Survival (7 page)

“Vacation,” she answered.

“All the way from Belgium?”

“Why not? I’ve heard good things.”

“Do you have a return ticket?”

She shook her head. “I’m on no firm schedule. I figure if I don’t like it, I can get the next flight out, and if I do, I might want to stay a while.”

“Occupation?”

“Freelance journalist.”

He set the passport down and regarded her again. “You realize that a tourist visa prevents you from accepting any employment while in Panama?”

“Of course. I wasn’t planning on working here.”

He held her passport below a scanner. The system beeped, and his phone rang. He lifted the handset to his ear and listened, his eyes never leaving her face. She controlled her breathing, as she’d been trained, emitting calm. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye on the far side of the large room and tried not to stare at three soldiers toting machine guns who had materialized from a side entrance. Even as she took in the new development, she smiled at the official, hoping this was just the usual officious bureaucracy, a low-level functionary relishing his ability to make her wait.

After what seemed like hours, he stamped the passport and handed it back to her. “Enjoy your vacation,” he said in a disinterested voice, already eyeing the next victim. She took the passport and shouldered her carry-on, to anyone watching a relaxed young woman without a care in the world, arriving in an equatorial wonderland for a tropical vacation.

Jet slipped on her sunglasses and watched the soldiers from behind the dark lenses. All three were staring at her, but she continued through the room to the baggage claim area – she recognized the expressions on their faces, and it wasn’t anything unusual or alarming. Just young men bursting with testosterone, eyeing a striking example of the opposite sex.

She pushed past a throng of her fellow travelers and stepped outside. Stifling humidity settled over her, and she peeled off her jacket as she removed her phone from her carry-on and waited for it to acquire a signal. After a minute she dialed Matt’s sat phone, only to hear it go directly to voice mail.

“I’m here. See you in a few hours. Hope everything’s going well on your end,” she said. “Call me when you get this. My cell’s on.”

Jet hung up and checked the time. Matt was scheduled to arrive on the fishing boat in six hours – more than enough time to get to the tiny port of Vacamonte, west of Balboa, on a remote spit of land twelve miles from Panama City. She’d go into the city center and get a sense of the town, and then meet Matt and Hannah.

The thought of seeing her daughter again sent a thrill of happiness through her. It seemed like forever since she’d hugged her and brushed her hair – for that matter, since she’d been in Matt’s arms. Finally, they were safe and could start a new life somewhere nobody could find them. She was exhausted from having to run, enemies from the past constantly chasing them, and wanted nothing more than a boring life as a homebody somewhere modest and quiet.

The thought of herself standing in front of a small house, an apron tied around her waist, waiting for Hannah to run toward her and tell her all about her day at school, tugged at her heart, and a wave of melancholy washed over her. Was that too much to ask? Peace, a good man, a happy kid, the world left to its own devices as she lived out her time in tranquility?

She waited in the taxi line for a bit and then changed her mind and returned to the terminal. A row of rental car agencies vied for her attention, and she chose the farthest from the arrivals salon, where a bored woman sat texting behind a chipped counter, her red uniform wrinkled from the humidity.

Jet exchanged pleasantries with her and ten minutes later had rented a nondescript economy sedan. A shuttle took her to a lot off the airport grounds and dropped her at the car, and after glancing at a map helpfully supplied by the rental company, she cranked over the engine and negotiated her way out of the lot.

The highway into town was clearly marked, and she marveled again at how modern everything seemed. As she neared the city, the high-rises astounded her, like something from photographs of Dubai or Singapore. One building in particular was arresting in a sea of new developments: forty or fifty stories of green-tinted glass that looked like a giant screw sticking straight into the sky.

She took an off-ramp and found herself on Avenue Israel, which was gridlocked, and she resigned herself to finding that quiet spot inside herself where her patience came from. After twenty minutes and having moved three blocks, that pursuit of serenity gave way to restlessness, and she exhaled a sigh of relief when she was able to get out of the worst of the traffic and pull onto a wide boulevard.

