I was in the cargo hold and couldn’t see what the pilot was seeing. He said it in such a flat, indifferent tone, I doubted the seriousness.
The man was hard to read. When we lifted off from the cattle ranch, I had asked if he was going to use conventional lights or night-vision gear to land. It was dark by that time. He had replied, “Neither. I’ve landed in that field at least five times. Why would I want to see it again?”
Pilots.
Rivera’s camp was farther than I remembered. We were in the air more than an hour. I sat alone near the open door as we flew over jungle, the forest canopy awash in mist. Occasionally, I saw pockets of light: isolated villages, fires burning, the night strongholds of rural people linked by darkness, strung like pearls, bright and incremental, from a thousand feet.
Ahead, a half-moon was rising, white as hoarfrost in the tropic night. Its surface was pocked by geologic cataclysm and a wisp of earth shadow.
At a hundred twenty knots, there was the illusion that the moon was pulling us as if we were waterborne, suctioned by tide ever deeper into darkness. The thrumming of helicopter blades echoed in the lunar silence. The silence allowed me to think, to visualize.
I’d been to this camp before, but Rivera had drawn a rough map, anyway, and I memorized it.
It also gave me time to assemble, then dry-fire the weapons the president had unexpectedly provided—they were in the boxes Vue had loaded onto the plane. There were five to choose from: a rifle, two handguns, a shotgun, and a submachine gun.
I selected two: a Russian-made sniper rifle with sound arrester and a pistol. Both had been fitted with infrared sights. Put the red dot on your target, squeeze the trigger.
I was tempted to select a second pistol that was also Russian made—a rare PSS silent pistol, used by KGB assassins. It was palm-sized and used special ammunition that, when fired, was no louder then the click of its own trigger.
Where had Wilson found a KGB silent pistol?
But it was a specialty piece and held only three rounds, so I left it with Rivera and Wilson. I was comfortable with the weapons I selected.
With chambers empty, I fired them over and over as we flew southeast. I worked the slide and bolts until my fingers were intimate. I loaded the magazines, learning the subtleties of their feeder springs.
The rifle had a Startron scope, which I had used before. The occasion was made necessary by two former KGB agents who aspired to be salesmen.
When I touched the scope’s power switch, the jungle below was transformed into green daylight, minutely detailed. Except for the iridescent glow and the slight whirring sound, we might have been flying at midday.
I adjusted the focus and experimented with the scope’s windage and elevation knobs. With the scope off, I activated the laser sight and aimed at the jungle. A red dot kept pace beneath us, sliding over treetops.
For each weapon, there was high-tech ammunition. Prefragmented bullets: maximum stopping power; no ricochet.
I also had a knife, the badek I’d taken from the bearded killer. And I had written instructions from the president, sealed in an envelope.
He had told me what was expected of me tomorrow in Panama. Wilson had been stationed there as a Navy pilot, he knew the area well and made suggestions about what to look for and where to position myself. He jotted a few key words, he said, so I wouldn’t forget.
The man really was good at details.
ONE OF RIVERA’S MEN WAS SITTING FORWARD, NEXT TO the pilot. The general had insisted. His name was Lucius. He was twentysomething and humorless. Lucius had a fuck-you-kill-them-all attitude. It matched my mood perfectly.
Rivera’s men were notoriously loyal. I was delighted with the general’s choice.
The helicopter’s pilot didn’t introduce himself—not unusual in Central America when circumstances are questionable. He spoke Spanish with an Israeli accent and English with a Mississippi accent. So when he said “Fire!” it came out “Fah-er!,” sounding like a Jackson door gunner I’d once flown with.
That’s why I had my hand on the pistol when he elaborated: “Up ahead. There’s something on fire.”
The chopper’s cargo area was lighted with overhead red bulbs. I secured my weapons and ducked forward. I put a hand on the right seat, steadying myself, as we tilted in descent. Ahead, I saw a petroleum blaze, black smoke boiling starward.
