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  8

  “Only you?” asked Phil from the back seat of the SUV.

  Halley, the security consultant Xavier had hired, sitting behind the steering wheel, did not respond as they waited in the driveway of the hotel. Instead he focused on the armed guards hauling back the barricade which had blocked the entrance to the street. Xavier sat in the front passenger seat, gripping the dashboard, chewing on the cigarillo.

  Phil tried again. “If we’re driving across the city, shouldn’t we have a little more security?”

  Halley looked in the rearview mirror. He wore mirrored sunglasses, and Phil saw his reflection in them; he looked small and pasty, trapped in the glass.

  “You think El Diablo wants a half-dozen armed mercenaries waltzing into his safe house, or even knowing where he is?” Halley’s voice was deep, like an idling engine waiting to be revved. Unlike the mercenaries at the hotel, he was clean shaven and wore a light blue shirt with a floral design under a flak jacket. The jacket, along with the gun holster strapped around his thigh, spoiled the tourist-illusion. “I’m more than enough protection for this job.”

  Xavier turned around in his seat to face Phil. “This will be over before you know it. I get the interview. You get the photo. In and out. I got your back, Phil. No worries.”

  Halley spoke to Xavier. “Your man going to be good? This is not the time for a rookie to be dipping his toes in the water. We get one shot at El Diablo. We mess up and he disappears again.”

  “He’s good, Halley. Kabul, Afghanistan, Colombia. He’s one of the best. No worries.”

  Halley glanced in the rearview mirror again. Phil felt even smaller in the reflection.

  The guards finally removed the barricade, and Halley eased his foot on the gas. They rolled past the barricades and Phil looked out his window. The guards looked like farmers, faces lined and leathery from years beneath the sun, their rifles awkward and heavy in their arms. He wondered if they would ever return to their families or walk their fields at the end of the day. He wondered if they knew that their pasts were gone forever.

  He lifted his camera to take a shot. Looking through the viewfinder, everything changed: the two guards were suddenly covered in blood; one with his right arm torn off, the other with a wide gash across his belly, his glistening intestines looping on the ground. Corpses standing. Behind them the sky swirled black and sheets of rain surged.

  Phil cursed, pulling away from the camera.

  “What?” barked Halley as he accelerated out of the drive and up the road. They swerved around a taxi and raced up the street. Phil bounced against the backseat, his camera falling into his lap. He turned his head to follow where the guards stood, the simple farmers with their heavy guns. They smiled and waved; they weren’t covered in blood or dead.

  “Phil, what the hell?” asked Xavier.

  “Nothing, nothing. My camera. It’s nothing. Keep driving.”

  His heart raced. He sunk into the seat, wishing it would swallow him up and take him away from this place, away from the life he had created for himself, away from the horrible image he had just seen. He sucked in several deep breaths. Halley’s glasses reflected Phil in the mirror, small and shivering. He was being watched. Their escort did not trust him. And with what Phil had just seen, he was not sure he trusted himself.

  First the blackness and the writhing worms invading his sight, and now seeing men covered in blood when they weren’t. He squeezed his eyes shut and balled his fists, took three deep breaths, then three more. What the hell was happening to him? Was he going crazy? His sight, the sense around which he had built a life, was tricking him, filling his head with delusions and darkness. Any chance of rebuilding life was falling apart.

  He thought about lifting the camera to his eye and pointing it out on the street or at Xavier. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. What if they were corpses, too? What if Xavier’s skull was blown apart, brain matter exposed? He shuddered and mopped at the sweat on his brow. He cracked his window slightly and leaned towards the breeze. The air felt good. He drew in mouthfuls. Even as hot and humid as it was, the air racing against his skin cooled him, made him relax. The image of dead guards had been his mind playing tricks on him. He had imagined that strange scene. It could not have been anything other than PTSD. Everything he had ever seen somehow emerging from his subconscious. All those repressed experiences rising now that he had once again entered a war zone.

  But he has to know. He lifted his camera. His hands trembled. He needed to be reassured that even if the horrors of the past crept into the present they would vanish.

