Where’s Sammy? asked Burnette.
He’s been scrubbed, said Ben.
Okay, said Burnette. How was the round?
Not the same, said Ben.
Sorry you missed it, said Chambers. I could have used you. For moral support, at least.
Ben reached into a gym bag at his feet and unzipped it and set one of the new, small, DOD-developed satellite phones on the table, which the three of them stared at for a moment until Ben explained, We’re waiting for a call.
It’s complicated, said Undersecretary Chambers.
Sir.
It’s complicated, Chambers repeated. Trust me.
It’s cockamamie, if you ask me, said Ben.
The phone began to ring and rang three times while they each looked at it and Chambers nodded for Ben to answer it and Ben said into the receiver, Hold on.
Ev, said the undersecretary, I need you to go back down to Haiti.
Okay, sir.
We have a situation. I need you to get rid of Renee Gardner.
Excuse me, we’re talking about your daughter, sir?
Chambers sighed and planed the middle of his forehead, pinching and massaging a pressure point with two fingers. Yes, he said, my daughter, I need you to take care of my daughter.
Take care how?
You know what I’m saying.
Eville understood there was a game and, behind the game, very committed people practicing a level of seriousness and decision making in which nothing could be discounted. Burnette looked up at the sky and the clouds horsetailed in the sky and then back at Steven Chambers and at Ben with the phone to his ear and back at Chambers and said, Negative, sir. That’s not going to happen.
Ben, said Chambers, give him the phone, and Burnette put the receiver to his ear and said, Burnette, and there was Dottie’s voice saying, Eville, you promised. I need you down here.
He listened to what she had to say and hung up and looked at Chambers and Ben, their rictus smiles anchored beneath unsmiling eyes, and asked, What’s Plan B? and Chambers said, We want to avoid Plan B.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
They streak down into Le Cap late and spooky and prepped for a firefight, no landing lights, no rum punch, and the welcoming committee is Dupuys. Eville is not even clear about his present rank so he calls him colonel and that seems to work, and there’s a happy surprise, of the two men with Dupuys one is the portly Brazilian commander of the UN police training mission but the other is Margarete’s brother, Reginald, who tugs at his sleeve, wants to speak in confidence, but Burnette says later, and they pile into the back of Dupuys’s HiLux and drop the pilots at the darkened Christophe and drive to the safe house where Dupuys has a half-dozen guys from the palace guard dressed like ninjas, trying to pull together a hostage rescue mission, the hostages being three Brazilian police trainers and the newly appointed governor of the northern cantonment.
Burnette shakes hands and introduces the ninjas to his team. Hey, I know these men, they’re squared away, my own ODA trained them after the invasion. Ti Phillipe and his force have gone rogue, grown treacherous, creating mayhem throughout the north, allying themselves with the narco-traffickers and criminal gangs like Armée Rouge, recruiting the old macoutes and accepting financing from several of the elite families to build a little rebel army of their own. The squad listens to the skinny and starts working options and Reginald’s so agitated Burnette takes him outside and Reginald says, She is in danger. The woman your friend.
Renee? says Burnette.
Oui, Renee, they are going to kill her and her husband tomorrow.
Who’s going to do this?
The drug people, says Reginald, foreign people, but Ti Phillipe organizes.
When? asks Burnette. Where?
Tomorrow evening, Reginald tells him, at a ceremony in Saint-Marc, and when Burnette hears that his alarm goes off, because the ceremony in Saint-Marc is where he and Renee have arranged to rendezvous and nobody knows that who isn’t supposed to, and Burnette feels lashed with a sense of urgency as his Title 10 and his Title 50 begin to bust out of their little compartments and collide into one glommed-together mess of a single frenetic mission.
You know the guy, Phillipe’s guy? he asks Reginald, and Reginald says there are two guys, a Mexican and a Haitian.
All right, says Burnette, we’ll go to Saint-Marc tomorrow and stop them, okay? and back inside the house Burnette shakes up the planning. Listen up, he says, something has come up and I’m on a tight schedule here, so we’re going over there now, to police headquarters, and bringing out those hostages. Colonel, he tells Dupuys, you got a phone here? Get on the phone and call Ti Phillipe and wake him up and tell him we’re coming down there.
