Drone - A Sci-Fi Superhero Thriller (The Gift Book 2), page 28
I snort, acknowledging the compliment as morbid as it is. “I think I styled it out, didn’t I?”
I walk the grounds, cautiously and slowly, seeing a handful more bodies as I go; blood surrounding them, coating the blades of grass and appearing almost black in the dark.
It isn’t long before a new alarm emerges. A guard I recognize from yesterday, wearing the same tactical vest as the others, emerges from the largest building in the compound; the same building I met Forrest in yesterday when I first got here.
“Medico!” he shouts; I don’t need to speak fluent Spanish to know what that means. I pick two more words out: “Forrest! Rapido!”
Oh man, this whole place feels like a tinderbox, and it could go up in flames any moment…
CHAPTER 47
I put the handgun I picked up from my sadly departed friend back there and conceal it within my waistband. Then I make a slow and steady approach to Forrest’s residence, with my right hand ready by my side just in case anyone tries to pin any sort of blame on me.
A man with a smart haircut who is carrying a large attaché case pushes past me as I reach the doorway, followed by a woman wearing a green medical facemask and a plastic apron.
Inside, the candles in the hallways are out, and instead a warm glow fills the room from an electric chandelier overhead. I carry on my slow walk across the corridor floor, only to hear another voice from behind, this time speaking a word I know too well.
“Kris,” Alessia says. I turn to see her striding down the hallway toward me. I think to go for my weapon, but her body language is anything but aggressive; she jogs to me with empty hands. “C’mon, this isn’t our concern.”
I wonder what she’s talking about just long enough to see her pass me in the corridor, sweeping past me like a ghost; Forrest’s gray eminence.
I glance past her and through an open doorway to Forrest’s dining room, and I see a skinny figure lying on the floor wearing white. He’s rocking forward and backward, apparently gripped by a seizure. I can’t see his face, but the violent shaking of his body tells me everything I need to know.
Alessia closes the door, turning and standing in front of it like a bouncer.
“This way,” she says, pointing with her hand to another door in the corridor. I follow her there, and when she switches on a light and I realize we’re standing in some strange recreation of a dive bar.
“Stay in this room,” she says hurriedly. “I’ll be back soon.” And she disappears – closing the door behind her – leaving me alone inside this odd approximation of a bar back home. There’s a giant neon beer sign, buzzing quietly in the corner, as well as a long, stained wooden bar fitted with beer taps the whole way along it, and a set of suitably stained, faded stools in front.
There are two clear refrigerators behind it containing any number of beers. I see bright ones, dark ones, conspicuously orange ones, pale golden ones, and everything in between, all with multicolored labels. Hell, I can even make out a couple of brands from the adverts back home.
There’s an overhead fan above me and a pool table with the balls already set up. There’s even an old Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner. All in all, an ideal recreation of a 1970s dive bar.
“I guess Forrest misses home,” I say out loud.
Most people do, Vega replies, making me feel a small amount of despondence. Am I supposed to miss home too?
I walk over to the corner of the room – a dark little nook, decorated by the banners of an East Coast football team – and pick one of two pool cues out from the wall.
Suddenly I’m struck by the memory of Dina teaching me to shoot bottles at the base camp in Aljarran, and wonder if my crack shot aim down the barrel of the gun translates onto a pool table. I was always terrible at the game; I could barely hold a cue. Let’s see if anything has changed…
I go the table, angle up a shot, and go for the break.
Alessia enters the room and asks dubiously, “Really?” apparently surprised and a little perturbed that I couldn’t resist a game of pool so soon after a deadly armed conflict. I never even heard her come in, but I guess it does look a little weird.
Nevertheless, I hit the shot and break the balls up. A ball even goes in a pocket: a blue stripe.
“What’s going on?” I ask her.
“Oscar Lopez,” she replies, crossing her arms and looking down at the dusty floorboards. “Somehow he found enough boys willing to come here on a suicide mission.”
“And Forrest?”
She hesitates and leans back against the wall.
“It’s a seizure, not the first, probably not the last.”
I turn back to the table and angle my next shot up: a red stripe into the bottom left corner pocket.
“He tells me he hasn’t got long left,” I say when I’m happy with the angle.
“No, he hasn’t,” she sullenly replies. I hit the shot with power, it’s aimed perfectly and the red stripe is sunk. Alessia waits for the ball to stop rolling in the table machinery and speaks again, “It just means we have to go about our mission quicker, that’s all.”
Our mission? We’re back to that grand plan again.
“You can’t even give me a clue as to what this is all about?” I ask her. She hesitates before scanning the room with those alluring brown eyes of hers. Eventually she thinks of something and speaks: “What’s that saying?”
“Huh?” I ask, wondering if she’s about to recount a bad domestic beer slogan to me.
“Power to the people,” she says after a few moments of thought. “We’re going to give power to the people.”
Well, that sure helps. I don’t respond to her. Instead, I just line up another shot: the brown stripe into a middle pocket.
“But I also wanted to say,” she hesitates before continuing, “thank you. You were pretty hardcore out there.”
Hardcore? That’s probably the first time anyone has ever called me that. I think I like it.
