Authors: Roxanne St. Claire
still hadn’t spoken to Navarro himself. But Dan had enough cash on him to buy a boat if they
had to.
“Calling it a town is generous,” Dan said dryly as they rumbled down the dirt road and
passed yet another Catholic church and at least the twelfth statue of Simón Bolívar they’d
seen since their plane landed.
He parked at a break in the buildings, where fruit and food stands lined the road, checking
the address on his makeshift map. “Let’s go find Señor Navarro. I think our luck is holding.”
She groaned. “What is
with
you? Don’t tempt the universe like that.”
“I like tempting the universe.” He took her hand as she came around the back, slipped his
arm around her, and pulled her close. “It’s gonna be a cake—”
She shut him up with a long, slow kiss. “Don’t say it.”
“Walk,” he finished. At her look, he gave her a little nudge. “
Walk
forward. To that chicken
spit with roasted plaintains. I’m hungry.”
They ate broiled chicken wrapped in newspapers as they walked by the vendors, checking
the little buildings to find the address they had for Jose Navarro.
A young Indian boy came scampering up to Maggie. “Do you need a boat, lady?”
They glanced at each other, then the boy.
“Tourists want to see the lightning!” he continued with a wide smile. “I can take you to the
lake before the lightning starts.”
Dan reached into his pocket for change. “We’re looking for Jose Navarro. Do you know
him?”
“He lives there.” He pointed to a red wooden structure across the street. “But he’s been
gone for five, six days.”
Dan ignored Maggie’s “I told you not to jinx us” look and checked his phone.
No Service
. It
was spotty here, at best.
“He went to find more tourist business,” the boy said, his accented English fairly easy to
understand.
“We do need a boat,” Dan said, deciding that Navarro might never materialize. “Can I rent
yours?”
The boy shook his head. “No, sir. No rental. But I will take you to the lake, because you
will never find it without me. I make the trip every day. I know the best waters, the fastest
route. There are several ways on the river.” He made wiggling motion with his hand. “Several,
uh, trib… trib . . .”
“Tributaries?” Maggie offered.
He nodded. “Yes. You get lost without a guide. I’ll take you for American cash.” At Dan’s
hesitation, he said again, “I take tourists all the time to see the lightning.”
“What’s the lightning?” Maggie asked.
“Catatumbo lightning.” The boy opened and closed his hands as if flashing a light. “Big,
bright light in the sky. Red and purple. All the tourists want to see it. My boat is very sturdy.
Very fast.”
“Are you sure Jose Navarro is gone?” The kid could be trying to muscle in on the little
business they got down here.
“Go knock on his door. If he doesn’t come out, I’ll take you anywhere you want on the
lake. I promise lightning tonight. The weather is perfect, and we haven’t had any for five
nights.” He pointed to the opposite end of the town. “My boat is right on the river. Very
comfortable. Not expensive.” He added a grin. “Less than two hours to the lake.”
“We need to go to a specific location,” Dan said.
“The lightning is everywhere,” the boy replied. “But I take you wherever you want to go.”
“Let me try Navarro first. Wait here, Maggie.”
He knocked on the red shanty and an older woman selling fruit shook her head and yelled,
“Él ha ido!”
He’s gone.
“Let’s give the kid a chance,” he said to Maggie when he returned. “Otherwise we’re going
to end up spending the night here.”
Two hours and one almost catastrophic motor breakdown later that their young driver,
Javier, managed to fix, they were still meandering down a winding river that cut through the
hills and jungle.
Dan pulled his shirt over his head and stuffed it into the bag between them in the tiny
fishing boat. “According to the GPS, we’re almost at the lake. It’ll be cooler on open water.”
Across from him, Maggie dropped her head back, looking up at the sky and the occasional
tree that hung over the river. “What’s the lightning he was talking about again?”
