Beneath a Panamanian Moon (36 page)

The Huey's rotors tossed the palms like an incoming hurricane. The whap of its blades beat against my ears.

I said to Kris, “Help me.”

She didn't say anything. I looked into her eyes but she didn't see me. I touched her face and said, “Kris, I need you.”

She looked at me. Her eyes focused.

“Kris, don't leave me now.”

She nodded.

“Can you get them down?”

“I think so,” she said.

I touched her cheek and she put her hand over mine. “I have to wave them off.” She nodded, and I sprinted toward the helipad. The Huey was at treetop level, its skids fifty feet from the concrete. Ice was in the door, directing the pilot's descent.

Kelly had not been bluffing. A single nylon filament stretched across the concrete pad, attached to detonators on either side. The detonators were rigged to a spring switch that would trigger the explosives when pressure was applied to the wire, or if the wire was cut.

The wind from the chopper blades roared around my ears and blew dirt in my eyes. I could hear Ice hollering but I didn't know if he was yelling at me or the pilot. They were going to land. Blind, unable to think, not knowing if the high explosives would blow from the pressure of the prop wash, I tried to wave them away. The wind tore at my clothes and hair, the noise sucked the air from my lungs, and I could feel the weight of the chopper hovering above me. They hadn't seen me, or they thought I needed help. Either way, they were going to land.

Kris stood twenty feet away, her hair tossing about her face. She looked as if she were walking in her sleep.

I hollered, “Get the shotgun!”

She gaped at me in confusion.

“The gun! Get the gun!”

She ran off. Ice was in the door fifteen feet above my head, telling me to back away. I stood on the concrete and let the wind buffet me like I was so much weightless trash.

Kris ran to me and handed me the shotgun. Ice mouthed “No!” Hamster raised his rifle and aimed at my head.

I lifted the shotgun in two hands, racked a round, and aimed into the sky. “Go away!”

Kris pulled at my arm. “Stop it, they'll shoot you!”

I shrugged her off and aimed the shotgun into the sky again.

Ice shook his head. The wind tore at our clothing. The helicopter's belly hovered over the pad. Hamster held his rifle steady. I watched his finger move to the trigger. I fired once, pumped the action, and fired again.

The helicopter seemed to rock. Hamster leveled the rifle at my head. I stood in the wash and glare of the chopper's lights, not moving from the pad. Tears blurred my vision and I had to wipe them away with the back of my hand.

When I could see again, I watched Ice put his hand on Hamster's rifle. He spoke into his headphones, the rotors changed their pitch, the wind shifted, the oppressive weight of the helicopter tipped and lifted away. Kris stood next to me. The Huey circled us once, high overhead. Kris held my arm and I asked her if Phil and Marilyn were alive.

“Yes,” she said. “I got Phil down, but I was afraid to move Marilyn.”

I ran back to the garden. Phil was lying on his back. I felt the pulse in his neck and it was strong. Leaving Phil, I climbed up into the tree and untied the rope around Marilyn's wrists. I saw that Kelly had one final surprise. He had run a nylon line from Marilyn's neck to a grenade wedged into a branch above us. I gently removed the grenade, crimped the pin in place, and put it inside my shirt. Safe now, I lowered Marilyn to Kris. Marilyn was limp and I knew she was dead, just by the way she fell across the grass.

The Huey set down in the far parking lot. New helicopters came up over the horizon and began circling the hotel. The sun broke over the treetops and bathed us all in the false promise of a brand-new day.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The grounds filled with soldiers. A line of cars came speeding up the road from the gate and stopped, disgorging another army of men in civilian clothes, from suits to the white guayabera and black slacks that is the unofficial plainclothes police uniform in Panama. An EMT truck, its lights flashing, stopped and three paramedics got out. Two other men strode toward us. One was Marquez, the other was a bullet-headed North American carrying a small revolver on his hip.

“Holy Mother of God, Harper, what a jumping Jesus jungle fuck this is.”

“My friends need help.”

