"Acting."
"Como este 'acting'?"
"Stop the car," said Jim.
"No. Retiro."
"Stop."
The guy mumbled, "No entiendo," and kept going, eyes darting, clearly looking for a cop. Jim closed his hand on the driver's shoulder, found the radial nerve, and sent a twinge
traveling down the man's arm into his fingers. The driver pulled over. Shannon paid.
They got out on a wide café-lined boulevard beside a park and waited until a raging chorus of horns forced the taxi to move.
"He's going straight to the cops."
Eight lanes of traffic roared, the speeding cars and trucks spewing exhaust fumes as thick as cigarette smoke in a sports bar. Crowds of people hurried along the narrow sidewalk, shouting conversations over the thunder of a big jet roaring in the sky. Jim oriented himself by it. Jorge Newbery, the domestic airport, was on the river.
He wanted to wait until the cab had disappeared in the dense traffic. People were watching from the cafés. He reached for Shannon to pick her up again. She stopped him.
"We're too conspicuous. Let me use the crutches:'
"It's too slow."
Balancing herself on one crutch, she struggled into her backpack. "I'll get myself to the third café. Go the other way and find another cab." She hobbled off.
It beat standing there waiting for the cops.
When he looked back, he saw that Shannon had stopped to buy something from a street vendor: a hat to cover her blond hair. Because the city was so dense with cars and pedestrians, within a hundred yards he was out of sight of anyone who had seen them get out of the cab together.
He was looking for another cab, when down the gentle hill of the park he saw bicycles gliding past statues and a Ferris wheel. He hurried down the littered grass slope to a newly paved bicycle path. A signpost indicated that it led back to the city center at Retiro. The third rider he called to spoke English. The nearby Velodrome had a rental kiosk, she told him. And there he got lucky.
Shannon was sitting at an outside table, watching the road for taxis, so Jim saw her first.
The exhaustion on her face tore at his heart. She had covered nearly two hundred yards on the crutches, a brutal haul. But her face lighted with relief when she saw him pedaling toward her, and she gave him such a big smile that for a second he could believe that they were just lovers on vacation.
"You genius. A bicycle built for two."
He helped her onto the front seat, got her feet on the pedals, and strapped her crutches alongside her backpack. Then, with a running start, he pedaled onto a red crushed-brick walk that led to the bisisenda.
The flat path was easy going for a couple of miles, though Jim was soon sweating in the humid heat. "I'm thinking our best bet might be to ride straight through out of the city to the next town and to try to catch the train there."
"How far?"
"I don't know. Twenty miles. Piece of cake on these flats. Maybe we should ride right to the boat. The bike's got a light. I could do it."
"That sign says FIN BISISENDA. I think that means the end."
Jim stood up on the pedals to see farther. "No, there's a big fancy building up ahead.
Some kind of museum. If we run out of bike path we can get on the road."
He pedaled past the FIN BISISENDA sign, down a slight incline, and under some massive brick arches that supported a railroad track. A commuter train was rumbling overhead. When he emerged from the arches, the bike path petered out and they were quite suddenly out of the green park and on a narrow, rutted dirt road that entered a neighborhood of low brick houses.
Ahead and off to the right he could see modern high-rises poking above the houses. But the road zigzagged and the houses, which stood cheek to jowl, began to squeeze it hard.
"Wait a minute. What the hell is this?"
Shannon said, "Wow. It's like we're not in Europe anymore."
She was right, Jim realized. Until this moment, as Will had predicted, Buenos Aires had felt like a European city, exclusively white, with nary a black or an Indian. Here, the people staring at them exhibited none of the lively gestures of the ebullient porteños and looked totally different from anyone they'd seen so far—smaller, darker, and dressed in rags.
Jim steered around a pile of garbage and dodged a heap of scrap wood studded with nails. Around a sharp bend he
found the way partially blocked by burning garbage. He pedaled around the smoke and wove a path through people pushing rusted shopping carts.
