Ice Woman Assignment (24 page)

Felicity looked up as Flat Nose took aim at Morgan. Reaching up with her left hand, she managed to grab his bloused trouser leg. When he looked down she released her right hand's grip on the ledge. Her weight dragged the man over the rim. He rolled forward past her, the gun sailing into the air. Twisting, Felicity got her feet under herself in a deep crouch. Flat Nose rolled to a stop not far ahead. He looked up at the girl, then down at the two fighters.

Morgan and Marta had almost reached the bottom, nearly fifty yards away. Flat Nose started down the hill, moving carefully, sliding as much as stepping. When he reached the machete, he freed it from the tree.

Inches from the bottom of the hill, Morgan finally freed his knife from its scabbard. Marta reached behind him to the narrow stream bed for a rock. He swung it at Morgan's head, but Morgan blocked it. The blow landed on his left hand, numbing his fingers and sending his fighting knife spinning away. An edge of hand blow from Morgan made Marta release the stone. His fingers switched to Morgan's throat. Damp soil clung to their faces and rolled down their necks as they wrestled for control. The loose, uneven ground made any kind of controlled motion almost impossible.

Felicity watched the Escorpionista receding ahead of her. Morgan had gained the top in his private battle, but he might not have noticed the approaching attacker. If he did, he might be unable do anything about it. She wondered what she could do. Reaching the bottom safely would take
her a long time, and Morgan might die before then. She had no weapons or tools to slow the man down with.

Finally, she slid forward just far enough to reach a young but solid tree. She pulled herself up its narrow trunk a few feet, and reached a low hanging branch, maybe seven feet above the ground. Gripping the branch with both hands she swung twice, and let go at her third swing's apex.

The sensation was frightening and thrilling. She flew perhaps thirty-five yards, dropping through space, while never being more than seven feet from the ground. Blurred fern trees flew past as she twisted her body, weaving between them. Leaves of a bewildering variety of trees slapped at her during her long seconds in flight. Then her knees smacked against Flat Nose's back. The impact thrust him to his feet, then forward onto his face. A dull thud told her his head had found a stone. He continued to slide forward, out of control. Felicity leaned back on her haunches, pushing him ahead of her.

Morgan and Marta were on their knees on the narrow creek bed's mud floor like high school wrestlers. Morgan had one arm around Marta's waist, while the other controlled his support arm. As Felicity watched, Morgan drove forward, forcing Marta into the ground. Marta's face splashed into the shallow creek, and he struggled like a landed fish. Now Morgan had Marta's right arm behind him. He held Marta's collar in his left fist, with his forearm across the man's neck. Marta was making a bubbling, gurgling sound with his face pressed into the shallow stream. Morgan was gasping in the crisp mountain air, apparently not feeling the cold cutting into his sodden clothes.

“You killed her just to be snotty, didn't you?” he said through clenched teeth. “Well you'll die for a reason, asshole. To make the world smell better.”

Felicity had seen men shot, knifed, and killed with
various other weapons, but watching Morgan kill a man with his hands, this was something very different. The act's personal nature made her shudder, but she forced herself to watch. She reminded herself that this man was a purveyor of deadly drugs, that he was a killer who murdered without remorse, that the world would be a better place after he left it. She watched Marta's final throes, heard his death gurgle, telling herself Morgan was an avenging angel, delivering fair retribution for the death of an innocent.

It didn't help.

When Marta lay still Morgan stood up, mud dripped from his knees. He drew several deep breaths, trying to regain some self control. He offered Felicity a half smile, and took a few steps uphill to regain his knife. Only then did he see the man with the flat nose, lying spread eagled on the slope. Dead leaves, palm fronds and black dirt were banked up in front of him, indicating a long slide. Morgan turned back to Felicity with new respect.

“Somebody will come looking for these two before too long,” Felicity said. “Shouldn't we be gone?” Morgan nodded, drawing his pistol. Felicity's eyes cut to the second man, fear showing on her face.

