by Lois Greiman
But, it wasn’t the heat, it was the humidity. Isn’t that what people always said as they sat on their shaded verandas and sipped sweet tea. He grinned as he hurried on. A root, gnarled and bare, caught the toe of his boot. He fell hard, rested a moment then forced himself to stand again.
Something warm spread across his wrist. He lifted his arm to examine it. Blood. His gut wound was oozing again. But it could be worse, though he wasn’t sure how. Oh yeah, the bullet could have become lodged in his intestines instead of passing straight through. He was the lucky one, he thought and caught himself against the solid trunk of a nearby tree before he fell on his face again. The plant life was ragged here. Small trees were broken and bent. As if some giant beast had plowed its way through. A giant beast or… a bulldozer!
The idea froze in his mind. If there were bulldozers there must be people. Maybe it really was his lucky day. Maybe—
“Fucking jungle.” The Spanish words were spoken low but close.
Shep ducked down, half falling, half lunging into the broken flora at his feet.
Foliage scratched against something off to his left. From his right, a twig snapped. Shep gritted his teeth and held his breath.
“When this is over, I’m going to lay in bed for a week.”
The man at two o’clock chuckled. “Do that, and Pia will kill you herself.”
“Who said I was going to spend that time with my wife?”
There was a snort from the man on the left. “So your niece is visiting again.”
“Dulce always comes for All Saint’s Day.”
“Good Christ, you’re a pervert.”
The first man chuckled. Close now. So close Shep could smell the onions he’d had for dinner, but he waited, tensed. One step closer. One more step and he would leap. He’d take out the pervert first then—
“Linus,” his mother said.
He jerked at the sound of her voice, head reeling.
“Your face is dirty again,” she said and, leaning down, brushed her thumb across his cheek. Her skin felt like magic against his.
“Mama.” His voice sounded guttural, but she just smiled. Marjorie Shepherd always smiled, eyes soft beneath the purple scarf she wore to hide her baldness.
“I swear, you’re the messiest boy I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m sorry.” He wasn’t sure why he was apologizing. A dozen things all at once he supposed. His cheeks felt wet.
“’Course you’re the handsomest, too,” she said and winked, periwinkle eyes shining.
“Where’ve ya been?” he whispered. His voice sounded whiny.
She shook her head. Her lips were still smiling, but her eyes were moist, shining with a thousand regrets. “Don’t you worry about that, young man. You just take care of yourself,” she said and turned away.
“Mama!” Whiny had turned to panic. “Don’t go!”
“I’d stay if I could, Saddle Tramp. I’d stay for you,” she said but she was already fading.
“Mama!”
“Jesus Christ!”
The coarse words snapped him from his trance. The nearest man stood not two yards away, feet braced, AR-15 trained on Shep’s chest. “This guy got the jump on Treg?”
His friend chuckled. “Looks like the American has had a run-in with our friend the jungle.”
The first man cocked up his rifle and switched to English. “You don’t look so good, amigo.”
Reality leached slowly into Shep’s faltering psyche. His mother’s image slipped slowly from his mind. So he was delusional. Not surprising, he supposed. And not so bad. Because despite the scores of beautiful women with whom he had spent time, there wasn’t one he wouldn’t give up for a few more moments with Mama. He chuckled. If that little scrap of truth got around the barracks, he’d never hear the end of it.
“Hey!” The nearest man snarled and kicked him. Pain burned like wildfire through his ribs. Consciousness turned to gray ooze then brightened stubbornly. “What you laugh at?”
Shepherd shook his head slowly. Two days ago, he had been certain death was preferable to bondage. But damned if life wasn’t a hard thing to give up. He rolled painfully onto his back. “I’m glad to see ya boys,” he said.
The man to his right was scrawny and jittery. A dirty white bandana was tied around his forehead. “Not so happy as we to see you.” When he smiled, you could see he was missing a molar. Apparently, hostage-nabbing, drug-running bastards didn’t spend a lot of time on dental care. “There will be a pretty reward when we return you to Quinto.”
“Linus,” Mama called.
Shep closed his eyes and sent his mother back into the shadows, but not without a hard bite of guilt.
“How much?” Shepherd forced the question from between gritted teeth.
They stared at him.
“How big is the reward?” he asked.
“A million pesos.”
Five hundred dollars. Shep considered trying a whistle, but there was no point attempting such challenging vocalization. It was fortunate as hell he could even talk…but then, he’d always been the lucky one. “That is a pretty reward,” he said.
The man on the left grinned. He had a moon tattooed on the biceps of his right arm. “The boss, he holds a grudge, amigo. Says he want you alive.”
Shep tried a casual shrug, but the bruising across his deltoids made that almost impossible. “I suppose it’s only fair that he keep the lion’s share for himself.”
There was a moment of silence then, “What you talk of, gringo?”
“Linus...”
Shepherd winced at the sound of his mother’s voice. She wasn’t real. Hadn’t been for twenty years. There was no reason to feel guilty for ignoring her now. But his gut felt cramped.
“Quinto told ya about the reward for me from the Americans, didn’t he?” Shep asked.
“There is no reward, amigo. None wants you.”
