Hot Ice

by Gregg Loomis

  Though tempted to follow, she knew better. If that was the place to which Jason’s assailant had retreated, someone would watch the street to make sure he had not been followed. Better to check it out in daylight when neighborhood activity would make her and Jason less conspicuous.

  Looking up, she squinted at the street sign to make it out: Calle Luna.

  45

  Hotel El Convento

  8:25 the Next Morning

  Sitting at a table at the hotel’s patio alfresco restaurant, Jason and Judith listened to the buzz of conversation around them, all on the same topic: the attack and near murder of a man in the plaza just in front of the hotel last night. There seemed to be two versions. The first held that the event was simply a brutal mugging.

  A chubby woman with a distinct New York accent at the next table stated her anxieties at venturing forth from the sanctuary of the hotel at night, tossing curls that possibly could have been that blond twenty years ago. Her companion, a young man who might have been her son were it not for his dark Latino complexion, told her that one of the guests, unable to sleep, looked out of a window and saw a woman. Perhaps a lovers’ quarrel turned near deadly?

  Judith used her fork to spear the last pineapple section of her fruit plate. “If everyone here speaks the truth, we had an audience as big as the Super Bowl.”

  Jason nodded before popping the final bit of omelet into his mouth. “Something exciting happens, everybody is a witness. Until subpoenas start getting handed out, that is.” He wiped his mouth with the napkin. “Then nobody saw anything, nobody remembers anything, nobody wants to get involved. By the way, that was some fancy footwork on your part last night. And slapping the knife aside … Sure you never had Special Forces training?”

  “May as well have. Had three brothers, all older. And I was ticklish. You learn quick.”

  “Any of them survive?”

  She smiled. “All of them, but they learned early on that their baby sister could take care of herself.”

  Jason held up the coffeepot. She shook her head. He drained it into his cup, lowering his voice. “I’d like to take a look at this house. Calle Luna, is it?”

  Judith nodded. “I doubt they are giving tours.”

  Sarcasm along with agile feet.

  Jason ignored it. “‘Tour’ sounds like an idea. Maybe we should take a walking tour of Old San Juan.”

  Judith glanced at her watch. “He will be in the Parque de las Palomas in ten minutes.”

  “Who?”

  “The tour guide from the service I called this morning. They give walking tours, mostly for cruise-boat passengers, but they can fit us in.”

  Maybe bringing Judith along was not as bad an idea as Jason had thought last night.

  Park of the Pigeons was aptly named. At the lower end of Calle Cristo, it was located on top of the old city wall with a view of the cruise boats in the harbor below. Beyond, a curtain of clouds was already devouring the green slopes of the El Yunque rain forest. Like the Piazza San Marco in Venice, pigeons and their droppings were everywhere: coating the old stone wall, the few benches, tree limbs, and anything else that was still for more than a few minutes, including the occasional unfortunate tourist. Like their Italian counterparts, the birds feared no man, as if well aware of their protected status.

  An old woman, occupying a lime-drenched bench, tossed pieces of bread into a seething mass of feathers.

  Judith wrinkled her nose. “Pigeon fecal matter causes fungal infections,” she announced disgustedly. “Filthy!”

  “‘Fecal matter’?”

  “‘Pigeon shit’ to you.”

  “Sky rats,” Jason agreed.

  A minivan with a cruise line’s logo on its side stopped at the entrance to the small park. Ten or so people were climbing out. None was under fifty. All had varying degrees of sunburn. Each wore white sneakers, white socks, white shorts, and T-shirts from various Caribbean Islands. Only the types and sizes of hats and cameras differed.

  “This must be our group,” Judith said.

  “What was your first clue?”

  By this time a man in a polo shirt and khaki shorts was herding his charges into a group. Jason and Judith went over and introduced themselves.

  An hour later, the tourists had seen the crafts market, the old jail (now the tourist bureau, but with a few cells sanitized and preserved for viewing), the one remaining old city gate, and several museums, including one of primitive Caribbean art, with emphasis on primitive.

