The Viking Funeral

Chapter 43

IT WAS AN empty structure: no windows, a tin roof, wooden shelves, and a poured-concrete floor. It looked like a supply locker. Once the door was locked, Tremaine sat glumly on the floor while Jody and Shane began pacing.

"What now?" Tremaine challenged, his low voice turned flat and cold as slate.

"Okay, look, this is a Colombian military unit," Jody said slowly. "America has diplomatic relations with Colombia, so we try and get a message out to the U. S. embassy, get them to cut through all this, get the embassy to release us into U. S. custody." He looked up into Tremaine's angry, disbelieving stare.

"You're kiddin' me, right?" Tremaine glared at Jody. "Didja forget, we're supposed t'be dead."

"We're also laundering fifty million in Colombian drug cash," Shane said. "If we call the U. S. embassy, we're not gonna get released; we're gonna get extradited."

"Okay, Hot Sauce, then you tell me… Whatta you wanna do?"

"I'll tell you one thing," Shane said. "There's something very wrong about this military base. Did you see the weapons those troops were carrying?"

"Yeah, what of it?" Jody growled.

"Some of it was prototype stuff, brand-new Beretta 92s. But I also saw some twenty-year-old Chinese assault rifles. I think one of those guys even had an antique Lee Enfield. He'd be better off using that thing as a club."

"So what?"

"Doesn't the army of a sovereign nation generally issue standardized equipment?" Shane continued. "Doesn't the Colombian government supply its soldiers with unitized ordnance? These guys are packing everything from auto-mags to slingshots."

"He's right," Tremaine said, looking up with concern.

"So what am I supposed to do about it?"

"Nothing. I'm just wondering why. And what happened to Paco Brazos? They pulled him outta the car with us, but they didn't put him in here. How come?"

"Maybe he drinks beer with these assholes. Who the fuck knows." Suddenly Jody didn't have very good answers.

"This afternoon we rolled in here with almost a billion contraband cigarettes, right past those guards," Shane said. "Nobody gave a damn. You saw that building of Paco's… How much contraband had to go past this base, unobstructed, to fill up that warehouse, not to mention all the other San Andresitos?"

"Okay, so somebody's getting paid off," Jody said, frustrated. "Stop asking all these dumb questions."

"Let the man talk," Tremaine said, turning toward Shane. "Whatta you thinkin'?"

"You were saying that Jose told you about the political situation in Colombia. I've read some department one sheets about it-it's supposed to be treacherous," Shane said, still pacing slowly in the locked room. He stopped and looked over at Jody, who was a few feet away, a strange expression on his face. "What is it? Do you know something?" Shane prodded.

"Yeah, that's what Papa Joe told me, too," Jody said.

"What'd he say?" Tremaine demanded.

"To tell you the truth, when he told me, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention. He said something about-"

"What? Come on, man," Tremaine rose off the floor, moved across the room, then grabbed Jody's shirt and yanked him up close. "What did Jose tell you, man?"

"Get your hands off me, Inky Dink. Who the fuck you think you're pawing?"

"I wanna know who those green jackets out there belong to." "Then get your fuckin' hands off me!"

There was a long, electric moment before Tremaine finally let go of Jody's shirt and took a step back.

"What did Jose Mondragon tell you?" Shane asked again.

"I don't remember, exactly. I'd been drinking. Something about two Marxist armies fighting with the government, or some shit. He said there's a lot of kidnapping out here. These Marxist guerrillas snatch people, mostly U. S. oil-company executives working on desert drilling rigs, or any Anglo they can get their hands on. They ransom you back to your family or your company-whoever will pay the most money to keep you alive. He was telling me about this insurance you can buy, kidnapping insurance. He said nobody from Blackstone or All-American will set foot inside Colombia without it."

"You tellin' me we coulda got kidnapping insurance?" Tremaine said. Now he was right in Jody's face.

"Inky Dink, you put your hands on me again, I'll knock your lights out. How we gonna buy insurance? We're all supposed to be dead."

"We got aliases. We coulda worked somethin' out through Jose," Tremaine shot back.

"We're not a bunch a fucking oil-company pussies. Nobody's got the stones to kidnap us." "Am I just imagining this, or are we all locked in a goddamned windowless room here?" Tremaine glowered. "Fuck you," Jody growled. Shane stepped between them. "What else did Jose tell you?"

"Just that there are these two leftist armies that prey on the San Andresitos and on each other. All the San Andresitos pay a percentage of their black-market profits to the guerrillas so they'll let the contraband go on into Colombia-a political contribution made at gunpoint."

