To The Lions - 02 (47 page)

“Do
you know Arturo well?” he asked the woman.

The
woman was shading her eyes, waving and smiling.
 
“I’ll say,” she replied with obvious affection.
 
“I’ve dated him for eight years.”

Arturo
returned her wave, crossing the wide field.

“He
wasn’t military, was he?” Gage asked.

She
turned to Gage.
 
“How did you know?”

“This
is a skydiving center.
 
I’d have put the
odds at one-in-three.”

As
he approached, Arturo spoke Spanish to his girlfriend at such a rapid rate Gage
couldn’t keep up.
 
Arturo hitched his
thumb back to his aircraft and was saying something about the exit door and its
latch.
 
Then he asked her about her jump.

“We
almost flushed and only got five stinking points,” she said, shaking her head
in disgust.
 
“I wasn’t very
focused.”
 
Quickly brightening, she
motioned to Gage.
 
“Arturo, this is our
guest, but I didn’t get his name.”

“Hola,
amigo,” Arturo said with a genuine smile, removing his sunglasses and tucking
them into his shirt pocket.
 
He was a few
inches shorter than Gage, but probably the same age.
 
His hair was black and streaked with gray,
bushy with natural curls.
 
His
well-tanned face was notable due to its deep, natural lines and affable
dimples.
 
The man had keen, light brown
eyes and shook Gage’s hand firmly.
 
Gage
instantly liked him.

“I’m
Greg,” Gage said.

“And
he has about seven thousand jumps,” the woman said proudly.

“Somewhere
in that range,” Gage corrected.
 
“And
many were hop-and-pops.
 
Nothing to get
excited over.”

Arturo
poked out his lips, briefly surveying Gage with narrowed eyes.
 
“Still…that’s a huge number around here.
 
You’re here to jump?”

“Uh,
yeah, I think I’d like to jump…me and my, uh, friend.
 
Especially if we can rent some rigs.”

“You
are licensed?”

“Yes,
but I don’t have it on me.”
 
Gage licked
his lips.
 
“I’m in the USPA database.”

Arturo
nodded.
 
“No problem, but it may be a
while.
 
My door isn’t latching the way it
should and, until my mechanic can get it working smoothly, I’m grounding her.
 
I called a pilot friend north of
Barcelona.
 
He’s going to fly up and take
our loads for the rest of the day.”

“I’m
going to go pack,” the girlfriend said.
 
She turned to Gage, giving him a firm handshake.
 
“Pleasure to meet you, Greg.”

Arturo
motioned to the hangar.
 
“You want to
come look around, check out our rigs?”

Gage
turned, looking back the way he’d come.
 
He could see Angelines walking from the distant restaurant.
 
Her limp seemed about the same and she was
carrying two paper sacks, one darkened, presumably, by the bottles of cold
water.

Gage
turned to Arturo.
 
“I understand you were
in the military?”

“Twenty-three
years.”

“What
branch, may I ask?”

“I
was in the Spanish Army.”

“Were
you a jumper?”

“I
was, airborne initially.
 
Then I attended
HALO school.”

“Where?”

“We
came to the U.S., actually.
 
Fort Bragg.”

Gage
nodded knowingly.
 
“You were special
operations.”
 
It wasn’t a question.

“Indeed,”
Arturo replied.
 
“Grupo Valencia.”

Maintaining
eye contact, Gage said, “I was in special ops, too, my friend…and I
desperately
need a favor.”

The
affability slid from Arturo and, behind it, Gage saw the cold, calculating mask
of a warrior.
 
The two men stood there in
a gulf of silence.

As
Angelines approached, her face splotchy, her breathing a bit ragged, Arturo
turned to her.
 
Gage watched as the
Spaniard’s eye moved down to the bandage on her leg.
 
Despite the clotting powder, it had begun to
weep wine-colored blood in its center.
   

Arturo
turned back to Gage.
 
“Tell me
everything.
 
No lies.
 
And that guarantees you nothing.”

Gage
took a bottle of water from Angelines, drinking half in one pull.
 
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand
and started talking.

Forty-five
minutes later, wearing yellow student jumpsuits and parachute rigs, Gage and
Angelines followed Arturo and his girlfriend to the Cessna.
 
Arturo placed the cardboard box inside before
turning and walking back to the manifest table, telling the manifest manager
what to do when his friend arrived with the backup aircraft.

