The Mangrove Coast

by Randy Wayne White

  Garret had watched the exhibition along with the rest of the bar. “Can’t say as I blame you, mate.”

  I’d been keeping track of the digital glow of the GPS, hoping Garret would wake up. Had a private little debate about it: Let the man sleep until we were closer to Panama City? Or make him take over the controls now?

  Thoughtfulness won out. Let the man sleep. Yeah, I was paying him, but he was still doing me a gigantic favor. Plus, he’d be flying back to Cartagena alone and he’d need all the rest he could get.

  I checked the GPS once again before I adjusted my headset, touched the transmit button and said, “Colón tower, this is Skylane four hundred Delta Hotel … I’m ten miles south-southeast at two-point-five with information Bravo.”

  GPS meaning Global Positioning System. Information Bravo meaning I’d just checked the weather, was completely under control. At least, that was the impression I wanted to give them.

  I waited for what seemed a long time before I repeated my previous transmission, adding, “Copy, Colón tower? Do you read?”

  Nope, apparently not. Garret had set the radio frequency, but I checked it again: 122.8. That seemed about right. Checked the GPS again. Yep, now nine miles out of Colón and closing.

  I touched the transmit button once more and said for anyone to hear, “This is Skylane four hundred Delta Hotel and I’ll be passing Colón to the south, bound for Panama City at two-point-five but climbing to four-point-five when I reach the mouth of the canal.” Said it more for any other aircraft in the area rather than the sleeping tower in the nasty little port town of Colón. Felt like adding that everyone should stay the hell out of my way, because I wasn’t much of a pilot and we were roaring into Panamanian airspace at 160 knots but at varying altitudes, and on a course that had more in common with a roller-coaster than with the normal patterns of a plane flown by someone who knew what he was doing.

  Years ago, after my first required solo, our instructor had described my touchdown as, “More like a midair collision with earth than what you’d call a landing.”

  But I could steer okay. In fact, I was enjoying it, because it took my mind off things I preferred not to think about.

  What I preferred not to think about was becoming quite a long list…

  Things I preferred not to think about: hearing Amanda’s voice through the telephone, but seeing her as a child again in that heartbreaking photo as she told me that the medical examiner had decided Frank had probably died from a heart attack that may have been catalyzed by slipping in the kitchen, cracking his head open on the counter.

  Skipper, the young widow, was taking it pretty well. Maybe not so surprisingly well. She’d lost a soul mate, but gained three maybe four million in assets, not counting her beachfront home in Boca Grande.

  Funeral was set for Monday.

  Apparently, Frank had sprinted from the pool into the house—knocked the sliding door off its tracks, that’s how fast he’d been going. Maybe hurrying to answer the phone, she guessed. But that didn’t make sense because there was a phone near the pool. It was almost like he was in a panic. Running after something or running from something. How else could he generate that kind of force?

  Part of what she said struck a chord: In a panic, running from something.

  Scared to death, that’s what the medical examiner was suggesting. But by what?

  I asked, “There were two weird red lines on Frank’s neck. Did the medical examiner say anything about that?”

  No—and I could tell that Amanda did not enjoy having to again visualize her stepfather lying dead on the floor.

  Something else was, she had a call in to the investigator Frank had hired, but no luck yet. She’d left a message.

  I told her not to worry about it. I didn’t need the information anymore. Told her that I had a good lead on her mom and that what she’d probably better do was call the airlines as soon as we hung up and book a flight for tomorrow morning. The earlier she could get here, the better.

  That got her excited. “You’re kidding me! Already? My dad was right, you really do have special talents.”

  I wondered if my lighthearted enthusiasm sounded as contrived as it felt. “We’ll see,” I told her, and that as soon as I knew more, I’d call. Sometime late tonight, probably.

  Just before we hung up, she’d said in a shy voice, “I miss you.”

  A nice thing to hear, but she said it in a voice that told me she hoped to be more than a friend … which is probably why it hurt me so much.

