Chapter 8
SMITH STROLLED UP THE STREET, anxious to get his ID straightened out and his credit cards replaced so he could enjoy the rest of his prize trip. His vacation in Colodor had gotten off to a bad start, but he didn’t want to let that ruin the rest of his time here. Trying to be a good American, welcoming to all the world’s people, he smiled at passersby and wished them good day.
Just where the cabdriver had told him it would be, he found the big white building, the stenciled U.S. Embassy sign and a flapping flag. Smith sighed in relief. “Ah, here we are. A place where I can always feel welcome.”
* * *
After making his treacherous phone call, Bolo eased up in his taxi to where he could watch Smith approach the embassy. He sat behind the wheel and held a portable walkie-talkie close to his face, waiting, waiting. He pushed the transmit button and spoke into the radio. “I will give you the countdown, amigos.”
Right on schedule, Smith strolled up the street.
Nearby, in a rented room above a florist shop, two Colodoran hoods looked out onto the street from a high window. One held a walkie-talkie, the counterpart to Bolo’s. The other thug squatted beside the remote controls of a set of planted explosives, gripping the plunger of a radio detonator switch. He wore dark glasses, and he held the detonator the way that another man might hold his lover. “Now?” he pleaded, as if anticipating the thrill. “Can I blow them up now?”
“I see him. He’s just going inside,” the hood with the walkie-talkie answered. “Twenty . . . nineteen . . . eighteen . . .”
The second thug fidgeted, looked away, clearly distraught. “Can’t you count any faster?”
“No. Now wait for it. Seventeen . . . sixteen . . .”
* * *
As Smith entered the embassy, he walked up to the receptionist — a tense-looking bear of a Marine sergeant. The Marine watched him, hand gripping the butt of his pistol.
“Hello, gyrene,” Smith said brightly. “I’ve got to report—”
From the peephole in the spy closet, O’Halloran squinted, ready to explode forward. He forced himself to take half a second to be sure and another half second to enjoy the flush of triumph. “That’s him!” he bellowed, yelling through the flimsy closet door.
Hearing the CIA chief’s muffled cry, the sergeant drew his pistol and said, “Excuse me, sir: kindly put your hands on your head!”
Smith’s words faltered to a halt in mid-sentence as he stared down the barrel of the drawn weapon. “I’ve lost my passport . . .”
O’Halloran aimed his revolver through the tiny spy port in the wall. He fired.
The echo of the gunshot inside the cramped closet nearly deafened him. He shook his head, trying to clear the dazzle from his eyes and the ringing from his ears.
Smith’s commando instincts, well honed from years of dodging gunfire in the streets of New York, took over.
He turned tail and jogged frantically from left to right. The Marine sergeant opened fire with his own revolver, blasting again and again as Smith scrambled for the door. The glass blew out, hammered by whining bullets.
Smith felt sure that Admiral Horatio Nelson never had to contend with such outrageous circumstances.
From the outside he heard the roar of an approaching taxi, the familiar putter of a poorly tuned engine. He charged for it, running pell-mell.
The cab swerved to a screeching halt in front of the embassy, its door already open. “Here, sir,” Bolo said. “Perhaps I could be of assistance?”
Smith dove into the back seat, sprawling across the upholstery. Gunshots bored holes into the right rear quarter-panel of the vehicle. The cab raced off.
* * *
Meanwhile, the hood at the window above the florist shop stared out onto the frantic street activity as he counted down. “Five . . . four . . .”
“Now? Can I do it now?” the second man said at the detonator.
“Hold on to your britches, Boom Boom,” the first thug scolded. “Three . . . two . . .”
The Marine sergeant and O’Halloran burst from the embassy’s shattered glass entry and stampeded down the marble stairs. “There! Shoot, shoot!” O’Halloran ordered the sergeant. “Don’t let Pedrito get away!”
Both men stood on the sidewalk and fired after the departing taxi, but they succeeded only in gunning down a few pedestrians, mapmaker protesters, souvenir vendors and wild chickens.
“One!” the hood at the window shouted triumphantly.
The whole front of the embassy blew out in gouts of orange flame. O’Halloran and the sergeant were knocked into the street.
“I hope you enjoyed yourself,” the first thug said, looking over his shoulder at his partner with the detonator.
“Oh yeah, that was good,” said the man with the detonator, his voice husky with ecstasy. “Almost as good as that airport in Panama in ’87.” He hugged the detonator close. “Can we do it again?”
* * *
Bolo drove at breakneck speed. Smith climbed to his elbows on the back seat, then scrambled to a sitting position. He glanced through the rear window, yanked the rattling door the rest of the way shut, then popped his head up alongside the driver. “Jiminy Christmas, what was that all about? I just wanted to report my stolen wallet.”
“It’s a national holiday today,” Bolo said. “Many unexpected things happen this time of year. All in good fun.”
“Does it usually involve shooting unsuspecting tourists?” Smith said, still trying to catch his breath.
“Sometimes,” Bolo nodded. “You have seen few people with red hair here in Colodor. Perhaps now you know why.”
The cab raced up the street, careening around other vehicles. Bolo continued to accelerate, though his face remained bland and unemotional. The cab skidded around a corner, leaving black tire smears on the pavement, then straightened out to speed along a wide expanse as pedestrians and street vendors leaped out of the way. Smith searched for a seat belt in the old cab, but found only loosely connected strands of baling twine, which didn’t seem to help.
Sirens shrieking, a police car turned the same corner after them, roaring in their wake.
“We’re being followed,” Smith said.
Bolo tilted the rearview mirror. “Don’t worry, sir. I’m sure they’re after someone else. After all, what have we done wrong?”
* * *
A banged-up O’Halloran sat beside a uniformed driver in the police car. Plaster dust and tiny cuts from the embassy explosion covered the CIA man. His hair hung in disarray, the overlong strands flopping down his cheek and leaving his bald spot uncovered.
O’Halloran gesticulated madly ahead and pounded the dashboard. “After him! After him!”
The driver hunched over the steering wheel and continued to race along, not daring to argue with his boss.
The streets became narrower, the houses more ramshackle in a poorer neighborhood. Graffiti covered much of the whitewashed stucco. Ahead, the road ended in a line of telephone poles covered with garish posters for political parties and fruit-based soft drinks. Beyond the telephone poles, the road veered in a steep slope off into a garbage dump, where small, smoky fires were burning.
Far ahead, the fleeing cab careened up the street, but the police car narrowed the distance with every block. Still hammering the dashboard, O’Halloran turned livid, as if he could physically urge the car forward through the sheer force of his high blood pressure.
“Oh, that dirty son of a bitch! I’ll get him if it’s the last thing —”
Bolo’s cab yanked sideways and slid like a thrown dart into a labyrinthine alley, scattering more chickens.
Unable to make such an unexpected turn, the police car continued straight ahead as the driver wrestled with the steering wheel. A spray of white feathers flew in front of his windshield, blocking his view.
“— I ever do!” O’Halloran said. “Faster!”
The driver stomped down on the accelerator — and rammed full speed into the nearest telephone pole.
After the hissing steam from the radiator cleared, O’Halloran wedged his shoulders out of the window, looking down at the buckled door of the police car. He shook his fist in the direction where the cab had vanished.
“I’ll get you,” O’Halloran vowed, because he could think of nothing more creative to say. With his other hand, he dragged his hair back into place over his bald spot. “I’ll get you, Pedrito Miraflores!”