Alpine Argentina
The next afternoon, Carlos met secretly with his cousin, Armando the banker. They sat in the covered porch in back of the little tobacco shop in the village that was a few miles from Diablo’s compound. Armando, an arrogant, unworried man in his late thirties, let the cigar smoke curl through a shaft of sunlight that blazed though the rift in the steel roof. He had declined an invitation to view Belief Keeper’s strange little body with, “Let’s talk, cousin, before it’s too late for you.”
Armando gave Carlos his straight, banker’s stare. “The Little Ones were right, you know. Not to let anyone see the body.”
“Why?”
“There are agents that will kill them on sight. And torture you to find the rest.”
“Agents? You’re crazy, Armando.”
Armando balanced his cigar precariously on his tea glass. “Agents as in representatives of agencies.”
“Come on. No one even knows about them.”
Armando sighed. “Listen to me, cousin. Bury these remains where no one will ever find them. Deny you even knew Diablo and get far, far away from here.”
“Why should I believe you?”
Armando just smiled. “Because my mother cares about you, Carlos, and everyone loves Alicia. Even I don’t want you killed.”
“So…What do you know that I don’t?”
Armando was suddenly very guarded. “You know I handled some money transactions for Diablo a while back. He changes bankers like a whore changes tricks. Well, you hear things. And you learn not to talk about them. Ever…”
Carlos considered that. “I’m going to slip by Diablo’s compound tonight and get my things.”
Armando stood, shaking his head. My cousin is a complete fool, he was thinking. “No you’re not.”
“Why not?”
“I heard there was big trouble there.”
“What trouble?”
Armando shrugged. “I can be very stealthy. I hear that police and military are hanging around the hills area. No one has heard from Diablo. You’re crazy even to try to get close.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Armando shrugged again. I’ll tell them I tried to stop him, he thought. “Just don’t let anybody see you going there.”
“Fine…”
Carlos decided to wait until three in the morning. Diablo usually turned in at midnight and the night guards had gotten sloppy since the perimeter lights were installed. Even his guards hate him. Carlos made his approach by packhorse from the wooded side long after the moon had fallen below the mountains. He had expected only to able to get to twenty yards from the fence under cover of the woods because of the flood lamps that surrounded the property. But something was wrong. It is much too dark. This night the lamps were dark. Diablo had always insisted: “The perimeter lights stay on if you have to crank the generators by fucking hand.”
…But not tonight. Maybe he’s using infrared.
The horse noticed the smell first and balked. Then Carlos caught a whiff of the distinctive, acrid tang of overheated metal and airborne ash. Moments later, in spite of the chill night air, he began to feel the heat. He tied his sister’s horse to a pine tree and made his way cautiously on foot, pausing every few steps to listen, look, and smell. Then, through the trees, he caught a glimpse of a necklace of blinking lights. Too far, he thought. They glimmered at an improbably great distance. Those lights are well past the compound. What happened to the buildings?
Carlos crept forward a few steps, stopped, peering around a pine tree. He could just make out a line of emergency vehicles, a fire truck, several vans and cars with flashing light bars, all on the other side of an unnatural pool of darkness. My God. Sometime in the last 30 hours, the headquarters of Diablo’s little empire had become a crater.
Carlos held very still; he was suddenly very conscious of the precariousness of his position. Someone, something, had blasted Diablo, Hector, everyone and everything within that compound into oblivion.
I could have been with them. Why? The Little Ones. Carlos turned and crept back to his horse. How much time do I have?
Four hours later, at dawn, Alicia squealed and wept when Carlos surprised her at the back door to her little cottage. She was tall and slender like their late father and hugged her stocky older brother fiercely on the back stoop until he could feel the dampness from her tears. “I thought you were inside that horrible place when they attacked Diablo,” she whispered.
“They attacked? Who?”
“Quiet,” she added as she led him into the small kitchen. “The children are still asleep.”
“Who?” he whispered.
“No one knows.”
As coffee bubbled on the stove, Carlos rubbed his hands. “I apologize for borrowing your horse last night. It was very late and I didn’t want to disturb you. I never thought you would think I’d died.” Alicia gave him that look. “Sister, I haven’t slept in two days. When was this attack?”
“Just before dawn, day before yesterday, I think. Where were you?”
