“Ah, you’ve made it back again! So how was fishing today?”
Abel turned his head and nearly tripped over a board in the pier. It was Monti, of course.
“Oh, uh, pretty good actually,” he said.
“And what does that mean?” asked Monti more seriously.
Abel scrambled in his mind to find words to end this conversation quickly.
“I’ve been doing a lot of exploring, and things are starting to make sense now. Give me a few more days, and I can probably finish the job.”
Monti smiled widely. “Ah, good. I can do that for you, but I must say, by the end of next week, things will have to be taken care of. My investors would like to come here personally, and I told them all would be ready. I hope you will be finished. My associates don’t like delays—or being lied to.”
“You won’t have to worry. It’ll be wrapped up before then,” said Abel. “Oh, and the sniper rifle—the .50 caliber one—it’s coming, right?”
Monti laughed. “Just keep looking for surprises!” he said, then turned to collect more money from some lollipop-hawking children.
Abel walked away, but not too far. He put his pack down on one of the park benches that faced the sea and casually looked around. Everything appeared normal, and Abel himself seemed to be just a weary hiker setting his stuff down so he could rest along the beach before heading to his hotel.
But the former Navy SEAL was in intense mental turmoil. Amid the most outlandishly puzzling situation he’d ever encountered, now his well-honed, ever-wary intuition had picked up another most disturbing signal.
Monti did not want to use Isla del Diablo as a tourist attraction.
In fact, quite the opposite—he most likely wanted to use it for something nefarious, probably related to his family business. There was something about Monti’s words just now, and the way he’d said them. Why such urgency? Why the timeline? It was already past the height of the high season. Tourists wouldn’t be back until December—plenty of time to construct a tour of some kind, build a pier for cruise ships to dock their small boats, cut trails, build a footbridge or two, hire guides. But if Monti wanted to expand his drug operation and his investors were cartel dons, there was never enough time. Abel recalled Monti’s information for the DEA that Colombian cartels were trying to move product up the coast and were looking for waystations for their ships and planes. Could giving out this information be Monti’s way of hiding in plain sight, sending the DEA off looking for whichever of his competitors was plotting with the Colombian clans while he, under DEA protection, was the one actually doing the collaborating? Far-fetched, he thought, but also totally within the realm of possibility for an ambitious conniver like Monti.
Abel thought about calling Lopez to let him know of his suspicions, but that could be tricky. First of all, Abel assumed that his beach house was bugged. It would be virtually standard procedure for a drug lord with a known DEA operative in town. So he’d have to use his secure phone outside somewhere, but there could also be people watching him, another thing that seemed like protocol for a known DEA asset. And Abel also remembered that Monti was going to contact Lopez about the job that Abel was currently doing out on Isla del Diablo, but he didn’t know how much Monti might have told Lopez. Did Lopez know that Monti had promised to make Abel a millionaire? It was a highly extravagant sum now that Abel thought about it. Would Lopez let him keep it if he knew?
Abel covertly assessed everything around him as his mind ran in circles. He noticed that Monti had a larger number of lollipops than usual at the end of the day.
Probably because I’m back earlier, Abel surmised.
The female lifeguard, resplendent in her form-fitting one-piece, was chatting with a young man in a blue cotton shirt and brown board shorts. She was smiling and laughing, as was the handsome man.
Flirting, no doubt. Does she know that he’s one of Monti’s men? Abel wondered, noting the odd bulge in the back pocket of the young man’s board shorts, which almost certainly meant he was packing a compact weapon.
His suspicions were confirmed when Abel saw Paco, Monti’s son, approach the young man. They both waved goodbye to the lifeguard, then ambled down the beach toward the other lifeguard tower, away from Abel, seemingly in deep conversation.
Around him and behind him, Abel saw only nondescript tourists passing by, either headed for the beach or back to the road to patronize the shops and sodas along it. If there’s any good time to do this, thought Abel, this is it. He moved his backpack a couple more park benches down the beach, away from the pier and Monti, and pulled out his phone and hit a number.
