It was a second negative reaction to a second request. The first had been no less reasonable, I thought: Why not contact my friends at the U.S. Embassy and at least tell them what we had planned? If we failed, who was there to back us up? I explained to him, “The people involved are very important to me. We need a second team. Just in case.”
It infuriated me that he wouldn’t even consider it, and I found his reasons revolting, though I couldn’t let him know how I felt. So I listened stoically, as he said, “If we get the governments involved, the U.S. government, Colombian government-it doesn’t matter. There are going to be rules. Heads counted, reports filed. Don’t you understand? That’s why they hire people like me to come here in the first place. I provide a necessary service.
“The bad guys don’t play by the rules, so the government types need a buffer. Someone to keep civilized people from getting strangled by their own stupid laws. Hell, Commander, they don’t want to know what I do, just so long as I get it done. Lying to them is part of the deal. They expect it.”
A few minutes later, he tried to reinforce his point. “The team we’re taking is the best that money can buy, so money is the key word here. My men, that’s all I care about. I trained them myself. They’re like my own children. If we ask your pals to join us, we’re not asking for military backup. We’re inviting witnesses.”
30
Tyner’s study consisted of a single upper-story room, with a massive wall of glass so thick that I knew it had to be bulletproof. It looked out onto the same horizon of rain forest as from the suite in which Keesha now slept, but from an elevated aspect.
The walls were lined with books, decorated with coats of arms and medieval weaponry. There was a giant-screen television and several computers.
“I built the cellular tower so I can have Internet access,” he told me. “A couple of the guys out here have it, guys who do what I do.” He chuckled. “Not as well, of course. But they’ve had the same mini-towers built. We stay in touch, send instant messages-I’ve got a bunch of e-mail friends back in the States who believe I teach high school in Iowa. Davenport-grew up there, love the place. Mostly, though, my colleagues and I trade intelligence. Kind of our own profit-sharing plan.”
Which was how, he said, that he happened to have a low-altitude aerial photograph of the compound where, hopefully, Amelia, Janet, and the others were being held.
Davenport-I remembered receiving an order from a high school there. It now seemed a decade ago.
He sat at the computer, and I stared over his shoulder, as he said, “The photo’s a couple years old, but the place can’t have changed that much. It’s an old rubber plantation estate. French people owned it for years, then the drug people bought them out.”
I was looking at the roof of what seemed to be a very large hacienda, built around a courtyard and fountain, the entire estate enclosed by a high stone wall.
Tyner continued, “When the drug cartel went out of business, a corporation based in Saudi Arabia bought the place. They still do the raw rubber thing, plus they raise bees. My sources tell me they keep a fairly good-sized security team there-that’s not unusual for private businesses out in the jungle, by the way. Hired guns are cheap, and that’s what it takes to survive.
“So, yeah. It makes sense. The whole thing’s probably a screen for some kind of drug operation, plus they dabble in a little kidnapping on the side. Cash business. Saudi Arabians? That’s got terrorist cell written all over it.”
Tyner twisted the waxed ends of his mustache, studying the photo, and smiling. “I’m going to enjoy this one, Commander. These days, the turbans bring a pretty good price, plus they’re packrats when it comes to money. They keep a lot of cash on hand because the U.S. government has gotten very good at freezing their bank accounts. I ran ’em out of my area. They despise me. You know why?”
I said, “I could guess at a number of reasons.”
“But you’d never get it. The reason they despise me is, when I go after one of them, two of them-a dozen, it doesn’t matter-I have my men rub bacon grease on their rounds.”
“Why? Infection?”
“Their religion, Commander. For a devout Islamic, pig meat is considered unholy, an abomination before God. Put pig grease in them, you not only kill the body, you condemn their soul to hell. They don’t like that.
