Captive Dove

by Leon, Judith

  She wasn’t going to beat him in this race.

  She stripped off the bandanna from her forehead, spun toward the caiman and, when it opened its mouth to chomp down on her arm, she grabbed his snout with all her strength, digging into the mud with the toes of her boots.

  She pulled the reptile to her, lifted her arm over his back and tucked his snout, nose forward, under her arm to make sure he could not open his mouth while she slipped the bandanna on. He trashed and twisted, dragging her under. She held her breath, kicked to try to regain her footing, and kept her arm’s tight, viselike grip on his snout.

  The big weakness of every crocodilian in the world was its bite. More specifically, the weakness of the muscles that opened its mouth, not the ones that held it shut once it had a good hold on its prey. The latter muscles were formidable. You’d never pry them open. But if you could get a croc’s mouth closed and keep it that way, you could win, because it simply would not be able to open it to bite you.

  She rolled to the surface and grabbed a lungful of air. He rolled her under again. They were thrashing up so much mud she could barely see, but she wrapped the bandanna twice around his snout, tied a knot, then pulled her knees to her chest and kicked the prehistoric creature away with all the strength she could muster.

  Breaking through the water’s surface again, she turned toward the shore, praying the bandanna would hold its mouth and distract it long enough for her to scramble up the slippery bank onto land.

  The caiman thrashed its head back and forth until she saw the bandanna come free. The beast lay quiet a moment, then slowly exhaled his breath and sank out of sight into the muddy patch they had stirred up.

  Well, that was fun. Every muscle in her body was quivering. Her knees felt unsteady.

  When she could walk again, she moved down the shoreline. Mud smeared her pants and top. It would soon dry and cake and be hard to explain. She needed to rinse it off.

  She did a full scan of her surroundings. Seeing no one, she stripped out of the shirt and pants and walked to the lake’s edge. The binoculars weren’t waterproof. In all this humidity they would probably quickly fog up. Her notebook and her birding guide were both soggy, but happily the notebook was quite readable.

  She rinsed her shirt and pants, then found a rock where she could sit to wait. She hung her clothes over the branches of a bush. Half-naked, she felt more creepy with every passing minute. Her ears strained to hear any snap of a twig that might warn of approaching guards. Without unpinning it, she squeezed some of the water from her braid.

  In the few minutes it took her clothes to dry, she heard a plush-crested jay, a saffron finch, and a raucous flock of parrots. A centipede made its slow journey past her from the shady place at the base of her sitting rock to the cool place at the base of another rock a few feet away. Somewhere, maybe not far from her, she knew that a jaguar rested, waiting for night and a hunt. And perhaps not far away, guarding their captives, she might encounter the most dangerous predator species of all.

  At ten after five, with plenty of daylight left, she hung the binoculars around her neck, her badge of innocence, and she walked as fast as she could, covering the open ground between the jungle’s edge and the sheds as quickly as possible, praying no one would see her.

  Chapter 27

  Nova strode through calf- to waist-high scrub grass and bushes, and then, perspiration soaking her underarms and trickling down her spine, she hugged the backside of the long, low building. Bars, the kind in a jail, sat like metal teeth in a row of windows built high up from the ground. Hope flickered, elevating her pulse. For what reason other than to keep captives would Escurra need a building with barred windows?

  The windows were about three feet too high for her to see inside and nothing lay nearby to climb up on—no boxes, barrels or logs. After listening for a solid minute, and hearing only the beat of her heart and the distant buzz of what sounded like a lawn mower, she decided she might risk peeking around the side of the buildings.

  Standing upright again—clutching her binoculars—she strode to the edge of the long building and walked around the corner, her cover story about birding on her tongue.

  She found nothing there but a view all the way to the big ranch house. She judged that the nearest buildings she could see, the three rancheritas, were at least a half a mile distant and the big house maybe three quarters of a mile away. This meant that the fighting pit, with its viewing stands, was readily accessible to Escurra, but also private.