“Lopez here. Good to hear from you. How goes it?”
“Good . . . I think,” said Abel.
“Ruiz said he’d given you a job. Something about the island there. What’s he got you doing?”
“Clearing out predators, stuff like that. He says he’s got investors coming next week. They want to make it a tourist attraction.”
“Your assessment?” asked Lopez.
“I . . . I don’t know,” Abel stuttered. For some reason, he found it impossible to say what he wanted to say.
“What’s he paying you?” asked Lopez.
“Too much,” managed Abel.
“Understood,” replied Lopez curtly. “Carry on.” He hung up.
Abel stared at the phone for a second, then put it away and casually surveyed the area again. Monti was still on the throne. He didn’t see Paco and the other man, but he was confident they had been far enough away not to notice him for the short time he’d been on the phone.
He sighed and shouldered his backpack again, heading for the road. For some reason, it felt lighter. Even his boots felt lighter. Despite Lopez’s cryptic remarks, he felt proud that, this time at least, he’d done the right thing, even though he had no idea how to talk about the things he’d seen or what he suspected about Monti. He needed to find out more tomorrow. That big whatever-it-was could end up being a giant-sized X factor in whatever was going on here, but for now, he just wanted to enjoy the lightness he felt for a while.
Crossing the bridge to the motel, Abel looked at the sunset that stared back at him and thought what a beautiful picture it would make to shoot the motel with the sunset in the background. He could frame it with the river on the opposite side, and it could look quite stunning. He’d love to get himself into the picture somehow, perhaps standing next to the river off to the side. He rushed into the motel lobby and was glad to see that Faviola was still at the front desk, her breasts once again shoved up by her push-up bra, this time into a space so expansive over her low-cut dress that they threatened to burst over it like a flash flood overtopping a dam.
“Hey,” he called to her. “How about helping me out with a picture outside?”
“Why should I do that?” she snorted.
“Because I’m a guest and you want guests to be happy and to put up amazing shots of your place on Facebook and talk about what a great manager you are on Tripadvisor.” Abel chuckled.
“You’re the scalawag that took my best room for yourself,” she countered.
“Yeah, but that was Monti’s thing, not mine,” he lied and hoped that she didn’t know the truth.
“You are a bad liar, Caleb Forrest, but I do like what you say, so I will do it as long as you promise to write good things on Tripadvisor and put the picture up on our Facebook page.” She came around the desk.
“You got yourself a deal,” said Abel. “Now I was thinking—”
“You go down there,” she interrupted, pointing to a spot down near the sandy bank of the river, “and I’ll stand near the bridge abutment. That way, you’ll be on one side of the picture, the motel on the other, and the sunset in between. We take one where you are turned around and looking at the sunset, so everyone doesn’t have to see your ugly face, then we do one more with you looking at the cam
era for you.”
“Did you just call me ugly?” joked Abel.
“I said your face is ugly. Too bad, because the rest of you is pretty hot. Now let’s do this,” commanded Faviola. She placed Abel at a particular spot on the beach near the Rio Palma, looking away at the sun, then snapped a couple of pictures with the camera on Abel’s smartphone. Then she repositioned Abel quickly, closer to the river, and told him to look back at her and smile.
As Abel grinned, he suddenly heard the water being disturbed behind him. Instinctively, he turned, then did a double take. There was a crocodile! A fucking brownish-green crocodile, and it was coming right for him.
“Shit!” he screamed. “What the fuck!” He dashed across the sand back toward the motel, remembering the poor dumb coati that had become crocodile feed the other day. But the sand was soft, and he stumbled, then stumbled again, finally ending up on all fours as he scrambled all the way back to the little road that led to the motel parking lot. It was there that he turned around and saw Faviola collapsed in laughter and the crocodile ambling back to the river’s edge. Abel got up and marched over to her.
“What the hell? What the fuck was that all about? I could have gotten killed, and you’re standing there laughing your ass off?”
