Night Vision

THIRTEEN

The reason I turned east, toward what turned out to be Harris Squires’s hunting camp, was because after touring Immokalee, seeing a helicopter and a half dozen cops parked outside a church, I decided that my detective friend might be wrong when he told me that Squires and Tula had left Immokalee and were now on their way back to Red Citrus trailer park.

It was 11:20 p.m. when Leroy Melinski called my cell to give me what he believed was the good news. I had cruised Immokalee’s slow streets and then headed out of town, occasionally glancing at the satellite aerial that showed Squires’s four hundred acres of what was probably saw grass and cypress trees.

“The girl wasn’t kidnapped,” the detective explained when I answered. “She told a bunch of people-including a priest and one of her aunts-that Squires volunteered to drive her around and help her find her mother. So there you have it, Doc. Turns out your kidnapper is just being a Good Samaritan.”

The reception on my phone was fuzzy, so I said, “You’ve got to be kidding. Say that again.”

Melinski told me, “Harris Squires and the girl stopped at some church, a pretty big one, so there’s confirmation on all this. A couple hundred people listened to her give a speech or a sermon, whatever you call it. Squires got out of his truck to listen, but he didn’t come inside.”

I said, “People on the scene told you this?”

The detective said, “Squires even made nice with some gangbangers who gave him a hard time. Not Latin Kings. Probably MS-13 from Guatemala, who are bloodthirsty little shits. But even they must have been convinced.”

I told him, “This just doesn’t mesh with what I know about Harris Squires,” as Melinski talked over me, saying, “I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, but I’ve heard enough to be convinced. So you can relax, okay? Go back to your test tubes or have a beer. I’m going to bed.”

I said, “Some minister lets a thirteen-year-old girl, a stranger, get up in front of the whole congregation? Why?”

“It happened,” Melinski replied, sounding impatient, “that’s all that matters. I talked to the priest myself. He’s worked in Immokalee for nine years, which means he’s heard every possible combination of bullshit story. According to him, the girl walked in and said she had something important to say, so he let her talk. He described her as happy and relaxed, which is not the way a kidnapped kid acts.”

“The priest,” I said.

“Along with several local women, too. They offered her a place to stay, but the girl refused. Squires may have something to do with the dead body we found, who knows? But the girl’s with him because she wants to be with him. End of story.”

I said, “Harris Squires wouldn’t lift a finger to help anyone-not unless he expected to get something out of it.”

Melinski told me, “We’ll find out more when they get back to the trailer park. The girl told the priest that was their next stop, so we’ve got some uniforms there waiting.”

I had to ask, “Did your hostage-rescue people call his cell?”

“That’s the only part that bothers me,” Melinski told me. “They tried but no answer. Reception’s bad around Immokalee, which could explain it. The priest said, at first, he didn’t like the idea of a Guatemalan girl being with a gringo guy that age. He tried to talk her into staying, but the girl was so sure of what she was doing, he decided it was okay. At least for the hour or so it takes them to get back to the trailer park. Red Citrus? Yeah, Red Citrus. Maybe a little longer because the girl told the priest they might get something to eat first.”

“What time did they leave?” I asked. “I hope you have cops checking the local restaurants.”

Melinski told me, “They pulled out at little before eleven, so they should be at the trailer park in half an hour or so.” With exaggerated tolerance, he then added, “Have you heard anything I said? You can stop worrying. The priest told me some pretty wild stuff about the kid. So, finally, I maybe understand why you’ve taken an interest. You didn’t tell me the Latinos consider her some kind of saint or something.”

“The priest said that?” I asked.

“The guy sounded a little in awe of the girl, in fact. He said there were women crying, people waiting in line to ask the girl’s blessing. ‘God has taken the girl by the hand’-this is the priest talking, not me. But the man was serious. So there’s no need to worry, according to him. The priest’s exact words almost, and more than nine years he’s been working with immigrants.”

I said, “If God took missing girls by the hand, there would be a lot fewer missing girls. Please tell me you’re not buying into this baloney.”

I was relived that Tula and Squires had been spotted. But I was also feeling too restless to allow myself to be convinced. I didn’t admit this to Melinski, of course, and pretended to be satisfied when he promised to call when he got word the girl was safely back at Red Citrus.

After I hung up, I checked the luminous face of my dive watch: 11:25 p.m. I was approaching the intersection of Immokalee Road and what I guessed was Route 846, where Squires owned the four hundred acres. Continue straight and I would take yet another lap through Immokalee, then north to home-or maybe Emily’s place, if I could get her on the phone. Make a right, I would have to drive at least forty miles, round-trip, out of my way-and probably for no reason.

In my mind, though, I suddenly pictured the Mayan girl looking through the window of Squires’s trucking, seeing a sign that read IMMOKALEE 22 MILES, then texting the information to Tomlinson, a man she trusted. The image was so strong that I actually shook my head to get rid of it.

As I neared the intersection, I hesitated, my intellect telling me one thing, my instincts telling me something else. Normally, that’s seldom a cause for indecision-which is why I was a little surprised when I found myself following my intuition. I turned right onto the narrow two-lane that vectored eastward into the Everglades.

Something else my intellect and instincts argued about was whether I should call Tomlinson. If he had gone to Red Citrus, as expected, I should tell him to wait there to make sure Tula arrived.

It only made sense that I call him, but I had settled into a comfortable cocoon of solitude, focused laserlike on finding the girl. For me, that cocoon is a place rarely enjoyed when I’m Florida and I didn’t want to leave it.

It had to do with my shadow life. Solitude is what I enjoy most about it. I travel alone to Third World countries, to Everglades-dark places, and I find people. I then track those people. I become familiar with their schedules, their habits.

