Red Leopard (The Vistaria Affair Series)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “That’s the campground down there,” he said.

  She looked. There was a bald spot amongst the treetops—pale green intersected by a thin strip she assumed was a road. “Do you have to circle to let Duardo know you’re here?”

  “No need. He’ll hear the helicopter for miles. If he’s here, he’ll make sure we spot him.”

  “But you’re circling anyway?”

  “I’m not going to land unless I have to. I’d be a sitting duck down there and I’ve got far too valuable a cargo to take such a risk.”

  It took her a moment to realize he was referring to her and she felt her cheeks bloom with an unusual heat. She could think of no suitable response and anyway, her silence had already extended far too long to make a snappy answer possible. Finally, she looked away to her left and down to the ground, scanning the visible area of the campsite.

  “There,” Nick said, pointing to the northern edge of the site.

  Calli peered. She could see nothing.

  But Nick was already bringing the helicopter around, bringing it lower, towards the campsite.

  Then she saw a small dot, moving out from the rim of the trees and realized her perspective had been skewed: she had been looking for something much larger because there had been nothing to give her a sense of scale. The small dot must be Duardo, which made the campsite larger than she had thought. They were higher than she had guessed, too.

  The helicopter dropped almost vertically now, turning on its axis. She lost sight of Duardo’s figure and leaned forward to watch past Nick’s chest for Duardo to come back into sight as they swiveled full circle. Then she saw him. They were at treetop height now and Duardo waved towards the trees behind him. He wore jungle fatigue pants and a black sleeveless stretch tee-shirt that didn’t look anything like army issue. In his right hand he held an automatic pistol, down by his side, while he waved with his left.

  From between two trees, Minnie appeared, dressed in jeans and a torn tee-shirt, running for her life. Calli caught her breath as relief, shock and fear speared her chest.

  Duardo let Minnie pass him then began to run behind her, a slow lope that covered the ground as quickly as Minnie’s all-out sprint.

  “There’s trouble,” Nick said, very quietly. He put the helicopter down on the ground, but she could tell by the way he juggled the pedals with his feet that he was keeping it poised for immediate take off. “Open your door and get in the back. Quickly.”

  She obeyed, fumbling with the awkward catch on the door, then shucking off her safety harness and headset and squeezing through the two seats into the cramped back area. By the time she turned around, Minnie was almost to the helicopter. Her small face was white, her eyes wide and her mouth open. She held out her hand, almost leaning towards them as she ran.

  Behind her, Duardo looked over his shoulder every few steps.

  Trouble chasing them.

  Minnie was at the door now, scrambling to get up the awkward step into the cabin. She gasped for breath and as she miss-stepped and her shin hit the edge of the door sill, she gave a breathless little whimper. Calli held out her hand, intending to boost her up and through into the back seat, to make way for Duardo.

  He reached the door and held it open, out of Minnie’s way. His head was turned back, watching.

  From the edge of the trees, three armed men rushed out into the open. As they lifted their rifles up, Nick shouted, “Down!”

  Minnie threw herself across the front seat and Calli felt Nick’s hand on her shoulder, pushing her down. Out of the way. There was no arguing with the force he used. She folded without resistance, dropping into the tiny space between the bench seat and the back of the chair she had been sitting in. She could just see over the windowsill.

  But Duardo merely turned, his gun raised and fired off three shots.

  The men at the other end of the empty field flinched a little, but they must have known his pistol couldn’t reach them for all but one of them kept running.

  Minnie tried to clamber into the back seat.

  “Minnie, no. Stay down,” Nick said sharply.

  Duardo glanced at her, then looked back over his shoulder again.

  The third man had halted and raised his rifle to his shoulder. Even Calli, who knew nothing about weapons, sensed that this man was a marksman from the way he held the rifle, sighting along it with care.

  Duardo took a step closer to the helicopter, then swung around to face the open doorway, his back to the rifleman. At the exact moment Calli heard the rifle shot. It sounded like a small thunderclap, complete with echo.

