When he stood as upright as his current condition allowed, he turned toward the hallway that had been his destination all along and saw the girl standing there. He saw deep fear and horror on her face, but thought too she might be suffering from some form of catatonia. Her eyes were very far away. But within them he also saw an odd kind of resignation, as if this very thing had happened to her once before and she were reliving it.
He eyed her closely while limping toward her, and saw no indication she was about to flee. Upon reaching her, as best he could in his diminished capacity, he took her gently by the arm and guided her to the couch.
“It’s okay, little one,” he said as he sat her down, his every word a panting effort. “I am here now. The bad man is dead. Everything will be okay now. If you could just put your hands behind your back . . . yes, yes, exactly like that.”
He continued to utter soothing words as he bound her wrists with cable ties, however she seemed momentarily to come back to herself upon hearing the ripping, tearing sound of the duct tape, and cringed back a bit as he covered her mouth. In the best part of this so far wretched evening, he watched her distant eyes return for a moment and flicker with dread.
He had just completed binding her such that she was ready to be taken to the car when he heard someone coming in through the front door. He heard the sound of what might have been a light slap on the buttocks followed by a girlish giggle, when he said to hell with this and reached to his holster for his weapon.
13
Dugan awoke to echoey, underwater sounds. It was a long few seconds before he realized they were the pitiful moans and mournful shouts of shocked and injured people making their way past his impaired hearing. The concussive blast had burst his eardrums.
Still stunned, he opened his eyes to find he was lying on his back in the middle of the street. He might even have blacked out, which he found equally stunning. He didn’t know he could do that. More likely, he guessed, time had simply slowed down to allow him to process the unprocessable.
Sitting up on a bed of glass shards, remnants of the shattered windows of the restaurants and cafes across the street, he looked toward Club Infierno. The facade of the building had collapsed in on itself and now teetered dangerously. Flames arced their way from windows on the third floor. Billowing clouds of thick smoke poured from the black hole that was once the entrance. The acrid smell of the explosive still lingered in the air.
Somehow working his way to his feet, he remembered suddenly, and quickly reached behind him to verify he was still in possession of his bag and the briefcase. After confirming that he was, he glanced around to take in the extent of the horror. Dead bodies and body parts littered the street: arms and legs and heads. What might be a bare male torso was on the pavement to his right. Blown about like so many tumbleweeds were the crumpled remains of the military and other vehicles that had been parked in front of the club.
Craning his neck left to right, he was happy to see at least some of the people he had warned made it out safely. The two soldiers and one of the prostitutes were on the ground nearby, staring back at the club with glazed eyes and blackened faces. The woman on the arm of the businessman had gotten out too, though the white bone poking out of her nylons below the knee revealed she had suffered a compound fracture. As for the others, he didn’t know . . .
Richards. There was no sign of Richards.
Making his way through the dismembered limbs and scattered debris littering the street, handbags and clothes and other personal effects, he stepped onto the blood slickened sidewalk and walked into the smoke toward the entrance. To the right, he saw one of the doors had blown off to land on a pile of bodies. Reaching down, he lifted the heavy thing, and among the tangled limbs and broken people underneath he found Richards laying atop the now headless businessman. His eyes were closed. Long scratches ran down his soot charred face. Driblets of blood ran from both ears. However, the act of lifting the door caused him to writhe in pain. Glancing lower, Dugan saw a twisted piece of metal had torn into and through the meaty part of his upper thigh.
Looking again at the man’s face, he saw that although he grimaced in pain, his eyes were now open. “Are you all right?” Dugan asked.
Richards grimace might have morphed into a sardonic smile for a brief nanosecond. “Fuck you think?” he asked between gritted teeth.
Dugan let out a low chuckle, then thought a moment before deciding. “This is gonna hurt a little, I think,” he warned. “Brace yourself.”
He gently lifted the door off Richards’ legs, pushing it off to the side. A sharp intake of breath was Richards only reaction.
“Here, let’s sit you up,” Dugan said, putting his arm beneath Richards shoulder. “You should probably know you got something sticking out of your leg. It ain’t pretty.”
Richards nodded. Dugan lifted. The movement caused another shock to the agent’s system. He emitted a plaintive groan. Once that passed, he glanced down to the ugly piece of corkscrewed metal sticking out of his leg and looked Dugan’s way. “Just a flesh wound,” he said.
Dugan smiled before noticing the smoke had thickened. The temperature was rising too. Turning his head, he saw orange tongues of flame had started licking their way through the entrance.
“Put your arm around me,” he said. Once Richards did, he added, “Think this might hurt too. Be ready for it. On three.”
He waited for Richards to digest that, then counted a quick three before jerking him to his feet. Aside from a low grunt of agony and a whispered, “Fuck,” Richards was a trooper about it.
The anguished moans and weak shouts of the injured and dying had segued into a clamorous symphony of suffering. To Dugan’s damaged ears, the most heart-wrenching pleas were now coming from within the wreckage of the nightclub itself. But of course, they would, he thought, blocking it out.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Richards said through gritted teeth.
