SYCAMORE BLUFF (Prequel to THE JACK REACHER FILES: ANNEX 1) (A Nicholas Colt Thriller Book 8)

by Jude Hardin

  “Tell me more about this job,” Del Chivo said. His tone had gone from light and jovial to stark and serious.

  “Señor Daehl wants a factory destroyed. There is nothing more to tell.”

  “What kind of factory?”

  “That, I do not know. All I know is the geographical coordinates of the town it’s in, and that the town is only accessible by helicopter. Señor Daehl is willing to pay a lot of money for my help in this matter.”

  “How much money?” Del Chivo said.

  The Unnamed Man with Connections told Del Chivo the amount.

  “Of course I will give you half,” Loco said.

  Del Chivo laughed so hard he nearly fell out of his chair. “My operation makes more money than that in one day, just on the east coast,” he said. “Why would I want to risk four of my men and a helicopter for such a pittance? Eh, cabron? You have truly lost your mind this time. You tell this friend of yours, this Leonard W. Daehl, that he can go—”

  “It is not only for the money,” Loco said. “There’s a very large bonus that comes with this job.”

  Del Chivo took a swig of tequila. The very fine señoritas had stripped out of their bathing suits. They were naked, splashing at each other playfully in the pool. The water beaded on their perfect brown bodies and glimmered in the silvery moonlight. Such beauty. Such fun. They were starting to look a little restless, though, Del Chivo thought. And needy. He knew what they wanted, and he had plenty of it to go around.

  “Bonus?” he said. “You have one minute to tell me about this bonus, Loco, and then I am hanging up on you. Comprende, mi amigo?”

  “I understand perfectly,” Loco said. “And it will not take a full minute to change your mind about helping me with this mission. I can promise you that.”

  “You’ve wasted fifteen seconds already.”

  “If we take this job, we’ll not only get to destroy an American factory, Sergio. We will also have the pleasure of killing two United States federal agents. And, according to Señor Daehl, these agents know many, many government secrets.”

  Aye! That was a horse of a different color. That changed everything. Perhaps Loco was not so crazy after all.

  Sergio despised the United States of America, and for very good reason: on his seventeenth birthday, Sergio Del Chivo witnessed the murder of his entire family. And the way he saw it, the U.S. government was to blame.

  Sergio’s father, Carlos Del Chivo, had assisted with the cost of printing a bundle of fliers protesting the working conditions at a local shirt factory. Sergio’s mother, Maria, and his sister, Bonita, were employed at the factory, where for ninety-seven cents an hour they sat at sewing machines alongside dozens of other women in the hundred degree heat of a seven thousand square foot second story loft.

  Every evening, six days a week, Maria and Bonita would return from their ten hour shifts with smiles on their faces, but Sergio knew that the smiles were not genuine. He could see the pain beneath those smiles, the pain of sweat and dust and tedium and humiliation, not to mention the swollen and bleeding fingers and the stiff and sore necks and backs. The factory was killing his mother and his sister, and something needed to be done about it.

  Sergio’s father believed that the fliers might be a good first step. They were to be distributed in the capitol city of San Salvador where the right people would see them, people who would be sympathetic to the cause. People who could make a difference.

  Unfortunately, an officer from El Salvador’s Treasury Police saw them first.

  How this officer came to know about Carlos Del Chivo’s financial contribution—a whopping six dollars—to the printing of the fliers was no great secret. The United States government, specifically the CIA, provided the Treasury Police with funds for their operations, and with intelligence. Ironically, the CIA, an agency from a country where freedom of speech was supposed to be guaranteed, was responsible for blowing the whistle on the owner of the printing press and on those who helped buy the paper and ink for the fliers.

  Armed with the knowledge that Carlos Del Chivo was a dissident, a stinking communist as they would later label him, two officers from the Treasury Police raided the shack where Sergio and his family lived, just as Sergio was blowing out the candles on his birthday cake. Sergio’s mother had lovingly baked and decorated the cake for him, and it was heartbreaking to watch as the policemen used their filthy hands to scoop out big chunks from the middle. They shoved the cake and icing into their mouths and then licked their grimy fingers clean. Cerdos!