“Your aim is good,” she tells me as I take the shot. I hit it with power, and after a satisfying crack the brown stripe disappears into the pocket. “You don’t panic under pressure, you’re confident with firearms.”
I smile at her, somewhat uneasily before going back to my solo game.
“Hell, I’d even believe you meant to use that body as a shield if I didn’t see you trip over and fall on your face.”
Ah; I feel my face turning red and beginning to radiate heat. I guess I didn’t style it out so well after all. I angle the next shot just to try to avoid turning beet red.
“What I’m trying to say is, you didn’t have to help us out but you did, so thank you.”
I hit the next shot: a green stripe at a tight angle. It’s aligned perfectly and falls into the pocket; I seem to be pretty good at this. I look up at Alessia, hoping for some recognition of the awesome game I’m playing, but she’s still leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.
“I’m good at what I do,” I say to her, turning back to the table. I angle another shot – the purple stripe into a far pocket. I lean my body down to the table and prepare to thrust the cue.
“That’s a poor choice of shot,” she says to me, finally looking over and judging my angle.
“What?” I reply, glancing up at her again.
“You don’t want to go for that, you’ll screw it up,” she says, stony-faced and matter-of-factly.
I grin at her, relishing the opportunity to use my technologically augmented precision to prove her wrong. I hit the ball hard, and it flies across the table striking the purple stripe and knocks it into the pocket.
“What were you saying?” I ask her, looking up with the biggest, smuggest smirk I can muster.
She stands there, her arms crossed, and nods back to the table. I glance back, only to see the cueball slowly rolling into a pocket. God-damnit.
“It isn’t just the shot,” she says, advice that my pride doesn’t appreciate, “but also the consequences.”
I throw the cue down on the table and shake my head. I notice my arms are crossed, held tightly to my chest; I don’t even remember doing it, but it says a lot.
“Go back to your place, get some sleep,” she says, turning to the exit. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”
She leaves the room in the company of the gaudy neon lights, the truly authentic smell of stale beer, and the gentle buzzing of the refrigerators.
Yeah, I don’t miss home at all.
CHAPTER 48
I wake up to the sound of a dreadful, tinny buzzing. I spend a fraught minute trying to figure out what the hell it is – wondering if Oscar Lopez’s men are attacking again by way of some soundwave superweapon – before I find the culprit: an alarm clock hidden away in a drawer beside the bed.
I take it out and push a few buttons, thankfully silencing it. The time is 7:30 AM.
I don’t know what’s worse: waking up from one of those hideous nightmares I’ve been having, waking up to the sound of gunfire outside, or waking up to that.
I jump out of bed and go about making myself halfway presentable – shower, brush my teeth, and tame my hair into a shape vaguely acceptable.
Then, I head out of the villa and into the courtyard.
As usual, the first thing that hits me is the heat; a full veil of humidity, draped over my face as soon as I leave the airconditioned accommodation. I shield my eyes from the sun; there’s a beautiful blue sky above me with not a cloud in sight.
I look around the grass, trying to seek evidence that there was a brutal firefight here last night, but see nothing untoward. I even walk to the wall – past the statues and the small wall where Alessia and I sought cover – but see nothing. No dark patches in the grass, no stray flecks of blood on the brickwork.
Then I’m drawn to one of the fountains and a statue within it. It’s a statue of a man – a king of some sort, probably Old-Testament related. It’s a marvelous statue, and one I haven’t had the opportunity to admire in my time here yet.
Only, there’s a bullet hole in his left pectoral muscle, right by where the heart would be.
“Uhh, Mr. Chambers?”
I turn around to see one of Forrest’s guards wearing a tactical vest, a red T-shirt underneath, and green camo shorts. He has a bandage over one eye; perhaps another telltale clue that we could have all died last night.
“Mr. Forrest would like to see you in his residence,” the guard says; he speaks with a heavy accent, but I can understand every word. I guess it was his job to spot me and pass on the request; strange that they gave it to the guy with one eye, but never mind.
I make the walk back to Forrest’s residence, the monolithic mansion that dominates the compound. I never had a chance to fully admire it until now: the roofs are tiled red, just weathered enough to look cultured. There’s dark green ivy covering most exterior walls, and large balconies and roof terraces surround the upper floors.
There’s also a small bell tower, and nestled within it a large silver shiny bell. Why the hell couldn’t they have woken me up with that?
I follow the guard into the mansion, walking the same corridor I walked last night. We don’t enter the dining room, though. Instead, he walks to the entrance of the dive bar and stands beside the door.
“In here, sir.”
Has Forrest heard about my newly found pool skills? I open the door to find three figures inside.
Standing by the bar is the tall, slender figure of Alessia, wearing her hair in a neat ponytail and dressed head to toe in black, still with that knife holstered on her hip as usual; whether she prized it out of the back of a gangbanger yesterday or if it’s a new one, I don’t know.
There’s a barman behind the bar, wearing a black polo shirt and shorts, doing his best to avoid eye contact with me. He’s wiping glasses with a dishcloth, probably assessing the life choices he made to find himself here.
