The Devil's bed

Hate had festered inside him, swelled huge and hard, barely contained by his intelligence. Patience, he told himself. Wait. Plan. Execute.

Execute, he did.

He’d observed that there were only two ways of leaving the prison compound. Most men left dead. They were executed on their knees in the yard or killed by disease or a beating or died on the Devil’s Bed. The others left because they were no longer dangerous. They were the broken men, the empty ones, the ones with hollow eyes. The other prisoners called themlos espectros. Ghosts. They wandered the yard freely, drifting inside the razor wire, until one day the gate opened for them. They left for brief periods on work detail, chained together on the back of a flatbed, accompanied by several guards. Usually they cut back the brush that threatened to engulf the perimeter fence, or they repaired the jungle road.

One day the gate opened for Moses.

Over a period of six months, he’d allowed himself to dissolve, to become one oflos espectros. In the end, he whimpered when he was taken to the Devil’s Bed. He’d wet his pants before he got there. He no longer cursed La Cucaracha after the violations. He never looked another man in the eye. He lost weight because the other prisoners stole his food. Then they, too, began to abuse and to beat him.

Eventually, he was gathered up with severallos espectros, chained on the flatbed, and driven out the gate. A jeep containing four guards armed with old Soviet SKS semiautomatic rifles accompanied them. They drove five miles until they came to a stream where the road had been washed away. Big mounds of rock and gravel for repair had been dumped beside the road. Each man was given a shovel.

As soon as the shovel was in his hand, Moses sank the sharp metal edge into the face of the guard nearest him, and he grabbed the man’s SKS. He dropped another guard with a heart shot before anyone had a chance to react. The third guard got off a hurried round that sizzled past Moses’s head, then Moses clustered three shots dead center in his chest. The last guard made for the jungle. Moses dropped him before he was forty yards out.

The driver of the truck had plopped himself down on the running board. He held a pack of cigarettes in one hand, and he sat paralyzed in the middle of pulling out a smoke. He eyed Moses from under the brim of a ratty cap withYANKEESsewn in silver across the crown.

Moses put the barrel of the rifle against the driver’s forehead.

He considered letting the driver go. The man was a local who worked for the prison. He wasn’t one of thepolicia. He looked like the kind of man who might have a wife and children. But to spare him would have required compassion, an emotion that had become even more rare to Moses than fear.

The bullet made only a small entry wound between the man’s eyes, but it splattered the back of his head across the side of the truck. Moses dug the keys out of the dead man’s khakis, shoved the body aside, and climbed into the cab. The other prisoners had watched the whole scene placidly, and none made a move to join him.

Within a day, he’d reached the embassy in Bogota and the Company had been notified.

Returning to the United States, Moses had three missions. To kill Coates. To kill Tom Jorgenson. And to kill Kathleen Jorgenson Dixon. Attempting any one of those assassinations was probably suicide, but David Moses was a man with nothing left to lose. His life had already been taken from him. What remained was little more than vengeance breathing.

The Company had given him a hero’s welcome. Even Coates shook his hand warmly. Two days later, Coates was found dead in his home. He was naked and bound to his kitchen table. A car battery had been set on the kitchen counter. Two wires ran from the battery terminals and were connected to the man’s genitals, which, when he was found, were charred to a black the color of cockroaches.

• • •

Kingman said, “A lot of us knew what kind of man Coates was. We all figured it was only a matter of time before you moved ahead of him and were the one giving the orders. Coates must have figured it, too. I was with him when he got the news that you were alive and on your way home. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a man quite as frightened. But when you returned to the Company, you didn’t say a word.”

“I came back to kill him. You think I should have announced that?”

“You might have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you’d just gone through channels.”

“Channels.” He nearly spit.

“After you killed Coates, why did you come back to Minnesota?”

“Business,” Moses said.

“You killed a homeless man here, David. What kind of business was that?”