‘Chili one, sir, Lieutenant Cody.’
The commander closed his eyes for a moment and his jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth. ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ he moaned. And a moment later: ‘Okay, get me GHQ, Saigon. I gotta tell the Old Man we just lost his son.’
LOS BOXES
The river had been broad and energetic at the beginning of the journey, but the jungle had gradually encroached on it until now, after four days, the tortured umbilicus between Madrango, the capital, and the forlorn outpost 160 miles away was a mere trickle. The ancient riverboat, scarred by years of heat and rain and piloted by a captain who could barely stay awake, chugged feebly up the last few cramped miles. Trees and ferns snapped at its gunwales and rattled its portholes. The old tub groaned as it fought the brush. The only passenger was an obese grotesque, his delicate face squinched by layers of fat, his faded blue eyes, tiny mouth and pointy nose lost in folds of flesh. He sat on a decrepit old lawn chair near the bow, knees and ankles tucked together, his chin pulled down, a white hat hugging his brow, his soft, dimpled hands clutching a white umbrella to shield him from the broiling sun. His white suit was skimpy, ill fitting and sweat-stained, and his unbuttoned shirt cuffs hung loose, for they no longer fit around his massive wrists.
His name was Randall Wilfred Pratt III, and he was with the U.S. State Department in Madrango, much to the chagrin of the embassy staff. On paper, Pratt had looked good, an honor graduate of Harvard whose father was a major contributor and leverage broker for the party in power, and a confidant of the president.
In person, Pratt III was an embarrassment to all, a closet case who came in the package, along with the donations and endorsements. Banished to the minute, unstable Central American country, he was kept discreetly out of sight and used only when some undesirable occasion arose. This job was perfect; it required no diplomacy at all.
For two days he had sat thus, all tacked in, waiting and watching for his first glimpse of a place so foul, so unforgiving, so terrifying by reputation, that even the judges who condemned men to its depths whispered its name. With each passing hour Pratt’s anxiety grew until it was a scream waiting to happen, a scream that could not be suppressed.
The old scow burst through the trees and the place rose like a specter before them, a towering stone bastion tortured by vines, smothered with damp green moss, and choked by the forest that entrapped it. Pratt was so undone, so utterly terrified by the sight that he -yelled out loud, a piercing cry that jarred the master of the boat awake and brought him immediately to his feet. Pratt quickly recovered. Turning with embarrassment, he dismissed the outburst with a wave of his chubby hand. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and furiously mopped his face.
My God, he thought, was Hatcher still alive? And if so, was he sane enough to be worth this trip?
HATCHER
Christian Hatcher had been there for three years, two months and twenty-seven days — 1,183 days, to be exact. Nobody in Los Boxes knew his real name, which was not uncommon; nobody in Los Boxes knew anybody’s real name. To be sentenced here was to be sentenced to oblivion.
There was no escape from Los Boxes. It loomed like an apparition from the jungle floor, encircled by two hundred miles of steamy jungle as deadly as it was verdant, an emerald paradise whose green canopy concealed a floor crawling with venomous snakes, jaguars and wild hogs, pocked with quicksand bogs, and teeming with vines that grew so fast in the hot, fertile forest that a man could be strangled by them as he slept. There were no paths here; the jungle devoured them in hours.
Centuries-old vines entwined the crumbling citadel and seemed to hold it together. Inside, there were 212 rooms carved from dirt and stone, each ten feet square and eight feet high, and each lit by a single bulb, the electricity supplied by an aged and unreliable generator. The barred windows were hardly more than slivers in the wall, barely wide enough for a man to get through. The only adversary here was nature. Nobody could remember why this fortress had been built, but it had served as a political prison for more than a century, surviving one feeble government after another. In Madrango its name was whispered in fear.
There were no records of names or arrival dates. A new inmate was simply assigned a box and its number became his identity.
Three years, two months and twenty-seven days ago, Hatcher had become no. 127.
The rules of Los Boxes were simple: You did your work, you never spoke to another prisoner. That was it.
Nobody refused to work, it was the only way to get outside, where there was fresh air and exercise. Those who did refuse, out of obstinacy or rebellion, were locked away in their box and forgotten.
If one prisoner spoke to another, the guards simply cut out his tongue.
There were no second chances here; Los Boxes was ferociously expedient.
The guards — there were only six — had once been inmates themselves. When the
