I got no response. She was definitely waltzing with the pixies, but at least the pain was subdued.
The door-banging got a result. As I climbed out of the Land Cruiser, heading for the tailgate, a woman in her mid-twenties with long brown sleep-hair appeared on the threshold, wearing a tracksuit. Her eyes darted about rapidly as she took in the scene.
What's wrong, Luz?'
Luz launched into a frenzied explanation as I got into the rear and undid the security bandage.
'We're here, Carrie,' I said.
She murmured to herself as the young woman came to the rear, now wide awake.
'Carrie, it's Janet can you hear me? It's Janet, can you hear me?'
There was no time for hellos.
'Got trauma care? It's an open fractured femur, left leg.'
Janet held out her arms and began to ease the cot out of the wagon. I grabbed the other end and between us we lugged Carrie inside.
The office was barely furnished, just a couple of desks, cork boards, a phone and wall clock. What I'd seen so far was doing nothing to make me feel happier about their level of expertise.
'Can you treat her? If you can't, you need to get her into the city.'
The woman looked at me as if I was mad.
More people were emerging sleepily from the rear of the building, three men in different shades of disarray, and a rush of American voices. What's happened, Carrie? Where's Aaron? Ohmigod, you OK, Luz?'
I stood back as events took over. A trauma pack appeared and a bag of fluid and a giving set were pulled out and prepared. It was hardly a well-rehearsed scene from ER, but they knew exactly what they were doing. I looked at Luz, sitting on the floor holding her mother's hand once more as Janet read the dihydrocodeine label on the bottle.
According to the wall clock it was 12.27 nine and a half hours to go. I left them to it for a while and went back to the wagon. Once in the driver's seat I hit the cab light, wanting to save the torch because I might need it later, and unfolded the map to get my bearings on the Bayano. It came from the massive Lago Bayano to the east of Chepo, maybe thirty K away, and snaked towards the Bay of Panama on the edge of the Pacific. The river's mouth was in line of sight of the entrance to the canal and, a little further in, the Miraflores. If this was the river they were on, they had to be at the mouth.
Sunburn couldn't negotiate high ground: it was designed for the sea. The range to the canal was just under fifty Ks, about thirty miles. Sunburn's range was ninety. It made sense so far.
I studied the map, wondering if Charlie was doing the same before getting out there to look for it. He didn't know what I did so he'd be scanning the sixty to seventy miles of jungle shoreline that fell within Sunburn's range and could be used as a launch point. That was a lot of jungle to sift through in less than ten hours. I hoped it would mean the difference between me destroying it and him repossessing it so he could hand it straight over to PARC.
The map indicated that the only place to launch from was the east bank as the river joined the sea. The west bank also had a peninsula, but it didn't project far enough out to clear the coastline. It had to be the east, the left- hand side as I went down the river. It had to be, and there was only one way to find out.
The Bayano's nearest reachable point was seven Ks south, according to the map, via a dry-weather, loose- surface road. There, the river was about two hundred metres wide. It then wound south, downstream to the coast for about ten K. In reality it would be more, because of the river's bends and turns. By the time it hit the coastline it was nearly two kilometres across.
That was it, that was all I knew. But fuck it, I had to work with the information I had and just get on with it.
I went to the rear of the wagon and closed the tailgate, then got back behind the wheel, fired the engine, and moved off.
I bumbled about the dark sleepy town, trying to head south using the Silva compass still round my neck. The map was the same 1980s 1:50,000 scale I'd had for Charlie's house, and Chepo had grown a bit since then.
It was only then that I realized I hadn't said anything to Carrie and Luz.
Carrie wouldn't have heard but, still, it would have been nice to say goodbye.
After getting two bottles of Evian down my neck and an hour of the dry-weather track, now just a mixture of mud and gravel, I saw a river in the tunnel of light carved out immediately ahead of me. Stopping, I checked the map and distance once more, then jumped out of the wagon with the torch and picked my way down the muddy bank. The crickets were loud, but the movement of water was louder.
The river wasn't a raging torrent surging with a massive rush, even after these rains: it was wide enough to accommodate all the water coming from the tributaries that fed it with a constant flow. It was certainly moving in the right direction, from my right to my left, heading south towards the Pacific although so would every other bit of water this side of the country so near to the sea.
Running along the bank, I checked for a boat, anything that would get me downstream quickly. There wasn't even a jetty no ground sign, nothing, just mud, rough grass, and the odd scabby-looking tree.
I scrambled up the bank, got into the wagon, and checked the map and mileometer once more. This river had to be the one I wanted: there was nothing else around here big enough to get mixed up with.
I drove back up the track towards Chepo, checking each side of me for somewhere to hide the Land Cruiser, but even after three kilometres the ground picked out by the headlights still looked completely bare-arsed. I finally parked up on the side of the road, dragged out the dried-out chest harnesses, the M-16 and jerry can then tabbed back towards the river with the kit dangling off me like a badly packed Cub Scout.
FORTY
Saturday 9 September I seemed to have spent my whole life sitting against a tree in the mud, listening to a million crickets disturbing the night. I wasn't under the canopy this time, but down by the Bayano as it rumbled past me out there in the dark.
The mozzies weren't out in such force here, but enough had found me to bring up a few more lumps on my neck to replace the ones that had just started going down. I ran my tongue around my mouth: my teeth felt more than furry now, it was as if they had sheepskin coats on. I thought about what I was doing here. Why couldn't I smarten up? Why hadn't I just killed Michael and had done with it in the first place?
With only half an hour to push before first light and a move to the target, I knew I was bullshitting myself. I knew I would have done this regardless. It wasn't just the fact that so many people -real people were at risk: it was that maybe, just for once, I was doing the right thing. I might even end up feeling a little proud of myself.
Pulling my knees up and resting my elbows on them to support my head, I started to rub my stubbly, sweaty face on my forearms. I could hear the weak but rapid wap wap wap of a Huey somewhere out there in the darkness. I couldn't see any navigation lights, but could tell it was only one aircraft. Maybe Charlie had been back to the house. After what he'd found waiting for him there, he'd be out looking, but I had no control over that.
Anyway, for the time being he'd be having those aircraft search the coastline for Sunburn rather than us three.
Invisible birds started their morning songs as a bright yellow arc of sunlight prepared to break the skyline and yield up a hot morning. I'd already repacked my docs and map in the two layers of plastic bags, tying each one off with a knot. I checked the Velcro flaps on the individual mag pouches of the harnesses to ensure that they weren't going to fall out during the next phase. Finally, I made sure all my clothing was loose, with nothing tucked in that might catch water and weigh me down.
I undid the plastic clips for the back straps of the harnesses and fed the ends through the handle of the jerry-can before refastening them. I did the same with the neck straps, through the carrying handle of the M-16. I'd learnt from my own experiences, and from others, that more soldiers get killed negotiating rivers than ever die in contacts under the canopy. That was why everything was attached to the empty jerry-can and not to me, and why I hadn't moved until first light.
I dragged the whole lot down to the edge of the tepid, rusty-brown water. It felt good as I waded in up to my thighs, then ducked my head in to take the sweat off my face. Refreshed, I heaped the three harnesses and weapon on top of the floating jerry-can, which wanted to go with the current. It was stronger than it had looked from the bank, and freshly dislodged foliage, green and leafy, sped past as the jerry-can bobbed in front of me, now more than half submerged with the weight of its load. I pushed on into gradually deepening water, forearms over the