“Something else? Couple years back, some bigshot turban fundamentalist tried to start an organization in my territory. He and his group were from a Colombian city called Maicao. Cocaine, I believe it was. We used the greased rounds on his men, but we did something special with the bigshot. Every little farmer in the jungle keeps a couple of feral hogs. A wild pig’ll eat anything dead, and most things alive if it’s been wounded. The turban had already been shot in the thigh, had his leg broken. So my guys put a couple of more rounds in his knees, and flipped him into the pen.”
His smile broadened. “Psy-War-Ops. Something like that, word gets around fast. Most of the turbans in this country, the fanatics, they live in Maicao. In that town, anyway, they know my name and my territory. People like that, they stay away from someone like me because they understand me. So this is a rare one for me. This one’s got the smell of money. Yes, sir, outstanding!”
Tyner told me we would leave for Remanso by helicopter at 1 A.M. That way, he said, I could get some sleep, make sure I was rested.
“Down south, they’re still farmer-types, so you don’t want to attack too close to dawn, but they also like to stay up drinking aguadiente, so you don’t want to attack too close to midnight, either. This whole country, it’s a balancing act.”
He’d sent his men ahead in a tight convoy consisting of two Humvees and an armored personnel carrier. We’d be in radio contact, but he’d already briefed them on the plan of attack.
A helicopter? Humvees and armored cars? I looked at the hundreds of books on the office shelves, at the careful crafting of the wood, at the expensive, imported furniture, his executive’s desk, at the carvings and sculpture and the thick Persian carpet before I said, “Did you really get this rich killing people?”
I could see that the question irked him. Like many small, driven men, Tyner had small, nervous mannerisms. One was twisting the tips of his handlebar mustache. Another was an unconscious motion as if he were washing his hands over and over-a Freudian mannerism that could have meant something, or could have meant nothing.
“You sound as if you disapprove. Hah! Coming from you-of all people-that’s almost funny.”
I said, “I’m not making judgments, Sergeant. I’m just curious.”
“In that case, I’ll answer your question. Come here and take a look at this map of Colombia. See the middle section highlighted in red? It’s the size of a large state. The idiots in the government here gave all that land to FARC, the guerrillas. That’s like siege victims throwing ransom over the walls.
“FARC’s region, it’s got everything: timber, minerals, good farmland, and a potential for oil. If the bastards were smart, had some initiative, they’d have their own thriving little country going by now.”
Tyner turned to look at me, still irritated. “But they aren’t smart. And they’re lazy. Instead of working, getting rich, they keep asking for more, more. They don’t want political change, they want bribes. They want a free ride. See where I’m going with this, Commander?”
I said, “Sorry to be dense but, nope, not a clue.”
He returned his attention to the map and pointed to a section southeast of the FARC area. It was highlighted in blue, not as large, but still sizeable. “This,” he said, “is the territory I control. I’ve worked my ass off here for ten years, and every year the government gives me a little more for a very simple reason: I’m better at doing the things they don’t have the stomach or the brains to do. I make them look good. And I make it safer. That’s the main reason they don’t hassle me, and why I’m making lots of money.”
I said, “They pay you a bounty for the guerrillas you k
ill. I know that. But it can’t be that much. Not enough to run the operation you have here.”
He was smiling, proud of himself, once again twisting the ends of his mustache as he answered, “See? You’re a smart man. Bounty-hunting, that’s small time. Quick cash, but no future. I realized that from the start. So I’m going to tell you the truth. I haven’t shared this with many others. What I’ve done is start several ancillary companies. As a group, I’ve incorporated nationally and international. A little thing called Backyard Enterprises. Can you figure out why?”
I risked angering him further by saying, “No. Back Door Enterprises, that’d make sense. But not Backyard. Where’s the name come from?”
