The gin was so cold it stung her lips. She had never drunk a martini before, and couldn’t make up her mind whether she liked this one or not. The juniper’s perfume scent appealed, and she felt warm through and through after the first few sips. But the liquor did something strange in her throat, making it feel taut and a little numb. The suffusing warmth soon overwhelmed that, however, and before she knew it, she had finished the martini and ordered another.
The nausea began when she was halfway through the second cocktail. Right after came a headache, swift, sharp pain like a blow to the front of her skull. Her stomach moved.
I need to go to the bathroom, she thought, and tried to stand, and found that she could not. For just an instant she thought that she had imagined it, but then she tried to stand again and nothing happened. She opened her mouth to call the steward, tried to raise her hand to signal for help, tried to scream. Nothing happened. She was conscious, breathing, could feel the chair pressing against her buttocks and clothing touching her skin, but that was all. Panic flared. It felt as though she had been buried alive.
Where was the steward? What was happening to her? Then she heard movement from behind and four of them appeared, two on each side of her chair. She recognized the Algerian and one other. Two more she had not encountered.
Thank God. They must have seen I was having trouble.
They lifted her out of the chair, their hands careless and rough. She could still feel pain where they squeezed her flesh. They supported her under both shoulders because she would have crashed to the floor without them.
They tilted her backward, as though her heels were affixed to a hinge on the floor. Two of them held her under the arms and the others lifted her legs, gripping them at the ankles and knees. She could feel their hands tightening like manacles. None tried to touch her improperly, and she thought that they might be carrying her to a clinic or infirmary. But the stewards who had bowed and called her mademoiselle now bore her through those locked doors and along shadowed, diesel-smelling passageways as though she were a side of beef. They neither rushed nor lagged but moved purposefully and without speaking. At one corner, her head swung on its limp neck and smacked into the steel bulkhead. For a time she saw nothing but red, and when she came back, she knew they were not taking her to a clinic. She tried again and again to scream at them but managed not even a squeak.
They carried her to the ultimate end of the ship’s pointed bow. Working smoothly in unison, they lifted her over the chrome rail and dropped her into the ocean. She disappeared beneath the centerline of the onrushing prow. The yacht was making sixteen knots and she did not have time to drown before her body met the hacking screws.
SHE BROKE THE SURFACE GASPING AND FOR A SECOND thought she was hallucinating. The last time she had come up there were two men. Now there were more.
“Buenos días, señorita.”
The speaker was ragged-toothed, leering. They wore patched jeans and odds and ends of scavenged military garments, sleeveless camo shirts, ragged straw hats, cowboy boots. Each one held an AK-47 and they all had pistols holstered on web belts. One, the biggest, carried crossed bandoliers of ammunition that gleamed like a golden X on his chest. He wore an oversized red ball cap with a huge bill cocked at an angle.
Narcotraficantes.
Holding his rifle in his left hand, the man who had spoken reached down with his right.
“Ven!”
No options to analyze this time. She reached up, took his hand, and he pulled her out. Once again she stood barefoot, dripping—now with four men leering at her. Two were obviously drunk, weaving on their feet, mouths slack, half-mast eyes. The big man with the bandoliers of ammunition appeared sober. He had a hard slab of a face, a beard like steel wool. A hand-rolled cigarette, or maybe a joint, dangled from his lips. He had huge feet and his shoes were black sneakers with the toes cut out.
The two drunk men, saying something in rapid-fire Spanish to the one who had pulled her out, started toward her. The big man remained where he was, watching the leader, who barked at the drunks. They scowled, mumbled slurred curses, but stepped back.
“Hablas español?” The leader was talking to her.
“Sí, un poco. Inglés, por favor.”
“Ah. Norteamericano. Me llamo Carlos. Been Laredo, Houston, big cities. Some English, me. Them … no English. Brains here.” He grasped his crotch, shook his head. “Want you for bad things. But no. You I take to Comandante. A gift. From me to him.” He smacked his chest, grinned.
