To The Lions - 02 (46 page)

“Hola!”
he said cheerily, just any recreational boater happy to have a day off.
 
Continuing in his American-accented Spanish,
he said, “My girlfriend and I are hungry and looking for a bite.
 
Is it okay if we leave our boat here for a
bit?”

“But
of course,” the woman replied, standing.
 
When Angelines babied herself from the boat, wincing from the impact,
the woman’s face clouded as she gestured to the bandage.
 
“You seem to be in a bit of pain.”

Angelines
smiled and dismissed it.
 
“I cut myself
earlier—just a surface wound.”

“So,
you’re from around here?” the older woman asked in Catalan upon hearing
Angelines’ accent.

“Sí,
sóc de Barcelona.”

Seeming
unfazed by their presence, the woman resumed her position on the kneepad and continued
her weeding.
 
“Please, leave the boat as
long as you like.”

Gage
leapt from the boat, carrying the cardboard box before making the line
fast.
 
“We’ll be an hour or two, madam,”
Gage said, backing away.
 
Under his
breath he said, “Now we’ve just got to hope she doesn’t go inside and turn on
the television.”

“Where
are we going?”

“No
clue,” he said, looking both directions as they reached the narrow road in
front of the woman’s cottage.

“Esperi!”
the woman called out after them.

“No,”
Gage groaned.
 
“You talk to her since
she’s speaking Catalan.”

Angelines
turned, cupping her hand to her ear.
 
“Sí, senyora?”

“If
you’re looking for a meal with a good view, you should go to the Restaurante Panorámico…it’s
just south of town, on the right.
 
An
easy walk from here.”

“Thank
you!” Angelines called out, while Gage grumbled from the continued attention.

“And
make sure you sit on the back patio where you can look at the towering
mountains and watch the parasailers and parachutists,” the woman
continued.
 
“It’s a well-kept secret
among the locals.”

Gage
asked for a translation and received it.
 
His grin grew from fake to genuine as he waved his thanks.

When
the restaurant was in sight, he moved to the side of the road and lowered the
cardboard box to the flowery weeds.

“What
are you doing?”

“Sven
mentioned something earlier.”
 
Gage tore
the box open, finding a letter on top.
 
He read it, his hand absently rubbing his sweaty hair.

“My
God,” he breathed.

“What?”

Taking
loud breaths, Gage lifted the sheaf of greenish paper from the top of the
box.
 
Underneath the thick sheaf were
stacks of euros.
 
He thumbed the sheaf
several times, shaking his head.

“What
are those?”

He
handed her the top sheet of linen paper.

“Bearer
bonds?” she asked, holding the paper close to her face.

“Along
with the money I was paid, Señora Moreno has left me nearly seventeen-million
dollars in these bonds.”

“Why?”

“She
said they didn’t know if I would even show up today.
 
But in case I did, she left these for me to
negotiate with, if necessary.”

“Whose
bonds are they?”

“Hers.”

“Señora
Moreno’s?”

Taking
the bond back from Angelines, Gage nodded.

“She’s
that wealthy?”

“Apparently
so.”

He
handed her the note, explaining as she read.
 

“So
they went to Redon,” Angelines said, “pretending to have access to Ernesto
Navarro’s money.”

 
“As I told you earlier, last night I called
Justina but I could only speak for a minute.”
 
He put everything back into the box, looking up at Angelines.
 
“And based on what I told her, she had no
idea I was escaping.
 
So, she told Señora
Moreno about my instructions that she go to the U.S. Consulate. Señora Moreno
said that was not a good plan and, instead, they hatched a plan to go and
entrap Cortez Redon.”

“Using
these bearer bonds.”

“Correct,
acting like they’d found Navarro’s fortune.
 
Señora Moreno wrote that she took one with her to use as proof.
 
Since I asked Justina to leave the money
and
the pistol, they thought maybe I was
somehow coming to retrieve it, hence her leaving the rest of the bearer bonds.”

Angelines
shook her head.
 
“But that plan is
reckless.
 
What if you’d sent me, or a
guard, or Los Leones for the money?”

“That’s
why she left the bonds, and the money,
with
her armed men.”
 
Tugging on his bottom
lip, Gage said, “The plan’s not all that bad.
 
But it’s dangerous.”
 

Gage
removed Sven’s phone and battery from his pocket, mating them and waiting for
the power to come on.
 
He held down the
first speed dial, listening to the rings followed by Señora Moreno’s voicemail
message.
 

“Damn!”

“No
answer?”

He
shook his head and stared at the phone.
 
“I assume this phone belonged to that man called Sven.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m
debating whether or not to disconnect the battery.
 
My training tells me to leave it
disconnected.”

She
shrugged.

“But
instinct tells me to keep it on.”

“Instinct,”
Angelines said.
 

“C’mon,”
he said, dropping the still-operating mobile phone into the cardboard box.

Bruised
and battered, the fugitive couple headed south.

* * *

When
they reached the Restaurante Panorámico, a rustic establishment constructed
from what appeared to be local timber, Angelines waited for their order in an
vacant corner.
 
In the meantime, Gage
hiked across the rolling meadow behind the restaurant.
 
Across the meadow, about a kilometer away,
was a small metal hangar and short asphalt airstrip, both nestled at the base
of a rocky peak.
 
As he closed in on the
hangar, he watched several parasailers, so much more common in Europe, soaring
gracefully, using the updrafts created by the rapidly warming day and the
arching towers of rock.
 