We angled lower, accelerating. I felt the temperature drop as we traced the course of a river, the quarry scent of water fresh in the cabin. But then there was heat and the smell of combusting rubber.
“Helicopter crash?” I was thinking of Danson.
“No, diesel doesn’t burn like that. That’s gas.” As we got closer, the pilot said, “Yeah. It’s a car.”
I whispered, “Christ.”
Rivera had told me the only vehicle that should be at the farm was the Land Rover that Tomlinson and Vue had driven from Nicaragua.
“If you spot any vehicle larger than a mule,” he had said, “expect trouble.”
There was a hacienda now visible and we buzzed it doing a hundred knots at treetop level. As we passed, the cockpit jolted unexpectedly and the pilot shouted “Shit” in Spanish, a word that has an ironic, musical sound.
“What’s wrong?” I thought maybe the vehicle had exploded beneath us.
“Some pendejo is down there shooting!”
There was a sound of a hammer hitting aluminum, three times fast, and the helicopter jolted again.
“Hold on!”
We banked into a climb so steep that I nearly went skidding out the open doors.
Clinging to the pilot’s chair, I could look straight down and see an SUV burning. It was the Land Rover.
A safe distance away, there was also the shape of a pickup truck. Rivera’s camp had visitors.
Yes, expect trouble.
WHEN I TOLD THE PILOT TO LAND, HE DIDN’T EVEN turn to look. “When I’m being shot at? Fuck you, I’m not getting paid enough.” He began to bank west, saying, “We’ll be back in Panama City in time for drinks at the Elks Club.”
In Spanish, I said to the twenty-year-old curmudgeon Lucius, “Order him to land. General Rivera will hear of this.”
Lucius was wearing a special forces boonie hat and tiger-striped camo. He had unbuckled the seat belt, grabbed his assault rifle, and was facing the open cargo door ready to return fire—reassuring.
But he surprised me, saying, “I don’t care what you tell Rivera. I would like to put a bullet in those culos, take their money and necklaces. But if the pilot chooses not to land, that is his decision. The old fool doesn’t frighten me.”
He was speaking of the general.
I was no longer reassured.
“I am asking for your help. There are friends of mine down there.”
“Why should I care about your friends? What are they to me?”
Lucius’s tough-guy act, I realized, was an act. He sounded relieved.
I returned my attention to the pilot. “Cut me loose. After that, I don’t care what you do. Put us on the ground long enough for me to bail and you’ve done your job.”
We were now climbing as we turned. “No way. We’ve taken, what, at least ten rounds? My advice to you is, get your ass back to the cargo hold where you belong and shut the fuck up.”
These were Rivera’s men? In Nicaragua, I had watched his men walk into fire following the general on horseback. Rivera had fallen further than I realized.
The .45 caliber pistol was in a holster on my belt. I put my hand on it as I asked Lucius, “Is the pilot in command or are you in command?”
Lucius gave me a look of disgust. “There is no one in command. We are here because we get paid.”
I was losing patience. “My friends are in trouble. Please tell the pilot to land.”
Lucius tilted the barrel of his M16 toward me—a threat. “The important thing, yanqui, is that you are not in command. If the pilot has decided we are returning to Panama City for drinks at the Elks C
lub, then that is what we will do. The pilot gave you an order. Move your culo—”
I was watching the helicopter’s altimeter. We were at three hundred feet. I didn’t let Lucius finish. With my left hand, I reached as if to touch the pilot’s shoulder. But then I turned my palm outward and grabbed the barrel of the assault rifle and yanked it from his hands.
I had the pistol drawn. I jammed the barrel into the back of the pilot’s neck as I said to Lucius, “Don’t point.”
I tossed the assault rifle out the open door.
“You idiot cabrone!”
“You want to go after it?” I shoved the pistol barrel hard into the soft spot beneath the pilot’s skull. “Drop us down to a hundred feet.”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll kill him if I throw him out from here.”