Shepherd caught the man’s gaze and tried the smallest hint of a know-it-all grin. “I’m sure you’re right. A guy like Quinto wouldn’t cheat his buddies.”
The two exchanged a glance. Shepherd could see that much though his vision had been for shit the last few days. He wiped his knuckles across his eyes.
“There is no reward from the Americans,” Bandana repeated.
Shep shrugged. He needed a plan. And he needed it fast, but he wasn’t altogether sure he could get his feet under him. And most plans were going to require a little bit of mobility.
“There is no reward!” the man demanded and kicked him again.
“Just ten thousand dollars.” They were the first words that came to mind, and were barely audible. His bottom lip, split weeks before, still stung when he was lucky enough to find a sip of water. “Ten thousand American dollars.”
“You lie like the pig.”
He was slipping again, sliding toward oblivion.
The closest man kicked him hard enough to jolt him back to reality.
“I’m not.” Shep’s voice was raspy. Blood trickled from his mouth.
“Who’s paying?”
“Gabriel,” Mama said. “He’s coming for you, Tramp. You know he is.”
“He doesn’t know where I am.” The words were whiny.
“We Shepherds aren’t quitters,” she reminded him.
“But I’m so tired.”
“You answer the man,” she insisted. “You answer him.”
“Gabe.” He could barely force out the name. “Gabriel Durrand will pay.”
“How much you say he give for you?”
“Ten thousand.”
“He lies,” Bandana had switched back to Spanish. “Nobody’s gonna shell out that kind of cash. Not for a corpse.”
The man with the moon tattoo was glowering at him. “He ain’t dead, yet.”
“As good as. He’s not going to make it all the way back to camp. Not on his own anyway.”
Moon’s expression was getting grimmer.
Bandana slapped a mosquito the size of a trai
n. “You want to carry him?”
Moon sighed. “Reward ain’t nearly so big if he’s dead.”
“I expect you to do what you have to do,” Mama said.
“What?” Shepherd asked, turning toward her. “What do I gotta do?”
Bandana snorted. “He’s loco already.”
Shepherd shook his head, though he wasn’t altogether sure the man was wrong. “If ya take me to the village, I’ll get ya the money. That’s a promise.”
Bandana grinned. “Think what kind of bauble I could buy Dulce for that kind of money.”
Moon chuckled. “You sick bastard.”
“You’re just jealous ‘cause your niece has a face like a capybara.”
“You want to get laid, you carry him out of here,” Moon said.
“Don’t think so,” Bandana argued and raised his rifle.
“Quinto must be more forgivin’ than I remember,” Shep said.
Moon scowled.
“He’ll hear the gunshot…” Shep shook his head. It was painful to breathe, almost impossible to speak. A rib, he supposed, was poking into his lung. “He’ll know ya killed me. Cost him the ransom.”
“Man’s got a point,” Bandana said and lowered his weapon.
“He does,” Moon agreed. Pulling a knife from the sheath at his side, he stepped forward.
Fear seeped through Shep’s system, but it was slow, lethargic. Still, Mama didn’t raise no quitter. “Let me go. Please.” He tried to imbue his voice with pathetic desperation. It wasn’t as difficult as it should be. Scrambling backward on his hands and feet was harder. His progress was practically indiscernible. The foliage scraped his hands. “Please,” he pleaded again but the moon tattoo kept coming. Closer. Just a little closer. Shepherd dropped his butt to the ground and kicked. His left foot was almost useless, but his right struck true, slamming the man’s legs out from under him.
Moon screamed as a severed sapling pierced his eye.
Shep leapt to his feet, but his legs crumbled. He toppled onto his side and froze at the sound of a cocking rifle.
Chapter 23
“Are you sure this is the right road?” Eddy glanced sideways at Durrand. He was holding onto the handle on the dash again, expression dark.
His conversation with Javier, the arms dealer, had been short, quick, and bracketed by thunderous expressions rather like the one that currently occupied his face.
“I’m not sure this goat trail is a road at all.”
The path they were on wound upward like a vicious snake, writhing and twisting its way toward some uncertain destination. Rocks the size of Halloween pumpkins adorned their route. Eddy swerved to the left to avoid the latest one.
A mile or so back they had passed a boy riding a horse and leading two mules, both of which carried lumpy packs. The scene felt like a slice from the distant past, except that the kid had been punching keys on his cell phone as he rode. Maybe Durrand was right? Maybe any yahoo could pry into her business. The idea made her palms sweat.
“He said to take the second right and not the first, correct?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
She nodded and glanced at him again. He was scanning the hills. They were endless, impossibly green and desperately lonely. She stifled a shiver.
“You think he’s watching us?”
“Probably.”
“Maybe it’s a setup.”
He shifted his gaze toward her without speaking. The look in his eyes suggested that he might have considered that possibility.
“What’s the penalty for buying weapons without a permit in South America?” she asked, but he ignored her. She’d never met anyone better at it.
“Slow down.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Look for a path heading west from the crooked Brazil nut tree.”
“Are you kidding me?” There must be a few billion trees in the jungle. And she wouldn’t know a Brazil nut from an Argentina monkey.
