Vultures in the Playground

  “Hi … uh … this is Archie Parsons.”

  “Quem?”

  “Archie Parsons. The doctor? Is this … Octavio?”

  “Why are you calling me? How did you get this number? This is a private line.”

  “The President gave it to me. He said I should call if I ever needed any help.”

  “Eh … I think he was just being polite. It’s not how we operate here.”

  “Can I speak to him? Please?”

  “I am sorry, that is not possible. The President is not available, and even so—”

  “But he insisted that I call you if I ever needed any help. He said you would take care of it. And … well … we need some help.”

  “You are the doctor who is not a doctor? Yes? The man who visited him this morning.”

  “That’s me.”

  “What kind of help do you need?”

  “Some people are trying to kill us.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “About the death threat. That’s why I arranged that meeting with him. To warn him about these people.”

  “He tells me no such thing. I thought you were just a malaria consultant.”

  “Well, yeah I am, but that’s not why I went to see him. Listen … these people are swarming all over the island. Killers all. They’re at the airport. Boca do Inferno. I just got attacked in the bathroom of the Hotel Miramar.” Archie paused to him respond, but there was only silence dressed with some faint tinkling of something like elevator music.

  “Hello? Are you still there?”

  “Yes. I am here,” said the aide. “So what exactly do you wish for us to do?”

  Archie puffed, exasperated. “I don’t know. We just need a safe place to go, someone to stop them.”

  “Have you contacted the police?”

  “The police? Listen. I don’t speak Portuguese very well. Neither of us do. And the President … he specifically told us to contact you if—”

  “Alright, alright. Maybe I can help. I will need to double check with the President first. He has told me nothing about your situation. It sounds so very strange. He is at meetings at the moment. I will have to call you back.”

  “Wait! Don’t hang up. We—” The connection clicked off.

  “Well, that didn’t sound very promising,” said Melissa, arms crossed.

  ***

  Archie hunkered low in the back seat watching the same tree crowns and building facades pass high in the window as Arcadio circled the same set of blocks, over and over.

  “Wish there was some hole we could crawl into,” said Archie. “Wait out the storm.”

  “Wasn’t that guy supposed to call right back?” said Melissa.

  “That’s what I assumed,” said Archie. “Said the President was at a meeting. You know how that can be.”

  “Not really,” she said, raising an eyebrow. Here face brightened. “Hey, why don’t we just go to the embassy? Even if they’ve got spooks there, there’s no way they’d try anything funny in the public spaces.”

  “Yeah, but there is no US Embassy in STP,” said Archie. “The Ambassador to Gabon handles things. I mean, they have a guest house they use when they visit but ….”

  Melissa sank a bit lower in her seat.

  As Arcadio turned down the road that arced along the inner, more urbanized harbor. A shiny beige sedan zoomed past them in the other direction.

  “Shit! That was him. The guy with the knife. Do you think he saw us?”

  Melissa wheeled around and peered out the back window. “Oh yeah. He’s turning around.”

  “Oh fuck, if he knows, they’re all gonna be after us now. Arcadio go! We gotta lose him!”

  “Where? Where I should go?”

  “That radio station … the one we saw on the way up from Boca,” said Melissa. “V-Voice of America. We crash the studio, take over their microphones. They wouldn’t dare hurt us with the whole world listening … would they?”

  “You tell me,” said Archie. “You seem to know their ways better than I do.”

  “You know? I don’t believe they would,” she said, sitting taller. “These are public companies with stockholders. You think they’d want word of this getting out?”

  “All the more reason to kill us by any means necessary.”

  “Then we go out with a bang. Crash the studio. Tell the announcers what’s happening. Share it with the world. What do you say?”

  “I don’t know, Melissa. A place like that’s gotta have pretty good security. How do we even get in the gate?”

  “Not a problem,” she said, reaching under Arcadio’s seat and pulled out the guns they had received in the last briefcase. She kept the FN and passed the Heckler & Koch machine pistol to Archie. “These should be worth the price of admission.” She slammed in a magazine packed with armor-piercing rounds and cocked her weapon.

