by Glen Carter
The helicopter was a Bell Jet Ranger with three passengers aboard, and one of them had a torn photograph in his pocket. It was a picture of a man and a woman and an Aztec aircraft with five letters clearly visible behind them on the plane’s fuselage. The last three letters were TFC. Tango Foxtrot Charlie.
They touched down with barely a nudge between an old DC-3 and a yellow crop duster – one aircraft carried cocaine – the other carried sprayed chemicals to destroy it.
The irony of that wasn’t lost on Hernan Suarez as he worked his large frame from the chopper, crouched low to avoid the rotor blades, and darted towards the flight services hangar. He stopped briefly, waving the pilot off. The helicopter increased power, rose into the air, and dropped from sight at the rear of the building.
Suarez spotted a lone figure standing beneath fluorescent lights in a small office at the back of the hangar, a cavernous corrugated metal structure that held an assortment of aircraft and, strangely, a trailer on which sat one brightly painted cigarette boat with a strip of bullet holes along its port side gunnels. The man was working the night shift, Suarez thought, no doubt the low employee on the totem pole at Zapata Flight Services. The two louts moved quickly behind him when Suarez reached the doorway to the office.
The man was surprised when he looked up to see Suarez and the two others standing there. “Yes, senor. How can I help you?”
Suarez shot him once in the chest. “Just looking,” he said as the man collapsed onto his desk. Suarez snapped the light off and pulled the door shut. He turned to the two louts. “You know what to do.”
Louts number one and two separated to take up positions on either side of the hangar, hunkering down behind empty fuel drums. Suarez found his hiding place deeper inside the building – a storeroom to the right of the dead man’s office. They were here because the photograph produced call letters, which along with cash produced a flight plan, and although they hadn’t reacted quickly enough to intercept the aircraft before today’s departure, they had managed to get here just in time for the return. Two souls outbound – two souls back. Perfect, Suarez thought, as he waited for Tango Foxtrot Charlie.
The powerful landing lights from the Apache shone white on the broken line that led to the hangar where Orlando planned to fill his tanks as quickly as he could so he could take off again in order to save his foolish but well-intentioned niece from a brutal and certain death.
Selena’s uncle hadn’t spoken since they landed. He’d opened her door to circulate cooler air and massaged the throttles and brakes to keep his aircraft tracking dead centre along the cracked taxiway. He informed the tower of his intention to depart as soon as he fuelled his plane and said he’d file a new flight plan when he was airborne.
The aircraft came to a full stop behind windmilling propellers and Orlando slapped shut his flight log. “Let’s go,” he said. “Ramiro will have hot coffee. Maybe some sandwiches if we’re lucky.”
There was no way Selena was going to abandon her friend. She wanted Orlando to slow down. She wasn’t going to Miami or anywhere without Mercedes. What she really wanted was a hot bath and some rest. She’d planned on getting a good night’s sleep before heading to Tayrona in the morning. Once there, she and Mercedes would hunker down. That was the plan, whether Orlando liked it or not.
Her uncle was already on the tarmac, waiting impatiently, when she pulled herself through the open door on her side of the airplane.
“The restroom is over there,” he said, pointing in the direction of a door at the corner of the hangar. “I’ll get Ramiro to pull the fuel truck around.”
“Orlando?”
“No argument,” he replied sternly.
Selena searched his eyes for concession.
“Go,” he commanded.
Stubbornly. “I won’t leave without her,” Selena declared.
“Her friends,” Orlando replied forcefully. “They’ll be searching for you because you can lead them to her.”
“They don’t know about me.” They were certain about that. Selena had set out that morning feeling cloaked in her anonymity.
“By now, they’ll know about anyone she’s ever spoken to,” Orlando replied.
Selena was suddenly worried. What if that were true? What if they’d underestimated Montello’s ability to reach out to the people in their lives? Selena quivered at the thought.