The two drunks were passing a clear bottle back and forth, swigging yellowish liquor that, even from where she was, smelled like kerosene and formaldehyde. Aguardiente, the local sugarcane moonshine. As they drank and passed the bottle, their eyes, red as crushed strawberries, never strayed from her breasts.
Negotiate. “If you let me go, I can get you money. Millions.”
He shook his head, looked genuinely regretful. “No good. No use to man with no hands. Feet. Head. Dick.”
Each time he named a body part, he made a chopping motion with the edge of his hand as though hacking with a machete, and she understood: Jungle justice.
He gave the big man orders, and Hallie caught enough of it to understand that he was to search the dead body, take anything of value from the camp, throw everything else, including the corpse, into the cenote, and then catch up with them.
“So. We go get your pack.”
He snapped at the other two, and they all walked around the cenote. She picked up her long underwear, not even bothering to glance at Carlos.
“Stop.”
His snapped command did stop her, and she stood, glaring. He looked back, expression neutral, considering. Pursed his lips, shook his head. One of the drunks muttered something guttural and obscene, and Carlos laughed so hard spit flew from his lips. But then he waved at her. “Okay. Put on. Is better for Comandante to undress you.”
Carlos said something to the men and one of the drunks led off. The other shouldered her pack and stood next to her.
“You now.” Carlos poked her in the side with the muzzle of his rifle and she started walking. The heels of the leading narco’s cowboy boots, she saw, were worn almost flat. She remembered her own bare feet.
“My boots.” She pointed at her feet. “Botas.”
Carlos smiled. “I think no. Is better to run. I go behind, protect you.” He pointed. They marched across the meadow and into the forest. They used no maps or compasses but clearly knew exactly where they were going. She tried to focus, to plan an escape. They had not bound her hands, either because they had nothing to tie her with or, more likely, because they could not imagine how she could be a threat. Once they got to the narcos’ camp, wherever that might be, she knew she’d be lost. The head man would rape her and then let his lieutenants like Carlos rape her. They might keep her for days and days, making her do whatever they wanted, handing her down to the lower ranks, torturing her if she balked. Eventually she would weaken, get sick, and die. Raped to death. That might take a long time, though.
“Carlos.” She looked back, spoke over her shoulder.
“Eh?”
“When we get to the camp, your comandante will take me. We could do something first. You and me. Here.”
“Cómo?”
“Send these others on ahead. Then we can …” What was the word? “Relaciones sexuales.” His face lit up. That he recognized. “Yo soy muy buena,” she said, thinking, If I can separate them, I have more of a chance. Not much, but better than three against one.
“Sí?” Carlos grinned, tongue slipping over cracked lips and yellow teeth. “But Comandante no like used. Fresh, he like. You see?”
She didn’t bother to answer, and they walked on. The forest floor, littered with pinecones and fallen mala mujer leaves, cut her feet, which left spots of blood where she stepped.
“Carlos!”
“Eh?”
“I need to go … to piss. Right now.”
He laughed, but there
was no humor in his eyes. “My English bad. But I am no stupid. Go on, puta.”
She marched, dazed and despairing. Even with all the risky things she had done, not once in her life had Hallie known, beyond doubt, that she was going to die. She did, now. Part of her looked forward to it. She was so exhausted, and hurt so much in so many places, that relief would be welcome, even if it was permanent. She began to think of all the things she would miss: her brothers, her mother, the horses, the water in Ginnie Springs, the ocean … The list went on and on and she just let it keep playing, and tears began to run down her cheeks at last.
“Eh!” Carlos grunted and threw a quick glance over his shoulder, but did not stop.
She turned to look. The big narco was a hundred feet behind them, lumbering head-down through the deep forest gloom to catch up, bandoliers like a cross of gold on his chest, the AK-47 a toy in his huge hand. The drunk narco in front and the one beside her didn’t even turn around. “Keep moving,” Carlos said. “He catch us.”
