by Trevor Scott
Maria tried her best to look as eager as the others, while she cringed internally as she heard this man talk like this about her beloved God.
Beck continued, talking about the history of the world and how everything in time had come to this point. To this place. How they would all soon find salvation based on the prophecy of the Nazca Lines and through his benevolent interpretation of these revelations.
While Maria tried desperately not to shout out ‘heretic’ or simply ‘bullshit,’ she maintained a cool outer disposition. It was her only hope to survive this ordeal, she was sure of that. These people were not just delusional. They were fucking crazy.
When Beck was done with his ‘indoctrination,’ the men left, along with all but two of the armed guards, who escorted the girls back to the dormitory.
Since arriving, Maria had been isolated in what could only be described as a prison cell. But now she was being allowed to stay with the other girls in a long barracks with two rows of bunkbeds. She was assigned an upper bunk in the middle of the long room.
At first Maria thought that the windows on each side of the room simply showed the darkness outside, since they were all black. But then she realized that the windows had been spray-painted black. Why? She had no clue.
Now that the guards had left, the girls started to undress and walk around in only bras and panties as some walked to the end toward the bathroom.
A young girl came to Maria and formally introduced herself to her. They had met before in the back of the van somewhere in Patagonia.
“Where is your friend?” Maria asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But I heard that some girls go to another location first. The younger girls. I thought they took you there, but you are older.”
“No,” Maria said. “They put me in a room by myself until just before the meeting tonight. Do you know where we are?”
The young girl nodded her head. “We studied this place in school. We are somewhere in Peru.”
“Peru?”
“Yes. Have you heard of the Nazca Lines?”
“Not until tonight,” Maria said.
“When our forefathers came here, they instructed the people to honor them in certain ways. In this region, they built elaborate drawings in the Nazca Desert. Like the monkey and the bird and a number of others. These look like nothing from the ground, but can only be seen properly from the air. It is also our understanding that they instructed other societies to build tall pyramids from Mexico through Central America, and then to Egypt.”
“And where did these forefathers come from?” Maria asked.
The young girl smiled and pointed to the ceiling.
“Aliens?”
“No, silly. Ancestors.”
“According to Herr Beck, humans were all placed on this planet in various colonies. These people were from all races. But of course the main people, those in power, were from a pure race. These people brought here were supposed to integrate and blend, becoming one race through procreation. This is still in progress. The only way for people to become one, without prejudice, is through total integration. You can’t possibly hate your own people.”
Maria considered that and said, “But Herr Beck and his men are all white. And all of us are Latinas.”
“Exactly. Our children will be more integrated, as our ancestors desired.”
Each of them were given a standard kit of personal care sundries, much like military recruits entering basic training. Once everyone completed their bathroom chores, lights out was declared and all of the girls found their ways into their beds. A few whispers could be heard for a while, but then soon the girls drifted off to sleep.
Maria lay awake, her eyes wide open now. The drugs that she had been forcibly given had nearly worn off completely. With all of the activity of the evening, she had not been able to discover if the two girls she had sought from the beginning were among these here in the beds around her. Despite her own predicament, she still had a duty and obligation to bring those girls home. But now, perhaps, her mission had changed. Now she needed to help not just herself, but all of these girls.
20
Jake and Sirena had quickly checked out of the hotel in Montevideo, Uruguay and took a late ferry back to Buenos Aires, Argentina. They were scheduled to meet a contact of the American, Sten Larsen, at midnight in one of the city’s more famous, if not macabre, settings—La Recoleta Cemetery. Jake had been to this massive labyrinth of tombs and mausoleums on one of his previous visits. But that visit had been on a sunny day. This was where former presidents of Argentina and other notables were interred. But the greatest attraction was Eva Peron, the tragically popular former First Lady of Argentina.
Rain came down on them in a constant wave as they exited the subway station a few blocks away from the cemetery. Puddles formed everywhere, making it more difficult to walk the dark streets.
On the ferry, Sirena had contacted Antonia, and the Argentine intel officer agreed to meet them at the front gate of the cemetery. This place wasn’t like most cemeteries. One couldn’t just wander in there at any hour and view the tombs. It was a national treasure with a gate a locks and business hours. But Jake had a feeling that the people they were dealing with didn’t follow the normal rules.
“Slow down, Jake,” Sirena said. Her voice a low whisper barely over the sound of rain hitting the ground.
Jake turned and stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I forget about pacing.”
“Normally I like that about you,” she said. “But for some reason this doesn’t feel right.”
“You mean meeting at a cemetery at midnight? That’s never a normal thing.”
“I know. Antonia said the place will be locked up tight.”
Jake took her arm in his and they strolled side by side like a couple around the outer edge of the tall wall that enclosed the tombs. This place was built more like a castle to keep away the marauding hordes than a place of reverent reflection and respect for the past presidents, generals and writers of Argentina.
“Do you know where to find the entrance?” she asked.
