Applewood (Book 3): The Space of Life Between

by Myers, Brendan P.

  Still, there was plenty to see. He watched the Nicaraguan soldiers complete the unloading of their illicit cargo into the American plane, saw handshakes all around as the Nicaraguan rebels said goodbye to their new American friends. He watched the Contra helicopters get loaded with crates of weaponry and ammunition along with supermarket-sized cardboard boxes bearing the familiar logos of Campbell’s Soup, Ivory Soap, Nabisco Crackers, and Frosted Flakes. He smiled to see that Tony the Tiger was well known and much beloved around the world.

  When the helicopters seemed as stuffed as they could be, he observed what might be a Nicaraguan colonel leave the hangar carrying one of the two suitcases Richards had liberated from the office safe. Dugan supposed it was payment for the shipment the helicopters had brought with them. Funny to think that the arms, bullets, and food the Nicaraguans received wasn’t a fair trade for the drugs they provided. But then, Dugan knew it was an expensive habit, and how many tens of millions of dollars worth of white powder he’d personally witnessed get loaded onto the cargo jet, he couldn’t say. He assumed too that there were others up the chain of a far more unsavory character, who required their payment not in guns, but in cash.

  During what seemed a break in one of his interminable meetings, Richards came outside to check on him. He apologized in what for him passed as a sincere manner for leaving him alone, telling him that their mission was a go for tomorrow evening. When he asked Dugan if he would be okay on his own for the next day, Dugan answered in the affirmative.

  Putting his hands on his hips, Richards went pensive for a while and looked away before saying, “You know, it still pisses me off.”

  “What’s that?” asked Dugan.

  “Your coffin. Sleeping chamber. Whatever the hell you call it. Believe me, we went to lots of time and effort to build that for you, and you only got to use it once.”

  Dugan thought back to the reason he only got to use it once, remembering the Marine being ripped in half and tumbling from the plane, and the pilot being shot in the back of the head.

  “I guess it’s the thought that counts,” he said.

  Still unhappy, Richards only grunted in response. When he came back to himself, he informed Dugan the two would meet up at ten o’clock tomorrow evening at a place called Club Infierno, in the Zona Rosa neighborhood of San Salvador. They would be departing from that location.

  “Where are we going?” Dugan ventured to ask.

  Richards thought it through before apparently deciding it was time.

  “We’re heading to a village called Santa Rosa, in the Chalatenango district. It’s about a hundred kilometers northwest of the city. That’s the last location our boy Gilberto was known to be.”

  Gilberto. Perhaps it was a slip on Richards part, but Dugan was quite certain it was the first time he’d used the name. While he processed that information, Richards reminded him again: ten o’clock tomorrow night at Club Infierno in Zona Rosa.

  “Will you be okay finding it on your own?” asked Richards.

  Dugan answered that he would. Richards then handed Dugan the second of the two suitcases and told him to guard it with his life.

  “What’s inside?” Dugan asked, believing he had every right to know.

  “Ransom,” Richards replied without further comment.

  Dugan took that in, and it was moments after Richards unceremoniously took his leave that he first glimpsed the private jet approaching the airport. He watched it land on one of the distant runways, then followed it as it taxied all the way to hanger 4.

  A jump suited technician from inside the hanger pushed over some rolling steps. A cluster of about a half-dozen men including Richards emerged from the hanger to greet the plane. Dugan saw the door open, and from inside the plane two men appeared on the platform. The first was a youngish looking man with a smooth face and flecks of gray in his hair. When he bounded athletically down the steps to greet Richards like a brother, Dugan saw he had a gap-toothed smile. The second man was older. Portly and balding, unlike the younger man, he took his sweet time at the top of the steps to light up a pipe before coming down. He too greeted the men waiting on the ground, who after already hearing what the boyish one had to say, were all smiles and backslaps as they headed back into the hangar to continue their meetings.

  Whatever it was about, Dugan was just beginning to feel the listlessness of the day coming on. In unfamiliar territory, he always needed extra time to find himself a daytime sinecure. But he always had. At least, so far.

