Randy White - Hunter's moon

In my headphones, I heard Shana demand, “Why the hell don’t you just radio the police?!”

Tyner said, “Because it kills the profit margin,” as he tilted us downward, a dive that left my stomach behind and the woman silent.

The Pacific Ocean was ahead, the waning moon a smear of orange behind rain clouds. I could see the lights of the cattle ranch.

Was that a fire burning?

Yes. But small, like a campfire.

“I don’t see a helicopter. Do you?” We’d leveled off, and shot past the ranch house and corrals at a hundred knots. Tyner banked around for another look.

No… no helicopter. Something else: Wilson’s plane was no longer moored in the lagoon.

“Are you sure we have the right spot?”

I was sure. I recognized the bay and the layout of the ranch. Even so, I checked the telemetry receiver. The flashing dot was steady: Danson’s wallet was somewhere on the ground below.

“Then there’s something wrong. I don’t like it.”

Nor did I.

Near the campfire, a couple of men were staring up at us. The men I’d seen cutting wood, possibly.

“Put me on the beach. I’ll check it out.”

Tyner said, “Okay, but I’m going airborne the moment your feet touch sand,” meaning he suspected a trap.

THE MEN WERE VAQUEROS. THEY WORKED ON THE RANCH with cattle and horses. But they were nervous as I approached. Shifting their weight from foot to foot, machetes within easy reach.

They were relieved when I told them I was a friend of Juan Rivera.

“You are the yanqui named Ford?” one asked.

“That’s right.”

“He told us you might return. The general was once a great caballero.” The vaquero smiled. “It is a shame we no longer have men like him.”

Men who work with horses and cattle are also sometimes called caballeros, the Spanish word for “knight.” The man was talking as if Rivera was dead.

“No,” the man explained, “the general is not dead. It is a way of speaking of people who lose their heart at a certain age.”

This was not a trap. These men knew Rivera.

The plane that floated on water, the vaquero said, had flown away more than an hour ago with Rivera and his yanqui friend aboard. Afterward, a helicopter landed. Men searched the house, and one of them tried to set the barn on fire. The man was very angry, the vaquero said, screaming profane words in a strange accent.

Lourdes.

“But we extinguished the fire. That is all we know.” Once again, the vaquero was shifting from foot to foot.

“Did the angry man ask you questions?”

“No. He did not see us. We… know who this man is. The stupid peasants in the mountains call him ‘Incendiario.’ A monster. We do not believe in monsters, but neither are we stupid.”

The two vaqueros, I realized, had watched from hiding until Lourdes was gone.

“How did you know it was Incendiario?”

“Because of the helicopter he uses. A yellow helicopter. The Indios speak of it. And also because”-the two men exchanged looks-“because one of his men fled and we could hear Incendiario ’s voice as he searched. He swore to burn the man alive if he found him. Even as his yellow helicopter left the ground, Incendiario was screaming.”

I said, “A man escaped? Where is he?”

The vaqueros exchanged looks once again. The man who had not spoken said, “Do you have a paper that proves you are this man Ford?”

I showed them my passport.

The men studied it so intently that I realized they could not read.

“The man who escaped rolled from the helicopter while the others were searching the house. His hands were tied behind his back, and we are the only ones who saw him. He ran along the beach to the corrals, then past the barn. But he stumbled as he climbed a fence. He fell into the pen where we keep the puercos.

“Those animals are wild. We trap them in the forest, and they sometimes kill our dogs.”

It was a place, the vaquero said, where even Incendiario would not search.

Puercos.

Pigs.

It was Tomlinson.

Tomlinson called to me, “If pigs could fly, man,I’d be pasted on some statue right about now!” Trying to be funny, but, instead, he sounded robotic, possibly in shock.

I was searching the pen with my flashlight, seeing black-haired hogs with tusks, belly-deep in slop after the rains, a Stygian nightscape too dark for the light I was using to probe.

But when I called Tomlinson’s name, he answered, “Over here!,” then moaned something indecipherable before attempting a brave front. If pigs could fly…

I used the flashlight to signal the helicopter- Land immediately -then ran around the outside of the pen, sweeping the beam back and forth until I saw a section of Tomlinson’s arm and hand, skin white as rice paper, protruding above the pack. He was waving to be seen, either sitting in mud or on his back-I couldn’t tell-surrounded, or pinned, by the hogs.

I vaulted the fence and landed in muck up to my calves. I was trying to get one of my boots free when Tomlinson yelled, “Don’t show fear! They won’t hurt you!”

I got the flashlight up in time to see two pony-sized boars charging me. The clicking of their tusks was the sound of bone on bone.

I wasn’t going to risk it. I slogged back to the fence, got a leg over the top rail as one of the hogs grabbed me from below, locking onto a length of shoestring like an attack dog. The shoestring gave way and I fell backward off the fence, landing so hard it knocked the breath out of me. I came up fast, drawing my pistol, holding the flashlight along its barrel in a two-handed grip.

“Don’t shoot them. They’re my friends!”

Friends?

I wanted to shoot. It was one of the scariest things I’d ever experienced. But I touched the hammer release and used the flashlight instead.

The hogs scattered when they charged me and I could see Tomlinson plainly for the first time. He was sitting in mud, back erect, legs folded into full lotus position, arms thrust outward, fingers and thumbs making circles. Around each wrist were cuffs of frayed rope, his hands no longer tied. He squinted with the pain of the light in his eyes.

“I was afraid you were Praxcedes and came back for me. He was going to burn me tonight.” Tomlinson’s voice was still monotone. Absurdly, he continued to meditate. Yes, in shock.

I was moving to the other side of the pen, hoping the pigs would follow. I said, “Tomlinson, get out of there. Lourdes is gone. You’re safe now.”

A lie because he wasn’t safe. The pigs were losing interest in me, snorting and gnashing their tusks as they refocused on Tomlinson. I had the gun out again, flashlight laid along the barrel. I touched a red laser dot to the head of the boar that was now chewing my shoestring.

“Praxcedes wanted my face for a surgical transplant. But he found out I’m the wrong blood type. He needs O-positive. Vue’s O-negative, but the surgeon told him that could work. Praxcedes wanted you and the president to watch me burn.”

“Tell me later. Get out of that pen.”

“But there’s no danger. You shouldn’t have run.”

The boar would have been eating my leg right instead of my shoestring if I hadn’t run.

I listened to Tomlinson tell me, “When I first fell in, I thought I was a goner, man. Pigs all over me. Know what they went for first? My hams. Funny or what? Instead of eating my butt off, though, they chewed my ropes. I communicated with them, man. They freed me. ”

I said, “Uh-huh. Regular heroes.” I was moving the laser dot between the two boars. “I’m asking you as a favor, climb out of there.”

“Okay. But they’re gonna miss their new buddy.”

I pulled the hammer back as Tomlinson got to his feet, slinging mud from his fingers. His pants had been ripped to tatters. I couldn’t tell if he was injured. The pigs, I noticed, continued to root where he’d been sitting, playing tug-of-war with bits of plastic bag.