by Ted Bell
“I will help you to escape. You will be one with your Michiko again, my dearest Ichi-san. I promise you.”
Ichi added brushstrokes, his touch like tiny wings batting here and there against the painting.
“How do you know when it is finished?” Yasmin asked, after a time. “The painting.”
Ichi looked up at her and smiled. He liked the question.
“You never finish,” he said. “You abandon it.”
The silence resumed. Finally, Yasmin rose to her feet and made as if to leave the garden. She stopped and looked at the gentle sumo, lost in his art and sorrow.
“Have the rikishi killed the American?” she asked him.
“We have been told to wait. Until your husband returns. The torture has not yet broken him. His body yields only pieces of secrets.”
“But you still take him the food I send?”
“Without it, he would starve.”
“I am sick to death of it. Prisons. Torture. All the killing.”
“It is just beginning. A great storm of death gathers here.”
“Shh—servants.”
Ichi returned to his painting, pretending to add a stroke just here and just there to the image of the fierce god Fudo Myo-o. Two young females appeared, dropping to their knees before Yasmin, their foreheads to the ground.
“Yes? Why have you disturbed me?” she demanded.
“A letter, Most Revered One. From the American. He begged us to bring it. He said that—that you would understand and not treat us harshly.”
“Give it.”
Yasmin took the envelope from the shaking hand of the servant and turned her back. The two young women rose silently and melted away into the shadows of a graceful archway. She opened the message with a fingernail and pulled out two handwritten pages. After reading them, she put a hand on Ichi’s enormous shoulder.
“Yes?” he said, turning from his painting.
“A farewell letter, Ichi-san, written to his wife—and children—oh—”
Ichi looked up and saw her tears.
He said, “I am sorry for your pain.”
“This is how you know your life is finished, Ichi-san.” she said, holding up the American’s scrawled letter to his loved ones. It is—like your painting. You abandon it.”
“Yes,” the sumo said, gathering himself up. “This American, he is a good man. He has suffered long enough.”
“Oh, God,” Yasmin said, hiding the letters in the folds of her robes, “Hasn’t everyone suffered enough?”
Chapter Forty-Five
The Ragged Keys
THE MOSQUITO THAT HAD BEEN BITING STOKELY’S NECK WAS now just a red smear in the palm of his left hand. In his right, the dead Cuban’s nine millimeter. In the Glock, thirteen hollow-point bullets, one spare mag in his cummerbund. In his eyes, nose, and throat, the acrid bite of burning rubber and gasoline. He edged up behind a still-smoldering scrub palmetto and pushed a charred frond aside with his pistol. The blackened and flattened mangroves and seagrapes extended back a hundred yards or so on both sides of the narrow waterway.
Nothing on the surface of the water other than some burning fuel and a couple of smoking life vests.
“Ross!” Stoke hissed, keeping it low. “Hey, Ross! You okay? Where are you, buddy?”
He waited, not expecting any damn answer, seeing the thing, how it happened. Yeah, Ross would have been right where he left him, up in the bow with the AK, watching the bend in the water. Perking up his ears all of a sudden when he hears his buddy Stoke up ahead, shouting and banging on the Cigarette hull with his pistol, then splashing around, climbing aboard. Ross mentally focused on that. Meanwhile, Scissor sneaking past him on the bank, moving quietly, taking his time, getting behind the inflatable, settling down in the mangroves with a clear shot.
Scissor enjoying this part, was probably eating it up. Resting his RPG tube carefully on a sturdy branch. Sighting the thing, maybe on the jerry cans full of gasoline in the stern. Yeah. Or, maybe, right between Ross’s shoulder blades. Squeezing the trigger slowly—Ross maybe shaking his head in that last second, trying to concentrate, clear the morphine cobwebs out—hears a THUNK-WHOOSH behind him.
Shit, Ross.
You were riverine. I was the flyboy.
“Okay, muthafucka, that’s it!” Stoke screamed, not giving a shit anymore, getting to his feet. “I’m coming to get you! You got a shot? Take it! Take your shot ’cause it’s going to be your last!”
He stood up on the bank, eyes peeled, breathing hard.
