Jaguar

The Call

This story is set in 1997

The huge cat was moving fast through the rain forest, so fast he couldn't even find it with his night vision equipment. The three hunters were soaked in sweat now, shouting in Spanish to one another as they pushed through the foliage. In the middle of the trio he stopped, eye pressed against the night vision scope, scanning with his rifle. The jaguar's roar filled the night, the sound sending a chill down his spine with its primal power. He couldn't site the jaguar, and calling for the lead man he found he had somehow lost him as well.

His other partner trudged past him, panting.

"Mierda!" the man cursed.

He didn't fall in with the other man. He remained stationary, continuing to scan with his night vision scope, an alarm sounding in his exceptionally well honed instincts. He had a sense not only of danger but also disorientation. Something was very wrong. A lightness, as if the earth were losing its gravity . . . or becoming liquid.

Another roar came, joined quickly by the horrible scream of the man who'd passed ahead of him, the two sounds blending into a symphony of predator and prey. The jaguar had somehow turned the hunt on its head, killing one of them, and he had no idea what had befallen Bates, the lead man.

He ran in the direction of the killing and screaming, certain even then he would be too late. Alone in the pitch black of the rain forest, rifle up, scanning, running, scanning, running, nothing coming through on night vision or infra red.

Where the hell was it?

He kept running until he was certain he'd over run the killing ground, then stopped, exhausted. And even more disoriented.

Christ, what was he doing here anyway? He'd never hunted game in his entire life. Was this real? How could it be? The thought was almost like a brief awakening from a bad dream. But the jungle didn't fade away, and another roar came, this one from very nearby. No, he was here, and the hunters had become the hunted. He'd been trained to play this game with humans and was impeccable, one of the best. But going up against a huge cat on its own turf had proven a different game altogether; one they were losing.

It was a credit to his training and experience that he didn't panic. Bates had taught him that, drilled it into his bone marrow, droned it into his nervous system. Instead of panic, everything within him ground to a total halt. An ability that had taken hundreds of hours to master; reversing the tendency of the nervous system to overload on adrenaline when severe danger was present.

He remained totally still now. Listening. He thought he heard something about thirty yards forward to his right. He lifted the rifle, brought the scope to his eye, scanning very marginally with the steady, skillful movements of a professional.

A form dashed through the scope. The cat!

He moved the rifle back just so, and found it.

Christ, the thing was huge! Its head turned towards him, eyes glowing surrealistically in the night vision scope, which shouldn't have happened. Puzzled by the anomaly, he pulled back from the scope, and in that split second he heard a loud snap to his left, very close. Instantly he swung his head towards the sound to find the same glowing eyes lunging towards him from a few yards away.

His mind reeled as he tried to react and bring the gun around fast, but the cat's lightning attack didn't even give him time to scream as it's jaws found his neck and seized upon it with their immense power, crushing his cervical vertebrae, killing him instantly as man and cat crashed down onto the jungle floor.

For a long time afterward there was pure blackness. A weightless void.

And then, slowly, a crack of light, gradually widening. The light assumed the shape of the contours of a door cracked open just a hair, light escaping from whatever was behind it. The door opened a bit wider, and he saw a figure standing there, vaguely silhouetted against the light, not well defined, was it a man in a trench coat, or something else? Part human, part animal? He sensed that it was beckoning him. Calling him to something mysterious behind that door.

He tried to move towards the doorway, but he had no substance and could not move. Drawing on all the reserves of his considerable strength he willed himself there, but didn’t move an inch. He was suspended, formless. And then the figure stepped back behind the door, and slowly the door closed, extinguishing the last remnants of light, pure darkness returning and with it, death.

John Ashbrook shot up in bed gasping for breath, drenched in sweat, his senses lagging in the dream state he'd just awakened from.

Shit! he said, slowly realizing he wasn't really dead. He sat motionless, his mind and nervous system slowly unwinding through de-escalating levels of shock. As the terror of the dream subsided he began to recall the other times the jaguar had found him in his dreams. Had hunted him in dreams since his childhood, since the loss of his family in the car crash.

But the dream seemed to be changing. The presence of his mentor and best friend Ronnie Bates. The mysterious figure and the doorway. They’d never been in the dreams before.

Ashbrook got up from his bed, went to the john, and splashed water across his face. It was still pitch black outside and he could hear another kind of roar coming from the ocean a few hundred yards away. The thunder of huge surf sweeping into the Hawaiian North Shore of Oahu, generated by storms in the North Pacific thousands of miles away. Any other night that sound would be music to him, kick the endorphins into high gear, get his ticker pumping and his ass moving into gear for a day of big wave riding. But now it seemed like a mere echo of the roar of the cat in his dream.

A weird sensation tingled through him; a sense the jaguar was near, getting closer. Not merely in the world of his dreams, but in this world.

That it really was coming for him.

What was this? A sense of, what? Déjà vu? Pre-sentience? ESP? He didn't believe in that woo-woo crap, but he could not dispel the sense the cat was close, getting closer.

Ashbrook cupped more cold water in his hands, splashing it across his face in an effort to dispel this nonsense from his mind.

As the cold water splashed across John Ashbrook's face, a man slowly returned to waking consciousness, seated at the glowing coals of a fading fire in the Amazon jungle night. The man's face was exquisitely painted as that of a jaguar, the form by which he'd been traveling in the otherworld. As he gazed into the coals, for one brief moment his eyes glimmered and reflected their light the way a cat's does as he slipped into his otherworldly trance again.

The man was coming; he had seen it during his journey, he saw it now. Jaguar was reaching across the Dream Time, reeling the man in. Let him splash cold water on his face all night long; nothing could stop Jaguar's power.

He smothered the coals, stood up, still immersed in his sacred state. He walked into the blackness of a moonless rain forest night. A perfect night for Jaguar's hunt.

