Hunter's Moon (30 page)

NIRINCO is China's primary weapons manufacturer. The company produces many thousands of AK-47-type assault rifles a year.

Lourdes had been hired by a wealthy and highly motivated group. It was not a commercial enterprise, it was a terrorist organization.

Vue was lying immobile next to the centrifuge, near a table where two men with beards and skullcaps sat smoking Kreteks and talking as they concentrated on assembling something—kites, I realized. Vue's guards were enjoying hobby time while he lay bound with duct tape, legs, arms, and mouth.

The temptation was to use the rifle. One round each. But I didn't know for certain these men had been involved in the earlier atrocities. Unless pathology is involved, murder always claims at least two victims. By sparing them, I would spare myself.

I checked the sky once again, hoping to see a helicopter. Nothing.

Using the gun was
tempting.

Instead, I went to a row of active beehives not far from the processing plant. I had weaved my way through many dozens of boxlike hives on the hike from the road. Unlike the others, these hives were smaller and set apart in a screened area as if to protect them from other insects. Odd. Maybe they were prized bees.

It didn't matter to me as long as they had stingers.

I walked to the hives and stepped beneath the netting. It had been raining for most of our drive, but now it had stopped.

Because I wanted the bees to believe it was still raining, I carried a bucket I'd found and filled from a puddle.

I chose the closest hive and began dripping water on the top. Inside, the buzzing of ten thousand bees noted the activity with a slow oscillating roar that calmed gradually as I poured more water.

Rain.

Bees are precision-coded. Unlike people, they do not venture out into the rain.

When the bucket was empty, I gently,
gently,
picked up the hive and went toward the building, walking with the smooth gait of a waiter carrying a tray. Without slowing, I stepped up onto the stump and tilted the hive through the open window . . . then I jumped back, slapping at my neck, then my arm, then my neck again.

These bees were armed. Each sting was like an electric shock, and I was very glad seven feet of metal now shielded me from the hive—or I would have been pursued.

I stepped back and listened. Metal buildings cause an acoustic echo. The choral buzzing of bees became an ascending roar. The roar soon mixed with the voices of two startled men. Their kite making had been interrupted.

I shouldered the rifle, drew my handgun, and moved to a side window to watch. I expected the men to walk quickly but calmly for the front door. They were used to working with bees, presumably. I figured they would let the bees settle for a few hours, or maybe the whole night, then return with a smoker to calm the hive and to figure out what happened.

It would give me time to slip in, brave a few more stings, and grab Vue.

But the men did not react as expected. Nor did the bees. The bees amassed from the hive and moved like an iridescent waterspout toward the men. The men were already slapping at the colony's attacker scouts when they began to run. They threw open the double doors and came stumbling outside.

To my amazement, the bees followed. When a bee stings, an alarm pheromone is deposited. These men were marked and the entire colony went after them, drawn by the scent, and also by the mammalian body heat and movement.

The men were screaming now as they ran. There were security lights out front and I watched as the bees swarmed outside, gaining on the men, then covering them like ants. One man fell, then the other. When the last of the hive arrived, both men were thrashing beneath layers of bees.

The hives behind the building were isolated from the other hives for a reason, I realized. Along with importing illegal weapons, these people were raising Africanized honey bees—“killer bees,” as they are known. Introducing noxious exotics into the United States was a favorite form of unconventional warfare among terrorist types.

If I hadn't used the water, the colony would have swarmed me instead. They could've swarmed me,
anyway.

My mouth was sticky dry. The swarming sound of bees is an atavistic sound that signals the legs to run. Far worse, though, were the sounds made by the dying men. Inhuman moans, childlike pleas for help. They would've been better off if I had shot them from the window. It would have been a kindness for me to shoot them
now.

But moral assessments are as tricky as the vagaries of our uncertain lives. I did not fire.

I had to get Vue. The bees would soon return to the building searching for their smashed hive.

I bolted inside and knelt over him.

“Vue? Vue?” I shook him.

He opened his eyes.

I USED THE
BADEK
I'D TAKEN FROM THE BEARDED KILLER to cut the duct tape and I pulled Vue to his feet. But he couldn't walk. His legs were numb, he said.

“Give me a few minutes.” His voice was amazingly calm for what he had endured.

“We don't have a few minutes.” Bees were buzzing by my ears. I grabbed the big man's wrist, pulled him over my shoulder in a fireman's carry, and waddled outside far enough from the lights and the swarming bees to be safe.

As feeling returned to his legs, Vue stood and began taking experimental steps. Soon he was swinging his arms and rolling his neck muscles.

“I pissed in my pants. I bet I smell very awful.”

I told him not to worry about smelling very awful. I had extra clothes in the truck.

“Where's Lourdes?”

“He knows where President Wilson is staying tonight! We must warn him.”

“Lourdes found my shortwave transmitter and he hooked it up inside.” Vue indicated the processing plant, which was full of bees by now. “The president made contact at eleven. When that helicopter lands, the president will expect us to get out, not Lourdes. Lourdes knows Morse code!”

Vue sounded shocked. I was only mildly surprised. Lourdes was expert at using computers and electronics to trick victims.

The gate where I had seen guards was several hundred yards away, but I was worried they might come back to check on the plant so I was steering Vue away from the building. “What about Tomlinson?”

Vue stopped to look at me. “You not find him?”

