Out on the Rim

Chapter Thirty-eight

Thirty-one minutes later the five of them reached the crude bamboo bridge that spanned the stream that flowed between the two steep ridges. It was point B on Booth Stallings’ rough map and Jack Cray, looking around, didn’t at all like what he saw.

“Who picked this place?” Cray asked.

“Why?” Durant said.

“It’s a perfect trap.”

Durant looked up and around, nodding in what seemed to be surprised agreement. “I believe it is.”

“So who picked it?”

“Espiritu, probably.”

Jack Cray raked one ridge with his eyes, turned and did the same to the other one. “There’re bandits up on those ridges, aren’t there?”

“Why do you say that?” Artie Wu asked.

“Because you can feel the fuckers, that’s why,” Weaver P. Jordan said. “Because when some guy’s got a bead on you, you damn well sense it.”

Jack Cray moved as close to Artie Wu as he could without touching him. “Who’s up there, damn it?”

Wu sighed. “Mercenaries.”

“Mercenaries! Whose mercenaries?”

“They could be ours. Possibly Espiritu’s. Maybe even yours. It all depends.”

The shock appeared first in Cray’s eyes, popping them wide, and then flowed down to his mouth, giving him a dim, slack-jawed look. When he asked his question, it was in a low monotone that shock had robbed of all expression, even the normal rising inflection. “That was just a shuck about giving us Espiritu, wasn’t it?”

Wu gave the far ridge his own long look before replying. “There’s a small problem with that,” he admitted. “You see, to keep the mercenaries away from Espiritu and their hands off whatever price is now on his head, we had to promise them a couple of profitable hostages.”

Weaver Jordan turned apoplectic red. His voice was a shout. “Us? You promised them me and him?”

“You were handy,” Georgia Blue said.

Durant studied the glassy-eyed Cray and the crimson-faced Jordan. “How much would Langley pop for you two?” he asked. “A rough guess.”

Cray answered as if by rote. “Not a dime. The agency will not negotiate with terrorists.”

“No one need ever know,” Wu said.

“You’d know,” said Weaver Jordan.

Artie Wu nodded sadly. “Yes, I suppose we would, wouldn’t we?” There was a silence and then Wu smiled, as if suddenly struck by an idea so wise and wonderful that it bordered on pure inspiration. “You could, of course—” Wu broke off. “Well, never mind.”

“We could what?” Cray asked.

“You could make your own deal with them.” Wu turned to Durant. “What d’you think, Quincy?”

Durant appeared to give it some thought. “Sure. Why not?”

“Georgia?” Wu asked.

“It’d be better than your playing hostage up in the hills for a year or six months,” she said to Cray and Jordan. “Unless you’re both crazy about fishheads and rice.”

Resignation spread across Cray’s face, erasing the last vestige of shock. Cynicism, in the form of a slight smile, moved in to replace resignation. “Isn’t this where I ask: I don’t suppose they take American Express?”

Wu’s frown was one of deep concern. “Money does present a problem.”

“But not an insurmountable one, right?” Cray said.

Wu looked a question at Durant who nodded his answer. “Yes, well, I suppose Quincy and I could lend you the money and you could give us an IOU or something.”

“A promissory note would be best,” Durant said.

“You fucks,” said Weaver Jordan.

Jack Cray again looked first at one ridge, then the other, turned to Wu and said, “Write it out.”

Wu smiled at Georgia Blue. “Georgia.”

She reached into her shoulder bag and removed an envelope. From the envelope she took a thrice-folded sheet of bond paper, which she unfolded and handed to Jack Cray.

He looked at it. “Neatly typed, I see.”

“What’s it say?” Weaver Jordan asked.

“It’s headed ‘Promissory Note’ and then it says, ‘For value received we promise to pay to Arthur Case Wu and Quincy Durant on demand the sum of forty-eight thousand Filipino pesos or twenty-four hundred U.S. dollars with simple interest accruing at the rate of six percent per annum.’ And then there’re places to fill in the date and sign our names.

“Who’s got a pen?” Weaver Jordan asked. “I’ll sign the fucker.”

Georgia Blue silently handed him a ballpoint pen. Using Durant’s back as a desk, Jordan signed his name with a flourish and handed the promissory note to Cray who glared at Wu. “We’re signing under duress, of course.”

Wu smiled politely. “We’ll let the lawyers argue about that, should it ever come up.”

Cray signed, handed the note to Wu and said, “Okay. Let’s get it over with.”

Durant turned toward the far ridge, took a white handkerchief from his pocket and waved it back and forth above his head.

“What the fuck’re you doing?” Weaver Jordan said.

“Surrendering, what else?” Durant said.

Up on the far ridge, Vaughn Crouch grinned down at the handkerchief-waving Durant, turned to his temporary first sergeant and said, “Well, son, you know what to do.”

“Right,” the first sergeant said.

Barking out his orders, the first sergeant had lined up his 23 armed mercenaries in two neat rows near the bamboo bridge. Twelve men stood at near attention in the front row; 11 in the rear. Weaver Jordan and Jack Cray were the paymasters. Carrying the thick stack of Filipino 50-peso notes, Cray counted out 2,000 pesos at a time. He handed each payment to Jordan who in turn handed it with his undamaged right arm to the next mercenary in line. The first sergeant approved each payment with a grunt and a nod.

