The Cessna flew on into the dark night, a speck of metal and electronics alone in the cold, endless void of time and space.
Collins asked, “Are you with a tour group?”
“No.”
“People usually travel down there with tour groups. In fact, it’s almost mandatory.”
“No one mentioned that.”
“Do you at least have a tour guide?”
“No. But I’m sure we can find one in Kavak.”
“Yeah… you should be able to.” He advised, “You shouldn’t go into the jungle alone.”
“Really?”
“It’s, like, dangerous. People get lost, and there’s no rescue units to find you.”
“I’m pretty good at land navigation.” He added, “Moss grows on the north side of the tree.”
“Yeah, but… the biggest danger is people. Like, drug runners, banditos. Then you have the indigenous people, who are usually okay, but sometimes they’re not.”
“We have Señor Glock to protect us.”
Collins didn’t reply to that, but said, “I wouldn’t take”—he cocked his head toward the rear—“a beautiful woman into that jungle.”
“Would you like to come with us?”
“Hell, no.” He added, “To be honest, I don’t even want to stay in Kavak overnight.”
“We’ll all sleep together.”
Again, Captain Collins had no reply, but he was probably hoping his passenger wasn’t joking, and also wondering who Mr. and Mrs. Bowman actually were. In fact, he asked, “How long have you been bird-watching?”
“Not too long.”
“I don’t get the thrill of that.”
“Me neither. I do it for my wife.”
Collins nodded. “Yeah. The things we do.”
“Tell me about it.”
Brodie wanted to feel Collins out about doing something good for his country—like flying from Kavak to Bogotá with a hog-tied criminal in the cabin—but they needed to bond more. So after they refueled in Ciudad Bolívar and were close to landing in Kavak, Brodie would make his pitch. Recruiting the locals was a matter of money; recruiting American expats, as he’d discovered, was usually a matter of flag-waving.
Ironically, no one was more patriotic than an expat. But the timing had to be right. Or the caliber of the gun you pulled had to be big. Money helped too.
The important thing was that Captain Collins—who by now was thinking that he didn’t have bird-watchers aboard—knew that Mr. and Mrs. Bowman were not engaged in criminal activity. Brodie asked, “You ex-military?”
“No. Thought about it, though.”
“My wife and I served. Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“Thank you for your service.”
“We live in the DC area. Where you from?”
“All over. Originally from Montana. Big Sky country.”
“Right. That would inspire you to become a pilot.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m from upstate New York. Farm family. My wife is from Tennessee. Moonshine family.”
Collins chuckled.
“Bird-watching is our hobby. Back in the States, we work for the federal government.” He added, “Nothing interesting. Department of the Interior. We’re geologists.”
Collins thought about that, maybe coming to the logical conclusion that Mr. and Mrs. Bowman were scoping out the terrain for possible oil deposits.
Brodie said to him, “That’s not for public consumption. We’re just bird-watchers.”
Collins nodded.
Brodie said, “I’m going to get some sleep. Unless you want me to take the controls so you can get some shut-eye.”
“You fly?”
“No. But I’ve been watching how you do it.”
Collins thought that was funny.
Brodie squeezed back into the cabin and took his seat next to Taylor. He watched her as she slept, her breasts rising and falling, a look of perfect peacefulness on her face. He hoped she was dreaming about waking up in bed next to Scott Brodie.
As he started to buckle in, her arm extended toward him, zombie-like, and in her hand was a scrap of notepaper. He took it and read, First Place for Bullshit goes to Scott Brodie. Then, P.S. Never made moonshine.
He smiled, tilted his seat back, and closed his eyes. His body needed sleep, but, as in Iraq, his mind was in survival mode and his thoughts were racing toward what lay ahead.
And what lay ahead would be partly determined by what lay behind. Meaning the shoot-out at the Hen House. And Carmen. If Carmen was grilled by the police or SEBIN, she might crack. And if she did, and if Mercer did in fact have contacts in the regime and the military, then Mercer could be waiting for them at the Kavak airstrip.
Brodie could have killed Carmen, of course, and also Luis, who had heard too much. And Carmen’s john, too, though he didn’t understand English. But you had to draw that line somewhere. Or, as Nietzsche said in Philo 101, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”