“I slipped away with four of the Little Ones, hid my truck under some brush in one of the canyons and walked into the village to see Armando.”
“That little shit. He should have told me you were alive. But thank God…And you, for saving the Little Ones.” She paused. “Four? Who?”
“Belief Keeper. Diablo had him killed by Hector in front of its pod mates, then Hector ordered me to deal with the mess.”
Alicia crossed herself. “He was the proud Little One.”
“Yes he was. I gave them his kilt to keep.”
Alicia smiled and wiped an eye. “They are so human.”
“I know, I know. God, Alicia, what can I do now?”
“You must save them.”
“Easy for you to say. But how? Who can help me now?”
“I think that one of the old customers might hide and protect them.”
“Diablo’s customers? Who?”
Alicia thought a moment. “Maybe you should ask Father Ramón.”
The little parish church sat alone at the edge of the woods; it was a steepled, steel-reinforced A-Frame made of rough native granite blocks and logs. A two-way satellite dish linked the church office to the rest of the world. Fr. Ramón Carrera, a tall man with short dark hair and dark brown eyes, dressed in jeans and black T-shirt, stood smiling just outside the office. “Carlos, I hoped your sister would get you back to church someday, even after you hooked up with El Diablo. But I didn’t think it would take aliens from outer space to get you here.” Father Ramón’s eyes were twinkling. He clasped the shorter man around the shoulders. “I want to see the dead Little One.”
“Alicia told you everything, then?”
“Yes. I know everything you told her, plus the rumors from the village.”
“Well…” Carlos was hesitating. He had borrowed his sister’s car and the remains of Belief Keeper were on ice in a beer cooler in the trunk.
“I know you have an ET’s body. You eventually have to trust someone besides Alicia. She made it easy by telling me all…So kill me or show me.” Ramón was grinning.
Carlos smiled, too. Ramón had come to the village as a priest when Carlos was a teenager. Carlos admired and liked the man even as he had “hooked up” (as Ramón put it) with “desperadoes.” Moments later, he opened the trunk door, exposing the cooler. He flipped the latch and opened the door. Fresh ice was heaped over beer bottles.
“Aha,” Father Ramón said. “…Alien beer from Mexico?”
Carlos was too distracted to laugh at Ramón’s crack. He brushed away the ice to expose a black plastic bag; carefully untied the top and peeled back the folds of plastic. “They made a mess of him.”
Father Ramón peered closely into the bag, bending forward almost double. “May I touch?”
Carlos nodded. Father Ramón Carrera held the tiny “fingers,” turning them gently, exposing the bulb at the base. “Eyes?”
“Their eyes are inside those bumps,” Carlos said.
“This one was the male?” Ramón asked. Carlos nodded. “Alicia said he was standing in front of the other ones when he was killed?”
“Yes. The other Little Ones told me that.”
“So they seem to have a sense of obligation to each other.”
“Yes. They can be very kind and brave.”
“What wonderful creatures.” Father Ramón made the sign of the cross then mumbled a ritual as he carefully closed the bag. He brushed the ice over the bag, rearranged two beer bottles and re-closed the cooler. Ramón looked at Carlos. “You’re a good man, my friend.”
Carlos closed the trunk. “They may die soon, Father. What can I do?”
The church office consisted of a single shelf of books and a rough desk. Ramón pulled away a stained oilcloth cover exposing a first-rate laptop and encrypted Sat Phone. “Frankly, I don’t know of any of Diablo’s customers who could ever be trusted. But I know of a large information brokerage firm with Australian, Canadian and US offices. It has a very good reputation out here. The principals are two men, Finnegan Gael and Jack Falstaff. Your late boss, the well named ‘El Diablo’, tried to deal with them, but they turned him down.”
“I only know of the names.”
“Actually, I know their top security man, Jay Robertson, quite well. In the old days, we worked side by side. I was a chaplain in the war and he was a colonel in the American Special Forces. I would trust him with my life.”
“You were in a war?”
“Oh yes…” Ramón’s eyes suddenly darkened but the mood immediately passed. “That’s wars…plural. Robertson is a solid fellow. A good American.”
“Can we trust them?”
Ramón sat down, and motioned for Carlos to take the other seat. “Robertson, most certainly…The rest? Who knows?” he said. “With your permission, I will find out if I can recruit Robertson right now.”