Damage Control

CHAPTER SEVEN

To call this rutted pathway a road was to overstate the case by half. Steep and unpaved, the dirt-and-grass clearing was barely wide enough for the Toyota, and it was steep enough to make the little engine scream. It was going to be a very long twelve-point-one miles. The jungle pressed in from both sides, and overhead, the canopy was so thick as to render Jonathan’s party invisible from the air. No wonder the aerial map was so unhelpful.

“What are those plants with the great big leaves?” Tristan asked from the backseat. “They’re everywhere.”

“I call them the plants with the big leaves,” Jonathan said. He’d never been a flora-and-fauna kind of guy. In his experience, terrain and indigenous living things were either tactical tools or they were irrelevant. As far as he knew, the plants with the big leaves weren’t a source of food, so their only relevance was their ability to provide cover for people who wanted to do him harm. They unnecessarily lengthened the trip.

At this rate, Jonathan figured it to be at least a sixty-minute trip to the village. Every few hundred yards, the road bulged to the right, providing space to pull over to allow an approaching vehicle to get by, or for a faster vehicle to pass from behind.

It turned out to be a ninety-three-minute trip.

As Boxers drove the SUV up the steep hill into the village of Santa Margarita, people on the narrow street cast curious glances their way. Jonathan guessed that white faces were rare in these parts, and that a collection of three was unheard of. Throw in the cammies and the weapons, and the locals had every right to turn away as they did, pretending not to see. Some turned their backs, some stepped into buildings, but in general, everyone looked everywhere but at them.

“These folks are scared,” Jonathan said.

“What’s your bet?” Boxers asked. “Are they afraid of us, or are they afraid of getting caught in the act of something?”

“Why are we letting ourselves be seen like this?” Tristan asked.

“Because I don’t know how to be invisible,” Boxers quipped. To Jonathan: “The kid’s got a point. I don’t like all this attention. Scared people drop dimes on the people that scare them.”

Indeed they do, Jonathan thought.

Though small, the village was colorful, every building painted a different pastel. Jonathan figured that the colors helped to make their drab lives a little easier. Yes, that was jingoism, and no, he wasn’t going to apologize for it.

“Drop a dime?” Tristan asked. “You mean call the police or something?”

“That’s what I meant,” Boxers said, “but that ain’t gonna happen.” He pointed through the windshield to a squatty building on the left side of the road. “There it is,” he said. He turned the wheel and headed in that direction.

“What are we doing?” Tristan asked.

“Not now,” Jonathan said. As they pulled to a stop, he unbuckled his seat belt and opened his door while Boxers did the same, in his case grabbing his ruck.

“That’s not a church,” Tristan said.

“Stay put,” Jonathan ordered. “This won’t take long.”

“What are you doing?”

Jonathan winked. “Stacking the odds in our favor.”

Digger and the Big Guy walked with purpose to the front door of the little brick and block building that they knew to be the telephone substation. He noted the concrete roof, which eliminated his biggest fear regarding what lay ahead.

Boxers asked, “Do you have the key?”

“Always.” Jonathan pulled a leather pouch containing his lock picks from a pocket in his sleeve. After checking to make sure that the door was indeed locked, he inserted the tension bar with one hand, and the rake with the other. Five seconds later, the door floated open, revealing the electronic guts of a telephone switching station. “Need help?”

Boxers gave him an annoyed look. “I’m offended. Just keep an eye out.”

While Jonathan stood at the open door, Boxers entered and walked to the far corner of the twelve-by-twelve single-room structure. The Big Guy pulled two orange thermite grenades out of his ruck. He placed one in a panel box that that looked like a knot of multicolored spaghetti, and staged the second one atop a larger panel that had to be the building’s main electrical supply, closer to the door. Moving back to the first one in the back of the room, he braced the grenade with his left hand, his thumb pressing the safety spoon, and pulled the pin with his right. Because thermite grenades had notoriously short fuses, he stepped back quickly as he let the spoon fly. Three seconds later, the grenade belched out a white-hot, forty-five-hundred-degree ball of fire that consumed the panel and its contents, filling the building with smoke.

He repeated the process on the building’s power supply on the way out, and then rejoined Jonathan, closing the door behind him. “I hate those damn things,” he mumbled as he headed back to the truck. “They don’t even go boom.”

“What did you do?” Tristan gasped. “Did you set the building on fire?”

“Not the building,” Jonathan said. “Just the contents. The brick won’t burn.” They were moving again.

“We can’t afford the risk of someone making a phone call,” Jonathan explained before Tristan could get the question out.

“Aren’t the police going to come for the fire?” Tristan asked.

“Who’s going to call them?” Jonathan countered. “It’s a gamble, but I think it’s a safe one.”

“You think it’s safe?”

Jonathan let it go.

A few minutes later, they turned a corner to the left, and the hills flattened out to reveal what appeared to be a much older part of the town. A cluster of worn wooden homes surrounded a circular patch of ground-maybe a half acre-that probably would have been grass-covered if given a chance, but that frequent wear had left a churned mess of clotted mud. Presently, a scrum of children-boys and girls aged, say, seven to twelve-was playing soccer in the space, several displaying remarkable skill at the game.

The church of Santa Margarita dominated the western edge of the circle, backlit by the late-afternoon sun. To Jonathan’s eye, the place looked more Methodist than Catholic, its thirty-foot steeple casting a shadow across the soccer field. No larger than twenty by thirty feet, the place had clearly been built with a lot of love. It gleamed with a fresh coat of white paint.

“Those kids are good,” Tristan said of the soccer players.

Boxers slowed the vehicle at the edge of the field and craned his neck to survey the area. Jonathan did the same, looking for unusual clusters of people, or physical movement that might indicate an impending ambush.

“What are we waiting for?” Tristan whispered from behind.

Jonathan ignored him. Nothing he saw gave him pause. Adults of varying ages sat in front of their tiny homes, watching the children either from stoops or from lawn chairs. Most seemed engrossed in the game.

Jonathan pulled a digital monocular from a pouch on his vest and brought it to his eye for a closer look. In his peripheral vision, he saw Boxers doing the same thing.

“I don’t see any weapons,” the Big Guy said.

Nor did Jonathan. “I count eight adults plus the children.”

“Agreed,” Boxers confirmed. “But there have to be more adults than that, just to account for the children.”

“I wish I could see a priest,” Jonathan mumbled. He brought the monocular down, turned it off, and slipped it back into its pouch. “Okay, Tristan,” he said. “You ready to take a walk?”