In Flames (17 page)

More talk arrived with breakfast.

Reg Townsley's congratulations were effusive.

“You're a legend, Dan, go with the flow.”

“Some flow. What's this about a counterattack?”

“For Christ's sake, relax, you'll give me a stroke here.”

“And the magazine story, you hear about this.” I handed him the
Vanity Fair
pitch.

“I helped write that letter. Look, Dan, it's all for your own benefit, every word of it. And if they pay enough for a cover photo, insist on Leibovitz. I hear she's a bitch on wheels to work with, but she's the absolute best, and a great
VF
cover will up your speaking fees. The truth is you're huge, Dan, you got the world at your feet. Go for it all, live it up to the hilt.”

The surf sound returned to my ears. I couldn't keep these bastards and their bullshit straight in my mind.
The truth is
…No, truth wasn't all that simple, truths in San Iñigo were misty and multiple, like ghosts. Believe in them all you wished, but you couldn't pin any truths down as easily as Reg Townsley did. “Counterattack, Reg?”

“The media get carried away. They got footage of you being rescued. And they interpreted it differently. You're not watching TV?”

“My eyes hurt. What the hell are you people doing?”

“We're working on an address to the joint houses of Congress.”

“You're out of your minds.”

“And there's a Twitter feed set up for you when you're ready. Someone's been standing in doing the tweets now, and you already got almost a million—”

“Stop.”

“What the hell do you expect, Dan? You can't let down a million people, just like that—millions of people, actually. It'll be like you died, like you came out of the jungle a hero, and then, poof, in a few days you're gone, you don't exist anymore.”

“Get real.”

“You get real. Yesterday's sixty-second video release—the counterattack—got over eleven million YouTube hits the first ten hours up. It's a record, Dan. And like I said before—and this time it definitely is a must because you're so huge—your Facebook page still needs serious updating, you haven't touched it, but we can give you professional help with that too. There's so much out there just waiting for you. You've even got the White House ready with support—check this, there's a congressional seat opening up on Staten Island, solid Republican, and it's yours to lose, totally yours. The president will endorse you. They're telling us through back channels he wants you to think about it, seriously. Funding isn't a problem, his friends write some pretty big checks. He's a Princeton man too. And a Deke brother.”

“I'm not like that, Reg, really it's crazy. I can't.”

“Yes, you can. You've already got your pick of all the talk shows. Hell, you get a good agent, and you'll have your own goddamn talk show, you're better-looking than any of them. Embrace the culture, Dan, don't fight it. Don't turn zealot on us. You've never been a Goody Two-shoes, so why start now when you're this huge. Everyone loves a hero. When you get back stateside, your appearance fee could be sixty thousand minimum, right off the bat, and when you have to give a speech, you double it. Plus expenses. And if you can act—hey, why not, with your looks—only remember your lines, don't walk into furniture, and
shazam
, you're the next DiCaprio or Clooney or whoever, really I'm not joking. Don't you want to smooch it up on screen with—”

“You're delusional, Reg. Totally.”

“Actually, these aren't bad times for delusion. It's only natural. A man has to have some sort of ambition to live by, even a billionaire wants to make another billion.” Reg's eyes turned dreamy.
“I caught this morning morning's minion
,
kingdom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon
…that's Hopkins, Dan, and that's you right now, daylight's dauphin. A falcon on the wing. C'mon, celebrate for Christ's sake, you're a free man, a couple of weeks ago you had zilch, holding down two jobs, and now you got the world by the balls—and you're angry? No one likes anger, Dan, it only gets you broke.”

“I'm always angry when I'm close to dying.”

“No one's dying, Dan.”

“What crazy horseshit.”

Reg cleared his throat. In his face, I could almost see a night hunter's eyes again, feathery mask, jungle bird gaze, nocturnal predator testing me once more. I shook my head to get rid of this dreadful image, and felt moisture on my face.

