Night Vision

by Randy Wayne White

  I was shooting back at him with the Glock even before I hit the ground, squeezing the trigger rapid-fire, my rounds puckering the door’s sheet metal, then shattering the glass window.

  I heard the man bellow as he ducked from view, but I kept firing, while my left hand searched for the Dazer that was in my back pocket. I didn’t aim, I shot instinctually, letting muscle memory control my right hand. Nor did I count the rounds—something I always do—because I had been taken so totally by surprise, and also because I had allowed myself to panic.

  There was a valid reason to be afraid. I could see Victorino behind the diver’s-side door, slapping at the Tec-9, getting ready to open fire. Maybe he hadn’t seen me until his partner had drawn his weapon and fired. Or maybe the Tec-9 had jammed—they are notoriously undependable.

  Whatever the reason, I knew that if he got the machine pistol working, I was dead.

  When Victorino’s partner suddenly reappeared, he was beneath the passenger’s-side door on his back, chest pulsing a geyser of blood. At least one of my rounds had hit him.

  Because there was no cover nearby, I got to my feet and charged the truck. I had the Dazer in my left hand, the Glock in my right. It seemed impossible that the gun’s magazine had more than one or two rounds left, and I was tempted to dump the weapon and reach for my Kahr 9mm—the pistol I had used to kill the gator. It was in my hip pocket, fully loaded.

  Victorino was bringing the Tec-9 up to fire, though, his head and shoulders framed by the driver’s-side window. A wasted second would have killed me. I was pointing the Glock at the man, screaming, “Drop it! Drop it!” as I squeezed the trigger.

  Instead of a gunshot, I heard Click.

  Absurdly, I tried the trigger again. Click-Click-Click.

  The Glock was empty.

  Victorino had ducked involuntarily when he saw me sprinting toward him, aiming the pistol. But now that he realized I was out of ammunition, I watched the man appear to grow taller as he stepped away from the truck. He was taking his time now, grinning at me with what might have been gold teeth, the machine pistol held at chest level.

  I had stopped running. The Glock was useless, so I dropped the thing at my feet, hoping the man was egocentric enough not to shoot me immediately, which is what a professional would have done. Maybe he would offer some smart-ass remark, provide me with a few seconds to think while he gloated over his triumph before killing me.

  As if surrendering, I thrust my hands in the air, as Victorino took charge, his ego on display. He told me, “The flashlight, too. Drop the flashlight, jelly boy. Who the fuck you think you are, coming in here causing so much trouble? And take off that goddamn ski mask!”

  I was holding the Dazer in my left hand, my thumb on the pressure switch. My heart was pounding. Even if I had the laser aimed accurately, even if I blinded him instantly, the man would still be able to fire twenty or thirty rounds in the space of a couple of seconds. It was my only hope, though. Drop the Dazer without at least trying, I would be dead.

  Victorino took a step toward me and yelled, “Do it now, cabrón!”

  As I reached to remove my watch cap, I mashed the pressure switch and collapsed to my knees. My aim was off only slightly, and I saw a shock of green light pierce the man’s eyes. In sync with Victorino’s shriek of surprise, I rolled to the ground, anticipating a long volley of gunfire. Instead, a three-round burst kicked the sand nearby, then the gun the went silent while the man continued to howl, trying to shield his eyes with his left hand but still jabbing the machine pistol at me with his right.

  The Tec-9 had jammed again, I realized.

  I took a long, deep breath and got to my feet, still aiming the laser. Until the weapon’s fouled chamber had been cleared, the thing was probably harmless, yet there was also a possibility that Victorino had somehow activated the safety—a mistake he might correct at any moment.

  Holding the laser in both hands, I kept it focused on Victorino’s face as I dodged out of his probable line of fire. I was yelling, “Drop the weapon, get down on your belly!” repeating the commands over and over as I approached. But the man was in such obvious pain, I doubted if my words registered.

  When I was close enough, I slapped the machine pistol out of Victorino’s hands. When he tried to take a blind swing at me, I grabbed him by the collar, kicked his legs from beneath him, then pinned the man to the ground.