“Catatumbo lightning,” Dan said. “I’ve only seen it once. It’s a huge cloud-to-cloud display
over the lake, something to do with the petroleum in the water causing an accumulation of
methane in the ozone. It’s pretty, but my memory says it happens after midnight and can be
followed by hours of torrential downpour. So God willing, we’ll be there and back before the
show.”
He took out his phone again, but there wasn’t even a flicker of service. “I’d like to find out
how it went with Lola at the FBI, but I can’t get a signal.”
“What do you think is going to happen there? She was just going to give them a description
of her attacker, right?”
“Oh, we had a little extra surprise planned with the SAC, Thomas Vincenze. That’s what
we were talking about when you woke up.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“Evidently Omnibus isn’t quite as clean as we first thought.”
“Drugs?”
“No, nothing that serious. Fraudulent insurance claims. She’s had quite a few, and they’ve
been lucrative. And Con Xenakis may be meeting Lucy sooner than he thinks, because he’s
done more than a few deals to help Ms. James ‘recover’ items that were ‘lost’ by her cargo
company. If they can find him, they’ll bring him in, too.”
“So Con and Lola may be working together, and lied to us.” She gestured in the direction of
the lake. “And we’re following directions we got from them.”
“True, but why would they send us to the wrong place? Just to get us off their case? I don’t
think either of them is that smart, or has anything to gain by it. Plus, someone did cut Lola up
pretty bad. Xenakis may be an unprincipled thief and mercenary, but I don’t get the
impression he’s vicious.”
“There’s the lake!” the boy announced, rocking the boat as he stood. He looked over his
shoulder and grinned at them. “Javi got you here!”
“Step it up, Javi,” Dan said, rolling his hands to indicate the boat moving faster. “We want
to leave before nightfall.”
Javi looked baffled. “You miss the lightning, then. I’ll wait with you. It’s no problem,
señor.”
“Not necessary. Just move.”
Maracaibo wasn’t technically a lake but a fat bay about a hundred miles long and nearly as
wide. In this southwestern corner, far from the oil rigs in the north, the water was purer and
the villages tiny. A few huts peppered the shore, with some farmers and locals milling about.
Across from Dan, Maggie took it all in, occasionally lifting her camera to take a shot like
any other tourist.
“Twenty-five kilometers, northeast,” Dan told Javi, glancing at the GPS and then gauging
the light. They still had time to get there, explore, and make it back to the Jeep. He could get
them to San Carlos in the dark.
“Look!” Maggie pointed to a shell-colored dolphin that leaped next to them.
“A pink dolphin,” Javi hollered over the revving motor as they picked up speed. “That’s
very good luck!”
She loved that, excitedly taking pictures as the dolphin leaped next to the boat. Then she
turned to Dan, her eyes bright. “I feel really good about this. This is a really good sign.”
Dan leaned over and kissed her. “That’s my sign,” he said, barely loud enough to be heard
over the motor. “For luck.”
Camera in hand, she wrapped her arm around his neck and pulled him closer. She kissed
him back with much more passion than he’d offered, parting her lips. With her free hand, she
pressed against his bare chest, caressing it as she deepened the kiss.
“Oh, you’re on your honeymoon!” Javi exclaimed.
They parted reluctantly. “No,” they said in unison.
But Javi shook his head in disbelief. “You’re going to a
palafito
for the wedding night,
sí?
“
“Not the night, Javi,” Dan said. “Just an hour, then we head back.”
“What’s a
palafito?
” Maggie asked softly.
“A stilt house.” Dan replied. “And spending the night in one alone with you wouldn’t be
the worst thing that ever happened.”
Her look said she agreed.
“But we’ll find a nice hotel in San Carlos,” he promised. “With no live chickens.”
They held hands as they bounced over the gentle waves, the late afternoon sun finally far
enough behind the mountains and the wind strong enough so that they felt cool for the first
time since the plane had landed.
And then, on the horizon, Dan saw a small structure on stilts in the exact location that the
GPS was sending them.
“You see!” Javi pointed at the spot. “A
palafito!
