River of Ruin m-5

by Jack Du Brul

  “I do not know. Until a few weeks ago Bruneseau was a stranger to us.”

  “You will tell him what we’ve learned?” Lauren asked in a tone as desperate as Mercer’s.

  “I will tell him. It may do no good. I get the feeling that he is more interested in his career than, ah, what is your saying, sticking out his neck.” Then he added soberly, “I do not concern myself with legalities in this matter. I don’t need enough evidence to convince a court of law that Liu is dangerous. However we have yet to gather enough proof to convince anybody of anything. This is all speculation on our part. Captain Vanik, would you be comfortable bringing this to your superiors?”

  She was embarrassed to admit that she wouldn’t.

  “You understand my difficulty as well. Bruneseau’s only concern was the missing nuclear waste. I do not believe we will be able to change his mind about leaving.”

  “Could you talk to your superiors in the Legion?” Mercer asked.

  “I am but a lieutenant,” he said, meaning any report he wrote would be filed and forgotten.

  “What if we can get more proof? Something definitive?”

  “I don’t know what you could find, Mercer,” the Frenchman answered honestly. “Because nothing has happened yet, there is no. . smoking gun.” Foch looked pleased at his use of the American idiom.

  Mercer swore at his own weakness. He was too tired to draw a conclusion from everything they’d discussed, even though he felt it was tantalizingly close. He closed his eyes, trying to get his mind around the solution he knew was there. His expression darkened and Lauren placed a concerned hand on his arm.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, damnit!” He paused. “Sorry.”

  No matter who he paid off, Liu couldn’t lace the Gaillard Cut with explosives and expect investigators to believe it was anything other than an act of terrorism. The U.S. government would come down here like the hounds of hell. How else could he do it? Come on, Mercer, come on. Think. Oh, sure. Ram a ship into the spillway. Roddy explaining how to breach the Gatun Dam. The last shot used sixty thousand pounds of explosives. Lauren talking about the canal widening. The ore carrier I was piloting suddenly veered into the oncoming lane. Roddy again, back in Harry’s hotel room, describing the suspicious accident that cost him his job.

  Three disparate threads and only one logical conclusion. Mercer looked first at Lauren and then at Foch. “Do you or one of your men have scuba diving experience?”

  “I have some,” the Frenchman replied at once, overriding his confusion at the odd question. “Corporal Tomanovic has more. He dives all the time.”

  “Can you spare him for twenty-four hours?”

  “What’s this all about?” Lauren bristled because Mercer had asked about men who dove while he knew from the picture in her apartment that she was a diver.

  “I think I know how Liu plans to blow up part of the Gaillard Cut. I think the proof we need is waiting for us at the Pedro Miguel Lock.” Mercer noted the anger in her eyes. He could tell she was silently accusing him of some misguided bit of gallantry to protect her from danger. He had no such intention. “Don’t worry. I’m not excluding you. I’ve only been diving a few times, nowhere near enough to make me comfortable about going into the canal. If Lieutenant Foch lets Vic join us, you’d be his dive partner, not me.”

  Her anger became mild concern as she thought through what Mercer proposed. Entering the busy waterway, where the locks weren’t much larger than the hundred-thousand-ton ships that regularly passed through them, would be the most extreme dive she’d ever attempted. She searched Mercer’s face, finding within herself the trust to know he wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t critical. “I’m your girl.”

  “Why the Pedro Miguel Lock?” Harry asked.

  “For one,” Roddy answered, having guessed Mercer’s plan, “it is the closest to the Gaillard Cut and is also the canal’s most isolated. There are no towns around and no one goes there to watch the ships like they do at Miraflores. More importantly it was coming out of that lock that the ship I was fired over was delayed for fifteen minutes. No reason was given and a short time later it veered out of control. If Liu is doing something to the ships to cause these accidents, that is the place.”

  “Ah.”

  “I can’t imagine that Liu’s plan doesn’t have something to do with the mysterious accidents Roddy and other pilots experienced,” Mercer said. He turned to Foch, his cocked eyebrow asking the question.

  “Vic is yours. I’ll cover for him with Bruneseau. When?”