Marquez barked an order and in minutes a helicopter landed and the medics loaded Phil and Marilyn inside for a quick flight to the hospital in Panama City. Marilyn was alive, which was the good news. But it was the only good news.

Smith put his arm around Kris. She put her head against him. Smith looked at me and I nodded, yes, I was fine. He helped Kris walk out to the EMT truck.

I sat there alone in the garden and watched as soldiers bent into the bushes and picked up Kris's father, as heavy as only the dead can be, and carried him away. I sat for a long time. The soldiers kept their distance, as if I were bad luck. A bomb squad stood far back from the helipad and debated how best to disarm the explosives. Smith returned to the garden, alone, and sat down next to me. He offered me his flask. I took a drink and I recognized the sweet taste of Maker's Mark bourbon.

I handed the flask back to Smith.

“Kris told me what happened.”

I said nothing.

“She turned the Claymores on her father.”

“I know.”

“Hell, she probably knows more about armaments than both of us put together.”

“Be careful what you teach your children, huh, Mr. Smith?”

He smiled, and it was kind, and comforting. “Glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humor.”

“Yeah, I'm a funny guy.”

“You'd best have that leg looked at.”

“I'm fine.”

“Your friends are going to be okay. And I think the girl will be all right.”

“That's good.”

“The government has everything under control.”

“I see you haven't lost your sense of humor, either.”

Smith handed me a handkerchief and I wiped my face. “We've contacted Kris's grandparents. She'll be going home soon.”

“What's going to happen to Marilyn?”

“Marquez promises she'll be taken care of.”

“There's another guy named Morton we need to find.”

“We caught him coming in the gate. The police have him in custody.”

I thought maybe, just maybe, there would be some justice to come after all. “Did I get everything right, sir? I mean, about what happened here?”

“You did good, son. Lauren sent us copies of everything.” He had the good grace to pause out of respect. “It looks like Kelly snookered the Colonel and a whole truckload of rich Colombians. The Colombians thought they were getting a country, the Colonel thought he was getting the Canal, but the only ones who were getting anything but screwed were Kelly and this joker Morton.”

“What about the yacht?”

“Another fraud,” Smith said. “They wanted it to look like the bomb was set for the locks.”

“And it got rid of a whole boatload of co-conspirators,” I said.

“That, too.”

“What about Morton?”

Smith shrugged. “It's hard to say, son.”

“What? You mean he might walk away from this?”

“He has friends, Harper, friends who go back to the first Bush administration.”

“But he's a murderer.”

“Pretty sad situation, isn't it? If it was up to me he wouldn't outlive old man Fidel.” Smith sucked on the flask again. “It's a loose end, son. It happens.”

Marquez bent down, shook my hand, and thanked me. “The government of Panama will not forget what you did for us.”

Smith handed the flask back to me and said, “Take another drink, son, there's something else I have to explain.”

“What? Explain what?”

“No one can know about this except for a very select group of people. The Panamanian government isn't crazy about three-hundred men being murdered on their watch. The Colombians certainly don't need any more trouble, and as for our government, they'd rather handle this through back channels. For your own good, of course.”

“For my own good, of course.”

Smith put his hand on my shoulder. “Things don't always work out like they should.”

“Yeah. You can sew that on a fucking sampler.”

“Now, son, bitterness won't get you anywhere but drunk. I'm going to take care of you. You can count on that. Hell, I feel kinda responsible for getting you into this in the first place.”

“Kinda?”

“But no sense in pointing fingers, you'll just poke someone's eye out. Hell, son, while you were lying around here on the beach, I was up to my keister in pissed-off Arabs.”

I gave him my best squint and hoped the heat would set him on fire, but it didn't.

“I've got your new identification papers in my bag. You want to see?”

“No.”

“Come on, son.” Smith squeezed my shoulder like an old coach with a losing quarterback. “It's the best we could do. John Harper is missing and presumed dead.”

“But my father…” It made my chest ache to think of my father getting another visit from a man with his hat in his hands.

