River of Ruin

by Jack Du Brul

  “I do not use Viagra!” Harry roared. “Very often.” He turned to Lauren with a wink. “Actually it’s Mercer who pops those pecker pills like candy. It’s made his blood so thin it takes an hour for a shaving nick to stop bleeding. Quite tragic really, young man like him.”

  Mercer could see that it hadn’t taken Harry long to charm Lauren. He had that way about him, part stray dog and part Fred Astaire. Before Harry could go any further, Mercer got them back on track. “What do we know about Hatcherly?”

  “Quite a bit.” Lauren pulled a notebook from the knapsack she used as a purse. She opened up to the first page. “Once we knew it was their chopper, Roddy and I hit on our sources.”

  “I have a cousin who works at their container facility,” Rodrigo offered. “He’s a forklift driver. One of their token Panamanians who’ll probably lose his job soon.”

  Lauren checked her notes. “Their facility is fifty-seven acres, with seven thousand feet of berthing space for ships. They plan to add perpendicular slips to triple the frontage but for now they just have a long seawall. While they can handle about two hundred thousand containers a year, they’ve done very little business since opening. According to Roddy their fees are almost double their competition’s.”

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Mercer said.

  “It gets weirder. Hatcherly just spent a fortune to buy the trans-isthmus railroad from an American company and installed a spur into their port. It’s coupled to an automated unloading and stacking system that can off-load a freight train and move the containers to designated spots until they’re ready to be transferred onto a ship. It’s done with an overhead cableway crane that only requires a few computer operators. They’re currently moving a little cargo by rail but nothing near their reported capacity.”

  “That is why my cousin will lose his job. The whole thing is automated.”

  “If Hatcherly’s up to something big, they’ll need to do it under cover,” Mercer said. “Do they have warehouses?”

  “Several. And they’re huge.”

  Mercer turned to Roddy. “Can your cousin get us in?”

  “No. They have heavy security, many are former members of Noriega’s brutal Dignity Brigades, the troops responsible for the worst of the Pineapple’s atrocities.” Roddy used the contemptuous nickname of the Panamanian dictator the U.S. military ousted in 1989. The name Pineapple referred to the horrible skin on Manuel Noriega’s face. “The ex-Dingbats”—that name for the Dignity Brigades came from the American soldiers involved in Operation Just Cause—“patrol the perimeter fences, which are electrified and have motion sensors. There are also Chinese guards who regularly sweep the container yard. Somehow Hatcherly got permission to have them all armed with automatic weapons.”

  “Bit heavy-handed to protect shipping containers that you can’t steal without a crane and an eighteen-wheeler,” Harry said. “We’ve got to see what they’re up to.”

  “My thought exactly,” Mercer agreed. “What about coming in from the water?”

  “There are powerful lights on the gantry cranes,” Lauren answered. “When you were in the hospital, Roddy and I went out on his boat. We didn’t get fifty yards from the place before they sent a patrol boat to escort us away.”

  “Could we swim in somehow?”

  “Maybe, but it would be risky. And we don’t know what kind of security they have on the quay. The whole place really is protected like a fortress.”

  “So there’s no easy way in?” The extra security gave Mercer the impression that they were already on the right track.

  “There is,” Roddy answered. “Well, not easy. But easier. We can come in the back door, so to speak.”

  Mercer raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “The railroad. Lauren and I talked about it. We can stow away in a container on a night my cousin is working. They unload the trains with forklifts until their cable crane is fully operational. My cousin Victor can move our container to a secluded spot and let us out. Once we finish looking around, he loads the container back on the train for the return trip to the Atlantic port of Cristobal.”

  “How can we get into a container at Cristobal?” Mercer asked, noticing another quirk about Lauren’s eyes for the first time.

  When just chatting about nothing of consequence, she turned her head so her warmer blue eye kept her expression candid and laughing. It was as the discussion became substantial that her face shifted so her more intense gray iris dictated her bearing. Her mismatched eyes were the only outward sign of this mental rebalancing. In their own ways, Mercer found both sides of her personality alluring. One was the epitome of Southern grace and deportment, the other a detached coolness that radiated competence. She was like two distinct people somehow reconciled within one.