  Duardo jerked forward, his shoulder hitting the doorframe. He made a small grunting sound and fell over the seat, almost on top of Minnie.

  Nick let go of the controls, picked Minnie up around the waist and almost threw her into the back. Then he grabbed Duardo, a hand under each arm, and hauled him into the seat. He lunged over the top of him, snagged the open door and shut it.

  Duardo moved slowly, sitting himself up in the seat.

  “Stay down!” Nick roared—to whom, Calli wasn’t sure, but she stayed down anyway and pulled Minnie down too.

  The helicopter was already lifting. As soon as it gained some height, Nick pushed the stick forward, dropping the nose and shooting them up and forward at a great speed. The engine screamed.

  She heard a quiet crack! and saw a small neat hole appear in the screen just in front of Nick. Bullet hole, her dazed mind identified. Nick didn’t flinch. From her sideways angle, Calli thought he didn’t even blink. The steep ascent continued.

  “Calli!” Nick said, not looking around.

  “What?”

  “Pull off your tee-shirt. Get it behind him, put pressure on it. Hurry!”

  She struggled back onto the bench seat. She didn’t understand why he had given her such a strange order, but hurried to obey anyway.

  “No! Duardo!” Minnie screamed and tried to push past Callie into the front.

  Calli froze for a second as the truth slammed into her. “Ohmigod,” she whispered. Then she ripped off her jacket with trembling, thick-fingered hands. Then she stripped off her tee-shirt and wadded it into a ball.

  Minnie was in her way. Calli pulled her petite cousin back with a force that almost rammed her into the back wall. “I have to get to him,” she said, as an apology.

  Calli pushed through the seats, leaning on the console in the middle, her legs still dangling in the back and reached for Duardo.

  He was slumped in the seat, his chin on his chest, his eyes closed. Her heart tightened and a watery, weak rush of adrenaline surged through her. “Duardo!” she called and tugged at his arm.

  No response.

  She grabbed a fistful of his tee-shirt and hauled on it. She had to get him leaned forward, so she could reach his back. But his hand reached up to snag her wrist, pulling her fingers from his shirt. He lifted his chin and looked at her and very gently shook his head. A little drop of blood escaped the corner of his mouth.

  The surge of adrenaline swirled into a sickly panic.

  “No!” she shouted at him. “No!”

  “Minnie,” he said softly and swallowed.

  Nick’s hand dropped onto her shoulder. “Let Minnie through,” he said.

  Calli gritted her teeth, shook her head. “No. I get the pad on, we get him somewhere.”

  “Calli,” Duardo said.

  She looked at him, ready to battle it out with him, too, if necessary. They would get him somewhere. Things would be okay. This was real life. Not the eleven o’clock news. He would be just fine, goddammit.

  But Duardo smiled a little. “La dama fuerte,” he said. “Thank you for not letting go.”

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. There was something building up inside her that was jamming up everything.

  Nick’s hand was on her arm, pulling her up, pushing her through to the back seat. She fell onto the cushion still clutching her balled up tee-shirt, her limbs as useless as a stringless mari
onette’s. Her hand hurt with the force of her clenching but she didn’t let go of the tee-shirt.

  Minnie had squirmed through the opening in the seats and half lay across Duardo’s lap. She smoothed his brow, kissed him, patted his shoulder and all the while her throat worked, as if she couldn’t speak the words building there. Her eyes were wide, their focus on him fierce.

  Duardo ruffled her hair. “I regret...” He closed his eyes, took a slow, struggling breath. “English...agh,” he whispered. Then, “Nick?”

  Nick stared straight ahead, his face a mask. “Sí, Duardo?”

  “Dígala yo estaba equivocado...Sí yo no había insistido a hacer mi deber entonces yo habría tenido la alegría de es su esposo. Aún un solo día...yo habría sido orgulloso.”

  Minnie’s face crumpled and she began to weep silently, showing that she had understood part of it. Enough of it.