Orlando continued, “If they know about you, then they’ll know about me. I filed a flight plan, Selena. It’s an open book with the right connections.” Orlando slapped the side of the airplane, a crack that made Selena flinch. “Damn,” he said, peering worriedly into the hangar. “We have no time!”
Selena felt cold doubt in the pit of her stomach. Maybe Orlando was right. Tears made their way down her cheeks. Could she really abandon her friend? Mercedes would be left a sitting duck. Her only hope was to flee as quickly as she could. Still, Selena could not leave without her, even if it meant her own peril. Selena was about to say so.
“How long?” Orlando said.
“How long for what?”
“How long will it take for your friend to get here?”
Selena hugged him. “Quicker than anything,” she replied. She’d call Mercedes, tell her to pack for both of them and meet them at the airport. It would mean an hour’s delay at most. That would be fine. Orlando was likely overreacting anyway. Besides, part of the plan had been to leave the country once the bonds were safely tucked inside the George Town bank vault. And Miami was much warmer than Switzerland.
“My favourite uncle,” she said, and then disappeared to the restroom. She’d call Mercedes while Orlando handled the refueling.
When she emerged five minutes later Orlando was already gone – no doubt already stuffing his face with Ramiro’s sandwiches inside the hangar. Come to think of it, she was hungry as well.
Selena stepped into the brightly lit hangar. “Orlando?” No answer. Selena wondered where he’d gotten to. If Orlando was eating, where was the refueling tanker? That would have been his first priority – not food. Selena took a few more tentative steps and stopped. She called Orlando’s name again, tried to shed the quiver in her voice. No response. Selena felt a chill. Something was wrong.
In her imagination she saw phantoms crouched behind a half dozen of the stored aircraft, faces peering out from darkened cockpits.
Selena noticed the closed door at the back of the hangar and breathed deeply. Thank God. Orlando and Ramiro had to be inside going over the details of the flight. Selena walked towards the office, already rehearsing what she planned to say to Mercedes. That’s when she heard the sounds behind her, the sweep of quickly moving feet. She turned. “Orlando…where did–” The words jammed in her throat.
The man had a gun pointed at her face, grinning. “Orlando’s not here anymore,” he said. “Sorry about wetting your bed.”
Selena screamed.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Juan Rodero lowered his shoulders to get a better view of the two bodies and worried about losing his breakfast in the process. He looked at his partner Jimenez, who nodded in the direction of the two backpackers. The woman wouldn’t stop crying. Jimenez shrugged.
“Get them out of here,” Rodero mouthed, tilting his head back. The vultures of Arrecifes loitered overhead, waiting for a chance to pick the corpses clean. He returned his attention to the grisly murder scene and knew he’d be skipping lunch that day.
The bodies were located in a coppice of shrubs about ten feet from a well-traveled rocky pathway. A male and a female. Older man. Both black. The woman’s hands were bound and the man had a bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. The woman was dressed in clothing you normally didn’t find on a hiking trail forty-five minutes from Canaveral. She was young and had been pretty. Rodero crouched lower, caught the faint scent of perfume. Lifeless green eyes stared back at him. A gentle face, lips that curled sharply upward at the corners. Otherwise, both bodies were a shambles of flesh and bone, limbs turned and twisted
at impossible angles like toys in the hands of an ill-tempered child. As far as Rodero could tell, the bramble and underbrush around them was undisturbed. He looked for tracks and found none. How had they gotten there? In the middle of the park? Even in Tayrona, which had a murder rate to rival a major American city, it was a bewildering tableau.
Rodero looked up to see that Jimenez had herded the two tourists to a shade tree nearby. They were too brave or too stupid to realize the danger they had ignored in coming here. Rodero couldn’t decide which. The woman and her husband, a couple of Canadians, had discovered the bodies not long after sunrise. They ran to Arrecifes where a panicked call was made to the warden’s office. Rodero and Jimenez arrived about ten minutes later. The two tourists had at first refused to return to the site, though Rodero informed them it was absolutely necessary that the two investigators be led directly to the scene – and quickly.
