Titanoboa (9 page)

“You know,” she said, “I hired you to do a job. I still need that job done. I need to find out what happened to Billy Gilmore.”

“I’m not sure—”

“I’ll pay quadruple your normal rate. A hundred dollars an hour.”

Before Mark had even processed the amount of money he could make, a single flash came to his mind. Himself in court with a lawyer, a good lawyer this time, fighting for custody of his daughter. He didn’t have a choice. He could do nothing else for the amount of money she was proposing. “Okay,” he said. “But I want one twenty-five an hour, plus expenses. Give me that, and I’ll find out what happened to Billy Gilmore. There’s no American you’ll find that has more connections on this island than me.”

“Okay, that’s fair. What do you need from me?”

Mark left a few bills on the table for the meal. “Just no more lying.”

He walked out of the café, a gray feeling in his gut telling him this might not have been the best thing to get caught up
in.

15

Steven
Russert had grown up in the oil fields. Back in North Dakota, he got his first job with the oil companies when he was just eleven years old. The field workers worked non-stop for so long they dehydrated themselves. The company hired him at one dollar an hour, under the table of course, to take them water and snacks during the day. He remembered saving every one of those dollars because, one day, he would be the boss in the suit that everyone looked up to. To do that, he would have to pay for college, and his parents weren’t going to do it for him.

Now, twenty years later, he was a boss, but not as high up the chain
of command as he thought he would be. As he stood over the fields in Kalou’s jungles, he was amazed how little that world appealed to him. He’d tried it awhile. He’d entered prep school with an eye toward Harvard, the business school preferred by most of the oil companies for which he wanted to work. But that hadn’t worked out.

Steven had hated his fellow
prep school students. They cared only about what people thought about them. Their appearance, their speech, their careers, who they dated and didn’t date, everything in their lives focused on one goal: making sure they gave the right impression to the right people. They lived their lives second-hand. An inauthentic life wasn’t a real life at all, in his estimation.

H
e began getting into trouble instead of coming to class. By the time he was ready to enter high school, he’d already been kicked out of two prep schools. His father, himself an oilman but one that never rose above the position of foreman, was at a loss as to why the boy wouldn’t take advantage of the opportunity given to him. Steven didn’t care.

He went to a regular high school and
, instead of college, joined the military. He fought in the first Desert Storm and was, by all accounts, a mechanic. In fact, he had been in a reconnaissance division of the Marine Corps, something colloquially known as Force Recon, an elite squad used as a precision instrument for one purpose: to go behind enemy lines and gather intelligence by any means necessary. Though missions were considered a success if no shots were fired, killing, he soon found out, wasn’t exactly discouraged.

When he left the
Marines, the oil industry still called to him. Something about pulling the stuff out of the ground, the smell of it, the feel of it, and using it for energy was a passion he’d never gotten rid of. But now he had a different skill set than business. His skill set was protection.

When he’d first joined VN, he began as a middle manager, hired by another
Marine who hated the Ivy League, or as he called them, “fairies” and wanted real men to help run the company. Steven hated the office environment and began asking for the more dangerous posts. Posts in Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, Iraq and Yemen. He longed for the adventure that he saw when he looked to men like John Paul Getty. The Wildcats scouring the world for oil.

One day, only four weeks into his post in
Baghdad, an executive for VN was traveling the various sites as part of a PR campaign to show the public that VN cared about what occurred in Iraq. While traveling in his Limo in the green zone, two policemen stopped the car and asked for identification. As the driver of the limo gathered the papers together, the policemen pulled out semi-automatic weapons and opened fire on the executive. The only other person in the limo was Steven, who threw himself on the executive, catching several rounds in his back that burrowed deep into the Kevlar vest he always wore.

Steven lay motionless, and just as he thought they would, the policemen inched closer to make sure the occupants were dead. Steven caught one of them with a round in his forehead, crumpling him to his knees. As he fell, he squeezed the trigger on his rifle,
hitting the other policeman in the leg. Steven got out of the limo and held the handgun, the largest Desert Eagle he could get his hands on, and fired rounds into the man’s throat then his eyes. He pulled the dead driver’s body out of the limo and drove back to the hotel.

The executive hired him as head of security for operations in the Middle East. Within four years, Steven head
ed security for the entire company.

And though they’d had terrorist attacks, bouts of cholera, and even one disgruntled worker who came to work with a pistol to kill his direct supervisor, they had never had anything like this.

Sixteen workers on the island of VN had disappeared. Twelve were native islanders, the other four mainland employees of VN. When Steven had gotten the call to come out, he expected some sort of disease, the men probably dropping dead in the jungle somewhere and no one ever finding their bodies. He didn’t think that anymore.

