Twelve Mile Limit

28

I’m not certain what I expected to see when the door of the Humvee opened, but it was not the astonishing figure that now approached me. Curtis Tyner-for it could have been no one else-was only slightly over five feet tall, and he had fire-bright red hair and bristling orange muttonchops of a type that I associate with Scottish bagpipers from a previous century. The hair of his beard was combed out away from his cheeks so that his face would have been orangutan-like in size and form but for the huge, waxed handlebar mustache that swept up toward his blue eyes.

Belted around his waist was a semiautomatic pistol and an attack/survival knife in a leather scabbard. His tiger-striped camouflage tactical dress-pants the same as mine-were bloused perfectly into his jungle boots. He wore a black beret cocked low over his right eye, and carried a leather swagger stick, which he used to slap the palm of his left hand as he approached. The T-shirt he wore was dark blue with a bright-yellow inner layer. Golden letters over the left breast read: British Royal Marines

Special Boat Service

M Squadron

Pinned on to the beret, I noticed, were a golden death’s head, along with a dagger and wreath that may have been from the South African Special Forces Brigade. There was also a patch that read: 1st SFOD-Delta Force.

An eclectic and unlikely mix of associations.

Tyner stopped a few paces in front of me, looked into my eyes-a chilly look of appraisal and indifference-and said in Spanish as he continued to look into my face, “What did you find on him?”

Standing beside the truck, with Keesha on the ground at his feet, the Irishman spoke first. “He’s got enough weaponry here to start his own fuckin’ war. He’s no bloody marine biologist, that much I promise you, Sergeant.”

The guerrilla who had searched me walked through the mud with the papers and false passport he’d taken and handed them to Tyner.

Tyner was silent for a minute or two as he read through the papers, then he shoved them back toward the guerrilla.

“Your name is Marion North? Says here that an electronics corporation out of Virginia sent you down here to help us do a little housekeeping. That you’re a retired commander, Navy Special Warfare. Is that true, Commander North?”

He was an American. The man’s accent was rural Midwestern, pure farm country, and he communicated suspicion with the easy, breezy friendliness that I have heard many times before from people of that region. Sometimes you’ve got to follow your instincts and take a chance. My guess was that he’d been in Colombia long enough to know how the system worked, what papers were real and which were counterfeit.

It was not a good time to lie, but maybe not a good time to tell the truth, either. So I said, “It wouldn’t make a lot of sense, them sending me into your territory, would it?”

“Exactly my point. And make no mistake Commander-if you really are a naval officer-this is my territory. I worked my ass off taking it-and keeping it. In the old days, they had a name for people like you-claim jumper. Or maybe spy. Who knows.” He smiled at me, but his eyes glazed slightly as he added, “Either way, they executed them. Tradition! I’m a stickler for tradition. So tell me why you’re really here. The truth. You’ve only got one chance, and I don’t much care either way. For starters, are you here looking for me?”

I said, “No, I’m looking for two men. A Samoan named Stallings, and an albino named Kazan.”

The little sergeant nodded. “One of those names is vaguely familiar. And why have you come to my territory looking for these two gentleman?”

I looked at Keesha, who was still on the ground, afraid to move. I thought for a moment before I said, “Tell that Irish Republican Army piece of shit to get away from the girl, then tell your men to leave us in private. They don’t need to hear what I have to say. You have my word, Sergeant. I’ll tell you the truth. But it’s classified.”

For some reason, Tyner found that funny. He looked at the Irishman. “You can’t fault his ability to judge character, McCauley! And right he is!”

Still laughing, Tyner said to me, “The cowardly bastard, McCauley, blew up a bunch of civilians with a bomb. So he’s scurried off to the jungle to hide. Hates it here. Always worried about snakes and diseases, and someone like me coming along and cashing him in. He’s got a hundred-thousand-dollar bounty on his head, so he’s paying me off a little at a time. Information, snitch work-grunt stuff that a man with any character couldn’t stomach. Still got a long way to go, don’t you, McCauley?”

