Hostage Zero

CHAPTER THIRTY — S IX

After taking Evan’s picture, El Jefe assigned a new guard to escort the boy farther into the jungle, past the cluster of huts that he presumed to be the headquarters for whatever was going on.

Evan had never been so exhausted-never in his entire life. Every muscle ached, and every square inch of skin screamed from the onslaught of God only knew how many different varieties of bugs. He’d known from the History Channel and Discovery that prehistoric times still reigned in the jungles, with man-eating plants and insects, but Jesus. How did the people who lived here get anything done when three-quarters of every calorie was burned up by either slapping something or scratching the bite that an unslapped something left behind?

Only a few minutes into the hike, they emerged over the crest of a hill onto a rolling vista that might once have been beautiful. There were fewer trees here, affording a view of thick ground foliage that swept downhill from where he stood to a little valley, and then uphill again on the other side. Evan wasn’t good at judging distances, but he guessed that it had to be a half mile or more between where he stood and the opposite peak.

The field of bushes had an undulating feel to it, as if it were alive. For an instant, Evan thought it might be the wind, but the rhythm wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. When he realized the truth of it, his heart skipped a beat. The place was alive with children scattered among the bushes, working their asses off stripping leaves from the branches and stuffing them into sacks that were slung over their shoulders.

He saw only boys among the workers and only men-some of them teenagers-among the guards who watched over them. The children all wore tattered remnants of what had once been poor people’s rags, though some wore nothing at all. Evan pegged the workers’ ages at somewhere between eight and maybe fourteen years old.

Evan’s arrival startled a soldier who looked like he might have been sleeping. He jumped when one of Evan’s escorts called his name, and he fumbled with his rifle-an AK-47, Evan thought-but then stopped when he recognized them. The guard who called his name had been part of Evan’s parade ever since he’d first met up with Oscar in the field. He spoke with rapid words and an angry tone to the man who’d been sleeping, and the guilty guard looked more terrified with every word that was being fired at him.

Evan’s guard finished his diatribe by shoving the younger man in the chest hard enough to make him stumble over his own feet and fall backward into the undergrowth.

Evan didn’t understand a word of it, but he was pretty sure he got the gist. “ Estupido ” probably meant in Spanish more or less what it sounded like in English.

It wasn’t lost on him that his captors treated everyone else much more harshly than they treated him. It’s not that they were nice-far from it. It was more as if he weren’t even there-better still, as if he were a dog or a piece of furniture. Whichever, he was obviously a valuable dog or piece of furniture.

Finished with delivering his tongue-lashing and obviously pleased with himself, Evan’s guard led the way into the endless field of bushes. He said something into his radio, and then they stopped again. A couple of minutes later, a man emerged from the brush. He was very tall, very black, and wore more or less the same tattered-shorts uniform as the workers. On his belt, though, he carried a coiled whip; in his hand, a well-worn Louisville Slugger baseball bat.

Evan’s stomach knotted in fear. This man with the glistening skin and powerful muscles was bad. Evil was written all over him just as surely as if it had been drawn with Magic Marker.

The presence of the new man transformed Evan’s guard from abusive bully to timid wimp. As the two of them spoke, it was clear that Evan was the topic of conversation, and the angry set of the black man’s face told the boy that he wasn’t welcome here.

When their brief conversation was done, the guard put a hand on Evan’s shoulder and pushed him closer to the black man. In the staccato conversation that accompanied the push, Evan heard his name.

“Ah, so you are the prince,” the black man said. His tone was leaden with sarcasm. “Welcome to your new home.” He held out his hand.

Evan took it. He was going to say, “Pleased to meet you,” but before he had the chance, the man’s grip closed like a talon.

“My name is Victor,” he said. “You are mine. You will do what I say. If you are too slow or if I am in a sour mood, I will hit you with my whip. If you try to run away, I will break your legs with my baseball bat. Do you have any questions?”

Evan found himself transfixed by the way the man handled the bat. When he talked about breaking his legs, he twirled it in a manner that projected perfect intimacy with its potential to inflict damage. Evan shook his head no-a silent lie. He was filled with questions-consumed by them-but nothing was more clear to him at the moment than the fact that the correct answer was no, he had nothing to ask.

“ Bueno,” Victor said. He then spoke rapidly to the guard, who laughed and walked away after giving Evan an angry glare that the boy felt he hadn’t earned.

Victor poked at Evan’s belly with the baseball bat, but he bent in the middle and jumped back, avoiding contact. Victor laughed. “Good reflexes,” he said. “They will serve you well among the other workers. Come.”

