It began to seem like she was detached from her body, feeling nothing, watching her progress from without. She thought more often of dying and found, as she had in other places, that it remained only a word. She assumed it would be so right up to the last breath and heartbeat. At least that was how it appeared when she helped recover bodies of very strong cavers and climbers. To a person they had died open-eyed and astonished.
She kept moving, but more and more slowly; there would come a time, she knew, when her mind could no longer compel her body and she would sit down and not get up again. According to the route map, she was close to the surface, but she might be closer to the end of her strength. Still standing, she felt her eyes close, felt sleep’s lulling pull, and almost lay down. Then she heard her soldier father’s voice:
Die before you quit.
She stood up straight and said, “I am not going to die here.” It made her feel better to tell the cave that. So she shouted, and the cave answered in rolling volleys of echoes:
“Die here … die here … die here.”
Day Six: Monday
2
Hector Villanueva was rarely happy these days, given the escalating assaults on his person and prosperity. Just now, though, he was enjoying himself, and clearly his guest was, as well. They were at Oro Nuevo, one of Villanueva’s remote Mexican hideaways. A Bell JetRanger helicopter had plucked the guest from remote Oaxacan mountains and flown him two hours to this little Xanadu in the jungle. Peacocks strolled golf-green lawns, and dog-sized lizards called tegus glittered like chunks of gold in sun-washed ponds. Beautiful women strolled, sipping drinks, languid and graceful as browsing deer and naked as Eve in the Garden.
Villanueva was a Mexican of Mayan descent, short and fat, with skin the color of muddy water and a pencil mustache over pendulous lips. He led the Salvados drug cartel in Mexico, controlling all cocaine and methamphetamine trade north of Acapulco, commerce worth billions. His was also the most vicious cartel. Just last week, as his guest knew, masked Salvados had deposited a secretary of national security — minus his hands and feet but still alive, more or less — on the steps of Mexico’s Supreme Court building.
He and his visitor reclined on green lounges beside a swimming pool the size of four tennis courts. Most other pools the guest had seen were painted a cool, soothing blue. This one was dark red, and its water looked like blood.
The guest raised his glass of golden tequila. “We are forever in your debt.”
“I will consider the debt paid in full when you put my gift to good use, Dr. Ely.”
“It’ll be done. We work together for a common goal,” Kurt Ely said.
“The elimination of that infernal whore.” Villanueva spat.
“Exactly.”
“When interests join, God smiles. Like the junction of roads. A thing of great power.”
Villanueva puffed his Havana oscuro, looked reflective, shook his head. “Your President Laning’s reward. Very stupid. Ten million dollars made me a lot of new enemies overnight. Some are dead already, but many more are lining up.”
The mention of death made Ely uncomfortable. Three months earlier, he had nearly gotten chopped up here himself. Looking for aquifer evidence, he had stumbled onto one of Villanueva’s secret cocaine factories. Only his passport kept the cocaínas from feeding him, alive, to their watchdogs as they did his three porters. Americans, they had learned, could be worth decent money, so they smacked his head with a rifle butt and delivered him to Villanueva.
He awoke naked and lashed, spread-eagled, to a massive butcher block made from thick pine timbers and tree-trunk legs. He was in a big, dim, building filled with crates and sacks. It reeked like a slaughterhouse and was as hot as a sauna, though none of the four men surrounding him was sweating. Three he recognized as captors. The fourth was a short, fat man with skin the color of mud and grotesque lips. He was wearing a long, black rubber apron and black rubber gloves. Beside him, on another table, Ely saw tools: ax, hatchet, hacksaw, clawhammer, pliers, propane blowtorch, and an orange Stihl chain saw.
“Habla usted español?” the aproned man asked.
“Solamente poquito.”
“A little, eh? We do English. I examined your documents. Your name means nothing. And you are not DEA or CIA. Why were you sneaking around my facility?”
“I wasn’t. I’m a scientist doing fieldwork. Please! It’s true.” Ely was about to cry and lose control of his bladder; it was a toss-up which would occur first.
The small man picked up a red-handled hatchet and approached. Ely saw that its head was caked with dried blood and tissue. “What kind of scientist are you?”
“Hydrogeologist. I look for water.” Ely’s chin was trembling. His head rang from the blow with the rifle, and his muscles were screaming from being stretched tightly on the tabletop.
“Do you know who I am?” The man waved his hatchet like a conductor’s baton, the blade an inch from Ely’s eyes.
“No.”
“I am Hector Villanueva.”
“Oh God.” Despite himself, Ely said this out loud.
“So you do know who I am?”
“I know who Hector Villanueva is.”
“And how would you know that?”
“It’s on TV and in the newspapers all the time. Because of that reward President Laning offered. They call you the Mexican al-Harani.”
Villanueva hissed like a snake. He muttered something obscene in Spanish, then the word “Laning.” The guards laughed.
“I think you are good for nothing except my technique.” He set the hatchet’s blade lightly on Ely’s wrist, where it felt like a sliver of ice. Villanueva sighed. “My only regret is that I will not be killing that filthy whore Laning instead. How I wish it were so.”
Ely was seconds from being dismembered alive. The most ancient instinct made flashing connections, whipped through a desperate calculus.
“Wait!” he cried. “I may be able to help you with that.”
Now here he was, sharing a drink and trying not to stare at the “beauties,” as Villanueva called the naked women he used like peacocks and tegus to decorate his estate.
“To make things worse, ten million is an insult,” Villanueva said.
“Indeed.”
“For Sayeedur al-Harani, they offered fifty million.” Villanueva was referring to a notorious Islamic terrorist whose life a drone-launched Hellfire missile had recently extinguished.
“He did kill many Americans,” Ely pointed out. “And threatened a smallpox attack.”
“Truly. But that will seem like — what do you say? — little potatoes compared to our action.” Villanueva puffed on his black cigar, scowled. “No woman should be a president.”
“I could not agree with you more. And with al-Harani gone, you were the perfect straw man.”
Villanueva’s eyes became slits. “Straw man?” Before Ely could answer, Villanueva said, “Don’t move.”