The Sand Trap (48 page)

Her answer made him laugh. “Sure. Doesn’t
everyone?”

“No Maria, they don’t. You have a special
ability, a sixth sense in a way, called spatial recognition and you
have a high degree of this spatial intelligence. It has been
evident in some people, mostly great athletes, but it has only been
recognized and formally studied in the past decade. A researcher at
Harvard had a friend with it when she was younger and was so
intrigued she did her Ph.D. on the topic. It is now recognized that
there are many with the talent; musicians, athletes,
mathematicians, even debaters and speakers, anyone who needs an
extraordinary sense of the space around them, someone who benefits
from the ability to see things before everyone else does. It isn’t
that you see things in slow motion; it is that you see them faster
than others. You have one of the most highly developed senses of
space that I have ever seen. I have it as well, just not as much as
you.”

She listened intently. “What do you call it
again?”

“Not me, the researchers. It’s called
spatial recognition or spatial intelligence.”

“And you have it too?”

“I was chosen for my work with the
government because I have it.”

“What does it mean? Am I a freak? And what
kind of government work needs fast reflexes? The bureaucrats I have
met aren’t known for their speed.”

He ignored the bureaucrat comment. “It means
nothing if you don’t use it. But it does explain your extraordinary
skill at Hwa Rang Do, and your ability to ride your bike faster
than a normal human being and, most importantly, your special golf
talents. One researcher defined spatial intelligence as the ability
to grasp changes that are happening and anticipate the next change;
the ability to make quick decisions; to size up all the
relationships in a fast-changing environment and understand them; a
heightened consciousness of surroundings and, both the intentions
of the people and their anticipated actions. In Canada,
Wayne Gretzky
has been recognized as
having the gift of spatial and situational intelligence. While you
clearly have a special level of spatial differentiation or
intelligence, you’re not a freak. Probably half of the population
has some measurably higher level of this ability; it is just only a
small minority that have it to your, our, level and a smaller
minority who actually use it in sports, music or something
else.”

“So why are you telling me this now?" she
asked.

“No particular reason Maria, except that
perhaps it is part of the two of us slowly dissecting our past and
our present so we can grow our relationship. I’m guessing there is
much yet we haven’t shared, so maybe finding we have this trait in
common will help us move forward?”

“Are you not happy where we are?”

“Indeed. These past few months have been
amongst the happiest of my life. You can’t know what it has meant
to able to share my passion for music, for golf, for Ching Wung ,
for you. But I am done here in a month. What do we do? Just treat
this as a summer fling and move on?”

She didn’t say anything and he didn’t add
that, with his time running out, he suspected his assignment would
come soon and he wondered how that would change his circumstances
and their relationship. In the past he never stayed around very
long after finishing an assignment and there is no reason this one,
whatever it was, would likely be any different. Without either of
them answering the question it became rhetorical and the
conversation shifted to other conversations.

To Mexican violence? They agreed that
drastic action needs to be taken in the drug wars. To Tiger Woods?
She said he was a despicable human being to cheat on is wife and
was finished. He said that Tiger would be back with a vengeance in
2013. To U.S. politics? They both laughed at the antics of the Tea
Party and the Republican candidates. They watched “The Tempest”
with Helen Mirren on her generator run entertainment system and
they agreed that it was bad, well below Mirren’s usual standard.
Then they went to bed with the sound of the Cortez surf and the
warm April breezes quickly lulling them both to contented
sleep.

Maria heard the sounds first, but with their
special intelligences Burt wasn’t far behind. “Did you hear that?”
she asked sitting up in bed.

“Sshh, yes. Some gravel rolled down the
pathway from the road. Probably an animal or something. Stay here.
I’ll go look.”

Burt was a trained agent. While he had a
special, non violent, role with the Agency he had undergone annual
“training camp” with other agents where he learned and practiced
the tradecraft of a skilled field agent. The camp was run by NATO
and had agents from every democratic country in the world, all with
some degree of spatial intelligence and all with different roles in
their countries. Most never had to use the things they learned and
practiced. For instance, while Burt was a crack shot with a pistol
he had never even held one outside of the annual training camp. And
that event in the Korean washroom was the first time he had ever
had to use the martial arts he was taught. All of the agents
enjoyed the war games they played. Concealment. Stealth. Paint
guns. Great fun when the prize was a beer at the canteen when it
was over. Burt missed the camps, so while tonight he was
anticipating a wayward goat, he pretended for fun that he was back
at the camp somewhere in the Adirondacks and he had just detected
the “B” team trying to sneak up on his “A” team. On the balls of
his feet, he moved silently out of the sea side of the porch and
into the shadows of the building on the side opposite the path from
the road. He knew what to look for in a raiding party. Not people,
but shapes and shadows, a bend of light that looked out of place, a
silence that was too oppressive, a subtle change in the wind
pattern. So he went into high spatial awareness. They had taught
him that with practice and concentration he could actually heighten
his ability. He wondered for a moment how incredible Maria would be
if he could teach her this skill.

The moment he started to concentrate he knew
something was wrong. As he hugged the shadows of the building, his
senses told him there were at least three or maybe four spatial
anomalies around him that were either four black bears or four
people. One was on or near the path from the road. One was
approaching the back door from the path side of the casita; one was
on the other side of the building from Burt. He could see feet when
he bent down and looked under the stilt raised floor of the casita.
He sensed a fourth but he couldn’t place him. He carefully worked
his way to the edge of the building. He looked at the back door and
the path and was shocked to see a man slowly working his way down
the path, holding a gun Burt recognized as a nine mm Glock.
Suddenly this was not just a war game for Burt. For some reason he
and Maria were under attack and he assumed that if the guy on the
path was armed, so were the others.

