by Galen Winter
The heat was intense and the soldier backed away. He remembered the report of the six bodies on the trail near the Alto Cuchumantes. If the gringo wasn’t in the Scout, he had to be somewhere nearby. The soldier didn’t want to be ordered to search a forested area for a man who had already killed six people. That man was very dangerous and, probably, very well armed.
The soldier went back to the helicopter and reported the heat was too great to get close enough to be sure, but he thought the man was inside and, almost certainly, he was dead. The helicopter rose and disappeared over the horizon. Den left his hiding place and, avoiding the open roadway, he made his way toward Tecun Uman and the border.
The sun was down when he got to the town. Den walked toward the river. When he came close to the bridge, he saw a Customs station and a few Guatemalan soldiers guarding it. Their rifles leaned against the building and, seated on chairs, they smoked and talked and joked among themselves.
Den changed direction and walked a short distance down a side street. Out of sight of the soldiers and unchallenged, he made his way across the river and into Ciudad Hidalgo. He was in Mexico.
After buying a guayabara and tossing his Mickey Mouse T-shirt, Den started the next leg of his trip - the hike to the airport in Tapachula. As he walked down the Mexican road, illuminated only by the moon and the stars, a peculiar question occurred to him: If a gringo sneaks into Mexico by crossing a river, is he called a “wet front” or a “dry back”?
Chapter 13
At Tapachula, Den boarded an Aerovias Mexicana flight. At noon he was in Mexico City. After buying a ticket for the flight to Dallas, he called Langley. As soon as he identified himself, Teddy broke in.
“For God’s sakes, what happened? They told me you were dead - got killed in a gunfight somewhere out in the hills. What in hell happened down there? Jesus Christ. Are you OK?”
“I’m all right. I’m carrying a couple of bandages, but I’m able to sit up and take nourishment. It’s a long story and I’ll tell you about it when I get back. I’m leaving in two hours. American Airlines. I’ll be in Dallas at 4:15.”
“OK. I’ll have a plane and a doctor waiting for you.”
Den was met as soon as he stepped out of the tunnel that led from the plane into the Dallas-Ft.Worth International terminal. He was immediately taken back to the tarmac where a waiting Jeep carried him to an Agency jet. A few hours later, an ambulance met him at the Andrews Air Force Base. He was taken to Walter Reed Hospital.
Apparently, Dr. Hernandez did a creditable job when he performed his patch-up in Ticopetenango. The army medicos reviewed his work. They did some cleansing, some re-bandaging and little more. They insisted Den spend the night resting in the hospital. The shoulder wound, they agreed, was not life threatening, but it would require time to heal. Physical therapy would help.
Early in the morning, a doctor stuck his head into Den’s room and asked how he felt. Den said: “OK”, the doctor said: “Fine” and his head disappeared back into the hallway. In some ways, the Walter Reed hospital was like any other hospital.
Later, with a breakfast inside him, Den took off the open backed nightshirt garb all hospitals use to embarrass, intimidate and humiliate their patients. He tested his wounds. His rib cage was still tender and his shoulder was sore, but the bandages showed only small traces of blood.
Den felt good enough to go to his apartment. Checking himself out of Walter Reed was, at best, an iffy proposition. Nevertheless, he would try it. Underpants, socks and pants were in place when the door opened and Teddy Smith entered the room.
Teddy saw Den, with bandaged side and shoulder, sitting on the edge of the hospital bed. This time there was no small talk. “How are you feeling, Den?” he asked. “Should you be sitting up?”
“I’m going to live,” was Den’s response. “I’ll heal up in a week or so and I’ll recover faster if I’m on the outside. Hospitals depress me. Can you threaten a few doctors and nurses and get me out of here?”
Teddy paid no attention to the question. “Rodriguez told me you were dead. He said you were killed before his men finished off Alvarez and three other terrorists. He sure jumped the gun,” he said, smiling and gently putting his hand on Den’s good shoulder, “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you. You feel up to telling me what the hell happened down there?”
