Hostage Zero

by John Gilstrap

  Standard, Alaska, turned out to be less a town than a navigational benchmark along the Alaskan Railway north of Gold-stream Creek. If you wanted to disappear from the face of the earth, this was a good place to go.

  Navarro would be armed, she reasoned. Certainly he had firearms at his disposal. Out here, he’d be out of his mind not to, just to take care of the occasional marauding grizzly bear. Plus, he’d assumed the mantle of a loner specifically because people were hunting him with the intent to kill. If that didn’t make someone quick to the trigger, she didn’t know what would.

  Gail opened her door and stepped out into the pleasant fresh air. She pegged the temperature to be somewhere in the mid-seventies; perfect weather, complete with a pleasant breeze that would help mask the noise of her approach.

  Close up like this, the house was more substantial than it appeared to be from the satellite photos. The footprint of the building was the same as a double-wide trailer, but it had clearly been built in place. The weathered clapboard siding appeared to have once been dark green-forest green, she supposed-but unrelenting heat, cold, wind, and rain had taken the luster away.

  Nerves kicked in as she climbed the three steps from the ground onto the covered stoop. She fought the urge to draw her weapon as she rapped on the door.

  Through the open window on her left, she heard movement-a lot of movement, in fact, as if someone had jumped from height onto the floor. The noise was followed by mild cussing, and then silence.

  “Mr. Planchette?” Gail called. “Are you all right, sir?”

  No words, but more movement.

  “Please don’t be frightened,” she said. She stepped away from the door and back to the front edge of the stoop, where she could have a broader view of the window. “I’m not with the police, I’m not with the government, and I’m not with Sammy Bell. I’m here because I need help. It’s important enough that your sister Alice told me where to find you.” She hoped the data dump would establish her bona fides with him. She decided not to use the word Navarro, however, because she worried that it would spook him.

  “Are you armed?” a voice asked from the darkness behind the window.

  “Yes. Isn’t everybody out here?”

  “You’re not from around here.”

  She smiled. “No, sir, but you are.” She let it go at that. She didn’t venture to interrupt the long silence that followed. This would be difficult for him to process.

  “Is Alice all right?” he asked, finally.

  “Yes, sir, she is. She sends her regards. Not being able to communicate with you has been a terrible burden. But I have to say that the whole coupon plan is brilliant.” Keep throwing stuff out, she thought, and sooner or later he’ll relax. Right?

  “Step out into the yard and put your gun down,” the voice ordered.

  “I don’t think I’ll do that,” Gail said. She’d learned a long time ago that in tense negotiations, stating the truth as matter-of-factly as possible-even when denying a request-served to put the other party at ease. “If I were any of the people you fear that I might be, we wouldn’t be talking right now. We’d already be shooting at each other. Just the same, I’d rather not make myself any more of a target than I already am.”

  The sound of more movement made her tense, and then the door opened. The man on the other side bore the same features as the photos Gail had studied, but all semblance of polished corporate lawyer had eroded away, leaving a much thinner, more drawn and haggard-looking alternate version. He wore blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt, and if anyone had asked, she would have said that this man was more attractive than the softer one from the past. He stared at her, cradling a sawed-off side-by-side shotgun in his arms. His finger lay poised outside the trigger guard, and the muzzle was not threatening her.

  “Say what’s on your mind,” Navarro said.

  “I’d like to come inside.”

  “I’d like to be twenty again,” Navarro replied. “Which do you think will happen first?”

  Gail smiled. Good guy, bad guy, or somewhere in between, you had to admire a sense of humor. “I’m going to reach around to my back pocket,” Gail said. “I have a note from Alice. I’m hoping it will put your mind at ease.”

  Navarro nodded.

  Avoiding any jerky motion, Gail reached with her left hand to her pocket, where her fingers found the edge of the invitation-sized envelope. She withdrew it and handed it to Navarro.

  He accepted it, then appeared hesitant to look away from her.

  “I’ll wait in the yard,” Gail said. She walked back down the steps to the lawn. She figured the distance would make Navarro feel less vulnerable.

  The envelope appeared sealed, but of course she’d already read the contents-it would have been foolish not to verify that Alice hadn’t given her brother an order to kill Gail on the spot. The note was short and sweet, oddly devoid of personal information despite the years. Perhaps the separation hurt less if the communication stayed businesslike. That it took Navarro over a minute to look up from the note told Gail that he must have read it several times.

  When he was finally finished, he turned on his heel and disappeared into the house, leaving the door open behind him. Gail took that as her invitation to enter.

  The interior was every bit as well-groomed as the yard. Navarro had decorated the place as if it were a New York apartment, in stark colors with minimalist furniture that must have cost a fortune to begin with, and then another fortune to have delivered. At first glance, the place was very dark, but as Navarro walked deeper in, he flipped wall switches that bathed each room with light that seemed to emanate from behind the walls. Maybe through the walls. Overall, it was a stunning effect.

  “Your home is lovely,” Gail said, perhaps for no other reason than to say something.