“You’re bluffing.”
Yes, I was bluffing, but also watching as Lucius unsnapped his holster. I swung the pistol toward his face, hoping the little red laser dot would blind him and also scare him. Lucius shaded his eyes with his left hand as he pulled the gun with his right.
“Don’t do it!”
He wouldn’t stop. As Lucius lifted the gun toward me, I put the pulsing red dot on his boot and fired.
“Mother of God!” The gun spun from his hand as he fell against the chopper’s controls clutching his foot. The helicopter rocked, began to climb, and nearly stalled.
The gunshot was so loud that, for a moment, I thought the slug had caromed off the deck and hit me in the temple. My ears were ringing.
As the pilot struggled to regain control, I reached and dragged Lucius into the aisle.
“You’re insane, man. You’re gonna kill us!”
I stuck the pistol against his neck again. “Insanity’s for amateurs. Do exactly what I tell you to do. Understand?”
Lucius was still screaming, trying to get his boot off.
“Okay! But keep that kid away from the controls. Christ, he’s getting blood all over everything.”
I told the pilot to do three touch-and-goes—brief landings, each with only a few seconds on the ground.
“Circle the hacienda, but stay a couple hundred meters away.”
There were men with weapons near the burning Land Rover. I hoped to confuse them. At which spot had the helicopter off-loaded attackers?
The third time we touched down, I slipped off the landing skids onto the ground. I kept the pistol pointed at the pilot. He gave me the finger as the helicopter lifted away.
21
Fifty yards from the burning Land Rover, I saw why I hadn’t been confronted as I approached the adobe ranch house, with its garden corrals, and horses grazing in the outfield of Rivera’s homemade baseball diamond.
Shana Waters had the full attention of the men sent to assassinate Kal Wilson. Three of the men, anyway.
Maybe there were others out there in the darkness, decoyed to the helicopter’s first or second landing spots. Or inside the house, where another fire was burning, judging from the strobing windows.
But I doubted it.
The men recognized Shana. It was in the familiar, leering way they said her name: Shaaa-nah!
It was not unexpected. People in remote villages worldwide who five years ago didn’t have telephones now watch satellite television by the light of cooking fires, indifferent to the diesel hammering of a generator.
An American TV star alone in the jungle? A fantasy opportunity they were not going to miss.
Or maybe the men had already gotten to her and were back again. The expensive blouse that Rivera had found fascinating was torn at the shoulder and her hair was a mess. She’d been carrying a backpack and its contents were scattered on the ground.
But the woman was not yielding without a fight.
Waters had her back to the burning car, holding a pitchfork. It was three-tonged, the kind used for lobbing hay to cattle. As the men circled, she jabbed the pitchfork at them. Each time she lunged, the men dodged out of danger, laughing and chanting her name. Shaaa-nah!
When they laughed, she swore. The woman had a New Yorker’s command of profanity.
It only made them laugh harder, and they conversed among themselves in languages I’d heard recently—Halloween night; the men who paddled to Ligarto Island to kill Kal Wilson.
Indonesian and Arabic.
These weren’t the same men, but, like the others, all three had automatic rifles slung over they shoulders. They’d come to kill.
Had they?
I’d hoped to hear Tomlinson’s voice call from the house. Or Vue. Instead, there was only the snap of flames as the SUV’s interior and tires burned. And the leering laughter of the men as they taunted the famous broadcaster.
But the woman was tiring. Pack behavior is choreographed to exhaust prey, not overpower it. It is the saddest dance in nature. Shana’s eyes were glassy; her slacks mud-stained . . . or bloodstained.
She was nearly done. The men knew it. They had not shot her for a reason.
The wind stirred . . . then shifted.
I was crouched, watching from the shadows, but then stood taller, testing with my nose. The garbage-dump smell of burning rubber was replaced, for a moment, by the scent of burning meat.
The stink of scorched adipose tissue is distinctive. The stink was coming from the open windows of the house.
