Tortured Spirits (14 page)

“Don't be alarmed,” Humphrey said. “The white snake represents white vodou, which is a force for good. If
someone did put it there, it was not with the intention of harming you.”

Jake heard the squeaking of brakes down the street. A moment later, Maria looked past him, her eyes widening, and the couple eating behind them on the patio leapt to their feet.

“Humphrey!” the woman said, pointing.

Jake turned around as four men dressed in camouflage military uniforms ran onto the sidewalk two stores down. They wore red berets and carried machine guns.

When Jake turned back, he saw the woman and the man draw black handguns from the folds of their clothing. A burst of machine gun fire ripped the air before they had a chance to shoot, and they danced like puppets, crimson wounds appearing in their torsos.

“Run!” Humphrey reached into his tackle box and brought out a Walther PPK.

Jake and Maria bolted from their seats and onto the patio. Jake jumped over the metal railing and turned to help Maria, but she sailed past him, her handbag trailing her shoulder.

Humphrey fired two rounds, and the four soldiers ducked behind cars for cover. Maria took off down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, and Jake ran after her. He heard Humphrey's footsteps behind them.

“Cross the street!” Humphrey said.

But Maria continued sprinting toward the nearest corner, and Jake followed.

Automatic gunfire tore into the trees around them and punched holes in the parked cars.

Humphrey screamed, and Jake turned around as Maria reached the corner. Humphrey lay facedown in the street, a puddle of blood spreading across his back. He raised his head, making eye contact with Jake, then hurled his gun forward.

The Walther struck the pavement, and Jake ran for it. He grabbed the weapon, but when he turned to follow Maria, gunfire sparked a line in the street between them, so he headed for the opposite corner across the street. As he rounded that corner, gunfire blew chips off the bricks.

Flattening his back against the wall, Jake saw Maria standing across the street, face white and mouth open. She stepped forward, and gunfire sparked against the pole of a street sign on the corner. She flinched.

“Stay back!” Jake said. Crouching low, he peeked around the corner.

The four soldiers were jogging in their direction in the middle of the street. When they saw him, they kneeled and fired their weapons.

He ducked as rounds hammered at the bricks. There was no way he could take them out with the little handgun.

“Jake!”

Stretching his legs, he leaned sideways and cocked his arm like a discus thrower. Then he hurled the gun across the street. It hit the sidewalk and spun past Maria. She retrieved the semiautomatic and stood facing him.

“Run!” Jake said, standing.

“No!”

“Maybe one of us will make it!”

“I won't leave you!” Her face turned bright red.

“Do it!”

With tears streaking her face, Maria turned and ran. She glanced over her shoulder at him, then looked ahead and ran faster.

With machine guns cracking behind him, Jake took off in the opposite direction as Maria. Whatever street he was on had fewer shops and buildings than Rue de Verger did.

A group of men drank bottled beer outside a hardware store. One wore a straw hat; all wore stunned expressions. Jake didn't know if the eruption of gunfire or the sight of a Caucasian man running for his life had startled them. They crowded into the doorway as he ran past them.

“Run, senor!”

Jake heard three pops in the distance behind him. The Walther. He prayed Maria would make it.

As he reached the next corner, a jeep occupied by four soldiers careened around it, cutting through the intersection and passing him.

“Le voilà!” a soldier said over the engine's roar.

Jake turned the corner onto a wide street with buildings spaced far apart. A garbage truck idled up the block, and he pumped his arms as a sanitation worker dumped the contents of a receptacle into the compacter. Hearing the jeep rev its engine behind him, he sprinted around the truck. The engine's roar grew louder, closer.

Jake veered to his right, putting the truck between him and the military vehicle as the soldiers unleashed a volley of gunfire. Without slowing down, he ran up the concrete steps of a deserted building with a boarded-up doorway. He ripped the plywood free as the jeep screeched to a stop and backed up.

With no idea what to expect, he went inside.

Maria ran down the street, tears streaming from her eyes.

Goddamn it!

She didn't want to abandon Jake without a weapon, but he had ordered her to do so, and she knew he was right. There had been no way for them to reach each other without being torn to pieces by the machine guns.

Poor Humphrey! She had never seen a man killed before, let alone someone gunned down trying to help her.

