By edRogers
[Reviewed here on the novel’s publication day, October 6, 2018: “Coming soon to a Barnes & Noble store near you?”]
The report that his warehouse had been broken into sent Tai into a rage. The first thing he did was fire all the security people and brought in Taiwanese who lived in San Jose. The second thing he did was telephone Taiwan and request more men.
There was never any doubt in Tai’s mind as to who was behind the break-in. Only one person he knew in Costa Rica had the guts to do such a thing, Victor Morales. Tai knew that Morales didn’t like it that he was shipping cocaine along with the fins. As far as Morales was concerned, drugs belonged to the cartels. There had been an uneasy peace between the Taiwanesse mafia and the Mexican cartels over the years. Although they hated each other, business came first and the peace held. Tai had crossed swords with Morales from time to time, but it was always at sea and never involved personal contact between them. But trying to rob his warehouse, that was different, it was an act of war.
Victor Morales was the third son of Tomas Morales, feared head of the Morales empire. Victor’s older brothers were running the family business in Mexico and living like kings, while Victor was living off handouts from the other cartels. Victor had killed a made man who had slapped a woman he was with. The woman turned out to be the man’s wife, and if that wasn’t bad enough he had killed him without his father’s permission, so it meant either war or his death. Tomas settled the affair with a lot of money and a promise to keep Victor out of Mexico. At times Victor wondered whether he had made the right choice coming to Costa Rica, and dreamed of his return.
He had heard the rumor of an attempted robbery at Tai’s warehouse, but he had no idea what was going on. All he knew was that he was being blamed. The whole idea was stupid; he wouldn’t have robbed the place – he would have burned it down over Tai’s body.
Now there was talk that Tai was preparing to go to war with him over it. Victor couldn’t believe his good luck. If it was true, it was a chance to get rid of Tai once and for all. If Victor had his way, Tai would have been fish-bait a long time ago. However, Costa Rica was a safe and important transfer point for all the drugs heading North. Victor was paid by the other cartels to be the middleman in that transfer and they didn’t want a war, so Victor had sucked it up. But Tai coming after him was an entirely different thing.
Victor put his men on a war footing and had his people watching for any movement that would indicate Tai’s intent to make a move on him. They were covering his warehouse, his home, the airport, and all of Tai’s hangouts.
On October 1st Victor got a call from the San Jose Airport about four Taiwanese hit men getting off an airplane. Victor, who was headquartered outside of Jaco, sent his best men to Puntarenas to wait for them.
At 4 o’clock the Taiwanese entered the restaurant Pescado, while Victor’s men moved into positions outside. At 5:30 the Taiwanese came out onto the sidewalk and a gunfight erupted.
Two of the Taiwanese fell from the first blast of bullets, their blood splattering across the concrete, but the other two dove behind a car and returned fire. It wasn’t long before the sound of sirens could be heard. Victor’s men had killed only two of the Taiwanese, but the police were already coming.
By the time the police showed up there were only two dead Taiwanese; the other two were nowhere in sight.
Tai hit back the next night in Morales’ hometown of Jaco. Four of Morales’s men were gunned down on the main street. The war was on.
Then the rain came, along with a Hurricane, and neither the cartels nor the Taiwanese mafia could stand up to Mother Nature. Business came to a halt. Tai lost a shipment of drugs, along with a boat, and the roads were flooded or covered with mud. Morales was catching hell because he couldn’t get any drugs north. Both he and Tai had more pressing problems to deal with than some war that made nobody any money.
Charlie heard about the killings on October 1st and 2nd, and then heard the reports of a tropical storm they were calling Nate off the east coast of Costa Rica. The world around the environmentalists was about to take a big turn.
It had been a bad rainy season, with a break in September and even hopes that the dry season was coming early. But the last week in September it rained the entire week, and October began with it still raining. And now, with Hurricane Nate, the soil became saturated and mudslides and floods were daily happenings. By mid-month the killings had been forgotten.
Charlie closed his rental house and moved in with Margot. Fighting the rain on his motorbike at night was far too dangerous, and the dogs were having a hard time with all the mud so he canceled his security contract and had the dogs picked up.
Before the rains started back up, Juan, Charlie, and Margot had had a few discussions about the looming war between Tai and the Morales Cartel, but they saw no way to head it off. Now that the war had started they still had no idea. They chose not to bring Howard or Tommy into the discussions for fear they would want to know why they were involved in something that had nothing to do with them. Charlie felt that three knowing of the killing of the guard was one too many already.
One good thing about all the rain was that it kept people indoors and kept the killing at a number so low that if you didn’t know about it, you would never believe a drug war was going on.