He led the way down the hill into the thickness of the bushes. As if it were even possible, the heat and the humidity both doubled. Most of the bushes were taller than Evan, and the height of the foliage blocked whatever semblance of breeze there once had been. Within a minute, his skin was slippery with sweat, which in turn summoned more insects.

“What is this place?” Evan asked.

“Your home.”

The answer was intended to frighten him, and it succeeded. But Evan wasn’t going to give his captor the satisfaction of showing it. “I meant the bushes,” he said. “What are they?”

Victor scowled. “You have hair like a girl.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Perhaps I should cut it off.”

Evan looked him straight in the eye. “If you want to, you will. I’m not big enough to stop you.” Actually, right now, in this heat, he sort of hoped he would. He’d have welcomed a buzz cut. But he sensed that these people wouldn’t let him cut his hair even if he begged for it. Whatever this was about, taking his picture was an important part of it. Since they’d already shot his photo twice in the last couple of days, it only made sense that they’d want to take it again, and if that was the case, they’d want him to look like himself.

Victor asked, “Have you heard people say that money does not grow on trees?”

Evan nodded.

“These bushes”-Victor brushed them with the tip of his bat-“prove that to be wrong. These leaves are U.S. dollar bills. Over there are Euros. And rubles and rupees and pesos. The work we do here makes people very wealthy.” He plucked a few leaves from one of the bushes and offered them to Evan. “Here.”

Evan took them, held them in his fist. They looked like any other leaves, green and oval-shaped. He looked at Victor.

His captor stripped a few leaves for himself and tucked them between his cheek and lower gum, the way people back home dipped snuff. “You chew the leaves. Suck on them. Make you feel happy. Make you feel strong.”

Evan remembered the nice old lady from the village spitting out the bits of paper that looked very much like these leaves. He handed them back. “No, thank you.”

Victor looked offended. “Coca leaves. Very good for you. Like Coca-Cola.”

So that was it. They’re making cocaine up here. Evan had watched a documentary once about the development of soft drinks, and he remembered that early on, Coca-Cola had cocaine in it. They’d removed it years ago, but apparently, a hundred years later, Victor still hadn’t gotten the word.

Evan dropped the leaves onto the ground and brushed his hands together. “No, thank-” A flash of light behind his eyes and an explosion of pain cut off his words as Victor knocked him on the back of the head with his bat. The boy yelled and bent over as he grabbed the wound. A second, harder blow to his right hip dropped him to his knees. From there, he curled into a protective ball, terrified of where the next hit might land.

“Stand up,” Victor commanded.

Sensing another blow, Evan raised a protective hand blindly, not daring to look where it might be coming from.

“On your feet now, chico, or I will truly hit you. Those were only light taps.” He poked him with the end of the bat, eliciting a yelp. “Stand now, or get hit again.”

Stunned by the suddenness of the attack and aching from the points of impact that were already starting to swell, Evan scrabbled to get his feet beneath him. He stood, his hand still pressed to his head.

“When I say to do something, you do it,” Victor said evenly. His tone made him sound like the voice of reason. “Now pick up those leaves I gave you.”

Luckily, they’d fallen in a clump on the dirt path where they’d been walking. Unluckily, they’d fallen in mud. As Evan picked them up, he noticed how filthy his hands were. He might as well never have washed. Perhaps that’s why no one else did.

He displayed the three leaves for Victor, spreading them in his fingers as you might show a hand of cards.

“Put them in your mouth,” Victor instructed, and he watched as the boy complied. “Chew them a little to get them soft, then settle them here.” He pointed to the dip-spot in his own mouth.

Evan chewed as instructed, in spite of the terrible, bitter taste. In seconds, he could feel his tongue going numb-not as thoroughly as with Novocain at the dentist’s, but that same sort of feeling.

“Be sure not to swallow them,” Victor said. “It should be okay to move them to your cheek now.”

Again, Evan followed directions and this time Victor watched expectantly. “How do you feel?”

“My mouth feels numb,” he said. “I don’t like it.”

“But how does your head feel? And your hip?”

Holy crap, the pain was nearly gone. He didn’t say anything, but apparently his expression spoke for him.

“See?” Victor said, smiling. “I told you the coca was good for you. Come.”

The walk continued. After a minute or so, they started to pass other people at work. It was as he’d suspected. The workers were all boys, and he was among the oldest. Most didn’t even notice him passing, but those who did registered a curious glance quickly and then went right back to stripping the leaves off the branches. Off to the left, Evan saw one kid squatted with his butt close to the ground taking a dump right in the middle of everything. Curiously, the smell of his shit was lost in the general atmosphere of rot and decay.

