He turned to Teresa. “Where is everyone?” he asked.
Before she could answer, sounds came from down the corridor. Just then, Manolo and Guillermo walked into the room. Manolo once more gave Dugan the cold shoulder, though he smiled at Teresa. Guillermo was again hard to read, his inscrutable withered face giving nothing away.
“Sleep well, gentlemen,” Teresa said warmly to them both. “We leave tomorrow evening, first thing.”
Dugan watched as the two men moved toward a pair of recessed alcoves in a far corner. As they got nearer, he saw Manolo appear to guide Guillermo the last few feet. Glancing toward Teresa, she reached out and took his hand.
“Come, hijo,” she said, leading him toward a spacious nook where the two lay down together. Dugan felt her head upon his chest and her fingers begin to lightly run across his upper arm.
Feeling a rush of fatigue wash over him, he whispered, “What’s up with Guillermo?” hoping it was enough to convey what he meant.
“Guillermo is tired,” she answered dolefully. “He has been living this life a very long time and would just as soon see it come to an end. It cannot have been easy for him, to have been taken when already so old, let alone, to be blind.”
“He’s blind?” Dugan asked, incredulous.
She lifted her head. “Yes. Did you not know?”
Dugan shook his head, wondering what that must have been like. He knew that all five of his senses, not to mention the bonus ones that seemed to come with the package, had all been heightened since his change. He suspected a blind vampire would do very well. Still, Teresa was right. It can’t have been easy.
“And so,” she went on, “as you can see, we have lost a great many of our companeros along the way. Four in the last six months alone. That is why we are hoping you will stay.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that Dugan almost missed it. But of course, she would hope for such a thing. He thought about what it would be like, and realized immediately that he would. He would have to close things out with his uncle, but Dan would get along just fine without him. He would even be proud that Dugan had found a cause to believe in and stand up for. Who knows, perhaps his uncle might even join him.
With his mind closing down, he started to map out his upcoming years, defending the village in tandem with the vampires, perhaps finding common cause with others along the way who would join them. The very idea of it made him as excited as he had been about anything in a very long time.
And of course, there was Teresa. He couldn’t leave Teresa, he knew. Because at the very moment that his mind and body shut down for yet another day, he became acutely aware he was in love with Teresa. There was no getting around it. He was in love.
Part IV
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
– John F. Kennedy
Chapter Twelve
1
Dan let his mind shut down for a while after his afternoon with Esquinaldo. He didn’t eat. Didn’t drink. Just retreated to the back room and sat in the chair with his eyes wide open staring out the windows toward the city beyond. The telescope too was abandoned for the time being. He just didn’t have the energy, or the desire.
He was frantic with worry, of course, but smiled inside to think that at least now, all his worry was not being expended on his nephew. He was mindful by then that it might be smart to spare just a little for himself. Because the more he reflected on it, the more convinced he became that when Esquinaldo told him, “Two days, three at the outside,” he was less than subtly informing him just how much time he had left to live. After doing the math in his head, even he couldn’t argue that it probably made sense.
In three days, Scott would have been gone two weeks. He could easily imagine a scenario in which Esquinaldo and Richards decided beforehand that after two weeks, if Richards had not returned, his host should assume the worst and dispose of his guest. However, the mere thought of that only made him more sick with concern, because that might also indicate his nephew was already dead. And so, to maintain what reservoirs of his sanity remained, he tried to let it all go, if only for a little while. He dozed off around dusk, waking the next morning and spending his day in much the same way, though his thoughts remained turbulent and stormy.
Of course, he knew he should just leave. Walk down the driveway and push the button and just leave. There was no one there to stop him, that he knew about, anyway. Every fiber of his being told him to run. Despite Esquinaldo’s veiled threat there was nowhere he could hide, Mexico City was one of the largest cities in the world. There were scads of places to hide.
With a smirk, he even tossed around the idea of running to the U.S. Embassy and throwing himself at their mercy. Maybe Agent Winthrop would put in a good word for him, provide a glowing character reference, and let everyone know he was current on his taxes. What finally prevented him from implementing any of those half-baked schemes was that he wanted to still be here on the off chance that Scott did come back. It was all he had left to hang onto.
In his heart of hearts, he admitted too that he wouldn’t complain if he could gather just one more piece of that goddamn puzzle taking up real estate in his notebook and in his head. The mystery was there for the solving. It needed either just another piece, or someone smarter than him. Probably both, he mused with an inner smile.
The sun went down. After more than a day spent mostly in the chair, eventually, he got up to have a nice long stretch and make a sandwich, grabbing a couple of beers to bring with him while he was at it. Not long after finishing his dinner, while on his second beer, he heard music and laughter and the clinking of glasses wafting across the lawn. Esquinaldo having another soiree. How nice for him, Dan thought. With a beery chuckle, he wondered if maybe this one wasn’t for the Queen of England. It wouldn’t surprise him one bit.
Hours later, he was quietly dozing when he was awakened by the sound of his front door opening. Gripping the arms of his chair, he waited for it and held his breath.
