The Last Dawn

by Joe Gannon

  He stalked closer to her, on full alert, for the first time feeling the Needle strapped to his calf. He was feet away when he finally saw what had so transfixed her—the gorgon she’d looked upon. And when Ajax saw, the sound went out of the world, replaced by the rushing of blood from his head to the bottomless chasm that had opened in his stomach.

  It was another ghost.

  Her ghost.

  And her ghost was as transfixed as she was—mouth open in shock and astonishment.

  Ajax dropped to one knee, slid the Needle out of the sheath on his calf, and stood up with it cupped in his hand. As he did, Gladys’s ghost blinked its eyes and shook its head. Then the eyes met Ajax’s. The bewildered disbelief of before became hatred, as quickly as the dark of night is illuminated by a lightning bolt.

  Gladys’s ghost pointed a finger as accusing as that other ghost had at Macbeth.

  “Piricuaco!”

  Krill.

  18

  “Piricuaco!”

  Krill’s voice rang out like the bell of doom: Peer-e-cwa-cooooooo!

  It’s an old saw that time slows down in combat, and combat had commenced. Ajax grabbed Gladys’s arm and rather than run, plunged them into the crowd of people so that Krill’s finger would not aim at them. He had a few seconds to save their lives, and they were owed to jargon. Piricuaco, the Nicaraguan slang for rabid dog, was the Contras’ name for Sandinistas back home. But it was not familiar to Salvadorans, and while the crowd heard the alarm, they did not yet know what, or who, it meant.

  So Ajax gave them one they all knew. “Asesino! Assassin!”

  Bedlam.

  The few civilians there bolted at the word, the wives and girlfriends panicked and fled in all directions, their screams drowning out Krill’s voice. The hired guns and bodyguards drew pistols and Uzis. Ajax bent low to get lost in the crowd, but Gladys was still so stunned by the sight of her tormentor that Ajax had to grab the back of her neck and force her down and drag her along with him.

  Screaming Asesino! in the ear-splitting pitch howler monkeys use to warn of jaguars, he made his way through the stampede to the stairs at the far side of the big sala, near the generalissimo’s portrait. He’d noticed before a hallway he was certain led to the kitchen, and beyond, to the servants’ quarters. No matter how high the security in a house like Max’s, Ajax knew there had to be a separate entrance for the servants.

  He peeked back over the stairs. Order was descending on the chaos. Colonel Benivides and the officers were retreating in order out the door. A dense scrum of bodyguards surrounded El Mayor and was doing the same.

  But Krill, fucking Krill, dressed in civvies, holding two .45s, was screaming into the ear of one gunman. He’d lost Ajax and Gladys in the rush, but as soon as he made them understand what was going on …

  Ajax wouldn’t finish the thought, so he turned to Gladys and backhanded her, snapped her head halfway around. Then he held her face.

  “Gladys! Live or die, now!”

  She blinked her eyelids a million times at near the speed of light as a nasty welt rose on her cheek.

  “I’m okay. I’m okay. Whatta we do?!”

  She didn’t ask how Krill had materialized as surely as Ajax’s ghost had, which was a good sign. Then a pistol barrel appeared in his peripheral vision. Monkey Man, the batterer. Ajax was about to open his throat with the Needle when Gladys threw her arms around him.

  “Thank God! Please help us, we’re the Americans! Please save us!”

  She kneed him in the nut bag. Ajax caught his pistol as he accordioned to the floor. He had one second to spare, and used it to kiss Gladys on her bruised cheek.

  “You’re a good man, sister.”

  Then he fired three shots into the generalissimo.

  They fled down the corridor to the kitchen. Terrified servants cowered in their rooms. They were moving so fast Ajax almost missed the doorway to a small courtyard and the iron door leading out.

  “Stop!”

  Ajax whirled, twisting down as he brought the pistol up to bear. For a split second he thought it was another ghost chasing them.

  Jasmine, in a floor-length white dressing gown, ran down the corridor to them. When she was a few steps away she ripped her gown open, showing her breasts, and stopped before them.

  “Hostage.”

  The sphinx!

  “Okay.”

