Green Ice (30 page)

Something rushed at him. He wasn’t ready to take it on. It turned out to be a dog, probably
the
dog, a dirty-colored, medium-sized mongrel with a long nose. It sniffed at Wiley’s crotch, sniffed even more aggressively at Lillian’s and disappeared into the night.

Wiley had the automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, the Llama pistol in hand.

“Cock it,” Lillian whispered.

He hadn’t yet mastered the Llama, but he knew enough about it to slide the hammer back and get a cartridge into the chamber. She shouldn’t have had to remind him. “Stay here,” he told her.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said.

“I’ll come back here.”

She wouldn’t have it. “Follow me,” she said and started off. He stopped her and took over the lead.

They searched along the road, moving stealthily from one structure to the next. Every so often they paused, remained absolutely still while they scanned the fog for a sign of someone.

At one point they couldn’t have been more than forty feet from the road-blocking army truck, but lack of visibility made rear assault impossible. All they could see was spits of flame exploding from the rifles of the soldiers, evidence that they would be greatly outnumbered.

Having found no vehicle of any sort along one side of the road, they crossed over to search along the other. They looked between buildings where possibly a car or truck might be pulled in.

They were quietly but swiftly on the move when it appeared. In another four steps, Wiley would have collided with it.

He didn’t have time to consider that it was a person. In the fraction of a second that was the difference between living and dying, it was merely a dark hulk of the appropriate dangerous shape. Wiley’s well-preserved reflexes saved him, his reaction was as natural as throwing a quick left at a shadow. The Llama did it, really, expended most of the energy. All Wiley did was shove his hand forward and squeeze. The Llama jumped as though trying to leave his hand when it exploded the nine-millimeter bullet down its barrel and out. The bullet was going 720 miles per hour when it struck flesh. Went in at that little notch where the collarbones join. It spread on impact, opened into sections like a four-petaled blossom. Tore through throat, artery, tissue, and smashed into the spinal column. The bullet drove the soldier back. He went down on his ass first, and then the upper part of him flopped over. His final flash of thought was that he and his rifle had killed someone. He’d been that close to pulling the trigger.

Wiley looked incredulously at the gun in his hand, then at Lillian, as if to say,
Do you realize what I just did?

No time for that.

Survival, as just demonstrated, was a matter of who saw whom first in that fog.

Another hulking shape was barely discernible off to the right.

Lillian, quickly down on one knee, fired twice. She went for the heart, had to guess where it would be. She was right.

Immediately, out of sight, two others began firing, spraying shots wildly.

Lillian and Wiley went as flat as possible. Bullets chunked the dirt around them and disturbed the air just above. They could only grit their teeth and hope against the chance that one of those many pieces of high-speed metal was flying in the direction of their bodies.

Wiley, cheek pressed to earth, looked at Lillian. Her face was turned his way, mouth slightly open as though stopped in the middle of a word, eyes fixed, staring and filmy. Surely, had she been hit she would have cried out.

He was relieved to see her blink. He thought: Some son of a bitch, merely a someone, was trying to take everything from him, them. He felt a change, actually felt it. A sort of inner snap, and suddenly the gun in his hand seemed to fit. He tightened his grip on it.

The firing let up. Perhaps the soldiers were clipping on new, full magazines or were sure that nothing could have lived through their barrage and were advancing.

Wiley and Lillian kept their heads down, used mainly their elbows and knees to crawl like infants. They reached the front porch of the nearest house, crawled along the side of it, did not get up until they were around back.

More alert now, more stealthily, they continued their search for any sort of transportation. A dilapidated thirty-year-old truck would do. For that matter, a horse. Anything that would get them away. Wiley was considering going back to the jeep to give it another try. Either that or head out into the fog on foot. Maybe they wouldn’t walk off a cliff.

They came to a house that was not much more than a shack. The most unlikely so far. It was the last house on the road. They went around the side of the place.

It was the fog playing a trick.

It had to be an illusion.

It was white like most illusions.

