by Ward Larsen
Horns blared and tires screeched. He glanced left and right, and saw all four men in pursuit. He darted through the opposing lanes, dodging a motorbike, and on reaching the far sidewalk he found himself facing a five-story building with shops at street level. He turned away from the soccer player and his partner, and sprinted at top speed in an effort to outflank their pincher maneuver.
He failed.
The other two cut him off with fifty feet to spare. One white shirt, one green. Green reached under his shirttail and pulled a handgun, leaving Davis but one option—the store right in front of him. He burst through the entrance and sprinted down an aisle toward the back. Flashing past in his periphery were sets of dishes, Wedgwood and Mikasa, and along the walls he saw displays of silver flatware. The stunned sales clerk, a slim and well-dressed woman, stood at a counter in back, wide-eyed and speechless as she watched her new and only customer rush down the main aisle.
He aimed for an exit at the back of the sales floor, but as soon as he reached it Davis skated to a stop on the slick tile and cursed. The only rear exit was blocked, a sturdy-looking door secured by a thick iron bar and padlock. The only other opening in the storeroom was a high transom window, ancient glass scored to the point of being opaque and fortified by an iron grate. He heard the shop’s front door open, then his pursuers shouting at the clerk in Spanish. No way out.
His head swiveled as he searched for a weapon. There was only one—leaning against a wall, a four-foot length of lumber. He grabbed the two-by-four, held it by one end and punched out the window. Glass shattered and light sprayed down through the opening, broken shafts playing the dim storeroom like a chapel nave under stained glass. Davis backed against the wall near the passage to the sales floor. He didn’t have to wait long.
The gun was the first thing he saw, the barrel canted upward toward the broken window. Davis swung his club eighteen inches above that, and a head arrived right on schedule. The two-by-four connected, but not cleanly, and the man stumbled back. Davis’ second swing was better, crushing his gun hand against the door-frame. The gun flew to the floor, and the man in the green shirt doubled over with a shout of pain. Davis palmed one end of the two-by-four and used it like a battering ram, a pivoting arc that ended abruptly under the man’s chin. He collapsed in a heap. He’d barely hit the floor when the first shot rang out.
Davis threw his shoulders against the wall, hopelessly exposed. The only way out was the way he’d come in. He needed protection, and the only thing he saw was inside the showroom—an arm’s length away, a massive silver serving tray. It was oval, the size of a manhole cover, and looked nearly as sturdy. Davis lunged into the open as a shot zinged past. He grabbed the tray by the handles and raised it, both surprised and heartened by its weight. With the white shirt ten steps away, Davis held the tray like a shield and bull rushed the man. Three more shots echoed, ricocheting off the thick metal. Glass shattered all around, and in the reflection of a wall-length mirror he saw the white shirt shift to one side. Davis altered his momentum and made solid contact.
Both men went down in a spray of crystalline shards. Davis was the quicker to roll, and he delivered his best strike of the day, an elbow to the forehead that sent the man cold to the floor. He scrambled to his feet just as the other two burst inside. Fortunately, neither man had a gun, but one was brandishing a black truncheon. When it came in a blur Davis moved too late, and took a painful blow to his shoulder.
It might have been the pain that set him off. It might have been so many days of frustration, not knowing whether his daughter was dead or alive. There was also a chance these men were tied to the abduction. Anger is never a strategy, at least not a successful one, but at that moment it swept over Davis like a breaking wave.
The nightstick came again in a backhand swing, but such blows were rarely effective. They lacked force and momentum. Davis diverted the strike easily before stepping in and dropping a weighted elbow to the man’s collarbone. When he buckled, immobilized, Davis grabbed under his crotch, lifted the man, and sent him flying across the room like a Scotsman tossing a caber. The impact took out an entire row of display cabinets stocked with tea sets. The resulting explosion of ceramics might have been heard a block away. Before he could turn, the last man standing, the one in the soccer jersey, crowned him with some kind of vase.
