Acts of Nature

by Jonathon King

  “Interesting accent for a Venezuelan rebel, Colonel,” Harmon said, not moving his eyes off the other man’s.

  “University of Miami 1998. Business administration major. Go ’Canes,” the colonel said, leaning in, smirking this time. Being a smartass. Losing focus. Harmon knew that Squires would be watching the others. All six of the colonel’s men were carrying Kalashnikov rifles, weapon of choice for paramilitary around the world. But none of them would be as experienced and comfortable with killing as Squires was. It takes a few times before you get used to shooting the hearts of out of other men. Squires had been there more than a few times.

  “I will take whatever it is that you have in the briefcase, Mr. American Oil Man, and then we will see what we can work out in the way of a negotiation,” the young man said, now a bit louder so his comrades could hear.

  Harmon could sense rather than see what his partner was doing behind him. They had been in situations that varied on this theme before, though it had been a few years. They’d both been in hot zones. Lawless wars. Military actions as soldiers themselves as well as being the hired guns on the other side. They had both faced the possibility of death. Now that they were considered to be “security executives” on a corporate payroll did not mean that their world was all about passing out business cards and making contracts. They’d been sent down here to retrieve a computerized analysis device from the pump room across the way. This zone was becoming far too hot with all the paramilitary action, and the diminishing political landscape between the United States and the new Venezuelan government dictated that a bit of company creativity be used. They usually called Harmon when it came to such creativity.

  An hour ago, Michael Mazurk, their helicopter pilot, had done a perfect dust-off and Harmon and Squires had simply jumped out of the side doors while the local oil thieves and their customers guarded their eyes from the blowing dust. They had then walked a straight and purposeful line to the pump room. They were dressed in casual attire: Dockers and collared knit shirts. Harmon was in his spring jacket, as always, and had a briefcase in his hand. Squires had the MP5 slung under his arm and carried it in a nonthreatening way, but a good study would see that the big man was as comfortable and proficient with the weapon as if it were a natural appendage. They were two fiftyish-looking Yankees with professional eyes on the pump and seemed to have little interest in the group stealing oil. If Venezuelan government troops showed up, the thieves and their customers would scatter. But under the eyes of the crowd, two American oil men were no threat and subsequently of little interest. Harmon had keyed the big padlock on the pump room and in minutes had found the computer recorder on the control panel and removed it. He then opened his briefcase. Inside was a satellite phone, a block of plastic incendiary explosive and a trigger switch, and fifty thousand dollars in cash.

  While Squires watched their backs through the partially opened pump room door, Harmon took a few extra minutes to search through some file cabinets and look for any other recording devices, laptops, CDs, anything that might hold information. He’d been at this corporate game long enough to know that information was valuable, especially those bits of intelligence he wasn’t supposed to have. Harmon and Squires worked on a need-to-know basis and it was not just an old television line when their bosses said they would disavow any knowledge of their actions. The corporate boys could do a lot to free you up if things went bad and you ended up in a foreign prison or worse, but not without some motivation. Harmon was always on the lookout for his own private insurance or leverage and he’d collected a lot over the years, copied documents and computer files. He was a careful man in that sense. But there was nothing in the pump shack worth sticking around for. He gave up and set the explosive and checked the switch. He then made a call on the phone to Mazurk that they were ready for pickup. When they stepped outside, Harmon turned, carefully and obviously, and relocked the big padlock on the door. He knew the crowd would be watching. He wanted him and Squires to be described only as company men, carrying out nothing more than what they carried in. They were employees doing their jobs, nothing more, without care for the activity around them. See no evil. That’s the way Harmon liked these operations to go. He might have even had a satisfied look on his face as they walked back to the roadside field where the chopper would now be inbound. He would be back home by tomorrow. Maybe even take his little boat out on Biscayne Bay, do some fishing with his wife, split a bottle of Merlot, and watch the lights of waterfront Miami sprinkle on at sunset.