Wiley didn’t believe it until he put a hand on it, ran his hands over it.

A white Cadillac El Dorado convertible. That year’s.

Steal it? Hell, yes, make it up to whomever later.

But all its windows were up and the doors locked. That meant probably the keys weren’t in it. They’d have to slash the top. Wiley would jump the wires to start the car.

Lillian thought it would be easier, perhaps even faster to get to the owner.

They went around to the front of the house, rapped on the door. No one came. Again. No one … Wiley tried and found the door was open. They entered.

It was a one-room place that smelled of garlic, licorice and woman. The licorice odor Wiley recognized was
aguardiente
. An oil lamp was burning low on a table off to the side. At the back of the room was a bed, very mussed up. There was a woman on it, sitting on the edge. She was also mussed. An extremely fat woman with large breasts down to the folds of her stomach. It wasn’t particularly warm in the room but she was perspiring.

Off to the right a man was dressing. He already had his shoes on. They were shiny even in that low light. Patent leather or plastic or a very high buff. He stepped into his trousers, tucked in and zipped up.

He was forty-some. A Colombian, mixed Spanish and Indian. Under five six, and thin, couldn’t have weighed over one-thirty.

Wiley apologized for the intrusion. He felt as though he’d come into a wrong hotel room.

The apology went unaccepted. “What do you want?” the man asked. A strong voice for his size.

“Whose car is that out there?” Wiley asked.

“I have the keys,” the man told him.

Probably, Wiley thought, the car belonged to whomever the man worked for and he’d used it to come here to this woman.

“Could you take us to Bogotá?” Wiley asked.

“I could,” the man said.

“For a thousand dollars,” Wiley said.

The woman uttered something religious at the sum. No reaction from the man. He was having trouble with his shirt cuffs, getting the links into the holes.

“Two thousand,” Lillian said.

The man smiled agreeably. “Let me finish dressing,” he said, reaching for his vest.

“Hurry,” Wiley told him, and went to the front window to keep watch with Lillian.

The fog seemed thicker than ever.

No more rifle fire coming from the other end of town. It must have just stopped. Not because anyone had given up, Wiley imagined.

He put his arm around Lillian.

“It’s going to be all right now,” he whispered to the situation. “We’ll soon be safe in Bogotá.”

There was no mistaking then what Wiley felt pressed behind his ear. Or what Lillian felt against the back of her neck. The small cold metallic circles that were the muzzles of guns.

The slight man owned the Cadillac.

He was Rico Morales—
esmeraldero
.

21

The cell.

Narrow like a stall with a high ceiling and a window just out of reach. The window was too small for anyone to escape through, but it was barred nevertheless. The floor of concrete had an open drain hole about eight inches in diameter that a prisoner could use for his wastes. No furniture, not a stick.

Wiley squatted on his haunches, away from the wall because it was cold and damp, as was the floor. He had thought his bare feet would eventually get used to the cold, but they got worse. Now all fifty-two bones in his feet were aching, and his soles felt like they’d turned to gelatin.

When the Captain had told him to strip, he’d presumed it was only to facilitate their search. That they hadn’t given back his clothes was uncalled for. What satisfaction for them to have him shivering? If they’d been gaping and getting their sadistic kicks, at least that would have been a reason, but no one had even looked in on him.

He had been separated from Lillian as soon as they had arrived at this place. Brought under heavy guard in the back of an army truck. It was only about an hour’s ride from where they’d been captured. The
esmeraldero
Rico Morales had been glad to turn them in. On the way, one of the soldiers had smirked and said they were going to Barbosa, as though that should be meaningful.

Barbosa.

Wiley remembered it was the place Argenti had mentioned about a week ago during that breakfast on the terrace with General Botero. In Wiley’s presence they had discussed the underhanded side-dealings of one of The Concession’s carriers. What was the man’s name? Ramsey. Yes, that was it. Coincidentally it seemed, this fellow Ramsey had had an accident in New York City in which he’d smashed both his knees. Argenti had told the General to be sure Ramsey got to Barbosa. Thus, Wiley had assumed it was either a convalescent center or a hospital.