  He pinched off the lens cap. They drove through a market, with stalls lining either side of the wide street. He saw a pickup overloaded with bananas. A teenager folded t-shirts. Two old ladies, barefoot, plodded beneath heavy bags strapped to their heads. White smoke drifted from a small grill, meat glistening. Despite the coming war, people carried on with their lives. They needed coins in their pockets, food on their tables, a sense of order in the chaos. The SUV slowed as Halley, whispering profanities, weaved between several stationary trucks. Phil focused on a woman sitting behind wooden boxes of what looked like dried peppers, ground spices, and bunched herbs. He lifted the camera and peered through the viewfinder.

  She looked normal, weary, but who wouldn’t, living in this city? He snapped a photo, and then pulled up the display. A strong composition; the light was not ideal, and there was a bit of a blur because of the moving vehicle. But it was normal. No black spot eating the image. No woman covered in blood. Just a normal photo.

  Phil smiled.

  “Everything alright back there?” asked Halley.

  “Good as gold.”

  9

  A few minutes later, Halley stopped the SUV in the middle of the street.

  Salmon-colored apartment buildings loomed on either side of the road. Clothes hung from balconies. The wall of another building, burnt out by fire, was covered in graffiti depicting images of the idyllic forests and rivers far from the city. Phil heard the distant rumble of an engine and the screech of metal and looked through the windshield. “What is it?”

  “Road block,” Halley said

  Farther down the street, two green army trucks had pulled together beneath a freeway overpass to form a vee shape in the road and a dozen armed soldiers waited in front of the trucks.

  “Is there another way?” asked Xavier.

  “Not to where we’re going,” said Halley. “Money. I need money now.”

  “I paid you,” said Xavier.

  “Don’t play ignorant. You paid me for my services. Bribe money is a whole different expense account.”

  Xavier reached into his bag and handed Halley a few twenty-dollar bills.

  “More,” said Halley, stuffing the bills into his front shirt pocket.

  Xavier shook his head. “I’m not an ATM machine. I need to ration out what I was given for the rest of the assignment.”

  “A couple hundred dollars?” said Halley. “Is that all your life is worth?”

  “I have a set expense account.”

  “Jesus,” blurted Phil. He shoved his hand into his jacket pocket, dug out a couple of crumpled twenties, and slapped them into Halley’s open palm. “Didn’t come all this way to be turned back before we even get out of the city.”

  Halley drove up to the roadblock. Phil cradled his camera in his lap. Unlike the guards at the hotel, these soldiers clutched their assault rifles tightly. They were young, little more than teenagers. Even so, they had a jaded look in their eyes. He knew that look. It was as if they had peered into the void, into the trauma of battle, had seen their friends die in pools of blood and viscera, and an endless hell on earth. Phil wanted to take a photo, to capture those fresh faces contrasted with the look of unspeakable horror that nested in their eyes, have them pose with their weapons in front of the wall covered in graffiti. The light was sharp. It would be brilliant. But he knew never to take a photo of a person with a gun without asking their permiss
ion first.

  Halley spoke to them with fluency and confidence, the Spanish rolling off his tongue, bantering, and soon he had them laughing. The soldiers stepped back and waved the SUV through. As the car rolled forward, Halley reached through the window and handed the twenties to one of the soldiers.

  After they passed, Xavier threw his hands in the air. “What the hell? Why’d you give them the money? We were already through!”

  “What do you think those soldiers are doing right now?” asked Halley. “They’re sharing that money, and laughing about the booze or whores or food they’re going to buy, and they’re looking at our taillights and seeing us as their opportunity to get ahead. So, what do you think is going to happen the next time they see us? They’ll be all smiles and glad handing. No one is going to roust us. They won’t make us lie spread-eagled on the ground and rifle through our stuff. They’re not going to drag you into a dark room and ask questions that have no answers. And word’s going to get around that there is a black SUV on the southside of the city, a traveling ATM machine. Those soldiers will be that much more likely to come find us if they hear we’re in trouble. Their gringo amigos. So, yeah, I’m just throwing your money away.”

