Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

Tyner pushed me toward the Humvee, waving for Keesha to follow, while behind us, the Irishman yelled, “I gave you two of them, Sergeant. No matter what you do with ’em, you still have to give me credit for both. That’s our deal. Two heads, Sergeant. I want it applied to my debt!”

Standing at the rear of the Humvee, aware that, from a distance, his men had their weapons trained on me, I told Tyner the whole story.

The real reason for me being there was no threat to his own strange operation, so I risked nothing in telling him the truth. The only details I omitted were which people and agencies had helped me.

When I was finished, he asked a few questions about my life in Florida, a little bit about my lab. He wanted to confirm that I really was a marine biologist come in search of friends. He took pains to be certain of that. Judging from the articulate questions he asked, he, in fact, seemed to have a pretty good general knowledge of natural science.

Living on an eroding mountainside above a dying river, that surprised me. I’m not sure why.

Then he said, “So you’re really not a commander with Navy Special Warfare?”

I shook my head slowly. “No.”

“But your name is Marion North.”

“Nope, that’s a cover, too. It’s Ford. Marion D. Ford.”

“Marion D. Ford, huh?” He nodded, thinking about that, looking up at me through the framework of his orange mustache, blue eyes glittering. “So why’d the CIA geeks agree to set you up? Help you find your pals? I took one look at your papers, and I knew who’d made them. You wouldn’t be the first they sent out to check on me.”

I said carefully, “I can’t and won’t confirm that it was a specific agency. In the past, I did some work for the State Department. Foreign-service variety. Not directly for any agency; sort of a contract thing. But some people in high places owed me favors. My friends who’ve been kidnapped are important to me. I pressed until certain people agreed to help.”

He slapped the swagger stick into his palm. “Okay, that’s just vague enough to be the truth. I believe you, Ford. Copacetic. Everything is copacetic. You look like you could use some food and some sleep. But…” He looked toward the men covering us, and gave a hand signal-they could relax and go about their business. “But first things first. You say you left five bodies upriver? Let’s go to headquarters, I’ll get out a topographical map. I want you to show me exactly where. The Colombian government will be searching for that chopper, and my men need to get to the bodies before they do. That’s money in my pocket.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “The dead guerrillas, that’s what I mean. I’ll collect the bounty for them. It’s what I do here. Business comes first, understand. I’ll give you a percentage, if you want, but not much. Or maybe I’ll pay you back by helping you out with your problem. Either way, you and the Indio girl may have done the killing, but I’m the one with the contract, all the permits. Without me, you could kill a thousand of the bastards, and you wouldn’t get a cent. Consider me generous just to include you, Dr. Ford. I don’t have to do a damn… do a damn…”

Tyner then paused, as if surprised by something, allowing the sentence to trail off before saying very softly, almost as if speaking to himself: “Dr. Ford? Marion Ford. Marion D. Ford.”

He said it as if struggling to remember some lost bit of data.

Then he looked up at me, eyes wide, his face an illustration of what might have been shock, as he whispered, “My God! You’re him. Dr. Marion Ford. I knew about you. You’re one of the Negotiators!”

I was so surprised by his reaction that I couldn’t speak for a moment, but then in a flat voice, I finally replied, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He slapped the swagger stick into his palm again. “I’m right. I know I’m right. You’re one of about ten guys with the W designation. You are him. I can see it in your face. Jesus Christ, man, you’re one of my heroes! What you did in Cuba, your work in Cambodia, it’s legendary. The way you took out the Soviet attache in Managua, the way you set him up-‘Let’s go spearfishing, comrade’-it was a masterwork. A piece of art. And that anarchist professor who disappeared from the bar in Aspen. Hell, man, I know a lot about you. I’ve studied your work.”

In the same flat tone, I said, “Sorry. Mistaken identity. You’re confusing me with someone else.”

“Hey, Ford, you can trust me. A couple years back, a guy named Heller-you trained together, according to him. He was here, doing the same kind’a work I do. Blaine Heller. An amazing man. He told me if anything happened to him, I should destroy all his files. He bought it in a chopper crash, so I burned all his papers. But I read them first-hell, who wouldn’t? That’s how I know about you.”

I waited but said nothing. Blaine Heller had been a good, good man. An intelligent, perceptive man who loved literature and fine art. What could have possibly driven him to come to this dark place?

Tyner stopped talking, grinned, and slapped his knee with the swagger stick, then thrust out his right hand to me. “Curtis Tyner, U.S. Army, Green Berets and Delta Force at your service, Dr. Ford! This is an honor. Damn glad to meet you.”

He began waving me toward the Humvee. “Come. I’ll radio ahead, have my staff lay out some food for you. I’ve got a couple prime Kobe steaks from Japan I’ve been saving. Anything you want. Finally, I meet a man who’s truly going to appreciate what I’ve done here. My place-it’s a… well, hell, it’s a warrior’s palace.” The little sergeant made an open-handed gesture of delight. “We have so much in common, you’re not going to believe it.”

Tyner didn’t live in a house, he lived in a castle fortress. It was built on a mountaintop, at the end of a long series of muddy switchbacks, constructed of rebar and concrete, dug into the bare hillside like a sprawling bunker, a low-profile mansion built for luxury, comfort, and defense.

The complex had a half-dozen or more thick-walled out-buildings, some set far from the house-munitions warehouses, possibly-the entire compound consisted of at least ten acres, all of it contained by high, iron fencing-electrified, it looked to be-with a ribbon of concertina wire around the top.

As the driver steered us through the gate, onto the grounds, Tyner chattered away about the years of work it’d taken to get his complex properly built. How difficult it was to get good help out in the jungle. Told me about his redundant systems for generating electricity, potable water, communications, waste treatment, and the improvements he’d made to guarantee easy transportation by land, river, and air.

“The danger of living in the jungle,” he said, “is that the goddamn thing never quits. It’s always out there, pressing in. Stand too long in one place and the vines will grow up your legs, around your neck, and strangle you. The humidity seeps in and turns everything metal into rust”-he snapped his fingers-“that quick. If you don’t fight it every single day, it’ll swallow you alive. But why am I telling you? You know that.”

When Ron Iossi of the CIA told me there were some retired special ops guys out in the jungle getting rich, he was accurately describing Curtis Tyner. The man had all the imported toys: satellite dishes, cellular communications mini-tower, new pickup trucks, ATVs, skeet range, three-hole golf course, a massive garden patio with built-in barbecue grill and wet bar, and a competition-sized lap pool with a three-meter diving board. On the bottom of the pool, in golden tiles visible through the chlorinated water was a Latin motto: Vae Victis.