The Nowhere Man

14 Rambo in a Bespoke Shirt

This time when Evan arced up from the depths and broke the surface of consciousness, he sensed a difference in the consistency of the air.

A draft.

Rolling his head to the side, he noticed that the bedroom door was ajar.

He rose, wobbling a bit on his feet. Then made his way toward the door. When he stepped through, he picked up movement far down the hall on either side of him. First he looked left, where Manny waited, shotgun leveled. To Evan’s right was another narco—one of the guards he’d spotted earlier from his window — with his weapon also at the ready. Evan took a step toward Manny, and both men moved with him, maintaining the twenty-foot buffer.

They had learned.

Manny jerked the end of the shotgun at the other man. “Dígale, Nando.”

Santa Muerte, tattooed on the side of Nando’s neck, looked like she was melting. He swiped sweat from the ink quickly, his hand slapping back onto the shotgun’s barrel. “Mr. René say he invite you to take some air. He say perhaps you can find some perspective.”

René’s arch tone, replicated through poor diction and a strong Mexican accent, made Evan smirk.

Nando flicked his head, making clear that the request wasn’t really a request.

Evan started down the high-ceilinged hall, Manny backpedaling and Nando bringing up the rear, the three men moving of a piece. The chalet smelled of dust and sweet rot, all the scents of a time-honored place. The space opened up around Evan, such a contrast to the locked and barred room.

They reached a landing. “Hold up,” Manny said. He shot a quick glance behind him, finding the top step with his boot, then looked back and ran his tongue across the caps. “Okay. Slow as shit, ése, or you be wearing a round in your face. Then you need golds like me.” He bared his teeth in something resembling a smile. “¿Comprendes?”

“Comprendo.”

The three men moved awkwardly down a few broad flights of stairs, Manny sliding his hip along the polished wooden banister for balance so he could move backward while keeping the shotgun raised. They reached the ground floor, stepping into the embrace of an expansive parlor. The lush Persian carpet yielded softly underfoot. Evan took in the intricate woodwork, the scattering of billiard tables, the excessively stocked bar. René certainly didn’t skimp, particularly when it came to luxury. Two foot soldiers sat on leather couches sipping scotch, Kalashnikovs resting on the cushions at their sides. They barely took notice of the bizarre procession moving past them.

A hostage being moved at double gunpoint didn’t warrant a second glance. Business as usual. Evan wondered how many times René had played through this scheme. How much blood had the walls of this chalet seen?

Evan paused, adding the men to the tally—two dogs, eight guards, Dex—before Nando prompted him to keep heading down a wide corridor. They passed a library, a sunroom, an empty ballroom with a listing grand piano and a past-its-prime air right out of a Victorian novel.

The grand entrance rose two stories, crowned by a glittering chandelier the size of a Buick. Evan leaned back on his heels, looking up, a country rube visiting Kuala Lumpur. Chalet windows filtered in the burnt orange of the setting sun. Manny halted by a curved Hollywood staircase and gestured for Evan to continue outside.

Evan placed his hand on the doorknob. The metal felt like ice. “I can just leave?”

Manny smiled. “You can try.”

And then Evan understood.

His thin tailored shirt and jeans would provide scant protection from the cold. René wanted to show him just how unforgiving the terrain was, to dissuade any thoughts of escape.

But he didn’t need to escape. Not yet. He needed to recon, gather intel, get the lay of the land. And René was providing him with a perfect opportunity to do just that.

Evan stepped outside, the breeze sweeping straight through him, biting at his ankles, his neck, his wrists. Clenching his fists, he drove them into his pockets. A light snow fell, so fragile that the flakes dissipated the instant they hit his clothes. For a moment he stood on the vast stone porch, giving his body a chance to acclimate.

René was right to show off the brutal landscape. SERE training aside, without a clear plan Evan would die of exposure. He appreciated the pageantry. Now he had to bear down and gather as much information as he could.

A circular cobblestone driveway received a gravel road that pointed east, the only clear route in or out. The hard earth crunched beneath Evan’s hiking boots as he stepped off the edge of the cobblestones, putting the chalet behind him. Pine air whistled in his windpipe, clean as mouthwash. Turning back, he admired the grand exterior. Four stories of stone and wood plunked down on an apron of landscaping carved out of the hard terrain. Boxy shrubs artfully concealed a few sunken basement windows. A tower stretched up from the east wing, manned by a rail-thin guard whose silhouette Evan didn’t recognize. He included the man in his mental count.

Evan rotated in a full circle, taking in the sweep of the surrounding range. The valley position was ideal for René. A single lookout could monitor incoming traffic from all directions, the amphitheater effect of the mountains ensuring that a car or a plane would be heard from miles away.

It made even more sense why René had hired narcos for his detail. Aside from ISIS bodyguards who were unwooable by money, narcos had the most experience conducting illicit and elaborate operations while staying off the radar. Evan had no doubt that these men had cut their teeth hiding powerful drug lords from the federales, rival cartel assassins, and DEA drones while doing the legwork to keep the empire running. Procuring these men was ingenious and bold — René’s trademarks.

The air was crisp, the view at postcard resolution. Above the ridge a hawk caught a wind current, frozen in place like a fleck of paint on a camera lens. The slope to the north looked to be the most gradual, which suited Evan fine. The border to Liechtenstein lay that way.

The red barn sat a few hundred yards to the east. Two narcos perched on wooden crates by the door, smoking and sipping coffee, their AKs dangling from straps. They wore long dark coats, heavy enough to add bulk. One poked a fork into a plate of food. A fire languished between the crates, down to ash and embers, a pot hanging over it like something from a cowboy movie. Evan recognized them as two of the men he’d seen jogging into the barn earlier. The Dobermans lounged at their boots, resting.

