Sam brought up the rear. Sam was constantly looking over his shoulder.
“How are all great discoveries made?” Cutbirth said. “By accident, of course.” He glanced back at Diego. “I was guiding for a group of bear hunters out of Memphis. My dogs ran a big blackie up this mountain and into its den. It’s called Bear Mountain for good reason.”
“A blackie?” Diego questioned.
“A black bear.”
“And I assume its den was the cave?”
“Exactly.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bear,” Sam sang nervously from the back of the line.
“I’d never have found the entrance to the cave without the dogs,” Cutbirth said. “It was obscured by heavy brush. I’m guessing I was the first white man to ever set foot inside the cave. I suppose it shouldn’t be all that surprising. There are still hundreds of caves in Missouri that have never been explored.”
“So what happened?” Yong asked. “With the dogs?”
“I released them into the cave hoping they’d run old blackie out so my clients could get a shot,” Cutbirth said, talking over his shoulder as he walked. “Craziest thing. Dogs went in, but never came out. I heard them barking for, oh, five minutes or so, then nothing.”
They hiked on in silence.
Sam said, “I don’t think I like the ending to your story, Mr. Cutbirth.”
“Nor I,” Diego said.
“Actually, it’s not the ending,” Cutbirth said. “I came back the next day alone. Spent three days exploring the cave and looking for my dogs. All I found was an exit north of the 38th latitude. Never realized the importance of it at the time. Hell, I didn’t even know what the 38th latitude was back then. That was a few years before the assassinations, the repeal of the Constitution, and all the crap that followed.”
“After the referendum everything happened way too fast,” Yong reflected.
“You wake up one morning and your whole world has changed,” Sissy said, swatting a mosquito on her arm and looking baffled.
“Hold up!” Henry cried, peeling off from the group and making his way into the forest a short distance. He took a knee and scooped up something off the forest floor. He returned to the trail with his hands cupped.
“What’d you find?” Cutbirth asked.
“A baby bird.” Henry had delivered the news with as much elation had he found the Hope Diamond. He extended his cupped hands for everyone to see. “It must have fallen out of its nest.”
Henry placed the tiny bird in his shirt pocket. The chick’s featherless head poked over the top of the pocket and it uttered a feeble chirp.
“Jesus, Henry,” Cutbirth moaned. “You think we’re on some sort of animal rescue safari?”
“Very admirable, Mr. Bilderberg,” Sam said, smiling a little.
“Jesus,” Cutbirth muttered.
They hiked on, the suffocating heat and humidity settling in over the forest, swarms of pesky gnats flying up their nostrils and into their mouths and ears. Hordes of battle-hungry mosquitoes attacked from every direction.
It had not been easy, but Diego had managed to push Rosie’s death to the back of his mind. He was once more focused on the mysterious theft of Adriana’s Z patches. Diego concluded that the only person who had a physical need for a pain patch was Sam Holiday. The festering F sliced into his stomach no doubt throbbed with pain. Sam must have taken them from Adriana’s backpack in the middle of the night. Maybe while he was pulling guard duty.
At a few minutes before ten that morning, the vague animal trail angled away from the base of the mountain and turned back toward the river.
“How many trips have you made through the cave?” Yong asked. They were making their way up a narrow ravine, one choked with flowering white dogwood trees. Yong and Sam had been lagging behind, and they hurried to catch up. Concerned, perhaps, that the bounty hunters were biting at their heels, Sam continued to look back over his shoulder anxiously.
“How many times have I led rabbits to the other side?” Cutbirth asked.
“Yeah,” Yong called up to him.
“This is my ninth trip, Yong.”
“Were your previous trips successful?” Sam asked.
Cutbirth gave a dismissive snort and in not-so-cordial voice said, “If you’re doing your due diligence, Sam, that’s probably a question you should have asked me several days ago, before you committed to this trip.”
“Yes, you’re quite right, Mr. Cutbirth,” Sam said, “Nonetheless, were your previous trips successful?”
“How would you define success?” Cutbirth ducked his head as he passed beneath a low branch. “Watch your head!” he called back.
“Did everyone make it across?” Diego asked, swatting the gnats away from his face.
“Just about.”
They climbed out the ravine and into a dense patch of sumac.
Adriana said, “If you intended for your last remark to be funny, Mr. Cutbirth, I’m not…not laughing.” Bent at the waist, she placed her hands on her hips and greedily gulped in air.
Cutbirth turned and looked at Adriana with a puff. “In eight previous trips, I’ve only lost one person. Does that work for you?”
Adriana nodded. “Yes.”
“What happened?” Diego asked.
“He was sick,” Cutbirth said.
Diego wanted more details, but his mind was preoccupied with a single thought: Sam Holiday had stolen Adriana’s Z patches. Diego was certain of it. Bringing logic to bear, Sam was the only person with the means, motive, and opportunity to steal them. And he must be wearing them under his boxer shorts, Diego thought.
About eleven that morning, Cutbirth and his troop left the obscure animal trail and began to bushwhack in a westerly direction toward Bear Mountain, pushing aside thorny bushes that pricked their bare legs and arms and tore small holes in their walking shorts. Cutbirth said the entrance to the cave was located on the opposite of the mountain, not far from its 1,450-foot summit.
They hadn’t bushwhacked that far—about a quarter-mile by Diego’s calculation—when they came upon a metal sign attached to a tall pole. They gathered around the sign, which rose 20 feet above t
he forest floor:
Warning!
You Are Entering
The 38th Latitude Demarcation Zone!
The Border Is 5 Miles Ahead!
Go Back At Once!
Trespassers Will Be Shot On Sight!
--------------------
Edict 3-11
País Nuevo Department of Immigration
“Merry Christmas to you, too,” Diego said, gazing at the sinister warning.
