Blood of Paradise

by David Corbett

  Chucho managed to get through the door finally and he tossed the sledge aside, pointing his rifle ahead of him as he disappeared inside the house. Meanwhile, Sleeper grabbed his weapon and took up position at the edge of the van, aiming straight at Consuela’s front door, as a billowing cloud of black smoke began to emerge from inside her house.

  The first Molotov cocktail, a fruit jar stuffed with a flaming rag, had hit the dining room table with a crash, spraying kerosene everywhere, which lit instantly. It wasn’t the fire, though, or even the heat, that caused the problem. It was the smoke. The second firebomb just made that worse.

  The only way out was through the front, but they’d be waiting.

  Jude turned to Axel: “Grab Consuela, get the boy and his mother, haul them downstairs fast and out into the garden. If the smoke’s too bad, break out the window in the bedroom and jump from there.” He called to Eileen: “We’re coming your way. Stay put.”

  But he wasn’t coming her way, not yet. He scurried up the stairs and into the front bedroom, hugging the wall until he got to the window, which was cranked open. He eased up along the side, peeking out at the edge of the curtain. Down below, one of the gunmen crouched behind the van’s front tire, using it for cover as he trained his rifle on the door.

  Where was the other guy?

  Take care of this first, Jude thought. The angle was bad. He braced himself with the wall, aiming carefully, getting the crown of the gunman’s head squarely in his sight. He whistled. Sure enough, the guy looked up—a kid, actually, twenty years old tops. Jude fired and hit him square in the face. The kid toppled like he’d been punched, arms flailing as his back hit the ground. Jude fired three times more, into the kid’s chest, insurance rounds, just as he heard gunfire from the back of the house, followed by a blistering scream.

  Malvasio watched Sleeper get hit and realized it was up to Chucho now. Dirty Dog. The roof lines prevented him from seeing the garden behind the house, so he wouldn’t know till later how the nervy little chavo fared.

  Meanwhile, he thought, work to do.

  Sighting the weapon felt natural, thanks to Strock’s tutoring. He had nowhere near the skill to be able to hit something pinballing around, but given Strock’s scope adjustment, fixing the proper zero point, as long as he could have a moment to relax into the shot, he could hit his target.

  He trained his sight on Magui shuffling woozily up the cul-de-sac, one hand clutching his bloody head wound. Guy thinks he can simply walk away. Malvasio aimed for the high left side of his back, the heart zone, then eased his breath out, squeezing the trigger. The big man flinched, like he’d been stung, then toppled, losing his balance but not quite falling over. He put out his free hand, dropped to a knee. Malvasio fired again and once more for good measure, at which point Magui collapsed onto his side in the street.

  The smoke boiled up from the dining room in dense, noxious clouds. Jude couldn’t make it back downstairs or even see more than a few feet into the living room, and so he scrambled back up to the second floor, ran to the rear bedroom. Looking out, he saw through the trails of smoke curling up from the doorway below that Oscar, wearing the bulky vest, lay twisted on his back in the garden, one eye pulpy with blood, another wound on the side of his face. He was convulsing. His mother screamed from inside the house, held back by Eileen and Axel and Consuela because the fourth gunman—he looked even younger than the one out front—had found a perch in the corner of the garden wall the next yard over. He stood on a table, aiming, waiting for the smoke to drive everyone out.

  The kid had set the perimeter sensor off, and the alarm sounded with a throbbing shriek. Except for the smoke, he presented an easy target, but just as Jude was drawing a bead, a shotgun blast erupted from downstairs and the kid ducked down, taking cover behind the wall. Jude knew he didn’t have time to wait—the smoke. He could hear through the pealing alarm the sound of choking coughs downstairs, he was starting to gag himself. But the kid with the rifle looked willing to wait till he knew he had everybody outside, gasping for air, before popping up again to take his next shot.

  Meanwhile, the mother wailed: “¡Oscar, mi pobrecito, es Mamá, es Mamá!”

  Jude shouted as loud as he could, “Eileen! Can you cover me?”