He heard a whispered, “Shh” followed by a girlish giggle, then a pair of soft footsteps coming into the hallway behind him. Swiveling his head, ready for anything, in the dim moonlight filtering its way through the windows he saw a well dressed young man holding the arm of a pretty blonde in a peach evening gown. Both were still smiling when they saw Dan sitting there. Their smiles froze for a long second, soon replaced with shocked expressions of surprise and embarrassment.
“I am so sorry, senor,” the man said with deep earnestness. “I was . . . I thought . . . we were just looking for a quiet place, is all.”
After letting out a long breath, Dan chuckled and pointed the way up the stairs. The man seemed confused, before a knowing smile bloomed on his face.
“Thank you, senor! Thank you so very much.”
The girl also sent a friendly smile his way before the two pirouetted and hurried up the stairs. Shifting his gaze back toward the city beyond, Dan smiled.
2
Dugan swam up from the dark mists of death and sensed immediately that something was wrong, and not only because he didn’t feel Teresa’s head resting lightly on his shoulder, or the delightful sensation of loving fingers rubbing against his chest. From deep within the earth, he felt mild tremors that at first he thought might be an earthquake. But they were too intermittent to be anything seismic. Impotent to do anything about it until he completed his journey, he waited impatiently and with escalating frustration to once again regain the simple ability to move.
When he did, he shot upward and looked beside him to see Teresa was missing. Twisting his head toward the faraway nooks where Manolo and Guillermo had bedded down, he saw those were empty as well. Leaping from the alcove, he snatched his bag from the floor and threw it across his shoulder before storming out of the ancient tomb.
Once in the corridor, he did his best to retrace the convoluted turns and zigzagging steps until eventually, he was in the great room. Shooting quic
k glances to all four corners revealed the room was empty. Almost hesitantly, he raised his head toward the altar in the center of the space and saw that all the documents and maps that had been carefully arranged there yesterday were gone. Gilbert was nowhere to be seen. His legs went rubbery.
Turning, still feeling the occasional temblor beneath his feet, he raced down the steps and ran along the corridors, rushing his way down the final one and then running up the stairs that led to the outcrop of boulders. Before even poking his head above the earth, with a deep sense of dread and foreboding, he recognized he already knew all too well what was going on. The smell of cordite in the stairwell only made tangible what he already feared.
He stepped from the rabbit hole hearing the distant sound of sporadic gunfire. The buzzing roar of helicopters was not far away. Cocking his head to the right, he recognized that some of the buzz was coming from the direction of the village. He was as certain as certain could be there would be others directing all their firepower at the guerrilla stronghold.
“Hey, dude,” said a friendly, familiar voice off to his left.
Turning, he saw a single crutched Richards standing about fifteen feet away. A half-dozen soldiers were clustered behind him in a semi-circle. From their insignia, Dugan saw that two were American and four were Salvadoran. All had their rifles pointed in his general vicinity, although lazily, as if by pure happenstance.
Leaning on his crutch, Dugan watched Richards light an incendiary device and flick it to the ground in front of him. Glancing down, he saw piled at Richards’ feet were stacks of documents and papers along with a couple of rolled up maps. They were Gilbert’s documents.
The fire burned low and greenish before something inside caught, and suddenly the flames turned orange and roared higher. Blackened bits of charred paper began floating into the air on the gentle nighttime gusts. When he looked again at Richards, Dugan saw he was smiling sincerely.
“You did good, kid,” he said. “You did real good.”
His rubbery legs went weaker still. It had been a setup. The whole thing had been a setup. He had been played like a fancy French violin from the start. With a sick feeling in what passed for his stomach, he recalled wondering stupidly just why Richards had brought him along. Well here’s your answer, kid. It was almost too much. Gazing emptily into the flames, he found it a sudden struggle to remain upright. Somehow, he managed.
When able to think again, a firestorm of emotions raged within as he struggled to grasp the full extent of the damage he had wrought. How many lives would be lost – were being lost at this very moment – because of the actions he had taken. For as he stood there piecing it all together while watching the meticulously compiled evidence burn, he knew beyond doubt that’s exactly what had happened. He had been played for a stooge. Step by step, inch by inch, decision by decision, Richards had known precisely what Dugan would do, and when he would do it. He was disgusted with himself. He should have understood it as soon as he learned there had been no kidnapping. He should have realized it the instant he learned who Gilbert was, and the threat that he posed to Richards. For if he had learned nothing else on their long journey together, it was that Richards was a man who would not be denied.
Looking into the man’s smiling face, Dugan asked, “How?” He watched Richards face soften somewhat, as if he was taking pity on him.
“I read your book,” he said simply, and Dugan knew in an instant it was true. The Official Scott Dugan Handbook. That’s what Richards had called it.
And if it wasn’t Richards who had drawn the psychological profile from the meandering thoughts and warped obsessions of the mortal he once was, and the fragmentary human part of him that still remained, then there were others at the CIA who could. Forget what they might have culled from his journals. Just think what they could have gleaned from the posters on his walls, the keepsakes in his drawers, the clothes he had worn, and hell, for all he knew, his porn stash.
