A hazy, dim light first broke above him, changing the black to grey, and then rays of sunlight shone through the branches of oak and encenillo and the vines of the lianas draped throughout the canopy. He felt his chin. The bleeding had stopped and a scab of crusted blood lay beneath his fingertips. He could move his legs, and he propped himself up on his arms and shifted his weight. The pack was there beside him. He opened it and felt for the tablet. The lines of the hieroglyphs, the smooth, cold stone grounded him with calm resolve. He took it out and held it up. In the sunlight it seemed to change its color. He could almost see the reclining king with the headdress turn to face him in recognition. By mid-morning he could sit up unsupported, and a few minutes later he'd sipped some water from the stream that ran between the large boulders.
The fact that he was alive must mean something to someone. His father had fallen saving him from the men with the hovering choppers. But it was all like a dream. He’d go back. Al was sure to be there having coffee with Evelio and Noah. It had all been an illusion of his own distorted, teenaged imaginings, a product of too many video games in his younger days. He wanted it to be that, but he knew. Al was gone. He knew it. Where would he go, how could he get home, where was home now?
Without his Dad, a secret called to him from the stone tablet and the figure carved on it, a knowledge that there was a bigger destiny in store for him than he had ever imagined or accepted. As if in confirmation, he found a spotted newt on the top of a rock, nestled in moss. He looked at its dead black eyes as it stared at him.
Okay. I'm communicating with newts now.
He spoke aloud to himself, stepping away from the stream and picking his way through the boulders, swinging the daypack with the tablet in it onto his back again. As he hiked back up the mountain, the blackness that had emptied his heart slowly lifted, and he felt a new strength surge through his body. He wasn't sure what it was, but he knew that nothing could hurt him on this day. Then he remembered. It was his mother's birthday. Al and he had planned on celebrating it with a rainforest hike up to the Continental Divide where they would have dropped gifts for her towards the Atlantic and Pacific, mingling the sounds of their voices with the mists swirling towards the four corners of the planet. It was his idea. Now it would never happen. In a way he was glad. He would keep the tablet instead of letting it go into the jungle forever in her name.
The hut was gone, just a blackened lump of something which might have been a tank of propane gas. The ground around it was black, and there was no sign of life, human or otherwise, in the surrounding fields. A stench of something burnt filled the air, incongruous with the blue sky that heralded a beautiful day. Ricky walked around, kicking at the ground for clues of his father's whereabouts, a cigarette pack, a piece of cardboard packaging. Puddles of water mixed with reddish gore. Death and destruction filled his nostrils until he had to get away.
Mom! He yelled at the top of his lungs. Dad!
He waited for an answer back. There was nothing except the rasping noise of tree beetles scratching in the bark of the trees. He hiked down the mountain to the main road and caught a ride with a man on a motorcycle, who said he was headed for Juchintla. The wind stung his eyes as he sat behind the cyclist with an unlikely pompadour of greased black hair and a too small leather jacket.
They passed buses full of tourists and slow moving trucks bearing brand names of cheeses and toilet paper. Life proceeded as if nothing had happened on the mountain. The man parked the motorcycle in the town center by the taxi rank. Ricky slipped off the back. He walked up the hill to the hotel and sat on the concrete embankment beside the entrance and waited. He couldn't go to the police, couldn't tell anyone what had happened to him for fear of tripping some guide wires of intelligence leading back to the men who had come in the night in those air ships. They had appeared so suddenly. Like ghosts slipping around invisibly. Didn't Noah say they had super stealth airplanes? That entailed a level of sophistication that meant Ricky ought to lay as low as possible. On the other hand, he needed help. The trick was getting through to the right people, people like Evelio and Noah.
An old scrap of a flyer went sailing by out of a car window. Reflexively, he ran after it and caught it. It was an advertisement for a zip line adventure tour. The Super Tarzan Jungle Canopy Ride. Not so long ago he would have begged for the chance to go on something like that. But he didn't feel sorry for himself. The sun was out and it felt good to be warming up in it. Cars were going by. School age kids hiked up and down the hill. It must have been the time for lunch. He felt like he should be hungry, but he wasn't. The absence of his father was such a drain on his heart he could barely move, but if he didn't keep moving he didn't stand a chance of finding out what had happened to him. He didn't even have time to be scared. He was too busy trying not to think at all. It was like his brain was rebooting after the Santos Muertos ambush.
