Rivers in the Desert

“See you in hell, Quint Rivers!” Juan Carlos Ramirez emphasized his point with a tightened grip around my larynx.

“That…” I managed to dig my fingers between his hands to allow enough air to hold out a bit longer. “…was three years ago, Juan!”

“You’re right, Quint.” He looked down on me from his position straddling my hips, shifting his weight to leverage further strangulation. “Three years! Three years of heartbreak. Three years of torture! Three years of plotting my revenge against you both.”

“Stop it, Juan!” Esmeralda yelled from across the jet’s main cabin, still tied to the lounge chair she’d been forced to sit in for the last half hour of this private flight to hell. The wind from the opened exterior door made her billowy Peruvian-style cotton top and luxurious black hair dance wildly. Just as we did that wonderful night. Why could I still not take my eyes off her?

I couldn’t blame Juan Carlos for his hatred of me. It was I who was in the wrong on this one. Most of us are aware that certain societal rules exist that are obvious and unspoken. The world of espionage has them in equal, but more deadly, measures. For instance, in normal society, you don’t sleep with another man’s wife. On the spy side, you don’t sleep with the wife of an assassin. Especially an experienced one. Common sense, I know, but what’s done is done. And who would you be to judge? You weren’t there to console such a beautiful and broken creature as Mrs. Esmeralda Ramirez was on that hot night in Rio. I was there. In fact, I was there all night and into the morning to be precise, but who’s keeping track? Besides Juan Carlos, I mean.

“I want to see the life leave your godforsaken eyes!” He leaned down onto me until we were face to face.

We were locked in a stalemate, even with all his strength focused on keeping me down. Juan Carlos wasn’t much bigger than I was, though he clearly had his intense rage and emotion to burn the insatiable fire of revenge pitting me against my own fight for survival. He clearly wasn’t going to have the strength to overpower me, but neither was I having any luck escaping his grasp. I decided instead to pull him closer—a sort of mock lover’s embrace, you might say. Just close enough to take a bite into his nose.

He screamed, letting go of his grip on my throat to clench his bloody face. Looks like he wouldn’t be such a pretty boy after all. I’m sure he’d get over it if we all survived this. Though something told me not all of us would.

I threw a quick reflex jab, but he managed to slap my hand away. We rolled away from each other on the plush beige airplane carpeting. I stopped when my back slammed against the base of the cabin’s two-seater bamboo bar. My hand reached up to the brass railing around the edge to stabilize myself against the wind tugging me toward the open door just a few steps away, leading to a drop of over 10,000 feet to Palm Springs far below.

Juan Carlos stumbled back into the chair next to Esmeralda. “Enough with the games.” He reached into the pilot’s jacket that I assumed he stole before the flight as part of his ruse and flashed a small silver pocket pistol in my direction.

“You made your point, Juan!” I yelled against the wind from across the cabin. “Why don’t you just get back in the cockpit and we can talk it all out on the ground? How about it?”

“I’ve got a better idea.” The deranged bloody smile on his face made me think I wasn’t going to like what he had in mind.

My eyes met with Esmeralda’s as her ex-husband carefully made his way past the small galley and lavatory towards the cockpit from where he first emerged not long ago. Once he was out of sight, I ran over to her and began undoing her from the ropes. Upon closer inspection, it seemed Juan Carlos’s accomplice managed to do a tight job with the knots—at least before I managed to kick him out the emergency door. I imagine some swinging Palm Springs pool party got quite a surprise with a Brazilian gangster dropping in from out of the blue.

“I’m sorry, Quint,” Esmeralda said as tears began to well in her big brown eyes.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, beautiful.”

“If I hadn’t led you on here in the first place, I’d… but I didn’t know what he was going to do.”

“It’s fine. Just… wait, you knew he was here, and you didn’t say anything? No warning or anything?”

“Are you mad at me?”

“I’m not mad,” I lied.

“He was going to kill me!”

Two quick gunshots rang out from behind the cockpit door.

“Sounds like that’s still an option,” I said, undoing the last knot and pulling her into my arms.

The loud hum of the engines faded into the sputtering exhaustion of motors and gears ceasing to function. The cabin fell to an eerie calm. I could feel the new sensation from under my feet that the plane was now drifting into a glide. It was only a matter of time before this bird was crashing down.

Juan Carlos stumbled out of the cockpit, using the wall to help brace his way back into the main cabin. In one hand was the pistol and the other carried two emergency parachutes, similar to the one currently strapped to his back. He didn’t look too concerned to see Esmeralda now free of her bonds.

“Those two chutes for us, JC?” I asked.

He nodded before tossing them to the floor near the open doorway to the clouds. For a moment I considered diving to grab them. Likely, that’s what he wanted to see: one last desperate act to save our lives and a final show before he shot me anyway. I chose instead to hold onto Esmeralda, watching together as both parachutes drifted with the wind towards the doorway until they vanished abruptly into thin air, our hope sucked out into oblivion.

