Randy White - Hunter's moon

We were now climbing as we turned. “No way. We’ve taken, what, at least ten rounds? My advice to you is, get your ass back to the cargo hold where you belong and shut the fuck up.”

These were Rivera’s men? In Nicaragua, I had watched his men walk into fire following the general on horseback. Rivera had fallen further than I realized.

The. 45 caliber pistol was in a holster on my belt. I put my hand on it as I asked Lucius, “Is the pilot in command or are you in command?”

Lucius gave me a look of disgust. “There is no one in command. We are here because we get paid.”

I was losing patience. “My friends are in trouble. Please tell the pilot to land.”

Lucius tilted the barrel of his M16 toward me-a threat. “The important thing, yanqui, is that you are not in command. If the pilot has decided we are returning to Panama City for drinks at the Elks Club, then that is what we will do. The pilot gave you an order. Move your culo -”

I was watching the helicopter’s altimeter. We were at three hundred feet. I didn’t let Lucius finish. With my left hand, I reached as if to touch the pilot’s shoulder. But then I turned my palm outward and grabbed the barrel of the assault rifle and yanked it from his hands.

I had the pistol drawn. I jammed the barrel into the back of the pilot’s neck as I said to Lucius, “Don’t point.”

I tossed the assault rifle out the open door.

“You idiot cabrone!”

“You want to go after it?” I shoved the pistol barrel hard into the soft spot beneath the pilot’s skull. “Drop us down to a hundred feet.”

“Why?”

“Because it’ll kill him if I throw him out from here.”

“You’re bluffing.”

Yes, I was bluffing, but also watching as Lucius unsnapped his holster. I swung the pistol toward his face, hoping the little red laser dot would blind him and also scare him. Lucius shaded his eyes with his left hand as he pulled the gun with his right.

“Don’t do it!”

He wouldn’t stop. As Lucius lifted the gun toward me, I put the pulsing red dot on his boot and fired.

“Mother of God!” The gun spun from his hand as he fell against the chopper’s controls clutching his foot. The helicopter rocked, began to climb, and nearly stalled.

The gunshot was so loud that, for a moment, I thought the slug had caromed off the deck and hit me in the temple. My ears were ringing.

As the pilot struggled to regain control, I reached and dragged Lucius into the aisle.

“You’re insane, man. You’re gonna kill us!”

I stuck the pistol against his neck again. “Insanity’s for amateurs. Do exactly what I tell you to do. Understand?”

Lucius was still screaming, trying to get his boot off.

“Okay! But keep that kid away from the controls. Christ, he’s getting blood all over everything.”

I told the pilot to do three touch-and-goes-brief landings, each with only a few seconds on the ground.

“Circle the hacienda, but stay a couple hundred meters away.”

There were men with weapons near the burning Land Rover. I hoped to confuse them. At which spot had the helicopter off-loaded attackers?

The third time we touched down, I slipped off the landing skids onto the ground. I kept the pistol pointed at the pilot. He gave me the finger as the helicopter lifted away.

Fifty yards from the burning Land Rover, I saw why I hadn’t been confronted as I approached the adobe ranch house, with its garden corrals, and horses grazing in the outfield of Rivera’s homemade baseball diamond.

Shana Waters had the full attention of the men sent to assassinate Kal Wilson. Three of the men, anyway.

Maybe there were others out there in the darkness, decoyed to the helicopter’s first or second landing spots. Or inside the house, where another fire was burning, judging from the strobing windows.

But I doubted it.

The men recognized Shana. It was in the familiar, leering way they said her name: Shaaa-nah!

It was not unexpected. People in remote villages worldwide who five years ago didn’t have telephones now watch satellite television by the light of cooking fires, indifferent to the diesel hammering of a generator.

An American TV star alone in the jungle? A fantasy opportunity they were not going to miss.

Or maybe the men had already gotten to her and were back again. The expensive blouse that Rivera had found fascinating was torn at the shoulder and her hair was a mess. She’d been carrying a backpack and its contents were scattered on the ground.

But the woman was not yielding without a fight.

Waters had her back to the burning car, holding a pitchfork. It was three-tonged, the kind used for lobbing hay to cattle. As the men circled, she jabbed the pitchfork at them. Each time she lunged, the men dodged out of danger, laughing and chanting her name. Shaaa-nah!

When they laughed, she swore. The woman had a New Yorker’s command of profanity.

It only made them laugh harder, and they conversed among themselves in languages I’d heard recently-Halloween night; the men who paddled to Ligarto Island to kill Kal Wilson.

Indonesian and Arabic.

These weren’t the same men, but, like the others, all three had automatic rifles slung over they shoulders. They’d come to kill.

Had they?

I’d hoped to hear Tomlinson’s voice call from the house. Or Vue. Instead, there was only the snap of flames as the SUV’s interior and tires burned. And the leering laughter of the men as they taunted the famous broadcaster.

But the woman was tiring. Pack behavior is choreographed to exhaust prey, not overpower it. It is the saddest dance in nature. Shana’s eyes were glassy; her slacks mud-stained… or bloodstained.

She was nearly done. The men knew it. They had not shot her for a reason.

The wind stirred… then shifted.

I was crouched, watching from the shadows, but then stood taller, testing with my nose. The garbage-dump smell of burning rubber was replaced, for a moment, by the scent of burning meat.

The stink of scorched adipose tissue is distinctive. The stink was coming from the open windows of the house.

I looked from the house, to the men.

I, too, was carrying weapons. I holstered my pistol, slipped the rifle off my shoulder, and slammed the bolt back, shucking a round into the chamber.

Certain sounds are also distinctive.

The laughter stopped. The men turned to look. So did Shana Waters.

I drew the pistol and walked toward the fire.

I was holding the rifle at waist level in my left hand, the pistol in my right.

In English, I said, “What happened here?”

The woman’s expression was a mix of shock and rage. “They burned Walt Danson alive! For no reason! They killed everyone!”

“The president’s bodyguard?” I had trouble assembling the next sentence. “And a friend of mine-Tomlinson?”

“Everyone!”

I felt a slow, chemical chill in the back of my head. It radiated through the brain stem, to my chest.

Tomlinson dead, Vue dead, and three more, including Danson. Shana Waters had her story. If she lived to report it.

As I stepped closer, the men began to drift apart, widening the circle-a typical pack response. Their hands also moved to the slings that held their assault rifles.

“Where’re the bodies?”

“In the house. It’s horrible.”

I indicated the three men. “Are there more?”

“There were five, but two must have left with the pilot in the helicopter. I didn’t see. That’s the reason I’m still alive-”

I interrupted. “I’ll get details later.”

My eyes moved from man to man. “Do you speak English?”

They stared at me blankly, one of them shaking his head, as Waters said, “Yes, they speak English. They’re a bunch of fucking liars.” She was pointing the pitchfork at them as she backed free of the circle.