Night of the Jaguar (36 page)

“Martin! We have been watching the widow's house. We saw you come yesterday with your pretty friend. We have been debating if she is lesbiana. Is she? But not Red Cross, I think. We were coming for you last night when the other three arrived. They moved like hunters. I thought, this is like a Mexican telenovela. Who loves who, and who is the betrayer! Stay tuned! But I saved you from them. They were going to kill you, yes?”

Ajax's mind was approaching the speed of light, but no matter how fast he thought, the math would not change. They were fucked.

“Epimenio, work your way back to the house.”

“No, señor.”

Ajax grabbed him by the throat. “Shut up. Get back there. Hide that shotgun. There is a lot of money we took from Evelyn's grave. Tell Gloria to give it to Krill to buy her life.”

“I can't.”

“You can. Tell Krill we came here with guns to steal the money and forced you to help us. Gladys, you're gonna make for the Land Cruiser. There might be radios in it; either way you get out of here and go to the nearest army base.”

“Where?”

“Matagalpa.”

“That's hours away.”

“I'll keep Krill busy.”

“By yourself?”

“No, Cortez and maybe Pissarro are out there somewhere. You've seen that movie—the outlaw and sheriff always join forces to fight the Apache.”

“You said
we
were the Indians, remember?”

“Well, then, warring Indians join forces to fight the white man.”

“Marrrrrrrrtin! Are you worried about the other two? Don't be. My men got them, and my other men are already between you and the widow's house.”

“Fucking mind-reading piece of shit!” Ajax hissed.

“Listen Martin.” Krill's voice rose a notch as he shouted to his men. “Muchachos! Make our new friends sing for Martin.”

There was what Ajax would've called a pregnant pause. Then Cortez and Pissarro sang out in horrible screams that went on and on.

Ajax shuddered. “Upside down.”

“Upside down, Martin. Remember?” Krill called out.

Still the Conquistadores screamed. Gladys got what some called a deer-in-the-headlights look about her, and Ajax could see how young she was. How afraid. He shook her.

“Don't lose it, Gladys. We gotta move—now. You and Epimenio head for the car, I'll pin them down.”

“No, Captain. Let me.” Epimenio got to his knees. “Then you two run.”

“Fuck no!” Ajax grabbed him by the arm and was shocked when the humble campesino pushed the shotgun to his face.

“It was me, Captain. Me. They made me tell on don Enrique ever since he got back from prison. State Security. Comandante Malhora said if I told him things Enrique would not go back to jail. Gloria would not lose the finca. I've been telling them for years. I told them about the jaguar, the airstrip, that Enrique went to Managua to report the men with the plane. That's why I got to Managua so fast. I got scared they would hurt him. They did. I told them don Mateo had found something, too. Look what I have done to them all.”

He broke Ajax's grip and bolted toward the still screaming Conquistadores. Ajax watched in amazed horror as Epimenio threw the shotgun to his shoulder and fired at a dead run.

“Cover him! Cover him!”

He rolled a few yards away from Gladys and opened up with the AK at any shape, sound, or muzzle flash. His first firefight in years and the old feeling returned: One eye shooting straight while the other sought the next target. Shots came from all directions, ripped into the trees and ground around them, but he heard five blasts from the shotgun. When it fell silent, so did the screams.

Then Krill's voice over it all. “Stop! Stop shooting! Hijos de puta! Cease fire!”

Krill's men obeyed but Ajax finished his magazine.

“I want Martin alive!”

Ajax knew they had to make their break now, a mad dash or die. But in the heightened quiet following a firefight he heard a small cry, like a song bird dying.

“Gladys.”

He scrambled to her side. She still clutched the AK to her chest, already soaked with blood.

“Gladys! Oh my God, Gladys!”

“Ajax.”

“It's okay, it's okay, it's okay.”

“I don't think so.”

Her voice had the dreamy quality of shock. He had to pry the rifle from her hands before he could pull her shirt open. A bullet had ripped a hole through her side and out her back. He ripped open the first aid kit and pressed two trauma bandages over the entrance and exit wounds. She moaned again.

“Shhhh. Shhhh. You're gonna be okay. I got you. I got you. See? Bandages. Bandages.”