Rodero returned his attention to the bodies. No one walked victims this far in. No one carried bodies and dumped them on a hiking path for the first passers-by to find. He stared out through tropical forest and past enormous boulders that ran along the coastline, but ruled out ingress by water. It didn’t make sense either. Why heft two bodies this far from the beach and dump them here? Rodero wiped a moist hand across his forehead and then focused on the body of the male. Beige pants and a pale blue shirt stained red with blood. Expensive leather sandals. Fine features, like the woman. The man had long slender hands and wore a watch that looked expensive, lots of gleaming dials and buttons. In a robbery it would have been taken. Rodero guessed the man was about six feet in height and average weight. There were other similarities between the two that Rodero saw quickly. Shapes and sizes that defined their faces – bloodline features – the nose, lips, and the delicate curve of a cheek. They could have been father and daughter. Was that possible? Rodero wondered. Sunlight glinted off the dead man’s wristwatch. A beacon to Rodero because the timepiece seemed to be leading him somewhere. The forest ranger pivoted forward on the balls of his feet and rested on his knees, then dropped to his elbows and leaned in, careful not to disturb the crime scene. He looked closely and saw the watch was a Breitling, one of those expensive aeronautics models that was popular with pilots. Maybe the guy was a flyboy – lots of work shifting coke until you screwed up and ended up dead. That was a definite possibility. But there was something Rodero still couldn’t figure. Why here? And why the woman? She was no pilot. She looked more like one of those high-powered boardroom types. Flyboy ends up dead in the middle of nowhere with his corporate she-wolf. Maybe lovers?
He decided nothing was disturbed in the vicinity of the bodies. It was as if they had just dropped from the sky. That made sense to him so Rodero considered that for a moment. He looked up and went to work formulating a likely scenario. The man was already dead when he took the plunge. A bullet in his forehead before he hit the ground. It had to be a chopper because the surrounding brush was intact. That meant they came straight down. Dropping at a velocity of about a hundred miles per hour, Rodero calculated, while the chopper hovered above. There was something else. The woman was broken but not bloodied – no bullet holes, no stab wounds that Rodero could see. He was certain she had been alive when she was sent out the door. It meant the woman was the key to what happened, the one they’d tormented and tortured until she was pushed to her death. Rodero wondered what she wouldn’t tell them. Or maybe she had and they tossed her anyway.
Rodero looked at the twisted forms and said a silent prayer. Father and daughter? Accomplices in something that got them killed? He shook his head. They’d likely never know.
The female hiker had stopped crying and was talking rapidly. Jimenez had his notebook and was doing his best to write as fast as she spoke.
Rodero was leaning back to get up when he saw it. A fragment of something sticking out from the dead woman’s clenched hand. He reached forward and gently loosened her stiff fingers until he saw what it was. A photograph. Rodero carefully retrieved it, smoothed it out as best he could. It was a picture of a man and a woman, both smiling as they stood next to an airplane – the same two people who now lay dead before him. The aircraft looked like one of those sleek executive twin engine jobs, fast enough to get you to Miami for dinner and home again in time for a nightcap. Rodero brought the picture closer to his face to read the registration numbers on the tail of the plane. Maybe they’d lead to the pilot. KL-TFC.
Kilo Lima. Tango Foxtrot Charlie.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Mercedes Mendoza wept uncontrollably, drawing pitiful stares from Rodero’s staff. The ranger handed her another tissue, leaned back on his desk and waited for her to stop crying.
“Are you sure it’s them?” Mercedes sobbed.
Rodero simply nodded, then passed her the torn photograph. “This was in her hand. An Aztec registered to Orlando Santos. He was with her. The victims are the same two people in the photo. Jimenez met your friend when she got here a couple of weeks ago. The day before you arrived. He showed her the way to the bungalow where you were both staying.”