She walked again, uncaring. Something would happen, some opening, and she would seize it. Or not. Maybe she would just have to run. They would shoot and she would die, but she was going to die anyway, so she might as well do something, anything, that would give her even one-half of one percent of a chance. Better quick and painful than slow and painful. But not now, not just yet.
She plodded on. The thud of the big narco’s feet grew closer, his jingling bandoliers reminding her of the bells on the sleighs when they hitched the Morgans up in one of Virginia’s rare snowfalls. She heard an odd, soft, high sound, a yelp like a small dog might make when kicked, and turned in time to see Carlos fall on his face, the handle of a knife sticking from the soft place where skull and spine met at the back of his head. The narco carrying her pack was also facedown on the ground, a knife handle sticking out of the side of his skull.
In his left hand, the big narco held a third knife, one with a stainless steel hilt and a vicious serrated blade, the kind divers used. She had seen that knife before, strapped to Bowman’s lower left leg in the black plastic scabbard.
They killed him, she thought, or found him dead and took his knife. But why …
The other drunk narco, the one in front of her, was spinning around, the muzzle of his AK-47 coming up. Small details began to take on immense significance and clarity for Hallie. She could see his finger, like a fat white worm, searching for the trigger.
She did not understand what was happening here, but she knew that dealing with one of these men would be easier than fighting two. So just as the narco’s finger found the trigger, her hands found his eyes. She dug, felt her thumbs go in, heard him scream. She smashed her body against his, driving one knee into his groin, trying to wrench the rifle away. He pulled the trigger and the AK-47 fired on full auto, the recoil making the barrel writhe and jump like a crazed snake. Reports from the big 7.62-millimeter rounds sounded like dynamite blasts so close to her ears. Muzzle flashes burned her side, but she was not hit. The narco stumbled backward under the impact of her rush, blinded, doubled over by the pain in his groin. He dropped the rifle and clawed at his eyes. She scrabbled for the gun, found its forestock with one hand, its pistol grip with the other, and spun to shoot the big one. The wound on her palm had opened and was bleeding, but she ignored it.
He wasn’t there. A forearm that felt like a steel bar closed over her throat. Somehow the huge man had moved quickly enough to get behind her. She threw her head back, hoping to butt him, but hit only air. She tried to swing the gun around to fire back at him over her shoulder. He grabbed it just above the magazine and ripped it out of her grasp as though taking a rattle away from a baby. But that freed her hands and she clawed at the forearm, scratching it, drawing blood, snarling and biting, fighting now with the last of her strength for the last of her life.
“Hallie.”
It took several moments for the word to punch through her rage and terror. But then she came back to herself.
“Bowman?”
The forearm loosened, fell away. She sucked in cool air, turned.
“I really thought you were going to shoot me.” Bowman, grinning, rubbed his bleeding forearm.
“Bowman!” She put her arms around him, dragged him toward her. “Bowman, goddamn you. I thought you were dead.”
They held each other tightly, her head against his shoulder, his arms completely around her, both of them panting, not talking. Suddenly she remembered the third narco, the one whose eyes she had gouged but who was still alive and could kill them with a pistol or machete. But she saw that he would never kill anyone again. He lay on his belly with the third knife, the diver’s knife, driven into his skull up to its hilt.
“Bowman. How did you …?” she started to ask, but felt a wetness against her chest, looked at him, saw his right sleeve darkening with blood.
“You’re shot!”
“Spraying and praying. Just one.” Through his right pectoral muscle, between his shoulder and nipple. He touched it, looked down without expression, shrugged. “Through and through. It’s okay. Missed the important stuff. Arm’s no good, though.”
“We have to do something for that.” She reached to take the shirt off, examine the wound.
He pushed her away, both hands on her shoulders. “Leave it. We—”
They both heard it then: a cacophony of shouts, men yelling, running, equipment clanking. Somebody fired off half a clip on full auto, a signal perhaps.
“That must be their main camp. It’s why I didn’t want to shoot these three and alert anyone else close by. Can’t be more than two hundred yards away. They heard that man’s AK for sure. We need to get back to the meadow. Do you have the moonmilk?”