It hurt like hell, but vases make lousy weapons because they have no density. With a broken ceramic handle in his hand, the man stood looking at his much larger opponent, obviously out of ideas. Davis started with a compact left, followed by a not so compact right. His fists arced down like a windmill gone amuck, and when the soccer player wobbled, Davis lifted him lengthwise, took a running start, and sent him headlong down a row of cabinets that stretched the length of the showroom floor. His head swept through sets of crystal goblets, two trays of figurines, before encountering the side of a very sturdy display case. One that held something called Baccarat. The big cabinet rocked back on its edge, hesitated for just a moment, and then crashed to the floor in a burst of glittering chips.
Davis fell still. He was battered and bloody. He was sucking air like a train at the top of a mountain. Four men lay motionless on the floor. Pretty much everything was on the floor. The carpet of glass shards and shattered ceramics was two inches deep in places. Behind the lone surviving counter, Davis sensed a presence, and the young saleswoman rose cautiously. First he saw her raven hair, then two wide eyes, and finally the rest as she stood straight. She looked at him dumbly, then surveyed what was left of her shop.
“Do you speak English?” he asked.
She nodded.
“You should call the police.”
She looked at him questioningly, then set her eyes on the man splayed on the floor near her demolished Baccarat cabinet. The clerk pointed down.
Davis looked at the soccer player. He’d come to rest on his back, but was beginning to stir. Next to him on the floor was small leather wallet that had been thrown clear on the final impact. Only it wasn’t exactly a wallet. It was a credential holder, and had fallen open perfectly to display a picture of what the man used to look like. Right next to that was his badge.
Davis heaved a long, heavy sigh. “Shit!”
* * *
“A china shop,” said a dumbfounded Larry Green after hanging up his phone.
Sorensen looked at him blankly. “What?”
The two had met for dinner, intending to discuss options for helping Davis. Heavy plates of a Thai wasabi creation had just reached their table when the call interrupted.
Green expanded, “Jammer just waylaid four policemen and converted a Wedgwood factory outlet into a beach of ground glass.”
Sorensen hung her head. She knew how much Jen meant to Jammer. She also knew it wasn’t in his nature to wait serenely for the world to turn.
“He never has been the patient type,” she said.
“That’s all good and fine when you’re turning over charred airplane parts in a Kansas cornfield. This is different. From what you tell me, he’s dealing with some pretty ruthless people who have high connections right here in the Beltway.” Green shook his head. “I should have known better than to send him down there. It was a disaster in the making.”
“Is he okay?” she asked.
“Jammer? He’s indestructible, you know that. But he’s definitely highlighting himself. That call was from my boss at NTSB, Janet Cirrillo, who has received some very specific guidance from the State Department.”
“The State Department?”
“It seems their prevailing view is that Jammer is an embarrassment to our nation. She’s been told in no uncertain terms to get him out of Colombia before he causes, in the Secretary of State’s words, ‘irreparable damage to a long and peaceable relationship with a vital strategic neighbor.’”
Sorensen looked at him doubtfully. “He won’t come. Not without Jen.”
“You and I know that.”
“So you’re not going to pull him out?�
�
He sighed. “I’ll leave a message on his phone. He’ll ignore it.” Green watched her spin her fork aimlessly in her food. “Tell me … how are the two of you doing?”
“Jammer and I? As in personally?”
He nodded.
“Not as well as we should be—the usual.”
“He’s never been one for spilling his feelings, but I can tell he really likes you, Anna. Goes into a funk every time the two of you split.”
“Does he?”
“I knew Diane. He was the same way about her when the squadron deployed. Send him to Italy, and he’d be fine for the first week. After a month he was miserable.”
“Maybe that’s one of our problems,” she said. “Ghosts can cast pretty long shadows.”
“And daughters?”
“No,” said Sorensen. “I know how much Jen means to him, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. In fact, that’s what worries me now. Worst case, if she doesn’t come back … I don’t know if Jammer could handle that.”
