Vector

by James Abel

  But Nelson needed medical attention before we could do anything else.

  The big sublieutenant had managed to crawl to the corpses, search them, and gather ID, like a good cop. But his leg was dragging. Flies hovered near his chest like insect vultures. Izabel was talking quietly in his ear.

  Marines don’t leave comrades behind.

  I used on him the bandages and antibiotics that I’d stolen with Rooster from the Porto Velho hospital. The bandage would function as a tourniquet. But Nelson was losing blood. He sagged when I slipped my arms around him. In the dark, Captain Santo and I helped him limp down the mud path to the dock. We knew what must be done. And that it better be done in the brief period of time left before the sun came up. There was no time to wait for reinforcements. We needed to hit that island, now.

  • • •

  The assassins’ outboard boat was tied to the dock where the ferry had deposited us. They must have cut their engine in mid river, and rowed the aluminum craft ashore. I had Cizinio’s hand-drawn map to direct us, five kilometers north, he’d said, to the island. Six guards, I think, I recalled him saying, as Izabel and I lowered Nelson and the seized shotguns and ammunition belts into the boat. But Anasasio wasn’t a guard. He must have come upriver to warn his friends. The other attacker had probably been a guard, so if Cizinio was right, there would be at least five guards left.

  Above the jungle silhouette came the first red hint of dawn as we chugged into the Madeira. Light would work against us. It gave us less time. The night noises were already easing, as if earth was yawning, preparing for transition. The howler monkey and jaguar sounds were gone, and dawn birds were calling. From the river I looked back to see huge winged bats, swooping against a quarter moon that brushed the treetops, seeking the caves, knotholes, or eaves in which they would sleep away the day, upside down, like logic in this remote place.

  Nelson half sat, half supported himself against the gunwale, and made no complaint. His breathing sounded ragged against the engine. He had the inwardly directed attitude of those who have suffered serious injury. He was conserving strength. Izabel Santo had done everything possible for him and let him be, but I knew how hard that was. The two Brazilians were like Eddie and me. Izabel was Uno and Nelson was Dos. My respect for them was enormous. They could have left me alone in New Extrema, but they’d stayed to help.

  Somewhere behind us I heard the diesel engine powering the village start up, and a single electric light shone from beneath a door. Good thing I smashed the ham radio. The residents would venture out now and find the dead. Were the people out there the hotel owner’s relatives? His parents or children? No way to know.

  But then my mind moved ahead, because a few miles upriver people would be wondering why they had not heard from their killers. Maybe we’ll be lucky. Maybe they’ll be drunk. Or asleep. Or would never think that we would attack.

  Cizinio had said, There is a dock on the south side, and always two guards posted.

  He’d said, There are no guards on the back side of the island, but there is mud that you sink into.

  The stars were out. Two feet of mist covered the river. We seemed to float through the bottom of a twisting canyon, the walls of which were a solid mass of trees. Overhead, a meandering slit of night. We must have gone five kilometers by now, yet there was no island. The river widened, the banks fell back. The smell was rot and vegetation and fresh oxygen so thick that it seemed to clot your lungs. The motor sounded too loud. I experienced the familiar gut clench that came before combat. Nelson’s head sank onto Izabel’s shoulder, not the way a man’s head rested on a woman, but soldier to soldier. She whispered into his ear. Her hair was tied beneath a kufi. He sat up. He had no expression. Nelson had wanted to leave me alone in the hotel. She had made him stay.

  “I see it, Joe,” she said, pointing. “There.”

  The island was a stiletto-shaped silhouette in the middle of the river. Without being asked, Nelson lay down in the boat, so any guards would see only two figures coming their way. Only two had left.

  “Two men on the dock, Joe.”

  The faint glow in the sky had been brightening incrementally, but suddenly a crimson streak shot across the water. Mist fell away in patches that I tried to steer jaggedly through, using just enough swerve to look natural but hide our faces. I kept the speed low. Even if the guards had night-vision equipment, the mist might provide us a few more seconds. I’d not asked Cizinio about vision equipment, and I cursed inwardly.