There was still a little blood, dried blood, on the leaves and branches of the mangrove down by the water, the spot where Scissor must have been when he fired the grenade launcher at Ross. Something shiny caught his eye, a spot on a root sticking out of the muddy bank above his head. He reached up and felt it, pulling his hand away and looking at the bright red smear. Fresh blood. So Fancha had cut his ass, too, somehow. When he was hurting her. During the struggle. Got his scissors away from him for a second or maybe just raked his face with her nails. Didn’t matter. It was something.
He worked along the bank, dead calm now, knowing what he had to do. Follow the blood.
He stayed close to the water a couple of minutes. Saw more shiny blood on a scrub palm frond to his left and headed inland. Seeing the whole thing in his mind, staying low, pausing every twenty seconds to listen. Skeets and birds were back. Tree frogs. Fiddler crabs scurrying over the sand everywhere. Sun was up and hot. The deep severe. Heat ’n skeet. Fresh blood on the dried grass where he crouched in the scrubs. Where the hell are you, Scissor? You doubling back to the Cigarette?
Yeah, that’s it. Gone back to his boat. That’s exactly what he’d be doing. Boy must have had himself a very startling realization.
There he is, smiling, lining up his mouth-watering shot, but something nagging at his ass, just before he squeezed the trigger. What’s wrong with this picture? Oh, yeah. No big black guy on the rubber boat with the white guy, that’s what’s wrong. Didn’t pass any big colored fellas slipping and sliding back along the bank, so, where the fuck is he? He’s got to be in the water. Or, he left his boat and swam up the channel. Right, Scissor thinks, black man swam upriver to the Diablo.
Stoke was glad he’d given Fancha the other gun.
He got to his feet and was running through the thick low scrub of the small clearing towards the Cigarette, when a single round whistled past his ear. He hit the dirt hard, scrambling and rolling right into a thicket of palmettos. Not good cover. Two more bullets kicked up dirt three feet to his left. Steep angle. Shooting from elevation. Stoke lifted his head and saw the big Gumbo Limbo tree at the far edge of the clearing. Bunch of Cypress trees, too, but you couldn’t hide in a Cypress.
Scissor liked to shoot people from out of trees. His M.O.
Stoke stood up and pumped four bullets into the Gumbo. Then he ran at a crouch towards a stubby little Calusa tree over on his left that would provide a little cover. The Calusa exploded before he got there. A white trail of smoke led back to the top of the Gumbo, right where Stoke had him.
Gotcha.
Stoke ran forward, right at him, squeezing off three careful shots in a tight pattern at the top of the tree, right where the RPG trail came from. Waiting to see the guy come tumbling down, and that’s when he heard a pop from up there in the treetops and somebody took a Louisville Slugger to his left thigh, bam. Spun him around good, maybe twice, but he stayed on his feet, only a hundred yards more now, pumping his legs, and then his feet stopped moving so good. Mud or something.
He made it almost to the base of the Gumbo, firing the Glock, screaming at the guy, “C’mon, Scissor! C’mon down! Les’ see what you got! Show me something! Shit! You ain’t got nothin’, shoot a bride down front of a church!”
He splashed through a mudhole full of water, twisted something, pitched forward, the Glock dry-firing now, empty. He kept his balance, moving forward and digging the fresh mag of ammo out of his waistband. Hell, he’d cl
imb the tree and pull the little shit down by his ankles. Stick the Glock in the guy’s mouth and see if he could beg God’s forgiveness that way. He would do that, and then some, but his feet wouldn’t move anymore. Couldn’t even lift his heels, like in that nightmare when you try and run but nothing will move.
He heard a sucking noise when he tried to lift his right leg and looked down at his feet. Couldn’t see ’em anymore. They had disappeared into some mucky stuff near the base of the tree. Past his ankles now, damn, almost halfway up to his knees. He heard some leaves rustling above him and then the guy just drops out of the Gumbo tree, lands on his feet in a patch of swamp grass next to the muck. Got a nickel-plated .357 mag aimed at Stoke’s forehead.
“Hola,” the man with no eyes said. No more mirrored shades. He had three ragged claw marks down his left cheek, still bleeding. Fancha had caught him good, bless her sweet little soul. Stoke smiled at the guy.