A mini-bus pulled up to the hotel's courtyard, a smallish concrete pad about the size of a basketball court with a tiled fountain at one end, whose brackish water spilled out and over a series of steps meant to mimic a rainforest grove with moss covered rocks. A couple and two small children exited the glass doors of the hotel. They looked European, well groomed, with identical pairs of sandals on all their feet. They were not speaking English. He couldn't make out the language. His head was buzzing with fatigue and a dull sense of panic. But underneath it he felt calm and collected. He shouldered the pack and walked over to where the man was negotiating with the driver of the minibus.
Excuse me, he said.
The two men stopped talking and looked over at him. They were both exasperated, but he had an opening and he couldn't stop now.
I missed the bus. My parents are waiting for me but I have no money. I can pay you when we get to the airport. Is there any way I could get a ride?
What is zee name? asked the head of the family, a burly man who could have been a builder or a factory foreman in his native Belgium, guessed Ricky.
Richard Lyons. I would be extremely grateful for a ride.
Yes, yes. Of course. How did you miss zee bus?
I had an argument with my father. I slept late. I think they wanted to punish me. Scare me. You know. Nutty thing is I don't think they realized that I don't have the credit card. I lost my wallet on the zip line. The Super Tarzan.
You were in zee Super Tarzan?
Yesterday. I think my wallet fell out of my coat pocket.
Of course, of course. The Super Tarzan. Il a fait le Tarzan savoir!
The two little children looked at Ricky as he climbed in beside them and smiled. They were full of awe and respect and they, along with their mother, allowed him to scoot to the back and sit in the last row alone. The father sat up front near the driver.
I'm so grateful to you for this, said Ricky.
Oh, no. You will see your Maman and Papa again and they will feel bad for their mistake. What time is your flight? asked the young mother, turning around in her seat and smiling.
It's not until tonight. They, uh, have a thing about getting to the airport like crazy early.
Of course. In this country one never knows.
No. One doesn't, of course.
Ricky looked out the window at the canyons and valleys as the minivan slipped towards the lowlands. He put his head against the glass and dozed. They would never know how grateful he was to get away from there. The driver played some Caribbean sounding music with steel drums. The music, the sunshine, and the greenery combined to produce an almost comic effect of carefree holiday charm with the Belgian or perhaps French family. He tried to keep his head up. He had the feeling the young mother wanted to speak with him, ensure him that he would be all right. But he couldn't keep his eyes open. The fear had sunk so deep into his bones he needed to shut down.
We are here. Zee airport.
Ricky came to his senses, pulling out of a dream of a day in the summer at Franklin Park in Oakwood, next to his town of Plymouth Beach, sitting and cuddling with Lian
ne, listening to the music of a free concert, and drinking out of a thermos of honey-sweetened lemonade cut with vodka that Lianne had taken from her grandmother's apartment on Sassafras Drive.
What?
La Aurora Aeropuerto Internacional, said the driver. The man was paying the driver and walking to the back to get out the bags. Ricky sat up and looked out the window and then climbed out. Cars and buses pulled around them and families and lone men and women in smart clothes exited onto the sidewalk and pulled their luggage along behind through the glass doors of the airport entrance. Around the back on the tarmac, airplane engines whined, and the airplanes wheeled slowly into position for takeoff or disembarkation. In the alien sky, above the distant, dark green mountains, were clouds, small puffballs of white cotton in a sea of dark blue that threatened rain.
The two children, dressed in matching khaki pants and buttoned shirts, waited on the sidewalk with the luggage and their mother. She grabbed their hands and pulled them towards the building, away from the road. Ricky smiled at her and wished he could say something in French to thank her.
Thank you for the ride. I will try and find my parents now and get some money.
