by Leon, Judith
Ramone finally took a beer that by now must have warmed up quite a bit, popped the top and swigged. “I have to confess something, just between us.”
Is he really going to admit to being an alcoholic?
“You met three of my friends the other night, Joe.”
Joe nodded. “Yeah. Cobra, Barbed Wire and Shooting Stars.”
Ramone threw his head back and, grinning, hooted. “Dead on! That’s my boys. Well—” he took another swig and then continued “—today I asked them to come join us here in Ciudad del Este.”
Joe exploded. “What the hell!”
“Don’t get your jocks in a knot. We can trust them as much as or better than anyone with the Company. Fact is, we don’t have anyone with the Company here, now, to help us. I asked my boys to come because I’m thinking we might need…assistance.”
Nova felt as surprised, and alarmed, as Joe sounded. “I don’t understand. What are you thinking?”
“I have a little business on the side. Not entirely legal. These are my partners. They’re smart. They’re tough. And they blend in, which any backup from the Company would not do. And I can guarantee they will keep their mouths shut.”
She said, “You shouldn’t involve anyone else, Ramone.” He had always been a rogue and rule-breaker.
He crossed his arms and set his jaw. “We may need some muscle of our own. I feel better knowing my men are here. If we don’t need them, you don’t even have to see them. And I won’t tell them why I want them here unless I need them. But I want them here and ready.”
“What’s your illegal side business, Ramone?” Joe asked.
To her surprise, Nova didn’t want to know.
“It’s not relevant,” Ramone countered.
Joe persisted. “It’s relevant to me. I want to know what kinds of muscle these guys are.”
“Smugglers.”
“Drugs?”
“I’m not a fool and I’m not some immoral shit, Cardone.”
“Then what is it?”
“Orchids and birds.”
Joe laughed. “Oh, they must be really tough guys all right.”
Nova didn’t find Ramone’s confession at all amusing. Clearly he thought smuggling drugs was evil. He wouldn’t understand why she found what he’d just confessed just as reprehensible. Drugs were something humans did to each other and to themselves. Killing birds and robbing the forest of its orchids was something humans did to the natural world and the effects were permanent.
“Don’t underestimate my men.”
Joe held both palms up and face out. “Okay. Fine.”
She decided she wanted them both out of her room.
“Let’s call it an evening,” she said. “Tomorrow we’ll have the keyhole data. Langley’s specialists will have decided where we should begin searching. Depending on what they tell us, and hopefully something Bebe’s contact may dig up, we can decide then how to proceed.”
Neither man moved.
“Seriously. Let’s call it an evening.”
She looked at Joe, then Ramone. Joe gave in and stood. “In the morning, then.”
He left, quietly shutting their shared door.
She hadn’t missed the pissed look on Joe’s face. He hadn’t wanted to leave her alone with Ramone. Ramone said, “Want me to go?”
Joe would know when, or if, Ramone left her room. If Ramone stayed, the longer he stayed, the more ticked off Joe might become. “It’s been a long time, Ramone.” She said it lightly, tauntingly. “I sure did wonder what had happened to you.”
“I didn’t think you’d continue to work for the Company.”
“My ops give me a chance to make payback now and then.”
He frowned, clearly stumped. “Payback for what?”
“By the time you left me, Ramone, I’d killed three men.”
Ramone snorted and shoved his beer bottle away. “Three bastards, all of whom deserved it.”
Candido Branco, in her opinion if not necessarily God’s, definitely had deserved it. But she’d never been sure about the others. She didn’t know their background. Didn’t know what got them into smuggling and pushing in the first place. That old saying about walking a mile in the other guy’s shoes had always haunted her. “Maybe.”
“I missed you. I really did.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“We do crazy things when we’re young. I left. Then I figured you’d never want me back.”
Had he actually thought of her even once after he’d brought her home from a fancy dinner, bedded her and walked out never to be seen or heard from again? Not likely.
“It’s late, Ramone. I need to sleep.” Besides, teasing Joe by letting Ramone stay even another minute suddenly seemed disgustingly dishonest. It was also unkind. Did she love Joe or not?
She stood, and Ramone took the hint. She moved toward the bathroom, expecting him to let himself out, but in the bathroom mirror she saw him standing in place, watching her back. “Good night, Ramone.”
At eleven o’clock her cell phone chimed. She put down the Moroccan novel and heard Claiton Pryce’s voice on the secure line. “I thought you wanted word when we had news about the hostages. I’m sorry to say that if the kidnappers are being truthful with us, the doctor, Redmond Obst, has been killed. They say another will die at noon tomorrow.”
Her throat choked tight and she blinked back tears. The world-famous birder would not add any more species to his life list. His life had been stolen from him.
She clenched her jaw. “He had a son with him on the trip. Let’s pray the boy wasn’t made to witness it.”
“By morning we’ll have located activity hot spots on either the Martinez or Escurra property and can direct you to the hostages. Analysts are primed to work, as soon as the satellite makes another pass over your area, which should be in about two hours. But it’s a huge amount of land to cover.”
“I know. I thank you for calling me.”
