Running from the Devil

by Jamie Freveletti

  She craned her neck the other way. The waning moon broke through the clouds, bathing the area in light. The road opened onto a grassy field that sloped upward and was lined on one side by trees, the other side by the ugly, metallic pipeline. The pipeline sat on four-foot-high tripods, running like a large snake along the trees. In the distance, Emma saw the tip of a column of flame. The pipeline burned steadily.

  She returned her attention to the yacht. They were going to offload the guns onto it for transport. She was certain. And she was just as certain that not every weapon would make it to the boat. She needed one if she was going to survive.

  Time to move, she thought.

  Emma jogged to the pickups, keeping low, watching for the soldiers to return. When she got to the first pickup, she reached into an open box and pulled out one of the rifles. It was close to the same design as the AK-47, but even Emma, with her lack of experience with weapons, could see that it was a technological leap forward. It was sleek and felt powerful in a way the AK-47 wasn’t. The high-tech scope on the top looked like the weapon had been designed for a marksman or a sniper. Someone who would hide in cover and had the expertise to shoot the enemy at a distance and with skill. Someone like Sumner. No one like Rodrigo and his band of losers. She thought of the damage that even one shooter with such a weapon could do from a hidden position in a high-rise building. She fiddled with the rifle a moment, checking to see if it was loaded. It wasn’t. Emma wanted to spit, she was so disappointed. She climbed into the truck to rummage through the boxes. The open box contained some spare ammunition. She grabbed it, jumped off the truck, and retreated a hundred feet into the trees. She squatted down next to one to analyze her new weapon.

  Despite its advanced design, or perhaps because of it, the gun was easy to load. There was no denying that it was a step up from her other weapon. She peered through the scope. It gave her an excellent view of any target, but adjusting to it felt awkward. Up to this point she’d shot at someone only in the heat of the moment, and failed miserably when she’d had the time to think. This gun required the calm of a professional.

  She jogged up the hill, toward the leaping flame, away from the boat landing. She wanted to get her bearings, to see what she was up against. She ran through the soft darkness. Her feet made very little sound. Her shin flared with each step, but she ignored it. She was just thankful that it didn’t spasm anymore. She’d felt much worse at the end of a hundred-mile run. She knew she could handle the pain. She reached the point where the pipeline had been exploded open. Its twisted metal dripped oil into a large oil drum that was filling rapidly. Her feet slipped in the oily grass.

  Light shone from a small hut that sat one hundred yards away. Emma could hear the soft murmur of voices. She inched along in the darkness toward the hut. There were no windows, but the door hung open. A triangle of light poured out from it. Emma stepped into position opposite the door. She used the scope to see into the hut. She gasped.

  Sumner and a soldier sat on the floor against the far wall. Blood covered the soldier’s shirt, and he slumped sideways onto Sumner’s shoulder. The soldier’s face was contorted in pain. He kept his eyes closed.

  Sumner looked unhurt, but grim. His eyes were red-rimmed and his beard more pronounced. He leaned against the leg of a desk or table while he supported the soldier and stared at something, or someone, just out of Emma’s vision. Both men had their hands tied and resting on their laps.

  Smoking Man came into view. He yelled something in Spanish at Sumner, who answered in one short sentence.

  So, one at least to eliminate, Emma thought. But where Smoking Man was, so were his bodyguards. Two more somewhere very close by, perhaps in the hut itself, and one was an excellent shot. She remembered that from the way he’d targeted the capybara at the airstrip.

  A black Range Rover came barreling up. White slammed out of it and headed to the hut. One of Smoking Man’s bodyguards followed at a slower pace. Emma lowered her weapon. The odds had just changed for the worse. It was eight against two: Smoking Man, two bodyguards, four soldiers, and White. This impressive array of might against Emma, Sumner, and an injured soldier who looked as though shooting a gun was well beyond his capabilities just then.

  Ridiculous odds, Emma thought. There was no way they’d survive in a shoot-out. She’d have to come up with something else.

