09-Twelve Mile Limit (44 page)

The barn was empty, though there was no doubt that it had served as a combination dormitory and prison. At one end, set inside a series of horse stalls, were a total of seven canvas cots, two or three to a stall. At the other end, in a larger stall, were two more canvas cots.

I remembered the intelligence provided me by Harrington: Seven women and two men had been photographed in a fenced area. This was the place. Presumably, the men had lived in one part of the barn, women in the other. The numbers added up. More telling that this place had been a prison, though, was its stench. It stunk of human waste, garbage, a festering unhealthiness. At each end were plastic five-gallon buckets. One had been spilled. The contents explained much of the stench.

To Tyner, I whispered into the transmitter, “Where are they? They were here. Hostages, their prisoners, they obviously kept them here. Where could they be?”

He was shaking his head. “Gate’s locked. It doesn’t make sense. Why would they lock an empty guardhouse?”

“I’m going to take a closer look around.”

Tyner had stationed himself at the door. “Make it fast. It’s been a little over eight minutes, and we only have a fifteen-minute window. My guys are going to start moving. They’re going to spread out and close in. We don’t want to be inside this place when that goes down.”

I returned to the area where the majority of cots were located, what I assumed to be the woman’s wing of the little prison. I ducked into one of the stalls. On the wooden walls, as if marked by a nail, was a calendar, the days marked off in columns of fives. Someone had been here for more than fifty days.

Couldn’t be Janet, and it certainly wasn’t Amelia.

Inside the second stall was another calendar, and a few blankets. The third stall, which contained three cots, was equally sparse. There was no calendar, no obvious method of keeping track of the days, but there was some graffiti:

Love Is God Humanity Rules Both were carved into the walls in big letters, the wood still raw.

I had to kneel to read a longer passage written over the bunk:

This Evil stands no chance against my prayers!

I reread the maxim more slowly, letting the words sink in, my memory banks scanning for some connection. It was familiar. I wasn’t certain why. Who had I heard speak that phrase before?

Beneath the cot was a thin blanket, a metal cup, and a spoon. I removed them and inspected them individually, looking for some kind of distinguishing characteristics, but there was none.

As I did, that phrase repeated itself in my brain.

This Evil stands no chance against my prayers!

Where had I heard it? In my memory, the phrase was somehow associated with some event, something bad, a tragedy, but also the strength of the individual who’d endured it but had managed to go with her life.

Her life. A car wreck. A lost child.

Then I knew.

I stood, in slow realization, and pulled the microphone arm away from my mouth, calling a single name, as loud as I could: “Janet? Janet! Where are you?”

I waited in the silence and called her name once more. Then, behind me, I heard a pounding, creaking noise, and I turned to see a door in the barn’s floor being opened—the passageway to some kind of tack room or feed cellar, probably. Then the familiar face of Janet Mueller was peering out, her cheeks very gaunt, as if she’d been starved, her eyes hollow as caves, blinking in the darkness.

I heard her strong voice say, “Doc? My God! Oh dear God, please let it be, please. Is that you?”

The barn was so dark that she couldn’t see me, I realized, so I spoke as I rushed toward her, saying, “It’s me, Janet. It’s Marion Ford come to take you back to Sanibel.” Then I reached and pulled her up to look at her—nope, I wasn’t dreaming—and then I hugged the lady mightily, feeling her thin arms, the warmth of her body against me. “You’re safe now.”

On the ladder below her, someone had lit a candle. I watched eight more haggard, emaciated people climb out, all naked but for rags of burlap or underwear or maybe a T-shirt. One of them, a tall, lean black woman, threw her arms around me, even as I still held Janet, both of them weeping in my ear.

The woman, whom I knew had to be Grace Walker, said to me, “I’m not dreaming, am I, man? Man, tell me I’m not dreaming. I want to go home. Please take us home.”

I pulled away long enough to say, “That’s exactly where we’re going. But first, where’s Amelia?”

Grace said, “Who?”

I repeated her name, “Amelia,” as I looked toward the cellar. “Is she still down there hiding?” Then I called, “Hey! Amelia. It’s me.”

