PRECIPICE (2 page)

Chip smelled entrapment. It wouldn’t be the first time a guide had been busted for agreeing to a trip they shouldn’t work. “It’s illegal to guide for pay here if I’m not working for an outfitter with a permit. The Park Service confiscates your gear, and there’s a huge fine. I don’t have my own raft or gear for customers anyway.”

“I’ve already cleared it with the Park Service. My friends have their own raft and gear. All they need is some training on how to use them in whitewater. I’m helping with logistics for a team who’s competing in an adventure race in Africa in six weeks. There’s a whitewater rafting portion of the race, and they need the best training they can get to be competitive.”

“I can take them rafting and show them a few things, but nobody can learn to run hard whitewater on their own in one weekend, even if we work all four days.”
…and Africa is some serious shit
, Chip was thinking. If the massive rapids didn’t get you, the crocodiles and hippos would.

“These guys aren’t your average people. They’re all retired Navy SEALs. They’re in tremendous shape, and they’ve spent plenty of time in a raft and in the water. They just need a little whitewater-specific training. You’ll be required to train one of them to guide the raft, and to teach them how to navigate the river and recover from any mishaps. Of course, you’ll need to arrange a few mishaps for them so they can properly train.”

That was as high adventure as trips got, Chip thought. After a full season of getting tourists of every shape and size safely down rivers, the idea of trashing Navy SEALs for a weekend was this raft guide’s dream. The thought of commanding the paddle strokes for world-class athletes who were trained to obey instantly and without question immediately brought to mind possibilities not conceivable with any other raft crew. There had to be a catch.

“What does it pay?”

“Two thousand dollars for the four days.”

Whoa. Jackpot! That was many times his usual pay, if he even got four days of work on a weekend so late in the season. There would probably be no tip, but it didn’t matter at that rate. Chip instantly had visions of a plane ticket to South America and skipping the long, dark rafting off-season by bumming around a tropical rainforest with his kayak for a few months this winter. He and Daniel had been down a few years back, and the level of pure adventure still available for the taking on South America’s rivers had called to him strongly ever since. This was a no-brainer.

“Where do we meet?”

“They’ll be in the campground here at the rafting outpost Thursday night. Look for a large blue SUV. The team captain’s name is Harris. You can make plans with them for the weekend then.” Sutherland extended his hand. “I really appreciate you helping us out with this.”

Chip grinned and took the proffered hand, “Thanks for the work. Sounds fun.”

Sutherland turned and disappeared around the corner of the raft barn, headed toward the parking lot. Chip tossed a couple more helmets into the bin and collected some stray paddles leaning against the wall. Taking the break to chat with Sutherland would probably leave him with the odious task of washing and disinfecting the wetsuits, but it had been worth it. He could practically taste those tropical January rum drinks, and he was already starting to think in Spanish.

*

Héctor Ortiz Fernandez thumbed off his satellite phone and stood still for a moment, looking pensively out from the shelter at the thick jungle which obscured his view in almost every direction. The patio floor of the round, open-sided palapa was made of stones hewn by hand from the nearby cliff walls and knitted together with fine lines of cement. A ring of concrete pillars supported the conical roof of thatched palm fronds. Everything was made painstakingly by hand—the power of manual labor was one of his country’s greatest strengths, but perhaps also a great weakness in its struggle to advance. With labor so cheap and money so scarce, there was little pressure for bosses to streamline processes or improve technology, leaving most of his countrymen stuck in an eternal hamster wheel of labor and poverty. Héctor was thankful that he had found his way off that ride.

Water dripped steadily from the edges of the palapa roof to the jungle earth below, but the sound of the drops was drowned out by the roar of the nearby river and the rumbling of both the diesel generator that powered the compound and a gold Ford Expedition that idled just outside the palapa, spewing exhaust which blended hazily into the moisture in the air. Héctor thought he could see the plants hugging closer around the structure, reaching out hungrily with wide, green leaves to suck the excess moisture up and breathe it back into the dank atmosphere. The thick foliage gave him moments of claustrophobia daily. At least it would hopefully only be one more month before this miserable rainy season ended.