  As the day got warmer, the tourists moved at a slower pace uphill toward the old fort.

  Just as they drew abreast of the intersection with Calle Luna, Jason suggested, “There’s a place down the street there. I’ll bet they have cold drinks.”

  A number of his companions held up nearly empty water bottles.

  “Yeah, let’s take a break.”

  “I could use something cold. My water is warm as bathwater.”

  Their guide impatiently checked his watch. “OK, but no more than ten minutes. I’ve got another group on the hour.”

  The small bodega, little more than an open storefront with two tables on the sidewalk, did indeed have cold drinks, in addition to a surprisingly lengthy menu. Better yet, from Jason’s point of view, it sat across the street from Number 23, the house into which Judith had seen last night’s assailant retreat. Other than its pale-blue exterior, a cursory glance did not distinguish it from its neighbors. Standing in what little shade was available, Jason studied the building. Unlike most of the others on the street, the windows were shuttered tightly.

  Cap pulled low over his forehead and swigging from a rapidly warming can of Coke, Jason crossed the cobblestones to feign interest in an elaborate brass door knocker on the adjacent building. The ornament was barely five feet from the common wall with Number 23. This close, Jason could see minor nicks in the paint on shutters, window frames, and door. Instead of the dark wood exposed by cracks and chips in adjoining woodwork, there was gray steel. He stepped back, seeming to admire the knocker. Was that a trace of wiring along the top of both windows and door? Certainly that reflection of glass in the shadows of the entrance bespoke some sort of camera.

  The residents of Number 23 Calle Luna had a great deal more interest in security than the rest of the street, and Jason intended to find out why.

  46

  Isla Grande Airport

  San Juan

  Two Hours Later

  Jason was uneasy enough in fixed-wing aircraft; flying in helicopters downright frightened him. In the first place, rising into the air without wings seemed an unnatural act, against the laws of nature. Like the American League’s DH rule. Next, he had apprehensions about the safety of choppers: If the engine quit, he would be aboard an airborne crowbar. Finally, the things flitted back and forth beneath the tops of buildings at altitudes only the heartiest of birds would chance.

  All his qualms had been explained away quite logically by persons far more knowledgeable on the subject than he, but he was just as nervous as ever. Fear, he told himself, is an illogical emotion.

  He felt it just the same.

  The Bell 47J Ranger on the tarmac of the general aviation airport offered little comfort. With a single pilot seat up front and a three-passenger bench behind, the aircraft was almost as old as the DC-3s at San Juan’s commercial field. The tropical sun had bleached its paint into chalk and the Plexiglas had cracked in a number of spots.

  It was, however, the only helicopter immediately available for rental.

  The only comfort Jason felt was the weight of his Glock in the small of his back. The weapon had been delivered in parts in multiple packages by UPS that morning, within fifteen minutes of the time given to Judith when she had shipped them and a couple of other items before departing from Washington. His National Security Agency permit would have satisfied the TSA people, but producing it would have surely attracted unwanted attention. The pistol would not make the helicopter flight less harrowing; but, sho
uld he survive it, he would feel a great deal more secure.

  The pilot, every bit as old as his ship, helped Judith into the rear seat. “Any particular part of the city you want to see?”

  She gave the preplanned spiel. “Just a general view. The beach, the fort, the old town.”

  What they really wanted to see was Calle Luna 23, but prolonged hovering over a specific building was likely to alert its occupants.

  Jason climbed aboard, strapped himself in, and pulled a newly purchased pair of binoculars from its case. “I’d like a long look at the old fort.”

  Only a few blocks from the subject of their attention.

  The engine made grinding noises as twin blades rotated slowly overhead. Jason felt a momentary and irrational hope the thing would not start, hope that evaporated in a cloud of blue smoke and the roar of a piston engine. Suddenly, sickeningly, the ground dropped away, along with Jason’s stomach.