  He pushed her first into the courtyard to the door, and escape. The door was a solid three inches of iron with a crossbar to secure it. Ajax opened it and reconnoitered the outside. There was a ten-yard-wide strip the length of the wall that had been cleared as a free-fire zone, on the far side of which began the dense growth of the tropics. Ajax saw no one in either direction and drew his head back inside.

  Jasmine gestured to go up the hill, away from the road, its cars, and armed men. Ajax nodded agreement. Gladys turned her palms up.

  “Jasmine, this is Gladys. Gladys, this is Mata Sofá.”

  “No fucking way.”

  “Way,” Jasmine said. “I’ll go first.”

  The three of them hugged the wall and dashed up the hill toward the edge of the wall, and, hopefully, out of sight of the squat guard tower. But a spotlight hit them, and bullets ripped the ground just ahead of them.

  Hope is a fickle cow.

  “Alto! Quien son?”

  Who indeed?

  “Don’t shoot! It’s me. Doña Jasmine!”

  Ajax put Jasmine in a choke hold, careful not to hurt her, stepped away from the wall so the guard could see her, and aimed his pistol at the center of the light, knowing that at any second he’d see the small muzzle flash that would be the last thing he ever saw.

  And he did. Although the flash was somewhat larger than he’d expected. So large in fact it engulfed the entire guard post which exploded into fire and flying concrete. Then it seemed the small muzzle flash he had expected did appear, except all around them and by the dozen. Ajax was certain Krill had rallied the godfather’s minions and was lighting them up. He pushed Jasmine to the ground.

  “What the fuck!” Gladys joined them eating dirt.

  “It’s the Farabundos,” Jasmine shouted over the gunfire. “They’re attacking the house!”

  “What?” Things were moving too fast for Ajax.

  “They’re after El Mayor. Benivides, this is your chance! Up the hill!”

  Ajax had questions, but none more pressing than living.

  They rose to a squat and ran for their lives.

  * * *

  The fugitives kept slogging up the hillside. After half an hour they’d left the house and the firefight far behind, and their breath too. They panted and sweated, at times having to crawl on their knees reaching out for one handhold after another to ascend the steep hill through the dense undergrowth. But death is a great motivator, life even more so, and they kept on, in silence, to the top.

  But Ajax was not silent in his mind. WHAT THE FUCKING SWEET JESUS MOTHERFUCK JUST HAPPENED!?!?

  Krill? In El Salvador? Turning up at the very same soiree as he and Gladys? And Gladys seeing him? He recalled the look on Krill’s face: it wasn’t anger, or hatred. The only word that came to mind was—relieved.

  Krill had actually looked relieved, like seeing someone you thought lost in a fire walk out of the inferno.

  And Jasmine. The sphinx. He followed close behind her, her white dressing gown a ghostly apparition in the dark.

  Too many goddamned ghosts.

  And what she’d said: the Farabundos are attacking the house. A strange phrasing. If she was with the FMLN rebels she’d’ve called them compañeros or muchachos. Against them, she’d’ve said terroristas. But Farabundos? It seemed an almost neutral term. Too neutral for a country where social conditions, ideology, or a gun in your face made everyone take a side.

  As suddenly as his world had turned upside down, the hill flattened out as they reached the summit. He dropped to his knees, panting hard, the stitch in his side feeling like an appendectom
y on the fly. All those months playing catatonic opossum he’d kept his muscles iron hard deadlifting his weight off the plastic chairs or balanced on his toes for hours. But he had the wind of an emphysemic.

  He could hear Gladys panting too.

  “Gladys?”

  “I’m okay, okay. You?”

  “If I don’t die of a heart attack.”

  She reached for his hand. “Ajax. You saw?”

  “I did. I can’t explain it.”

  “God help us, look!” Jasmine called out from the dark and Ajax leaped up, pistol at the ready.

  She stood at the rim of the canyon they’d climbed, her ghostly outline in the dark, finger pointing like a phantom. Below them the teeming city of San Salvador, home to a million souls, was in blackout. Firefights could be seen all over the city, dozens of them. Explosions flashed like strobe lights, followed by Booms! muffled by the distance. On the ground red tracer bullets split the black, ricocheting high into the air. While from the sky denser streams of red fell as helicopter gunships answered with their own tracers, looking like angry angels peeing death on the city.

