Angel of Death - Debt Collector 5 (A Jack Winchester Thriller)

by Jon Mills

  In between the vehicles he saw Isabel running toward the taxi with her weapon drawn. He was stuck behind some foreign piece of crap that looked as if it had been manufactured for environmentalists. It was small, barely let out any fumes and was blocking his way. He slammed his foot against the accelerator and smashed into the back of it, sending it forward into the next vehicle. He kept his foot on the metal until he saw his window of opportunity. A short amount of space between the car ahead and the car to his side opened up. Outside he could hear people screaming for him to stop but there was no way in hell he was letting her catch him. He swerved a hard left just as Isabel came up to the passenger side. She grabbed the door handle and had clicked it open when the vehicle tore away from her. He cast a glance over his shoulder to make sure she was okay. He was certain that he must have run over her feet or something to that effect, as she was right there, beside the car.

  The sound of sirens filled the air as he drove away and veered into the next road that took him away from the congested part of the city. He was sweating profusely and his heart hammered against his rib cage. Jack continued sweeping the mirrors with his eyes looking for police cars or worse — Isabel.

  Jack brought the car onto the main highway and headed for the airport. Once he arrived, he abandoned it outside the departures terminal and entered the lobby. Once he bought a ticket to Puerto Maldonado, he entered the first washroom he saw and sat inside a stall to calm his nerves.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he muttered to himself knowing that he could just go back to the United States and tell Patrick that he was unable to find his daughter. What did she mean to him? Nothing. He didn’t owe anyone shit. Outside the stall he heard different people come in and take a piss. The sound of running water and paper towels being pulled. How had it come to this? Being pursued by a lunatic FBI agent? He wished he had gone back to Rockland Cove and lived out the rest of his life on his boat. At least that way he would have avoided all of this. Going to L.A. was the worst mistake he had made, even if he had helped two kids in the process. Why did it matter? Thousands of people were suffering in this world. What did he really think he could change by helping a few people? He placed his head in his hands and thought about Eddie Carmine. It was easier for him. He only took on jobs in New York. Perhaps that’s what he needed to do. Return to the Big Apple and stay low-key in one of the projects. Do small jobs at night, live close to a grocery store and only venture out with a hood up and head down.

  Jack came out of the stall. A Peruvian man glanced at him briefly before leaving him alone. He gripped the sides of the sink, and stared at himself in the mirror. After throwing cold water over his face, he took some towels, wet them and placed them against his ankle. He took a look. It wasn’t in bad shape, just a little bruised. It would heal in a day or two. But she had got so close. Sitting on the floor in that bathroom he chuckled to himself at the look on her face as he broke away from the police. He had to admit she was looking good. Maybe a bit too good. She had lost some weight since the last time he had seen her. Stress, perhaps?

  The flight to Puerto Maldonado was a short fifty-minute flight. He fully expected Agent Baker would find out where he had gone. He didn’t bother with a false passport. Sure, he could have got one in New York. He had seen numerous crime family members get face jobs and reinvent themselves under a new alias but it was a lot of work. Most of it was driven by a paranoid mind. He wasn’t going through all that trouble. If they wanted him, it was simple, they would have to come and get him.

  He looked out the small port window. Heat waves danced across the tarmac and the noise of the plane’s engines muffled chatter.

  As soon as he was through security he sought out an information booth that could direct him to a company that could provide a guide. He was pretty sure if he didn’t find someone he would wind up lost in the jungle. He was made for the city and ocean air, not a dense, humid climate loaded with insects. He slapped his hand against the back of his neck and wiped it clean.

  “Damn bugs.”

  It didn’t take him long to find a company that offered translators and tour guides. He took off in a taxi and arrived in the central city of Puerto Maldonado. As soon as he flashed the company some money they were more than willing to help him get to where he wanted to go, which was Tambopata National Reserve. He was introduced to a short, rather chubby-looking man by the name of Jose. He wore white pants, a blue top and a brown baseball cap. His English was impeccable and he had grown up in the area. It cost Jack close to a thousand dollars to pay for his service but that was money well spent when he wasn’t aware of all the threats that the jungle held. From the moment he was introduced to Jose, he began telling Jack about how they were going to have to take a three-hour trip downriver to Tambopata National Reserve.

  “I hope you aren’t afraid of anacondas as they are pretty big down here.”

  There were very few things that Jack was nervous about. Heights and snakes were two. Jose led him to a jeep and they took off in the direction of the river.

  Jose talked loudly as the wind whipped at their faces. “This is the gateway to the southern part of the Amazon jungle. We are going to travel down the Madre de Dios river. We are thirty-four miles west of the Bolivian border. Have you ever been to South America before, Mr. Winchester?”

  “No,” Jack said holding onto the side of the jeep for dear life. The roads, if they could even be called that, were full of potholes from where the rain had washed away the earth. Jose navigated around them like Neil Armstrong riding a buggy on the surface of the moon. Over the noise of trucks passing by, Jack asked Jose where he could purchase a handgun. Jose’s eyebrow shot up.

  “Hunting and poaching is forbidden.”

