Acts of Nature (2 page)

“I mean, it’s October, a perfect time out there because the temperature, even in the full sun, is pretty tolerable. In the summer I won’t even go out there.”

“Oh, not even you, eh? Mr. tough-guy Gladesman.” She was smiling when she said it, but I had been right about the challenge. Sherry did not thrive long without a challenge.

“And the stars are amazing,” I added, just for incentive. “Horizon to horizon without any of the city lights to muck it up.”

She took another sip of late morning coffee and acted like she was pondering the possibilities.

“Sold,” she finally said, stretching out her long legs, flexing and showing the hard cut in the muscles of her thighs. “Let’s go.”

We packed up a cooler of food and plenty of water. The plan was to stay a couple of nights, maybe three, at the Snows’ fishing camp and then make it back for a final day at the shack before returning to civilization. I was digging around in my duffle bag for the small GPS unit on which I had recorded the coordinates of the Snows’ place. I wasn’t that good of a Gladesman to be wandering around in that open acreage without some help. While I sorted through some old rain gear and special books that I kept in the duffle, I pulled out the leather bag that held my oilcloth-wrapped Glock 9mm service weapon from my days on the Philadelphia Police Department. I hefted it in one hand, feeling the weight of it, but as soon as the memories of its use started leaking into my conscience, I pushed it back into the duffle, deep to the bottom. Don’t go there, Max, I said to myself. I finally found the GPS, left the gun inside the duffle and shoved it back under the bed. New time. New memories.

In a waterproof backpack I stored the GPS and extra batteries along with some camping tools including a razor-sharp fillet knife I kept in a leather sheath for the fish I hoped we’d catch and the small steel first aid kit I always took with me on trips. I thought of myself as a careful man. I knew enough about alligators and water snakes and poison vegetation, and after four years out here, how one never underestimates that shit can happen, even without the source of its usual progenitor: people. We were ready within an hour’s time and though I thought about it twice, given the pristine vision of where we were heading, I decided to take my cell phone. Sherry said she’d left hers at home because she didn’t want to talk to a soul or get called into work on some damned so-called emergency. I didn’t want to spoil the sense of just she and I, the way I’d planned it, so I tucked it deep into the bag out of sight.

Just after noon, with Sherry settled in the front seat of my canoe and me in the stern, we pushed off.

TWO

Edward Christopher Harmon looked into the muzzle of the man’s blue-steel Python handgun and took a step forward. Adrenaline was swirling into his bloodstream as it had so many times before and with a pure force of mind he stopped it before it reached his eyes.

You don’t show fear in such instances. You don’t show panic, or emit even the scent of wildness. You bring your heart rate down with deep, measured breaths. You consciously keep the irises of your eyes from growing wide. Harmon’s wife once described him as having “safe” eyes. He tried to achieve that look now. When they think they have you, when they think they’re going to make you beg, you must present yourself as being the one in control. And at the moment, they definitely had him.

“Colonel, you and your men are presently on private property. I am a representative of the oil company that owns this land and I am here to retrieve certain items belonging to my company,” Harmon said to the small dark man holding the gun on him.

“Silencio!”
the man hissed, his own eyes giving away the wildness that Harmon was working to avoid. The little colonel had already achieved one goal, taking Harmon and his partner, Squires, by surprise. The rebel militia officer and his six-man squad had embedded themselves among the dozens of locals from the town of Caramisol and the surrounding Venezuelan mountains who were looting oil from a spigot that had been tapped into the company pipeline. A dozen old, rusted tanker trucks snaked in a line that ran down the roadway, waiting their turn to pay cash to the bandits, a third of what they would pay through a government outlet, for loads that they could easily resell on the open market. The armed rebels were the paid protection for the bandits who gave them a percentage and an occasional fresh group of teenagers from their villages for their antigovernment militia. The little colonel matched Harmon’s step forward and lowered the beautiful .357-caliber revolver just so, turning it sideways and bringing it forward so that the end of the six-inch barrel must have been scant centimeters from touching Harmon’s throat.

“Come on, man,” the colonel said quietly, abandoning his Spanish for perfect American street English. “Don’t diss me in front of my crew, oil man. We can work this shit out.”

