“Sjunkhatten National Park, Norway. Living beneath a road bridge over a fjord, snatching hikers who went trip-trapping across. Try harder.”
“Okay, then. Chupacabras.”
“We’ve fragged the odd South American goat-sucker.”
“Ghoul.”
“Bahrain, two years ago.”
“Abominable Snowman.”
“Well now, he’s not exactly what you’d call a clear and present danger to anyone, stuck way up in the remote Himalayas like that, all by his lonesome.”
“But you’ve seen him?”
“I’ve seen some pretty convincing spy-satellite footage of him,” said Buckler. “Is that it? The best you can do?”
“Honest politician,” said Lex.
Buckler couldn’t help but chuckle. “Now you’re being ridiculous. Everybody knows there’s no such thing.”
Lex sat back. He didn’t like to admit it, but he was halfway to thinking that Buckler was telling the truth. If not, then the man was delusional or a phenomenally good liar, and the impression Lex had so far formed of him suggested he was neither.
“But it would be front-page news, wouldn’t it?” he said, scrabbling for a rebuttal. “Trolls in Norway, werewolves in Germany...”
“Would be if the CIA and the Pentagon ever allowed it to be,” Buckler replied. “We got people, Langley data analysts, employed full-time covering up any and all reports of Team Thirteen activity. We do covert like no one else does covert. You’d know a thing or two about that yourself, career history like yours. Tell me if there’s one journalist who even got close to publishing a story about your involvement in a high-profile assassination.”
“We have ways of making them not talk,” Lex said. “And that’s assuming I was ever careless enough to leave a trail of evidence in the first place.”
“Precisely. Same here. Folks want safe, orderly lives, don’t they? They want to know their jobs are secure, their kids are getting taught properly at school, the bills are paid, the car works, they can go fishing at the weekends or catch a movie or have a burger at McDonalds or whatever. They don’t want to know that there’s people like you who go around offing the bad guys so that those safe, orderly lives can continue for them.”
“‘People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.’”
“Yeah, I like that quote. Orwell, right?”
“Attributed to him. There’s some dispute. It could be Kipling, or Churchill. But it’s been a mantra of mine since as long as I can remember.”
“The principle applies equally to Team Thirteen,” Buckler said. “You think the world would stay calmly spinning on its axis if suddenly there was absolute, definitive proof of, say, the existence of vampires? Scrawny, slimy bloodsucking motherfuckers with the blackest tongues and worst breath imaginable? We’re here to tidy them away without the general population finding out, sweep them under the carpet so that global sanity can continue. We’re the janitors of the uncanny. It’s a thankless task, but someone’s got to do it.”
“Okay,” said Lex. “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I accept everything you’ve just told me.” He couldn’t, not quite, but he was getting there. “I suppose the next logical question is, what’s going on around these parts that demands the attention of Team Thirteen? What sort of ‘freaky shit’ have you come to our shores to shovel up?”
BUCKLER TYPED SOME commands into the laptop, then spun it round so that the screen faced Lex.
“What you’re about to see is classified ‘Sensitive Compartmented Information’—above top secret,” he said. “It’s footage streamed from the helmet camera of a member of a unit of US Marines who were inserted into a location not far from here some thirty-six hours ago. The location is a US military research installation, and the leathernecks were sent in because there’d been a sudden and catastrophic loss of communications. All radio traffic and satellite uplinks went dark two days ago, and SOP in response to such a turn of events is to launch a recon-and-rescue party. The Marine commandos were helo’ed over from Hurlburt Field in Florida, and all’s they expected to find on entry was that there’d been a power outage, uplink on the fritz, something of that sort. Nothing to get your panties in a bunch about. The research scientists and their military supervisor would all be fine and dandy, and everyone could go back home and have a drink and laugh about it.”
“I’m guessing that wasn’t how it turned out.”
“Watch and see.” Buckler clicked on the Play icon, and a video clip started up onscreen. It was night-vision footage, flickery and ambiguous. Vague green figures were running and yelling. Guns rattled. Hot white lines of tracer round flashed. Tight echoes suggested the firefight was taking place in close confines, indoors. The image jerked this way and that. Lex found it difficult to follow, or fathom.
