Rising Phoenix

by Kyle Mills

  It was clearly time to switch to plan B. Hobart had come to Colombia expecting to convince Corey to hit the drugs. His training, talent, and knowledge of the area made him the perfect candidate for the operation. Or so he had thought The man in front of him looked like he’d have a hard time getting up two flights of stairs. Hobart hoped Corey had enough of his faculties left to at least provide some information.

  “So what are you doing in Bogotá? And why the getup?” Corey asked, turning sideways and putting his feet up on the bench. He sniffed deeply.

  “Working on a little operation,” Hobart replied hesitantly. His old friend could no longer be trusted. Corey’s condition screamed drug habit, and while that could work in his favor for getting information, it would work against him in trying to coerce Corey to keep his mouth shut. Addicts tended to quickly forget past promises and fears in their eagerness for their next fix.

  On the other hand, he was the only game in town.

  “I could use a little information and you came to mind.”

  “What kind of information?”

  Hobart scooted closer and lowered his voice. “Information on cocaine manufacturing.”

  Corey looked surprised. He took a long drag on his cigarette. “I heard you got booted out of the DEA. They decide to take you back?”

  “Nope. Working for myself.”

  Corey scooted even closer and craned his neck unnaturally. His position obscured his mouth from the other people in the bar. Hobart wondered if lip-reading eavesdroppers were common in Bogotá’s seedier bars.

  “So what do you want to know exactly?”

  “I’m looking for a large coke manufacturing plant that supplies the U.S. I need to know its exact location, who runs it, and where they get the chemicals they use for processing.”

  “Which one?”

  Hobart shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter.”

  Corey laughed quietly and scooted back to his side of the booth. “What’re you up to?” He lit a new cigarette with the waning embers of the old one.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “None, I guess.”

  “I could use a .22 pistol, too.”

  “Jesus, John. Anything else? Maybe a fucking invitation to Luis Colombar’s birthday party?”

  Hobart recognized the name. Colombar was the most powerful of Colombia’s cartel leaders. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  “Pretty tall order—and it’s gonna cost me to fill it. I don’t have to tell you that asking those kinds of questions can get you killed. You know what I mean?” His expression was vaguely hopeful.

  Hobart looked on with a bored expression. He was being buttered up for the price tag. He knew damn well that the information he needed was already locked in Corey’s coke-addled brain. He decided to move things along.

  “How much?”

  Corey made a show of calculating the amount. “I can probably get you the information for, say, five thousand dollars. The gun will cost you another thousand. That’s cost, John. I’m not making anything on the deal.”

  “I can trust your information, right?”

  He looked insulted. “Have I ever steered you wrong?”

  He hadn’t. Hobart hoped that the drugs and years had left just a fraction of the unfailing reliability that he’d counted on in Vietnam.

  “Six thousand it is. When?”

  Corey thought for a moment. “Wednesday. I’ll meet you at the bar directly across the street at eleven-thirty.”

  Hobart scowled. He wasn’t looking forward to spending nearly a week idle in Bogotá.

  Changing the subject, Corey held up his shot glass. “To old times.”

  Hobart picked up the glass in front of him and gulped back the cheap tequila.

  Corey stumbled out of the Piñata Verde at two-thirty a.m. Hobart watched him from the garbage-strewn alley where he’d been standing motionless for the last six and a half hours. He let the drunken man get a fifty-yard lead, and walked quietly out onto the street after him. Corey took him straight north for almost a half an hour, though his weaving gait didn’t get them very far in that time. Finally he turned east through a narrow alley, exiting onto an empty four-lane road. About half a block from the alley, he turned again and made his way up a set of stairs to a white house with a sagging roof. It took him almost a minute to find the lock with the key.

  Hobart watched until he disappeared into the house. Shivering slightly, he turned and walked back the way he came. Five minutes of vigorous waving found him a cab that took him back to his hotel.