Victor bellowed, “Charlie! Where are you, boy?” Evan wouldn’t note it until later, but he shouted in English. After he didn’t get an immediate answer, Victor poked another boy with his bat. “Jesus,” he said, and the boy jumped. Victor asked him something in Spanish, and the boy pointed behind them.

“You stay here,” he said to Evan, and then he retraced their steps back a dozen yards. “Charlie!” he yelled, clearly finding the face he was looking for. “Come out here.”

A boy of about twelve emerged from the bushes, and Evan’s heart fell. It was the one he’d just seen taking the shit. He was nearly as dark-skinned as the others, but his hair was brown, not black, making Evan wonder if maybe genetics had less to do with his skin color than sun exposure. He was skinnier than the others, too. A rope kept his tattered shorts in place. He was beyond filthy, and his eyes had a dull look about them. Evan instantly disliked him.

“Look what I brought for you, Charlie,” Victor said as he brought the boy closer to Evan. “Another English speaker.” They were very close now. “Charlie, shake hands with Evan.”

The other boy dutifully raised his hand in greeting, but Evan hesitated. The kid had filthy hands, and there was no toilet paper out here. Figure it out.

He offered a fist for a knuckle-knock, and Charlie took him up on it.

Victor said, “Charlie, I want you to take charge of Evan.”

Charlie didn’t like the idea at all. He said something to Victor in Spanish, and Victor responded in a harsh tone. After a pause, Victor unleashed some more words, and Charlie caved.

Victor explained, “For the first few days, you work the same bag. Today you will learn, Evan. Tomorrow, you are half responsible for Charlie’s double production. You don’t want to fail. Show him, Charlie.” Victor made a spinning motion with his forefinger, and Charlie turned to display crosshatched scars on his lower back. He showed them just for a few seconds, and then he turned back.

“Tell our new friend how you earned those,” Victor encouraged.

Charlie cleared his throat and spoke to Evan’s feet. “From the whip,” he said. “Because I didn’t work fast enough.”

“ Exactamente,” Victor said, smiling. “There are many scars here. I like giving scars.” As if reading Evan’s mind, he bent low till he was face to face with him. “And no matter how badly I make your back bleed, the pictures will always look just fine.”

Jonathan and his team gathered around the computer screen, examining the satellite imagery that Venice had gotten them via an encrypted sat link. “Mother Hen, those are some great pictures,” Jonathan said into the radio. “I don’t suppose you see any blond-headed kids on your screen, do you?” Back in the War Room, Venice would have these images displayed on the ninety-six-inch high-definition screen.

“I’m looking,” she said. “I haven’t had access to the sat link for much longer than you have.”

The imagery they were looking at now was just a few minutes old, and it showed a cocaine factory of a scale that Jonathan had never seen before. This one stretched for dozens of acres across difficult terrain, and showed a level of organization that Pablo Escobar could only have dreamed about. No longer burdened with the need to hide their activities from the government, they could incorporate efficiencies that were normally reserved for legitimate manufacturing. There appeared to be a central headquarters area, the details of which were difficult to discern because of the thick jungle canopy, but with penetrating imagery technology, they could clearly make out fourteen covered structures of various sizes, thirteen of which were built in a rough rectangle around a central structure that was four times larger than the next largest building.

Southeast of the city-why not call it what it looked like? — stretched the acres of coca bushes and the teeming population of workers, several dozen in total. While the detail was amazing, this commercial version of the highly classified technology available to the armed forces allowed only a bird’s-eye view, directly from above. State-of-the-art versions allowed digital enhancement to convert such images to ground-level views, making facial recognition possible from two hundred miles in space.

“Zoom in to about thirty feet,” Jonathan instructed as he squinted at the screen. “Let me see one of the workers.”

“Which one?”

“Your choice.”

While it was possible to manipulate the images from the laptop, it was far simpler for Venice to do it with her controls. The image moved to a section of the screen where the thirty-foot elevation would actually give them a view of four workers. In a single frame.

“I’m seeing children,” Harvey said. “Are you seeing children?”

“Turning you on?” Boxers jabbed.

“Fuck you.”

“Can it,” Jonathan snapped. He keyed his mike. “We’re seeing a workforce of kids, Mother Hen. Is that what you get from the big screen?”

“Oh, my God, that’s terrible,” Venice said.

Jonathan took that as a yes.