“Marrrrrrrrrrrrtin! Is your dyke leaking? Ha! Ha!”

“Kill that fucker for me, Ajax.”

“I will, but first we got to get you out of here. Hold still.”

He hurt her tying the bandages off, but it had to be done. She bit down on her lip and took it.

“It must be Saturday.”

“Saturday, yes, Gladys, it is. We're going dancing.”

“No, idiota. Saturday is for confessions. Epimenio and now me.”

“Sure, Gladys, no problem.” He got up on one knee. “KRILL! KRILL!”

Gladys grabbed him and the feel of her bony hand in his nearly broke his heart.

“They put me with you to spy.”

“I know. Don't talk. Krill!”

“They wanted to know your state of mind, your drinking. I reported on you. Malhora knew. Horacio knew.”

“I know. That's good Gladys. That's good. Horacio's my friend. You did good. You want a confession? When you came to my house I was going to blow my brains out. I was gonna eat my gun and you saved me. You saved me! Okay? We're even. Krill!”

“Yeeees, Marrrrrtin! I am holding my fire. I need you alive so we can talk.”

Ajax scanned the bush for signs they were moving on him, but all was still.

“Krill, I can stay here and fight it out with you all fucking day. The army will get here eventually.”

“I'm listening.”

“You want me for an upside-down party. I'll give me to you. You leave my friend and Gloria alone. Me for them.”

“Interesting.”

Gladys squeezed his hand. “You called me your friend.”

“You are my friend. Maybe the only one I've got left. Poor you.”

She smiled. “Poor me.”

“Krill!”

“It's a deal, Martin!”

Gladys let go of his hand.

“Gladys, Gladys?” He gently slapped her face. “Come on, look at me. Look at me.”

Her eyes fluttered open. She reached up and weakly slapped his cheek. “You're a good man, sister.”

Her eyes rolled into her head, and she was gone.

“No! No! No! KRILL!!” He leapt to his feet, hands in the air. “Krill! Me for her, you take me and we go. She stays!”

Krill rose from his hiding place and signaled his men to come in. Ajax walked halfway to him.

“You take me. You leave her alive.”

“We will take you back to our base in Honduras. I always like to take a present for the muchachos when we return. And you are a much better present than some broken dyke. Get it? I can't stop making that joke. But, Martin, you are too much trouble awake.”

Krill signaled to someone behind Ajax. He lowered his hands and let it come. The blow sank him to his knees. He saw stars. As all the world faded to black, he had time to notice that while he had seen stars before, they had never been accompanied by fireworks, for he was sure he heard pyrotechnics all around him. The second blow sent him falling, tumbling, plunging into oblivion. Upside down.

 

20

1.

Captain Ajax Montoya had a pain in the ass. He didn't know where the pain was, or even where he was. But wherever and whatever, it was a pain in the ass. Then he heard his name being called.

“Ajax. Ajax Montoya. Ajax.”

That was the pain in his ass. He just wanted them to shut up and let him alone.

“Ajax? Ajax Montoya?”

Black oblivion gave way to light as the night had to dawn. He needed a winch to raise his eyelids, but eventually they rolled up. A woman's face loomed over him.

“Amelia?”

“Gloria.”

“Gladys?”

“Gloria, Ajax. Gloria Cuadra.”

A man's face slid into view. Ajax tried to rise.

“I'll kill you, Krill.”

Gloria rubbed his face. “Shhhh. Krill's gone. The army's here. This is Colonel Garcia.”

“What?
You're
Martin Garcia?”

“No. Josecho Garcia, Seventeenth Light Hunter Battalion.”

In the unfocused grayness of his gray matter, Ajax was beginning to understand. “The cavalry saved the Indians.”

“I guess. You must have powerful friends, Captain. We got orders from Managua to not come back without you, alive.” Colonel Garcia laid a comradely hand on Ajax's chest. “I heard of you; your reputation's deserved, Captain. If you'd lost five minutes we would've missed you.”

Through the fog of a blood-clotted brain, Ajax realized that what he'd heard when Krill's man had knocked him out had not been fireworks, but a firefight.

