Tortured Spirits

by Gregory Lamberson

  On his feet again, running, spanning the walls with the flashlight, detecting the support beams, avoiding them, crushing dirt with his combat boots. He thought he glimpsed a bat up ahead, then realized it was one of the wooden rungs beneath the secret trapdoor. He slowed and used his right hand to break his trajectory into the wall. Gasping for breath, he doubled over, then folded his hands behind his head, filling his lungs with oxygen.

  An explosion roared somewhere above him.

  Grimacing, Jake scrambled up the rungs. At the top, he searched for the locking mechanism. Instead, he found a wooden handle in the middle of the fake stump’s top and shoved the hinged stump open. As he climbed out, the sky lit up.

  Flares, he thought. Malvado’s forces were searching for them. Searching for me.

  He turned in a circle, searching for the way back to the minicaravan. Another flare lit up the sky, and he glimpsed a reflective metal surface in the distance. Charging forward, he weaved between trees and emerged from the foliage onto the road in front of the camouflage van. The vehicles formed a straight line to Armand’s Dodge Ram, all of them hidden by palm fronds. Far in the distance, lights rose high into the sky.

  A helicopter!

  He sprinted down the road. Figures crouching in the woods swung their guns in his direction.

  Maria!

  A flare went off, and he saw the helicopter in detail: red with white markings. It turned and receded even farther into the distance.

  “No!”

  Armand and Stephane whipped in his direction even before he crashed into the Ram. They came over to him, keeping the truck between themselves and the prison.

  “Is that the chopper?” Jake said between ragged gasps.

  “Yes,” Stephane said. “I saw it land when I was making my way back from the guard tower. Soldiers marched Maria out in handcuffs. I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do.”

  “Where’s it going?”

  “It’s heading toward Pavot City,” Armand said. “That means the Ministry of Defense.”

  In his mind, Jake saw Russel chopping off his hand. “You have to take me there.”

  “No. We’re here to transport Le Père. Everyone is risking his life, just as Maria did.”

  “Then give me one of these vehicles so I can go after her myself.”

  “Even if that was possible, it would be impossible. The city will be under lockdown. There’s no way you can get in or reach the ministry.”

  A single blinking light, all that remained of the helicopter, winked out.

  Jake looked at Armand. “If they do to her what they did to me, she’ll wind up in that clinic or on the plantation. If we get Santiago on the boat, will you help me rescue Maria?”

  “You’re boarding that boat, too.”

  “Not a chance. Not while Maria’s here.”

  “She’s a special woman. I can see why you’d risk your life for her. But the chances of her surviving the night are slim, especially if we’re successful.”

  “Will you help me?”

  Armand gave Jake a long, contemplative look. “Oui.”

  Jake spun on one heel and charged back up the road. At the van, he veered right. The sky lit up, but this time he heard a loud whistling sound. A deafening roar followed, and a fireball rose from the trees between him and the road.

  They were just waiting for the chopper to get clear.

  Locating the stump, he climbed through its hatch and down the ladder. “Jorge!” He ran again. Two hundred yards in, he found his party. “They’re bombing the jungle. We have to hurry!”

  “What about Maria?” Alejandro said.

  “They took her away on a chopper.” Jake turned to Andre. “I won’t be accompanying you to Miami.”

  “I understand,” Andre said.

  “Leave me,” Alejandro said. “But leave me a machine gun.”

  “If we leave you and Maria’s killed, then she’ll have sacrificed herself for nothing,” Jake said. “I won’t allow that to happen. We’re all getting out.”

  An explosion above them shook the ground. Dirt poured from the ceiling.

  “Come on!”

  All four men moved as fast as they could. Another explosion sounded from farther away.

  “They’re blanketing the area,” Jorge said.

  Another explosion. This time the tunnel ceiling caved in behind them, and the concussion knocked them down. Through the dust and the wide hole in the ceiling, light from a burning tree illuminated the rubble around them.

