“Ow! Jesus!”
“Working up a sweat in some Del Rio motel room is what you’ve been doing.”
He jerks her back around facing him, pulling her close until she can count the nasty black hairs like spider legs curling out of his nose cavity. She imagines his brain being devoured by a horde of chomping arachnids.
Catching the movement of his hand drawing back to slap her silly, instinctively she butts her head into his face as hard as she can.
“Aaarrrgh!” he screams, at the same moment releasing his hold on her. He falls to his knees, hands grabbing his forehead, blood streaming down his chin.
Oh my god! she thinks. He’s going to kill me now.
In the next instant she’s in the kitchenette, hand scuttling across the stovetop, grasping for the heavy frying pan left from breakfast with its layer of hardened bacon grease. Half turning, she swings the pan full bore just as Artimus jolts into the kitchen, his fist drawn back to pummel her without mercy. The cast iron dead weight connects with the side of his head with a dull thud. The blow’s force rips the handle from her grasp, twisting her wrist sharply, so she cries out in pain.
Artimus’ vision goes blank as a movie screen before the credits start to run; he falls forward in a heap. A zigzag of blood dribbles from one ear.
The only sound is the distant hum of the window air conditioning unit in the living room. And the rasping seesaw of Tiara’s breathing.
Is he dead? Is she a murderer? Oh my god!
She covers her mouth with her hands, starring wild-eyed at the inert form of her husband.
Willing her breathing back to normal, she crouches down and puts two fingers against the side of his neck, feeling for an artery. A faint pulse rewards her efforts.
She should call for emergency medical assistance. He could still die from shock or whatever. Do it now.
But instead she splashes cold water on her face from the kitchen sink, tucks in her blouse. Picks up the frying pan and sets it back on the stove.
You’ve got ten minutes, she thinks. Clothes, shoes, cosmetics and a copy of the Old Testament go into two beat-to-shit Samsonite suitcases that have trundled from military base to military base in the wake of Artimus’ ascent from West Point plebe to base commander. There’s three hundred dollars in Artimus’ wallet. And in the cookie jar another five hundred that she’s been skimming off his paychecks. She also takes a box of shells for the Glock that now resides in the Charger’s glove box.
Twice she checks on Artimus but he’s still not moving. It’s the end of married life. Standing in the kitchenette entry, she looks one more time at her sorry-assed husband, suppressing an urge to kick him in the cojones. She knows there’ll be more trouble later, but for now it’s over.
“Hasta la vista, asshole.”
Five minutes later she’s through the base front gate and headed back toward Port Aransas, the Charger’s headlights cutting a narrow swath through the moonless night.
9.
The light from the rising mid-August sun strikes Bobbie Beck across the eyes like a section of rebar. A dull throbbing rises and falls behind his forehead like the sullen beat of a tom-tom.
“Goddamn to Hell.”
He rolls off the couch, his stomach twisting like a storm tossed sea. Acid vomit climbs his throat and spews onto the carpet. It keeps coming until it feels as though his liver, gall bladder, stomach, spleen, intestines, the works are going to explode from his mouth. In the end he lies panting, drenched in sweat and sour-mash vomit, amid empty liquor bottles and the broken shards of wood, shattered glass and debris that had once been the living room set he and Amanda had bought one time the year they were married.
Amanda dead and buried. His life dead and buried.
He remembers the life insurance policy he purchased the day before, a hundred thousand dollars to provide Randall Carter, age twelve, a liver transplant. A life instead of a death sentence.
Now all he needs to do is to find a way to die.
He staggers into the tiny study that Amanda insisted on creating for him. “A man’s place,” she had said. “A place to escape from the world’s chaos; to find peace of mind.”
What bullshit!
When he yanks on it, the bottom drawer of his desk tumbles from its slot, its contents a swath across the floor. Old photographs. A penny collection, 1909 to the present, with lots of empty slots before WWII. His favorites had always been the steel and zinc pennies made during the war. The play he had never finished. A frilly lace garter from his bachelor party. A .45 caliber service pistol and a box of shells.
He hefts the weapon. Feels the dead weight of a cold, killing device.
But I can’t use this, Bobbie thinks. The insurance policy doesn’t pay out for suicides. Instead, he’ll have to stick with Plan B. He puts down the pistol and picks up the last item from the drawer, an M67 fragmentation grenade.
Today at 12:15 CST, while flying at 1,500 feet down to 500 feet in a copter full of military and government brass checking out the results of Operation Fig Leaf, he’ll jerk free the M67’s firing pin and toss the live grenade into the pilot’s lap.
KA-boom!
No survivors.
Narco-terrorism strikes again.
***
A pint of white rum he found in the kitchen sits next to him on the vinyl bench seat of his pickup. The M67 is in a camouflage canvas knapsack tucked next to the Toyota Tundra’s gearbox.
Bobbie Beck depresses the clutch and with a shaking hand turns the ignition key. The rising sun, still low on the horizon, streams into his eyes. In no time the pickup’s speedometer is up to 90, the truck shimmying from side to side on the narrow roadway.