And then there’s Charles Forrest. He’s sat on a stool, facing the bar; he’s skinny, just as he appeared the other day, with his complexion a pallid shade of white, but at least he’s upright. He wears a white shirt, and I see for the first time that he has a small bald spot on the back of his silver head.
Forrest turns on his stool to face me and begins to grin warmly.
“Here he is,” he says, his voice deep and raspy. “I hope you’ve found your residence comfortable.”
“Comfortable, sure,” I say, slowly approaching the bar. I’m speaking the truth, it has been comfortable, besides the fact I had to kill a few people last night, but I don’t want to be splitting hairs here.
“I’m sorry about that whole drama last night,” he then says, addressing the huge, pile-of-corpses-shaped elephant in the room. “It was regrettable, but I did hear you handled yourself very well.”
“It’s what I do best,” is all I can think to say in return. He smiles again, and gestures to a stool beside him. I glance at Alessia – who stands there, leaning with her back against the bar, and her arms crossed – before slowly taking my seat beside Forrest.
“I’ll have a beer” Forrest says before presumably saying the same thing in Spanish to the bartender. Then he turns to me: “How about you? Want a beer?”
“It’s eight in the morning,” I reply, barely able to conceal the surprise in my voice.
“Buddy,” Forrest says, looking me in the eyes. “When you’re ill – when you’re really, really ill – you find out that all of life’s little rules don’t mean jack.”
Very poignant, but we are still talking about early morning drinking here. I decide to nod at the bartender, asking for a beer to go along with Forrest.
“Beautiful,” he says with verve. He seems a lot more energetic today.
“So, what’s this all about?” I ask, hungry to finally get to the bottom of this particular supervillain’s masterplan.
Forrest glances at the bartender, who’s just about to pop the caps off two brown bottles of beer. He says a few words, and the bartender opens the bottle before making a hasty exit. He leaves the two beers on the counter, which Forrest gathers and passes one to me.
“Well, I might as well get right to the point,” he begins before taking a second to cough, putting his fist to his lips, and then following that with a sip of beer. “My former employers told you that I’d lost my mind. I’d given up my duty to my country and begun working against it. I’d deposed a drug lord only to become one myself.”
I furrow my brow before nodding uneasily.
“And, hell, all of that may be true!” he slaps the bar in front of him; the noise echoes across the wooden surfaces of the room. “But I bet they didn’t tell you about the gold…”
“The… gold?” I stammer.
“I was posted here just after the new, democratically elected government had risen to power. My bosses at the state department wanted me to begin putting the wheels in motion to provoke a new change in government.”
“A coup?” I ask.
“That’s right,” he says with a grin. “The new government was playing hardball with our diplomats, threatening to supply certain unfriendly nations with cheaper oil instead of old Uncle Sam.” He pauses, rubbing his forehead before taking another sip of beer. He’s so skinny I can make out his entire orbital bone surrounding his eye.
“You know, politics. We coup here, we coup there. We coup who we want to coup.”
I take a sip of my own bottle. It’s somewhat flat, ice cold, and reminds me entirely of home.
“I spent about six months here, doing my job and battling headaches and problems with my co-ordination that I thought were all to do with being an old man. Hah, little did I know…”
He chuckles to himself, but his tone is wistful. Maybe he hasn’t made peace with his fate yet after all.
“And then, six months in I got new directive from Langley. A shipwreck had been discovered by deep sea divers off the coast of Madrevaria. A shipwreck that was some 450 years old.”
I nod along with the tale, but I’m struggling to piece all of this together in any way. A shipwreck?
“You see, soon after the discovery of the Americas, the Spanish empire would send loot from their South American colonies back to Europe via ship. We’re talking massive amounts of treasure by weight: gold, silver, gemstones, you name it. Occasionally, these ships would go down in a storm, get sunk by an enemy fleet, or just hit a rock and vanish beneath the waves.”
I seem to remember reading something like that. I take another sip of my beer and Forrest coughs again, hacking his guts into his fist.
“The Madrevarian shipwreck was one of the largest ever recovered. A galley loaded to the brim with gold intended as a coronation for some Spanish king. In today’s money, it’d be worth some $48.4 billion.”
I can’t help but widen my eyes at that amount. I haven’t earned a dollar in months now – haven’t even wanted to – but even I must respect the very big number.
“The United States of America, via a series of disputed treaties and trade partnerships, considers this shipwreck and its cargo her own property. I was tasked with ensuring the safe and speedy recovery of that gold to a CIA base in Brazil; I was very confidently assured that amount of money would fund every off-the-books operation we have for a generation.”
Ahh, now I see where this is going: Baynes and his bosses want that gold to fund their black site prisons, their interrogations, their coups, and whatever the hell else they need to do without getting congress’ approval.
“So, after six months of sleuthing around the favelas of Madrevaria, trying to cope with thundering headaches, I tried to engineer the recovery of that gold.” He pauses, clutching his forehead again. “But I couldn’t do it. I’d had a career of this – working undercover in poor and undeveloped countries, and I found I couldn’t steal from this one. Not this time.”
Alessia looks over at him with some concern. However, he soon lets go of his forehead and goes back to his beer.
