Rising Phoenix

by Kyle Mills

  There was a loud click as Swenson replaced the receiver.

  His final words struck a chord. The tension was building in Hobart, too. The preliminaries of a mission always tied him in knots. Too much planning and not enough action.

  Hobart maneuvered the powerful Range Rover through the midmorning traffic, cutting across the heart of the city. Ahead of him, the mountains seemed to float in a haze of exhaust fumes. He sucked in a deep breath of the foul-smelling air and exhaled loudly. The adrenaline pumped evenly through him as he approached the point of no return. He had almost forgotten what it felt like during his uneventful years with the church. It was a little like dying, he imagined.

  The traffic eased as he moved farther from the city center toward the suburbs. By the time he turned off on the old mountain road, his was the only vehicle in sight.

  The ride wasn’t much more comfortable than it had been the first time, but he was covering terrain at least three times faster. He worked through the gears slowly, keeping in mind that a road like the one he was on could cripple even the Range Rover. This was not the time to get careless.

  About halfway to the pullout that had been so useful on his reconnaissance missions, a cloud of dust became visible high on one of the switchbacks in front of him. A moment later, the source of the cloud appeared. He instantly recognized it as the truck used by the refinery. Right on time.

  The decrepit old truck slowed to a crawl, its right tires dipping out of sight on the steeply angled shoulder of the road. Despite the distance still between them, Hobart could see the look of concentration on the driver’s face as he stared intently forward. The expression was almost too intense. Happy hour must have already started.

  Hobart’s suspicion was confirmed when the man in the passenger seat put a clear, unlabeled bottle to his mouth and took a healthy slug. The driver maintained his focus on the road as they passed within a foot of each other. His passenger stared intently at Hobart through glassy eyes. It wasn’t a look of suspicion—more one of mild interest. Not very many cars traveled this road. In fact, this was the first time Hobart had seen one, despite his frequent trips to study the refinery.

  It was almost another half an hour before he found the pullout. He took a deep breath and backed the truck down the steep slope and into the jungle. At the bottom he came to a full stop for a moment, shifted into first gear, and gunned the engine. The truck came to life, shooting up the steep incline like a rocket. Satisfied that he wouldn’t have any trouble getting out, he backed down again.

  Hobart jumped out of the truck, and struggled back up the hill on foot. From the road, the Range Rover was completely invisible. The only problem was the tree branches that had been bent from its entry. They all pointed to the truck’s position. Fifteen minutes of sweaty work in the waning light returned the branches to a more or less natural position. He walked along the road one last time, satisfying himself that everything looked as it had before his arrival.

  He opened the hatch on the back of the Range Rover, and changed into the torn jeans and T-shirt that had served him so well on his first trip. A grimy poncho and weathered felt hat completed his costume. Scooping up a handful of dust from beneath his feet, he splashed it on himself and brushed it in vigorously. Finally he pulled a full bottle of tequila out of his bag, and dabbed the clear liquid on his poncho. Walking around to the passenger-side mirror, he examined the result.

  It wasn’t great. A close inspection would undoubtedly reveal him to be a gringo. Of course, a close inspection wouldn’t be necessary if he was forced to speak. His Spanish was still weak.

  The good news was that he was completely unrecognizable as the well-groomed, bespectacled man who had passed by the guard’s truck only an hour ago. Not that Hobart anticipated being seen, but it paid to be cautious. Secreting the .22 in his waistband, he began backtracking on the road until he found the other feature that had prompted him to pick this as an ambush site. A little over one hundred yards from where he had pulled off, a sharp turn in the road combined with a deep horizontal rut. It had been necessary to slow his Range Rover to a crawl to negotiate these obstacles, and he imagined that the old truck the guards were driving would have to nearly stop.

  Walking down the slope to the south of the road, Hobart picked out a comfortable-looking tree and sat down, leaning his back against it. He estimated another two hours before the truck came lumbering back up the mountain.

