Now that he had noticed them, he wondered if he should continue looking for poison dart frogs.
"What's going on up there?" Tomlinson was standing in the shade of a mangrove, hands on hips, his back to Ford.
Ford followed Tomlinson's gaze to the bluff above the lake a half mile away. From where they stood, with volcanoes seeping pale smoke in the background and the lake pouring a silver waterfall into the jungle below, the bluff was a spectacular sight. But Tomlinson wasn't enjoying the view. There were men on the bluff. Soldiers, but other men, too. Several of the men were naked. One wore baggy white shorts. All of them walked oddly, and Ford realized it was because their hands were tied behind their backs.
"Hey, what are those guys going to do?"
Ford said nothing, just watched as the soldiers lined the men on the high ledge above the lake. He knew what they were going to do.
Tomlinson said, "That one soldier's Zacul, isn't it? Yeah, that's Zacul. See how he moves—like he's got batteries in him. He's a cocaine freak, man. I could smell their kitchens up there by the digs. Gas and ether. You can always spot a coke freak." Then Tomlinson said, "Oh, my God."
Zacul was standing in front of one of the naked men, his right arm held straight out. The naked maTi was small with long black hair, and Ford guessed it was Creno, the Miskito Indian. Zacul's arm bounced and Creno tumbled backward off the bluff, hitting the rocks like a rag doll before disappearing behind the trees, into the lake.
A couple of seconds later, the echo of a gunshot reached them.
Ford began to walk slowly toward the bluff, as if ready to charge Zacul—as if that would help. "You don't see the boy up there, do you? Anyone Jake's size? That guy in the white underwear is the doctor, but I don't see any kids—"
Tomlinson said in a whisper, "My God, he shot another one. He's going to shoot them all."
Ford stopped walking. "Yeah, I think he is."
The prisoners were on their knees now. Or on their bellies, trying to squirm away. Zacul shot them in the head one after another, and soldiers came behind him to kick eight more bodies off the bluff. Amazingly, some of the victims kicked wildly as they fell, still conscious despite the head wounds. Then the only one left was the young doctor, but Zacul kept the gun at his side. The doctor was on his knees, rocking back and forth, and Zacul seemed to be talking to him. Ford was about to say "He'll sign that paper now," but didn't have the words out when the doctor got slowly to his feet, hesitated, then took a long step and threw himself off the ledge. He fell freely for a microsecond then hit buttocks-first on a jagged rock outcrop before tumbling down the wall and out of sight.
Tomlinson released a long breath, like a groan of pain.
Ford said, "We can't let Zacul or anyone else know that we've seen this."
Tomlinson dropped to his knees in the sand, head down, and made a deep primal grunting noise: a sob.
Ford twisted a branch off a mangrove tree and began to strip off leaves. From his pocket, he took the two small red frogs, released them, then waded into the lagoon. With the branch, he penned a botete then flung it up onto the beach with his hands. He caught six more before he realized Tomlinson was standing in the water watching him, his face still pale. "You want me to help, man?"
"No."
"I don't know what you're doing, but—"
"Just walk down the beach and pick up some shells. Some nice pretty shells so we can show them to that maniac if he wants to know what we were doing down here. But stay away from this lagoon unless you want me to lie to you again. ..."
NINETEEN
Ford caught ten of the fish and worked on them in the shade of the mangroves. Their skin was as leathery as melon rind and he used a sharp stick, ripping them open from the anus. But then he found a couple of razor clams that were better for cutting.
Ford laid back the bellies of the fish, then cut out the small livers and gall bladders as carefully as he could. Several of the fish were gravid, and he added a few of the eggs to the pile.
Tomlinson came up behind him, throwing a shadow. "I've seen people eat those kind of fish. Or fish kind of like that, I'm almost sure. In New Jersey they call them sea squab. I think they were called fugu fish in Japan. They keep them alive in the markets." There was the timbre of relief in his voice, as if Ford couldn't be planning anything that bad.
"Do you know what they call people who eat fish from this family?"
Tomlinson shook his head. When Ford said, "They call them fools," Tomlinson turned without comment and walked away.
Ford tore a piece from his shirt, wrapped the entrails, then threw the dead fish far out into the lagoon.
They followed the path back toward the camp and stopped where it swept closest to the bluff. They were above the lake and could see some of the bodies still floating. The young doctor was facedown, his arms thrown out, his legs submerged and spread. The water was clear and very blue, and it added to the impression that the doctor had somehow been frozen in freefall, trapped in blue space.
They could see something else, too: dark torpedo shapes that appeared small from that distance, spiraling up through the shafts of sunlight which pierced the depths. They were sharks; dozens of them. When the sharks broached and listed to feed, the corpses bobbed like corks, trailing rust-colored stains that marked the trajectories of the feeding fish: red contrails on the pale void.
They stood watching for a short time, saying nothing, then Tomlinson said, "He went brave, that doctor. I wish his schoolmates could have seen him. The man was no coward. Jumped off the cliff rather than work for Zacul."
Ford suspected the doctor had probably jumped out of fear of being shot, but either way it had taken courage. He said nothing.
Back at their hut, Tomlinson piled the seashells outside the door as Ford said, "I'm going to pay a visit to the chef." Tomlinson, who still looked shaken, very weary, said he would come along; that he might be able to provide a diversion. When
Ford said he couldn't, Tomlinson insisted. "Look, man, what we saw upset me, okay? But I'm not an invalid."
"Then what you can do is try and find a leverage bar—-a strong limb or something—we can use to pry up the lip of the stockade. Hide it in the weeds. We may need it tonight."
Tomlinson said, "I feel like I'm going to throw up."
Ford said, "In the next few hours there's going to be a lot of that going around."
Oscar was alone in the officers' kitchen, peeling potatoes. He looked up expectantly when Ford came through the screen door. Was there something the Señor required? Some way he could be of service? Ford said that he had come because the fish prepared for his lunch was superb; that he wished to watch a master at work if it was possible.
Oscar beamed, looking down at the pile of potatoes. "It is true," he said in Spanish, "that I once trained in the very best kitchens of Masagua City. But out here, with these limited facilities, my work has suffered," looking rather sad as he made this sly request for reassurance.