Orinoco

by Dan Pollock

  Of course, if Oscar doubled back anywhere on his past, they’d have him. Unfortunately, that left most of Venezuela wide open. He could, in fact, have gone to ground right under their noses in Ciudad Guayana, exactly as Brigate Rosse and Hezbollah kidnappers liked to keep their captives in nondescript apartments in Rome or Beirut, or moving frequently from one to another.

  But there was no point in rehearsing these dismal facts again and again. And they’d already given D.W. the most encouraging news. This was a consensus among Siso and his colleagues that, despite the revolutionary graffiti on the bombed and burnt-out bulldozers, Oscar Azarias had for many years been nothing more than a straightforward criminal. In which case, this was not likely a long-term hostage-taking for some political goal, but a short-term snatch strictly for ransom. Eventually, if the old man didn’t blunder into their nets, he’d have to surface to name his price and method of payment. They’d get him then. And Colonel Higueras and his hostage-rescue team would be in the vanguard, keeping Jacqueline out of harm’s way.

  Ray Arrillaga, meanwhile, had led D.W. out of the living room command post and into the master bedroom, where he veiled the world-class view behind heavy drapes.

  “It’s no use, Ray,” D.W. protested. “I can’t sleep. If I close my eyes, I hear her calling me.”

  “At least lie down, D.W., and take your shoes off. Listen to me now. If you don’t get some kind of rest, you won’t be in any condition to help her.”

  Eventually D.W. agreed to take another Valium and give sleep a try. Ray was right, of course. Jacqueline’s safety might depend on D.W.’s ability to function effectively and decisively in the unfolding crisis. He must remain strong for her, and not allow this gut-churning torment to master him.

  But the instant he lay down and shut his eyes, he heard her, exactly as he had told Ray. She was crying out to him childishly. And to think that only yesterday he had invested great concern in the future of an iron mine or in corporate quarterly earnings or his own executive image. What incredible blindness! All those things were no more than plastic counters in a global board game for grown-ups, and he had allowed them to obscure the real treasure of his life.

  And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, D.W. could do to bring her back. She was beyond his reach—exactly as she had been in that final glimpse aboard the Kallisto, through a barrier of fire. He could not know where she was, nor what was being done to her, nor even if she were still alive. And in this dark void of unknowing, nightmares were endlessly spawned and all his parental fears unleashed. He replayed her voice, torturing himself with it, while trying vainly to ward off the hideous visions that swarmed in his mind.

  Finally, he got off the bed and knelt beside it. Then, after a desolate moment on the emotional brink, he began to weep bitter tears. He found himself repeating prayers he had learned forty years before as a six-year-old orphan in a Methodist Missionary School in Pusan. He petitioned as well Confucius and Lord Buddha, two adopted spiritual fathers of the Korean people. He received only the most fleeting comfort. But at some point, he did sleep.

  *

  Owen Meade was shaking him gently.

  “What is it?” D.W. mumbled. Then, as memory flooded back, he sprang up, seizing Owen’s shoulder. “What’s happened?”

  “They didn’t find her yet, D.W. Sorry. But they think they’ve found the truck she was kidnapped in.”

  D.W. hurried down the hall to the living room, barefoot and buttoning his shirt. Siso was waiting there to brief him, with an interpreter at his side.

  They had located a Venezuelan telephone truck, one reported missing early the day before south of Cerro Bolívar—and slightly north of Cerro Calvario. In fact, Siso recalled having spotted a CANTV truck parked alongside Route 16 when he and his partner left the cattle ranch with Dr. Laya. The phone company driver had not yet been located and was feared—

  “The hell with him!” D.W. cut in on the laborious translator. “Where did they find this truck?”

  “Ah, yes. That would be near Espinero. Which is on the margin of Guri Lake, the western side, about a hundred kilometers south of Ciudad Guayana.”

  “And there was no sign of Jacqueline?”

  “Alas, no.”

  Captain Siso continued in quick bursts, but D.W. had to force himself to await the translator’s long, convoluted renderings. The truck had been run off the road into the forest, he was finally told, perhaps a half kilometer back from the lake—

  D.W. momentarily abandoned his struggle for patience: “I don’t understand! Why do you think my daughter was in this truck?”

