River of Ruin (16 page)

Reminded of what he was risking, Roddy caught Mercer’s eye. “I’ll do whatever you say.”

It wasn’t claustrophobia that bothered Mercer as the large shipping container was shunted around the cargo terminal on Panama’s Atlantic coast and loaded onto the flatbed rail-car. The enclosed blackness didn’t affect him at all. If it did he never would have become a miner. What he hated was the disorientation of not knowing what was coming next. A sudden turn by the heavy-duty forklift slapped him and Lauren against the container’s wall and the slam of the box dropping onto the train came with spine-jarring abruptness that left the steel confines echoing.

“What next?” Lauren complained from across the darkness where she’d tumbled.

The diesel locomotive two dozen cars ahead lurched forward to test the couplings. Mercer had just gotten to his feet and had the floor pulled out from under him. He landed on his backside, cursing.

“I should have known.” She turned on a flashlight with a red filter lens. In its glow, her dark hair looked like ink.

“Didn’t Roddy tell the forklift driver to take it easy?”

“I think he was.” Lauren crabbed across the floor to sit next to Mercer as the train jerked again. “I feel like we’ve been stuffed inside an industrial clothes dryer.”

The train’s motion settled to the metronomic clacking of wheels over rails. It was a rhythm Mercer had always enjoyed. For a moment he could forget where he was, what he was about to do, and the Beretta 92 hanging in a nylon shoulder holster.

He and Lauren had ninety minutes before the freight train reached the Hatcherly terminal at Balboa. There, the last three cars would be decoupled while the remainder of the train continued to the larger container terminal farther along the canal. They had gone over their plan for two days straight, knew the layout of Hatcherly’s facility from diagrams drawn by Roddy’s cousin, Victor. Lauren had even taken Mercer to a pistol range to test his assertion that he knew how to handle a weapon. Though she’d beaten him at distance shooting, he had an intuitive aim for pop-up targets that she couldn’t match.

They had nothing to do for the next hour and a half and neither seemed willing, or able, to make idle conversation as the miles stretched out behind them. Mercer’s mind drifted back twenty hours, when he’d been eating off a teppanyaki grill at a Japanese restaurant with Maria Barber.

The meal had been delicious. The company remained as a bad taste in his mouth.

By the time Mercer had felt strong enough to attempt the infiltration, Victor Herrara wasn’t scheduled to work until the next night, leaving Mercer with a free evening. He’d hoped to spend it with Lauren but obligation had forced him to call Maria. A week had passed since she’d learned of her husband’s death, and while he got the impression that the loss wouldn’t cast her adrift, he felt he owed her a call. He didn’t like Maria, didn’t trust her and wouldn’t have called if she hadn’t been the wife of a friend.

She’d answered her phone so cheerily that he’d almost cut the connection. “Hello, Maria. It’s Philip Mercer.”

“Who? Oh, Mercer. Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for your call for ages.” The exaggeration in her voice made him think she’d been drinking.

“I had a little stomach trouble,” he answered warily.

“You’re feeling better now, yes? You promised me we’d go out when you got back.” Mercer recalled they were supposed to meet for a church service for her husband but that wasn’t what she was talking about now. “Are you free tonight?” she asked.

Why he’d said yes would remain a mystery, but he did.

“Wonderful. Where are you staying? I’ll pick you up.”

Mercer knew exactly why he didn’t answer that question. Their earlier conversations had pegged her as a gold digger, and if she learned he was staying at the Caesar Park he’d never get rid of her. “I’m at a hostel loaded with peace corps volunteers near some bus stop. Pretty nasty place, I might add.”

“Oh. Well, do you like Japanese food? I just love how they cook in front of you and do all those tricks with the knives.”

“Sure, that’d be fine.”

She gave him the address of Ginza Teppanyaki on Calle D and said she’d be there at eight.