“Think about it. How often do you hear people say it in the States? People need oil, but they won’t let the oil companies drill. They get hysterical-not in our backyard, they can’t. People create waste, all kinds of waste: petroleum and plastic and-” He nodded as if he could see me catching on. “And they create nuclear waste, too. A major nuclear plant creates only about a dump truck full of spent rods a year. Hell, the French, of all people, have proven how damn safe it is-but same thing. People go ape-shit. Safe or not, no matter how much it’s regulated, no one’s going to let it be dumped. Not in their backyard.”
Sergeant Tyner gestured grandly toward the bulletproof glass and the jungle vista beyond. “So welcome to my backyard. No regulations, no rules, no controls. The world needs lumber? I’ve got it. A dumping ground? I’ve got that, too.” His voice lowered slightly, as if he were about to share a valuable secret with me. “Have you ever noticed, Commander, that the more sophisticated a society becomes, the more adolescent it behaves? Back in the States, they want all of the benefits but refuse the responsibilities. Let’s face it, most people are sheep. And they’re cowards, too.”
Now the little man reached out and tapped his index finger on my chest, an intentional invasion. “You know why they’re cowards? Because they know the truth, but they won’t allow themselves to admit it. You know the truth. I know the truth. What we’ve done, our lives, our actions prove it. But the common person-they can’t handle it. It terrifies them.”
I looked at his finger until he took his hand away, and then I said, “The truth about what?”
Blue eyes glittering, Tyner used his head to indicate the doorway. “Follow me. You’ll understand. I’ll show you. You’re one of the few.”
Down two flights of stairs, dug deep into the hillside, walled with thick cement and barred by double sets of locked, fireproof doors, was Sgt. Curtis Tyner’s armory-the Vault.
I followed him out of some perverse desire to prove he was wrong but felt a strange sense of unreality. He kept saying over and over that he and I had much in common, that we were alike in many ways. Even to myself, I could not prove how wrong he was until I had seen it all, whatever it was. It was the only way to prove that I was right, at least, in my hope that we could not have been more different.
But if I were so certain, why did I feel such overwhelming dread?
He used three different keys to unlock the metal doors, and when the doors swung open, he reached into the darkness, touched a switch, and an apartment-sized room was illuminated with sterile neon. I’d expected some fashion of survivalist bunker-a safe place to sit out WW III-but, instead, I stepped into a precisely maintained little arsenal. The walls were lined with professional-quality gun lockers; the stainless-steel bench tables were as neatly kept as those in my own lab.
Tyner began opening lockers, handing me equipment: an Autovon voice-activated radio, with headset (“Tonight, we’ll have to be in close radio contact”), Generation 5 night-vision goggles (“My team owns the night-it’s our biggest advantage”), and several choices of body armor, or bulletproof vests.
I accepted it all without comment, certain that he was creating a little mote of time, a period of linear decompression, before showing to me whatever it was he wanted me to see.
Perhaps it was to get a more pure reaction. There may have been something in my face he expected to read. Whatever the reason, I was right.
When I had all the gear piled in my arms, I said, “Well, I better get back and check on how Keesha’s doing. And get some sleep.”
He held up two index fingers-twin exclamation points-and replied, “Not yet. There’s one more thing you need to see. My collection. Did you forget? It’s why we’re here.”
On the far wall was the biggest of all the brown metal gun lockers, and he used another set of keys to open the double doors. Inside, on shelf after shelf, row after row, were what looked to be small glass aquariums but were probably terrariums because I didn’t smell the familiar ozone odor that I knew so well.
Instead, the open lockers filled the room with an unusual leathery, musty smell, a slightly acrid air.
When Tyner touched another light switch, I saw why.
Inside the locker, inside the glass housings, were rows of tiny, shrunken, human heads. Dozens. A hundred. Probably more. All males, and every race represented. Each head was isolated, individualized, by its own thin, glass boundary. Eyes and lips sewn shut, the miniature faces were frozen in various expressions of horror or pain, but all shared a dumb look of final, abject submission.