  “I’m not here to hunt. It’s for protection.”

  “You would be better off buying bug spray.” He then burst into laughter.

  “Right,” Jack said swatting another bug. His skin had small welts on it from the mosquitoes that were eating him alive. He didn’t even want to imagine all the other insects he would encounter. Now he was beginning to think he should have charged Mr. Lefkofsky twice the amount. After a fair amount of back and forth Jose took him to a store. It wasn’t a gun store, more of a gift shop. Jose went in first and spoke with the owner and then came out and asked for close to nine hundred dollars.

  “That’s a rip-off.”

  “That’s the Amazon,” Jose said. “Of course you can fly back to Cusco.”

  Everything was amusing to this man. Jack agreed and Jose led him into a palm tree hut. It smelled musty inside and the floors were just mud. All over the place were antiques and tools that could be used to hack your way through the jungle. Jack eyed a machete and told Jose that he wanted it included. Once again they went back and forth but the owner eventually agreed. It wasn’t like they got a lot of business down in these parts. How he managed to survive was unknown until Jose told Jack that the owner operated a retreat with ten lodges. They were full all year around. The store catered to the basic needs of the community, his staff and tourists. Jack passed by what looked like a freezer running off a generator. There was a stack of wine and beer further back and shelves of canned food. The owner took them into his office where he unlocked a drawer and pulled out a Walther P22, a Glock and a Smith and Wesson. He laid them out on the table and then placed several boxes of bullets beside them.

  “He says, take your pick.”

  It was a no-brainer. He reached for the Glock. It had been the one gun that he’d always used. He now had several stashed away in different areas around the United States. He couldn’t take them on planes and he didn’t have a storage unit, so he’d buried them in different places wrapped in rags and placed inside a box. If he wasn’t in the area, he could always find someone willing to sell one. But with the Amazon not being the gun-toting capital of the world, he had to make do with whatever he could find.

  Jack looked over the handgun, loaded a bullet and fired off a round out the window. To
him it was normal. He had bought many a gun out the back of a vehicle in Jersey. It was common to have a person try the weapon but apparently not down here. The owner picked up one of his other guns and aimed it at Jack. Jose tried to defuse the situation, notching it up to a misunderstanding.

  Once matters were settled, he followed Jose out and they made their way down to the dock.

  Chapter Twenty

  Another woman had been murdered, though he didn’t call it that. To Castillo it was a sacrifice, something beautiful —a gift even. Danielle couldn’t believe how much he had changed since she had first met him. She had watched his rise to power as more and more flocked to hear his words and seek out healing. Forty-five had traveled to the retreat but more would soon join them. Most joined because they suffered from severe bouts of depression, or illnesses that could not be treated effectively by modern-day medicine.

  In their eyes, Castillo was a god among men.

  To Danielle, he was a crazed, narcissistic murderer.

  If it weren’t for the fact that only a few trusted people knew about what happened inside, he would already be locked up. She now understood why he chose Peru. Why he specifically picked the Amazon jungle. It wasn’t just off the beaten path and isolated, it was outside of the borders of American justice. Peru’s government was corrupt. As far back as the 1990s there had been talk and rumors swirling of the president being involved in organized killings, embezzlement, abuse of power and corruption over the course of his ten years in power. And though changes were made, corruption still permeated every facet of society. It wasn’t about what a person did, but how much he or she could pay to have people turn the other way. And that was if they knew about it at all. Many came to the Amazonian jungle and the small neighboring villages because it provided the opportunity to do whatever the hell they liked with minimal eyes watching.

  Danielle had seen Castillo’s men pay police officers. The very first couple who tried to escape were handed back to them by an officer of the law. How much did it cost them? Who knows? But it was the reason she couldn’t just up and leave or send a message to the police. There was no way of knowing what would happen. Relationships had been formed months before their arrival. She remembered Castillo taking several trips to Peru and collecting a large amount of money from members prior to her arrival. He said at the time he was dealing with paperwork and the legal process involved in setting up an ayahuasca healing retreat in Peru. But that was only part of it.

  As Danielle watched them remove the dead girl’s body from one of the lodges she thought about her parents. Would they come looking for her? Did they even know that their daughter was dead? They would never know. Her body would be wrapped, weighted down, taken out into the middle of the river and dropped into the depths of the murky green waters, never to be found again. Who could prove it? No one as most of the people here were runaways, street dwellers, the outcasts of society and the mentally unstable. The few who were of sound mind justified the actions by saying that death was not really death. They were being rewarded with eternal favor from the Sage.

  Another man brought out the closed wicker basket containing a deadly green mamba snake. Instead of killing this girl with a knife they had allowed the snake to bite her. While no one else questioned him, Danielle had, and Castillo had made it clear to all in attendance, they were not to question the directions of the Sage. “Our minds cannot comprehend the plans it has for each person,” he said. The girl was meant to die this way according to the Sage. She was meant to feel the paralyzing power of a potent neurotoxic venom course through her veins. Danielle didn’t want to watch but she was forced to. Castillo saw her flinch at the sight of the girl experiencing the symptoms of the bite within fifteen minutes. Over the next two to three hours she watched as the girl died a painful death.