  With his bag slung across his shoulder and the newly acquired suitcase in hand, he had a little fun dodging the gun toting sentries, who turned this way and that thinking they had seen something, before threading his way to the well guarded gate and slipping from the airport unseen.

  While walking along the deserted airport road toward the city, with not a street lamp in sight, in just the earliest droplets of what he knew would soon be a torrential tropical downpour, he pondered his now absolute conviction that after what he had just witnessed, and what he now knew, that Richards would never, not in a million years, allow him to get out of this alive.

  Chapter Eight

  1

  From Dan’s Notebook:

  Esquinaldo – ‘middleman’ - arms dealer – onetime Nazi (Waffen SS – is that important?) – Lots of VIP friends / connections.

  “Esquinaldo is the key” – Rosa Lopez (to what?)

  Duane Richards – Definitely CIA – Central America – kidnapping (Who? Where?)

  Rodrigo Salazar – Crusading reporter – murdered before he could meet with a source – (Who? Drugs?)

  Rosa Lopez – Research assistant, Salazar’s helper. (Murdered? Accident?)

  Horace Winthrop – DEA agent – investigating missing person – Who? Guy who disappeared in Esquinaldo’s house (though I haven’t seen him!)

  “Forecast says rain.” (?)

  Two men in Esquinaldo’s office:

  1) Young guy – Definitely military or ex-military – Did most of the talking

  2) Old guy (pipe smoker) – Military too? – Boss of younger guy?

  Dressed casual, like tourists.

  American? Probably.

  Left in a big hurry!

  Vice President – Received presentation – nodded head – handshakes all around. Decision?

  Loose bits:

  Chilean ambassador (party)

  Israeli diplomat visit

  Iranian diplomat visit

  Photos in Esquinaldo’s office – Kissinger & others – military men and politicians

  “Esquinaldo is the key!” – to fucking what?

  2

  Dugan inched his way up from the nothingness of death into the murky gloominess of undeath with the unmistakable scents of stale must and cloying mildew overpowering his nostrils. When he was again able to feel sensation upon his body, it was via the mechanism of something blunt digging into his back. After a disoriented and confused few seconds, he remembered what both could only mean, and smiled inside while waiting for his nocturnal reawakening to conclude.

  For the skies did open up as he walked the few miles down the airport roadway toward the city, passing only an occasional tin-roofed hut or thatch roofed shanty, and no convenient or obvious place to shelter from daylight. With scarcely minutes to spare before the dreaded sun rose for the day, he chanced upon a cemetery at the periphery of the city. Dashing into its perplexing warren of headstones and mausoleums and statuary gardens, he busted into the first gated crypt he could find. Once within its walls, he muscled aside the thin granite slab covering the tomb and crawled into the casket with its current occupant. He didn’t think he would mind. His best guess was it was the poor sap’s pelvic bone that was causing his present discomfort.

  When again able to move, he pushed open the rotting wood and hastened from his sleeping place. Out of respect for the man’s hospitality, he closed the casket and resealed the tomb, then dawdled a moment to fully return to himself. While standing there, he heard a s
queaking noise off to his left. Turning, he saw a cat-sized rat giving him the evil eye from a corner of the crypt. Spontaneously salivating from his long ago acquired taste of rat’s blood, Dugan sent it right back. Concluding it was a battle he could not win, the rat quickly pivoted and scampered through a fracture running along the side wall.

  Before hefting his bag onto his shoulder, he contemplated the valise that Richards had given him. A few inches thick, made of blonde leather, he considered a moment before lifting it onto the granite slab. Pressing his fingers to the dials, he immediately sensed the two three digit codes that opened it. Rolling the dials, he popped the latches and saw inside were stacks of neatly packed one-hundred dollar bills. Half a million, he’d estimate. Maybe more, given the weight of it. Pondering it another moment, he closed the briefcase and locked it, then stuffed it into his own bag.

