The Lotus Eaters

at the soldier who stood leaning against the car, head hung in sorrow.

He stood that way, weeping, for only a few minutes before hurt changed to a cold, inhuman fury. Carrera turned around and walked to the broken legged gunman. By the sub-machine gun lying several meters away, Carrera knew that the militiaman had searched and disarmed the gunman. He told the militiaman 'Get me an iron bar or a big stick.'

'Si, Senor, I have a crowbar in my house.'

'Perfect.'

When the militiaman returned with the crowbar, Carrera turned over his Pound SMG, took the crowbar and slapped his left palm several times. He ignored the pain emanating from his injured shoulder. Some pains can overwhelm others. He said to the gunman, 'You killed my friend.'

Two swings and the Santandern's knees shattered. Carrera then bent down and, putting the crowbar on the ground, grabbed each leg in turn and twisted it. The gunman arched his back and shrieked. When he tried to bend over to reach his crushed knees, Carrera let him. Then he picked up the crowbar and broke each forearm. Several distinct blows so destroyed the Santandern's arms that his hands flopped uselessly in the breeze. The Santandern fainted. Carrera sent the militiaman for smelling salts.

While he waited, Carrera lit a cigarette. Two police in a squad car arrived on the scene, followed by an ambulance. The policemen took a fire extinguisher to smother the flames, while one of them hauled out the bodies of the two guards in the back seat. When the ambulance crew went for the Santandern lying motionless on the road, Carrera waived them away. 'See what you can do for my men,' he said, even though he knew there was nothing that could be done.

The stretcher bearers looked at Carrera's uniform and insignia of rank. They left the Santandern where he lay.

The smelling salts not arriving quickly, Carrera borrowed two ampoules from the ambulance. These he crushed and held under the Santandern's nose. The gunman choked and sputtered, then began to moan. The militiaman returned without the salts.

With a kindly voice, Carrera told the militiaman, 'Thank you. It's all right. I don't need them anymore. And thank you, too, for saving my life. That was quick thinking, Private . . . ?'

'Pitti, Senor. Private Hector. 6th Mechanized Infantry Tercio.'

'Again, thank you, Corporal Pitti,' Carrera said. Pitti's eyes widened.

Once the Santandern was again wide awake and shrieking, Carrera placed himself on the man's left side and methodically broke all of right side ribs, moving each blow up a bit higher than the one before. Some took more than one blow before he felt the rib give way. Then Carrera walked around to the gunman's right side. The militiaman and the police winced with each blow, but could not leave until dismissed. As a practical matter, given who and what Carrera was in Balboa, they couldn't object either. Most of the eyewitnesses left when the first of the gunman's bones was driven through his skin, blood spurting across the asphalt, and he began to scream like a young girl. Once, when the Santandern almost stopped reacting to the pain, Carrera took the crowbar by the hooked end, jammed the other end into the assassin's abdomen, dug around, twisted twice, and pulled. At the sight of the greasy-looking, bluish intestine, the older of the two policemen promptly threw up next to the yellow painted squad car. The Santandern screamed anew, then turned his head to one side and vomited as well. Flies began to settle on the loop of intestine almost as soon as it appeared.

It took the Santandern almost thirty agonized minutes to die. When Carrera finally grew tired, and became aware once more of the pain in his shoulder, he stood over the Santandern, took a last look as Mitchell, still laying beside the smoldering Phaeton, and brought his crowbar down, again and again, until the man's head was a shapeless lump, brains leaking out onto the roadway for the ants.

When the beating was done, Carrera walked over to Whitley's body and pulled out his own penis to urinate on the corpse.

That done, he reclothed himself and turned to the policemen. 'See if there's any ID on the Gringo-looking one. Photograph his corpse and print him. Get a blood sample. Then feed them all to the dogs!' he ordered, in a voice that permitted no questioning. Turning, he asked of the ambulance crew, 'Could you do something about my shoulder? I think it's broken.'

* * *

Crouching under a table at a small roadside cafe about a hundred and fifty meters down the road, Endara witnessed the entire incident, including the beating. He left the scene before he could be questioned by the police. Thereafter, telling his uncle, the rump president, that he was seriously underestimating the nature of the opposition, Endara began to make arrangements to leave Balboa for healthier climes. When he arrived in Santa Josefina, a week later, he claimed to be a political refugee.

Raul Parilla never found out why his receptionist left for parts unknown following the attempt on Carrera's life. However, she and Endara were often seen together in the nightclubs and restaurants of the capital of Santa Josefina.

Mitchell was buried with honors in a small part of the Casa Linda grounds Carrera set aside as a cemetery. His wife, Chica, great with child, and Lourdes held each other and wept while the priest went through the ceremony. Carrera just stood with one of his hands clenched behind his back in pain and fury. The other arm was immobilized by the cast that held the shoulder. The Sergeant Major and the rest of Carrera's personal staff made up the pallbearer detail and firing squad.

Within three days of Mitchell's murder a diplomatic pouch containing weapons and munitions, along with some fifteen new Embassy personnel, arrived in the Balboan Embassy in Santander. Within a few days of that, three Balboans of the 14th Tercio (Operaciones Especiales) were dead, as were eleven bodyguards of various Cartel members in Belalcazar.

No drug lords were killed, unfortunately. However, all took to their most suburban palaces for protection. The remaining nine unwounded 14th Tercio men began gathering intelligence on those same palaces. They also, with the replacements for the wounded and dead, undertook some more sanguine operations.

As the drug war spread to Santander, it waned somewhat in Balboa. Although Carrera's marksmanship and rage had made certain that no useful intelligence would be forthcoming from those who had tried to kill him, there were still the two bombers captured by Alvarez.