Even now, in shock, Janet was still reactive enough to be puzzled. “Do you mean Amelia Gardner? Oh, Doc, something terrible happened. Our boat sank, and we got separated from Amelia, and we left her. I feel terrible. I feel so guilty. We couldn’t find her, and we left her. She’s probably still out there in the ocean somewhere. And Mikey, my God, poor Mikey.” She began to cry again, and Grace Walker was now sobbing even louder. “This terrible man—a guy we call the albino—he shot our dear Mike for no reason, and he’s treated us like animals.”

In my earphone, I heard Tyner say, “Commander, there’s something I need to tell you.”

I felt my body numb slightly when he added, “It’s about that woman you’re after. Amelia Gardner.”

A weapons firefight is sustained panic interrupted by moments of raw terror, and the sounds of that fight—the shouts, the screams, the gunfire—had drawn closer. Tyner was crouched in the doorway, and he leaned and fired two short bursts out the door as I approached.

Expecting return fire, I turned and motioned for Janet and the others to get on their bellies, before I said, “What about Amelia, Tyner? Is there something you didn’t tell me?” To my own ears, my voice seemed oddly pitched.

“We need to get our asses out of here, Commander. My men are on the move a little earlier than I expected. We don’t have time to look for your other friend. We’ve got to go.”

I told him, “Go without me. She’s here somewhere. I’m not leaving.”

“Looks like we’ve got eight or nine very weak people to take care of. I can’t get them out alone.”

“You’ll have to try. The moment I find Amelia, we’ll be right behind you.”

His words seemed then to slow horribly and deepen into a spatial echo, as he said, “Then you leave me no choice. I want you to get a hold of yourself, Commander. I’d have told you earlier, but I needed you gung-ho, with your full facilities because of what we had to do here tonight.”

He said, “That woman? She never made it out of Cartagena. Maybe she put up too much of a fight, I don’t know. The guys who kidnapped her shot her. They found her body in a motel. I got the word about an hour before we left.”

I whispered, “They … killed Amelia? She’s dead. You’re sure?”

“Yes. The Intel comes from the U.S. Embassy. There’s no doubt about it.”

Emotional shock affects different people different ways. In that moment of comprehension, into my mind came an analytical clarity: They had murdered a woman about whom I cared deeply, and so there was only one rational response. I would kill them. I would kill both of them, Kazan and Stallings. I did not have time to indulge in overwhelming emotion or expressions of grief. Perhaps I would—but later. Now I needed to stay absolutely focused on the task at hand: Find those two, look into their eyes, tell them why I had sentenced them to death, and then eliminate them.

“Are you okay, Commander Ford?”

I had been down on one knee, but now I stood. “Yep. Hundred percent. I want you to lay down some covering fire. I’m going to bust into the big house and see who’s there.”

“No. It’s too late. We’ve got to move out now.”

“Sergeant, I’ve been given an executive order on Hassan Kazan, and I’m obligated to carry it out.”

He was standing, waving Janet and the others to get in line and be ready to follow him. “The time to hit them was when we first got in. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. You missed your chance. They’re gone by now.”

He raised his night-vision goggles long enough to look into my eyes. “But I’ll tell you what. Help me get these people out safely, and I’ll come back with you and kill anyone who’s left.”

Behind him, Janet was helping to support a young girl who looked sick, near death. “Doc, please don’t leave us. Please. We need you.”

I noticed that my whole body was shaking, quivering, as I answered, “Okay, okay. Of course I won’t, Janet. I won’t leave you. I’m here.”

That morning, in the jungle’s first bronze light, Tyner and I returned to the remains of the rubber plantation. Janet and the others were safely on their way out via a private plane that we’d hired, so there was no rush.

We tallied nine bodies among the rubble—a profitable night’s work for Tyner’s team. We also found a wall safe in which there was a box of Colombian emeralds and more than $100,000 in cash.

I was more interested in inspecting the bodies. Six looked to be Middle Eastern, but neither the big Samoan nor the albino was among them.

Back in Cartagena, I behaved as a modern, responsible adult is expected to behave. As with the heirs of the very wealthy, victims of crime are assigned many small, legal obligations by governments, as if to punish them. I busied myself taking care of those details for all involved. But that feeling of clarity, of pure purpose—Stallings and Kazan—stuck with me.