He scowled at the world ahead. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
At the moment, he didn’t even look like he knew how to joke.
“There,” he said and pointed to an enormous tree that grew at a bent angle across the road.
Eddy swung the Jeep to the left. It bumped over the ruts like a carnival ride gone mad.
“That way.” Durrand pointed toward a trail that branched off to their right. But it wasn’t really a trail at all, just a few flattened blades of grass and some broken saplings. Still, she turned in. A jagged boulder was perched on a rocky outcropping, almost completely covered in vines. “Stop here,” he ordered.
She did so.
“Kill the engine.”
Once she turned the key, the morning seemed heavy, pregnant with silence and impending doom. “We walk from here?”
“I walk,” he said and, lifting a duffle bag from the floor, slipped the strap over his head. “You stay with the Jeep.”
She opened her mouth, maybe to argue, but he raised a hand. “Not my decision,” he said. “Javier insisted that I go in alone.” She had to admit that he didn’t look thrilled with the idea. “Take these.” Pulling a small pair of binoculars from one of a half dozen of his pants pockets, he handed them over. “You see anyone coming…anyone at all, call me on my cell. Let it ring twice.”
She took the binoculars in one hand, raised them to her face, and wondered if they had any reason to assume their phones would work when they most needed them. “Then what?”
“If I don’t show up in two minutes, come in and save my ass.”
She lowered the field glasses with a snap.
“Now I’m joking,” he said and shoved a knife into his boot. She stared at him. His teasing expression was strangely similar to his dour expression. “If I’m not out in fifteen minutes get the hell out of Dodge. I’ll meet you back at the hostel.”
“How?” she asked.
He was already exiting the Jeep. “Not your problem.”
“But—
“Stay out of sight,” he ordered. “This should only take a few minutes.”
In a matter of seconds, the jungle had swallowed him up. She was not a patient person. Others at the agency would have disagreed with that assessment, but she was not a woman who could sit and wait. Inactivity made her fidgety.
Dragging out her tablet, she tried to do a search on Quebrada Verde. But there was no satellite signal available. Maybe Durrand was right about technology, she thought and opened a conventional map. According to the blog she’d read while online earlier, the Tortuga River was relatively user-friendly. Except for the alligators and…
A noise from behind startled her. She glanced in the rearview mirror and jerked. A lone figure was approaching on foot. He wore the deep green uniform of the Colombian police. Aviator glasses hid his eyes, and his mustache, thick as a raccoon’s tail, made him look sinister, like a caricature of a villain. Visions of Romancing the Stone stormed through her brain. But she put them aside. She was being foolish, she told herself. Still, she felt sweat bead on her forehead.
Folding the map rapidly, she shoved it under the seat and turned to the window.
“Good morning, officer.” She employed her best Spanish and tried to give him the full force of her smile, but her lips quivered with nerves.
He didn’t respond, just watched her from behind his mirrored lenses.
“I’m not…” Her mind was galloping. Where was Durrand? “I’m not double parked or something, am I?”
Sadly, that was the best joke she could muster under duress, but he didn’t smile back.
“You are American?”
“Is it that obvious?” She upped the wattage of her smile, but there wasn’t much left in reserve. “And here I’ve been so proud of my Spanish.”
“Why are you here?”
“Here?” She forced a laugh. It sounded painful. “That’s the thing. I’m afraid I don’t know where here is.” She gestured toward the maps that Durrand had left on the dash. “I’m totally lost.”
He sc
anned the jungle that surrounded them before returning his gaze to hers.
“Surely you are not in this remote spot alone, chica,” he said and removed his shades. His lips curled into a smile for the first time. Neither the sight of his eyes nor his expression made her feel better. His mouth seemed to be entirely disassociated with the rest of her face. Her mind raced along, tumbling over a dozen less than comforting scenarios.
“I’m afraid so,” she said. “I wanted to get in some early-morning sightseeing.” She shrugged, disarming but confident…or annoying and pee-in-her pants scared.
“Do not tell me you came to our country unchaperoned.”
“No!” The word came out too quickly, too forcefully. She smoothed out her tone. “No. My husband…” Durrand’s broad, no-nonsense image filled her mind. She found she desperately longed to convey that image to this less than charming officer. “My husband accompanied me.”
He stared meaningfully at the empty seat.
She chuckled. It sounded like gravel on tin. “I mean, he came to your beautiful country with me.”
“And his name?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your husband…” His gaze dropped to her chest for a moment then rose leisurely. “The lucky man to whom you are wed…what is his name?”
For one frantic moment she failed to recall the fictional name he had chosen, but in a second her mind cleared. “Luke,” she said. “Luke Lansky.”
His lips twisted knowingly. “Shall I be encouraged by the fact that you could not, at first, recall his name?”
She tried to chuckle. “I didn’t forget,” she said and forced a shrug. Casual as a heart attack. “It’s just that…most people call him…” Her mind was racing along like an out of control locomotion. “Rage.” Holy mother of God, what was she talking about?
He raised a brow. She giggled, feeling dizzy. “He’s rather…protective.”
His smile soured. “Then he obviously was not the man we just spotted slinking through the jungle.”