by Rachel Lee
“Está terminado,” he repeated. “Vamos.”
Yes, she thought, unable to look back at the clearing. It is finished. Let’s go.
Grangeville, Idaho
It had been chilly in Boise, given that it was only April, but neither Renate nor Tom was prepared for the arctic cold that had apparently pushed its way into the northern part of Idaho. To step out of the truck was to step into a meat locker. At once noses and fingers began to tingle, and within moments earlobes were aching.
That didn’t keep them from creeping alongside the deserted campground road to find out what Wes Dixon’s group was doing. At this time of year the rangers weren’t even out to collect fees. The gate was open, and a sign announced lack of facilities until the campground officially opened in May.
They left the truck at the gate and walked into the campground, following bus tracks carved into several inches of otherwise unmarked snow. They walked well off to one side, so their passing wouldn’t be noticed by anyone on the bus when Dixon moved on. It wasn’t long before they heard sounds, and a few minutes after that, through the thick trees, they could see that tents were being erected.
Worse, they could see that all of the men were dressed for the weather in camouflage parkas and gloves.
Rachel tapped Tom’s shoulder and indicated with a jerk of her head that they should go back to the truck. Tom was glad to oblige. The wound in his leg was blessedly numb from the cold, but the other parts that were growing numb concerned him.
They crept back the way they had come, even stepping in their own footprints. Not that so much care was probably necessary, Tom thought when they reached the truck. It had begun to snow heavily.
“Okay,” Renate said. “We’re going to need some serious cold-weather gear.”
“You get that feeling, too?”
She flashed him a glittery smile. “I just hope they’re planning to stay at this campground all night. I’ve never used snowshoes, but I’m fairly good at Nordic skiing.”
By that he presumed she meant cross-country skiing, not downhill. He was fairly good at that, too, from his youth in Michigan. But in mountains like the Rockies…well, it was probably a very different kettle of fish. It might be smarter to learn how to use snowshoes.
Renate backed slowly out to the highway, then headed away from the park. Before long they were back in Grangeville, where they found an outfitter’s store.
She pulled into a spot in front of the store and they went inside, to find the owner alone, sitting at his cash register in the back, reading a book on conspiracy theories. He looked up and greeted them with a big “Howdy,” though he didn’t smile.
Tom recognized the look immediately: small-town suspicion of outsiders. He also knew how to deal with it. Affecting a mild Southern accent, he extended a hand and said, “Howdy, I’m Lawton Caine. Brrr. Do y’all grow this cold yourselves, or import it from Canada?”
The man chuckled and took his hand. “Burt Reynolds. No, no relation. My mother was a starstruck fan. Nah, this here is homegrown cold. When it comes in from Canada, you have to thaw out your bladder to pee. So what can I do for you?”
Tom had glanced at his wares on the way in and held slim hope that they would find what they needed. The store was stocked for the summer activities that were right around the corner.
“We’re looking for some winter gear,” he said. “My wife and I are visiting up here and thought we might do a little hiking. Don’t see this kind of weather in Georgia.”
“I’ve got that stuff in the storeroom,” the owner told them genially. “Holding on to it for next fall. Come on back with me and we’ll get you outfitted. I’ve got the best of everything for winter hiking and skiing.”
He leaned toward them a bit as he opened the door to the back. “A lot of survivalists in the mountains around here. When they buy, they want the best.”
“If it comes to that,” Tom said, “we’re all going to need the best.”
“You got that right,” the man replied.
Before long, Tom was holding winter camouflage parkas and snow pants, boots with replaceable felt liners, and a box of replacement liners.
“Here,” Reynolds said, relieving Tom of the heap. “Let me go put this on the counter out front. You two just keep looking. Don’t miss those survival blankets. And those tents in the corner? They fold up to nothing, weigh only a couple of pounds and give the best wind protection you can get. Come in one-and two-man sizes.”
Renate nodded and started building yet another stack. Backpacks, canteens, one two-man tent, Mylar survival blankets, some flares, dried food, and two pairs of cross-country skis with boots, binders and poles.
“What happened to traveling light?” Tom asked a little while later as they loaded the truck.
Renate looked at him. “This is light if we’re going to be out in the woods. I know this kind of weather. It will kill you if you’re not prepared.”
Half an hour later, Renate was booking them into as sleazy a motel as he had ever stayed in.
“You just stretch out on the bed and save that leg,” she told him. “I’ll bring everything in.”
“No, I’ll help.”
She turned to him, her gaze as hard as twin chips of blue flint. “No, you will not. I’m not letting your masculine ego get in the way of finishing this job. You need to save that leg in case you have to spend all day tomorrow walking on it.”
He gave up. The German duchess had spoken.
He had to admit, though, that it felt good to stretch his leg out on a level surface. The throbbing eased almost at once. And the pillow beneath his head was so soft….
He drifted off to sleep without realizing it.
He awoke an hour or so later to see Renate packing the knapsacks on the other double bed. She certainly seemed to know what she was doing.
She apparently noticed he was awake, because she began to talk. “I used to spend a lot of time hiking in the Schwarzwald and the Alps. I learned how to pack one of these things the hard way.”
