“What’s he doing now?” Crocker whispered to Mancini.
“He’s setting off fireworks. It’s about two minutes shy of the New Year.” With all the excitement, injuries, and activity, Crocker had lost track of time.
They watched rockets explode in the sky, drank champagne, and sang “Auld Lang Syne.”
After midnight, Crocker, Mancini, and Neto piled into the Toyota for a drive past the Unit 5000 base, which was a couple of miles west. All they could see from the narrow road was a high aluminum fence topped with barbed wire. Guarding the gate were Venezuelan soldiers armed with automatic rifles who were passing a bottle of whiskey.
Back at the house, Neto and Crocker examined the latest satellite photos. Neto pointed out that while all that had been built so far were two barracks and an admin building, construction on the airstrip, small control tower, and storage hangars was moving fast.
“How soon before the airstrip is operational?” Crocker asked.
“They’re already landing smaller planes on this dirt strip over here,” Neto answered, pointing to another photo. “But the longer asphalt one probably won’t be ready for another three or four months.”
Bush and field crickets chirped through the screened window and a string of firecrackers went off in the distance as Crocker sat down at a laptop in Señor Tomás’s office and typed out a report on the Brazilian raid for Captain Sutter back at command. He still owed him one about his arrest of the major in Afghanistan, too. He thought, Maybe I’ll get to that tomorrow.
The white stucco walls and tops of the old credenza, desk, and bookcase were covered with framed pictures of Tomás’s life and adventures-smiling in the back of a boat with a large sailfish in one hand and his arm around a beautiful woman; standing with a group of shorter Cuban-looking men; shooting skeet; waterskiing. One of the black dogs snored on the round faded rug near Crocker’s feet.
He was starting to stand when he heard something move outside and he stopped to listen. The dog lifted its big head for a moment, then subsided. Another dog barked in the distance. It stopped, and all he heard were crickets again and the leaves rattling in the breeze.
Crocker looked at the watch he’d received from Akiclass="underline" 0324. He was still wide awake.
He liked the house, the semitropical setting, the languid feeling in the air, the sense of being surrounded by memories. Projecting at least fifteen years into the future, he wondered what it would be like to retire to an outpost like this with Holly. If she didn’t want to come with him, he might try living there on his own. Maybe find a younger Venezuelan family to help him run the ranch. Maybe learn to play the saxophone, which he’d always wanted to do.
He saved his document, shut down the computer, and was walking down the hall to the bedroom when he heard a vehicle enter through the gate and stop. Footsteps hurried over the gravel. The dogs barked.
Someone was pounding on the front door. He heard Tomás shout in Spanish and ran to see what was going on. A single gunshot reverberated down the hall, followed by the horrible yelp of a dog in pain.
More men shouted from the bedroom area. Crocker ran back to the office, grabbed the old.38 revolver he’d seen in the top drawer of the desk, and checked to see that it was loaded. With his back pressed along the wall, he made his way to the front room.
From the hallway, he saw Tomás wrestling with two men wearing black ski masks. Tomás punched one of them in the face; the other grabbed him around the neck and threw him to the ground. While the two masked men kicked him in the chest and groin, another man with a big belly watched. He laughed, then leaned over to smack Tomás in the face with the big black pistol he was holding.
Crocker stepped forward and heard the wooden floor creak behind him. He stopped and pivoted into the barrels of two AK-47s pointed at his head. “Drop your gun,” a masked man growled in Spanish-accented English.
Crocker bent down to lay the pistol on the floor, then threw himself at the men’s knees. He was reaching around in the dark trying to locate one of the men when something smashed into the small of his back and a bolt of pain shot into his legs and up his spine to his head. His arms and legs went numb. Hands grabbed him by the neck and roughly pulled him to his feet.
He kicked and tried to pull away when something hit him in the stomach, forcing the air out of his diaphragm and striking the vagus nerve in his stomach, which made him want to throw up.
Gasping for breath and unable to summon the energy to fight back, Crocker was hog-tied at the wrists and ankles, his mouth was taped shut, and he was dragged outside past a dead dog and thrown into the back of a covered truck. He saw Cal beside him bleeding from a wound on his forehead. When he heard Mancini moaning, he tried to turn and look over his left shoulder, but a soldier kicked him back.
The truck they were in started moving and picking up speed. As Crocker sweated through his clothes, he counted the seconds in his head. Simultaneously he was trying to remember the route-down a straight road, right, up an incline, another right, past what smelled like a barn. They stopped when he reached 243-Mississippi.
Two soldiers dragged him across a dirt field and down fifteen concrete steps. A metal door creaked open. He was pushed into a little room that stunk of human waste and rot. It was completely dark and barely long enough to accommodate his long body.
Three soldiers wearing black masks entered. One used a large pair of scissors to cut his clothes off while another removed his watch, shoes, and the tape from his mouth. A third placed a large tin can filled with water on the floor, and all three left.
Crocker heard a muffled scream from another cell and thought it sounded like Cal. He wanted desperately to help him. His windowless room was completely devoid of light. With his wrists still tied behind his back, he measured the space with his leg and the side of his face. He found rough cement, a metal door with a one-inch gap at the bottom, human waste, and some bones in one corner. Nice way to start the new year, he said to himself as he saw a rat squeeze under the door and scurry around his cell. When it ran across his shoulder to his chest he shook it off, then used his knees to crush it against the wall.
Sitting naked with his back against the wall, he measured his breath. Square breathing, they called it in yoga-counting to four as he inhaled, holding his breath in his lungs for another four, exhaling in four, then counting to four before he inhaled again.
He tried to stay positive and chased out of his head all thoughts of long-term captivity, torture, and death.
They’ll come and get me. Something will happen. An opportunity will present itself, and I’ll strike.
Hours passed before three men in olive uniforms with black hoods over their heads entered. They dragged Crocker down a dark, narrow hallway to a larger room with bright lights. The men sat him in a metal chair facing a long metal table.
The light burned his eyes as he waited for perhaps an hour, with soldiers standing guard behind him. Then a door to his right opened and three more men filed in, also wearing black hoods but dressed in civilian clothes. The one with the big belly carried a gray folder, which he slapped onto the table as the other two took their seats on either side of him. The guards moved forward to stand parallel with Crocker. He noticed automatic handguns in the holsters on their waists.
The man with the big belly opened the folder, grabbed a pen from his pocket, clicked it, and looking up at Crocker asked in English, “Name?”
“Thomas Mansfield.”
“Name?”