“Margate pulled the plug on aid to Colombia until the passengers are returned safely. He’s demanding extradition.”
“There goes the deal,” Miguel said.
“Right.”
“Any news on the paras’ response?”
“The Cartone cartel is hunting Rodrigo to kill him, the other paramilitary guys are hunting the Cartone cartel, Rodrigo, and the FFOC to kill them, and the Colombian military has orders to shoot on sight. They’re all converging on your area.”
“And the passengers?”
“Caught in the middle. These guys kill. None of them has any experience in actually saving people. I wouldn’t count on any passengers surviving the shit storm that’s coming your way. So get the hell out of there. It’s going to be raining fire in your area in the next twenty-four hours.”
“You want me to pack up and go? Just like that?” Miguel was astonished.
“I don’t want it, the Colombian government does. When Margate pulled the plug on aid, the Colombian president demanded an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel in Colombia. He said that any further search and rescue will be conducted by the Colombian army.”
“You said I have twenty-four hours. If that’s all I get, then I need more backup. I need a guy, a leader, who can do what it takes without me being there to hold his hand. The guys I have here are good, but too young to be of help.”
“Margate refused any additional assistance. I can’t overrule him, and even if I could, I’m not sure I want to. I’d be putting whatever poor slob I picked into a death trap.”
“Banner?”
“Yes?”
“Where are you? How do you feel about coming back into the field?”
The silence on the end of the line was almost palpable.
“I’ll get back to you,” Banner said. Then he hung up.
Miguel mapped out the coordinates. “He’s ten miles away, due north.”
“Did Sumner say if Ms. Caldridge was with him?” Kohl hated the idea of leaving the path and heading up the road. He was sure Ms. Caldridge had continued through the jungle.
“He did not.” Miguel sat back on his heels. “I know this landing strip. It’s on the Air Tunnel map.” He hauled out the ATD’s map showing the known landing strips. “There’s a second near an abandoned training center for Colombian military.”
“Maybe it’s not abandoned now. Maybe it’s filled with passengers,” Kohl said.
“Maybe. The good news is that I think I know how to get there. The bad news is that it’s back down the path. It’s a switchback that cuts in about five miles from here.”
Kohl groaned. “Five miles on that path will take us another day.”
Miguel hit him on the shoulder. “We have a direction, Kohl.”
“What about Ms. Caldridge?”
“The human race car? Don’t worry about her. She’s probably run all the way to Cartagena by now.”
35
EMMA SAT NEXT TO SUMNER, WHO WAS TIED AGAINST THE TREE, and watched the sentry walk around the wooden watchtower. Every so often the man took a hit off a flask he kept in his boot. He’d swallow the liquid, smack his lips, and spit down to the ground. Once it got dark, he put his rifle on the parapet and jumped down. He put the liquor bottle next to four others that sat open in a row on the ground. He waved at Emma, giving a guttural order in Spanish.
“He wants you to help build a fire,” Sumner translated.
Emma rose wearily and assisted three male passengers to start a fire. The passengers’ clothes were soaking wet. One coughed while he shoved dried sticks under a collection of wood, some of it still wet. While the passengers worked stacking the wood in a large pyramid, Emma walked to the edge of the camp collecting dried weeds. She’d pull a few, then push them under the sticks for kindling. She concentrated her weed-searching efforts close to the open bottles of aguardiente. Each time she returned to the bottles, she pulled a seed pod from her cargo pants’ pockets, hit it with a stone to break it open, and dropped it in the liquor. By the time the bonfire was burning, Emma had managed to fill the bottles undetected. The flames lit the night sky. She would have enjoyed her first dry heat in days if it wasn’t for her fear of being thrown on it in some awful sacrificial manner. She didn’t trust Rodrigo.
“He’s insane, isn’t he?” Emma whispered to Sumner when she returned to sit next to him.
“I think so, yes.” Sumner’s voice was bleak.
“He isn’t the leader, you know. Smoking Man in the shirtsleeves at the airstrip was.”
“Rodrigo couldn’t lead his way out of a paper bag.”
Mathilde sauntered over. She stopped in front of Sumner, tossed her hair, and struck a pose.
Sumner ignored her.
She sneered at Emma. “So, you and your lover meet mine, eh? He is one of the best leaders in the north. When this mission is done, all of Colombia will know his name.”
Mathilde eyed her fingernails as she spoke. Emma had the distinct impression that she didn’t give a damn about Rodrigo. All she cared about was his upward mobility.