The hurricane was a slow mover, and for days, as it skirted along Nicaragua’s Caribbean coastline, it pumped a steady line of water-filled clouds over the land and down the Pacific Coast side of Costa Rica. Charlie was having his third rum and Coke and looking out the glass doors at the back of Margot’s house. “Damn if I don’t think this rain is getting harder. There’re rivers of water coming down the hill in back. Have you ever had a mudslide?”
“No, Charlie, I have never had a mudslide. I have a very large retaining wall back there. Now come over to the couch and relax.”
Charlie returned to the couch and stretched out with his head in Margot’s lap. She ran her fingers through his hair. “You know the rainy season will be over soon and this drug war will really get bad.”
“I know,” said Charlie, “and I have no idea what we can do about it.”
They were silent for a minute. Margot said, “I still have the feathers that were going to Customs. If the rain lets up tomorrow I can drive you to Customs. This war and the rain must be hurting shipments. Customs should know something; we can see whether the government is going to step into the war and stop it, or if they even know about it.”
The rain didn’t seem to have a stop switch. It had, in fact, rained for a couple of weeks with only a small break now and again. Charlie checked the weather channel on Margot’s computer, which said the hurricane was heading north away from Costa Rica. However, it was wrapping bands of rain back over Honduras, Nicaragua, and down the west coast of Costa Rica. The effect was that as the storm moved away they were getting even more rain.
At four in the morning, both Margot and Charlie heard and felt the earth move. With no need for either of them to holler at the other to run, they were both out of bed running to the living room. The sound lasted only a few seconds, but as they stood clinging to each other, time seemed to stop. Then there was only the sound of rain.
Charlie looked down at Margot. “What the hell was that?”
Margot shook her head. “I think it was a mudslide.”
Charlie walked down the hall to the bedroom. “This side of the house is intact.” He came back and cautiously opened the front door, ventured onto the porch, and shined a light into the darkness. “My God, the face of the mountain beside us is gone.”
Margot rushed to the door. “We need to check the road and see if we’ll be able to get out of here.”
Charlie put on his shorts and flip-flops, lowered his head against the wind and rain, and started toward the gate. His flashlight shone on water whichever way he pointed it, and he couldn’t tell where he was walking. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t walk off the face of the mountain, so he soon gave up and returned to the house. “We’ll have to wait until daylight to see what has happened. It’s raining too hard to see anything.”
Margot made coffee and they were on the couch enjoying it when the electricity went off. “Well,” said Charlie, “I wonder how long we’ll be without electricity?”
“I don’t know, Charlie. I have never seen anything like this.”
They drank their coffee in the dark and spoke little until the dim light of morning came over the mountain. The rain had let up and was no more than a drizzle. When Charlie looked out of the front door the sight sent chills down his back. The face of the mountain, which was about six-feet from the side of the house, was gone, as were parts of the fence on that side of the road. Nevertheless, he made his way to the gate and climbed up with the key to the release box where the latch for the gate was secured. Because there was no electricity the gate had to be pushed open manually. With the gate open, he started down the road in what was now light rain. But the wind was still blowing hard, so he had to wipe the water from his eyes to make sure of what he saw.
A river ran down the mountain from where the slide had taken place and trees and brush along with mud were being washed down toward the town. Most of the road was gone for about ten feet across. There was no way to get Margot’s jeep out, and there was maybe just enough roadway left for his bike. Charlie returned to the house with the bad news.
The water had begun to rise around Juan’s house in the first week of October. His place had been flooded some years ago and it had scared him enough to cut a hole in the ceiling and install a door in order to store their things away from flooding water. Now, as they got the last of their belongings up the ladder, he was wondering whether the attic was going to be high enough. He had never in his lifetime seen the water rise so fast.
Then came the night of the big storm, and the water entered their house and they had to move to the attic. In the attic, nothing protected them from the rain but a tin roof. The hard downpour, the lightning, and the thunder became very personal. The water filled Juan’s house halfway to the ceiling. They were not able to leave the attic until three days later. Then they started the hard job a removing the mud from their home.
The town of Puntarenas suffered greatly from the high water. It flooded the streets and most homes and businesses. The town itself was cut off from the world for many days. And it would be weeks before Highway 1 would be open to San Jose. The coastal highway that runs to Panama was soon open although potholes marked the passing of the storm.
The government went to work on Highway 27, which runs from San Jose to Jaco, and reopened it for shipping. The finning and cocaine trades stopped, for a while anyway. As did the drug war.
Howard and Tommy, whose homes were close to the top of a mountain, came out with little or no damage. The banana trees around their houses were pretty much destroyed but the buildings and roadways going to their homes fared well.
Tai’s lost boat and crew were never found, or even mentioned in official reports. The Coast Guard did find hundreds of packages of cocaine floating on the water close to Cocos Island. There was no mention in the news of there being a boat lost, just a report about them fishing out the cocaine. Tai’s business had survived the hurricane.
| Copyright © 2018 by Ed Rogers |
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