Now all Harmon could see was the rear sight of the Python and the burled walnut grip in the young man’s hand. The Colt Python truly is the finest in American arms design and it pained Harmon to see the colonel holding the beautiful gun sideways, its grip turned parallel to the ground like some gangsta movie amateur, which went totally against the firearm’s function. The thing was engineered to fire straight up, butt end level with the floor, barrel sighted along the line of vision. Idiot couldn’t hit the side of a barn holding it like that. Harmon could also see that the gun’s hammer mechanism was not cocked. Maybe the kid simply didn’t know the difference between a 9mm and a revolver and how much time it would take to roll that hammer back and fire.

Harmon’s own version of the Colt, the smaller one with the easier to conceal two-and-a-half-inch barrel, was in his hand tucked deep into his jacket pocket, the trigger more appropriately cocked and hot.

“Interesting accent for a Venezuelan rebel, Colonel,” Harmon said, not moving his eyes off the other man’s.

“University of Miami 1998. Business administration major. Go ’Canes,” the colonel said, leaning in, smirking this time. Being a smartass. Losing focus. Harmon knew that Squires would be watching the others. All six of the colonel’s men were carrying Kalashnikov rifles, weapon of choice for paramilitary around the world. But none of them would be as experienced and comfortable with killing as Squires was. It takes a few times before you get used to shooting the hearts of out of other men. Squires had been there more than a few times.

“I will take whatever it is that you have in the briefcase, Mr. American Oil Man, and then we will see what we can work out in the way of a negotiation,” the young man said, now a bit louder so his comrades could hear.

Harmon could sense rather than see what his partner was doing behind him. They had been in situations that varied on this theme before, though it had been a few years. They’d both been in hot zones. Lawless wars. Military actions as soldiers themselves as well as being the hired guns on the other side. They had both faced the possibility of death. Now that they were considered to be “security executives” on a corporate payroll did not mean that their world was all about passing out business cards and making contracts. They’d been sent down here to retrieve a computerized analysis device from the pump room across the way. This zone was becoming far too hot with all the paramilitary action, and the diminishing political landscape between the United States and the new Venezuelan government dictated that a bit of company creativity be used. They usually called Harmon when it came to such creativity.

An hour ago, Michael Mazurk, their helicopter pilot, had done a perfect dust-off and Harmon and Squires had simply jumped out of the side doors while the local oil thieves and their customers guarded their eyes from the blowing dust. They had then walked a straight and purposeful line to the pump room. They were dressed in casual attire: Dockers and collared knit shirts. Harmon was in his spring jacket, as always, and had a briefcase in his hand. Squires had the MP5 slung under his arm and carried it in a nonthreatening way, but a good study would see that the big man was as comfortable and proficient with the weapon as if it were a natural appendage. They were two fiftyish-looking Yankees with professional eyes on the pump and seemed to have little interest in the group stealing oil. If Venezuelan government troops showed up, the thieves and their customers would scatter. But under the eyes of the crowd, two American oil men were no threat and subsequently of little interest. Harmon had keyed the big padlock on the pump room and in minutes had found the computer recorder on the control panel and removed it. He then opened his briefcase. Inside was a satellite phone, a block of plastic incendiary explosive and a trigger switch, and fifty thousand dollars in cash.

While Squires watched their backs through the partially opened pump room door, Harmon took a few extra minutes to search through some file cabinets and look for any other recording devices, laptops, CDs, anything that might hold information. He’d been at this corporate game long enough to know that information was valuable, especially those bits of intelligence he wasn’t supposed to have. Harmon and Squires worked on a need-to-know basis and it was not just an old television line when their bosses said they would disavow any knowledge of their actions. The corporate boys could do a lot to free you up if things went bad and you ended up in a foreign prison or worse, but not without some motivation. Harmon was always on the lookout for his own private insurance or leverage and he’d collected a lot over the years, copied documents and computer files. He was a careful man in that sense. But there was nothing in the pump shack worth sticking around for. He gave up and set the explosive and checked the switch. He then made a call on the phone to Mazurk that they were ready for pickup. When they stepped outside, Harmon turned, carefully and obviously, and relocked the big padlock on the door. He knew the crowd would be watching. He wanted him and Squires to be described only as company men, carrying out nothing more than what they carried in. They were employees doing their jobs, nothing more, without care for the activity around them. See no evil. That’s the way Harmon liked these operations to go. He might have even had a satisfied look on his face as they walked back to the roadside field where the chopper would now be inbound. He would be back home by tomorrow. Maybe even take his little boat out on Biscayne Bay, do some fishing with his wife, split a bottle of Merlot, and watch the lights of waterfront Miami sprinkle on at sunset.