  “Señor Lee, I am apologize,” Siso said in his own Spanish-inflected English. “But you only must to listen and I think will be soon clear.”

  And it was. The truck roof was scorched and pockmarked, D.W. learned next, presumably from blast debris. The rear doors were gone, and the windshield had been blown out—or rather inward, for the interior was strewn with glass fragments. The obvious conclusion was that the panel truck had been parked in the blast vicinity, then driven south—before roadblocks had been thrown up—and abandoned. While DISIP investigators searched the nearby lakeside, lab techs were combing the truck interior, gathering and bagging trace evidence for later analysis. For comparison purposes—since the Kallisto had burned to the waterline—Siso had sent a technician to the La Promesa ranch to try to obtain samples of Jacqueline’s hair.

  “Okay,” D.W. said, “this narrows the search, right? I want to tell you, Captain, if you see the slightest problem in financing a massive search, I will pay whatever is necessary.”

  D.W. was surprised by the slowly translated response. It seemed he had not properly understood the implications. Oscar Azarias might simply have had one of his Indians drive the truck south and abandon it. If so, Jacqueline and the kidnappers might still be holed up somewhere in San Félix or Puerto Ordaz. The search radius, in other words, was now vastly widened, not narrowed. In addition to the metropolitan area of Ciudad Guayana, with its airport, roads and great river, their investigatory net must now spread to include all the five thousand square kilometers of the Guri Lake basin, along with its two great tributary rivers—the Paragua and the Caroní—as well as lesser feeder streams.

  To illustrate, Siso unfolded a large map of Bolívar State on the black marble coffee table. From geological survey maps and a recent flyover with Venezuelan mining officials, D.W. was fairly familiar with the local topography. But he watched closely as the federal cop traced the ragged lakeshore with a hovering finger. On the map Guri Lake looked like it had been outlined by a badly palsied hand. Those tortuously indented banks would provide almost unlimited hiding places, D.W. realized.

  Not exactly the optimum terrain for Colonel Higueras and his boys, with their body armor and stun grenades, Browning Hi-Powers and Heckler & Koch submachine guns. Their specialty was storming airliners or urban strongholds, not tracking Indian guides through rivers and jungles. As if in confirmation of this, when D.W. glanced across the room, he saw the Special Intervention Brigade’s bearded commander talking to someone on the phone and shaking his head emphatically.

  Blindsided again by despair, D.W. stumbled away from the table. He managed several steps toward the hall before his face crumpled. Siso and the other security men looked respectfully elsewhere. But Ray Arrillaga sprang up from the sofa, waving off Owen Meade, who was vectoring in from the bar. A moment later the mining executive had steered his boss back to the master bedroom and onto a leather settee. Then, as D.W. fought and shuddered helplessly against his grief, Ray held him in his arms.

  “They’re doing everything they can,” he said. “We’ll get her back, goddammit, I swear we will.”

  D.W. turned a ruined face to his friend, his tears streaming, wanting to believe, trying to nod, but looking utterly without hope.

  Chapter Forty

  Sam was out after breakfast, behind the wheel, bouncing over the stubbled range, checking the herd and stopping periodically to fork bal
es of winter hay out of the back of his Dakota pickup. He was heading in for a second load when the cellular phone chirped, and he found himself talking to Ray Arrillaga in Puerto Ordaz.

  “What’s going on, Ray?”

  There was the usual overseas delay, as digitized signals caromed off a satellite and pulsed through land links. Then:

  “A terrible thing has happened down here, Sam.”

  In a dry voice, Ray began relaying the stark facts of the terrorist attack on the waterfront and Jacqueline’s kidnapping. After the first indelible sentence, Sam reached out and killed the dash radio, silencing a rabid sportscaster in mid-hyperbole. Like D.W., Sam was already cursing himself for negligence. The prairie morning, sullen for starters, had turned exceedingly grim. Sam’s chest felt hollow.

  “Ray, what’s being done? Who’s in charge?”

  Arrillaga filled in the names and agencies, then capsulized recent developments. “I don’t know, Sam. They all seem to feel fairly optimistic about finding this guy and rescuing Jacqueline. But I’m afraid neither D.W. nor I share their confidence.”