  He lay awake on the hard mattress until the sun appeared in his window and the light began inching across the stained vinyl floor. Unexpected changes in plans always made him nervous. There were so many angles to consider. But he had five days until their next meeting and nothing to do but think.

  Hobart paced slowly across the small room that had been his home for almost a week. It was ten o’clock Wednesday night. Almost time.

  The week hadn’t been wasted. He had had time to explore Bogotá and many of the surrounding mountain roads. Talking with everyone who would listen, he had also managed to put a little polish on his rusty Spanish. On the whole, though, he had felt like a horse stuck in the starting gate of a race. But the gun was finally about to go off.

  With his newly acquired knowledge of the city, Hobart maneuvered his rented car through the back streets and alleys of Bogotá, ending up in a parking space three blocks from his final destination. It was 11:28. He hurried up the well-lit street and entered the bar across from the one he and Corey had met in almost a week ago. There was no name on it, only a hand-painted sign welcoming its patrons. The bar was wall to wall with sweat-drenched revelers, grinding and shaking to an ear-splitting disco song. Hobart couldn’t remember the artist, but he remembered the yean 1977.

  He paused in the doorway. There was no way to easily circle the crowd. All of the tables had been moved to the sides of the large room, and patrons had spilled from the dance floor and were gyrating in every open space they could find. Light was supplied almost exclusively by a spotlighted disco ball.

  Hobart took his last gulp of fresh air and began pushing his way methodically through the crowd. He started at the left. When he hit the back wall, he moved a few feet to his right and plunged in again. Wet bodies ground against him, and disgruntled dancers mouthed silent insults as he pushed by. An elbow, inadvertently thrown by a large man with a gold tooth, dazed him. Hobart wondered angrily why Corey would choose this place to meet. It seemed that anonymity could be found in more convenient locales.

  Finally, a lone brown head bobbed up in the sea of black. It was less than ten feet away; and Hobart adjusted his trajectory accordingly. It took a full five minutes, but he finally found himself standing alongside his old friend. He felt conspicuous when he stopped and began swaying to the rhythms in an effort not to stand out. Corey glanced at him and twirled around. For a moment he thought that his old friend hadn’t recognized him, and pulled a hand back to give him a sharp jab in the ribs. Before he could, though, he felt a large padded envelope being pressed into his stomach. He grabbed the heavy package, and pulled an envelope with six thousand dollars in cash from his waistband. Corey took it and disappeared, deftly swinging a rather overweight woman between them. By the time Hobart was able to work his way around her, Corey was gone.

  Back in his rental car, Hobart ripped open the package with his teeth and pulled out of his space and into traffic. He didn’t have much time if Corey had left right after their meeting.

  He had driven the route between the bar district and Corey’s home a number of times during his exploration of Bogotá.

  The late-night traffic was making it unnecessary to concentrate very hard on driving. He dumped the envelope out on the seat next to him and began sorting through the contents with his free hand, occasionally glancing up at the road.

  They consisted of a .22 caliber semiautomatic pistol, twenty or so shells—which were now bo
uncing all over the passenger seat—a folded topographical map, and an empty envelope with handwriting on it. The envelope had the names of various chemicals used in the processing of cocaine, with company names and addresses next to them. The map had a small circle near the center with something scrawled next to it. The light in the car was too dim to read the blue pen against the blue-green of the map.

  Hobart stuffed everything back in the envelope as he approached Corey’s neighborhood. Pulling over into an empty spot about three blocks away, he collected the remaining shells off the floor and threw the repacked envelope into the trunk of the car.

  After double-checking that the trunk was locked, he walked briskly across the street and into the alley that Corey had led him through a week before.

  Hobart found a comfortable spot between a Dumpster and some garbage cans, and settled in. From that position he could just see Corey’s front door around the corner of the alley, but would be invisible to anyone walking by. He pulled a long thin knife out of the sheath taped to his calf, and laid it on his lap. The black blade didn’t reflect the light from the street.