  That had been a lapse.

  Either way they’d have binoculars.

  Now a garish light spread out across the water. I looked back to see the orb tip appearing barely above treetops, liquid red. I needed sun at our backs. I wanted them to see silhouettes, not faces. I wanted them to imagine for a moment what they expected, their assassins chugging back home after a job well done.

  Eighty yards. Fifty. Maybe I should have given Izabel the extra day she wanted. I smelled ammonia, urine from Nelson.

  Just give us one more minute . . .

  With the shocking suddenness that comes in the tropics, the day flared to life like a silent explosion. There was more heat on the back of my neck. Full dawn. The sun would be directly in their eyes. I saw a long diagonal line emanating off the shoulder of a guard and the arc of the banana clip in his AK-47. The man seemed to be shielding his eyes, trying to see us better.

  Thirty more seconds . . .

  A harsh male voice carried over the water, in Portuguese. Probably saying, What the fuck happened to you two? Are you drunk? Why didn’t you call on the ham radio?

  They weren’t unslinging the AKs yet. They were moving two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. As in target practice.

  I whispered, “Ready?”

  I saw, from the corner of my eye, Izabel’s hands down in the bottom of the boat, touching her shotgun. We’d break out of the mist in another second.

  “Now!”

  I let go of the motor arm and swung up my shotgun. Hers was up, too. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM. The water was flat so there was no bounce, and at our fast moves the guards had reached to unsling weapons.

  I heard the snapping sounds of an AK firing. I heard screams from the treetops. Hundreds of bats or birds launched themselves into the air.

  • • •

  The first guard had toppled into the water, firing at the sky, and the second had crumbled before getting a shot off. There was no way that other people on the island would not have heard the fighting. Nelson had forced himself up, his face a rictus of pain, but he held a handgun. He forced out words to Izabel as we reached the dock. “Nelson says he will tie the boat. We must run.”

  She was out on the dock first, and I was right behind her. We needed to get into the jungle fast. We’d be dead in seconds if we stayed here. More guards would be coming.

  They have cameras in the trees. I remembered Cizinio’s warnings as we pounded onto land.

  There! A red light, a round lens catching sunlight, ten feet up. I shot it out and we raced past. Behind us, I could only hope that Nelson remained conscious long enough to tie up the boat, so it would not drift off.

  Cizinio’s voice in my head said, The path takes a few minutes to reach the main house. Stay on the path at first.

  Floodlights burst on in the trees at the same time that sunbeams shot down through the canopy. They angled down like artillery as I ran past a mist net—a researcher’s tool, mesh so fine it was invisible to animals. It was designed to catch birds. In the net I saw wriggling life, a hand-sized tarantula attached to a bird. Cizinio’s words better be accurate, I thought, as giant fern leaves flapped wetly into my face.

  At the second bend leave the path but keep going in the same direction.

  I left the path and plunged into jungle, following the upward slope of land, as Cizinio had instructed. I heard the light, quick footfalls of Captain Santo behind me
, and now came alarmed shouts ahead, men calling to one another, as their voices spread out. I halted, listening. They were coming straight on. Izabel and I ducked behind the waist-high fan-shaped base of a ceiba tree. The huge trunk disappeared into the canopy one hundred feet overhead. The roots needed to be high to support such an enormous weight. Cizinio had said the guards knew the shortcut, that if they heard shots, they’d skirt the path, too. With the camera shot out, they would, I hoped, think that Izabel and I were still on the path. We waited behind those huge roots like the ambushers in the graffiti drawings back in our hotel.

  Sure enough, movement, whispers, as two men came low and fast through the shadows at the base of the forest. Even with the sun up, the canopy blocked out light here, made the air cooler. There was less surface vegetation. Vegetation was thicker by the river. You needed a machete to get through there. But here the shadowy figures emerging from mist were clear, forty yards away . . . stop and go . . . stop and listen. One man gave the other a hand signal.

