by Marc Cameron
“Believe me, he will kill you and take the device,” Zamora said. “Rustam Daudov is a thug.”
“And what are you?” Pollard sneered.
Zamora scratched his chin, then ran the tip of his finger along the thin black line of his mustache. “As you say, I am the man who has your family. You would do well to remember that. Now be watchful. I will be there shortly.”
He ended the call as Monagas entered the coffee shop.
Zamora motioned for him to sit in the chair across from him. That was the thing about Monagas; he never assumed things. “I hope you have good news.”
“I am sorry, patrón,” Monagas sighed. “They say this weather will be here for some time. No aircraft are able to fly over the mountains for the Beni.” His eyes shifted back and forth around the small coffee shop and he leaned forward across the table. “I do have a way out, patrón, but it would be very, very dangerous.”
CHAPTER 49
In the valleys of the Andes, La Paz, Bolivia, was a city built upside down. The most desirable real estate was nestled at a more breathable nine thousand feet in the lowlands southwest of the tree-lined central thoroughfare known as the Prado. Much of the city sprawled along a deep trench with middle-class residents occupying condos near the Choqueyapu River. The less well to do clung to the steep mountains surrounding the city in makeshift brick houses. The poorest lived in the thin air of nearly fourteen thousand feet above sea level.
Quinn felt his ears pop for the third time as the rattling Ford radio-taxi turned back southeast on the Autopista and headed down into the city.
The cabdriver, a short Aymara Indian man with a colorful wool hat and tattered homespun coat, pointed to the south with an open hand. “If not for the clouds, you could see the three peaks of Illimani there. The guardian of La Paz.”
The man, who said his name was Lupe, never engaged in real conversation, piping up only when they passed a particular landmark or milepost. Quinn suspected he didn’t actually speak much English, but had memorized a few lines in order to ingratiate himself to tourists for bigger tips.
Quinn had the taxi drop them off a block above the Hotel Condeza at the bustling intersection of Santa Cruz and Linares. Lupe smiled broadly as Thibodaux paid him fifteen American dollars, twice the agreed-upon fare.
Low clouds sulked in the air, drifting between the red brick buildings. Barrel-chested men and stocky women wearing colorful, handwoven alpaca shawls against the drizzling rain sauntered along the crowded streets. Most wore bowler hats, tied to their heads with pieces of string. The smell of frying meat and roasted corn drifted with the mist and whiff of open sewers.
“I tell you one thing, cher,” Thibodaux panted as they jostled their way through the crowds of tourists and stall keepers. He clenched his eyes shut. “I am not a mountain man, that’s for sure.”
Bo, who seemed less affected by the altitude, pointed down the street, less than a hundred meters away. “There’s the hotel,” he said. “Should we go see if he’s there?”
Aleksandra tapped the small duffel slung over her shoulder where she carried her pistol. “Good idea,” she said.
“Now hold on a second,” Quinn said, pulling up short in the drizzling rain next to a stall selling what looked like dried baby dinosaurs. “Our goal is to follow him to the bomb. Not confront him yet.” Passersby spilled around him.
Aleksandra nodded. “That is true,” she said, but it was obvious she was trying to convince herself.
A wizened old woman, sitting behind what turned out to be a large pile of desiccated llama fetuses, piped up. “You need good luck.” Thinning gray braids hung from a weathered brown derby hat that sat sideways over her broad face, which was wrinkled and dark as a prune. A coca leaf was pressed to her sagging cheek like a piece of jewelry. She chewed on a wad of leaves as she spoke, sweeping a bony hand across the stacks of figurines, amulets, and dried animals that made up her wares. Like traders worldwide, her command of English was remarkable. “Everyone could use some help. I have the llamas to bless new buildings, Ekeko to bring you fortune, Pachamama for protection… ” Her rheumy eyes narrowed to look straight at Aleksandra. “You are on a quest, no?”
Thibodaux, who put a little more stock than he should in such notions, raised a surprised brow at the woman’s divination.
“Relax, Jacques,” Quinn whispered. “A bunch of turistas marching along, intent on something down the street. It’s not too much of a stretch to guess we’re on a quest.”
