Carmen nodded.
“Did you see trucks? Jeeps?”
She shook her head, finished her cigarette, and stubbed it out. “Couldn’t get a truck through there, unless there was some road I don’t see.”
“And they were training?”
She nodded. “Someplace away from the huts, I didn’t see it but I hear it. Shooting, people giving orders, a few times I hear an explosion.”
Captain Mercer’s Summer Camp for Psychos. Get high, get laid, and blow shit up. Sounded fun. Brodie said, “So you stayed there a week.”
Carmen’s face darkened. “He wants me to stay longer.” She hesitated, then said, “One night I go out of the hut to take a piss, and this Colombianguy who’s high as fuck just attacks me, gets me against a tree and… it’s over quick, he leaves. And I… I tell Señor Kyle because it felt wrong and I thought…” She trailed off, looked down at the floor. “You don’t get made to feel special in this job, señor. So when someone does that, it’s nice. And I thought maybe he would… protect me.”
“Did he?”
“He told me not to worry about it. So I go to sleep. And the next morning, Señor Kyle is not in the bed. I go outside, to the clearing… He’s there, the Colombian guy. Hanging from a tree. His body beat to shit, his…” Carmen touched her stomach. “Things were just hanging out of him.”
Kyle Mercer was an officer and a gentleman with a soft spot for old Army buddies and child prostitutes. And this was the same man who cut off heads, maybe tortured a CIA officer to death, and, as per Carmen, defended her honor by disemboweling her rapist. Or more likely Mercer was defending his own honor and his position as alpha male. Brodie thought that an insanity plea at court-martial would work well.
Carmen continued, “I tell him I wanna leave. He don’t understand, says he was just making sure it don’t happen again. He thinks I’m gonna be fuckin’ grateful or something.” She shook her head. “He tries to convince me, he tells me it’s bad in Caracas, here I can live in peace. I say, what kind of peace is this? This is when I know that the one-week thing was bullshit, he wanted to keep me there, and I am afraid he won’t let me leave. But the next day he tells me he is going back to Caracas and I can come. So I fly back. The other girls stay. He brings me here. And that is the last I seen him.”
Brodie asked, “And you think he went back to the jungle?”
“I think… yes, he seem happy there.”
Right. Happy to be where the law of the jungle is his law. Captain Mercer had probably read Heart of Darkness twice, and seen Apocalypse Now ten times. Brodie wondered just how much of the well-trained career Army officer was left in him.
Beyond that, it was a major security breach to let Carmen return to Caracas, even if she had been blindfolded for the critical last leg of the journey. Brodie thought back to how Mercer had spared Al Simpson, and how that act of mercy led directly to the CID being on his tail. And now this, letting a witness who spoke perfect English return to the Hen House where he’d already been spotted, instead of keeping her prisoner—or killing her. SeñorKyle must have really liked her. Which was too bad for him, because this señorita was going to lead Brodie and Taylor right to him.You fucked up, Captain. They all do in the end.
Brodie said, “I need more description of the village you flew into.”
She seemed annoyed or impatient, but replied, “It was just this little place with huts… but it had this tourist guesthouse. Only a few people. I think the village is just for tourists, but there was no tourists so it was just us and the natives.”
“What were the huts made out of?”
Carmen thought a moment. “Stone or mud or some shit.”
“Color?”
Carmen thought. “Yellow, I think. Maybe like they were painted.”
“Any churches? Stores?”
She shook her head, then lit another cigarette and glanced again at the door. “We done?”
“Almost. Tell me about the trip down the river.”
“I was blindfolded.”
“Try harder.”
Carmen shot him a look, then thought for a moment. “There was a lot of turns in the river. It took maybe an hour? Maybe longer.”
“Were you going upriver or downriver? With the flow or against it?”
“Fuck, man, I don’t know.”
“You said the boat had a motor. Was the motor running the whole time?”