  Something else I preferred not to think about was Tuck. He’d made a big scene at Club Nautico when I told him I was leaving him behind. So drunk and drugged up that he could hardly speak, but still coherent enough to make himself the center of attention.

  I’d told him that he’d find a way to embarrass me, and he had. Stood in the doorway of the marina weaving, trying to form words, and then—I couldn’t believe it—he began to weep.

  I’d never even heard the man’s voice break before, but there he was sobbing, people in the bar hearing it all, but not understanding, when he yelled at me, “Why won’t you give me a chance to make it up to you! You don’t think it’s damn near drove me crazy all these years? She was my sister, goddamn it! My only sister!”

  It was the first time he’d ever mentioned the death of my mother or had even acknowledged that it had happened. That’s how stoned he was. That’s how old and broken, filled with regret, he’d become.

  I felt some sympathy, but not enough to take him along.

  Something I didn’t mind remembering, though, was telephoning computer whiz Bernie Yager, timing it lucky enough so that he was at home.

  After explaining to him where and what and why, I gave him the Internet address for Club Gamboa’s Web page. I’d copied it onto a little piece of paper before I left the Turk’s boat. To Bernie, I said, “I’ll be forever in your debt if you destroy the son-of-a-bitch. The sooner the better.”

  Bernie had an evil little grin in his voice when he replied, “This whole terrible thing with Commander Richardson’s wife, it’s got the entire community talking.”

  “It does?”

  “They’re burning up the phone lines. Take it from me. And your fat friend? An hour from now, there won’t be a data bit left standing of his Web page. All that money he paid? Down the drain. And every time he rebuilds it, I’ll do it all over again.”

  Yeah, I was enjoying the flight, feeling the little plane beneath me. Concentrate: light touch of the wheel, foot-rudder controls and a nicety of trim all keyed to engine speed. Kept my eyes moving from horizon to altimeter, checking over and over to make certain that all gauges were in the green.

  We’d been at forty-five hundred feet when Garret dozed off, but I’d dropped down to the deck, twenty-five hundred, to get a better view.

  What I saw beyond the flare of my own running lights was the Caribbean Sea glittering in the moonlight. Off to the left was a black hedge of coastline, no lights, no life at all. Mangroves. Had to be mangroves. I repeated my transmission twice more, no reply. Had the feeling that I was alone in the world, suspended in darkness above a revolving earth.

  What worried me was, I knew there were military bases nearby. The Jungle Operations Training Base at Fort Sherman was still operating. I’d done some training there years ago: tropical billets on a 30,000-acre preserve of untouched rain forest. Magnificent. There were Forts Gulick and Davis, too, but they’d already been turned over to the Panamanians. I remembered enough from my flight training that such bases generally have restricted areas associated with them called MOAs, or Military Operation Areas.

  You can’t fly through a restricted area without prior permission. To get that, I’d have to call the base’s approach frequency before entering … a frequency I did not know. So, if I screwed up, I could expect to soon see a couple of Tomcats, war lights strobing, insisting that I land so that I could have a little talk with base security.

  It’s the sort of thing that inexperie
nced pilots want to avoid….

  Ahead now I could see an iridescent mushroom that had to be the big city glow of Colón. Separated from Colón by a panel of darkness was a galaxy of anchor lights at the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal. Lots of freighters and cruise ships waiting to transit.

  It was still difficult for me to accept the reality that the Panamanian government had chosen the power brokers of Taiwan and Hong Kong as the canal’s major concessionaires.

  China?

  It gave me something new to think about. Something to take my mind off the picture that kept re-forming behind my eyes…

  Axiom: Whoever controls the ports of Panama controls the Panama Canal. Accept the premise and you have to also accept the fact that, as of December 1999, it will be China. To be exact: Panama Ports Corporation, subsidiary of a major Hong Kong conglomerate.

  At first, I was shocked … but then, as I flew along gazing at the lights of ships at anchor, it began to make some sense … then it made perfect sense.

