Atlanta Extreme (6 page)

“Let us hope,” James Hawker said, parroting her.

The horses were waiting where Laurene's brother had tied them, five splay-legged animals that slumped beneath the hornless saddles like vultures.

Hawker finally found time to urinate, then he and the woman strapped the gear on the two packhorses, hid the Toyota as best as they could, then set off along the river through the rain forest.

The vigilante put a grenade in one of the oversized pockets of his Egyptian cotton safari shirt and slung the old Uzi across his back. After a few miles of riding through the pale gloom of the forest, the woman led them up a steep gorge into the foothills, away from the river.

“We don't have far to go now,” she said, stopping her horse momentarily at a broad tree with black-green leaves. From the tree she twisted off several avocado pears and tossed one to Hawker. “Colonel Curtis asked that I blindfold you before taking you on this trail. After what we have been through, though, I don't think it's necessary. But before we go into camp, I'll have to blindfold you for appearance's sake. I hope you don't mind.”

From a smaller tree Hawker took a handful of tiny green limes. He squirted lime juice onto the avocado and ate. “And what if I choose not to be blindfolded at all?”

The woman shrugged. “I would prefer that you did refuse. That way you would never be allowed to leave us.” The woman kicked her horse and left Hawker sitting there, unsure about whether to feel flattered or angry.

The narrow trail climbed higher and higher into the mountains. There was a whoof of distant thunder, and the leaves in the high trees began to rattle. Hawker realized that it was raining, a warm rain that plastered the shirt to the woman's sharp breasts. The vigilante felt a stir of strong physical wanting, and he wondered what it was that attracted him so to the woman. Perhaps it's her anger, he thought. It makes her indifferent to the past and to the future. She seems to accept everything for exactly what it is: hardship, killing, sex, she takes them all at face value. She lives in the present, in the instant of her breathing, and that makes her a damn unusual woman.

“There,” she said, pointing. “Do you see?”

In the near distance a small river leapt off the brink of a cliff forming a waterfall. The waterfall glistened and roared in the gray light of the storm, disappearing into the bright flowers of the jungle.

“Yeah,” said Hawker. “It's very pretty.”

“It's also our first checkpost. I must blindfold you now.”

Hawker shrugged. “Okay, fine. But if you see anything the least bit suspicious, let me know immediately, damn it.”

The woman maneuvered her horse beside his and tied a bright red bandanna over his face.

“Can you see?”

“Yeah. The inside of this bandanna.”

Hawker was surprised to feel her lips claim his in a passionate, but brief, kiss. “What a strange sense of humor you have, James Hawker.”

Hawker allowed himself to be led up the twisting trail like a child on a park pony. The roar of the waterfall drew nearer, and he heard the woman call out a greeting in Spanish that was returned by the voices of two men.

“This is the Americano?”

“
Si
. Colonel Curtis is in camp waiting?”

“Our colonel is in camp, but do you not think he will be jealous of this handsome gringo man-child?” one of the guards chided. “Perhaps he will insist that Ramon and I scar his pretty white face—”

“Silence,” the woman cut in. “Are you so sure that this man does not speak Spanish—”

“I do not care what the gringo hears!”

“Save your nastiness, Balserio. The government forces approach. They attacked us after we landed. My brother, Mario, was murdered. This man beside me fought more bravely than you have ever fought. Stand aside so we may pass!”

They rode for only a short time before the woman brought the horses to a stop again. There was an edge to her voice as she spoke, and it took Hawker a moment to recognize the edge as nervousness. He had not heard nervousness in her voice before.

“We are only a short way from the camp,” she said. “I would like to prepare you.”

“Don't tell me—you want to tie my hands, right?”

“I am not joking. You are a man of the world and have no doubt seen many … strange things. But it is possible that some things you see in this camp may appear stranger than they actually are. You are an outsider. You have come from a comfortable, modern world. Our world is not comfortable and it is not modern. Our war is not a modern war, though it is sometimes fought with modern weapons.”

“What in the hell are you getting at, Laurene? I'm getting a little tired of sitting here with my eyes covered, listening to your Ping-Pong talk. If you have something to say, come out and say it.”