Next thing, a jackrabbit sprints wildassed across the road. Bobbie imagines a small child and slams the breaks. The front wheels hit a patch of sand. A worn rear tire strikes a rock and explodes. The Tundra karooms down a laterite embankment into a tussle of mesquite and Spanish bayonet.
Bobbie’s forehead slams into the windshield; he lies on the seat for a long time without moving. The engine shuts off. Finally he opens the passenger door and climbs out. He drinks a third of the rum and immediately calls Ralph on the porcelain phone.
After awhile he regains the highway where in a daze he walks directly in front of a truckload of gravel coming hell bent for leather.
10.
Corporal Emilio Suarez returns to duty on the opening day of Operation Fig Leaf. He feels relaxed, almost normal. It’s just an ordinary day on a dull military base.
When he enters the canteen, he observes Captain del Toro seated in the far corner surrounded by a group of soldiers in camouflage fatigues.
Del Toro, gesticulating with wild abandon, is narrating to his captive audience some grandiose semi-fictional narco-escapade. Glancing up, he sees Corporal Suarez and motions him over. As he approaches, several buzz cut visages turn in his direction. One of them takes him instantly back to Hell!
It’s the face he can never forget. The face of the devil who raped and beat him to an unconscious pulp. He hyperventilates; the face grows immense, filling the room. As though an insect is crawling under his skin, rage pulses in the side of his throat. Unnamable colors and streaming geometrical shapes assault Suarez’s vision. His brain is fevered.
Suarez is going batshit!
Than Captain del Toro is standing beside him, shaking his hand, slapping him on the back.
“The timing of your recovery is impeccable, Emilio,” del Toro says. “Today will be remembered forever in the annals of the war with the Cartel del Gulfo.”
He draws Corporal Suarez to the waiting group, introduces him as his navigator. Waxing eloquent he explains how in an hour these three officials from the Policia Federal and two liaison officers from the Brigade Escorpion, Majors Eutropio Escandido and Pablo Delgadillo, will board the Huey for a flyover of Operation Fig Leaf, to be joined at Firebase Harry S. Truman by no one less than El Presidente of the Mexican Republic and the Norteamericano Vice President.
All this means nothing to Suarez. His mind is a chasm in which the details of life tumble into oblivion. Only one idea races through his brain. REVENGE!
The moment he has eaten, slept and dreamed about for these past weeks is now upon him like a deluge.
Soon he breaks away. Walks quickly across the canteen and through the double doors. Once in the corridor, he turns and runs toward the file room where the explosive device he has built with such care waits.
He unlocks the door. His hands are as jittery as a June bug in heat. Inside the file room he removes the slim bomb from its hiding place. He caresses its sleek metal surface. He cracks the case open as though it were a stainless steel egg revealing oblong bars of C-4 explosive like cakes of soap wedged around a digitally timed detonator. His fingers play over these organs of destruction, checking the connections, verifying that all is in order.
Then the unimaginable happens. His twitching fingertips inadvertently trip the timer into life. Unbelievably, impossibly, the green numbers begin to tick down. 10…9…8…7
Suarez flounders. His brain, nerves, flesh and bone, tottering on the brink of extinction, are unable to respond. He comes up short, grinding on empty. But the timer inexorably continues its countdown. 6…5…4…3
At the final moment some self-preservation mechanism cuts in. Suarez dives beneath the metal desk. The bomb blows.
11.
Five black heavily armored Humvees careen through the semi-arid south Texas scrub. The Vice President of the United States of America is aboard one of them. Each time it’s a different vehicle in the sequence, a random pattern intended to elude IEDs and EFPs. What a joke.
Overhead a Cobra attack helicopter swoops low, looking for bandits.
This time the VP is ensconced in the second Hummer along with Monty Brown his chief of staff and a pair of hardbitten Secret Service agents. His wire frame specs askew and fallen partway down his nose, the Veep nods out. A beatific smile flutters across his lips as he dreams of a lap dancer he’d met in a private room at the Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. during the inauguration night hoopla. After that little adventure he’d checked into Walter Reed with heart palpitations.
Ahead, on a sandy rise edged by a thicket of yaupons, mesquite and prickly pear, the guard towers overlooking the entrance to Firebase Harry S. Truman loom. Monty nudges the VP’s shoulder. His eyes flick open.
“We’re arriving at base, sir” Monty says.
“What time is it?” asks the Veep.
“10:15 hours.”
“Three and a half hours. Could have gotten here faster on a Goddamn Greyhound bus.”
“That’s a good point, sir.”
The VP snorts at Monty’s irony.
“Is El Presidente here already?”
Monty checks his solid gold Tag Huger.
“Should be landing fourteen minutes from now, aboard a brand spanking new Black Hawk equipped with special long range fuel tanks. Part of the basket of goodies funded in that last anti-drug bill. A twelve million dollar taxi.”
