Jet

Chapter 8

Present Day, Guiria, Venezuela

If there was a grimmer place on the planet than Guiria’s harbor, Jet was yet to encounter it, and she’d languished in some low places in her time. Rusting fishing scows creaked and groaned against crumbling piers, bemoaning the region’s poverty. Once she had climbed up onto the wharf and waved goodbye to Capitan Juan, she turned to survey the little port, and what met her eyes wasn’t heartening. Corroded metal roofs, peeling paint and a pall of rotting stink greeted her senses as she moved from the waterfront into the town’s truculent streets.

She stopped at a small corner market and bought a bag of nuts and a bottle of water, which she drained greedily outside before going back in and getting another. Further up the block, she found a shop that stocked a few tank tops and T-shirts; she chose the least terrible of them, suffering the annoyed look from the old shopkeeper when she paid with dollars — a currency that was officially frowned upon in Venezuela, and yet in reality was accepted by the majority of the locals.

Near the central square, she came across a tired little hotel that had been around since the dawn of time. A few locals sat on the curb, trading familiar jokes and stories as they watched their world go by. They stopped talking as she passed them, and she could hear the whispered snipes when she walked through the hotel’s cracked wooden doors.

A stout woman, wearing a bright yellow dress and with the face of a former heavyweight contender, met her at the reception counter and agreed to rent her a room for seven dollars. Jet asked her about the bus schedule. She shrugged. The stop was two blocks up. Jet was free to check whenever she felt like it.

The room was on the second floor and smelled like a combination of vomit and mildew with a veneer of cleaning product slathered over it. But it would do — there was tepid running water and a bar of white soap in the shower, which was all she had been hoping for.

Half an hour later, she descended the stairs and stepped out into the muggy heat. The same loitering group watched her walk up the sidewalk in the direction of the bus stop, making all the same comments they’d made when she’d entered. Apparently, being a gutter rat in Guiria didn’t require a vast repertoire.

According to a faded agenda mounted on a post near the church, the bus to Caracas ran once a day in the early afternoon. It was scheduled to leave in an hour and a half, so she had time to eat and make it back to catch it.

A few minutes later, she was sitting in a family-style cafe that unsurprisingly featured seafood as its staple. She ordered the grilled fish and considered her next move as the dusty overhead fans creaked ineffective orbits to mitigate the heat.

Her adversaries either thought she was still alive and therefore likely still on Trinidad, or had heard about the exploding boat and thought she was dead. A very distant third possibility was that they remembered her last death by explosion and didn’t believe she’d really been killed, assuming they thought it was her on the boat.

It was the third possibility that troubled her.

If it were Jet conducting the hunt, she would have operatives at any of the major towns on the coast, watching, just in case. It was a long shot, but she’d gotten lucky herself on long shots before. Based on the scale of what she’d seen so far, she couldn’t discount the possibility.

When the fish arrived, Jet devoured it with ravenous enthusiasm, starved after a night with no supper.

Back on the street, she ambled down the shabby sidewalks until she found a stall calling itself Bazaar del Mundo — the bazaar of the world — a lofty claim based on the town and the sad collection of secondhand goods assembled within sight of the street. Washing machines from the Sixties, a TV that was older than she was, fishing nets at the end of their rope…and a rack of used clothing.

She entered the stifling emporium and browsed its sorry offerings, and within five minutes had made her selections, including an ancient cardboard suitcase that had probably been there since Columbus landed.

Once in the hotel, she changed into her new outfit — a shapeless, loose-fitting black skirt with a frayed hem, a creme-colored native blouse that looked like it hailed from the disco era, and a dark blue scarf for her head. The ensemble was completed with a pair of sandals that someone had probably died wearing. She peered at herself in the mirror, and a Venezuelan peasant woman looked back at her — only one whose face was still far too memorable. Her features were distinctive in the sense that she looked either Asian or Slavic — high cheekbones, slightly almond-shaped eyes, perfect symmetry. But that could easily pass for native — there was a decent amount of Indian blood in the population, which also had similar attributes.

She went into the bathroom and balled up some toilet paper and stuffed it between her cheeks and her bottom molars, then returned to consider her reflection. It was still missing something. Stooping down, she scraped up some dark brown filth from a corner of the room and then rubbed it beneath each eye. Much better. Now she looked at least ten years older, ridden hard by a harsh life. More in keeping with the likely passenger profile on a rural bus to nowhere.

Jet packed her clothes into the suitcase, along with her shoes, and snapped the latches closed. It wasn’t a perfect disguise, but anyone looking for her based on a description or her old passport photo wouldn’t give her a second glance.

On her way out of the hotel, she dropped the key on the counter, not waiting for the clerk to come out of the back and witness her remarkable transformation. She didn’t think that anyone would be questioning the unfriendly matron, but better to play it safe than take an unnecessary risk.