Snapping out of his reverie, Héctor walked across the palapa, detouring around a large table and benches where two men were quietly finishing breakfast. Each had a Cobray M-11/9 subcompact automatic pistol—9mm knockoffs of the more common MAC-11—sitting next to their plates on the table, and their button-up shirts clung moistly to their backs in the heat. Leaving the shelter, Héctor followed a stone walkway through the jungle toward the river’s roar. He kept his head down as the drizzle oozed from the thick air and dripped in fat plops from overhanging foliage, beading on his straight black pony tail and soaking the shoulders of his silk shirt. In this heat and humidity, it made little difference whether the rain actually fell on you. Although he hated this climate—so different from the northern deserts of his youth—he was resigned to knowing that he would dry out in a month or two when the rains stopped. Everything had a price; and for the position he enjoyed, dealing with a little rain was a small thing.

Héctor entered a wide patio area with another larger palapa to the left where two women were busy cleaning up the first round of dishes while keeping breakfast warm over a flaming grill. The smell of eggs and beans reached out tantalizingly to Héctor’s nose. A square concrete house was situated to the right. He proceeded to the wooden door of the house and knocked politely, leaning his head under the thatched eave to keep the rain off. A few moments later the door swung open, and a lovely woman stepped backwards into the room allowing him to enter.

“Hola!” She greeted him cheerfully.

“Buenos días, Señora,” Héctor replied formally, showing proper respect despite the fact that she was several years his junior.

The woman glided across the room, her long black tresses flowing behind her down the back of her simple yet elegant cream-colored dress. She rounded up two children—a boy and a girl of about four and six years old—and herded them toward the door. Héctor stepped into the room and aside to allow passage for the woman and children, who forged out into the rain and headed down the stone path toward the waiting SUV. Despite being sequestered here in a remote corner of the jungle, Estella Cardenas insisted that she and the children be driven more than forty kilometers over bumpy dirt roads to the nearest village for church each Sunday. Although this created a security nightmare for Héctor, it did afford him a few uninterrupted hours each week during which he could meet with his boss. Hopefully Estella and the kids would return to their compound in the city soon.

Héctor pulled a two-way radio from his pocket and informed the men at the guardhouse nearly ten kilometers away that the truck with his boss’ wife and kids was coming out. After hearing confirmation, he replaced the radio in his pocket and walked across the spacious room to the left where a couch and several straight-backed wooden chairs were gathered near a picture window that looked over the edge of a jagged canyon. The world dropped away over one hundred feet on the other side of the glass. Outside the left half of the window, the trees and jungle plants growing from the cliff wall had been cut away, opening a view of a huge waterfall that raged over a precipice and into a cliff-walled bowl of aquamarine water in the depths below. The trees and fronds that remained outside the right half of the window gave the effect that the room was part of the jungle. He stood near the window and admired the breathtaking view.

He turned at the sound of a door opening behind him and watched his boss enter the room. Vicente Guerra Cardenas was a fit man of medium height and build who despite his wealth and forty-plus years showed no signs of the softness or expanding waistline that characterized many of his peers. He carried himself with the athletic grace of a warrior, a carryover from his time in the GAFE—an elite division of his country’s special forces. His black hair was cropped short, and a thick moustache angled down sharply from the base of his nose on each side. He wore a large polo shirt that hung loosely with the tail outside his slacks and the collar turned up, and slip-on leather shoes with no socks.

“Buenos días, Héctor,” he said with the tone of a superior calling a meeting to order.

“Buenos días, Jefe,” Héctor answered.

Cardenas strolled easily across the room and reclined comfortably on the couch. Mindful not to wet the cushions, Héctor took a seat on one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs instead.

“Have you spoken to your cousin?” the older man asked.

“Si Señor. He will speak to his boss again tomorrow, but he believes that we will have a deal.”

Cardenas smoothed his moustache with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, showing no emotion while he paused for a moment in thought.

“¿Cuánto costará?” he asked abruptly.
How much will it cost?

“He says this vote will probably end his jefe’s political career, so the price is a bit higher than we expected. We don’t have an agreement yet, but I think it will be seven million dollars American.”