Who put the firebug up your ass? says Scarecrow. What happened to dawn?
You and I have somewhere else to be, Burnette tells him.
Scarecrow says, Okey-doke, but it’s past midnight, you don’t want to surprise these ass-clowns?
No, says Burnette. Colonel, get on the horn and tell them we’re coming and we’re not happy and if we see anybody point a gun at us we will drag out every last person in that station and hang them upside down in the street.
The squad kits up, strapping on body armor and headsets and night vision goggles and chambering 40mm grenades in the launchers on their MP5s and bandoliering themselves with ammo and tear gas and they cram themselves in two Toyota pickups and caravan downtown, the D-boys divided between both trucks, a most fearsome sight through the dark empty streets and they split when they’re almost there so the pickups approach from opposite ends of the block, stopping near the corners and the men flowing silently into position, establishing a kill zone, Tilly and Spank setting up on a diagonal behind the Haitians so they won’t be doused by the ninjas’ Uzi spray, then Burnette backed by Scarecrow walks across the street toward the blacked-out headquarters and pounds on the big wooden door and steps to the side because it’s hard to say what’s coming.
You know what you’re doing, right? Scarecrow’s voice hisses in his earpiece, and Burnette says softly, Yeah, but I could be wrong, and then he shouts, Phillipe! We need to talk, and it seems he knows his man well enough, because Ti Phillipe cracks the door to peer out, armed and ready with his own machine gun pointed knee-high, and Phillipe looks at Burnette in bitter astonishment and says, You! and Burnette says, Yes, me. How’s your—he says, tapping his throat because he can’t remember the word in Kreyol.
Phillipe, with a murderous pop-eyed glare, says, Why are you here? To invade my country again? To make war with me?
I’m your guardian angel, Burnette says, and I’ve come to save your life a second time.
At each end of the street more pickup trucks careen to a stop, armed men flying out into a firing line, the D-boys including Scarecrow go flat on the ground and the ninjas press into the walls and doorways and Burnette says to Ti Phillipe, Tell them to lower their weapons and we’ll work this out, and Burnette can see Phillipe calculating the odds and gives the command and Burnette says thank you. Here’s the deal. You have four hostages inside. Just push them out the door.
Tell me why I would do this, says Phillipe. If I do this then you will kill us.
If you don’t do it, we’re killing everybody, the hostages will probably die too, and I don’t care, they’re not my people, says Burnette. If you do it, we’ll just take the hostages and leave and everybody can go back to sleep and then tomorrow you and Dupuys will sit down with the Brazilian commander and work this out. I give you my word. For the next three days, no one will fuck with you, nothing, as long as you don’t fuck with them. You have three minutes to give me the hostages, okay. Then we go away. This is a good deal. You and I made our peace long ago. I’ve got nothing against you and you know I didn’t come all this way just to tell
you lies or screw around. Let’s not have a bad night.
Ti Phillipe says he’s going back inside and Burnette says three minutes but Phillipe has them stumbling out the door in their underwear in less than that, clutching their clothes and shoes to their stomachs, and Burnette sends two one way and two the other, to the ninjas who get them down the street and into the trucks and Scarecrow back-steps to Tilly but Burnette stands a minute longer in the middle of the street and then turns his back on the station, if a bullet takes him now the cause of death would be listed as disrespect, and he walks to Spank’s covering position and they get out of there, Burnette yelling at Phillipe’s reinforcements to return to their trucks, and that’s how it goes.
When they arrive back at the safe house Scarecrow jumps down from the bed of the Toyota wildly aggressive, and chest bumps Burnette harder than he should, bellowing, Ding a goddamn derry! No cover, no advantage, no surprise! That was the stupidest, fuckiest action I have ever been dumb enough to enact! and Burnette sticks his hands in his pockets so he won’t punch him and sighs with contrition and concedes that indeed it was, a style of insanity that would have inspired his father to sign on the dotted line.