  The change in temperature as warm day turned to cool night dispersed the clouds, and he could see the stars twinkling through the canopy of the forest. Other than that, it was completely black.

  His estimate had been optimistic. It was almost three hours before he heard the unmistakable sound of the old engine struggling in the thin mountain air. He stood, stretching his legs. The truck’s headlights weren’t visible yet, and he had to feel his way up the slope and into a thick stand of grass. The natural sounds of the jungle stopped. The only things that existed were the coughing of the motor and the soft grass beneath him.

  He shielded his eyes as the truck’s light arced through the night, searching for his fully dilated pupils. Slowly he lifted his hands away from his face, adjusting to the sudden explosion of color around him. The smell of exhaust fumes replaced the comforting perfume of decaying leaves.

  As expected, the truck slowed with a shudder as the washed-out groove in the road became visible to the driver. The front tires dropped in gingerly. Once in, the driver gunned the engine and the tires obediently popped out the other side. The drums of kerosene in the back pulled apart and clanged back together, despite the ropes securing them to the bed.

  When the back wheels had fully cleared the wash and the driver had peeled his eyes from his sideview mirror, Hobart jumped to his feet and circled behind the truck. The gears ground as it slowly gained speed, held back by the weight of the drums.

  Hobart jogged up behind the struggling vehicle and sat down on the foot or so of empty space remaining on the back of the makeshift plywood bed. Taking a deep breath, he relaxed for a moment, knowing that the large metal drums completely hid him from view. After he had collected himself, he grabbed the rim of the drum directly behind him, using it to steady himself as he peeked over the cargo.

  During his reconnaissance of the refinery, he had noted that the back window of the cab had been replaced by an old metal sign. It was still there, further blocking him from the eyes of the men up front.

  The truck swayed violently as it made its way up the road, forcing Hobart to keep both hands on the barrels in front of him to keep from falling off—something he hadn’t anticipated. He was going to need his hands.

  Climbing carefully onto the swaying barrels, he noticed a gap where three of them hadn’t been pushed completely together. He crawled over and wedged his right leg down into it, then rocked back and forth, confirming the stability of his position. The truck hit a bump, and drums shifted, biting painfully into his thigh.

  With both hands now free, he pulled a pair of pliers out of his back pocket and began twisting the tops off of the drums. The smell of kerosene, combined with the rocking of the truck and the loud laughter coming from the cab, were causing the nervous lump in his stomach to evolve into full-fledged queasiness.

  It took him almost ten minutes to get the tops off all of the drums and to stash them in a cloth pouch brought along for the purpose. He stuffed the pouch partially into the hole that his leg was wedged into and pulled a bundle from under his poncho. It consisted of seven lengths of white PVC pipe, each about eight inches long. One end of each pipe had been sealed with a white plastic disk, making them look like candles on a stand. The other end was sealed with only a condom stretched tightly across the opening.

  Half listening to the loud conversation coming from the cab, he slid them, condom first, into the holes in the tops of the drums. The large bases kept the pipes from falling in.

  The pain in his leg was becoming excruciating as the weight of the drums shifted rhythmically back
and forth. The constant rubbing had torn through his jeans and was working on his skin. He could feel blood beginning to slide down his leg.

  After a few more minutes of agony, Hobart began pulling each pipe back out in the same order that he’d put them in. The condoms had been dissolved by the kerosene, and the deadly powder emptied into the drums with anticlimactic silence. He threw the pipes one by one into the trees behind the truck, holding his breath against any particles that might escape into the air.

  By the time he had the seventh of ten tops screwed back on, kerosene had sloshed onto the tops of the barrels and was being held in quivering pools by their raised edges. He had managed to avoid most of it, but he could feel it beginning to drip down the hole next to his leg. He shifted violently to keep the poisonous kerosene away from his widening wound.

  One more.

  He tightened the second to the last top with his pliers. As he pulled the last one out of the cloth pouch, the conversation that he had been half monitoring took a turn for the worse.