For the period of a week-sometimes two, depending on the importance of the assignment-I charted the subtle movements and interactions of a stranger’s life. I did it invisibly, with a laboratory precision that in the end allowed me to segregate that person from his surroundings as effectively as using tweezers to remove a bee, undetected, from its colony.

That was my specialty-my genius, Tomlinson might have called it, had he ever learned the truth. What I do, however, doesn’t demand genius. I have no illusions about my own gifts, other than to acknowledge that, since I was very young, I have had an obsessive need to identify, then define, orderly patterns in what most would dismiss as chaos.

We all have our quirks.

That’s my job when out of the country: to discern order in the chaos. To create a precision target. As creator, I am also tasked with finding the most effective method of displacing that target from his surroundings.

I am good at it.

After wrestling with the decision for a mile, I decided I wasn’t in the mood for a conversation with Tomlinson. Instead, I pulled over long enough to send a text:

Tula and Squires to arrive at Red Citrus by midnight, cops waiting. Let me know. If you’re drinking, stop now. Don’t piss off cops!

After a moment of thought, I added, Is Emily safe? then sent the text with a slow Whoosh! that told me reception was getting worse.

I got out of the truck long enough to urinate, then got back in, but left the dome light on. Out of long habit-or, perhaps, just to reestablish my focus-I took inventory of my equipment bag. First, I popped the magazines of both pistols to make certain they were loaded, although I knew they were.

I am not a gun fancier or collector, but the precision tolerances of fine machinery appeals to the same sensibilities that cause me to linger over a fine microscope. It was true of my Sig Sauer P226 pistol. The Sig was one of the first issued after the Joint Service Small Arms test trials of 1985, and I have trusted my life to it since that time. I had recently purchased a new magazine that held fifteen rounds instead of only ten. I had also added Tritium night sights, which I had yet to try on a range.

I held the Sig’s magazine in my hand, testing the mobility of the rounds with my thumb, the odor of Hoppe’s No. 9 gun solvent spreading a lingering sweetness through the cab of my truck. It reminded me of Tomlinson’s crack about smelling gun oil in the lab whenever I felt restless. An inside joke? Or was it a veiled reminder that, one way or another, my relationship with Emily was doomed as long as I continued to live my shadow life.

Whether a dig or a warning, what he’d said was true: When I get restless, it shows. After a month or two without a new mission, I find myself studying maps. I find myself at night sitting within easy reach of my Trans-Oceanic Radio, recleaning my weapons as if that private ceremony was an incantation that would bring a call from my handler.

After inspecting the Sig Sauer, I took the much smaller, lighter Kahr pistol in hand. It was black-matte stainless, comfortable to hold. After so many years trusting the Sig, it was tough to admit that this was now my weapon of choice. It wasn’t as tiny as another favorite-a Seecamp. 380-but the Kahr slipped just as easily out of the pocket. And it could be hidden almost as completely in the palm of my hand. Firing the Kahr, though, was a pleasure, and it had more stopping power than the Seecamp.

Like the Sig, the Kahr was loaded with federal Hydra-Shok hollow points. But the Kahr had the added advantage of a built-in laser sight that was activated whenever I gripped the thing to fire.

Unlike the high-tech Dazer Guardian, also in the bag, the laser sight was red, not green.

It was unlikely that I would use any of these weapons, just as I knew there was very little chance now that I would stumble onto Harris Squires and the Guatemalan girl. He and Tula were on their way to Red Citrus while I was out here wasting time on back roads east of Immokalee.

It didn’t matter. I was in a certain mood. To rationalize wasting time, I told myself this was training, a way to stay sharp.

I leaned to roll down the passenger window, and drove on.

Tomlinson is right. I’m not a fast driver. I slowed even more whenever I switched on the dome light and checked the satellite aerial. My pal had used a highlighter to square off the boundaries of Squires’s property, but it still wasn’t easy to pick out landmarks. I was driving through a shadowed mesa of cypress that I guessed was Owl Hammock. It meant I had at least fifteen miles to go.

Thus far, I hadn’t passed a car. Not one.

Alternately squinting at the aerial, then accelerating, my headlights tunneled through a starry silence, toward a horizon abloom with the nuclear glow of Fort Lauderdale, eighty miles to the east.

I passed through the precise geometrics of tomato fields and citrus orchards. Then more cypress domes that exited into plains of myrtle and saw grass. My eyes moved from the road, to the satellite aerial, then to my watch.

11:45 p.m.

Training exercise or not, my mind wandered back to Emily. My reaction to her had been a surprise. A shock, in fact, and now it was a new source of restlessness that was pleasure mixed with angst.

I had left Tomlinson alone with Emily for a reason-a deceit that Tomlinson had guessed correctly. It was a test. He suspected it, I knew it. I was subjecting myself, my new lover and my old friend to yet another of my relentless personal evaluations.

“Why do you set traps for people you care about when you’re the one who is inevitably hurt?” a smart but troubled woman had once asked me.

I had no answer then. I had no answer now.

It was a uncomfortable truth to admit, but that was balanced by something I believed with equal honesty: Emily Marston could be trusted. There was no rational explanation for why I trusted her, but I did. Attraction is commonplace. A visceral, indefinable unity is not. The chemistry that links two people is comprised of elements too subtle to survive dissection, too complex to permit inspection.

It was unlike me to ponder the exigencies of romance, but that’s exactly what I was doing as the miles clicked by. My mind returned to the bedroom, where I had used every gentleness to follow Emily’s physical signals, then fine-tuned what I was doing to match her respiratory and moaning guidance. Our rhythms escalated until, finally, she had tumbled over a sheer apex, crying out, then sobbing, a woman so disoriented even minutes later that she seemed as vulnerable as a creature newly born.