I looked from the house, to the men.
I, too, was carrying weapons. I holstered my pistol, slipped the rifle off my shoulder, and slammed the bolt back, shucking a round into the chamber.
Certain sounds are also distinctive.
The laughter stopped. The men turned to look. So did Shana Waters.
I drew the pistol and walked toward the fire.
I was holding the rifle at waist level in my left hand, the pistol in my right.
IN ENGLISH, I SAID, “WHAT HAPPENED HERE?”
The woman’s expression was a mix of shock and rage. “They burned Walt Danson alive! For no reason! They killed everyone!”
“The president’s bodyguard?” I had trouble assembling the next sentence. “And a friend of mine—Tomlinson?”
“Everyone!”
I felt a slow, chemical chill in the back of my head. It radiated through the brain stem, to my chest.
Tomlinson dead, Vue dead, and three more, including Danson. Shana Waters had her story. If she lived to report it.
As I stepped closer, the men began to drift apart, widening the circle—a typical pack response. Their hands also moved to the slings that held their assault rifles.
“Where’re the bodies?”
“In the house. It’s horrible.”
I indicated the three men. “Are there more?”
“There were five, but two must have left with the pilot in the helicopter. I didn’t see. That’s the reason I’m still alive—”
I interrupted. “I’ll get details later.”
My eyes moved from man to man. “Do you speak English?”
They stared at me blankly, one of them shaking his head, as Waters said, “Yes, they speak English. They’re a bunch of fucking liars.” She was pointing the pitchfork at them as she backed free of the circle.
In Spanish, I said to the men, “There was a man here. A yanqui with long hair. His name is Tomlinson. Where is he?”
I could see that they understood. They didn’t answer.
“She says you killed him. Why?”
One of the men spoke. Maybe he interpreted the expression on my face accurately. “The woman lies. We have only just arrived. We have no knowledge of what has happened here.”
“That’s difficult to believe. Why are you carrying weapons?”
“It is a dangerous world.”
I replied, “I’ve heard the rumor. I will give you one more chance. Did you kill him? Or was it Praxcedes Lourdes?”
They knew Lourdes. I could tell by their reaction. The man said, “We know nothing.”
“You know how to lie, that’s clear.”
“Believe what you want. We saw the fire and came to help this silly puta. Call the police, if you like. We will only speak to the police or our attorney. And stop pointing those ridiculous guns at us or we will have you arrested.”
Attack your accuser—an old gambit.
One of the men managed to laugh. The third man appeared terrified. Of the three, he was the only one with good instincts.
I thumbed the pistol’s hammer as I said to Waters, “Do you understand Spanish?”
“A little.”
She hadn’t understood.
“They want us to call the police. They want their attorney.”
“They’re a bunch of murderers, for God’s sake—”
“Do you have a cell phone?”
“Of course, but there’s no signal. I tried while they were—”
“Walk toward the house. Maybe you’ll get a signal there. These men know their rights.”
“But I tried to call a dozen times!”
“Try again. I’ll stay here.”
“But why?”
“Do it.”
When Waters was a dozen yards away, I shot the first man in the chest, the second man in the side of the head, and the third man in the back. Two shots each. Stop-action. Like film frames of a man attempting to turn and run.
It’s not like in the old westerns. No matter where you shoot a man, he continues to function until the hydraulics or the electrical systems fail.
The man who told me he would only speak to the police or his lawyer was still moving. I stepped close enough so that the pistol was directly over his head. His eyes were open, looking up at me, and he lifted his chin, exposing his neck—a reflexive gesture of submission I have witnessed before in men about to die. It is a primitive request: Be quick, be painless.
Waters, I realized, was watching.
“Keep walking!”
The woman turned. I fired.
22
Walt Danson, the television star, had not died a Hollywood death.
Nor had his two crewmen.
Praxcedes Lourdes had enjoyed himself here. Shana Waters had watched through the window, she said, until she couldn’t stomach it anymore, then run away.
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