by Ted Bell
Focus, Harry. Okay. He had to be somewhere in the little shitburg town of Madre de Dios. Yeah. He’d wandered into this Brazilian backwater yesterday afternoon because a hungry, pushing forty-year-old guy with back problems just gets tired of not eating and sleeping out in the rain under a different tree every night. It had been a week since he’d taken shelter under an actual tin roof, and the last real bed he’d actually slept in, he had gotten out of about two minutes before Las Medianoches rapped on his door and knocked it down.
What finally happened was, how he came to be here in Madre de Dios, about a week ago he’d started seeing a bad Xerox of his face plastered all over the charming town of Barcelos on the Rio Negro. Printed under his mug was a rather large round number calculated in both pesos and dollars. He’d been deeply depressed with how little he was worth until he remembered that in this part of Brazil you could buy a Mercedes E55 AMG with a sticker price of $81,000 for less than $10,000. Dom Perignon was three bucks a magnum, and you could snag a fresh pair of Nike Air Jordans (he had) for a dollar.
Hell, that meant his life was only worth about a thousand pairs of Michael Jordan sneakers. Seemed a little on the low side.
This was a tiny spot on the map, but it was the central city in what is known as the Mato Grosso, where about $12 billion, that’s billion with a B, worth of cocaine passed through every year. Harry had asked around, dropping a few names and discreet amounts of cash here and there, and managed to hook up with a big time guy named Osvaldo Sanchez.
Osvaldo, who was president of one of fifty-five international bank slash laundries operating here in town, liked to siphon off a hundred million or so every now and then to buy bargain basement surface-to-air missiles for the glorious pan-American revolucion Hugo and Fidel were dreaming about. Because Harry was pretty savvy about the illegal arms business and both men knew the names of a lot of heavy hitters, he and Osvaldo had hit it off and actually developed a good working relationship.
Good enough for he and Señor Sanchez to arrange a confidential meeting where they would talk turkey and Harry would find out who some of the key players were in what was shaping up as the major drama currently unfolding down here south of the border. Rumors were rampant. Massive terrorist armies moving north to invade Central America. Stuff like that.
But, wouldn’t you know it, at the last minute Harry had had to cancel due to a prior commitment (staying alive) and instead of talking turkey with Don Osvaldo he was running for his life and hopping into the back of a poultry truck crossing a bridge to nowhere. Once safely across the Paran River, he’d taken to the jungle, sleeping rough for a week until, good luck, the heat died down. Hiding in jungles is hot, thirsty work. Harry finally succumbed to his baser desires and hitched a ride with a busload of poppy growers to his current residence, a less than idyllic village called Madre de Dios.
All he’d really wanted was a couple of cold cervezas and a warm bed. Was that too much to ask? Before Saladin Hassan had left to go find the Xucuru tribe that was holding Alex Hawke for ransom, he had given Harry the address of a place (an abandoned mosque) he could use to hole up in, but only, Saladin had emphasized, in a dire emergency. Saladin, reluctantly giving Harry the key to an upstairs room, said, don’t use it. As it happened, he had used it, although in hindsight, maybe that wasn’t a really good idea.
It was a scruffy little town he’d slipped into. Losing himself in the horde of merchants, peddlers, and smugglers hoofing it at a snail’s pace over the Puente de la Amistad (the bridge of friendship) he thought there was something a little incongruous about the sight of golden domes and spindly minarets rising up out of this lush jungle. But what he found out was, back in 1975, after the outbreak of the civil war in Lebanon, the Islamic population of this region had swelled rapidly and was now somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty thousand in this one town alone.
Why were they here and what the hell were they up to, you might well ask yourself. Well, money. The more the United States shut down the terror networks’cash flow, the more these guys had to turn to alternative sources of income. And what better source of income than drugs? Human trafficking and guns? Not too shabby either.
What Harry was picking up on was a whole infrastructure in this part of Latam, locally known as the Mafia-Araby, who had taken over all the weapons and narcotic sales and distribution channels down here. This was because the badass Arab sin sheikhs made the local toughs look like a bunch of drugstore gauchos.