  Hobart checked his watch for the twentieth time—he could just make out the hands. They read four-thirty A.M. He had been sitting motionless, surrounded by garbage, for almost four and a half hours. In that time only three people had walked through the alley. None had seen him, or at least none had acknowledged his presence. People sleeping in alleys were hardly a novelty in that part of Bogotá. The only attention he got was from the rats, upon whose turf he seemed to be intruding. Every fifteen minutes or so another cat-sized rodent would stroll within five feet of him, stop, and stare. He stared back, occasionally he considered throwing something, but knew that the minute he did, Corey would come around the corner. Murphy’s Law.

  His legs were starting to cramp from his partially crouched position, and that worried him. Corey might be a fat drug addict now, but his days as a killing machine were still fresh in Hobart’s mind. It had to be over in a few seconds. He didn’t want to give Corey’s body the chance to produce enough adrenaline to bring him out of his stupor. A fight with Corey, even at half of his former capacity, could prove lethal.

  To the degree that Hobart felt emotional pain, this had been the most painful decision he had ever made. Seeing his old friend brought back memories that he thought were dead and buried. Memories of Corey on point, gliding silently through the jungles of Asia. He had always taken the point and Hobart had always been a few feet behind him, following his footsteps through thick mud or tangled living carpet. Corey’s instincts and sharp eyes had kept him and his team from getting their asses shot off more times than he could remember.

  Corporal Reed Corey was gone though, and in his place stood a drug-soaked impostor. An insult. To Hobart, Corey was already dead—he was just going to make it official. The regret wasn’t for the act of sliding the knife into the back of his head—it was for the memories of Corey that would be forever overshadowed by this last meeting.

  There was no alternative, Hobart had decided, though he’d made little effort to find one. Corey was now completely unreliable. Should he put two and two together and figure out that it was Hobart behind the drug poisonings, he would undoubtedly sell that information to the highest bidder. The thought of dodging cartel enforcers as well as the FBI didn’t sit well with him. This was the most effective solution to the problem.

  At about seven, Hobart noticed shadows beginning to appear. The light of the coming dawn was turning him from an invisible stalker to a derelict bum sleeping in an alley. It was time to move on. Corey was a no-show and he was bone tired.

  It was difficult getting up initially, but the blood started flowing back into his legs as he walked up to the house that he had seen Corey go into a week before. As he passed by, he noticed an envelope taped to the door. It was almost invisible against the peeling white paint. Hobart jogged casually up the steps and grabbed the envelope, hoping that it might give some indication as to Corey’s whereabouts. To his surprise, it was addressed to him. The letter inside was in the same precise lettering as the list of chemical wholesalers in his trunk.

  John,

  I don’t know what’s going on, but knowing you, it’s something heavy. If I were you, I wouldn’t want some small-time coke dealer running around with too much information. I know you hate loose ends even more than me—remember Pyon Te? So I thought I’d take your money and go on a little vacation.

  I want you to know that the info I gave you is totally accurate and that I’ll take our conversation to my grave.

  Good luck with whatever the hell it is you’re doing.

  It was unsigned.

  Outsmarted by a coke addict. He tore the note up into small pieces as he walked back to his car, throwing the pieces on the ground with frustrated snaps of the wrist.

  Pyon Te.

  He vaguely remembered the name. Just another nothing village somewhere in southeast Vietnam. His team had been sent there toward the end of the rainy season in what—1969? It had been a routine operation. Round up the occupants of the village and question them regarding reports of VC activity in the area. What had happened there that rated a mention twenty-odd years later?

  It came to him as his key hit the lock of the rental car.

  The rain had been coming down in sheets all day. It had slowed them down sufficiently to put Hobart and his team more than two hours late in arriving at the village. The light had been waning as they surrounded the small group of huts and began creeping through the mud toward them. Corey had taken the lead, as he always did, and by the time Hobart arrived in the center of the village, almost all of the twenty or so inhabitants were kneeling in a deep puddle at the edge of the swollen river that wound its way through the region.