I’d like to believe I am a competent lover, but I knew my skills did not account for an eruption of such magnitude. It was Emily, uniquely Emily, her physical release so explosive that it was as unmistakably visual as it was audible-a jettisoning fact that only made her sob harder, and voice her embarrassment.

“That’s why I’ve always been so careful about men,” she had whispered. “I can’t help how my body reacts, and it’s goddamn embarrassing. It creeped Paul out, I think, so I almost never really let myself go. Tonight, Christ! I got carried away, I guess. I’m so sorry.”

Sorry? I had just experienced one of the most sensual couplings of my life. I did my best to reassure her and succeeded, apparently, because half an hour later it happened again.

To equate sexual release with trust was as irrational-or as sensible-as any other aspect of love play between male and female. But there it was. It was the way I felt.

Just by thinking it through, I felt better about coming to Immokalee alone. After only a day together, I had no right to expect fidelity from the woman nor a reason to demand trust. If Tomlinson or anyone else could lure Emily away, so be it. I would be disappointed. Very disappointed. But I also knew that I would be secretly relieved. Discovering the truth tonight might spare me a more painful surprise down the road-no doubt the reason why I set such traps in the first place.

It was refreshing to be able to admit that to myself. Freeing, in its way. So I closed a mental door on the subject and focused my attention on what I was doing.

A good thing, too.

By then, in the lights of my truck, I could see a curvature of tree line that indicated a bend in the road. According to the satellite aerial, it was where County Road 846 turned north as County Road 857-and marked the midway point of Squires’s acreage. To the south was saw grass and swamp. To the north, more of the fertilized geometrics that define Florida agriculture.

I slowed enough to poke my head out the window and checked an east-facing road sign that drifted past. I was not surprised by its message. It was the same sign I’d seen in my odd vision of the girl.

IMMOKALEE 22 MILES.

Almost concurrently, two Hispanic-looking men on the Everglades side of the road caught my attention. They were standing by a gate, smoking cigarettes, no vehicle in sight. The gate was chained, I noted. I also noted the way the men turned their faces away from my headlights, shielding their identities, as I drove past.

They were spotters, I decided. They were standing watch. If Squires had indeed driven Tula Choimha home to Red Citrus, why were these two guarding the gate to his Everglades acreage?

It suggested to me that I had indeed seen some kind of structure beneath the trees in the aerial photo. It suggested to me that Squires and the girl were nearby.

Slowing to a crawl, I gave the men a mild wave. In response, one of them flipped his middle finger, then turned his back. His reaction was more than just aggressive. It was stupid. Why would he invite a confrontation down here in redneck country, where a lot of pickup trucks still had gun racks?

I decided the guy was either drunk or he was aggressive for a reason. Was there something happening beyond that metal gate he couldn’t risk anyone seeing or hearing?

I shifted into neutral, letting the truck coast, as I picked up my phone to call Leroy Melinski. It was the reasonable thing to do even though I didn’t want to do it. Perversely, I hoped there was no reception or that I got the man’s voice mail. Leaving the detective out of the loop would allow me to remain invisible.

I liked the potential of that. Neither Melinski nor anyone else knew where I was. The two men at the gate had no idea who I was. I could talk to the men or slip by unnoticed and search the area alone. Do it right and no one would ever know I had been there.

I got my wish. No reception.

I lifted my gear bag onto the passenger’s seat as I shifted into reverse and swung the truck around. By the time I got to the gate, both men were standing in the road, dark bandannas now covering their faces like bank robbers in a TV western, their body language communicating a rapper’s insolence. The bandannas and the tattoos told me they were members of a Latin gang- pandilleros, in Spanish slang.

Should I stop? Or should I park a mile up the road and jog back?

I foot-flicked my high beams on long enough to convince myself that neither man was palming a weapon. It gave me a reason to stop, which is exactly what I wanted to do-another perverse preference. I can tolerate stupidity because it is a biological condition. Ignorance and arrogance are choices, though.

I got out of the truck, engine running, lights on and my gear bag within easy reach if I needed it.

Beside the bag was the palm-sized laser I’d brought along, the Dazer Guardian. Because I had demonstrated the weapon to Emily earlier, I’d already overridden the twenty-four-hour security timer, which meant the weapon was operational, ready to use at the touch of a button.

I gave the thing a long last look, then almost stuck it in my pocket before I swung the door closed. But then I reminded myself I had never tried the light on a shark, let alone a couple of two-legged gangbangers, and now was not the time to risk a disappointing first test.

I felt confident I wouldn’t need it, or any of the other weapons in my bag.

I was wrong.

Because both men assumed I didn’t speak Spanish, I listened to them exchange nervous and profane assessments of me as I walked toward them.

I was a homosexual cowboy who had lost his hat as well as a horse that I abused anally. I was a drunken Gomer-a welfare redneck-who was too poor to buy a truck that was not inhabited by rats.

Hearing that caused me to take a closer look at the lane beyond the gate, wondering about their truck. It was all tree shadows and darkness, but my headlights were bright enough that I should have seen reflectors on their vehicle.

I did not. It confirmed what I had suspected: The dirt road led to a cabin or some sort of area where these two had parked.

Maybe Squires and the girl were there now. If not, someone else was there, because I heard radio static and then watched one of the men pull a little VHF from his pocket, saying in Spanish, “Don’t bother us now. We got a visitor. Some white Gomer-he’s probably pissed because Dedos just flipped him off.”

Latin gang members use nicknames. Dedos was appropriate. It meant “Fingers. ”

The radio crackled in reply, a voice saying, “Tell that pendejo to stop causing us problems! A white dude? Jesus Christ, get rid of him! What kind of car? You call me back if there’s any trouble, you hear me, Calavero?”

Calavero-another graphic nickname.

