Dust Up: A Thriller (22 page)

We ran up to it, but Regi paused, looking back. “Portia’s bag,” he said, his eyes momentarily clear. “The samples. We have to get them.”

He took off running, between two of the houses. I followed against my better judgment. The air was thick now with the smell of fuel and smoke. When we peered around the front of the houses, we saw the soldiers with the flamethrowers dowsing the blue-and-red house, where the bodies were. Where Portia was.

Regi froze, watching, trembling. I was scared to leave him alone, afraid he might go after them, attack them, try to stop them from incinerating the woman he loved.

But we needed those samples. I didn’t quite know why, but I understood that it was true.

I crawled through a window into the house with the bag. It was right there, on the table with the inhalers and the soyflour. As I grabbed it, the bag of flour fell to the floor, sending out a little jet of white powder. I picked it up and jammed it into the medical bag.

As I wheeled around, the doorway erupted in flames. The heat was intense. Instinctively, I raised my arm to shield myself from it and felt the plastic of the biohazard suit melt against my skin. I dove for the window just as another blast of fuel splashed into the hut. As I tumbled onto the ground, a gout of flame followed me through the window.

Regi was standing to my right, near the front of the building, mumbling to himself, his eyes tightly clenched. At first, I thought he was praying, but then I got the impression he was arguing with himself about whether or not to attack the flamethrowers. I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away, just as the next burst of flame enveloped the entire building, and a cascade of flames came over the roof right where we’d been standing.

Regi was in shock, but once we started running, he kept up. By the time we got back to the tree line, the entire village was in flames. I pulled Regi into the trees, twenty feet, but we could still see the village. Through the gap between the two houses closest to us, we could see the flames rapidly enveloping the big blue-and-red house.

Regi stood there, mesmerized as I opened the jug of chlorine and poured it over his biohazard suit. We both knew the Ebola story was bullshit, but there was so much blood. I didn’t want to risk the exposure on the remote chance we were wrong. He moved his head away from the splashes of chlorine, away from the smell of it, all the while watching as the flames engulfed the building where his beloved lay.

I wiped down my own suit with chlorine, as well. Then I tugged at the tabs and zippers and flaps, tearing the plastic as I pulled the thing off me, peeling it away from my skin where it had melted. Then I tore Regi’s suit off him.

Once I got him moving again, he seemed to snap out of it, but I could tell he was in a precarious mental state. We scrambled down the incline toward where we’d left the car, but as we drew nearer, I stopped and pulled Regi back.

Inching forward, I peered over the ridge, down at the car. It was surrounded by half a dozen Interior Ministry soldiers. One of them was lying across the hood. A couple of them were smoking. They were laughing, joking, either oblivious to what their comrades were doing or indifferent.

Regi stared down at them, and I could feel his rage. I worried once again that he might plunge forward, engage the overwhelming enemy, and vent his fury before they killed him.

I pulled him farther back from the ridge and gave him a gentle shake. “We need to get out of here,” I told him quietly. “So we can take them on another day. So we can stop whatever it is they’re doing.”

He stared at me for a second, then he nodded and took the lead, grabbing me by the shoulder, pulling me through the trees. We crossed the road around the bend, where it was barely a cow path. Then we plunged into the dense green growth on the other side.

56

The terrain was hard, with lots of up and down, even after we found a semblance of a path. Behind us, black smoke drifted into the sky.

We’d traversed a couple of miles when we came over a slight rise and saw ocean below, maybe two miles away. A small cruise ship was anchored in the bay. A sliver of white sandy beach was dotted with umbrellas, a jumble of low, red-roofed buildings, and in the middle of it, a sleek glass hotel. It looked oddly out of place, more Bahamas than Haiti.

I guess I stopped walking to look at it, because Regi looked over and said, “Labadee.”

“What?”

“That’s Labadee down there.”

“That’s it? Where the summit is?” Partly I was curious, but I also wanted to keep him talking, hoping that if I kept him engaged, he wouldn’t slip into shock or despair.