Auckland, New Zealand

The call to the U.S. embassy came at 1 a.m. on Saturday night. A distraught American tourist explaining that her husband had died of a heart attack, his body was being released by the coroner and could the embassy help get him back to the United States for burial?

The embassy officer tried to direct her elsewhere until she explained that her husband had been involved in sensitive work for the U.S intelligence community. Moments later a sleepy Justin Calder, CIA chief of station, hopped on the line, waking up fast as he told the woman to say no more on the phone, just get the body to the compound ASAP.

She was insistent that only the CIA station chief and two of his people with the highest clearance should see the coffin and its corpse, asserting that Calder would understand once he saw who was in it.

The hearse arrived at 3:37 a.m., and was quickly passed through the embassy gates, down into a garage.

Calder's first sense something was askew came when the driver of the hearse got out. He was a big Latino, built like an earthmover and bearing a MAC 10 machine pistol quite casually, like it was his camera. A pose that said 'biz as usual boys- how ya doin'?' Clearly a professional pistolero, Calder thought, and gave the man some room as he moved to the back of the hearse. Calder observed the man riding shotgun wasn't much different as he got out of the hearse, carrying the same hardware and looking like he knew how to use it.

The back of the hearse was opened, and Calder, eager to know who had brought this sort of escort, stepped forward as they wheeled the coffin out, a move that could've cost a man with a weak heart his life.

The coffin lid opened, and the body inside sat straight up; Calder's ticker jumped into a MACH 6 climb, every nerve ending in his body standing on edge in shock.

Jesus! he said, jumping back, thinking the corpse had just come alive.

And alive it was, a grinning Luis Ortega Rodriguez climbing out of the coffin, laughing at Calder's state of shock with his two attendants chiming in. He walked over to Calder, offering him his huge hand.

Still stunned, Calder offered his in return.

I could use a drink, and you look like you need one even worse, amigo. In a secure room, with a line to your number one in Langley, Ortega said, smiling wolfishly as he crushed Calder's hand with his grip.

Section Headquarters

A Small Island in the Caribbean

Barry Forsythe received a call from the Director of the CIA 30 minutes after the Director's conversation with Luis Ortega Rodriguez. It was a measure of Forsythe's status that he alone had been informed about the highly sensitive matter at hand. Not a soul in any other branch of the U.S. intelligence community knew word one about the huge coup.

Besides the Director of the CIA, only a few people knew of the existence of Section, the extremely secret outfit that Forsythe ran.

During the phone conversation between Ortega and the Director of the CIA, Ortega stated he had vital information to barter with. If accurate, it was information that deeply interested Forsythe.

The DCIA believed Ortega had spotted an agent of Forsythe’s that had vanished six months earlier in Europe. He’d stumbled upon the discovery as he'd elicited a description of an American Ortega said was involved in the matter he'd come to discuss. Pressing for details, it became clear to the DCIA that Ortega was describing Ronnie Bates. A good friend of Forsythe's and a man he considered to be the most gifted deep penetration agent he’d ever known, Bates had been the source of scores of sleepless nights for Forsythe since his disappearance.

Ortega had clammed up completely after describing the American, refusing to discuss any further details about the entire matter until the DCIA offered him a deal to his liking. Just as a man in his extremely precarious position well should have, Forsythe mused. Smart move there.

Luis Ortega Rodriguez was a numero uno jeffe, one of the most powerful bosses of the South American cartels. It was rumored that over one hundred bodies were buried on his thousand acre finca in Colombia; people who'd stood in his way, got on his bad side, or dipped their hands in his billion dollar till. Ortega was sharp; he kept out of the public limelight, ran an organization that was increasingly difficult to detect or inflict damage on, and always seemed to be one step ahead of the DEA and CIA's efforts to nail him.

The remote ranch from where he ran his business was so heavily guarded that even the special paramilitary anti-drug squads of Colombia balked at any thought of attempting a raid. Yet now, this man who possessed the equivalent of a small, well outfitted army had turned up half way around the world from his native Colombia to give himself up and seek asylum from the country his kind dreaded most.

What could have pushed him into such a desperate act? And how the Devil did Bates figure into it? He'd gone off the screen in Europe to turn up in Colombia?

While nothing Ortega said to the DCIA suggested he knew of Section's existence, Ortega had said that Bates was on the trail of something 'muy grande,' a matter that the entire U.S. intelligence community was in the dark about.

Forsythe immediately arranged to move Ortega to the Rat Farm, an ultra secure holding facility for defectors, snitches, Mafia turncoats and other folks possessing information that made them targets for assassination.

The North Shore of Oahu, Hawaiian Islands

As Justin Calder was setting up a secure call to the Director of the CIA in Langley, Virginia, John Ashbrook was paddling through the channel into the monstrous break at Sunset Beach, watching as Freddy Choy, one of the best veteran big wave surfers in the islands fell over the falls and took a head first drop down the forty foot face of a monster wave. Ashbrook winced as Freddy vanished into an explosion of white water, the massive wave crashing down upon over airborne body and burying him. More than a minute passed, Ashbrook growing more and more tense as he watched for the crazy Hawaiian.

Shit mahn! Choy's words exploded across the water as his head bobbed up, followed by a crazy man's howl, Freddy's signature.

Relieved that Freddy was okay, Ashbrook resumed his paddle out. There weren't many surfers left outside now; only the hardest of the hard-core, the true loonies. The swell had been growing bigger all morning, and a cleanup set of forty-five foot waves had rinsed all but three suicidally tenacious guys off the surface of the sea.

This was really pushing the envelope, and Ashbrook's entire adrenal system was manufacturing a wild concoction of adrenaline, terror, awe, and excitement, flushing it through his veins.

At least as good as sex, without the complications! Ashbrook shouted over the thunder of the waves to Buffalo, another Hawaiian named for his massive frame, as he paddled into the break line.