  She needed to find the four soldiers in order to determine their location. She jogged back along the stinking pipeline toward the beach, keeping low and in the shadows. When she reached the Daihatsu trucks, what she saw made her spirits plunge. The soldiers were busy stacking the boxes of rifles onto a small dinghy floating at the edge of the boat landing. When the dinghy was full, three of the soldiers hopped in and fired up the engine. They motored out to the cruiser, where Emma could just make out the features of the boy soldier. He stood on the deck, waiting.

  One truck was empty, and the second nearly empty. Emma ran toward the last truck and clambered onto it. She needed at least two more rifles. She clawed at one of the remaining boxes. The lid came loose with a tearing noise that nearly stopped her heart. She crouched next to the pickup’s sidewall. The only sound that greeted her was the soft lapping of the waves against the shore. She hauled the rifles over her shoulder before running her hand around the box’s bottom to search for ammunition. She found two belts, a carton of cartridges, and a small rectangular box that contained long sticks of dynamite. She gathered it all up and shot off the truck just as she heard the dinghy’s engine fire up again.

  Emma dragged her own weapon by its strap as she moved farther into cover. She dumped it onto the ground while she focused her attention on loading the new rifles. When she was finished she grabbed all of them and returned to her position outside the hut’s entrance. Soon one of Smoking Man’s bodyguards stepped into view. He held an assault weapon at his side while he took a long drag off a cigarette, blew the smoke out, and scanned around the hut.

  Emma left the extra rifles in a pile behind a tree and proceeded to canvass the area, moving in a wide semicircle. Halfway around, she found a well-worn trail. She took it, moving as quietly as she could.

  After four hundred yards, the path ended at a clearing. A long, low gazebo with a thatch roof but no walls ran the length of it. Long wooden tables with trestle benches sat under the roof. Plastic five-gallon cans and heaps of rubber tubing were piled all around, along with a huge mound of coca leaves. Glass beakers rested on the table. A wooden pallet at the end of the table was stacked high with plastic-wrapped bricks of white powder cocaine.

  Emma wandered around the table, checking the items with a scientist’s eye. Several cans with pour spouts were lined up against one side of the gazebo. The first had the word ACETONE written on it in crude black marker. The second said PEROXIDE and the third PETROL. Emma knew that gasoline and acetone were often used to distill coca leaves into cocaine paste, but the peroxide threw her. She couldn’t figure out how it would be used in refining coca. She bounced the three components around in her mind, trying to find a link among them. Then it came to her. The peroxide could have a very lethal use.

  Emma walked the length of the gazebo a second time, reading the labels on all the cans and glass beakers, looking for a specific ingredient. Sure enough, there it was, sitting at the farthest end of the table: sulfuric acid.

  They were making bombs.

  The synthesis of acetone peroxide carried with it so much risk that Emma was surprised the guerrillas would attempt it. The substance was volatile and unstable. When the two liquids were mixed, they could create enough force to blow off fingers. Add a blasting cap, and one could create a decent-size bomb.

  Problem was, there was no telling when the mixture would explode. The only way to be safe was to cool the liquid to low temperatures. Acetone peroxide achieved a level of stability when cold. Emma couldn’t imagine where they’d cool the mixture. They would need a refrigerator or freezer, because the jungle environment would warm it far too fast.
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br />   She once again walked the length of the gazebo, this time looking for anything that could contain ice or dry ice. Nothing.

  Perhaps they’re storing it farther away for safety in case it blows, Emma thought. She widened her search area. She found two coolers twenty-five yards into the trees. She knelt down and very gently removed the lid. There, nestled in a glass container labeled AP, sat the dried granules of acetone peroxide. Ice filled the remaining space. She opened the second cooler. This one was stacked with silver metal plates just like the ones she’d watched the guerrillas use to mine the road back at the airstrip. They, too, were covered with ice. Several rolls of duct tape lay all about.

  An idea bloomed in Emma’s mind: AP explodes when jarred or pressed. She could use the AP to create her own pressure-sensitive mine. If she could bury it outside the hut’s entrance, the first person who stepped on it would be blown up. Her biggest challenge would be to add only the amount of AP needed to affect the individual stepping on the mine. She didn’t want it to destroy the hut, and Sumner and the soldier, with it. The other question was, How would she ensure that Sumner or the wounded soldier didn’t step on the mine first?