Grateful she had worn sneakers, Maria ran as fast as she could. Thank God she had only resumed smoking two days earlier and still had her wind. Machine guns roared behind her, and bullets ricocheted off a metal mailbox to her left. Ducking into the doorway of a rug store, she turned and
fired the Walther three times, driving the soldiers back around the corner. She had never killed anyone, much less soldiers on foreign soil, and she had no intention of starting now.

Sprinting to the next corner, she turned left, heading in the direction of Coucher du Soleil on a street parallel to Rue de Verger. Maybe she could somehow reach the Fiesta.

No car keys
…

A woman getting out of a dark green Dodge froze when she saw Maria running straight toward her.

Raising the gun, Maria angled her body sideways, sandwiching the woman against the open door. “Donne moi tes clefs!” she said in her best French.

With her face contorting, the woman held out her car keys, which Maria snatched as she threw herself behind the wheel. Tossing the Walther onto the seat beside her, she jammed the key into the ignition, cranked the engine, and stomped on the gas pedal. The Dodge jumped forward, the open door crashing against a parked car and slamming shut.

Maria sped down the narrow street, machine gun fire shattering the windshields of the parked cars around her. A man with a terrified expression jumped off his bike and hid behind a pickup. Maria knew if she continued down the street another block or two and turned left, passing the area where the soldiers had attacked, she could find her way onto the highway.

Fuck that.

Instead, she turned right. By circling that block, she could head toward Rue de Verger.

Back toward Jake.

Jake stopped inside the abandoned factory just long enough to get his bearings. Fading sunlight seeped through the tall window spaces, illuminating broken shards of glass on the floor. He had entered an enormous former plant with one gargantuan room opening into another. Fallen bricks and cinder blocks surrounded the columns supporting the high ceiling, and gaping holes in the walls permitted views of other rooms.

At the far end, easily two hundred feet away, he spotted a stairway and ran toward it. His feet crushed glass, kicked gravel, and scraped cement. Green stalactites hung from the ceiling like daggers ready to fall. Hearing footsteps behind him, he angled right so a cracked wall hid him from view. He ducked through a hole in another wall, stepped over the skeleton of a cat, and hurried past a rusted industrial oil tank.

Men shouted behind him, and he flattened his back against the right wall of the stairway as he charged up the stairs, which were covered with clumps of dirt and debris.

Reaching the second floor, Jake was surprised to see trees growing in the middle of the floor and through a wide hole in the ceiling. He passed piles of knocked over filing cabinets and found himself in a long corridor with a dirt floor lined with doorways lacking doors. Scavengers had salvaged everything they could. Sunlight glared through an opening in the wall at the end of the corridor. He ran toward the light.

Excited voices rose from below.

Entering a room to his right, he ran past an open safe to an empty window space and glanced down at the sidewalk. His stomach tightened.

Three jeeps and two canvas-covered military transport trucks occupied the street, and dozens of armed soldiers charged into the building.

For a moment he wondered what would happen if he leapt out into space, aiming for the canvas, like they did in the movies. He decided he would break his neck.

A cacophony of raised voices and thunderous footsteps filled the stairway behind him. Then he heard the deafening sound of a fire horn.

Maria raced toward the intersection where she and Jake had parted ways. She had no intention of abandoning him in the heart of Pavot City. Passing Rue de Verger, she glanced down the street and saw Humphrey's corpse fifty yards ahead of the jeep the soldiers had arrived in. All four soldiers stood in the street, brandishing their guns.

That isn't right,
she thought.
What the hell is going on?

A car heading toward her stopped at the next intersection, and a pair of Humvees passed her. She stomped on the brake, her pulse racing. When the street cleared, she drove slowly forward and stopped at the corner, where she spied half a dozen military vehicles and a score of soldiers armed with machine guns in front of an abandoned factory.
The approaching car passed her, followed by another.

“Son of a fucking bitch, Jake!”

She grabbed the Walther and laid it between her legs for easier access. How could she reach Jake?

Another Humvee drove by and tears obscured her vision.

Then a fire horn wailed, and in the rearview mirror she saw both of the cars that had passed her come to a sudden stop. An oncoming car across the street stopped as well. The vehicles settled as their drivers killed the engines.

She winced, torn with indecision. Then she turned the car around and floored it.

Jake ran through one doorway after another, passing overturned desks, typewriters, and rusted electrical equipment. Seeing no reason to make it easier for them to identify Maria, he took his camera out of his pocket and dropped it down a hole in the wall. He told himself there had to be a stairway at the end of the corridor, where the sunlight flooded through the window space.