“I am only asking that you do not judge Colonel Curtis—and his methods—too quickly. He is a brilliant man, but he has had to live in a strange world these last two years. The jungle does things to a man from your civilization. It changes all men, even him. I do not always approve of what he does, but he is much brighter than me, much brighter than you and all of us, and he has a reason for everything—”

“Laurene, damn it, tell me what you're trying to say, or I'm going to rip this blindfold off and go in and look for myself.”

“Perhaps that is the best way,” the woman said softly. “But, before you do, I want you to promise that you will not judge him too quickly. I have been as honest with you as I can be. Last night, James, we shared something that was very good. If you have any appreciation for what passed between us, then grant me this favor: Do not judge the colonel too quickly.”

“Okay, okay,” said Hawker. “I promise. Now let's get going.”

seven

Hawker took the woman's words of warning as an uncharacteristic insertion of the dramatic. What could he possibly see in the camp of the Masaguan rebel army that he hadn't seen at some other time in his life?

Hawker was wrong. There were a great many things he had yet to see. And the camp was one of them.

Around him he could hear voices, some speaking in low Spanish, others in guarded English. Someone called out for the colonel as the horses came to a rocking stop, blowing air. It was cool here, and Hawker could hear the sound of running water—a brook? But there was something else too: mixed with the sweet odor of jasmine and frangipani was an odd, rancid odor, like a mixture of sweat and animal grease. And there was a great stillness about the place, too, despite the voices, despite the clump of bare feet on soft earth—a strange, deathly stillness not related to sound.

“Can I take my blindfold off yet?” Hawker asked loudly, not sure where the woman was.

“By all means, Mr. James Hawker,” said a man's articulate, enthusiastic voice. “Take off your blindfold and climb down off that poor horse. You've had a long journey and you must be very hungry.”

Hawker stripped away the bandanna and blinked into the splotched light of a jungle clearing. Twenty or thirty men encircled him, spreading out from just behind the man who now held out his hand to Hawker. “I am Wellington Curtis, Mr. Hawker,” the man said in his rich Southern accent. “We're damn glad to have you with us. I've been wanting to meet you for a long, long time.”

Hawker slid off the horse and took the man's firm hand. For a moment he was speechless. This was not the Wellington Curtis he had expected. The Wellington Curtis of his imagination was the one he knew from the dust jackets of the two books on military history: a well-groomed Atlanta aristocrat with gray hair at the temples, wire-rimmed glasses, tweed suit, the stomach paunch of the scholar, and the wry, bemused expression of a middle-aged man who lived his adventures through his typewriter.

The Wellington Curtis of the dust jackets and the man who now stood before him were two very different people. This Wellington Curtis wore loose khaki pants belted tightly around a lean waist. His chest was broad, covered with matted gray hair, and his arms were long and corded as he rested one hand on a black-handled fighting knife and the other on his military-issue canteen. His face was gaunt beneath a three-day growth of beard, beaming expression, bushy gray eyebrows, and eyes that had a pale, wild look, like someone who had gone too long without food or water. Most striking of all, Curtis's head had been completely shaved, giving him a sinister, Oriental appearance, like a mad Buddhist monk. The broad, bald head glistened with sweat, and Curtis wiped a big hand over it, flinging the water away.

“You are hungry?” he repeated. “I have had my men butcher a mountain tapir to celebrate your arrival. Have you ever had tapir, Mr. Hawker? It's a strange-looking creature, like a cross between an elephant and a mule, but the meat is really damn good. Reminds me of my boyhood days in Georgia when we'd hunt wild hogs and barbecue a couple of tender sow haunches. Better than any pork you'll ever get back in the states. Unfortunately Laurene tells me that we have company below the mountain, so I'm going to have to ask you to take a snack instead, then we'll have a full meal later.”

“You are going to attack them?”

The older man smiled. “In our own way, Mr. Hawker, in our own way.”