“Could any of us?”
Sorensen looked up plaintively. “You said you could help him.”
“I said I was working on some options.”
“Well, now’s the time.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right.” Green picked up his phone.
As he dialed, Sorensen kept playing with her food. In time her worry gave way to the slenderest of smiles.
“What?” he asked as his call rang.
“For real? A china shop?”
Green only shook his head.
THIRTY-FOUR
Prison cells, Davis had once mused, were rather like fine wine. Each has its distinctive bouquet, subtle flavorings and nuances that present a unique signature. As a full-bodied Merlot might have hints of red currant or blackberry, a robust drunk tank could allude to the bodily functions of the previous night’s lodgers. If a Chardonnay reflected the essence of an oak barrel, the walls of a Third-World immigration lockup might offer scratchings and cranial imprints from vintage years past. The understated signatures were always there. All you had to do was look for them.
This particular hundred square feet was not the worst he’d seen. Three cement walls, and at the front a standard-issue iron grate with a hinged door. It wasn’t old, wasn’t new, and Davis could see three similar cells down the hall. Beyond these was a brightly lit office where uniformed policemen came and went. Though Davis had seen his share of holding cells, two in one week was a personal best. His other visits had been the result of minor transgressions, most fueled by alcohol. Rugby celebrations gone too far. The odd bar fight as a young enlisted Marine, the service in which he’d done a tour before gaining his appointment to the Air Force Academy. For all his proficiency, however, he had never spent two nights in the same week on ice. That was a record he desperately wanted to keep intact.
He sat on a stained cot as he contemplated his misfortune, and like suspects everywhere, tried to get his story straight. How was he to know they were cops? His daughter had been kidnapped, Colonel Marquez murdered, so he was understandably on edge. He’d witnessed two men breaking into his room and assumed the worst, that they were tied to Jen’s disappearance. It never crossed his mind that they might be police. Not one of the four had identified themselves as such. He thought it best not to address the question of who followed who away from the hotel. He could rightfully claim that one man had tried to shoot him, and another took a swing with a club. Altogether, not a bad story, and one that would make a strong case for self-defense in most of the fifty States. But here in Colombia?
Not so much.
Davis knew he’d screwed up again, acted without reason. No, that wasn’t right. His reasons were damned good. It was foresight he’d lacked. Given what transpired, he could easily have ended up in a hospital, or even on a metal table under Dr. Guzman’s bright examining light. And if any of that happened, who was going to find Jen?
He stirred and began pacing his cell, feeling a host of new aches. He rattled the bars to get the attention of a uniformed guard down the hall. He asked for a phone call, and the guard yelled, “Silencio!” He demanded to contact the U.S. embassy, and two men in the adjoining cells heckled him in Spanish. Davis kept at it for the best part of an hour, making noise, trying to get a rise out of someone. It was well after dark, after floodlights snapped to life outside the window down the hall, and after a shift change at the guard podium, that the man he wanted to talk to arrived.
Major Raul Echevarria, Region One Police, Special Investigations Unit, walked up and stood in front of his door.
“I didn’t know they were cops,” Davis said, hours of preplanned story crafting yielding to impatience.
Echevarria only stared at him, the oft-smiling mouth set straight under his bushy mustache. He looked tired, as if he’d been working all day. Even so, there were no wrinkles in his shirt, and his uniform trousers were sharply creased. Maybe a man who’d gone home after a long day, but who’d been called back to work overtime.
“Did I hurt anybody?” Davis asked.
“Most will recover. Officer Nunez has a concussion and is still seeing double.”
“They should have identified themselves. And they definitely shouldn’t have started shooting. What would you have done?” Davis knew any lawyer would tell him to shut up at this point. Except, perhaps, a lawyer whose daughter was being held hostage in a hostile jungle. “What were they doing in my room?”
“They were investigating.”