“Good night, Nova.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Joe knocked on her door early. He was going for breakfast to the small cantina next to the Blue Parrot. They agreed there was no reason not to be seen together. She had already bathed and braided her hair and pinned it up. She slipped on her gold studs, climbed into the green tourist-in-the-jungle outfit and hurried downstairs to join him.
Chapter 29
The Christmas Eve morning air in Ciudad del Este was already at simmer, but men and boys, young women, and several dogs were out and about their business as Nova crossed to the cantina. Tonight, for Escurra’s party, it might cool off enough to be pleasant. She wondered how bad heat stress might be for the Hill boy.
The cantina’s thick mud walls kept the inside temperature quite cool. Joe, looking like every woman’s dream cowboy in jeans and a blue, short-sleeved shirt, greeted her with the smile that gave her more sustenance than food.
“I ordered huevos rancheros for two,” he said.
They had shared a special weekend in Ensenada, south of the San Diego border, and agreed that huevos rancheros was their favorite breakfast. She appreciated his attempt to please her and remind her of the good times. She was going to win him over, she could feel it. She smiled and sat. “Nice choice.”
A girl in a gaily colored red, yellow, and blue peasant top and flared skirt brought coffee, and, before Nova even had her second morning wake-up sip, their eggs and beans.
Joe said, “I stopped by Ramone’s room. Faxes of the keyhole photos still aren’t in.” One of Ramone’s means of communication with Rio was a portable fax machine with wireless Bluetooth technology.
She shrugged. “Analysis always takes so damn long.” The eggs were fabulous, probably because the hens here ran wild and ate well.
Her cell phone chimed, the first two bars of “The Rose,” from the depth of her woven bag. Bebe sounded excited. “Come right away. This time of the day the drive shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. I will wait in my office.”
She reac
hed the hotel by nine thirty. Her large, dear friend rushed around his desk, took her arm and tugged her to a coffee table upon which was spread a map like the one the tourist agent had given her. “There is something very, very strange about this one place on the property. My friend, Netinho, explains that there are watering troughs all over the part of the Martinez ranch where the cattle roam.”
“I believe that’s common.”
“Yes, of course. And here on this map he put little marks to indicate his best memory of where all of the troughs are.” Maybe twenty small black dots had been inked onto the paper. “But—” Bebe continued, pointing to a dot quite close to a strip of jungle “—Netinho says that all of the boys are told to stay entirely away from this trough. Only Martinez’s manager and a few men, who Netinho really does not like, go there.”
“That does sound suspicious.”
“According to Netinho, there are rumors among the long-time gauchos that Martinez runs guns and they think he hides them there or somewhere around there. Maybe it’s drugs. Who knows? The thing is, Nova, he could perhaps hide kidnap victims there.”
“Did your friend, by any chance, go out and look the place over?”
“He said he was too afraid of Martinez.”
“It’s not a problem, Bebe. I just needed to ask.” She folded the map, then hugged him. “Thanks.”
“On TV, I see practically nothing but news about the kidnapping. But they are all still running around Manaus. I am truly puzzled.”
“That’s one of the things I can’t explain, Bebe. I only ask that you tell no one what I’m doing here.”
He patted her arm and nodded.
She raced back toward the Blue Parrot, calling Joe and telling him she had a lead, although nothing solid. She arrived shortly after ten thirty. She reached the entry when Ramone, who came out of the cantina, stopped her. “The faxes are in,” he said. “Joe and I have already worked them over. But before we go upstairs I want you to meet my friends.”
“We’re in a hurry, Ramone.”
“This won’t take long. You need to see the boys and judge them for yourself.”
She let him take her arm to guide her to the cantina door, and once again, as he pulled her unnecessarily close, she felt the old attraction. Apparently powerful sexual chemistry did not fizzle with age. She assumed he was feeling it as well, which made the rational part of her mind damned uncomfortable.
She spotted Ramone’s three friends at once. You couldn’t miss them, the Hell’s Angels of Paraguay.
Chapter 30
The sharp smell of male bodies needing a good bath hit her along with the smell of the beer. An old Willie Nelson song, “Momma, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys,” entertained the cantina’s few patrons. “Com-padres,” Ramone said, “this is Nova. Like it or not, she’s in charge. I think you’ll like it.”
In charge of what? No way would she involve these men in high-stakes Company business unless absolutely necessary.
“Glad to meet ya,” she said, giving them all a power smile with hard eyes that should convey the message that in the remote possibility that they might work together, they would do well to remember that she would, in fact, be in charge.
Cobra nodded. Barbed Wire said, “Me gusta.” Stars smiled back and said, “My pleasure, señorita.”
She turned to Ramone. “Business calls.”
“Stay here until you hear from me,” he said to his men, and then, side by side, he walked with her to the Blue Parrot.
The moment she walked into Joe’s room, with Ramone so close he was breathing down her neck, Joe gave Ramone a daggered look. The glance was brief, only a moment, but it burned with the fire of jealousy before Joe switched his attention to her. “We’ve got something with meat on it,” he said. “Come look.”
