Music of the Spheres (12 page)

20

Unknown Plantation :

Honduras :

Central American
Conglomeration :

For
what seemed
like an eternity, Michael and George
lay on the floor of the van as the Cruzados transported them to an unknown
location.

Trussed up like a hog around his ankles and
wrists, Michael was unable to find a position where every pothole they hit in
the road didn’t send him bouncing and jostling against the steel floor. Twice
he banged his head against a metal tool box; the second time he nearly blacked
out and almost vomited from the sudden nausea. He wasn’t sure his kidneys would
survive the ride.

Like George, Michael was gagged, and could
only glare back at the rebel soldier who watched over him with callous eyes. Unlike
George, Michael was still conscious.

The first time George had tried to protest
his capture, struggling against his bonds, the solider guarding them kicked him
in the side and barked,
“Silencio!”

After a particularly jarring bump, George
once again growled through his makeshift muzzle. The soldier struck him in the
side of the head with his rifle butt, and then gave Michael a challenging look
when he tried to wriggle over to check on his friend.

A small trickle of blood ran down George’s face.
He was knocked out, but breathing. Still alive, though he didn’t regain
consciousness during the remainder of the journey.

It was hard to judge how much time had
elapsed, but it seemed like hours before the van slowed, turned a sharp corner,
and then rolled up to its final destination.

Michael heard shouts in Spanish as orders
were given, acknowledged and carried out. He estimated from the voices that there
were more than a dozen men in the vicinity.

When the back doors of the van opened, and
he and George were pulled out into a moonlit compound, Michael saw that his
assumption was correct.

A number of armed men approached to assist
in unloading the prisoners. While two of the soldiers grabbed Michael by the
arms, a third cut the rope around his ankles. They escorted him from the van to
a large storage shed. Four other men lifted the prone figure of George out and
carried him.

In addition to the shed where they were
heading, there were three other outbuildings—barns converted to barracks,
Michael guessed as he spied more men milling around in front of them. The
buildings had been erected on either side of a packed dirt road which led up to
a main house. It was dark except for one room on the second floor. A
silhouetted figure stood in the window, as if overseeing the activity below.

One of the soldiers yanked on Michael’s
arm, getting his attention and dragging him roughly to the storage shed.

Stepping inside first, the soldier pulled a
thin string attached to a bare light bulb hanging from a rafter, and harsh
yellow light bathed the inside of the shed. Wooden barrels were stacked in one
corner. Against the other wall was a dilapidated gas generator that looked as
if it hadn’t worked for a decade. The floor was of packed earth, but there was
a dirty straw mattress near the back of the shed. The soldiers carrying George
dropped him on it without exercising any amount of care.

In heavily accented English, one soldier
said, “Sleep now. No trouble.”

Turning off the light, the Cruzado exited
the building. Michael heard the snap of a padlock and the soldier ordering a
man to stay posted out front.

There was one small dirt-stained window
beside the door, but it was large enough to let in some light from the moon,
and Michael’s eyes soon became accustomed to the night.

With his hands still bound behind his back,
he moved over to check on his friend again. He got down on his knees and leaned
in for a closer look. George was still unconscious, but his breathing was evening
out.

Michael spoke in low tones, “It’ll be all
right George. We’ll get through this.”

He looked around the shed again, his mind
racing. First things first, Michael wasn’t going to be able to do much with his
hands tied together.

Awkwardly struggling to his feet, he
approached the generator and turned his back to it. Reaching out with his
fingers, he felt a sharp length of broken metal jutting out just far enough that
he might be able to cut the rope at his wrists. He worked the rope over the
edge repeatedly.

Soon enough, the rope fell free from him,
and Michael brought his hands out front to examine them in the dim moonlight
for damage. Several tiny cuts marred his skin and a few trickles of blood ran
down his arm, but he was otherwise unscathed.

He set to work untying George’s bonds and
trying to arrange the man into a more comfortable position until he regained
consciousness. That accomplished, Michael sat on the foot of the mattress and
leaned back against the wall.

With the shed locked and guarded, and
Michael unarmed, there wasn’t much else he could do. They had been sending
updates to John Markham every morning. When they failed to check in tomorrow,
Michael hoped that John would send out an alert to the authorities and contact
Calbert at Quantum Resources. However, even if they were made aware that Michael
and George were missing, they would have no idea where the two were.

Michael had no idea what had become of
their equipment. George’s video mask had a GPS tracker in it. If the Cruzados
had taken it with them, then all Michael had to do was turn the camera back on
and wait for someone back home to notice. If the machine were destroyed, then
Michael would have to find some other way to let their location—wherever that
was—be known.

In the back of the van, Michael had been
disoriented and distracted. He’d had no bearings. Had they gone north, west,
east, south? And for how long? Hours for certain. But that could mean they were
anywhere, even in one of Honduras’s bordering countries, like El Salvador or
Guatemala.

Michael sat up for another hour, worrying over
their situation and speculating on what would happen the next day. After a
time, exhaustion crept in and sleep took him.

∞

It was one of the most uncomfortable nights
Michael had ever spent, and he woke with a sharp pain in his neck from sleeping
upright against the wall.

George was already awake, and sitting on
the edge of the mattress, elbows propped on his knees, one hand gingerly
touching the swelling bump on his head.

“You look like I feel,” he said to Michael
in a grave voice.

“Thanks.” Michael tried to work the kink out
of his neck. “How’s the head?”

“Feels like a watermelon in a microwave.
But no permanent damage, I think.”

“That’s good.”