Cardenas grunted, frowning while he again smoothed his moustache. While higher than the cost he had expected, it would only take him a month to make that money back if the law passed. He thought for a moment more in silence before looking back up at his chief lieutenant.

“Bueno.”
Good
. “And the other one?”

“They are still in agreement,” Héctor answered. “This one will gain support in his party for pushing the bill through, so the cost is much lower. We don’t expect any problems.”

Cardenas sat for another few moments in thought. “Would you like some breakfast?” he asked, waving his hand magnanimously toward the door leading to the patio.

“Gracias, Señor,” Héctor answered, reading this as a dismissal and standing to head for the door.

Cardenas sat looking out the window in silence while Héctor closed the door behind himself, headed for the large palapa where breakfast was still warm. He knew it was a dangerous game he was playing, meddling with the American political system. He would need to use much caution now.

“Todo por México,” he muttered softly to himself.
Everything for Mexico
. The words had been his motto in the Special Forces, but they still applied to his mission today. If this was what it took to bring America’s riches to his country, then so be it. He would take the risk.

*

Senator Sheldon Moore tossed the limp body of a dove onto the ground beside two others, turned, and settled his bulk carefully back into a creaking, fold-up hunting stool, taking care not to topple over as the chair legs sunk into the soft earth. He laid his Benelli Legacy 12 gauge across his lap and kicked his heels together in an attempt to dislodge the clumps of pungent, red Alabama mud that clung to the soles and sides of his boots. He picked up his cap with a thumb and forefinger and wiped beads of perspiration from his bald scalp with the heel of his hand before perching the hat back lightly on his head. It wasn’t a fantastic morning for a dove shoot, but it was the only one he would get this year. Wrangling over healthcare had kept him pinned down in Washington until Friday of the final weekend of the early dove season. Saturday had been a washout as tropical storm Katia battered Lookout Mountain with a deluge of rain and wind, breaking limbs from trees everywhere on the elevated plateau. Nothing was flying in that. That left only the final Sunday for hunting, but such was the price of vigilance against the insidious creep of socialism. After twenty-three years in the Senate, Moore was weary of the fight; if his financial ship came in, he would forego re-election and not miss any more hunting trips.

Although the senator was a very large man at a thick-bodied six-foot-four, he was not overweight. He had kept a firm regimen of physical activity for the last five years after a minor heart attack in a deer stand at the age of fifty-five had scared him into a lifestyle change. His only daughter—now in her sophomore year at Stanford—called two or three times each week to make sure he was eating right and exercising. The last thing he wanted was to leave his little girl too soon, as his father had done to him at roughly Sheldon’s current age. In fact, she was one of the reasons he was still in the Senate.

Sheldon Moore was a political legacy, his father having held the same Senate seat immediately before him. Colonel Howell C. Moore had been born to dirt farming parents in the wide valley between Sand Mountain and Lookout Mountain in northern Alabama. He had stormed the beach in Normandy at the tender age of nineteen and came home with a Medal of Honor. He’d gone on to fight again in Korea before retiring from the army as a war hero in 1963, settling his family back in rural northern Alabama. With military conflict reaching a new fever pitch in Viet Nam, the decorated Colonel had made a run for the Senate in ’66, when Sheldon was fifteen. The anti-war movement had little traction in Alabama at the time—segregation was the hot-button issue, and a white farmer-turned-war-hero was an acceptable choice.

After four years in the army and four more at the University of Alabama, young Sheldon had attempted to revive the family farm. Having spent his early years on various army bases, his annual hunting trips with his father to the family land and the four years spent there in his early teens had been the only geographic constant in his formative years, and he’d longed to settle in the familiar place. As large agribusiness moved into the South in the late seventies and early eighties, however, it became clear that running a small farm was no longer a viable living. In 1985, Sheldon had been forced to sell off most of the land to a large farming company to pay for a move to D.C., where he had gone to work on his father’s staff. Only three years later, Howell C. Moore had passed away suddenly from an extremely virulent cancer. The Governor, an old army buddy of the Colonel’s who had known Sheldon since he was a boy, had appointed Sheldon to serve out his father’s term in the Senate. Re-election had come and gone, and the people of Alabama seemed just as happy to have one Senator Moore in office as the other.