Hah! Buffalo laughed. This is every bit as much woman out here as you'll find anywhere. Buffalo swiftly swung his board around began paddling furiously out towards a line of swells coming in from the horizon, the biggest of the day.

Forty five seconds later, Ashbrook watched Buffalo paddling into a four-story building's worth of wave, heard him scream with insane delight as he took the drop and disappeared, leaving Ashbrook totally alone, a mile out to sea. He glanced back to shore, saw nobody making their way back out now. He heard the rescue chopper overhead, its phones blaring feebly against the thunder of the waves.

Paddle out of the break and we will take you in.

Ignoring the chopper, Ashbrook paddled into the lineup, barely making it over the lip of a wave approaching fifty feet before it began crashing down. He airdropped down the back of the wave, his chest slamming hard against his board as he struck the water again.

Now, here comes your sister, he said aloud, jockeying into position, paddling into a massive swell. He felt it's monstrous power picking him up, rapidly lifting him forty feet from the sea level below him, Ashbrook jumping up on his gun in the fraction of a second he had to get going before the wave ate him for lunch.

His eyes grew wide as he began the radical elevator drop down the wave's now vertical face, planting his feet onto the board and crouching, trying to dig his board's fins into the wave to plant himself as he rocketed down the mountain of water, its top beginning to throw out high above him.

For a moment he began to freefall and things looked very bad, then his surfboard's fins dug into the steep wall of water and thunder, giving him traction, and he leaned into the vertical cliff of the wave with everything he had, a deafening roar filling his ears as the wave began breaking behind him.

Ashbrook shifted his weight to give him the maximum speed he could get, staying just far enough ahead of the breaking wave to elude its grip, squirting through the little gap between its monster fingers. He was rocketing along the wave face at such high speed that he was barely able to keep his center of gravity, narrowly eluding tons and tons of white water crashing down a few feet behind him, unable to capture him in its grasp.

Yeeehaaahhhh! he screamed, suddenly enveloped inside the huge cylinder of water the wave created as it broke. He shot through the massive liquid pipe like a rocket, almost thrown from his board by the extreme speed at one critical moment, then suddenly blasting out of harm's way onto the shoulder of the now spent wave and gliding into the calmer waters of the channel.

Above him in the rescue chopper, the man riding shotgun retracted the rescue harness. The crazy asshole is going back out for more, he said in disbelief to the pilot. The pilot shook his head, turning the chopper back towards shore.

Paddling back out through the channel, the deafening thunder of the waves all he could hear now, Ashbrook flashed on his jaguar dream. For one brief moment he hesitated, watching a huge wave in the break line dredge up hundreds of tons of saltwater, swelling up, preparing to break. The massive swell rose to a peaked, crested, hurling tons of tumbling white water towards the sea below, and for one instant a different memory flashed through John Ashbrook's mind.

The water tumbling from the top of the wave became the car tumbling, over and over, thundering, rolling sideways across the pavement, screams, heat, fire, then blackness.

Ashbrook shook his head to clear it, gathered his fire up, and paddled straight towards his fear.

Section Headquarters

Barry Forsythe sat down to consider a problem that he knew there was no satisfying answer for. He retrieved a leather bound dossier from the edge of his large teak desk, found his pipe and began stuffing a fresh load of tobacco into it.

The question involved sending Section agent John Ashbrook on a mission to sniff out Ronnie Bates' trail. A basic rule for Section agents who operated in the field was they could have no living family. This made the often used tactic of using threats against an agent’s family as leverage impossible. John Ashbrook had qualified easily; he'd lost his entire family to a drunk driver when he was 13 years old.

Forsythe opened Ashbrook’s dossier, skimming through it. He knew it chapter and verse, was merely using it to jog his memory and anchor his thoughts.

Those who'd known John Ashbrook said that after his family had died in a horrific car accident that only Ashbrook survived, a steel door had slammed shut in John. He'd turned into a super performer in both sports and academics to direct the steam from the cauldron brewing inside of him. A tendency to push the edge had developed in Ashbrook, pursuing extremely risky physical adventures as if to taunt the death who'd come and taken his family.

By age 23 John Ashbrook had a Masters Degree, spoke several languages fluently, and was admitted into the SEALS and within two years brought into the elite Navy SEAL Team 6, where he both amazed and terrified his superiors with his balls to the wall tactics. Yet he consistently surprised everyone by pulling big coups out of near disasters. Some of his superiors felt he was far too over the line for the SEALs, yet they had not been able to dispense with Ashbrook because of the fact that on several occasions he'd put his own neck in extreme jeopardy to save fellow team members from certain death. That kind of gutsy loyalty bought you a lot of credit in the SEALs, and the members of Seal Team 6 unanimously said there was no person they’d rather go into a high risk op with than Ashbrook.

Five years after Ashbrook's entrance to the SEALs, Section was formed and the ingenious, veteran deep cover agent Ronnie Bates was selected by Forsythe to hand pick the agents it would recruit and train.

Forsythe paused, looked up from the dossier and watched the smoke from his pipe curl around the leaves of a palm hovering next to his desk. He thought of Bates. A legend among the few who knew about him, the man could walk right through the most heavily guarded walls in the world and come out with the crown jewels. He earned the nickname ‘The Ghost’ in the rarified circles of those that knew about his successes.

Bates had held a screening camp in a remote region of Virginia where dozens of potential agents were put through the mill so he could assess their abilities. He immediately saw the potential in John Ashbrook, swiftly chose him as one of his magnificent seven.

Ronnie Bates took the wild John Ashbrook under his wing, hammering him through training by day and slugging them down with him at the local watering holes by night, a powerful bond developing between them. Bates commanded the respect that nobody had been able to win from John since his father's death, and he used that respect to temper John's furies and train a deep cover agent who was thought to be potentially as good as Bates himself. John became the son Bates never had as well as his bar room bud.