When Cray and Jordan were halfway down the front row, Georgia Blue took the 35mm Minolta from her shoulder bag and began snapping pictures of the payments. Jack Cray stopped, turned and started to say something, but changed his mind when the first sergeant clapped a large but gentle hand on his shoulder. Georgia Blue captured Cray with his mouth open and the first sergeant’s hand on his shoulder.

After the last mercenary was paid, Cray and Jordan walked over to Wu and Durant, accompanied by the first sergeant.

“Now what?” Cray said.

“Well, we come now to the glory part,” Wu said. “You and Mr. Jordan will escort these brave ex-NPA freedom fighters back to Cebu City where they’ll meekly surrender to the proper authorities. Just how the CIA talked them down out of the hills we’ll leave to your imagination. But whatever you guys dream up, they’ll swear to. Right, Sergeant?”

“Absolutely,” the first sergeant said.

There was a silence that went on and on until Jordan looked at Jack Cray and said, “You know. It just might work.”

After a moment, Cray nodded and looked at Durant. “What else?”

“One last item,” Durant said. “If ever asked, you know nothing about anyone called Wu, Stallings, Overby, Blue or Durant. Nothing pertinent anyhow.”

Cray turned the threat over in his mind. “If we know nothing about you,” he said slowly, “then you can’t know anything about us, can you? And you’d have no use for that promissory note or the photos.”

“What a good boy,” said the beaming look that Artie Wu gave Jack Cray. Aloud, he said, “And thus we all arrive safely at the perfect stalemate.”

“Otherwise known as mutual blackmail,” Durant said.

“I like detente better,” Weaver Jordan said.

Wu beamed again. “Then we’ll call it detente.”

They came out of the tropical rain forest at 3:31 P.M., both limping a little, Otherguy Overby in the lead, Booth Stallings a dozen or so feet behind. They saw the bamboo bridge first and then, a little to the right of it, seated in the shade of some flourishing nipa palms, Wu, Durant and Georgia Blue.

Durant was up first and trotted toward Overby who stopped and waited for him. “Where the hell is he?” Durant demanded.

“Right behind me the last I looked,” Overby said and turned to find Booth Stallings moving slowly toward him. “Yeah. There he is.”

Durant waited patiently until Stallings joined them. “I mean Espiritu.”

“Oh,” Overby said. “Him. Well, he couldn’t make it.”

“Espiritu’s dead,” said Stallings.

“What happened?”

Neither Overby nor Stallings apparently wanted to speak first. Finally, Stallings said, “We’d like to sit down in some shade, have a drink of water and maybe a sip of whiskey, if anybody’s got any, and then I’ll tell you what happened. And if Otherguy doesn’t like my version, he can tell his.”

They sat in a row in the shade of the flourishing nipa palms, three big wide-eyed kids named Wu, Durant and Blue, listening transfixed to the tale told at storytime in the jungle kindergarten. At least, that’s how Otherguy Overby would later remember it.

Stallings, the tale teller, began with the death of Alejandro Espiritu’s nephew, Orestes; continued with the death of Carmen Espiritu in the cave; reached his climax with the death of Espiritu himself (“Otherguy shot him twice in the back before old Al shot me. Afterward, Otherguy felt a little bad about it but I sure as hell didn’t”); and ended with the arrival of Minnie Espiritu and her five young guards.

When Stallings was done with his story, he asked, “Anybody think to bring a bottle?”

Georgia Blue reached into her apparently bottomless shoulder bag and produced a half-liter of Black and White Scotch, which she handed to Stallings. He twisted off the cap, had a long swallow and passed it to Overby who drank and offered it to Artie Wu who shook his head. So did Durant. Overby gave the bottle back to Georgia Blue and then crept into his private sealed-off place to wait and see who would get blamed for what.

Wu looked at Overby and nodded sympathetically. “Is that about what happened, Otherguy?”

“That’s it.”

“So what d’you think went wrong?”

“Overall?”

Wu nodded.

Overby thought before answering. “You came up with a real smart plan, Artie. One of your best. Maybe a little tricky here and there, and maybe a little too egg-crated, but what the hell, there was a big score involved and none of us, except you and Durant, have worked together for a while. So that was okay. And everybody was given a job to do and, as far as I can tell, everybody did their job — except one person.”

“Who?” Durant asked.

Although sweat still flowed down over Overby’s face, the smile he gave Durant was one of chilly disapproval. “Espiritu. You guys sort of forgot to give him the whole script. Especially the last act. If you had, well, maybe, things would’ve turned but better.”

“Maybe,” Artie Wu said. “Maybe not.” He leaned toward Overby, his expression frankly curious. “What if you hadn’t shot him, Otherguy?”

Overby sighed. “Well, Booth here’d be dead and I — well, I probably could’ve been five million bucks richer.” He paused. “Two and a half million anyway.”

Durant glared at him. “You were going solo, weren’t you?”

Overby returned the glare. “Was I?”

Artie Wu smiled. “Let’s assume the thought crossed your mind — fleetingly, of course.”

Overby only shrugged.

Booth Stallings looked at Overby with a wry fond smile. “That was a hell of a choice you made, Otherguy.”

Overby nodded. “Well, I made it,” he said. “And now I’ll just have to live with it.”