On a Tuesday night, he was walking back from the worksite to what was basically a tent city set up in the middle of a clearing. The jungle had been carved away, leaving only flat dirt.
About a hundred tents, including a medical tent and a mess hall, were placed there. He was inspecting the camp’s perimeter. He’d stationed guards every hundred feet, and he checked in with them. As he was rounding a corner and heading to the next guard, he heard something. Soft, like someone whispering to him from the darkness. He stood frozen, staring out into the darkened jungle. Something was moving in the bushes.

He didn’t take his gaze
from the object, though he couldn’t tell at all what it was. A dark mass taking up so much space he thought his eyes were mistaken. And whatever it was reflected the moonlight. Like dark obsidian stone, a pure black. Darker than night.

And then Steven felt it.

Smoothness on his calf. He glanced down at the slick surface wrapping around his leg. He didn’t recognize it at first, his mind unable to process what he was seeing. So he did the first thing he always did in that kind of situation. He attacked.

Withdrawing the Desert Eagle he now preferred, he fired directly into the slick surface twice. It withdrew into the jungle, a loud hiss accompanied by what sounded like a cat dying. Despite everything he had seen, all the combat, death
, and chaos, Steven had felt the cold touch of fear. Other guards ran over, debating going into the jungle after whatever that had been, but Steven didn’t allow it. They would wait until daylight. Besides, it was injured and couldn’t get far.

That night was nearly
three months ago, and he hadn’t seen the thing again. Only the effects of its presence in the men that went missing.

Steven lifted his binoculars and scanned the oil fields.
They were the smallest fields he’d ever been to, and in fact, he’d never seen oil fields on an island other than the Falkland Islands. This island was special to his company. And if it was special to the company, it was special to him.

Truth be told, he wanted nothing more than to abandon this place and pull everybody out. It gave him, for lack of a better word, the creeps.

“Sir,” his assistant, Derek, said as he ran up to him, “post one hasn’t called in.”

“How long?”

“Six minutes late.”

“Try them again.”

Derek lifted a walkie-talkie to his lips. “Try them again, Hank, over.”

“Roger that. One sec.”

A few minutes passed in silence. Steven found silence more comfortable than small talk. But it wasn’t a trait other people shared. Derek had grown accustomed to it, so he didn’t attempt conversation. The two men simply stared at the surrounding jungle without speaking.

“Derek,” the radio crackled, “still getting no response. Over.”

“Roger that. Thanks.” Derek looked to Steven but didn’t speak for a moment. “Well, what should we do, sir?”

“Send a small team to post one. Have them meet me over there.”

Before Derek could respond, Steven was already jogging through the thick vegetation. He pulled out the machete strapped to his belt and hacked away the massive leaves and branches that blocked his path. He could’ve run around the jungle on the dirt path the company had carved out months ago, but that wasn’t the quickest route. He wanted to get to post one as quickly as possible.

The posts were the most dangerous spots on the guard rotation. A good half of the disappearances occurred in one of the ten posts he had set up. The posts were all on the outskirts of the camp
, and each disappearance had forced him to bring them closer and closer until they were in their present situation. Where the guards were basically in the camp itself.

One particularly dense patch of vine and leaves was giving him trouble
, and Steven had to hack at it for much longer than he would’ve liked. When he got through, he could see post one up ahead about thirty feet. Each post was marked with a white marker so the guards would know where to rotate.

No one was there yet
, so he stood by the marker. It was possible the guard had wandered off for a beer. The islanders didn’t have incentive for work. They felt they didn’t need much, so work seemed like a waste of time to them. VN had solved that particular problem recently. They simply provided the workers with catalogues of things they could order, should they be able to gather the money. Productivity and longevity of hours increased, but there was still an understanding that they would get away with working as little as possible, should they have the opportunity to do so.

Three men broke through the wall of green that made up the wild jungle around him
, and they stood in silence as he scanned the surroundings. No sign of the guard assigned to this post. They would have to check camp then the city to see if they could locate him before jumping to any conclusions.

As Steven turned to head back to camp, he glanced down
at the knee-high white post. A discoloration marred the bottom. Bending down, he could see clearly that it was blood. Blood—actual, fresh, blood—didn’t look like it did in the movies. It was more black than red. The only real color in it was right at the edges of any spatters. This blood was in a spatter pattern of small droplets leading down. He wasn’t a forensic analyst, but if Steven had to put money on it, he would guess something had struck the guard in a downward swing from above him.

“We’re
gonna need more guards,” he said, standing up straight. “Hire whoever you can in town. Once they’re posted, I want volunteers for a hunting party. As many as we can get. Time and a half pay.”

Derek was standing just off to the side. He waited a moment before clearing his throat and saying, “Hunting for what, sir?”

“Haven’t you heard, Derek? We got ourselves a damn monster stalking us.”

16

Mark stopped the car in front of the old house. The home lay far enough in the jungle that it took almost half an hour of driving on bumpy dirty roads to get out here. Though he’d been on several tours of the jungle before, in general, he stayed away from it.