Still, that didn’t answer every question. “How?” he asked again, staring Richards in the face. “Was it in the ransom?”
His mind flashed back to the conversation the two had on the boat regarding the transponder unit:
“Supposed to be able to pinpoint our exact location anywhere on the globe . . . They have ones now as small as a watch battery.”
Averting his eyes this time, Richards repeated his previous answer. “I read your book.”
Dugan understood then it was his journal. They had embedded the transponder in his journal. Probably, the spine. That had always been kind of lumpy anyway, and bent from use. He remembered clutching the thing, feeling those dead spots of sense memory and just writing them off as the sort of thing that happened sometimes, for example, when the object had been held with gloved hands.
He didn’t want to ask his next question, but knew he had to. It was, after all, his fault. He owed them at least that much. It seemed only right.
In a voice that sounded hollow and faraway, he asked, “Teresa? Manolo? Guillermo?” Richards would know who he meant.
He watched Richards’ icy blue eyes shift slightly to the left. Steeling himself, Dugan turned that way too, and saw on the ground a few feet away were three long piles of gray ash. Hardly anything, really. Some of it had surely blown away by now. Still. It was striking just how little stuff a body was made of. Dugan recalled their conversation on the subject.
“So what happens to you in the daytime? If you get exposed to the sun, I mean.”
Well, you have your answer now, don’t you Duane?
Momentarily, he again felt unsteady on his feet. His vision blurred in and out. Not wanting to give Richards the satisfaction, he held back his choking sob and reflected at length on the vastness of the conspiracy Gilbert had described.
“You’ll never get away with it,” he declared flatly, once he trusted himself enough to speak.
Richards smiled icily. “Yes, we will.”
Dugan was puzzled. “You won’t,” he insisted. “It’s too big. There are too many players. Too many countries. And you can’t kill everyone, you know. Eventually, it’s gonna get out.”
Richards seemed to weigh that before oddly, agreeing.
“I suppose that’s true,” he said. “But believe me, no one will care. Sure, Congress might kick up a fuss. Hold a few hearings. Imprison some flunkies. But America will be on our side. They hate communism too. They’ve been brought up to hate it. But even more than they hate communism, they love a winner, they love to chant USA! USA! And we’re going to give them the best possible reason to chant it. We’ve already rolled it back here in El Salvador. We’re doing the same in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. Things are cooking in Eastern Europe as well. And so, we’re going to be the winners.”
“At what cost?” Dugan asked, his voice close to breaking. “On top of how many corpses? How many dead women and children is it going to take? Aren’t we supposed to be the good guys?”
Richards was growing tired of the conversation.
“We are the good guys,” he said with dull finality. “Anyway, I already told you, it’s complicated. But this is how the sausage gets made, Scott. I am sorry you had to see it.”
Dugan shook his head, knowing there would be no converting Richards. He was as fervent a believer in his cause as the most ardent communist was in his. Well, to hell with them both, he thought. It was no longer his fight.
When he felt ready, he asked, “So what happens next?”
Richards deliberated a while before answering.
“First, let me say this. I like you, Dugan. I think you know that. And I really am sorry I had to do this to you. But as you’ve probably figured out by now, it was the only way.”
Clinging to his crutch, he bent low, picking something up off the ground that Dugan had known all along was there. It was a crossbow.
Raising it, Richards pointed it in his direction. “Anyway, I thought you at least deserved an explanation before, well, you know . . .”
Dugan
did, and despite everything, he appreciated it. Still and all, by the time the arrow left the crossbow to whoosh its way in his direction, before slicing through the empty air where he had just been, Dugan was gone. And on some deeper level, he understood that by now, after all they had been through together, Richards would have known that he would be.
3
He glanced across his shoulder in the direction of the guerrilla camp only once, long enough to watch a helicopter gunship drop a blindingly white phosphorus object. It sailed unnaturally slowly toward the ground, along the way giving birth to flaring offshoots that discharged in all directions before touching down, leaving in its wake a ghostly smoke trail one hundred feet high that called to Dugan’s mind one of H.G. Wells’ martian machines from the Classics Illustrated of his youth. After seeing a second combat helicopter drop something that caused flames to leap into the air over a broad and wide swath of land, he turned around and did not look back.
He noticed soon after that the air was suffused with a greasy, gasoline odor. Recalling the pattern of flames he had just seen, he realized that the smell was what he had always imagined napalm might smell like. It would explain why most of the dense foliage that had once swaddled the village had been burnt away, leaving the earth beneath his feet seared and barren and varnished with an oily film.
Approaching the town, he heard sporadic gunfire here and there, but it seemed most of the bloody work had been done. When he arrived at the spot where the trail had ended, he looked out upon a desolate wasteland and saw nothing of the village he remembered. He stood there a long few seconds unable to get his bearings, until he turned his head to see what appeared to be the lone structure left standing, the flagpole in the center of the plaza. At its top, the flag of El Salvador flew proudly. The rebel flag was gone.
Applewood (Book 3): The Space of Life Between Page 23