“What about…”

“Shhhh, Ajax.” Gloria rubbed her smooth hand over his face again; it felt cool and clean. “The colonel got here just as Krill was taking you. The others are all gone, all gone. They took the bodies back to Managua. We buried Epimenio yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“You've been out a day and a night.”

“Señora, we've got to go. He's got to come with us now.”

“All right, Colonel.”

Ajax did not like people talking about him as if he wasn't here. And he was going to give them a piece of his mind but the cable on the winch holding his eyelids snapped, and down they went.

“Ajax? Take this.”

Gloria pressed something into his hand.

“They're going to take you to the clinic in Matagalpa. They're going to take you in the Red Cross Jeep. Can you hear me? I packed your things,
everything,
into the Jeep. Can you hear me?”

Of course he could. He just couldn't keep night from rushing back.

The rest was brief days and long nights, like an Arctic winter. He heard voices, felt himself lifted, set down, lifted again. He saw another woman's face, maybe more than one. But not the woman he wanted to see. The women.

2.

When at last he could open his eyes without a winch, it was night and another woman looked down at him.

“Hello, handsome.”

“Marta.”

“That's good. You've got some brain cells left.”

“I…”

“You want to interrogate the world again. Here”—she lifted a large bowl from a bedside table and tucked a straw into his mouth—“drink this. It's Mami's special broth. Drink and I'll tell you what I know.”

He did as ordered and the soup seemed to pass directly from the walls of his mouth into every cell of his body.

“You're in Managua, in your own bed at home. Your skull was fractured four days ago.”

“Four…”

“Shhh. Just keep sucking it down, compa.”

He did, greedily. When the broth was gone, she gave him a tall glass of chilled sweet orange juice that seemed to cool the fire in his brain. Greedily, he finished it.
Finish it.
Somewhere in his still fuzzy mind he realized that was the mantra he needed:
Finish it, finish it, finish it
. But the earth seemed to open yet again, and he was falling, sinking, descending.

*   *   *

When Ajax finally awoke as himself, it was night again. He lay for a while, eyes closed, listening. Sensing. A line from somewhere floated into his mind:
The more you sense everything, the more sense everything makes
. He tried to open himself to sense as much as he could, if not everything. Everything.
I packed your things,
everything
, into the Jeep. Can you hear me?
Yes, he could hear Gloria. And now the smell of putrefaction in the Jeep on the long rides to Pantasma and Managua made sense. She must've packed the money. Two hundred and fifty thousand stinking yanqui dollars. Not a hundred and twenty-five, but twice that much, half of five hundred thousand.

Then, quite suddenly, as sometimes happened, he could, fleetingly, sense it all—and it all made sense.

He snapped his eyes open. He half expected to find the ghost looming over him again, and felt a small pang that he did not. A candle burned on the bedside table—it must be Wednesday. Again? Marta slept curled up on the far side of the bed. He sat up slowly, swung his legs over the bedside, and felt the cool concrete under his feet. His head was swaddled in a turban of bandages. He pushed his fingers underneath it and felt the sharp little bristles of his shaved head. He stood slowly. He felt okay, satisfactory, tolerable. He went to his closet and his hand hovered over the clothes there. He knew what he was going to do and he would not do it in his police khakis. He dressed in black pants and a dark T-shirt. He slipped on leather sandals, paused to watch Marta's sleeping face, and then slipped out of his house.

He opened up the Red Cross Jeep and found the two AKs, the ammo pouch, and the reeking money in the rear compartment. One of Gloria's dolls was on the front passenger seat. He searched the rest of the Jeep but did not find the Python or The Needle. Damn. He was a carpenter without tools. He hurried back into his house, retrieved Fortunado Gavilan's Makarov and two clips of 9mm's from the hidey-hole where he kept such things. He paused for a moment: if he'd lost the Python and The Needle, had he lost the ghost? And if he had, had he lost an ally, or a tormentor?

It didn't matter. It was time to finish it.

3.

He parked three blocks away from Sub-comandante Vladimir Malhora's house and watched the street. The house sat behind high walls with a guard post next to iron gates that led to a courtyard. The bad news was that rich neighborhoods like this were the only ones in the entire country with working streetlights, so a stealthy approach on foot was almost impossible. The good news was that with armed guards on patrol few of the residents kept dogs for protection.