"Who are the two armies?" Shane asked. "They've both got acronyms… One is like RAFC. Stands for something like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. And the other is NLA, the National Liberation Army."

"Sounds t'me like you paid more than a little attention. You got all this down pretty good," Tremaine challenged.

"What're you tryin' to say?" Jody threatened softly. "You got something on your mind, lay it down, asswipe."

"How 'bout we focus on the damn problem," Shane said. "If these guys aren't regular army, then is that good for us, or bad?"

"One other thing Jose told me… There's another guy up here. It's probably not important, but Jose said he's the joker in the deck, an ex-Argentine army colonel who leads a death squad-a right-wing fanatic with white-blond hair. He supposedly trained in the U. S. at the School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia."

"Never heard of it." Tremaine glowered.

"It's some kinda counterterrorist school, run by our Pentagon. Latin American army officers from OAS get nominated by their governments to go there. Instructors from the Pentagon teach greaseball commandos how to get info out of captured commies, how to pull out fingernails with pliers-shit like that."

"I love it," Tremaine said.

"Papa Joe told me this Argentine colonel gets off by torturing and killing."

"What's his name?" Shane asked.

"Don't know his name, but they call him the 'White Angel.' Papa Joe said The Hague finally charged him with war crimes committed while he was in Argentine Intelligence. He was sentenced to death in Argentina, but he escaped and fled to Colombia. He settled up here, in the desert."

"So I guess we got two choices," Shane said. "If these guys are regular Colombian army, we play the American embassy card. If they're Marxist guerrillas, we get down on our knees, start begging, give them a cut of what we got in the bank in Aruba."

"And if we been captured by this other dude, the White Angel?" Tremaine asked.

"It's not him," Jody said. "He's a right-wing extremist… An outlaw hiding from the government in the desert."

"But isn't the Colombian government a right-wing democracy?" Shane asked. "Wouldn't the White Angel be closer politically to them than to a buncha Marxist guerrillas?"

Nobody answered Shane's question. Finally Tremaine changed the subject.

"You're an asshole, ya know that, Jody?" he said. "We coulda had insurance. We had us some insurance, then we coulda got the fuck out of here."

Jody took a swing at him, knocking Tremaine back hard against the brick wall. In an instant, the two were at each other, snarling like animals.

"This is great," Shane muttered.

They came hurtling back toward him. Shane tried to get out of the way, but the room was small, so he was pinned as the two crashed hard against him. He caught an elbow in the head and went down under a pile of flying fists and sweating bodies. He finally managed to roll free and get up. He grabbed Jody, who had gained control and was now on top of Tremaine, pummeling him with both fists.

Shane yanked Jody off and threw him against the far wall. "We got enough trouble without this!" Shane shouted.

Tremaine wiped some blood off his mouth with the back of his hand, while Jody slid down the wall and sat on the floor.

"You fucking jerk-offs," Jody mumbled. "How'd I get stuck with such pussies?"

"You picked us!" Tremaine shot back.

They sat on opposite walls of the room, all staring at their feet.

An hour later the door opened and a tall, handsome Hispanic man they had never seen before entered the room. He was wearing a perfectly cut tan suit and a red silk ascot. He kept his jacket buttoned despite the oppressive heat inside the windowless, metal-roofed room. There were two armed guards beside him, but they weren't adolescent teenagers with bristling chin whiskers-these men had expressionless eyes like dark holes cut into cardboard.

"Good evening," the man said. His English was perfect, and he spoke with an American accent. "My name is Santander Cortez and I'm sorry you have been forcibly detained. I know you probably think that because of our business difficulties, I mean you harm, but let me assure you this is not the case. I hold Paco Brazos responsible for leaving me out of your cigarette transaction."

"You got that right," Jody said, standing.

"And you, I wager, are Mr. Dean?"

"Yes."

"I would like to discuss options with you, if that is convenient." He was smiling warmly.

"Sounds good."

"You other two gentlemen, if you'll please bear with me, I think everything can be amicably arranged. I'm sorry if this has been stressful. I'll be back to you two shortly." He motioned to Jody. "Mr. Dean?"

Jody moved across the room and exited with the tall, handsome man. The door was locked behind them.

"Maybe we finally caught us a break," Tremaine said.

"Yeah," Shane answered. But one thing troubled him about Santander Cortez.

The man had a full head of snow-white hair.