by Chuck Holton
She nodded. “You know what I don’t get is the billboards. Ever since we got within thirty miles of Colón, there have been signs nonstop advertising stuff here at the free zone.”
Rip shrugged. “So, what’s strange about that?”
“If you notice the models, all of them are American women. Like that one, there.” She pointed to a large billboard advertising cowboy boots, featuring a white woman wearing little else. “Why no Latina models?”
Rip thought for a moment. “The Catholic church.”
“Really? Why?”
Rip kept his eyes on the road while he explained. “Look, Latino culture is very Catholic and very conservative. To see our women dressed like that would be offensive.”
“But white women in lingerie is okay?”
“Well, apparently so. I mean, you see white women running around dressed like that all the time on television. It wouldn’t surprise me if the people here, on some level, see American women as cheaper, easier, than Panamanian women.”
She bristled. “That’s not true!”
Rip held up one hand. “Hey, don’t punch me or anything. I said it’s just a theory.”
The red-headed agent pursed her lips. “Well, you have a point. But I wonder what seeing all those perfect white-skinned models does to the self-image of the Panamanian girls.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just that in America, girls see those ads and maybe aspire to that level of beauty, which leads to all sorts of problems. But would it be worse if you knew it was impossible to ever look like that because your skin was the wrong color?”
Rip shook his head. “Got me. Guys don’t think that way.”
“Well, girls sure do.”
A short time later, Rip motioned to a large fenced area on their right with warehouses visible inside. “Hey, is this our place? I think I see a gate coming up ahead.”
Phoenix peered at the approaching guardhouse. “I think that’s it.”
They turned in under a large concrete arch that read: Zona Libre, Panama, in blue letters on a white background. A heavyset black man with a pockmarked face and a shotgun stepped from a guardhouse, which sat on their left under the arch. He held up a hand for them to stop. “Buenos días.”
“Buenos días,” they answered.
“Welcome to the Colón free zone.” The guard spoke Spanish with a pronounced Caribbean accent. “What is the nature of your business here today?”
“We just want to have a look around,” Rip answered in Spanish.
“You are tourists?”
Rip glanced at Phoenix. “Yes, just tourists.”
“I’m sorry, then you cannot come in.”
Fantastic. Now what? Rip turned to Phoenix. “He says that tourists aren’t allowed in.”
She reached into her purse and brought out a ten dollar bill. “See if this changes his mind.”
Rip looked at the money. “You’re serious?”
Her eyes bored into his. “Do I look serious?”
Rip took the bill and held it up to the guard. “We really would like to see the free zone. We’ve heard it’s very interesting. Are you sure no tourists are allowed inside?”
The man smiled. It was clear this was exactly what he had hoped for. He took the bill and put it in his breast pocket. “I can make special exceptions for you, mi amigo.”
“I thought so.”
The man stepped away from his window and waved them through.
She sighed. “If only everything in life was that easy.”
Rip shook his head. “I can’t believe we just bribed that guy.”
Phoenix looked nonplussed. “I’m told it’s a fact of life down here. It’s the cost of doing business.”
From inside, the Zona Libre resembled a city more than a shopping mall. A grid of narrow streets crowded with every imaginable kind of delivery vehicle separated each city block, most of which were occupied by what looked like gigantic outlet stores.
“Seems like you can find a little bit of anything here,” Rip said. “Do you know how the prices compare to the States?”
Phoenix shrugged. “Marcel said that you don’t actually come here to shop for individual products. Rather, wholesalers come here to view the goods available and then order by the container load.”
“So they probably won’t be having a spring hijacking sale here with items from the ship?”
She laughed. “They actually might. I mean, this place would be ideal for selling the stolen goods en masse, because it would give the sellers a certain amount of anonymity and allow them to get rid of the entire load of goods at one time, as opposed to trying to sell them retail.”
Rip nodded. “Makes sense.”
“Which is why I suggested we visit.”
He stopped the car at the curb in front of a giant store selling clothing. Very few pedestrians were on the street, aside from the workers who were scurrying around loading and unloading trucks. “So where do we start?”
She pulled the palmtop computer from her bag. “Let’s just drive around first and see if we get any hits.”
“Okay.” Rip put the car in gear. This is going to be like looking for a needle in seventy acres of cacti. But it beats sitting at the hotel.
Two hours later, a hard rain was falling when they again pulled to the curb. Rip stretched. “Well, it was worth a try, you know?”
Phoenix sighed. “It was a long shot anyway. The traffic here is like Washington on the Fourth of July.”
“Yeah, except everyone is driving a delivery truck. So what do we do now?”
She set the PDA on the dash. “How about some lunch?”
“Sounds good. I haven’t seen any restaurants in here, though. We might have to go into Colón to find something.”
She turned in her seat. “I saw a street vendor selling food back that way about a block.”
“Are you crazy? You want to eat food from a Panamanian street vendor?”
She grinned. “Sure, why not?”
He rolled his eyes. “I can think of several reasons. Not the least of which is amoebic dysentery. Besides, you don’t strike me as the type who would eat on the street.”