“I feel sorry for you, Mathilde. A woman with your intelligence and looks stuck in this hellhole of a jungle. You deserve better.” Emma accompanied these words with a sigh, as if Mathilde’s situation was truly tragic to her.
Mathilde bristled. “I don’t need your”—she appeared to search for the right word in English—“sorry.”
“You have the opportunity to change your situation right now. But”—Emma shrugged—“if you like the jungle so much…”
“What opportunity do I have?”
Emma narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps you would like to trade, eh?”
Mathilde looked at Emma in surprise. “What do you mean? You have nothing to trade.”
Emma leaned forward in what she hoped appeared to be a friendly, conspiratorial way, like two girlfriends, chatting.
“I’ll trade my lover for yours. It is not an even trade, because mine is much more valuable to you, but yours has me prisoner, so right now he has some value to me.”
Mathilde looked at Emma as though she’d gone mad. Sumner raised an eyebrow at Emma as if to say, What the hell? Emma acted as though the conversation was routine.
“My lover works with the Air Tunnel Denial program. If you free him, it will be a sign of your good faith. He could pull strings to get you a deal under the disarmament, with no extradition. You could get out of here for good.”
Sumner shot an appalled glance at Emma. Emma kept her eyes on Mathilde.
Mathilde gave a toss of her head. “The disarmament deal is not offered to Rodrigo, only to the far right.”
“Sumner could speak to his superiors here and in the United States. Get them to make an exception for you. After all, you weren’t really involved in the hijacking with Rodrigo. Why should you suffer for his mistakes?”
Mathilde turned to Sumner. “What do you say to this?”
Sumner said nothing, but it appeared that this time staying silent was taking a huge toll on him. He looked as though he was gritting his teeth.
“Ah, yes, I remember. He is mute, this man of yours.”
“Isn’t that the best type of man?” Emma shot back.
Mathilde laughed out loud. Then she caught herself. “It won’t work. He would whine to the authorities that he’d been forced to make the deal, and they would extradite me.”
“Not if I’m part of the deal,” Emma said.
“What do you mean?” Mathilde seemed curious, in spite of herself.
“He agrees to get you a no-extradition deal and make it stick; and you free him and lead him out of the jungle.”
“Do you think I’m a fool? He would kill me and leave.”
“Not if I stay here. He knows Rodrigo would kill me in retaliation.”
Mathilde leaned forward. “Rodrigo will kill you either way.”
“Then I will only agree to get you a no-extradition deal if you agree to free Emma during the night,” Sumner said. “Once she is free, I will leave with you and speak to the authorities.” He spoke soft and low, but both women jerked in surprise.
Mathilde straightened and stared at Sumner. Emma could almost see the gears turning in the woman’s head. Before Mathilde could reply, Rodrigo stormed out of a nearby tent. Alvarado and the other guerrillas followed at a slower pace.
Rodrigo’s face shone with sweat, and his eyes were crazier than normal. Emma didn’t think it possible for the man to look even more psychopathic than he already had, but there he stood, breaking new ground.
Rodrigo waved at his men and spoke in Spanish. Emma felt Sumner’s body jerk next to her.
“What did he say?” Emma watched as the guerrillas untied Sumner.
“He said to move me from the tree. He needs a clear shot.”
Before Emma could react, Rodrigo marched up to her and kicked her in the leg.
“Why do the gringos want you so much?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Emma tried to keep her voice from cracking.
“Liar.” Luis smiled, his lips stretching so far as to show his gums, the edges blackened from rot. The light from the fire flickered, turning his eye sockets into black holes. Emma didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with Rodrigo, but she knew that what made him smile was not good.
Sumner sat next to her, watching the proceedings with a grim look. Emma watched his eyes flick over the crowd as if he, too, was reaching for options, trying to plan a way out of the camp.
“Tell me, or I’ll shoot your friend and leave him to bleed to death in front of you.” Rodrigo raised a gun in Sumner’s direction. He pointed the gun at Sumner’s temple. Sumner stilled.
The guerrillas passed around the bottles of aguardiente and started murmuring, chanting something in Spanish over and over again. It wasn’t hard for Emma to figure out that they were saying “kill him.”
“Why do the gringos want you!” Rodrigo shrieked.
