Valley of the Templars (28 page)

“Or a series of them,” said Kokum.

“Who gets to tell the president?” McGraw asked. “This could be worse than the BP spill, and in an election year. Shit!”

“You’re the chief of staff,” said Kokum. “You tell him.”

“You’re the national security adviser. You tell him.”

“I’ll flip you for it,” suggested Kokum.

“We’ll both tell him.”

“Jesus wept,” said Colonel Frank Turturro, staring down at the hideous image on his iPad. The image, sent from the Desert Hawk III mini-drone he’d sent
out twenty-four hours after the last time his men had reported in, left nothing to the imagination. The men, all equipped with under-the-skin RFID—Radio Frequency Identification Devices—in their biceps, had led the tiny drone to them within half an hour of the aircraft’s launch.

The pictures had been uploaded to the requisite satellite, the signal boosted to take it to the Blackhawk Security Systems Compound War Room and then relayed back to him. The three headless corpses were barely identifiable, but the heads weren’t decomposed enough to make it impossible, despite the spawning maggots: the one on the left was Nick Cavan, the one in the middle was a corporal named Dick Rush and the third man was Toby Greer, an old combat veteran Turturro had worked with in Afghanistan. There was no sign of Anthony Veccione, the “Therapist.”

“Do we have a signal on Master Sergeant Veccione?”

“Yes, sir,” said the young communications officer standing stiffly at attention in the camouflaged operations tent. “Loud and clear, sir.”

“Good, get me a GPS fix on him as soon as possible. If he’s heading back in this direction, I want an escort sent to meet him along with a medic.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else, sir?”

“Yes,” said Turturro, thinking hard. “Send me Ed
Broadbent.” Broadbent was the best of the Tucano pilots. If anyone could find the son of a bitch who’d desecrated his men’s bodies, it was him.

The old man with the frayed straw hat and wearing the white cotton shirt and the torn cotton pants sat sidesaddle on the swayback of the tired-looking gray burro, giving it an occasional slap across the neck with a long willow switch when it began to slow as it shuffled slowly along the dusty road carrying its bound bundle of cane across its ancient rump.

The burro—whose name was Graciano, which meant “pleasing and agreeable,” which he was not—came to a dead halt when he saw the four people step out of the jungle and onto the road. Three men and a woman, all heavily armed with very modern-looking weapons. The
nèg
carried a very old machete in his belt that was brown with rust or dried blood, and the
blanco
pirata
with the ruined face had a large knife in a sheath.

The old man, whose name was Federico Fernández Cavada, stared at the four people and wondered for a moment if this was the day God wished him to die. He mentally shrugged his shoulders. Who cared? He had lived in the world longer than he could remember, had a wife, watched her die, had children, watched them forget where they came from, heard of
a revolution that was supposed to change his world but had done nothing one way or another, even heard stories of men on the moon and Cubans on the teams of the American major leagues, but what of it? If God meant him to die today, then so be it, as long as somebody took care to feed Graciano.

“Señores buenos días y la dama,”
said Federico politely.

The black one answered, “Good day to you, as well, my friend.” He smiled.

Federico found it somewhat interesting that the man did not call him “Comrade” as the officials in Hatillo or Moron did, but then again, it had been a long time since he had been to either one of those places. Maybe things had changed. It was also interesting that the man’s accent marked him as originally coming from Havana. He decided to remark on it.

“You are a long way from home, my friend,” said Federico.

Graciano’s body squirmed and he farted, then blew air from his nostrils. “This is true, but I would very much like to know how far away I am.”

“And how could I tell you that?” Federico said.

“If you told me where I was, then I would know,” said the black man.

“You are lost?” Federico said, a little incredulous. What were people like this doing lost in the jungle?

“We are lost and hungry,” said the black man.

“There is lots of food to be had in the jungle for people with such weapons as yours.”

“We have been trying to be discreet in our movements, old grandfather.”

Federico nodded. They were being pursued by others like them. He would be a fool to put himself between such people, but the black man was very polite and it was obvious he was well educated. “Who looks for you?”

