by Jack Du Brul
“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 highlights 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.”
<
br /> 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.
A moment later the door swung open and Mercer stepped out into the moist night. In front of them loomed an enormous crane specially designed to move freight containers, its boom like a medieval battering ram. All around them towered ranks of containers like steel building blocks. In the distant glow of gantry lights Mercer could see one of the warehouses Victor had drawn on his map, orienting him to the layout of the terminal. Victor had placed them where Hatcherly stored their empty containers, a paved field that stretched for acres.
Victor was larger than his cousin, with dirty hair tied in a ponytail and a rather dim expression. Through the smoke of a dangling cigarette, he and Lauren spoke in low tones. Victor kept looking over his shoulder to where the bulk of the facility’s work was carried out, troubled that he had no excuse for driving the container so far away if a foreman questioned him.
“Si, si, si. Gracias.” Lauren turned to Mercer while Victor looked longingly at the cab of his Kalmar 3500 reach-stacker crane. “We’re in luck. Victor says that there’s some big operation going on in the smallest warehouse. In the past couple of weeks Hatcherly’s completely emptied the building and no one other than a few Chinese workers have been allowed in. Last night a special cargo was brought in from a Chinese freighter. He thinks it’s being transferred out tonight.”
“Does he know what it is?”
“No idea, but he said that security around the building’s been beefed up.”
Mercer recalled Victor’s detailed drawing. “Wait, the smallest warehouse is the one that sits by itself surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire.”
“Yup.”
“Damn.” He thought furiously, finally looking up when he got an idea. Lost in the darkness above them were the guy wires for the cableway crane system, a grid of heavy-gauge steel lines that crisscrossed the terminal like a spider web. “Ask Victor if the cableway goes near the warehouse.”
“Yes,” she translated. “One of the cables passes in front of the building.”
“Can we climb up a support tower to reach the main cables and then crawl over the security fence to the warehouse?”
Lauren asked the stevedore and translated his answer. “Yes, but the cables are eighty feet off the ground so they don’t interfere with the stacked containers or vehicles.” Victor said something else and Lauren blanched under her camo paint. “Damn. The main cableways are made of three wires, two for holding the container grapple and one to supply electricity. It’s always hot.”
Their high-wire act just got doubly dangerous. “Ask him if there’s another way.”
Victor looked Mercer in the eye and said no.
“You afraid of heights?” Mercer asked. Lauren shook her head. “Electricity?” She nodded. “We’re in the same boat. How long until the train comes through to take us back to Cristobal?”
“Two hours.”
“Tell Victor we’ll be waiting.” Before setting off to find one of the support towers, Victor gave them each a pair of leather gloves he kept in his giant forklift.
Once they left the relative security of the deserted container storage area, Mercer began to feel the tension. There were thirty guards patrolling the facility and dozens more workers. Any one of them could shout an alarm. Considering what he knew of the company, he doubted Hatcherly would let them go with a stiff warning. More like a one-way ticket to China in a sealed container.
He drew his pistol and checked that the silencer was screwed on tightly. Lauren padded silently at his side.
Fighting the instinct to climb the first tower they came across, Mercer and Lauren needed to get closer to the warehouse in order to cut the distance they’d need to shimmy along the cableway. Lauren tapped him on the shoulder, pointing to a line of trucks that would provide partial cover. Step in step they moved across an open expanse of cracked asphalt, ever alert for a roving guard. In the distance, a large freighter secured to the quay was lit like a cruise ship, and gantry cranes methodically lowered cargo containers into her hold. The air was sharp with the smell of bunker fuel and diesel smoke.
Bent double, they edged along the row of silent trucks, careful not to let their motion draw attention. Once they reached the lead vehicle, they saw they next had to cross multiple sets of rail spurs. Longshoremen in dark overalls and hardhats worked on coupling a locomotive under the glare of pole-mounted arc lights.
Mercer slid onto his chest and crawled across the filthy ballast rocks, angling to pass on the far side of the train. He rolled off the last rail and into a wild tangle of bushes that had somehow taken root in the oil-soaked ground. Lauren reached him as a small forklift raced past.
“Jesus,” she breathed. “He came out of nowhere.”
“The closer we get to the warehouse, the busier it’s getting.” The approach of another truck forced them deeper into the bushes. The risk of discovery was growing too great and Lauren suggested they climb the next tower they came across. Mercer agreed.
The nearest support structure for the cable crane was fifty yards away. They dodged from their cover, racing hard for another group of containers that was halfway to their goal.
Thirty feet from the closest container, Mercer saw a figure suddenly emerge from around its far side. He raised his pistol just as a dockworker looked up.
Mercer dropped his aim, unable to shoot an unarmed man. He quickened his pace so his boots slapped. He was just ten feet away when the Panamanian opened his mouth to yell a warning. Without slowing, Mercer threw himself in a cross block that slammed into the worker’s chest, crushing him against the container. The man was doubled over, gagging to catch his breath when Lauren ran up and clipped the side of his head with her Beretta. He fell silent.
“Thanks.” Mercer struggled out from under the unconscious laborer. They stuffed the worker in the gap between two containers and waited in the shadows to see if anyone noticed. Everything appeared normal.
The support tower was a skeletal frame resembling a radio mast topped by a set of pulleys and gears for manipulating the cable crane. It reminded Mercer of part of a ski lift. Securing their weapons, he and Lauren climbed the integrated ladder. The machine was so new it had yet to show rust from the tropical humidity. Eighty f
eet up, they found a precarious perch and a vantage to check their location.
Beyond the terminal lay the main channel of the Panama Canal and on the far bank the lights of another dockside facility. A ship was passing up the canal on its way to the first set of locks at Miraflores, its lights reflected in the black water. Behind them was Quarry Heights, the former headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command. To reach their target, they needed to shimmy a thousand feet and cross over several other towers. The warehouse sat alone in its chain-link redoubt, and all but its roof was bathed in artificial light. Smaller than the other storehouses, it still measured about a hundred feet wide and at least four times as long.
Mercer studied the cableway. The two main lines shooting off into the darkness were about two feet apart. Up close they looked thick and substantial, tight braids of steel wire pulled so taut they felt like iron bars. But when he looked across the port, the wires became like a gossamer lattice over the facility, as insubstantial as thread.
“Are you ready?” he asked Lauren after they’d caught their breath.
“You did notice that they are using this system, didn’t you?” Lauren pointed to where a container glided silently across the night, held aloft by a grapple crane running along the wires.
“Victor said the warehouse is off limits. I doubt they’ll move any containers our way.”
“They’d better not.” Tentatively, Lauren took a step onto the tandem wires, bending over so she could grasp with her hands as well. Just over her shoulder, the electrified third cable seemed to hum.
“Careful not to get too close to the other wire,” Mercer cautioned as he followed her. “Your body may cause an arc.”
The cables were coated in grease and each step demanded attention before weight could be shifted. Their gloves became so slick they took them off, absorbing small cuts from the sharp strands rather than lose the control of direct contact. Like a pair of monkeys they shuffled along the wire, not daring to contemplate the eight-story drop. Below them, workers continued their duties without looking up to see the dark shadows moving along the cableway.