They stood in the shadow of the sign to rest and drink from their canteens. No one seemed able to take their eyes off the signpost. Henry sat on the ground, poured some water into the cap of his canteen, and offered it to the chick in his pocket. The bird wouldn’t drink. Sissy had chewed her fingernails on both hands down to the quick, and was now working on her fingertips. Emily shot a few pictures of the threatening sign.
“Once we cross into the Demarcation Zone, we’re fair game,” Cutbirth advised. “Anyone with a gun has a right to shoot us.”
“Shoot us?” Emily cried. She tried to hold it in, but a big tear rolled down her sunburned cheek.
“Damnit, Cutbirth!” Sissy howled, pulling Emily into her arms.
“Oh, sorry, my nomenclature was all wrong again,” Cutbirth said in a spiteful tone. “I meant to say ‘to eviscerate our bodies on sight.’”
“You are a mean, hurtful man,” Sissy said, her eyes tearing as well.
“She’s only a child,” Adriana said.
“You do not have to remind me of that regrettable fact,” Cutbirth said, his lips pursed in anger.
Sissy said, “What Mr. Cutbirth was trying to say, Emily, is that bad people who cross the border in plain view of the guards might get in trouble. But Mr. Cutbirth has a plan to get us across the border without anyone seeing us.” She glared at Cutbirth. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Cutbirth?”
“That remains to be seen,” he replied.
“Try again, Cutbirth,” Diego said.
“That’s right, kid,” Cutbirth told Emily, “we’re going to cross the border and nobody will see us.” Cutbirth looked up at the sky and said, “Dear Lord, deliver me….”
In a few moments Emily’s blubbery outburst was reduced to sniffles.
Cutbirth looked at Sissy and in a cold voice said, “The next time your kid starts bawling, I’m leaving the both of you.” He looked at Sissy with a cruel smile. “I mean it.” He looked at Emily and said, “No more crying, kid, because if you cry and the bad men at the border or the bounty hunters or a hungry bear hear you crying, then we’ll be in big trouble. Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh. No more c-c-crying,” Emily said, looking up at Cutbirth with huge eyes. “I…I promise.”
“I hope you never have any children, Mr. Cutbirth,” Sissy said. “You’d make a terrible father.”
“My ambition in life is not to father a kid, but to explore a very deep cave outside Haute-Savole, France.”
“Good,” Sissy said. “You have spared some child a life of misery.”
Cutbirth slipped out of his backpack and dropped the gym bag on the ground. “Let’s take a five-minute break. All this bitching has worn me out.”
Diego set his backpack on the ground and asked Sam to join him. They walked a short distance into the forest.
“What’s up?” Sam said.
Diego was determined to remain cool, even though his blood was beginning to boil. “Why did you steal my wife’s pain patches?” On an anger scale of ten, with ten being the angriest, Diego was at about an eight. When he reached ten he would see if all those stories he’d heard about fistfights were true—the stories about how a solid punch to another person’s jaw could be felt all the way to the soles of your feet. Although he had never struck another human being in his life, Diego’s fist was doubled and the soles of his feet awaited.
Sam’s eyes got round. “I didn’t! No way! I would never do that! Honestly!”
“I believe you did, Sam,” Diego said coolly. “You had the means, the motive, and the opportunity.”
Sam gave an odd frown. “Means? Motive? You’ve been watching too much crime TV, Diego.”
Sam’s comment served merely to exacerbate the tension Diego was feeling and he pushed on. “Then you won’t mind removing yours shorts and your boxers.”
Sam started to laugh, but didn’t. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Damn right I’m serious. I have never been more serious in my life.”
Seated under the DZ sign, Yong had been watching Diego and Sam, and he walked into the forest and joined them.
“What’s the problem, Diego?” Yong said. “You look really pissed.”
“This is between Sam and me,” Diego said. “It’s none of your business.”
Yong uttered something between an assertive snort and an amused chuckle. “What if I want to make it my business?”
Before Diego could reply, Sam said, “Diego believes I stole his wife’s pain patches.”
“I don’t get it, Diego,” Yong said. “We emptied our backpacks. We stripped down to our shorts. What the hell else do you want?”
“Sam could be wearing the patches under his boxers,” Diego said.
Yong said, “And you want him to remove his boxers so you can examine his groin and his genitals and his butt?”
Diego nodded. “Something like that.”
“It’s not going to happen,” Yong said. Yong’s tone was composed, but Diego knew that if he peeled back a layer he would discover a shit-load of aggression.
“You’re being totally unreasonable, Diego,” Sam said. “I am probably one of the most honest people you will ever meet, and when I said I didn’t take the patches, I meant I didn’t take the patches. Period. I’m sorry about Adriana’s cancer and all the pain, but I didn’t take her meds.”
Diego exhaled an anxious breath. “How’s that cut on your stomach, Sam?”
“It hurts like hell,” Sam said. “It burns…but it doesn’t hurt enough for me to steal pain patches from a woman with cancer. I’m taking aspirin. It helps some.”
Diego sighed and smiled tightly. “I had to ask.”
“If you want my opinion, Henry sold the patches,” Sam said.
“Why would he steal my wife’s pain patches?”
“For spite.” Sam looked through the trees to where Henry was sitting under the DZ sign smoking a cigarette. In a soft voice he said, “Henry’s an evil little man.”
“Sorry if I offended you,” Diego said.
Sam and Yong said there were no hard feelings and the three of them rejoined the group.
Seated on his orange backpack, Henry said, “Cutbirth, are there any of those motion sensors in this Demarcation Zone?”
“Weren’t any the last time I was here,” Cutbirth said, his gazed fixed on the mountainous slope ahead. “But that’s not to say there are none now.”
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