  Izabel and I opened up at the same moment with our seized AK-47s. The guards had no chance. Both went down. One was screaming in pain, and I saw ferns waving wildly where he’d fallen. There was no sound from the second man, who’d flown backward and lay still. That made four guards down, five if I included the one in New Extrema.

  Abruptly, with a cough, the screaming and fern waving stopped.

  Both corpses were thickly bearded and had worn skullcaps. This place must be exactly what Ray Havlicek had sent us to find. At that moment if he had been present I would have rammed my weapon into his belly. He’d sent Eddie and me here and denied us help. He’d asked us to look for something and we had found it but then Ray had disappeared. Do us a favor . . . You can call me anytime.

  I pushed Ray from my mind and into my future. We started moving again, recalling Cizinio’s advice. Stay in the same direction, follow the slope. The forest will end and there will be a lawn and the doctor’s house and medical building where he used to treat us and give us medicines.

  A man’s voice called out, from ahead, “Nasser?”

  From behind us, from the dock, I heard three quick gunshots, snap-snap-snap. A handgun. Nelson. I heard the rapid fire of an AK-47 shooting back. I could only hope that whoever was exchanging fire with Nelson had gotten close enough for Nelson’s shots to find their mark. But had they found their mark, there would have been no return fire.

  Still, the man ahead of us seemed to lose heart at the sound of more gunfire. I saw ferns waving, but this time in retreat. Whoever was there had panicked, or been ordered back. He was running to the houses. Izabel and I surged forward.

  A sudden thump ahead sounded like a grenade going off. But the explosion was nowhere near us.

  Suddenly there were no more trees, just a sloping lawn that led, fifty yards up, to reveal what Cizinio had drawn. The one-story ranch house lay exactly as depicted, and thirty feet from it, the dorm/clinic and exam room. Cizinio’s proportions were perfect. I heard another thump from the main house as the front windows blew out. I heard AK bursts inside. Who the hell were they shooting at, if not us? Gray smoke billowed out. I heard quick two-round shots, and they brought terror into my throat for Eddie, because suddenly I knew what was happening in there.

  They’re destroying things. They’re executing people. They’re getting rid of evidence.

  In drills in the Virginia forest at Quantico, Eddie and I had assaulted hidden “biolabs” while other Marines playing “enemy” triggered smoke traps, smashed computers, “murdered” witnesses as they retreated, employing a scorched-earth policy that the Soviets would have envied in World War Two.

  If they’re panicking, there must be only one or two guards left, I thought.

  “Labs” on fire, “prisoners” shot. That was all I could think as I propelled myself across that lawn, with Captain Santo screaming something at my back in Portuguese, probably, Don’t do it!

  The flowers to my right blew apart. Petals flew in the air with shrub bits. I ducked and hit the lawn and rolled into a bush, fired, and kept going, at a fast crawl. My right ankle was on fire. I’d been shot. No, I haven’t been shot, because something small is running up my leg toward my crotch. I’ve been stung!

  I rolled sideways and slammed my palm into my pants at whatever the hell was in there. The sensation of burning was getting worse. I saw an inch-long flattened insect drop onto the ground. Bullet ants lived in shrubs. Eddie and I had been warned about them. A half dozen bites can kill a large human. The single bite will produce pain that increases for up to twenty-four hours. The inch-long creatures inject a neurotoxin in victims that tops the list of Amazon dangers. Bullet ants, not jaguars, not snakes, not piranhas, cause more human deaths each year than any of those other things.

  I could only hope that the strength of the poison inside me had crested. I was limping as I rose, and the pure, intense stabs of pain were getting worse. I thought, gritting my teeth, You’re stronger than a fucking ant.

  A shadow appeared at the window, rising flames behind it. I fired and raked the side of the building. The shadow ducked sideways. The snout of a weapon jutted out, and a line of bullets stitched the lawn. But suddenly the AK-47 fell out of the window. Izabel was coming low and fast from the left. She’d hit whoever was in there.

  Eddie . . .