He shifted his chin ahead. “Just around that corner and half a block. I’m guessing our contact will meet us at the front gate.”
Moments before reaching the corner, a shot rang out. Jake instinctively drew his gun and put it at the edge of his right leg. Sirena also had her gun out.
He rushed toward the corner and stopped for a second. Then he quickly looked around the corner and saw two flashes, but only muted coughs from an obviously silenced gun.
Without hesitation, Jake ran toward the cemetery entrance, his gun pointed toward the entrance—the last place where he saw the muzzle flashes.
He saw the body just ahead laying on the wet street next to the driver’s side door. He hurried now to the body and crouched down to check for a pulse.
Jake looked up and saw that Sirena was covering him, her gun aimed at the entrance to the massive tomb enclosure. Strangely, the gate was open.
Sirena glanced back and asked, “What’s the status?”
He tried to find a pulse on the woman, but she was gone. She had taken a number of shots to the chest and one bullet to the right side of her face.
Antonia was dead.
Damn it. Jake shook his head and got up, moving toward the gate.
“Hang on, Jake,” Sirena said. “We can’t go in there. We have no idea how many are in there. It’s a maze.”
He knew she was right, but he didn’t give a shit. “There’s only one way in and out,” he said. “You wait here at the gate and I’ll flush them out.”
Jake ran to the gate and squeezed through the entrance gate, which was only partially open. Then he stepped quietly on the cobblestone path, his eyes adjusting to the relative darkness. Light did reflect in from the perimeter, especially from a small square out by the entrance where tour busses normally parked during operating hours.
Now he could at least see down the narrow passageway
s, with tall stone tombs on either side. His mind went back a few minutes when he saw the muzzle flashes. Were those from one or two guns? He wasn’t sure.
He moved along the right side of the main path past some general’s tomb, with a statue of the man out front. The Argentines knew how to memorialize their heroes. Rain continued to pelt him as he stepped forward.
There. A dark figure ran across the path in front of him.
His gun at the ready, Jake aimed while stepping softly down the cobbled road. First came the flash and then the cough. He smashed his body against the stones surrounding a tomb, but could hear the bullet buzz past his head.
But Jake didn’t fire. He had no target. Just an idea of where the shot came from. Ahead on the right. The first corridor off the main trail.
He was too vulnerable against this tomb. The shooter could narrow his target too easily. So, Jake vectored across the main path in a quick, methodical gate, his gun ready for a shot.
When the next flashes came, Jake took just a second to identify his target. But he kept moving as he shot three times, his gunshots echoing through the night air and muffled only by the rainfall.
Nothing. Did he hit the target?
Jake continued forward until he was even with the passageway where the man had taken shots at him. He could see a figure on the ground. No movement.
His heart pounded out of control, his breathing heavy, and a wave of heat rising up from the collar of his jacket. Was there a second shooter?
Jake got to the man on the ground and kicked the body to see if he would move. But it was like kicking a sack of potatoes. With his back against a wall, Jake checked for a pulse. Nothing.
Now he kept his eyes and gun vigilant as he took out his phone and clicked on the screen for some light to check out the dead man.
A couple of things were obvious. First, at least two of Jake’s bullets had hit his target. One had hit center mass. Probably his first shot. And another had entered the man’s face just below his right eye. Jake took a quick shot of the man’s face. Then he typed a text to Sirena saying he had taken out one man. The next obvious thing was the fact that Jake had encountered this man before a couple of times.
He got a text back from Sirena, saying to get the hell out.
Sirens sounded in the distance.
Jake didn’t need any more reason to move. He quickly found his way back to the front entrance, squeezing through the gate again.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah. We need to go. No way we can explain these deaths.”
“We can’t leave Antonia alone,” she reasoned.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her. “We have to go. Now.”
Reluctantly she relented and ran with him for a couple of blocks. They could see flashes of Policia cars zip by at cross streets, but Jake wasn’t sure if they even knew where the shots had come from. But it wouldn’t take them long to find Antonia’s body lying in front of the cemetery entrance.
After a few blocks, they came to a subway entrance and went down out of the rain. As they waited for the next train, Jake thought about the man he had just been forced to kill. Again, his mind tried to innumerate the number of people he had killed in his career, but he couldn’t come up with a number. Did this young man have a family? Was he worthy of concern?
“What happened?” Sirena finally asked.
“The normal,” Jake said. “A guy tries to kill me, but I got him before he got me.” He pulled out his phone and brought up the picture of the man he had just shot, showing the face to Sirena.
“Him?” she asked. “That’s the guy I just threw into the sea off the ferry. How did he get back here?”
“Maybe you should have put a bullet in his brain before dumping his body,” Jake surmised. Then he cringed, thinking he was being too judgmental.
“He’s a cop, Jake.”
“I’m not criticizing, Sirena. Just making a statement. The guy got what he deserved.”
“But maybe you’re right. He wouldn’t have been able to kill Antonia if I had taken him out on the ferry.”