  Emma shook off her indecision. It was the only idea she’d had so far. She’d solve these problems when she came to them. She got to work creating her mine. She took the AP out of the cooler, being careful not to jar the glass. She sprinkled it over a flat metal disk. Then, very slowly, she lowered a second disk over the first. She was impressed that the guerrillas thought to cool the metal disks as well. When held together with the tape, they would help keep the AP stable for a bit longer. She bound the ends of the disks together.

  She made a second mine as quickly as possible. The outside temperature was rising steadily. When the disks warmed to above ten degrees Celsius, the AP would once again become unstable.

  Emma carried her two mines back down the path. She moved with as much grace as she could muster so as not to jar them. She reached the spot outside the hut where she’d hidden the rifles and lowered the mines to the ground.

  The situation at the hut seemed to have taken a turn for the worse since White had arrived. He paced back and forth in front of Sumner in agitation. Sumner watched White with his characteristic lack of emotion. White crouched down and spat directly into Sumner’s face. Sumner’s eyes remained blank. He gazed at White’s face, only inches from his own, with a level stare.

  “Who the hell are you?” Sumner’s voice floated to Emma. She strained to hear White’s response.

  “I’m your worst enemy, you just don’t know me,” White said. “Caldridge owes me the formula, and with your help, I’m going to make sure she delivers.”

  Sumner frowned. Emma could see him trying to make sense of what White said. Before he could say anything, White backhanded him, hitting him in the face. Sumner pitched to the side but managed to catch himself before he fell on the wounded soldier. Emma felt her anger begin to bubble under the surface. She reached up and fingered the cross hanging around her neck. Worried the beads with her fingers. She calmed almost immediately. She took a deep breath.

  Focus, she thought. The soldier leaning against Sumner looked unconscious, but for a second she thought she saw a flash of awareness in his body language. He was not as bad off as he wanted everyone to believe. She was right to have brought him a weapon.

  It took an effort for Emma to divert her attention from the unfolding scene. She analyzed the dirt around the hut, trying to get a handle on the most likely traffic pattern. The grass was beaten to dust in a line outside the door that curved to the left. Twenty feet away sat a large, flat boulder. The path curved around it and continued down toward the ocean. Halfway down the trail, Emma saw the glow of a cigarette tip moving toward the beach. The second bodyguard was headed toward the water’s edge.

  Emma lifted both disks off the ground, took a deep breath, and carried them to the path, taking care to stay out of direct line of sight from the hut. She placed the disks back on the ground before clawing at the dirt. She was sweating and in a state of near panic. The sun was rising and along with it came the heat. The AP would soon be too warm to handle.

  While she worked, she heard White talking to Smoking Man, outlining a plan.

  “Burning the plants set us back at least six weeks. It will take that long for her to grow new ones that can be infused with the chromosomes we need.”

  She finished burying the first disk. She turned to the second. Her panic was taking over now. She didn’t want to remain out in the open any longer. The second bodyguard could return at any time. White’s Range Rover was parked next to the line in the dirt. She maneuvered the second disk through the open passenger-side window and lowered it onto the seat. The minute she let go of the mine she hightailed it back toward her hiding spot. Once in the trees, she used the scope on the rifle to look down the path. The second bodyguard was strolling toward the hut, still pulling on the cigarette in his mouth. Emma held her breath as he approached the buried mine. He walked past it, missing it by only a few inches before heading into the hut.

  “Get started on him,” she heard White say. He waved at the bodyguard. “Go get her. She needs to watch.” Smoking Man repeated the order in Spanish. The guard loped off, once again missing the mine by inches.

  Emma’s panic spiked even higher. The guard would discover that she was gone and raise the alarm. Whatever she was going to do, she’d better do it now.