  I had one knee on Victorino’s chest as I jammed the Dazer hard into the socket of his left eye. The laser’s megawattage was radiating heat through its aluminum casing that even I could feel despite my leather gloves.

  I held the gang leader there for several seconds, ignoring his screaming pleas, his wild promises, until I was certain he had had enough. Then I switched off the laser, pressed my nose close to his and said, “Tula Choimha. The Guatemalan girl you abducted—where is she?”

  Victorino started to tell me, “I don’t know nothing about no—” but I didn’t let him finish.

  I speared the Dazer into the socket of the man’s right eye and held the pressure switch, full power, as he tried to wrestle away. Even when he had stopped fighting me and was screaming, “I’ll tell you anything! Anything!” I kept his head pinned to the ground. I held him there for another few seconds before switching off the laser, then I tried again.

  “Where’s the girl?” I asked the man. “Did you kill her?”

  In the stark light of the inferno, Victorino was crying now—perhaps an involuntary ocular response to the laser or because he was afraid. The teardrop tattoo beneath his left eye glistened with real tears. The irony might have struck me as vaguely amusing had I been in a different mood.

  I placed a finger on Victorino’s Adam’s apple, my thumb on his carotid artery. As I squeezed, I said, “I’m not going to ask you again. Where is she?” and then I lifted until the gang leader was on his feet.

  He didn’t try to fight me. “You blinded me, man,” he said. “I can’t see! How the hell you expect me to answer questions when I can’t see nothing?”

  When I squeezed his throat harder, though, Victorino opened his eyes and blinked a few times before telling me, “Okay, okay. Everything’s real blurry, man. And my eyes fucking hurt, man. It’s like you stuck a knife in my brain. You got to give me a minute.”

  I gave him a shake and said, “Tell me where you have her—the girl. And what happened to Harris Squires?”

  I released the man long enough to confirm his partner was dead. Beside the body was a .44 Smith & Wesson, a small cannon that caused my pants to sag when I stuck it in the back of my belt.

  My attention had shifted to the wooden building, flames shooting out the door now. It caused Victorino to turn his head, and I felt myself cringe when he finally answered my question. “Last time I saw that little girl,” he said, “she was in there.”

  I got behind the gang leader and shoved him toward the flames. If Tula Choimha was still alive, she wouldn’t last long.

  We had to hurry.

  I slapped Victorino in the back of the head, then pushed him harder toward the building, yelling, “The girl might still be alive. Run! Help me get her out, I won’t kill you!”

  The man replied, “You serious?”

  When I pulled my hand back to hit him again, Victorino took off running.

  Together, we sprinted toward the wooden structure, the heat from the burning RV so intense that we had to circle away before angling toward the door of the shack. As we ran, I took the Kahr semiautomatic from my pocket, already aware that Victorino was faster than I and he might decide to keep running.

  That’s exactly what he had decided to do—until I stopped him by skipping two rounds near his feet.

  “Goddamn it, man!” he yelled. “I’m not escaping, I’m trying to get to the back side of this place. I think there might be a window there.”

  Victorino had long black hair. I grabbed a fistful, then used it like a leash to steer him, saying, “We check the door first. Get as close as you can and ta
ke a look.”

  I gave the man a shove toward the opening as my brain scanned frantically for a better way to clear the building. For a moment, I considered the possibility of ramming one of the walls with Squires’s truck—but that might bring the blazing ceiling down on the girl, if she was still alive inside.

  But Tula wasn’t alive. She couldn’t be. I knew it was impossible, as my eyes shifted from the truck to the building that was now a roaring conflagration of smoke and flames.

  Twenty feet from the door, Victorino dropped to his belly because of the heat. He yelled, “There’s something you don’t know, man! This place”—he gestured toward the building—“it’s a cookshack for steroids. It’s got a bunch of propane tanks all lined up. Any second, they’re gonna start—”

  There was no need for him to continue because that’s when the first propane canister exploded. Then three more followed in staccato succession, each shooting a fireworks tapestry of sparks into the night sky.