Den told Teddy of the ambush set up by Colonel Rodriguez’ Security Forces. He told him Alvarez and all of his three friends were too young to represent serious threats to anyone. “Those kids were no more terrorists than you or I.”
Teddy’s act was convincing. He showed indignation. Through clenched teeth he said: “That double crossing bastard, Rodriguez. It looks like he wanted to wipe out student protest. In Latin America, university students are almost always the children of wealthy families. The son of a bitch was afraid to kill the sons of important people. He got us to do it for him. He sold me on the idea of a terrorist organization being formed. Terrorists? A bunch of kids playing ‘revolution’.”
“I knew Rodriguez had a reputation for being a ruthlessly son of a bitch. There is nothing delicate about the way he stamps out any opposition to that Junta and there is no doubt about his connection with Guatemalan death squads. No one has ever been able to prove it. It looks to me like you might have had a brush with them.”
Den nodded his head. The word “brush” didn’t begin to describe his experience with the Rodriguez death squad. Den told Teddy about the second ambush - the one that came close to killing him. Teddy nearly exploded in a combination of surprise, and anger.
He let go a few expletives. There was no mystery about the reason for the Colonel’s attempt to kill him. Packages of cocaine, the bodies of the students AND the body of a dead gringo, known to be looking for drug connections in Guatemala City, would have been found on that dirt road.
It was obvious. It was the Junta’s plan to contend the students were buying cocaine from an American drug trafficker. A Guatemalan drug lord decided to eliminate the gringo competition. He would be accused of killing the student witnesses. Den’s body would be all that was needed to pass the whole thing off as drug killings. Nothing would give the slightest hint of a death squad and Den wouldn’t be alive to tell the truth.
“Sooner or later there’ll be a change of government down there,” Teddy said. “It won’t be long before Rodriguez will be looking for asylum. I’ll get my chance at him. Believe me, I’ll make the son of a bitch pay for this.”
Teddy squeezed Den’s right arm. “Come on, Den. I’ll help you put your shirt on. Let’s get out of here.”
The day after Den returned from Guatemala, Jake Jacobson was livid. “How did he get out of Guatemala alive?” he asked himself again and again and again. Now the fat was in the fire. Not only had Den survived Ocelot, but he was wounded at the same time students were killed during what the Guatemalan newspapers called a gun battle with drug traffickers.
Den’s presence during assassinations in Chile and Bolivia was bad enough. His presence in Guatemala and his drug investigation mission made thing much worse. The smell test would certainly fail if it were applied to the “coincidence” of Den’s wounds being received concurrent with the so-called Guatemalan drug trafficker’s shoot-out.
Jake tried to convince Teddy it was essential to the safety of Aegis that Den Clark be unable to answer any investigator’s questions. He recommended Den be killed as soon as possible. Teddy didn’t want to see Den eliminated. Emotion or sense of loyalty had nothing to do with it. If Den were murdered inside the Belt Line, the Senate and the House would investigate and the media would be sure to make a fuss. The Washington Post would speculate the hell out of it.
More importantly, the Agency’s attention would be drawn to Den’s Guatemalan assignment. If the Agency did its own in-depth investigation, the “coincidence” deaths of Montoya and el Valle would be discovered. The existence of Aegis might be suspected. Teddy felt it would be much safer if Den died during his next off
-shore assignment. It was best to let the matter rest for a while.
In the meantime, Teddy hired a nurse to visit Den at his Arlington apartment to change his bandages and provide physical therapy to rebuild his injured muscles. Teddy’s motives had nothing to do with an interest in Den’s well being. He had to be sure Den would cause no problem while he recuperated.
Teddy asked the nurse to get Den’s confidence, encourage him to talk and then report the conversations back to Teddy. At first the nurse was disinclined to act as an informer and violate confidences, but Teddy made a convincing argument.
He told her he was worried about her patient’s state of mind - even more than his physical recovery. He swore her to silence and confided that Den was being considered for an important position in the Agency. If there were any indications that the experience of being shot might affect his ability to make decisions that could put men in harm’s way, the Agency had to be advised. The nurse agreed to act as Teddy’s spy.