  “Up there!” Jake said.

  He ran over to the rubble and climbed to the top. Grabbing a tree root, he hauled himself onto the ground. Andre and Jorge helped Alejandro to the top of the pile. Jake planted his heels in the dirt and extended his hand, which Alejandro grasped, and he pulled the priest up with him. Jorge went next and helped Andre to the surface.

  A flare lit up the sky, followed by three sequential explosions that scorched the jungle. Machine gun fire erupted around them.

  “This way!” Jorge said.

  Jake put Alejandro’s arm around his shoulders and helped Andre support the man. They followed Jorge through the jungle.

  Another explosion blew chunks of earth at them, and the ensuing fireball engulfed the treetops. The machine gun fire grew louder and more plentiful, and a woman screamed.

  When they emerged onto the road near the van, Jake gasped. Flames consumed the next three vehicles, including the Ram, and smoldering bodies lay scattered along the road. In the jungle on both sides of the road, rebels fired their machine guns at advancing ground troops.

  “Armand!” Jorge bolted toward the farthest inferno.

  The back doors to the van opened, and Stephane called out, “This way! Hurry!”

  “Go on,” Jake said.

  Andre helped Alejandro to the van, and Jake sprinted after Jorge, the heat from the various fires making his skin hot. He caught up with Jorge, who kneeled beside Armand’s blackened corpse, recognizable only because of his cowboy boots. Setting his hand on Jorge’s shoulder, Jake kneeled beside him. Jorge wept.

  “We can’t stay here,” Jake said.

  “First Humphrey. Now my brother.”

  “They’d both want you to live.”

  A burning tree limb crashed ten feet away from them. Jorge made the sign of the cross, then kissed two fingers and touched them to the charred head.

  Jake pulled him away, and they ran down the road. Around them, the freedom fighters retreated, blasting their machine guns.

  The cargo van took off, then stopped, its doors swinging open. Jorge scrambled into the van first, and Stephane helped Jake in, then slammed the doors. The van sped away.

  “We just might make it,” Andre said.

  Stephane went to the front of the van and sat in the passenger seat. Jake didn’t recognize the driver.

  Jorge wiped tears from his eyes.

  Alejandro set his hand on the man’s back. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “He didn’t receive last rites.”

  “God will look after him.”

  The van rocked from side to side, and branches scraped it.

  “We’re getting off the road,” Stephane said. “It will be too easy for them to follow us once they break through our defenses. Shandre is taking a narrow side road used by horse-drawn carts.”

  An explosion shook the van.

  Alejandro bowed his head and prayed. Jake felt helpless to do anything. For the moment, his fate was out of his hands.

  The machine gun fire stopped.

  “What’s happening?” Jake said.

  Jorge looked at him with no emotion. “Air support.”

  A plane soared overhead, so close its engine drowned out everything else. Jake saw a fighter plane streak through the black sky ahead. A series of explosions lit up the jungle behind them, casting orange flames on the back windows. Napalm burned across the jungle, incinerating anyone in its way.

  The van cut across the island to a coastal road that it
followed north.

  “We’re far from the action now,” Stephane said. “In half an hour, we’ll reenter the jungle.”

  Like Jake, Andre kneeled at the back windows.

  “This is some country you’ve got,” Jake said.

  “It was once. It will be again.”

  “You really think you can make a difference over in the US?”

  “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

  “Good. I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “The odds are pretty good I won’t get home. I need to know your wife will keep her promise: she has to make my friend human again.”

  “The woman I married would never break her word.” Andre paused. “Assuming this raven really is your friend and assuming Miriam has the power she says she has.”

  Thanks, Jake thought.

  They drove through the jungle again, and Jake closed his eye. The occasional sound of a helicopter would wake him, and Shandre would stop the van.

  The van stopped and Stephane turned around. “Boucanier Cove, folks.”

  Jorge opened the side door, and Alejandro remained in the van with Shandre. Andre, Stephane, and Jake joined Jorge outside.