With exaggerated care, George pushed
himself to his feet and tested his balance. He looked around the shed and then
stepped closer to the small window. “Where are we?”

“Not sure of the exact location, but it’s
obviously some kind of base camp for the Cruzados.”

George glanced sharply at Michael. “Our
equipment? The camera?”

“I’m not sure. They may have destroyed it.”

“We can only hope!”

Michael stood up. “What?”

With a knowing smile, George winked. “I
installed a backup circuit running off a lithium battery. It was in constant
contact with one of the geo satellites we were using. If the link is severed,
it trips an immediate alert back home. The GPS uplink would give them our last
coordinates. At least that would give them a starting point from which to track
us.”

“What if they didn’t destroy the camera?”
Michael asked.

Shrugging, George said, “Well, the longer
it takes Calbert to notice we’re missing, the harder it will be for him to find
us.”

“That’s what I thought,” Michael said,
pressing his lips together in a grimace.

They both turned when the heard the
clanking of metal. Someone unlocked the shed’s padlock, and the door swung
open. Two Cruzados with rifles at the ready stood just outside, looking in. One
of them glanced down, saw their hands unbound, and narrowed his eyes. He made a
gesture with his weapon and said,
“Siga con nosotros.”

With one soldier in front, and one behind,
the two prisoners were led up the packed road to the main house.

∞

Inside, they were greeted at the door by a
dark haired, middle-aged man with a thin black moustache which drooped around
the corners of his smiling mouth.

“Please come in,” he said with a sweeping
gesture of his hand. “My name is Oscar Ruiz, and this is my plantation. I
apologize for the unpleasantness of your quarters last night, but we were
unprepared for your arrival. We have had many guests of late, and we are not
always able to accommodate everyone.”

Michael blinked, unsure how to respond. He
shared a look with George.

A burly man with a thick moustache appeared
from another room. He was dressed in a dark grey shirt and denim overalls. At
the end of a leather strap slung over his shoulder was a submachine gun. It
rested between the back of his arm and his side.

Noticing the new arrival, Oscar nodded in
his direction while keeping his eyes on Michael and George. “This is Humberto, who
is part of my new protective detachment, and is assigned to household security.
If you will follow him upstairs, he will show you where you can clean up.
Breakfast will be served shortly. I cannot wait for you to try our own
home-grown coffee—it’s world famous, you know.”

Oscar gave them a quick nod, took one step
back and spun on his heel. As he disappeared into the same room Humberto had
come out of, he called out some instructions in Spanish to the house staff.

In a thick accent, Humberto said,
“Upstairs.” When Michael didn’t move right away, the soldier put his hand on
the back of his arm and pushed him gently but firmly toward the staircase.
“Now.”

George needed no prompting, and led the way
to the second floor. Humberto followed them up, and called out directions which
brought them to a sparse bedroom furnished with a single mattress flat on the
floor, a wooden chair in one corner, and a ratty looking sofa.

There was a four-pane window looking out
over the plantation, and a quick glance showed dozens of
campesinos
tending the rows of plants. Thick iron bars covered the window, providing no
means of escape. Not that it was an option at this point. Even if Michael and
George were able to get away from their captors, they were both unequipped to
survive in the open on their own for any length of time; at least for however
long it would take them to make their way to a populated area where they could
call someone for help.

Humberto took a few steps to the wall
opposite the sofa and pushed back a slatted door.

“Wash here,” he instructed them.

Without another word, he left the bedroom,
closing the door behind him and locking it.

Michael looked at George. “What the hell is
going on? Are we prisoners or guests?”

“Yes,” was George’s answer. He smiled. “If
I were to make a guess, I would say Mr. Ruiz is a supporter of the Cruzados
movement, but he might not be a willing supporter. I wouldn’t count on him
knowing much more than whatever rhetoric they feed him.”

“How’s that?”

“Look at it from his perspective,” George
said. “He’s a wealthy landowner with a profitable business, at least by local
standards. Central America has been rife with civil war of some sort for
centuries, and someone who wants to maintain their status needs to work within
that reality. I’d say he’s just hedging his bets. Obviously the Cruzados are a
larger organization than we suspected. If they manage to attain their
objectives, then he’ll be remembered for his contribution. If their revolution
gets put down, he can always point to his ‘guests’ to prove how hospitable he
was; he could maybe even go so far as to claim the Cruzados forced his
cooperation.”

George was the first to enter the water
closet and he grunted in disapproval. “Well, at least it’s indoor plumbing,” he
said when he turned on the tap and watched rusty water pour into the cracked
porcelain sink. He did his best to wash the sweat and dirt from his face and
neck while Michael sat on the chair and waited his turn.

“So how do we play this?” Michael asked.

George stepped out of the washing room,
dabbing at his face with a towel. “We don’t have a lot of options. We don’t
know where we are; the authorities don’t know where we are and we don’t have
any means of contacting them. They’re not going to kill us, and I don’t think
they’ll hold us for ransom—at the most we’ll be used as hostages. In the
meantime, we should act as guests, ingratiate ourselves with Oscar, and pump
him for as much information as we can get. Even if he’s not directly involved
in the Cruzados’ politics, I’m sure he knows more than we’ve been able to guess
so far. Your turn.”

Michael barely had enough time to wash up
before there was a knock on the door for them to head back downstairs.

∞

Michael smelled the fresh-brewed coffee
well before Humberto led them into a large dining area. The table in the center
of the room was filled with breads, fruits, sausages and fried potatoes. Eyeing
the breakfast hungrily, Michael almost didn’t notice there were two people
sitting at the table.