Tyner pushed me toward the Humvee, waving for Keesha to follow, while behind us, the Irishman yelled, “I gave you two of them, Sergeant. No matter what you do with ’em, you still have to give me credit for both. That’s our deal. Two heads, Sergeant. I want it applied to my debt!”

Standing at the rear of the Humvee, aware that, from a distance, his men had their weapons trained on me, I told Tyner the whole story.

The real reason for me being there was no threat to his own strange operation, so I risked nothing in telling him the truth. The only details I omitted were which people and agencies had helped me.

When I was finished, he asked a few questions about my life in Florida, a little bit about my lab. He wanted to confirm that I really was a marine biologist come in search of friends. He took pains to be certain of that. Judging from the articulate questions he asked, he, in fact, seemed to have a pretty good general knowledge of natural science.

Living on an eroding mountainside above a dying river, that surprised me. I’m not sure why.

Then he said, “So you’re really not a commander with Navy Special Warfare?”

I shook my head slowly. “No.”

“But your name is Marion North.”

“Nope, that’s a cover, too. It’s Ford. Marion D. Ford.”

“Marion D. Ford, huh?” He nodded, thinking about that, looking up at me through the framework of his orange mustache, blue eyes glittering. “So why’d the CIA geeks agree to set you up? Help you find your pals? I took one look at your papers, and I knew who’d made them. You wouldn’t be the first they sent out to check on me.”

I said carefully, “I can’t and won’t confirm that it was a specific agency. In the past, I did some work for the State Department. Foreign-service variety. Not directly for any agency; sort of a contract thing. But some people in high places owed me favors. My friends who’ve been kidnapped are important to me. I pressed until certain people agreed to help.”

He slapped the swagger stick into his palm. “Okay, that’s just vague enough to be the truth. I believe you, Ford. Copacetic. Everything is copacetic. You look like you could use some food and some sleep. But…” He looked toward the men covering us, and gave a hand signal-they could relax and go about their business. “But first things first. You say you left five bodies upriver? Let’s go to headquarters, I’ll get out a topographical map. I want you to show me exactly where. The Colombian government will be searching for that chopper, and my men need to get to the bodies before they do. That’s money in my pocket.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “The dead guerrillas, that’s what I mean. I’ll collect the bounty for them. It’s what I do here. Business comes first, understand. I’ll give you a percentage, if you want, but not much. Or maybe I’ll pay you back by helping you out with your problem. Either way, you and the Indio girl may have done the killing, but I’m the one with the contract, all the permits. Without me, you could kill a thousand of the bastards, and you wouldn’t get a cent. Consider me generous just to include you, Dr. Ford. I don’t have to do a damn… do a damn…”

Tyner then paused, as if surprised by something, allowing the sentence to trail off before saying very softly, almost as if speaking to himself: “Dr. Ford? Marion Ford. Marion D. Ford.”

He said it as if struggling to remember some lost bit of data.

Then he looked up at me, eyes wide, his face an illustration of what might have been shock, as he whispered, “My God! You’re him. Dr. Marion Ford. I knew about you. You’re one of the Negotiators!”

I was so surprised by his reaction that I couldn’t speak for a moment, but then in a flat voice, I finally replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He slapped the swagger stick into his palm again. “I’m right. I know I’m right. You’re one of about ten guys with the W designation. You are him. I can see it in your face. Jesus Christ, man, you’re one of my heroes! What you did in Cuba, your work in Cambodia, it’s legendary. The way you took out the Soviet attache in Managua, the way you set him up-‘Let’s go spearfishing, comrade’-it was a masterwork. A piece of art. And that anarchist professor who disappeared from the bar in Aspen. Hell, man, I know a lot about you. I’ve studied your work.”

In the same flat tone, I said, “Sorry. Mistaken identity. You’re confusing me with someone else.”

“Hey, Ford, you can trust me. A couple years back, a guy named Heller-you trained together, according to him. He was here, doing the same kind’a work I do. Blaine Heller. An amazing man. He told me if anything happened to him, I should destroy all his files. He bought it in a chopper crash, so I burned all his papers. But I read them first-hell, who wouldn’t? That’s how I know about you.”