“A truck. An old redneck piece of shit, don’t worry about it,” Calavero said, looking at me now as he shoved the radio into his pocket. Then he said in pretty good English, “What you doing way out here, Gomer? You lost or something? Hell, man, my homey, he was just using his finger to point to the best direction for you to go. Straight up, unless you want to drive through a bunch of cow shit.”

The man laughed, glancing at his partner, Dedos, then used his chin to motion toward me. It was a signal to separate, possibly, because Calavero started moving to my left as Dedos took a couple of steps toward the truck’s passenger side.

I had stopped midway between the men and my truck, a hazed silhouette to them because of my headlights. If they hadn’t separated, I would have continued to assume they weren’t armed. But movement was all the warning I needed. So I maximized my Florida accent, saying, “I’m lookin’ for an ol’ boy named Harris Squires. You boys know where I can find him?”

That stopped them. I used their momentary surprise to take a long step back, then leaned a hip comfortably against my truck, close enough to get to the door fast if I needed to.

Calavero was the talker, and I listened to him reply, “ Amigo, we can’t even see your face ’cause of them lights. How we supposed to answer a question like that? I suggest you get back in your truck and get the fuck outta here, man.”

I planned to. But not yet.

“It’s a pretty simple question,” I said. “He’s a great big guy, Harris Squires. I met him last night. He’s not the one who said it, but I heard he has something for sale out here I might want to buy. Why don’t you call him and let him know I’m here?”

I could only guess at what Squires might have to sell, but the pandilleros knew.

In Spanish Dedos said to Calavero, “He wants to buy steroids from jelly boy this time of night? Or maybe the V-man’s right. Maybe they been running our girls outta here. Call Chapo, tell him we got to speak to the V-man right now.”

Chapo-the voice on the radio and another nickname. Shorty.

It didn’t tell me everything I wanted to know, but it told me enough-enough to get a rough estimate of how many people I was dealing with. Also, that there was an established pecking order. There were at least two more pandilleros beyond the gate, including a boss man named V-man. Plus Squires and, hopefully, the Guatemalan girl.

I had also learned that Squires wasn’t a friend of the gang-perhaps he was even their captive. It was unlikely but a possibility. Referring over the radio to a man the size of Squires as “jelly boy” required a controlled environment or some firepower to back it up.

It was time for me to get going, I decided. Time to drive fast to an area where there was phone reception because I’d walked into something bigger than I had ever anticipated. This situation required the police-a whole squad of pros, including a chopper. In another country where there were fewer laws, maybe, just maybe, I would have tried to handle it on my own. But not here. And not when there was a chance that Tula Choimha was alive and still in danger.

Because I didn’t want the men to know what I’d learned, I said, “I don’t have time to stand around listening to you boys talking Mexican. If you see Squires, tell him I stopped by. But don’t blame me when he gets pissed off ’cause he didn’t make a sale.”

I stood and turned my back to them, paying close attention as the two bickered about whether they should let me go or not. Because the exchange was in Spanish, they believed there was no need to keep their voices low. Dedos was the violent one, but Calavero was the boss.

“Stab him with a knife, that’s just stupid!” he hissed at Dedos. “For what, to rob him? He don’t have any money, look at his goddamn truck! We gonna have enough bodies to deal with!”

I almost stopped when he said that but forced myself to keep moving.

Dedos’s response: “Man, we can’t just let him go-the Gomer knows Squires! Call the V-man. The dude could bring the cops the moment he’s out of here. Then what’s the V-man gonna say?”

It wasn’t until my hand was on the open door, my foot on the running board, that I allowed myself to risk a glance over my shoulder.

My timing could have been better.

Dedos was fast and quiet. He had closed the distance between us, suddenly only one long stride away from the truck. His arm was extended, something in his hand. A cell phone, I thought at first, but his partner was yelling, “Don’t shoot him, you idiot!” so I knew that I was mistaken.

I threw my hands up, a defensive response, as I dived into the cab of my truck. At the same instant, I heard a percussion-cap BANG! then a brief whistling noise. A microsecond later, I felt a dazzling impact of something metallic that glanced off my left shoulder, then clanged hard against the truck’s cab.

It took me a moment to realize I’d been tasered with an electroshock weapon. The thing produced a crackling burst of pain that radiated through my spine, down the sciatic nerves of my legs. Zapped by several thousand volts, my brain flashed with what might have been the white schematic of my own cerebral synapses.

Then the wild sensation was gone.

My body lay immobile on the seat for an instant, as my brain worked it through. Dedos had used an older taser, with a steel dart attached to a wire. But the dart hadn’t hit me squarely. It had plowed a furrow of blood across my left shoulder, then skipped out, hitting the truck, steel on steel.

Now Calavero was calling, “Grab him, pendejo! We got no choice now!” as he also yelled into the radio, calling for help, but didn’t seem to be getting a response.

I was dazed, my glasses hanging by fishing line around my neck, as Dedos grabbed me by the ankles, trying to pull me out onto the road. I kicked back hard… missed… then kicked again and heard the man make an encouraging Woofing sound that told me I had connected with his groin.

I got my left hand on the steering wheel and was pulling myself into the truck when Calavero joined the attack. He used his boots to kick my calves and thigh muscles numb as he ordered Dedos, “Get on your feet, you drunken fool! Use the radio, tell them we need help ’cause you did something stupid again.”

My equipment bag was in the middle of the seat, not quite within reach. The palm-sized laser was close enough, though. I grabbed the thing as, once again, I felt my body being dragged out of the cab.

I had experimented enough with the laser to know that the rubberized cap was an instant-on switch, much like a flashlight. But the system was far more complex. There was another switch that cycled through various ranges of effectiveness, from one yard to almost a quarter mile.

To impress Emily, I had dialed the thing to three hundred yards and then painted distant mangroves with its luminous green beam-“searchlight mode,” according to the literature. Stupidly, I hadn’t taken the time to switch the laser back to close-quarters-combat range. Would searchlight mode have any effect on men only a few yards away?