Davis stiffened ever so slightly, remembering when he’d given a similar answer. I’m investigating. He looked again at Echevarria’s shoes. Spit-shined black Oxfords, not a mark on them.
“Since when am I the subject of an investigation?”
“This crash is a criminal matter, Mr. Davis, there can be no doubt. And you withheld evidence.” Echevarria reached into his pocket and pulled out a Ziploc bag containing Jen’s iPod.
Any number of responses came to Davis’ mind. He’d only recently discovered the audio portion, the element the police might find useful. He could argue he’d taken possession of the device as his daughter’s personal effect, or even as part of the crash investigation. He didn’t bother with any of that. He said, “This doesn’t make sense.”
“What are you speaking of?”
“Everything. The crash, the missing passengers. Gunshots and false identities. It’s all too crude and obvious.”
“Even a Colombian detective might realize that criminal forces are at work?”
Davis kept on track. “Whoever is behind this—they’ve practically advertised their crime.” He explained his theory of the jet’s diversion and the abduction of the girls.
“That is what you think happened?” Echevarria asked.
“It’s not very subtle. The people who dreamed this up are confident of two things. First, they seem sure that only one person outside Colombia realizes what’s going on.”
“Who might that be?”
“Kristin Stewart’s father.”
Davis watched Echevarria cup a hand over his broad mustache and drag it down over his lips, a theatrical gesture of reflection. “And the second thing?”
“The people we’re looking for—they seem certain they won’t get caught.”
The policeman shrugged. “Your ideas are entertaining as always, Mr. Davis. I will miss them.” Echevarria pulled a United States passport out of a different pocket—Davis didn’t have to ask whose picture was inside—and handed it through the bars. “Your time here has come to an end. Our foreign ministry forwarded a demand that you be sent home. We received an immediate response—from your NTSB head office, I think. You are being recalled immediately. The next flight to Washington is at seven tomorrow morning. Make sure you are on it. Until then, I will do my best to overlook these new troubles you have found yourself in.”
Davis looked curiously at the policeman. “Do you have children, Major?”
No response.
“I’d guess not, becaus
e if you did you’d understand why I’m not going anywhere—not without my daughter.”
“Señor … make no mistake. You attacked four policemen today in front of many witnesses. There is also the murder of Colonel Marquez to consider. That investigation remains in its early stages, and I should question you further. Take this as a once-in-a-lifetime offer—leave while you can. My influence is not endless. If you are placed on trial for these crimes you will likely end up in a far less accommodating place than this. And for a very, very long time.”
Davis gave no reply.
“Rest assured that the investigation into the crash, and of course the fate of your daughter, will move forward. My department is taking over entirely until a replacement for poor Colonel Marquez can he found.”
“That could take days, even weeks.”
The policeman only shrugged.
“Your department knows nothing about aviation.”
Echevarria once more reached into a pocket—he was beginning to remind Davis of a bad magician—and he handed over a small piece of paper. He said, “If my advice is not persuasive enough, perhaps this note will guide your decision. It was found in your room by one of the officers you assaulted.”
The note was handwritten in block letters.
REYNAUD’S TWO WEEKS AGO—YOU ALLOWED YOUR DAUGHTER WINE. LEAVE THE COUNTRY NOW IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE HER AGAIN.
Davis felt a clench in his gut. Every muscle in his body tensed as he glared at the policeman.
“I will find your daughter,” Echevarria promised. “But if you stay in Colombia, I fear it might not be in the condition you wish.” The major was silent for a time, then motioned to the jailer at the top of the hall. The man came with a set of keys and opened the lock.
“Goodbye, Mr. Davis,” said Echevarria, beckoning him toward the wide-open door.
Davis felt like a soldier in an old war movie—being offered freedom, yet fully expecting to be shot in the back for attempted escape. He wanted Jen’s iPod back, but knew it was pointless to ask. He walked past Echevarria into the long corridor.