  “Jesus save us,” Gladys murmured.

  “The Farabundos,” Jasmine said. “It’s the offensive. They’ve begun. The final offensive.”

  And somewhere down in that cataclysm was young Peck. Dead or alive.

  As Ajax watched the combat roil over the city his blood chemistry changed as his lungs finally delivered enough oxygen to his corpuscles. His heart steadied and slowed as his muscles ceased screaming for sustenance. And a great, deep, malevolent calm settled over him, as dawn settles all the fears of the night. For the first time in three years, Ajax Montoya felt truly at peace. At home.

  19

  Gladys Darío/Batista fell to her knees and puked. And puked again. For a minute she retched in rhythm to some internal beat: spew, pant, pant, pant, spew, pant, pant, pant. After that minute she stopped and Ajax listened to her catch her breath, a panting steadiness under the staccato sounds of the distant gunfire, and the bass grinding of the helicopters’ mini-guns.

  “What is he doing here?”

  He didn’t need to ask who.

  Ajax squatted next to her. “I do not know. But are you gonna be alright?”

  “No! I’m not alright! Jesus Christ, Ajax, it was fucking Kri.” She stammered the name, retched one last time. “Fucking Krill! How did he know?”

  “About us?”

  “Of course!”

  “He didn’t. I saw his face, he was as amazed to see you as you were him.”

  She shot him a look as violent as the combat below, but much closer.

  “Not like that, but as surprised as you were. The question is, what is he doing here at all?” Jasmine stared over her city; Ajax could not read her face in the dark. “Jasmine, when D’Aubuisson came in he had a Nicaraguan with him, a Contra named Krill.”

  But the sphinx was mesmerized by the faraway chaos.

  “Jasmine!” Gladys was up on her feet, angry—at the wrong person, Ajax knew, or hoped—but right now he’d take Gladys angry over any other variety.

  “What? I’m sorry, a Nicaraguan? I don’t know. Why does it matter now?”

  “Because we’re…”

  Ajax slapped her arm to shut her up. “Because we know him and he knows us,” he said.

  “I’m not following.”

  “You know we’re here undercover.”

  “To find Jimmy, yes. But, you mean you aren’t private investigators from Miami?”

  “We are but we have history with that guy, bad history, and if we hadn’t gotten away…”

  “If I hadn’t helped you get away.”

  “If you hadn’t helped us get away, we’d be dead right now.”

  “Or worse.” Gladys spat it out.

  Ajax knew she was right. “Our cover’s blown, and this…” He gestured to the city below. “We might not survive the night.”

  Jasmine turned back to the city where the steady flicker of fires illuminated the night. “None of us might. See down there,” she pointed off to the west where they could see a cluster of white explosions and red tracers, “that’s the Quartel, army headquarters. And there,” another cluster of red and white, “that’s the presidential palace, poor Freddy, not even a year in office.”

  Ajax knew Freddy was Alfredo Cristiani, a gray-suited, American-educated banker D’Aubuisson’s ARENA party had chosen as a front for last year’s presidential elections. He’d won too—not hard when most of the opposition were rotting corpses with their thumbs tied behind their backs.

  Freddy. Ajax shook his head. How much damage has been done to a nation’s soul when all the devil has to do to win the popular vote is don a smiley-face mask.

  “And there,” Jasmine pointed to large area in the blackout, “down there is the American embassy. Just go there, or any hotel. The Farabundos won’t attack the hotels. You’ll find a lot of Americans at the Camino. You’ll be safe there.”

  Ajax and Gladys moved away from Jasmine, still transfixed by the deadly pyrotechnics engulfing her city. Ajax tried to count the days since he’d left Kilometro Cinco, but it was lost in the gap between experienced time and the calendar. “Well, this is another fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

  “I wish I believed in God.”

  “Why?”

  “Then I’d have someone to blame. How do you explain this inexplicable coincidence?”

  “Karma?”

  “Is ours that bad?”

  “Mine is, wouldn’t think yours was. But Reynaldo did say that back in Miami.”

  “What?”

  “The cease-fire in Nicaragua … he said rumor was some of the Contras were out freelancing.”