  With the crunch of dried up leaves beneath his feet, in no particular hurry, he stepped outside to find himself standing in a veritable city of the dead. All around were ornately decorated mausoleums built in a discordant fusion of styles, from Italianate brick to Gothic marble to Spanish Colonial. The poorer folks speckled throughout the opulence settled for simple crosses atop unassuming headstones. Affixed to many older tombs were black and white photos of those who resided within, their faces frozen in eternity, from young babies to those cut down in the prime of their lives to a fortunate few who looked to have lived a very long time.

  On the pathway toward the street, he walked past life sized and incredibly detailed statues of winged, sexless angels, weeping cherubs, and the more ubiquitous carved representations of Jesus, from his gory death on the cross through to his glorious resurrection.

  Leaving the dead behind, once on the street he remained in shadow, ducking low at the sound of oncoming vehicles, sometimes a crowded city bus, occasionally something military, but more often and somehow more menacing, black SUVs with heavily tinted windows. More than a few of those had whizzed by. Dugan watched them as they passed, wondering just who was inside, and what they were hiding.

  Veering off the increasingly busy road, he followed railroad tracks into the city proper, passing through makeshift settlements of densely packed tumbledown shacks fashioned from tin, cardboard, and cloth, whatever material could be easily scavenged, populated by forlorn people in torn, soiled clothing and bare feet. A lucky few cooked something appalling on weak, smoky fires. And everywhere he turned he saw malnourished children, many missing limbs, with mud streaked faces and haunted eyes. He could only guess how these people lived without electricity or water. He didn’t have to guess what they did with their sewage.

  And looming above it all, just blocks away, were the stately twin spires of a grand cathedral, which for all their grandeur, seemed to offer little more than empty comfort and blind hope for a better world after this one to these impoverished people.

  With a sharp stab of melancholy, he swerved off the tracks and returned to the streets, which were a bare step up from the poverty he had just encountered. Ramshackle apartment blocks, sad looking bodegas, and poorly lit alleyways that even he would think twice before venturing down. Every wall he passed was plastered with graffiti and slogans, most of the political variety, but sometimes containing something upliftingly religious.

  Entire blocks were taken over with handmade posters featuring black and white photos of missing people, most of university age, some far younger, bearing their names and birth dates and the last time and place they were seen. In most all the pictures, they were youthful and smiling and appeared flush with confidence about the future. Yet Dugan couldn’t help but think back to the photos on the tombs in the cemetery, and suspected most everyone on these walls was in the same or similar place.

  Having seen enough, the next time a vehicle approached, he stepped out of the shadows and walked into the street, where a car screeched to a squealing halt just a few feet in front of him. Dugan saw it was a military vehicle with a single occupant. Moments later, he was inside the Jeep and they were on their way. The initially irked driver, who was already dangerously late for an assignment, soon found himself more than happy to take Dugan wherever he wanted to go, and where Dugan wanted to go just then was to see how the other half lived.

  3

  Torres arrived at the beachfront cottage around eight-thirty or so. Dressed in full uniform, he had driven the ‘Chiefmobile,’ the marked patrol car assigned to him, with his rank emblazoned across the hood. His reputation was such that folks tended to turn away quickly or scurry past when they saw the Chiefmobile pass them by. And though he fully expected there would be no problems, it was probably in everyone’s best interest that passersby not look too closely at or within this vehicle on this night.

  He had his kit by his side, a worn leather satchel containing the tools he had used in the past and various other items that time and experience taught also came in handy. Inside the bag there was rope, cable ties, duct tape, fishing line, a blindfold, and a zipup pocket case containing a hypodermic needle with a fast acting sedative that had never yet failed him. Still, he went through his mental checklist once again, verifying he had taken all the necessary precautions.