“Bad men, old grandfather,” said the black man.

And there was the age-old question of course, thought Federico. Bad men never thought they were bad, but everyone thought they were good. “And how am I to know that you are not the bad men and the people pursuing you the good?”

“You are a wise man, old grandfather, to ask such a question, but the answer is an easy one.”

“And what is the answer?”

“If we were the bad people, we would have blown you off your old burro by now and butchered his stringy old flesh for our dinner.”

The black man smiled.

Federico smiled. “That is a good answer,” he said. “Come with me to my home and we will talk and I will give you some food.” He put the willow switch lightly to Graciano’s neck and the burro moved slowly off again. Eddie and the others fell in behind him.

“That didn’t sound like any Spanish I ever heard,” whispered Carrie.

“That’s because it wasn’t Spanish—it was Cuban Creole,” said Black. “It’s the second language here and it goes back a long way.”

“Could you understand what Eddie was saying?”

“No, but it was obviously all the right things.”

Alfonsito’s finca, or farm, was located at the very end of the narrow little road in the mountains. There was a small cluster of plaster-covered single-story buildings that looked as though they had been a work in progress for a hundred years or so, a broken-backed small wooden barn and a pigpen with half-built walls of concrete blocks. The house was roofed with loose squares of rusted sheet metal, and the barn was thatched with woven banana leaves and cane.

Several small fields climbed up the slope behind the house and outbuildings. Holliday could see tobacco, tomatoes, potatoes, something green like spinach and even a spiky field of pineapples.

There were a pair of avocado trees ripe with fruit giving shade to the doorway of the farmhouse, and underneath one of the trees was a 1941 half-ton Dodge pickup that looked as though it might have been black at one point but which was now covered with a coat of uniform mud gray house paint.

The old Dodge was in excellent shape except for the frighteningly bald tires, and with a little work Alfonsito could probably get more money for the truck than for his entire farm. A dozen chickens poked about in the front yard, pecking at nothing. Off to the right was an adobe fire pit with a grease-encrusted grill. Heat was rising from it, which meant the coals had been lit some time ago.

Alfonsito slid off the burro, tying it to a low branch of one of the avocado trees. He led them into the main room of the house and threw open the shutters of the two windows to let in some light. There was a homemade table, four wooden chairs and a small bed in the corner.

Alfonsito spoke to Eddie. “Take the table and chairs outside. We will eat under the tree where it is cooler.”

“Certainly,” said Eddie. He explained what the old man had said and they began moving everything outside. Alfonsito stepped into a back room, disappearing from view.

“You think we can trust him?” Carrie asked.

“He’s offering his hospitality,” said Eddie. “That is trust enough for me.”

They took the table and chairs outside into the shade of the avocado and Alfonsito appeared a few moments later with a split and eviscerated suckling pig, which he laid on the grill.

Alfonsito disappeared again and came back in a few moments with a burlap sack and five tall plastic cups held in his spread fingers. The cups were old McDonald’s
Batman Forever
giveaway cups with the images mostly faded and scratched off.

He opened the burlap sack and ceremoniously removed five cool bottles of blue-labeled Mayabe beer. He set one bottle and one cup before each of his guests. He found an old wooden crate beside the door, upended it for a stool and then passed an old rusted bottle opener around the table. When all the beer had been passed around, he stood and lifted his bottle.

“Bweson zanmis!”

“It means ‘Drink, my friends,’” translated Eddie. The others all raised their bottles “
Onè Respè!
” said Eddie, toasting Alfonsito. The others all followed suit without having any idea what it meant, but whatever they’d said, it made the old man smile. Behind them on the grill, the smoky sweet smell of barbecuing pork began to fill the air.

By early evening the team of scouts sent out by Turturro had returned with Veccione in tow, exhausted and suffering slightly from exposure but otherwise intact. Broadbent the Tucano pilot had searched until the light began to fail, but all he could find was an
abandoned campsite and a clear trail heading northwest.

“They’re heading for the coast,” said Veccione. “I’d bet on it.” The “Therapist” gave a little wince of pain and his face darkened. “I’d like to get my hands on the savage son of a bitch who did that to Nick and the others.”