  When Victorino got to his feet and tried to sprint to safety, I caught him by the hair again and yelled, “We check that window next. I’m not giving up until I’m sure.”

  From the expression on the gang leader’s face, I knew there was no window. He had been lying. Even so, I herded him to the back of the building, where a small section of the wall had been blown outward. From a distance of thirty yards—that was as close as we could get—I could at least see inside the place.

  I was positive then. No living thing could have survived that fire.

  For several seconds, I stood there numbly, taking in the scene. Had I arrived a few minutes earlier, spent less time interrogating Dedos and Calavero, maybe I could have saved the girl. It wasn’t the first time my obsession for detail had thwarted a larger objective. But it was the first time an innocent person had died because I could not govern what secretly I have always known is a form of mania—or rage.

  Obsession is rage, a Dinkin’s Bay neighbor had once told me—a man who also happens to be a Ph.D. expert on brain chemistry and human behavior.

  The fact was, I was doing it now—obsessing—and I forced myself to concentrate. Later, I could wallow in the knowledge of my inadequacies. Tonight, I still had work to do.

  There were a lot of unanswered questions. Unless I was willing to risk prison, I had to understand what had happened here. Obsessive or not, details are vital when manipulating a crime scene.

  I asked Victorino, “Is Squires in there, too?” The wooden building, I meant.

  I knew the man wasn’t telling me the whole truth when he replied, “I think so. Him and that woman, Frankie, they did some weird, kinky shit. But she got pissed off at him. That Frankie is crazy.”

  I watched Victorino’s head swivel. “Where the hell that woman go? She’s the one you ought to be hammering on, man. Not me.”

  When I told him the woman had been in the RV when it exploded, he did a poor job of hiding his reaction—a mix of relief and perverse satisfaction.

  Victorino and Frankie had been sexually involved at one time, I guessed. Hatred is often catalyzed by the pain of previous intimacies—or infidelities.

  I asked, “Were his hands tied? His feet? What about Squires?”

  I was trying to assemble a better overview of who had done what to whom. Before crime scene police could understand who the bad guys were, I had to understand it myself.

  Victorino replied, “Man, I had nothing to do with that shit.” When he saw my expression change, though, he added quickly, “But, yeah, I’m pretty sure Frankie had them both tied pretty good. She was getting ready to do a video deal, you know? So later she could have fun watching herself do shit to the girl, and her old boyfriend, too. A freak, man. I already told you.”

  The truth of what had happened was becoming clearer in my mind despite Victorino’s dissembling. As the man continued talking, inventing details, I was studying the portion of wall that had been blown open. It was a narrow section of planking wide enough for me to see inside, if the angle was right, but not large in comparison with the rest of the structure.

  It bothered me for some reason. What I was seeing didn’t mesh with my knowledge of explosives and the complex dynamics involved. At that instant, as if to illustrate, another propane canister exploded, and we both ducked instinctively, watching a column of red sparks shoot skyward.

  Victorino was telling me, “My boys and me, we sold them grass, coke, whatever. Sometimes moved some of the muscle juice shit they made—strictly business, you understand. That’s the only reason we come out here tonight. Then this shit happened.”

  What bothered me about the hole in the wall, I realized, was that the boards had shattered geometrically, yet it was a random displacement of matter in an otherwise solid wall.

  What I was seeing made no sense. An explosive force creates a rapidly expanding wave of pressure slightly larger than the volume of the explosive. It expands with predictable symmetry—a three-dimensional sphere capped by a matrix of superheated gases and particles. The matrix created by the exploding propane takes was rocketing upward. Why had this small space been blown outward?

  But then I decided that the anomaly could be explained in many ways. A weakness in the structure, an absence of bracing because the hole had once been a window or a door. The shack looked homemade, sturdy but inconsistent. What I was doing, I realized, was fishing for hope—hope that the girl and Squires had managed to crash their way through the wall and escape.

  The fire had started so suddenly, though, the heat and flames so intense that the pair would have had very little time to knock a hole in what had been a very solid wall. And they had both been tied, hands and legs.