Calavero had a gun in his hand now, I realized. A little chrome-coated derringer, with sizable over-under barrels that told me it was heavy caliber. He was using the butt of the gun to bang at my knee, looking for an opening to put a bullet into me. My truck was about to become a killing field, and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of there and start over.

Probably because I have never been shot in the stomach or chest, an odd, slow thought moved through my mind, oblivious to the panic I felt. Pain or impact? Which would I feel as a bullet splintered my ribs?

I tried to kick my legs free so Calavero couldn’t get a clean shot. It caused him to pocket the weapon long enough to concentrate on his grip. As he pulled me from the truck, my head banged hard on the running board, then I landed, back first, on the asphalt.

I fumbled the Dazer upon impact but managed to recover as Calavero gave me another numbing kick to the thigh. My glasses were still around my neck, but I could see well enough to know he was reaching for the derringer again. If I didn’t disable the man soon, he would shoot me, then keep shooting until I was dead.

I used the laser.

When I brought the Dazer up to fire, I told myself, Keep your finger off the damn switch until you’ve aimed!

I had been told that surprise was an important aspect of the laser’s effectiveness. So I waited… waited until I had the weapon in both hands, leveled at the man’s face. I was sighting down the little metal tube as if it were a gun when I touched the button.

When contact was ignited, I got my answer about the Dazer’s effectiveness. The pandillero was stunned.

In Calavero’s corneal reflection, I saw a bolt of green fire that flared like a welding torch. There was an instant of shocked silence, Calavero’s eyes wide, his face contorted, then a scream as he released his grip on me and tried to claw his eyes free of the pain.

I jumped to my feet, hearing Dedos yelling, “Pull him out from behind the truck, I’ll shoot him!”

The partner was armed now, I realized. I couldn’t deal with both men at the same time, so I ducked low behind the door, holding the Dazer like a roll of quarters. I drew my arm back and swung hard from the hips, hitting Calavero twice in the ribs with my fist, hearing the distinctive pop of thin bones breaking.

Making a grotesque wheezing noise, the man collapsed beneath my left arm, blind and unable to take a full breath. To make sure he was disabled, I gave his eyes another laser burst, his scream not so loud this time because he was semiconscious.

It took a moment to balance Calavero’s body against my chest, then get the Dazer positioned correctly in my right hand. When I was ready, I dragged Calavero away from the door, using him as a shield, until I had a clear view of his partner, Dedos, who had taken a few steps back.

The man was crouched in a shooter’s stance, hands gripping a black semiauto pistol. Its laser sight created a smoky red beam that I realized connected the pistol with a dot that painted my forehead. I ducked lower, closer to the door, as the beam bounced, then searched for me.

Dedos’s hands weren’t steady. He was probably spooked by how easily I had disabled his partner. Yes… that was the reason, because he decided to bargain.

“Man, I don’t want this kind of trouble,” he called to me. “Tell you what. You throw that green-light thing you got on the ground, I’ll do the same. I promise, man. You can stand up now- seriously. You want, I’ll count to three. I count to three, we both throw our shit on the road at the same time. How about that?”

From behind the door, I said, “I don’t want to have to kill you. Put your weapon on the ground and put your hands behind your head. Show me your hands, you won’t get hurt.”

The man answered with a forced laugh, saying, “You sound like a cop, the way you say that. But you ain’t no cop. You just a cowboy redneck, talking big.”

I didn’t respond. Instead, I switched the Dazer’s range to close-quarters combat, then took a second to check Calavero’s pockets. I found an ornate pocketknife and the VHF radio-lucky for me because I realized that the volume had been turned low. I adjusted the volume so I could hear the pandilleros’ friends if they called, then jammed the knife and the radio in a pocket of my fishing khakis.

A moment later, Dedos hollered, “Kill me with a light, man? How dumb you think I am? A light can’t kill nobody, man!”

I’d kept my left arm locked around Calavero’s throat. To keep him from responding, I squeezed his windpipe closed as I replied to Dedos, saying, “Then why’s your friend dead? You tell me.”

Calavero’s body thrashed briefly until I reduced pressure, listening for his partner’s quiet feet. I heard nothing, so I risked a look.

With one eye to the driver’s-side window, I watched Dedos take another nervous step backward before he yelled in Spanish, “Calavero, hey! You okay? Answer me.”

I watched until I saw that Dedos had lowered his weapon just enough for me to make a move. Using the door as a shield, I stood, aimed the Dazer at the man’s face and pressed the button. As I did, I averted my own eyes, but not until I witnessed Dedos’s face contorted by a searing, ocular virescence. It was simultaneous with his shrill scream.

The pistol went flying as Dedos covered his eyes. It didn’t help because I kept the laser beam focused on his face, using the door to steady my aim. Dazer literature claims that green is four times more visible to the human eye than other colors. It claims that a laser of this wattage could pierce human flesh, including finger and eyelids.

“It feels like a knife through the orbital socket,” one of the Dazer techs-who had experienced the pain-told me. At the time, I had assumed it was a mild exaggeration to get me interested in testing the company’s product.

I believed the tech now, particularly when Dedos began to roll on the ground. After a few seconds, he gagged and then vomited. Nausea is a common reaction to being blinded by the laser, according to what I had been told.

I felt confident enough to take a quick look at my shoulder. The dart had plowed a small furrow of flesh. It was bleeding but not badly. Next, I switched off the Dazer long enough to crawl into the truck and grab my equipment bag. In those few seconds, I formulated a plan. I needed information now. Where was Tula Choimha? If the men didn’t volunteer that information, I would have to force it out of them.

And I knew exactly how to make that happen.