And the Mafia-Araby was using all this ill-gotten lucre to finance their Latino terrorist operations. In this region alone, the number of guerilla training camps had to have risen exponentially. And high-tech weaponry was flooding in, some of it experimental technology stolen from the U.S. and Britain.
Now, you had to wonder, as Harry did on a regular basis, how come his bosses at the Pentagon, Langley, and NSA had missed all these interesting developments in Latin America. Just by walking around, looking at faces, you could see there was not a lot of love for the norteamericanos down here, no matter what the race, color, or creed of the people on the streets. What there was a lot of, if you asked Harry, was trouble.
Trouble wasn’t brewing, like Milwaukee’s finest, it was fully brewed. And, some day real soon, somebody around here was going to pop the top on a whole six-pack of shit.
The funny thing was, all this snooping around he was doing wasn’t even Harry’s assignment. He’d been ordered down here with a couple of other CIA guys for one specific reason: find Alex Hawke and if he was still alive get him the hell out. Harry had gone to his boss, Charley Moore, at the JCS and volunteered for this assignment when he’d heard about it. He owed Alex Hawke a big favor.
He had met Hawke a year or so ago. Hawke had pulled him off a Chinese steamer just before it sailed Harry back to the Chinese prison hellhole where he was scheduled to spend what was left of his life begging to die. He owed Hawke big time and had planned to repay that debt if he ever got a chance. Now, he had it.
This town was busy, busy, busy. Really hopping. In addition to the group of young Shiite Muslims he’d seen outside a mosque (raising money for the imminent jihad, no doubt), there were countless good citizens packed into the narrow streets, hawking everything from designer jeans and leather jackets to plasma TVs, computers, and laser tools. There was some other stuff, too, including tons of choice Colombian marijuana, hashish, and cocaine for the guys who made a living transshipping the stuff to Puerto Paranagua over on Brazil’s Atlantic coast.
Harry didn’t pick one up, but he’d heard on the street you could buy a counterfeit Brazilian passport from Brazilian officials for a measly $5,000. And that passport, under the current waiver program created by some benevolent genius in Washington, opened the portals to the fabulous Magic Kingdom lying immediately to the north of the Mexican border. The waiver made a valid Brazilian passport all you needed to travel throughout the United States.
Think about that one for a minute and your head will explode.
He was pretty sure the blossoming suicide bombers hanging around the mosque had figured that one out long ago. If you could afford five grand for a passport, you didn’t need to worry about sneaking across the Mexican border to blow shit up in Houston or Chicago or wherever. Just hop a flight to Miami. That’s pretty much what Harry was thinking about when the girl had showed up on the stool right next to his.
He’d gone into the first bar he’d seen that looked air-conditioned. No windows, so it was dark inside, too, and he’d felt all safe and cozy inside sipping his cerveza fria with a whisky back at the bar. Then, at some point, a girl was sitting next to him. A nurse, she said. It was her day off. What was her name? Caparina. Yeah, that was her name, pronounced like that Brazilian drink he liked, the one made with limes and Cachaca, grain alcohol distilled from sugar cane. Lethal.
Caiparinha. Some kind of butterfly, she’d said it meant in English.
So, what the hell, he’d bought her a few beers, not many, only a hundred or so. She’d asked him
if he wanted to get busy and he said, yeah why not?
Why not? Jesus, he knew why not now. She had a torn Wanted Dead or Alive poster in her free hand and Harry immediately understood that he was up creek number two without a paddle. Now that the sun was up she was comparing his face with the Xeroxed one on the wanted poster. There was a small painting of the Holy Virgin stuck on a nail just above Harry’s head. Caparina smiled at him, then reached up and slapped the poster over the painting, the nail head sticking right through Harry’s forehead.
A warm breast brushed his cheek as she settled back down, kind of squishing herself onto his lap.