Evan started toward the men, and they both rose quickly. The dogs lunged to their paws and issued a rumbling growl in stereo. But still they kept slack in the leash. They were well trained, not junkyard menaces.

The wet air conveyed the scent of cigarettes, onions, and garlic. As Evan drew near, he saw that the plate held a half-eaten tamale smothered in green salsa. His stomach leapt at the sight.

Giving the men a wide berth, Evan passed by. “Buenas tardes,” he said.

“Buenas tardes.”

The barn door rumbled open with a metallic rasp. Another narco, with grease stains on his hands and shirt, stepped outside as he lit up a cigarette. A tenth guard. His left cheek sported an impressive knife scar, his patchy beard riding the pitted flesh haphazardly. He saw Evan and froze.

Through the rolled-back door, Evan took in the interior. Only now did he realize that the barn, for all its cozy Old World appearance, was built of metal. There were no stables inside, but an open stretch housing a pair of big Mercedes SUVs — Geländewagens with their license plates removed. Beside the G-Wagons, a vintage Rolls-Royce Phantom was parked, jacked up on the left side, its rear tire removed. Gear lockers lined the back wall. A distressed feminine voice carried out, ringing sharply off the metal, echoes making her words unintelligible.

Evan strained to source the sound, catching a flash of movement between the G-Wagons, a woman doubled over, head bent painfully, her mane of straight black hair thrown forward over her face. He couldn’t see her features, but the sounds clarified as cries.

She slid bizarrely along the ground like a stop-motion insect, one arm twisted up as if in supplication. It wasn’t until just before she skittered behind one of the vehicles that Evan spotted the massive hand clamped over her wrist, wrenching the arm painfully as it dragged her from sight.

It had a streak of color across the back just beneath the knuckles.

Dex.

The man with the grease-stained shirt slammed the door shut quickly behind him, clearly concerned by what Evan had seen. Or was he? Had the whole episode been staged?

At a twenty-yard standoff, the men regarded Evan, blinking. Then they flicked their cuernos de chivo at him: Get moving.

He kept on toward the edge of the pine forest, half expecting them to herd him back toward the chalet. But they let him roam.

There’d be no going Rambo in a bespoke shirt on an empty stomach with zero planning. Not in this weather.

As Evan hiked through the trees even the muddy patches held firm, frozen in place. Though the branches filtered out most of the snow, a light dusting still fell, melting on impact. He worked his way up the first slope, sticking to the ridge. The trees were less dense here, providing better sight lines to the chalet below and the looming crest. He paused, breathing hard, his sweat clammy and cold across the back of his neck. His hands were going numb.

He spotted a clearing ahead and set up the jagged slope toward it. When he finally reached the break in the trees, he paused, leaning against a boulder. A glasslike puddle at his boots looked like a portal to the underworld, the reflected pines thrusting down to a miasma of subterranean clouds. A loon arced gracefully down to land, kissing its mirrored opposite and shattering the illusion. The sleek black head bobbed, and then a mournful wail drew out and out, warbling the air.

Evan would have to head back soon or risk frostbite. He climbed atop the boulder and peered up the northern face of the range, charting a mental course over the brink.

His thoughts traveled to a midsize carrier that right now was sliding south alongside the Baja Peninsula toward the Panama Canal.

Seventeen years old. Locked in a goddamned twenty-foot ISO-standard container like a piece of break bulk cargo.

For a moment the image of Alison Siegler made him debate going for it. Insulating his skin with a paste of mud. Once he got past the rim, he could build a shelter, search out tinder, forage for food. Maybe it was worth taking the shot now.

The loon’s howl cut off abruptly, and it took flight with a graceless flapping, flecks of water raining down on Evan’s head. He turned to see what had scared it off.

A ten-point buck had wandered silently to the water’s edge. His majestic head was raised, obsidian eyes fixing Evan where he stood. Evan’s breath gusted out, wisps riding the air. He could see the buck’s breath, too, twinning plumes from the nostrils. The buck lowered his front leg, muscles sheeting beneath the fur.

A frozen moment.

Then the buck jerked.

An instant later the gunshot thundered across the valley.

Evan’s head snapped upslope to search out the shooter, but it was too late.

The stag buckled onto bent front legs. He wheezed. His hind legs kicked, propelling him forward onto his neck. The puddle sprayed, dark with churned-up muck. Then the buck collapsed onto his side. Crimson matted his fur, running into the water.

Evan slid down from the boulder and walked over. Breath fluttered the tattered fur at the wound, air leaking through the punctured lung, the sound like a deep, hoarse sigh. Saliva frothed the mouth. One rolling black pupil looked up at him.

Evan squatted over the buck, rested a hand on the warm neck, stroked it gently until an inner stillness claimed the eye.

He tallied the new count: Two dogs, ten guards, Dex. And a sniper.

He understood better what René had wanted him to learn on his little nature hike.

Now that the point had been made, Evan was not surprised to hear heavy footsteps approaching through the underbrush. It was time for him to be returned to his box. A moment later Dex broke through the tree line into the clearing. Still crouched, Evan looked up at him.

Dex was expressionless as always, his gaze absent of life. His face maintained that preternatural blankness as he lifted his right hand and cupped it over his mouth — elbow flagged to the side, palm pressed to his lips, the V of his thumb and forefinger snug against his nose. For the first time, Evan saw the tattoo on the back of his hand clearly. It was a mouth stretched eerily wide, conveying pleasure but no happiness.

A painted smile, slapped monster-mask crooked over Dex’s actual mouth.