  Navarro stopped in front of a conversation cluster of two chairs and a love seat near one of the front windows. “I believe it’s best to make do with what little you have,” he said. He gestured to one of the chairs. “Please,” he said. He took the love seat, clearly the most worn piece in the room, for himself. The dent in the pillow confirmed for Gail that he had been sleeping when she knocked on the door. He never relinquished the shotgun. On the other hand, he never menaced with it, either. It was just there in the crook of his arm if he needed it. Behind him sat a rack bristling with firearms. It said something about Navarro’s personality that he chose the shotgun over the others. She wasn’t sure exactly what it said, but there was definitely a conclusion to be reached. Maybe he just wasn’t a very good shot.

  The cushions crinkled as Gail sat on them.

  “They don’t get sat in very often,” Navarro said, reading her thoughts. “Under the circumstances, I’m not all that fond of visitors.”

  Gail gave a pleasant smile.

  “You must be proud of yourself for finding a man so many have been hunting for so long,” Navarro said.

  “I had certain advantages,” she said. “It helps to be doing the right thing for the right reasons.”

  Navarro nodded. “My sister’s note mentioned something about a kidnapping.”

  Gail revealed the details of the assault on Resurrection House and the information they’d learned since. As she laid out the story, the lines in Navarro’s face grew progressively deeper.

  “Mr. Navarro,” she concluded, “you are the common denominator in this story. Arthur Guinn is being threatened in order to silence his testimony against Sammy Bell and the Slater syndicate, Marilyn Schuler worked for you, and you worked for Sammy Bell. The smart money says you’re the one who can untie this knot.”

  For the longest time, he just sat there, mulling over the story he’d just heard. Gail gave him space. After a minute or so, she saw the shotgun lift out of the crook of his arm, and she went to high alert-but only for an instant. He swung the weapon in a wide arc, the muzzle never in play, and set it down on the coffee table in front of the love seat.

  He stood, shoved his hands into his trouser pocket
s, and turned to look out the front window.

  “Life never ceases to surprise me,” he said, his back turned to Gail. “You don’t get into the kind of trouble I’m in and expect to survive all that long. It’s been a good run for me-nine years is about ten years longer than I had a right to. I always figured that when I was finally busted, there’d be a lot more violence.”

  He turned to make eye contact, and Gail tried to conjure her most pleasant smile.

  “If I tell you this, what happens to the information?”

  “We use it to rescue a child.”

  Navarro thought for a moment more, then resigned himself to the inevitable.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  They walked for a long time. Evan guessed it was three hours, but it could just as well have been two or five. The jungle never changed. The heat never cooled. A foul smell filled the air at every step, as if everything around them were rotting in the heat. At first, he’d wished that he had boots like Oscar and the soldiers did, but after walking over and over again through shin-deep water, he bet they wished that they were barefoot like him. He saw a show on History Channel on trench foot, and given the shit they’d had to wade through, his guards would be lucky not to pull their skin off when they removed their socks.

  No one spoke during the walk-certainly, no one spoke to him-which was fine with Evan, because he’d promised himself not to say anything to anyone until someone had answers. So he just walked. One foot in front of the other, hoping, even though it was ridiculous, that his footprints might leave a clue for someone to come and rescue him.

  No one could find him out here. No one except God, of course, and as he slogged along, he offered up a continuous prayer that maybe He would at least tell Father Dom that he was okay. Father Dom would worry about that sort of thing.

  It’s funny how your mind shifts into neutral when there’s nothing to say and nothing to see. It occurred to him that despite the hours spent marching along like this, he had no real memory of any of it. There were no special plants or flowers that stuck out to him-although he knew that he had seen some beautiful ones. It’s as if the sameness just attracted more sameness, and in the end it all translated into nothingness.

  He was mentally entrenched in that sameness place when he became aware of a new aroma. He didn’t know where it was coming from, but it was as if something pleasant were struggling to push away the constant fart smell of the jungle. Could it be food?

  He told himself that he was just getting hungry, and that he was imagining things; but within a dozen steps or so, he changed his mind. He was definitely smelling food. His stomach rumbled.

  Apparently the others smelled it, too, because the whole line picked up its pace. By Evan’s estimation, they’d been doing about one step per second, and now they were doing like twice that. Would they let him eat?

  His heart skipped a beat as he had a wild thought: Maybe someone in whatever place was cooking food would help him get away. Was that too much to ask? He didn’t need a big break-a little one would do. Any port in a storm, as Father Dom used to say.

  The parade picked up the pace even more as the terrain became steeper. Evan didn’t have to run, exactly, but he had to move quickly to keep from getting run over by the soldiers behind him.

  The ground was hard and dry here. The hard-packed dirt felt good against the soles of his feet. And the food smelled fabulous.

  Without warning, the jungle gave way to a clearing that was lined with huts that were not dissimilar to the one he woke up in yesterday. That was yesterday, wasn’t it? Maybe two days ago? A week? God, what was happening to him?

  Evan didn’t know what he was expecting to see when they entered the village, but it was miles away from the fear he witnessed. Soldiers waved their rifles in the air and shouted words he didn’t understand.

  As the villagers scattered, there was no way to count them all, but Evan thought that there had to be forty or fifty of them at least. He noted, too, that they seemed either to be young or old, with few in between. Certainly, there were no young men. In fact, if you discounted the soldiers in their little parade, Evan was the oldest boy in sight. Even without thinking it all the way through, he knew there was no way for that to be good news.