“Hey. How you doing? Where’s your grenade launcher?” he said, grinning. “Get stuck up in that tree?”
Scissor smiling at him with those horror movie eyes. Clear as marbles. Man had aged some since Vizcaya, life on the run and all. Wearing a Kevlar sportcoat, which explained why he hadn’t got shot out of the tree. Stoke’s left leg hurt like a bitch now, like a nest of hornets had put down stakes in his thigh muscle. He couldn’t pull his damn feet out of the muck. He started looking around for something to grab on to, a bush or something. Wasn’t anything near close enough. Maybe if he stretched out flat, he could get his fingers in the thick grass round the edge and haul himself out.
Stoke raised the Glock, but they’d both heard it dry-firing and they both knew it was empty. He couldn’t decide whether to throw it at the guy’s face or ask him to give him a hand here, get out of this crap. The mud was almost up to his knees now. You could feel it rising.
“Hey. Look. Do me a favor. Give me a hand here. I’m stuck in the mud.”
“Is not mud, señor. It’s quicksand.”
So he’d known about the quicksand. Pretty good trap. Shit, you had to give him credit for that at least. The guy sat down on the mound of grass, his legs crossed under him, smiling at Stoke, cradling the big silver magnum in his lap. Chilled. Happy. Like he was waiting on the perfect sunset down at Pier House on Key West. Wouldn’t leave till it had gone all the way down. Then he’d ooh and aah and go have a margarita at Sloppy Joe’s.
Stoke’s mind was racing as he tried to stifle all the bad stuff he remembered about quicksand. More you struggle, worse it gets, he knew that. Saw a scary movie when he was a kid and he could see it now. Guy in Africa in a situation just like this. Guy kept his nose sticking up till the end—his mouth filling up with muck so he couldn’t scream anymore. Then, nothing but a couple bubbles on the surface.
“Hey. I got an idea. See that old Cypress branch? That’ll reach. Then we can have us a fair fight.”
“I don’t give a fuck about fair.”
“I forgot. The brave bride killer.”
“How is your amigo? Hawke? Still in mourning?”
“You help me get out, we’ll talk all day long.”
Stoke had managed to eject the Glock’s empty mag without the guy seeing it. Sank instantly, sucked down. You could feel the pull. Strong. Had to be fed by an underground spring. Even if he managed to reload and shoot this evil bastard, it was all over anyway. He was going down. He knew that. Seen this movie, pal. The hero dies in the end.
I can live with that, Stokely suddenly thought. What the hell, you know? It even made him smile. Business he was in, your number’s bound to be up one day, why not this one? Good as any. Just don’t go out all by yourself, Stoke. No matter what. You do that, you just break Alex Hawke’s heart one more time. One way or another, you got to take this dirtbag along for the ride. Headed my way? Step right in.
“What’s so funny, señor?”
“You, that’s all. Instead of running Cuba, you running from me, bigshot. You know who saved Fidel? Who got him out of your hostage hacienda? You’re looking at him. I’m one half the reason all those Navy Super Hornets bombed all you little banana republican dictator assholes into oblivion. That’s right. Alexander Hawke and Stokely Jones, Jr., we the ones teach you not to fuck with the US of A, dickhead.”
Rodrigo del Rio laughed out loud.
“You want me to end it, huh? Is that it? Shoot you, no?”
“Not really. I plan to live a short and happy life.”
While he was lecturing Scissorhands on politics of the Caribbean he’d slipped the fresh mag into the Glock’s grip with just a soft click. Didn’t see any eye movement from the guy, not a flicker. Good. Muck was now climbing up near his waist. Bad. Not a whole lot of time here. Extremely unfortunate situation you find yourself in, Stokely.
“Ask you a couple questions,” Stoke said, finger lightly on the trigger, waiting for his moment. “You Catholic? Iglesia Católica?”
“Sí.”
“I’d spit, but why waste good saliva? Your mamma back in Cuba, she know you killed a bride? At a church? How do you possibly go any lower than that? Tell me something. Back in England. You aiming for Hawke? Or Vicky? Which?”
