by Glen Carter
They were standing on a beach: Jack and Raspov and the dozen Marxists, all staring at one another. Uri and Pavel had disappeared to the tree line where they were looking for a place to hide the rubber dingy. Jack could barely make out their features, but on the faces of the men closest to him he saw a mixture of suspicion and contempt. Cold, hard looks illuminated now and then by the flaring of a match, the glow of a cigarette, a sliver of reluctant moonlight through low hanging clouds. Jack wasn’t feeling any better about things, and the gun in his belt wasn’t helping any.
One of the FARC soldiers was arguing loudly with Raspov, stabbing a finger at Jack. He didn’t know what the two of them were on about, and that worried him. The commander was getting even more animated, refusing to listen to what Raspov had to say. The conversation heated up to the point where it appeared Raspov had lost all control. The rebel commander lashed a hand at Jack and then, in a sign that things were really off the rails, hands flashed to weapons. At that moment the rebel commander said something that brought dread to Jack.
Raspov laughed in the man’s face. Not the best strategy. All eyes were on the Russian as he spat at the soldier’s feet, thrust out his chest in a pathetic attempt to intimidate, and in rapid-fire Spanish said what loosely translated might have been, “CIA spy, my ass.” Everyone watched Raspov, who appeared in both stooped posture and breathlessness to be failing in his bid to save Jack’s life. Time to get the hell off this beach, Jack thought. So, with not a moment to spare, he began to inch slowly and silently towards the water. He planned to make a run for it. Go deep fast, swim to the boat and take his chances with Smiley and his RPG. He would fire up her powerful engines, slam the throttle to the firewall and drag anchor until he was a safe distance from shore. Jack believed it was his only option. He felt the Glock in his waistband, calculated the time it would take to draw the weapon if the shooting started. Christ, he’d never fired a gun. What was he thinking?
Raspov must have big balls, or was simply crazy, because in a uicidal move, the Russian’s hands went to his pistol. It was a mistake followed by a roar of voices and the clack of AK-47s being raised to firing position. Adrenalin shot through Jack like compressed air, made his ears ring. He was about to shout something at Raspov when he felt the tip of a blade sting his neck, just below his jawbone. Smiley wasn’t smiling anymore. His breath stank of tobacco and rancid meat as he stuck the knife into the side of Jack’s neck and said something that roughly translated must have meant “Die! CIA pig.”
He should have seen this coming. These men were animals. Raspov’s warnings flooded back to him. Credentials made of plastic, not miracles.
Everyone seemed to be fighting for the same oxygen. No one knew what to do next. The rebel leader resumed a tirade that was now peppered with language that sounded to Jack like an attack on the morals of Raspov’s mother. He pressed his weapon against the Russian’s chest and spit at Raspov’s boots. The others looked like they couldn’t decide whether to shoot the Russian or the American spy. Jack felt hopelessly done for as the knife pushed harder against his throat, making it impossible to deflect the image of arterial blood gushing from his neck, the radiant transfer of his life from flesh to the sand at his feet.
A second or two slithered past with the tension of electric eels. The rebel leader swaggered towards Jack. He brought an oily hand up and grabbed Jack’s chin. “A hundred of my men are dead in six months,” he growled. “American special forces in Arauca. Do you know they kill us? They kill us for a big fat American company. The 18th Brigade are whores. They protect an American pipeline.”
Jack didn’t move. Black hatred pooled in the Colombian’s eyes, his hatred so volatile it threatened to engulf them both. The soldier slowly pulled his revolver and placed it against Jack’s forehead. “Because of a capitalist pipeline we die.”
He twisted the weapon harder into Jack’s flesh. The smell of gun oil reached him. “Journalist. Not CIA,” he said through clenched teeth.
The rebel leader inched closer. “Journalista? Why you not tell the American people what your soldiers do here?” His fingers tightened on Jack’s face. “How your government kills our people?”
Jack wanted to break the man’s nose with his forehead, or at least point out that the noble revolutionary armed forces of Colombia had slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians – his people.
“Big American reporter.” The rebel leader laughed, teeth stained black. “All fucking liars.”