  As predicted, there were just the two cars in the driveway this evening, Senor Proctor’s Dodge Dart and the boy’s Ford sedan. Ever regular, the cook and her husband were out for the evening. The basement of Torres’ home was prepared as well. While double checking that space earlier in the day, he almost smiled to see what he had made of it over the years, a combination prison cell and pleasure palace and torture chamber. Though hurting the girls was never his first inclination, and much of the equipment was there for show, the fear it never failed to instill helped him perform sexually, so what were you going to do? He had long ago surrendered to the notion that everyone has their own kinks, their own hangups, and fear just happened to be his.

  He glanced at his watch once more and saw it was just after nine. He planned to wait until ten o’clock, because that was when his own wife went to bed, and bringing the girl down the stairs to his locked and off limits cellar was guaranteed to be done in privacy. He had soundproofed it with mattresses over the years, though he sometimes heard a mournful wail or childlike cry come up through the floor or a radiator. If his wife ever heard them, she never mentioned it. It wouldn’t surprise him to learn that she did, and was simply grateful that, for the day or two he was allowed to use the girls before handing them over to Rocio, she at least knew she would be safe. For he wasn’t above instilling fear in his own wife when necessary.

  Reaching down one more time to adjust his powerful tumescence, he glanced again at his watch. One more hour to go.

  4

  Traffic got heavier as they approached the tired looking city center, the streets growing crowded with passenger cars, limousines, trucks, and military transports. Dugan noted in passing that each city bus had an armed and uniformed man on board, in keeping with the oppressive military and police presence. Despite that, the streets and sidewalks this night seemed alive with people: street vendors pushing carts, students and senior citizens relaxing on benches, nuns out for a stroll, and upper class men and women all gussied up for an evening on the town.

  Near the heart of the capital, they passed commercial buildings, hospitals, and medium sized apartment blocks. The grand plaza that was the centerpiece of downtown hosted the mammoth National Palace and National Cathedral, along with heroic monuments to national heroes, bronze statues set on granite pedestals of military men on horseback.

  Along the way, Dugan entered his driver’s mind and learned his name was Ernesto Menendez. A corporal in the Salvadoran army, he was from the eastern province of San Miguel and had been pressed into military service at the age of sixteen, when the army arrived in his village to round up all the young men. When it became clear that Ernesto was literate and more than a little clever, the army found more productive uses for him than taking on the guerrillas. Since that time, he had been enlisted mostly as a driver an
d secretary for senior officers. Though he had seen and done many things he was not proud of, he had been mainly spared participation in the killing and torture and murder of his fellow citizens that were intrinsic to membership in El Salvador’s national army. For that, Ernesto was eternally grateful.

  Soon after passing through downtown, they found themselves on the clean streets of a well tended, garden enclave. Another quick probe of Ernesto’s mind disclosed that the district was called San Benito, and it was the wealthiest neighborhood in San Salvador. Here, the homes of the elite were ringed by walls two to three meters high, topped with sharp chunks of glass or electrified barbed wire. Some estates were equipped with watchtowers, their walls with gun ports, and everywhere were closed-circuit television cameras monitoring the grounds and the streets. In the shadows of their gatehouses stood rough looking men with machine guns. Remembering the railroad tracks, and all the people he had passed that evening who had nothing, Dugan could understand why the people who had everything would need such protection.

  Though the corporal didn’t understand much of it, further interrogation of Ernesto allowed Dugan to piece together most of the relevant facts. The nation of El Salvador was poor in natural resources, therefore the land itself was El Salvador’s most valuable asset. The people who lived behind these walls were the landowners, the families that for generations had owned huge tracts of land throughout the country. The vast majority of the population, like the people in Ernesto’s village, were peasants who worked the land on behalf of these entitled people, sowing the fields and planting the crops and mostly, picking and toting the neverending stream of coffee beans and sugar cane that were the nation’s chief exports. The army Ernesto served were in essence the hired – and oftentimes, as in Ernesto’s case, the kidnapped – mercenaries, in paid service to the people behind these walls, to ensure that everything remain exactly as it was. With an odd sense of shame, Dugan realized that America too, though they veiled it as anti-communism and uttered a thousand other excuses, was also on the side of the people behind these walls.