Night of the Jaguar Read Free

asked.
    â€œSeguridad is here.”
    Ajax shot up off his haunches and looked out the door. A squad of Russian-trained sharpshooters from State Security took up concealed positions around the soldier’s refuge. He froze Gladys in an accusation: “How did they know?”
    â€œWe got orders at formation this morning. You weren’t there. The major said to notify State Security when we found him.”
    â€œThe major is a moron.”
    â€œThe perpetrator was from the Seventeenth Light Hunter Battalion. They’re a MINT unit.”
    The Ministry of the Interior, the MINT, was an octopus with a tentacle in too many tamales, including State Security and its own combat units fighting the Contra.
    â€œGladys, his name is Fortunado Gavilan.” Ajax returned the Python to its holster and handed the rig over to her, ivory handle first. “Don’t ever involve State Security in our business again.”
    She looked at the gun. “Captain, are you crazy?”
    He regarded her for a moment. Did she know his history with State Security? Did she sense his confusion from the hallucinations he’d been having? Or had he told her and forgotten?
    â€œI won’t need the piece, Gladys, he’s done killing.”
    She seemed to straighten up into a formal pose. “Captain, regulations say no officer is allowed to enter the presence of a dangerous suspect without protection.”
    â€œJesus, you sound like a condom ad from the Health Ministry.”
    He shoved the Python into her hands.
    â€œAjax, please, he killed his girlfriend. The priest could already be dead, too.”
    â€œGladys, he’s shell-shocked. This is not an arrest. It’s a rescue. Give me the wire.” Ajax felt a burst of adrenaline flutter his heart and turn his stomach. My God, how long had it been? “Just sit still until I bring them out.”
    Ajax stepped out of the shack. He signaled the sharpshooters, who lowered their rifles. He stole around the back of the soldier’s hut. He slid the wire inside the shuttered window, turned the simple wood latch, and slipped soundlessly inside.
    He crouched on the floor and covered his shut eyes for a count of five to help them adjust. Opened them in the darkness. The musky incense clogged his nose, so he had to smother a cough. He was in the back of a two-room shack. He made out a few shapes: two simple cots, a packing-crate table, a woman’s plastic brush and comb. On the wall was a scrap-wood shelf, holding only a prized bottle of imported Jergens hand cream, looking a saint in its niche.
    The hut felt empty. He stood, took a step further inside. The window he’d come through was framed by a halo of sunshine. A few panes of smoky light seemed to hang on invisible wires where the sun bled down from the roof. Ajax moved soundlessly into the other room. The door was barricaded. Piles of incense smoldered on the dirt floor. This room seemed empty, but he could sense, if not see the soldier.
    â€œYou came in so quietly I thought you were an angel.”
    The soldier materialized out of a corner, as if passing through the wall from outside. Ajax stumbled backward and went down over a table flat onto his back. Fortunado Gavilan stood over him. He was dressed in camouflage pants, bare-chested, a bottle of rum in one hand, an AK-47 in the other. He pointed it at Ajax. “You aren’t. Are you?”
    Ajax cleared his throat, struggled to control his voice. It had been a long time since police work had involved Ajax in real danger, and madness was the most dangerous of all. “No compa, I’m no angel. Just a soldier like you.”
    The soldier leaned toward Ajax, studying him in the gloom. Ajax looked up at a dark, miserable, mestizo face. Close-cropped black hair and heavy brows. He’d seen the face many times before. An old man’s exhausted visage on a very young man’s body, the pitiful, pitiless look of the combat