“Shoot him and I’ll never tell you.” Emma was surprised to hear that her voice didn’t shake, belying the actual fear roiling in her stomach. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, watch Sumner die. She had never felt such fear, never dreamed such a bottomless pit of terror could exist inside a human being. She struggled to keep focused, keep thinking of options, but even her logical, trained mind could not shove the primal fear that gurgled up from her stomach, rendering her mind blank.
Rodrigo screamed in rage, flipped the gun around, and slammed the butt of his rifle into Sumner’s neck. He hit Sumner low, at the point where his neck met his shoulder. The force of the hit knocked Sumner sideways. He landed on his bad shoulder. He winced and Emma saw blood start to seep through his shirt at the location of the still-healing machete wound.
Sumner planted both palms on the ground and rose back into a kneeling position. Then he uncurled and began to rise. Rodrigo followed his movement with his rifle, pointing it at him, tracing an arc in the air as Sumner straightened. At six foot three, Sumner towered over Rodrigo. He glared down at the little man. The assembled guerrillas stopped their howling and seemed to suck in their breath, all at once. The entire camp fell silent. Alvarado took a swig of the aguardiente and stepped closer to Rodrigo, as if he wanted a better view of the action.
“Watch him die,” Rodrigo said.
Emma did the only thing she could. She lurched to her feet, catapulting herself between Sumner and Rodrigo. She faced Rodrigo but started walking backward, pushing Sumner with her, using her body as a block between hers and Sumner’s, and she started talking.
“He works for the United States government. A branch of the Drug Enforcement Agency. You kill him and the U.S. will hunt you down. And if you kill me, the Smoking Man at the airstrip won’t stop until he kills you.”
Emma watched Rodrigo freeze at her words. And then the entire camp went mad, guerrilla by guerrilla.
“El Chupacabra! He’s here.” A guerrilla started screaming. He clawed at his face, backing up in terror.
Luis spun around.
Another guerrilla started twitching. He fell to the ground, writhing. A third went to help him, then staggered and fell. A fourth screamed in terror and jumped in the air, keeping his feet moving in a dance, as if he was trying to avoid something on the ground. He kept howling the same sentence.
“What’s he saying?” Emma spoke to Sumner in German.
“He’s saying that the turtles are coming to kill him.”
“Turtles?” Then, feeling the need to be sure, she said, “Turtles?” again in English. She glanced up and back at Sumner.
“Yes.” A look of admiration came over his face. “You put something in their aguardiente, didn’t you?”
“Scopolamine. From jimsonweed.”
“Devil’s breath,” Sumner said.
“That would be the Colombian street term for it. Keep going back, slowly. We need to get to that machine gun, the one the sentry left on the watchtower parapet.”
“How long will it last?” Sumner took a cautious step back, moving in unison with Emma. She kept her eyes on Luis, who held his rifle and watched in stunned silence as his men started seizing.
“Depends on the concentration each one drank. Hard to tell with these guys. But I used the seeds, the strongest part.”
Another guerrilla jumped up, foaming at the mouth and yelling.
“He’s seeing snakes,” Sumner said.
They took another step closer to the tower.
Alvarado stood still. His eyes were glazed, and he appeared stuck to the spot.
Luis said something sharp to him in Spanish. Alvarado didn’t react.
“Look at Alvarado.” Sumner spoke in low tones. “That’s why the street dealers call it the ‘zombie’ drug. It makes people lose their will and become completely suggestible.”
They were three feet from the watchtower and still moving. Emma kept her focus on Luis, who remained with his back to them.
“I’ve always considered the zombie stories to be a myth. I think some people just get a paralytic reaction to it,” she said.
“Paralysis is good. We’re under the strap.”
Emma glanced out of the corners of her eyes, trying to move as little as possible to avoid drawing any attention their way.
“Can you reach it?”
“No. Too high.”
“Let’s go to the ladder.” The ladder was at least twelve feet away.
“No time. When I say ‘now,’ I’m going to come around the front of you, pick you up, and hold you against the wall. It’ll be a stretch, but I think you’ll be able to reach the gun.”
“And then?”
“Aim it at them while I lower you back down. Be ready to use it if you have to.”
Another guerrilla started walking in jerky movements, like a robot. The majority of the guerrillas were affected now, but Emma counted at least ten who were not. Mathilde had worked her way around the group to stand next to Luis. She held a rifle as well. She prodded Alvarado with the tip while she yelled at him. Alvarado turned his attention to her, but there was no recognition on his face as he stared.