“Blisters?”
“Mostly a shrieking back. Balance is important.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Do you hike?”
“Sometimes. The Appalachian Trail.”
She smiled. “Good. You know how.”
“I don’t generally do it in snow.”
At that she laughed. “Do you know how to ski?”
“Some. I did it as a kid, in Michigan.”
“You’ll remember quickly,” she said. “Dixon needs to get out of the country with his men. I doubt the Guatemalans will know how to ski, so they’ll probably be moving slowly once they have to abandon their bus. We’ll have the advantage there, provided we’re not seen. We need to keep tabs on them and pick a good spot for the FBI to take them down.”
“We’re taking them down?” he asked.
“No. That would be pointless. Office 119 has no legal jurisdiction. We rely on local authorities to make arrests. But I want to pick the place. A place where our well-armed friends will be least likely and least able to resist. Once we’ve done that, we’ll have to get the information to your old colleagues, without them knowing where it came from.”
“I think I can do that,” he said. “I know what words and phrases to use to catch their attention. Even with an anonymous tip.”
He watched her continue to organize the backpacks and realized that she hadn’t bought as much as he had thought at the store. Everything was fitting snugly away, leaving ample room for more, even as the stacks on the bed diminished. She was very good at this. Even had room for changes of underwear and the thick white socks that had been one of her purchases.
She glanced at her watch and said, “Oh!”
“What?”
“I need to go get us some dinner before it is too late. I’ll be back shortly.”
Grabbing her new parka, she disappeared through the door. A moment later he heard the truck engine turn over. Yes, it did purr like a Ferrari. This woma
n was full of endless surprises.
Putting his hands behind his head, he stared up at the water-stained ceiling and thought about what he’d seen so far. She seemed to have a free hand in what she did, and a boundless budget. It was very different from what he’d dealt with.
Not that he wanted to go outside the law, but being part of a huge governmental bureaucracy caused a lot of problems. Layers upon layers of command combined to bollix up too many operations. Then there were the budgetary restrictions, sometimes to the point that agents paid for some items themselves rather than wait for the Bureau to put through a voucher.
On the other hand, staying with Renate would mean leaving behind everyone he knew. Thinking of Miriam and Terry, he felt a deep pang. They had been good friends, and had gone above and beyond the call in caring for him since L.A. Allowing them to think he was dead seemed like a betrayal.
He sighed and continued to stare at the ceiling as if the water stains might rearrange themselves and spell out some kind of cosmic answer. He would have to ask Renate about these things. Surely she had had friends whom she’d left behind, as well as her family in Freiburg.
How did she deal with their grief? And her own guilt?
Bottling his feelings and freezing them in a glacier was not an option. Somehow, he would have to make peace with the decisions he was making. Otherwise he would eat himself alive. He’d done it before. He didn’t want to do it again.
If he was going forward with her, he needed to be clear and sharp. Of that much he was certain. If only the water stains on the ceiling could talk.
Watermill, Long Island
Edward Morgan didn’t at all like the tone of voice he was hearing from his contact on the other end of the line.
“His shield and personal effects are being shipped back to me,” the voice said. “You didn’t have anything to do with that, did you, Edward?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been asking about him for weeks. Now he’s dead. Are you going to tell me you don’t know anything about it?”
Righteous anger rose in Edward Morgan, as it always did when he was questioned. It didn’t matter whether he was in the right—right and wrong had ceased to matter to him so long ago that righteousness was his response any time he was angered. “Don’t you dare talk to me in that tone.”
“What?” The voice on the other end was quiet for a moment, then a chuckle filled the line. “My old friend, have you forgotten you’re merely mortal like the rest of us?”
“What do you mean? Are you threatening me?”
“I don’t need to threaten you. But if you think our current relationship has given you any importance beyond what you had when we first met one another, you’re sadly mistaken. And I’d better not find out that you had anything to do with the death of Tom Lawton.”
“Of course I didn’t!”
“Hmm. We’ll see, won’t we?”
Morgan hung up, shaking again. He’d been shaking entirely too much lately. Instead of pouring his usual drink, he went to the liquor cabinet and got out the Irish Cream, filling a tumbler with it.
Things were beginning to feel very much out of his control, and he needed to figure out how to get them back within his grasp before everything he had worked for exploded in his face.
Kevin Willis would have to be sacrificed.
21
Dos Pilas, Guatemala
Miriam followed the column almost woodenly, putting one foot in front of the other, listening to the jungle behind them for sounds of pursuit. The constant climbing had aggravated the severely bruised muscles around her knee, and her side was aching, as well. But she had to press on. She had no doubt there were other rebel forces looking for them. To stop meant to invite the rebels to overtake them. And that would mean more killing.
For the past five hours, she’d fought a battle with her conscience. The young man, whom she now knew as Miguel, had offered a couple of comforting looks at rest breaks, but she found little comfort in his eyes. He was, after all, the man who had cold-bloodedly murdered the U.S. ambassador. He had too much blood on his own hands to wipe the blood from hers.