This was Barbosa.

Where did they have Lillian?

Not in any of the several other cells nearby, because Wiley had called out for her over and over, loud enough. He seemed to be the only prisoner. However he was on the second floor, and probably there were other cells on the first, and that was where they had her.

In the passageway a short ways down from Wiley’s cell, a soldier stood guard. Actually, he sat—on an ordinary wood chair, tipped back, his rifle leaning against the wall within easy reach.

Wiley called to the guard, said he wanted to speak to him.

The guard ignored Wiley.

Wiley said please.

The guard picked up his rifle and came to Wiley’s cell, kept well back away from it.

“Where is the woman?” Wiley asked.

The guard grinned and lowered his head to one side, as though embarrassed.

Strange reaction, Wiley thought. “Is she downstairs?”

“No.”

“Is she all right? I mean, is she comfortable?”

The guard had to look aside.

“It’s not as bad as this for her, is it?” Wiley indicated his cell.

“No.”

Wiley hoped that was the truth.

The cell stunk.

The whole place had a peculiar heavy stench. Wiley had noticed it on the way in. A sort of shitty farm odor.

A smoke would help camouflage it.

He’d give anything for a smoke.

No harm asking.

“How about getting my cigarettes for me?”

The guard took one of his own from his pocket, lighted up. He looked as though he was about to offer one to Wiley.

“Smoke your cock,” the guard said and returned to the chair.

Wiley’s hands became fists. He called out to Lillian. Again and again, till he was yelling without allowing time between for her to answer. The soldier didn’t appear bothered. Evidently it made no difference how loud or long Wiley yelled, because no one came to complain.

Wiley gave up on it.

He sat and suffered the cold on his ass cheeks while he tried to rub some warmth into his feet. Improvising, he sat on his hands. On the palms for a while, then the backs for a while. Palms down was the most tolerable.

He had to bite down a little on his teeth to keep them from chattering.

Probably, he thought, it would be warmer in the daytime. What time was it now? He reviewed the night and tried to estimate how much time had elapsed in each sequence. He had no idea how long they were in that town in the fog. It could have been only thirty minutes, it had seemed like hours, still seemed so.

Between two and three in the morning now was his guess.

Lillian. He couldn’t get her out of his thoughts. She was in the front of his mind, like a transparent image through which he was required to view everything.

Remember, he told himself, you’re the man who married Jennifer.

That was enough to make him think.

His life had been in radical change when Lillian came into it. Was that why she’d made such an impact? Perhaps, cutting through the bullshit, he really didn’t love her all that much. Perhaps he only needed to believe he did.

Besides, what was there about her to love? She was rather spoiled, captious, definitely lethal, had a will like a wall, was neurotic in a way or two, seemed there was more than a pinch of suicidal compulsion in her. She was devious too (the twelve-thousand lie), too independent, with every intention of remaining independent. Noncommital. Not once had she said she loved him. A few times, at certain peaks, it seemed the words had been right there in her throat, and he had done everything that should have brought them out, but they hadn’t come. It was goddamn frustrating. How many times had he told her he loved her and not gotten a response? Twenty times at least, aloud. A thousand times without saying. What a smartass she was, really. A user. A rich, one-way chick looking for temporary satisfactions. Him a temporary. It was time he came to his senses.

He hated her.

An insignificant, random thing came to mind: her disciplining her hair back from her face the way she did, with her fingers like a comb.

He loved her.

As for having gotten into this terrible spot, really, he had only himself to blame. At any time down the line he could have put his foot down harder, she would have acquiesced, but, instead, he had gone along with her. His choice. No tag-along puppy, him, no matter how it seemed.

He had killed that soldier.

No one ever did anything they didn’t want to do, he’d always told himself.

Up to the moment when he killed that soldier his existence had been on a course to that moment. Plane from Kennedy International, car to Las Hadas, jeep to Leiva, and so on. It had been unavoidable. Just as it was never meant for him to walk away from Lillian.