Tampa Burn (9 page)

All good advice. The kind that can save a life or lives. Trouble was, I knew there was a possibility that Lake hadn't even read the damn thing. He'd certainly never made any specific references to the data in a reply e-mail.

Boys his age are bulletproof. Or think they are.

But maybe, just maybe, it'd helped him.

Even so, I was immensely thankful that I'd made the effort. Thankful because it took a bit of the sting out of the overwhelming guilt I felt. It was guilt that any parent would have experienced.

My child had been taken. Even though I'd anticipated the possibility, I wasn't there to protect him when it happened.

Unforgivable.

It's guilt that destroys us
—one of Tomlinson's favorite sayings.

Pilar felt the guilt, too. Of that, I was certain. And for good reason.

When I'd sent my warnings to Lake, I'd sent the same warnings to her. Our son was an obvious, high-risk target. Serious measures needed to be taken.

She'd never responded.

I'd yet to mention that to her.

I never would.

 

 

OH
yeah, she was feeling it.

Pilar pressed a blinding hand over her eyes, moaned softly, and then I listened to her say, “I'm so sorry, Marion. It never crossed my mind that a noise in the background could be important.”

The bird call. She was still punishing herself for not zeroing in on the quetzal.

She added, “That morning, while I was watching this awful thing, Laken was just a few miles away? We could have sent in soldiers and saved him. Oh dear God. I feel terrible I didn't understand . . .”

Tomlinson reached and put his big hand to her shoulder, communicating with touch—
Don't blame yourself. Victims should never blame themselves
—but stuck to business, saying, “O.K., O.K. We're done with the subject. There's nothing more to learn from background noise. Let's discuss other elements in the video.”

He watched me nod before saying, “So far, we both agree that Lourdes videoed this by himself. But I'm still thinking he had to have one or more accomplices.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the way Pilar describes it, your son was kidnapped from a place that's downtown in a busy city. And from a building that was guarded. There almost had to be a driver. Don't you think? Or a chopper maybe. Someone waiting to get away fast.”

I said, “O.K, I'll go along with that.”

He turned to Pilar. “Do private planes fly in and out of the international airport?”

“Yes. Of course.”

I was looking at the moth on the screen, comparing it with photos in the book. The insect's wingspan was massive—more than six inches. Finally, I found it:
Ascalapha odorata,
the Bruja Negra or Black Witch moth. An insect common to Central America—further confirmation that the video had been shot in the region.

I said, “That's what I'm asking myself. Why would someone kidnap the son of a popular political figure, then head straight for a hideout close to the airport?”

Tomlinson was now allowing the video to play in slow motion—an eerie thing to watch—as he asked, “Does your ex-husband have enough political juice in neighboring countries to get passports for Lourdes and your son? Visas, I.D.s? I'm talking about credentials good enough so they could hop on a private plane and take refuge in another country. No way you can fly a kidnapped child out on a commercial plane, so that leaves military or private.”

I leaned close to study my son's haunted eyes staring back at me, then focused upon the red welt that snaked up his arm. I'd dismissed the possibility of it being a burn. Now, though, I reconsidered.

As Pilar replied, “Yes, documents, passports, Balserio could get anything he wanted,” I looked across my laboratory sink at the Bunsen burner. I pictured the scalpel-blue flame it produced, then reviewed variations of propane torches.

A portable welder's torch came to mind. They were cheap, easy to use, readily available even in Third World countries, and intimidating if used as a weapon—something that would appeal to a sociopath who liked fire.

I remembered Pilar saying that the fish in Lake's main aquarium had been killed. Stick a welder's torch in an aquarium, and the swim bladders of fish would soon explode, expanding in the super-heated water.

Lake
had
been burned. The wound seemed a defensive variety. People under attack throw their forearms up to protect their face.

It told me something that I couldn't share with Pilar, and would not share with Tomlinson. That brand of assault is indicative. If Praxcedes Lourdes had already burned Lake, then he planned to kill him. That seemed probable to me.

