James Siegel - Detour

One moment Paul was standing ten feet from the door with the Ginzu in his hand. The next, an amorphous black shape was hurtling straight at him.

He lunged at the black apparition with his knife, but the man deflected his arm with almost comical ease.

The knife went skittering off somewhere on the floor.

Before the man could kill him, Paul kept going.

Momentum carried him past the man’s swatting arm and back into the kitchen, where he attempted to ransack the second drawer without slowing down. But he cut himself on one of the other Ginzus—perhaps the apple-corer they’d received free because they’d acted now. His hand came up bloody and, more important, empty.

The man was right behind him. He could hear him breathing hard, as if the exertion of kicking in the door had tuckered him out.

Only momentarily. Not enough to make him stop.

Paul zigzagged into the bedroom like a broken-field runner. He slammed the door shut.

No.

The man had made it to the other side of the door just before Paul could actually close it.

He was pushing back.

Adrenaline was a kind of drug, Paul thought. He could feel every single muscle crackling with energy. He felt powerful, relentless, even indomitable.

He didn’t stand a chance.

Adrenaline could only do so much. The person on the other side of the door wasn’t human. He was a freakish force of nature. The door was moving backward.

One inch.

Two inches.

Paul’s hand was slipping in his own blood.

“Fuck!” Paul shouted. “Fuck!” Grunting, trying to summon a last reserve of strength.

He could bellow all he wanted. He could push and scratch and fight and pray. He was going to lose.

It ended with a bang and a whimper. The door slammed into the wall with a loud crack. Paul went backward; no—he flew, soared, catapulted. He careened off the bed. He grabbed for the phone—dead.

The man came for him.

Paul put his hands up to defend himself. He screamed. Nothing came out.

The man had put one hand around his mouth, the other against his windpipe.

He felt like a rag doll whose head was about to be smashed.

But the man didn’t smash Paul’s head.

He spoke to him.

Whispered even.

“Breathe,” he said. “Nice and easy. That’s it.”

There was no Russian accent. No Colombian accent either. That was the first surprise.

There was another.

LATER, AFTER PAUL HAD STOPPED SHAKING, THEY TALKED ABOUT old times.

Not really old times. Fairly recent in memory, just far enough away from now to be ancient history.

The delay in Kennedy.

The layover in Washington, D.C. Eight excruciating hours sitting on the tarmac with nothing to do.

Only it hadn’t seemed excruciating for the man. No. He’d sat there with utter calm staring at the seat back in front of him.

He was used to waiting, he’d said. Remember? he asked Paul.

He was a bird-watcher.

THIRTY-FOUR

J ungle gym.

The Jungle Book.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.

Jungle boogie.

Joanna was reciting the entire known canon of jungle references. She was being her own google.com. Some of these jungle references were clearly sanitized, the jungle made friendly. Something to dance to, sing to, for four-year-olds to innocently clamber over.

There were other, scarier references.

The concrete jungle.

It’s a jungle out there.

She would just as soon not think of those.

The real jungle, the humid infestation of invisible buzzing, shrieking things and rotting, tangled vegetation, was scary enough.

For one thing it was dark.

Darker than dark.

A suffocating canopy of branches blotted out whatever moonlight there was. It was like stumbling around a closet—the kind children are convinced harbors hideous monsters.

There were definitely things going bump in the night. She could hear them directly above her head. Rustling branches, sudden growls. Monkeys? Or something worse?

Jaguars, ocelots, boa constrictors?

Joelle had woken up soon after they’d made it down a small clearing and into the thick trees. She’d begun wailing for food—or because she was cold or just plain sick. Joanna didn’t know. She was still learning the foreign language of infancy—something Galina seemed to have down pat. It didn’t matter. She had no baby formula with her, and she couldn’t do anything about the surrounding chill the baby blanket was doing little to counter.

“We’re going home,” she whispered to her daughter, though it was solely for her own benefit. Speaking out loud helped pierce the darkness, let her know that she, at least, was present and accounted for. Of course it might’ve been doing the same for any animals in the vicinity. Human or otherwise.

Occasionally, invisible flying things smacked her in the face. She nearly swallowed an enormous moth—just managing to spit it out, then bending over and retching when she realized what had been fluttering around her mouth.

She had no idea where she was going.

She’d decided she’d maintain a straight line from the house. Even if she didn’t know where she was headed, she’d know where she was headed from. There was a problem, though—as with all thought-out, rational plans of attack. The enemy had a vote.

The jungle wasn’t cooperating. There were innumerable obstacles in her way—massive tree trunks, several of which she almost walked into, sudden steep drops, a black stream complete with invisible waterfall that sounded, for one instant of comfort, like TV static.

She kept making detours till she felt like it in blindman’s buff. She’d been spun around too many times to know which way was which. She desperately needed someone to tell her if she was getting warmer.

Right now she was getting colder. And hungrier. And more frightened.

The simple rocking motion of putting one foot before the other lulled Joelle back to sleep. Joanna was tempted to join her. In the morning she’d at least be able to see—survey her surroundings and make an educated guess where she was.

She was worried someone would peek in the room—Tomás or Puento. That they’d send out searchers who knew the jungle and, more important, knew how to track someone in it. She had to keep moving.

She stumbled into a large clearing.

It was as if someone had flicked on the room lights. She could suddenly see her legs, Joelle’s sleeping face, the sky. She hadn’t seen the sky since . . . well, she couldn’t remember. She was momentarily stunned at the tapestry of glittering stars—so many of them that it seemed artificial, like an enormous disco ball. She stood there and caught her breath.

Odd. Here she was in the middle of a jungle, but if she didn’t know any better, she would’ve sworn she was standing before a field. Something cultivated, regular, attended to. There was a dank but distinct odor in the air. What?

She stepped forward till she stood on its very edge.

Of course.

Coca. She’d stumbled across an illegal cocaine field, the kind they grew deep in the jungle to shield from government patrols.

Joanna felt a surge of—what? Hope?

She was trespassing on dangerous ground. But at least it was ground trod by humans.

If she waited till morning, someone might come—the farmer who tended it. But what if it wasn’t a campesino looking for a little supplemental income? What if it was one of— them ? Maybe they grew their own fields—maybe this was one of them. She felt caught between competing and equally compelling inclinations. She would do anything not to go back into the jungle. If she stayed, if she lay down and curled up till morning, she might end up having waited for the wrong people.