Traffic in the other lane also came to a quick stop. Horns began to sound off, mimicking the noise of a flock of angry geese.
Bell got to his feet as the police were about to get out of their car. He climbed to the top of the truck’s staked side and jumped down onto the roof of a car idling in the other lane. He leapt from there to the hood of the next car, scrambled up its windshield and dashed across its roof too. Twice more he did this until he found himself at an intersection. Right at the corner was a livery stable with the horses penned close to the street.
He jumped from the last car roof to the top of the split-rail fence, fought to keep his balance, and then launched himself across the corral, stepping his way across the backs of five horses, moving swiftly yet softly enough that the animals barely had time to react. He reached the far fence rail, and from its top he jumped astride a horse that had just been saddled for its owner—a local farmer or ranchero, by the look of him.
“Sorry,” Bell said, shaking out the reins and putting a heel to the horse’s flank. “I’ll have it brought back within the hour.”
Because the horse had been saddled, it was primed to ride even if Bell’s style of mounting wasn’t what it expected. It started off at a decent trot. The owner had been too stunned to move for a second, but he quickly gave chase. Bell drew his .45 and pointed it back at the man. He stopped and cursed at Bell until he’d ridden out of earshot.
There was no sign of the police. He’d given them the slip.
He made note of the street, so later he could pay someone to deliver the horse back to the stable, and then rode aimlessly for several minutes to fully get his bearings.
As much as he wanted to race straight to Dreissen’s house and beat the man until he divulged Marion’s location, Bell knew not to give in to the urge. Dreissen would have been tipped off the minute he’d escaped. Either the German would leave or turn his house into a guarded fortress. Probably both. Bell’s best course of action if he wanted to rescue his wife was getting to the Canal Zone as quickly as possible. If Ortega got his hands on him again, Bell suspected they’d kill him outright, and to hell with any consequences.
He couldn’t risk encountering a police barricade on the main road into the zone. It would be Ortega’s first order even before freeing his men from the cell. Bell didn’t have the time to wait them out or try to sneak past that night, so he rode toward Ancon Hill, the six-hundred-foot, jungle-covered peak that partially overlooked the section of the canal where he had met the tour guide Jorge Nuñez.
The side of the mountain facing the city wasn’t as developed as the canal side. Once across Martyrs Avenue, Bell had to bushwhack his way up the hill. To its credit, the horse seemed more than game and exploited the tiniest opening between the bushes and shrubs and knew to keep its head down to avoid the vines draped between the trees like so many Christmas garlands. It was amazing how the humidity shot up under the jungle canopy and how the light became weak and gauzy.
Both horse and rider were drenched in sweat when they burst out of the undergrowth without knowing they had reached their destination. Before them stretched the dazzlingly white observation point’s parking lot with a motor bus disgorging a troop of tourists. It was a jarring transition from primordial jungle to modernity in just a few steps.
A dazzling kaleidoscope of images and an array of scents and feelings flooded Bell’s nervous system, almost causing him to fall from the horse.
He remembered.
He remembered it all. Everything came back. All the memories. The truck slamming into the water carrier and sending him over the edge of the Culebra Cut. The creeping despair of being buried alive. And especially his conversation with Court Talbot and Rinaldo Morales.
“Yes,” he shouted triumphantly, eliciting some startled looks from the tourists across the parking lot.
He had never felt such a tremendous sense of relief in his life. He’d felt like his mind had betrayed him, but now that the memories had returned, he knew that wasn’t the case.
He also understood two more things, one of which he’d deduced earlier but forgotten, the other was something new. He had the answer to the mystery of the humming clouds many locals had reported. And he’d figured out that Viboras Rojas, his very reason for being in Panama, didn’t exist.
29
Bell had made it safely to the Canal Zone. He was beyond the reach of the Panamanian police. That gave him some measure of satisfaction yet did not lessen the urgency of his mission. He wanted to race down to the administration building, but his mount was in no condition. The horse had given its all to get him to the summit of Ancon Hill, and that was as far as it would let itself be ridden. No amount of coaxing changed its mind.
He dismounted and led the horse down the other side of the hill along the winding road the tourist buses used. The horse plodded along, its head down and the sweat drying on its flanks. When they finally arrived at the soon to be completed building, Bell uncoiled the reata that was secured to the bridle and tied it to a tree in the middle of a lawn so the horse could graze.
“You can’t leave that animal there.” The speaker wasn’t any sort of guard, just a man in shirtsleeves and an accountant’s green