  “I don’t blame you. Have they given you their no-negotiating-with-terrorists line?”

  “Yeah, you got that right. The word just came down—apparently from the presidential palace.”

  “And how’s D.W. reacting to it?”

  “Jesus, what do you think, Sam? He’s been screaming at a whole roomful of suits here, and not making a fucking dent. Actually, that’s one of the reasons we called. If you don’t mind, I’m going to put him on. He’s kind of shaky, okay?”

  “I understand. Put him on, Ray.”

  D.W.’s voice came through a moment later, without its usual command authority:

  “Sam, Ray told you?”

  “I’m still in shock. Duke, if there’s anything I can do, you name it.”

  “That’s just it, Sam. I don’t know what to do. And I don’t think the police know what the hell they’re doing. I’ve never been so scared in my life, Sam.”

  “I understand that.”

  “There’s this anti-terrorist colonel here, he wears a red beret. Sam, I can tell this asshole wants to charge in with his commandos firing Uzis at the first opportunity. And he looks crazy enough to do it, even if it was his own daughter at risk.”

  “You gotta understand, D.W., these hostage-rescue guys, they all act like that. If you need ’em, and they do it right, they’re goddamn heroes. But from what Ray told me, except for finding this bombed-out truck by Lake Guri, nobody’s heard from the kidnapper, whom we assume is this Oscar character—Dr. Laya’s crazy uncle, right?”

  “Right. Nothing.”

  “So I’d say it’s a tad early to be talking about commando raids.”

  “That’s what I told them, Sam. I pointed to this colonel and I said, ‘This is the last thing we’re going to do here. We try everything else first.’“

  “Exactly. The thing is, D.W., even if these guys are final-option, they’ve got to be on stand-by and ready to move fast, starting now.”

  “Dammit, Sam, it doesn’t ever have to come to that. They say this Oscar Azarias guy—”

  “Wait a minute, Duke. Who exactly is ‘they’?”

  “A captain from the security police, Señor Siso, and also his boss, who just showed up, another colonel. They’re all in the next room.”

  “Got the picture. So what are they saying about Oscar?”

  “That all this anti-Proteus bullshit is just a smoke screen. That whatever he used to be in the Sixties or Seventies, he’s nothing now but a low-life criminal—dope dealer, thief, and now, apparently, a kidnapper. But strictly for money.”

  “Okay, I buy that.”

  “Me, too. So I say, fine. Whatever this bastard wants, absolutely I will pay it. Not Proteus. I will pay. No questions asked. And absolutely no police, no red berets. Put me on television now—today, tonight. Let’s not wait around here for him to contact us. I’m dying here every second, and God only knows what it’s like for Jacqueline! I’ll put out the word, offer the old bastard whatever he wants—money, or even money plus a straight hostage trade, me for Jacqueline.”

  “I bet that went over well.”

  “You know, Sam, they looked at me like I was the criminal! Then somebody calls Caracas. Then they tell me the president of Venezuela says no. No TV, no negotiation. He’s a tough guy, they tell me. I say, call him back, let me talk to him. He knows me. Absolutely not. El Jefe guy can’t talk to me now. The son of a bitch! Tough guy my ass. It’s not his daughter out there!”

  “D.W., hold on now. What you’ve got to do here—”

  “Sam, don’t you see? I’m going crazy. First they tell me this old bastard is not a terrorist, just out for ransom. Okay, so it’s not a political issue, let’s pay the fucking ransom and get Jacqueline out of there. Then go in after the bastard. But they say no. If he’s pretending to be a political terrorist, and acting like a political terrorist, he must be treated like a terrorist! And Caracas doesn’t negotiate with terrorists or give in to their demands! Goddammit, Sam! Those goddamn high-and-mighty sons of bitches!”

  It sounded like a distant bomb had gone off in Sam’s earpiece. Then Ray Arrillaga’s calmer voice came on:

  “Sam, D.W. stepped away from the phone a second. He’s, uh, he’s had a pretty rough night of it, as you can imagine. Just give him a minute.”

