Neruda wondered if his old rival was finished. “So what in the hell do you want from me?” he asked.
He was feeling desperate—an emotion he was unfamiliar with.
“I want you to show the world what a coward you are. I want to see you humiliated and brought as low as you can possibly go,” Encina said. “And you’re going to do it for me. You see, that is part of the fun. You have to do it for yourself.”
“Do what?” Neruda demanded
“Run away like a coward,” Encina snapped back with a hearty laugh. “Flee and leave all your wealth and possessions behind. Or kill yourself. Which is really the same thing. Whatever you do, you have to do it yourself.”
“I’d rather take my chances with the planes.”
But even as he said the words, Adan Neruda became aware of the quiet. The hotel was silent. The rattling gunfire and the crashes of glass and the thumps of explosives hitting the building had all stopped. He ran down the stairs, quickly catching up to the descending crowds. He pushed and shoved his way through strangers and acquaintances and business partners and people he had called friends, and eventually found himself emerging on the ground floor.
There were ambulances and army and police gathered around the Hotel Europa. They didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves, other than care for a few wounded victims. Most of the people streaming out of the building were simply shaken up.
The casualties had been amazingly light considering the spectacular attack. And that, Neruda did not doubt, was exactly what Encina had wanted.
Men were shouting at the military commanders on the scene. Demanding action. Demanding explanation. Soon enough their anger would turn on Neruda. It was his party, it was his building, and there would be little doubt that the attackers were after him.
Neruda had been trying to come up with an alternative explanation, one that would wash, one that the people La Paz would accept. But he knew how this crowd behaved. He knew they would not accept a crime without a perpetrator. The strange messages signed “Soros” would only perplex them and exacerbate their anger. They would surely turn their anger to Neruda soon enough.
There was no way he was going to talk his way out of this.
As much as it galled him, Neruda was going to have to take the exact steps that Encina had mapped out for him. Kill himself or flee the country. And he would not kill himself. He was not a weak man. He was not a stupid man, either.
He could assume that all his property and probably his entire fortune that was in-country would be forfeit. His vast Bolivian assets would be frozen within hours.
But he had other assets, in Swiss and in Caribbean banks, untouchable by outsiders. It was a only a fraction of his total net worth but enough to keep him living very well for the rest of his life.
There were soldiers already taking up positions in the parking tower alongside Hotel Europa. Adan Neruda strolled on by and headed into the small, expensive shopping district adjacent to the hotel. He wasn’t going to risk trying to get by those soldiers. And he had other cars. A five-minute walk took him to a building where he kept an office suite, along with the headquarters of one of his shipping businesses. He observed the front entrance of that building from a distance, and found more soldiers taking up positions at the entrances. These soldiers were attracting the attention of the agitated city people, who had already heard about the aerial attacks at the hotel.
Neruda was getting a sinking feeling that Encina had orchestrated more than he had let on.
Neruda got on his smartphone and pulled up a Bolivian news app. They were unusually quick to update: there was already information being posted about the attacks at the hotel.
One of the bullet items told him that the military counterterrorist task force was thought to be mobilizing.
He scanned the item for less than ten seconds before he found out what he needed to know. The military had been alerted more than a day ago that a well-known and well-placed Bolivian businessman had been funding and equipping a terrorist organization. But the businessman had double-crossed the organization, and terrorists were planning payback.
The army, the news item said, didn’t get enough actionable information, and had been forced to sit and wait—for a full day—for the attack to happen.
And now it had happened. The target told the Bolivian antiterrorist investigators exactly who the “well-known and well-placed Bolivian businessman” was. Adan Neruda was the man who had been funding and equipping terrorists.
Neruda ducked into a high-end clothing store and quickly bought a ridiculous sun hat and an oversize jacket. He paid cash, pulled on the jacket and jammed the hat on his head, getting strange looks from the young woman behind the counter.
They would eventually come and question everyone on this street, and they would question this clerk, and she would remember him. If Neruda had a gun he would’ve shot her in the chest. But he was unarmed, and there were thirty people within sight, on the street outside. There was no way he could cover his tracks.
The best he could do was get out of La Paz and out of Bolivia as fast as possible. He walked six blocks, trying to keep himself from hurrying, trying to look unexceptional among the agitated city folk. Even as he was keeping his eyes peeled for unwanted attention from the military, his mind was spinning, trying to come up with an exit strategy.
The army certainly had been ready for something to happen. They had covered the city with uncharacteristic efficiency. Small groups of men, army and police both, were taking up positions on every street corner, each with a plainclothes commander. All they had been waiting for was the name of the traitor. And now they had it—and it was him. They would waste no time in locking down Adan Neruda’s homes, apartments and offices. He couldn’t return to any of it. Not ever. It was all taken away from him.
He should’ve put anonymous transportation in place for himself. But he’d simply never felt vulnerable enough, not in all these years. And now it was too late. That didn’t mean he couldn’t find himself a ride.
He strolled into the deteriorating sections of the city and found himself in front of an auto repair shop. It had been there for years, the grounds crowded with rusting hulks.
