by Gregg Loomis
Waiting was something she had been trained to do. The hours or days she had spent in anticipation of completing some Agency operation had taught her the virtue of patience. At a time when gratification was expected instantly, satisfaction even quicker, where information could be exchanged in nanoseconds, waiting was an acquired talent that exceeded simple inactivity. In the world Gurt had inhabited, long periods of apparent idleness could be terminated violently and unexpectedly.
Waiting, professional and useful waiting, required mental alertness behind a facade of indolence.
For all of those reasons, Gurt was sufficiently attuned to her environment to detect the sound. It wasn’t the light breeze whispering among the boulders that littered the mountainside, it wasn’t the exfoliation of a rock contracting as it cooled from the previous day’s heat and it wasn’t the sound of some stray animal. She was unsure what she had heard but it was none of those.
She released the horses, who made no effort to escape or even stray but stood dumbly, heads down as though confused as to what to do next. She lay flat, making certain she would not be outlined against the starry sky.
This time she identified the sound: horses slowly walking down from the Citadelle above. The muffled creak of leather against leather told her these were not grazing animals but saddled mounts, presumably with riders. And they were definitely coming her way, because there was no other way to go.
She could hear voices now, words she could not understand, but their inflection indicated surprise, perhaps at finding two saddled, riderless horses in the middle of the precarious trail between fortress and forest. A beam of a flashlight ran across the ground, missing her by inches. The next time she might not be so lucky.
And there would be a next time, probably in the following few seconds if the tone of curiosity she heard in the voices increased. If these men were guards of some sort, the two riderless horses would not be ignored.
She reached out, preparatory to moving as far down the slope as she could before the sheer drop-off. Her hand touched something solid, rough. A large outcropping of rock. She belly-wriggled toward it. Looking up, she saw two figures, half horse, half man, dark cutouts against stars beginning to dim as they were devoured by the moon’s brighter light. She could not be certain but she thought she saw what might be a weapon slung across each man’s shoulder.
She made out each careful step of the two newly arrived horses. She even imagined she could detect the impact of each hoof on the stony surface. They had to be within feet of her. The light breeze brought her the smell of horse sweat and damp leather. Could she also feel the animals’ body heat on her skin?
Another beam of light swept the area, barely giving Gurt time enough to roll behind what she hoped was the protection of the rock. She seemed to have succeeded. The prying light swept by.
The jingle of tack and a grunt told her at least one of the riders was dismounting. On foot, sweeping the area with light, he would find her in minutes. She thought wistfully of the Glock 19 safely if uselessly stored in the drawer of her bedside table at home. She might not have to use it were it here, but it would certainly put her in a better bargaining position when she was discovered. So much spilt milk, as the Americans would say, though she never really understood why one would cry over spilt milk. Sour or spoiled milk, yes. But spilled?
Spilled, sour or rancid, the difficulty of getting a firearm through U.S. security at departure had seemed at the time to outweigh the possible benefits, not to mention the off chance Haitian customs might actually have an interest in luggage other than visitors’ wallets.
Like most decisions with a bad result, the effect of leaving weapons behind now seemed foolish.
Foolish or not, the man was approaching Gurt’s hiding place. She could see his form against the sky. Perhaps her height, maybe a little shorter. He held the light in one hand, a rifle in the other. His head seemed misshaped. No, he was wearing a short cap of some sort. Part of a uniform? Whatever, within seconds, a minute at most, she was going to be discovered. It was time to act.
But how?
She slowly got to her knees, ready to spring.
Waiting, waiting.
In a second or two, the knot would slip through, leaving Lang with a useless length of rope and a fall he would not survive. It was time to do something, even if it was wrong.
He swayed his body back and forth on the rope, gaining momentum like a child on a playground swing set. He could only hope he reached a wide enough arc before the line slipped free. On the third swing, he sensed rather than felt the slackness.
The knot was undone, the rope loose.
Ignoring the fire that burned along the muscles and tendons of his back, shoulders and arms, he hurled himself into space.
His left hand slapped something, then his right. His fingers were scraping the cannon’s muzzle, trying to find purchase on a circumference far larger than they could encircle.
He was not going to be able to hold on.
Sucking in his breath, he used what little traction he had to jackknife, sending his feet above his head like a circus trapeze artist. By wriggling, he got one leg over the cannon as far as the knee, then the other. Now he was head down, knees hooked over the cannon barrel, hanging like a giant bat in some third-rate horror film.
He tried to bend outward so that he could get his hands on the iron of the gun again. No luck. He hadn’t been that supple since grammar school.
He slid the leg closest to the wall a few inches. Then the other. Already he could hear the buzzing in his ears, feel the dizziness of being head down too long. The muzzle of the AK-47 slung over his shoulder rapped the back of his head. He shoved the symptoms of inversion away, concentrating on inching forever closer to the opening of the gun port.
At last a hand touched the rough rock surface of the sill of the opening. Contorting his body, Lang twisted so his other hand could also grab hold. For a second, he hung by his arms, legs dangling in space as his feet sought purchase against the stone face.