He pointed to a little cove off to the left. “Over there is Labadie, ending in
ie
, a very nice but very humble little seaside village. No roads go there because of the terrain, so it’s like an island. Very hard to get to except from the water.” He pointed at the white beach and the hotel. “Over there is Labadee, with two
e
’s at the end. It was built by a cruise line, a self-contained little bit of manufactured tourist paradise. The cruise ships dock there and drop off a couple thousand tourists at a time, and they play on the beach and in the water for a few hours. Then they would get back on the boat and go off to their next destination because there was no place to stay. The hotel is brand new. The Ministry of Tourism gave them incentives to build it so the tourists will stay a little longer. The whole place is surrounded by a huge wall topped with barbed wire, to keep out the Haitians, so they don’t ruin the rich people’s vacations.”

“Are you serious?”

He nodded.

“Jesus, that’s messed up.” Something about the cruise ship in the bay looked familiar.

He shrugged. “It is and it isn’t. It brings in some foreign investment and spending, employs some Haitians, which is a good thing.” He allowed himself a slight smile. “But it is very, very strange.”

“I see the cruise ship, but I don’t see any people down there.”

He squinted. “That’s not a cruise ship. The resort is closed to host the summit.”

“Why are they having it there?”

Regi shrugged. “To show it off. To attract more foreign investment. But also, if there’s instability in the wind, this way they can remain apart from it.”

That’s when I noticed the helicopter perched on the back of the vessel.

“That’s Archie Pearce’s yacht,” I said, almost to myself.

“Who?”

“Archie Pearce, the head of Stoma Corporation. That’s his yacht. I’ve seen it before. On Martha’s Vineyard.”

“It’s a nice boat. That would make sense. Stoma is very involved in the effort to gain greater access in the region for their biotech products, their genetically modified seeds and such.”

I felt a chill as it sunk in that it was Pearce. He’d gotten away with some very shady stuff the last time I’d encountered him. He was very rich and very powerful. And very dangerous.

The path descended into a little hollow, but before the ocean disappeared from sight, I turned back for one last look at Archie Pearce’s yacht.

As we continued on, a dozen different types of insects found us. Or at least found me, buzzing around my ears. The heat was getting to me, as well. Once we had put a little more distance between us and Gaden, I sidled close to Regi. “We need to figure out what’s next.”

He turned to look at me, taken aback, like he wasn’t expecting to be making that decision. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we have a lot to do, and I don’t know how to go about doing it. I’m not from around here.” I barely understood how things worked in my own country. “I guess the first step is testing those samples. We need to figure out where and how.”

There was plenty more, as well. I thought about Miriam and wondered once again what had become of her. It was still possible she had landed back in Florida or somewhere else, but hope had been slipping away with each passing hour, and especially after what we had just seen, I had to acknowledge the likelihood that she had been reunited with her husband. I felt rage flaring up in me and shame that I had let this happen to her. She had come to me for help, for protection. Now she was dead. But if I was to keep Regi from losing it over the slaughter of the woman he loved, I couldn’t let myself lose it over the death of a woman I barely knew.

Regi took out his phone and tried to place a call. “No signal,” he said. “We’ll test the samples at my lab at the university, where I tested the others.”

“And whatever we find, we have to get word out. Through the media or the Internet; maybe through Mikel. About Saint Benezet and Gaden too. Who do we tell about that here?”

“I must tell Dissette right away,” he said, a hint of a sad smile tugging at his mouth. “He is an old fool and a coward. He won’t do anything, but I have to tell him, anyway. Then I must tell President Cardon. There is no one else to tell.”

57

We made better progress once we found a small dirt road, but the sun was high and beating down hard. As we came over a rocky hill, a cell phone tower rose incongruously out of the scrubby trees. I powered up my iPhone but there were no new messages.

Regi took out his phone and placed a call. He spoke in Kreyol, a dead monotone marred only by a growing sense of exasperation. He shook his head as he lowered his phone. “Dissette is not to be disturbed,” he spat. “They say he is in a meeting. More likely taking a nap.”