  “She’s hurt!” It was Axel, shouting over the wailing alarm and the mother’s screams.

  “I’m okay.” Eileen’s voice was labored, clenched. “It’s not bad.”

  Jude fired off a round into the corner, to keep the kid with the rifle down. To Axel, he shouted, “Can you cover me?”

  “Not for long.”

  Jude glanced down, saw the tip of the shotgun’s barrel poke out through the punctured screen and then fire. Jude tucked his pistol into the waist of his trousers, cranked the window open as far as he could, and crawled out as a second blast came from below. He gripped the window ledge, let go with his feet, hanging, dropping to the ground, rolling with the fall, then running as soon as he had his legs beneath him, darting past Oscar who lay there, blind, trembling from shock. Jude couldn’t take time to help him. With the alarm providing cover for the sound of his movements, he reached the corner of the small garden and pressed himself against the veranera vines torn ragged by the buckshot. Ignoring the thorns, he crouched below where he guessed the gunman would pop up to shoot once he decided to take his chance.

  That was when Axel decided to improvise. Jude watched in disbelief as the older man crawled out from behind the sofa barricade, slid open what remained of the screen door, and walked out into the garden.

  “I’m coming for the boy,” he shouted, using Spanish—it was for the gunman’s benefit, not Jude’s. “I need to make sure he’s okay. Whatever you want, you can have, just let me get to the boy. He’s young, he means no one any harm …”

  Watching him, Jude thought to himself in an eerie moment of calm: He gave his vest to the boy’s mother.

  Axel just kept jabbering, switching to English just in case, coming closer to the wall. His eyes looked spent but there was fury in them too. Jude edged up slowly, careful not to rustle the veranera leaves. Finally he saw the barrel of the AR-15 pop over the top of the garden wall. He rose to full height, grabbed the weapon and pulled down, lodged his pistol into the throat of the kid, then fired. The boy’s jaw exploded in a hurl of blood. He toppled down into the neighboring yard. The rifle came free in Jude’s hand and only then did he realize how hot the barrel was, scalding his fingers.

  Jude turned off the perimeter sensor, and suddenly there was only the sound of the fire and Oscar’s sobbing mother.

  The side of Eileen’s white shift was soaked with blood, her skin grimed from the smoke. She whispered between coughs, “I tried to catch him … Oscar … but I couldn’t see when—”

  “Hush. Come on.”

  Jude lifted her to her feet, wrapped her arm around his neck, and led her out from behind the couch. Greasy black clouds billowed around them as he guided her haltingly into the small garden, thick with the stench of cordite and burning kerosene. Both of them hacked, and Eileen’s spittle came up dark. Consuela tried to comfort Oscar’s mother, who gripped her son to her chest and rocked back and forth, mewling in grief. Axel stood dazed amid the others, unsure who needed comfort, who needed help.

  Jude took a running start to scale the wall, the veranera thorns snagging his shirt and hands, but he got up and over in one quick move and landed in the neighboring yard, primed to take on the kid if he flashed a backup weapon. But the boy was down for good, one side of his face a gory mask, blood bubbling from his neck, the other side of his face frozen in a wide-eyed grimace. Jude patted him down, found a knife, took it away. He thought of Oscar and had to fight an impulse to shoot this kid dead, then elected to opt for triage, help the others first. By the time he got back, the thing would be decided.

  He hoisted himself onto the same table in the corner the kid had used as a firing stand and waved for everyone to come toward him. “We’ll get out this way,” he said, gesturing
to the neighbor’s house. Consuela managed to get Oscar’s mother to her feet and lead her to the garden wall. With tortured eyes, she handed up her son’s body to Jude. It felt like nothing, the bones so slight, skin like paper, but blood came away on Jude’s hands as he set the boy down gently in the grass. He climbed back up onto the table, wiped his hands clean, then held them out and the woman grabbed on and climbed over, quickly scrambling down to pick up her son again and wrap him in her arms.