  The officers carried automatic weapons, which of course were also paid for by the United States government. Sergio’s father tried to reason with them, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. They slapped him and spat on him. Resistance was futile. They herded Sergio and his family into the back of a white van and drove them to a remote location. There, Sergio and his father were forced to watch as the sweaty policemen took turns raping Maria and Bonita on the top of a wooden picnic table.

  It was at this point that Sergio’s hatred of the United States was solidified, and he made a silent vow there in the jungle as his mother and sister cried and screamed for the officers to stop: if he made it out of this alive, he would do everything in his power to bring great harm to the nation that did this to his family.

  When the officers were finished with the women, they slit their throats and dragged them off to the side of the clearing, out of the way, like sacks of garbage.

  Now it was Carlos Del Chivo’s turn. They forced him onto the wooden planks, and they kept him there by hammering sixteen-penny framing nails through his hands and feet.

  Sergio’s poor father turned his head to the side and retched as the policemen worked on him. Every time the hammer struck the head of a nail, part of Sergio Del Chivo died. Part of his soul. And every time his father grunted in agony, Sergio’s hatred for the United States, los Estados Unitos, intensified.

  Then, while Sergio’s father was still very alert from the pain of the spikes in his extremities, one of the officers castrated him with a butcher knife.

  Sergio had never heard sounds like that coming from a human being. The officers laughed and laughed as Sergio’s father writhed in excruciating pain. They laughed, but they had done something very stupid. They had left their rifles leaning against a tree, and in the hour or so since the festivities had begun, Sergio had managed to wriggle free from the shoelaces binding his wrists.

  While the officers laughed hysterically, Sergio ran to the tree and grabbed one of the rifles and started spraying bullets in an arc from one end of the picnic table to the other. Sergio didn’t want to hit his father, so he was careful to keep the barrel of the rifle level with the officers’ chests. He kept his finger on the trigger until the magazine was empty. Blue smoke filled the air, saturating the entire area with the hot acrid stench of gunpowder. Sergio tossed the spent weapon aside and grabbed the other one, but he didn’t need it. Both of the officers were dead on the ground.

  Sergio walked to the table and looked down at his father.

  “Shoot me,” Carlos Del Chivo said. “Please.”

  “No, Papa.”

  “Please, my son. Do this for me.”

  Sergio made the sign of the cross. With tears streaming down his face, he fired a single bullet into his sweet father’s head.

  After crying like a baby for more than an hour, after shouting at the universe for being so cruel, Sergio used the Treasury Police van to drive to the coast, and from there he stowed away on a boat loaded with cigarettes and whiskey. He didn’t know where the boat was going, but he knew it was going somewhere.

  And wherever it was going, he would honor his vow to do whatever it took to destroy the United States of America.

  Twenty-six years later, Sergio Del Chivo said, “You know me too well, Loco. Bueno, mi amigo. You will have the helicopter and the explosives by morning. Is that soon enough?”

  “Si. What about the men?”

  “I can give you three.”

>   “I need four,” Loco said. “It is crucial that I have four.”

  “Then take your friend Leonard W. Daehl. It’s his factory. If the stupid gringo wants it blown up, then he can help do the work. Sorry, but that’s the best I can do. Okay, cabron?”

  “Okay, señor. Mercy.”

  Del Chivo laughed. “Ah, we are back to speaking French again.”

  “No, señor,” The Unnamed Man with Connections said. “Mercy. It is what the United States agents will be begging for by the time I am finished with them.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Nicholas Colt and Diana Dawkins took a right at the corner of Otter Creek Road and Main Street. Just three more blocks to Town Hall.

  Colt pulled out his whiskey and took a swig.

  “Sure you don’t want some?” he said.

  “I’m sure.”

  The screams from earlier had stopped. The town was quiet. A little too quiet, Colt thought. The kind of quiet you get in a horror movie immediately before another big scare. It was unnerving.