"Jim, I think we should get out of here."
He took the next turn, to the right, which should have brought them back to the center city. But the street grew narrower still and the houses had turned to shacks made of cor-rugated metal and scrap lumber.
The bike was too long to turn around. Another bend brought them to a halt on a lane of cardboard and flapping plastic. A trench down the middle of the lane overflowed with sewage. Jim stepped off the bike and walked it, looking for a turnoff.
A child in ripped jeans and a dirty T-shirt darted from a slot between two plastic-covered crates. He shook a torn paper cup in Jim's face.
"I have change," said Shannon. "They want money—hey!" she shouted as another child—as tiny as a six-yearold—tugged at her backpack. "Let go!"
Jim pushed the kid away. The child was so skinny that he felt his palm brush bone. In an instant they were surrounded by ragged children who were reaching for their packs and grabbing at their pockets.
The children were so silent that Jim and Shannon could hear the distant whine of another train. Jim saw a flash of steel, then felt something sting his thigh. When he looked down he saw that they'd slashed right through his pocket. A walnut-sized fist emerged from the cloth, stuffed with money.
They were grabbing the bike, dragging it with Shannon still on the seat. He shoved through the swarm of arms and pulled her off. The bike slid away and vanished. Jim backed against a wall, gripping Shannon in the crook of his left arm and fending off the silent, swarming children with his right.
A ten-year-old grabbed one of Shannon's crutches. Without them she was helpless, and Jim felt her erupt into a torrent of frightened muscle. She thrust the other crutch like a cue stick and the kid let go and fell back, holding his eye.
He saw steel flash again—a box cutter. He struck first and
was appalled to see an eighty-pound child go flying. Two more took its place. Jim whipped off his backpack. "Give them your stuff."
Before the hand could close on his pack, the children scattered, melting away into holes and slots and over low walls. Six teenagers, as silent as the children, stood staring at Jim and Shannon. Five held knives. The sixth had a pistol: he gestured with it for them to follow.
The group moved around them and Jim had no choice but to swing Shannon into his arms and walk with them through the maze of narrow streets and muddy lanes that stank of sewage. Shannon whispered, "What is happening?"
"I don't know."
They stopped in front of a brick house with a second story made of wood. The leader knocked and the door opened instantly. He gestured again with the gun. Jim had to turn sideways to fit through the narrow door with Shannon. It closed behind. A match flared, and an oil lamp was lit.
They went through a series of rooms and narrow doorways, up some steps and down again, descending finally into a dank cellar—a low-ceilinged room crowded with children. In the glare of several oil lamps, they saw a broad, squat man sitting at a plank table.
Jim felt Shannon shudder. The man's face was grotesquely scarred. Burns had seared his flesh and left patches of hair on shiny skin. He had no eyebrows, and, Jim realized with a twisting stomach, no ears. His legs appeared to be curled under him. One arm was a withered claw. The other, gracefully muscled, with a fine, long hand, seemed to be the final remnant of a once strong and handsome man.
His milky left eye was blind. The other flicked from Shannon to Jim and back to Shannon's crutches. Then
he crossed his heart with his good hand, smacked the table, and announced with a childlike glee: "Word of an Englishman! You found them."
WELCOME. SHANNON. WELCOME. Jim. Thank you, Mother Mary." He snapped his fingers. "Tell Eduardo we have them." Two boys hurried out. The children—a dozen or more—crowded closer.
"Who," asked Shannon, "is Eduardo?"
"Eduardo, pretty woman, is my negotiator. My agent. He will help set the price."
"Of what?" asked Jim.
"Of the famous Jim and Shannon everyone is looking for."
"You're going to turn us in to the police?"
"Policia? No, my muscled friend. The policia beat us and shoot us. They do not pay us."
"Who?"
"Put your pretty woman down, muscle man. Your arms must be tired. We'll bring her a chair. It is hard to stand on crutches, is it not?" He pointed at his useless legs.