  “But why Krill and why here?”

  “Krill, ’cause he’s Krill. Here? It’s where he started.”

  “What?”

  “Back in seventy-nine Krill and his unit were the last of the Guardia to keep fighting. When they were finally cut off they commandeered a fishing boat out of Chinandega, made it across the Gulf of Fonseca. As I heard it, the officer wanted to put into Honduras, Krill didn’t trust the Hondos, so he put the officer over the side. The last five days they were without food or water, floating on currents. They washed up here, boatload of corpses. Krill made it. Supposedly he got his start with El Mayor and ORDEN, until the CIA picked him up. He must’ve told you this?”

  “You think I was listening to him?”

  “No, sorry. But that might be why he’s back here. Maybe he’s undercover too.”

  Gladys’s hand moved through her purse like a snake in a sack of cornmeal. She fished out a towelette, fingered it in such a way that he knew it was her last.

  “Ajax, when I saw him…”

  He could sense more than see the tremblers zigzag through her body.

  “… I froze. He could’ve shot me and I wouldn’t have moved. He could have shot you and I wouldn’t have lifted a finger.”

  “So? You were in shock.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “I had an early warning.”

  “How?”

  Who?

  Boo!

  The ghost.

  It was not the first time the boy with the long eyelashes had appeared just before trouble. The last time, on a coffee finca in northern Nicaragua, he’d woken Ajax the moment Malhora’s henchmen had arrived to assassinate him and Gladys. Ajax still didn’t know what the ghost wanted, or even if it was a real phantasm or the hallucinations of a failed mind. But he hadn’t told Gladys then, and he sure wouldn’t confess it now. She was on the verge, on a precipice over a void—she would step back or over. He couldn’t bring her back. But neither would he nudge her forward with ghost stories.

  Then it hit him: it was all just one big ghost story. The boy, Krill, the Pecks. There was no mission, it was still 1986, and he had only opened and closed a single door to be here.

  “Ajax? What early warning?”

  “Jasmine’s right. The emb
assy and back to Miami.”

  “Abort the mission? You think I can’t handle it? You think I’m afraid?”

  “I don’t care.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.” His head shaking sped up slightly as all the pieces came together in a centrifugal motion. “You need to go, Gladys. This is all on me.”

  “What?”

  “You asked what Krill’s doing here. He’s here ’cause I’m here. It’s all because of that, because of…” He shook his head. “It’s still 1986, Gladys. I’ve been stuck in this eddy of time, pushed up against the bank while the rest of you went on. Think about it: all that time as a somnambulist and it’s the Pecks reading Amelia’s letter who wake me? Horacio who gets me released? Even El Gordo back at Kilometro Cinco? And this…” He plucked the Needle from its sheath on his calf. Its long, elegant, devilish blade as familiar and as repulsive as a goiter on his soul. He flipped the blade and as it spun he knew the steel and rawhide handle would slap flawlessly into his palm as it had ten thousand times before. “I come here, with this, and find Krill?” He slipped it into its sheath without looking at either. “No time has passed. I just closed a door in Managua and opened one here. Young Peck’s not the mission. There is no mission. Or unfinished business is the mission. I am the mission. You need to go.”

  Gladys looked at him a few moments without judgment, like someone waiting for the simultaneous translation to catch up. Then she stuck the still unopened towelette in his face. “Here.”

  “What?”

  “Take it.”

  “Why?”

  “You need it more than I do, you’re a fucking hysteric.”

  The statement was so unexpected it pulled Ajax out of the trance he’d slipped into. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous?” She put the towelette back in her purse. “Listen to yourself! ‘I’m trapped in an eddy of time.’” For some reason while mocking him, she put her hands by her face and waved her fingers like whiskers, or like Kafka’s cockroach would its antennae. “You list all the actors in your little sci-fi story, but what about me? Horacio called me. The Pecks came to me. I took you out of Managua. And I am here now. Listo. En pie.”

  Upright and ready. It made him smile. It was an old saying from the old rebel days. No matter how dog tired, sick, or even wounded, when asked by a commander how you were, it was the only answer. It had become the slogan of an increasingly exhausted revolution.