“Fanfuckin’tastic.”
They’re at the front gate to Firebase Harry S. Truman. The duty officer pisses his pants. Figuratively. They whisk inside. Their host Major General Artimus Wade Vega waits outside the officer’s club, bowing like an obsequious samurai. A blood-soaked bandage covers most of his nose. A massive yellow & aubergine bruise stains his temple.
Inside the officer’s club the buffet is out of this world. Eggs benedict, rashers of black pepper bacon, brown sugar glazed ham, country sausage links, smoked Mexican quail, huevos rancheros, pancakes with genuine Vermont maple syrup, grilled Montana trout, biscuits and gravy, fire-roasted jalepenos, yellow tail and tuna sushi, shrimp & grits. A bottle of Stolichnaya sits next to the juice dispenser. Orange, cranberry or Clamato? are the choices.
The VP is in heaven.
He fixes himself a heaping plate while he waits.
Monty Brown frowns over a message on his Blackberry.
He sits down next to the Veep. A Wild Turkey on the rocks appears in his hand. He takes a sip.
“Some kind of explosion at Aerodrome Alpha in Aerea Millitar Monterey.”
“Explosion!”
“That’s what it says.”
“Don’t we have to be somewhere else?”
Outside a sleek military helicopter bearing the insignia of the Republic of Mexico circles and lands. Surrounded by bodyguards, El Presidente, in a gray sharkskin suit, starched white shirt and pale green Hermes tie, jumps from the Black Hawk to the tarmac.
“Show time,” the VP says.
He leaps toward the approaching entourage, grasping El Presidente’s hand.
“Buongiorno,” the Veep says.
“That’s Italian,” hisses Monty.
The Veep and the President of the Mexican Republic walk arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, to a stack of white plates at one end of the buffet.
“Chow time, your Excellency.”
Seated opposite each other, the VP and El Presidente chow down. Flutes of Don Perignon appear like magic.
“Some kind of explosion at your base…” says the Veep, “Week’s been a bitch and a half…Get in some extra hunting time…Nothing more boring than a flyover… No reason to take unnecessary risks…”
After a second plate of grub, El Presidente motions to his chief of staff and tells him about the change of plan.
An hour later the Vice President, Monty Brown and the two Secret Service dweebs scramble aboard El Presidente’s refueled Black Hawk, which lifts off in short order heading toward the Presidential hunting lodge high in the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains. As they sore into the bleached blue sky, a stunningly beautiful, dusky skinned senorita in camouflage short shorts and a fitted safari shirt of sheer white linen hands around shots of blue agave tequila and little foil packets of mesquite-smoked almonds.
12.
Captain Jesus del Toro, a/k/a the Toad, gazes from the cockpit of the Huey. The fire started by the bomb explosion in the aerodrome’s file room is still sending up a trail of gray smoke, but order has been restored. Del Toro waits patiently for instructions to commence takeoff. If they wait too much longer they won’t be able to keep to the schedule.
Twin Jeeps overflowing with dark blue fatigued cops armed to the teeth speed across the tarmac and squeal to a halt on either side of the helicopter. A senior police officer dismounts. He approaches the Huey.
“Captain Jesus del Toro, you are hereby relieved of your duties pending the investigation into your alleged association with the Cartel del Gulfo.”
Unbeknownst to Captain del Toro, at that moment the gates of Heaven have swung open. His life spared.
Minutes passed. The Toad stands in full sun, arms shackled, sweating like a stuck pig, and watches as the replacement crew climb onboard the Huey. Three senior officials from the Policia Federal and Majors Eutropio Escandido and Pablo Delgadillo from the Brigade Escorpion follow them aboard.
Much later Jefe Carlito hires a shrewd and devious coven of lawyers to defend his son. The Toad beats the rap and receives an honorable discharge. He opens a consulting business in Cuidad Juarez.
13.
At Firebase Harry S. Truman the Huey UH-1N takes aboard Major General Artimus Wade Vega, his aide-de-camp, two senior Homeland Security officials and reporters from Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.
Artimus has a raging headache. His publicity officer Lieutenant Bobbie Beck mysteriously fails to arrive in time. They go airborne without him.
Reports from the field indicate sterling results in neutralizing facilities and enemy combatants identified as belonging to the Cartel del Gulfo. Artimus stares out at the undulating, low-rise, scrub-infested landscape. Anything could hide out there, he thinks.
14.
Tiara arrives back in Port Aransas just as the newly risen sun seers a bank of morning clouds apocalyptic orange. The effect is so dazzling she has to pull off onto the shoulder and wait for things to cal
m down.
Having had less than three hours of sleep, Tiara is a tad spacey as, carrying a brightly colored beach towel and a thermos of top shelf margaritas; she follows Susan O’Faolain down the back stairs of her apartment building and onto the pool deck. The micro bikini borrowed from Susan fits like a charm.
There’s no one else at the pool at ten o’clock on a Friday morning.
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