“But
I thought the Cessna was dead-lined,” the woman said, pointing to the trio
boarding Arturo’s airplane.

“That
was all just a cover story,” Arturo replied, putting a finger over his
lips.
 
“But keep that quiet, okay?”

“What’s
the deal?”

“I’m
going to put those two out over the beach near L’escala,” Arturo said in a low
voice.
 
“They’re on their honeymoon and
he’s paying me a great deal of cash, but it’s an illegal jump, so keep that to
yourself, okay?”

The
manager shrugged.
 
Moments later, the
Cessna strained against its brakes as Arturo did his run-up.
 
Seconds later, they were aloft.

* * *

Gage
and Arturo chatted over the headset while Angelines and Marina, Arturo’s
girlfriend, rewrapped Angelines’ leg in the rear.
 
There was only one seat, the pilot’s, so Gage
knelt in the jumpmaster’s position, normally where the seat next to the pilot
would be.

“Here’s
the way we’re going to play this,” Arturo said.
 
“Right now we’re about three thousand feet AGL.
 
In a few minutes we’re going to enter El
Prat’s airspace and they’re going to call me.
 
I’ve got my transponder on so they know who and where we are.
 
If I don’t respond, it will send up red
flags.
 
So I
will
respond, and I’ll tell them we’re a jump plane and we’re
landing at a private grass strip at La Rabassada to pick up a part for my
door.”

“Will
that concern them?”

Arturo
shook his head.
 
“Not a bit.
 
They might vector me a little bit but they
shouldn’t care about us that far from El Prat, especially to the west.
 
They’ll probably bring me low and just keep
an eye on us.”

“And
once we land?”

Arturo
looked at Gage and smiled.
 
“You’re going
to ‘steal’ my friend’s car.
 
And if I get
questioned about this, I will say that an American madman hijacked me at
gunpoint.”

Gage
nodded approvingly then asked, “And if they ask why you didn’t report it
immediately?”

“I’ll
tell them you threatened revenge if I ever talked.
 
What choice did I have other than to keep my
mouth shut?
 
Don’t worry, my friend, I’ll
play it off if necessary.”

As
the sprawling metropolis of Barcelona slid into view, pinks and whites and tans,
Gage checked the time.
 
It was growing
quite late in the afternoon.
 
He gritted
his teeth, hoping he could get to Acusador Redon before he left for the day.

Just
then, the radio squawked and Barcelona’s Approach Control called Arturo’s
aircraft.
 
Arturo went with the same
story he’d told Gage.
 
There was a brief
pause before Approach Control advised him to continue at 3,000 AGL and to call
out his downwind, base, and final legs.

Arturo
gave Gage a thumbs up.
 
“If they thought
you were aboard this aircraft, they’d have delayed me.”

Ignoring
the searing pain from his kidney, Gage turned to Angelines, yelling over the
prop and rushing wind.
 
“We’re landing in
five minutes.
 
Be ready to haul ass.”

Angelines
leaned back, covering her eyes with her hand.
 
“Believe me,” she replied.
 
“I’m
ready to be done with all of this.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Justina
had watched in horror as the tattooed woman sewed Señora Moreno’s face back
together.
 
While the woman worked,
speaking in a surprisingly clinical tone, she told Señora she was a registered
nurse.
 
Taking her time and occasionally
snipping away minute pieces of ragged flesh from Señora’s narcotic-deadened
face, the woman added what amounted to about thirty well-done, tight stitches
from Señora’s ear to mouth.
 
Finished,
she coated both sides with antibiotic ointment before covering it with an
adhesive bandage and securing it with a wrap that traveled over the top of
Señora’s head.

“I’ve
never sewn up that type of wound before.”
 
The nurse glanced at the man for a moment, lowering her voice.
 
“You’ll still need to have it looked at
soon.
 
While I trust my stitches will
take, there may be other considerations when sewing a cheek back together.”

The
man had been lounging in a chair opposite Justina during the medical
procedure.
 
He’d fiddled with his iPhone
for a bit, afterward thumbing through a magazine.
 
When the nurse finished, he beckoned her,
whispering something in her ear.
 
She
nodded, walking into another room while the man stood before Justina and Señora
Moreno.
 
“Now that the unpleasantness has
been repaired, it’s time to have a bit of frank discussion.”

With
rapid footsteps, the tattooed woman rushed back into view with a large
hypodermic needle in her hand.
 
The man
moved quickly, clamping Justina’s upper arms, pulling them behind her.
 