  I ran toward the main house while she laid down cover fire. Because now I heard screams in there, multiple voices, pleading. Shot/pause/shot. My heart seized up. An explosion sounded in the main building. Another window shattered, and gray smoke billowed out. At least six guards were down now and as many as eight, so who was in there, destroying evidence? How many guards were there in this hellish place?

  I burst through the door.

  A guard lay inside, still alive, but blood pumped from his mouth. The man wore a white khet partug, a long body shirt ending at the knees. His skullcap was still on. I kicked the AK away from his spasming hand.

  “Sa-aidnee! Sa-aidnee!” he begged. Please help me! Skinny guy. Dark skinned. He had the fear of death in his face.

  I shot him in the head.

  Cizinio was wrong about the number of guards. And if there are this many guards, this place is really important.

  The heat was extreme and the air convoluted. The fire was intense, mahogany dining table on fire, tropical wood stairs on fire, curtains and velvet couches and Oriental rug burning, the whole world hot. If they’re burning evidence, find it, seize it, remember it. I screamed Eddie’s name and got no answer. There was no way to get up the stairs without an asbestos suit. I could only hope, as the last scream died away, that whoever had been alive up there, it was not Eddie.

  The pain in my ankle had now grown into a searing mass.

  Captain Santo and I moved toward the low, one-story medical building. It was on fire, too, but this fire wasn’t that bad yet. The lawn was a mass of choking smoke. The pain in my leg had radiated up toward my thigh. All around us fire consumed wood, oxygen, and roasting vegetation. Marine assault teams in Afghanistan had always been made up of at least five attackers. Not two against nine or more.

  There was no time to get into that building slowly. I burst in and found myself in a medical ward. And in it, a horror: two rows of single beds, containing men and women, in hospital gowns, like patients, but these patients were handcuffed to iron bedposts, and all of them shot in the head. The blood was still soaking their bedding, fresh on their faces. I’d heard the executions. These must be the kidnapped miners.

  “Jesus Cristo,” whispered Izabel, coming up beside me. “Is one of these people your friend?”

  I ran from bed to bed, looking for Eddie, coughing. This place was the negative image of a hospital ward; same layout, but it existed to inflict pain, not alleviate it. Hell’s clinic. I saw surgical instruments collecting soot inside smashed-up glass cabinets. Normally the instruments look benign to me. Here they were implemen
ts of torture.

  Find Eddie but pay attention to everything.

  I saw Eddie! He lay sideways, in a blood-soaked bed, feet over the edge, mouth gaping, brain matter splattered across the pillow!

  No, it was not Eddie. It was a different Japanese man. I fell against the wall in horror and relief.

  The pause had situated me beside several black-and-white photos on the wall. I stood blinking at them in astonishment. The pictures curling inside heat-shattered glass were the last thing I’d think to see here. They were World War Two shots! German officers sightseeing at the pyramids, with two men wearing white suits. One of them looked fifty, a European; the other was swarthier. Egyptian? Next, shots of Jews with yellow stars on their clothing, on a line, in a concentration camp. Then Adolf Hitler sitting in a chair talking earnestly with a robed cleric wearing the kind of round white turban that I recognized from Iraq. Shiite.

  Hitler was leaning forward, palms open, face reasonable, if such a word could be used in his case. He was making an important point to a valued guest.

  What the hell? What’s the connection to this place?

  When I reached the end of the ward I looked back to see fire consuming the room. A door here was closed. My leg was dragging. I pushed through the door with my heart in my mouth to see a middle-aged man in medical whites whirling toward me, holding a can of gasoline. I was in an examination room. A few beds, and human forms on them. An exam table with shackles on it. The doctor struck me as Levantine; olive skin, fleshy face and body, large nose, and furious black eyes that looked larger through thick black eyeglasses, half slid down his nose. He’d been splashing gasoline on walls. He’d given up the chance to flee in order to complete the destruction. He screamed at me as fire consumed an open file cabinet, and a laptop melted and bubbled on a table. I needed this man alive. I yelled for him to put down the can. He started to throw it at me, and a burst of gunfire spun him sideways and made him dance back and smack into the wall and slide down.