As she approached the bus stop, she slowed, scanning the few vehicles and taking in the people waiting nearby.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled. Something was off.

There.

Fifty yards up on the opposite side of the street, a Caucasian man leaned against the wall of a neighboring building, reading a paper, occasionally glancing at the waiting passengers when he flipped the pages.

He hadn’t seen her. Or if he had, he hadn’t registered her as anything besides what she appeared to be — a late thirties peasant woman down on her luck.

She turned and moved back down the street then ducked into a tiny market, where she bought a bottle of water and considered her options.

Thank God she’d decided to play dress up. She would have stuck out from a mile away if she hadn’t.

But her basic problem remained. How to get off the peninsula?

The small airport wasn’t a solution. It would also be watched if the bus stop was.

She resumed her walk, passing the little secondhand store, then backtracked and asked the proprietor if he knew anyone that could give her a ride to Carupano — a relatively large town on the Caribbean side that would have more buses to Caracas — the only international gateway she knew of. He rolled his eyes, considering the request.

“You can catch the bus. It leaves in a few minutes. Takes you there on the way to Caracas,” he offered.

“No. I’ve had bad experiences with rural buses. It’s worth it to me to pay a little more and have someone drive me.”

“It’s going to cost more than just a little more.”

“Well, I’m obviously not rich, but where there’s a will…”

He studied her. “I may know someone.”

“Could you call them?”

“What do you think is a fair price?”

“I don’t really know. How far is it?” she asked.

“Maybe eighty or ninety miles by road. Mostly bad roads.”

“What do you think is the right price?”

He laughed. “For you or for the driver?”

After another few minutes of banter, they agreed that twelve dollars seemed fair.

“My name’s Cesar. I’ll close up the shop.”

She nodded, her suspicion confirmed. “What’s your car like, Cesar?”

“It’s made it so far. Like me. A lot of miles, but still runs okay.”

He swung a rusting gate closed across the stall and slid a padlock through the latch, then motioned for her to follow him. Two blocks later, they arrived at a small house with a tin roof and chickens swarming the yard. A skinny brown mongrel dog growled from one side of the shaded front porch, but didn’t bother to move.

“Don’t let him scare you. He’s too lazy to bother to attack if it means getting up or coming into the sun,” Cesar said, then pointed at a sagging gray Isuzu Trooper that was more rust than metal.

She eyed it skeptically. “Are you sure that will make it?”

“It would make it to Alaska for the right kind of money.”

He walked to the side of the SUV and pulled free a filthy rag that served as a gas cap, then lifted a dented jerry can.

“Just need to fill it up, and then we can go.”

Jet began to get a sinking feeling, but simply nodded. Anyone watching for her wouldn’t be looking for a native woman in the world’s losing-est truck. She walked slowly around the vehicle, noting the nearly bald tires and the wire that appeared to be holding on one of the fenders.

“Jefe! Come on. You want to go for a ride?”

The dog sluggishly raised its head, and then its ears perked up. Cesar slapped his leg in invitation, and the animal stood and stretched, then sidled over to where his master was finishing pouring gas into the tank, watching with measured curiosity. Cesar returned the can to the side of the house and then opened the rear cargo door. The dog hopped up with remarkable dexterity and plopped down in the back.

“Hop in. We’ll be there in no time,” Cesar said.

She tossed her bags onto the rear bench seat, watching the dog for any sign of aggression before climbing into the passenger seat. The door sounded like it was going to fall off its hinges when she slammed it shut. Jefe began panting his anticipation, and the vehicle immediately smelled like dog breath.

Cesar slid behind the wheel and dug a key out of his pocket. Squinting at the dashboard as though puzzled by the layout, he fiddled with the ignition. At first nothing happened, and the temperature inside the cab quickly climbed twenty degrees. Finally, a series of clicks issued from under the hood, followed by a wheezing groan and a series of coughs, and then something caught, and the engine puttered to life.

“See? It’s a like a Mercedes! I told you.”

“Very impressive,” she agreed.

He jammed the shifter into drive and goosed the gas, and the ancient truck lurched reluctantly forward.

“Sorry. No air-conditioning. Broke about ten years ago. But once we’re moving, the air from the windows will cool us.”

“I just hope we keep moving.”

They pulled onto the narrow street, and he eased the truck up the gentle incline to where rural Highway 9 connected to the main street. On the outskirts of town, they passed an old converted school bus heading into Guiria. It looked marginally more trustworthy than the Isuzu.

“That’s the Caracas bus,” Cesar said, gesturing with his head.

“Nice.”

The road meandered across the peninsula and back again, and they motored along at an average of twenty miles per hour. Jet didn’t know whether to be more annoyed or relieved that the driver was being cautious. She decided to be optimistic and closed her eyes, allowing the feeble cross-ventilation to provide scant relief from the mounting heat.