“Relax, Red,” Morgan said, approaching the prone man. “I'm not looking to finish him off. This is a perfect source of intelligence.” He knelt and slapped the man hard across the face. His eyes snapped open, sagged, then widened again as his brain registered the gun hovering inches from his nose. His gaze quickly left the pistol, focusing on the face of the man holding it.

Another seasoned pro, Morgan thought. His attention is on the man, not the gun. That should make this easier.

“Habla ingles?” Morgan asked. Flat Nose nodded. “Good. Look left.” Flat Nose twisted his head around. The dead man was just in his field of vision. “Marta's dead,” Morgan continued. “You don't have to be. If you come with
me and tell me a little about your job with Anaconda, I guarantee you'll get out of this with a whole skin. Now, can you walk?”

Before answering, Flat Nose moved his limbs experimentally. Not enough to make Morgan nervous, just enough to make sure his joints all functioned. Then he nodded.

“Good,” Morgan said, easing the gun back from the man's face. “What's your name?”

“Jorge,” Flat Nose replied.

“Well, Jorge, do you believe I'll kill you if you give me any shit?”

“Yes,” Jorge answered. His tone was respectful but calm. Morgan helped him stand. Jorge looked quite surprised to find a woman watching all this. Then realization popped onto his face.

“You hit me from behind while I was sliding down the hill.” His face changed to something approximating a smile.

With Felicity behind Morgan and Jorge six feet ahead of him at gunpoint, they moved off toward camp and, Felicity hoped, some more of that ajiaco.

It was two o'clock before Morgan and Felicity were invited in. Morgan rankled at being separated from a prisoner he felt was his but CIA interrogators wanted him first, and Roberts had been pretty insistent.

The room was warm when they entered. On their left, large square windows offered a panoramic view of downtown Bogota, but the city's grand setting overshadowed it. Bogota sits on a plateau surrounded by the towering Andes Mountains. The city's many high rise buildings are all dwarfed by the height of those peaks. And the mountains host some impressive adornments. Felicity stared up at the huge figure of Christ atop the mountain directly ahead of her. She knew from another room she would see the giant cross on a different peak, or the lovely white convent on yet another mountain at the city's edge. It was a struggle to force her attention to events inside the room.

Roberts sat at one end of a long table, his hands folded before him. Jorge sat at the other end. A wire trailed from a microphone which sat up, like a begging dog, in front of Jorge. The wire disappeared into a hole in the table. Felicity guessed the wire would go to some sort of recording device and maybe machinery designed to judge from the man's tone of voice whether or not he was telling the truth. Beside the mike sat a water pitcher with four paper cups, three of which remained unused. Two men in short haircuts and identical gray suits stood as Morgan and Felicity entered.
After one replaced a syringe in a black leather attaché case, they both left without a word. Morgan looked a question at Roberts.

“Gave him something to relax him,” Roberts said with a smile.

“Right,” Morgan said. Then he walked over to face Jorge. His pupils were dilated, his stare a bit vacant, but Morgan saw no signs indicating physical abuse. “You okay?” he asked.

“As you promised,” Jorge said. “With a whole skin.”

“I know your interests aren't the same as ours,” Felicity said, pulling a chair out from the table and dropping into it, “but did you get a layout of the grounds?”

“Our resident artist is putting it into scale right now, based on topographic landmarks,” Roberts said. “We have the shape and size of all buildings, guard positions, roads, the works.”

“I thought these people were so tough.”

“Felicity, we couldn't have gotten anything out of this guy in three weeks of physical persuasion,” Roberts said. “Water boarding is for the military. We're a little more sophisticated than that.”

“These new pentothol derivatives are amazing,” Morgan said, pulling off his suit coat. His gun and knife were in full view, over a white dress shirt which somehow accented the weapons. “If you can keep the subject alive, you can coax him into telling you things he didn't know he knew.” Then he turned to Roberts “Get all you wanted?”

“Well, this guy's pretty low on the totem pole,” Roberts said. “He doesn't know that much we didn't already have. It's just an exercise anyway. You know we can't take any legal action. And the president doesn't want any real action taken down here anyway.”

“No big surprise there,” Morgan said. “They hate the drugs, but not enough to take action to fix the problem.”