Bag over my shoulder, I dragged Calavero to the front of my truck, positioning his head under the bumper. Alternately, I zapped both men with the laser even though they showed no readiness to fight back.

Next, I kicked Dedos’s pistol away, then dragged him near his partner, but closer to my truck’s right front tire. When he saw where I’d positioned him, the man became combative. To quiet him, I hammered my elbow into his nose. After one blow, Dedos pretended to be unconscious.

Then I stood and looked far down the road, first to the west, then to the east. How close would a driver have to be before he noticed the two men?

Not very close, I decided, which told me I needed to get moving When the pandilleros had first attacked me, I’d desperately hoped a car would turn down this remote road. Not now. An eyewitness was the last thing I wanted. Unless I was willing to detain an innocent passerby, the plan forming in my head would have to be abandoned.

I didn’t want to risk making that decision. Not that I was incapable of eliminating an eyewitness-I have done it before in my life. But I have never taken the life of a wholly innocent witness. Not knowingly, anyway. And never, ever in my own country.

“What have you done to my eyes?” Calavero moaned as I used duct tape on his ankles, then his wrists.

“Maybe this will help,” I replied, then stripped off more tape and wrapped it around his head as a blindfold.

When I had both men bound, I repositioned them so they could both feel next to their faces the tread of my front tires. My truck was still running, which scared them. Even though they lapsed into a machismo silence, their expressions were easy enough to read in the headlights.

I knew that what the pandilleros were imagining was far more terrifying than what they would have experienced had I not taped their eyes. Which was all part of the plan.

I had set up a variation of an interrogation technique that, unlike waterboarding, is unknown to the public. I had been with a special ops team years ago in Libya when I witnessed just how effective-and fast-the technique was at extracting information from an enemy.

I knelt between the men and spoke in English, saying, “I’ll give you one chance to answer questions. Refuse, get smart with me, I’ll crush your heads with the truck. If you lie, same thing. You’re road-kill. I’ll leave you here for vultures.”

“Don’t tell him anything,” Calavero said to his partner in fast Spanish. “His voice is different now, hear the difference? The accent. He is a cop. But he’s not going to hurt us. Cops aren’t allowed to hurt people in the States, you’ll see.”

Dedos didn’t sound convinced when he answered, “My nose is broken, man, I could strangle on my own blood if he doesn’t let me sit up.” Then in English he added, speaking to me, “We don’t know anything! But what do you want to know? Hurry up, I’m dying here!”

I asked the men about the girl. I asked about Harris Squires. I asked how many more of their gangbanger friends were waiting down this rutted drive?

Their reply was a smug silence that infuriated me. Two punks, secure in the rights guaranteed by their adopted country, were playing hardass. Two bottom-feeders who profited from the misery of others, dealers of drugs and flesh.

I zapped them both with the Dazer, but the duct tape mitigated the pain. I leaned closer and lasered them again, but they only squirmed and thrashed their heads in response.

“Why is this asshole doing this to us?” Dedos yelled in Spanish, getting mad. “I’m going to die, I’m choking! Even if he is a cop, how’s he know so much about Squires and the little virgin?”

Voice steady, Calavero replied, “Shut up. The V-man will have us out of jail by morning. Tell him anything, you’re dead, pendejo.”

Dedos’s words, “the little virgin,” answered one of my questions. It told me that Tula Choimha was here and maybe still alive. Or had been, the last time these two saw her. Which couldn’t have been long ago. According to Melinski, Squires and the girl had left Immokalee a little before eleven p.m.

I checked my watch. Midnight.

I was tempted to drag the two into the ditch and get moving, but I had to have more information. How many pandilleros and how were they armed? Was Squires a captive or working with the gang?

Calavero was telling Dedos, “My ribs are broken, you don’t hear me whining, you pathetic woman-” when I interrupted him, saying in English, “No more talk. You have five seconds to answer my questions.”

I began counting as I squatted to confirm the heads of both men were positioned directly in front of my tires.

“Why are you doing this? Who are you?” Dedos wailed, coughing blood as he tried to sit up.

With my foot, I forced the man to the ground. Then gave it a beat before I told them both in Spanish, “No more time. You assholes have no idea who I am. But you’re about to find out.” To convince them my Spanish was good, I added an insult that’s common in Mexico.

I heard Calavero swear, groaning, “The Gomer understood us. Everything we said!” as I swung into the truck, limping a little because my leg muscles were beginning to knot from being kicked.

As I positioned myself behind the wheel, the VHF radio beside me crackled, and I adjusted the squelch to hear, “Calavero! Get your fingers out of your ass. Why haven’t you called?”

I hit the button and replied, “I tried. Where were you?”

“Don’t give me your shit. What happened to the Gomer? That’s all I want to know.”

I kept the radio a foot from my mouth and tried to make my voice higher and hoarser, to imitate Calavero. “Dedos is an idiot, but the white guy is gone. How much longer?”

I didn’t want to risk his suspicion by saying more.

The man-Chapo, I guessed-was suspicious anyway.

“What’s wrong with your voice? You sound different.”

I snapped, “I’m bored shitless, I’m thirsty. Maybe you’d rather talk to Dedos.”

The voice paused… more suspicious now? Even when the man laughed, saying, “Dedos is an asshole. What else is new?” I wasn’t convinced.

I kept an eye on the wooded road, expecting Chapo, or his partners, to come and check things out for themselves.

The interrogation technique we’d used in Libya is called the Spare Tire Switch, although I have never heard the term again as it relates to intelligence gathering. It was called that by CIA officers running the operation-presumably CIA, because such information is never offered.

A spare tire, handled by two quiet men, is bumped against the head of a blindfolded enemy. A third team member sits next to them in a truck, engine running, that alternately accelerates, then decelerates, as the spare tire rocks in sync, as if attempting to climb over the enemy’s face.

