Hunter's Moon

by Randy Wayne White

  I checked the sky once again, hoping to see a helicopter. Nothing.

  Using the gun was tempting.

  Instead, I went to a row of active beehives not far from the processing plant. I had weaved my way through many dozens of boxlike hives on the hike from the road. Unlike the others, these hives were smaller and set apart in a screened area as if to protect them from other insects. Odd. Maybe they were prized bees.

  It didn’t matter to me as long as they had stingers.

  I walked to the hives and stepped beneath the netting. It had been raining for most of our drive, but now it had stopped.

  Typical.

  Because I wanted the bees to believe it was still raining, I carried a bucket I’d found and filled from a puddle.

  I chose the closest hive and began dripping water on the top. Inside, the buzzing of ten thousand bees noted the activity with a slow oscillating roar that calmed gradually as I poured more water.

  Rain.

  Bees are precision-coded. Unlike people, they do not venture out into the rain.

  When the bucket was empty, I gently, gently, picked up the hive and went toward the building, walking with the smooth gait of a waiter carrying a tray. Without slowing, I stepped up onto the stump and tilted the hive through the open window . . . then I jumped back, slapping at my neck, then my arm, then my neck again.

  Shit.

  These bees were armed. Each sting was like an electric shock, and I was very glad seven feet of metal now shielded me from the hive—or I would have been pursued.

  I stepped back and listened. Metal buildings cause an acoustic echo. The choral buzzing of bees became an ascending roar. The roar soon mixed with the voices of two startled men. Their kite making had been interrupted.

  I shouldered the rifle, drew my handgun, and moved to a side window to watch. I expected the men to walk quickly but calmly for the front door. They were used to working with bees, presumably. I figured they would let the bees settle for a few hours, or maybe the whole night, then return with a smoker to calm the hive and to figure out what happened.

  It would give me time to slip in, brave a few more stings, and grab Vue.

  But the men did not react as expected. Nor did the bees. The bees amassed from the hive and moved like an iridescent waterspout toward the men. The men were already slapping at the colony’s attacker scouts when they began to run. They threw open the double doors and came stumbling outside.

  To my amazement, the bees followed. When a bee stings, an alarm pheromone is deposited. These men were marked and the entire colony went after them, drawn by the scent, and also by the mammalian body heat and movement.

  The men were screaming now as they ran. There were security lights out front and I watched as the bees swarmed outside, gaining on the men, then covering them like ants. One man fell, then the other. When the last of the hive arrived, both men were thrashing beneath layers of bees.

  The hives behind the building were isolated from the other hives for a reason, I realized. Along with importing illegal weapons, these people were raising Africanized honey bees—“killer bees,” as they are known. Introducing noxious exotics into the United States was a favorite form of unconventional warfare among terrorist types.

  If I hadn’t used the water, the colony would have swarmed me instead. They could’ve swarmed me, anyway.

  My mouth was sticky dry. The swarming sound of bees is an atavistic sound that signals the legs to run. Far worse, though, were the sounds made by the dying men. Inhuman moans, childlike pleas for help. They would’ve been better off if I had shot them from the window. It would have been a kindness for me to shoot them now.

  But moral assessments are as tricky as the vagaries of our uncertain lives. I did not fire.

  I had to get Vue. The bees would soon return to the building searching for their smashed hive.

  I bolted inside and knelt over him.

  “Vue? Vue?” I shook him.

  He opened his eyes.

  I USED THE BADEK I’D TAKEN FROM THE BEARDED KILLER to cut the duct tape and I pulled Vue to his feet. But he couldn’t walk. His legs were numb, he said.

  “Give me a few minutes.” His voice was amazingly calm for what he had endured.

  “We don’t have a few minutes.” Bees were buzzing by my ears. I grabbed the big man’s wrist, pulled him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and waddled outside far enough from the lights and the swarming bees to be safe.

  As feeling returned to his legs, Vue stood and began taking experimental steps. Soon he was swinging his arms and rolling his neck muscles.

  “I pissed in my pants. I bet I smell very awful.”

