Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

I had to pace around the room a couple of times before I could bring myself to read the accompanying note from Harrington: Commander F., Our intelligence now confirms that Hassan Atwa Kazan has financial links with terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, whom the Israelis consider a clinical psychopath. It was Mughniyeh who kidnapped Beirut’s CIA chief William Buckley, videotaped his torture, then killed Buckley with his own hands. The tape was later sent anonymously to CIA headquarters. Kazan works through terrorist cells in the Colombian city of Maicao, which is near Barranquilla on the Caribbean. Maicao is a Muslim extremist stronghold. Our government has yet to deal with anti-American organizations here, but it is time we started. Kazan is a low-echelon soldier, a freelance money raiser probably in business strictly for personal profit, but he may lead you to more prominent members. When and if you conclude your private business with him, we urge you to take executive action against Kazan. If you have assembled sufficient evidence, you may also take executive action against any of his associates you deem an enemy of our government. You have already been briefed on the restraints and limitations, and you are not authorized to exceed those limitations under penalty of military prosecution. We have no interest in Earl E. E. Stallings, and leave his dispensation to you. As a personal favor, and with the help of our friend BY, we are hereby supplying additional classified information concerning your own private business in Colombia. According to satellite imagery, as of yesterday’s date, 15 December, 9:45 P.M. EST, nine women and two men were photographed in what appeared to be a wire-fenced area within a walled courtyard in the Colombian state of Amazonia, outside the village of Remanso. The fenced area was west of a large house, the entire compound four miles south of the village. Five of the women and both men

appeared to be Caucasian. Good hunting, HH

I read the note a second time before tearing it into pieces and flushing it down the toilet. Then I went and sat heavily on the bed. I remembered obsessive Bernie Yeager saying to me, “Ours is a dangerous world. It would be good to have you back working with us again. We need you!” Remembered Hal Harrington once telling me, “I wish we could find a way to get you to come back.”

I felt like vomiting, like running out of the room, jumping into a cab, and heading for the airport. I’d already done my duty; I’d served my time. My life was my own now. I was content to live quietly and alone on Sanibel Island, content to spend quiet, peaceful nights in my lab, doing my work. I didn’t want to come back and participate in a dirty war.

But they’d found a way. I’d opened the door for them with my requests for help, baited my own trap. When I’d asked Bernie for information, was he already aware that these terrorist groups were involved in smuggling drugs, people, and weapons to finance their cause?

Of course. He had to know that the odds were good that the men running the Nan-Shan had at least indirect ties with enemies of our government.

Had Harrington known?

Certainly. He was an expert on South America. He knew who was doing what and where they were doing it. And the two of them had been in contact, obviously sharing information. They’d been smart enough to wait until I was already in Colombia to finally formalize the assignment. The obligation was implied but understood: They’d helped me. Now I was expected to help them.

“Dear God…” I said softly.

My voice sounded unusually hoarse in the silence of the air-conditioned suite. I stood, looked out the window, and saw that Amelia was no longer by the pool.

I rushed to the briefcase and began to pack the weaponry. I’d just gotten the thing locked and under the bed when I heard the door open and she came into the bedroom. Her skin was the color of fresh cinnamon, and there was a bawdy smile on her face that quickly faded. “Hey… Doc? What’s wrong, you’re so pale. You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

I said, “I think I’m just thirsty. Let’s go down to the bar and get a drink.”

That night, we showered together and dressed in our best clothes for dinner. Amelia wore a sleek beige dress that showed her body, made her look even taller, and left no doubt that she was braless, too. “When I’m outside the country,” she laughed, “I always take the opportunity to show what little I have.”

I wore khaki slacks, a Navy polo shirt, a light, silk sports coat I’d had tailored in Asia, and my old, soft jungle boots-which earned me a minor rebuke. “Just when I think you’re halfway civilized, you prove me wrong.”

I told her Colombia wasn’t a particularly civilized country, and she smiled as if I were joking.

We walked the cobblestone streets west toward the Hotel de Acension, Hassan’s hangout and sometime home. I didn’t tell Amelia why we were going there, just that I’d eaten in the restaurant and the food was very good. Nor did I tell her why I asked to have my new briefcase kept in the hotel safe.

It was a typical December night in Cartagena. A jungle breeze came off the water carrying aromatic little pockets of open sea, of jasmine and frangipani blossom, and of the city, too. It smelled of water on rock and diesel exhaust, of wood smoke and the shadowed musk of narrow alleys, and of cobblestone markets that hadn’t missed a night in three hundred years.

Once Amelia hugged herself close to me, and said, “I love it here. We’ll have to come back just to have fun. I feel so… relaxed.”

Already, it seemed very comfortable to speak of us as “we,” two people but one united couple.

I, however, did not feel relaxed. We were on our way-hopefully-to meet a man that I was now duty-bound to murder.

Earl Stallings was in the bar. I saw him when we walked through the great stone archway that was the entrance into the Hotel de Acension. The bar was to the left, elevated above the marble lobby. Wrought-iron tables were crowded, people drinking and laughing, ceiling fans above stirring slow mare’s-tails of smoke, while a very black man at a very black grand piano played and sang “Jamaica Farewell” in Spanish.

“My heart is down, my head is spinning around, I had to leave my little girl in Kingston town…”

Stallings stood beside the piano, dressed in white linen slacks and a white guyaberra shirt, smoking a cigar. Clinging to his waist was a woman wearing a purple blouse and a white Panama hat.

Shanay Money had been correct. Stallings made her giant of a father appear small. He dwarfed the piano and dominated the room. His head was huge, pumpkin-sized, and even from that distance I could see the yellow smoothness of a burn scar on the right side of his face. He appeared to be Polynesian, possibly Fijian or Samoan, and he had to weigh well over four hundred pounds.

“Doc, what’s wrong? What are you staring at?”

I realized that Amelia was pulling me by the hand toward the restaurant, while I stood there taking him in, memorizing his features.

I said, “It’s somebody I think I know. Let’s get a table, and I’ll come back and say hello to the guy.”

The restaurant was in a smaller courtyard separated from a larger courtyard by palms and hibiscus in red and yellow bloom. From our table, I could see the moon through the feathered leaves, above the stone gables of the hotel.

Amelia took my left hand in both her hands and said, “Hey pal, we haven’t known each other that long. I want to learn everything there is to know about you, all your moods, what makes you mad, everything, but I haven’t had time. I want to. I will. The point is, I get the feeling that something happened this afternoon, that there’s something wrong. Did I say something that offended you? Sometimes I talk before I think. You seem so distracted.”