  The two soldiers in the front of the line took off at a run, chasing villagers who seemed to be running for their lives. The one who caught Evan’s eye just because he was closest seemed focused on one of the girls in the crowd, and she seemed equally intent on staying away from him. The soldier chased her at a dead sprint. At the last second, just as he was about to catch up, she cut hard to the right and evaded his grasp.

  The soldier shouted at her-bitter staccato syllables that could only be cursing. The girl ran faster. The soldier stopped abruptly, stooped, and snatched a baseball-size rock from the ground and hurled it at her. From ten yards away, the rock sailed with no arc and caught the girl in the back of the head, sending her sprawling face-first into the dirt.

  She screamed as she fell and clutched her head with both hands.

  Evan saw a flash of red through her fingers. All around him, the other villagers had stopped running. Many stood and watched the attack, and Evan couldn’t believe that no one was doing anything to intervene.

  The soldier wasn’t running anymore. He walked with long strides up to the girl and shouted at her. When she curled up tighter on the ground, he bent at the waist, grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled. She screamed louder, and he yanked, lifting her to her feet. When she tried to wriggle free, the soldier hit her across her face with an open hand. The blow seemed to stun her, and as she stood there, the soldier ripped open her shirt and yanked it down off her shoulders, exposing her breasts. She made a tired gesture to cover herself up, but when the soldier slapped her hands away, she surrendered the effort.

  The soldier bent and kissed a breast, then turned back to face the rest of the soldiers, displaying the girl like a trophy, with one hand draped over her shoulder and the other rubbing his dick through his pants. He gave a thumbs-up sign, then shoved the girl through the door of the nearest hut. Three seconds later, an old woman and a little boy hurried out through the same door.

  “A young man has needs that cannot be denied,” Oscar said from very close by.

  Evan turned to see him standing at his side. The boy just stared.

  “I could have them provide for you, too, if you would like,” Oscar said. He winked.

  Evan backed away.

  “Don’t wander far,” Oscar said with a smirk. “What the jungle takes it rarely gives back.” Behind him, the girl screamed from inside the hut and then fell suddenly silent after the scream was cut short.

  Evan’s head swam with confusion. Where the hell was he? What was going on? Why were all these people just standing around as a girl was being raped? Yeah, he knew that’s what was happening. You don’t live the kind of life he’d lived and not know what a rape looks like when you see it.

  The villagers outnumbered them ten-to-one. Why couldn’t they-

  A hand landed on his shoulder. Evan jumped as if shot with electricity and whirled to see an old woman very close by, reaching out to touch him. He stepped to the side, the only way to distance himself without stepping closer to Oscar and the soldiers.

  The woman smiled, revealing kind eyes and a mouthful of half-missing teeth. “Boy,” she said. She beckoned him with a gnarled old hand. “Wheat boy. Comb.”

  She meant no harm, he knew. He recognized the friendliness in her eyes. In fact, she might have been trying to protect him, but it was hard to walk toward someone so…well, ugly.

  “You. Wheat boy. Eat?” She pantomimed putting food in her mouth and smiled again.

  Food. His awareness of the cooking smell returned, and with it his stomach rumbled. God yes, he’d love some food. He nodded.

  The woman beckoned more broadly. “Comb.” She walked toward the open door to one of the huts, checking over her shoulder with every other step to be sure Evan was following her.


  He was. Part of him said he was crazy for doing it, but that wasn’t the part that was screaming for food. For a fleeting moment, he thought of Hansel and Gretel, but he pushed the images away. He was definitely staying away from any cages, though.

  As the old woman got closer to her doorway, she beckoned more aggressively. “Comb, comb, comb,” she said.

  In that moment, Evan realized that she was saying come not comb. She was trying English, and the effort made him feel warm inside.

  “ Gracias,” he said, hoping that it was the right word for thank you. He followed the woman through the open door and into a cramped living space that looked more like pictures he’d seen of teepees in the Old West than of any modern home. There was no real furniture-just some rough-looking wooden chairs-and the floor was made of the same dirt as outside, but somehow felt cleaner against his feet. Certainly drier.

  Eight people-six of them old and two of them under five-filled the single room to capacity, yet they all stood as he entered. The old woman spoke a mile a minute, and the people in the room seemed to be pleased by what they were hearing. They pulled away from their tight circle in the middle of the room and made room for him at a table that was otherwise invisible. Just beyond the table was a pot of some kind of stew that smelled like heaven. One of the adults pulled a bowl away from one of the children and placed it on the table in front of Evan. She said something to him that he didn’t understand, but the accompanying smile reassured him that he was being welcomed as a special guest.

  As Evan took a seat in the middle of a long bench, a different old woman leaned to the center of the table and ladled out a generous helping of the stew. Evan had no idea what it was, but because the broth was brown and there were green vegetables mixed in, he told himself that it was beef stew. The first sip blew that out of the water, but he refused to think about it. Whatever it was tasted good, and for now, that’s all that was important. That and the fact that it put food into his belly.