Phoenix raised her eyebrows. “Hey, frying kills everything. I’m not afraid. Are you?”
Rip shook his head. “All right, hermana. We’ll eat street food. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He put the car in gear and made a quick three-point turn.
“Man, that’s what I call rain,” Rip said as he parked across the street from the vendor, who had a booth against the wall of a warehouse and was busily deep frying something.
Phoenix peered through the rivulets on the windshield. “Tell me about it. It’s like driving through a car wash, only without the brushes.”
“Okay, you stay here, and I’ll run over and secure our chow. It looks like you have a choice of something brown—fried or fried.”
“I’ll take fried. Here’s a ten.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Rip jumped out of the car and dashed across the busy street to the shelter of the portico where the vendor had his stall, sheltered from the rain on one side by a blue plastic tarp.
The man was just fishing a batch of crusty empanadas out of a vat of oil that looked long overdue for a change and stacking them with a pile of similar fried pastries on a greasy plate.
Mystery meat pies. Wonderful.
Rip was trying to decide if he wanted to know what the pies were filled with when another man walked up and asked for him. “¿Qué tipo son?”
The vendor pointed to one side of the plate. “Estos son de carne,” then to the other side, “Y estos de pollo.”
Beef or chicken. Actually, it doesn’t smell half bad. While Rip made up his mind, the other man paid for his order and walked several steps away to eat it. Then the vendor looked up from the vat-o-grease and said, “Dígame.”
Rip ordered two of each and was amused when the total price came to one dollar. The man was reluctant to brea
k Phoenix’s ten dollar bill, so Rip fished around in his pocket for some ones. He heard her honking the horn at him as he did.
Sheesh! The girl can’t even let a guy pay for lunch. Wait until she finds out why!
He took the warm paper bag from the vendor, absently wondering if the hot grease would really be enough to kill any nasties that might have been in the meat. He turned back toward the car and prepared to dodge puddles again when his heart almost stopped.
The car was empty.
Zona Libre, Colón. 1155 hours
DOMINGO BEDOYA LICKED the last of what would likely be his only meal that day off his greasy fingers. He watched with interest as the red-headed gringa sprinted down the opposite side of the street. The scene got more interesting when the athletic Latino caught sight of her and dropped his just-purchased bag of empanadas to give chase.
Domingo had scoured the sidewalks all morning for enough change to purchase the meal he’d just eaten. And here this man just threw away a bag full of food. What was it like to care so little about life’s basic necessities?
The vendor was watching the commotion too, so he paid no attention to Domingo when he retrieved the bag, then quickly crossed the street and hid behind a box truck, stuffing one of the still-hot empanadas in his mouth.
At the end of the block, the clean-cut Latino caught up with the woman, and Domingo watched them having an animated conversation, standing in the rain. At first he decided they must be lovers in an argument. But then he realized that the woman had been chasing the white cargo van that had just pulled into the open garage belonging to his former employer Señor Hu.
He had unloaded trucks for the elderly Chinaman before being injured in a nasty fall from a loading dock. Señor Hu was incredibly well connected within Zona Libre, and Domingo held out hope that the shrewd businessman might be compassionate enough to hire him for something, anything that would give him enough money to eat. But Señor Hu was not an easy man to persuade.
He decided to save the rest of his pastry windfall for later. He did not know when his next meal might be, so it wouldn’t do to waste his good fortune. He glanced again in the direction of the gringos and didn’t see them anymore. Suddenly worried the man might come back for his bag of food, Domingo stepped from behind the box truck and hurried off in the other direction.
He passed the car that the gringos had gotten out of and glanced in the passenger side window. There on the dash was an electronic device. Perhaps a large cellular phone? No, it has too many buttons, is too big.
He knew he shouldn’t do it. Somewhere deep inside a brief skirmish ensued between the rules he’d been taught at the Catholic orphanage as a boy and the gnawing uncertainty of his present situation.
It was a short-lived battle. A glance up and down the street showed few people in his immediate area. No one was paying attention to him. Sometimes it is good to be a nobody.
He quickly opened the door and took the device, then closed the door again and walked away. He had no use for whatever the gadget was, but he could sell it for enough money for some new shoes and a month of food, at least.
Or better yet, maybe this is my ticket to an audience with Señor Hu.
Domingo opened the paper bag and ate another empanada. Despite the rain, it had become a beautiful day.
Isla Coiba. 1200 hours
Thwack!
Zack’s machete deftly sliced through a young banana palm, and as it toppled, water seeped quickly up from the four-inch stump.
“See? I told you.” The mop-headed college student grinned. “Water.”
All the time I’ve spent in the jungle, and I never knew that! Fernanda gave him a dubious look as she sat on her backpack several feet away, sweating. “Okay, but is it drinkable?”
“I dunno. Let’s find out.” Zack stuck his machete in the ground and bent over the stump, out of which water was still flowing.
“Zack! Are you sure you want to …?”
He spit it out. “Bitter. Yech.”