  “The bitch invited us,” Victorino told me. “She told me they had a new batch of muscle juice. Only reason my boys and me were here tonight. And we got certain security procedures we follow. Two guards at the gate, two of my best men with me riding shotgun. A dude they don’t know shows up, they’re trained to take certain steps. It was nothing personal. You understand.”

  I waited, watching Victorino’s eyes move from the fire to the shattered windows of the Dodge pickup, aware that at least two of his men were dead inside. The truck appearing animated in the oscillating light. I wondered if the man would have the nerve to ask what he was aching to know. He finally tried.

  “Maybe you know something about the steroid trade yourself?” I watched Victorino grin, showing his gold teeth. He wasn’t a badlooking guy, actually. He had a good chin, a strong Aztec nose and cheeks. Had the man made different decisions—or been born in a different setting—he might have succeeded in a legitimate business.

  Staring into the fire, I said, “Her name was Tula Choimha—the surname dates back to the time of the Maya. She was thirteen years old, two thousand miles from home, and the girl had no one to protect her from scum like you. That’s why I’m here.”

  Victorino chose not to respond.

  Slowly, I backed away from the heat. Victorino backed away, too, but he was gradually creating more distance between us, I noticed, until I hollered at him to stop. I used the pistol to wave him closer, before telling him, “Let’s get in the truck and get the hell out of here. You drive.”

  It surprised the man. He replied, “Both of us you mean?” unsure if he had less to fear or more to fear.

  “A plane or a helicopter’s going to spot the flames,” I told him. “Cops and firefighters will be coming soon. Maybe park rangers—we’re close enough to the Everglades. I don’t want to be here when they show up. How about you?”

  I had taken off the night vision headgear, and Victorino jerked his head away when he realized I was going to remove the ski mask, too.

  Mask up—but not off—my face pouring sweat, I told the man, “It’s okay. You can look.”

  Victorino was three steps ahead of me, facing the truck. I could see his mind working, wondering what was going on.

  The man stood frozen for what seemed like several seconds. Perhaps because I began to whisper
to myself, repeating a private liturgy, he finally turned to look at me.

  When he did, I asked, “Where’s the money? Sixty thousand dollars cash.” I didn’t know if the drunken woman was telling the truth, but I was thinking about Tula Choimha’s determination to lead her family home to Guatemala. They would need money.

  Victorino’s eyes revealed the money’s location, but I waited until he lied to me, replying, “Money? What money?” the staged look of confusion still on the man’s face when I shot him in the chest. A few seconds later, I shot him at close range in the back of the head.

  His partner’s .44 Smith & Wesson made a thud when it landed on the ground beside Victorino’s body.

  I wasn’t going to invest much time searching for the money—if it existed. What I had told Victorino was true. The hunting camp was in one of the most remote regions in Florida, yet a fire of that magnitude might still attract attention.

  I found the cash in a canvas gym bag on the floor of Squires’s truck, along with a .357 Ruger Blackhawk revolver. The temptation was to get behind the wheel of the truck, and drive as fast as I could back to the main road. But then I remembered that the Dodge blocked the exit. Bulldozing the thing out of the way would take time and would make a lot of noise. It would also prove that at least one of the shooters had escaped.

  It was safer, cleaner, if I returned on foot.

  To add further confusion to the scene, I tossed the Blackhawk under the truck, then took off, jogging toward the darkness, gym bag over my shoulder, as I repositioned the night vision monocular over my left eye.

  I had learned my lesson. Until I was close enough to my truck to risk stepping into the open, I would stay in the shadows. To me, darkness—and open water—have always represented safety.

  I am a stubborn man, though. Because the anomalous hole in the wall still bothered me and because it would be the driest route back to my truck, I chose to run past the burning shack before turning into the woods. There, the topography was upland pine. Plenty of cover but lots of open ground, unlike the swamp to my right. It would be a hell of a lot easier to parallel the hunting camp road before angling to the gate where my truck was hidden.