He took a deep breath and chinned himself upward. For an instant, he hung half in, half out of the portal before he flopped inside like a hooked fish being pulled over the transom of a boat. For a full moment, he lay still, waiting for his breathing and heartbeat to return to a semblance of normal. He smelled a mixture of mustiness and the sweet air of a tropical night.
A fragile shaft of moonlight filtered through the aperture through which he had entered, a beam dividing the night into equal parts of darkness. Using touch more than sight, Lang got to his feet. It took only a minute or two to determine he was in a small room, perhaps ten by ten. At his feet was a semicircular iron rail, the open part toward the port. Although long rotted away, the wheels of the gun’s carriage would have moved along this track to cover an arc of perhaps ten degrees or so. The gun, a massive twenty-four-pounder, judging by its girth, lay amid the rusting remains of carriage-wheel rims, aiming screw and things Lang could not identify by touch. Beside the cannon, balls were neatly stacked in a pyramid near hoops of powder barrels. Lang had the eerie feeling the gun’s crew had taken temporary leave and would return any minute.
The ghostly impression was reenforced as a cloud slowly enveloped the old fortress, turning what little light there was into gray fog. The sudden drop in temperature caused goose bumps along Lang’s exposed skin. Or was it the spookiness of the place?
The damp shreds of the cloud reluctantly dispersed. Lang could see the rear of the room was open, allowing a gauzy film of moonlight to paint a parade ground from which mouths of similar gun rooms yawned. Above him, he could make out at least two more levels, each with openings to rooms he was certain were similar to the one in which he stood. At another time, he would have been curious as to how newly freed slaves had obtained the expensive ordnance that he had seen bristling from the Citadelle’s walls the previous afternoon. There must have been at least a hundred guns here in one of the world’s more remote places, almost twice as many as Henry Knox had be
en able to supply to the Continental Army for its siege of Boston in 1775.
Lang stood just inside the room, listening and trying to command his eyes to somehow penetrate the darkness. If whatever was here merited a guard—the one he had left bound in duct tape—logic dictated there would be others.
Keeping his back to the wall, he edged toward the courtyard, a hand feeling his way. His foot struck something along the stone just as his hand felt a wooden surface. Wood? Any wood, like the gun carriages, would have long fallen victim to the humid tropical climate and the insects that flourished in it.
Turning to face the wall, he spread his arms. Crates, long wooden crates, were stacked to the low ceiling of the gun room. This was hardly something left by Christophe’s militia nearly two centuries ago.
He slipped the AK-47’s strap from his shoulder, removed his backpack and fumbled in it until he touched the tiny penlight he had purchased in Cap Haitien. A larger flashlight would have been more help, but the smaller version had a concentrated beam, one less likely to be seen by other eyes. His back to the room’s opening, he turned the light on, playing it across the boxes. They were marked with Asian characters, either Japanese or Chinese. Since kanji, the Japanese writing system, had been adapted from the Chinese centuries ago, the subtle differences between the Chinese onyomi and the Japanese kunyomi were indistinguishable to anyone not literate in one or both.
In light of what Miles had said, though, it was an easy guess which one he was looking at.
He switched off the light and looked over his shoulder. He neither saw nor heard any indication his presence had been detected. He went down on hands and knees, fingers searching the dusty floor. He found what he was looking for, a rusty piece of iron that could have been part of the gun carriage, a piece of the track or any number of military items.
He touched the end. Sharp enough, but had the rust of time made it too brittle? One way to find out. Using only touch, he found the edge where the lid of a crate had been hammered onto the sides. He worked the edge of his newfound tool between the two, working it up and down like a crowbar.
With an almost human groan, the nails pulled loose and Lang inhaled a familiar odor, the sweet smell of gun oil. His fingers blindly fumbled aside an oily cloth and touched what was unmistakably a dozen or so gun barrels. The other parts would be in other crates.
He sat back on his haunches and thought for a moment. There was no way to tell how many small arms might be stored here at the Citadelle without a count he doubted he would have time to make. For that matter, the old fortress was more than ample to also contain more serious weaponry—missile components, for instance.
Now there was a happy thought: Chinese rockets with potential nuclear capability right on America’s doorstep.
Almost equally disturbing was the way the rifle barrels had ben packed: with oily cloths instead of Cosmoline, that Vaseline-like substance that prevents moisture from reaching the inner working of machinery, widely used for the storage of firearms. But Cosomoline required detailed removal from intricate nooks and crannies such as firing pins and ejection mechanisms. It was not a method of storage for weapons which would see use soon.
For whatever purpose, rifles were going to be issued to someone in the near future.
What other surprises did the old fort hold?
Easing the crate’s top back in place, Lang slid along the wall and into the parade ground. The night air brought him the heavy fragrance of citrus blooms, of the sea and a tiny trace of burning tobacco.
Lang turned his head slowly in hope of a visual clue as to the source of the last. The moon, now overhead, painted the interior of the old fort a monochomatic gray-silver, corners delineated by smudges of black shadow. The spasmodic breeze whispered through the open gun ports as it pushed a small piece of paper across the parade ground.