  “Of course. Jesus, Ray, it’s got to be the worst thing in the world. I mean, hell, we’ve both got daughters. I’d be a basket case. I may be already.”

  “That pretty much describes me, Sam. We’re both looking for some kind of guidance here, I guess you can tell. And I figure you’ve dealt with about as much of this kind of South American craziness as anybody, starting back in the Fifties, right?”

  “I’m afraid so, Ray. In Colombia there for a while, it got to be kind of a cottage industry, kidnapping multinational executives for ransom. But Jacqueline—Christ Almighty! We should never have let her go down there.”

  “Obviously, in hindsight, I agree. D.W. blames himself, of course, but we were all negligent to some extent. Still, the way it went down, Sam, on the ship with bodyguards around her, even the Guardia Nacional staked out on the dock, how can you figure that? The way I look at it—hold on, Sam. Here’s D.W. again.”

  “Sam, are you still there?”

  “I sure am.”

  “Sam, I need help.” The guttural voice thickened with raw emotion. “Not that I have any right to ask—”

  “Oh, for chrissake, D.W.! That’s pretty damn irrelevant.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I appreciate your saying so.”

  “Look, I don’t know how much help I can be over the phone, three thousand miles away. You want me to come down there?”

  There was a pause, then: “Would you, Sam?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  “Okay. I’d appreciate it, Sam.”

  “I’m on my way. I’ll call you back when I’m in the air.”

  “Sam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not going to fly that little Cessna down?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s still parked at La Promesa. I’ll hitch a ride on the first and fastest damn thing out of here—private, military, commercial.” Sam debated, then added: “You hang in there, Dukie, you hear? We’re going to get your little girl back.”

  When D.W. choked on his answer, Sam said good-bye fast and hung up. The ranch house was coming into view ahead, and he had a lot to do.

  *

  The fastest nearby transport turned out to be a Cessna Citation V business jet belonging to a Fort Worth law firm that handled a lot of Proteus litigation. Sam arranged to be picked up in Amarillo that afternoon and was in the air by four with the plush cabin all to himself. Given the CV’s long-range cruising speed of 350 knots, Sam figured to be on the ground in Puerto Ordaz in seven and a half hours, or about one-thirty in the morning local time.

  The Citation allowed Sam to stretch out and attempt sleep, which he
did immediately after telephoning Ray Arrillaga at the Inter-Continental Guayana and arranging for Bernardo to meet him at the airport in Puerto Ordaz. But before sleep could come, Sam had finally to deal with the turbulent emotions he’d kept bottled up ever since that morning phone call.

  Here, with the day’s hectic logistics behind him, and the westering sun burnishing the bizjet’s starboard wing and cloud canyons below, there was no more escaping Jacqueline Lee. A terrible, paralyzing dread had fastened itself upon him, shadowing every heartbeat. His anguish for her safety could scarce be mentioned in the same breath as her father’s, Sam knew, but he felt it all the same. And he thought: I would have come down here whether D.W. had asked me or not. I couldn’t have stayed away.

  And then he thought, Because I love her.

  That was a lightning strike to the heart. How many days and nights had he tiptoed around that little revelation, only to have it seared into his mind, three miles in the sky, with the force of holy writ?

  When it was too late.

  No, not too late, pray God! This time Sam was flying south with a mission he wouldn’t fuck up, like he had Cerro Calvario. And that was only because he’d changed his mind on the ground. But this he could pull off, if anyone could.

  Let the DISIP hew to its official intransigence as regards hostage-takers. Sam understood and accepted all the political and PR justifications for that hard-line policy. But what he intended to get—either at the ministerial level or even from the resident of the Miraflores Palace if he had to—was permission to pretend to play the kidnapper’s game. Crazy old Oscar had to be contacted or lured out of his hidey-hole, had to be convinced there really was big money there for him—but there only if Jacqueline’s safety was absolutely assured. And that Sam could, and would, accomplish.

  And in one moment of pure cinematic fantasy, he went considerably farther. He saw himself participating in the actual rescue, charging into some jungle clearing alongside that red-bereted colonel and his men, and being the one to pick the palm-thatched hut containing the raven-haired princess, and of course the one to scoop her into his arms and deliver her from her living nightmare.