  Chapter 36: Diesel

  Bloody Hell! White hunched over a sink flooding his eyes with cold water, and still he could not assuage the feeling that his corneas had been blasted with grit.

  Consider his priorities revised. That bitch from hell now topped his list. Take her down and Parsons would drop as easy as culling sheep. Soft and docile, he was. Unlike that she-beast, that wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  She had skills, that one. Why hadn’t headquarters clued him in? Black certainly would have gotten the full skinny.

  His nose crunched when he winced. It was likely fractured. He tried washing the blood from his face and shirt, but it continued to drip. A losing proposition, he tucked his shirt as best he could and stormed out the washroom.

  The doorman cringed away as he approached, using the glass door to shield himself. White barged out of the Miramar and hauled his aching body back to his car, limping and lurching along the walk.

  The boys waiting proudly by the now gleaming sedan ran off into the shrubberies at the sight of him. He could imagine how he looked: face swollen, eyes blinking and weeping, crimson streaks staining the front of his shirt. He must have looked like a flipping monster!

  He tossed a fistful of cash and coins at the frightened kids and climbed into the beige sedan. He twisted together one set of wires and touched the other set to engage the starter. The engine roared. He was off on the hunt.

  ***

  Hodges rode shotgun in the rented van—literally. He held a sawed off 12-gauge Benelli in his lap, part of a larger arsenal he had retrieved from the cigarette boat and shared with the two men from the B team who rode with him.

  They had left one guy behind to watch the boat. Another had remained at the airport to monitor all outgoing flights. Earlier, one of them had spotted the girl at the TAP counter, making some sort of flight arrangements.

  White wasn’t answering his phone and neither was Arcadio. What the fuck was up with these guys. At least these B team guys understood the value of working together.

  According to Henson, that Melissa bitch used to be a junior field operative in the CIA. Who knew? She seemed a little too cute and ditzy for a spook.

  He had no idea where to find her or Parsons, but at least in town they would be situated to respond more quickly to any contingency. Screw White and his maverick ways. At least, in town, he could get himself a hot meal and give his constitution a rest from all those damned MREs.

  Turned out, Hodges shared some history with John Grecko, the B team leader. They had run into each other in Libya back when Hodges sold up-armored cars to dictators and their flunkies.

  Grecko, an ex-Marine, had just taken a job with a Serbian-run mercenary outfit. He had still been a freckle-faced kid back then. These days he had sprouted enough red whiskers to pass for a Viking.

  “Yeah, I hope Mr. Muammar is making good use of that S600 I sold him. That baby carried a thousand pounds of armor and 640 horsepower engines to haul it around.”

  “Run-flat tires?”

  “Of course.”

 
“Yeah, but … I bet it’s already obsolete. The Iraqis have turned shaped-charge IEDs into a cottage industry.”

  “Oh. I don’t know. I’d put my money on that Mercedes. We installed a few little tricks that most folks in the industry don’t bother with. I’d tell you but it’s a trade-secret. The non-disclosure I signed is still binding.”

  “Hey, isn’t that the same Nissan we saw at the airport?” said Grecko’s buddy, a quiet kid named Mark.

  Grecko pumped the brakes as the other vehicle converged and zoomed past them, heading south at maximum throttle.

  “Holy shit,” said Hodges. “That was Arcadio. And he’s got those two fucktards with him. Where the heck are they going? Boca, maybe? Turn around Goddamnit! They ain’t getting my boat.”

  A little beige Renault screamed by, struggling to keep up with the more powerful Nissan.

  “That was White,” said Grecko, fish-tailing the van around. He goosed the accelerator and joined the chase.

  “Lock and load,” said Hodges. “Things are gonna get real interesting real quick, fellas.”

  ***

  “Here it is! Turn here!” said Archie.

  Arcadio jerked and wheel and started to skid, heading straight for the deep ditch that drained off the VOA compound. One tire grabbed and pulled them back onto the pavement as the rear wheels were about to slip over the edge.

