I jerked my head back, letting the blood drain away. I looked again, making sure that my fatigue wasn’t making me see things that weren’t there. There they were, right where I’d seen them before. I tried to find the main detonator but couldn’t see that far under the deck. I had no idea if it was time-triggered or set off by hand. Neither option made me feel any better.
“How did you find this?”
Mariposa shrugged. “I get bored, and when I get bored, I get curious. What is it, John? Drugs? Why are those wires attached to drugs?”
I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her back into the bedroom. “We have to get off this boat.”
“But I can’t. The Major.”
“Come on.” We went back through the main salon, up onto the deck and down the main corridor to the stern, where the small boats and waiting water taxis bobbed on the chop. I told Mariposa, “You hail one of the water taxis, and get as far away from this yacht as possible.”
“John, what was that? Why are you doing this?”
“It’s explosives, Mari. There’s no time to waste. We have to move.”
She grabbed my sleeve. “Where are you going?”
“To find the captain. We need to evacuate the boat. You go, you get into one of those water taxis and get away as far and as fast as you can.”
Mariposa gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and a brief hug, her arms around my neck, and when we broke I saw that everyone on the aft deck was staring at us—Ricardo, couples by the rail, waiters, the crew, and, most significantly, the Major. The earth seemed to hold its breath and the only movement was the Major’s hand as it went inside his jacket and withdrew a stainless-steel pistol.
“You! I should have known you would follow us here. And now you have the audacity to assault my wife and dishonor me in front of the General’s guests.”
“Major, this is not what it looks like.”
Mariposa said, “We have to get off this boat.”
The Major didn’t hear either of us. The Major was deaf to everything but the roar of his wounded pride. “This will be the last time you bring a stain to my family name. Prepare yourself!”
He aimed the pistol, one-handed, and the bore seemed to swallow me up.
“Major,” I said, as calmly as I could, “there is no time for this. The entire deck beneath us is packed with plastic explosives.”
A murmur ran through the crowd.
“It could go off at any time,” I said, keeping my voice steady, not wanting to cause a panic. I turned to the circle of party guests. “Please, I need all of you to abandon ship. I need you to do it now.”
The guests began to back away.
“Stop!” the Major hollered. And, he being the man with the gun, the group stopped. All but one man. He kept moving. I was afraid to turn my head to see who it was.
“You stay where you are,” the Major shouted.
Then I heard Phil say, his voice soothing, “Major, you have to put the gun away.”
“I am going to kill him!”
“I don’t have any problem with that, Major, but not here. Think of the General’s guests. Think of the women.”
The Major’s pistol did not waver. “Mariposa,” he said, “come to me.”
Mariposa left me and went to stand beside her husband. She said many things to him, too low for me to hear, and in the surrounding silence it sounded as if she were reciting the rosary and each revealed mystery would bring us closer to Jesus.
“Now, sir,” the Major said, “it is time for you to say your prayers.”
Another man, a waiter, moved away from the bar where he’d been standing, his dark eyes glittering with purpose. When he reached the center of the deck he held high a blinking detonator, his thumb on the plunger. His hand shook.
Ricardo pulled the MP-5 out from under his jacket and began to circle the waiter.
The waiter pushed the detonator forward as if it were a religious icon, meant for holding back evil in all its forms, even large tuxedoed men with automatic weapons. Ricardo stopped moving.
Cooper stepped from the crowd, his hands up and open, showing the waiter that he had no weapon. The waiter turned to look at Cooper, then around at the rest of us, his eyes huge, and I knew he wasn’t seeing anything beyond his own bright panic. Cooper took another step toward him and the waiter raised the detonator high over his head. “Stop,” he said, and Coop stopped.
The Major didn’t know what to do next, whether to shoot me, or bring his full attention to this waiter. Being a man of action, he decided to deal with the threat to his person before he dealt with the threat to his honor. “You, what do you think you are doing?” The Major pointed his pistol at the waiter. “I order you to put that down.”
Ricardo raised his rifle and the click as he removed the safety could be heard across the bay.
The waiter looked very scared now. His underarms were soaked with sweat and his hair was plastered to his forehead. His eyes darted from the Major to Cooper. Coop was moving slowly toward the waiter, his voice soft with calming words I couldn’t hear.
I felt Phil at my side. He said, “This doesn’t look good, Harp.”
“Where did you two come from?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“You think there’ll be a later?”
“Are you ready?”
“Ready? Ready for what?”
Cooper moved closer to the waiter, his hand out. He was a few feet from the boy. The Major continued to aim his pistol, but the muzzle was shaking. Ricardo stepped closer, tightening the circle.
“We’re going over the side,” Phil said. And then he tossed me, one-handed, over the rail. I was airborne, and then plunged into darkness. Behind me, the world shook and the concussion ripped through the water like a liquid hammer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I was underwater and didn’t know which way was up. I thought I was going the right way, the only way, until I saw bubbles drift past me and I turned and saw the light. The surface glowed with fire.
I turned around and kicked up and into air that was brighter than daylight. Gasoline burned in pools on the surface. Smoking parts of the General’s yacht, and bloody pieces of the General’s guests, bobbed all around me.