  What did this have to do with healing? What did it have to do with enlightenment? Castillo had twisted a vision seen under the influence of a plant for his own deranged purpose.

  Danielle walked back to her small hut along the wooden pathways that connected them all. She was lost in thought and beginning to feel the strain. When the others were engaged in long sessions of meditation, consuming the holy medicine or listening to Castillo preach at them about eternal principles, she would lie in the hut and sleep. It was her only escape from what had become a daily horror show. She never quite knew what was going to happen next.

  As she lay on her side, she heard someone enter. Over the past few weeks she had learned to stay alert to the point that she went without sleep. Her mind constantly searched for a way to get away from the group but so far she’d had little success.

  “Danielle.”

  She turned and saw April. April had a short blond bob. She was thin from her time in the jungle but very dark-skinned from the sun. She was the one person that Danielle had come to trust. She hailed from Chicago. A doctor by trade, she had sought out the group looking for alternative forms of treatment for her patients. At first she was enamored by the reports of people being healed of diseases or freed from pain. It was her natural curiosity as a doctor that made her agree to travel to Peru to help them get established. Within a month, like Danielle, she knew that she was in over her head. She had gone along with them to the city, and had been the one who caught Danielle writing on paper. Instead of turning her in, she had disposed of it before some of the men came bursting into the bathroom. Had she not done that, it would have been her they were carrying out and dropping into the depths of the Amazon River.

  April came close and perched on the edge of her bed. She glanced over her shoulder nervously as if expecting someone to come in at any minute.

  “What you said about wanting to escape. If you still want to do that. I will go with you.”

  Danielle pushed herself upright as she began to explain. This had been the first glimmer of hope that she had got. The chance of them both being able to make it out of the jungle was a lot higher if they worked together.

  “Why the change of mind?”

  “Castillo came to my hut last night.”

  She stared back at Danielle and she didn’t need to explain any further. It was another one of the horrors of the place. Castillo had made it clear that all the women were his, and as the Sage directed he would sow his seed with whomever he chose.

  April stared down at her folded hands. Danielle clasped them between hers and gave her a hug. “It’s another month before we leave for the city.”

  “Maybe I can convince him to go sooner than that.”

  “How?”

  “The bags of grain. If I can get rid of some of it in the river and make it look like an animal got into it, we would be forced to go and get more.”

  “You need to be careful, April. They’re always watching.”

  “I’m in charge of the food.”

  “Even more reason to be careful. There is very little that gets by him. Why not just poison him? Take some of the venom from the green mamba and mix it in with his food.”

  “No, he has someone try his food now before he eats.”

  Danielle raked her fingers through her hair to work out the tangles.

  “When?”

  “Tonight. After supper, when they all go down to listen to him speak.”

  Every night after they ate, Castillo would take everyone down to the water’s edge. They would sit on logs and he would teach until it was dark. She hated it. At one time she hung on his every word, now he represented death, falsehood and malice to her.

  Back in Cusco, Isabel had just finished up speaking with the local police. After she pulled her gun out in an area full of tourists, they didn’t take too kindly to her desire to just walk away without them looking into her credentials. She had spent the past three hours stuck inside some stuffy room with nothing more than a table and two chairs. Several officers had been in to speak with her and even though she was able to present her badge and give them the number of her superior, they still seemed to be doing nothing to speed up her r
elease. When they eventually decided to make the call, and told her she was free to go, she was furious. It didn’t matter that she was on official FBI business. The way they saw it, she was nothing more than a tourist packing a loaded gun as the FBI meant nothing to them.

  “You are out of your jurisdiction,” a translator said.

  She didn’t bother to argue. They released her with a warning that if she was caught again, they would see to it that not only would she pay a penalty, but she would be deported and banned from entering the country. It was like talking to a wall. Nothing that she said meant anything to them, it just went over their heads. She knew how it worked down here. The only reason they had taken three hours was because they wanted to see if she would cough up some form of payment. She refused and so she spent the better part of the day locked inside a stuffy room that didn’t even have any air conditioning or ceiling fan.

  The officer at the front desk slid her belongings underneath the bulletproof glass; a badge, a gun and holster, her purse and a cellphone. She immediately checked her purse to see if they had removed any money. Sure enough, at least fifty dollars was gone. She was going to ask about the missing money but she wouldn’t have got far. It was just how they operated down here. There was no law. It was just for appearances.

  When she finally stepped outside of the door into the afternoon sunshine, she was tired, sweaty and in desperate need of a shower. As she trudged back to her hotel she was frustrated that she had once again come so close to catching him and he had just slipped through her fingers. She was beginning to think that what Detective Banfield had said was not without some merit. As she made her way down the main street and back across the square, she couldn’t help wonder what building he had come out of. She returned to the alley and the spot where she saw the police appear. She pulled on the door but it wouldn’t open. She gave it a few hard knocks and waited. A minute or two later the door cracked open and a man in chef’s clothing stared at her.