  Next, Consuela and Axel helped Eileen. She couldn’t put weight on her left leg so they had to hoist her up to where Jude could wrap both arms around her. She bit down to fight the pain, puling in his ear as she kicked herself over with her one good leg. Jude eased her down slowly but her whole left side collapsed. Her eyes were dull, she was panting, her breath smelled like tin. They needed to get her to a hospital before she went into shock. Jude turned back to help Consuela then, and finally Axel.

  Everyone eyed the wounded young gunman but no one approached. His stare seemed fixed on something else—far away or deep within, Jude didn’t know or much care. Axel, wearing a look of anguished desperation, trained his pistol on the boy and nodded that he had the situation under control as Jude drew his own gun and lifted it close to his chest in a ready position, venturing inside the strange house.

  He’d seen only four men charge out of the van, but there could be others, maybe one of them hidden here, a trap. But when Jude got beyond the doorway, he found only the owners, an aging couple, the Chilean missionaries, crouched in terror behind an armchair in the corner of the living room, the man’s arms wrapped around his tiny wife. Jude asked if there was anyone else in the house and they said no, just the one who had run through to the garden. Still, Jude checked every room. Once he knew the place was clear, he went back out and collected everyone, telling them to move on inside. Everyone did except Oscar’s mother, who remained kneeling in the garden, clutching her dead son and staring at the young man, not much older than Oscar, who had killed him.

  The old woman in the house saw Eileen’s blood and ran to her kitchen to fetch clean towels and soap. Her husband said he’d called emergencia—he’d been told the police were on their way, but that felt like ages ago. Jude looked at his watch, realizing only then that barely fifteen minutes had passed since he’d first looked out Consuela’s window and seen the strange van parked down the street.

  The old man’s wife returned from the kitchen and, using sewing shears, cut away the bloody cotton of Eileen’s dress and underwear and gently washed the wound. Once the blood was wiped away, Jude could see the bullet, lodged within the puncture it had made in the muscle of her hip. Eileen shook and gritted her teeth, looking up at Jude. “It’s gonna be okay, I know it, I can feel it, it’s gonna be fine. You gotta help Oscar.”

  The old woman glanced at Jude to suggest he leave Eileen alone for now, so she wouldn’t exhaust herself with further talk. Jude leaned down, squeezed Eileen’s hand, and kissed her hair, not knowing what to tell her, then went to the front door, pulled it open, and stepped outside.

  His pistol still at the ready, he checked the street and found the shooter who’d hidden near the van lying where he’d fallen, dead. Nearby, another lay crushed in his own blood where the van had run over him, his back corkscrewed. Up the street, the large one lay facedown. That, plus the kid in the back garden, made four. Jude checked inside the van, ready to shoot, but found no one else. Then he remembered the van had been parked outside a house up the block, the old gossip’s place. Osorio. That’d bear checking.

  He turned to head that way and found Axel wandering ahead of him, toward the black Mercedes.

  Jude hurried to catch up, snagged Axel’s arm. “I need you to stay inside.”

  Axel shook him off. “I have to see Carlos.”

  Jude planted himself in Axel’s way. “It’s not safe out here, you’re not wearing a vest, I need—”

  “I’m not much concerned about your needs, frankly.” Axel stared into Jude’s eyes with a vacant, hateful intensity. “Isn’t safe? Out here? Well, isn’t that refreshing? In contrast to all the perfectly secure and docile places I’ve been of late. Why, didn’t you know, just a few moments ago, I was sitting inside the home of a dear friend. We had a little fire going and—”

  The bullet came silently and from nowhere and hit the side of Axel’s head near the ear, the impact creating a tiny halo of blood. His expression froze, the eyes suddenly glassy and wrong. He tottered. Then a second round hit him in the throat and he buckled into Jude’s arms.

  PART V

  FACELESS

  There is always another level, another secret, a way in which the heart breeds a deception so mysterious and complex it can only be taken for a deeper kind of truth.

  —Don DeLillo, Libra

  American Business Consultant

  Murdered in El Salvador

  SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (Inter-American Media Agency)—An American hydrologist was slain early today in what authorities believe was a failed kidnap attempt.