He was surprised to see someone on duty this late in the evening. The mechanic had black, broken fingernails and filthy clothes and his hair was matted with oil. He was watching the stranger standing outside his shop, and he was getting suspicious. He stepped away from the door and returned with a wrench, which he pretended to wipe with a filthy rag.
Neruda headed in.
The man had already determined that Neruda had not come to have his oil changed. The mechanic was stiff and ready for trouble. Neruda gave him a smile, but it wasn’t a good one, and the mechanic was not put at ease. The mechanic was an old, scrawny man who wheezed with every breath. Half the people in La Paz had breathing problems. The air was thin up here.
“I need to buy a car.”
“I don’t sell cars.”
Neruda pulled out his wallet and began counting bills onto the workbench. The mechanic’s attitude changed dramatically. All of a sudden, he did have a car to sell. It wasn’t a pretty one.
“Will it get me to Cusco?” Neruda demanded.
“Yes. It runs pretty good. It will get you pretty far. I take good care of it.”
“Good,” Neruda said. He was not headed to Cusco. He was headed for the coast, which was not as far.
“Got an extra shirt?”
The mechanic was slightly bewildered.
Neruda put more money down on the counter.
The mechanic sold him a shirt. It was not a clean shirt. Neruda took off his thousand-dollar suit jacket and his three-hundred-dollar shirt, his T-shirt, and put on the old mechanic shirt. There were places where the dirty oil stains were so thick they soaked through the shirt and clung to his skin.
There was no way that this mechanic was going to fail to remember Adan Neruda, his strange purchase of a car and a shirt and his huge wad
of cash. He’d have a lot to tell the army, as soon as they came asking questions on this street.
But Neruda knew exactly what to do about that.
Adan Neruda was younger and stronger, and as they strolled to the back drive he satisfied himself that there was no one else in the shop tonight.
The car, a twenty-one-year-old Ford with rusting body panels, belonged to the mechanic himself.
“You sure this will get me to Cusco? These tires look pretty thin.”
“It’ll get you there.”
“Is there a spare?”
Adan Neruda took the keys from the mechanic and opened the trunk and sorted through some trash, then pulled back the fabric flap. He unscrewed the brace on the spare tire, pulled it out and bounced it on the floor.
“It’s good,” the mechanic insisted, holding on to his pants, on to the wad of cash in his front pocket.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Adan Neruda agreed as he shoved the tire back into the trunk, screwed the brace back into place, then snatched up the crowbar and bashed the mechanic’s skull as hard as he could. The mechanic’s head seemed to collapse, and Neruda grabbed him by the shoulders and steered his falling body behind a heap of cast-off auto parts.
Neruda took back his cash, prying it from the mechanic’s hand, and took the mechanic’s driving license and ratty leather wallet. Then Neruda bashed the old man in the head a few more times, just be sure.
Then he got behind the wheel of the old Ford and pulled out onto the street.
* * *
AS HE DROVE THROUGH La Paz he wiped his hands on the greasy shirt and wiped the grease onto his face and into his hair. He appraised himself in the rearview mirror. It hadn’t taken long to make himself look like street rabble. He certainly didn’t look like one of the most powerful men in Bolivia anymore.
Despite the occasional patrol of military men, Adan Neruda managed to get out of the city without being stopped.
He drove through the night.
At Villazon he detoured to the west, crossing the border without incident at Piscuno, where there was little more than a shack and a pair of bored border guards on duty.
He was soon inside Argentina. His first instinct had been to get to the coast, in Chile—but there was a good reason to go to Argentina instead.
It was because of the way that his enemy, Encina, had buzzed his L slightly when he pronounced the word kill. It was the way that Encina had used the pronoun vos. These were speech elements indicative of Argentinean Spanish-speakers.
Encina must have come to Argentina after being forced to flee Bolivia.
Now Neruda turned back east and finally stopped to sleep in the small Argentinean town of Pueblo Viejo. In a dirty little bus stop he paid two dollars for a filthy cot and a plate of runny eggs and pork gristle. The food tasted like heaven. The bed felt like heaven.
But he did not go to sleep at once. First he stared at the stained ceiling in the back room of the bus stop and made a quick oath, almost like a prayer. He would track down Encina, here in Argentina.
His business with Encina was not yet done.
CHAPTER THREE
The Texan crouched behind the ancient Mayan wall, his back to the moldy stone, and stared at the patch of jungle. He’d been staring at the same patch of jungle for two hours.
This was not the kind of work he enjoyed.
“This is stupid.”
“You’ll not get any argument from me.”
Standing next to him was a black man with an M-16 draped over one shoulder. The two men weren’t on guard so much as they were in wait-and-see mode. The ruin of the wall had been interesting to look at for something like ten minutes. The jungle had been interesting for five. The remaining hour and forty-five minutes were monotonous.
The King’s Wall was all that was left of the once-massive Structure 33, a stone temple or king’s chamber. The lower walls were plain and unadorned, but the upper walls were honeycombs, the stones laid to form alcoves more than two yards square. There were six rows of these alcoves, and in most of them were the crumbling remains of ancient statuary. At one point, every one of the alcoves had been home to beautifully carved, life-size human figures.