  Between the rancheritas and the big house lay open ground, most of it covered in lawn. A macadam road lined on both sides with palm tress led from the house to the rancheritas and at the last minute, the road split three ways, one branch leading to each of the guest houses. She could see and faintly hear two men riding lawn mowers.

  The macadam road continued on down to the fighting pit. Other than the guys mowing lawn, she’d seen no men, armed or otherwise. Her initial hope cooled.

  She decided to check out the ring with its tiers of seats. Maybe she could get some elevation, the better to scan the property. She strode across the thirty feet of empty space between the back of the sheds and the back of the ring. The pit and the viewing stands, deserted and quiet, were constructed of wood.

  She climbed to the top row level and, crouching, checked the surroundings. In front of the sheds, two cowboys, unarmed, were wrestling a back tire off of a battered pickup truck. They wore the tall boots, baggy pants and loose blouse of a gaucho. Not exactly the picture of kidnappers on the alert.

  When she trained the binoculars on the rancheritas the scene proved equally disappointing. Expensive cars were parked in front of all three, cars of the kind that might be driven by important guests, not thugs: Bentleys, Rolls, Cadillacs.

  At their rear, the three houses shared one big swimming pool. A woman in a white bikini lay on a chaise lounge beside it, soaking up some very late afternoon sun. On the lawn beside the middle house, two kids smashed a badminton bird back and forth.

  No one was concealing kidnapped Americans at the rancheritas, and it didn’t look like the Americans were being hidden in the sheds either. Still, its interior had to be checked out. She retraced her steps, and then walked to the shed’s front corner. Peering around it at the two cowpunchers changing the tire about seventy-five feet away, closer to the shed’s far end, she heard them chatting in Guarani.

  She straightened, boldly rounded the front of the wooden structure, ducked inside the closest open door, and found herself in a dim and eerily quiet interior. In spite of the heat, she shivered.

  The structure reminded her of the rows of horse stalls in a riding stable or at a track. A single, wide corridor, lined with scattered chairs and a couple of tables, ran its entire length. The barred windows on the little chambers where horses might be kept just shrieked that the chambers were cells. Some doors were closed and some open. She picked the closest cell, its door standing open, and went inside. The floor was of well-packed dirt. The walls and low ceiling were rough-hewn, old and dried-out wood. A real fire hazard.

  Other than a rusty pan on the floor under the lone, barred window, the little cubicle stood empty. Dark smudges on the walls looked like they might be blood. In one corner she found dog scat. In another, to her surprise, she found different scat with the unmistakable stench of wild boar still on it.

  So, he did keep animals for his fights here.

  She stepped outside the cell and, proceeding down the corridor, glanced inside each cell. At the first closed door, she peeked in the window. A beautiful specimen of fighting cock turned its beady dark eye on her, his red wattle wagging.

  When she leaned forward to peek into the next closed cell, the rapid barking of a dog with a deep, intimidating voice caused her to lurch back, her heart leaping up into her throat and fine hairs standing up all over her body.

  From other cells other dogs took up the cry.

  Chaos!

  She imagined the cowboys suddenly standing upright
and looking at the shed. Would they come to check out the commotion?

  Hell! She spun around and raced back to the door where she’d entered. She skidded to a halt and peeked out. One of the men was ambling toward a door at the other end of the shed with a rifle in his hand, his friend watching.

  She dashed outside and sprinted back around the corner of the building. No way could she make the sheltering jungle if either man decided to look for a jaguar or some other source of disturbance behind the building.

  The unmowed, wild grass stood knee high. She threw herself face down and lay still. Counting. One hundred and one, one hundred and two, one hundred and three. She kept it up. When she hit five hundred, she lifted her head and looked back at the sheds.

  Nothing. Either the men had not looked, or they had not seen her.

  Now she lit out for the jungle at top stride, swallowing disappointment. She would not be making an excited call to Joe to let him know she’d found their hostages.