Teddy intended to create one more overseas assignment for Den. It would be the last one he would undertake. In the meantime the danger to Aegis could come not only from suspicions of assassination projects discovered by someone within the Agency. It could also come from the possibility of a planned or inadvertent disclosure by Den Clark.
If Den showed signs of wavering, Teddy would no longer be able to dismiss Jake’s often-repeated proposal to kill him in Washington.
The nurse was Teddy’s insurance policy. If she reported Den showing indications of second thoughts about continuing the work he had been doing, he would have to be eliminated as quickly as possible and regardless of collateral risk.
Teddy took what appeared to be a personal interest in Den’s rehab program. He made sure Den’s supply of aged single malt Scotch was a bit more than adequate. He often visited Den and, sharing a drink or two, he led conversations to Ocelot and Rodriguez, hoping to find if Den suspected the truth about the double ambush.
Den was unaware of Teddy’s ulterior motive. He believed Teddy was sincerely interested in his recovery. He came very close to concluding Teddy must have hired Jake because he had been ordered to do so. Nevertheless, the voice of that tiny skeptic within him continued to urge caution. This time, Den listened to it.
As he recuperated, strengthening his left arm and exercising the muscle that had objected to the injuries around his ribs and upper arm, Den had time to think. Undoubtedly, justice was served by the death of del Valle, but there was no pressing national interest that called for his assassination. He was a test and Den could see how Aegis would consider the test necessary.
Montoya, on the other hand, presented a stronger case. The killing of such a drug lord was higher up on the scale of national interest - on a societal, if not on a military level. The Ocelot Operation, however, was nothing more than garden variety murder. Den tried, without success, to forget he was the one who probably killed Alvarez as the young man rode in the front seat of the Volkswagen.
On the surface, the Guatemalan Colonel appeared to be the villain, but Teddy Smith had withheld information on the death of Mick McCarthy and someone in Aegis had engineered a cover-up. Den’s confidence in both Teddy and Aegis continued to erode.
Den began to realize he had entered a dark world where he was a pawn, a tool, manipulated by men like Colonel Rodriguez and the people who protected Jake Jacobson. He didn’t like it. The thought that he should end his association with Aegis and the CIA crossed his mind with increasing frequency.
Den paced the living room of his apartment and squeezed a soft rubber ball in his left hand. His nurse had given it to him. She said he should use it. It was an exercise that would strengthen his arm muscles. She knew her nursing services would end when he was pronounced “recovered” and Den was nearly at that point.
When she asked if he would return to the work that caused his injuries and could easily have killed him, Den momentarily dropped his guard. He told her he wasn’t sure. He told her it wasn’t the danger that bothered him. It was something else. Now he wondered what might have motivated her questioning.
Squeezing the ball with his entire hand presented no challenge. When Den tried to use only his thumb and little finger, the ball slid from his grip. As he bent over to retrieve it, the king sized double paned window in his apartment shattered above his head. Den immediately dropped to the floor. He crawled to the wall and, carefully reaching up, turned off the lights.
Still on his hands and knees, he saw the red dot of a laser above him. It slowly moved back and forth along the back wall of the room. Den knew someone had shot at him from the building on the other side of North Hancock Street. Someone wanted to kill him.
As soon as Den’s apartment lights were turned off, the man who tried to shoot him knew he had missed. The red dot of the laser told Den the man had access to some high-tech equipment. It also told him the man was waiting for another chance to kill him. It meant this wasn’t a casual amateurish shot. The shooter didn’t quickly disappear. He calmly waited to fire again. It smelled of professionalism.
Den watched the red dot as it swept the room and finally found the door that led from the apartment to the hallway. There it stopped. “The son-of-a-bitch is going to wait until I try to leave,” he thought. Keeping his eye on the red dot, Den crawled to the desk. He removed his .357 revolver from the middle drawer and then pulled the phone to the floor. He dialed 911.
“I just watched a man murder a woman on the fifth floor of the building at 1267 North Hancock,” he said, giving the address of the building across the street. Then he hung up.