  “I’ve already worked it out.” Lauren leaned forward. “Three months ago an import-exporter I know over in the Colon Free Trade Zone had a son who was getting involved in the drug trade as a courier. He asked me to help set the boy straight. Pretending to be members of the National Police, Ruben and his men broke into his apartment one night. They roughed him up a little, took his passport and said if he tried to get it renewed they’d be back. Needless to say, the kid gave up his dreams of becoming the next Pablo Escobar.” She smiled at the memory. “The old man owes me.”

  “And the Chinese guards?”

  “Roddy said easier, not easy.”

  “We need guns.” Mercer felt his guts slide even as he said it. Once again, he was putting himself in danger for a cause he didn’t yet fully understand. Ever since he’d accompanied a commando team into Iraq to determine Saddam Hussein’s uranium mining capabilities, the threat of violence had dogged him. He never sought it out. It was just there, a circumstance he seemed unable to avoid. But like the other times—Hawaii, Alaska, Eritrea and most recently Greenland—he felt an unnamable obligation to face it.

  Lauren thought she recognized the tired look in Mercer’s eyes. Harry had told her some of his past and she knew he did not relish what they may be forced to do. She nodded slowly. “I’ve got that covered too. Roddy, if we’re lucky no one’s going to see us, but if we’re not. . . . Are you sure you want in on this?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “I’m fighting for my family, perhaps a better reason than either of you.”

  “No,” Mercer snapped. “You’re not coming. You might have a good reason, but you don’t have any combat experience.” He wouldn’t let Roddy orphan his children and widow his wife for this. “Lauren and I know what we’re doing. We’ve been there before.”

  Roddy’s face went red with unsuppressed anger. He looked to Lauren for support.

  “We can handle this ourselves.” She understood what Mercer was doing. “Your job’s going to be to learn as much as you can about Liu Yousheng. If we don’t find anything at the container terminal, going after him directly might be our only other option.”

  Carmen Herrara and the children returned before he could reply. His three kids crowded around him, vying for his attention as they gushed about their day swimming. Miguel went straight to Mercer to show him the money an English tourist had given him for retrieving her sunglasses after they had fallen in the pool.

  Reminded of what he was risking, Roddy caught Mercer’s eye. “I’ll do whatever you say.”

  Cristobal, Panama

  It wasn’t claustrophobia that bothered Mercer as the large shipping container was shunted around the cargo terminal on Panama’s Atlantic coast and loaded onto the flatbed rail-car. The enclosed blackness didn’t affect him at all. If it did he never would have become a miner. What he hated was the disorientation of not knowing what was coming next. A sudden turn by the heavy-duty forklift slapped him and Lauren against the container’s wall and the slam of the box dropping onto the train came with spine-jarring abruptness that left the steel confines echoing.

  “What next?” Lauren complained from across the darkness where she’d tumbled.

  The diesel locomotive two dozen cars a
head lurched forward to test the couplings. Mercer had just gotten to his feet and had the floor pulled out from under him. He landed on his backside, cursing.

  “I should have known.” She turned on a flashlight with a red filter lens. In its glow, her dark hair looked like ink.

  “Didn’t Roddy tell the forklift driver to take it easy?”

  “I think he was.” Lauren crabbed across the floor to sit next to Mercer as the train jerked again. “I feel like we’ve been stuffed inside an industrial clothes dryer.”

  The train’s motion settled to the metronomic clacking of wheels over rails. It was a rhythm Mercer had always enjoyed. For a moment he could forget where he was, what he was about to do, and the Beretta 92 hanging in a nylon shoulder holster.

  He and Lauren had ninety minutes before the freight train reached the Hatcherly terminal at Balboa. There, the last three cars would be decoupled while the remainder of the train continued to the larger container terminal farther along the canal. They had gone over their plan for two days straight, knew the layout of Hatcherly’s facility from diagrams drawn by Roddy’s cousin, Victor. Lauren had even taken Mercer to a pistol range to test his assertion that he knew how to handle a weapon. Though she’d beaten him at distance shooting, he had an intuitive aim for pop-up targets that she couldn’t match.