“In the pack there.”
He retrieved the stainless steel cylinder, shoved it into her good hand, picked up Carlos’s rifle. “Run!” he yelled.
They took off back the way Hallie and the narcos had come. Bowman carried the AK-47 in his left hand, keeping his right arm tight against his belly. Louder shouts came now, mixed with the pounding thuds of booted feet.
“Run!” Bowman yelled.
They ran. Hallie’s soles were cut, her body slashed and bruised, and she was so tired that she had been able to doze while walking with the narcos. None of that mattered now. She sprinted, cradling the steel cylinder in her right arm like a football, gasping, looking over her shoulder to make sure Bowman was still there. He could have run much faster, she knew, but would go no faster than she could.
A burst of automatic rifle fire, then another. Bullets snapped past, hissing and cracking. Others clipped leaves and branches, thunked into tree trunks. She looked over her shoulder to make sure Bowman was not hit again. More rifle fire. Rounds kicked up spurts of dirt.
She felt herself going anaerobic, chest burning, muscles flooding with lactic acid, and it was as if she were running through mud, but there was no possibility of stopping. She heard a long burst of fire, Bowman shooting left-handed from the hip as he ran backward. Through the forest ahead she could see the meadow, then ran toward the light, pain blossoming in her chest.
She looked back at him again. He was clutching the AK-47’s pistol grip in his right hand, pressed against his body. In his left he held a black, softball-sized grenade, one of several that had been hanging from the big mercenary’s harness.
“Pull the pin!”
Without breaking stride, she reached back with her left hand, grabbed the ring, yanked. The pain in her hand almost knocked her down. He opened his fingers, letting the spoon fly loose, turned, threw the grenade underhanded without missing a step.
“Go left!” he shouted, and she veered in that direction. She heard the grenade blast, heard screams, curses. The meadow had to be close. A hard blow in the middle of her back slapped Hallie down. For an instant she thought she had been shot. She hit the ground face-first, so hard that it knocked the breath out of her and made her vision blur, but she did not lose her grip on the canister. She felt no pain
in her back, felt no blood pouring out of her.
“Don’t move!” Bowman was yelling, moving, pressing her down all the while. Fifty feet farther on, between them and the meadow, two narcos materialized out of the forest gloom. One was having problems with his AK-47. The other was not. He fired off a short burst on full automatic—spraying and praying—and bullets cracked the air around them. Bowman threw himself on top of Hallie. The narco fired again, correcting his aim, coming closer, bullets kicking up spouts of soil on the trail as he walked his rounds toward them. It was happening in microseconds, too fast for Bowman to fire back.
Though Bowman had his arms over her head, she had a slice of vision between them and could see the narcos. And then she saw the strangest thing. A quick silvery glint, like light flashing off a mirror, and the narco stopped firing. The barrel of his rifle drooped, slow and easy as a dying flower, until its muzzle was pointing at the ground. Another flash of light, and the second narco dropped his rifle.
She watched as the two fell slowly forward, like men who had suddenly gone to sleep standing up. Before their bodies hit the ground, both heads toppled from their shoulders, fell to the trail, bounced, and rolled away. Then the bodies flopped down onto their chests, spouting blood from their headless necks.
She glimpsed something white slipping from the trail into the forest. Then nothing except the two headless corpses and one small, white dog with eyes like red coals. He walked to one of the decapitated heads, sniffed, and disappeared into the forest.
Running again, they broke out of the trees, into the meadow. The cave mouth was two hundred yards away. She was running harder and harder but moving slower and slower, her muscles tying up, face contorted with the pain flooding her body.
Bullets snapped and crackled around them, whined off rocks. It was not easy to shoot accurately at a dead run, she knew: the only reason the narcos had not brought them down already. That and aguardiente and God only knew what kind of drugs they’d taken. Bowman must have thrown another grenade, because she heard the explosion, closer this time, felt pieces of soil and rock pelt her head and back.
The Deep Zone: A Novel Page 33