They brought a cracked plastic kitchen chair and Jim lowered Shannon onto it as the mutilated man watched. She and Jim exchanged looks of fear and confusion. He was racking his brain, wondering if they could buy their way out
of this with the gold Krugerrands in his pack, or those still on the boat, when Shannon broke the silence.
"Your English is excellent. Where did you learn it?"
"I was born Brazilian. When Portuguese is your native language, you are wise to learn new tongues." He looked down at his shriveled body. "My nurse spoke English—a nun.
She taught me how to read, too. Which, you know, comes in handy when you are '
recuperating.' Here in BA, of course, there is much English, so mine has been exercised.
I am called Stallone, by the way—my 'surf tag.' May I ask what happened to your legs?"
Jim felt Shannon stiffen. He laid his hand on her shoulder and she grabbed it. Throwing the word cripple around like a hard-won badge could never erase her loss. She had told him only once the horror story of her accident and made him swear they would never speak of it again.
"I asked, what happened to your legs?"
"An accident," she answered at last. "And yours?" "An accident."
Shannon and Stallone stared at each other for what seemed to Jim a very long time. Then Shannon said, "Skiing."
"Surfing," said Stallone.
Shannon looked at him, clearly surprised.
Stallone broke another silence with a loud laugh. "You're asking yourself how does a man get roasted to a crisp in the ocean. Train surfing. Do you know about train surfing?"
Shannon shook her head.
"Surfistas ride on the train's roof, dance in the wind. It feels wonderful, especially when you are going home to hell. In Rio we had shantytowns that make this one look like your Plaza Hotel. Where you shot the cops—for which, in a better world, you would be rewarded, if this were only a better world."
"Who is paying you for us?"
"There are problems with train surfing. Falling off is one problem. The train runs over you. Or you land on your head at a hundred kilometers per hour. The other problem is electrocution. The electric cable that powers the locomotive is
just above the roof. Four thousand volts. You start to fall, you grab the cable. You can't help it."
He flashed white, even teeth, which, like his beautiful arm and hand, had survived intact.
" 'Shocking,' they say. But they never say how the electricity burns you. It burned the fat right out of my legs and this arm. This one—the funny one."
Shannon said, "My father is a very wealthy man. He will pay you for us."
Stallone shook his head. "Sadly, your father is not nearly so wealthy as the people Eduardo is dealing with. Nor is your father here, while these people have gone to the trouble of coming all the way to Buenos Aires. All week they've been asking for you. All over BA. They tell the police, the mafia, the gangs of the villas miserias: whoever finds the pretty blond girl who can't walk, whoever finds her muscle man—name your price.
Jim and Shannon are a very popular couple."
"Double your money," Jim said. "It's me they want. Not her. Sell Shannon to her father.
Sell me to the—"
"No," said Shannon.
Stallone said, "Be quiet, pretty woman. Your muscle man has a good idea."
"Just get her away before they come," urged Jim. "They're only using her to get to me:"
"I won't leave you."
Stallone started stroking his twisted hand with his good one. "You will leave him if I say so."
"Then please don't say so."
Stallone laughed. He shook his head, clearly intrigued by Jim's suggestion. His eyes glittered as Shannon said to Jim, "Please don't leave me."
"You'll be okay."
"Not without you."
Stallone jabbed his finger at Shannon's crutches. "Tell me, how did skiing do that to you?"
Jim started to speak in her defense, but Shannon's hand bit into his and he listened in fear and wonder, thrilled by her spirit. She challenged their captor.
"I did something as stupid as you did."
Stallone's twisted body seemed to swell up. Blood suffused the skin on his head. He gripped the table and Jim thought he was going to throw it at her. He rubbed his face and shouted, "What did you do?"
"I sneaked onto the ski mountain at night. When it was closed . . . I climbed in from the next mountain—with skins on my skis.'
Stallone nodded, though it was doubtful he had ever seen skis, much less climbing skins.
"You didn't pay?"
"Not a peso. It was free."