  Axel Odelberg, working on behalf of Horizon Project Management, was shot dead shortly after seven o’clock this morning in the eastern town of San Bartolo Oriente. A second American, anthropologist Eileen Browning, was critically wounded in the attack. Her condition has stabilized, but she is scheduled for evacuation to the United States shortly for further treatment.

  Seven Salvadorans were also slain: Odelberg’s driver, an eight-year-old boy, a seventy-nine-year-old neighbor, and the four would-be kidnappers. The four attackers were killed as Odelberg and Browning defended themselves with the assistance of Odelberg’s bodyguard. The alleged kidnappers were identified by their tattoos as members of Mara Salvatrucha, a notoriously violent Salvadoran street gang with roots in Los Angeles and a rapidly expanding membership throughout the United States and Central America.

  A regional spokesmen for ARENA, El Salvador’s ruling party, stated: “This attack underscores the terrorist ambitions of these gangs and the need for La Mano Dura and even tougher laws. The voters in the recent election spoke loud and clear on this, and we will give the people the security they demand.”

  Odelberg’s killing sent particularly severe shock waves through the American business community, since it took place in the aftermath of Teamster Gilberto Soto’s murder just last week.

  “Mr. Odelberg was a gifted man whose death hits all of us hard,” said Robert Strickland, an executive with Torkland Overby Enterprises. Strickland was in El Salvador to confer with Odelberg regarding the expansion of a soft drink bottling facility operated by Estrella, C.A., in which Torkland has a significant equity position. “Axel believed deeply in the need for sound development throughout the region. It was his life’s work.” Asked if Odelberg’s death would cause Torkland to rethink its commitment to Estrella, Strickland responded, “If anything, we’re more committed than ever. We can’t back down now. That would be a victory for the terrorists and an insult to Axel.”

  41

  It took a second for Jude to place the man. The context was all wrong and he’d changed in ten years, a weariness of spirit, hair fading, the body still neck-bending tall but thicker from middle age. There was no mistaking the eyes, though.

  The man pulled up a chair across the metal table from Jude and rested his briefcase on the floor. “You may not remember me.”

  “I can’t place your name at the moment,” Jude said. “But I remember you.”

  The man took out a card and slid it across the table. Special Agent John Pitney, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Chicago. “I’ve come a long way, obviously, and if it’s all right with you I’d like to jump right in.”

  Jude stared into Pitney’s singular green eyes. “Sure.”

  Jude had spent most of the previous day watching lizards scurry across the walls of the cramped, sweltering PNC garrison in San Bartolo Oriente where he was questioned by members of the infamous Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime. It had been clear almost immediately that the
men working the case had bought into the botched kidnap angle—for all Jude knew, they were its masterminds. Or answered to higher-ups who were.

  He elected to play along without committing himself to their interpretation, reviewing their pictures—they had hundreds, a numbing testament to the thoroughness of the cover-up—and he identified as best he could who was who and what was where. They asked nothing about the timing of the shots that killed Axel, or of the situation involving Estrella, or the abducted little girl, or why Oscar and his mother were at the house. Jude didn’t volunteer, either, or even ask if Consuela was saying anything of the sort, reminding himself of the farce the investigation into the murder of Gilberto Soto had become.

  He’d accepted a change of clothes at the garrison, surrendering what he’d been wearing—more pointless evidence. He ignored the food he was brought; the intense smells nearly made him retch. Then, quite late, he was driven all the way to the capital by two silent men and encamped in this small, windowless room, tucked deep within the bowels of the embassy. He’d lain awake on his cot all night, fending off the nightmares he knew sleep would bring.

  Wakefulness proved just as punishing. Nothing he would hear from anyone over the coming days, regardless how damning, would approach in viciousness his own self-laceration. His epiphany of two days earlier, when he’d discerned the little machine cranking out so many of his missteps—the blind swings in temperament back and forth between shrewish self-hatred and stubborn numbness—it seemed a kind of fantasy, a moralistic fable delivered up quaintly to a wholly different person. Here and now, the guilt felt right, it felt necessary, the more eviscerating the better.