Now the upper walls on three sides had collapsed, and most of the roof was gone. Only the front-facing wall remained, looking out into the central acropolis of the Chilan ruins.
The brochure said that the Structure 33 was a masterpiece of stonework that dated back to 750 A.D. It had been built by one of the first kings of Chilan, and may have served as its central temple. A dramatic stairway led down the front of the extant wall into the grand plaza.
The jungle of southern Mexico came close behind Structure 33, but throughout the remainder of the plaza the jungle had been chopped away. The Mexican government had an ambitious schedule for opening these ruins to tourists.
The Chilan ruins had been big news when Mexico began to unearth the structures. Although their existence had been known for decades, no one had fully understood the extent of the ruins. The dig had uncovered one of the largest archaeological sites in Mexico, with some of the best-preserved interior frescoes.
After years of negative publicity over growing drug violence, Mexico’s tourist industry was suffering and needed to lure people to come take their vacations in the country again.
Interest in the Mayans had been growing for years, fueled by the misinterpreted warnings in the Mayan calendar regarding the end of 2012. The Mexican government was banking on that interest continuing—even though the 2012 Armageddon had failed to materialize. The world hadn’t ended. The truth was, the Mayans had never said the world would end over Christmas vacation of 2012.
The Mexican government hoped to cash in on this revived interest in all things Mayan. Jungles around Chilan had been cleared with amazing speed, tearing away the dank shadow of jungle and revealing a magnificent series of buildings that once served as the home of one of the most powerful kingdoms in the Mayan world.
The idea was to bring in tourists even as archaeology continued. New frescoes were being uncovered on an almost weekly basis, the site promoters intended to create touring areas of the working sites.
It was an approach that was already starting to pay off. A boat-in tour group had been on hand when a team of diggers opened up an entirely new room. The tourists had been permitted to come to the entrance of the new room. In fact, the group was among the very first people in the world to see a chamber that had been closed off for more than a thousand years.
The permanent on-site reporting team had recorded it all, and the news around the world picked it up. Members of that first team of tourists had been treated like celebrities. They did talk shows and appeared in People magazine. It was unbelievably good publicity for the Chilan site.
It was exactly what the Mexican tourism promoters wanted.
And it was exactly why Chilan was being targeted now.
“What’s the certainty that these guys will even show up?” the young Texan asked.
“Pretty damned good, I guess,” said the black man at the moment that a shadow emerged over the top of the jungle canopy and momentarily shaded their sunlight.
The young Texan, Thomas Jackson Hawkins, leaped to his feet and pulled his own M-16 off his shoulder, taking aim at the sky. The plane had sailed over the top of the wall and was drifting low over the campus of ancient Mayan ruins.
Calvin James, the black commando, tapped his headset.
“The bird just arrived, and boy is she quiet. We didn’t even hear it when it was overhead.”
“I don’t even think the damned engines were on,” Hawkins said under his breath.
James was still for a moment, listening. He looked through the square window in the wall. The small gray aircraft seem to be floating over the ground, and his ears picked up a faint rush from the engines.
“She’s on—I guess,” he said into his headset. “I can hear engines running. Coming your way, Manning.”
* * *
GARY MANNING, A HULKING, square-jawed figure, was camping out in a building at the opposite end of the central plaza. An unobstructed view of the long, flat plaza stretched between himself and, in the distance, Structure 33, where T. J. Hawkins and Calvin James were holed up.
Manning’s building, Structure 30, was one of the best-preserved buildings in the Chilan site. Structure 30 had three broad doorways that faced out onto the central plaza, each door entering into one of three parallel chambers that made up Structure 30. Above Manning’s head was a series of impressively engineered stone support beams. There were twelve of them. Manning knew this because he had been standing here looking at them for the past two hours, with nothing better to do, and had counted them over and over, wondering if that number had significance. He finally decided that the number of support beams in the ceiling had no significance whatsoever. It was just a convenient number. Like 2012 was a convenient number.
But Manning was certain that if he ever came back to this place and took the regular tour he would hear the tour guides speculate that the number of vaults in the ceiling signified some great prophecy.
But sometimes a number was just a number—even if it was the Mayans who came up with it.
All this concentration on the supposed mystical aspects of the Mayans ignored the culture’s true accomplishments. The vaulted ceiling in Structure 30 at the end of the central plaza was a real triumph of structural engineering. Despite the ravages of time and the destructive attack of the jungle, the roof of Structure 30 was intact, even after thirteen hundred years.
Structure 30 was one of the few structures that had already been completely cleared of overgrowth at the Chilan site. Also cleared was the central plaza, which had been completely overgrown by jungle. In the past two years the developers had cut down and dug up all the trees and undergrowth that had made their home there since the departure of the Mayans in something like 900 A.D. They had cleared off the long plaza and covered it with gravel, making of it a staging area for the heavy equipment that had been working here until very recently. Heavy equipment to continue the deforestation and the building of new structures.
Perilous Skies (Stony Man) Page 5