In the very absence of family that Section required of its agents, Bates and Ashbrook had become family. And the dilemma that Forsythe had sought to avoid when he wrote the no-living-family-members rule for Section agents now glared at him.

Bates' disappearance had deeply affected Ashbrook, and John had been on Forsythe like a terrier, urging to let him go on the hunt for Bates for several months now. Forsythe had kept Ashbrook in check, reminding him that an operator like Bates could go under for a very long time if he was on to something big, and that if that was the case, Ashbrook might blow it or even jeopardize Bates' life by sniffing along his trail. Ashbrook had accepted the argument initially, but as the months rolled by with no clue on Bates' fate and the odds grew stronger that he was in trouble or even dead, holding Ashbrook in check had become increasingly difficult.

Forsythe had the sense he was losing John, that the loss of Bates had somehow rekindled Ashbrook's old demons, which would come back with a double fury now as Ashbrook experienced the rupture of yet another close bond by death. There was a tension in him, and he'd taken up that god awful sport of riding monster waves again.

Contrary to Hollywood’s fantasies, agents with death wishes are extremely bad risks in the world's second oldest profession. They generally fulfill their wish, not their mission. Forsythe had seen more than one agent succumb this way, and he saw warning signs in John Ashbrook. One too many tragedies. One too many glimpses into what Conrad had called the heart of darkness. Something coming unraveled.

The man was remarkably strong, and it would happen slowly. But it was happening.

Unless . . .

Forsythe placed his pipe down, closed the dossier.

The man Ortega had seen in South America was clearly Ronnie Bates.

If Barry Forsythe sent Ashbrook on Bates' trail, he knew every particle of Ashbrook's being would be focused on finding his friend. His self-destruct drive would be temporarily sublimated into the hunt, his demons yoked to the task at hand.

But there were serious problems in doing this. It was extremely dicey to send an agent into a situation where he had a strong personal bond with the person in jeopardy. Sometimes the agent super performed out of loyalty to the person in jeopardy. But they had so much invested that they just as often balked at a critical moment or rushed in too fast when a cooler head would have held back. And the opposing side could always use the threat of torture or murder of the loved one as leverage.

On the other hand, if Forsythe didn't send Ashbrook, Ashbrook would be enraged at both Forsythe and Section, resign, crash and burn. Or more likely tell Forsythe to go fuck himself and head out on Bates' trail anyway.

There was no happy solution here. And the stakes were very high.

Forsythe got up from his desk, walking to the French doors and opening them, stepping out onto the balcony, breathing in the fresh night air. The moonlight glimmered across the Caribbean, an illuminated path pointing towards the south. To where Ortega had come across Bates path.

Forsythe clenched the railing as he contemplated that path. The chance he could lose both men down in that godforsaken jungle gnawed at him. He was deeply fond of Bates, having worked with him for decades, even back when Forsythe himself was an agent. And he’d had developed a respect for John Ashbrook’s rascalish brilliance.

He let out a long sigh, turned from the railing and walked back to his desk, picking up the dossier and returning it to his office safe. When you got right down to it, there was really only one choice. Ashbrook had waited it out. He knew the finer nuances of Bates' tradecraft better than anyone and with that knowledge he had the best chance of picking up Bates trail. This was clearly Ashbrook’s mission. It might well be his last mission, but it had his name written all over it. This wasn’t a choice—it was fate, and Forsythe the veteran spy knew it in his bones.

Forsythe turned back to the open French doors, gazing again at the swath of moonlight pointing south, wondering what Ronnie Bates had gotten himself into, and hoping to God that he was still alive.

Chapter 2

The University of Caracas, Venezuela

We'll conclude with this thought, and a question for you to consider for our next encounter. Science, religion, art and philosophy all share a common mainspring. That mainspring is the tension that exists within the human psyche between knowledge and mystery. The tension between these two poles is what drives our species to question, to investigate, to contemplate, to create, to explore. The different disciplines approach mystery in their different ways. Science seeks to strip it down to its bare mechanics. Religion seeks to worship it. Art attempts to capture and savor it. And philosophy . . .

Hector Santos paused, and that quizzical smile that was full of mischief, humor and a brilliant wit grew across his face, an expression that drew students to his class in numbers double any other class on the campus. Several students laughed in anticipation.

. . .seeks to inquire about mystery and attempt to articulate it in the purest form, ends up babbling and running around in circles, but just as it gets dizzy from running in those circles and goes delirious has those rare, priceless moments of dazzling insight which leave one speechless.

The laughter thundered through the auditorium, Santos laughing with his students, a good, resonant belly laugh. He let the laughter wind down, his gaze darting from student to student, connecting, and enjoying their enjoyment.

Gradually, the auditorium grew calm.

He paused a moment, letting silence fill the room.

But here is the question I want you to ponder. What kind of world would it be if we succeeded in explaining away every mystery?

Again he let silence punctuate his delivery.

Is such a world one you would want to live in?

His attention wandered across the auditorium from one student to another, almost seeming to burrow the questions deeper into their psyche with his intimate gaze.

Until next time, he said.

Three hours later, Hector Santos was driving his four wheel drive jeep along a battered road that ran deep into jungle terrain, pushing the vehicle's limits of endurance. He drove until the road became impassable, and then disembarked, taking out a small knapsack and continuing his trek by foot.

Jaguar's call had been growing stronger ever since he'd awakened this morning, so powerful now that his legs seemed to be moving by themselves, without effort, as if he were being pulled into the rain forest by a super magnet.

Several hours later he arrived at the site where he'd buried the coals of his fire three nights earlier. Even as he approached the site he sensed Jaguar drawing near. He could feel the doorway to the other world slowly opening as he prepared the ritual paste and then built a new fire over the old coals, the sun setting as he did so.

As the sun dropped, he began the ritual, painting the jaguar spots on his face. He took the paste and spread it on the power points of his body that his teacher, Don Antonio, had shown him over a decade earlier. By the time he had finished, he was already slipping into a deep trance.

