The Devil's Footprint (35 page)

The photographs of the wreckage of the two machines and the charred
bodies of the crews had been an unparalleled propaganda tool.

Irony of ironies, the abortive DEA raid had served to further protect the
enormous Mexican drug-processing and –smuggling industry.
 
And, incidentally, the
activities of the state of Tecuno.
 
Governor Diego Quintana had roared with laughter when he read out the
U.S.
president's National Security Executive Order FA/128.
 
"They bind themselves," he had
said.
 
"They know and yet they can
do nothing."

The official story was that all twelve members of the raiding party had
been killed in the two crashes.
 
Five
bodies had been returned.
 
The others had
been kept as a bargaining tool.
 
They
would be released ‘over time.’
 
There
were procedures to be followed.
 
The
unofficial subtext was that if the
U.S.
authorities behaved
themselves, one body would be released every six months.
 
Perhaps.
 
The Iranians had shown how far you could push
this particular strategy.

The administration had accepted the deal.
 
The men were dead.
 
The mission
should never have happened in the first place.
 
Improving U.S.-Mexican relations was the priority.

The seven survivors had been given to Oshima to use as she saw fit.
 
But above all, they must not escape.
 
They were dead.
 
They must stay dead.

Keeping the mercenaries at the Devil's Footprint in line had been a
problem.
 
The prisoners were used to set
an example.
 
Their deaths were spread out
over the months.
 
The first prisoner had
been burned alive in a metal cage in front of the assembled garrison.
 
The conflagration had taken place at night
and had been quite spectacular.
 
The entire
cage had glowed white hot as the thing inside it screamed.

Discipline had improved dramatically.

The second prisoner had been guillotined.
 
The French had invaded
Mexico
for a while, and the mercenaries had constructed a play around the
execution.
 
The entertainment value of
these events was clear.

The third man had been ritually hanged, drawn, and quartered.
 
This had proved a little more than some of
even the most hardened members of the garrison could take.

The fourth man had been crushed by a tank.

The fifth man had been strapped across the muzzle of an artillery piece
and a blank charge fired.
 
The blast had
showered pieces of him all over the canyon wall.

The sixth man had been slowly garroted.

The seventh man was still alive.

As Oshima strode out in front of the assembled mercenaries, the naked
body of her victim was strapped to crossed timbers.

The troops were hushed and expectant.

Oshima cut off his hands and feet and then disemboweled the man.
 
It was her favorite way to kill, and she
marveled at how long it could take for a human being to die when a skilled
executioner was at work.

In her mind, the victim under her sword was the
gaijin
Fitzduane.
 
She took
her time, but there were practical problems when performing in front of the
mercenaries.
 
A parade could take just so
long.
 
Guards had to be relieved.
 
There were duties to be carried out.

She would be under no such pressure when working on Kathleen.
 
This was a woman whose agony would be
endless.

13

Fitzduane dozed uneasily on the aircraft while flying back to
Washington
.

Since
Vietnam
,
where he had been shot down on several occasions, and from various similar
experiences in war zones since, he had learned that aircraft had different ways
of returning to earth, and not all of them were pleasant.

He was not overly fond of flying.
 
If he could sleep through it, he would.
 
This time it was not that easy.
 
His subconscious flooded his mind with dark images and he had the
terrible feeling that the mission he had embarked on was going to get much worse
before it got better.

His black mood had started with the bank raid in Medora.
 
The burst of adrenaline that had kicked in
when Lonsdale and he had roared away from Lonsdale's extraordinary home had
turned into depression when they caught up with the perpetrators at an Arizona
Highway Patrol roadblock a few miles outside the city limits.

With good reason, the state troopers were not taking any chances.
 
When the bank robbers had opened fire and
tried to run the roadblock, the troopers, hunkered down behind the cover of
their cruisers, had returned fire with a vengeance.

The driver had taken a shotgun blast in the face in the first fusillade.

Out of control, the jeep had spun off the road and overturned.
 
One passenger broke his neck in the
crash.
 
The two surviving robbers,
already wounded, were thrown clear and as they tried to rise, were chopped down
almost clinically by a trooper armed with a heavy-caliber sniper rifle.

Fitzduane and Lonsdale had come on the scene seconds later.
 
The dead robbers had weapons in their hands
or just beside them.
 
It was a righteous
shoot without question, but the rivulets of blood and the destroyed splayed
bodies of what had been up till a few moments ago healthy young men caused the
bile to rise in Fitzduane's throat.
 
So
this was civilization as we approached the twenty-first century.
 
So this was how far we had come.

Fitzduane's revulsion was further increased by his own sense of
guilt.
 
It was not what he wanted —
indeed, it was what he had run from when he had resigned from the army — but
there had been circumstances and he had killed, and he was good at it and he
would kill again.

The causes had been just, and doubtless would be just, but still there
was a voice inside him saying that he was wrong and there had to be a better
way.
 
And then there were the faces of
those who had died as a result of his actions, who seemed to take a little
piece of his life force with them as the life flickered from their eyes.

