Hunter's moon

23

At the side of the road, there was a sign visible in the truck’s lights, the writing in Arabic and Spanish. Shana Waters asked, “What does Granja de Panal mean?”

“ ‘Honey Farm.’ ”

The telemetry chip inside Dan Danson’s wallet was sending a steady, pulsing signal from somewhere inside the fenced confines, about a quarter mile ahead. Tomlinson and Vue might be near.

“Lourdes is staying on a honey farm? It would be funny if it wasn’t so disgusting.”

But it made sense. Osama bin Laden had been in the honey business before he went underground, and the honey trade is still a primary source of funds for terrorist groups. Honey is shipped in industrial drums-ideal for smuggling weapons, conventional, chemical, or nuclear. When the U.S. Treasury froze the assets of the three major honey producers in Yemen, Islamicists moved some operations to Colombia.

It was 11:15 p.m. I put the truck in gear and continued down the road, accelerating as I passed the gate with its chain and NO TRESPASSING Sign. There was a light, the shape of men guarding the shadows.

I drove another quarter mile before I got out, collected my rifle, and told Shana Waters to keep driving.

“Fine! And I hope to hell I never see you again!” She floored the accelerator, showering me with dust.

We had not become friends during the trip. The woman had endured two hours of bad roads and rain, plus she was pissed off about her cell phone. I had asked to borrow it, when she finally got a signal, and called the El Panama Hotel on the chance that Curtis Tyner had checked in.

When I was done, I threw her phone out the window.

Waters was momentarily shocked, then furious.

I had to do it. She would have called the police. The woman had been only a dozen yards away when I murdered three men-something she had conspicuously not mentioned as we drove.

When I refused to go back for the phone, she had screamed, “Who are you!” It was an accusation, not a question.

I replied, “I’m the guy who saved your life and I’m asking for a little time in return.”

She gave it to me, in a chilly, relentless silence.

As the woman sped away, I felt relieved to be alone-until I heard a distant turbine whine coming from inside the compound. It was a helicopter. I watched as the helicopter levitated above the forest canopy, its landing spotlight maintaining contact with the ground until the craft tilted southwest. The light went out and the helicopter flew away toward Panama’s Pacific coast.

Damn.

Was it possible that, after hours of hard driving, I’d missed them by only a few minutes?

The telemetry receiver was in my pocket. I hurried to check the illuminated screen.

Yes, it was the same helicopter. Danson’s wallet was aboard. Maybe Tomlinson and Vue were aboard, too. Or… could the pilot be returning to Panama City alone…?

No. If he’d wanted to do that, he could have left hours ago.

I whispered profanities and checked the sky, hoping another helicopter would materialize. I was thinking of my call to Curtis Tyner.

It did not.

So I was alone, on a dirt road in the jungle. No transportation, no way to communicate with the outside world. Because it was possible that Tomlinson and Vue had been left behind, I decided to stick with my original plan and search the honey farm. If nothing else, I might find a vehicle to steal.

As I turned toward the fence, though, I heard the truck skid to a stop. Waters had seen the helicopter lift off. She was coming back for me.

“The only reason I’m doing this is because”-she made a growling sound of frustration-“because you’re the only person I know in this whole goddamn country who’s still alive and even I’m not bitch enough to go off and leave you alone.”

For the first time that night, she began to cry.

VUE WAS INSIDE.

Alive? I couldn’t tell because the woman was accurate when she said they’d taped him like a mummy.

But no sign of Tomlinson. No sign of Lourdes.

I was standing on a stump at the rear of a corrugated-metal building looking through an open window. It was a processing and packing plant, set back several hundred yards from the road. There were stacks of boxes, unused commercial hives, a conveyor belt for bottling, and a wagon-sized centrifuge.

Commercial beehives contain removable frames. When the combs are full, the frames are slotted into a centrifuge that spins the honey free. My crazed uncle, Tucker Gatrell, had kept a few hives on his ranch because he liked orange blossom honey in his coffee.

This was a prospering business, not a front for Praxcedes Lourdes. But it was a front for weapons smuggling, judging from the metal crates stacked near the window and screened from the main entrance by machinery. The crates were labeled NIRINCO/PRC.

NIRINCO is China’s primary weapons manufacturer. The company produces many thousands of AK-47-type assault rifles a year.

Lourdes had been hired by a wealthy and highly motivated group. It was not a commercial enterprise, it was a terrorist organization.

Vue was lying immobile next to the centrifuge, near a table where two men with beards and skullcaps sat smoking Kreteks and talking as they concentrated on assembling something-kites, I realized. Vue’s guards were enjoying hobby time while he lay bound with duct tape, legs, arms, and mouth.

The temptation was to use the rifle. One round each. But I didn’t know for certain these men had been involved in the earlier atrocities. Unless pathology is involved, murder always claims at least two victims. By sparing them, I would spare myself.

I checked the sky once again, hoping to see a helicopter. Nothing.

Using the gun was tempting.

Instead, I went to a row of active beehives not far from the processing plant. I had weaved my way through many dozens of boxlike hives on the hike from the road. Unlike the others, these hives were smaller and set apart in a screened area as if to protect them from other insects. Odd. Maybe they were prized bees.

It didn’t matter to me as long as they had stingers.

I walked to the hives and stepped beneath the netting. It had been raining for most of our drive, but now it had stopped.