“They had him tied just like me, only not so much. But then Lourdes take him away, so maybe they both on the helicopter.”

I checked my watch. It was ten minutes before midnight. The flight to the cattle ranch where Wilson and Rivera were staying would take at least an hour. The helicopter had lifted off at 11:15.

“Can you run?”

“I try!”

“I have a truck and someone waiting. There's still a chance we can intercept Lourdes.”

“A truck is no good. Too far, too far! The president will be dead by time we get there.”

That's not what I meant. I had checked the sky once again. This time there
was
a helicopter, approaching low from the southwest and closing fast.

I fished a flashlight from my pocket so I could signal the helicopter when it was closer.

Lourdes had a deal with his employer, Vue told me as we jogged. He had overheard enough to piece it together. If Lourdes delivered the head of President Wilson, they would provide him with a new face and a new identity in Indonesia. They had the surgeons and the technology to do it.

He'd kept Vue and Tomlinson as bait.

“You ever see that bastard without his mask?” Vue asked as we neared the truck. “He hates you. But he wants the president
more.
”

Maybe that's why he'd taken Tomlinson, I suggested. Lure me in.

But Vue said, “No, I think the reason is different. He said Tomlinson has a nice face.”

Sergeant Curtis Tyner told Shana Waters, “You should live with me in the jungle for a few months. Get to know the oil prospectors and headhunters—birds of a feather, really. Then you'd realize I'm considered a damn fine-looking man in this part of the world.”

Tyner had landed in his futuristic-looking, five-passenger Bell helicopter and immediately offended the woman by telling her that if she was as smart as she was good-looking she would have had an anchor job
before
she turned forty—a suave endearment, in Tyner's strange mind.

“You have to live outside America to be an expert on the American media, and I
am
an expert,” he explained, attempting damage control. “I have seven satellite dishes in my compound and more TVs than a sports bar. What else am I going to do in my spare time, socialize with monkeys? New York should hire me as a consultant.”

Now, as we flew toward the Pacific coast of Panama at a hundred forty knots, Tyner had offended her once again by suggesting she return with him to the Amazon Valley of Colombia.

“You're not for real,” Waters said, dismissing him.

Tyner turned and looked at her bosom. “Neither are those. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be fun getting to know you better.”

Curtis Tyner
was
unreal; among the most bizarre characters I've encountered. He's about five feet tall, with amber-red hair and bristling orange muttonchops of a type that I associate with Scottish bagpipers from a previous century. Tyner would resemble an orangutan if it wasn't for his handlebar mustache.

He had stepped out of the helicopter, extending his hand, saying “Damn glad to see you again, Commander Ford! Game's afoot, huh?,” then ordered us aboard. His tiger-striped pants were bloused into jungle boots, a black beret angled low over his right eye, and he slapped a leather swagger stick into the palm of his left hand as he approached.

Pinned onto Tyner's beret was a golden death's-head and also the winged intelligence owl of the IDF. Most impressive was a green pyramid pierced by a stiletto—Delta Force. SEAL teams, Green Berets, and Rangers are in awe of Delta Force. For good reason. They are
operators,
the selected amalgam of the country's special forces.

Delta personnel are the secret soldiers that Hollywood, and the American public, does not know about.

As a bounty hunter and special warfare consultant, Tyner had seen places and done things that even an experienced journalist like Waters could hardly guess at.

I found him interesting as a character, but also scary and offensive in a way that tickled the gag reflex. The man
did
collect shrunken heads for a hobby. Becoming expert in military tactics and killing had made him rich—a
big
man—and he had an unsettling mannerism that psychologists would find interesting: unconsciously rubbed his hands together as he talked, as if washing them.

I did not doubt Tyner's expertise, nor his connections. Chiseled in stone over the entrance to his mansion was the watch phrase BY WAY OF DECEPTION THOU SHALT DO WAR.

When it came to hunting down Praxcedes Lourdes, Tyner was my first choice. He would not have paused to consider beehives if he had a gun.

 

 

 

TYNER WAS NOT A PURIST. THE HELICOPTER'S CONTROL panel was aglow with GPS, radar, infrared imaging screens. Ten miles out from the cattle ranch, he asked, “Should we go in soft or go in hard, Commander?”

Meaning, should he make a combat ascent onto the property or should he do a few touch-and-goes a mile out to insert me and Vue? We could then approach the ranch in stealth.

It was 12:30 a.m. We had made up time in the fast Bell aircraft, but Lourdes had probably already been on the ground for twenty minutes or more. The image of Kal Wilson and Juan Rivera walking out to meet that helicopter only to be surprised by Lourdes and his men was sickening.

I said, “We don't have time for soft.”

Tyner hummed his approval. “Lock and load, gentlemen. Safeties on until I give the word.”

In my headphones, I heard Shana demand, “Why the hell don't you just radio the police?!”

Tyner said, “Because it kills the profit margin,” as he tilted us downward, a dive that left my stomach behind and the woman silent.

The Pacific Ocean was ahead, the waning moon a smear of orange behind rain clouds. I could see the lights of the cattle ranch.

Was that a fire burning?

Yes. But small, like a campfire.

“I don't see a helicopter. Do you?” We'd leveled off, and shot past the ranch house and corrals at a hundred knots. Tyner banked around for another look.

No . . . no helicopter. Something else: Wilson's plane was no longer moored in the lagoon.