Joe and Ramone had spread keyhole photos of the Martinez and Escurra places over Joe’s bedspread, overlapping and taped into place so the photos formed one composite. Joe pointed to a spot on the Martinez ranch, the very spot she’d discussed with Bebe. Her pulse quickened.
“What we have is a site here, around a watering trough for cattle, that has an unusual wear pattern.”
“Bebe’s informant told him to watch out for this same location.”
Joe continued. “See here. The markings around all the other troughs are uniform—” he passed his finger over several sites on the ranch “—made by the hooves of randomly moving cattle. Each of the other sites has only one truck track leading to and from it. Now this site has several unusual features. First, it’s within forty feet of jungle. Cattle tend to be leery of such heavy cover, and the hoof wear pattern here is less dense. Jaguars are a serious problem. So it’s like someone picked the site for reasons other than accommodating the cattle.
“Then you can see that there’s a shack of some kind. About ten by ten. Not big, but none of the other trough locations have any buildings. Just a trough and a salt lick. Then see how there’s not only a truck track leading to and from the site by way of the grassland, there’s a track that leads directly into the jungle. The canopy cover is too thick to see what’s underneath it. Langley is putting infrared eyes on the canopy in hopes of catching any traffic that might be moving under the trees.”
“Bebe’s informant said he thought Martinez might be running drugs or guns.”
“See that little spot,” Joe said, pointing.
She leaned closer to the photo and squinted. The tiny dot was hard to make out.
“It’s a man. They have an armed guard on the site of a cattle watering trough. A timed series of photos shows that he stands, walks or sits in front of the shack.”
“Aha.”
Ramone jumped in. “If we get moving now, we can be out there by noon.”
She studied the shack again. “You said the dimensions are about ten by ten, right?”
“That’s what the analysts calculate.”
“So how many hostages could be inside? I’m getting more and more afraid that they split everyone up and our hostages may be spread all over Paraguay.”
A long silence settled into the room.
Ramone broke it. “Well, even if the shack holds only one or two hostages, we have to go look. And we sure have to get solid confirmation before we call in Special Ops.”
Nova checked her watch and, frustrated to see that it was already ten minutes after eleven, balled her hand into a fist. Fifty minutes until the next killing. Even if there were captives there, it was too late for Special Ops to arrive in time to prevent it. Would this next victim be the Obst boy? Or maybe Linda. Linda didn’t have any family with money to pay up. Maybe they would consider her expendable.
She looked to Joe and then Ramone. “I’m going to change clothes and get armed. Let’s meet here in four minutes.”
The first stanzas of “The Rose” chimed in her woven bag. Leila Munoz, on the secure line, said, “We have current update from the Martinez site. Since dawn, an unmanned drone has been circling it at high altitude. Ten minutes ago Carlito Gomez was seen driving up to the site using the grassland road. He went into the shack. Then a short time ago, a Ford truck drove up and unloaded supplies. Lots of bottles of water and boxes of food. All taken into the shack. It’s way too much to reasonably fit inside. The analysts say that the shack is covering an underground bunker. They’ve confirmed it using ground penetrating sonar.”
“This looks good, Leila. Maybe they haven’t split the hostages up.”
“It looks so good that we’re sending in a special operations team on the assumption that our captives are there. The team is on the way. They’ll come in low, under radar, across northern Argentina. We don’t have permission from Brazil or Argentina, so it will be quick in and quick out, no footprint.”
Nova checked her watch. Eleven fifteen. “How soon will Special Ops be on site?”
“Sixty minutes. Seventy tops.”
“That’s not good enough, Leila. They threatened to kill again at noon.”
&
nbsp; “Sorry. It is what it is.”
“Roger.” Nova snapped the phone closed and quickly explained these new developments. “This looks to be the correct location, but the timing sucks.”
Joe checked his watch.
Ramone said, “Maybe the bastards won’t be prompt in the timing of their next execution.”
They fell silent. She crossed her arms, sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “That doesn’t work for me.”
Chapter 31
Joe strode to the bedroom window and looked out at the ugly view of rundown clapboard buildings across the street from the Blue Parrot. He turned back to face Nova. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“We often think alike,” she answered.
Ramone added his two bits. “All of us are thinking the same thing.” A wry smile twisted his lips. “Somehow I just knew I would need the boys. Instinct. I say we go out there ourselves. Right now. We’ll beat Special Ops by at least twenty minutes.”
Joe nodded. “We crash the bunker, secure the captives and wait for Special Ops to pick them up.”
“We are agreed, then?” Ramone said. “Do I go get the guys up here?”
“Agreed,” Nova said. “Go get them.”
Ramone headed for the door.
She cut him short. “Look, these guys smuggle birds and orchids. They look scary as hell, but do they have weapons and can they use them?”
“I brought them, Nova, because the answer to both questions is yes. They come from mean backgrounds, but they’re good men.”
“Okay. Go.”
Ramone strode out, closing the door behind him.
Nova punched in the number for Leila and told Leila of their intent to raid the Martinez bunker. “I’m pretty sure SO isn’t going to like the idea. But you need to be in direct contact with them,” Leila said. “Here’s the number. The line’s secure.”
