She continued, “So I just want to be clear about the mission before we get there.”
“Right. Well, this is a recon mission. Intel gathering.”
“All right. So if we do take that boat trip up the river, there will come a point when we hit the one-hour mark, and I know you’ll want to go just a little farther—”
“We stop when we see the first shrunken head.” He assured her, “We will go to the edge of danger, but no further.”
“You know as well as I do that you don’t know where that edge is until you’re over it.”
Brodie finished his OJ and held up the bottle. “Is this bottle half-full, or half-empty?”
“It’s completely empty, like your brain.”
“Right. Can you get me another?”
“Another brain?”
“Juice, please.”
She stood, reached behind the bench seat, got another OJ from the cooler, and handed it to him.
They sat in silence for a minute; then Brodie said, “We told Dombroski we were going to get a fix on Mercer’s camp. And that’s what we’re going to do. And you suggested having a Delta team go in to take Mercer out. And Dombroski liked that idea. But without actionable intelligence for such an operation, we may as well have gone to Aruba.”
Taylor didn’t reply for a moment, then said, “In Afghanistan, I wasn’t afraid to die. I just didn’t want to die for a stupid reason.”
“In war, that’s not usually your choice.”
“True. But now it is.”
“Right. We’ll play it by ear.”
“And I get to call the tune.”
“You get to hum along.” He reminded her, “Our original assignment was to find and arrest a fugitive—”
“That has changed.”
“Okay, but—”
“I hope you learned something from that shit-show at the Hen House.”
“I did, which is never go into a whorehouse without a gun.”
“I think you missed the bigger lesson, Scott, which is don’t walk into an armed enemy camp without a battalion behind you.”
“Right. Look, I’d like nothing better than to see Kyle Mercer hog-tied in that back seat with a mango stuffed in his mouth. But I’ll settle for a fix on his camp.”
“Good. So we’re clear on the mission.”
“We are.”
“No fantasies about capturing Kyle Mercer.”
“I have a new fantasy.”
Taylor looked at him but didn’t reply. Then she said, “If we get out of here alive… I’ll make you a nice dinner.”
“Looking forward to that.” So all he had to do to fulfill his fantasy of sleeping with Maggie Taylor was to get them home alive. She knew how to cement a deal.
He watched Collins peeling off money from a wad of cash, paying for the fuel. He also noticed that Collins had a cigarette in his mouth—standing right next to the NO FUMAR sign. That idiot was going to get them killed before they got a chance to get themselves killed.
Brodie sat back and finished his juice. It was quite possible that Kyle Mercer had been briefed by now about the Hen House—by radio, sat phone, or messenger—and that Mercer and his armed thugs might be staking out the Kavak landing strip, waiting for unwelcome company. Well, that would put a quick end to this assignment.
Taylor asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“I’m just thinking that Kyle Mercer could be waiting at the Kavak airstrip to see who arrives on the next plane from Ciudad Bolívar or Caracas.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Bowman are arriving for bird-watching.”
“Will that turkey fly?”
“We will see.”
“Yes, we will.”
CHAPTER 40
They were about an hour and a half out of Tomás de Heres, and for most of that time Taylor had had her eyes closed, leaving Brodie to read the Helm Field Guides Birds of Venezuela on Taylor’s tablet. Most birds, he discovered, were not monogamous. He must have been a bird in his previous life. Maggie Taylor must have been a scarlet macaw who mated only once a year.
The refuel at TDH had taken longer than expected—like most things in Venezuela, except death—and it was now almost 8 A.M. The sky was cloudless and the sun was well over the horizon, lighting up the terrain, which was heavily forested now with not much evidence of human habitation.
Collins announced, “Kavak is about fifteen minutes.” He asked, “You still want to do some aerial sightseeing?”
Brodie called out, “We do.”
Taylor opened her eyes. “What’s happening?”
“Kavak, fifteen minutes.”
She nodded.
Collins said, “We’ll reach Auyán Tepui and Angel Falls first, and we can do a flyby. Kavak is on the far side of the tepui.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Brodie. He leaned toward Taylor and said softly, “We’ll do an