The Bonaparte Secret lr-6

by Gregg Loomis

  Just then, a shaft of light shone from the door. Whoever was in the room was coming out.

  As though by prior agreement, both Lang and Gurt flattened themselves against the building. An indistinct shape exited their room, pulling the door closed behind it and furtively scurrying toward Lang and Gurt.

  Lang waited until the person was almost abeam of him before sticking out a foot. Something tripped over it and went down amid what were understandable as curses in any language.

  Lang was on top of the form, his knee pressing against shoulders as he held on to the wrists, jerking them upward. Once he had a firm grip, he stood, snatching the person to their feet. He was surprised at how light, how small, the would-be burglar was.

  “Mr Lowen!”

  “It is the woman from the front desk!” Gurt exclaimed just as Lang reached the same conclusion.

  He spun her around to face him, pushing her toward the nearest gaslight. “Care to explain what you were doing in our room?”

  Her eyes sparkled with either fear or fury. “To check your air-conditioning. Several of our guests have complained the units were not working. I knocked on your door, and when I got no answer…”

  Lang had seen no other guests, had the distinct impression he and Gurt were the only ones. Nonetheless, he let her go.

  She took a step back, rubbing her wrists. “You should be more careful who you attack,” she said angrily.

  “You should leave the door open when you are in someone’s room,” Lang countered. “It might help avoid unpleasant surprises for both you and your guests.”

  She gave him a glare, turned on her heel and was gone.

  Inside the room, the window unit was doing a workmanlike job.

  Lang glanced around. “I don’t see anything missing.”

  Gurt held up a paper bag that held the afternoon’s purchases. “Perhaps not missing, but someone has moved the contents around.”

  At the same time, on the deserted road beside the hotel, a woman stood, talking into a cell phone.

  “Yes, I looked carefully. The woman’s clothes mostly have German labels. The man’s… His jeans are American, but that means nothing. The wealthy all have American jeans. Two of his shirts are French; they still have the price tag.”

  She paused, listening.

  “No, I found no weapons but I did find something interesting: several lengths of rope, a boat anchor-a small one-and flashlights. Whatever they plan, they plan it for tonight. They are scheduled to leave tomorrow. They saw me leaving their room, but I gave them an excuse.”

  Another pause.

  “Yes, tonight. I would expect them tonight.”

  Milo

  02:40 the next morning

  The cab ride from Cap Haitien had been uneventful if expensive. Andre, operator of the vibrant blue Ford taxi, had asked no questions as to why anyone would choose to visit the little hamlet in the morning’s earliest hours. If he had curiosity, the hundred dollars pressed into his palm quenched it.

  As bidden, he let them out at the bottom of the hill that rose to Milo and became a mountain as it reached ever upward to the Citadelle. Wordlessly, he wheeled the old car around and headed back the way he had come. Gurt and Lang shouldered the small backpacks they had purchased the previous afternoon.

  Gurt was carefully picking her way in the ghostly light of a three-quarter moon. “You could have let him drive us into town,” she observed.

  “And wake everybody? The car had no muffler, y’know.”

  “Still, riding would not risk breaking our necks walking in the dark.”

  “Easy enough for you to say. Last time you rode uphill, I pushed, remember?”

  They finished the gentle slope in silence. At the top, the scattering of huts was dark. Somewhere, a dog barked, someone shouted and the animal went silent. To their left, a gentle whinny led them to a low wooden fence around the central corral. Lang slipped a saddle and bridle from the top slat and was approaching a horse made skittish either by the dark or the fact he was facing a stranger.

  “It will give trouble if we are caught taking horses,” Gurt predicted.

  “If we don’t have them back by sunup, being horse thieves will be the least of our problems.”

  “Do they not hang horse stealers?”

  Lang managed to slip a bridle over the horse’s head. “That was Lonesome Dove. Don’t know about Haiti. Whatever they do, we don’t want to be here when it gets light. Now, get one saddled up.”

  Each leading a horse toward the increasing slope, Lang and Gurt waited until they were well past the last silent hut before mounting. The trail narrowed to the point of invisibility as it snaked upward. Lang had not been willing to follow a path he could not see with an abyss on either side, as would be the case approaching the Citadelle. Instead, he had remembered the little sure-footed horses and how they had needed no guidance from riders to find the Citadelle or home. He could only hope they knew their directions well enough to navigate without actually seeing their way.

  The moon was playing peekaboo behind puffy, silver-lined clouds, drenching the mountainside in inky darkness for minutes at a time. The surrounding coolness was Lang’s first clue they had entered that part of the route that passed through tropical forest. One of the horses’ hooves struck a rock, and there was a sound from the side of the trail that could have been a sleeping human mumbling in one of the mud habitations beside the trail.

  There was no doubt when they emerged from the canopy of trees. A panoply of diamond chips sparkled in the eastern sky, undimmed by the fickle moon. Like a stage setting, the Citadelle was an undefined mass of foreboding, black against the array of stars. For once the area was not cloaked in clouds. Lang would soon find out if the tiny horses could navigate by memory alone. Between here and the bastion the narrow path was a bridge across oblivion.

  The both saw it at the same time: a pinprick of light flashed and died near the base of the fortress. Someone had lit a cigarette.

  “If there’s one, there’s more,” Lang whispered, although the distance to the Citadelle did not yet mandate silence.

  The shadow that was Gurt nodded. “But how many more?”

  Lang slipped from the saddle. “With a little luck, we’ll never know.” He edged past her horse to stand behind it, placing a hand on its rump. “I’ll walk awhile, following your horse. When we get a little closer, you stop, hold my horse.”

  “But you cannot see.”

