by Jack Soren
“What? Don’t talk to me, man. We’re supposed to be trying to kill each other,” Lew said, though the idea of getting the fuck out of there and being able to let his aching arms drop was more than a little attractive. Right now they felt like lead weights and any moment he thought his shoulders were going to pop out of their sockets.
“We are. We’re just taking a little break,” the stranger said with a wink. Lew thought it was the most exhausting break he’d ever taken. The altitude wasn’t helping. Bogotá was a mile and a half above sea level, and despite how long Lew had been there, he still winded faster than anywhere he’d ever been. Luckily, most of his fights lasted less than a minute. So far this one had been going for almost fifteen. He noticed that aside from the wounds he came in with, his opponent not only wasn’t marked from their fight, he wasn’t even out of breath.
“What’s your plan?” Lew finally said. Something weird was happening. The more they fought, the less he wanted to hurt this guy. Probably just the booze.
“Who’s in the stable right now?”
“One or two guys hang back, usually. In the back, counting money or fixing wounded fighters.”
“Is there a back door?” he asked, swinging the clinched duo around every few seconds. Lew figured he didn’t want the crowd to get too restless.
“Yeah, why?” Lew asked, getting tired of just providing information.
“That’s our way out,” he said, indicating the stable door with his eyes.
“I don’t know if you noticed but there’s about fifty guys out here who might have something to say about that.”
“Leave that to me. Now, I’m going to cut you. Not much, just a nick. You go all roaring bull like you’ve been doing and come after me, keep swinging your machete, driving me back toward the door. Don’t stop for anything, just keep pounding on me. When I give you the signal, run into the stable.”
“What’s the signal?” Lew asked, actually thinking for a moment this might work.
“I figured I’d yell something like ‘Run into the stable.’ Not too complicated for you, is it?”
Lew brought a knee up, but the stranger twisted and blocked it.
“Two problems with your little plan. They’ll never buy it if I just drop my guard and let you cut me, and if we run into the barn there’s going to be a herd of pissed-off, armed gamblers right on our ass. Other than that, the plan’s perfect.”
“Let me worry about our six, you just run. And I didn’t say anything about dropping your guard, I just said I was going to cut you,” he said with a grin.
“Tell you what. If you can cut me, we’ll try this,” Lew said, realizing he didn’t have much choice. The crowd was getting pissed with their clinch and starting to throw things.
They pushed apart finally and circled each other again.
Then, moving so fast Lew had a hard time keeping his eye on him, the stranger did a somersault across the mud, coming to a crouch at Lew’s side for just a moment before he rolled away, coming back to his feet. It was so fast, Lew almost didn’t feel it. He reached down and touched his side, his fingers coming away slick and red.
“Son of a bitch,” Lew said, realizing this guy could have carved him up at any time. But there was no more time for wondering. Lew was a man of his word, even if that word was likely to get his head cut off and fed to a pen of pigs.
Lew roared, fire in his eyes, and charged. He brought strike after strike down, the stranger’s sword absorbing blow after blow. He drove him back farther and farther down the gauntlet, the crowd roaring with excitement. The closer to the stable they got, the more the crowd liked it.
“Now!” the guy yelled. And there was a moment that could have gone either way. A life-defining moment, for both of them. Lew could keep swinging, pretending to go along and then blindside the guy with his blade. Or he could go along with the plan. A moment later, Lew stopped swinging at him and ran toward the cool dark of the stable.
Out of the corner of his eye, Lew saw him raise his machete. For a moment he had a bad feeling about his decision, but then the guy slammed the blade into a rope running vertically up the huge door frame. Lew hadn’t even noticed the rope until now. He kept running, and when he was partway into the stable, the dim went dead black with a crash. He spun around and saw that the stable’s door had slammed down, the stranger running toward him. They didn’t have much time. The door was massive and would take some teamwork to get it open. With the fervor the crowd had been in, that would take some time to organize. But not much.
The stranger ran past Lew and kept going. Lew spun and ran after him.
“Come on!” he shouted when Lew sidestepped into the stall that had been his dressing room minutes ago. He grabbed his duster and slipped it on before heading back out.
“Seriously?” he said when he saw what Lew had done. “A coat?”
“This is a great fucking coat,” Lew said. “A lot of memories are in this coat.”
Just then one of Chico’s men emerged from a side room. It took him only a second to see what was happening. The stranger, obviously caught off guard, raised his machete, but the man grabbed it with one hand and pulled out a knife with the other. He was thrusting downward when a shot rang out. The bullet caught the man in the shoulder, the blade flying out of his hand. Lew fired again, hitting the wounded man in the forehead. He fell to the ground, dead. The stranger looked up at Lew.
“A lot of memories and one damn fine gun,” Lew said with a grin.
“Thanks,” he said. “Now, come on.”
They ran down the length of the stable and found the back door Lew had mentioned. Never slowing, Lew kicked the door open as they ran. The light wasn’t as bright now, the afternoon turning to dusk, but it still took them a second to survey the area.