“Don’t worry,” Juan Carlos said earnestly. “There’s forgiveness in my heart. But unfortunately, my heart is not so big these days. There’s only enough forgiveness inside it for one of you. There’s one parachute I left in the cockpit. I can’t decide who deserves it more, so I’ll let you two figure that out.” He put the pistol back into its jacket holster and gave a sweeping wave with his departure. “Tchau!”

As soon as he vanished into the blue, I held onto Esmeralda’s hand to guide her as fast as possible to the cockpit. I pushed open the door and attempted to cover her eyes at the carnage Juan Carlos left in his wake. The co-pilot was unrecognizable after a bullet to the back of his head left blood and fragments of skull strewn across the busted controls and windshield, looking out to the tilting view of an ever-approaching hillside.

“Don’t look,” I said to her.

She slapped my hand away. “I’m no stranger to death. Juan made sure of that.” That certainly was the truth. She didn’t flinch at the gruesome sight. She stepped past me, lifting the last remaining parachute from under the dead co-pilot’s legs.

I inspected the bullet hole in the center panel. Even with my rudimentary degree of flight knowledge, it was clear to see that our course was set without much chance of changing it now. “Damn it. Looks like there’s no landing this thing.” I turned to her and knew what she was thinking.

She couldn’t hide the selfish intention from me. “I’m sorry, Quint.” Esmeralda backed out of the cockpit clenching the emergency pack as a frightened child clenches a teddy bear.

“Esma… I…” What could I say? She didn’t deserve this. No matter what she claimed, it wasn’t her fault. It was mine. She was paying for my mistake. For my sloppiness. She deserved a better life than the one she ended up with.

Me, on the other hand? A killer’s life is always on the edge of certain death. It was only a matter of time. Perhaps it was finally time to say goodbye to it all with a fiery crash, bursting with a thunderous roar through the gates of Valhalla. A warrior’s death for sure. There was no point in fighting the inevitable. Maybe there was still some whiskey in the bar to toast with on the way down. Might as well end it in style, like those musicians on the Titanic who kept playing until their ship sank into the frigid abyss.

The plane shook through the turbulence of a small pocket of air as we moved out of a low patch of clouds. Esmeralda stumbled for a moment walking backwards into the main cabin as I clung to the cockpit doorway. Our eyes never broke contact as she drifted towards the open exit.

I couldn’t help but smile at her. “Just do me one favor when you get back home. Will you, Esma?”

She stopped with her hand bracing the chairs near the galley. “Anything.”

“Maybe work on upgrading your choice of men.”

Tears burst from her eyes with a cry of desperation. She dropped the chute and ran forward with arms out. I caught her wholeheartedly, even as my eyes watched the abandoned parachute slowly creep back toward the exposed doorway. My instincts pulled an override against my heart as I spun her around to dive with an outstretched arm to grab hold of a loose strap.

Maybe I was giving up too soon? Maybe there was still another option to consider? There had to be another way. I just hadn’t figured out what it was yet.

“Quint?”

“I’m not going to let it end this way.”

I wrapped the strap around my arm and pulled myself to the chair that Juan Carlos’s goon had tied Esmeralda to after they first came out of the cockpit laughing like a pair of hungry hyenas surprising their prey. It was hard to believe that this whole endeavor was just a giant, convoluted plan to exact revenge. But that’s what you get for dealing with all the folks lost in delusions of grandeur that fill a global society of espionage ne’er-do-wells. People who are too busy concocting complicated schemes like they're baking elaborate French patisserie. And it’s not just the bad guys that are prone to this shit, either. Good ol’ Uncle Sam and whatever you want to call them across the pond are equally terrible with these shenanigans. Makes me glad to be rid of them. All of this effort to get Esmeralda to lure me onto a flight just to tie us up and crash a plane? Sounds like Juan Carlos alright. That’s the kind of know-how that gives you a sort of “household name” status amongst the overabundance of assassins on the black market. A big show of force with a mastermind flair for the dramatics. And even though it looks like it all didn’t go off without a few hiccups, he did make quite an exit. It didn’t matter now, and I still think he should have just shot me. Though, someone had already tried that and failed to finish the job. I still had the fresh wound to prove it, too.

Then it hit me. I turned to Esmeralda. “Do you trust me?”

A brief glimpse of hope widened her teary eyes. She nodded furiously in reply, clinging to the back of the nearest chair for support as the plane’s gradual tilt started to reach an uncomfortable incline for us both.

There was no telling if my plan was going to work. I threw the parachute onto my back and adjusted the buckles and straps accordingly, just as I’d done on numerous covert jumps in my years in the service. This time it wouldn’t be enemy territory in the dead of night. This time it was the Morongo Valley at the peak of day.

“Come over here!”