“Shit,” he thought to himself. “These are
not local robbers. Someone must have found out where he was and
they were coming after him. Now Maria is going to be caught in the
crossfire of his past.” His last distracting thought was, “I’m too
old for this shit!” as he started to map out his plan in his head
to take on three, maybe four, armed young thugs on an isolated
beach in Mexico. He figured the one at the back door was his
immediate concern so, in a low crouch, he slowly inched his way
around the building. The gravity fed water tank was between him and
the guy at the door so he was fairly hidden until he was six feet
away and he could see the guy was concentrating on trying to open
the door without making a noise. Burt quickly moved around the tank
and with one brutal hit to the man’s temple he was out. Burt caught
him with one hand and the gun with the other and slowly and
silently lowered him to the ground. At least now he had a weapon, a
Glock he was familiar with from his training. But there were still
two, maybe three more to deal with. He glanced nervously up the
path and he could see the shadow of the guy who had stopped half
way down the trail. Burt figured he must have been designated as a
lookout, so maybe he won’t even come done here. He turned his
attention to the one who was on the far side of the casita. He
looked under the building again and watched through the building
legs as the man climbed the three steps up to the porch. He had
left the door open so this man would be able to easily and silently
walk into the casita. Their plan was pretty good; one in by the
back door, one by the front door and a lookout. Burt thought for a
moment. What else would some professionals do? The suspicion of a
fourth man niggled at him, but he had to move quickly to deal with
the man on the porch so he crept around the side of the casita to
approach the porch from the front. By the time he arrived he could
see he was too late, the man was already somewhere inside the
casita, armed and looking for him. He had to act quickly. He was
starting to charge in and save Maria when he heard a thump and a
groan from the living room, and the sound of someone and the gun
hitting the floor. He realized with relief that Maria was not
exactly helpless. He suspected the man would not wake up for a
while. Suddenly another man moved out of the shadows and stepped
into the living room.

“Of course!” Burt cursed to himself. “The
fourth man, a backup to the one who entered. He stayed hidden in
the shadows of the porch as the man yelled at Maria from the
doorway.

“Stop!”

Burt couldn’t see but he suspected Maria was
either reaching for the gun or was going to give the other guy a
second blow for good measure.

“Fernandez! I got her!” he yelled, probably
at the guy who was supposed to come in the back door. Burt was
struck with the realization that his presence was still a secret.
“Fernandez! Come in!”

Then he heard Maria. “I recognize you. You
were the one who tried to run me off the road a couple of months
ago. That was not an accident apparently.”

“Stay back lady. I know what you can do with
your feet and hands. Fernandez! Where are you? Get in here.”

“What are you going to do? Kill me if I
move? Isn’t that why you are here now?” Maria knew now that Burt
was still a secret so she was stalling the man as long as she
could.

“If you harm me you know that Jose will
track you to the ends of the earth. All of your family’s heads will
be found rolling down the middle of the freeway in
Guadalajara!”

Burt was amazed at her tone and the
conversation. "Who was this Jose?" he asked himself. "Heads rolling
down freeways? They were here to kill her?"

“Ha, who do you think has sent us tonight?
Soon you will just be another person buried without your head on a
beach and….” were the man’s last words before a whack from Burt’s
fist on his neck sent him to the ground, gun rattling out of his
hand, knocked out cold and on the floor before he could finish his
sentence. Burt surveyed the scene. Maria was standing in the middle
of the living room with a relieved look on her face. Two men were
out cold on the floor and one out cold by the back door and in
trying to digest it all he forgot about the lookout at the road.
Suddenly he saw Maria look past him towards the beach and before
she even muttered a warning, before the sound of the shot reached
him he rolled sideways and brought his own weapon up and fired. His
double tap shot the man between the eyes and in the heart. There
was no mistake when his training instincts took over.

And then there was silence. Burt lay on the
floor for a moment and with a body that felt its full fifty-nine
years, he moved to his hands and knees and stood up. “Shit, I’m too
old for this.” He moved over to a still shocked Maria and they
hugged each other for a moment as the adrenalin subsided.

“What do we do now?” she asked as she looked
down at the two men on the floor and the one outside with a hole in
his head.

Burt tried to think. “Look, these two guys
and the one out by the back door will be out for a while. These are
professional killers so they came here to do damage and there is
probably someone waiting for a report. When these guys wake up they
will know that he won’t want this to be public, so they will pick
up their partner there and go home to their boss.”

Maria explained in an apologetic tone.
“Burt, they were here to kill me. I know who sent them and I know
why. There are things I haven’t told you.”

“There are still secrets we both have
Maria,” Burt offered.

“Like how you can hit a forehead from thirty
yards with a handgun?”

Burt laughed. “Yes, that is one of them. If
it is any consolation this is the first time I have ever fired a
gun at anyone. But let’s not worry about that now. Let’s just get
out of here and go back to my place and figure out our next step
from there. Whoever it was will likely deduce I was the one who
helped you tonight and will come after both of us, but not likely
in such a visible place as the golf course. Not tonight at any
rate. I figure we have some time to figure out our own next step.
Let’s go.”

They left the bodies where they had fallen
and worked their way up the path to the road. The jeep that had
tried to run Maria off the road was parked there. Burt took the
keys and threw them over the cliff into the arroyo figuring that a
walk back to town would slow them down even more. They straddled
their bikes and quietly and slowly drove back to the marina and the
golf course and hid both bikes under a tarp near the driving range.
They approached Burt’s apartment carefully but a recognizance
showed nothing out of the ordinary so they went in. All was in
order. They left the lights off.

They sat on the chesterfield looking out
over the sea and the golf course. Burt poured them each a Bolera
rum and they sat while the adrenalin further subsided and the
liquor spread its warmth.