“Okay, back off to a hundred feet again.” The children seemed to fall away into the screen, and they saw the southwestern corner of the factory. Jonathan touched a spot on the screen with the tip of a retracted ballpoint pen. “Let me see this building right here,” he said to Venice. “Get me to ten feet.”

As the image started to move, Boxers asked, “You want to see the thatched roof?”

“Exactly.” The building he was calling up was the only structure in the compound that had been built outside the jungle canopy. It was therefore easy to see construction details.

When the image stopped moving, and the software finished its resolution process, the picture of an open-sided hut was as clear as if it had been snapped by a visitor. As he’d expected, the roof was made of what appeared to be palm fronds. Admittedly, though, he didn’t know one plant from another.

“Why is the thatched roof important?” Harvey asked.

“Because they burn really good,” Boxers said.

Harvey’s jaw dropped a little. “What exactly are we planning to do?”

“Win against ridiculous odds,” Jonathan said. Then, to Venice: “Go ahead and pull out again and let me see the compound. Just enough altitude to give me all the buildings.”

“Are we looking for something in particular?” Venice asked.

“We’re looking for stores of gasoline,” he said. He’d keyed his mike for Venice, but the answer was intended as much for Harvey as for her. “Cocaine manufacturing is a bizarre process,” he went on. “If people knew how it was made, they’d never in a million years shove it up their nose. After they stomp on the leaves, they soak the shit in sulfuric acid for a while, and then after another step or two, there’s a long soak in gasoline. Up here, I figure they’ve got to have a pretty good supply.”

“Gasoline, eh?” Venice said in his ear. “You should have said something earlier. Watch this.” The image on the screen blinked as it refreshed, and then it turned from a picture as you’d normally see it to something more akin to a photographic negative. It jumped a couple more times. And then rotated.

Harvey asked, “What the hell is going on?”

“That’s Venice being Venice,” Boxers said.

Jonathan added, “You learn over time not to ask questions. It’s best just to sit still until she’s finished. She’s good enough with this computer shit that electrons are actually afraid of her.” In anticipation of the show that always accompanied one of Venice’s digital accomplishments, Jonathan unplugged his earpiece from the radio and ran the audio connection through the laptop’s speakers.

“Quit talking about Venice,” he said. “She can hear us all now.”

“Ha, ha, very funny,” she said.

They listened to the clatter of her computer keys as the image on the screen continued to shift and change colors. For the first part of this dizzying display, she trolled around the outline of the main building, zooming in and out of different quadrants. When one quadrant showed a yellow-orange aura, she said, “There it is.”

“There what is?” Jonathan asked.

“Just wait,” she said.

She zoomed away from the main building and then shifted to the others in the compound. Through the canopy, they appeared more as outlines than real images, but the footprints of the huts were plainly visible. The screen shifted from building to building, pausing for a second or two, and then moving on to the next. She zoomed out and then in, at what seemed to be random intervals, and finally, she paused at one hut, perhaps the smallest of them all. She zoomed in closer, and as she did, a similar yellow aura appeared on the screen.

“There’s your gasoline storage,” she said.

Boxers blurted out a laugh.

“You’ll tell us how you know this?” Jonathan asked. He didn’t for a moment question the accuracy-Venice was always right-he just wanted to know how she got there.

“Did you forget what SkysEye was designed to do?” she asked.

Then he saw it. He had in fact forgotten. “Petroleum research,” he said.

“Bingo. The program is designed to search for petroleum compounds. Don’t ask me how it does it-something about the light signature of vapors-but there you go.”

“I’ll be damned,” Harvey marveled.

“I told you she was good,” Jonathan said.

Venice continued, “That first yellow plume we saw was the gasoline in operation. I figured it would be easier to find when it was in use, and I figured that the big building was the actual factory. I just needed to see what it looked like in use, where vapor concentrations are high, so that I could look for it in storage, where vapors are more contained.”

“I’ll be double-damned,” Harvey said. “So, now that we know where it is, what are we going to do with it?”

Jonathan and Boxers exchanged glances, and together said, “Blow it up.”

Jonathan expanded, “We’re going to need a diversion to get our PC out of there in one piece. If we give the guards a choice of saving one kid or saving the whole compound, maybe we can catch a break.”

“Speaking of breaks,” Venice said. There was a sudden lightness in her tone. “Wait till you see this.” The screen blinked with another refreshed signal, and then they were looking at a clear image of the coca field again.

Not much seemed to have changed. The workers still toiled, and shadows were still sharp. It wasn’t until she started to zoom into the workers that Jonathan got that anticipatory quiver in his gut. Was it possible that she’d found Evan in the middle of the crowd?