She did as I asked. If there was any question or doubt in her mind about what I was doing, it didn’t show. She followed my instructions as I pulled her close and took the rope lying on the chair. I let professional instinct take control again to keep the thought out of my head of the approaching mountainside that I was sure we’d be crashing into at any moment. My focus was now all on lashing her onto me as best I could, using every inch of rope available to wrap around her perfect body and mine. My hands guided along her pelvis and up the inner soft skin hidden by her white khaki shorts to create a functional seating harness. Under any circumstances it would have been hard to pull myself away from her right then and there. Now though, we were one.

“Are you sure this will work?” she asked. I guess there was still a little doubt left in her after all. Even with the jostling of the plane’s motion, I could feel her whole tender body shaking with fear. She kept a tight hold on me as I guided us toward the exit. “Quint? This will work, right?”

“Of course it will.” There was no point in telling her the truth at a moment like this. It’d only add to the anxiety and fear already present in us both. It was best to just stay positive, even with death waiting in the wings. “Are you ready?”

“No.”

It didn’t matter. I embraced her in a single fluid jump into the unknown. I expected her to scream, but she stayed quietly frozen in fear as we plummeted downward. That was fine for me. I didn’t need any additional distractions. My arms and legs spread out to help guide her under me. Now I found myself properly arranged to maximize the chute’s ejection, and with Esmeralda’s view only on my face and not of the ground swiftly approaching. I scooped my arms until the ripcord was in hand and quickly prayed to God this would work.

The chute deployed, jerking us momentarily back up. We settled in our positions enough that I knew the rope would hold her to me. We were still gliding faster than I’d ever made a landing before thanks to the increased weight. I held onto the guiding straps, pulling hard to keep our trajectory out of the path of a multitude of cacti that lay scattered across the desert floor.

“Hold on!”

“What do you think I’m doing!?” she screamed into my ear with an intense pitch that I’m sure could be heard all the way out in Barstow.

Landfall came quicker than expected. We hit the ground at an angle, tumbling across an empty patch of earth between outstretched yuccas, and crashed into a large mound of dirt. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the worst landing I’d ever accomplished, but you work with what you've got. I was just glad it didn’t feel like anything was broken on my end. We caught our breath and yelled in jubilation at the miracle of our salvation.

“How ya feelin’?” I asked.

She coughed dirt in my face and took a deep, gasping inhale of air. “I can’t believe it! How did you know that would work?”

I didn’t. “Oh, you know, just lucky I guess.”

She playfully hit me first before grabbing me again, holding the back of my head to press her lips deep into mine. I moved my hand into her hair, taking the time to enjoy each other’s company while the spent chute gently tugged at us in the dirt from the light easterly breeze. We were lost in the moment with hearts pumping a shared adrenaline high between our intermingled bodies.

It’d been so long since I could remember appreciating what two feet on solid earth felt like. I made my own little pact not to take that feeling for granted. That’s what this “retirement” was in a sense already. A break to enjoy life’s pleasures, beyond those found in all the usual places. Most of my adult years were spent taking away the life of others and never knowing when the day would come that it’d be me. That day would likely still hit me like a sack of bricks, but not today.

We were safe for the time, but there was still the matter of getting back into town. I marched up to the top of the dirt hill for a lookout to get my bearings straight. The burning wreckage of Juan Carlos’s plane was marked by a steady stream of black smoke towards the eastern hillside. I’m sure it’d attract plenty of attention from town soon enough to bring in the cops and emergency personnel. It’d probably get run by the FBI sooner rather than later too, meaning I’d have plenty to talk about with my old bureau pal Victor next time I saw him.

“Quite the wreckage,” I said. “By the way, whose plane was that? I don’t imagine Juan Carlos would willingly risk crashing his own private plane if he could afford one.”

“No idea,” she replied while in mid-stretch with arms twisted upwards mirroring the cacti around us. “He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t question it. I just assumed he stole it.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. Wonder where he landed.” There was no sign of another parachute still in the sky or dragging along the dusty winds. If we survived, it was almost guaranteed that he did too. He’d still be out there and now with an unsatiated grudge to fulfill if he knew we didn’t succumb to his devious trap. It wasn’t doing my stress any good to think about him much longer. I’d save that ache and worry for when we got back to civilization. “We’re too far to see much. I’d say if we head south and take our time, we’ll get back in the city before it gets dark.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to get very far as is.”

“Why not? Something broken?”

She lifted a bare foot in the air with the grace of a dancer on display. “What about my heels?”

She was right. I didn’t notice that she was standing with her toes on the ground heating up with the midday sun. I looked up, half expecting to see the pair about to come crashing down. When they failed to appear, I kicked off my black leather loafers. I was just glad I always wear mine with dress socks.

“You don’t have to do that, Quint.”

“I know.” I tossed the shoes over to save her soles. “And you didn’t have to stay behind with me on that plane. But you did. Now let's take a hike.”

Chapter 1

The Assassin from Ipanema