I waited but said nothing. Blaine Heller had been a good, good man. An intelligent, perceptive man who loved literature and fine art. What could have possibly driven him to come to this dark place?

Tyner stopped talking, grinned, and slapped his knee with the swagger stick, then thrust out his right hand to me. “Curtis Tyner, U.S. Army, Green Berets and Delta Force at your service, Dr. Ford! This is an honor. Damn glad to meet you.”

He began waving me toward the Humvee. “Come. I’ll radio ahead, have my staff lay out some food for you. I’ve got a couple prime Kobe steaks from Japan I’ve been saving. Anything you want. Finally, I meet a man who’s truly going to appreciate what I’ve done here. My place-it’s a… well, hell, it’s a warrior’s palace.” The little sergeant made an open-handed gesture of delight. “We have so much in common, you’re not going to believe it.”

Tyner didn’t live in a house, he lived in a castle fortress. It was built on a mountaintop, at the end of a long series of muddy switchbacks, constructed of rebar and concrete, dug into the bare hillside like a sprawling bunker, a low-profile mansion built for luxury, comfort, and defense.

The complex had a half-dozen or more thick-walled out-buildings, some set far from the house-munitions warehouses, possibly-the entire compound consisted of at least ten acres, all of it contained by high, iron fencing-electrified, it looked to be-with a ribbon of concertina wire around the top.

As the driver steered us through the gate, onto the grounds, Tyner chattered away about the years of work it’d taken to get his complex properly built. How difficult it was to get good help out in the jungle. Told me about his redundant systems for generating electricity, potable water, communications, waste treatment, and the improvements he’d made to guarantee easy transportation by land, river, and air.

“The danger of living in the jungle,” he said, “is that the goddamn thing never quits. It’s always out there, pressing in. Stand too long in one place and the vines will grow up your legs, around your neck, and strangle you. The humidity seeps in and turns everything metal into rust”-he snapped his fingers-“that quick. If you don’t fight it every single day, it’ll swallow you alive. But why am I telling you? You know that.”

When Ron Iossi of the CIA told me there were some retired special ops guys out in the jungle getting rich, he was accurately describing Curtis Tyner. The man had all the imported toys: satellite dishes, cellular communications mini-tower, new pickup trucks, ATVs, skeet range, three-hole golf course, a massive garden patio with built-in barbecue grill and wet bar, and a competition-sized lap pool with a three-meter diving board. On the bottom of the pool, in golden tiles visible through the chlorinated water was a Latin motto: Vae Victis.

When I asked about it, he translated, “ Woe to the conquered. I’m surprised you don’t know it. It’s an old military expression. Dates back to Roman times.”

I told him, “Military history was never a main interest of mine.”

The man had an affection for maxims. Over the double doors that were the main entrance to the house, chiseled into the cement were the words: By Way of Deception, Do We Make War -that phrase, at least, I knew. Carved into the mantel over a wall-sized fireplace of raw stone was more Latin: Mors ad Barbarii.

This one, I didn’t bother asking about.

Inside, the place was furnished as impersonally as a model home. It was as if he didn’t live there. The building was a trophy-a thing to be shown, not used. The entrance hall was draped and carpeted, two stories high, and the dining room table was beautifully made, some kind of exotic black wood, and long enough to seat twenty or more beneath crystal chandeliers.

When I asked, “Do you get a lot of guests out here?”

Tyner replied. “Not yet. But I will. I’ve been making a few friends. I know a family in Bogota that I like a lot. There’s a priest there that I sometimes play golf with. But it’s tough out here. Socially speaking, I mean. You don’t want to associate with the locals too much. It undermines respect-I’m sure you understand what I mean.”

I thought to myself: This man’s insane. But I said, “Sure. In a place like this, a little distance is healthy.”

Each time I reminded him that I was in a rush, that I had a deadline if I wanted to save my friends, Tyner made a dismissing motion with his hands as if it were a minor problem, as if all my worries were over.