Thibodaux bit his bottom lip. “Take a look up there, beb.” He nodded toward a sign on the open front brick building where the old woman’s stall was tucked in among others selling similar wares. “Mercado de las Brujas,” he said as if proving a point. “The witches’ market.”
“I have the ingredients to capture the heart of a man.” The old women grinned at Aleksandra, showing the wad of coca against stained teeth. “But I see you have already captured one.” She cackled at Bo, who shot a startled glance at Quinn.
“That’s crazy,” he said, looking a little too guilty for Jericho’s taste.
“How about one of these?” Aleksandra picked up a clay figurine of a little man, apparently anxious to change the subject. The statue wore a traditional wool hat and his arms were laden with packages. It was no more than three inches tall, and a hole in its mouth held a full-size cigarette. “How much?” She shuffled through her pockets for her money.
“Ekeko,” the old woman said. “He will bring you good fortune.”
Aleksandra pulled her cell phone from her pocket along with her wallet. Quinn, who stood directly beside her, heard a nearly inaudible ping. She handed the woman her money and turned quickly toward the street, staring down at the phone.
“What was that?” Quinn moved closer.
The face of the phone showed a map where a blue dot pulsed on a road leading northeast out of the city.
“Zamora?” Thibodaux said as he and Bo crowded in to look at the phone as well.
“No.” Aleksandra shook her head. “Monagas. This signal is from the tracker I placed with Umarov at Zamora’s party. It was in a gold money clip. It was Monagas who killed the Chechen back in Miami and must have taken the clip as a trophy.” Aleksandra gave the half grin of a hunter. “His foolish habit will be his undoing.”
“We’ve been around Monagas for over a week. Why is the tracker only showing up now?” Thibodaux asked.
“The device is activated by body heat.” Aleksandra shrugged. “Perhaps he had it buried in his luggage and did not have it in his pocket until now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Quinn held out his hand for the phone. “May I see it?”
Aleksandra gave the phone to him and he showed it to the woman in the bowler hat, who sat smiling behind her stack of dried baby llamas. “Do you know what is in this part of the city?” he asked.
The old woman pulled a pair of cat’s-eye reading glasses from behind her table and slipped them on to study the phone.
“Ahhhh,” she said under her breath. “Very bad. This is very, very bad.”
“What?” Thibodaux’s mouth fell open. “Just go on ahead and tell us, will you?”
“This blue spot?” The old woman peered over the top of her bright red glasses. “This is what you seek?”
“It is.” Quinn gave her a twenty-dollar bill.
The woman took off her glasses and held them in a clenched fist. “The miners are marching on the new road, making it impassable today. The one you seek goes to El Camino de la Muerte.” She pointed to the northeast. “The Road of Death.”
CHAPTER 50
Quinn flagged down the first green and white radio cab he found that would hold them all. The driver was a ponytailed Aymara Indian named Leonardo who looked to be in his late teens. He confirmed that the easiest way to get across the Andes to Coroico and on to Rurrenabaque was shut down by a parade of striking indigenous silver miners trying to get the Bolivian government’s attention. Until the skies cleared, El Camino de
la Muerte, he said, was the only other way. He agreed to take them to Cumbre Pass, beyond the eastern edge of the city, where his cousin Adelmo had a four-wheel-drive van that could make the journey down the Bolivian Road of Death. Quinn wondered if everyone in South America had a cousin who ran a hotel, flew planes, or rented out cars.
Crammed in the middle between Jericho and Bo, Aleksandra kept watch on the pulsing blue dot on her phone. “We have to hurry,” she said, her voice breathless from tension and altitude. The heavy mist and lack of oxygen made everyone feel as though they were slowly drowning. “He’s still moving away.”
“My friend.” Thibodaux took a drink from his water bottle and looked across the front seat at the driver. “We are in a hurry. I will double your fare if you can pick up your speed.”
Leonardo grinned broadly and slammed his foot to the floorboard, throwing them all back in their seats. He drove with one hand while he spoke in animated Spanish on his cell phone. The car sped over cobblestone streets, climbing steadily upward thousands of feet, splashing through puddles and drenching pedestrians who trudged too close to the edge of the road. Rain spattered on the foggy windshield but did little to slow the boy down.