A colorful building advertising toys caught her eye, and she found a parking place a block away, locked her bag in the trunk, and ambled down the sidewalk in no particular hurry. When she pushed her way through the doors, she discovered a huge inventory of games and playthings – most made in China, of course. After twenty minutes agonizing over her choices, she bought a doll and a plush bear that she hoped would melt Hannah’s heart.

With the toys safely stashed in the trunk next to her bag, Jet decided to walk the downtown area and get a sense of the town’s style. Every place she’d spent any time in had its unique mood and vibe, and Panama City proved no different – an eclectic combination of high tech and big money juxtaposed against a laid-back tropical rhythm.

A friendly waitress at a café she stopped at gushed about the new canal and the prosperity it was going to bring, clearly excited at the idea of even more development for the otherwise unremarkable slice of earth. To Jet, after the wine-based economy of Mendoza, Panama City seemed like a schizophrenic stepchild of New York set down in the jungle, all rush and bustle but lacking the sophistication a more mature city would have.

The word that best defined the city for her as she gazed at the impressive skyline was “new.” Everything was recently built, barely out of the box, which was both exciting and disturbing. She wondered what the city must have been like twenty years earlier, and decided that she might have liked it better as a backwater than a busy metropolis. But for her current purposes of finding a reasonably civilized place where she could effectively disappear, Panama City was probably as good as any other. The infrastructure seemed decent, the cars mostly new, the natives all dressed as in any commercial on U.S. or European television, regional distinctions long ago lost in a wave of corporate globalization that ensured everyone wore Nike and No Fear, whether in Tel Aviv, Moscow, Buenos Aires…or Panama.

Jet finished her coffee and checked her watch. It was early, but she had nothing else to do but wait for the love of her life and her daughter to arrive. She returned to the car and sat with the AC blasting the perspiration off her face, and caught a glimpse of her emerald eyes in the rearview mirror. She tilted it down and studied her features – after everything she’d been through in the last few months, she was surprised her hair hadn’t turned white, like a witch in a Japanese monster movie.

But that was all behind her now. She was here, safe, and her family would arrive in only a few hours.

Life had never been better, she thought as she put the car into gear. Maybe she’d finally caught the break she was hoping for.

It had to happen sometime.

Chapter 10

80 miles south of Panama City, Panama

Igor watched the massive hull of the
Seylene
fade into the horizon as the fishing boat that had rendezvoused with the cargo ship motored toward Panama, still out of sight somewhere beyond the endless blue of the Pacific Ocean. Leon stood by his side, their weapons hidden in the bags they’d filched from the ship’s crew.

The fishing boat captain had been surprised when Igor and Leon had boarded.

“I thought it was supposed to be a guy and a kid,” he’d remarked.

“There was a change of plans. Why, do you charge by the pound?” Igor had asked.

They’d laughed, the captain somewhat uneasily, and then pushed off, anxious not to draw the scrutiny of one of the naval vessels patrolling the waters.

The boat was rancid, a working fishing scow with dried scales stuck to her gunwales and a film of noxious ooze crusted on her decks, and Igor was surprised when the captain pushed the throttle forward and the boat surged ahead. He’d figured that they would be lucky to do ten knots, but the GPS read fourteen, which was unbelievable.

“What have you got in this thing?” Igor asked, impressed.

“Twin Caterpillar 3208 TAs,” the captain beamed.

“I would have made this for a single screw.”

“That’s the whole point. But if I need to outrun a storm…or anything else…better to have some power, you know?”

“Few more knots and you’d get up on plane,” Igor teased. The fishing boat may have been supercharged, but there were physical limits to the speed a displacement hull could achieve, given a certain length and width.

“Make yourselves at home. It’ll be a while,” the captain said.

“Where are we headed?”

“Puerto Vacamonte.”

“Near Balboa?”

The captain gave him the beginning of a smile. “But far enough so there are no prying eyes.”

“Good.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

“Six hours, at this speed.”

That would put them into the port at roughly eight o’clock, so dark by the time they arrived.

Igor called Fernanda and gave her the details.

“I’ll get on it and have a welcoming committee waiting when you dock. If the woman shows up, she’s history,” Fernanda promised.