“It’s chaos,” he said. “Who are they shooting at?” He kept glimpsing figures in the background, pale and elusive. “And why’s there no return fire?”
“Hah. Spotted that, did you? The answer is, they appear to be shooting at an unarmed enemy. Which is not the Marine corps way, not normally. What’s also anomalous is that the enemy seem to have the upper hand. Marines are dying. You can hear it on the soundtrack.”
Lex could. Screams interspersed the gunfire, and they were screams of mortal terror—and mortal pain.
Finally there came a lull, and then a lone, hoarse voice calling from a distance: “Bondye! Bondye! Hear me, Bondye. I am coming for you.”
Buckler pressed Stop.
Lex let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.
“Makes no sense,” he said. “Enlisted men with automatic weapons, an elite force, coming off worst against... unarmed civilians? And who, or what, is a ‘Bondye’?”
“Can’t account for the first part of that, although I have my suspicions,” said Buckler. “As for the second part, I can tell you that Bondye is a term used in voodoo practices.”
“Voodoo...” Lex felt the ground underneath him begin to shift, solidity giving way to quivering uncertainty, as though he had stepped onto quicksand. Voodoo. Fucking voodoo again.
“It’s pidgin French. Breaks down as ‘bon dieu.’ Basically, it’s the voodoo term for God.”
“‘God! God! I am coming for you.’”
“That’s what the guy’s saying.”
“Shit. So what does it mean?”
“That,” said Buckler grimly, “is the big damn honking question, isn’t it?”
ELEVEN
PUDDLE JUMPER
LEX FOUND WILBERFORCE and Albertine at the Cape Azure’s main outdoor restaurant. It was set on a terrace overlooking the bay, wicker tables and chairs sheltering beneath a rattan-covered pergola.
Wilberforce’s plate bore the remnants of an immense dressed lobster and he was licking sauce off his fingertips with relish. Albertine had plumped for beef curry with a side order of roti flatbread and fried plantain, which she was eating with far more delicacy of manners than her cousin.
“Hey! Lex, my man!” Wilberforce, to judge by his wild, expansive gesturing, was on at least his third rum and Coke. Perhaps he was self-anesthetising the ache from his bruises. “Come sit. You hungry? Food here’s amazing, and there’s plenty in your American friend’s kitty to go round.”
“He’s not my friend,” Lex said, pulling up a chair.
“What, then? Business associate? Someone you met on Facebook?”
“Colleague, sort of. We’re working together, that’s all.”
Wilberforce narrowed his eyes. “This has something to do with the old days, isn’t it? Your soldiering past.”
Lex gave the merest of nods. “It’s connected with that, yes. Tenuously. Now listen. Both of you. Mr Buckler—that’s the American’s name—has a proposition for you.”
“There money in it?” Wilberforce said, quick as a flash.
“It’ll be to your advantage, I’m sure.” Lex hadn’t discussed terms of hire
with Buckler, but he was prepared to part with some of his own fee in the unlikely event that the American didn’t stump up any cash himself for Albertine’s and Wilberforce’s services. “You still keep that seaplane of yours in flyable condition, don’t you?”
“More or less. Haven’t been up in Puddle Jumper for months, but as far as I’m aware there’s nothing wrong with her. Why? Those guys want transporting somewhere?”
“They do.”
“Then I’m your man. Mind you, I’ll need to go check up on her first. Haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Let’s do that in a minute. As for you, Albertine...”
“Yes, Lex?” Her deep brown, long-lashed eyes studied him with inquisitiveness and appraisal. He was struck, once again, by her beauty. He hadn’t been so bowled over by a woman’s looks since... he couldn’t remember when. Those sharp, high cheekbones. Those full, lustrous lips.
“Buckler would like to draw on your expertise too,” he said.
“What expertise is that?” she asked with a wry, languid smile.
“You know.”
“You’re going to have to spell it out for me.”