  Nick took a breath and Calli saw him swallow. “Minnie, he said, ‘Tell her I was wrong. If I had not insisted on doing my duty then I would have had the joy of being her husband.—’”

  Minnie gave a little choked cry as Duardo’s head rolled loosely to one side.

  “‘...Even a single day...I would have been proud,’” Nick finished, his voice a flat rasp.

  Minnie buried her head against Duardo’s chest, holding him.

  Calli watched, too numb with shock to comfort her.

  Beside the silent pair, Nick reached up and thumped the door frame with the side of his fist. Once. Twice. And a third time that traveled through the metal and made the craft shiver.

  Chapter Seventeen

  They landed back on the same square of concrete they had taken off from that morning and only then the horrible silence in the cockpit broke.

  Nick half dragged, half lifted Minnie away from Duardo’s body, as soldiers raced across the concrete and opened the door on that side. Two of them had a stretcher and eased Duardo out of the seat and lay him on the canvas.

  Nick held Minnie against him. She seemed limp in his arms and did not protest as the soldiers carried the stretcher away. Nor did she resist when he opened his door and lifted her out onto the concrete beside him.

  He looked at Calli then, his expression bleak. “Come.”

  She carefully maneuvered her cramped body to the concrete, surprised she could move at all and was capable of standing. She tugged at her crumpled tee-shirt, finally having the elbowroom to straighten it up. She didn’t bother tucking it back into her trousers. Somewhere in the last few hours, the elastic holding her braid had snapped or been pulled off and her hair had unraveled. The ends brushed her elbows, and she pushed it back tiredly.

  Nick took her arm and Minnie’s too, then led them over to the row of cars. “Quiero uno con poder y manejo bueno?” he called out.

  “El sedán de BMW, señor!” a soldier answered.

  “Keys?” Nick asked. “Las llaves?” he added.

  “Sí Señor!” The soldier turned and ran.

  Nick directed them to the dark blue BMW the soldier had recommended for its power and good handling, the two qualities Nick had specified. “Get in,” he told them. “I’ll get you back to the apartment and then off the island. It’s no longer safe for you here.”

  Calli slid into the front passenger seat and Nick helped Minnie into the back before walking around and settling behind the wheel. He was handed the keys as he shut the door and he started the car and backed it out.

  Minnie had curled up into a ball on the back seat and shut her eyes. Shutting out the world?

  Rather than direct the car towards the front gates, Nick drove across the concrete to a gravel path that skirted the southern wing of the palace. Beyond the building the manicured lawns quickly turned to wild grasses, then the road slipped between trees and emerged onto a narrow and deserted neighborhood street, a good mile away from the palace. He turned sharply left and headed for the downtown area.

  As soon as they turned onto a major road Nick braked sharply. People moved along the street itself. Nearly all of them carried, pulled or pushed belongings in sacks, carts, trolleys, whatever had been to hand. They hurried along, fear the common expression on their faces. Most of them headed east.

  “Where are they going?” Calli breathed.

  “The coast. Off island. It’s almost a hereditary instinct in Vistarians to flee the island when bad trouble strikes.” He changed gears and let the car drop into a crawl. “We’ll have to use side roads. There’s a route over the back of the hill that will get us to your apartment.”

  “What trouble are they running from? The rebels are north.”

  Nick glanced at her. “Not for long. If the people are fleeing the city, it means they expect the fighting to break out here at any moment. Word will have passed.” He nudged the car through the people, easing it towards the right. Once he could steer into a side street, he picked up speed, for the street was nearly deserted.

  No businesses were open and no one not running for the coast was out on the streets. It reminded Calli of news footage she had seen of cities that were the focus of war—empty streets, bombed-out cars, silence and everywhere the dust and rubble of disaster.

  “How could this happen so fast?” she asked. “Yesterday, Las Colinas was a normal city. Even this morning I did not see this sort of...” She was at a loss to categorize what she saw.

  “Exodus,” Nick supplied. “What it comes down to is that I was caught napping. Worse. I was caught by my own complacency. I thought we had time, Jose and I, to fix this.” He did not say the words with any emphasis.