The interrogation subject, of course, doesn’t know it’s a spare tire. He’s convinced he is lying under the truck. It is a powerful motivator.

My variation worked well.

When I got my truck into first gear, I accelerated slowly forward until I felt the first hint of resistance. It was accompanied by a duo of howls from Dedos and Calavero.

Instantly, I shifted to neutral, then stepped quietly out of the truck.

Using my left hand on the doorframe, my right on the accelerator, I began to rock the truck forward and back. With my hand, I added more gas with each forward thrust. The terror the two men endured-and the pain they imagined-was caused by the engine noise that grew progressively louder. It was the noise that convinced them their skulls were about to crack like eggs.

After just a few seconds of this, Calavero was begging me to stop.

“Anything,” he pleaded, “I’ll tell you anything.”

He did, too. But he wasn’t nearly as eager to share as Dedos, who I had to threaten just to shut him up.

“Crazy with fear” is just a cliche-until you have actually interacted with someone whose brain has been addled by terror. They weep, they slobber. Their sense of time and balance has been scrambled.

“Sick with fear” is another cliche, yet it accurately described the visceral dread I felt after what the two men confessed to me.

They were members of the Latin Kings. The Kings were killers and proud of it. Members were holding Squires and the girl captive at a hunting camp that consisted of an RV and a couple of outbuildings, half a mile away through the woods. There, a man named Victorino-a Latin King captain-and a woman called Frankie were filming a sex video, using Tula Choimha as their victim.

It made no sense to me when Dedos explained that the woman was Squires’s girlfriend, but I didn’t press for details. I grabbed the radio after a moment of indecision, pressed the transmit button and called, “Chapo! Stop everything! I think maybe the cops are here. Chapo?”

I waited… called again, but no reply. It was maddening.

Dedos referred to the girl as la chula virgen. The Mexican slang he used to describe how she would be raped was particularly disgusting: Romper el tamor con sangre.

His boss was going to bust through the girl’s screen in search of blood.

Equally disgusting was the indifference with which Dedos offered details. He wasn’t referring to a teenage girl. He was discussing a worthless object, a young Guatemalan, no better than an animal.

It was not uncommon in the racial hierarchy of Mexican gangs. He mentioned Tula, in fact, as an unimportant aside after Calavero had told me about Harris Squires.

“This person-we call him jelly boy-he disrespected the reputation of our organization,” Calavero said. “For this, he is being punished. How, I do not know. That is up to our jefe. Now, stop this bullshit! Arrest us, if you want. We’ll be out by tomorrow, what do I care? I’m not guilty of anything but being too stupid to kill you when I had the chance.”

Calavero was lying about Squires, and I knew it. When I threatened to put them under the truck again, Dedos was more forthcoming. Squires was to be the victim in a snuff film, he said. With a camera rolling, Squires would be murdered-“Slow, like a kind of ceremony,” Dedos said-then his body would be burned.

“If he’s still alive,” Dedos added. “He attacked the V-man, so the V-man shot him in self-defense. With a shotgun, but I don’t know how bad. When they sent us out to watch the road, jelly boy was still alive. He was bleeding from the face and chest, but the man is big as a mountain, so who knows? I only do what I am told. I have nothing to do with anything that happens at the hunting camp.”

It was then that Dedos told me about the girl.

That’s when I tried the radio. Then again.

Nothing but static.

I felt a panicked need to hurry even though I was unclear about the timing. Had Tula already been raped or was it happening now? More threats didn’t make it any clearer, and I couldn’t waste any more time.

Shock affects different people in different ways. Into my mind came an analytical clarity: I had to do whatever was required to help the girl-do it in a way that didn’t risk my future freedom, if possible, but saving the girl came first.

There is a maxim that applied. At least, I wanted it to apply, because it excused the extreme behavior that might be required of me. An old friend and I had pounded out the truism together long ago in a distant jungle:

In any conflict, the boundaries of behavior are defined by the party who cares least about morality.

The Latin Kings cared nothing of morality. They’d made that clear.

I gave myself a second to review. No one knew I was here. The pandilleros had no idea who I was. They wouldn’t expect a hostile visitor, particularly someone with my training and background. And, tonight, there were no rules, no boundaries of behavior.

Thinking that transformed my strange, restless mood into a resolute calm. I had made the decision to act before giving it conscious thought. The decision tunneled my vision. Thoughts of legalities and guilt-even my fears for the girl-vanished. They were replaced by the necessity of operating in the moment. Of acting and reacting with an indifferent precision.

It was a familiar feeling, a cold clarity that originated from the very core of who I am. I might have been in North Africa or the jungles of Central America. Nothing existed but my targets-threats which I must now find and neutralize.

There were three targets, according to Dedos, not counting Squires or the woman named Frankie, whose role was still unclear. Two fellow gangbangers plus their boss, Victorino-or the V-man, as they called him. All men were armed with handguns and knives. Two carried fully automatic weapons-“T-9s,” Dedos told me.

He was referring to one of the cheapest machine pistols on the market, a Tec-9. Cheap or not, the thing could spit out twenty or thirty rounds in only a couple of seconds, then fire again with the quick change of a magazine.

Daunting. But yet another reason not to hesitate when my targets were in sight.

I was hurrying now, but methodically. From my equipment bag, I took a pair of leather gloves and put them on. The night was warm, but I pulled on a black watch cap, too. Roll it down, it became a ski mask.

I looked at my leather boat shoes. The tread was distinctive, so I found rubber dive boots in my truck.

When I had changed shoes, I tried calling Chapo on the radio again-nothing but static. Then I frisked Dedos and Calavero more thoroughly.