  “What do you think, Lauren? You’ve got the experience.”

  “Early morning or late afternoon is best. The angle of the sun and its glare will hide the glow from a dive light. None of us are in shape to do it at dawn.” She looked at her watch. “Which is four hours from now. Let’s say tomorrow just before dusk.”

  Roddy had a suggestion. “So you don’t draw attention by entering the water from shore, I know someone who keeps a powerboat at Limon on Lake Gatun’s east shore. You can meet him there and he’ll take you through the cut to the Pedro Miguel. His boat can be your dive platform.”

  “Would he do it for you?” Mercer asked.

  “He’s Carmen’s brother.” There was no need to elaborate. In a country such as Panama, nothing was more important than the family bond.

  An hour later the ringing telephone jolted Mercer from sleep and for that he was grateful. He’d been deep into a nightmare, a virtual replay of his torture, only this time Mr. Sun hadn’t restarted Mercer’s heart before applying additional needles. Mercer was dead yet could feel the unbearable pain of his body turned against itself. Each new agony, piled on top of all the others, made him pray his brain would stop functioning. It was starving for the blood his heart no longer pumped while still providing him with every crisp pain. Death was not a release, no matter how much he hoped for it.

  At the second ring he came awake enough to feel his body was so bathed with sweat that he needn’t have bothered with the brief shower he’d taken before collapsing on Roddy’s sofa. Through the panic, he felt his heart pounding against his ribs and fell back into the cushion with a relieved sigh. His lungs pumped air like a pair of bellows.

  “Mercer,” Roddy whispered sotto voce. “Are you awake?”

  “And alive,” he panted, disturbed by the vividness of the dream and the hollowness it left in his chest. Terror lurked right under the surface, ready to fill that emptiness if he didn’t force it back.

  “Lieutenant Foch is on the phone.” Roddy crossed the dim living room, his parental sixth sense allowing him to navigate the minefield of discarded toys. “Here is the cordless.” He padded back to his bedroom.

  “Yes, what is it, Lieutenant?” Mercer’s voice rasped.

  “We’re back at the safe house. Bruneseau isn’t here.”

  Mercer swung his legs off the couch, the rush of air tingling his sweat-matted hair. “Has he already left for France?”

  “His luggage is still here, although his passport is missing.”

  Mercer dismissed the missing passport. Like most knowledgeable international travelers, the spy would take the precaution of carrying it all the time. Mercer did whenever he was overseas. “Maybe he’s at the embassy.”

  “I called his cell phone and spoke to him. He said that’s where he was, but after we talked I had another question and called his cell again. He didn’t answer. I then phoned the embassy to get him for me. The duty officer hadn’t seen him. I had security check their logs. Rene Bruneseau hasn’t been there in five days.”

  This got Mercer’s attention. “He lied to you?”

  “Oui.”

  “Pourquoi?” Unconsciously Mercer had switched to French.

  “Je ne sais pas,” Foch admitted. “When we spoke, he didn’t seem to care that I had taken some of the men tonight. Nor was he interested that you wanted Tomanovic tomorrow.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. Just that he had some
loose ends to take care of before he could leave Panama and that we should make our own way back to Guyana.”

  “Any idea what these loose ends might be?”

  “Monsieur Bruneseau did a lot of work without us,” the Legionnaire explained. “Our job was mainly to watch the Hatcherly container port. He’d spend his days, and some nights, elsewhere. I assume cultivating contacts, but now I’m not sure.”

  Mercer paused before responding. He’d worked with CIA agents in the past and thought he understood the spy mentality. Most took the concept of need-to-know to the very limit, oftentimes to their own detriment. “Did you tell him what we planned to do tomorrow?”

  “Just the broad outline.”

  Something told Mercer this was meaningless. He didn’t like Bruneseau. The French agent had used him, after all, but he didn’t think Rene would do anything to impede what they were trying to accomplish. Tonight, Lauren had told him how Bruneseau was ready to lead the rescue at the mine and only backed out when he found his primary mission was over. Not helping save Mercer made the Frenchman a bastard, not a threat.