“Mmm-pf!” Harry said, and she looked at him for a long minute and then pulled the gun out of his mouth. The oily aftertaste was pretty bad, but at least he could work his jaw. He thought she was being a good girl, but then he saw her reach for the cell phone on the night table.
“Don’t do that!” Harry said.
“Porque no?” she replied, looking again at the poster with the big fat number prominently displayed on the bottom. Harry tried hard as he could but he was darned if he could come up with a zippy and compelling answer to that question. Why shouldn’t she call the telephone number on the poster and collect the reward? Seriously. Why the hell not? In fact, there were many thousands of reasons why she should do exactly that. Hell, if their roles were reversed he would do exactly the same—
“You’re pretty,” he decided to say, letting her have both the pearly whites and the sleepy brown eyes. Harry was an okay looking guy. He’d been told he looked like Bruce Willis with hair. He didn’t see it, but frankly, whatever. Some times it worked, some times it didn’t. This time, thank you Jesus, it did. She hesitated, then put the phone back and looked at him, that cute little smile on her face. Caparina could obviously tell Mr. Happy was back in town and restless; maybe looking for a place to settle in for a spell.
She got busy. You know, one for the road, after all she had nothing to lose and Harry certainly did not. He was reduced to thinking of turning himself in, getting the reward, and then escaping again. Admittedly, it was a plan with a lot of holes.
He meant what he said. She was pretty. She was a drop-dead babe even sober, meaning when he was sober not her. He looked at her face, too, as she started rocking back and forth on top of him, grinding away at him until he was hard as stone. She had what Harry the world-traveler called a pretty version of the U.N. face. Part Chinese, part Indian, part mestizo, part brown skin gal. She had long purplish black hair, full lips, and amazing breasts that were now swinging dangerously close to his lips.
“Hey,” he said, “C’mon on.”
“What?”
“You know what.”
“Beg me,” she said.
“What?”
“Beg.”
“I don’t beg.”
“Oh, yes you do, Mr. Harry Brock.”
“All right, I’ll beg.”
“I don’t hear you.”
“Please.”
“Louder.”
“I can’t. Somebody will hear us.”
“We’re in a deserted mosque, Harry. No one can hear us.”
“Wait. We’re at my place?”
“Of course. You don’t remember?”
“No. I mean, yeah. I sort of knew. I guess I forgot. All mosques look pretty much the same to a guy like me.”
“You want to kiss my titties, Harry? This one? Or, this one?”
“Yes. Both.”
“Beg me, Mr. Brock.”
“Please. I beg you. I’m not kidding. I am sincerely begging here. This could be it for me. The swan song of Harry Brock.”
“There. Happy?”
“Oh god, yes. Now the other one.”
“Be gentle, Harry. That’s a good boy.”
WHEN HARRY WOKE up for the second time that morning he realized he had a cigarette in his mouth and involuntarily took a puff. Nothing in recent memory had ever tasted so good. The girl reached over and plucked it from his lips so he could expel the smoke. Shit. He was still cuffed to the damn bed. He must have dropped off for a couple of minutes. The girl took a drag herself and then she said, “I know a joke.”
“Yeah? What?”
“A man is in bed with a woman. After they make love, the man says, ‘Do you smoke after sex?’ and the woman smiles at him and says, ‘I don’t know, I never looked.’ ”
Harry burst out laughing.
“That’s pretty good,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Fell asleep, huh?”
“For about twenty minutes.”
“Did you call?”
“Mmm.”
“You called? Holy shit. Aw, Christ, Caparina.”
“Calm down, Harry.”
“Calm down?”
“I didn’t call who you think I called.”
“The number on the poster. For the reward.”
“No.”
“Ah. Well, okay, who did you call?”
“My ex-husband. He’s on his way.”
“Your ex-husband is coming here? Now?”
“What are you doing down here in Brazil, Harry? You’re obviously an American. You have no identification. No passport. Nothing. Only this gun and a few thousand pesos. You don’t speak Portuguese. Or even Spanish.”
“I’m a tourist.”
“You came all this way to buy those shitty Nikes? Six hundred tourists die every year in this crappy town. And that’s only the reported number.”