  Once she reached the cover of the trees, she tried to jog, but the tangle of roots and the oppressive heat worked against jogging. The return trip to the Jeep seemed to take longer than the trip in. Relieved to have escaped detection, she tossed her field glasses into the passenger seat.

  A male voice said, in Spanish, “Stop. Step away from the auto.”

  She turned. Two men looking to be a mix of Spanish and Guarani and wearing jeans, sleeveless shirts, and 38-caliber Smith & Wessons still in hip holsters approached in a slow amble.

  She smiled. “Buenos días.”

  The older one, a bandanna tied around his forehead much as hers had been, didn’t return the smile. The younger one—he looked to be no older than fifteen—flashed a beautiful mouth full of white teeth.

  Concentrating on the guy with the bandanna, she said, “Do you speak English?”

  He didn’t flicker an eyelash.

  The boy said in English, “What you do?”

  “Birding,” she said. She pulled the still-soaked bird book from her pants pocket and pointed to the cover, a collage of paintings of the heads of a toucan, cotinga, harpy eagle and great egret. “Birds,” she said again. “Aves.”

  Rapid Guarani passed between them. The boy repeated, “What you do here?”

  She leaned into the Jeep and picked up the field glasses. She put them to her eyes and mimed scanning the nearby trees. “Aves.” She pointed to the book cover.

  The older man’s face didn’t twitch a muscle. He reached for the book and she handed it to him. What would he make of a soaked book? Her pulse started a rapid thump, thump, thump in her throat. She smiled at the boy, then scanned their surroundings. She needed a bird now. Any bird she could show him. Where was a bird when you really, really needed one?

  More quick Guarani and the boy pointed to the book and said, “Water? Why?”

  Pointing in the direction of the river Nova mimed what she hoped looked like a woman losing her balance and starting to fall. She unVelcroed another pants pocket and took out another steno book brought for just this emergency. Not the one with her sketches of the house, but one in which she’d drawn sketches of eight common local birds. Under each she’d written the bird’s Latin name.

  She opened to the first drawing, a black vulture in flight. “Black vulture,” she said. She pointed, feeling idiotic, at the sky. Both would know the profile of this ubiquitous big scavenger and would have seen it their whole lives in the sky.

  Whether it was the sketches or her familiarity with the book or maybe just her nonthreatening femaleness, an American woman out here doing the dumb things that tourists did, the old guy finally seemed convinced.

  After a quick scan of her other sketches, he returned the steno pad.

  A few more words of Guarani and the boy said, “Private property. You go.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Okay. No problem.”

  They watched her climb into the Jeep. The boy smiled. The older guy, he of the supreme straight face, simply stood with his hand on the butt of his gun.

  While she had collected some information on Escurra’s digs, as far as anything substantial was concerned she had struck out. Linda, the Bennings, the diabetic boy, all of them—they were hopefully all still alive, wherever they were. She could imagine their fear. It would be dusk by the time she reached the Blue Parrot. She’d done all she could here. She revved the Jeep to the top speed allowed by the road conditions, looking behind once or twice to see if the man and boy were following. They were. They followed her all the way back to the gravel road leading away from Escurra’s front gate.

  Would they report finding a foreign woman snooping around to Escurra. Probably so. Too bad she’d been caught.

  She asked at the Blue Parrot’s reception desk and was told that Mr. Villalobos could be found in the bar next door.

  She found him seated in a tiny booth alone, apparently behaving quite civilly. “Let’s go to your room, Nova,” Ramone said. “I’ll stop at the café across the street and order in food. I presume you’re hungry.”

  “Starving.”

  Chapter 28

  Joe entered Nova’s room through the connecting door. He took a chair by the single window, kicked off his hiking boots and propped his feet on a straight-back chair seat. As she washed her hands and face to cool off, Ramone arrived and took one of two chairs by the small table.

  Returning to the bedroom, she said, “Let me go first. I don’t have much. Bebe knows someone who works in Martinez’s stable. He’ll call me when he hears anything. I also rented a Jeep and bought some birding gear and scouted Escurra’s place.”