Dugan nodded. With his arm supporting the much taller man, the CIA agent hopped and hobbled as best he could being helped by what looked like a young teenaged boy, and the two stutter stepped their way through the broken glass, along the blood and gore spattered street and away from the chaotic aftermath about to ensue.
After they went half a block, the wailing of distant sirens evinced that the cavalry was on their way. As the two ducked into a side street, they heard the heavy clomp of approaching footsteps, revealing the army was on the march as well. And all along the way, Dugan kept his eyes peeled, on the lookout for another car and driver he could commandeer.
Chapter Nine
1
In the waning daylight of late afternoon, Dan sat in the backroom of the cottage, his notebook in his lap and his paperback flipped down on the arm of the chair by his side. He had just finished reading a section about the death of an old man named Aaron Jastrow in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Using a clinical, almost documentary style, the author followed the character as he removed his clothes in the outer room, then walked him and the reader into the “shower room” with all those other doomed people, where he choked to death amid the screams of both young and old alike.
But Wouk didn’t stop there. He followed the character as his body was lifted from the floor and carted off to the crematorium, and followed him still as his body was shoved into the fires, to turn once more into the carbon from whence it came. We follow it finally, as what remained of Aaron Jastrow went up the chimney toward freedom, the only freedom left to those poor, star crossed people. It was one of the most horrific things Dan had ever read; and yet, it was also somehow uplifting. He was moved beyond words and was at that moment trying to internalize it.
He was also more than grateful to have the book as a diversion, because his worry about his nephew was growing daily. A full week had gone by since he went away with the CIA man, which was the long end of the man’s estimate for how long their journey should take. Feelings of helplessness and boredom battled for dominance in his mind, a boredom
he no longer allowed himself to assuage with trips into the city.
Nothing good comes from that, he thought again with an internal smile.
In addition, with the calendar pages turning toward mid-September in this, his backyard prison, he had one less thing to keep his mind on. He had decided earlier that morning to give up on trying to solve any of the ‘mysteries’ surrounding him, indeed, he wondered if there were truly any mysteries at all. Esquinaldo was obviously a well connected businessman, with contacts in the political and diplomatic worlds. That made perfect sense for an arms dealer. It was doubtless part and parcel of it. That ambassadors and vice presidents would come to his house to pay obeisance or to otherwise make his acquaintance was no mystery either.
Glancing down at his open notebook, Dan reread his latest and final scribblings on the subject:
Worst Case (most malevolent) scenario:
Rodrigo Salazar and Rosa Lopez were murdered because they were on the verge of uncovering something.
The man Salazar was scheduled to meet before being murdered was the same man who ‘disappeared’ within the confines of Esquinaldo’s estate (“Esquinaldo is the key!”)
The DEA has no idea that the CIA (and the vice president?) have dealings with Esquinaldo.
The back-to-back diplomatic visits by Israel and Iran coincided too neatly with the vice president’s visit. Whatever it is, they’re in on it too.
He stopped right there out of the sheer silliness of what he was writing, because none of it made any sense. There was nothing in anything he had observed (which admittedly, wasn’t much) that tied Esquinaldo to drugs. Aside from the gobs of money that could be made, what could drugs possibly have to do with any of it? There was certainly nothing in it for the vice president, who was a heartbeat away from command of one of the most famously anti-drug administrations in history.
Iran? As a Muslim country, Dan knew Iran would sooner cut off your hand than allow that sort of thing. He suspected Israel frowned on it as well. In a sea of a billion Muslims who were sworn to destroy you, it was probably a good idea to keep your faculties with you at all times. No, the drug thing was a red herring.
Sorry, Agent Winthrop, he thought. Can’t help you there.
Closing the notebook, he set it on the table by his side. Good riddance, he thought. He glanced toward the Wouk novel and contemplated picking it up, but he still needed time to consider what he had just read. So, he returned to his brooding, to thinking about Ana back at the beach house and hoping she was okay; to worrying about his nephew and praying he was okay; to meditating upon the ultimate freedom that it seemed sometimes only death itself could provide.
2
Between the bittersweet memories dredged up by holding the journal that Richards had gifted him, and Larry’s continuing snark, Dugan opted to do without his talismans for the remainder of this journey. Tonight, he was flying solo from the lowest depths of darkness into the nighttime world that was his domain.
As happened most every evening during his reawakening, he suffered a brief moment of forgetfulness and panic about where he had bedded down, followed soon by recollection and the understanding that he was safe. And where he had ensconced himself this evening was in yet another old tomb in a forgotten cemetery in El Salvador, this one just on the edge of the renegade Chalatenango province.
Minutes after escaping the chaos engulfing Zona Rosa, Dugan hijacked a taxicab, and at the CIA man’s suggestion, instructed the driver to take them to Rosales Hospital in central San Salvador. Upon arrival, they were greeted at the door by a squadron of doctors and nurses who had heard about the bombing at Club Infierno and were prepared for the inevitable casualties. Richards was the first of them to arrive.
