“You didn’t say—”
“Thank you. I’ll take that as a no. The two of you exceeded your instructions and then, what? He kicked your asses, I suppose?”
Jones fidgeted with eyes downcast. Sutter was fuming, anger radiating from his body like the stench of garbage that surrounded him, but he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut.
“Right,” Downey continued. “So, he kicked your asses for you. Knocked you both unconscious, I presume, since your report is hours late. And from the way you stink, I’d guess he dropped you down a manhole. Were you floating in the sewer all this time, ladies?”
Nothing.
“I can’t hear you.”
The crunching sound from Sutter had to be grinding teeth. His face was red enough to fit a stroke victim. Beside him, Jones reluctantly answered, “A garbage Dumpster, sir.”
“How’s that?”
“He put us in a Dumpster, sir, not down a manhole.”
“I’m relieved,” Downey said. “I don’t think that I could stand another load of shit from either one of you.”
“No, sir,” Jones answered.
“Will you shut up!” Sutter hissed.
“I’m gravely disappointed in the pair of you,” Downey announced. “You’ve turned a simple job into a screwup that’s left the Company exposed on levels you don’t even understand. You wouldn’t catch me lighting any candles if the mark had bled you out instead of marinating you in garbage. Are we clear?”
Apparently, since neither of the smelly two replied.
“My choices, broadly speaking, are to can your asses on the spot or to send you back to Langley for retraining and potential reassignment. That’s if I report your sorry asses for the mess you’ve made.”
“And if you don’t? Sir?” There was something close to hope in Sutter’s surly voice.
“You must redeem yourselves,” Downey said.
“How can we do that?”
“Begin by thinking for a change. What do you think might change my mood, right now?”
“Locate the mark!” Jones said, pleased with himself despite his reek.
“And…?”
“And…trace him to his contact?” Sutter asked.
“At which time,” Downey prodded, “you would…?”
That one stumped them for a moment, until Sutter hit upon the obvious. “We take ’em out,” he said. “Use locals if we can. No comebacks on the Company.”
“Be careful, gentlemen, and shower thoroughly before you start, for God’s sake. I’ll expect good news within…shall we say, forty-eight hours?”
“Yes, sir.” A two-man chorus.
“If you can’t manage that, I suggest you keep going. Find a hole and burrow deep. Pray I don’t find you alive.”
Cuiabá, Brazil
THE RED-HAIRED PILOT beat her own best ETA by forty minutes, even after bucking killer turbulence over the Serra Formosa. Bolan tipped her thirty percent of her fee and got an inkling of a smile in return before she left him to fuel the plane for her return trip to Belém.
When Bolan turned, hefting his bags, he saw Marta Enriquez standing in the shadow of the airstrip’s terminal. She raised a hand and Bolan nodded in return, while scanning left and right for any sign of watchers in the neighborhood. He’d missed them back in San Diego, and he was determined not to make the same mistake again.
This time around, his life depended on it.
Bolan crossed the tarmac and a strip of poorly tended grass to reach the terminal. He didn’t go inside, because the country’s rural landing strips demanded nothing in the way of customs declarations or security procedures. It was why he’d gone the charter route, instead of booking a commercial flight.
Enriquez put on a smile to greet him, saying, “I was worried that you wouldn’t come.”
“I’m here. You have a car?”
“This way.” She eyed his bags. “May I…?”
“No, thanks.”
She led him to the far side of the small building and a bare-dirt parking lot of sorts. Three vehicles stood baking in the sunshine, the woman’s four-door model Bolan didn’t recognize. Something domestic, he decided, patterned on some U.S. model from the 1960s.
Bolan put his bags in the back seat and let himself into the oven on wheels. The sedan’s air-conditioning gave out asthmatic wheezing sounds, and Enriquez left the windows down, raising her voice as she accelerated on the highway to Cuiabá.
“Were there any difficulties on your trip?” she asked.
“I had a welcoming committee in Belém,” Bolan replied.
“Oh, yes?” She sounded nervous.
“A guy from the U.S. embassy. He doesn’t like the company I’m keeping lately.”
“Oh?” Her eyes flicked back and forth between the road and Bolan’s face.
He didn’t feel like tiptoeing around it. “Did you know you had a tail in San Diego?”
“Tail?”
“That you were being shadowed. Watched.”
The horrified expression on her face answered his question well before she found her voice. “I didn’t know. I promise you.”
“You put them onto me, and they were waiting when I touched down in Belém.”
“What did they say?” she asked.
He gambled on the truth. “They called you ‘a subject of interest’ and told me to leave you alone, go back to the States, this and that.”
“But you came anyway.”
“I like to judge things for myself,” Bolan replied.
“Did they say anything about Na—About Dr. Weiss?”
It wasn’t the first time she’d caught herself speaking of Bones in a familiar way. Or was that intimate? Bolan couldn’t swear the question was relevant to his mission, but it might have some bearing on how much he trusted the woman.
“He wasn’t mentioned.”
“Oh? Perhaps they just want me.”
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“I’ve been involved in antigovernment protests since they began to drive my people off the land.”
“That’s a domestic problem,” Bolan said. He guessed the answer to his next question before he spoke, but asked it anyway. “What does it have to do with Washington?”
“Your country has involved itself in Latin American matters for two hundred years, from the Monroe Doctrine and the Panama canal to Noriega and the Contras. Some say Washington supports regimes that favor U.S. businesses.”
“And what do you say?” Bolan prodded.
“Dr. Weiss needs help,” she said. “Soon, it may be too late. If you’re his friend, please help him.”
“First, I have to find him.”
“I will show you where he is,” she said.
“That wasn’t part of the agreement,” he reminded her.
“How else will you locate him?” Enriquez asked.
“Technology. You