  Melissa, unbuckled, flew across the cab and slammed into Archie.

  “Jeez, Melissa! Buckle your seat-belt!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry for me. You could have cracked your skull!”

  Arcadio jerked the wheel again and they slid around to face the long, dirt drive leading into the compound. A long line of broadcast towers stood at attention like steel soldiers. Below them sprawled a complex of squat, prefab warehouses with walls of corrugated aluminum. Bulbous tanks held diesel for the generators, ensuring that the towers never had to rely solely on the local power grid to beam their message to the world.

  “There is a gate coming,” said Arcadio. “And a guard post.”

  “Crash it!” said Melissa.

  “What?” said Archie.

  “There’s no time to stop. Those guys are right behind us.”

  The guard post was a little wooden shed just large enough for a chair and a desk. The guard stepped out into the dusk, stretching his arms languorously, but his posture turned to panic when it became obvious that Arcadio had no intention of stopping or even slowing down. He backed away from the gate and scrambled to unsnap his holster.

  Arcadio sank low in his seat and smashed through a flimsy gate arm that served more as a polite suggestion than an imperative. The guard held his gun in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other.

  “If we’re lucky, he’ll give the others a harder time getting through,” said Melissa.

  They climbed a slight rise to the cluster of warehouse-like buildings.

  “Which one?” said Arcadio.

  Most were drab and windowless. Archie saw nothing that looked to him like a studio. “I don’t know. Just drive around.”

  At the center of the cluster, they came to a signpost. “Stop here.”

  As they exited the vehicle, Arcadio pulled his own pistol out of a courier bag along with an extra pair of magazines.

  “You coming with?” said Archie.

  “I am with you. Yes.”

  “Alright, Arcadio, my man!” Melissa slapped him on the back.

  Archie went over and studied the sign post. “There’s a ‘Broadcast Center’ in Building 2A. That could be what we’re looking for.”

  “Where’s 2A?” said Melissa.

  “Is over here,” said Arcadio, pointing to a long narrow building with shipping containers integrated into the walls like blocky warts. Behind it stretched a row of generators housed separately in open-eaved concrete block structures backed by diesel tanks.

  Two more vehicles screamed up to the guard post.

  “Let’s move,” said Archie.

  The guard shouted. There was a series of brittle pops followed by a loud, dull blast.

  Archie didn’t dare a glance as he turned the corner under a covered walkway.

  “It is here,” said Arcadio, pointing his pistol at a glass door held ajar with a wedge of wood.

  “Go on inside.” Archie let Melissa and Arcadio enter first and then locked it behind them. To free both hands to do so, Archie clasped the machine pistol to his side with an elbow.

  “Archie! Don’t hold it like that. You’re gonna shoot yourself.”

  “Safety’s on. I think.”

  “No it isn’t! Jesus Christ, have mercy on the feeble-minded!” She reached over and flipped a toggle. “S is for safe, okay? E is for single fire, F for full automatic. Got it?”

  “E stands for single? Now that’s counterintuitive.”

  “It’s a German weapon Archie. E stands for ‘Ein.’”

  They passed through a small and Spartan lounge with a cartridge coffee maker and a mini-fridge in one corner. A chipped Formica table was stained from decades of spillage. Speakers in the ceiling played an interview with a cut flower farmer from Kenya.

  “That can’t be live,” said Archie.

  “Maybe they intersperse taped bits with the live stuff. I mean, they must have someone here for voice-overs … at least. Right?”

  “I don’t know,” said Archie, beginning to worry about what kind of trap they were getting themselves into.

  The studios weren’t hard to find. They were behind a heavy steel door, lining both sides of a narrow hall. The first pair of glassed-in rooms were completely dark.

  “There is a man in this here room!” said Arcadio, waving his pistol.

  They came down the hall to where Arcadio stood. A technician in headphones sat in a mesh-back chair, feet up on a sound board, headphones on, head tilted back, arms crossed, eyes closed.