As I stood, feeling the shallowness of my own breathing, surprised by my own calm, Tyner said, “That Indian girl you’re with. Did you see the black tattoos on her ankles? She’s from farther south in the Amazon. I know her tribe well. She’s a Jivaro.”
He smiled. “Her people are the ones who do this for me. Headhunters. The shrinking of human heads-it’s their most devout expression of art. The ones who avoid contact with us, they’re the ones who do it because they love it. Your girlfriend-she’s almost certainly eaten human flesh. Still think she’s worth the price of a doctor?”
I swallowed, trying hard to keep my expression indifferent, to show him nothing, allow him no private insights into my reaction-it would have seemed a violation of my person-as I replied, “Is there a difference between the craftsman and the collector?”
He laughed, and waved me closer. “Touche! You’re right, I’ll accept that. Point well made.” He paused before he added: “From one craftsman to another.”
I listened to him tell me about some of his trophies. He had the swagger stick again and was using it as a pointer. I listened to his concise description of individual hunts as they related to a specific head. He had an expert, almost scientific, approach when describing the final shot that felled each.
He touched the swagger stick to a case that contained a tiny head with a face the size and color of a very small, angry mandrill, but it wore a disproportionately long, squarish beard. The head was mounted on a pillow-sized purple turban and over a white conical kalansuwa, both of which looked to be stained by blood.
“This is the guy I was telling you about, the one who tried to get into the cocaine business in my territory, but ended up back on the farm, feeding livestock. His name was Rashid, Rashad… something like that. I knew I wanted to take him alive, and when my spotter first found him in the scope, we were half a mile away.
“I was using a HK Weapon System, a PSG-1 on a kind of lark because, as you know, optimal firing accuracy can only be achieved with single-loaders. Dispersion diameters and acceptance specifications call for something a little better that those shitty 7.62mm NATO rounds, so I’d loaded my own-right here in this room. I loaded very hot, very heavy.
“But still, it was a cold-bore shot. You’ve been through the training, Commander. When the barrel’s cold, you’re never really sure where the first one’s going to go, are you? Plus the air was dense. So I did all the required calculations-range, distance, wind, and refracted heat-but mostly used my intuition, my instincts, before squeezing off a round.
“It seemed to take two or three minutes, watching Rashad through the scope, before the round finally busted his femur out from under him and knocked his turban crooked. Rashid, Rashad-whatever his name was-he had this expression
on his face: Offended! Absolute disbelief. A profound look of surprise beneath a crooked turban, hands flopping around. It was almost comical.
“I consider it one of the finest shots I’ve made-or witnessed. I’m not bragging, mind you. I’m a professional. Keeping an enemy alive is so much harder than killing him.”
I stood there listening to Tyner talk-lecture, actually, for that’s what he was doing-and I’m not certain why. I could have turned and walked away. I could have told him the truth about himself: that he was mad. He’d stayed in this place so long that it had strangled all the humanity out of him-if there had been an element of humanity in him to begin with. He said he had grown up in Iowa? I could have told him another truth: He had traveled much too far ever to find his way back to his home state.
But I didn’t. I stood and listened. Listened to him tell me about Keesha’s people, the Jivaro. That they were artists of the first magnitude. That they, above all others, were preoccupied with realism, and so took utmost care to maintain the original likeness of the slain victim’s face.
Tyner explained, “They believe the power of a dead man’s soul is still dangerous, and that taking and shrinking the head of an enemy is the only way to conquer and destroy his soul. Plus, it’s a hell of an insult for a man’s head to be perverted and owned by another man. To a Jivaro, an enemy’s head is the equivalent of the Medal of Honor to an American soldier.”
He explained the process to me. I refused to listen attentively, though some of the details still got through: A slit was made up the back of the neck, and the skin peeled off the skull, which was then discarded. Then eyes and lips were sewn shut with fine native fiber. The actual shrinking process was extremely delicate and precise. Heated stones and hot sand were used, and the head had to be constantly rotated to prevent scorching.
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