  They had nothing to do for the next hour and a half and neither seemed willing, or able, to make idle conversation as the miles stretched out behind them. Mercer’s mind drifted back twenty hours, when he’d been eating off a teppanyaki grill at a Japanese restaurant with Maria Barber.

  The meal had been delicious. The company remained as a bad taste in his mouth.

  By the time Mercer had felt strong enough to attempt the infiltration, Victor Herrara wasn’t scheduled to work until the next night, leaving Mercer with a free evening. He’d hoped to spend it with Lauren but obligation had forced him to call Maria. A week had passed since she’d learned of her husband’s death, and while he got the impression that the loss wouldn’t cast her adrift, he felt he owed her a call. He didn’t like Maria, didn’t trust her and wouldn’t have called if she hadn’t been the wife of a friend.

  She’d answered her phone so cheerily that he’d almost cut the connection. “Hello, Maria. It’s Philip Mercer.”

  “Who? Oh, Mercer. Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for your call for ages.” The exaggeration in her voice made him think she’d been drinking.

  “I had a little stomach trouble,” he answered warily.

  “You’re feeling better now, yes? You promised me we’d go out when you got back.” Mercer recalled they were supposed to meet for a church service for her husband but that wasn’t what she was talking about now. “Are you free tonight?” she asked.

  Why he’d said yes would remain a mystery, but he did.

  “Wonderful. Where are you staying? I’ll pick you up.”

  Mercer knew exactly why he didn’t answer that question. Their earlier conversations had pegged her as a gold digger, and if she learned he was staying at the Caesar Park he’d never get rid of her. “I’m at a hostel loaded with peace corps volunteers near some bus stop. Pretty nasty place, I might add.”

  “Oh. Well, do you like Japanese food? I just love how they cook in front of you and do all those tricks with the knives.”

  “Sure, that’d be fine.”

  She gave him the address of Ginza Teppanyaki on Calle D and said she’d be there at eight.

  Maria was sitting at the bar when he arrived and she leapt to her feet when she saw him, squealing like a long-separated lover. Her blouse was open low enough to allow her lace bra to peek out as her breasts slid against each other. Her jeans were so tight that the deep valley where they rucked between her buttocks carried around to the front in an obvious display of her sex. Mercer felt a flash of animal arousal, then annoyance at himself. Not only was she Gary’s widow, but such overstatement was truly vulgar. He had to wipe a smear of lipstick and saliva from his cheek and mentally brush aside her look of annoyance that he’d turned his face at the last instant.

  In minutes, they were seated at a large grill table with some German businessmen who swilled thimble-sized sakes. At first Maria delighted at the chef’s skill with a knife and spatula, but when the young Asian missed flipping a shrimp tail into his hat she berated him in angry Spanish.

  She would have caused a scene had a waitress not arrived with her third Mai Tai. Mercer had barely touched his beer.

  “Do you want to know about Gary’s funeral?” Mercer asked, because she hadn’t.

  “I suppose.”

  He’d already decided not to tell her the truth, knowing that she wouldn’t care. Also he didn’t want her to have any excuse to see him again. “It went fine. The police arrived a few hours after you left and determined it was a guerrilla attack. My mugging in Paris and Gary’s murder really was just a coincidence. When I escorted Gary to El Real, those three guards I hired stayed behind. I’m not sure why. No one told me.”

  “And no sign of Gary’s treasure?” She failed at hiding her avarice behind a neutral tone.

  Mercer shook his head. “Listen, I always liked Gary. He was a good man. But I never believed there was a treasure. I’d told him that when he sold his gold mine in Alaska and started looking for lost cities and quick wealth. I think deep down he knew it too, and just kept looking for the fun of it. It was the kind of thing he’d do.”

  “Yes, it was,” she agreed with a trace of regret. For herself, Mercer thought, not her quixotic husband. “What about the book Gary wanted?”