I heard shouts above the fire’s blistering howl. I added my own voice to the chaos, calling for Phil, and Cooper, and Mariposa. I swam to each rounded back and turned each one over, searching for a friend, searching for a partner, searching for life in a stranger’s eyes.
I found Mariposa. Her right arm had been torn away, and the back of her head was stripped to the bone, blackened by the blast. I knew it was Mariposa by her wedding ring and her eyes, once again brown, the green contacts gone along with the spark.
I found the Major next. He looked surprised, but other than that, I couldn’t see any wounds or burns. I pressed my palm to his chest to check for a heartbeat and in horror I watched my hand sink up to the wrist. Blood blossomed across his shirtfront.
“Harp?”
I heard his voice before I saw him. “Here!” I looked among the shapes for a hand, a face, a movement.
“Harp?”
I swam in a circle, searching among the flames and debris for the voice. I saw him, twenty yards away, and swam toward him, dodging bodies, burning oil, and wood. I heard more shouts now, shouts of rescuers, and in the distance, sirens and the whoop of an alarm.
When I reached him he was floating on his back, his face barely above the surface. “Phil? Are you hurt?” I held him up. He was breathing. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t looking at anything. “Where are you hurt?”
Phil’s lips moved and I put my ear close to his mouth. He said, “Cooper?”
“I can’t find him.”
“Find him,” Phil said.
“I’ve got to get you to shore,” I said.
“Find him!”
I looked up at what was left of the General’s yacht. The aft deck was gone; the rear half of the yacht’s superstructure, includ
ing the wheelhouse, had been ripped away. The foredeck was littered with the dead, and stunned, wounded people pulling themselves along on bloodied hands, wandering blindly, or lying still, calling for help. The water near the bow was full of survivors who had been blown free. Those lucky few were treading water around the floating dead.
“He was too close, Phil. There’s no way. He was too close.”
Phil floated, my hand under his back, holding him up. He was silent for so long I thought I’d lost him, then he said, “Get me the fuck out of here.”
I grabbed his collar and swam for land, which was the breakwater, a thin spit of concrete and rocks stretched hundreds of yards into the harbor. Searchlights from rescue ships swept the oily water, picking up sadness all around.
I pulled Phil onto the sand and let him lie quiet for a long time. Phil said, “I think I’m okay now.” He tried to sit up, but couldn’t. “Or maybe not,” he said. “I think maybe it’s my ribs.”
“You stay here. I’ll go get help.”
“No, you’ll have to carry me out.”
“If your ribs are broken, you could puncture a lung.” I shook my head. “No, Phil, I’m going for help.”
He gripped my shirt and said, “I want them to think we’re dead. If you leave me here and they find me, how long do you think I’ll last?”
“Okay, okay.” I helped Phil to his feet. He draped his arm over my shoulder and we began the slow, painful trip inland.
The breakwater is not an easy place to walk, even when healthy. It’s barely twenty feet wide and constructed of concrete blocks as big as summerhouses, tossed like dice along the gravel. To get back to land we had to climb up and around these blocks, planting each foot carefully. If Phil fell off, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get him back up by myself.
The gravel bed was littered with broken bottles, condoms, and crack vials. “A great place to get high,” Phil said. “Remind me to come out here on my day off.”
I helped him up the slope of one block and at the top I looked to see how far we had yet to go. It looked like we were walking to the far end of the earth.
Thirty minutes later we were making our way past concrete gun emplacements, abandoned about the time Americans discovered Diz and Bird and bop, a better time for everyone, even musicians. “Where are we?”
“It’s France Field,” Phil said. “No one’s used it since World War Two.”
“The last good time America ever had.”
“You’re a funny guy, Harp. If I laugh any harder, I think it’ll kill me.”
There was a group of teenagers, all standing, watching the fire in the harbor. When they saw us staggering toward them, wet and bleeding, they parted to let us pass.
“¿Quién tiene un automóvil?” I said.
“Christ, Harper, are you speaking Spanish?”
“Trying,” I said.
One boy came forward and took Phil’s other side. “Venga,” he said, and helped Phil into the back of a Chevy Vega.
“Gracias.”
The boy spoke to me, rapidly, and I told him, “Despacio, despacio, por favor.”
Phil croaked from the shadows of the Vega. “He’s saying he’ll take us to the hospital.”
“No, no,” I said, and gave him an address. The boy hesitated until Phil pulled a roll of wet bills out of his pocket. The boy nodded and got behind the wheel.
* * *
Miss Turando helped Phil remove his shirt. He grunted and, for Phil, that meant he was in serious pain.
She listened to Phil’s lungs, her fingers gently probing his ribs. Removing the stethoscope, she said, “There’s no pneumothorax, which is good. That means the lungs haven’t been punctured. I can’t be sure without an X ray, of course, but I believe three ribs have been fractured.”
“So, you tape them up and he’ll be good to go?”
Miss Turando smiled and said, “He’s good to go now. We found that a rib belt only inhibited breathing and encouraged pneumonia. Now we advise the patient to breathe deeply and stay as active as possible, given the pain. I believe your friend will pull through just fine.”
