John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

“Mr. Planchette, how are you?” the sheriff asked. Gail had almost forgotten Navarro’s alias.

“I’m just fine, Sheriff,” Navarro said.

The sheriff looked beyond the driver to lock eyes with Gail. His Indian blood was obvious in his features, and his face was set hard. “That so? I think if everything I owned was on fire, I’d be a little, I don’t know, something other than ‘just fine.’”

Navarro paled and shot a look to Gail.

Before she could say anything, the sheriff asked, “Are you Gail Bonneville?”

Her jaw dropped. “I, uh, yes.”

He fixed her with a stare. “Uh-huh. Well, could I ask you both to step out of the car?”

Gail’s stomach tumbled and her mind raced, but options still evaded her. Obviously, the guy was really a cop. But how could he know who she was? She pulled the door handle as he opened Navarro’s door for him. “Sheriff, I need to tell you that I’m armed,” Gail said.

“I figured as much,” the cop replied. “Don’t touch yours, and I won’t touch mine. How’s that?”

Oh, this wasn’t right at all. At the very least, he should have asked to see a carry permit. She let Navarro leave the car first and then took her turn, so as not to overload the cop’s senses. Her door opened over a ditch, so she lost six inches in height on her first step. She walked around the right front fender and positioned herself directly in front of the worn Ford medallion. Ahead and to her right, Navarro looked terrified.

The sheriff looked from one of them to the other and winced a little as he shook his head. “You know,” he said, “I just got the damnedest phone call about you two.”

Navarro shot her a panicked glance. “Is that so?” Gail asked, trying her best to look unmoved.

“It is, indeed,” the sheriff said. “I’ve been in this business for a long, long while. I’ve seen and heard a lot of strange things. After a while, given the nature of the job, you get used to being surprised. But this phone call beat everything else combined.”

He took a deep breath, and his scowl deepened. “It’s just not every day that you get a call from the director of the FBI.”

Isabella reemerged from the hut with Harvey and joined the others in the center. He had his helmet crooked on his head, his MP-5 in his hand, and his pack slung over his shoulder. He looked like he needed a very long nap.

Isabella made a shooing motion with her hands-the exact same gesture Mama Alexander would use to chase away pigeons when Jonathan was a boy-and the villagers dispersed, leaving the table for Jonathan’s team and Isabella.

“I’m sorry for your daughter,” Jonathan said in Spanish.

“She is just one of many,” she said. “The soldiers are very bad men.” She looked uncomfortable. “Not you. Them. You saved my daughter. I am very thankful. Are you here for the white-haired boy?”

The directness startled him-more so because this was a culture known for obfuscating everything from the weather to the color of the sky. Slipping a question like that into an unrelated discussion was an old interrogator’s trick, and Jonathan was pissed at himself for showing a reaction. With the option of a bluff gone, he said, “Yes. What makes you ask?”

Isabella smiled ruefully, exposing a set of well-worn teeth, from which several were missing. “I notice things,” she said. “Sometimes those things are hard to see, sometimes they are easy. A white boy with white hair is easy to see. Soon after, white soldiers with guns are easy to see. I think maybe one has something to do with the other.”

“His name is Evan,” Jonathan said. “He was taken from his home, and we are here to take him back.”

Isabella’s eyebrows scaled her forehead. “Just three people?”

Jonathan shrugged.

“They are many,” Isabella said. “Thirty, maybe forty.”

“Holy shit,” Boxers grunted.

Jonathan ignored him. “Thirty or forty total, right? Not thirty or forty soldiers.”

Isabella nodded. “Twenty soldiers. But many people with guns. Men and boys with guns keep men and boys without guns from running away. Keep enemies out.”

Jonathan and Boxers had seen it before throughout the world. Young men with nothing to lose confuse firearms with manhood. You see it on the streets of the United States, too, but in the third world, those young men with guns had jobs to do, and they were handsomely rewarded for them. In his experience, the average age of guards and terrorists and pirates all hovered in the mid-teens. Like teenagers everywhere, they were genetically wired to be fearless. Combined with indoctrination to kill without hesitation, that fearlessness made them fierce warriors.

Sensing the pall in the air, Jonathan changed the subject. “You say that Evan was here yesterday? How long ago?”

Isabella nodded. “Five, six hours. Maybe longer. With the men who hurt my daughter.” Her eyes hardened. “With the boys who did that to her.” Clearly, she’d sensed their discomfort in engaging young people in combat. “The boys who do that to many of the women in the village. At fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old, they are already devils. Do not pity them.”

“How was Evan?” Jonathan pressed. “Was he in good health?”

A sudden wariness changed Isabella’s face to a mask of suspicion. All trappings of hospitality evaporated. She seemed suddenly angry. “Leave now,” she said; but she didn’t rise.

Jonathan recoiled. He looked to Boxers and got the shrug he knew he was going to get before he looked. “Have I done something wrong?” he asked.

“Leave,” she said again. “I want no part of this.”

Jonathan made no effort to comply. In fact he leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Isabella, if I have offended you, I apologize.”

She glared. “You offend me by being here,” she said. “You see my daughter, I tell you about the devils on the hill, and all you care about is the white boy. The American. The gringo. My son is dead. Many sons are dead because of the devils, but no one cares. The white boy-your Evan-is another mother’s son. I help you help him, and I bring danger to all the people of my village. You don’t care about my people, I don’t care about yours. You must leave now.”

Harvey cleared his throat, drawing all eyes around to him. “Where are the men?” he asked.

“Dead,” she replied.

“All of them?”

“All who were old enough to fight. The others work up there.” She pointed toward a spot in the air that only she could see.

“What work do they do?” Jonathan asked. He knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from her.

“Coca drug,” she said. “They have a factory up there. Young men and boys put to work up there. We stay here and bring them food.” She looked away as she said the last part, and Jonathan interpreted that to imply other services that one would expect from a village of slaves.

“Why don’t you leave?” Harvey asked.

“They are our sons,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “They work or they die. We stay or they die. If they try to escape, then we die. That’s why they work for the devil.”

“Jesus,” Harvey breathed.

Jonathan had seen it before, in all corners of the third world. The average American, accustomed to twenty-four-hour cable television and air-conditioning on demand, found it impossible to comprehend the suffering endured by the other eighty-five percent of the world’s population. While we prosecute hate speech, the rest of the world enslaves their enemies.

Jonathan sighed noisily. “If you help us, we will fix it for you,” he said. “If you can help, we can make them stop hurting you.”

Boxers got squirmy in his chair. “Um, Scorpion?” he said in English. “What are you doing?”