  Andre inhaled the fresh air. “Wonderful. I’ll miss this land.”

  “You’ll be back soon,” Jorge said.

  “I hope so.”

  Stephane led them through the foliage to the edge of a cliff overlooking the cove. Nestled near the rocks, a schooner bobbed on the water.

  Jake spotted another boat in the distance. “What’s that?”

  “A patrol boat,” Stephane said.

  The distant whine of a helicopter grew louder.

  “Take cover!” Jorge said.

  They scrambled into the jungle. The sound of the helicopter intensified, and the trees around them swayed. The helicopter flew over them to the cove.

  “That’s not good,” Jake said.

  The helicopter hovered above the water near the schooner. Exhaust flames shot from its sides, and two rockets burst forward. The air-to-surface missiles spiraled toward the schooner, which exploded into twin infernos. The helicopter turned and soared away.

  “What now?” Andre said.

  Jake looked him in the eye. “I guess we’ll just have to take back your country.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Handcuffed in the helicopter and surrounded by armed soldiers, Maria saw Pavot City below. Military vehicles patrolled the outskirts of the urban area and traveled its streets. She had never witnessed such a mobilization before. A glance at her watch showed the time as 11:45. Fifteen more minutes and, God willing, Jake and Andre would be safely aboard the boat bound for Miami.

  Leaning her head against the padded wall of the chopper, she exhaled. After sending Father Alejandro into the tunnel beneath El Miedo alone, she had held the encroaching soldiers back with her machine gun until they had dispersed gas into the station. When it came down to it, they had taken her with relative ease. If she’d had her own gas mask, like Jake, it might have been a different story. But there had been just one mask, and they had agreed he would take on the soldiers in the control room.

  A beacon flashed in the distance, providing a signal to the pilot. A dark shape became discernible in the darkness: Pavot Island’s Ministry of Defense, where Bill Russel had interrogated Jake and hacked off his left hand with a machete. Maria suspected she was about to meet Mr. Russel.

  Leaning to one side for a better look out the window, she saw flames below: dozens of bonfires in the street. Smoke billowed out the windows of a factory as well. Fire trucks had been dispatched in a wide radius to combat the fires, and scores of figures ran down a street.

  They’re rioting. They know Andre is free!

  The helicopter circled the dark tower, and she glimpsed a helipad below. The aircraft descended and touched down on the roof.

  The soldier on Maria’s left threw a lever bolt into the unlocked position and opened the hatch. He hopped out and faced her, beckoning her forward. Unable to use her hands for support, she scooted across the seat, and the man gripped her bicep and helped her down without too much force. The spinning blades above whipped air around her, blowing her hair in her face, even as they whined to a stop. From this angle, she saw glowing hazes all across the city.

  The soldier who had sat on her other side jumped down and grabbed her other arm, and the two men led her across the roof to two glass doors in a square structure that slid open, admitting them. Crossing the carpeted floor to a pair of elevators, she saw a door marked Aircraft Control. The first soldier palmed a button between the two elevators, and a door slid open. They boarded the elevator, which serviced thirty floors. The lead soldier pressed a button numbered 20, and the door closed and the elevator descended.

  On the twentieth floor, they followed a hallway to a room protected by a security scanner and two wall-mounted cameras. The first soldier swiped his ID card, the door unlocked, and he pushed it open. The second soldier guided Maria inside, where half a dozen khaki-clad police officers spoke on telephones and pecked at computer terminals, hurrying from one station to another with the frenetic energy of drone bees.

  The soldiers stood Maria at a counter and spoke to a middle-aged attendant in French. “Be careful. She’s supposed to be dangerous, believe it or not.”

  You bet your ass I am.

  The middle-aged attendant called to a uniformed black woman who came over. Maria appraised the woman. Late twenties, straight, shoulder-length hair.

  I might be her if I grew up here.

  “Empty your pockets,” the female soldier said.

  Maria removed her cigarettes from her pants pocket.