“Where are you now?” Igor asked.

“I’m in Medellín,” she said. “Our Panamanian friend has a contact here. I’m supposed to meet him soon, so we’ll see what he can do for us.”

“Every minute counts.”

“As well I know.”

“But no pressure.”

“Of course not.”

He hung up, and Leon joined him as they watched the ocean blow past, the water sapphire blue and crystal clear, the breeze refreshing in the heat. The Panamanian gunman, one of their contact’s top enforcers, leaned into him after glancing around to ensure that neither the captain nor the three fishermen that served as crew were nearby.

“So how are we going to do this? If the woman’s going to meet the boat, she’s going to figure out pretty quickly that neither one of us is a child or a gringo.”

“We stay onboard. Your boss is arranging for reinforcements. They’ll have the same photo you do. If she shows, they’ll take her out.”

“But we still get paid the same, right?” Leon asked.

Igor smiled. Of course. The man was worried about his fee, as would Igor in the same circumstances. “Sure. It doesn’t really matter whose bullet kills her. She just needs to die.”

“How are Carlos and Raphael going to get off the cargo ship?”

“Same trick the gringo played. Lifeboat. When they’re only twenty or so miles off Los Santos point, they’ll make their way to shore.”

“And the ship?”

“They won’t be able to do much in another few hours about our hitching a ride. It’ll be too late.” Igor paused. “And anyway, I got the feeling that the captain wasn’t the type to call the cops – he’d have a lot of explaining to do himself. No, they’ll continue on their way as though nothing happened.”

“Minus their lifeboats.”

“It’s an imperfect world.”

~ ~ ~

As the afternoon drew to a close, the
Seylene
’s captain was growing more nervous. He’d smoked his last cigarette, but Carlos, the gunman, wouldn’t let him go below to get more. He hadn’t seen any of his crew for hours, not since the ringleader had disembarked onto the fishing boat, nor had he heard from his mechanical engineer or any of the crew in the engine room, and he was getting a sinking feeling in his gut.

When he’d demanded to know what Carlos intended to do with them, the gunman had smiled a psychotic grin and assured him that he’d be out of their hair soon. Carlos had questioned the captain at length about launching the remaining lifeboat, and it became quickly apparent that he and the other thug planned to take it, leaving the crew to keep going without looking back.

Which was a safe bet. The captain didn’t need anyone asking difficult questions. Of course, no matter how it played out, there would likely be some kind of inquiry – for instance, the shipping company would want to know what had happened to two expensive lifeboats. And the mobster who’d paid a small fortune to get the man and his daughter to safety would want to know how it went.

It was going to be a difficult week.

The hair on the back of the captain’s neck stood on edge when he sensed Carlos walking behind him, and he was about to turn around when the .40-caliber soft-nose slug blew his brains all over the console. The helmsman froze in shock at the sight of his captain executed without warning, and when Carlos spoke, he could barely hear him through the ringing in his ears.

“Set the autopilot so the boat will drive itself,” Carlos ordered.

“Why? What are you going to do?” the helmsman stammered.

“I’m taking you downstairs where you can’t get into any trouble and locking you in with the crew.”

“Why did you kill the captain?”

“Orders. He was into more than you want to know about. The less you know, the longer you live. Now set the autopilot.” He gestured with his pistol.

The helmsman didn’t need to be told twice. He entered the coordinates that would take the ship back into the shipping lanes, programmed the device, and then sat back. “There. But it’s not safe to have a ship flying blind. The shipping lanes are crowded, even though they look empty.”

“That’s okay,” Carlos said, and shot him in the temple at point-blank range.

He studied the two dead men for a few moments and then gazed out through the windows at the calm sea. Hard to believe that earlier the ocean had been a living nightmare. Now it was smooth as glass, a pleasure to be on.

He used the bathroom and then went below, where he’d execute the crew before launching the lifeboats. Igor’s instructions had been clear – nobody to be left alive who could identify them. It was bad business to leave survivors, and Carlos hadn’t thrived for years in the brutal drug trade as an enforcer, and then a hired killer, by being squeamish about doing what was required.