A dirt road ran past the back of the stable, obviously a service road meant for trucks and horses. To the right the road wound up and then around a bend behind some shacks. To the left it shot straight down a steep incline that seemed to go on forever, but eventually met up with a paved road in the distance that looked like some kind of highway with almost no traffic. Straight across the road was nothing but jungle. This close to dusk, that way was a fool’s journey.
“Which way?” Lew asked.
“I have no idea,” the stranger said as the first man from the crowd came around the corner, bringing his shotgun to bear on them.
Lew fired twice, wood from the back of the stable exploding over the man’s head. The man dropped his shotgun and ran back around the corner. The stranger ran over and picked up the shotgun, cracking it open to check it—it wasn’t loaded. He tossed the useless shotgun to the ground and rejoined Lew.
“What do you mean you have no idea?” Lew shouted, eyeballing both him and the corner of the barn. “What happened to your big plan?”
“This was it. Get us away from the crowd and out the back door. End of plan.”
“Remind me never to disarm a bomb with you,” Lew said, looking at the wall of jungle in front of them.
“Forget it,” he said, and motioned down the hill. “We go that way.”
“Why?” Lew asked, though he joined him in a light jog as they headed down the road.
“We have no idea what’s around the bend back there. Unknown is bad. We like known. So we go this way. Besides, in this altitude, if you have to run, do it downhill.”
Lew had things he wanted to ask this guy, but they needed to conserve their energy for the run, so he just listened to the rhythm of their feet smacking the hard-packed earth.
They reached the pavement and stood on the side of the road bent over and panting, Lew more so than his new partner.
They’d almost caught their breath when a truck’s lights came over the hill. They flagged him down and the stranger convinced the driver to let them ride in the back of the open-topped cargo truck into downtown
Bogotá.
They walked around the back of the truck and the stranger hopped up with Lew’s help. He turned around and stuck out his hand to help Lew up. Lew looked at him for a moment but then put up his hands like the offer to help him up was a hold-up.
“Not me, gringo. I’m not done here, yet,” Lew said.
“What? What are you going to do, go back to fighting?”
“No, I think you pretty much put an end to my career on this circuit. Hey, don’t sweat it. It was time, anyways. You did me a favor. No, I . . . I just haven’t found what I’m looking for yet,” Lew said, looking off toward the mountains.
“In my experience, if a man gets too comfortable looking for something, he won’t recognize it when it finally shows up,” he said. Lew looked away but didn’t say anything. “Come on, what could it hurt. Let me treat you to a night of the good Bogotá on Uncle Sam’s nickel. Then if you still feel the death wish gnawing at you, I’ll get you a ride back in the morning.”
“Uncle Sam, huh?” Lew said.
“Am I telling you anything you didn’t already know?”
“Not really,” Lew said. He thought it over for a moment and then reached up and took his hand, but just to shake it.
“Name’s Lew,” he said.
“Jonathan,” the man in black said. Lew made no move to get in the truck.
“Later, Jonny. Don’t take any wood—”
A bullet zinged past Lew’s head. They looked up the hill and saw a group of about forty men running toward them full-tilt. Another couple of wild shots screamed over their heads.
Lew and Jonathan exchanged the realization, eyes wide. Jonathan pulled and Lew came flying into the back of the already moving truck.
JONATHAN AND LEW leaned back in their chairs on the patio of the Cielo Jardin restaurant in the north end of Bogotá, their stomachs full of red snapper and spicy corn and potato soup. They’d ridden in the truck as far as the farmer would take them, which happened to be far enough away from the angry mob. They walked for a few miles before they came to a phone. Jonathan made a call, spoke a code, and twenty minutes later a car showed up. The window whirred down and an envelope was passed out before the window whirred back up and the car drove off. Inside the envelope was a passport, keys for a safe house, and a credit card paid by the government. Jonathan tried not to enjoy the stunned look on his new companion’s face too much. They grabbed a taxi, and fifty thousand pesos later, they were taking a spot on the restaurant’s patio.
It was a beautiful night; the sky was clear and the light breeze was kept off them by the long sheets that hung from the top of the patio’s pergola, tied off on the railing that ran around the serving area. With each gust the white sheets snapped full and arched, looking more like a ship’s sail.
The dinner and the night were on Jonathan. Or, on Jonathan’s credit card, which his agency paid. It was the last meal he’d ever have at their expense. He was done with the intrigue.
“So how long were you in?” Jonathan asked before taking another pull on his bottle of Aguila.
“Still shows?” Lew asked, lighting a cigar to go with the whiskey he was drinking. Jonathan had never seen anyone who could hold his liquor like this guy. He was pretty sure Lew was just a lost soul, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone was placed in his life to test him.
“Mostly in the way you fight. You don’t pick that up on the street,” Jonathan said. Lew took a long draw of smoke and blew it up into the air over the table, the wind quickly dissipating the plumes.
“Ten years. Or would have been ten years.” Lew didn’t expand on that.
“What made you quit?”
“How do you know I quit? Maybe I got drummed out or I’m AWOL. You never can tell,” Lew said with a grin and a wink.
“I can. Usually,” Jonathan said. He had to admit, Lew was hard to read, but he didn’t get the sense he failed at much he set his mind to. “And you didn’t answer the question.”