What was the statistic I'd read? It had been compiled by some government agency in Britain. In kidnapping cases worldwide, only about forty percent of the victims are recovered alive even
after
the ransom is paid in full. If the victim has been seriously abused or mistreated—severed ears or pinkie fingers are common examples—then chances of the abductee surviving drops to nearly zero.

Paying Lake's ransom, following his kidnapper's orders, made sense only in that it might buy us a little time.

I jumped, startled that anyone could speak calmly when Tomlinson said, “As long as we have the computer out, maybe you should check your e-mail. They said you should check it often.”

Pilar still sounded despondent. “You're probably right. I tried from my hotel last night, then again this morning. So far, nothing. I need to buy a laptop while I'm here. I don't have one.”

I pointed to my desk model on the far side of the room. “You can use mine, or we can hook Tomlinson's up to the phone. His'll be faster.”

We did. She checked.

She had an e-mail from the kidnappers. There was also a note from our son.

Sitting at the computer, nervously regarding what she was about to read, Pilar said, “When Jorge Balserio is back in the presidential palace—and he probably
will
be, unfortunately—he'll owe that animal a debt more than favors and money. I wonder how he'll deal with his famous monster then?”

She was talking, once again, about the possibility that Balserio had provided passports and a private plane. She was also talking about the man who'd abducted our son.

I was picturing the burn scar on Lake's arm, my child's terrified eyes staring back into mine, and I was thinking:
If Balserio's smart, he'll kill Lourdes.

But I was also thinking:
If I get to Lourdes first, he'll never have the chance.

THE
night he kidnapped the boy, Prax Lourdes told his driver, Reynaldo, “Drive fast, but not so damn crazy that you bring the
federales
down. I got us this far, don't screw it up now.”

He was sitting in the back of a dented Toyota Camry, his hood down, still wearing the mask. Engine running, the car sat in the shadows of a park that separated the presidential palace from the convent, and a line of colonial buildings—columns, plazas, balconies—built in the 1700s.

Through the tinted windows, Prax could see shadowed ficus trees and royal palms in the park, homeless adults and children sleeping on benches, and a horse grazing near the ornate marble band shelter. The horse was all head and ribs.

Lourdes wasn't hot, yet he couldn't stop sweating. Returning through the tunnel, goading the boy along ahead of him, he'd felt that same shitty fear, like drowning. The tunnel walls, the darkness, seemed to crush at the muscles in his heart.

But he'd endured it. The boy was in the trunk now, mouth, hands, legs all taped.

He'd not come easily. A surprise. The kid wasn't just a smart-ass, he had some balls, too. He'd even taken a swing at him back in the room. Big kid for his age, with muscles. Quick, too. But still just a kid.

Prax had thrown him down by the hair, and scorched his arm with a quick shot of the blowtorch. He'd screamed out, but only briefly and not loud. But then he became real cooperative when Prax told him, “You try that shit again, I'm going straight to your mother's room and set her hair on fire. Or I'll have my pals do it. How'd you like to hear your mother scream?”

Yeah, that was the key to this kid. Threaten the mother with make-believe hacks, and he'd do absolutely anything. Prax got no more trouble from the little bastard after that.

Lourdes knew he couldn't linger, but he still took the time to go through the kid's drawers. The kid had lied when he said he didn't have any cash hidden away. Stashed among baseball cards and a bunch of beetles pinned to a board, he found slightly more than five hundred dollars in Masaguan córdobas, and a thousand in U.S. currency: ten crisp $100 bills.

Clipped to the bills was a business card that read: sANIBEL BIOLOGICAL SUPPLY / MARION FORD, and signed,
Happy Birthday, Lake!
There was also a photograph that showed a studious-looking man with glasses.