  “I don’t think we have to worry,” Mercer said at last. “Rene doesn’t know what we’re planning. If everything goes well, by tomorrow evening we’ll have the proof we need for Lauren to go to her superiors.”

  “Okay. To be safe, I am going to close up this house and relocate. I’ll have Bruneseau’s stuff brought to the embassy. You and Captain Vanik should pick up Vic at the main bus station in the Cinco de Mayo Park at, say, nine-thirty. Don’t worry, he’ll recognize Roddy Herrara’s Honda.” Foch hadn’t come out and said he didn’t trust his superior, but the precautions meant the Legionnaire wasn’t taking any chances.

  Operationally, it was a sound plan. It also made Mercer think about putting Roddy and his family into a hotel for a while. The few hundred dollars for a suite was a small price for peace of mind. He couldn’t bring himself to imagine anything happening to this generous family. Mr. Sun couldn’t create a torture even half as painful.

  “Okay,” Mercer said with deepening apprehension. “I’ll be in touch before we reach Pedro Miguel.” He clicked off the phone.

  Mercer settled back into the couch, wrestling with his doubts. There could be dozens of reasons why Bruneseau had dismissed the Legion soldiers. He really could be closing out his case or he might have been embarrassed to admit he was with a prostitute when Foch called. There was no reason to believe that Liu Yousheng had turned him, yet with so much at stake, Mercer couldn’t dismiss that idea.

  When he finally drifted back to sleep, the nightmares returned. Only this time it was Rene Bruneseau who manipulated the acupuncture needles.

  Lake Gatun, Panama

  The boat was a twenty-four-foot Wellcraft, old but well maintained. The elements had yellowed her fiberglass shell, contrasting with the recently repainted red strip along her waterline. Her stern was molded into bench seats that hid the engine and partially insulated its throaty growl. Accessible between the two front seats was a forward cabin outfitted with two beds, a tiny kitchen, and a small cubicle for a chemical toilet. She was perfect for a romantic weekend cruise on the lake, where thousands of secluded bays and uninhabited islands beckoned.

  Behind the powerboat a wake of white foam spread like an elongated arrow on the glassy green water. The overnight rains had ended and the morning haze had burned off. The sun beat mercilessly. The breeze of their twenty-knot speed kept the four people on the boat from wilting in the heat.

  Had Mercer been able to forget what lay at the end of this journey, he would have cracked a beer and enjoyed himself.

  He stripped off his shirt, leaving him in just shorts and sneakers. He watched with fascination as the unusual coast-line rolled by. It was tough to imagine that the immense body of water wasn’t a natural formation. Lake Gatun, in fact all of the Panama Canal, represented an unprecedented triumph of human engineering over a nearly insurmountable obstacle. Geology had separated the Atlantic from the Pacific three million years ago and now they were connected across a lake floating eighty-four feet above sea level. That the canal was nearly a century old made it that much more impressive.

  From the boat’s speeding deck, Mercer found himself hard pressed to find evidence of the lake’s unnatural birth. Farther on, past Gamboa where the canal narrowed toward the Gaillard Cut, its man-made nature revealed itself, but here it looked like any other lake in the world. It wasn’t until he looked closely at the islands that he could tell they had once been hilltops and the lake’s meandering shore the flanks of mountains. There was little evidence of erosion and only a few small sections of beach. Also, the vegetation covering the islands contained few aquatic plants. There were no marshes or wetlands, as he’d expect to see. The jungle simply stopped at the water’s edge where it ran out of soil. Outside the shipping lanes, he occasionally saw the tips of old telegraph poles sticking from the water’s surface, birds perched on the rotting wood. They were remnants of the old rail line that had been submerged when the lake formed.

  He imagined that this is what the world would look like if the polar ice ever melted. The endless parade of ponderous freighters and tankers only enhanced that impression. It was easy to think that the last remnants of humanity were borne on their great hulls like a flotilla of modern-day Noah’s Arks out of some post-apocalyptic science-fiction scenario.

  Juan Aranjo, Carmen Herrara’s brother, kept them well outside the buoys that marked the shipping lanes as they sped away from Limon toward the Pedro Miguel Lock. He spoke no English and seemed content in silence rather than engaging Lauren in conversation.