  Xavier muttered a half apology and slumped in his seat.

  Ten minutes later, deeper in the city, far from the shining hotels and worn-out office centers, in a part of the city where warehouses rusted, packs of dogs skirted the edges of the road, and blue tarps and cardboard boxes created a neighborhood, they reached their rendezvous point: the skeletal remains of a church. Its white plaster walls had broken away to reveal fire-blackened wood beams.

  This was where they would meet up with El Diablo’s handler who would then take them to a safe location somewhere in the capital. Phil’s palms were moist with a sweat that he could not wipe away. His breath quickened, became shallow. He glanced through the rear windows. He hated these moments of waiting. Always safer to be moving, to be doing something, anything other than sitting still in one spot. He checked his camera kit again, touching spares batteries, lens, the extra camera body.

  What they were doing felt suddenly more dangerous. They were stepping into the unknown. No government soldiers lingered here. The rules of engagement in this neighborhood were different. A handful of twenties would not protect you. This was the kind of place where photographers and journalists disappeared.

  He anticipated what would happen if everything went sideways. A nondescript van would pull up; masked men would leap out, shouting, brandishing their guns. Shots would be fired at their feet. Phil and Xavier would scurry out of the SUV, hands raised. The gunmen would search them before shoving, dragging and pushing them onto the hard ground. Cloth bags would be slipped over their heads. Phil would struggle to breathe, see the world as muted shadow and light through the bag’s thick weave, then he would fall onto the hard metal floor of the van, a sharp knee in his back, a palm against his head.

  But no van pulled up.

  Five minutes later, Halley checked his watch, then dialed a number on his cell phone. Phil heard the endless ringing in the receiver.

  “We wait,” said Xavier, his cigarillo bobbing between his lips. “We’re on La Plata time.”

  Half an hour later, they were still waiting. A handful of emboldened dogs had crept out from the shadows of the surrounding buildings to sniff the tires of the SUV. They were mangy, ribs showing, heads hanging low, rotten teeth flashing behind snarling lips. The cigarillo was a nub in Xavier’s mouth.

  Halley dialed the number again.

  This time someone answered. Halley spoke quickly, nodded, and then ended the call. “That was my contact. We’re done. They’re not showing up. We need to return to the hotel and wait to be contacted again.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Xavier, pointing at the church door. A woman in a heavy black skirt and a jacket stitched with indigenous designs descended the church steps. She wore a bright blue Dodgers cap. She walked up to Halley’s open window. Her teeth and lips were stained red.

  She whispered to Halley. As she returned back up the steps, he put the car in gear and circled it towards the city center.

  “What?” asked Xavier. “I didn’t understand. She wasn’t speaking Spanish.”

  “Meeting’s off. He left the capital. Too dangerous.”

  “That’s it?” asked Phil. “That’s the end of this?” He thumbed his camera power switch repeatedly, on, off, on, off. The chance for the photo of a lifetime was disappearing. Worse, the opportunity for redemption was quickly fading. He would spend the rest of his career chasing celebrities, and nothing would crack through the guilt he felt around the death of Samantha. He would not be able to break this cycle of despair.

  “There’s more,” said Halley. “She said El Diablo is gathering an army, bringing demons from the other side.”

  “From across the border?” asked Xavier.

  “The other side, she said. From hell.”

  Xavier laughed. “I’m definitely putting that line in my story.”

  “Now what?” asked Phil. In his mind’s eye, he imagined that those demons had already torn through from the other side: tentacles, blurred spots, shadows seeping, his own guilt manifested.

  “Back to the hotel,” said Halley. “We lost our chance.”

  10

  Xavier tossed his cellphone onto the table between him and Phil. “The assignment’s been killed. My editor said we’d be smart to catch the next flight back. Good chance the airport is going to shut down completely in the next day or so. Sorry, man. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Fuck. I wanted this story.”