Burnette and Colonel Dupuys pull up chairs for a tête-à-tête, closing the door in the face of the cowardly Brazilian commander who had begged off the raid to stay behind and take a dump, and Burnette tells Dupuys that he and Scarecrow have some other business down south but half the squad will stay and he’ll be back in three days, three days should be enough to negotiate some reasonable outcome with Ti Phillipe. And Dupuys says three days will be enough, yes, but he doesn’t say enough for what, his eyes are shifty and his voice distant and his answer sounds unnecessarily cryptic. Burnette makes sure Tilly and Spank are set for the night and he finds the chickenshit Brazilian and says I need a vehicle.
There’s only my own, says the commander, a brand-new UN-purchased SUV, and Burnette says I’ll take it and the guy asks for how long and Burnette tells him he’ll have it back right away and the Brazilian cop reluctantly gives him the keys.
It’s 0400 and Burnette tells Scarecrow snag a nap and I’ll be back at sunrise and he leaves with Reginald and at the darkened bungalow near the cathedral he sees the curtain move when the vehicle stops in front and it’s a good feeling poking through the venomous haze, knowing Margarete’s there waiting for them, and it’s good to see Margarete, something he waited for without knowing it. By the time they come inside there’s a golden welcoming light from a lantern and Margarete has water heating on the stove and her relief is a palpable mix of joy and lingering fear, embracing her brother, kissing Burnette’s hand before he can stop her. I listened for the shooting but it never came, what happened? she says. Monsieur Burnette, thank God, you have come again, things are very bad here. Ti Phillipe has grown wicked, I don’t understand him. He wants to fight the government. Thank you for sending the money with the woman, she has been very kind to me, but my brother told you, yes, these men are going to kill her husband and kill her.
The three of them sit at the rickety table drinking Margarete’s thick black coffee and Burnette asks about her son and asks about her and Reginald says, Monsieur, I must tell you, I fear for our lives. Burnette raps the surface of the table with his knuckles, trying to think this through, and says, Bon, let’s make a plan, and they talk for another twenty minutes.
Outside the windows the night begins to lift, it’s time to go, and Burnette leaves them there while he drives back across town to collect the grouchy Scarecrow and then return to the bungalow for the family and their sad suitcase and plastic bags, a blanket wrapped robe-like around Henri, the sleepwalking boy. Reginald is out of his cop’s uniform into the casual prowl of D-boy fashion, just us guys, jeans and T-shirt and journo vest, all those pockets hanging empty with the bare meaning of his life, carrying his service revolver in a paper bag.
As she’s getting into the backseat with Henri and her brother Burnette gives Margarete a clip of money, which she accepts without remark, a manner he most appreciates, tucking the dollars into her bra. The kid and Scarecrow drop back to sleep and by sunrise they are on the outskirts of the city, dodging chickens and goats on Route Nationale One. Fifteen minutes later Burnette pulls over at the turnoff to the unpaved road that heads up into the northwest mountains, where Margarete and her son will seek refuge for the time being until it’s clear the danger to her and her brother has passed. They leave Henri and his mother and their meager heap of possessions there on the side of the road in the tap-tap queue and drive on, south through the central range of mountains, his passengers’ heads lolling with fatigue, jarred by potholes, then straining erect on the hairpin turns. At Gonaïves they stop for gas and cold sodas and Burnette makes Scarecrow take the wheel across the mud flats and rice paddies of the Artibonite Valley, Ev zonked and snorting at the havoc of his dreams before they make it out of town but even in the depth of his unconsciousness he smells the coastline and the freshness of the sea as they approach Saint-Marc and he straightens awake clearheaded and anxious, striving to rehearse the op in his mind but he might as well be a blind man because he can’t visualize any of it.
The next decision is coming fast upon him—sooner or later the police in Saint-Marc will have a role to play in the mission and although he knows the command pretty well, trustworthiness has never been their virtue. Should he bring them in now? Avoid them until they’re unavoidable, then entertain them with song and dance? Fuck, fuck, Burnette says to himself, because he doesn’t have the answer, and they’ve crested a hill and can see ahead a half-mile or so to the next bend, cars pulled over and parked on the shoulders, and atop the low mesa on the inland side of the road, the temple flags and Haiti’s own red-and-black high in the windless air, hanging without glory, limp on their poles. This is the place and he knows he’s driven past many times but can’t remember ever paying a courtesy call when his A-team was bivouacked there all that time ago, two gritty sleepless months wasted in the center of Saint-Marc.