Strangely, at that moment Jack felt more anger than doom. Asshole. Smiley pushed the blade deeper into his flesh until Jack felt something warm trickle down his neck. Smiley murmured, “Journalista pig dies.”
Jack looked at Raspov wide-eyed. Why wasn’t he doing something? Then Jack realized the two brothers hadn’t returned yet. Apparently, no one else had given them any thought, and the rebels were about to find out just how big a mistake that was.
In Colombia, decades of civil war had killed tens of thousands of people. Many more were displaced, including legions of women who had been widowed by rightist death squads financed by the United States Congress, a huge sore point for the insurgents. Many of those widows turned to Marxist doctrine, partly to find revenge, partly because they had no other choice because the insurgents controlled most of the villages where they lived. The group of twelve rebel soldiers was actually a baker’s dozen, and the unlucky number thirteen was a raven-haired rebel with the curves of a baroque sculpture. She had been watching her companero get in the gringo’s face when Pavel crept up and snatched her from the underbrush. She was now the property of the two Russians, and Jack was about to discover what Raspov meant when he said Uri and Pavel were taught “human things and things not so human” by their KGB masters.
Uri had his big Russian gun pressed against her skull, and that should have been reason enough for the wide-eyed panic that distorted her face. There was more. Pavel was holding her tight, inching forward from the tree line, one hand covering the lower half of her face. “Pavel is hungry,” Uri said. He snapped his jaw open and shut with a crack that echoed through the clearing. His brother grunted something that couldn’t be understood because his mouth was full. Pavel shuffled through the sand towards them.
It was the first time Jack noticed the Russians’ strange teeth, and now he understood why they had spoken so little. Mouth wide, Pavel’s lips were drawn back to reveal enamel daggers that appeared as sharp as surgical instruments. Pavel pressed them gingerly against the place where the woman’s wrist and hand were joined. Jack now understood Uri’s and Pavel’s special talents, and he wondered how much human flesh they had savaged in the dungeons of Lubyanka, their psychoses blossoming like dewy black roses.
Pavel was able to fit her entire hand in his mouth, no problem. Uri laid it out for them. “Drop your weapons or your comrade is separated from her hand.” Pavel bit into her. The guerrillerera screamed as a thin line of blood appeared on her wrist.
The rebel commander made his move. It wasn’t much. Pavel’s jaw tightened on her wrist and a trickle of blood became a drip off the Russian’s chin, stopping the commander dead in his tracks. Surrender turned to rage as he flashed at Raspov. “If they kill her, you fucking die! On my honour.” His words dropped to the sand like pieces of hot lead. Then a signal.
Smiley muttered something with a religious insinuation and withdrew his knife. Jack gripped his throat and dropped to the sand.
Raspov held his hands up in a show of magnanimity as the bewildered clutch of angry soldiers began to lower their weapons. He gazed at them one by one, waited a moment for the display to have its full impact. “We are all friends. Suspicion defeats us,” Raspov sighed, a look of mild rebuke directed at the rebel leader who couldn’t take his eyes off the two Russians, and his woman.
Resignation crawled like a dark shadow across their olive complexions as the Russians moved slowly forward, blood spilling over Pavel’s chin.
Jack was sure he saw the Russian smile as the woman went deat
hly still in his vice-like embrace.
FIFTY-ONE
Jack cringed at the sight of Raspov slipping onto his ass again. The once decorated KGB colonel had already gone down half a dozen times on the greasy claustrophobic trail. Uri pulled him to his feet while Pavel appeared to be growing increasingly impatient with the old spy master.
A line of soldiers spread out at twenty-foot intervals to protect their flank. Jack would occasionally hear them muttering to one another, the strike of a match or a shifting weapon. They were young, Jack guessed, still in their teens. Too young, he thought. Probably recruited at gunpoint.
They’d been walking for two hours, making slow progress. The heat and humidity made it feel as though they were breathing under water.
Raspov was wheezing now.
The rebel commander and the rest of his unit, including the woman, were breaking trail, several of the soldiers hacking through brush with large machetes, khaki fatigues sopping wet. Chatter was non-existent on point.
Raspov fell again. “Why don’t you carry him?” Jack suggested quietly.