  “Pull over here, I’ve got to piss,” the passenger in the cab said in Spanish thick with alcohol.

  Hobart began working his leg from between the barrels, cursing quietly. It came out in painful inches as the truck slowed to a stop. He threw the last stopper into the trees and positioned himself so that he could use his free leg to push against the drums. As the passenger nearly fell from the truck, Hobart’s foot cleared the hole, and he dropped on his back onto the kerosene pooled on the tops of the barrels.

  The quiet splash startled the man stumbling toward the trees. Hobart watched through half-closed eyes as the man spun clumsily, moving his hand from his fly to his side. It took him a few seconds, but he finally managed to get his gun clear of its holster and level it in the truck’s general direction.

  Hobart lay perfectly still. His body tensed as the barrel of the gun leveled at him, praying that the man wasn’t stupid or drunk enough to fire a gun at fourteen barrels of kerosene from five feet away. Apparently, he was. His hand jerked on the trigger, and Hobart’s teeth clenched involuntarily as he waited for death. Nothing happened.

  The safety was on.

  Hobart continued to watch through half-closed eyes as the man tried to comprehend what had happened. It didn’t take long. He flipped the safety off the revolver and leveled it at the back of the truck again.

  “You on the truck. Get down from there!”

  Hobart stirred. He sat up slowly, as though in a drunken stupor.

  “What the fuck is going on put there, Carlos?” The driver yelled, opening his door.

  “It looks like we have a passenger!” Carlos was speaking confidently now, but was still swaying slightly from the tequila that he’d been nursing on the drive.

  Hobart jumped off the truck, falling to the ground. The fall wasn’t pantomimed; his leg was completely numb. He lay there motionless on the dirt road, thankful to be off the top of the barrels. The poisoned kerosene had been soaking through his clothes.

  From his position on the ground, Hobart could see the flicker of the headlights as the driver passed in front of them.

  “What the fuck were you doing up there?” Carlos screamed, pushing the gun into Hobart’s face as he got unsteadily to his feet. The driver stopped a few feet away and leveled a rifle at his head.

  “Ceratibo,” Hobart replied quietly, keeping his head down in a submissive pose. Ceratibo was a small village about twenty miles past the refinery that was the truck’s destination.

  Carlos pushed his .357 harder into Hobart’s cheek, pressing him back against the truck. He used the barrel of the gun to force his head to the right.

  “Does this look like a fucking bus to you?”

  “No, senor,” Hobart replied, trying to keep his answers to simple phrases that were easy to pronounce.

  “Smells like one of the tops came off the kerosene, and this assholes been sleeping in it,” Carlos said to the driver, looking disgusted. “Hey, I got an idea.”

  He grabbed the front of Hobart’s poncho and swung him away from the truck, almost falling himself. Digging in his pocket with his free hand, he produced a lighter and flicked the flame to life.

  “I’ll bet this prick would make a nice torch!”

  The driver laughed and Hobart almost joined him. It seemed ironic that he was replaying his recent visit with Peter Manion, but on the other side of the lighter. If there was an afterlife, Manion was loving this.

  Hobart fell back against the hill behind him, sliding a hand innocently under his poncho and releasing the safety on the .22 tucked into his waistband. It wasn’t ideal, but if he had to he could shoot both men, take their guns and money, and the kerosene would still end up at the refinery by tomorrow night.

  The driver chimed in as Hobart began to slowly pull the gun free.

  “Carlos, you fucking moron. You light that asshole up, and he’s gonna run right over to the truck and blow us all to Kingdom Come.”

  Carlos looked disappointed, but seemed to see the wisdom in his friend’s words. He put the lighter back in his pocket.

  “Now let’s get the hell out of here—we’re late as it is.” The driver’s tone suggested that he was Carlos’s superior.

  “What do you want me to do with this piece of shit?”

  “You shoot off that gun an’ we’re gonna have trouble,” he warned. “They’ll be able to hear it from here.” The driver walked back around the truck and began surveying the drums. Finding the one without a top, he stuffed a rag into the opening.

