Damage Control

CHAPTER TWELVE

As Tristan’s hosts led him into their house, the father flipped the light switch on. Tristan was surprised to see that it still worked, but then remembered that Scorpion had killed the telephones, not the power. The mother gestured to a cane-back chair that was pulled up to a four-place wooden table. As far as he could tell, the tiny house consisted only of two rooms-the kitchen, which was just inside the front door, and a dark living room on the far side of an archway.

She nodded to Tristan. “I am Dorotea,” she said. “This is my husband Roberto-”

The man nodded, but he did not offer his hand.

“-And this is our daughter Rebecca. She is fifteen.”

Fifteen my ass, Tristan didn’t say. She’s equipped like she’s eighteen. He tried not to be a perv and stare, but the girl had the kind of chest that was hard to ignore. He found himself becoming aroused by the oscillating breasts beneath her T-shirt, and tried to think of something else. He was in enough trouble already; the last thing he needed was to piss off her already-grumpy father by pitching a tent in his underwear while ogling jailbait.

“My name is Tristan,” he said. He sat in the chair, and Rebecca sat opposite him. She smiled. Constantly.

“Father Peron tells us that you are in trouble,” Dorotea said. “What kind of trouble would that be?”

“I, um, don’t think I’m supposed to talk about that,” he said. Fear grabbed a fistful of his guts. Why hadn’t anyone prepared him for this question?

“Yet we are supposed to feed you,” Roberto said. “This seems unfair, does it not?”

Actually, it did. “I just think I’m not supposed to say anything. If you knew, you’d be in danger.”

“Are we not in danger already?” Dorotea used a hand pump to fill two five-gallon cook pots with water, and hefted them onto the stove, which she lit with a wooden match after cranking on the gas.

“Of course we are,” Roberto said. “This boy and his friends have placed us in danger.”

“His name is Tristan, Papa.”

Big tits, a hot smile, and now she was defending him. Tristan prayed that he wouldn’t have to stand up and reveal that which was standing up.

“Where are your clothes?” Roberto asked. “And why is there blood on your arms and legs?”

Tristan’s stomach seized again. How do you explain blood without triggering something akin to panic? “I, um…” It was the best he could do.

Dorotea took stuff from the refrigerator and started preparing dinner. She fired up some other burners on the stove, and the kitchen filled with the rich aroma of spicy food. “Are you a killer, Mr. Tristan?” she asked.

The fist in Tristan’s gut tightened more.

“You’re being rude,” Rebecca said. “Tristan is our guest. Can’t you see that he doesn’t want to talk about this?”

Roberto pressed on. “Tell me, Tristan. How can it be that in these troubled times, a boy as young as you can look as if he’s seen so much violence?”

Tristan cleared his throat. “It’s very…” He searched for the correct word in Spanish. “Complicated.”

Roberto pulled out the chair to Tristan’s right and sat down. “I’m sure it is,” he said. “What simple solution could there possibly be for such a thing?”

The heat of the man’s glare was unbearable.

“Papa, you’re frightening him.”

Roberto didn’t reply, but Tristan guessed that frightening him was very much a part of the plan.

“Tell us what happened to you, Tristan.”

Tristan opened his mouth to answer-to say something, probably a lie-but then his voice wouldn’t work. Out of nowhere, completely without warning, he found his lip trembling. His vision blurred and the current reality of accommodating hosts was replaced with the old, far more vivid reality of Miss James being raped and murdered. He remembered the look in that soldier’s eyes on the bus when he was going to murder him.

Then he remembered how Scorpion’s face filled his field of view. He remembered the blue eyes and the calm tone. These men had sacrificed everything to deliver him from certain death.

Tristan was not going to betray all of that just for a meal.

“I can’t tell you that,” he said.

With the Pathfinder loaded up and ready to go, Jonathan and Boxers sat on the steps of the church where they could see the incoming routes and ate MREs from the supplies in their rucks. They both went Italian-Jonathan with ravioli and Boxers with spaghetti.

Boxers said, “So, what happens when we escort this Maria Elizondo babe across the border and she gets asylum?”

“I don’t know,” Jonathan confessed. “Special Friend thinks that Wolverine is depending on her testimony to bury the guy who got us into this. A senior spook named Trevor Munro.”

“Agency, right?”

“Correct.”

“And he’s tied to Colombian drug money.”

Jonathan hesitated, wanting to capture the nuance of it, as passed along by Venice and Dom. “He’s tied to a lot of drug money. Enter Felix Hernandez. Apparently, our time in Colombia cost him a boatload of cash, and he blames Munro and the Agency for it.”

Boxers coughed out a laugh. “They wish. The Agency could never pull off as cool an op as we did. Not in Central America, anyway. All the good spooks are working the Sandbox now.” Sandbox meant the Middle East.

“Perception is reality, Big Guy. So Hernandez is putting pressure on Munro, who, coincidentally, is in line for a big promotion in Langley. This Elizondo lady is Wolverine’s key to a case that will take care of all of it.”

Boxers’ expression darkened. “You’re talking courtrooms and lawyers.”

“Exactly.”

“After all this, I think he deserves worse than that.”

“What do you have in mind?” Jonathan asked, as if he didn’t already know.

“I think he needs some special attention.”

Jonathan waved him away. “We’re not vigilantes.”

Boxers made a puffing sound with his lips. “Easy on the we shit, pal. The plan sucks.”

“Duly noted,” Jonathan said. He could think of no greater waste of time than getting crosswise with Boxers when he was in one of his bloodlusts.

“Suppose Wolverine is wrong.” Boxers said. “Suppose all that financing shit is a coincidence? What happens then? We’d have unidentified enemies lurking out there.”

“You know what I think about coincidences,” Jonathan said. “If we start citing possible enemies, the list gets really long really fast. Frankly, at this moment, the list is operationally irrelevant.”

Boxers thought about that for a few seconds. “Oh, I don’t know. I think people’s efforts to kill me are always relevant.”

“Fair enough. But at the end of the day, we still have to get that kid home.” He looked at his watch. “Do you think he’s had enough time to eat and bathe?”

Boxers laughed. “I dunno. He was pretty rank.”

Jonathan decided to give him ten more minutes.

Dinner was a quiet, unfriendly affair. Tristan knew that they were pissed at his silence, and they rewarded it with an icy silence of their own.

All except for Rebecca, who seemed to be on his side. She said so with her eyes.

The meat was pretty good. He thought it was chicken-okay, he prayed it was