  “This is no deejay,” said Archie. “This guy’s just a techie.” Archie rapped on the glass with his gun and opened the door. The man’s eyes popped open. He lurched at the sight of the armed trio entering his cubicle and fell out of his chair onto the floor.

  ***

  “Bloody hell!” said White. “Did you have to shoot him in the fooking chest?”

  “I had no choice. He shot first!” said Hodges, reloading his shotgun.

  “He fired in the air you golldamn fool. We could have talked him into surrendering.”

  “Whoa! Look at this. White is suddenly ‘Mister Tread Lightly.’”

  “It’s called collateral damage, Curtis. That’s what you just accomplished in your haste.”

  “No big fucking deal. Damage control will take care of it.”

  “Damage control? Surely you realize who’s going to take the blame for your little fook-up. That would be me, your Alpha Leader.”

  “You should be used to it by now, Whitey. No?”

  White seethed with the urge to blast the little bastard a new asshole out his front, when he realized he didn’t have a firearm.

  “Someone hand me a side-arm. Surely one of you has a spare?”

  The young man from the B team handed him a Glock and three magazines filled with ammo, which he stuffed into his shirt.

  Hodges turned to the B team leader. “Hey, John. That guy you left on the beach. He any good with a boat?”

  “Well, duh. He’s a former SEAL. That’s why I left him.”

  “Give him a call and see if he can meet up with us just off these bluffs here. Once we’re done here, it might save us a trip to Boca. I doubt any of us are going to be making it past the immigration queue.”

  Grecko smirked. “You got that straight.” He unclipped a sleek black radio from his belt.

  “We can kiss any hit on the big fish good bye, as well,” said White.

  “Oh well,” said Hodges. “Two out of three ain’t bad.”

  “Small potatoes,” said White, striding off towards the broadcast facilities.

  “You
guys flush. We’ll flank,” said John.

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Hodges. “You got that boat ride hooked up?”

  “He’s already on his way.”

  “Good man.”

  Hodges trotted to catch up with White. “What the fook do you want?” he snapped. “I work alone.”

  “Well golly, aren’t you the prima donna. Someone’s gotta cover your ass while you play superhero.”

  They came to the black SUV and gave it a quick going over.

  “Some blood on the seat,” said Hodges.

  “Good,” said White. “Wish there was more.”

  The wind surged off the ocean and scoured the peninsula, kicking up several dust devils. White squinted at the horizon. Twilight was coming on fast, the sun a red glow like an incendiary bomb gone off over the town. Waves grumbled out of sight below a line of cliffs.

  “Over there!” said Hodges. “I just saw a light flick on.”

  They ran over to a building with a fading ‘2A’ stenciled over the weathered paint and stood before a locked glass door. “Stand back,” said Hodges. He blasted a hole with one barrel of his sawed-off. White kicked at the crystalline lacework of shattered safety glass, creating a gap large enough to squeeze through.

  “You stay by the door,” said White.

  Hodges shuffled his feet. “Fuck that.”

  “You stay!” growled White. “I will handle this. I have some settling to do with the bitch who broke my nose.”

  ***

  “Nothing live is broadcast from here,” said the technician, headphones askew across his cheek, palms in the air. “Only rebroadcast. Everything we play is produced in Washington. This is just a relay station.” His accent was faint. He must have spent considerable time in the states.

  “But what about those microphones over there?” said Melissa, pointing at a cubicle across the hall.

  “That is a studio. The locals use it to record spots in Portuguese. They play music on FM from their own little shack. It is part of the cooperative agreement. Their signal does not even reach Príncipe.”

  A blast came from the lobby, following by the tinkle of glass.

  “We’d better get out of here!” said Archie. “Is there a back door?”

  The technician pointed down the hall opposite the direction they had come from.

  “You should come along, too,” said Melissa to the techie.

  “I can’t,” said the technician. “I’m on duty.”

  “We’re not giving you a choice.” Archie pointed the machine pistol at him.

  “For your safety,” said Melissa, her face all open and earnest. She patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. We won’t make you a hostage.”