“There's nothing to get so upset about here, Dan. I've gone through your record with HR. Okay, you weren't on payroll long. But we've certified you for a fat performance bonus, a contract separation fee, plus disability annuity and medical benefits. Dental too.” The station chief was a remarkably persistent man, particularly at elevating a pay package deal over any potential principle that could mount a dissent. “No one is looking to hurt you, Dan. It's the exact opposite. We're jumping through hoops for you here, treating you like gold.” He touched my arm. “Only one more thing, Dan, and then you sign the separation papers.”

“What the hell you want now…”

“Vice President Arbusto. You go out in a helicopter with him this afternoon, go up over the river where they found you, and you point out the spot where the rebels held you in the jungle down there. That's all we're asking. You don't have to land. Simply show Arbusto the location, so his men know where to attack. And we know where to bomb. Militants are like invasive species, they're costly, and they disrupt everything, they can infest anywhere you care to name if you don't catch them in time. You just point them out over the jungle up there, and that's it, they're extinct, and you got your golden parachute, Dan, the best I could do for you. The papers are all filled out. Then you're free and clear…you're covered, my friend, you're made. The rest is up to you.”

Xy Corp. airfield.

My eyes caught a glimpse of four gold star inlays embellishing ivory handles on a pair of nine-millimeter Glocks, the pistols snug in Vice President General Armando Arbusto's polished leather holsters. His camouflage uniform was immaculate, sharply pressed, no sweat stains, no evidence of ever having seen combat. On each of his epaulets, and each of his collar points, four camo black cloth stars.

“I'm so sad,” he said, shaking his head, and taking my hand. Mirrored sunglasses concealed his eyes. “And so shocked, señor, how this nightmare could happen to you in my country.” He lowered his voice to confidential tones. “I promise I won't repeat this again, but I did warn you about her. And Delgado Vinny was very popular, much too popular…” The general removed his sunglasses, and I held my gaze on his imperturbable face, a shockingly easy thing to do. The general was clear-eyed, attentive, convincingly empathetic, while conveying the impression that he realized he was always right about everything. He was my last assignment for Reg Townsley. “She has to go to court, señor, even here the law is the law. A judge will present the investigation report about Delgado Vinny.”

“I didn't know that.”

The general nodded, and I interpreted his smile as a sign of pride in San Iñigo justice. He turned his head away, and I glimpsed his smile turn to a smirk, his thoughts almost audible…
Troublemaking bitch should have died like Delgado Vinny, we'd have all been better off.

“When we go up in the helicopters,” he said, turning back to business, “it'll be very noisy. So before we leave, tell me now exactly what happened to you.”

Once more, I related the broken phrases. Forest. Captors. Midnight escape. River. And again, I skipped the killing. And I skipped Elaine. Throughout, like the psychiatrist at the medical facility, the general didn't blink. He listened with a growing look of deliberation, the familiar brooding bulge of tongue slipping around inside his dark cheek, large hands clenching and unclenching, head shaking and nodding. He gripped my shoulder, and he spoke with the same fatherly tone in which he'd once recommended Señora Francesca's brothel as good for my health. “They'll never do it again, señor, on my mother's grave I swear to you. Never again.
Vámonos.”

Four Xy Corp. helicopters rose from the airfield—U.S. contractors at the controls, U.S. agents on heavy machine guns at the open doors, squads of armed local soldiers strapped in for the ride. We flew eastward over San Iñigo city, above the beaches, the Club Saint Ig, tennis courts and golf course, straight out along the coast. I made little attempt to look down at the view. The general was right, the hard
thwock
of the rotor blades made conversation impossible. A sense of unreality prevailed, a feeling I was dreaming again, and this was one more hallucination I had to keep to myself, concealed in some private unbreakable code. Returning to the river seemed much faster than the flight to the hospital two days before over the same coast, and at first I didn't recognize the bridge and estuary to the sea. Surrounding forest had vanished, below us only charred earth, still smoldering after aerial bombing attacks.

As we circled, and I looked more closely, I recognized the bridge and road, the immediate contours of the riverbank, the spot where they'd found me standing in the river, waving my weapons like a madman. At the altitude we were holding, it was impossible to identify more than traces of trees. Too much was burned away. But we were low enough to set my heart jumping, straining again like a small animal desperate to escape.