“Let's not get into a political thing,” Felicity said. “Mark, do you mind if we ask him a few questions?” Roberts waved a hand as if to say “help yourself.”

“Thanks. First thing, I'm wanting to know about the mutant dogs.” Morgan and Roberts looked at her dubiously. “Really. I saw them behind the fence, Morgan. Big dogs, but with horses' manes and giraffes' legs.”

“Oh, you mean the maned wolves,” Jorge said.

Morgan chuckled. “They're not mutations, Red, just one of the unusual animals that grow in South America, although I didn't know they had them in Colombia.”

“We don't,” Jorge said. “We chased all over to get them: Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, even down to Peru. Just because Anaconda thinks weird animals look dangerous.”

“That's a laugh,” Morgan said. “They eat small animals, like guinea pigs and such. “They may look funny, but not particularly dangerous.”

“That's what you think,” Jorge said, listing a bit to the right. “Anaconda, she's conditioned them. That electrified fence keeps them in, even with their long legs. By controlling their food and feeding them drugs, she's made them all really vicious.”

“Why are they there?” Felicity asked.

Jorge chuckled. “Don't you see? They are her last line of defense. See, Anaconda's house sits in the middle of about an acre and a half of rolling grass land up in those mountains. That fence surrounds the whole area, and those wolves live in there. They make a hell of a racket if anybody gets inside, and they'd probably eat up an intruder anyway.”

“How does she get in and out?” Morgan asked.

“Oh, they're too skittish to attack you if you're in a crowd.,” Jorge said. “Now, one or two men they might jump, especially if they got spooked.”

“You said last line of defense,” Felicity said. “What else? I mean, infrared beams, motion sensors, pressure alarms?”

“You Anglos. You just don't get it,” Jorge said, reaching for water. “Out where we are, all the power's from a generator. Anaconda, she likes her television, her DVD movies, her stereo music, her computer. There's not much electricity left for alarms and such. She figures a couple dozen trigger men and the maned wolves ought to protect her.”

“I see,” Felicity said. She stood and crossed to the window, her mind wandering to the task ahead, entering this mountain fortress. “And no sign of Frederico, eh?”

“That boy has a spirit inside him,” Jorge said with a sudden shiver. “Anaconda has not let him step out of the house since he returned.” A curtain of silence settled over the room, its inhabitants paralyzed. Felicity's stomach turned to ice and breathing became difficult. She moved first, turning slowly from the window to stare into Jorge's wide, vacant eyes.

“He's there?” she croaked out. “Alive?”

“Not for long,” Jorge answered. “Anaconda's anger, it was great. For days she's insulted and abused the boy, shaming him publicly, not allowing him to see the sun. Some of us, we thought it was a bad idea. Spirits commune with the boy. If she angers them enough, they might decide to take action against the Escorpionistas. I think she's started to see the fear in her followers. She might not be able to keep control if it keeps up. So, she's going to kill him. It will be a spectacular death, to prove her power's greater than any spirit.”

“Kill him?” Felicity said, snapping forward, stopping inches away from Jorge's face. “When?” She put her hands flat on the table and held her breath.

“When? Well, let's see. What's today? Wednesday?
Yeah, well she's going to do him Sunday morning. Death at dawn. Drop him from a copter, I think.”

“Four days,” Morgan whispered. “No, three, really, if she's talking about dawn. Jesus.” Felicity could see his mind was running down a predetermined past. It seemed that Roberts' mind was on the same path, but unhampered by excessive imagination, his reached the road's end faster.

“No way to stop it,” Mark said. “You couldn't possibly get a team here and together in that time. And the political repercussions of getting anybody CIA involved would be excessive.”

“Excessive? What's excessive is letting him die,” Felicity said, straightening. “Saved our skin, he did. That's how he got in this mess. He's counting on us to get him out of it.”

“Felicity, how can we…”

“I don't know,” she said. “I don't know, but we will. I'll just figure out how I'd rob the place, and substitute Frederico for a set of Van Gogh's. You just be ready to go in there and get him.” When the door closed behind Felicity, Roberts looked at Morgan, mystified.