My first consideration was Janet, Grace, and their fellow captives. The FBI and the State Department wanted to debrief them, but both agencies agreed to wait until they’d had complete physicals and their health was back on track. That meant the nine of them had to stick around in Colombia for a few days before flying home, and they insisted on spending those days together, as a group.

So I got them rooms at the Hotel Santa Clara. Made sure that the superb staff there kept them stuffed with gourmet food and local fresh fruit. I took paternal pleasure in watching them divide their time between the plaza dining room and the lounge chairs around the pool.

They had become extremely close, Janet explained. One of the two males was a boy in his early teens—the albino had killed his oil executive father—and she had taken the kid under her wing.

“Ronnie has become like a son,” she said. “He hasn’t seen his mother in years, so we’ve already discussed it. He’s coming back to Captiva to live with me. If I can, I’m going to adopt him. You know how badly I’ve missed my child, Doc.”

The change that had taken place in Janet was remarkable. She’d always been a solid person, but the quiet type, seldom outwardly demonstrative.

Not now. I saw in her a strength, a confidence, that positively glowed, yet both she and Grace Walker also exhibited a demeanor of inner peace that provided me with both courage and hope during what were among the darkest days of my life.

One night, standing on the docks of Club Nautico, looking out over Cartagena Bay, Janet confided something to me. She said, “The night we were adrift, lost at sea, I’d never experienced such fear. The chaos of it all, the wind, the waves, and those black stars. I remembered walking the beach on Captiva a while back, at sunset, and telling someone that I felt at one with nature.” She shook her head and squeezed my hand, remembering. “It’s the sort of thing people say, but it was a lie. A fairy tale. I’ve never felt a union with anything other than another human being. I know that now. The people I’m with, the courage they all showed during some of the terrible things they did to us, their love and caring, like a family, that’s what makes life not just bearable, but wonderful. Everything else seems as … well, as cold as the stars that night.”

Something that Grace said also helped me through those days: “Out there, I learned that on the other side of every great fear is freedom. Even if we’d have died, our loved ones could have found comfort in that. We helped each other, and, after a while, we weren’t afraid.”

On the day that I identified Amelia’s body—she looked so tiny and alone in the refrigerated drawer, all of the youth leached out of her—I’d walked the streets of Cartagena like a zombie, walked for hours until I somehow ended up in Grace’s arms, and then on her bed, wanting badly to cry but unable. I don’t know if I’d have made it without her strength, and Janet’s.

There was one dazzling bright and happy moment during that time. It was when we first got back to Cartagena, and I placed a call to the office of Dinkin’s Bay Marina, Sanibel Island, and asked to speak with Jeth Nicholes.

When I heard his voice, I said, “Hey, you big ape, I’ve got a pretty lady here who wants to talk to you.”

“The Family of Nine,” as they called themselves, flew back to Florida on Wednesday, December 24, and I waved them away as their Avianca flight pulled back from the boarding ladder.

Then I hurried to another part of the airport where Curtis Tyner’s Bell helicopter and pilot were waiting for me.

The pilot, whose name was Barry Rupple, told me, “The hotel sent your gear over, Dr. Ford, and I’ve got it stored aboard. Sergeant Tyner wanted me to offer you his help. Again. Whatever you need.”

I said, “Transport back to the jungle is all I need,” and strapped myself in.

I had the pilot land us at the convergence of two rivers—a paranamirims, in the Jivaro language—and I stepped out, seabag over my shoulder, into the smell of wood fires, roasting meat, and something else, something intimate and important, a memory that was instantly recognizable but, for some reason, impossible to anchor consciously in my brain.

Keesha wasn’t there, but they found her. With the chopper gone, I ignored the bitter stares of the painted men, the suspicious chatter of women, until the girl arrived, smiling, and held out her hand to me. “You will stay with me in my pacovas, big man. The creature is gone from my belly, and I am healthy again. But you must bring me food.”

Keesha’s village was deep in the interior, at the confluence of two narrow, blackwater rivers where, at dawn and dusk, I used a spear tipped with the barb of a stingray to take piranha, and red-scaled pacu and, once, a very large arapaima—it had to be close to fifty pounds—that fed the whole village.