“Your”—Lex lowered his voice—“voodoo.”
“Oh, come now! You don’t have to whisper it like it’s a dirty word.”
“I don’t want people overhearing.”
Albertine glanced round the restaurant. “Who’s overhearing? Nobody here’s listening. Nobody cares. They’re all too busy chatting and eating and being on vacation. Lot of them don’t even speak English.”
“Still,” said Lex. “Shouldn’t we be discreet about it?”
“You can if you want to. Me, I’m not bothered. Vodou is core to who I am. It’s my life. I’m never going to deny it or downplay it. Why does Mr Buckler need a mambo?”
“I don’t know yet. Nor does he, exactly.”
“It’s got something to do with that danger Damballah told me you’re in.”
“Conceivably.”
“No, darling, I wasn’t asking a question. I’m telling you. I know it has. Papa Damballah sent me to you with good reason. He doesn’t mess about. If Mr Buckler needs me, it’s because you need me. I’m not going to ask how he found out what I do. That blonde woman in my car, Madison, she was being pretty nosy. Oh, she sounded like she was just making polite conversation, but I could tell she was probing. I mentioned my being a vodouisante to her because I had a good idea it was something she wanted to hear, a nugget she could pass on to her boss. Wilberforce, being Wilberforce, couldn’t stop himself. He told her he was a pilot and most everything else he could think of to say about himself. Short of giving her his phone number...”
“I was getting round to that,” Wilberforce said. “She turned from me to you before I could work it naturally into the conversation.”
“She’s too skinny for you, cuz,” Albertine said.
“Says you. How come you’re all of a sudden the expert on my taste in women?”
“You like them rounded. That Madison, she’s got a flat butt and no boobs to speak of. I’ve met enough of your girlfriends to know you prefer something to grab onto.”
“Maybe I’m expanding my range.”
“No, you were trying it on with her because that’s what you do. You can’t help it. She’s got a pulse and a pussy, so as far as Wilberforce Allen is concerned she’s fair game. Besides, I’m pretty sure you were barking up the wrong tree there. I think she’s a madivin.”
“Yeah, not all of us speak Creole, cuz.”
“A lady who loves ladies.”
“You think?” A doggish grin. “Well, to me that just makes it more of a challenge. Like I said, I’m expanding my range.”
Albertine rolled her eyes. “You really ought to think about doing the opposite for once. Discriminating. Looking for a wife, not just the next bed partner. Committing to someone. Your mama despairs of you, you know that? Every other day she’s on the phone to my mama. ‘When’s my boy going to settle down, Hélène? When’s he going to give me grandbabies?’”
“You first, Albie. You’re the one in our family should be finding a spouse and having kids soon. You can’t put it off forever. Biological clock must be ticking like crazy for you.”
“I have three ‘husbands’ already. What would I want with a fourth? Besides, he’d have to be quite a man to hold his own against them. Lex? Would you have a problem being married to someone who has two men and a woman already in her life?”
“I’m staying out of this.”
“I’m not asking you to audition, just to comment.”
“Seriously.” Lex felt like burying his head in his hands. “I have bigger things to worry about than your marital status, Albertine, or Wilberforce’s inability to keep his pecker in his pants for more than five minutes. And I’m not here to play referee between you two. Seems to me the solution to both your problems would be to get married to each other.”
Wilberforce’s jaw dropped. “That isn’t even funny. That’s the most disgusting thing I ever heard. Man, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Why not? Cousins can marry. It’s allowed.”
“Me? Marry a waster like him?” Albertine snorted. “Never in a million years.”
“You already argue like husband and wife. Might as well tie the knot and make it official.”
Both the cousins were so appalled by Lex’s suggestion, they forget their squabbling.
Which was pretty much what Lex had intended.
THEY DROVE IN just the one car, Lex’s, to where Wilberforce’s seaplane was berthed, and during the journey nobody spoke, apart from Wilberforce making the occasional aside about how Lex was a sick man, a sick, sick man, and should go and see a therapist to get his depraved brain fixed.