  I told him not to worry about smelling very awful. I had extra clothes in the truck.

  “Where’s Lourdes?”

  “He knows where President Wilson is staying tonight! We must warn him.”

  “What?”

  “Lourdes found my shortwave transmitter and he hooked it up inside.” Vue indicated the processing plant, which was full of bees by now. “The president made contact at eleven. When that helicopter lands, the president will expect us to get out, not Lourdes. Lourdes knows Morse code!”

  Vue sounded shocked. I was only mildly surprised. Lourdes was expert at using computers and electronics to trick victims.

  The gate where I had seen guards was several hundred yards away, but I was worried they might come back to check on the plant so I was steering Vue away from the building. “What about Tomlinson?”

  Vue stopped to look at me. “You not find him?”

  “No.”

  “They had him tied just like me, only not so much. But then Lourdes take him away, so maybe they both on the helicopter.”

  I checked my watch. It was ten minutes before midnight. The flight to the cattle ranch where Wilson and Rivera were staying would take at least an hour. The helicopter had lifted off at 11:15.

  “Can you run?”

  “I try!”

  “I have a truck and someone waiting. There’s still a chance we can intercept Lourdes.”

  “A truck is no good. Too far, too far! The president will be dead by time we get there.”

  That’s not what I meant. I had checked the sky once again. This time there was a helicopter, approaching low from the southwest and closing fast.

  I fished a flashlight from my pocket so I could signal the helicopter when it was closer.

  Lourdes had a deal with his employer, Vue told me as we jogged. He had overheard enough to piece it together. If Lourdes delivered the head of President Wilson, they would provide him with a new face and a new identity in Indonesia. They had the surgeons and the technology to do it.

  He’d kept Vue and Tomlinson as bait.

  “You ever see that bastard without his mask?” Vue asked as we neared the truck. “He hates you. But he wants the president more.”

  Maybe that’s why he’d taken Tomlinson, I suggested. Lure me in.

  But Vue said, “No, I think the reason is different. He said Tomlinson has a nice face.”

  24

  Sergeant Curtis Tyner told Shana Waters, “You should live with me in the jungle for a few months. Get to know the oil prospectors and headhunters—birds of a feather, really. Then you’d realize I’m considered a damn fine-looking man in this part of the world.”

  Tyner had landed in his futuristic-looking, five-passenger Bell helicopter and immediately offended the woman by telling her that if she was as smart as she was good-looking she would have had an anchor job before she turned forty—a suave endearment, in Tyner’s strange mind.

  “You have to live outside America to be an expert on the American media, and I am an expert,” he explained, attempting damage control. “I have seven satellite dishes in my compound and more TVs than a sports bar. What else am I going to do in my spare time, socialize with monkeys? New York should hire me as a consultant.”

  Now, as we flew toward the Pacific coast of Panama at a hundred forty knots, Tyner had
offended her once again by suggesting she return with him to the Amazon Valley of Colombia.

  “You’re not for real,” Waters said, dismissing him.

  Tyner turned and looked at her bosom. “Neither are those. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun getting to know you better.”

  Curtis Tyner was unreal; among the most bizarre characters I’ve encountered. He’s about five feet tall, with amber-red hair and bristling orange muttonchops of a type that I associate with Scottish bagpipers from a previous century. Tyner would resemble an orangutan if it wasn’t for his handlebar mustache.

  He had stepped out of the helicopter, extending his hand, saying “Damn glad to see you again, Commander Ford! Game’s afoot, huh?,” then ordered us aboard. His tiger-striped pants were bloused into jungle boots, a black beret angled low over his right eye, and he slapped a leather swagger stick into the palm of his left hand as he approached.

  Pinned onto Tyner’s beret was a golden death’s-head and also the winged intelligence owl of the IDF. Most impressive was a green pyramid pierced by a stiletto—Delta Force. SEAL teams, Green Berets, and Rangers are in awe of Delta Force. For good reason. They are operators, the selected amalgam of the country’s special forces.