No, no. Not necessary. She clucked with her tongue. They stared at each other. I wish you best of luck. Your parents are inside, I'm sure. I hope so. Her voice was soft and appealing. It pained him.
I hope so, too.
Ricky waited for her to go inside the building with her husband and children. Then he wandered around the back, watching the coming and going of taxis and buses, wondering how to get something to eat. He'd made it this far. Maybe he could even get on a plane. From a fence along the main road into the airport, he observed the taxiing patterns of landing airplanes and the way the airport workers marched up and down the runway in their blue uniforms and orange hats. Then he turned around, light-headed from hunger, and walked inside and looked around for the French family. They were just about to pass through the customs line and into the security area. The mother looked around and caught his eye and looked crestfallen, as if disappointed to see him alone in the crowd, before she turned and passed through the checkpoint.
Through that long day, Ricky wandered in and out of the airport and along the road—thinking he might keep walking until they found him collapsed on a sidewalk in the busy industrial sectors—then turned around and hastened to march back inside the airport with a crowd spit out from the tourist buses. If he did it right he might be able to pass through customs and get on a plane, any plane, and confess to the pilot that he was running from the Santos Muertos and needed to get back to Florida where his father would be waiting in the kitchen with a lemonade on the coffee table and sandwiches from the Shrimp R Us. But he usually stalled in the crowd in front of the long Delta counters.
There was a twenty-something girl, with long black hair in a ponytail working the counter who looked at him every time he walked by feigning nonchalance and smiled at him with a haunting look that promised succor if he could just get up the nerve to confess his plight, but he wasn't there yet. The afternoon dragged into the early evening. The number of arriving and departing flights hit a peak and then subsided. Janitors began long sweeps through the halls with brooms, and security guards on the night shift appeared to congregate in strange, cloistered doorways with small cups of coffee in thimble-sized plastic cups.
You miss your flight? It was the Delta girl.
I, yes.
Come with me.
Where?
To the police. You must make a report and they will help. No, don't worry.
She could see the fear in his eyes. He fought back the panic.
No. I don't want the police. I'm waiting for my father. He said to wait here. He's a geologist with the State Department and he knows where I am. It's okay.
He was speaking so fast she couldn't understand.
Okay. Okay. You want some food, no?
Yes.
She tugged at his arm.
Come with me.
I. . .
She shrugged and began to move away. Ricky followed, catching up to her side. They took the escalator to the second floor, and she held a door open for him that led through to the departure lounge and a restaurant called El Grano de Oro. There were two Asian men drinking martinis and watching the television screen above the bar, which showed models on a runway in long dresses and high heels. The Delta girl sat with him at a table and ordered without seeing the menu when the waiter appeared.
You like estek?
Yes. Fine.
Un lomito, Carlos. Y trae tambien una ensalada mixta. For drink?
A beer is fine.
Beer? You are too young.
No. It's fine.
Okay. Una Imperial, Carlos. No, mejor dos.
They ate mostly in silence. She was hungry and barely glanced up from the food. Ricky studied the movement of her hands, the set of her eyes, trying hard to decipher her motives for feeding him. She seemed unfazed by his appearance, the smoky smell in his hair and the gash on his chin. It was as if she knew him, and this perplexed him instead of reassuring him.
Very good?
Yes, delicious.
She nodded. Then raising her glass to her lips, she smiled with her eyes in a way that seemed to melt an inner core of resolve. It was funny. He wanted to see more of that look.
Your father. Where he is? Really.
Really? I don't know.
You have nowhere to go.
No.
It's okay. She smiled again, drank the rest of the beer.
Do you want some more?
No.
She motioned for Carlos and took a credit card from the bag in her lap. She reminded him of his mother in the way she handled money officiously and without fear. She stood, buttoning her blue uniform jacket and wiping away the crumbs on her skirt. Ricky pushed back in the chair. He had no choice. He was going to follow her.
On the escalator, Ricky surveyed the airport lounge below. Some passengers milled around the door, but otherwise the floor was empty. She turned around.