  Sycamore Bluff was as silent as the distant planet it was supposed to be a training ground for—and as cold—but Colt was optimistic that he and Diana were going to make it out of there in one piece. They were well-armed, and the radio was only a couple of blocks away now. It had been a long trek, but their destination was finally in sight.

  “I can’t wait to get home,” Colt said.

  “You and me both.”

  “This place has given me the creeps since day one.”

  “Day one was just yesterday,” Diana said.

  Colt shook his head. “Seems like we’ve been here longer than that. A lot longer.”

  “I know what you mean. Anyway, it’s almost over now.”

  “I hope so.”

  Colt hoped it was almost over, and his gut told him it was. Once Diana contacted The Director, help would soon be on the way. The Director was like The Wizard of Oz. He was the man behind the curtain turning knobs and pulling levers. He could make things happen.

  “One more block,” Diana said.

  “That’s good, because I’m not sure my legs are going to last much longer than that.”

  “You’re doing pretty good for an old man.”

  “Very funny,” Colt said. “So tell me, are you really thinking about resigning from The Circle?”

  “Maybe. If they’ll let me. Writing a letter of resignation is a huge decision, because once you hand it in there’s no turning back. Once The Director knows you have doubts about your place in the organization, he’s never going to send you out in the field again, no matter what. You’re either sent to our equivalent of Siberia, where you’ll live your life out anonymously, or they make you disappear another way.”

  “Has anyone ever tried to escape?” Colt said. “It seems like you could buy some phony credentials, maybe get a little plastic surgery, and then leave the country. Go to France or somewhere. New Zealand. Australia. Anywhere.”

  “The vast majority of operatives are happy doing what they’re doing,” Diana said. “But there have been defectors. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your perspective—none of them lived very long. You can escape to another country, but wherever you go, The Circle will find you.”

  “The blood tattoo,” Colt said. “I forgot about that.”

  “Exactly. It’s possible to have the microchip surgically removed, but nobody has been that stupid yet. Nobody has tested the agency that far, to see if they’ll really come after friends or family members in retaliation.”

  “What do you think?” Colt said. “Do you think they would?”

  “There’s no doubt in my mind. You have to understand, we do things on a daily basis that change the course of history. There’s very little room for error, and there’s no room for an operative who isn’t a hundred percent committed to the cause. If you ever decide to take the plunge and do this full time, you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

  “I think I’ll pass on that. Anyway, I doubt they’d want me. Seeing as how I’m so elderly and frail and all.”

  “I know you’re being facetious,” Diana said. “But really, The Circle uses operatives in all stages of life. As you get older, the assignments might not be as exciting—or as grueling—but as long as your mental faculties are sharp, they can use you.”

  “What about retirement? Is that ever a possibility?”

  “Yes, but only when they say so. Then, it’s the same deal as an approved resignation. You’re put into the Witness Protection Program.”

  “Interesting,” Colt said.

  “Yeah. Well, here we are.”

  “Finally.”

  Colt noticed the steeple again, thought about Juliet again.

  He and Diana climbed the steps and stopped at the double set of oak doors.

  “You go left and I’ll go right,” Diana said. “On three: one, two, three.”

  They yanked the doors open, stepped inside simultaneously and swept the area with their pistols. Same dim lighting as the night they’d arrived, same smell of fresh paint, same tape deck on the stage in front.

  “Anybody home?” Colt said.

  No answer.

  Diana found a switch and turned on the overhead lights, and then she motioned for Colt to follow her up the stairs. They climbed to the second level, turned more lights on, walked around until they found a door marked COMM CENTER.

  “This is it,” Diana said.

  Colt opened the door. The room was dark, but the unmistakable stench of fresh blood and human waste started painting the picture right away.

  Colt tried to say something, but the words caught in his throat. All he could manage was a wheezy cough. A pair of internal hands gripped his stomach and twisted it, wringing it like a wet washcloth. He felt for a light switch, found it, flipped it on.