Faviola could hardly stand she was laughing so hard. “As big as that croc is, I have no idea how it could kill you.” She laughed. “Look at it!” She pointed to the croc, and he looked. At first glance, he couldn’t see anything other than a big ugly beast, but then he noticed its mouth and jaws.
“It’s got no teeth,” he said. “It’s got no fucking teeth!”
Faviola laughed some more. “And look at how far it chased you!” she said.
Abel noticed that the croc, now crashed out on the beach, had barely made it ten feet out of the water before it had stopped. “What the hell?” he said. “You knew all this! You set me up, you goddamn—”
Faviola was trying to stop laughing but having a hard time. “That croc’s been around here since Grandfather Juan bought this land a hundred years ago. Probably even before the dinosaurs, I think.” She chuckled. “I’ve only seen six teeth in his mouth, and if he even makes it this far out of the water, it’s a miracle. He’ll probably just lie around for another hour before he’s back in the river!”
Abel finally cracked a wry smile. “Well, I assume you got a good picture,” he quipped.
“No,” said Faviola, laughing again. “I made a video of the whole thing with my phone! You should see yourself. You look like you’re a clown act in a circus! I hope all your friends will like it when I post it on Facebook!”
“Not sure that will help your business. ‘At the Rio Palma Inn, we feed our guests to the crocodiles,’” said Abel. He held out his hand. Faviola slapped the phone into it.
“I lied,” she said. “I took it with your phone. You can do whatever you want with it. I just couldn’t resist. It serves you right, you know.” She turned and walked away. “I’ll be looking for that nice review on Tripadvisor!” she called back as she left.
***
Abel went back to the beach house and checked out the pics on his laptop computer. The one with him turned around, enjoying the sunset, really did look good. He made it his desktop wallpaper, and also shared it on the Rio Palma Inn Facebook page and captioned it, “Sunset at the Rio Palma, your home when visiting paradise, Playa de Palma, Costa Rica.”
The place had turned into something like a paradise for him. The town was small, the people were friendly, the weather was perfect, and the things that had bothered him so much before, restlessness, lack of direction and security, being personally and morally unmoored, all seemed to be dissipating. The area and his job provided all the intrigue and excitement he could ever want. He was making friends here that he’d actually miss when he’d have to go back to Jacó. After talking with Lopez, he thought that his job was secure despite the extra job he’d taken—and the enormous sum he was being paid to do it. Maybe Lopez would even let him keep it. It was no wonder he’d actually seen something beautiful tonight and stopped everything to take a picture of it—for the first time in so, so long. Perhaps life was about to take a turn.
With those thoughts in mind, he plopped down on his king-sized bed and let the gentle roll of the ocean waves lull him to sleep as the purple sky out his window gradually became black, utterly unaware that the next day his life would indeed take a turn, but in a direction so unfathomable that if he’d been told ahead of time, he’d have laughed out loud and told the teller they had gone out of their mind.
16
—
Abel wolfed down another plate of Belgian waffles, grabbed some fresh fruit, and was on his way out of the Rio Palma Inn just a half hour after sunrise. He was wearing his khaki cargo pants and a roughly matching button-down shirt with his DEA utility vest over it stuffed with ammo cartridges, sunscreen, energy bars, water purification tabs, a jackknife, and the small, holographic vision machine that had been left for him the day before. He wondered what, if anything, might be left for him in place of the pen he’d left there. He also wore a fully loaded utility belt on which hung his long machete, a water bottle, a tactical flashlight, and his Glock 19, which was in a holster for the first time. In the pack he shouldered, there was the Mk 16 assault rifle, several hand grenades, more ammo, plus raingear and a new camo fatigue outfit in case he actually ended up staying on the island that night. He had no idea what to expect when he began inspecting that shiny metal thing he’d seen the day before.
As usual, he’d also stopped by the front desk to share a barb or two with Faviola before he took off, and she had obliged appropriately. “You look like everything on you is stuffed,” she’d said.