  After “taxiing” a few feet above the airport’s single runway, Jason heard the tower’s permission for departure through the ill-fitting headset, the sole means of communication because of the racket created by the turning blades.

  Another reason to despise whirlybirds.

  At no more than a few hundred feet, the aircraft’s shadow was soon skimming along the golden crescent of Condado. With no small feeling of consternation, Jason noted the upper floors of a number of mega-hotels were looking down on him. The pilot called out names of the various structures, the El San Juan, the Caribe Hilton, Conrad San Juan. Jason tried to concentrate on orienting himself. The updrafts that bounced the chopper like a small boat in a rough sea did not make the task any easier.

  Leaving the beach, the helicopter headed for Felipe del Morro, the fortress brooding on its promontory above the mouth of the harbor. Through the headset, Judith gave instructions to the pilot, who maneuvered while she took pictures. On the other side of the aircraft, Jason used the binoculars to study the houses whose flat roofs were the top of the old town’s wall. Counting from the intersection, he quickly located Number 23. Chairs, lounges, even a small inflatable wading pool or two demonstrated that the inhabitants of adjacent dwellings used their roofs as an extra room. Number 23 was bereft of amenities. Most houses boasted an array of potted plants, no small number of which appeared to be marijuana, discreetly pulled back from the edge and prying eyes from the street. The local residents, it seemed, were ardent agriculturists.

  No living thing graced the roof of Number 23.

  There was, however, a forest of antennae, dishes, and devices whose purposes Jason could only guess at. More than enough electronics to satisfy the most avid ham radio operator or satellite-TV fan.

  The air-conditioning units for many of the houses were also on the roofs, in addition to small structures housing the head of the stairs leading up from below.

  The supposition strengthened when the helicopter made a couple of passes over the old city, low enough for Jason to see that several of these little shacks had their doors open, exposing steps. A young woman wearing only the bottom of her bikini waved gaily as the chopper passed overhead.

  Once on the ground, Jason and Judith took a cab back to the hotel. Both examined the doors to their respective rooms before entering. The telltales they had left showed no signs of tampering. They packed what little they had removed from their single bags, mostly toilet articles. They had defeated an assassination attempt the night before; to remain in the same place would be foolhardy.

  Jason noted with some amusement the attention the desk clerk paid Judith as they checked out.

  “You have paid for two nights, ma’am.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Jason responded.

  The man’s eyes never quit feeding off Judith. “Was there something unsatisfactory?”

  “No. A sudden emergency,” Jason responded.

  “We will credit your American Express.”

  “My American Express,” Jason said. “The rooms were on my American Express, Not Dr. Ferris’s.”

  For the first time, the man seemed to take note of Jason’s existence. “That is what I said, Mr. Peters.”

  A short cab ride deposited them in one of Old San Juan’s many plazas. Jason paid the driver and watched the taxi depart. Once it was out of sight, Jason and Judith rolled their bags over uneven sidewalks.

  “How am I doing?” she asked.

  Jason, his mind on the next phase of his plan was barely aware she had spoken to him. “Pardon?”

  “How am I doing?”

  He stopped, facing her. “Doing?”

  She stopped, leaning on her roll-aboard. “Doing. You know, how am I doing as a spy, secret agent, or whatever you call yourself? What would you give me as a grade?”

  “A-plus.”

  Her eyebrows went up in surprise. “Really? That good?”

  Jason began walking again. “In this business, there are only two grades: A-plus and F. If you’re alive, you get an A-plus.”

  What he didn’t say was the final exam was still pending.

  Without further conversation, they trudged uphill to a small hotel. On his arrival yesterday, Jason had seen it from the cab’s window. Men and women in the uniforms of airline flight crew had been arriving. A layover base suggested the place was clean, cheap, and comparatively anonymous.