  Colt had witnessed plenty of carnage in his lifetime, but he’d never seen anything quite like this. Diana Dawkins was right behind him, and she uttered something, but he barely heard her. His mind was busy trying to process the scene in front of him. To his left, there was a wall of twelve-inch television screens. Some of the screens had been smashed to bits, while others remained intact and seemed to be working perfectly. To his right there was a desk with a computer and a two-way radio and a man in a chair. The man and the computer and the radio were smashed to bits as well. None of them seemed to be working at all, especially the man. There was a puddle of blood on the desk and some pieces of bone. Some of the fragments appeared to be teeth, and others, the larger ones, broken chunks of skull. The man was slumped forward, palms down on the desk, as though he were praying to the computer monitor, but his head was twisted around the other way. His neck had been broken and his face had been beaten to a bloody, unrecognizable pulp. The man’s mouth was open and his tongue was sticking out and lolling to one side, but the most striking and horrifying and immediately nauseating feature on this former human being was his eyes. Or lack thereof. The eyelids were closed, but they were sunken in. Concave. Colt could tell there was nothing behind them. And the kicker: the folds of skin surrounding the sockets appeared to have pink lipstick on them.

  It was a ghastly image, the kind that would stick to Colt’s consciousness forever, like slime to the bottom of a swamp log.

  “This is not happening,” Diana said.

  “Someone sucked his eyeballs out.”

  “I don’t care about him. The radio. The radio, Nicholas. Look at it. It’s ruined.”

  “Yeah. What are we going to do now?”

  Before Diana could answer, a set of footsteps echoed from somewhere down the hall. Not the clicking sound of hard-soled shoes or the rubbery squeak of sneakers, but the flap, flap, flap of bare skin on hardwood.

  Colt clicked his safety off and stepped out into the hallway. Diana stood at the entrance to the communications room with both hands on her pistol, ready to back him up.

  There was a woman at the end of the hall, and she was coming Colt’s way. The overhead li
ghts were on, and he could see her clearly. She was tall, maybe six feet, and appeared to be in excellent physical condition. Late twenties to early thirties, long blond hair. She could have been a professional tennis player, Colt thought. But apparently tennis wasn’t her game. She had both hands wrapped around the grip of a wooden baseball bat. The bat appeared to be stained with blood. She wore a black Nike warm-up suit and no shoes, and something pink and gooey was dripping from her chin.

  Colt’s stomach lurched again. He was no Sherlock Holmes, but it didn’t take a genius detective to put two and two together. Deducing this woman’s recent activity was elementary, dear Watson. Obvious as a stop sign.

  “Stop, or I’ll shoot,” Colt said.

  She didn’t stop. She never opened her mouth, but a guttural moan resonated from somewhere deep inside her, something similar to the sound of a donkey braying. A very sick donkey, Colt thought. Or an injured one. One that needed to be put down.

  Colt aimed the pistol at her chest.

  “Eeeeeeh-ahhhhhh,” she said.

  “Last chance,” Colt said. “Stop right there, or you’re dead.”

  She shambled forward, disregarding Colt’s warning, taking small steps as though her ankles were chained together. She was less than ten feet away now. This woman had killed the man in the communications room. She’d beaten him to death with the baseball bat, and then she had eaten his eyeballs. She’d sucked them right out of their sockets, and Nicholas Colt had no doubt that, given the chance, she would do the same to his.

  He pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times. She still kept coming. Colt looked on in astonishment. He steadied his aim and squeezed the trigger again and again and again. He fired ten times, emptying the entire magazine on her. The final round caught her in the throat and stopped her in her tracks. She listed to the left, swayed and staggered and turned in a circle like a drunken ballerina. Then, in a maneuver that seemed to defy gravity, she hurled herself over the railing and plummeted twenty feet to the first floor.

  There was a sickening splatter, the sound a sack of raw turkey giblets might make, followed by the rattle of the Louisville Slugger as it bounced around and finally rolled to a stop.