“That’s why I’ve got the gun.”
“I’ve got the gun, Harry. Last night, when you were drunk, you said something about las Medianoches.”
“Really? What’d I say about them?”
“That the jihadistas had your friend. You came down here to look for your friend, Harry? Who is your friend?”
“Why is this important to you?”
“Hassan can help you I think.”
“Hassan? Who the hell is Hassan? Every second guy you meet around here is called Hassan.”
“My ex-husband. He’s a good guy, speaks perfect English. Very tough. Not everyone in this country is intimidated by the Mafia-Araby.”
“How can he help me?”
“You can help him.”
“Why the fuck should I do that?”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“Not necessarily. Anyway, who’s your enemy?”
“The enemy of my people. The jihadists in the jungle who call themselves Las Medianoches. This bastard Papa Top.”
“What are you, Caparina? Some kind of spy or something?”
“I keep my eyes open.”
“Good. We’ve got something in common. Now, let me go. Okay?”
There was noise coming up the steps beyond the door. Caparina hopped off the bed and pulled her flowered blue cotton dress over her head and smoothed it down over that spectacular body. She was one of those women who look almost as good dressed as they do naked. She stepped into her pale blue panties, wiggled her butt as she hiked them up under her dress, and smiled at Harry.
Harry lifted his head and stared at the door. “Shit. They’re coming up the steps. Get me out of these cuffs, will you? Hurry up.”
“I can’t. No key.”
“No key? What?”
“We were playing a game. ‘Who’s the prisoner?’ You lost when you swallowed the key, remember?”
“Aw, shit, Caparina, they’re at the door. Can you at least throw the damn sheet over me or something? Jesus. This is embarrassing.”
“Say please.”
“No.”
“Harry?”
“Please.”
“Good boy, Harry.”
She was bent over picking the sheet up off the floor when the wooden door swung open and a man stepped inside, looking at the scene on the bed with a bemused smile.
“Harry?” the man at the door said.
“Saladin?”
“You two know each other?” Caparina said.
“Of course we know each other,” Harry said. “Jesus.”
It was Wellington Saladin Hassan. Few months ago, he’d paid this man a small fortune for finding Alex Hawke and returning him safely to England.
“Who’s got the key?” Saladin asked the two of them, a big smile on his face.
25
PRAIRIE, TEXAS
S unday morning just before noontime Franklin was in the cold barn mucking out the stalls. He had just about finished when he heard an automobile driving too fast up the long dirt drive from the highway. He leaned his pitchfork against the wall and moved over to the open window facing the road. It was Homer in the department’s new Crown Vic Interceptor, barreling up the deeply rutted road at about fifty, kicking up a big rooster tail of dust behind him.
Franklin looked up at the cloudless blue sky, any prayer of a quiet Sunday afternoon sliding away from his mind. He walked out of the barn just as the deputy skidded to a stop between the barn and the house.
“Easy, Homer, no fire out here, son.”
Franklin walked over to the car wondering what was so all-fired important on a Sunday. It had been nine days since the incident at the Wagon Wheel. Homer had been beat up pretty bad. Still and all, he’d been back on the job for three days now and, mercifully, things had been quiet since all the hoopla of the week preceding. He’d even had a few afternoons to finish correcting all the errors in that Texas border presentation he was set to give down there in Florida in a week’s time.
Mostly it was quiet because Rawls and a few bike riders had been locked up down at the courthouse. He’d put them there for a few days until everything cooled down. He’d let most of them go. He’d wanted to hold Rawls longer, based on a tip he’d gotten about six months ago.
A paid informant had told the Laredo PD that Rawls was suspected of involvement with some kind of border smuggling operation. Drugs, guns, and even automobiles coming through tunnels under the border. According to the snitch, Rawls was in bed with corrupt Federales and narcotrafficantes and had been for a long time.
But, they couldn’t prove it yet. Franklin just didn’t have enough to hold him. So he’d released Rawls on his own recognizance, as June called it.