“You can’t think that way,” he said. “There was no way you could know the man would end up here at this meeting.”
She cocked her head to the side. “How did he get here? And what about the man we were supposed to meet? Where was he?”
“Damn good questions,” Jake said. “But I’ve got no clue. All I know is that this place has gotten too hot. Maybe we should just schedule a flight out on the jet. That guy’s partner is gonna be gunning for us now.” He deleted the photo of the dead guy from his phone.
In a minute the train came and they got aboard, heading to the central train station where they had left their bags in a locked storage box.
Jake went into the restroom and washed up, getting any gunshot residue off of his hands, before changing into dry clothes. Then he went out into the main terminal and waited for Sirena.
Now Jake thought they might have a problem. Before dying, the American, Sten Larsen, had set up the meeting both in the cemetery and with the transportation van on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Did Larsen set them up? Were they about to walk into another trap?
21
George Town, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
After midnight, Seven Mile Beach was still active, but not like Vegas or New York. The Caymans were much more laid back. People who wanted to party in hot, sweltering beach communities went to places like Cabo or South Padre Island. That’s why billionaire Carlos Gomez liked it here instead of those party towns.
Carlos had spent the evening in meetings with friends and associates, discussing business and politics. He knew that money often influenced governments to move in certain directions. Unfortunately, most of the European countries had nearly turned over their sovereignty to communists and socialists and other haters of commerce and capitalism. Despite the failures of the former, they still embraced failed ideology for the sake of the people. But the people they really wanted to enrich were not the underprivileged. It was their own pockets. They wanted what Carlos Gomez had worked all his life to achieve, without the pesky hard work and risk of actually running a business. As far as Carlos was concerned, these people were like leeches sucking the blood from a dying man.
Carlos sat now at an isolated table in the bar at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, his third Macallan single malt 18-year-old scotch in front of him. He wished they had something a little more exclusive here, but this scotch would have to do until he got back to his yacht.
His drinking guest was U.S. Senator Brock Huey from the state of Massachusetts. The two of them had met a number of times over the years at events like this. Huey had been married to his second wife since the 80s, but Carlos had only met the woman once at a White House state dinner. Back in the day his wife had been Miss Rhode Island, but that had been before giving birth to two children in the late 80s, which had left the woman a bit thick in all the wrong places. Still, she was by all accounts a wonderful woman from old money in Newport. Huey, on the other hand, was a portly pig with a predominating priggish personality. The wisp of hair trying to cover his bald pate only led the eye to his red bulbous nose. Yeah, he had it going on, Carlos thought with a slight snigger as he took a sip of scotch and watched the senator waddle back from the men’s room.
The rotund man squeezed into the booth and picked up his umpteenth whiskey sour, sucking down a healthy portion.
“Everything all right, Brock?” Carlos asked.
“Not really,” the senator said. “I’ve got a bladder the size of an infant. Then I have to push on my belly to grab my damn cock. I haven’t seen my pecker in twenty years without a mirror.”
Carlos smiled and shook his head. That didn’t stop the man from being a serial adulterer with prostitutes, he thought. Which is why they were meeting in the first place. Many in their circles had come to Carlos to deal with their personal indiscretions. Carlos only dealt with people who could help him in return. But he only did that for frien
ds with redeeming qualities, and Carlos wasn’t sure the Massachusetts senator qualified. He believed in redemption, but it always had to follow contrition. Was this man even capable of remorse?
“All right,” Carlos said. “It’s getting late. What exactly can I do for you?”
The senator’s eyes shifted back and forth like a rat surrounded by cats. “That’s why I like you, Carlos. You get right to the point.”
Carlos sipped his scotch and wished he could feel the same for the senator.
“My colleague from the great state of Oregon,” the senator said.
“The one who died recently?”
“That’s right. He was in contact with me about a little problem.”
“I know all about that,” Carlos said.
“Well, as you might know, he was from the other side of the aisle. His party tolerates such indiscretions. In fact, some would say it’s a damn right of passage to them.” Senator Huey sucked down the last of his drink and waved across the room at the waiter leaning against the end of the bar. He swirled his hand around the table, meaning drinks for both of them.
“Continue,” Carlos said.
“So,” the senator said, “I have a similar problem. But mine is a bit more delicate.”
“Because your party expects better family values?” Carlos provided.
“Right, right. And the circumstances of my situation. You see, I was at the same junket in Uruguay.”
Carlos knew where this was going. But he waited patiently for the normally bloviating senator to spit out his words.
The waiter brought each of them another drink, setting them on the table in front of them. Then he drifted away.
Senator Huey continued, “The circumstances, if they got out, would be extremely embarrassing. Not just for me, but for our entire family.”
“How bad could it be?” Carlos asked. “Young girl?”
“You could say that. It was a train situation.”
“Tell me you were the caboose,” Carlos said.
The fat senator shook his head and his jowls stopped jiggling shortly after his nonexistent chin. “Not exactly. I was fucking a young woman from behind, and a young man took me from behind.”