But now he had the barrel of a beautiful American gun at his throat, and he was about to blow the heart out of a young University of Miami graduate with a homeboy lust for excitement. The more things change in this world, he thought, the more they remain the same.

Without taking his eyes off the other man’s, Harmon extended the briefcase and dropped it at the little colonel’s feet as he had been asked.

“De pinga!”
the colonel said with a smile and then motioned one of his rebel gunners up to his side.
“Abre el maletín!”

The soldier shouldered his Kalashnikov and bent to one knee to open the case. Another one Squires would not have to worry about, Harmon registered. The soldier laid the case down, flicked open the unlocked latches, and flipped the top up. His face registered the delight of seeing the stacks of banded American money, and as his confederates read it, all took a step forward to gain a look.

“Fifty thousand in cash,” Harmon said to the colonel, who had not looked down but could no doubt feel the excitement in his men. Greed comes in every language. “It’s yours. I only need the phone and the black box. You take the fifty grand and go party with your friends or whatever you do and we’ll trundle on out of here. Consider it a visitation fee, eh?”

The little colonel held his gaze but Harmon could tell he was not just considering the proposal.

“Well, of course it is mine!” the colonel finally said, tipping the muzzle of his Colt Python, touching the soft skin hanging under Harmon’s chin. Harmon hated it when they actually touched him.

“But I will have to perhaps make a call on your phone to my commandant to see what to do with you and your black box, Mr. Oil. You must know that the political climate has changed down here and bribes are not the only way it works any longer. You don’t just walk into my country like you’re the fucking Miami police and tell the
chulos
what to do with your high and mighty. Here, we are the power!”

It was then that Harmon picked up the distant sound, at first faint, like the hard purring of a cat. He knew it would grow louder into the whumping of air on a blade. He still had his hand in his pocket. In Miami even the gangbangers would have had him put his hands on his head by now.

“There are many lessons here for you, college boy,” Harmon said and for the first time there was a slight growl in his voice. Harmon knew that Squires would begin firing as soon as the soldiers’ eyes went up and away to search the sky for the helicopter.

“Number one is that no, we aren’t the Miami police. You see, they wouldn’t just kill you in the street and not stay to fill out the paperwork. And two, the more things change…” He began pulling the trigger on his own little Colt before finishing the thought. Three rounds in quick succession pierced the fabric of his coat pocket and ripped up and through the heart of the UM business major. The young man did not react enough to even tighten his grip on his own weapon and Harmon slapped it away and went to one knee as the air above him ripped with the automatic fire of Squires’s MP5 on full auto. His partner drew a line across the chests of all five standing rebels. They dropped, some with short spins as the bullets slapped them, and not one got off a shot. The last man was still on his knee over the briefcase, eyes still full of American greenbacks and maybe a vision of what the money was going to buy him and his family. A pleasant place to be when you die, Harmon thought after quickly taking the Colt from his torn pocket and shooting the stunned rebel in the side of the head.

The chopper was banking in low now, the pilot perhaps seeing the bodies still twitching around the men he was there to pick up. He reacted the way he should, coming in fast for a dust-off, keeping the landing rails off the ground, keeping the pickup side tipped up so the blades wouldn’t decapitate his employers. In the distance Harmon could see the oil thieves reacting to the action. They were probably used to gunfire when the paramilitaries were around. They probably were not used to seeing those same men fall to the ground while strangers backed away, watching them intently, weapons still at the ready. Squires was in his position for cover fire, walking backward in a low squat with the MP5 sweeping for movement. Harmon snapped the briefcase closed and picked it up, his Colt still out in his hand, but useless at this range if anyone from the pipeline should start firing. But men were not his fear and the fact that he was again walking away from a dead man who just moments ago had had a gun barrel at his throat only reinforced that odd mentality. He turned his back to the group of curious men gathering at the pipeline and walked to the chopper. Passing Squires, he nodded at the big man with a look that said “our work is done here,” and in seconds they were in the aircraft and away.