He tells Scarecrow to pull over and give the wheel to Reginald and they sit there for a minute double-checking the armory they have strapped onto their various parts and discussing what they came to do and how it might happen and Reginald has the jitters and Burnette tells him don’t worry, we do grabs like this all the time, and Reginald confesses he’s not worried about the bad guys, he’s nervous because he has little experience driving a car but on he drives, a little goosey on the pedals, and Burnette tells him keep going around the bend until there are no more parked cars and let us know if you see the Mexican’s wheels and they lurch down the line, Burnette offering Reginald driving lessons, but never seeing the Mexican’s black SUV and they park in the thin shade of an acacia tree and Reginald says, Sundown will be their time, and Burnette says, Okay, Scarecrow, ever been to a voodoo ceremony? Scarecrow says, I don’t care if they’re fucking nuns up the ass as long as they sell cold beer.
They climb the bank to the top of the little mesa and there’s a pathetic mud-walled hounfour with beautiful murals and dozens of people but the drums are farther on and real action is unfolding behind the temple in the dusty expanse of a barren field, hundreds of people, a thousand probably, buzzing around, and at the center of their orbit are two enormous bulls, wide-horned and black and frothing in the heat, tethered twenty feet apart to separate stakes, and behind the animals, peasants stacking branches for a bonfire. They split up, Scarecrow and Reginald looking for the bad guys, Burnette hunting for Renee but she finds him first, hurling herself into his arms, her legs off the ground and wrapped around his thighs, and he pries her off to explain.
Her reaction is airy and cavalier and she tells him she’s there with Gerard and her husband Parmentier’s up in New Orleans on business but will be flying back to Port-au-Prince in the morning (Eville knows every one of these details). Ti Phillipe talks big, she says to Burnette, and Honore Vincent detests me, he’s jealous not to mention insa
ne. She wanted to attend a sacrifice ceremony and had to pay a bundle for it, and I didn’t choose him, she tells Burnette, I chose the priest here in Saint-Marc, his arch enemy, but hey, relax and enjoy the show, she says, Honore will not show his face here, this is not his turf, these are not his people, and he would never come this far south to fuck with somebody he could fuck with up north with a lot less effort, but by the end of her reasonings Burnette is only convinced that the hit is not a joke—which is truly messed up, Phillipe’s hit on Renee competing with his own. Reginald and Scarecrow come back from their recon with nothing to report and Burnette sends them out front to watch the road. Then it’s late in the afternoon, the crowd’s drunk and raucous, the bulls have been beheaded with a great pulsing outpour of blood, skinned and disemboweled and quartered and hacked into purple chunks, people shoving and clamoring for a piece, the fire lit like a bomb, leaping up in a sheet of red flame and showering sparks, his teeth are rattling from the drums—and now cue the shit, cue the fan.
He might have expected a heads-up from his boys on the road, but suddenly the woman says to Burnette with cool amazement, Oh, my God, there’s Honore Vincent, and Burnette looks and this jumbo-assed black guy is coming their way with wild-eyed ferocity, the crowd parting to let him pass, and Burnette wants confirmation from Renee, You’re absolutely sure? and Renee seems puzzled, not by his identity but by his audacious presence, and Burnette yells out the monster’s name as a question, Honore Vincent? but gets no reaction, just an unbroken deliberate stride of sheer menace, not a threat one needs to stand back and ascertain. Burnette can smell the alcohol, the guy’s been bathing in clairin, he’s like some android demon programmed to reach through a brick wall for Renee’s throat, the all-powerful gros neg come to teach a lesson to the world’s white bitches. He steps in front of Renee to shield her from the assault but Renee instantly switches places, herself perhaps a gros neg stuck in a puny woman’s body, and at the same moment she boots Honore Vincent’s scrotum into his spleen and bends him over, Burnette hops aboard trying to wrench Vincent’s arms behind his back and ends up riding him for a short distance until they topple to the ground, Burnette flipped underneath the monster and into a stranglehold until Renee seizes his flailing leg to release his sidearm from its ankle holster and cracks the brute into semiconsciousness with one flat-sided swing, at which point Burnette heaves and Vincent releases and Burnette rolls over and pins Vincent’s wrists behind his back to get the cuffs on.
The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover Page 66