  But now he had the barrel of a beautiful American gun at his throat, and he was about to blow the heart out of a young University of Miami graduate with a homeboy lust for excitement. The more things change in this world, he thought, the more they remain the same.

  Without taking his eyes off the other man’s, Harmon extended the briefcase and dropped it at the little colonel’s feet as he had been asked.

  “De pinga!” the colonel said with a smile and then motioned one of his rebel gunners up to his side. “Abre el maletín!”

  The soldier shouldered his Kalashnikov and bent to one knee to open the case. Another one Squires would not have to worry about, Harmon registered. The soldier laid the case down, flicked open the unlocked latches, and flipped the top up. His face registered the delight of seeing the stacks of banded American money, and as his confederates read it, all took a step forward to gain a look.

  “Fifty thousand in cash,” Harmon said to the colonel, who had not looked down but could no doubt feel the excitement in his men. Greed comes in every language. “It’s yours. I only need the phone and the black box. You take the fifty grand and go party with your friends or whatever you do and we’ll trundle on out of here. Consider it a visitation fee, eh?”

  The little colonel held his gaze but Harmon could tell he was not just considering the proposal.

  “Well, of course it is mine!” the colonel finally said, tipping the muzzle of his Colt Python, touching the soft skin hanging under Harmon’s chin. Harmon hated it when they actually touched him.

  “But I will have to perhaps make a call on your phone to my commandant to see what to do with you and your black box, Mr. Oil. You must know that the political climate has changed down here and bribes are not the only way it works any longer. You don’t just walk into my country like you’re the fucking Miami police and tell the chulos what to do with your high and mighty. Here, we are the power!”

  It was then that Harmon picked up the distant sound, at first faint, like the hard purring of a cat. He knew it would grow louder into the whumping of air on a blade. He still had his hand in his pocket. In Miami even the gangbangers would have had him put his hands on his head by now.

  “There are many lessons here for you, college boy,” Harmon said and for the first time there was a slight growl in his voice. Harmon knew that Squires would begin firing as soon as the soldiers’ eyes went up and away to search the sky for the helicopter.

  “Number one is that no, we aren’t the Miami police. You see, they wouldn’t just kill you in the street and not stay to fill out the paperwork. And two, the more things change…” He began pulling the trigger on his own little Colt before finishing the thought. Three rounds in quick succession pierced the fabric of his coat pocket and ripped up and through the heart of the UM business major. The young man did not react enough to even tighten his grip on his own weapon and Harmon slapped it away and went to one knee as the air above him ripped with the automatic fire of Squires’s MP5 on full auto. His partner drew a line across the chests of all five standing rebels. They dropped, some with short spins as the bullets slapped them, and not one got off a shot. The last man was still on his knee over the briefcase, eyes still full of American greenbacks and maybe a vision of what the money was going to buy him and his family. A pleasant place to be when you die, Harmon thought after quickly taking the Colt from his torn pocket and shooting the stunned rebel in the side of the head.

  The chopper was banking in low now, the pilot
perhaps seeing the bodies still twitching around the men he was there to pick up. He reacted the way he should, coming in fast for a dust-off, keeping the landing rails off the ground, keeping the pickup side tipped up so the blades wouldn’t decapitate his employers. In the distance Harmon could see the oil thieves reacting to the action. They were probably used to gunfire when the paramilitaries were around. They probably were not used to seeing those same men fall to the ground while strangers backed away, watching them intently, weapons still at the ready. Squires was in his position for cover fire, walking backward in a low squat with the MP5 sweeping for movement. Harmon snapped the briefcase closed and picked it up, his Colt still out in his hand, but useless at this range if anyone from the pipeline should start firing. But men were not his fear and the fact that he was again walking away from a dead man who just moments ago had had a gun barrel at his throat only reinforced that odd mentality. He turned his back to the group of curious men gathering at the pipeline and walked to the chopper. Passing Squires, he nodded at the big man with a look that said “our work is done here,” and in seconds they were in the aircraft and away.