  Lauren’s cell phone chimed.

  She waved for Mercer to answer it. She and Tomanovic were checking over the equipment she had rented at Scubapanama, the country’s premier dive shop, where she was known.

  He dug it out of her knapsack. “Hello.”

  “Mercer, it’s Roddy.”

  “Are you guys out of the house?”

  “We just got to our new hotel. The kids are getting spoiled by your generosity. Even Miguel wasn’t so disappointed about you leaving him behind when he found there is a pool here. And Harry’s already working his way through the mini-bar.”

  Mercer smiled at that image. “Have you heard anything from Foch? There was no answer when I tried calling him from Limon.”

  “No, I haven’t,” Roddy said. “A couple of his men made sure we got to the hotel safely but I haven’t spoken with him. However, I did get a call this morning from a friend of yours. Maria Barber.”

  That was the last person Mercer had ever expected to hear from again. “Really? What did she say?” A thought occurred to him and concern crept into his voice. “Hold on, how did she know to call you? She thinks I’m in D.C.”

  “Don’t worry. I asked her the same thing. She tried your home in Washington and then took a chance calling me. She said you’d told her about me when you two had dinner.”

  Mercer had worked to purge the whole ugly night from his memory so he didn’t specifically remember that part of their conversation. “What did she want?”

  “Besides you?” Roddy teased, then turned serious. “She claims she has some information about her husband’s death.”

  “Did she say what it was?”

  “No, she wanted to talk to you in person. I told her you were going out on Gatun with my brother-in-law and couldn’t be reached. I have her number if you want to call her.”

  “How did she sound?”

  “Like she’d started her morning with a couple of Bloody Marys.”

  Mercer’s mouth turned downward. “Keep the number. I’ll call her when we’re finished.” Or maybe he wouldn’t call her at all. It was unlikely she had any pertinent information. She was probably just drunk and lonely, and looking for affection. His pity for her went only so far.

  “Where are you guys?” Roddy asked.

  “According to the chart Juan showed me, I think we just passed Barro Colorado Island. We’re going t
o hold up near here until late afternoon. I don’t want us hanging out near the Pedro Miguel Lock longer than necessary.”

  “Good idea. The Canal Authority hasn’t banned pleasure boats from approaching the locks, but with the heightened security they could ask you to leave if they get suspicious. Call me when you’re done.”

  “Will do,” Mercer said and killed the connection.

  Ten minutes later, Juan Aranjo cut away from the shipping buoys and motored toward the shore, tucking his boat into an isolated bay far from where they could be seen. He took them under an overhang of thick palms to hide them from aerial observation and the noontime sun. After killing the engine, he tossed a small anchor over the side. The jungle was a riot of bird calls.

  Lauren declined his offer to use the cabin so Juan went below to sleep through the afternoon. Like soldiers anywhere in the world, Tomanovic found a corner to curl up in. The gentle sway of the boat and the shaded warmth lulled him immediately to sleep.

  “All your equipment check out?” Mercer asked Lauren quietly.

  “We’re good to go.” If she was nervous about diving near the lock it didn’t show in her voice. Lauren gave him a level gaze. “Can I ask what really happened to you at the mine?”

  Mercer’s stomach clamped. All morning he’d convinced himself that he could put the incident out of his mind. The frantic preparations-getting the dive gear, picking up Tomanovic and meeting up with Juan-had kept him occupied. Now that they had a couple of hours with nothing to do but wait, he’d hoped the memories would remain suppressed. Lauren’s question brought the whole thing back in brutal clarity.

  “Why do you ask?” he hedged.

  “Something tells me that the description you gave us in Roddy’s kitchen wasn’t the whole story.” She paused. “From the bedroom Carmen let me use I could hear you moaning and thrashing in your sleep.”

  Mercer wasn’t comfortable giving voice to what bothered him. He’d witnessed so much ugliness and death that it would take a lifetime to talk it out. Instead, he steadily purged it himself, banishing it to the darkest corners of his memory where only nightmares dwelled. He knew that it was an ill-advised attempt at denial, but somehow it seemed to work.