Lang could have been the only human on earth had it not been for the persistent smell of tobacco.
He unslung the AK-47 not because he feared he might have immediate use for it as much as the comfort it gave him to have a weapon in his hands in this seemingly deserted and ghostly place. Facing the parade ground, he walked backward up a ramp that led to the next level, careful to use the shadows as cover as long as possible.
As far as he could tell, the upper gun level resembled the one he had just left. He looked around carefully before moving toward the nearest gun room. His foot touched something on the stone. Kneeling, he felt a wire, what seemed to be an electrical wire that ran from the edge of the ramp he had just traveled.
He squatted, the wire in his hand. Why would it be necessary to install electricity here unless there was some activity besides storage? There was certainly no need at the moment, as indicated by the absence of the chugging of a generator. Like the rifles stored below, wiring the Citadelle was an indication of action planned rather than undertaken.
But what?
Following the wire, he entered another room, this one without a gun port and, he estimated by touch, larger than the one he had seen below. Its lack of opening to the outside indicated its use had perhaps been that of magazine, a place where powder and shell could have been temporarily stored until distributed to the guns on this level.
The hand not holding the rifle extended in front, he touched another surface, this one metal. Exploring with his hand, Lang estimated whatever he was touching to be at least twenty feet long and four or five wide. He guessed this container held something more than small arms. A brief probe with the flashlight revealed more Chinese characters.
An idea. Returning the light to his pocket, he pulled out his BlackBerry. Now, if he could manipulate the settings . . . Ah, the screen lit up. Taking a picture was going to involve a flash, but he saw no other way of getting an image of whatever military hardware this might be to Miles. Before leaving the States, Miles had given him an e-mail address, which Lang had dutifully stored.
So, all he had to do was take the picture, e-mail it and get the hell out of this creepy place before anyone was the wiser.
Now to get the hell . . .
The thought vanished as the room was flooded with light. For an instant, he thought he had been blinded by the tiny flash of the BlackBerry’s camera. Had he turned it upon himself instead of the containers?
“Drop the weapon,” came a voice from behind him. “Drop it, put your hands on your head and turn very slowly.”
Lang did as he was told, his eyes slow to adjust to the brilliance of two very bright flashlights in his eyes. He could make out the forms of maybe a half-dozen men, but their faces remained obscured in darkness. Likewise, he could not see who was speaking.
“Mr. Lowen,” the disembodied vice said, using the name on Lang’s passport, “or should I say Reilly? We have been expecting you.”
“And who might you be?” Lang asked.
Rough hands grabbed him, shoving him toward the ramp he had just climbed. He tripped over the cord, his hands getting cut as they braced against the stone to break the fall.
“Careful, Mr. Reilly,” the unseen voice mocked him. “We would not want you to get hurt. At least not until we have had the chance to . . . what do you say? Visit, not until we have had a chance to visit awhile.”
Someone behind him found this funny, snickered, someone who was prodding Lang’s back with what felt very much like a gun barrel. Hands patted his body and dug into his pockets, removing his BlackBerry, flashlight and money clip. The watch was taken from his wrist. His wallet was slipped from its pocket.
Not a good sign. Wallets were the first place investigators looked when trying to identify a corpse.
The moon was to the rear of the rock behind which Gurt was hiding. She could clearly see the man walking slowly toward her, searching the ground with the beam of his flashlight. Carefully, she edged around the stone, keeping it between him and her. She could not go much farther without being clearly visible in the moonlight to his companion, who, she assumed, was still sitting on his horse.
She got as close to the ground as she could with her feet still underneath her.
The flashlight’s beam hit her face and she uncoiled like a broken spring. Her hands, open to cover as much area as possible, hit the man square in the middle of the chest. He grunted, stumbling backward in surprise.
Before he could regain his balance, Gurt shoved from the side, pushing him toward the precipice. He was waving his arms to regain some form of equilibrium when she stuck a foot between his ankles and snatched it back, knocking his feet out from under him.
He windmilled backward. Even in the dim light, Gurt could see eyes enlarged and bright with terror as he lost his footing and toppled backward over the edge.
She was surprised he did not scream. The only sound was of rocks knocked loose by his fruitless efforts to find a handhold.
She didn’t have the time to find out if she could hear his body’s impact below. Instead, she rushed the man on horseback. Spooked by her charge, the animal whinnied and stepped back nervously, throwing off the aim of the rider trying to bring a weapon to bear.
Before he could level his rifle again, she was upon him, tugging at his belt. He steadied himself in the saddle with one hand as he raised the barrel of the gun with the other to bring it down on her head.
It was a move Gurt had anticipated. She sidestepped, the muzzle sizzling in the air as it missed her cheek by fractions of an inch. She grabbed his wrist, and using his momentum in delivering the blow, she yanked downward as hard as she could.
His cap flew off and he seemed to leap from the saddle, performing a flip from the horse’s back that would have done credit to an acrobat. Except that he landed headfirst with a lung-emptying thud.