  They sat on sagging chairs on the roof of the hotel, a small pool discolored with rusty water at their feet. Phil tasted the moisture in the air and his shirt clung to his skin. A tropical wind had picked up and, on the streets below, palm fronds swayed and neglected billboard signs flagged in the wind. Clouds hung low and bled darkness, filling him with the sensation of being slowly crushed. The city itself, grown quiet, seemed to be waiting. And not just for the thunderstorm that was coming.

  After the failure to meet with El Diablo’s people, Halley had raced back through the city, from the tarp neighborhood through the roadblock, and finally circled back up the hotel driveway where the farmer-soldiers smiled and waved them through the barricade. Xavier and Phil had ordered whiskey and cokes when they got to the lobby and carried them up to the rooftop pool. Halley had left with the SUV.

  “I’m not ready to give up. We should try to set up another rendezvous for tomorrow,” said Phil. “We wait it out. These things happen.” He stared over the flat valley floor, past the hotels and apartments and factories, to where distant gray runways marred the green land. He hoped the airport would still be open tomorrow, that the flights wouldn’t be cancelled. He was now willing to take the risk. He didn’t want to return home to nothing. With nothing. He needed this photo.

  Xavier rattled the ice in his glass. “He’s left the capital. He’s returned to his hideout in the south.”

  “We can get there,” Phil insisted.

  “Look, the story is dead. We’ll get our expenses covered and a few bills slipped into our hands for time wasted, and that’s it. Get a flight tomorrow morning, back to Cali. Maybe the Kid knew something; I think I’d rather be at a music festival right now, too. Better than this shit hole.”

  “I’m not ready to go back to L.A.” Phil fought the feeling that he wanted to throw up; the whiskey was sour, like stomach acid in his mouth.

  Xavier tilted his glass, sucking down half his drink in one gulp. “We can make sure this trip isn’t a total loss. We’ll go out tonight. To a nightclub. Get drunk. Sing bad karaoke.” He cursed. “The kill fee won’t be enough to cover the time I put into researching this story. There’s no story without the interview. I wanted to dig beneath the surface, find more than has been written about him over the past decade. Did you know there were strong rumors that El Diablo was on the CIA payroll? Maybe he still is. Apparently, they
needed a disruptor, a foil, and then he went rotten on them. One of my sources said they funded his first drug lab in the jungle. They created him. But then it went all ‘Heart of Darkness’. He vanished into the wilderness and eventually came back a prophet.”

  “I can’t go home,” said Phil, not really listening to what Xavier had been saying. The hotel roof’s height was suddenly dizzying; or maybe it was the whiskey, drunk too fast. It felt like the roof was tilting, and he clutched the sides of his chair, fighting the feeling that he was about to be flung into the dark swirling clouds. “This is my one chance.”

  “I’ll put in a good word for you. I’ve got connections. Shit, man, you won a Pulitzer. I’ve got a couple of stories in the hopper. I’ll need a photographer. Nothing like this, but also not stalking celebrities, either.”

  “It’s not just the photos. It’s more than that,” said Phil.

  He picked up his empty whiskey glass. He turned it upside down so the last drops ran onto his flicking tongue. He wanted to get drunk. To go back to the room with a bottle and drink until he passed out. He had no desire to go out to a nightclub with its loud music and insistent bar girls. Pretending that he was a somebody when, in reality, he was nothing more than a failure. A man who left others behind to die.

  Suddenly, reflected in the tilted glass, Phil saw a figure emerge from the stairs behind him. A distorted figure, a man with half a face; as if blown away by a shotgun, the skin and muscles torn back to reveal the white bone and tendon of his jaw. His smile was a maniac’s smile.

  Phil gasped, dropped the glass, fell out of the lawn chair and skittered sideways on his palms and heels.

  “What the hell?” asked Xavier frowning.

  Phil looked up again at the approaching figure.

  Halley. Unmarked, unbloodied. Normal.

  He waved his phone at them. “I know where El Diablo is. I can get us there.”

  “But what about the roadblocks? The city is shutting down,” said Xavier.