“Phil, how you doing?”
“I am so fine,” he said.
“I’ve given him some Percocet.”
We put Phil in Miss Turando’s Mercedes and headed back toward La Boca.
“I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done,” I said.
Miss Turando kept her attention on the road. “I have many visitors, Mr. Harper, and one of them is a Colombian. He’s a very superstitious man who tells me things he shouldn’t.”
Miss Turando looked at me and I saw sorrow in her eyes. “You need to know something, Mr. Harper. When you were here before?”
“With Marilyn.”
“Yes. She paid me to tell you to leave the country. She tried to save your life. I know you think otherwise, but she is trying to help you. She cares for you, I know.”
Miss Turando dropped us off a mile from the hotel gate. Before she drove away she said, “You’ll do the right thing, Mr. Harper.”
“How will I know what that is?”
“You’ll know,” she said.
I thanked her again. When she was gone, Phil, still flying on Percocet, said, “If you hadn’t been in a such a hurry, I mighta got some of that. You know what they say about nurses.”
“Yeah,” I said, “they marry doctors.”
Phil was hanging on to me, looking up into the dark trees, and said, “What are we doing here? I thought you had the names of the cells.”
I patted the CD in my pocket, the CD Mariposa had given me, and said, “I want the list of the money men, too, and anything that’ll help us convince the authorities we’re not hallucinating. There’s also the name of a goat fucker.”
“A goat fucker?”
“That’s just what the Colonel called him. He’s a partner in all this, and if we don’t find out who he is, he’ll slip away and neither one of us will be safe, I know that.”
“Okay, Harp, from here on in, you’re driving. I’m just along for the ride.”
I helped Phil through the jungle and around the hotel by way of the firing range. The going was slow and there were several places where Phil stumbled and fell and I had to lift him up.
At the edge of the treeline I stopped to let Phil rest. Not a single light burned in the hotel and it looked as inviting as a prison in the pale light of the quarter moon. We crossed the range, crept through the garden and up into the lobby. I saw the glow of a computer screen in the office. Sitting in front of the screen was Eubanks, his headphones playing loud music, the heavy bass buzzing around the quiet office. I touched his shoulder but Eubanks, the little clerk, wouldn’t be hearing any music other than the celestial choir. Eubanks was dead. I felt for a pulse in his neck, and he was warm to the touch. That meant it hadn’t been long since someone, obviously not a music lover, had come up behind him and put a .22 bullet just behind his right ear.
I opened Kelly’s office and found it empty. Phil went through his desk as I printed out the list of the operation’s financial backers. Phil found nothing more interesting than Field Manual 5–13, the army’s catalog of homemade booby traps, fun for the whole family. That caused us to search everything with a lot more care.
The Colonel’s office was dark, and the door was ajar. Phil pushed it open and I jumped, the shock and surprise so intense I tasted the electrical juice along my jaw. There, sitting at his desk, was the Colonel. He looked sadly surprised that his long career had ended this way. He, too, sported a new .22-caliber hole, this one right in the middle of his forehead.
“They’re taking everyone out, down to the last man,” Phil said.
Phil needed help up the stairs. He took one at a time, just as he had the night I’d met him.
As we made the slow climb I asked him how he and Coop had found me on the yacht.
“The party was no secret. We bribed the caterer to get me on the staff and Coop found an invitation in a guy’s
pocket.”
“Was the guy alive?”
“Sleeping,” Phil said. “So, what do we do now?”
“Get all this to my boss. We need somebody who swings a bigger hammer in this fight.”
“What about Kris?”
“Kris is gone, Phil. Kelly put her on a plane for the States this morning. He told me I was a corrupting influence.”
“Well, the old man’s right about some things,” Phil said, and tried to laugh but each jerk of his diaphragm shoved a hot blade of fire between his ribs.
In the dim light I could see his face was wet and I was surprised. He played such a tough guy, I assumed he was immune to physical pain, and way beyond tears. “Are you okay, Phil? You want to sit a while?”
“No,” he said, and wiped his cheeks with the back of his fist. “I was just thinking about Coop.”
“I know,” I said. “What’s that you always tell me? It don’t mean shit?”
“Yeah, well, this time it does, Harp.”
“All we can do is make the fuckers pay,” I said.
“Then let’s see what Kelly has hidden away in his apartment,” Phil said.
“I was thinking the same thing.”
At Kelly’s door Phil said, “Work your magic, Monkeyman.”
“I can’t. I lost my picks in the harbor.”
“Then we’ll have to use my method. Go get a tire iron.”
I ran down the steps, eased through the shadows past Eubanks again, and retrieved the tire iron from the parking lot. Back on the second floor, I did as Phil told me.
“Now, stick it here, and separate the door from the frame.”
The gap between the door and the frame widened as I leveraged the tire iron. The wood began to crumble and snap.
“A little more,” Phil said.
I pushed harder and looked in the space, trying to see how far I had to go for the bolt to clear. I stopped when I saw that there was no bolt. I pulled out the tire iron.
Beneath a Panamanian Moon Page 22