The answer came when he got his first flash of white-blond hair. He pointed to the screen. “Holy shit, that’s him, isn’t it?”

The boy stood with a tall black man and another child. It was hard to tell from a still picture, but they appeared to be having a conversation. “Take me in as close as you can.”

Even as he said the words, he knew that he’d overstated. If Venice took the imagery in as close at it was capable of going, they’d be able to count the freckles on his shoulders. As it was, Venice understood his meaning and brought them in to within four or five feet.

“I see a white boy with long blond hair,” Boxers said. “Look at the sunburn on his shoulders. That’s someone not used to this much exposure. I give it a ninety-nine percent.”

Jonathan agreed. “I call that confirmation,” he said. “That makes us a go. Mother Hen, can you put a tag on him somehow and keep up with him?”

Silence.

“You still there?” Jonathan asked.

“I’m here,” she confirmed. “I just don’t know how to answer you. His heat signature is going to be just like everybody else’s. I can track him visually, but that gets to diminishing returns really quickly. After dark, he’ll be lost.”

“Screw it,” Boxers said. “We already know he’s there. Once we create a little chaos, we just search him out.”

“That’s a lot of chaos,” Jonathan said. “I don’t want to have to find a moving target if people start running around.”

“Then we’ll find him before we blow the gas. Eyeball the kid, then bring hell to life.”

“Then we’ll be the only things moving in the camp,” Harvey said. “I’m not the tactician that you guys are, but that sounds scary.”

Boxers laughed. “Scary, huh? You do know about the guns and stuff, right?”

“I’ve got it,” Venice said.

All heads turned to the computer. “Got what?” Jonathan asked for all of them.

“How to track him after dark-at least until he goes under cover. It’s not about acquiring his heat signature. It’s about eliminating all the other identical heat signatures.”

Jonathan looked to Boxers. “Did you understand that?”

“Absolutely not.”

Jonathan smiled. “So it’s not just me.”

“It’s a simple concept,” Venice continued. “Normally, we worry about heat signatures as a way to differentiate one target from others. That doesn’t work in a population of targets who all have a signature of ninety-eight point six degrees, give or take a couple of tenths. So what we do instead is teach the computer to ignore all but one of the identical signatures.”

“Oh, I get it,” Jonathan said. He wasn’t sure he actually did, but as he said so, he made a slicing motion to the others, telling them not to pursue it any further. When Venice said it was possible, it was possible. Understanding the hows and whys really wasn’t all that important.

“It shouldn’t take all that long,” Venice said. “First I want to mark the GPS coordinates for every target and download them to your equipment. We don’t want you getting lost in the dark.”

Jonathan smiled. Technology had changed so much of warfare over the years; and it wasn’t just in the weaponry. In fact, the business of the actual fight hadn’t changed much at all. You still had to pierce the flesh of other human beings to kill them, albeit with progressively greater accuracy and effectiveness. The real changes came in the noncombat elements. When Venice was done with the download she’d just mentioned, the specific coordinates of every landmark in the enemy compound would be documented to within inches, as would the details of their infiltration and exfiltration routes. On a cloudy, foggy night with zero visibility, they could arrive at their destination and get home again. It was a whole new world of land navigation.

While Venice worked on her cyberspace easel, Jonathan and his team hammered out their assault plan. Given the limits of their intel, it was necessarily straightforward. Get in, create a diversion, and get out. Any enemy with a weapon would be killed without hesitation. Unarmed enemies would be spared as long as they stayed out of the way.

“Tactically, Box, you’re the explosives king. Harvey, you’re the medic. I’m the lead on whatever entry we need to make. We stay together as a team, we cover each other’s asses, but once we have the PC in hand, nothing stands in the way of getting him to the vehicles. And I mean nothing, understand? If things go to shit and we get separated, whoever gets to the vehicle with Evan leaves immediately and goes to the exfil site. The reason we have two vehicles is specifically to plan for us getting split up.

“Once the PC is secure and on his way, if we’re separated, there’s some room for improv.” He looked directly at Harvey. “You’re the new guy on the team, so you need to know the rules of engagement. We will not leave you behind if you’re alive, unless it’s the only way to exfil the PC. Understand?”

“Us jarheads aren’t big on leaving people behind, either,” Harvey said.

Jonathan nodded. “Didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” He checked his watch. “It’s five twenty-eight. That gives us fifty-six minutes till sunset, and that’s when we step off. Figure three hours to get to the compound, and then the night gets interesting. One way or another we should be clear of this shithole country in thirteen hours, tops.”