“This is it,” the general shouted. “Correct? We burned the right place before—”

“Everything looks different.”

“Because of the counterattack. It was all on the news. But we found no bodies here. Where's their camp?”

“Somewhere up there.” I pointed upriver, higher into the mountains.

The helicopters descended closer to the river's surface and scorched ground. The nearer we came, the warmer the air in the cabin turned, the earth below us still glowing. We headed up toward the mountains. I couldn't hear the river above the noise of the helicopters, but I saw the water clearly, its inexorable flow undisturbed, covered now in gray ash, everything around it smoldering. The world here was incinerated and carbonized, only ash and blackness and cinders, a grayness like old age covering remains of forest, few traces of green left. The legend of a counterattack grew stronger, the narrative hardening into eternal truth.

“You walked so far in this river?” The general shook his head. This tremendous detail had to be cleared up. “How did you do it? I'm amazed.” Passion colored his words, even as his voice stayed controlled, straightforward, unvaryingly polite. He kept incredulity from his tone, his face composed as his eyes flicked back and forth, from the river to burnt forest to me. Abruptly, green forest returned, and a contractor with a video camera leaned out the helicopter's open side. The general appeared satisfied with this, almost reassured. “Did you start up here, Señor, all the way up here?”

“Maybe. Everything looks like everything else.” In the chaos of green below us, nothing was conclusive, nothing yielded certitude, everything was genuinely like everything else. I couldn't see the giant tree.

The general regarded me. “So this is it? Where they camp?”

“Yes, it's possible.”

“Okay.” He pounded on the copilot's shoulder. “Call them in.” He turned to me. “When we get back to base, I'll write a report commending you. Now point, please, down there for the camera.”

I pointed down at the forest. The man with the camera pointed at me. And the general leaned back and released a long breath.
“Ajusticiamiento,”
he said. Here justice is done.

We hovered over the spot for what seemed like eternity, and images flooded my mind. Night tree, potbellied thug tearing a spear blade from his gut, intestines spilling over forest floor, butterfly hovering above his face. And Padre Cardenio Morena? His men? Would all of them be charred corpses soon? Again I was wrenching myself free, a steely surge of something like victory racing through my body, fever leaving my veins, and as the helicopter turned around, I spotted a squadron of fighter-bombers flying low over the forest, releasing phosphorus incendiaries and napalm. Flashes of light and heat blazed, as explosions roared above the racket of rotor blades, and the helicopter started swaying, the smell of burning chemicals suffusing the cabin air.

Expelled by blasts, thousands of birds filled the sky above the forest canopy, a soundless storm of flailing wings fighting to escape. The bombs created firestorms, fire tornados, flames shooting up sixty, seventy, eighty feet above treetops. The surface of the river sparkled, shimmering orange and red and yellow. Walls of flame flared, a combustion so fierce our bodies sweltered as if wrapped in molten lead. An infernally hot wind whipped around us, kneading our faces. The air grew acrid with smoke, and our features turned shadow-striped, reflecting the hellish fires as if we were some grotesque religion's devotees, marked by an appalling imprint of wildness, an image so fierce, I was sure even heaven itself couldn't stop the general's troops performing whatever horror they believed essential.

Fire was their job
…

The general and his men worked hard, concentrating on their tasks—destroy, record, move on—such furious haste in their movements, that all thought stayed locked in the lunatic logic of broadcasting this devastation to the entire world when we returned. Somewhere in Washington, officials were already watching, on closed circuit satellite television they were observing everything I could see, the entire roaring inferno. I tried to speak, but it was impossible, even breathing hurt. The knots of my mind and body hardened, and I glimpsed again that piercing lucid beam of realization in my brain, once more the falling star, meteor, comet shooting straight across the sky, lighting my way out of a burning lava black island, leading me directly home, an entire world away to the north. But the general had also given me a few other ideas, some unfinished business I still had to complete. Monstrous as he was, a tyrant and killer, Armando Arbusto was an ogre of such long-standing that his thoughts merited a certain consideration from me. And so even as the burning devastation below our helicopter gripped and electrified, I wasn't forgetting Elaine.