This journey would be different, he realized as he sensed Jaguar coming for him, then carrying him across the threshold. Santos didn't know it, but as this happened he was already half a mile away from his campsite, trance-walking briskly into the jungle night.

He walked all through the night, often stepping within inches of various forms of certain death, yet no creature so much as stirred as he passed.

Not that he was conscious of any of it. He was in another world altogether, traveling with Jaguar. Jaguar's power this night was stronger than anything he'd experienced on his previous journeys. He felt the power expanding across Amazona, extending far beyond it. Reaching for the man, drawing him in.

And as Santos journeyed onwards in the state of seeing, Jaguar revealed to him another man who would also come. Later.

He trance-walked until 30 minutes before dawn, when Jaguar stopped him. Slipping out of trance momentarily, he found himself perched on a mountain top overlooking a lush, narrow river valley. Aware Jaguar was about to show him something of importance, he sat down on a rock, relaxing, waiting for the sun to rise. Far down the valley he heard Jaguar roar.

He had no idea of where he was, nor had he any need to know. When journeying with Jaguar, bearings in the physical world were insignificant.

The sun rose, passed across the sky, set. The Moon followed. Santos remained on the mountain top, slipping in and out of the visionary state of seeing in which Jaguar guided him and revealed what he'd been brought here to see. On the second sunrise he stood up, peering for the first time down into the valley below.

His eye went right to it, guided by some intuitive prodding. It was barely perceptible. . . directly under him, an old white adobe monastery tucked into the edge of the lush rain forest which hugged the side of the mountain, less than a mile from the river running through the valley.

Santos laughed. Jaguar had played a trick on him. While he’d seen the monastery in his visionary journey, he had no idea that it sat directly below him.

In the valley below, a woman walked into the courtyard of the monastery. Her eyes were immediately drawn up to the top of the mountain where she saw the silhouette of a man standing against the rising sun. Something within her compelled her to cross herself and fall to her knees, whence she began to grieve uncontrollably. Memories she had buried away for many years surged to consciousness, accompanied with the sorrowful feelings she'd had to bury like so many corpses. The welling up of emotions continued for a long time, a procession of images from her torn childhood running through her mind.

Then it was over, and a deep peace filled her, a sense of having been cleansed, then blessed.

She looked back to the mountain top. The man was gone. As she got up, the roar of a jaguar again filled the valley. Strangely it did not terrify her. In fact, she found it comforting. A sense of protection filled her, much like she'd felt as a young girl when her brother Rafael would wrap his arms around her and tell her to go to sleep, that he would never let anything in the world harm her, not anything, and she knew this was true, and would fall asleep and dream the dreams of the innocent.

Maria folded her hands in prayer, her fingertips pointing to the mountain top, kissing the peaks of them as if to send thanks to the mysterious figure that’d been standing there moments ago. She passed the rest of the day with a deepening sense she had been blessed by that figure, and that a major, divine event was impending. She stopped to pray for guidance and strength every moment she could as she went through her day caring for the children and the others depending upon her.

John Ashbrook had received the summons from his boss Barry Forsythe not long after he'd toweled off and watched the sun drop into the South Pacific. Within three hours he was airborne, making the first leg of a three legged flight to his rendezvous point with Forsythe. Ashbrook rode in a windowless passenger compartment and changed planes two times during his journey, a security measure he'd grown accustomed to.

After his third plane touched down, Ashbrook boarded a helicopter for the final leg of his journey to the Rat Farm. The passenger compartment where he sat also offered absolutely zero visual access to the outside world. The route to the Rat Farm was so secret that even Ashbrook’s boss Forsythe didn't know its location. While the security measures might appear extreme to some, assassins of a very high caliber often stalked the people the Rat Farm sought to protect.

The Rat Farm had at one time or another been home to people whose testimony had put some of the biggest Mafia bosses behind bars, to top level defectors carrying highly treasured secrets of countries considered to be potential enemies of the U.S., even to a few CIA operatives who came in from the cold bearing information of a mole high up in the agency.

Ashbrook found himself growing thirsty as the helicopter began its final descent. The one thing Ashbrook could tell about the Rat Farm's locale was that it had to be somewhere in a high desert climate as his nose would dry up every time he found himself inside the windowless, resort-like citadel.

As he walked down the corridors, he compared its Byzantine security measures to the maddeningly effective defenses of Janet Roslin, the first love of his life who'd managed to keep him out of her citadel for three frustrating years of their adolescent romance.

He picked up his pace briskly as he wondered who the hell was waiting for him on the other side of the maze-like security checks he was about to pass through. Only a very big fish would be tossed into this place. The Rat Farm was extremely selective about their guests.

He hadn't been aware of any operation in progress that could have brought in such a catch. Fact was he hadn't a bloody clue as to who it might be. But as he entered the conference room, he saw the Director of Central Intelligence sitting with his boss and knew something big was afoot.

John, have a seat, Barry Forsythe said, getting up and making an empty seat at a conference table available to him. Across from Forsythe sat Alan Carr, Director of the CIA.

Ashbrook sat down next to Forsythe, across from the towering, white haired, 6'2" Alan Carr, reaching across and shaking his hand. As directors of the CIA go, Carr was an excellent one in Ashbrook’s opinion. He'd been an agent in the field, was a career professional rather than a political appointee, and was a contemporary of Forsythe's. He knew the beat of the street.

Both men looked tired.

Alan, would you run the story by John from beginning to end? Forsythe asked.

Carr nodded, and briefing Ashbrook on the sudden appearance of Luis Ortega Rodriguez at the embassy in New Zealand, the three men laughing heartily as Carr related the tale of Ortega's popping out of the coffin and scaring the hell out of the chief of station. Carr continued on to Ortega's story of spotting an American in South America that fit the description of Ronnie Bates. That Ortega believed Bates was onto something big. Something the entire U.S. intelligence community was completely in the dark about.