They had branched off the trail twenty minutes earlier, and now they waded through chest-deep undergrowth. Miriam tried not to think about what might be concealed in the deep tropical forest. Instead, she focused on lifting one foot and then the other, repeating the process into what had come to seem like infinity.
The woman in front of her turned and put a finger to her lips. The column went silent as they skirted around a clearing and edged their way toward what looked to be the ruins of an ancient city. After another half hour, they had wound around to the far side of the ruins and settled into a sheltered clearing two hundred meters into the jungle.
Miguel joined her for a moment. “You are a good soldier,” he said.
“Thanks, I guess,” she said.
“No.” He put his hand on her arm. “You did what any soldier is trained to do. You are a good soldier.”
“Where did you train?” she asked. What she had seen was no haphazard assortment of farmers who had taken up arms. “Where did the rest of the rebels train? In the Guatemalan Army?”
“In your country,” he said in heavily accented English.
She gripped his arm in turn. “Tell me where. You know you can’t return to the rebels. God knows how you’re going to survive if they keep looking for you. But you can help keep others from stepping into your shoes.”
His dark eyes burned. “They will keep stepping in my shoes because of the way we are treated. And I will be arrested by you, and my village will be safe again. So I have nothing to say.”
“You have plenty to say,” she told him, her jaw tight. “Listen, Miguel. You tell me who trained you, and I’ll go back to Guatemala City and tell them you died out here.”
His head jerked back. “Why?”
“Because you’re being used, Miguel. You and all your fellow rebels. I want the people who are using you.”
“We would fight anyway,” he argued.
“Perhaps so. But at least you’d be fighting for your own purposes rather than for someone else’s. Think about it, Miguel. Why are they running a training camp for you? Don’t you ever wonder?”
He was silent for a long, long time. Miriam bit her lip, and forced herself to let go of him and wait.
After what seemed like an eternity, he lifted his eyes. “I trained in Idaho,” he said. “One of your former army men has a big ranch there. He gives us weapons and trains us. I do not know his name.”
Miriam sagged back against a rock, still looking at Miguel. By damn, Tom had been on to something. Miguel might not know Wes Dixon’s name, but she did. Suddenly she was desperate to get back to Washington.
“I’ll tell them all you’re dead, Miguel. So change your name, and look after your sister and her family.”
He nodded, his chin setting. “I will look after all my people. I brought this on them, now I owe them.”
Paloma approached her as she sat on a log and tried to massage the pain from her knee.
“Caliente, sí?”
“Yes,” Miriam said, nodding. “It’s very hot.”
The woman nodded and placed her hands on Miriam’s knee, feeling around the tissue, pressing. Miriam stifled a cry as her fingertips prodded the bruised area. The Mayan smiled and dug into a pouch at her belt, then held out a small clutch of dried leaves on her palm.
“She’s offering you medicine for the swelling,” Steve Lorenzo said, joining them. “It’s quite harmless. It’s an herbal analgesic.”
Miriam nodded and took the leaves, unsure of what to do next. “Do I eat them?”
Paloma laughed quietly, and Steve shook his head. “Soak them in water first, then hold them in your cheek,” he said. “It will feel a bit strange at first, but it’s good medicine. Just don’t swallow the leaves. They wouldn’t harm you, but they would upset your stomach.”
“Gracias,” Miriam said,
smiling at Paloma.
The old woman looked around, as if feeling the vibrations of the jungle. She spoke in Spanish, and Steve translated.
“The end started here,” he said. “The end of a great people.”
“Where are we?” Miriam asked.
“Dos Pilas,” Steve said. “It was once a small but prosperous trading city. She says this was over a thousand…fifteen hundred years ago. Two great kingdoms were to the north—Mutul and Calakmul. They were… I guess the closest word would be superpowers. They were at war, and this city was important to both of them, because it was the gateway to the wealthier cities in the south.”
“A pawn,” Miriam said.
“Exactly.” Steve listened as the woman continued, then picked up the translation. “The trade moved along the Pasión River, she says. Jade and obsidian, quetzal feathers and shells. The Pasión is the river we have been traveling near all day, where you fought the battle earlier.”
Miriam nodded, not wanting to think of what had happened as a battle. It had been an ambush, then a massacre. She fought down the images and listened.
“The king of Mutul sent his young brother, only four years old, to be the ruler here. Balaj Chan K’awaii was the boy’s name. He remained loyal to his brother until the armies of Calakmul captured this city. Then he served that king, fighting under his banner, and waged war upon his older brother at Mutul. The war lasted for ten years, and finally K’awaii won and destroyed Mutul. He brought his brother and the other members of the royal court back here, and slaughtered them all. Their skulls were piled up, and he danced in a pool of their blood.”
Miriam shuddered. “This is legend, right? Oral history?”
Steve translated the question, and a smile broke out on Paloma’s face. The woman dug into a bag and pulled out a tattered copy of National Geographic. Steve laughed and translated.
“Not legend. She learned it from our books. Her people simply speak of this as the place of betrayal. The place where the beginning ended and the end began. It was those wars that destroyed the great Mayan cities. People fled for their lives, into the jungles. When brother kills brother, only the blood of the dead remains.”