  “Oh, that,” Mercer said indifferently. “It’s in Washington. I got kind of paranoid and didn’t want to bring it to Panama until I knew what had happened to Gary so I mailed it home from Paris. It seems ridiculous now. If you want it, I can send it to you when I get back.”

  Maria’s eyes drifted around the room as she considered her answer. “It meant something to Gary. Not me.”

  “I understand.”

  “It was in El Real you got sick?” she asked to change the subject.

  “On the flight back to Panama City. I went straight from the airport to a hospital. I only got out two days ago.”

  “Poor baby.” She placed a hand on his leg. “Are you going to stay in Panama?”

  Mercer shifted away as much as the cramped seating would allow. “No reason to. I’ve got a flight tomorrow morning.”

  “That leaves us tonight.” The implied invitation made Mercer more than uncomfortable. It made him ill.

  Struggling to keep revulsion out of his voice, he replied, “I don’t think so. My flight’s early and well . . .” He trailed off, hoping she’d get the hint.

  “Because I was Gary’s wife?”

  “Well, yes.”

  She lit a cigarette. “Did he think of me when he was out in the jungle wasting money that should have been mine?”

  “Maria, I don’t know what happened between you and Gary, but I just want to go home and remember him the way I knew him.”

  “And what about me?” The alcohol glint in her eyes turned feral. “How will you remember me? Or will you even think about how he left me nearly penniless? A widow with no future?”

  Mercer had had enough of her petulance. Recalling her tears when they reached Gary’s camp, he knew this spoiled image of her was the correct one. Typical Gary. He’d wanted to save a barrio kid and got himself a grade-A bitch. Mercer slapped money on the table edge and stood. “Something tells me you’ll be okay.”

  He left the restaurant followed by her shrill curses.

  The train’s distant whistle snapped Mercer back to the present. He rubbed his cheek where she’d kissed him as if he could still feel her lips and the tip of her tongue. He shuddered.

  “You okay?” Lauren Vanik asked. “Even in here I can tell something’s bothering you.”

  He looked to her. How different the two women were.

  Thank God. The crimson light distilled her face to ruddy highligh
ts and impenetrable shadow. Her hair was now tucked under a watch cap that matched her black BDUs. She had a mirror poised to begin applying greasepaint.

  “Just thinking about my friend Gary and his wife.” He readjusted the fifty-foot coil of climbing rope secured to the back of his web belt.

  “I take it your date didn’t go well.”

  Mercer hadn’t told her many details. “Not a date. Just a very sad get-together. I wonder if Gary knew what kind of person she was or if she hid it from him on those days he was back home.”

  Lauren handed him the wax stick so he could dull any shine from his face and hands. “A woman that manipulative can hide her true self so easily it becomes second nature. And I hate to say that most men wouldn’t pick up on the subtle signs. Another woman can spot a phony in a second, but it’s not in a guy’s nature to look for the small clues. Believe me, your buddy died thinking he had the perfect wife.”

  The conversation ended when they felt the train decelerate, the play in the couplings snapping closed like a string of firecrackers. “We’re close,” Mercer whispered, even though a shout would barely penetrate the container’s walls.

  Another ten minutes trickled by as the last three railcars were detached from the train and shuttled into Hatcherly Consolidated’s main yard. They heard an occasional muffled yell from outside and the blast from a signalman’s whistle as the train was positioned for the forklifts to unload the two containers placed on each of the cars. Then came a metallic crash and suddenly they were in motion again as the crate was lifted from the train. Hopefully by Victor Herrara. If something went wrong, and he wasn’t the one driving them through the terminal, Mercer and Lauren could easily find themselves trapped in one of a hundred containers lashed to the deck of a ship on its way to the West Coast or Asia.

  After bouncing over numerous sets of tracks and kidney-punishing rents in the pavement, the forklift eventually reached its destination and the container was lowered to the asphalt with a hydraulic sigh. Lauren extinguished her light. They waited for what seemed like an eternity until Victor rapped on the container with a hammer—his signal that it was clear.