Lex grinned to himself, enjoying the blissful reprieve from the cousins’ seemingly constant antagonism. He watched the island’s verdant scenery pass by, and even hummed a tune under his breath.
Wilberforce’s De Havilland Canada DHC-2T Turbo Beaver had been elderly when he’d bought it, and during his years of regular flying he had done little in the way of maintenance beyond the bare minimum necessary to keep the plane from plummeting out of the sky. It now resided at a boatyard situated a few hundred metres inland on a broad river inlet. The boatyard owner was a mechanic, Virgil Johnson, to whom Wilberforce paid a peppercorn berthing rent, supplemented by free drinks at the rum shack every Monday. This wasn’t an absolute bargain, since Virgil could consume his own bodyweight in booze on any given night, but it still worked out cheaper than the fees for a slip at the marina at Port Sebastian.
“There she is, the old girl,” Wilberforce said, springing from the Subaru. “Looking lovely as ever.”
In fact, to anyone not as fond of it as Wilberforce was, the Turbo Beaver looked dilapidated and forlorn. The paintwork on the fuselage and tailfin was peeling, the wing struts bore an alarming amount of rust at the welds, and there was even the odd barnacle clinging to the floats. The plane bobbed at its mooring, riding up and down on the gentle river wavelets with the air of a retiree in a rest home dozing off in a rocking chair while musing on the good old days. Alongside it, a handful of motorboats and small fishing vessels sat in various states of disrepair and decay.
At one time, the Turbo Beaver had shuttled back and forth as industriously as its namesake between Manzanilla and Haiti, Manzanilla and the Turks and Caicos, Manzanilla and Jamaica, even Manzanilla and Cuba. Propelled by its single Pratt and Whitney PT6A-27 turboprop engine, the seaplane had lunged through clear air and the occasional thunderstorm, transporting passengers, delivering parcels, and picking up luxury items for resale. Havana cigars had been a nice little earner for Wilberforce, and fresh spices even more so. The mail boat to Manzanilla would put in only once a week, whereas Wilberforce had been able to get certain items of perishable produce to your kitchen table almost on the day they were picked. Bundles of marijuana had found their way into his cargo hold from time to time, but the vast majority of hi
s trade had been legitimate.
Then had come the boom time for the island, and with it the construction of the airport. Virtually overnight Wilberforce’s business had evaporated, as commercial air haulage carriers began freighting goods and people in and out of Manzanilla, offering a much cheaper and more reliable service. Puddle Jumper had had to be put out to pasture and Wilberforce had been obliged to seek a new revenue stream. The seaplane could still be chartered for sightseeing tours if anyone was so inclined, but there was a company in Port Sebastian offering helicopter rides around the island, and its Eurocopter AS350 Ecureuil was faster, more exciting, and in considerably better shape than Puddle Jumper.
Virgil Johnson emerged from the corrugated-iron shed that doubled as both workshop and office. He was a tubby, froglike man with greying dreadlocks and a faded Evinrude T-shirt stretched tight as a drum skin over his pot belly. He was simultaneously wiping his grease-covered hands on a rag and talking into a mobile phone crooked between shoulder and ear.
“...yeah, better go now,” he said. “That’s right. So we’re cool? Yeah, same here. It’s good, man. It’s all good.”
He terminated the call with one thumb, raising his arm at the same time in greeting.
“Wilberforce! My brother!”
The two of them embraced and did a two-part handshake—clasp then finger-grip.
“Man, you look like you’ve been in the wars,” Virgil said.
“My face isn’t as pretty as it used to be, but it’ll get better. Wish I could say the same for yours.”
“Thought you’d abandoned Puddle Jumper for good. Left me to look after the old lady all on my own.”
“You know I wouldn’t do that, Virge. I love her too much.”
Virgil chortled. “Well, I’ve been turning the engine over once a fortnight, regular as clockwork, you know that. And only last Tuesday I cleaned out the compressor and put in some new gaskets. She purred like a happy cat when I fired her up after that. You going for a flight right now?”
“Not exactly. Just checking up on her. Chances are she’ll be airborne in the near future, though.”
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