  In three hours’ time they were winging their way north on a commercial flight out of Montevideo to Miami. Sitting in first class, Squires was folded into the seat next to him sleeping easily after consuming several brown bottles of Cerveza Especial at the airport bar and then reading some Cuban novel he’d purchased called Adios, Hemingway and passing out. Harmon, though, was nervous, but his anxiety had nothing to do with the bit of trouble they’d had at the pipeline. He and Squires had been in such situations before. It would pass. When they were still in the helicopter on the ground at the airport, Harmon had said his good-byes to the pilot by handing him a brick of ten thousand dollars in bills from the briefcase. There would be no mention of what he may have witnessed during the routine ferrying of the Americans. Harmon knew the pilot was a player by the way he’d stared straight ahead after banking into the quick pickup and then quickly lifting back out of the clearing, never hesitating over the fact that Squires was still hanging out of the open side door with his MP5 covering the increasingly agitated group of fuel thieves, some of whom by then had magically produced weapons of their own. The extra cash in his pockets in addition to his professional fee would ensure that no report or even a vague memory of the incident would remain. Harmon’s only regret was that in the interest of the company’s unwritten policy—what happens there stays there—he’d had to instruct the pilot to sweep low over the middle of an inland lake where he and Squires wrapped their used weapons in Harmon’s bullet-pocked jacket and tossed the bundle out the door. He hated having to do that with the little Colt. He only had one more like it at home.

  No, Harmon’s nerves were twitching because while Squires had been drinking at the airport bar he’d been watching a satellite news station, concentrating on the reports of a tropical storm that was moving westward from the open Atlantic through the southern Caribbean. It was expected to strengthen to hurricane status within the next twenty-four hours and continue on a path vaguely in the direction of the Yucatan, but as a longtime resident of Miami, Harmon knew you couldn’t predict these bastards. A hurricane had an eye, but you could not read it, and it never showed reluctance or hesitation. And unlike most human dangers, Harmon was scared as hell of it.

  THREE

  The kid still had his eyes closed when the collar of his shirt yanked back, the first button pulled up into his throat until it popped and went skittering onto the girl’s dresser top.

  “Dream about the panties on your own time, son. I brought you up here to steal stuff, not sniff it,” Buck said, releasing the fistful of collar and then lightly backhanding the boy’s head.

  “OK, OK, man. Jeez, chill,” Wayne said, tucking his head down into his shoulders. When he turned, Buck was already focused on the jewelry box on the pink and white dressing table. He flipped open the top and while Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” plinked away, he pawed through the necklaces and earrings. “Junk,” he snorted and then started toward the bedroom door.

  “If you’re not going to do me any good in here, Wayne, next time you stay outside with Marcus,” Buck said and then stopped to toss the big-handled screwdriver at the kid. “Now go downstairs and check the guy’s study. And if the desk drawers are locked, pry ’em open. That’s where the good shit will be.”

  “Yeah, all right,” Wayne said, turning his back and straightening his shirt. But Buck stood and watched him for one more second, saw him take the teenager’s panties and stuff them into his jeans pocket. He shook his head and wondered again why he ever thought of using these kids on these burglary gigs. The fact that they would do almost anything you asked without hesitation was their only redeeming value. That plus he needed someone to help do the heavy lifting. But one day they were going to put him in the weeds, he thought as he moved down the hall toward the master suite. Then there’d be no more Miami-Dade Correctional Center for him. He’d be riding straight up to Raiford Prison. He looked at his watch again. They’d been in the house for twenty minutes already, first stripping the wires on the big plasma television in the living room and loading it into the van. Then the other electronics: CD players, stereo components, the Xbox computer games. You take the heavy stuff first in this kind of work. Buck had again borrowed a friend’s white van, slapped the magnetic FreezeFrame Air Conditioning Service sign on the side, and come probing for the right house.