  “The cross,” the woman said.

  Maria took off the gold cross from around her neck and added it to her belongings.

  “You’re not a soldier. Take that uniform off.”

  Maria looked around the room at the men. Few of them paid any attention to her. She unlaced her combat boots and removed them. At least her toes felt better. Then she unbuttoned her camouflage shirt and dropped it on the floor and stepped out of the cargo pants. She stood before the soldiers in a gray muscle shirt and black panties.

  “This way,” the woman said.

  Maria and the two soldiers who had brought her in followed the female soldier into an anteroom. Through the glass in another door, she glimpsed a dozen female prisoners in civilian clothing standing, sitting, and lying in a number of jail cells. But the woman took her through a different door, which led to a row of empty cells.

  “What’s wrong?” Maria said. “You don’t want me to spread the word to the other ladies that Andre Santiago is free?”

  The woman opened a cell door and nodded for Maria to enter. “We’re protecting you for your own good.”

  Maria entered the cell and sat on the lower bunk. “I don’t need protection, girlfriend. You do.”

  The woman studied her, then left with the other two soldiers.

  Maria glanced around the cell: a sink, an exposed toilet, and a dirty towel were the amenities. A security camera looked down on her. She stretched out on the bunk, folded her arms behind her head, and willed herself to remain calm.

  Mambo Catoute watched Malvado storm into the war room, Maxime trailing him. Using her cane, she rose a moment later than the other people around the table, including Buteau and Solaine, who had been frantically juggling laptops and cell phones to coordinate their troops just moments before. Only Russel seemed calm to her. The man had participated in conflicts all over the world and had evacuated President Seguera from Manila, only to kill him at Malvado’s request.

  “What is going on?” Malavado said. “I want reports from everyone, starting with General Buteau! How did Santiago escape from El Miedo?”

  Buteau folded his hands on the table as Malvado sat and glared at him. “The rebels constructed a narrow tunnel beneath the prison. Security tapes show two of them dressed in military uniforms entering the cellblock thro
ugh a storage closet. They killed all but two of the guards on duty and liberated Santiago and the priest. They escaped through the same tunnel, but my two surviving men apprehended one of them at the tunnel: Maria Vasquez.”

  A cold look of satisfaction swept over Malvado’s features.

  “We have her in custody at the Ministry of Defense,” Russel said.

  Score those points, Catoute thought.

  “How is it you never discovered this tunnel?” Malvado said.

  Buteau made a face. “I don’t know. The tunnel was three-quarters of a mile long, with tracks that carried rather unusual transportation dollies. They must have spent ten years digging it.”

  Malvado shifted his gaze to Russel. “I expect El Miedo to be full very soon. I want you to do whatever’s necessary to make it secure.”

  “I’d be happy to, Mr. President.”

  “I don’t care if it makes you happy or not. I just want it done. General, kindly explain the fires burning in the jungle outside the prison.”

  “As soon as I received word the prison had been compromised, I ordered troops there from our central base and engaged rebel forces. We destroyed three of their vehicles and killed twelve of them. We don’t know how many escaped.”

  “How many casualties did we suffer?”

  “Eight, in addition to the seven in the prison.”

  “Then I would say they won this battle, wouldn’t you? Especially since Andre Santiago is free.”

  “Our coastal patrol located the boat Miriam Santiago sent to transport Santiago off the island, and we destroyed it with one of our helicopters. There’s no telling how many men were on board.”

  “Or if they were even from Pavot.”

  Buteau didn’t respond.

  “At least your men apprehended the woman. I want them rewarded for that.”

  Buteau nodded.

  “I’ll interrogate her as soon as I leave here,” Russel said.

  He never misses an opportunity to prove he’s essential, Catoute thought.

  But Malvado ignored Russel. “Shut down the airport and the shipyards. No one leaves Pavot Island and no one arrives. All business stops until my enemies have been punished. Colonel, what is the situation in Pavot City?”