Paul Christopher - Valley of the Templars

“Bueno,” said Domingo, laying down the machete. “Le doy las gracias, amigo.” Domingo slid the big-bladed knife out of the dirt and sliced through the fishing line with a single downward swipe. Holliday held his breath and he felt Eddie stiffen beside him, but nothing happened. Laframboise’s knees stopped shaking and he zipped up his fly.

“That was a close one,” he said, half turning toward the others. Domingo took a step toward him and then his eyes widened with horror.

“Ay no!”

There was a harsh swishing sound as a sapling bent back on itself, whipped back into place, and six sharpened bamboo stakes, each eighteen inches long, impaled both Domingo and Laframboise where they stood. Holliday saw that the sapling was weighted at the end by a small, curved rectangular object that he recognized instantly: it was an MMI “MiniMore,” a smaller version of the much larger Claymore fragmentation mine.

“Hit the dirt!”

Holliday dropped, the gentle pinging as the second trip line pulling the ring on the mine tinkling melodically before the main charge exploded and its load of shrapnel exploded in a twenty-foot arc at roughly waist level. It sounded like a small sharp thunderclap followed by an acrid cloud of smoke and then something like the pitter-patter of hail as the projectiles within the mine hit the jungle. Then there was silence and the smoke began to clear.

Holliday stood up. “Anybody hurt?”

Will Black and Carrie Pilkington, coughing as they appeared out of the smoke, shook their heads. Eddie was already at his brother’s side, huge tears running down his cheeks. The MiniMore had missed Domingo’s face but had blown off much of his left arm below the elbow. Four of the six bamboo stakes had found their mark, taking the older Cuban through the belly and the midriff, but he was still alive-barely. The MiniMore had decapitated Laframboise. Blood and tissue were splattered everywhere.

“Help me, Doc,” pleaded Eddie, his voice broken through his tears.

As gently as he could, Holliday bent back the sapling long enough for Eddie to pull his brother out of his grotesque embrace with Laframboise’s headless corpse. Eddie then eased his brother off the vicious sharpened stakes and laid him down onto the dark earth.

Blood was pouring from his wounds, but Eddie had already torn off his shirt to stanch the gaping rents in his belly and Holliday made a quick tourniquet above the elbow using his belt. Even so he knew it was just delaying the inevitable. The stakes had pierced Domingo’s liver, kidneys and intestines. He didn’t have much time left.

“Te amo, hermanito,” whispered Domingo, blood bubbling between his lips.

“Permanezca tranquilo y descanse Domingo,” hushed Eddie, his tears falling onto his brother’s face.

“Explicar a Mama Lo siento por todo, Edito, prometeme, mi pequeno vampiro.”

“Prometo.” Eddie wept. Domingo smiled through bloody teeth, his breath coming in rapid gasps. He turned to Holliday.

“They mean to start a war,” said the dying man. “You must stop them.”

“The missiles, you mean?”

“There are no missiles. Only the warheads remained. The Chinese made three suitcase bombs for us from the old fissionable material. Two have been taken to Orlando. I know nothing of the third.” He coughed a great gout of blood.

“Dear God,” Holliday whispered.

Domingo brought up his good right hand and gripped his brother’s shoulder, pulling him down. He whispered urgently into Eddie’s ear, his breath failing with every word. Then his head fell back and with a long, terrible sigh he died. Eddie began a soft keening wail as he wept over his brother’s body. He reached out and with his thumb and forefinger closed Domingo’s eyes. He stood then, gathering up the fallen machete and the bowie knife.

The keening sound of Eddie’s mourning grew louder and suddenly, horribly, Holliday could make out the tune to “Auld Lang Syne,” the song from Eddie’s days as a Young Pioneer and the same song Holliday had first heard before Eddie had gone on his murderous rampage in the jungles of Central Africa. Eddie’s killing song, his hymn to death.

“Bury him deeply so the animals do not get him,” said Eddie, and then he was gone.

“Eddie! Come back!” Holliday yelled, but there was no answer. He turned to Will and Carrie, his eyes burning with killing fury. “Bury these men and don’t make a move away from here until I get back.”

And then Holliday was gone as well, disappearing into the dawn mist, following his friend to whatever fate awaited them.

“This shit is not going down quite the way we thought it would,” said Max Kingman, taking a large bite out of his foie-gras-topped Kobe beef cheeseburger. Chewing, then swallowing, he nibbled at a fresh-cut French fry, first dipping its end into a silver salver of Dijon mayonnaise.

He took a sip of his Chateau de Malleret, Haut Medoc, and leaned back in his buttery-soft leather armchair. Somewhere behind him the twin engines of the Gulfstream G560 purred. Across the table from him, Joseph Patchin took a tentative bite of his own burger. Kingman smiled. “If God had a wife, that’s what her ass would taste like,” he said.

The CIA deputy director took another bite of the admittedly tasty burger and tried not to think about Kingman’s somewhat blasphemous description. Mirroring Kingman, Patchin took a sip of the extremely smooth red wine. “Exactly what shit are we referring to?” Patchin asked. He glanced out the window. The sun was setting behind them and there was nothing but water below them, so he assumed they were somewhere over the Atlantic. Kingman hadn’t mentioned a destination so far.

“The Cuban shit, of course,” snapped Kingman. He picked up half a dozen French fries in a bunch, dunked them into the yellowish mayonnaise and stuffed all of them into his mouth.

“Any particular part?” Patchin asked.

“Your part.”

“How is that?”

“I’ve had one of my best teams hung out to dry by this ex-army officer of yours and his nigger Cuban commie fucking pal. Not to mention the fact that those two have apparently managed to fuck things up further by rescuing your analyst bitch and that limey you sent in for a look-see. And if that wasn’t bad enough, our people are getting some hard intel that this fucking Housein-Sosa character was a goddamn, son-of-a-bitching Trojan horse.”

“What sort of Trojan horse?”

“The kind that’s a plant,” said Kingman. He took another swallow of wine. “They let you have the stupid bastard in Dublin. They gave him to you on a silver fucking platter.”

“I don’t believe it. He wasn’t a walk-in. He wasn’t even one of ours-he was a gift from MI6.”

“Yeah, like they’ve never had a few fucking commies hiding in the woodwork. Jesus! Talk about moles! You’ve got nothing on those guys, yet you took the doctor at face value.”

“What did he have to gain?”

“He gets to go and live in Miami or wherever the hell he’s been squirreling away money for the past fifty years. He passes on the message he’s supposed to and then he gets his get-out-of-jail-free card.”

The two bites of foie-gras burger were sitting in Patchin’s gut like ball bearings. He was getting raked over the coals by a fat, blasphemous bastard and he didn’t understand what the man was talking about. “I’m not sure I’m understanding all this,” said the deputy director.

“Christ on a crutch, man, are you that dumb? The doctor was a signal flare that said ‘we’re just about open for business.’ It’s a palace coup d’etat, my friend. Castro’s going to be offed, Raul’s going to get in that jet he’s got permanently fueled and ready to go at Libertad Airfield and head for the hills and the generals will be running the show.