“
The closer they got, the more Dan felt certain it was deserted, and absolutely on top of the
coordinates, right down to the seconds in either direction. It rose from the water on weathered,
wooden stilts with a covered porch that faced west, what looked like one room under a tarred
roof, its sides lined with wide windows and a tiny dock. Piping ran down from the house right
into the water.
Javi motored up next to the dock, where Dan tied the boat and instructed Javi to wait for
them. “You go first,” he said to Maggie, giving her a boost.
She hoisted herself up and Dan grabbed the duffel, shouldering it as he climbed onto the
dock. As he passed Javi, he saw the kid eye the gun in his holster.
“Don’t move from this spot,” Dan repeated.
The response was another glance at the gun and a solemn nod.
“It looks empty,” Maggie said, already headed to the ladder that led up ten feet to the patio.
She started up, and Dan followed. At the top was a six-foot-wide opening to one large room,
and an enclosure around a closet that held a toilet and sink.
Dan crossed the room, testing the wooden floor and checking for hollow areas where
something might be hidden, heading toward a pile of canvas in the back.
“Anything?” she asked.
“It’s a hammock, I think. Yeah.” He flipped it around in his hands. “This would be the
furniture.”
He started his search, carefully tapping boards, opening the single cabinet built into the
wall, examining the ceiling, completely concentrating until he heard a distant splash. He
pivoted and darted to the front, pulling his gun. Javi was rowing like crazy, and well out of
range of a safe shot.
“He thinks we want to be alone,” Maggie said, putting her hand on Dan’s arm so he didn’t
shoot.
“Or someone paid more than we did, and told him to leave us wherever he was taking us.”
Either way, they were stranded.
Alonso Jimenez heard the distant ring of a phone. Blinking away sleep he reached for the tiny
device that he used to communicate with one person only. And he’d been trained not to use
names.
“Sí?”
“I’ve found him. I’ve found the boy.”
The boy who wasn’t his grandson. “Bring him to me.”
“It won’t be easy, Viejo.”
More, always more, with this one. “Then take a wrench,
bárbaro!
“
“Easy, old man.”
Alonso picked up the condescension in the voice. This one knew who had control now. He
closed his eyes and leaned back. Was it time to give up? Did those years in prison really suck
the juice from his heart? Was he impotent in all ways, now?
“Just bring me the boy,” he said. “And tell me you’ve got a plan for his mother and father.”
“The plan is well under way by now.”
“And the shipment? Did it go?”
The silence was too long.
“Did it?” he demanded.
“We’re having some problems on this end.”
Once he lost control, he lost everything. And it seemed . . . he’d lost everything. “So fix
them.” The command was . . . impotent.
A man without power was no man at all. And a Venezuelan man without power might as
well be dead. He closed the phone and set it on the table next to his cold bowl of
arroz con
leche
.
A real man would go to that warehouse now.
Mañana.
He would go to the warehouse tomorrow. First, he would sleep some more in
preparation for his last act of revenge.
THEY WERE OUT there like proverbial sitting ducks, especially since there was no satellite
signal. They were so vulnerable, surrounded by thirty miles of lake in one direction and fifty
in the other, the mountains of Venezuela the only sight of land they had. And the three flimsy
walls—two of which were only three feet high— and bamboo roof with gaping holes would
provide little shelter from the coming rain.
Maggie settled against a wide beam, her bare feet peeking out from khaki cargo pants, her
white T-shirt sticking to her skin, as Dan tried again in vain to get a call through to the pilots
or Miami. Nothing.
He finally stopped pacing, trying various spots for satellite reception. “We’re stuck.”
“Maybe Javi will come back for us in the morning,” she suggested.
“Maybe whoever paid Javi to strand us out here will come back and try to kill us.”
She shot him a look. “I realize you’re wired to think that way, but who knows we’re here?”
“Whoever knows about the fortunes, and gave us bogus information. Ramon could have
been lying about reading the clues. Con and Lola could have cooked up the whole thing to get
us off their backs. The FBI notes could have been wrong. People know we’re here—we just