  Delta personnel are the secret soldiers that Hollywood, and the American public, does not know about.

  As a bounty hunter and special warfare consultant, Tyner had seen places and done things that even an experienced journalist like Waters could hardly guess at.

  I found him interesting as a character, but also scary and offensive in a way that tickled the gag reflex. The man did collect shrunken heads for a hobby. Becoming expert in military tactics and killing had made him rich—a big man—and he had an unsettling mannerism that psychologists would find interesting: unconsciously rubbed his hands together as he talked, as if washing them.

  I did not doubt Tyner’s expertise, nor his connections. Chiseled in stone over the entrance to his mansion was the watch phrase BY WAY OF DECEPTION THOU SHALT DO WAR.

  When it came to hunting down Praxcedes Lourdes, Tyner was my first choice. He would not have paused to consider beehives if he had a gun.

  TYNER WAS NOT A PURIST. THE HELICOPTER’S CONTROL panel was aglow with GPS, radar, infrared imaging screens. Ten miles out from the cattle ranch, he asked, “Should we go in soft or go in hard, Commander?”

  Meaning, should he make a combat ascent onto the property or should he do a few touch-and-goes a mile out to insert me and Vue? We could then approach the ranch in stealth.

  It was 12:30 a.m. We had made up time in the fast Bell aircraft, but Lourdes had probably already been on the ground for twenty minutes or more. The image of Kal Wilson and Juan Rivera walking out to meet that helicopter only to be surprised by Lourdes and his men was sickening.

  I said, “We don’t have time for soft.”

  Tyner hummed his approval. “Lock and load, gentlemen. Safeties on until I give the word.”

  In my headphones, I heard Shana demand, “Why the hell don’t you just radio the police?!”

  Tyner said, “Because it kills the profit margin,” as he tilted us downward, a dive that left my stomach behind and the woman silent.

  The Pacific Ocean was ahead, the waning moon a smear of orange behind rain clouds. I could see the lights of the cattle ranch.

  Was that a fire burning?

  Yes. But small, like a campfire.

  “I don’t see a helicopter. Do you?” We’d leveled off, and shot past the ranch house and corrals at a hundred knots. Tyner banked around for another look.

  No . . . no helicopter. Something else: Wilson’s plane was no longer moored in the lagoon.

  “Are you sure we have the right spot?”

  I was sure. I recognized the bay and the layout of the ranch. Even so, I checked the telemetry receiver. The flashing dot was steady: Danson’s wallet was somewhere on the ground below.

  “Then there’s something wrong. I don’t like it.”

  Nor did I.

  Near the campfire, a couple of men were staring up at us. The men I’d seen cutting wood, possibly.

  “Put me on the beach. I’ll check it out.”

  Tyner said, “Okay, but I’m going airborne the moment your feet touch sand,” meaning he suspected a trap.

  THE MEN WERE VAQUEROS. THEY WORKED ON THE RANCH with cattle and horses. But they were nervous as I approached. Shifting their weight from foot to foot, machetes within easy reach.

  They were relieved when I told them I was a friend of Juan Rivera.

  “You are the yanqui named Ford?” one asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “He told us you might return. The general was once a great caballero.” The vaquero smiled. “It is a shame we no longer have men like him.”

  Men who work with horses and cattle are also sometimes called caballeros, the Spanish word for “knight.” The man was talking as if Rivera was dead.

  “No,” the man explained, “the general is not dead. It is a way of speaking of people who lose their heart at a certain age.”

  This was not a trap. These men knew Rivera.

  The plane that floated on water, the vaquero said, had flown away more than an hour ago with Rivera and his yanqui friend aboard. Afterward, a helicopter landed. Men searched the house, and one of them tried to set the barn on fire. The man was very angry, the vaquero said, screaming profane words in a strange accent.

  Lourdes.

  “But we extinguished the fire. That is all we know.” Once again, the vaquero was shifting from foot to foot.

  “Did the angry man ask you questions?”