Ashbrook abruptly stood up from his chair, surprising the other two men.

Well shit, then let's go see this Ortega hombre and squeeze him. My main man may be in trouble. he said, moving towards the door without waiting for a response.

Inside, he felt something lifting, letting up. His best bud was alive, or at least he had been when Ortega spotted him. And on the trail of something big. Ashbrook turned down the hallway towards the suites where the debriefings always took place at the Rat Farm.

Then it struck him.

Bates was in South America . Just as he'd dreamed a few nights ago.

Ashbrook had expected to encounter a defiant, macho Luis Ortega Rodriguez as the debriefing began; this was the norm at the beginning of these affairs, when the person coming over believed they held all the cards and his hosts would do anything for the information he possessed.

And this man held some big cards. While some people had the mistaken idea that the action in South America had diminished since the heydays of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin and Cali cartels, Ashbrook knew this was far from true. The Colombians were quite ingeniously creative and had accumulated the wealth of a small, well to do nation. They'd grown smarter, quieter, and more entrepreneurial after the disastrous busts of the 1990's. And they'd branched out into heroin when the cocaine markets began to shrivel and were doing quite well.

A recent DEA analysis of heroin being taken off the streets in busts throughout the U.S. had found that 62% of all heroin on the streets of the U.S. was coming from Colombia. There was also well substantiated intelligence that the Colombians had a trafficking partnership with the Sicilians and the Russian Mafia that basically controlled the cocaine flow throughout Europe and Russia, now the booming market for the white powder.

They had shrewdly laundered and invested the billions of dollars they'd reaped from their trade into legitimate and illegitimate enterprises across the globe, multiplying their financial wealth day in and day out.

Ashbrook sat in the debriefing room waiting for them to bring Ortega in, the same question chewing at him that had puzzled Barry Forsythe.

Why the fuck had Ortega booked out of Colombia and given himself up? Colombian drug lords had a severe dread of the U.S. justice system, and had fought a vicious and protracted war against the government of Colombia to avoid extradition to the United States for trial. In the battle against extradition, they'd killed hundreds--- judges, policemen, politicians, and journalists unsympathetic to their cause-- intimidating the Colombian government into an submission several times.

Yet Ortega had in effect extradited himself by seeking refuge in a US embassy.

What was it he had feared that would drive him to this?

Forsythe came into the room with the big Colombian, gesturing for him to sit in a comfortable sofa chair across from the chairs where he and Ashbrook would sit.

Ortega was dark, mustachioed, about 6 foot tall, heavy set with a barrel chest and pot belly, easily 220 pounds, with thick arms that could snap a neck or spine with ease. He had the legs of an ox. His peasant upbringing had been obviously one of hard labor, and he had not drunk, screwed, or snorted all of the benefits of that early life conditioning away yet. Jet black hair showing streaks of gray, hung down to his shoulders. He had a quality in his dark brown eyes that Ashbrook had seen many times before; the merciless, hawk-like gaze of the killer.

There was a keen, knife edged tension to the man. Overweight as he was, Ashbrook sensed that this man could move very fast and adeptly when necessary. Ortega's chunkiness probably had lured more than one would-be assassin into thinking the man was a slothful pig and would be an easy kill. But Ortega would be standing over the assassin's bloody corpse grinning when it was all over.

It made Ashbrook think back to something Bates had drilled into his head during his training; the virtue of seeming harmless, even wimpy to your enemies.

007, Rambo, and the rest of the Hollywood screen geeks would be dead before they got to first base in our world, Johnny, Bates had said. Coming across like a testosterone ad is shit for cover; it attracts attention, and it alerts the other peckerheads around you. Act like a milquetoast, like a spaz, like you're deathly afraid of scratching your pinkie. Play submissive. Let your target disarm themselves with their self confidence.

Then, Bates said with an evil twinkle in his eye, strike hard, fast, straight into a kill zone with no hesitation, no restraint. That's how you survive in this business.

Ashbrook had a gift for reading people that had saved his life many times, enabling him to sense the way to play the opposition. He brought his gaze to bear upon Luis Ortega Rodriguez, tuning into the man's psyche.

The defiance was there in Ortega as he had expected, but what was also there, palpable just beneath the bravado surface, was fear. Ortega was a tough hombre; he'd been in more than half a dozen shoot-outs with Colombia's elite narco police, was seriously wounded in three of them, and did business daily with people ready to stick a knife in his back should the right opportunity present itself. The man was a seasoned pro at the poker face, the laugh, the friendly bandito camaraderie, the macho swagger. But Ashbrook's perception delved beneath those masks, seeing into the man's psyche.

Saw that Luis Ortega Rodriguez had that wary quality of the hunted, his radar on full alert even here in what was the most secure fortress in the United States, perhaps the world. The man wasn't sure he was going to live through this episode of his wild ass life. He had begun to question everything.

As he told his story, Ortega's mood swung radically from a mocking bravado as he laughed and made sport of the U.S. failed efforts to penetrate his own organization to one of haunted paranoia whenever he started to speak of what led him to leave his empire and seek refuge from his Americano enemies whom he'd outfoxed for so long.

When he spoke of this, his eyes darted around the room, as if he thought his enemy would pop out from behind a chair and nail him. He chain smoked, and the floor was soon littered with ashes shaken free by his slightly trembling hand. Surely he'd been briefed on the layers of security of the place; that was the first thing they did when somebody hot came to the Rat Farm. Cool them down, give them some creature comforts, let them know that they have no need to fear anything now . . . people talked more freely when they were relaxed, safe. Especially when they knew their talk was buying them that safety.

But whoever it was that Ortega feared, he obviously didn’t think they could be stopped by the Rat Farm's dense security.

Ortega started his story calmly enough, taking some delight as he proceeded to get in a good kick to the balls of the DEA and the U.S. intelligence community.