Maria was sitting at the bar when he arrived and she leapt to her feet when she saw him, squealing like a long-separated lover. Her blouse was open low enough to allow her lace bra to peek out as her breasts slid against each other. Her jeans were so tight that the deep valley where they rucked between her buttocks carried around to the front in an obvious display of her sex. Mercer felt a flash of animal arousal, then annoyance at himself. Not only was she Gary’s widow, but such overstatement was truly vulgar. He had to wipe a smear of lipstick and saliva from his cheek and mentally brush aside her look of annoyance that he’d turned his face at the last instant.

In minutes, they were seated at a large grill table with some German businessmen who swilled thimble-sized sakes. At first Maria delighted at the chef’s skill with a knife and spatula, but when the young Asian missed flipping a shrimp tail into his hat she berated him in angry Spanish.

She would have caused a scene had a waitress not arrived with her third Mai Tai. Mercer had barely touched his beer.

“Do you want to know about Gary’s funeral?” Mercer asked, because she hadn’t.

“I suppose.”

He’d already decided not to tell her the truth, knowing that she wouldn’t care. Also he didn’t want her to have any excuse to see him again. “It went fine. The police arrived a few hours after you left and determined it was a guerrilla attack. My mugging in Paris and Gary’s murder really was just a coincidence. When I escorted Gary to El Real, those three guards I hired stayed behind. I’m not sure why. No one told me.”

“And no sign of Gary’s treasure?” She failed at hiding her avarice behind a neutral tone.

Mercer shook his head. “Listen, I always liked Gary. He was a good man. But I never believed there was a treasure. I’d told him that when he sold his gold mine in Alaska and started looking for lost cities and quick wealth. I think deep down he knew it too, and just kept looking for the fun of it. It was the kind of thing he’d do.”

“Yes, it was,” she agreed with a trace of regret. For herself, Mercer thought, not her quixotic husband. “What about the book Gary wanted?”

“Oh, that,” Mercer said indifferently. “It’s in Washington. I got kind of paranoid and didn’t want to bring it to Panama until I knew what had happened to Gary so I mailed it home from Paris. It seems ridiculous now. If you want it, I can send it to you when I get back.”

Maria’s eyes drifted around the room as she considered her answer. “It meant something to Gary. Not me.”

“I understand.”

“It was in El Real you got sick?” she asked to change the subject.

“On the flight back to Panama City. I went straight from the airport to a hospital. I only got out two days ago.”

“Poor baby.” She placed a hand on his leg. “Are you going to stay in Panama?”

Mercer shifted away as much as the cramped seating would allow. “No reason to. I’ve got a flight tomorrow morning.”

“That leaves us tonight.” The implied invitation made Mercer more than uncomfortable. It made him ill.

Struggling to keep revulsion out of his voice, he replied, “I don’t think so. My flight’s early and well . . .” He trailed off, hoping she’d get the hint.

“Because I was Gary’s wife?”

“Well, yes.”

She lit a cigarette. “Did he think of me when he was out in the jungle wasting money that should have been mine?”

“Maria, I don’t know what happened between you and Gary, but I just want to go home and remember him the way I knew him.”

“And what about me?” The alcohol glint in her eyes turned feral. “How will you remember me? Or will you even think about how he left me nearly penniless? A widow with no future?”

Mercer had had enough of her petulance. Recalling her tears when they reached Gary’s camp, he knew this spoiled image of her was the correct one. Typical Gary. He’d wanted to save a barrio kid and got himself a grade-A bitch. Mercer slapped money on the table edge and stood. “Something tells me you’ll be okay.”

He left the restaurant followed by her shrill curses.

 

The train’s distant whistle snapped Mercer back to the present. He rubbed his cheek where she’d kissed him as if he could still feel her lips and the tip of her tongue. He shuddered.

“You okay?” Lauren Vanik asked. “Even in here I can tell something’s bothering you.”

He looked to her. How different the two women were.

Thank God. The crimson light distilled her face to ruddy highlights and impenetrable shadow. Her hair was now tucked under a watch cap that matched her black BDUs. She had a mirror poised to begin applying greasepaint.

“Just thinking about my friend Gary and his wife.” He readjusted the fifty-foot coil of climbing rope secured to the back of his web belt.

“I take it your date didn’t go well.”

Mercer hadn’t told her many details. “Not a date. Just a very sad get-together. I wonder if Gary knew what kind of person she was or if she hid it from him on those days he was back home.”