  “No. He did not see us. We . . . know who this man is. The stupid peasants in the mountains call him ‘Incendiario.’ A monster. We do not believe in monsters, but neither are we stupid.”

  The two vaqueros, I realized, had watched from hiding until Lourdes was gone.

  “How did you know it was Incendiario?”

  “Because of the helicopter he uses. A yellow helicopter. The Indios speak of it. And also because”—the two men exchanged looks—“because one of his men fled and we could hear Incendiario’s voice as he searched. He swore to burn the man alive if he found him. Even as his yellow helicopter left the ground, Incendiario was screaming.”

  I said, “A man escaped? Where is he?”

  The vaqueros exchanged looks once again. The man who had not spoken said, “Do you have a paper that proves you are this man Ford?”

  I showed them my passport.

  The men studied it so intently that I realized they could not read.

  “The man who escaped rolled from the helicopter while the others were searching the house. His hands were tied behind his back, and we are the only ones who saw him. He ran along the beach to the corrals, then past the barn. But he stumbled as he climbed a fence. He fell into the pen where we keep the puercos.

  “Those animals are wild. We trap them in the forest, and they sometimes kill our dogs.”

  It was a place, the vaquero said, where even Incendiario would not search.

  Puercos.

  Pigs.

  It was Tomlinson.

  TOMLINSON CALLED TO ME, “IF PIGS COULD FLY, MAN, I’D be pasted on some statue right about now!” Trying to be funny, but, instead, he sounded robotic, possibly in shock.

  I was searching the pen with my flashlight, seeing black-haired hogs with tusks, belly-deep in slop after the rains, a Stygian nightscape too dark for the light I was using to probe.

  But when I called Tomlinson’s name, he answered, “Over here!,” then moaned something indecipherable before attempting a brave front. If pigs could fly . . .

  I used the flashlight to signal the helicopter—Land immediately —then ran around the outside of the pen, sweeping the beam back and forth until I saw a section of Tomlinson’s arm and hand, skin white as rice paper, protruding above the pack. He was waving to be seen, either sitting in mud or on his back—I couldn’t tell—surrounded, or pinned, b
y the hogs.

  I vaulted the fence and landed in muck up to my calves. I was trying to get one of my boots free when Tomlinson yelled, “Don’t show fear! They won’t hurt you!”

  I got the flashlight up in time to see two pony-sized boars charging me. The clicking of their tusks was the sound of bone on bone.

  I wasn’t going to risk it. I slogged back to the fence, got a leg over the top rail as one of the hogs grabbed me from below, locking onto a length of shoestring like an attack dog. The shoestring gave way and I fell backward off the fence, landing so hard it knocked the breath out of me. I came up fast, drawing my pistol, holding the flashlight along its barrel in a two-handed grip.

  “Don’t shoot them. They’re my friends!”

  Friends?

  I wanted to shoot. It was one of the scariest things I’d ever experienced. But I touched the hammer release and used the flashlight instead.

  The hogs scattered when they charged me and I could see Tomlinson plainly for the first time. He was sitting in mud, back erect, legs folded into full lotus position, arms thrust outward, fingers and thumbs making circles. Around each wrist were cuffs of frayed rope, his hands no longer tied. He squinted with the pain of the light in his eyes.

  “I was afraid you were Praxcedes and came back for me. He was going to burn me tonight.” Tomlinson’s voice was still monotone. Absurdly, he continued to meditate. Yes, in shock.

  I was moving to the other side of the pen, hoping the pigs would follow. I said, “Tomlinson, get out of there. Lourdes is gone. You’re safe now.”

  A lie because he wasn’t safe. The pigs were losing interest in me, snorting and gnashing their tusks as they refocused on Tomlinson. I had the gun out again, flashlight laid along the barrel. I touched a red laser dot to the head of the boar that was now chewing my shoestring.

  “Praxcedes wanted my face for a surgical transplant. But he found out I’m the wrong blood type. He needs O-positive. Vue’s O-negative, but the surgeon told him that could work. Praxcedes wanted you and the president to watch me burn.”

  “Tell me later. Get out of that pen.”