Uri nodded at his brother, and then Pavel hoisted the older man on his back. Raspov offered weak resistance but eventually surrendered to the indignity. A moment later the colour returned to his face. With his wind back he said, “He wanted to put a bullet into your brain.”
“I think I got that impression,” Jack replied.
“I informed him he was suffering paranoia and that’s when he spit at my feet, apparently dissatisfied with my diagnosis. Come to think of it you do look CIA.” Dmitri adjusted his piggyback position, reminding Jack of an old Mel Gibson movie. Brains atop the brawn. Mad Max. Two men enter, one man leave. That was the flick.
“He obviously doesn’t like you,” Dmitri added. “He’ll kill you if given a reason.”
Jack contemplated the warning. He stepped over a huge sodden palm frond, unconsciously rubbed the wound on his neck. “I don’t plan to give him the motivation.”
The rebel commander looked back at Jack. Tough guy, sneering. Jack casually averted his gaze. “Just another terrorist,” he said to no one in particular.
“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” Raspov offered.
Jack knew Raspov was goading him. “Freedom fighters killing innocent women and children?” Jack thought about Amillo’s wife and daughter and the thousands more murdered over the decades.
“You make a good point, my friend, best saved for the debating club. It means nothing here.”
Jack slowed his pace, came shoulder to shoulder with Pavel, who was breathing easily, eyes straight ahead while he carried the Russian.
“Amillo was dead the moment he began his march towards the extradition treaty with Washington,” Raspov continued. “He signed his own death warrant. The extraditables couldn’t allow him to live.”
Jack remembered the faces of Amillo’s wife and daughter. They had both been beautiful, bravely following a man targeted by some of the most brutal men on earth. “There are cleaner ways to take out a target. Why kill so many innocent people?”
Raspov laughed. “You’re talking about collateral damage like it matters here, when in fact it’s part of the equation. The more innocents who perish, the greater the terror. The people are shell-shocked. The government is paralyzed and as a result chaos wins the day.” There was a pause. “Last December a school teacher was shot dead on a street corner in Medellin after asking his ten-year-olds to pray for an end to the killings. It was a stroke of genius to take him out. Imagine the terror dividend it paid.”
Jack was seeing a side of Dmitri he didn’t know existed. “You’re a bastard, Raspov.”
“Just a realist.”
Pavel gave Jack a sideways glance. You insult a man with such a word – fists usually follow. He hefted Raspov higher on his back and turned away, apparently satisfied Jack wasn’t about to throw any punches, along with his slur on Raspov’s character.
Raspov dropped his head until his eyes were level with Jack’s. “No offence, Jack, but stop being so soft and gooey. Open your eyes and say hello to Coca Loco Land.”
Jack had seen plenty so-called “freedom fighters” and their acts of cruelty. Heinous atrocities by small haughty men who killed and destroyed in the name of something. The Hutu and Tutsi had done that in Rwanda, their gory machetes held high in righteous fervour. Jack also remembered the blood-stained churches in the Balkans, the religious zealots and ethnic cleansing. He’d had to numb himself to the horror and pain of others, suppressing what he feared might one day overpower him. Lesser burdens could turn men into drunks or emotional basket cases. As Jack trudged along the slippery trail he thought again about the suicide bombing at Café Umbria. Amillo wouldn’t crumble to the threats, so he had to be taken out, clear and simple. His wife and daughter and dozens of others were sacrificed for the terror dividend. Shit happened. But in this case the shit had happened to him – and his producer. He mentally chastised himself for not acting on his instincts when Amillo walked into the restaurant. Jack rubbed rock-hard muscles at the back of his neck. “Any guesses on Café Umbria?” he said.
“Who knows? Maybe FARC,” Raspov replied, thrusting his chin at one of the rebels. “The insurgents don’t care much for that extradition treaty either. Big bad America throwing its weight around again. The cartels, ELN? Need I go on?”
“No,” Jack said.
Raspov went on anyway. “Sometimes everyone’s on the same page, but for different reasons. One group takes a pass, the other takes up the slack. Why duplicate resources?”
None of this came as news to Jack. “Simple stuff. Drug lords, FARC, ELN. Everyone in the same bed humping, but everyone else gets screwed.”