"What if I were to tell you that all of your so called victories in the war against us, the cartels of Colombia, were not really your victories?"

Ortega paused, took a long drag on his cigarette, grinning, watching Ashbrook and Forsythe's faces for a reaction. Seeing none, he continued.

"That they were all part of a design by a man who brilliantly manipulated your entire apparatus . . . CIA, DEA, Centra Spike, Delta . . . everything you had down there, even Colombia's own Search Bloc. He used all of it to do his dirty work for him."

Ashbrook saw Ortega was having fun with this, the demon of his fear abated while he relished this small, perhaps last victory. Ortega paused, watching the smoke from his cigarette curl upwards into the air, letting his words soak in.

The guy knows he's on videotape, Ashbrook realized, and had to fight back a grin. He actually appreciated the butt kicking Ortega was giving to some of those who would eventually watch the videotape of this debriefing . He could think of a few that really needed it. He could imagine Bates taking delight in this as well were he present.

Ortega grunted a short laugh, took a long drag on his cigarette, savoring both it and the delivery of his bad news to his adversaries.

As your DEA wiped out the Cali cartel, they believed they were accomplishing huge victories in your Drug War. Ortega laughed, shaking his head. All the time they were being manipulated by a man they knew nothing of, feeding them information and pointing them like guided missiles at his competition. . .

Ortega paused, seeming to reflect a moment, shaking his head slightly in wonderment.

Your CIA couldn't pull this off in its wildest dreams, he said. But our mystery man did.

Ashbrook glanced to Forsythe, then back to Ortega. He and Forsythe had done this dance before. You had to let the man empty his testosterone tanks. You don't get the real gems until they're dry.

Wouldn't play so well in the press, would it? Your DEA and CIA manipulated, guided and used to destroy the people who stood in the way of another, very dangerous hombre. Engineering . . . what you call it in your business world? A hostile takeover, Ortega taunted them, chuckling to himself. .

Forsythe smiled, nodded with amusement. Ashbrook observed Ortega's first stumble, a look of puzzlement at Forsythe’s unexpected reaction. And just who is this rather remarkable man you speak of? I'd like to meet him. Hell, I'd like to hire him, Forsythe said.

Ortega hesitated. Ashbrook sensed fear welling up in the big Colombian. The question was opening the door that scared the big man. To Ortega's credit, he still maintained a semblance of composure, of the storyteller controlling the tale and dispensing it in his chosen rhythm. He leaned forward, lowered his voice to almost a whisper.

Ah, but that is the question nobody has been able to answer without dying before they could share the information.

There was no laughter now. Ortega fixed his eyes on Ashbrook's, then on Forsythe's. They were cobra's eyes, hypnotic, intense. Ashbrook sensed briefly the fear and paralysis this man's captured enemies must have felt in their last moments.

You see, anybody that gets close to finding out who he is vanishes without a trace, Ortega paused, his eyes turning to his cigarette, watching the smoke curling into the air. He brought his eyes directly onto Ashbrook’s.

"Which may be what happened to your friend."

Ashbrook was taken aback. Ortega had already gotten on to the connection between Bates and himself. They hadn’t even gone down that road yet, but Ortega already knew. The man was very good.

There was silence in the room. Forsythe glanced across at Ashbrook, then turned back to Ortega. You're telling us one unknown genius runs the cartels. That with all of your resources you guys can't find and kill him?

He has a network of spies and informers so extensive he knows our moves before we make them, Ortega said, glancing around the room, then continued. He maintains so many layers between himself and those he controls that only a few people ever talk to him directly. Some of our associates have captured and tortured people who came to do business on his behalf, tried to pry his name from their lips. But these people they tortured did not know the identity of the man who they worked for. And those who tried to make them talk died soon after their attempt.

Ortega took a long chug off of his beer. Dispensed another cigarette from his pack, lighting it up. He took a deep drag on it, then blew the smoke across at Ashbrook. Toying with him, testing his metal. Studying him, appearing to evaluate how good Ashbrook might be. He clearly knew Ashbrook would be the man traveling south when this was all over.

He fixed his gaze on Ashbrook's eyes, and for one long, unforgettable moment Ashbrook felt transparent, as if the man was somehow looking into his soul. The words almost hissed out of Ortega's mouth as his eyes maintained their grip on Ashbrook's psyche.

He is like the jaguar. No one ever finds him. Only the trail of his kills. You could sit in the jungle for months and never see him. Ortega paused, a sinister glint arising in his eyes.

But he would see you.

An involuntarily shudder shot down Ashbrook's spine like an electric shock. For a moment everything seemed unreal, as he were back in the dream. Time seemed suspended.

John, Forsythe's voice broke him out of it, his hand firmly grasping Ashbrook's forearm.

Yeah, Ashbrook said, shaking his head slightly, sitting up in his chair.

Long flight, and no sleep before I left. He turned to Forsythe. Give me five, he said, getting up from his chair.

Ortega grinned, watching Ashbrook walk out of the room. He had a strange sense that he was not the only man in danger now, that somehow he had contaminated the young Americano agent with the curse he bore. The words about the jaguar had come to Ortega spontaneously, and even as he spoke them he'd had the odd sense that they weren't his own words. That something had seized his tongue, had used him.

Yet once he'd spoken those words he'd felt unburdened.

Forsythe watched the big Colombian cross himself, offer a silent gesture of thanks, then kiss the medallion of the Virgin that he wore around his neck. He wondered what the hell had just transpired between Ortega and Ashbrook.

Chapter 3

Standing in the bathroom, Ashbrook was pondering the same question. Ortega's reference to the jaguar had totally thrown him. And the look in the man's eyes as he had mouthed the words; it was as if he'd seen into Ashbrook's mind, keying in on the dreams he'd had about the jaguar.

Perhaps his dream that put Bates in South America before Ashbrook knew he’d actually been seen there and Ortega's lucky strike with his metaphor about the jaguar was all a fluke.

