an option, but maybe there’d be a better time and place to try it. Like at night, if they lived that long. Or… they could do what they’d come here to do—what he would have done in the Hen House if Mercer had been there: talk to the man and see if he had a shred of Captain Mercer left in him, or a memory of the soldier that Al Simpson had seen in basic training. Or better yet, maybe there was something left of the kid from San Diego. If none of that was true, then Brodie and Taylor had one card left—the good cop card that almost always worked with a criminal. Tell us, Kyle, what happened to make you do that? Or, Who made you do that? Was it Brendan Worley? Tell us about that.
Or Brodie was putting too much faith in his powers of persuasion and bullshit.
They kept walking, and Brodie could see that Taylor was starting to drag.
They came to a small clearing where an open-sided hut stood, and in the hut were three Pemón men sitting on logs around a long table, cleaning fish and tossing the guts into plastic pails. The Pemón stopped what they were doing and stared at Brodie and Taylor as they approached.
Brodie saw bottled water on the table and called out, “Agua! Por favor!”
One of the Pemón took a bottle of water, stood, and came toward Brodie and Taylor.
Emilio barked something at the man, and he stopped and looked at the two prisoners, then back at Emilio, who repeated his command. The man went back to his fish-gutting.
Brodie whispered to Taylor, “Faint.”
Taylor shook her head. “You faint.”
Well, tough is good. But heatstroke, as he and Taylor recalled from their respective deserts, could kill you. Maybe that’s what she wanted.
Emilio continued on the path and one of the men behind them shouted, “Caminad!”
The jungle path wound through tall trees that blocked the sunlight, and the air was thick with the smell of decomposing vegetation.
Brodie could hear the crack of single-round shots, so Mercer’s men were now practicing marksmanship instead of having fun mowing down targets on full automatic. So what was this camp all about? They were close to an answer.
They approached a clearing with a few huts around the perimeter, and also a fire pit in the middle where Pemón women were burning what appeared to be food scraps and other garbage, and what smelled like raw shit. Another Pemón woman was sweeping out one of the huts. So apparently Captain Mercer taught and practiced good field sanitation, meaning he hadn’t gone completely off the rails, so hopefully they wouldn’t meet Mercer in a dark room filled with human skulls.
The Pemón women, who probably also worked in Kavak, glanced at the two outsiders, who were obviously prisoners. One of them looked closely at Taylor, and if Brodie could read minds as well as he could read faces, then the woman was thinking, Oh, that poor pretty girl. What they will do to her.
Brodie felt his gut tighten.
Ahead, Brodie saw more huts and what looked like a long, open-sided mess hall, and he had the sense that they were reaching the center of camp, and thus whatever it was that passed for a headquarters building. He pictured Kyle Mercer, el comandante, standing in front of the HQ building, waiting for them. He wondered if Mercer had his own flag flying on a pole—a large nut would be appropriate.
Emilio turned off the path and onto a much narrower trail that was hemmed in by thick growth. Brodie and Taylor exchanged glances, and kept walking, with Brodie taking the lead.
At the end of the trail was a small bamboo hut with no visible windows, and Brodie guessed it was the one building that every military facility needed—the stockade.
Emilio opened the small door, motioning for his prisoners to enter.
Brodie went first, ducking his head as he entered, followed by Taylor. They found themselves in a dark, fetid room that smelled faintly of urine, sweat, feces, and fear. The floor was covered with dried palm fronds and in the middle of the room was a thick log, about six feet long, stretching nearly wall to wall.
Emilio entered and pointed. “Sentad.” Sit.
Brodie and Taylor stepped over the log and sat with their backs to the wall, and Brodie noticed now in the dim light that two chains were bolted to the log, and at the ends of the chains were leg shackles and open padlocks.