  The two boys had been useful because they got a charge out of sneaking over the walls of these gated communities and then scurrying around from house to house with the laser intercept Buck had put his hands on. They’d hide in the bushes like they were playing a kid game and soak up the garage-door laser signals of home owners coming in after dark from work. It was another benefit of these far-out suburbs. The commute into Miami took these office workers forever and they rarely got home until after sunset this time of year. They’d hit the button to open their garage and the boys would be right there to record it with the intercept.

  Then Buck would return with them a week later and scout the possibilities. If things looked cool he’d simply hit the garage door, back the van in, snap on the surgeon’s gloves, and in broad daylight they’d clean the place out. When they had what they wanted, they’d just open the door and drive away. In the past he’d left the two boys outside as lookouts, giving them a Nextel so they could beep him if anyone approached or things got hinky outside. This was the first time he’d given Wayne a shot at working the inside and he’d done it mainly so they could load the big stuff that he couldn’t hoist alone.

  While Wayne went back downstairs, Buck did the master suite. He’d lied. The best stuff was always in the bedroom. He went to the walk-in closet first, the boxes up high and then behind all the hanging stuff, looking for a wall safe. You never knew, especially in these new suburban places. Folks had jewelry passed down, coin collections, shit that was valuable like Granddad’s antique fishing rods were to him. He dug an old gray metal lockbox out from a spot back on the floor. Take it with, there will be time later to bust it open. From the closet he moved to the dresser. There was unopened mail to someone named Briand A. Rabideau tossed on top but nothing like a credit card app or something he could use. Inside the drawers he found the lady’s jewelry box, under some silk nighties. Why did they always think that was a place to hide valuables? Like some burglar is going to be shy about rooting through their underwear. Young Wayne already proved that theory wrong and he wasn’t even seventeen yet. Buck went through the box, took the necklaces and the rings, some good-looking stuff there, and then stripped the pillowcase off the bed and tossed the jewelry and the lockbox inside. Then he moved to the bedside nightstand drawers: lip balm, bottle of aspirin, warming jelly, and a wad of one-dollar bills. Buck pocketed the cash and muttered something about the lucky bastard. He pulled the drawer out full. They were always stashing stuff in the back. That’s when he saw the old-style .38 revolver. He stared at it a minute. B
obby the Fence always liked to deal guns. Good as gold, he always said. Acid off the numbers, they went like cash on the streets and among the woodsmen out in the Glades. But Buck disliked guns. Too many idiots without an idea how to use them. Gave them bullshit false courage. Fools rush in; he remembered that one from his grandfather. Buck was a planner. Guns made shit happen too fast.

  Bleep, bleep. The sound of the Nextel decided for him. He shoved the drawer closed and left the gun behind.

  Bleep, bleep.

  Pissed, Buck snatched the phone off his belt.

  “Goddamnit, boy. I tol’ you one signal was enough,” he said into the instrument.

  “I know but I think it’s the lady, Buck,” came the excited voice from Marcus, who was keeping watch outside. “I think it’s her car just came in down at the east end. Y’all ought to kick on outa there.”

  Buck was already at the top of the stairs and taking them two at a time.

  “Let’s roll, Wayne,” he called out but the other one was already ahead of him, with an armload of stuff from the den and heading through the kitchen for the garage door. Both of them dumped what they had into the open van doors and Buck jumped into the driver’s seat, keys still in the ignition. Soon as the engine cranked, Wayne hit the garage opener alongside the entry door and skipped to the passenger side and slid in. Buck eased the van out of the garage while the door was still rising, and just like they’d planned, Wayne turned in his seat and pointed the stolen signal back and flicked it. The door rolled back down and its seemingly undisturbed look would give them a few more minutes of getaway time before the owner discovered the burglary.

  Buck drove slowly out into the street and hung a left. Wayne looked sharply at him but was smart enough not to question why he was going in the opposite direction from the development’s entrance.