Four hours later, they rolled into Carupano and Jet had Cesar drop her off a block from the bus station. She walked over and checked the schedule and saw that there was a bus headed to Caracas that evening, and another in the morning. The prospect of traveling three hundred miles at night on dubious roads didn’t appeal to her, so she decided to get a room and do some clothes shopping — the peasant garb had been fine, but it had served its purpose, and she needed essentials that a town the size of Carupano was likely to have.

She found a serviceable hotel a block and a half off the beach. The room was clean and comfortable, with a reasonable bed and a mild breeze blowing off the Caribbean. After unpacking her few belongings, she went in search of stores, and several blocks away, she came across one that looked promising. Within a few minutes, she found a pair of jeans and a top that would work — long-sleeved lightweight cotton in muted blue and green — and some running shorts and a T-shirt. Jet paid for her purchases and changed into the jeans and top at the store, stuffing her dress and blouse into the bag — then went in search of dinner.

She found a promising eatery on the malecon and took her time over her meal, but by the end of it, she realized she was exhausted. The night on the beach hadn’t been particularly restful, and she’d only been able to doze as the Isuzu had weaved through the jungle hills — she needed some solid hours of uninterrupted sleep.

It was getting dark as she exited the restaurant, and the stream of beachgoers had dried up. Jet stuck to the main seafront road, in no hurry, and was looking forward to the inviting bed in her room, when she turned the corner that led to her hotel.

A blur of motion came at her as she passed a small alley, and she barely had time to register a twenty-something-year-old man in a stained soccer jersey approaching her holding a knife. She threw her clothes bag at his head and then swiveled and grabbed his knife arm, then slammed the heel of her right hand into his face, catching him on the chin. He winced in pain from the blow, but he didn’t drop the knife, although he’d stopped his surge and was standing facing her, breathing heavily, a trickle of blood running down his chin. He spit a bloody gob of froth and a decayed tooth into the gutter, and glared at her. He was emaciated and smelled sour, with a junkie’s distinctive body tics.

A smaller man, older, with a face that resembled nothing so much as a rat, edged to the alley mouth, his eyes darting down the street to confirm there were no witnesses. He clutched a length of pipe and held it like he had used it before. The stink of sweat and tobacco wafted off him like a noxious fog.

Jet quickly sized them up. These were common muggers, thieves that plagued the more prosperous areas of most Venezuelan cities, on the prowl for easy targets of opportunity.

Tonight they’d picked the wrong victim.

She debated possible tactics as they moved slowly around her, circling, trying to get behind her. There was a small amount of primitive strategy to their movements — they stayed well separated so she could only focus on one at a time. Under any other circumstances, it would have been a good gambit.

She decided on subterfuge and misdirection as opposed to a frontal assault. Let them come to her.

Her eyes widened as she swung her head around in fright.

“Please. Don’t hurt me. I don’t have any money, and I…I know karate.” She sounded convincing. The tremor in her voice as she said ‘karate’ was particularly feeble.

The smaller man laughed, an evil, humorless bark and, without saying a word, stepped towards her and swung the pipe at her shoulder.

From there, everything happened fast.

Her kick caught him in the groin, arresting the swing as he let out a moan and doubled over. She kicked him one more time, this time in the head, and he sprawled onto the filthy pavement, the pipe banging against the surface before rolling from his grip.

The younger man rushed her, but she easily blocked the upward sweep of the knife and leveled a brutal strike to his throat with a closed fist. His free hand clutched at his windpipe as he fought for breath, and she slammed her good hand into his knife arm. He dropped the blade with a clatter and bent over, struggling for air.

She watched him gasping. She hadn’t landed a lethal blow, choosing to pull the strike at the last second, so he would eventually recover. Still, neither one of them would be mugging anyone in the near future.

“Pick up your buddy and get the hell out of here before I tear your arms off and beat you over the head with them,” she said in a low voice as she knelt and grabbed the knife, eyes on her incapacitated assailants.

The man on the ground groaned as the younger one staggered over to him.

There was nothing more to see. It would take them a few moments to collect themselves and be able to walk, by which time, she’d be long gone.

Jet scooped up the plastic bag with her clothes in it and backed out of the alley, watching the motley pair to ensure she wasn’t surprised by an unexpected burst of stamina from either man, then hurried up the block and entered her hotel. She was reassured to note that her respiration and heart rate were normal. This was the old Jet. The instincts that had served her so well had come back quickly.

Not all of them, though.

She hadn’t killed either mugger.

In the old days, she wouldn’t have pulled the punch.

Jet stripped off her clothes and took another shower with cool water before throwing herself onto the bed. She groped for the bedside lamp and switched it off, plunging the room into darkness, the only sound an occasional car rumbling down the street to the beach.

She was out cold within sixty seconds.