You stay with me and, in the morning we, eh, find him, okay?
All right.
How was she going to find his father? It seemed like a long shot, but at least it was a promise of something, which was better than anything else he could think of. Then he spotted him, the man from the beach, Robert Newman. He was in a pod of men in suits walking swiftly across the floor towards the exit. It had to be him, even though he looked different without his swimming suit and his hair was slicked in a comb-over across the top of his head; something about his bowlegged, large-bellied stride gave him away. Ricky was sure. He leapt down the escalator past the Delta woman.
Wait! She yelled after him, grabbing at his pack. She almost took it off him, but he whirled and managed to bat her arm away. She was surprisingly agile. Ricky jumped the last ten steps and landed in a crouch. He turned and saw her waving frantically. Guards appeared at the end of the hall and began to move towards the escalator. Ricky sprinted and caught up to the knot of men as they approached the exit. He stopped in front of Newman, blocking his way. Newman, red-faced at the sight of him, cleared his throat as if he were choking, barely managing to get the words out.
You. What do you think you're doing?
I need to talk to you, Mr. Newman. I'm in a whole lot of trouble and my Dad. . .
Your Dad is in even bigger trouble.
The popping of bullet fire sounded. Newman ducked. Five of the men pulled revolvers and started firing back in different directions. At the same time, one of them grabbed Ricky and pulled him out the door. They made a run for a limo pulled up to the curb.
Get in, said Newman, shoving his head down and in through the open door as if he was under arrest. The limo lurched forward with the screech of rubber. Ricky looked around through the back slit of window. Another long, black car was in back. As they rounded the corner, there was more gunfire and then they were out on the main road to Guatemala City, weaving th
rough the traffic.
Newman was on the cell phone. Get out to the highway as fast as you can. They're likely to block the toll road. I've got the boy.
He put the cell phone away.
Newman turned to him and breathed deeply to regain his calm.
That was a team coming in to investigate the death of one of our local agents, Noah Hipps. I'm thinking you might know what happened to him.
How do you know he's dead?
His body was found this morning dumped on the beach outside of San Jose.
Anybody else?
No.
Ricky let out an audible sigh.
Was your Dad with him?
Ricky nodded. And Evelio Duarte.
Newman checked an open laptop on the seat beside him, scanning through some files.
Nope. Nothing on Evelio Duarte. We know about your Dad, though. Both of you had transponders placed on you while you were at the hotel. So we know where your Dad is. He's a prisoner of the LSM in their Canadian base.
What?
Listen. I'm going to give you an injection of this Midazolam. It's a short term sedative. It's going to knock you out. You can use the sleep. Trust me.
Ricky objected and tried to resist, but Newman produced a syringe from a briefcase he laid out on the seat on top of the laptop, and then he proceeded to hold Ricky's shoulder while sticking the syringe in his leg right through the pants. In the first few seconds Ricky experienced a pleasant sensation of his anxiety level dropping way down. Then he was out.
Nine—Chagnon
I'm breathing slowly in and out. I'm stringing one breath after another in a prayer chain. I'm thinking hard, focusing my mind on an image of Ricky. My son is fine. He is strong. I know it. Because he is good. And good will always triumph over evil. This is my faith. It is strong. I am strong. But when I hear the train overhead, a chill runs through me.
Maybe he will come today. Not my son. I'm talking Samael Chagnon. It has been many days and I do not miss him. Even so, the toxins he brings strengthen me. The stink of his words gives me the slightest purchase on life, better than the sheer nothingness of solitary imprisonment. The foulness of his ideas sharpens my mind. It is enough to go on. And worth the pain he brings in his wake. I have a high tolerance for pain, especially when I feel myself sinking closer to death. It is a fine line. This is how I demarcate it, one breath after another. Walking that line. But without that shock of contact with the death force of Chagnon, I am unmoored, floating in this sea of blackness. This is an ultimate sort of pain beyond pain, the despair of a wasted breath, a meaningless life that is not worth pursuing down the rat hole of what my mind is in danger of becoming.
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