Riki
stepped out of the passenger side. Mark had tried to tell her he worked alone, but she insisted on coming, reminding him who was paying for this investigation. Under normal circumstances, he might’ve just told her to find someone else, but he couldn’t pass up so much money. Not when he had a chance, a real chance, to get his daughter.

“You’ve never been here?”
Riki asked.

“No. Stanley never liked anyone up here. I only actually spent time with him once. He was fixing his boat motor
, and I brought out a couple beers. We sat on the beach and talked for maybe five minutes, and that was it. When the beer was empty, he went back to the motor. He didn’t enjoy other people.”

“That must’ve been lonely,” she said as they walked up the small path to the front door.

Mark looked through the front room window, but the blinds were drawn. He thought he might be able to see something out of the corners, but the only thing was a shovel leaned up against the wall.

“Well, considering he’s gone, I don’t think he’d mind if we picked his lock.” Mark took out his lock
pick kit and went to work. The kit consisted of several smooth keys and a long, thin access tool. He’d practiced a few times at home, and the ease of cracking open a lock surprised him.

The trigger in the lock popped
, and the door opened. Mark glanced over to Riki, whose face bore a combination of excitement and fear. He pushed open the door and said, “Ladies first.”

She grimaced and brushed past him inside the home.

The house was about as messy a place as Mark could’ve imagined. Garbage was piled up on the floors and overflowing from a bin in the kitchen. Crusted food pasted the few dishes spread throughout the front room. An overwhelming smell of something putrid hit them, like rotting meat wrapped in wet dog fur.

Riki
covered her nose with a Sani-wipe she pulled out of her purse, but Mark just breathed through his mouth. He wasn’t entirely certain what he was looking for, but if he could definitely cross Stanley off or add him to the list of missing persons, he would have one less thing to worry about. Then again, the government was paying by the hour, and he didn’t want it resolved too quickly.

Riki
began flipping through some files on a bookshelf. Mark crossed into the kitchen then the bedroom.

The bed was nothing but a mattress, no blanket or pillow, and the mattress was filthy. In the closet were the few items of clothing Stanley owned that weren’t on his boat.

“Hey, Mark?” Riki shouted.

“Yeah?”

“I found something.”

Mark hurriedly left the bedroom and
returned to the front room. Riki held an open file filled with photos. Mark looked at the photos as she flipped through them. They were all of women, younger women, perhaps fifteen to twenty, and all of different nationalities in different locations. All of them were dressed scantily. None of them looked frightened, which meant they were taking the photos willingly.

“Well, I guess we figured out where Stanley would di
sappear to for months at a time,” he said.

“Prostitutes? He lived in paradise but travelled around the world visiting prostitutes?”

Mark grinned. “You’re not a man. I think that might be the dream of most men. In secret of course.” He scanned the rest of the front room. “I don’t think there’s anything here.”

She closed the file and pushed it away. “What next?”

“I have a meeting with the guy that reported Stanley’s boat. I can handle that alone.”

“I’d like to come.”

“Why?”

“Because maybe I can help.”

Mark exhaled. “Well, lunch is on you, then.”

The veranda at the café was packed
, but Mark spotted who he was looking for immediately. Miguel had said on the phone that he would be with the most stunning blond in the place, and he wasn’t kidding. She looked like she had been ripped from the pages of any fashion magazine.

“Miguel?”

“Yes.”

He held out his hand
, and Miguel took it. “Mark Whittaker. Thanks for meeting me.”

“No problem.”

The two of them sat down, and the blond immediately began eyeing Riki. Riki had a natural beauty about her that Mark found more appealing than the plastic exaggeration of the blond. Somehow, intuitively, the blond recognized this and saw Riki as a threat. She wasn’t friendly and in fact leaned away from Riki, folding her arms defensively but never taking her eyes off her.

“I know the police didn’t have you fill out a witness statement,” Mark said, “so why don’t you just start at the beginning and tell me what you saw.”

“Nothing much, really. We were out on my yacht, and I saw Stanley’s boat just drifting out there. I knew Stanley from a few interactions we’d had. So I went over and hopped aboard. The swells weren’t that bad. Um… then I looked around, didn’t find anything, and was about to go when I saw the blood. Like a stain. It had, like, pieces of meat on it. So I went back to call the police. That’s it.”

“Did you see anyone around? Maybe another boat or something?”

He shook his head. “No. No one.”

“When was the last time you saw Stanley?”

“Oh, man, months ago. Last time I was here. Maybe like last year.”

Mark glanced over Miguel’s shoulder. Two men were arguing about something
, and one told the other to be quiet. Mark watched them a moment then leaned back in the seat. Miguel was a dead-end. Just someone that saw the boat after everything had already happened.

“I appreciate you meeting me,” Mark said.

He shrugged. “Sorry I couldn’t give you more.”

“Not your fault,” he said, scanning the place for a
server. “Maybe he’ll turn up on his own somewhere?”