“I don’t want to be the pantywaist here,” Bo said, bracing his knees against the front seat to keep from being thrown completely on top of Aleksandra as the cab made a hard left. “But we don’t exactly need a run-in with the local polícia right now, considering our status in the country.”
Leonardo smiled over his shoulder. “Not to worry, amigo,” he said, with an apparent understanding of English far greater than that of their last driver. “My cousin Mateo is the captain of the traffic police. His men know my cab.”
* * *
Leonardo’s cousin Adelmo had the van ready to go by the time the cab came screeching to a stop high up on the barren mountainside in front of a terraced yard full of rusted vehicles. Chickens pecked in the mud, oblivious to the rain. A tawny billy goat peered through the mist from the long hood of an old AMC Javelin sitting on concrete blocks.
Not much older than Leonardo, Adelmo was more somber than his cousin with a curl of black hair hanging over expressive brown eyes. His English was not quite as good, but he was pleasant enough and willing to get them over the Road of Death. His services as a driver, along with a plate of piping-hot meat empanadas and chunos, a grayish frost-dried potato, came with the price of the vehicle rental.
“He has stopped,” Aleksandra said through clenched teeth, eyes glued to her phone. Her entire body seemed to hum with nervous energy. “If we hurry, we can catch him.”
Adelmo’s young wife, plump cheeked and pregnant, had given Jacques a small pamphlet on the Yungas Road, as the Camino de la Muerte was more formally known. It was written in Spanish, but the big Cajun’s French and Italian helped him pick through the descriptions as they drove.
“Did you know the American tourist books call this place we’re going WMDR — the world’s most dangerous road — on account of the little factoid that two or three hundred people plummet to their deaths there every year? It says here that we’ll be climbing to over fifteen thousand feet at La Cumbre Pass before we drop down to about four thousand feet.” He glanced up at Quinn, wagging his head. “But don’t you worry because the drop-offs are only eighteen hundred feet or so and we’ll have plenty of room since the shittin’ road is all of ten feet wide.” He turned to stare out the side window. The fog made it impossible to see the sheer cliffs that fell away from the mountain just inches outside the door. “Don’t be surprised if I use up a non-Bible curse word or two, l’ami.”
“We will be fine, señor,” Adelmo said, nodding to the clay statue of a big-breasted Pachamama, the Aymara earth goddess, on his dashboard. It bore a surprising resemblance to his wife.
Traffic grew thicker as they approached the pass, with cargo trucks and brightly painted buses known as col-lectivos inching along in a soggy parade to clog the ever-narrowing road ahead. Within another half mile they were at a complete standstill. Nothing but fog to the left and rivulets of muddy water gurgling down the rock face to their right.
“I don’t think anything has passed us from the other direction for quite a while,” Bo said, leaning out the window.
“Can we go around?” Quinn asked, pulling a wad of American bills out of his pocket. “It is important that we catch our friend.”
Adelmo took a deep breath, reached to touch the statue of Pachamama, then pulled his little van out of line and began to slog forward, past the line of glaring truck and bus drivers, up and over the pass.
Quinn kept an eye out as they drove past every vehicle.
“Do you see him yet?” Adelmo said, eyes glued to what he could see of the narrow road through the fog.
“Not yet,” Quinn said.
“He’s still ahead of us,” Aleksandra said from the back of the van where she got better reception from her satellite.
Well below the pass, Adelmo slowed as a truck driver wearing a North Face fleece jacket and traditional bowler hat ghosted through the fog outside his flatbed. Smoke from his clay pipe curled around his brown face. Adelmo apparently knew him and rolled down his window to shout a greeting. They spoke in a rapid-fire language Quinn guessed was their native Aymara. Adelmo’s young face grew grave as he listened to his friend.
“There is a mudslide ahead,” he said, pulling his head back inside. He switched off the engine and leaned back in his seat, settling in as if this was something he did all the time. “A road crew is there, but it will take two or three hours to clear.”