“Nicely put. No wonder you’re a journalist.”
The jungle was long awake with the calls of exotic birds. Occasionally there were the sounds of larger creatures scattering through the rainforest, as well as the persistent thump of heavy boots against hard-pressed mud.
Jack wanted to hear more from Raspov but the Russian dug his heels into Pavel, quickening his pace. Uri slid away into the thick jungle, breaking through the foliage as unstoppable as a trophied linebacker.
Jack thought about Jonathan Short’s warning on the phone before he and Kaitlin boarded the Citation in New Orleans. “You’re absolutely crazy to be even thinking about it, Jack. The DEA says things are about to explode.” Short, ex-CIA now, riding the diplomatic ladder at the State Department and one of their best analysts on South America. “The extradition thing is making the nineties flare-up look like a picnic.”
Jack had been warned.
“Sarah sends her love. Watch your back.” The click Jack heard when Jonathan hung up that day sounded to Jack like a gunshot.
They continued to march through a wall of humidity, sunlight barely piercing the thick jungle canopy.
Jack was drenched, a combination of sweat and dew from a thousand leaves that reached out to touch him. First they had to locate Seth. Raspov was confident his revolutionary friends would help them accomplish that. After all, Seth was last reported in rebel-held territory near Santa Marta.
“If he’s still breathing – we’ll find him,” Raspov had guaranteed.
As Jack trudged along the darkened trail there were curves around bends, bends around corners, footprints that shifted this way and that on a terrain that constantly changed. Jack preferred patterns of right and wrong,good and evil. Judgments easily made when based on fact. But he wasn’t sure about anything or anyone right now, including Raspov. And of course, Kaitlin. She’d been expecting someone that night, Jack was sure of it. Jack was also certain that Kaitlin had already disappeared when the car full of explosives obliterated the restaurant.
What troubled him most and puzzled him more than all else was the possibility that she had abandoned him to die.
FIFTY-TWO
They made the rebel camp three hours after starting their grueling trek through the jungle, and a curious thing ha
ppened when they walked through the well-guarded gates into the Marxist stronghold.
It was exactly five minutes past seven. Two hours earlier in Washington and at the National Reconnaissance Office headquarters in Virginia. Time was very important there because spy satellites traveling at mach 25 in a geo-synchronous orbit around the earth opened their all-seeing eyes at pre-determined points and times along their orbital path and, at exactly five minutes after seven every morning, one of those five satellites was perfectly positioned in the black and cold of space about one hundred miles above the hot rainforest and mountains of Colombia. The 3-D imagery from the billion dollar birds told American intelligence analysts a lot, including where the opium and coca were being nurtured, sometimes by peasant farmers who lived in wooden shacks overlooking tiny pathetic crops that made them target-worthy combatants in America’s war on drugs.
The Drug Enforcement Agency was mandated, through both legislation and executive branch political imperative, to stem the production of cocaine and heroin, thereby denying the mighty American appetite. Sometimes that satellite information was used to vector the pilots of Colombian aircraft who, under escort by US Blackhawk helicopters, launched from government-controlled airstrips with their bellies full of a poisonous chemical called glyphosate. In America, Roundup Ultra kills weeds dead. In Colombia it destroys the coca plant and everything else in its path, including maize, yucca and plantain, which American drug addicts can’t sniff or inject, and thus crops which the US administration couldn’t care less about. No one seemed to care, either, that fumigation chemicals such as Roundup Ultra made people and animals very sick.
The CIA’s Keyhole-class satellites, which can see an object as small as five inches, kept a close watch on hideouts of Colombian drug lords and rebel fortresses, and at precisely five minutes after seven, one of these “visible light” birds was snapping digital pictures high above the insurgents’ camp where Jack Doyle now stood. Jack had no access to classified information on the orbits of CIA spy satellites, but apparently the leftists did. They knew, because ex-KGB spook Dmitri Raspov knew. And this was why, at the same time every day, a large group of guerrillas, two hundred or more, interrupted their morning calisthenics to send a message to those CIA imagery analysts who toiled along the Beltway. With their middle fingers raised high, they cried out in unison, “Fuck you!” in their best English and then resumed their sweaty regime. Jack couldn’t help laughing.