He took a deep breath and placed another call. He was on hold for a moment, then he said, “Chantale!” with a forced cheerfulness. He continued on, this time keeping his voice even and controlled, polished almost. When he finished, the smile disappeared, as if the effort to support it had exhausted him. “My friend Chantale is in the president’s scheduling office. I left a message with her asking him to call me,” he said when he was done. “I said it was urgent, but I don’t know if he’ll call.”

Next, he called Jean-Pierre at the airport. There was still no sign of Miriam and Sable. He lifted the phone one more time, holding it in front of him. “Portia has a sister,” he said distantly. “Studying in Cuba. I must tell her…” He cleared his throat and shook his head. “But not now.”

We were hiking at a brisk pace, but I think we shared a growing sense of frustration, stuck on foot in the middle of nowhere while we knew something terrible was going down.

I pulled out the plastic bag and looked through the pages as we walked, hoping something would jump out at me. But the terrain was rough. It was hard to get much out of it.

Regi looked over and put out his hand. I handed him the bag, and he started looking through the documents, as well.

“This is useless,” he said, squinting and holding a page up in the sunlight. “These are barely legible.” As the baking sun dried them out, they got better, but not much.

The road widened, and I heard a vehicle approaching. I tapped Regi on the shoulder, and we clambered into the brush on the side of the road. I stuffed the pages back into the bag and the bag into my shirt.

A Jeep appeared around the curve, slowing as it approached. For a moment, I worried the driver might have seen us. When he pulled off the road and stopped, I recognized him as one of the soldiers from the roadblock. Regi recognized him, too. His eyes flashed with anger.

The driver jumped out and ran into the bushes, leaving an old M16 leaning against the dash. His holster was empty.

As he began peeing against a small tree, I felt Regi tensing up next to me. I put my hand on Regi’s arm and shook my head. The guy could still have another sidearm, and even if we killed him, the gunfire would bring his friends. Plus, Regi wasn’t a killer. I doubted his soul could handle becoming one, and I hoped he never had to find out.

A thief, though, that wouldn’t be so bad.

The Jeep’s engine was running. I pointed at it and whispered in Regi’s ear, “Let’s take it.”

I saw a ghost of a smile, and he nodded.

“Quickly.” I sprinted out of the bushes and down onto the road. Regi was right behind me. I jumped into the driver’s seat and Regi got in the other side.

As soon as I put the Jeep in gear, the guy peeing in the bushes turned and saw us. “Hey!” he called out, grabbing at his empty holster as we drove off.
“Hey!”

By the time his pants were done up and he had run out on to the road, we were fifty yards away.

Regi smiled briefly, looking back at the soldier, who ran halfheartedly after us. But the smile faded as he turned to face front, and by the time the soldier had disappeared around the curve, Regi’s face was stony and grim.

Even in the Jeep, the going was slow, and when the road straightened out, I looked back, worried the guy we’d stolen it from could be gaining on us. Just before the road curved again, he appeared—150 yards back, moving at a cross between a jog and a shuffle. Regi turned to look back as the guy called out weakly and collapsed to his knees.

We left him behind the next curve, but I drove faster, anyway, trying to put more distance between us. I was relieved that he had appeared unarmed, and I found his .45 with a full clip under the seat, along with an unopened bag of fried plantains and a green wool watch cap with
OFFICER TURNIER
written on the inside in black permanent marker.

I showed Regi the hat and handed him the bag of chips. “Thanks, Officer Turnier.”

His mouth twitched in a hint of a smile. He started to wave off the chips but then changed his mind.

“I wonder who’ll be angrier at Officer Turnier,” I said, “the police for losing his Jeep or his mother for losing his hat.”

Regi opened the bag and took a handful of chips and then passed the bag to me.

The road we were on ended up ahead at an intersection with a larger, more defined road.

Regi said, “We should make a right up here, to get us back to Cap-Haïtien. Left will take us toward Labadee.”

I nodded, slowing to make the turn. But as we approached the intersection, my heart sank. Another police vehicle pulled across the road right in front of us. Both officers got out and held up their hands for us to stop.