The guy laughed. “I am not Cuban. Colombian, Señor. From Cali. We Colombians kill the circle around the center. The bride was first because I knew she would cause the most pain. What better place to kill her than on the steps of the church? She was first. Hawke will be last.”
“Really? So who’s supposed to be next?”
“You, of course. Why do you think you’re here?”
“You ain’t that smart.”
“No? I knew one of you would come. Avenge the bride. I knew it was you who saved that fucking Castro’s life, no? Twenty years ago, Fidel disappeared my family and put me in a hole. I lived in the hole for twelve years. No sunlight, no artificial light. Ever. He did this to my eyes. Twelve years in blackness, this is what happens. But I got out and I was going to bury Fidel in that very hole. I was close. And then you and this man Hawke, you ruin everything.”
“Yeah, we got a bad habit of doing that,” Stoke said. He raised the Glock and fired as he said it. “Messing with people’s long-range plans.”
Shit.
“You missed,” Scissor said, unhurt, and pulled the trigger of the .357.
Stoke’s shoulder exploded in pain, tissue and bone blown away, and his gun smacked in the muck close enough to reach. He tried to grab it but he couldn’t move his arm and, besides, the damn gun sank instantly. What the hell? He’d missed? He never missed. Glock sounded funny when it fired. Mud in the muzzle maybe. Wasn’t his day, but, hell, it was still early.
Stoke looked at the guy, sitting there with the smoking .357, pulling the hammer back again. Cocky. He could see the guy trying to decide what would be more fun, shooting him in a lot of non-lethal places or just watching him sink.
“That must hurt, eh?” Rodrigo said.
“Hey, look!” Stoke said suddenly. “Here comes the dead guy. Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Stoke grabbed his right shoulder with his left hand. Bones felt okay. It was just a flesh wound but it was bleeding like hell and the muck was creeping up over his ribcage and the new bullet hole in his shoulder made him forget all about the one in his leg. That, and the fact that—
“Oldest trick in the book—” the guy was saying when Ross hit him high, square between the shoulder blades and drove Rodrigo forward, not stopping, pumping his legs, shoving him into the quicksand not six feet from Stokely.
The guy started screaming, flopping around. Digging his own grave, which would save Stoke a lot of trouble.
“ ’Bout damn time,” Stoke said to Ross.
“Sorry. Just woke up,” Ross said. He picked up the Cypress branch and it was just long enough.
“You just about burned beyond recognition.”
“I got blown up.”
“Looks like it.”
“Señor, I beg you!” Scissor screamed. He was up to his waist already. “Save me—”
“Save you?” Stoke said, whipping around furiously and looking at him dead in the eyes, one last time. “Save you?”
“Please!”
“Ain’t nobody can save you, Rodrigo. Take a good look at yourself. You going straight to Hell. And you halfway there already.”
It took the man with no eyes a long time to die. He flapped his arms back and forth, making snow angels in the muck, but it didn’t help much. He was going down all right, just as Stoke had told Ross he would, back at Vizcaya. Stokely and Ross sat on the clump of dry grass and watched. He pleaded and begged for a while. In the end, all that was still showing was the tip of his nose, just like in that movie about Africa that Stoke saw when he was a little kid.
He was there, and then a half-second later he wasn’t. Right after that, the exact same two little bubbles from the jungle movie.
Pop. Pop.
“You hurt?” Stoke finally asked Ross.
“A little. Heard him coming. Slipped over the side. Tried your reed-breathing technique. It worked okay until the ammo went up and blew me out of the water. You?”
“Couple of boo-boos, that’s all.”
“I don’t think you need your cummerbund anymore. You could tie that around your leg.”
“Good idea. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“You know what I like about this, Ross?”
“Can’t imagine.”
“At the end, I mean the very end, I do believe Rodrigo truly knew which direction he was headed in.”
“Yeah.”
“You see that, too?”
“Yeah.”
“Vicky, she was standing on the church steps. The girl was already halfway to heaven when she died.”
“Yeah.”
“Well. I guess that’s all you can ask for.”
Stoke got up and stuck his hand out to help Ross get back on his feet.
“I guess it is,” Ross said.