Fernanda rolled her eyes. “Maybe we should refrain from putting things in our mouths when we don’t know if they are poisonous or not.”
Zack spit again. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“Sure. Don’t think of it as dysentery. Think of it as ‘the Coiba diet.’ ”
Zack laughed. “Good one. There are people in the States who are stupid enough to pay for something like that.” He flopped down next to his backpack.
The shade from a stand of tall palm trees shielded them from the worst of the midday sun’s rays, but not from the oppressive humidity. Cicadas whirred unseen in the tall grass of the clearing to their front, bordered by seemingly impenetrable stands of banana palms.
The still air made the sweat that soaked through their clothing useless for cooling but great for attracting the interminable flies, and Fernanda waved at them absently with her hat as they buzzed around her head.
“How much longer do you think Alex and Carlos will be?”
Zack shrugged. “Alex said they’d be back inside of an hour unless they found water. And I sure hope they did. I’m down to my last quart.” He sloshed a half-full water bottle. “How much do you have left?”
Fernanda thought for a moment. “Probably about a liter and a half. I gave one bottle to Carlos before they left. I figured if they were going to climb to the top of the hill, he’d need it more than me.”
She peered up the hillside behind her and could see less than thirty feet up the steep bank through the dense foliage in the direction the two men had taken.
Zack gave her a serious look. “So how do you feel about being here?”
She brushed a spider off of her sleeve. “What do you mean?”
“Aside from it being tougher than we thought, we’re kind of breaking the law by being here, aren’t we?”
“I guess so. But in Panama, you’re probably always breaking one law or another.”
He nodded. “Sure, it’s like that in the US too. I don’t know how you feel about God and all, but I get kind of worried whenever I find myself doing something I know is wrong.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she said nothing.
“Do you go to church or anything?”
Fernanda looked up. “Sure. I’m a Christian.”
“Really? You mean like Catholic, or what?”
“No, my family is Protestant.”
Zack pointed at her with both outstretched hands. “Well, there you go. Doesn’t it bother you then, breaking the law like this? I mean, the Bible says that the government is there to do us good.”
It does? Fernanda pursed her lips. “But in Panama, most of the laws don’t make any sense.”
Zack threw a pebble at his shoes. “I used to think the same thing about the rules my parents gave me too. I guess what worries me is that I think God put laws in place to keep us out of trouble, and when we go outside of those laws, we choose to give up God’s protection to some extent.”
Fernanda was starting to feel uncomfortable. “Hmm … I never thought of it like that.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the buzz of insects and screech of what seemed like a thousand different birds.
Fernanda reached into her backpack and pulled out her journal. Might as well keep up with this while I’ve got the time.
Coiba: Day 2. I finally got some sleep last night once the rain hit and quieted the jungle animals. Aside from being claustrophobic and sort of cold, the hammocks did a great job keeping us dry. According to Alex’s Global Positioning thingie, we’ve made it over two miles inland from the beach and have found the edge of the triple-canopy rain forest. Now all we need to do is cross a steep ridge, and we’ll officially be in the interior of the island.
So far, this is harder than I ever expected, but at the same time, it’s incredible to think that aside from a few prisoners who may have explored this part of the island (since most of them lived on the other side), we could be the only people in history to set fo
ot on this place. Pretty amazing to think that’s possible in the twenty-first century. If I had known how strenuous and uncomfortable this was going to be, I’d never have come. But now (at least while I’m resting in the shade of a palm tree), I’m glad I didn’t know.
Fernanda looked up to see a bright purple hummingbird hovering in front of her, practically within arm’s reach. She gasped. A violet sabrewing! She could clearly see its black face and iridescent green tail as it floated there for a few seconds, then was gone.
I just saw the most amazing sabrewing hummingbird! It gives me a strange, almost guilty feeling to think that I may be the only person who will ever see that particular bird. Like I’ve been given a special gift … a rare privilege, for no particular reason.
In fact, it seems like my whole life has been this way. I can’t help but feel like God can’t love everyone the same when He plays favorites with people’s lots in life. Zack said that what we have loses its value if it isn’t shared. Can that really be true?
He also mentioned that he felt uncomfortable breaking the law to be here. I don’t know … We’re not here to hurt anything, so is it really that bad?
Zack jumped to his feet. “Scarlet macaws! Look!”
Fernanda jerked her head up just in time to see two brilliant splashes of red swoop low over the treetops, headed straight for them. When one of the dazzlingly colored birds screeched as it passed overhead, she recognized the sound immediately as that of the late-night visitors that had nearly scared her to death.
“Here they’re called guacamayos! Ooohh! They are so pretty!” She shaded her eyes to get a better look. The birds looked like flying rainbows—their backs displaying rows of yellow, blue, and green feathers. The pair screeched again before passing out of sight beyond the trees.
“Wow.” Zack shook his head. “Just wow.”
Fernanda couldn’t have put it any better. She was still hot and sore and exhausted, but if that was the price of admission to see things like this, it was worth every steamy, muddy step.