Abel had come right back at her. “You look stuffed, too,” he’d replied, noting her bulging chest. “You look like you could pop out of that button-down blouse any second.”
“I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you,” she’d come back seductively.
“Oh, yeah,” Abel had agreed, “except I’d have to watch out for flying buttons. They’d pop off like bullets—a guy could get hurt that way.”
“A secret weapon to keep scalawags like you from getting too close.” She smiled. “Where are you going anyway, camping for a week? If you are, you’d better let me know so I don’t rent out that beach house by mistake while you’re gone.”
“No such luck, I’m afraid,” Abel had replied. “I’ve got to come back and get my pictures.”
He’d headed out over the bridge, chuckling at the toothless crocodile, which was still lying near the river’s edge. Perhaps he’d moved a yard or two since the day before.
Now, noting that Monti the King hadn’t set up his throne yet (just as he’d planned), Abel hustled down the pier in hopes of getting out to sea before he came around. Just as he reached the boat, however, he heard Monti’s familiar jolly call.
“Hey, fisherman!” he yelled. Abel turned and pasted on a smile. “You got your favorite fishing rod today! Make sure you use it and bring home a big one!”
Abel gave Monti a little wave, dumped his stuff on deck, and revved the boat up. He noted that it was a bit down on fuel, but there was certainly enough for the day, and he didn’t want to hang around any longer. He slowly left the pier, then pulled the boat out in a more direct line toward the island, not as concerned about arousing the curiosity of tourists at such an early hour. Taking a second to check the cabin, Abel smiled with satisfaction at what he saw. There it was, the M107 .50 caliber anti-personnel/antimatériel semiautomatic sniper rifle, complete with a soft carrying case. Effective range, several hundred meters over a mile. It was the kind he’d used in his early days as a SEAL. Seeing it now made him feel like a little bit of home had come to him. The day was definitely off to a good start.
***
As soon as Abel dropped anchor and motored ashore, he left most of his gear in the r
ubber life raft he used as a ferry, grabbed the M107 in its carrying case, hustled at a slow trot along the trail he’d cut to the volcano, and began to climb. Finally, he reached the promontory upon which he’d sat a couple of days before and made his map of the island. He assembled the M107, filled up its magazine with ten .50 caliber rounds, flipped out its attached bipod, got himself in a prone position, and, using the rifle’s range-finding sniper scope, began panning around the island. He wanted to do a little experimenting.
At the mouth of the river were the crocodiles, sitting just under the water, waiting for dinner to come their way. Maybe even another unsuspecting coati. Abel peered through the scope, ran some calculations through his head since he didn’t have a spotter to do it for him, calmed his excitement with some deep breathing, and then gently squeezed the trigger. The report of the rifle scattered some vultures high up on the mountain. At the same instant that the birds flew away, Abel saw a fountain of sand and water leap up on the other side of the farthest crocodile. He turned toward the east, the coastal side of the island, and exploded more sand and water on the large beach that was the farthest eastern point of the island. He sighted on his boat floating at anchor out in the little bay and splashed water just behind it. He blasted sand on the farthest point of the sandbar that formed the bay his boat was in. He fired a round into one of the farthest logs he’d scrambled over the day before—as close to the shiny metal whatever-it-was as he could get before it became obscured by trees—and watched part of the log explode into splinters.
And finally, just on a whim, he turned his rifle straight eastward, where the beaches of Playa de Palma could be seen with little ant-sized people running around on them and, behind them, tiny Monopoly-sized houses and hotels. He brought this all into focus through his sniper scope, where now he could see actual people: the female lifeguard relaxing in her chair on the tower, a group of paddleboarders cruising along parallel to the beach about a hundred meters out, surfers riding waves or waiting to catch one, kids running around selling lollipops to tourists in beach chairs, and Monti holding court as usual in his canopied throne room at the foot of the pier, Paco sitting next to him.
The Green Cathedral Page 14