“I don’t like this,” Thibodaux said. “I jump out of airplanes and go toe-to-toe with whatever badass you want to shove my way, but you can have this road-of-death shit.”
“Oh, señor.” Adelmo opened his eyes, chuckling. “We are not yet on El Camino de la Muerte. That does not begin for five more kilometers at the town of Cota-pata.”
“Damn to hell!” Aleksandra hissed. She looked up, a dark frown creasing her face. “They made it around the slide. He is moving again!”
CHAPTER 51
Quinn stood beside Thibodaux under a drizzling rain along the edge of the pavement, a satellite phone pressed to his ear. What had been bare, skeletal rock from the Altiplano to Cumbre Pass was now covered by a lush skin of green cloud forest. Towering peaks vanished into the clouds in every direction, blocking the horizon and making it difficult to get a signal. He had to turn every now and again to stay connected.
Bo and Aleksandra had walked ahead a little, passing the line of trucks and buses to see if they could get a feel for how long the road would be blocked. It was eerily quiet but for the gurgle of newly formed streams and waterfalls that tumbled down through the foliage. Drivers and passengers alike dozed in their seats.
Palmer answered on the third try.
Quinn brought him up to speed quickly about Aleksandra’s tracker. Few details were as important as the fact that they were about to lose the only link they had to the bomb.
“He’s moving north,” Quinn said. “We believe he’s trying to get to a place called Rurrenabaque.”
“Dammit,” Palmer said. “It had to be Bolivia.”
“Sir?”
“Since Evo Morales shut down cooperation with drug enforcement, we’re pretty slim in the way of resources in that part of the world.”
Quinn could hear the click of a keyboard in the background and imagined Palmer sitting behind his expansive wooden desk in the study of his Virginia satellite office away from the White House. “I may have somebody,” Palmer said. “What kind of a vehicle are they in?”
“Not sure,” Quinn said.
“Okay,” Palmer sighed. “You realize you’re asking me to call a seldom-used asset and ask him to look for two Hispanic men coming into a town of eight thousand or so people who look just like them in a vehicle you can’t describe?”
“Bolivian police then?” Quinn offered. “Someone has to stop this guy before he dissolves into the jungle. Maybe
regular military.”
“That wouldn’t go well,” Palmer said. “In one scenario they kill Zamora and we are no closer to the bomb. In the other, they find the bomb and Bolivia suddenly becomes a nuclear power.”
“We are losing him, sir,” Quinn said. “Can you destroy the road? Box him in until we catch up?”
More keyboard clicks.
“The George Washington is off the coast of Brazil with the Fourth Fleet,” Palmer said. The line was silent for a long moment. “But that’s a no-go. They’re too far out to do you any good.”
Aleksandra came trotting back up the hill with Bo right behind her. He looked mortified at the thought of being beaten by a girl in a footrace. Their chests heaved under the flimsy clear plastic rain jackets Adelmo had given them.
Bo stopped beside Quinn, bent forward with his hands on his knees. “We found a way around,” he said between panting breaths.
“Gotta go,” Quinn said into the satellite phone.
“I’ll put our Bolivian contact on alert. Call back as soon as practical.”
“You have got to be shittin’ me,” Thibodaux said when Bo explained his plan. He shook the now dog-eared tourist pamphlet at Quinn for emphasis. “We’re talkin’ about the Road of Death here, beb.”
“He’ll soon be out of range.” Aleksandra looked up from her phone. Rain plastered red hair to her forehead and cheeks in thick locks. “I cannot see another way,” she said.
* * *
Bo ran back down the hill while Jericho and Aleksandra threw on fleece jackets and shoved their gear into Quinn’s daypack. Quinn sighed at the Spartan nature of it all — two pistols, an extra pair of socks for each of them, and the heavy Severance blade.
Bo and Thibodaux had the battered Yamaha 250 dirt bike off the back of a rusted bubble-topped Mercedes truck by the time Quinn and Aleksandra made it down to them. The driver stood at the side of the road, counting his surprise windfall. Adelmo stayed back with his van, unwilling to be a part of such foolishness.