The two separated for a few hours, with Richards undergoing a procedure to have the metal removed from his upper leg. While that had been going on, the injured started arriving at the hospital. They were still coming when Richards was finished and all stitched up. Dugan took the liberty of briefly visiting his doctor’s mind for a prognosis before proceeding to the second floor room where Richards was resting comfortably. The doctor informed him that over his advice, the patient had insisted quite forcefully that they use a local anesthetic, so Richards should be lucid and able to talk.
Walking in, behind a sheer curtain in the farthest corner of the six bed room, Dugan smiled to see the rugged and daring blond man reduced to wearing a flimsy, sleeveless hospital johnny and covered by a thin sheet. His left leg was elevated and wrapped up tightly, hanging from some kind of metal contraption. Dugan couldn’t help but salivate to see that a small splotch of blood had seeped through the gauze. He felt no shame about it. That was to be expected.
“How are you feeling,” he asked the pale man while taking a seat by his bedside.
Richards turned his face Dugan’s way. “Fuck you think?” he asked.
Dugan chuckled, then said, “Here. I brought you something.” Lifting his hand, Dugan produced the foot and a half long corkscrew sliver of metal they had removed from him and handed it over.
Taking it, Richards raised his eyebrows. “Fuck is it?” he asked.
Dugan had asked himself the same thing.
“I think it might be trim from the doorway,” he answered. “It’s brass, and Club Infierno was nothing if not high end, right?”
Richards grunted and set the metal on the table beside him.
After a pensive moment, without looking Dugan’s way, he said, “Well. You did it again, didn’t you?”
“What’s that?”
“Saved my life. Not that I’m counting, but that’s the second time.”
Dugan thought about snarking, “You’re welcome” but decided to let it pass, saying instead, “Doc says they’re gonna keep you for a couple of days.”
Richards sent a cold glare in his direction.
“Just let them try,” he said.
Dugan snickered, but didn’t believe him. It was patently obvious that Richards was going nowhere for a while, whether he thought he was or not.
After letting the silence linger, Dugan said, “Think I’m gonna head up there.”
Richards stiffened visibly before looking his way. “Where?” he asked.
“Chalatenango. Santa Rosa.”
“No, you’re not,” Richards said sternly.
Dugan sighed. “I’m not going to be much good around here,” he said. “Maybe I can find something out, at least get the lay of the land.”
Richards shook his head. He started to say, “Out of the question. It’s far too danger . . .” before the look on Dugan’s face and his own realization quashed that statement in its tracks. Instead, he went with, “You’re not going, and that’s the end of it.”
Dugan threw up his hands. “What the fuck am I doing here, then?” he asked angrily. “Seriously. Why the fuck am I here? What do you expect from me?”
Richards turned his face toward the window. In a low, almost churlish voice, he said, “I order you not to go, and that’s all there is to it.”
Though Richards couldn’t see, Dugan smiled. “Not for nothing, but I don’t think you’re in any position to give anyone orders.” Standing up from the chair, he started walking toward the door. “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll meet you in Santa Rosa. And don’t worry. I’ll find you.”
With Richards’ assailing him from behind with irate shouts and slurs against his mother and orders for him not to, Dugan left the hospital room and started on his journey, this time, alone.
3
The poverty he had encountered at the extreme edges of San Salvador was but prelude to the degradation that was the Salvadoran countryside. Traveling in a military vehicle, this one driven by a National Guard major, Dugan took to the pitted roads, driving past communities of squalid lean-tos perched precariously on eroded cliffsides, through rural hamlets spookily devoid of people, and landscapes denuded of vegetation as if war were being waged on the very earth itself. Many of the fields they passed were tired and fal
low, as if they had lain uncultivated for some time. Dugan suspected they had, and it was part of the strategy of the haves to starve out the have nots. It would also explain why many of those wretched people by the railroad tracks lived the way they did, for there was nothing out here for them. Nothing at all.
Some miles outside the city, they came upon a huge piece of land consisting of rolling dunes of piled trash, a vast expanse that could only be San Salvador’s city dump. Throughout its foul acreage, Dugan saw hovels built of whatever materials were available, to serve as shelter to these poorest of the poor. Smoky campfires burned here and there to provide warmth to those forced to make this their home. As they passed by, beneath the stench of decaying garbage and human misery, Dugan detected buried deep within and in some cases laying atop those heaped mounds of refuse were dozens of human remains, martyred citizens discarded as just so much rubbish.
They ran into military checkpoints every few miles, manned by thuggish looking brutes or scared young teenagers who kept their fingers nervously on their triggers. Upon seeing the major behind the wheel, they invariably waved them through. The deeper in country they went, the more manifest was the ongoing warfare. One village they passed through had been flattened entirely, the deep clefts in the road revealing it had been bombed from the air. The streets of those towns that still stood were ominously uninhabited, either because the village had been emptied out via government fiat, or people were afraid to go outside due to the nationwide curfew designed to curtail the movement of insurgents. From the major, Dugan learned the entire Chalatenango province had recently been designated a free fire zone, granting permission to both the military and to local civil defense forces to shoot anyone they did not know on sight.
Applewood (Book 3): The Space of Life Between Page 17