  It wasn’t just business, pure and simple; it was business and the politics of the coming millennium.

  Most believe that the United Nations will provide scaffolding for the emerging “World Government” or “New World Order.” That’s what right-wing conspiracy kooks and leftist dilettantes preach, anyway.

  Both are wrong. Unnoticed by the working public, a world government has been emerging strongly, steadily, for the last decade, and it is not the United Nations. It is a government made up of international conglomerates. These conglomerates have become the behind-the-scenes arbiters of power worldwide. Toughened by the economic expedient, they have become efficient and mobile administrators of legislation and policy. They have their own legislative and executive branches; they have their own sophisticated intelligence-gathering capabilities and their own loyal citizenry. Microsoft, British Petroleum, NEC, Canon, Toyota, Dow Chemical, Time Warner, Turner Broadcasting—of the world’s largest one hundred economies, more than half of them are not countries, they are corporations.

  So, yes, it made sense. Couriers of the New World Order were taking control of the earth’s most important and profitable canal, and it had nothing to do with conspiracies. It was the Darwinian template acted upon by political dynamics. Yes, there were some Panamanian legislators who stoked and tended hard feelings toward the U.S. Maybe that was part of it. But Asia, booming on-the-move Asia, was a sound financial choice.

  China now controlled the Panama Canal….

  It was a difficult truth to accept.

  Some critics will say that, somewhere, a good man who was devoted to the well-being and security of his own great nation is rolling over in his grave; a hardened little Rough Rider who, to his credit, had nothing in common with New Age chief executives who lack what he most admired: courage, integrity and fidelity to the greater good.

  And those critics will be correct.

  There will also be advocates who point out that after years of manipulation, murder, ill-use and what amounts to political slavery administered by the United States, the small nation of Panama has not only a right but an obligation to do what is best for its own people.

  They will be correct as well. But neither viewpoint carries an ounce of currency when applied to this new Darwinian template of world government. The dynamic is neither evil nor good, neither left-wing nor right-wing. It is pure. It is power. In such an environment, liars often prosper and cheaters usually win. Things are changing. The hubs of world authority are in a constant state of flux. Why did I find that surprising? Why would anyone find it surprising?

  “We almost there yet?” Garret was stirring in the left seat. He glanced out the window, then he sat up quickly. Jammed his headset down over his ears and said, “Christ, that’s Colón over there! We were supposed to cut inland way back.”

  “I know, I know, but I didn’t want to wake you up and I didn’t want to fly into any mountains, so I reset the GPS and it gave me a new route.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know how to fly.”

  “I’m a terrible pilot, but I’m a fair navigator. Some people feel safer over land, I happen to feel safer over water. Besides, I’ve never flown down the canal at night.” He said, “That’s the first problem. We’re not allowed to fly down the canal.”

  “Can we fly along it?”

  “Yeah. Just don’t buzz any cruise ships. We don’t want a bunch of newlyweds and nearly-deads complain’ to the Panamanian authorities about us.”

  I was banking southwest now over a vast darkness that was Gatun Lake, one of the largest manmade lakes in the world. The channel was lit up like a freeway. Open all the locks at once, and it would be like pulling the plug on a bathtub. The lake would drain almost dry, not enough water left to float a pontoon boat, let alone a thousand-foot-long container ship.

  The mountains fed the lake, the lake fed The canal. Thus the necessity of the locking system on this highway between two seas.

  Garret said, “Your friend who’s picking you up at Paitilla Airport? He’s gonna be sittin’ on his hands twenty minutes or so longer than expected, ‘cause that’s how late we’re gonna be.”

  “He’s the friend of a friend, really. A real live Zonie, fourth generation. Born here, went to high school here, and now he’s been temporarily stationed at the embassy. That’s what I was told, anyway. He’s a Company man.” Garret flew for a while before he said, “One of the Christians in Action fellas? One of the blue-shirt guys, is that the company you’re talking about?”