Dedos had pointed a. 45 caliber Glock at me, fifteen rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. Because Glocks have no safety-and I don’t trust the weapon, anyway-I chose not to slide it into my belt.

That would come later.

Calavero’s derringer was a. 357. The recoil had to be horrendous, but it was a manstopper at close range. I slipped it into my back pocket.

I found a key to the gate and keys to what Dedos said was a Dodge Ram pickup hidden in the trees fifty yards down the hunting camp road. Because a priority was getting my own truck out of sight, I opened the gate, backed my truck into the shadows, then jogged back to Calavero and Dedos. I used my Randall knife to free their ankles-but not their hands-then ripped the tape from their eyes.

“Get up, get moving,” I told them, pointing Dedos’s Glock at them. If I was going to shoot someone, I wanted the medical examiner to find rounds from a gangbanger’s gun, not mine.

“Show me you where you parked your truck,” I ordered them. “You can lay in the back while I look for the girl. Or stay here if you want. Let the ants eat you, that’s your choice.”

It was a lie. They were going with me.

From my equipment bag, I removed the night vision monocular, then hid the bag behind the seat of my truck. The monocular is fitted on a headband that holds the lens flush over one eye.

When I flicked the switch, the gloom of the woodland ahead vanished. I was in an eerie green daylight world, details sharp. My right eye is dominant, yet I prefer to shoot using natural night vision, which is why I wore the monocular over my left eye. It is a personal preference that wouldn’t have held true were I carrying a rifle or a full automatic.

As we jogged toward the hunting camp-I had to literally kick both men in the butt to get them going-I stayed behind them off to the side. Because I couldn’t get Chapo on the radio, I had no choice now but to go into the hunting camp fast and hard.

Twice, I told Calavero to shut up, stop talking, but he continued to goad me. Breathing heavily, he made threats about what the V-man would do when I found him, then said, “When our lawyer gets you in court, man, how you gonna explain to the judge about my broken ribs? Dedos’s fucked-up face? You going to jail, faggot. Police brutality. We got lots of Latin King brothers in the joint, they’ll love meeting you. Man, those brothers gonna have some fun!”

That caused him to laugh, imagining what they would do to me.

By then, I could see the grille of their Dodge hidden in trees. To silence Calavero, I considered hammering him in the back of the head with the Glock but didn’t. Pointless demonstrations of power-like anger-is for amateurs.

Instead, I timed his steps, kicked his right foot into his left ankle, then brought my knee down hard, between his shoulders when he fell. I taped his mouth, then pulled the man to his feet. As I forced Calavero to lean his head against the fender of the truck, I told Dedos, “You seem like the smart one. Keep your mouth shut until I tell you to speak.”

Dedos nodded eagerly, his face through the night vision lens a misshapen montage of silver eyes and glittering blood.

Dedos got his chance to speak sooner than expected. As I forced Calavero, then Dedos, into the passenger side of the Dodge, the radio squelched with a muffled voice. Pulling the radio from my pocket, I heard a man say, “Calavero, you there, man? Come in.”

It wasn’t Chapo’s voice.

I touched the transmit button and replied, “Hang on a minute. Talk to Dedos.”

Then I pressed the radio to my chest and told Dedos, “Tell him cops just busted through the gate. In a truck. Tell him to leave the girl where she is and run. But”-I slapped him behind the ear for emphasis-“ listen to what I’m telling you. If you screw this up, if they hurt that girl, I’ll kill you. I’ll shoot you in the back of the head.”

To make my point, I touched the Glock to his temple, mildly amused that, beside him, Calavero leaned toward the dashboard so he wouldn’t be hit if the bullet exited his partner’s head.

Dedos looked at me as if I were crazy. “You kidding, man. The truth? That’s what you want me to say to my boys?”

I replied, “Do it!” then held the radio up to Dedos’s mouth.

Dedos was so frightened, his voice had a hysterical edge, the pitch of nervous laughter.

“The hell you talking about?” the pandillero replied. “Stop with your joking. V-man is sick of that little virgin, so we need something in the truck. The chain saw. Check, make sure it’s there.”

I took a deep breath, steadying myself. As I did, the man spoke again, saying, “Wait a minute. You serious? Put Calavero on. You’re joking about cops, right?”

I ignored him, thinking it through. If they needed a chain saw, it was to dismember Tula’s body. And if the girl was already dead, I was better off going in quietly. It was safer, cleaner. Take the men by surprise, one by one. Or just wait for them to finish up and jump them as they left the camp.

But what if they were killing her now?

I held the radio to my face for a moment, undecided. Then I touched the transmit button and said in English, “If you hurt that girl, you’re dead. Understand me? Tell Victorino. Tell him to stop everything and throw your weapons on the ground. We’re coming in. You’ve got three minutes, then you’re going to jail.”

There was a shocked paused before the man responded in English, saying, “The fuck you talking about? Who is this?”

Hoping the gangbangers would abandon the girl and scatter, I told him, “We’ve got your names, we know where you live. We’ll come to your houses if you run. But don’t hurt that girl-or you’ll be sitting on death row.”

The pandillero was replying as I sprinted around to the driver’s side, saying, “I don’t know nothing about no girl, man! We having a party, that’s all…,” but I didn’t listen to more.

I tossed the radio into Calavero’s lap as I started the Dodge, put it in drive, then transferred the Glock to my right hand. Because I knew I might need the emergency break, I tested it to make sure it worked. Then I floored the accelerator, fishtailing toward the hunting camp.

Dedos was hollering at me, calling me crazy, saying, “I can’t see nothing, man! You’re gonna kill us all!” because I drove with the lights off.

I could see fine. Through the night vision lens, my world was sharp and clear. It was, to me, a familiar world, where shadows are unambiguous, a place without shades of gray.

Dedos was right about one thing, though. If Tula Choimha was dead, I would kill them all.