Acts of Nature

blowing dust. They had then walked a straight and purposeful line to the pump room. They were dressed in casual attire: Dockers and collared knit shirts. Harmon was in his spring jacket, as always, and had a briefcase in his hand. Squires had the MP5 slung under his arm and carried it in a nonthreatening way, but a good study would see that the big man was as comfortable and proficient with the weapon as if it were a natural appendage. They were two fiftyish-looking Yankees with professional eyes on the pump and seemed to have little interest in the group stealing oil. If Venezuelan government troops showed up, the thieves and their customers would scatter. But under the eyes of the crowd, two American oil men were no threat and subsequently of little interest. Harmon had keyed the big padlock on the pump room and in minutes had found the computer recorder on the control panel and removed it. He then opened his briefcase. Inside was a satellite phone, a block of plastic incendiary explosive and a trigger switch, and fifty thousand dollars in cash.
    While Squires watched their backs through the partially opened pump room door, Harmon took a few extra minutes to search through some file cabinets and look for any other recording devices, laptops, CDs, anything that might hold information. He’d been at this corporate game long enough to know that information was valuable, especially those bits of intelligence he wasn’t supposed to have. Harmon and Squires worked on a need-to-know basis and it was not just an old television line when their bosses said they would disavow any knowledge of their actions. The corporate boys could do a lot to free you up if things went bad and you ended up in a foreign prison or worse, but not without some motivation. Harmon was always on the lookout for his own private insurance or leverage and he’d collected a lot over the years, copied documents and computer files. He was a careful man in that sense. But there was nothing in the pump shack worth sticking around for. He gave up and set the explosive and checked the switch. He then made a call on the phone to Mazurk that they were ready for pickup. When they stepped outside, Harmon turned, carefully and obviously, and relocked the big padlock on the door. He knew the crowd would be watching. He wanted him and Squires to be described only as company men, carrying out nothing more than what they carried in. They were employees doing their jobs, nothing more, without care for the activity around them. See no evil. That’s the way Harmon liked these operations to go. He might have even had a satisfied look on his face as they walked back to the roadside field where the chopper would now be inbound. He would be back home by tomorrow. Maybe even take his little boat out on Biscayne Bay, do some fishing with his wife, split a bottle of Merlot, and watch the lights of waterfront Miami sprinkle on at sunset.
    But now he had the barrel of a beautiful American gun at his throat, and he was about to blow the heart out of a young University of Miami graduate with a homeboy lust for excitement. The more things change in this world, he thought, the more they remain the same.
    Without taking his eyes off the other man’s, Harmon extended the briefcase and dropped it at the little colonel’s feet as he had been asked.
    “De pinga!” the colonel said with a smile and then motioned one of his rebel gunners up to his side. “Abre el maletín!”
    The soldier shouldered his Kalashnikov and bent to one knee to open the case. Another one Squires would not have to worry about, Harmon registered. The soldier laid the case down, flicked open the unlocked latches, and flipped the top up. His face registered the delight of seeing the stacks of banded American money, and as his confederates read it, all took a step forward to gain a look.
    “Fifty thousand in cash,” Harmon said to the colonel, who had not looked down but could no doubt feel the excitement in his men. Greed comes in every language. “It’s yours. I only need the phone and the black box. You take the fifty grand and go party with your friends or whatever you do and we’ll trundle on out of here. Consider it a visitation fee, eh?”
    The little colonel held his gaze but Harmon could tell he was not just considering the proposal.
    “Well, of course it is mine!” the colonel finally said, tipping the muzzle of his Colt Python, touching the soft skin hanging under Harmon’s chin. Harmon