  Joe shook his head. “You shouldn’t do stuff like that without me.”

  “We’re short on time, Joe.”

  “I know that!”

  “Then don’t lecture me about staying safe.”

  “I just meant—”

  “I know what you meant, and we don’t have time to play this game safe.”

  “So what did you see?” Ramone asked, cutting off their head butting.

  A knock on the door brought Ramone to his feet. He tipped the kid and set the package of food on the table. They drew up chairs. “I ordered baribari. It’s a typical Paraguay soup. Meat, vegetables, some bacon and dumplings.”

  Ramone hauled out six beers and also three of something in capped, insulated cups. “If you guys don’t want the hot drinks,” he said, “we can just dump them.”

  Joe took a beer, opened it and swigged.

  “The hot drink is a local herb tea. Yerba maté. It’s supposed to be some kind of elixir, a rejuvenator. A definite refresher.” He picked up one of three strawlike silver objects. Each had a little bulb on one end pierced with tiny holes. “You sip the tea through these bombillas. The holes are like a little strainer.”

  She wondered if he ever actually drank anything nonalcoholic except the occasional coffee. She dished the soup into three enclosed paper bowls. “What’s in the dumplings? Also a health food?” She couldn’t suppress a skeptical raised eyebrow.

  “Maize and cheese.”

  She fetched the tourist company map and her sketches and laid them out in front of them. She drew a finger around the border of Escurra’s massive holding. “He owns it all. His house is here.” She touched the X the helpful agent had drawn.

  “If you use the big house as the anchor point, I’ve sketched other landmarks. Down here—” she pointed “—there is a fighting pit. He apparently entertains with animal fights. Bebe says he always throws a big party on Christmas Eve, and there were some caged dogs. No guards. No trace at all of Americans or of anything going on.

  “That’s pretty much it, except that two guards caught me off the side of the road where I’d parked. I don’t know if they bought my birding cover.”

  She sat down and sampled a dumpling, then used the odd silver straw to taste the maté. It had a sharp but pleasant taste.

  After another swig of beer, Joe said, “I interviewed Martinez. He speaks damn good English but t
old me nothing about money laundering or terrorists that any man or woman on the street couldn’t have told me.”

  He gave Ramone a sharp look. “I could see how, in this heat and all, a man could get hooked on this beer.”

  Ramone simply sucked on his silver straw, refusing the bait.

  “What about Gomez?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah. We could probably consider that a plus. I covered twenty or thirty acres before I ended up at a corral where seven men were watching a guy breaking a horse to the saddle. Gomez was there. So at least we know that he came back here. No sign of hostages.”

  Ramone said, “I tapped the lines to Martinez’s land telephone. We may get lucky and intercept a local call, maybe to or from Escurra. They sure as hell won’t use cell phones.”

  Nova stood. “The soup was good, Ramone.”

  He took her hand. She felt a rush of fire up her arm.

  “No, no. Sit back down,” he said.

  She sat. He didn’t let go. Warm feelings on her skin intensified. She normally did not blush. Was she blushing now? Could Joe see the fire under her skin?

  Finally Ramone let go. She pulled her hand into her lap, amazed—no, way beyond amazed—that Ramone could still have such a profoundly chemical effect on her.

  The man abandoned you! He just walked out of your life!

  Ramone dived once more into the brown sack. “I brought mbaipy-he-é for dessert. You’ll love it, Nova.” The way he said Nova with a soft breath was almost like a kiss. “It’s an unforgettable mix. Cornmeal, milk and molasses.”

  Joe said, “Don’t forget me, Ramone. I’d also like some dessert.”

  The three-way tension around them was thick enough to dice and slice.

  Ramone handed her a cup of the pudding and a spoon as he continued his report. “I complained to Rio that we want better maps. I said if they want to catch these guys before they kill the VP’s niece, they better get keyhole satellite photos of not only Martinez’s place but Escurra’s. We should have extremely detailed specifics of whatever is on the ground at both places sometime late tonight or tomorrow morning.”