"And you felt free."
"All alone racing down the mountain."
"In the dark?"
"The snow glowed blue."
"Enough to see?"
"I thought I could see."
"Fast?"
"Fast as a train."
"The air was good?"
"The air was beautiful. Clean and cold. Stinging cold. Pure as ice."
"You feel yourself start to fall."
"No. I don't fall."
"You skid into a tree."
"I don't skid."
"You fall from a cliff."
"I jump from a cliff."
Stallone flashed another smile. "You crash."
"I soar like a bird."
"You crash to the ground."
"I float to the ground. My knees bend to take the shock; they cushion the landing and I make a magnificent turn through a blue-glowing curve. . .."
"Then?"
"There, in front of me, is a snow cat."
"What is a snow cat?"
"A tractor they drive up and down the mountain to groom the snow trails."
"No lights? No warning?"
"It had broken down. It was a dark, silent mound of steel. I couldn't stop. No one could have—that was my last thought. No one could stop. Not even me."
Stallone stared at Shannon and a deep silence descended on the room. Finally, he whispered, "I know. I know. I knew I was reaching for the cable. I couldn't stop myself. I was afraid to fall."
He looked sharply around the cramped, dim room, stared into the faces of his gang.
Children and teenagers gazed back impassively and Jim could not figure out whether they understood English. Stallone shrugged. "Who cares who knows? I went soft. I was finished."
"How did you end up here?"
Stallone shrugged. "What do these people want from you?" he asked Jim.
"Something I don't have."
"They'll expect a better answer than that."
"I don't have it."
"They will 'ask' until you give it to them. Or die. Her, too."
He cocked his ear to a sound Jim couldn't hear. Those who had gone out earlier had returned with those who would be doing the asking. Two Americans by the look of them, soldiers or cops, the leader not that tall but plenty wide, with arms and a chest that said he could bench-press four hundred. Andy Nickels?
His backup was taller, but just as wide, with a swimmer's chest and shoulders. Buzz cuts, sm
ooth-shaven hard-planed faces. Definitely military types. Special Forces or SEALs.
"Where's Will Spark?"
Jim squeezed Shannon's hand lightly with his fingers, warning her not to speak, praying that they wouldn't notice that he was trying to beam a million-volt thought into Shannon'
s brain: Don't tell them Will is dead. If they think we have Sentinel they will torture us to death to get it.
They had one hope. The McVays would chase Will, believing him to still be alive. But that demanded a Will Spark
answer. Details, details, details. Smoke and mirrors. And a thousand "facts."
"Last I saw he was headed east."
"Where?"
"Ten miles off Montevideo."
"Where were you?"
"I was on the ferry to Buenos Aires. We had already said good-bye. I went out on deck and suddenly I saw his boat. Close enough to wave. He was really tramping, a broad port reach on that north wind. Good point of sail for that boat."
"What ferry?"
"Will didn't want to come into Buenos Aires. So he dropped me at Montevideo, in Uruguay, on the other side of the Rio de la Plata, and I caught the boat. What is all this about?"
"How long did Will Spark stay in Montevideo?"
Jim built his answer from the truth—after three months at sea, the boat was low on everything. "Will bought diesel. I helped him fill the water tanks. He picked up a sack of rice and coffee, a couple of cases of ultrapasteurized juice and milk, and a heap of frozen food, and he was out of there."
"No one saw him in Montevideo."
"What do you mean?"
"No one saw him there."
"So?"
"So you're not telling me the truth."
"It's a big port. I don't know where you were looking, but we were there. He dropped me right at the ferry. The main dock, for God's sake."
"Where is he headed?"
"I told you. East."
"For where?"
"I don't know. What the hell is this about?"
"Why didn't he tell you where he was headed?"
"He claimed somebody was chasing him and that it would be better if I didn't know. I'm beginning to believe him."
Andy Nickels turned a sudden cold eye on Shannon. "Is that true?"
Buried At Sea Page 29