“I'll go see your dad myself and explain things.”

I thought that was good of him until I realized what it meant. “You mean I can't go home?”

“Not home, no, but hell, it's a big country. If you want, I can fix you up with a civilian job someplace. Of course, you'd have to give up the piano.”

“What?”

“And with a new name and a new profession, you've got a running start.”

“That's all I get? A running start?”

“And if civilian life doesn't work out, you can work for me anytime, anywhere, and that's a promise.”

Smith stood up. “Come on. Another chopper's on its way to take us out of this wretched fucking country.” He held out his hand. I took it and he helped me up. We walked out of the garden together.

Meat was in cuffs on the veranda. Hamster was in the yard with his hands over his head. They both looked at me once and then looked away. I hoped it was from shame.

Panamanian soldiers stood around the hotel's door and smoked cigarettes. Others were removing the weapons from the basement and loading them into a waiting truck. The bodies were carried out. Eubanks, the Colonel, and the Major's Gorilla, frozen stiff. Even though he'd tried to gut me, I still didn't think he deserved this.

A green government Taurus was parked in front of the hotel. In the back seat was the man Morton, his hands cuffed behind him. He was wearing the collar of a priest. I asked Smith if I could see him. “I just want to look at the son of a bitch,” I said.

“Sure, son, you want to spit in the devil's eye, I think you've earned it.”

I walked over to the car. The rear window was halfway up. I leaned in to look at the man who had coauthored so much misery. “Funny, you don't look like a killer,” I said.

“And you don't look like a dead man.” He shrugged. “But there you are.” Morton was so calm it was as if he were being arrested for an overdue library book. “I know who you are,” he said, “and you know what I am. I'd say this isn't over.”

Then the bastard smiled and something inside me changed.

“There's no place on earth your Mr. Smith can hide you and your Chicano friend. You are, as you soldiers like to say, seriously fucked.”

“No, Morton,” I said, “I think it's you who's fucked.” I took the grenade from my shirt, and enjoyed the frozen shock on Morton's face as he watched me pull the pin. I dropped the grenade into his lap and I counted long enough to capture a quick snapshot of that face, a snapshot I filed away next to those of Mariposa, Cooper, Zorro, and Ren. Then, as he was screaming, I took Smith's suggestion and got a good running start.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

It's the holidays again and I'm playing all the old tunes. Everything but “I'll Be Home for Christmas.”

I've kept tabs on Kris. She picked up the piano faster than I would have ever guessed and I had no idea she could sing like that. No idea. The songs she wrote for her first CD are all so smart and warm, and I'm happy that she's doing well. She's even getting her music played on the radio. I read in the
Times
that she moved to North Carolina and I cut the picture out of the Arts and Leisure section. She looks happy in her new home. She looks happy with her new baby.

As for my father, he travels a lot on short notice to tiny, out-of-the-way places. He says that he sees more of me than Mr. Grubner sees of his son, and his boy lives in Cleveland. We still don't have a lot to talk about, but he's not as disappointed in me as he once was.

And Smith still sends me out on assignments, just to keep things interesting.

The first few months after Panama were the hardest. That's when I limped around Europe, playing piano in dives until I got homesick for fresh mango. I found life was easier in the tropics, even though I broke into a sweat every time someone mentioned meat or a man in a white guayabera looked at me twice.

It was summer in Belize and I was playing in one of the hotels out on the cay. I returned to my room about two and found a box someone had shipped to me from Venezuela. Inside the box I found a short note, a photo, and two million dollars in hundred-dollar bills. There was no return address. The note said to use the cash any way I liked. An equal amount had been sent to an intelligent Panamanian woman who had turned a seaside resort into a home for orphaned boys and girls. The photo was of Marilyn surrounded by a dozen skinny little brown children. All of them looked happy to be where they were loved, Marilyn most of all.

I took the money, and took the chance, and bought a bar on a small island with simple rhythms. Cruise ships visit four times a year. Every day it either rains, or it doesn't. Every night I get to drink and play piano.