Curtis turned. Immediately a path cleared for them through the crowd of people. Like Curtis, the men all wore khaki pants, side arms, canteens, and knives. Unlike Curtis, they all wore military-issue fatigue shirts with epaulets, name tags, and gaudy, subdued unit patches bearing a screaming red skull and crossbones. Hawker guessed that the uniforms Curtis had had custom-made for them and were like none he had ever seen, a cross between garish Italian and African white hunter. The men were a mixture of Hispanics and Americans in about a three-to-one ratio. The Hispanics were generally small, lean, intense men with wild, dark eyes and mustaches. The Americans were of the Southern rawboned variety: florid faces, thick necks, gaunt cheeks, sandy hair. Hawker found their presence strangely reassuring. Despite Hollywood's hackneyed view of the male Southerner as an overweight, tobacco-chewing sadist, Hawker knew that the South consistently produced some of the brightest politicians, scholars, and military leaders in America and, undoubtedly, some of the best athletes. If Curtis had gone insane, it seemed unlikely that he could continue to hold the respect of men such as this. Yet they obviously did respect him. Hawker was beginning to believe that his friend, Jake Hayes, and his lover, Senator Thy Estes, were both wrong about Curtis.

He would change his mind in a very short time.

He followed Curtis down a rocky path into a little jungle hollow where a whole village of substantial tree houses had been built high off the ground. Below them and to one side was a long open mess area with stone ovens and plank tables. Next to that was a neat little cottage made of raw clapboard. It had a porch and mosquito screen over the windows. Hawker guessed that this was where Curtis lived, his one concession to his past as a civilized man.

As they walked, the odd smell again drew Hawker's attention. He looked up at the side of a rock precipice, and there, for the first time, he saw the source of the sour odor. There, on staves, baking in the tropical sun, were heads. Human heads. Dozens and dozens of them; hundreds of human heads, each on its own pole, mostly men, but there were women, too, and even, it seemed from the distance of a hundred yards, children. The heads all faced the little military compound, the eyes sometimes wide-open and hollow, the mouths thrown open into wild, silent screams.

Hawker came to a stop, staring.

Colonel Curtis looked at Hawker, looked at the hillside, then back at Hawker. “Oh, you've spotted our trophy case, huh?” He laughed. He gave Hawker a slap on the shoulder that was harder than a friendly slap. “Don't let it bother you, Mr. Hawker. Or can I call you James?”

Hawker said nothing but continued to stare.

“James it is, then,” Curtis rambled on. “I guess a sight like that is a little hard to handle for someone fresh from the outside world. ‘Barbaric,' they would call it; indeed, as if those lily-fingered hypocrites have the right to call anything we do down here barbaric. They with their factories that are poisoning the earth and their politicians who would sell their mothers for a profit, or their weak-kneed military leaders who no longer have any appreciation for the battlefield. Instead they prefer to incinerate whole populations from a nice sanitary plane six miles high—and they call me barbaric. It's absurd!”

The pitch of the man's voice had risen preceptibly, and his eyes had taken on a pale, haunted look. Hawker caught Curtis's eyes for just a moment. It was like looking into two embers from hell.

“It is a little absurd,” Hawker heard himself saying.

The colonel looked surprised for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. “By God, you agree with me!” He slapped Hawker on the shoulder again, this time not as hard. “I
like
you, James. I like everything I've ever heard about you—and you might be surprised at some of my sources. And now to find out that you agree with my thinking … well, by God, it's just music to these old ears. Shit, this is a day for celebrating! But first we've got to pay a neighborly visit to our commie friends. After that we'll break out the palm wine and the
kashiri
, have the boys roast the tapir, have ourselves a good talk, then I'll assign you a nice young girl to relax you before lights-out. How's that sound?”

“Actually, Colonel, a talk with you is all I came for—”

“Hell,” Curtis boomed, “don't be shy around me, boy! Stroll over to the mess there and grab yourself some tortillas and beans. Get a good shot of water, too, because it may be a while before you get time for another drink. Then I'll have one of my men fix you up with weapons. I want you to get a firsthand look at how we operate!”

With that, Curtis left him and began shouting orders at his troops. He used a mixture of Spanish and English, Hawker noted, and when he spoke, his men jumped.