Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

As I paid him, Keesha said to me, “He’s not going to take us to the big house on the hill? We must not let him take us there.”

I looked at the Irishman, to see if he understood the question. He replied, “Take you to Tyner’s place? You don’t go looking for Curtis Tyner. He comes looking for you.”

“He’s an American?” I asked.

The Irishman replied, “He used to be. I’m not sure if he even knows anymore. Or cares.”

When we were loaded in the pickup truck, Keesha between us, the Irishman lighted a cigarette, and told us his name was Niall, no surname offered. It reinforced the impression that he was afraid of something, on the run.

“How long have you lived here, Niall?”

“Too fucking long. This place is hell when it comes to civilized things, things we take for granted back in the world. Women, though. ..” He swung his chin toward Keesha. “You can have all the girls you want, and as young as you want.” As if she were not there, he added, “And a lot more comely than this one. She looks a little used up. The jungle girls. They don’t flower for long. Give me another ten bucks, I’ll find you two girls a hell of a lot prettier than this one.”

We drove the rest of the way up the mountainside in silence, the back of the truck fishtailing on the slick orange clay. Once, the Irishman came very close to losing control completely, and we nearly slid over an embankment that would have dropped us several hundred feet into a gully.

The girl had reached for me involuntarily, her small hands tight on my arm, yet the stoic expression on her face did not change. Even when she said, “It is not so interesting as I thought it might be.”

“What’s that?” I asked her.

“Riding in an automobile. I thought it would be as interesting as paddling my obada. But it is not. It gives my stomach a sick feeling. Do people ever recover from this sickness?”

Thus I knew it was her first time in a car.

Several hundred feet above the village, near a ditch already overgrown with scrub bush and weeds, the Irishman braked to a stop. He handed the phone to me, and said, “Step out of the truck, you may have to move around a wee bit. But you should get a signal.”

I walked away from the truck, taking a slip of paper from my billfold on which I’d written Harrington’s number and a couple of others. The paper was sticky wet from being dumped in the river, though still readable.

But I never got a chance to finish dialing. As I straightened my glasses and began touching buttons on the phone, a half-dozen Latin-looking men, heavily armed and dressed in camo, stepped out of the bushes.

I stood there motionless, with no way to respond. I’d taken off my holster prior to entering the village, and I’d left the briefcase in the truck.

In Spanish, one of the guerrillas yelled, “If you move or try to run, we will kill you both!”

To my left, I heard the door of the Toyota slam shut, and I looked to see the Irishman drag Keesha out onto the ground as, in the far distance, a green Humvee sped toward us, kicking up a rooster tail of mud.

As I raised my hands above my head, I said to Niall, “You have me, there’s no reason to hurt her.”

In reply, the Irishman said to the guerrillas, “Search him while I see what the bastard’s got in this case. Sergeant Tyner is on his way.”

I’m not certain what I expected to see when the door of the Humvee opened, but it was not the astonishing figure that now approached me. Curtis Tyner-for it could have been no one else-was only slightly over five feet tall, and he had fire-bright red hair and bristling orange muttonchops of a type that I associate with Scottish bagpipers from a previous century. The hair of his beard was combed out away from his cheeks so that his face would have been orangutan-like in size and form but for the huge, waxed handlebar mustache that swept up toward his blue eyes.

Belted around his waist was a semiautomatic pistol and an attack/survival knife in a leather scabbard. His tiger-striped camouflage tactical dress-pants the same as mine-were bloused perfectly into his jungle boots. He wore a black beret cocked low over his right eye, and carried a leather swagger stick, which he used to slap the palm of his left hand as he approached. The T-shirt he wore was dark blue with a bright-yellow inner layer. Golden letters over the left breast read: British Royal Marines

Special Boat Service

M Squadron

Pinned on to the beret, I noticed, were a golden death’s head, along with a dagger and wreath that may have been from the South African Special Forces Brigade. There was also a patch that read: 1st SFOD-Delta Force.

An eclectic and unlikely mix of associations.

Tyner stopped a few paces in front of me, looked into my eyes-a chilly look of appraisal and indifference-and said in Spanish as he continued to look into my face, “What did you find on him?”

Standing beside the truck, with Keesha on the ground at his feet, the Irishman spoke first. “He’s got enough weaponry here to start his own fuckin’ war. He’s no bloody marine biologist, that much I promise you, Sergeant.”

The guerrilla who had searched me walked through the mud with the papers and false passport he’d taken and handed them to Tyner.

Tyner was silent for a minute or two as he read through the papers, then he shoved them back toward the guerrilla.

“Your name is Marion North? Says here that an electronics corporation out of Virginia sent you down here to help us do a little housekeeping. That you’re a retired commander, Navy Special Warfare. Is that true, Commander North?”

He was an American. The man’s accent was rural Midwestern, pure farm country, and he communicated suspicion with the easy, breezy friendliness that I have heard many times before from people of that region. Sometimes you’ve got to follow your instincts and take a chance. My guess was that he’d been in Colombia long enough to know how the system worked, what papers were real and which were counterfeit.

It was not a good time to lie, but maybe not a good time to tell the truth, either. So I said, “It wouldn’t make a lot of sense, them sending me into your territory, would it?”

“Exactly my point. And make no mistake Commander-if you really are a naval officer-this is my territory. I worked my ass off taking it-and keeping it. In the old days, they had a name for people like you-claim jumper. Or maybe spy. Who knows.” He smiled at me, but his eyes glazed slightly as he added, “Either way, they executed them. Tradition! I’m a stickler for tradition. So tell me why you’re really here. The truth. You’ve only got one chance, and I don’t much care either way. For starters, are you here looking for me?”

I said, “No, I’m looking for two men. A Samoan named Stallings, and an albino named Kazan.”

The little sergeant nodded. “One of those names is vaguely familiar. And why have you come to my territory looking for these two gentleman?”

I looked at Keesha, who was still on the ground, afraid to move. I thought for a moment before I said, “Tell that Irish Republican Army piece of shit to get away from the girl, then tell your men to leave us in private. They don’t need to hear what I have to say. You have my word, Sergeant. I’ll tell you the truth. But it’s classified.”

For some reason, Tyner found that funny. He looked at the Irishman. “You can’t fault his ability to judge character, McCauley! And right he is!”

Still laughing, Tyner said to me, “The cowardly bastard, McCauley, blew up a bunch of civilians with a bomb. So he’s scurried off to the jungle to hide. Hates it here. Always worried about snakes and diseases, and someone like me coming along and cashing him in. He’s got a hundred-thousand-dollar bounty on his head, so he’s paying me off a little at a time. Information, snitch work-grunt stuff that a man with any character couldn’t stomach. Still got a long way to go, don’t you, McCauley?”