  “If I get close enough, I won’t have to. I’ll move on hands and knees, feel my way along.”

  “But-”

  “No buts. If we get any closer and one of the horses whinnies or strikes a rock…”

  Although clearly unhappy to be relegated to the role of holding the horses, Gurt knew this was neither the time nor the place for an argument. Reluctantly, she rode ahead in silence until Lang touched her arm.

  “Here, wait here.” He handed her the reins of his mount. “If I’m not back in an hour and a half, take the horses back to Milo and get to the hotel. I’ll need help.”

  She started to offer a final protest, but Lang had slipped away into the darkness.

  On hands and knees, Lang felt his way along the rocky path. Within minutes, his back began to throb at the unusual angle at which it was bent. Progress was slow, one hand in front of the other, making sure where he could place each knee. Once or twice, he had to stop as unseen rocks were dislodged and tumbled noisily into the void on either side. He would pause, listening for any human reaction.

  So far, there was none.

  After what seemed like painful hours, but his watch’s luminous dial described as twenty minutes, Lang could no longer see the Citadelle’s form against the sky. He was so close it filled his vision. Starting to stand, he froze in midcrouch as an orange dot caught the periphery of his vision. Either the cigarette smoker they had seen from the trail or another nicotine lover.

  Lang moved a few inches to his right and squatted, trying to pick up a silhouette, a
shape, anything that might give him an idea as to the smoker’s exact position. The mass of the old fortress and its shadow from the moon blacked out everything in front of him. His fingers searched the uneven ground at his feet and closed around a stone slightly larger than a softball.

  He waited.

  The cigarette glowed with what turned out to be the last puff before it was discarded in an arc of burning ashes against which Lang could see a single figure not three feet away.

  Lang purposely cleared his throat.

  The man in front of him grunted in surprise and Lang was close enough to hear the small sounds of movement. Pebbles underfoot crunched; metal struck metal as a weapon struck a belt buckle.

  Lang timed his swing with an accuracy learned on the Agency’s long-ago training fields. Rock met skull with a grinding crunch and a grunt. He fell against Lang.

  Quickly moving from under the still body, Lang searched his victim until his hand touched a weapon still grasped in unconscious hands. Running a hand down a stubby barrel, Lang quickly identified the gun as an AK-47, type 63/68. There was no chance he could see the markings stamped into the metal that would reveal its origins. He set it down beside him and fumbled off his backpack.

  Minutes later, he was finishing binding the man’s arms and legs with duct tape. Task completed, he taped the man’s mouth shut and stood, slinging the rifle over his shoulder. No doubt the guy would regain consciousness shortly-he was already moaning-but Lang intended to be long gone before his companions found him in the early-morning light.

  For a full five minutes, Lang stood still, listening for any evidence his presence had been detected. He heard none. Still, he didn’t dare approach the fortress by the front, the site of the only entrance. Surely it would be guarded. He had prepared for a less-orthodox entry. He moved gingerly to the side of the path. Keeping a precarious balance, he reached a point where he could see a slice of the night sky, its stars outlining the wall of the Citadelle.

  Climbing that wall was out of the question without some sort of help, help that just might be provided by…

  Lang took a length of rope from his backpack and uncoiled it. Blindly, he tied a slipknot into one end. Twirling the rope above his head like a cowboy chasing an errant steer, he let it slide through his fingers. Rope met rock wall with a faint slapping sound and Lang reeled it in to try again. On the third effort, the rope settled around a cannon’s muzzle protruding a foot or so from its gun port. Lang threw his weight backward, drawing the knot tight. He gave several exploratory tugs to make sure it was fast before he slung the pack back onto his shoulders and began to climb.

  Unlike many fortifications that had been built with a slight slope to deflect artillery fire, the Citadelle’s walls were vertical. Above the gun port toward which he was climbing, Lang could see two more, their silent barrels protruding into the night like the gargoyles of a Gothic cathedral.

  His foot found a niche in the mortar between two stones. Pulling on the rope as he braced against the wall, he was able to “walk” up the face of the fort perpendicular to it. Above his head, he could see the cannon getting ever closer. Another step, perhaps two, and he would be there.

  The gun was finally within his reach. Taking one hand from the rope, he stretched toward it. At the same time his foot hit a trickle of water, a patch of moss, something slick that broke the traction between his rubber-soled shoe and the rock surface, sending him swinging pendulum-like across the face of the stone.

  He clung to the rope, an umbilical cord of life that held him above a drop of thousands of feet. The swing ended abruptly as his momentum slammed him into a protruding stone, perhaps the top of another gun port. The impact knocked the breath out of his lungs and blurred his vision with colorful spots that spun in front of his eyes. Gasping to refill his lungs, he felt his grip on the line slip before his concentration could return from the pain of colliding with unforgiving rock.

  He drifted back and forth in space, the cannon’s muzzle taunting him with unreachable proximity. His shoulder muscles were in rebellion, sending jolts of pain radiating from neck to wrist. Hands beginning to spasm from the physical tension, he forced one after the other to inch his way up the remaining few feet of rope toward the gun.

  He was almost there when he felt an almost imperceptible slack in the line. The swinging motion had somehow loosened the knot in the rope. It was coming loose.

  If it did, the next stop would be nearly a half mile below.

  Gurt was trying to get comfortable sitting on a craggy rock, the reins of the two horses in her hands. Her watch told her Lang had been gone only a few minutes, but the wait was becoming burdensome. They could just as easily have found some outcropping of stone to which to tether both horses. Unspoken had been the thought that the two of them, Gurt and Lang, should not be at risk at the same time. Manfred should not be in danger of becoming an orphan at a single stroke. She accepted the reasoning, but being left out of any action still rankled her.

  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.