The nurse wasted no time administering the
shot in Justina’s shoulder.
 
It stung,
burning afterward as the fluid dissipated in her body.

“Relax,”
the nurse smiled.
 
“You’ve never felt so
good when that hits your bloodstream.”
 

“Her,
too,” he said, nudging Señora Moreno’s foot.
 
“Full dosage, if not a little bit more.”

“The
dosage chart is specific.
 
We don’t want
to kill her.”

“Not
yet,” the man laughed, the sounds modulating.
 
What had been sharp, exultant laughter from the man suddenly drew out
like a recording run at a quarter-speed.

Justina’s
vision was altered.
 
Movements began to
appear like streaked neon.
 
The smallest
of sounds became clinging cymbals and bellowing bass tones.
 
As the woman walked away from Señora Moreno,
Justina watched as the nurse’s tattoos stretched out, melding with the
background, becoming a canvas of inky blur.
 
And my headache is gone
,
Justina blissfully realized, quickly scolding herself for her suddenly
contented demeanor but soon after forgetting why exactly she needed to maintain
focus.

What is happening?

“How
long?” she heard him ask, bringing Justina back to the situation at hand.

“It’ll
be best in ten or fifteen minutes, when it’s had time to marinate into all
recesses of her brain.”

“How
long until it dissipates?”

“At
least an hour.
 
Maybe an
hour-and-a-half.”

There
were three of them, each.
 
Three bearded
men to her left, three tattooed nurses to the right, spinning like a twisted
kaleidoscope.
 
They kissed again, their
tongues doing the dance of the snakes.

Then
they were gone, all six of them.

Justina
blinked rapidly.

Time
began to slow, or did it speed up?
 
As
Justina turned her twenty kilo head to Señora Moreno, whose head had tilted
backward, eyes partially shut, lolling, Justina suddenly heard the moans and
what must have been the rhythmic bumping of a headboard.

They’re in there doing it.
 
While we sit here like two heroin addicts,
slaves to the narcotics in our veins, that sicko is in there satisfying his
sexual urges.

In
one of the more peculiar situations of her life, Justina discovered that
certain parts of her brain wanted to function normally while the remainder of
her brain, and her body, were falling further and further under the drug’s
spell.
 
It reminded her of those
miserable dreams where she wanted something that was clearly in reach: the
clichéd expanding hallway, a tarry surface that trapped her feet, or (her least
favorite) a prancing demon that tied her up and flayed her while a crowd
cheered from the sidelines.

As
she slid to the floor, she realized the arrogance of the bearded man.
 
While he’d handcuffed her, he’d done nothing
to prevent her escape.
 
And as she slid
across the floor like some terminal drunkard in her last moments of
consciousness, Justina briefly forgot what it was she was hoping to do.

There
was a smacking sound from the bedroom followed by the woman’s cackling
laughter.
 
Then another smack.
 
She could hear their voices, inflamed,
speaking Catalan.
 
Justina didn’t know
the language well, but had been propositioned enough to know the vulgar words
when she heard them.
 
Coming back up to
her knees, first banging her head on the stucco wall, Justina, using her mouth,
rooted into Señora’s purse like a gluttonous sow into a feeding trough.
 
Aware of the slobber she couldn’t contain,
she used her mouth to clamp Señora Moreno’s iPhone, holding it as best she
could.

It
was nearly hopeless.
 
Her motor skills
were quickly deteriorating.
 
She tried to
wake the iPhone with her nose, realizing that it had been turned off.
 
In a movement that took a full minute,
Justina rolled her body over, fumbling with her fingers until she eventually
felt the trademark Apple oval slide switch at the top—the sleep button.
 
Following two missed tries, she finally
wedged her thumbnail under the rubberized phone protector, holding the switch
on for what felt like ten seconds.
 
She
let the phone drop and tried to roll over.

Her
body failed her.
 
The motor skills she’d
possessed thirty seconds ago were gone.

Do not accept that as fact.
 
Just do it!
 
Twist your body and roll!

If
allowed an out-of-body experience, Justina would love to slap herself across
the face.
 
Twice.
 
Half of the usable cells in her brain
screamed for her body to move, but her muscles would no longer comply.

Her
plan was simple: roll over, tap the phone with her nose, and redial Sven’s
phone, or Señora’s lawyer, or whatever number that happened to pop up.
 
It would take only two touches of her nose.

Can I even speak?