  Hobart had been questioning a particularly stubborn villager when he’d caught a hint of movement through the rain about fifteen meters south. The downpour had quieted enough for him to recognize the figure as a child of ten or eleven. He had calmly raised his pistol and squeezed off a single shot. The bullet hit the child squarely in the ear.

  Inexplicably, Corey had been shaken by the incident. He had stood over the small body for some time. For a moment Hobart had thought he was going to cry. In Hobart’s mind there had been no choice. The girl could have made it to any number of adjoining villages in less than an hour, and if the village was indeed VC-controlled, his team could have ended up with more than they could handle. Corey hadn’t seen it that way.

  No loose ends.

  Back at the hotel, Hobart spread the contents of the envelope onto the bed. He picked up the .22, loaded the magazine, and stuck the rest of the shells in his pocket. The gun looked like it had been well maintained, but he regretted forgetting to ask for a holster. Next he smoothed the map out on the bedspread. A small blue circle was drawn on a mountainous area about fifty miles from Bogotá. Next to it was printed an exact latitude and longitude that ought to get him within a hundred feet of the refinery. He smiled. Where Corey had found precise coordinates escaped him. Still a miracle worker.

  He put the gun and map under his mattress and focused his attention on a small white envelope. Running a finger down the list written on the back of it, he saw what he was looking for.

  KEROSENE: GARCIA QUÍMICO: 12 ROHO

  8

  Bogotá, Colombia,

  December 2

  Hobart spent almost the entire next day looking for a Global Positioning System. These units were relatively new on the American market, having become more reliable following the recent launch of additional navigational satellites. The concept was simple: The small handheld unit tracked as many synchronous satellites as possible and triangulated its position to within a few feet. Hobart had assumed that Corey would give him a general area on a map and that he would have to search that general area for the plant—necessitating the use of his rusty orienteering skills. He had to admit that Corey had come through. That is, if the refinery was at the coordinates scribbled on
to the map.

  He finally located a GPS at a high-end electronics store in one of Bogotá’s ritzier sections. He paid probably double what it was worth and started the long drive into the mountains.

  It was almost ten P.M. when he reached the outskirts of Bogotá. Another thirty miles of highway driving brought him to a gravel road that wound its way into the mountains. The night was clear, though the moon was only a sliver. The waning moon, in combination with the thickening jungle canopy and narrowing road, gave the illusion that the world ended at the edge of his headlights.

  Almost an hour into the mountains, he was forced to reduce his speed to a slow crawl. He cursed himself for opting for an economy car instead of a more sturdy four-wheel drive. Pressing a button on the front of his GPS, he watched it light up and read out his coordinates. He punched another series of buttons and the unit calculated the direction and distance to his preprogrammed objective. It read just over six miles and the directional arrow pointed northeast. He had been heading roughly north for the last hour, and hoped he could cover the rest of distance in another hour.

  In the end, it took him almost ninety minutes to cover four miles. The road never seemed to go straight for more than ten feet and in many places deep ruts had been carved by the heavy Andean rains. When the GPS read out two miles to his objective and the arrow had moved to point more of less west, Hobart eased into a small clearing in the jungle. He could get the car only about five feet from the edge of the road—any farther and he would risk getting stuck.

  The smell was somehow different from Asia, he noted as he jumped out of the car and retrieved his bag from the trunk, but the sights and sounds were enough to cause an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. Pushing it away, he laid his bag on the ground and pulled out a pair of night vision goggles, which he strapped to his face and turned on. The jungle around him was bathed in an eerie green light. Despite the goggles’ ability to amplify existing light ten thousand times, his vision was still murky. The weak mix of moon- and starlight was being diffused by the thick canopy of the jungle.