Mercedes looked for a long time at the picture before handing it back. She’d recognized it immediately. She’d snapped the shot of Selena and Orlando the day he flew them both to Caracas last year. It was in a frame next to Selena’s bed, and Mercedes was sure she had no reason to take it with her when she left for the Cayman Islands yesterday. That meant Montello’s men had found out about Selena and had gone to her apartment. The picture led them to Orlando’s plane and to them. The photograph was intended as a message. To her.
“It’s so horrible,” Mercedes said, wiping her red eyes. “They were only gone for the day. She was supposed to arrive back this morning.” Selena had called from George Town to confirm the money had been deposited – provided the necessary passwords and other information concerning the account – and then told Mercedes to have breakfast ready – she’d be there early. She didn’t arrive. An hour ago Rodero arrived on her doorstep with the news that Selena and Orlando were dead.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Rodero offered, placing the box of tissues on her lap. “But I’m not going to lie to you. The solve rate for this kind of thing is close to zero.” Rodero got up to close the door and waved away a group of gawking staff members clustered at the water cooler outside his office. He turned to Mercedes and waited for a break in her sobbing. “But Senorita Mendoza, it is possible you can help us.”
“Help, how?” she asked, sniffling.
“We know about Santos’s brother – Selena’s father.” Rodero picked up a manila folder from his desk and held it up to her. “The crash of his plane. She would have been just a kid then.” He opened the folder, flipped through some pages. “When the search team reached his plane they found his body and four hundred kilos of coke.” Rodero allowed that to sink in.
Mercedes suddenly realized where he was headed. She knew exactly what Selena was doing and it had nothing to do with drugs – at least not directly. “If you’re saying Selena was somehow involved in drugs,” she said, “you’re wrong. Selena wasn’t involved in drugs. She hated anything to do with drugs.”
“Maybe she wasn’t directly involved.” Rodero took his time laying it out for her. “Maybe it was Orlando. There’s not a pilot in Colombia who hasn’t thought about shifting coke. Huge cash – easy work.” Rodero had seen it a thousand times, seen the downside too. Flying your plane into the side of a mountain wasn’t the only way to die. Sometimes you got thrown out of a helicopter.
Mercedes shook her head. “Orlando felt the same way as Selena. They both despised drugs. Coke destroyed their family…Can I go now?”
Rodero didn’t answer. Santos’s plane was parked outside a hangar at Santa Marta Airport. They found no drugs aboard. But there was another dead body inside the hangar. That made three. Rodero walked behind his desk and sat. Outside, the sounds of telephones and voices were getting louder. A group of American hikers had gone missing up near Bahia Neguanje, another case th
at was likely to have a bad outcome. “Will you be staying at the bungalow?”
“Yes. For now,” Mercedes replied. She stood to leave, steadying herself against the arm of the chair. “What about their bodies?”
Rodero thought for a moment before standing to walk her out. “They haven’t been released yet. When they are, I’ll come see you.”
Mercedes opened the door and then turned to him. “Bad luck seems to follow me.”
Rodero motioned her through the office door and followed her out. He’d already saved her from rape and murder. Now her friends were dead. What more could happen to this beautiful woman? “You’re alive. Your friends aren’t,” he said as they reached the entrance to the administrative building. “I’d say that’s good luck in a way.”
Alive, Mercedes thought. Sure. But as she stepped outside and into a gathering storm she wondered for how long?
THIRTY-NINE
Everything seemed surreal to Mercedes in the hours after she left Rodero’s office. Unbelievable. She cried for hours, but at some point she must have decided to run because she was now holed up in some motel in Taganga, sitting there like a zombie barely aware of the noises coming from the other rooms at two o’clock in the morning.
She wasn’t keeping track of time, but the half-eaten meals on trays on the dresser suggested a couple of days had gone by. What did it matter? Selena and Orlando were both dead. Likely, she was too. It was only a matter of time before Montello’s men found her.
Mercedes and Selena had stayed for two weeks in the bungalow, hardly moving outside except to replenish their supply of food. Montello would have cast a wide net, catching them the minute they strayed too far from their hideout. It was likely they would be most vulnerable at airports and bus stations.