“Why didn’t he get you?”

“I was getting some kindling for a fire. I heard the commotion, so I bellied down and got as close as I could. It was too late. One against three and he took them all out. There was nothing I could do.”

“You had a sidearm.”

“It was holstered. He would have heard.”

“So you just watched him kill my men?”

“Fuck you, sir. They were already dead with their guts pouring out and their heads on poles. I didn’t think getting myself killed was going to be particularly useful.”

“So you bellied away?”

“I didn’t move a muscle until they were gone.”

“They?”

“The guy with the eye patch showed up about half an hour later. The black guy went off with him. I split.”

“Why do you think they’re headed for the coast?”

“Where else would they go? They know we’re after them. They flew in here with a crop duster, for
Christ’s sake! They’re not equipped to get through army checkpoints on the highway, so they sure as hell aren’t going back to Havana.”

“The guy with the eye patch and the black came by boat up the Agabama River. What’s to stop them from doubling back?”

“They’d have to double back. They gotta know they’d run into us. Not to mention the fact that it’s almost a hundred miles downriver to the south coast. With this Viva Zapata shit we’ve stirred up, every Cuban patrol is going to be on edge.” Veccione winced again and moved on his cot to get more comfortable. He shook his head. “They have to be heading for the north coast. By now they’re not more than twenty-five or thirty miles from the Atlantic side.”

“Where?”

“Caibarien,” said Broadbent, the pilot, speaking for the first time. “I was studying the maps and charts when I got back. It’s the only place they could find a boat.”

Turturro looked at his watch. Forty-eight hours now before Point Zero, the code name for their operation, to begin in force. Holliday and the others had to be caught before then. “All right,” he said finally, “Caibarien it is.”

They ate roasted suckling pig and drank beer in the dying sun, and then Alfonsito found blankets and
bedding enough and took them to the big tobacco drying shed, where they bedded down for the night. Tomorrow they would help him gather enough produce in the cool of the morning for him to take to the market in Caibarien and he would be more than happy to give them a ride.

The coastal town had once been known as La Villa Blanca, the White Town, famous for its port, its hotels, its
parrandas
, or
carnivals
, and its white-sand beaches arcing around the Bahia de Buena Vista. Now the town had fallen into disrepair, the fine old nineteenth-century hotels crumbling, its two sugarcane mills long closed down and most of the piers and other port facilities rotted, sunk or destroyed by decades of hurricanes sweeping over them.

On the eastern side of the decaying town, there was still a small fishing fleet, specializing in lobster and other crustaceans and a small but active sponge fishery. It was here, suggested Alfonsito, that they might be able to find someone willing to rent out his boat.

The old farmer woke them before the sun had truly risen and they found themselves in a ghostly universe of early mist that hugged the ground and drifted, shredding through the trees on the hillsides all around them. Alfonsito gave them a breakfast of harsh black
café Cubano
, fried eggs and crisp pieces of succulent
lechon
from the night before and then
they went to work in the fields, following the old man’s directions and filling basket after basket with fresh-picked produce and even two or three dozen already ripe pineapples.

By the time they were finished, the mist had burned off and the hot sun was rising in the sky. The baskets were loaded in the truck and then Alfonsito disappeared into the old house. They packed away their weapons among the baskets of food and waited for the old man to reappear.

“Bloody hot work, that,” said Will Black, sitting on the open tailgate. “I really am a city boy, I suppose. Never was one for all that ‘bringing in the sheaves’ silliness.”

“We spent our whole summers doing it,” laughed Eddie, stretching his arms and yawning. “
Trabajo voluntario
, whether you volunteered or not. Two months gathering tomatoes only to see them rotting on trucks because there was no gasoline.”

“What gets me is the quiet,” said Carrie. “A few birds, the wind in the trees. Nothing. I haven’t heard a car in weeks, it seems. A bit spooky.”

“Is this where I’m supposed to do the John Wayne bit and say, “Yes, ma’am, just a little too quiet?”