Soon, sirens announced the arrival of the police. The red dot disappeared and Den left his apartment. He took the stairway to the basement, opened the service entrance door and entered the alley running parallel with North Hancock Street. Den left the alley when it met a side street. He turned away from the police cars’ flashing lights and the noise and confusion in front of his apartment building. As he walked, Den’s adrenalin flow ebbed and he began to organize his thoughts.
“He’s a persistent bastard, whoever he is,” Den thought. “If a man misses his first shot, he usually gets the hell out of there in a hurry. That red dot didn’t leave until the cops’ sirens were close by. This guy, Red Dot, is serious about trying to get me. Who is he?
“Máximo Rodriguez?” he asked himself. It seemed improbable that his tentacles stretch as far as Washington. It was possible, but not probable. Rodriguez might not even know he was still alive.
The second name was Humberto del Valle. Did some far right wing Chileno ideologue friend of del Valle discover he was the one who killed him in that cottage at Puerto Montt? Certainly, that possibility was a stretch. Still, a right wing conspiracy nut blew up a Federal Building in Oklahoma and left wing nuts shot judges and robbed banks in California. Extremists are capable of almost anything.
Den’s third scenario was a hit man hired by a drug trafficker who wanted to make a statement about the impropriety of assassinating Bolivian drug lords.
The chances of any of those three being behind the attempt to kill him, Den thought, were a hundred to one. On the other hand, the chances of being eaten alive by a polar bear in Arlington are a million to one - but once is enough. Den had to consider all alternatives. There was another candidate and Den believed he was the more viable possibility. That man was Jake Jacobson.
Of course, Jake knew it was Den who broke his jaw, cracked his ribs and sent him to the hospital. That might be motive enough for a borderline psychotic like Jake. Den suspected Jake was the most probable man behind the attempt on his life. He had no proof. It could have been someone else, but . . . Den stopped in mid-thought. A fifth alternative occurred to him.
Aegis! What if it wasn’t Colonel Rodriguez who quietly planned his death in Guatemala? It could have been Aegis. Aegis planned Ocelot. Den could have been no more than an expendable element of that plan. Aegis might have been willing to let him die in order to protect Rodriguez and his death squad
s. If Den survived, he might suspect that truth and he would have both the information and motive to destroy Aegis.
Aegis could not run that risk. It would have to permanently close his mouth. Now Den’s lists of probable suspects had grown to five: a Chilean fascist, a drug lord, Colonel Rodriguez, Jake Jacobson, or an Aegis assassin.
“I got lucky tonight,” Den thought. “I got a warning. If they get another chance, I may not get lucky again. Jacobson or some Aegis agent or whoever fired that shot will try again. I’ll have to change my routines. Certainly, I can’t go back to my apartment. I’ll have to find another roost.”
Teddy had often visited him and showed concern since he had been wounded in Guatemala, but Den wouldn’t consider calling Teddy for help. The man who tried to kill him might be waiting at Teddy’s apartment building. Moreover, Teddy, too, was suspect. He was part of Aegis.
Den could take no chances. “Well,” he said to no one in particular as he continued walking down the side street, “the scalded cat hates all kind of water.” It was his way of telling himself that he had to be doubly careful and could trust no one.
Den made no attempt to spend the night in a hotel or a motel. Someone could check hotel and motel late night registrations. He could be identified and killed before the sun arose. Den bought a newspaper and entered an all-night porno movie theatre.
If Red Dot was still looking for him, he doubted he’d look there. Den wedged himself into a seat, rolled up the newspaper and shoved it down the front of his shirt. Resting his chin on it, he tried to sleep. A casual observer, seeing his upright head, would think he was watching the films.
Chapter 14
The sun was up when, crumpled and unshaven, Den left the porno movie house. The smell of the place clung to him and he felt more than a slight need for a shower. His muscles objected to the cramping ordeal of trying to sleep in a dusty theatre. He wondered how other patrons could spend the entire night watching, over and over, the kind of court defined “free speech” spectacles he had dozed through.