“I guess I owe you that much for getting me out of there. Not sure why I didn’t leave on my own,” Lew said, sounding disappointed in himself. Jonathan knew how that could happen. Sometimes you get into spots that you think you deserve, whether it’s true or not.
Once Lew’s lips loosened up, they just kept on going. He obviously felt a kinship of some sort with Jonathan, but Jonathan got the sense that Lew had been waiting for a while to tell his story. To anyone.
He’d gone into the military to change the world. To do some good and help people. And he’d spent all ten years doing exactly the opposite. After what he went through in Kuwait, all to preserve the flow of oil to drag racers in the States, Lew had had enough.
“I took a half pension and walked away,” Lew said. “Haven’t looked back since,” he said, raising his glass before downing it. Jonathan knew that wasn’t true.
“You know what I think? I think you put so much of yourself into the army that when you left you didn’t even know who you were anymore. I mean, you said, ‘If I’m not a soldier, who the hell am I?’ And you’ve been wandering around ever since trying to find the answer. Mostly in the bottom of a bottle or at the end of someone’s fist,” Jonathan said, watching Lew’s expression slip from jovial to stoic.
“Getting kinda personal there, Jonny,” Lew said. He wasn’t angry, he just seemed unimpressed. “Maybe I should tell you what I think of you.”
“Maybe you should,” Jonathan said. Sometimes listening to someone talk told you more about him than a profile could.
“All right,” Lew said, his grin returning. Jonathan knew his type. If you made it a game, he was up for almost anything. “Let’s see. You’re obviously a spook. You’re not with the major agencies, at least not directly. You’re on your own. And you like it that way. But I’m thinking you’re about as happy with your career as I was.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Those melon heads that grabbed you and brought you to Bogotá. There’s a sheen on you that says if you really were on your game, no way they would have gotten you. Or survived to transport you. You let them take you. You wanted to see what adventure they took you on. You were so bored, anything else was better. Especially if there was some risk involved. Which landed you in my little sandbox.”
“Interesting theory,” Jonathan said, hiding his amazement at Lew’s intuitiveness. This guy is way smarter than he looks.
The next few hours were filled with more such discussions; some opinion and some confessional. And lots of alcohol. Jonathan told Lew that he did indeed feel the same way. He’d become a spy to fight the supposed evils in the world. But more often than not, he watched the powerful prevail while the weak suffered.
The restaurant owner finally got them to leave so he could close by giving them each a bottle of whiskey to take with them. With no destination and enjoying their newfound friendship too much, they wandered the streets of northern Bogotá, alternately singing and laughing.
Stopping in an alley to relieve themselves, Jonathan fell backward over some garbage cans while trying to do up his fly.
“Jeshus, you okay?” Jonathan said from the ground.
“Yeah, I’m fine. You I’m not so sure about,” Lew said, bending over to help him up. Instead, Jonathan ended up pulling Lew onto the ground with him. They laughed and sat up against the alley wall.
They stared at the night for a while. Their wild ride was over and they knew it. Pretty soon they’d fall asleep or pass out, and tomorrow they’d wake up to a world of hurt and unknowns.
“You know my only regret? Well, my recent regret,” Jonathan said.
“You weren’t man enough to join the army?”
“Ha-ha. No, seriously. When I was in Brazil I was doing a handoff to this fat cat in the government. Guy had a house the size of my old high school. And you could tell by the way he walked around he didn’t think anything could
hurt him. He was completely untouchable. But that wasn’t even enough for him. After the handoff, he had to march me around and show me all his shit. Stuff he’d had stolen for him from all over the world. He was one of these private collectors. Art, antiq . . . antiq . . . old expensive shit, books—you name it.
“He shows me this secret room he’s got in the basement where he keeps his best stuff. Stuff that should be in museums. And all I keep thinking is why do you have this stuff if you keep it locked away in a room in your basement? What’s the point, you know?”
“Yeah. That’s your regret?”
“No, no. In this room, he has this one painting. I kid you not, a fucking van Gogh. He had some guy steal it for him years ago and replace it with a copy he had made. I mean, the museum has been showing this fake to people for years and they don’t even know it. All these people who spent their tiny amount of vacation time to go see this work of art, this thing of beauty, and they’ve been staring at a fake. It just made me mad.”
“I hear ya,” Lew said.
“My regret is that I didn’t have the balls to lay him out and take the painting back to the museum where it belongs.”
“So why don’t we steal it?”
“Yeah, right. We should,” Jonathan said, laughing. He looked at Lew’s face and saw he wasn’t kidding. “Are you serious? We can’t do that.”
“Why not? Think about it. You’re as pissed as I am at how the world works. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and it ain’t ever changing. And in a few days we’re going to go our separate ways and you know as well as I do we’re going to either end up dead or doing the same old shit we were doing before. But this could be our chance. Our chance to do one thing right. Our chance to feel good about something.”
“Yeah, but—”
“You gonna tell me you’ve never stolen anything as part of an op?”
“No, that’s not the point.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“The point is . . . the point is . . .” Jonathan trailed off and thought about it. Soon he was smiling. “The point is it would feel fucking great.”