But it was a damn odd fluke.

Ashbrook wasn't the mystical type at all; he didn't believe in omens, never read his horoscope, or go to psychics. His job required him to be pragmatic, keenly observant and extremely present in the world of the senses.

But he’d seen what he’d seen. There had been a blankness in Ortega's eyes as he'd stared at him, then a strange light flashed in them briefly as he spoke of the jaguar. For a moment he'd felt as if something had been reaching for him, reaching through Ortega from somewhere far off.

What was this? Hell of a time to go psycho . . . just as word of his missing friend had surfaced after months of total silence.

When Ashbrook returned, Forsythe picked up the debriefing.

Tell us about the man you mentioned to the Director of Central Intelligence.

I have a European working for me. It was he who spotted your man.

What nationality?

"Klaus is a German, formerly East German. He worked for the Cali cartel for several years. He came to me after Cali was destroyed by our mystery man. I hired Klaus. He's very good at security matters; spent two decades in the Stasi in East Germany.

"One day a strange coincidencia occurs. Klaus is in Caracas handling some business, and he spots a man he is certain he remembered from the Cold War. An Americano agent, quite a remarkable one according to Klaus. He tells me the Stasi wanted him badly, but could never seem to catch anything but his shadow."

Klaus wonders what this man is doing in South America and is certain that whatever it is, it is unfriendly to our interests. He calls me, asks for a support team to follow him. I argue at first, but he convinces me of the caliber of this man, that this shadowy Americano is a threat we should not ignore. I send Klaus a surveillance team.

Over the next three days, Klaus' team discovers the Americano is tailing somebody else. Then Klaus' team loses the Americano; he outfoxes them. But they stay on the trail of the man the Americano was tracking. And this man turns out to be a very big player . . . a key transportation man.

Ortega paused. Took a drink. When I say he is a very big player, I mean huge. The man owns shipping, airlines, trucking, you name it, throughout South America, Mexico, the United States and Europe. We watch him a bit further, and confirm that he is indeed moving large shipments of product.

I knew we had struck something big. And if it was big, it was a key part of the mystery man's operation. He would have killed this man and destroyed his company if the man was not his own business partner.

I immediately call Klaus' team off the man, dispose of them. I knew that if this was a key part of the mystery man's operation, then he would have counter surveillance watching Klaus' team, trying to find out who they worked for.

Ashbrook watched Ortega light another cigarette, his hand trembling as he did so. The big Colombian did not like talking about his invisible boss.

There is no room for mistakes with the mystery man. If he traced Klaus or any of his watchers back to me, then . . . Ortega made a gesture of his own throat being cut.

Since the Americano who vanished had probably been trying to hunt down the mystery man, I stopped Klaus' efforts to find him as well.

Let the Americano hunt, I thought. An outsider might have a chance of catching the mystery man. For months I waited, figuring that if your man was successful, we would learn of the mystery man's demise. But it remained business as usual. I believe the mystery man killed this crafty Americano I'd put my hopes on.

Why? Ashbrook asked.

Because things remained the same.

Why didn't you pick up the hunt? You had the transportation man, you could have followed him to your mystery man, and . . . Forsythe made a trigger pulling trigger gesture with his fingers.

Ortega shook his head, took a long, heavy draw on his cigarette, exhaled as he shook his head with self-annoyance. "I discovered that I was under surveillance by the mystery man’s people. His people must have picked up my team's surveillance of his transportation man. There would be no time for a countermove . . . my days in Colombia were over. I had two choices: Run, or die."

Ortega fell silent, a grave expression falling across his face as he seemed to relive this fateful realization. Then he sighed, took in a deep breath, and looked across at his two interrogators. And so I came over.

Besides, his wicked bandito smile appeared again as he brought his gaze directly into Ashbrook’s eyes, I knew I could give the hunt to you. As a gift, and as a curse.

Caracas Venezuela

A Full Moon shone across the entire American continent the evening Barry Forsythe and John Ashbrook interrogated Ortega, stretching from the Rat Farm's secret haunt somewhere in the high deserts of the southwestern United States all the way to the glittering skyline of Caracas, Venezuela.

And while Isabel Londono could not see the heavens, she felt like she had ascended to them. At twenty eight, a stunning Venezuelan beauty gorgeous enough to fetch the attentions of any man in Caracas, a power that she exercised with regularity and wisdom, Isabel believed she knew what damn good sex was as well as having experienced a fair share of it.

That notion had been destroyed in the last two hours as her body had unleashed feelings, movements, energies and sensations she had no idea existed within her. She'd sensed some kind of power in the man when she'd first seen him at the art gallery opening months before. Strikingly handsome, a face that had a fierce, intense quality yet could easily break into laughter, eyes that seemed more to absorb their surroundings than merely observe them . . . oh, those eyes missed nothing, beautiful green eyes, penetrating right to her core when they came to rest upon her.

A while spent observing him move around the party and she knew he was strong, fit, his entire energy was sinewy, cat-like, that he could move with extreme speed, agility and force on a second's notice. She sensed the coiled springs within him, and at the same time a relaxed ease, the calm power of a man who has been tested enough to know his power is there when needed. A man who would be composed even in danger. She intuitively knew this within the first few moments of watching him move about the party. She was that way.

But she had no idea this other power dwelled in him as well. Some remarkable force he emanated seemed to possess her body, causing her to coil and undulate around him, vibrating with an energy that was filling her with pleasure almost too intense to handle as it pulsed through every cell in her body. Even the subtlest of his movements charged her being with intense pleasure. He seemed to be putting her under some sort of erotic spell, moving all over and through her like . . . . waves. Yes, like waves, orgasmic waves, one after another.

He moved slowly, masterfully, playing her body to ever greater heights like a maestro with his violin . . . and then at times he would become still, yet the pleasure and energy continued to build, making her feel like she was expanding into