The initial search team never finds everything. It's one of Mooney's tenets. The initial searchers can get wrapped up in the crime. Cool heads are needed for a search.
What might I find? What was I looking for? Another of Mooney's rules: Don’t look for anything; look for everything. If you search for the specific, you’ll have eyes only for those car keys, that shell casing.
I blanked my mind while Roldan and Mama Parello discussed my request with clicks and gutturals and waving hands. When Roldan nodded permission, I scurried down the incline, scrabbling over rocks and boulders, grateful for work I knew how to do.
Divination, my ass.
I’d flown in helicopters during police exercises, gotten a quick lift in an FBI copter once, smaller than this one and in pristine condition. I tried to remember where things had been stored, where compartments had been located. Possibly there were places in the copter that hadn’t been searched, papers that might tell me who they were.
The holy they were the Kogi. Who were the evil they?
Because of the angle of the crashed copter, I had to clamber onto the fuselage, clinging to a metal bar, to reach a sliding door that was immobilized in the open position. Dropping down into the cabin would have been no treat considering the condition of my feet, so I let my eyes do the initial walk-through. There were no bodies inside, but there were helmets and goggles, charred remnants of scarred machinery. I saw another light source, slid to the ground, and squirmed inside a more convenient opening, a narrow crack in the fuselage.
It was a Boeing craft, model CH-4, something, something. The panel had cracked on impact and the last two letters or numbers were illegible. I wondered whether the radio might be miraculously intact. It wasn’t. There had once been labels on the helmets, but they were charred. Same with the goggles.
I squirmed back into daylight. Roldan and the priest sat cross-legged on the ground. The little man was holding Paolina's birdman up to catch the rays of the sun.
“How many men were there?” I yelled.
“Dead?” Roldan said. “Six.”
“Dog tags?”
He shook his head no.
No dog tags on the injured American; no dog tags on the dead. Odd.
The signs of hastily abandoned digging were plain, shovels stuck in the earth, picks propped against skinny trees, shrubbery uprooted. A moonscape of holes pocked the earth. Half a huge pottery urn leaned against a rock. Bits of hard red clay littered the ground. Some holes were completely empty; some littered with shards indicating the breakage of an urn. There were bones scattered in the remnants of the urns, human bones, I thought, ancient bones. If I’d been an archeologist, I’d have been fascinated, but I wasn’t looking for bones, pots, or gold. I divided the area into a mental grid. In the first few minutes, I found a package of cigarettes and two partially smoked cigars. After ten minutes, a lump of chewing gum. I worked at a slow, deliberate pace, lulling the men into inattention. I noticed a khaki cap caught on a bush, but it bore no insignia. Why were there no dog tags? Roldan's eyes were glued to the priest; the shaman focused on the birdman.
The pistol was shoved into a mound of dirt, concealed under brush and leaves. If the sunlight hadn’t caught the dull metal, I wouldn’t have noticed it. I didn’t react; I kept walking and stooping, pretending to examine a patch of discolored earth. I glanced downhill. The little man clicked and chattered.
If I grabbed the gun and threatened to shoot the old man called Mama Parello unless Roldan cooperated in getting Paolina back, where would I be? I had the feeling that the two men would simply tell me to do what I needed to do, that the mama would be pleased to join the spirit world sooner rather than later.
A Mac-10 might have been more persuasive, but a small pistol like this one could be concealed. It looked like a Beretta, a new one, a .38 with twelve rounds, and I didn’t intend to leave the mountaintop without it. Roldan and the priest were peering at something in the Kogi's cupped palms, possibly the divination beads. Where were the others who’d melted into the mist? I did a quick scan of the area, waited till a bird called. Roldan and the little man looked up, and the gun nestled in the back of my waistband like an old friend.
Mooney was right, I thought. The initial searchers had missed a gun. If they’d missed a gun, they could have missed anything. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them wide, determined to overlook nothing even if it meant crawling over every inch of the mountain.
I worked for another fifteen minutes, another half hour, forty-five minutes. Roldan was right; time had no meaning in this place. When I saw the scorched leather folder, I almost walked right past it. Someone had trodden it into the earth. It looked like it belonged, like a line of rock under the soil. I sank to the ground and scrabbled at it with what was left of my fingernails. It had started out tan; it was brown now. It peeled away from the ground, slightly damp.
I pried it gently open, afraid I’d find the tattered remnants of a dollar bill, a worthless itemized receipt, other meaningless debris. Half of a photograph of a dark-haired child; that wasn’t going to help. Two thin cards were stuck to one another. I tried to wedge my nails into the crack between them. There: The corner of one chipped off, but they separated into a Florida driver's license and a plasticized badge with a corporate logo. I studied the badge, shielding it from the fierce sun.
A black arrow pierced a blue triangle, the same design I’d last seen tattooed on the arm of the wounded American. The tiny photograph on the badge meant nothing to me, a man's face, nothing more, a name: Sean McIntryre. It was the corporate name that hit me like a sudden slap. BrackenCorp. My lips shaped the name. Drew Naylor rented his huge house from MB Realty Trust, a subsidiary of BrackenCorp. BrackenCorp, the big defense contractor.
BrackenCorp in Miami. BrackenCorp here on the mountain. Pieces of the mosaic shifted in my head.
“Roldan!” My voice carried in the clear thin air. I moved downhill as I spoke, rushing as though I’d never known a blister.
“What is it?”
“The lawyer, Vandenburg. Why didn’t you send Paolina's gifts through Vandenburg this time? What were the rumors?”
“What troubles you so?”
“Tell me.”
“Five years ago, Vandenburg was picked up by the DEA.”
“And?”
“That's all. They let him go, but after that, others were detained. You know what I mean?”
He was telling me that Vandenburg was a DEA informant. But if the lawyer was linked to DEA…
The small Kogi priest lifted his arms and rattled off a barrage of incomprehensible sounds. I glanced at Roldan, waiting for translation.
“He says you’ve had a vision. What does it tell you?”
BrackenCorp in Miami, BrackenCorp on the mountaintop, Brack-enCorp in the camp. The soldier in the hut had to be weaned off opiates and made to talk, made to talk now. I wasn’t sure why, but my heart was pounding in my chest, and each beat was sending the same message: Hurry.
I said, “To get down the mountain, back to the camp. As quickly as possible.”