It takes three or four minutes uphill and around a bend before we reach the crest where Julio’s helper is still standing, looking toward the sea in the distance. As we approach, he’s crouching, blending into some low jungle foliage at the side of the road.
He speaks to Julio in Spanish and holds up two fingers. He points off in the distance. “Dos hombres fuera de la casa.”
Adam and I settle in next to them. I can see that from this point the jungle declines gently toward a cove and some rocky bluffs on the coast about a mile away. A little to the north, perhaps a half mile from where we stand, is a sizable clearing in the jungle, red clay and naked limestone scraped clean, like a bald spot in a sea of green. I would guess it is several acres in size. Parked on it is an assortment of trash, wrecked-out vehicles and abandoned tires, some larger trucks, old Fords and Chevys, one with a rusted crane on the back that looks like it could be an antique.
The ground is spotted with empty fifty-gallon drums corroding in the sun, some of them dented and tipped on their sides. Splotches of darkness spread from the yawning open ends of these into the soil, the last contents leaking out onto the ground.
On the far side, closest to the bluffs and the sea is a construction trailer, white sides and a flat metal roof with an air conditioner on it, ripples of heat rising from this.
Out in front of the trailer, a few large truck tires laid on their sides with pieces of plywood thrown over them form a crude wooden deck in front of the door that faces this way.
Julio finishes talking to his assistant, then swivels around on his haunches to translate for Adam and me.
“This es a road they don’t use,” he says. “Otra. Over there.” He points. “The other road. They use.”
I lift the field glasses to my eyes and adjust them. On the other side, farther to the north, a winding stretch of brownish red soil wends its way back into the jungle and disappears around a curve.
“My man says two of them are outside the house. The trailer. They are armed.”
I bring the glasses back to my eyes and check it out. I see nothing moving around the trailer. The cars parked closest to it appear to be empty. With the sun now behind us, anyone outside is likely to be around in back of the trailer, in the shade, where we can’t see them.
“We’ll stay here for a few minutes,” says Adam. “It’s getting hot.” He takes off his hat, one of those floppy safari things with a broad canvas brim, then crunches it up and uses it to wipe his forehead.
Julio hands him a bottle of water. Adam uncaps it, takes a drink, and immediately spits it out. “It’s hot,” he says.
Julio shrugs as if to say, “That’s all I’ve got.”
Adam pours the rest over the back of his head and lets it drip down onto the jungle vegetation at his feet, then opens the hat up and puts it back on his head.
“There.”
When I look, Julio is back over my shoulder.
I bring the glasses back to my eyes and train them at the trailer. From the back side a man walks this way, what looks like a short assault rifle of some kind slung from one shoulder, muzzle pointed at the ground. Just as he rounds the corner on the front side of the trailer, the door opens and another man steps out onto the plywood step in front.
I squint into the glasses to make him out. He turns his body away from me just as I focus, awkwardly closing the door with one hand. I notice there is no arm coming out of the other sleeve of his shirt.
When he turns around again I realize why. His arm is bandaged up against his body, shoring up the broken ribs I gave Hector Saldado when I hit him with the tire iron.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“ Are you sure?” says Adam.
“In the flesh,” I tell him. “I was watching the sharp edge of the razor most of the time, but I’m not likely to forget that face anytime soon.”
Adam takes a look and I hand my field glasses to Julio, who focuses on him and watches, then hands the glasses back to me. “He lose an arm?” he says.
“In a manner of speaking.” I watch as Saldado steps down from the plywood platform, wrestles a cigarette one-handed from a pack in his shirt pocket, then lights it with a lighter from that same pocket.
Then he ambles to one of the vehicles out front, a large van with back doors open, and calls two of the guards to come over.
He gives them directions, pointing inside the van. One of them gets in, while the other one, his rifle slung over his shoulder, tries to pull something out of the back. He’s not having an easy time.
Saldado calls several more of them from behind the trailer. Six of them finally muscle the thing out of the van.
“You see that?” says Adam.
“Yeah.”
Whatever it is, is about six or seven feet long, wrapped in a cotton bed sheet that has twine tied around it. The six men stagger under the load. They lift it up onto the platform in front of the trailer, and then through the door inside.
“What do you think it is?” Adam lowers the glasses from his eyes and looks at me.
“I don’t know.”
A few seconds later, Saldado comes out of the trailer, gets in the van, and drives off, headed for the dirt road on the other side of the property.
“Well we’ve confirmed one thing. The brothers were involved with your man, Espinoza,” says Adam.
“I’d like to know what that thing was they were carrying.”
“We could try and take a closer look.”
“How?”
Adam talks with Julio who in turn speaks in Spanish with the other man. He motions off toward the other road with his hand. When Julio comes back he says: “You can get much closer to the trailer from the other road. He says there are some larger windows in the back, a sliding door. They walked in yesterday, and with field glasses they could see people inside.”
Adam thinks about it. “You want to try?”
“Why not?”
Fifteen minutes later we’ve collected ourselves, cooling down in the air-conditioned cars, back out on the highway. We backtrack less than a mile and turn off on another dirt track toward the sea. Julio says something into the handheld as we drive. A minute or so later, I look back through the rear window and realize that the other two cars in our caravan have suddenly disappeared.
“Don’t worry,” says Adam. “Julio’s people know what they’re doing.”
“Yeah, they be gettin’ the fuckin’ artillery out,” says Herman. “Case we get our asses caught.” Herman doesn’t like what we’re doing. “Ya want I get you the bullet-proof vest from the back,” he says. “Da one wit da bull’s-eye got all the holes in it.”
“Herman, cut it out,” says Adam.
“Yessir.” But when I look in the rearview mirror, Herman is still smiling, winks at me, chipped tooth looking like a broken picket on a fence.
“It will be all right,” says Julio. “If they stop us, I will tell them that you want to talk business. That you are down here looking for property for a resort. I will also let them know that we have people out on the road,” he holds up the walkie-talkie, “other cars. They are not likely to do anything. They would have no way of knowing what they are confronting.”
Adam smiles at me. “This is why you hire people.”
The Surburban rumbles down the road, bouncing over washouts from the last hurricane. Suddenly Herman hits the brakes, skidding tires throwing up dust. He’s turning the wheel, trying desperately to avoid plowing into the