Once, he said, “Remanso? I own a piece of a Bell helicopter. I’ll call my pilot, have him pick us up. We can be there in an hour. There are two ways we can work it. We can pay the ransom in cash, make sure your friends are secure, then kill the bad guys. Or we can lure the bad guys out and do it surgically. That might be the most interesting way to approach it. As a classic problem-hostage rescue.”

When I replied, “I don’t have that much cash, so the ransom option won’t work,” Tyner seemed pleased that I’d opened the door to the subject.

“I’ve got cash, all you need,” he said. “You won’t believe how much money there’s to be made down here. After you eat, get some sleep, I’ll explain to you how it works. The way we could do it is, I lend you the cash. You give it to the turban-Kazan, you called him?-he gets the cash when your friends are safe. Then we pop him and as many bad guys as we can, get my cash back plus collect the bounty on the heads. See? We actually make a very sizeable profit. Outstanding! Something like this, I think of as an investment, man.”

Another time, he said, “I don’t know why you’re so dead set on involving the Colombian government in this, or calling your friends at the State Department. You really think those idiot Anfibios can do a better job than us? Think about it. This is a chance for the two of us to finally work together. You and me!”

Tyner had a staff of a couple dozen or so people, most of them teenage Latino girls, and a few stoic Indio men. “See a girl you like?” he told me. “Let me know, and she’s yours. The reason you need to talk to me is, I’ve got a personal relationship with three of them. All Castilian, all from Cali-where the prettiest women in the Americas come from. Other than those three, the choice is yours. But some things, a man won’t share, right?”

He assigned a girl to me, then one to Keesha, too, though he was visibly disappointed that I was taking a personal interest in Keesha’s well-being.

“Indio girls, man. The jungle’s thick with them. They breed in the bushes like rabbits, drop babies like it’s nothing. I don’t see why you’d waste your time.”

I told him, “This one may have saved my life. I kind of like her.”

From Tyner’s house on the mountaintop, I could look out the window of our guest suite and see a horizon of cloud forest, the black tree canopy silent, cavernous beneath a layer of white mist. It was a swollen presence, meticulous photosynthesis in relentless slow motion. Connected as they were, the forest and the eroding strip of mountainside, the yellow earth seemed an indecency, bare as private flesh, an exposure that needed covering. It drained into the only section of river that I could see, changing the water’s color to a bloody orange.

The two servant girls-there was nothing else to call them-led Keesha and me into the suite, and showed us the full refrigerator, the closets of generic clothing, and a massive sunken marble bathtub. When I told them that Keesha would need her own room, the Indio girl grabbed my arm, squeezing, and shook her head. “I stay with you. Not alone. Not for a moment. In this place, we will be always together.”

I could see that she was very frightened, and I didn’t blame her. Houses, even some buildings, have a feel to them. Tomlinson would be able to explain it more completely, but it’s true. Perhaps my impressions were colored by my subconscious assessment of Tyner’s employees-they never made eye contact, and they spoke in whispers-but this house had a dark feel to it, a kind of chilly dread. Even as solidly built as it was, it did not seem a thing of permanence in this vast place.

One servant girl brought us a stack of sandwiches-ham and cheese, and rare roast beef with onions. The other filled the sunken tub with hot water and bubbles.

Standing in the doorway of the huge bathroom, Keesha looked at the tub and said uneasily, “What form of soup is it that she is making?”

When I told her it was a place for bathing, Keesha thought about that for a moment, then nodded as if pleased-as if the bath were a good opportunity. Without commenting to me, she then told the servant girl to bring one of the Indio men to her immediately-a woman right at home giving orders.

Keesha’s conversation with the man was in a tribal language I didn’t understand, and very brief.

When I asked her about it, she said, “I asked him for the leaves and the root from a lehuenka plant. In this room’s cooking place, I can make a strong tea of it. I’ll drink it, then sweat myself in this tub of bubbles. It must be done soon, very soon, and you’ll be here to help.”

“Help do what?” I asked.

The girl walked to the stove, looking at it, scrutinizing the knobs, not sure how to use it. “I’ve missed my cycle by nearly seven days. The soldiers who raped me. One of them, I think he now lives inside my body.”