When Prax flashed the photo at the kid and said, “Who's the creep who sent you the money?” the kid had replied in a very odd tone, “He's a man I hope you get a chance to meet real soon, mister.”

The way the kid said it, it was like the creep was supposed to be scary or something.

 

 

THEY'D left the boy in a rental cabin, still taped, and also handcuffed to the bed. Now Reynaldo parked the Toyota a few blocks away from the cabin at the edge of a smoldering industrial dump, behind a corrugated building next to the airport, as he'd been ordered to do. He sat shivering in the morning darkness, lights off, Lourdes beside him, waiting for some early flight to arrive. Reynaldo didn't know why.

He continued to shiver as Lourdes said, “I said I'd tell you how it happened. About what the soldiers did to me. You said you wanted to know.”

Lourdes' voice was smoky deep. He spoke softly, but because of his harsh American accent, he sounded loud.

Uneasy, Reynaldo replied, “Only if you want to discuss it. Another time, if you like. It doesn't have to be now.”

There was a hint of irony in Lourdes' voice when he said, “Oh yeah? I think you're wrong. I think it's now or never.”

There was a meanness in there, too.

“But first, tell me what you've heard. I always enjoy hearing the bullshit going around about me. Being lied about comes with being famous.”

Prax watched the driver take a gulp from the bottle of
aguadiente
he now held between his legs, and saw that his hand shook. Lourdes got a kick out of that.

“I've heard what most have heard,” the driver began. “That you were adopted by a tribe of Indians on the Moskito Coast of Nicaragua. As a young teenager. That your parents must have been killed in a shipwreck, because they found you starving, wandering the beach.”

“The Suma tribe,” Prax said. “Moskito Indians. They took me in. They named me. I became one of them. My adopted father was the village leader.”

Reynaldo said, “Yes, your father was the leader, and so soldiers came to kill him. That they burned your house, your whole family. Only you survived. After that, you dedicated your life to revenge—”

“To the Revolution. Anything against the government whores.”

“—that you dedicated your life to the Revolution. That is what I heard.”

“Yeah,” Prax said. “The same old stuff. But since we're working together, since we've become such close buddies, you and me, I'll tell you the details. Things almost no one knows. Then you can go back to your village, brag about it, and act like a big important man.”

Reynaldo smiled for the first time, saying, “Yes, I'd like that.”

He meant it.

 

 

LOURDES
said, “Before I tell you, let me ask you a couple of questions first. Nothing too personal. Just some stuff I want to know. I heard you and General Balserio are tight. At least, I hear the General trusts you. That you guys go way back together.”

“I have served the General over many years, and in many ways,” Reynaldo said modestly. “When he has special needs, special assignments such as this, he calls on me. It is an honor.”

Then, because he could sense Lourdes was driving at something, maybe trying to extract confidential information, the driver added, “But we are not friends as neighbors are friends. I only do what he tells me to do, and he only tells me what I need to know.”

Prax said, “For this job, he told me he would send an amount of cash to cover expenses, plus my fee. He said that someone—you, I'm thinking—would deliver the money to me. And that this same person would arrange for a plane to take me and the kid to one of the General's hideouts in Nicaragua. Do you have the money?”

Because Reynaldo had been ordered to give Lourdes the money—but only when he was safely on the General's plane—he felt he could answer truthfully. “Yes. It's in a briefcase. I will give it to you soon.”

“And the plane?”

“Yes. Everything's arranged.”

Lourdes asked, “After the kid and I get to the General's camp, do you know what his plan is after that? How's it going to work?”

“I have no knowledge of anything once you get on the plane,” the driver said.

Prax Lourdes adjusted his mask and nodded. He believed that the man knew nothing else. But he was pretty sure of what General Balserio had planned. The entire population of Masagua was terrified of
Incendiario.
News that he'd kidnapped the son of Pilar Fuentes, the General's former wife—and perhaps the mother of the General's son, some still whispered—would make Lourdes the focus of a united, national hatred.