“Kkkkannn
I eeefffennn thhhpppeeekkk?” she mumbled in English, drooling again as she
tested her ability to articulate.

Get it together
,
Justina commanded herself, her Polish inner voice authoritarian and
demanding.
 
You can do this!
 
Roll over.
 
Tap the phone twice.
 
Give whomever the critical information or
just leave the damned phone on.
 
Maybe
the authorities can home in on the signal.
 
This will be the difference between your living and your dying.

Justina
heard the tattooed woman crying out in ecstasy, yelling for the man to do
something harder.
 
Her screams sounded
like the overdone, ridiculous noises from the actresses in an adult video
Justina had laughingly, and embarrassingly, viewed once with a curious friend
back in Poland.

With
a renewed burst of effort, Justina managed to twist herself, hearing her own
involuntary grunts.
 
The phone was
mercifully face-up, the home screen shining brightly.
 
Coiling herself like an inchworm, Justina
brought her face down on the iPhone, stabbing the phone icon.
 
There, the second number of the oversize
digits (
thank you Señora Moreno for
setting your phone to the hard-of-viewing setting!
) was Sven’s number, just
below Redon’s office number.

Touch it, Justina.
 
Touch it and tell your story, no matter if he
answers or not.
 
You can leave a message
if you have to.

With
a jerk of her head she successfully touched the number, her satisfied chirp
foreign to her as the screen changed to a phone image, shaking back and forth
as it rang.
 
One ring, two rings, three
rings.

The
phone screen changed.
 
It had been
answered!

* * *

Moments
earlier, the Cessna 182 had roared back into the sky.
 
Arturo wagged the wings back and forth, a
pilot’s goodbye but probably in this case intended to symbolize good luck.
 
After waving back to him through the rolled-down
window, Gage shifted gears on the old, compact Toyota pickup, bouncing away
from the private airport when an alarm-style ringing startled them both from
the cardboard box.

“Phone!”
Gage shouted, watching as Angelines tore the box open, reaching below the sheaf
of bonds, into the stacks of money, and pulling the mobile phone out.

The
caller ID read “Lydia Moreno.”

“Give
it!” he yelled, snatching the phone away and pressing the green button.

“Hello!
 
Justina!
 
Señora Moreno!
 
Señora
Moreno!
 
Justina?”

The
connection went dead.

* * *

The
bare heel smashed down on the iPhone, destroying it despite the rubberized
protective case.
 
Justina was too
immobilized to even lift her head.
 
She simply
laid there, a line of saliva flowing from the side of her mouth, numbly eyeing
the tanned foot, marked by sun-bleached hair running from the ankle onto the
top of the arched foot.
 
Shards of glass
penetrated the heel and, with each minute movement, she watched the
prism-effect of the glass, gouging the thick cutaneous tissue.
 
Then she was lifted, face-to-face, with the
bearded man.
 
He smirked at her, like a
parent secretly proud of their mischievous child.

“Naughty
girl,” he admonished, his tongue slithering over his curled lip.

When
she was dumped back into her chair, pain briefly spiking through her shoulders
due to her cuffed wrists taking the brunt of her weight, she watched as the
naked man, his excitement visibly abating, picked the glass from his heel,
licking his own blood from his fingers afterward.
 
The tattooed girl appeared, cinching a short
robe around her waist, frowning at his foot as he relayed what had just
happened.

The
nurse listened before she turned and nodded approvingly at Justina.
 
Though much of her body was currently
useless, Justina’s eyes went wide at the sudden recollection.

Gennady!

The nurse was one of Gennady’s
girlfriends.

Gennady
was the manager of Eastern Bloc.

“Our
little fun time is over,” the bearded man said, walking away.
 
Seconds later he was back, wearing loose
athletic pants and nothing else.
 
“It’s
time to get some answers.”
 
He walked in
front of Justina, looking down at her.

“I’m
going to ask you some questions.
 
Will
you answer them, and answer them truthfully?”

This
moment was, unfortunately, the worst few seconds of the entire drug-induced
episode.
 
Despite the bellowing of her
inner good judgment, telling her, of course, to mislead him or outright lie,
and despite some deep-seeded gut knowledge of what she needed to do, to her
utter horror, she felt her chin dip, followed by a tightening in the rear of
her neck.

It
was a nodding movement.
 
She was
unwillingly cooperating.

The
man touched her cheek affectionately, murmuring, “
Bona noia
.”