The little man held his hand as if taking an oath. “On the grave of my mother, I have told no one.”
Boxers growled, “Careful, Scorpion. Snakes aren’t born. They hatch.”
Jose turned on him, craning his neck to look Boxers in the eye. “I don’t like you,” he said. “I been nothing but nice to you all day, you been nothing but lousy in return.” Then he faced Jonathan. “And then you come and treat me like I am traitor. I never betrayed you, Mr. Jones. Never once, not even during our fight with Pablo. I could have been a rich man if I had betrayed you, but I never do.”
“You would have been a dead man if you’d betrayed us,” Boxers said.
“Back then we all think we are dead men anyway,” Jose countered. “I could have been much safer telling people about you, but I never do that.”
Jonathan felt tension draining from his shoulders. Jammin’ Josie was exactly right. During the shoot-’em-up drug war, there had been a time when the only safe people were the ones on the wrong side of the law. A man like Josie could have retired on the reward for betraying the good guys.
“You’ve always been a good friend to me,” Jonathan said. “But it’s been a long time, and things are different now. Josie, right now is your one and only opportunity to tell me if your loyalty has been compromised. Tell me the details of what you’ve told others, and I promise that I’ll let you all walk away. I won’t come looking for you.”
Something changed in Josie’s eyes. A brief flash of panic, maybe. Boxers saw it, too, and he shifted his grip on his rifle, allowing his gloved finger to slip into the trigger guard of his M4.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
Harvey sensed the tension between Jonathan and his old friend, but there was nothing about their interaction that seemed critical. The order to arm himself surprised him, but even then he didn’t sense urgency. As ordered, he’d lifted out his MP5 machine gun, but he thought it was more a symbolic gesture than preparation for combat, so he didn’t even bother to extend the telescoping stock. He stood, watching and doing his best to listen, with the weapon dangling from his hand like an overgrown pistol.
Such was his posture when one of the mercenaries on his left shouldered his M16 and brought it to bear.
Boxers said, “Oh, shit,” and then the jungle exploded in automatic weapons fire.
Harvey dropped to the ground for cover, but by the time he rolled to a prone shooting position and brought his weapon up, it was over. None of the mercenaries remained standing. Most appeared to be dead, but the one closest to him writhed from his wounds, one of which pumped blood at a fatal rate.
Harvey whipped his head toward the spot where he’d last seen Jonathan and Boxers, and both of them had dropped to a knee. Barrels smoking, their weapons remained locked in on their targets. In less than five seconds, they’d cut down seven men. Harvey had never seen anything like it.
“Mr. Smith, are you all right?”
Harvey gaped. His ears felt like they’d been stuffed with cotton. “Yeah,” he said. “Holy shit.”
While Jonathan held his aim, Boxers rose to his feet, and with his weapon always at the ready, approached the bodies. “If you’ve got nothing better to do, how about giving me a hand?” the Big Guy said.
“M-me?” Harvey stammered.
“Y-yeah, y-you,” Boxers mocked. “Disarm these men.”
Harvey rose to his feet. “But they’re dead. Jesus.” Once he stood, he could see just how dead they were- every one a head shot.
“Disarmed and dead is better than just plain dead.”
“No, Big Guy, I need him here with me,” Jonathan said. He was kneeling over Jammin’ Josie, his bloody hands pressed against the other man’s belly. “Find the aid kit and bring it here.”
The trauma bag lay on the top of the equipment piled next to one of Josie’s Blazers.
Harvey knew it was bad the instant he saw pallor in Josie’s face. The location of the bullet wound in the upper left quadrant of the abdomen, combined with the flow of blood, said that his spleen had been hit.
“He needs a surgeon,” Harvey said.
Jonathan gave him a knowing look. Josie was not long for this world. “Do what you can.”
A new kind of fear gripped Harvey’s insides. He hadn’t seen a bullet wound in years; and the last time he did, a medevac chopper was always a radio call away. He had no magical powers. This man was going to die, and Harvey was going to have to tend him while it happened.
“What’s this all about?” Harvey asked. “What just happened?”
“You tend to the wounds, Doc,” Jonathan said. “And we’ll find out the rest together.”
Jonathan helped Harvey strip Josie of his shirt, exposing the wound that had been inflicted by one of Josie’s own-by accident, Jonathan assumed, but with mercenaries, you could never be sure. This man who’d betrayed him had a chest and belly much like Jonathan’s own-less developed, perhaps, but equally disfigured by scars from previous wounds. This new one was a perfectly round hole in the front, about the diameter of a number-two pencil, while the exit wound in his back was a ragged avulsion three times the size of the entry hole.
While Harvey pulled HemCon packets out of his med kit and ripped them open, Jonathan said, “Tell me what you did, Josie.”
“Am I shot bad?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’re shot bad.” No matter what, Jonathan owed him the truth.
“Fatal?”
“Probably.”
“Jesus,” Harvey snapped. “Where did you learn bedside manner?”
Jonathan ignored him. “I need to know the details, Josie. You don’t want to die with betrayal on your soul.”
Harvey said, “This is going to hurt.” He’d donned a pair of latex gloves and prepared to insert the HemCon pads into the wounds. Similar in appearance to standard gauze dressings, HemCon pads were soaked in a coagulating agent that was damned effective at stanching the flow of blood from traumatic injuries long enough to get the patient to a hospital.
“Wait a second,” Jonathan said.
Harvey shook his head. “No.”
No easy way existed to jam fabric into the ballistic pathway of a bullet. Josie howled like a tortured animal as Harvey stuffed first the entry wound and then the exit. The very thought of it churned Jonathan’s stomach.
Josie lay soaked in sweat and heaving for breath when it was all done. He’d nearly bitten through his lower lip. “ Dios mio,” he moaned.
Jonathan stroked his hair. “It’s over now. That should slow the bleeding.”
“Then maybe I can live?”
Harvey shot a glare.
“Maybe,” Jonathan said. “But Josie, you have to tell me what you did. After you do that, we can give you a shot for the pain.”
Josie locked eyes with Jonathan. They shimmered with fear and shame. “A man came to me,” he said. “He knew of our work together in the past. He had pictures of you. All three of you.”
Jonathan’s heart skipped. No one knew they were coming. “Who was this man?”
“I don’t know him.”
“You know his name,” Jonathan said, his heart heavy with disappointment. “I know it, too, but I need you to say it. Please don’t lie to me. Not now.”
Tears tracked from the corners of the little man’s eyes. “I don’t know how he found me,” he said. “He approached me on the street, showed me a picture of my family, and told me that if I saw any of you-he showed me your pictures-I was to call him and tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“That I saw you, I suppose.”
Boxers had rejoined them. He stood at his full height, allowing his shadow to keep the sun out of Jose’s eyes.
“He threatened my family,” Jose said.
Jonathan understood now. “What did he want?”
The last of the resistance went away. Jonathan saw real remorse. Genuine regret. “He knew that I was raising an attack force. He guessed that it was for you.” He tried a friendly smile. “I’m not the liar I used to be. He