  With a little luck, the guys from GrünWelt wouldn’t know they had left the El Convento. In the meantime, he and Judith had some shopping to do.

  47

  Old San Juan

  1:34 a.m.

  The streets were still steaming from early evening rain showers and traffic was beginning to thin out. Judith and Jason, clad in black jeans and black long-sleeved jerseys, carefully picked their way from dark shadow to dark shadow along the old fortress’s walls. The body of the citadel, now a national park, had been closed for hours but its outer defenses surrounded the old town, easily accessible to anyone who, for whatever reason, decided to take the same evening stroll along the ramparts as a Spanish sentry might have done nearly five centuries before.

  Jason suspected such excursions might be prohibited, judging from the razor wire that was strung across the wall at regular intervals. Whether it was there to discourage impromptu exploration and possible injury, to prevent access to some of the roofs of the old city, or plain-and-simple bureaucratic desire to thwart any activity it did not control, Jason could not have said.

  Whatever its purpose, the wire yielded to two pair of wire cutters and the black costumes blended with the darkness of a Caribbean night, a velvet that provided the backdrop for a million sparkling diamonds above. Once or twice, an unusually bright pair of headlamps passing on the adjacent road had sent Jason and Judith diving flat onto the broad surface of the wall’s top. Generally, though, they were unmolested by light or other human contact.

  They had been traveling along a section where the streets below seemed to sink farther and farther away, when Jason stopped.

  “This is Calle Luna. The house should be the sixth one down.”

  “You’re going to cross one roof to another?” Judith asked.

  Although she couldn’t see it in the dark, Jason gave her a nod. “Yeah. You got a better idea?”

  She shook her head no, nonetheless pleased her opinion had been solicited. “Can’t come up with one at the moment.”

  She ran the beam of a flashlight along the row of roofs. A wicked reflection of more razor wire blazed between each rooftop. Not exactly neighborhood-friendly.

  “Shit!” Jason grumbled, “I couldn’t see that from the air! We can’t cut every strand; someone would notice tomorrow.”

  Judith switched off her light, using it as a pointer. “That is not the problem. I doubt anyone checks the wire regularly. The problem is we are not alone.”

  Jason saw them now. Two or three couples on two or three different roofs—roofs that provided a cool place away from kids, parents, or whomever someone wanted to leave behind for a few minutes—all taking in the damp night ai
r.

  “If we wait until there is no one here, we could be here when the sun comes up,” Judith observed.

  Judith, the optimist.

  Jason had a plan. It was the reason he had allowed Judith to come. She might be untrained, but she could sure cause a diversion if one were needed.

  Fifteen or twenty minutes later, excited voices rose from the street below. Jason, now alone, had no need to look. He knew what had happened. One of the city’s opportunistic pickpockets/purse snatchers had no doubt made a poor choice. He had seen a woman alone, a norteamericano, possibly intoxicated and with her purse held loosely in her hand instead of slung from her shoulder by a strap.

  Jason had no trouble visualizing the scene as he slunk across roofs where the occupants were enthralled by the activity below. The criminal had, Jason guessed, snatched at the seemingly carelessly held purse. Maybe he succeeded, maybe not. Either way, the ruckus would get the attention of the people on the roofs.

  The sirens and flashing blue lights arrived as Jason reached the roof of Number 23 and stuffed the wire cutters into a pocket. He lay flat on the cool tiles for a full minute. In the reflected light of the city, he saw no security cameras or motion detectors. Of course, both could easily be obscured in the darkness that covered most of the roof.

  Crawling on his belly to eliminate any silhouette an unseen camera might pick up, he made his way to the structure that housed the staircase. Placing an ear against the door, he listened closely for a full two minutes.

  Nothing.

  Standing, he gripped the Glock at the small of his back with his right hand and tapped gently on the door with his left.

  Again, nothing.

  He had to assume there was nobody in the space behind the door.

  He took a penlight from a pocket and examined the lock, a standard deadbolt as far as he could tell.