  Calli touched his shoulder. “You can’t take on all the guilt. There are others who are also responsible for Vistaria.”

  He glanced at her and his expression was stony and unforgiving. “The others didn’t fuck up as badly as I did.”

  He said it gently but he might have slapped her and achieved the same impact. She snatched her hand back and folded her arms across her stomach, feeling sick.

  They made the rest of the trip in silence and Calli made no attempt to cross the soundless barrier between them. When Nick pulled up at the apartment, she opened the door herself and then opened Minnie’s. She tugged on Minnie’s hand and coaxed her to get out.

  Nick did not linger to watch. He moved ahead to the front door. He knocked, a hard rap and when Joshua opened it, he shepherded him inside.

  Calli walked Minnie into the apartment and turned her to face her. She stroked her cheek. “Did you lose your pack of essentials?” she asked gently.

  “Everything is in my pockets,” Minnie said, her voice ethereal. Distant.

  In the lounge room, Calli could hear Nick talking to Joshua. Low, controlled. The leader was back in charge again.

  “I think we’re going to leave again very soon. Do you have anything else you want to take?”

  Minnie roused a little. “I don’t want to leave at all,” she said, quite calmly.

  “We have to. The fighting is going to break out in the city very soon. We have to go over to Mexico. Foreign nationals here, especially Americans, won’t be treated well. This is their war, Minnie. Not ours.”

  Minnie seemed to take a moment to process this, then she nodded and sighed, and the sigh seemed to vent any resistance in her. “Yes,” she said softly. “I suppose we must leave then.”

  * * * * *

  A little less than an hour later they piled back into the car. This time Joshua and Beryl were with them. The plan was simple; they would drive to the yacht club on the coast and use Nick’s boat to cross over to Acapulco.

  Nick sat behind the wheel again, Joshua in the passenger seat. Between Beryl and Calli in the back seat, Minnie sat like a statue. She had withdrawn into herself again.

  Her remoteness worried Calli, but she didn’t know what to do about it. She mentally listed it as something she must take care of when they reached the boat. She couldn’t deal with it now. She knew the drive to the yacht club would not be as breezy as Joshua made it out to be.

&nb
sp; Nick had an encyclopedic knowledge of back roads and side streets. As a result, they avoided crowded main thoroughfares nearly altogether. When they drew closer to the eastern outskirts of the city, Nick sat up straighter, showing more alertness than before.

  “What is it?” Joshua asked.

  “We have to use the main road for a few miles. It’s the only one until we get to a turnoff about five miles away.”

  “Oh well,” Joshua said philosophically.

  The car climbed over a raised lip and bumped onto a wide, sealed road. They turned right, heading east. The sun sat low behind them, sending their long shadow down the road.

  There was a lot of traffic, moving slowly. Cars, buses, mini-vans, rusted out hulks blowing blue smoke, even horse-drawn carts. Along both sides of the road a long, strung-out line of people headed east, too, carrying their burdens, shepherding children, goats and other household animals. This far from the city, they had settled into a rhythm and uniform speed. None of the panic Calli had seen in the city showed here, just a stoicism that told her more clearly than words could just how used to fleeing and hiding Vistarians were. As Nick had said, it was in their blood, part of every page of their history.

  She felt sad for the pretty country and the happy people. Their resistance to outsiders, to Americans, hadn’t been whipped up overnight. The rebels had tapped into a deep-rooted foundation of fear built by generations of abuse. Her sadness was tinged with indignation, too. How could a people be treated this way? How could anyone watch it and not want to take up their cause?

  Nick had taken up that cause. Now he would look upon these refugees and tell himself he had failed to save them from this misery.

  She moved forward to sit on the edge of the seat and reach through the front seats to lay her hand on his chest. Although she could not see him because of the headrest, she said very quietly by his ear, “Don’t look at them and tell yourself it’s finished, Nick. This doesn’t have to be the end. Not until you decide it’s over.”

  Silence. But she knew he listened, for he had stopped breathing. His chest did not rise or fall under her hand.