Added to the
updrafts caused by radiational heating, Gage mused, was the upward air effect
when gusts of wind were forced to move up and over the mountain.
 
With a light breeze at the mountain’s
southern face, Gage assumed that today was the perfect day for soaring.

He
also heard the droning of an aircraft somewhere high above, most likely the
jump plane.
 
Gage shielded his eyes,
hearing the pitch change as he walked.
 
The aircraft had just turned on what’s known as “jump run”, the slow
pass when the jumpers exit.
 
He spotted
the plane’s T-silhouette high above.
 
The
airplane was a single engine, but Gage could tell no more from his position
approximately 10,000 feet below.
 
Rather
than strain his eyes, he kept walking.

When
he reached the hangar, receiving a few polite nods, he saw the normal goings on
one would expect to see at a skydiving center.
 
Even though this dropzone was smaller than Raeford—it seemed like years
ago when Gage met Hunter there—there were still a number of similarities.

On
the grass, staked down near the hangar, were several blue packing mats.
 
An instructor stood on one of the mats,
speaking Spanish, teaching several students the “flat pack” with what appeared
to be a large student canopy.
 
Behind her
were diagrams of the proper skydiving “arch,” a basic body technique that makes
a jumper fall face to earth.

With
a flash of melancholy, Gage recalled his first free-fall instructions two
decades before, his Alabaman green beret instructor spitting tobacco juice as
he yelled, “Just aim your dick for the dirt!”

Long time
.

While
Gage was looking for an unoccupied “up-jumper,” meaning a non-student, to ask a
few questions, he heard the familiar rip-popping of parachutes opening in the
skies above.
 
Thankful for Sven’s
sunglasses, Gage looked up to see four parachutes, spread apart but at roughly
the same altitude, open and flying quickly.
 
They’d opened at what Gage estimated to be between 2,000 and 2,500 feet
above ground level, indicating the foursome were experienced jumpers.
 
Added to that fact was the rapid forward
speed of each of the canopies.
 
He could
tell the chutes were zero-porosity, and small, meaning they didn’t bleed air
and truly acted as a wing.
 
The fact that
the canopies were small in relation to the body and gear they supported denoted
them as high-performance, allowing the operator of the parachute to generate
high forward speed.
 
While more
dangerous, the landing result was often breathtaking and, to some skydivers, as
great a rush as the freefall itself.

Gage
watched the canopies setting up like F-16s preparing for high speed landings.

The
first canopy, marked by the familiar Performance Design logo, a Stiletto,
turned sharply from its blazing fast downwind leg, swinging the parachutist face-to-ground
at several hundred feet.
 
This was by
design and was a method known as “swooping,” something only experienced jumpers
should attempt.
 
Like an aircraft racing
straight toward the ground, the parachutist applied pressure to the steering
toggles, generating lift.
 
Then, as
pretty as Gage had ever seen, the parachutist leveled out with the ground,
moving at least fifty miles per hour, lifting his legs to prevent further
drag.
 
The effect was breathtaking, and
allowed the jumper to “turf surf” nearly the length of a football field.
 

Each
of the other jumpers followed suit, with the last one misjudging things
slightly, but recovering enough to wind up in a harmless low-speed tumble on
the ground.
 
This generated good-natured
laughter from his fellow jumpers while the parachutist, after brushing himself
off, took a self-deprecating bow.
 
Something
about the tumble reminded Gage of his old Army buddy, Chuck.
 
Chuck was a natural skydiver when it came to
relative work—maneuvers while free-falling—but had never been known for his
pretty landings.
 

As
the quartet removed their helmets, Gage realized two of the jumpers were
women.
 
While the first one daisy-chained
her lines, he walked over and asked who the owner of the skydiving center was.

The
woman, with an open and friendly face, tilted her head upon hearing his
accent.
 
Then, with her gloved hand, she
pointed up and made a circling motion.
 
“You’re looking for Arturo, he’s also the pilot.
 
His aircraft isn’t a turbine—it takes him a
while to get down so he doesn’t over-cool the engine.”

“Are
you a pilot?” Gage asked.

“Student
pilot,” she said.
 
“You’re a jumper?”

“I
am.”

“Novice?”
she asked, switching to English.

“Not
a novice, but not exactly current either.”

“How
many jumps do you have?” she asked, gathering her chute in her arms.

“I
haven’t kept a strict count in a long time, but probably five, six…maybe seven thousand.”

Her
eyes went wide.
 
He was being truthful
and, while large, such a high number certainly isn’t unheard of.
 
In the U.S., especially at large drop-zones
like Raeford, a person can find dozens, maybe hundreds, of skydivers with over
seven thousand jumps.
 
But in Spain,
where jumping is far more expensive, and tougher to accumulate with a small
piston aircraft, it would take a skydiver decades to accumulate such a
total.
 
Plus, most of Gage’s jumps were
military, often coming during training when they would make ten to twelve
practice jumps in a day.

“What’s
in the box?” the woman asked.

“Ah…just
some of my old gear.”

They
chatted a bit more before they saw the single-engine airplane, a Cessna 182,
turn in on a short final.
 
Arturo landed
on the asphalt airstrip expertly, flaring at the last moment, resulting in a
very short landing roll.
 
When he killed
the engine in the grass, a small pickup truck with a large fuel drum on the bed
drove to the aircraft.
 
Gage watched as
Arturo exited.