  The remaining bodyguard grabbed Sumner by the shirt. The wounded soldier rolled off him onto the hut’s dirt floor. The bodyguard dragged Sumner out of the hut straight toward the mine.

  Oh, no, Emma thought. She targeted the bodyguard, preparing to shoot him in order to stop him before he dragged Sumner right over the mine. Six feet from the spot he veered off and headed to the flat boulder ten feet farther away. Emma lowered her gun.

  Smoking Man snapped out an order in Spanish. Sumner said nothing, but Emma could see that he had gritted his teeth to prepare himself. For what, Emma couldn’t tell. She didn’t know what was going on, but Smoking Man, his second bodyguard, and White all stood around with an expectant air, so whatever they were preparing to do, it wasn’t going to be good. Her fingers returned to worrying the rosary stones.

  There was a yell from the bodyguard who had been ordered to get her.

  “He saying she’s escaped,” Smoking Man said.

  White’s eyes bugged. “What?” Emma watched his face grow red with his rage. “Are you kidding me?”

  The bodyguard ran up to Smoking Man, babbling in Spanish.

  “She’s gone,” Smoking Man said.

  White rounded on him. “Find her. Now. Tell him to get the pilot to use the helicopter to search from above.”

  Smoking Man spoke in rapid Spanish. The second guard nodded and ran back down the path.

  He didn’t come close to the buried mine.

  White rubbed at his eyes with his beefy hands. For a brief moment, Emma relished watching him panic.

  “She can’t be far,” White said.

  Smoking Man pulled a cigarette out of a pack and lit it. He stared at White, a speculative look in his eyes.

  “Did you take her away? Have your soldiers bring her to the buyers while we were up here?”

  White looked indignant. “Why would I do that?”

  “To keep the money for yourself. Cut me out of the deal.”

  White drew himself up. “I wouldn’t cut you out. Besides, where would I hide her while I negotiated with the buyers? You’re the one with the network down here, not me. You’d find her in a heartbeat.”

  Smoking Man just pulled on the cigarette, watching White with his hard, dead eyes.

  “You want to see what we do to those who betray us?” He jutted his chin at Sumner, still held against the boulder. “Continue.”

  The bodyguard stubbed out his own cigarette. He untied Sumner’s hands, grabbed Sumner’s right arm, and yanked it flat across the boulder, holding it in place. He dropped his weapon on
the ground. He pulled a machete out of a holder attached to his belt. Smoking Man and White watched with anticipation for the bodyguard’s next move. He raised the machete high.

  Emma realized in that instant what he intended to do. She let go of the rosary, flattened again onto her stomach, pulled the rifle into position, flicked it into automatic mode, placed the crosshairs on the spot where she’d buried the mine, and started firing. Bullets hammered into the ground above the device.

  It exploded.

  The force of the blast knocked both White and the bodyguard backward. The machete flew out of the bodyguard’s hand. White landed hard, but regained his feet and ran behind the hut. The bodyguard rolled to his stomach and crawled into the trees, dragging a bloody leg.

  Emma wasted no time in sighting her second target, Smoking Man. She flicked the gun back to semiautomatic. She’d wasted only six seconds between blowing the mine and turning to her next shot, but they were enough to save Smoking Man. He dove downward. Emma’s single shot flew harmlessly over him, hitting the trunk of a tree growing thirty yards behind him. In a flash Smoking Man was on his feet. He dove behind the hut. Emma heard the ominous sound of helicopter rotors thumping in the dawn light, growing louder. The pilot was beginning his search for her.

  At the sound of the shots, and the minute the bodyguard fell, Sumner was up and running toward the hut. Emma looked for White. She saw the driver’s-side door of the Range Rover open. Sunlight reflected off the moving window. White’s head and shoulders appeared above the metal door. Emma watched as he bent to put a key in the ignition. The Range Rover’s engine roared to life. The vehicle’s wheels spun on the dirt, kicking up a huge cloud of dust as White threw it in gear. He drove past the hut, headed away. The car bounced over the ruts in the dirt trail. Emma could hear the suspension squeak in protest. The car fell into yet another rut and the right side tilted at an angle.