  Carlos grunted in frustration as Hobart continued to slowly free his pistol.

  When the driver’s door slammed shut, Carlos finally made a decision and gave Hobart a vicious kick to the face. He could have avoided it easily, but there was no sense in pissing the man off anymore.

  Through watering eyes, he watched Carlos pull out his penis and begin to relieve himself on his chest. As he felt the warm fluid seep into his clothes, he briefly considered pulling the gun. The thought passed quickly, though, and he just lay there quietly as Carlos zipped his pants up and walked back to the truck, cackling.

  The moment the truck disappeared from view, Hobart jumped up and jogged slowly across the road He managed to make it down to the forest bed before the light from the receding truck completely disappeared. He stripped off all of his clothes and strapped on his night vision goggles. He headed quickly away from the road, remembering a stream that ran fairly straight north to south. It took him about ten minutes to reach it, and he walked into its center and began scrubbing. The mountain water took his breath away at first, but no more than the mingling smells of kerosene and urine. The water stung the open wound in his leg, drowning out the throbbing coming from his blood-spattered nose. Finally he put his goggles on a rock at the side of the stream and washed the blood from his face, carefully feeling the bridge of his nose. Broken. Another battle scar to add to his collection.

  The trip back to his truck went much faster than he had anticipated. Visibility was poor, even with the goggles, though it was sufficient to avoid large objects such as trees. They did manage to pick up one of the pipes that he had thrown from the back of the truck, giving it an eerie greenish white glow. He gave it a wide berth.

  Back at the Range Rover, he quickly dressed and pulled out onto the road. The smell of kerosene hadn’t been completely eradicated, so he rolled down the window to circulate the air.

  He tried unsuccessfully to push the thought of the poison from his mind. It hadn’t made it to the gash worn into his leg, but had it penetrated his skin? Had the poison mixed well enough to cause the fumes to be dangerous, or had it been forced to the bottom when it was dumped in?

  He wished that Peter Manion were still alive. Even if the news was bad, he’d rather know now. Wondering for the next two weeks was going to be a hell of a lot worse.

  13

  Baltimore, Maryland,

  January 30

  The good news was that it had been a week since his keros
ene bath in Colombia, and he felt fine except for the dull throbbing in his nose. Of course, that didn’t prove anything. Manion had warned him that the effects of the mushrooms would be negligible for almost two weeks. And then you’d be dead.

  The bad news was that he hadn’t heard a word from Robert Swenson since he had given him the go-ahead. Hobart was struggling to keep his mind from running endless worst-case scenarios. Its current favorite was that his partner had been captured and was at this moment giving him up. He had briefly considered moving from the warehouse, but where to? Better to just sit it out and keep his eyes open. In the interim, a bullet-proof vest and extra clips for his .45 had found their way under his jacket.

  He had planned to have a ballpark time frame on the arrival of the tainted heroin before putting the ads in the paper, but it didn’t look like he was going to have that luxury. In the scenario currently branded into his mind, the heroin didn’t even get poisoned—Swenson was caught going in. In any event, his best guess was that the first wave of bad coke was going to hit the American shore in about four days. His estimate wasn’t based on scientific study or statistics—it was really just a guess. There were too many variables to get a reliable estimate. Shipping schedules, modes of transportation, Coast Guard activity, final destination. The list went on.

  Crabbing a handful of tissues from a box off the desk, he walked to the open filing cabinet behind him and pulled out three Federal Express envelopes, careful to keep the tissues between his fingertips and the flimsy cardboard. He tossed them on the desk and sat down. It wasn’t quite the elevating moment that he had hoped for, but the ads had to go today. He had probably already waited too long.

  The climax to all of the preparation seemed to dissolve in light of Swenson’s disappearance. All Hobart could do was hope that his partner hadn’t been caught until he had finished what he was there to do. Or better yet, that he had been shot leaving the refinery area.

  Hobart switched on the computer in front of him, and pulled up Word.