Typical.

Because I wanted the bees to believe it was still raining, I carried a bucket I’d found and filled from a puddle.

I chose the closest hive and began dripping water on the top. Inside, the buzzing of ten thousand bees noted the activity with a slow oscillating roar that calmed gradually as I poured more water.

Rain.

Bees are precision-coded. Unlike people, they do not venture out into the rain.

When the bucket was empty, I gently, gently, picked up the hive and went toward the building, walking with the smooth gait of a waiter carrying a tray. Without slowing, I stepped up onto the stump and tilted the hive through the open window… then I jumped back, slapping at my neck, then my arm, then my neck again.

Shit.

These bees were armed. Each sting was like an electric shock, and I was very glad seven feet of metal now shielded me from the hive-or I would have been pursued.

I stepped back and listened. Metal buildings cause an acoustic echo. The choral buzzing of bees became an ascending roar. The roar soon mixed with the voices of two startled men. Their kite making had been interrupted.

I shouldered the rifle, drew my handgun, and moved to a side window to watch. I expected the men to walk quickly but calmly for the front door. They were used to working with bees, presumably. I figured they would let the bees settle for a few hours, or maybe the whole night, then return with a smoker to calm the hive and to figure out what happened.

It would give me time to slip in, brave a few more stings, and grab Vue.

But the men did not react as expected. Nor did the bees. The bees amassed from the hive and moved like an iridescent waterspout toward the men. The men were already slapping at the colony’s attacker scouts when they began to run. They threw open the double doors and came stumbling outside.

To my amazement, the bees followed. When a bee stings, an alarm pheromone is deposited. These men were marked and the entire colony went after them, drawn by the scent, and also by the mammalian body heat and movement.

The men were screaming now as they ran. There were security lights out front and I watched as the bees swarmed outside, gaining on the men, then covering them like ants. One man fell, then the other. When the last of the hive arrived, both men were thrashing beneath layers of bees.

The hives behind the building were isolated from the other hives for a reason, I realized. Along with importing illegal weapons, these people were raising Africanized honey bees-“killer bees,” as they are known. Introducing noxious exotics into the United States was a favorite form of unconventional warfare among terrorist types.

If I hadn’t used the water, the colony would have swarmed me instead. They could’ve swarmed me, anyway.

My mouth was sticky dry. The swarming sound of bees is an atavistic sound that signals the legs to run. Far worse, though, were the sounds made by the dying men. Inhuman moans, childlike pleas for help. They would’ve been better off if I had shot them from the window. It would have been a kindness for me to shoot them now.

But moral assessments are as tricky as the vagaries of our uncertain lives. I did not fire.

I had to get Vue. The bees would soon return to the building searching for their smashed hive.

I bolted inside and knelt over him.

“Vue? Vue?” I shook him.

He opened his eyes.

I used the Badek I’d taken from the bearded killer to cut the duct tape and I pulled Vue to his feet. But he couldn’t walk. His legs were numb, he said.

“Give me a few minutes.” His voice was amazingly calm for what he had endured.

“We don’t have a few minutes.” Bees were buzzing by my ears. I grabbed the big man’s wrist, pulled him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and waddled outside far enough from the lights and the swarming bees to be safe.

As feeling returned to his legs, Vue stood and began taking experimental steps. Soon he was swinging his arms and rolling his neck muscles.

“I pissed in my pants. I bet I smell very awful.”

I told him not to worry about smelling very awful. I had extra clothes in the truck.

“Where’s Lourdes?”

“He knows where President Wilson is staying tonight! We must warn him.”

“What?”

“Lourdes found my shortwave transmitter and he hooked it up inside.” Vue indicated the processing plant, which was full of bees by now. “The president made contact at eleven. When that helicopter lands, the president will expect us to get out, not Lourdes. Lourdes knows Morse code!”

Vue sounded shocked. I was only mildly surprised. Lourdes was expert at using computers and electronics to trick victims.

The gate where I had seen guards was several hundred yards away, but I was worried they might come back to check on the plant so I was steering Vue away from the building. “What about Tomlinson?”

Vue stopped to look at me. “You not find him?”

“No.”

“They had him tied just like me, only not so much. But then Lourdes take him away, so maybe they both on the helicopter.”

I checked my watch. It was ten minutes before midnight. The flight to the cattle ranch where Wilson and Rivera were staying would take at least an hour. The helicopter had lifted off at 11:15.

“Can you run?”

“I try!”

“I have a truck and someone waiting. There’s still a chance we can intercept Lourdes.”

“A truck is no good. Too far, too far! The president will be dead by time we get there.”

That’s not what I meant. I had checked the sky once again. This time there was a helicopter, approaching low from the southwest and closing fast.

I fished a flashlight from my pocket so I could signal the helicopter when it was closer.

Lourdes had a deal with his employer, Vue told me as we jogged. He had overheard enough to piece it together. If Lourdes delivered the head of President Wilson, they would provide him with a new face and a new identity in Indonesia. They had the surgeons and the technology to do it.

He’d kept Vue and Tomlinson as bait.

“You ever see that bastard without his mask?” Vue asked as we neared the truck. “He hates you. But he wants the president more. ”

Maybe that’s why he’d taken Tomlinson, I suggested. Lure me in.

But Vue said, “No, I think the reason is different. He said Tomlinson has a nice face.”