Lauren handed him the wax stick so he could dull any shine from his face and hands. “A woman that manipulative can hide her true self so easily it becomes second nature. And I hate to say that most men wouldn’t pick up on the subtle signs. Another woman can spot a phony in a second, but it’s not in a guy’s nature to look for the small clues. Believe me, your buddy died thinking he had the perfect wife.”

The conversation ended when they felt the train decelerate, the play in the couplings snapping closed like a string of firecrackers. “We’re close,” Mercer whispered, even though a shout would barely penetrate the container’s walls.

Another ten minutes trickled by as the last three railcars were detached from the train and shuttled into Hatcherly Consolidated’s main yard. They heard an occasional muffled yell from outside and the blast from a signalman’s whistle as the train was positioned for the forklifts to unload the two containers placed on each of the cars. Then came a metallic crash and suddenly they were in motion again as the crate was lifted from the train. Hopefully by Victor Herrara. If something went wrong, and he wasn’t the one driving them through the terminal, Mercer and Lauren could easily find themselves trapped in one of a hundred containers lashed to the deck of a ship on its way to the West Coast or Asia.

After bouncing over numerous sets of tracks and kidney-punishing rents in the pavement, the forklift eventually reached its destination and the container was lowered to the asphalt with a hydraulic sigh. Lauren extinguished her light. They waited for what seemed like an eternity until Victor rapped on the container with a hammer—his signal that it was clear.

A moment later the door swung open and Mercer stepped out into the moist night. In front of them loomed an enormous crane specially designed to move freight containers, its boom like a medieval battering ram. All around them towered ranks of containers like steel building blocks. In the distant glow of gantry lights Mercer could see one of the warehouses Victor had drawn on his map, orienting him to the layout of the terminal. Victor had placed them where Hatcherly stored their empty containers, a paved field that stretched for acres.

Victor was larger than his cousin, with dirty hair tied in a ponytail and a rather dim expression. Through the smoke of a dangling cigarette, he and Lauren spoke in low tones. Victor kept looking over his shoulder to where the bulk of the facility’s work was carried out, troubled that he had no excuse for driving the container so far away if a foreman questioned him.

“
Sí, sí, sí. Gracias
.” Lauren turned to Mercer while Victor looked longingly at the cab of his Kalmar 3500 reach-stacker crane. “We’re in luck. Victor says that there’s some big operation going on in the smallest warehouse. In the past couple of weeks Hatcherly’s completely emptied the building and no one other than a few Chinese workers have been allowed in. Last night a special cargo was brought in from a Chinese freighter. He thinks it’s being transferred out tonight.”

“Does he know what it is?”

“No idea, but he said that security around the building’s been beefed up.”

Mercer recalled Victor’s detailed drawing. “Wait, the smallest warehouse is the one that sits by itself surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire.”

“Yup.”

“Damn.” He thought furiously, finally looking up when he got an idea. Lost in the darkness above them were the guy wires for the cableway crane system, a grid of heavy-gauge steel lines that crisscrossed the terminal like a spider web. “Ask Victor if the cableway goes near the warehouse.”

“Yes,” she translated. “One of the cables passes in front of the building.”

“Can we climb up a support tower to reach the main cables and then crawl over the security fence to the warehouse?”

Lauren asked the stevedore and translated his answer. “Yes, but the cables are eighty feet off the ground so they don’t interfere with the stacked containers or vehicles.” Victor said something else and Lauren blanched under her camo paint. “Damn. The main cableways are made of three wires, two for holding the container grapple and one to supply electricity. It’s always hot.”

Their high-wire act just got doubly dangerous. “Ask him if there’s another way.”

Victor looked Mercer in the eye and said no.

“You afraid of heights?” Mercer asked. Lauren shook her head. “Electricity?” She nodded. “We’re in the same boat. How long until the train comes through to take us back to Cristobal?”

“Two hours.”

“Tell Victor we’ll be waiting.” Before setting off to find one of the support towers, Victor gave them each a pair of leather gloves he kept in his giant forklift.