An examination of the corpses quickly revealed that all four of the dead
young men had been Mexican and had only recently crossed the border.
 
All wore the clothes of itinerant
workers.
 
One wore sandals.
 
One wore cheap shoes without socks.

The man who had taken the shotgun blast in his face had a gold crucifix on
a thin gold chain around his neck.

The fourth man, killed by the sniper, lay on his back where he had been
thrown, his hair, features, and coloring strongly Indian.

"There but for a quirk of fate go
I
,"
said Lonsdale, quietly looking at the body of the fourth man.
 
"Ninety-odd million Mexicans rammed up
against the border of the richest country in the world.
 
What would you do if you were them?"

"Try and make
Mexico
work," said one of the state troopers.
 
"They've got their own country.
 
Some of it is poor, but some of it is rich.
 
They've got oil.
 
Certainly, coming up here to rob and kill
isn't the answer."

"What do you do if you have they have not?" said Fitzduane
almost to himself as he gazed at the carnage.
 
"This thing is not about the
U.S.
and
Mexico
.
 
It's about the whole world and how you slice
the pie."

"You hold the line, Hugo," said Lonsdale firmly.
 
"You try and do what you can, but you
accept the world as it is.
 
Or you're
fucked."

Fitzduane had a last terrible dream as his flight neared its end.

He could see Kathleen lying in a cell.
 
She was blindfolded and chained and her chains were secured to a ring in
the wall.
 
Her clothing was ripped and
torn.
 
The crude concrete floor was
dusty.
 
As he watched, she traced words
in the dust.
 
Her fingertips were
bleeding as if she had done this again and again.
 
He strained to try to read what she had
written.
 
He could just see his own name,
HUGO, and then another word beginning with
H
.
 
He could not read the rest.

Figures came into the cell.

He could not make out their faces.
 
They were indistinct but menacing.
 
One carried something.
 
It was a
piece of board like a butcher's block.
 
Kathleen's hand was placed upon it.
 
She was struggling and screaming, but she was held firmly.

The figure of a woman came forward with a long heavy blade in her
hand.
 
Its edge glittered unevenly as if
freshly sharpened upon a stone.
 
It was a
crude instrument, a simple machete, the tool of a peasant, an elemental weapon.

Here is was an instrument of torture.

The figure of the torturer turned toward Fitzduane so that for the first
time he could see her face.
 
The features
were Japanese.
 
Once beautiful, she was
now hideously scarred, but she acted as if still supremely confident of her
appeal, of her sexuality, and of her power.

She was half smiling.
 
She could
see Fitzduane looking and she was pleased.
 
This was why she was doing it.
 
It
was aimed at him.
 
He understood.

She raised the heavy blade and brought it down into Kathleen's
flesh.
 
Fitzduane could hear the
sound.
 
Kathleen did not scream.
 
But he could see the tears as they welled
from under her blindfold and coursed through the grime on her face.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Cochrane was in the underground conference room in the STR Virginia
facility in the building they called Son Tay.

As he had got to know the area better, Fitzduane had learned that there
were a dozen or more buildings of various sizes in the complex and doubtless
more elsewhere on the estate.
 
Most of
the buildings were at least partially underground, as best he could
determine.
 
They were linked by
subterranean passages.
 
Access was on a
‘need to know’ basis.
 
The Task Force and
Fitzduane had the run of the first building they had met in and were using it
as a base.
 
As to what happened
elsewhere, Fitzduane had absolutely no idea.

The whole setup reminded him forcibly of the iceberg nature of
power.
 
The average citizen rarely saw
the extent of the forces that controlled and guided him or her, and such
secrecy was not confined to totalitarian states.
 
Even the
United States
, the most open nation
on earth, kept much hidden.
 
It was in
the nature of those who truly understood power to be secretive.
 
Even if you were an insider, there was much
that was secret.
 
No one had full access.

But Grant Lamar, in Fitzduane's opinion, had more access than most.
 
Otherwise, none of this made sense.

Cochrane was buttoning up a crisp white shirt as Fitzduane came in.
 
A regimental tie followed.
 
An electric razor appeared out of a
drawer.
 
A quick combing completed the
transformation.
 
Within a couple of
minutes Cochrane, his face drawn with fatigue, was transformed into a
reasonable similitude of the whip-sharp chief of staff whom Fitzduane had first
met.

"You caught me, Hugo," said Cochrane briskly, the anger
suppressed but escaping as he talked.
 
"Sprucing up on the run is something you learn in the House.
 
You work long, stupidly long hours, sometimes
for remarkably stupid people.
 
Most of
your work gets shit-canned, but appearances — boy, they really count.
 
You've got to look STRAC.

"You learn to bathe in a water glass and keep your wardrobe in a
drawer in your filing cabinet and fuck between votes.
 
The legacy of the Founding
Fathers.
 
Those good ole boys set
up a hell of a system.
 
It must have been
easier in the days of the Roman emperors.
 
Then you still might be knifed in the back, but at least you didn't have
to worry about the people.
 
Frankly,
democracy sucks."