Ted Bell - Spy

“There should be a river around here somewhere,” Saladin said, slowing down and peering over the steering wheel.

“I think we’re in it,” Harry said, kicking his feet and splashing water forward beneath Caparina’s seat.

“I like him,” Caparina said to her ex. “He’s funny.”

Saladin said, “Wait, what’s that up there?”

Brock leaned forward. He saw a dark mass a hundred yards ahead, moving left to right across their path.

“What the hell is that?” Harry said.

“Water buffalo,” Saladin said.

“That’s got to be your river,” Caparina said. “Stop!”

Hassan stood on the brakes and they fishtailed to a halt just shy of the swollen torrent. He raised the little fish-eyed goggles up on his forehead and smiled at Harry.

“See? We made it!”

“Made what? I don’t recognize this. I don’t have a fucking clue where we are!”

“Calm down, Harry,” Caparina said.

EVERYBODY CLIMBED out of the Toyota into slushy mud that came up to their knees. Saladin led the way forward to check out the river. Harry, bringing up the rear, could barely make out the small herd of water buffalo moving away along the flooded bank.

Ahead, Harry saw, the road plummeted and seemed to disappear, dead-ending in a muddy brown river some two hundred yards wide. The heavy rains of the past few days had caused the thing to overflow its banks. The raging stream was churning with submerged kapok logs, most likely from a logging station upriver. Logs and other debris were flowing by from left to right. The rain, mercifully, had subsided a little. For a few moments they were able to speak more or less normally above the sound of the rushing river.

“Take a look at this, Harry Brock,” Caparina said. She had flattened the rain-soaked map onto the hood of the Toyota.

“I think we’re here,” she said, putting her index finger on a small tributary. The unnamed river ran west to east through an area of floodplain and flooded forest.

“Yes,” Saladin said, studying the map. “That makes sense. What’s this larger river over here called?”

“Igapo,” she said, “Black Water.”

Harry looked around and said, “Is there maybe a waterfall nearby?”

“Impossible to say. Certainly not one on the map. There are so many in this part of the jungle. Some big, some small. Some exist only during the rainy season.”

“Why do you ask?” Saladin asked Brock.

“I hid in one. After the plane went down.”

“Tell us,” Caparina said, putting a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

“We all survived the plane’s landing. I was the last one off. When Top’s welcoming committee started shooting at us, I made it into the jungle. I was the only one who got more than a hundred yards from the plane alive. After slogging it for about an hour, I found a waterfall. I hid inside when I heard the dogs coming.”

“Inside. You mean, behind the water?”

“Yes. There was a deep indent in the rocks at the base of this waterfall. A small cave with a tunnel leading deeper inside. Unfortunately, they caught me before I could do too much exploring. But it looked interesting.”

Saladin looked at him. “What do you mean, ‘interesting’?”

“It looked like the tunnel could have been manmade.”

“How far do you think these falls were from the landing strip?” Caparina asked, suddenly much more interested.

“I didn’t get very far from the strip,” Harry said. “The jungle was so thick and I only ran for about an hour. Probably less than three miles.”

“We’re probably here,” Saladin said, pointing to the map. “And with this flood, we’re not going any further right now. Let’s track the water buffalo on foot along the river. There’s still a lot of light left in the day and it’s better than turning back.”

“I agree,” Caparina said. “Let’s follow this river and see what we see.”

“Go with the flow,” Harry said, smiling at her. Even soaking wet, she was a babe.

“Right,” she said. “Let’s get the weapons.”

A half-hour later, trudging in the rain through knee-deep mud behind a herd of meandering buffalo, Harry was feeling more than a little discouraged. But he began to notice that the current was speeding up dramatically. It was beginning to at least look more like a run of rapids. And, maybe it was leading to a waterfall.

Suddenly, Saladin, in the lead, halted.

“Listen,” he said.

“What?” Caparina said, pausing to hear.

“That dull roar. Up there, not too far. Hear it?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, his face showing some life. “That sounds like it.”

“All waterfalls sound the same, Harry,” Caparina said. “Some are a little louder, that’s all.”

“I know, but this one sounds like the one I found, that’s all I can tell you.”

Fifteen minutes later they were standing near the top of a very large waterfall, watching it cascade down into an almost circular pool some forty feet below.

“Yeah,” Harry said looking down and nodding his head. “I dove in that pool and swam under those falls. Let’s go.”

“You’re sure about all this, Harry?” Caparina asked.

“It’s a hell of a difficult climb down there,” Saladin said.

“Almost positive,” Harry said.

32

MIAMI

T his mystery man you’ve kidnapped,” Hawke said to Stokely Jones, “tell me more.”

“The Mambo King? You’re going to be talking to him yourself in about ten minutes. You want me to go faster?”

Hawke glanced at the big sixties style chromium speedometer centered behind the steering wheel and said, “Not really.”

The two men were rumbling loudly across the causeway spanning Biscayne Bay, strapped into the black leather-pleated front seats of Stokely’s outrageous new automobile.

Hawke, who favored more understated forms of conveyance, was fascinated by the GTO Pontiac. This street-legal racing machine, he had just learned, was capable of running the standing quarter mile in a shade under seven seconds. A small miracle. Hawke, for all his racing automobiles, had never owned anything that could touch this metallic beast off the line.

Alex Hawke was eagerly anticipating his meeting with the Venezuelan officer. Stoke had arranged the rendezvous at the Key Biscayne home of his intended, the beauteous Fancha. He had somehow forged an agreement with the Coast Guard honchos in Key West to maintain custody of the man for forty-eight hours. Or, longer if necessary, since, as Stoke told the commander, it was clearly a matter of national security. The man was now parked temporarily in a staff apartment located above Fancha’s boathouse.

“What’s he like, your Venezuelan colonel?” Hawke asked.

“You know it’s funny.”

“What is?”

“Well, like I told Tommy Quick this morning, it’s weird, but I feel like I’ve known this guy all my life. Even though we only met two days ago.”

“Really? Why is that, do you suppose?”

“To tell you the honest truth, when we were out there in the Tortugas, I encouraged the man to let his hair down. You know, seeing as how I’d saved his life, I said to him, and this is a quote, ‘Fernando, if you got any frijoles, spill ’em now, hombre.’ ”

Hawke laughed. “So, he’s talking, is he? What the hell does he want?”

“Asylum for him and his family up here in the big Magic Kingdom, I think. That’s the best card we got to play. Anyway, I told him you were a big-time government guy and would listen to what he had to say.”

“You say which government?”

“Hell, I don’t even know which government. I can’t keep up with you anymore. You ought to wear those little flag pins, so folks know who they’re dealing with at the moment.”