The directness startled him-more so because this was a culture known for obfuscating everything from the weather to the color of the sky. Slipping a question like that into an unrelated discussion was an old interrogator’s trick, and Jonathan was pissed at himself for showing a reaction. With the option of a bluff gone, he said, “Yes. What makes you ask?”
Isabella smiled ruefully, exposing a set of well-worn teeth, from which several were missing. “I notice things,” she said. “Sometimes those things are hard to see, sometimes they are easy. A white boy with white hair is easy to see. Soon after, white soldiers with guns are easy to see. I think maybe one has something to do with the other.”
“His name is Evan,” Jonathan said. “He was taken from his home, and we are here to take him back.”
Isabella’s eyebrows scaled her forehead. “Just three people?”
Jonathan shrugged.
“They are many,” Isabella said. “Thirty, maybe forty.”
“Holy shit,” Boxers grunted.
Jonathan ignored him. “Thirty or forty total, right? Not thirty or forty soldiers.”
Isabella nodded. “Twenty soldiers. But many people with guns. Men and boys with guns keep men and boys without guns from running away. Keep enemies out.”
Jonathan and Boxers had seen it before throughout the world. Young men with nothing to lose confuse firearms with manhood. You see it on the streets of the United States, too, but in the third world, those young men with guns had jobs to do, and they were handsomely rewarded for them. In his experience, the average age of guards and terrorists and pirates all hovered in the mid-teens. Like teenagers everywhere, they were genetically wired to be fearless. Combined with indoctrination to kill without hesitation, that fearlessness made them fierce warriors.
Sensing the pall in the air, Jonathan changed the subject. “You say that Evan was here yesterday? How long ago?”
Isabella nodded. “Five, six hours. Maybe longer. With the men who hurt my daughter.” Her eyes hardened. “With the boys who did that to her.” Clearly, she’d sensed their discomfort in engaging young people in combat. “The boys who do that to many of the women in the village. At fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old, they are already devils. Do not pity them.”
“How was Evan?” Jonathan pressed. “Was he in good health?”
A sudden wariness changed Isabella’s face to a mask of suspicion. All trappings of hospitality evaporated. She seemed suddenly angry. “Leave now,” she said; but she didn’t rise.
Jonathan recoiled. He looked to Boxers and got the shrug he knew he was going to get before he looked. “Have I done something wrong?” he asked.
“Leave,” she said again. “I want no part of this.”
Jonathan made no effort to comply. In fact he leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Isabella, if I have offended you, I apologize.”
She glared. “You offend me by being here,” she said. “You see my daughter, I tell you about the devils on the hill, and all you care about is the white boy. The American. The gringo. My son is dead. Many sons are dead because of the devils, but no one cares. The white boy-your Evan-is another mother’s son. I help you help him, and I bring danger to all the people of my village. You don’t care about my people, I don’t care about yours. You must leave now.”
Harvey cleared his throat, drawing all eyes around to him. “Where are the men?” he asked.
“Dead,” she replied.
“All of them?”
“All who were old enough to fight. The others work up there.” She pointed toward a spot in the air that only she could see.
“What work do they do?” Jonathan asked. He knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from her.
“Coca drug,” she said. “They have a factory up there. Young men and boys put to work up there. We stay here and bring them food.” She looked away as she said the last part, and Jonathan interpreted that to imply other services that one would expect from a village of slaves.
“Why don’t you leave?” Harvey asked.
“They are our sons,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “They work or they die. We stay or they die. If they try to escape, then we die. That’s why they work for the devil.”
“Jesus,” Harvey breathed.
Jonathan had seen it before, in all corners of the third world. The average American, accustomed to twenty- four-hour cable television and air-conditioning on demand, found it impossible to comprehend the suffering endured by the other eighty-five percent of the world’s population. While we prosecute hate speech, the rest of the world enslaves their enemies.
Jonathan sighed noisily. “If you help us, we will fix it for you,” he said. “If you can help, we can make them stop hurting you.”
Boxers got squirmy in his chair. “Um, Scorpion?” he said in English. “What are you doing?”
Isabella looked interested. “I don’t think I understand,” she said.
“We’ll kill some, and make the others too frightened to ever hurt you again.”
“We need to talk,” Boxers said in English.
“There are only three of you,” Isabella said.
“But we’re very good at what we do,” Jonathan countered.
“Scorpion, stop!”
Jonathan slammed the table with his hand. “Quiet!”
“Are you listening to what you’re saying?” Boxers railed. “Do you think maybe a team meeting is in order?”
Jonathan’s eyes flared. He shifted to English. “What’s the alternative? What would you have me do? We’re just going to sneak in, take our one precious cargo, and then leave the rest for these people to live with?”
“That’s exactly what I’d have you do,” Boxers fired back. “That’s the mission. We’re surgical, remember? Not tactical. In a perfect world we sneak in and sneak out and never fire a shot. You’re talking about going to war.”
Jonathan cocked his head. “Since when did you start backing away from starting wars?”
“When I learned to count and discovered that three against a lot was really bad odds. What they have going here is not our fight. It’s their fight.”
“But our fight is going to make it worse for them.”
“So? Our fights always make things worse for somebody. It’s what we do.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” Jonathan stood. He thought more clearly when he paced. “Just once, wouldn’t you like to actually finish the job we started? Just once, wouldn’t you like to solve the problem behind the problem and bring justice to everybody?”
Boxers looked confused. “Are we still talking about Evan?”
“Think about it,” Jonathan went on. He was on a roll. “Vietnam, Grenada, Mogadishu, Heavy Shadow, two Gulf Wars. Hell, Afghanistan. We moved in, we did what we had to do, and then we left a mess behind. We told ourselves we were successful because we achieved our objectives, but then we left misery behind.”
“What’s this ‘we’ shit? We did our jobs. We would have stayed for as long as it took. But we were just the muscle for the assholes in Washington. Don’t lay their shit on me.”
Jonathan opened his palms, as if balancing an invisible tray. “But don’t you see? You just made my point. Washington isn’t in on this. This one is all us. The scope of what we do is our design. What we do or don’t do is all on us. We can do this right.”
Boxers rose, too, and when he did, Isabella and Harvey both stirred uncomfortably. If this came to blows, it’d get real ugly real fast. And no one in his right mind would put a dollar on Jonathan to win. “Jesus, Scorpion, why do you always pull this shit? Why is there always some fucking moral dilemma to lay on me? These people were born badly, okay? Whoever spins the luck wheel before we’re born let it stop a tick or two early for all these poor fucks. But we can’t fix it all. Even if we had enough ammo, we couldn’t carry it, and sooner or later some lucky fucker is going to drill me. Again.”
Harvey raised a finger to interrupt. “Are you saying-”