  I didn’t reply to the question. “The best thing is, he says he lives near Gamboa. And he’s got a car I can use. Some kind of transportation once I get there.”

  “Good on ya’,” Garret said. “Seems like it’s coming together bloody well.”

  “So far.”

  Panama City lay ahead, a void of the tangible insinuated by hills on the rim of horizon and moonlight. Gaillard Cut and the Continental Divide were out there. Gamboa and Gail Calloway were out there, too.

  I was watching thunderheads to the southwest crackle with sulfurous light. The clouds vanished, then reappeared. The Aussie surprised me a little when, after a long silence, he replied, “No, that’s not what I meant when I asked if he was CIA. What I meant was, if you’re going to kill the fat man, it’ll be handy to have a guy like that on your side. A spook, I mean.”

  18

  The man driving the van from Paitilla Airport was probably in his mid-twenties, not more than a year or two out of some Ivy League college. He assumed a telltale variety of nasal wit that requires careful tending. Princeton, maybe Yale. The Company has always been big on recruiting from the Ivy Leagues.

  But he was a Zonian, he said, the great-grandson of an engineer who’d come to the Zone back in the 1920s and stayed. Before the transfer, his mother and father both had had offices in the museumesque Canal Commission administration building with its red-tile roof up there on Ancon Hill. Now his great-grandparents and his grandparents were in the cemetery at Corozal, beneath the mango trees.

  His name was Matt Davidson. Or so he claimed. Big rangy blond with a gawky, grinning Opie Taylor face. Had his aviator sunglasses in the pocket of his blue button-down shirt, sweat stains beneath both arms.

  On the ground now, I was sweating, too. A hot night, like being immersed in bath water. So humid that when I first swung out of the plane I thought maybe that it’d just finished raining. But no. The tarmac was dry. Thunderheads were still strobing out there over the Pacific, sailing landward with the wind.

  Davidson told me he’d just returned from a three-month assignment in Asia and man-oh-man was it good to get back to the Zone. “Couldn’t wait to get here and go to the Tablita for a Sobe and choris.”

  I said, “Huh?”

  He chuckled, “Sorry, forgot you’re from the States. Or maybe I’ve still got a bad case of moonpongitis. What I said was … it’s like Zonian Speak. Soberana’s a beer. Chorizo, that’s a kind of sausage. Really good sausage. Maybe we’ll
get you one while you’re here.”

  Like I’d stopped in for the weekend, me in my black turtleneck with leather gloves and a navy watch cap I’d borrowed from Garret.

  “Moonpongitis?”

  From the look on his face, I got the impression that he’d misspoken. It was like: uh-oh. “Just an expression I picked up somewhere. It means like gone, you know, stir crazy. But those sausages I was telling you about, choris, the best place to get them is this car wash called Tablita…. “

  No doubt, he’d said something he wasn’t supposed to say. Not a big deal. I would have never asked him about Asia—professional courtesy prohibited it—but he’s the one who offered up the familiar name. Moonpong? Phumi Moonpong, actually. It was a remote village in the Cambodian interior. The jungle was massive there, leaves the size of elephants’ ears in the high tree canopy, and vines that snaked out the portals of Hindu temples that were eight hundred years old. Villagers lived in hootches with swept lawns on the banks of a river named by French missionaries: the River of Sin. I was supposed to forget a name or a place like that? It was said that the missionaries so named it because they were pissed off about something or because the river was black from rice paddies.

  Davidson’s small talk about the Zone didn’t interest me. All I cared about was that he apparently worked for the CIA. There was something very odd about friends of my friends arranging for a Company man to meet me at the airport, provide me with a ride and probably a place to stay if I needed it.

  Why? Why should they risk even peripheral involvement in a fray between private citizens?

  I thought Davidson might give me a hint let me know what was going on. But no, he played it straight as he drove through Panama City traffic, then into Balboa and out of town into the darkness of rain forest headed for Gamboa.