The DMZ Read online

  “Sure, what else was I supposed to do with your wheels practically on the runway? You’d have been a whole lot safer to keep as far out of our space as possible, as I’d have told either SouthCom or your people if anyone had bothered running that flight plan by me. And I can tell you, the Colombians aren’t happy about it either! Colonel Serano is breathing fire. This place is supposed to be his show, not ours, and he doesn’t appreciate a flat order from the American State Department to extend his base facilities to a planeload of foreigners, or risk losing his share of the latest aid package. Was that your doing as well, Shidler? Real diplomatic! Serano’s on the phone to Bogotá right now, complaining about the americanos strong-arming the local authorities.”

  Shidler protested even more stiffly. “I simply made it clear that we expected some reciprocal courtesy for all we’ve done down here. He wasn’t being very cooperative.”

  “Right! And that isn’t strong-arming? I can’t blame Serano for being upset. This is a restricted military installation—and you’re bringing in guerrillas? And reporters?”

  By the disgust in his tone, he might have been talking about tapeworms. “If that isn’t all we need! As it is, Serano’s already issued orders to keep this crowd out of his end of the base. Maybe that’s nothing to you, Shidler, but we’ve got a job to do here, and we can’t do it without cooperation from these guys.”

  From Julie’s position in the shelter of the stairway, she saw the colonel turn to descend the steps and the political officer following. “Okay,” Shidler said in a placating tone, “so the San José flyby wasn’t the greatest idea. And maybe we could have flown on to San Ignacio instead of turning back. I panicked. I’ve never had anyone shooting missiles at me before. Come on, Jeff, lighten up! We’re going to be out of your hair in half an hour. How much trouble can they get into in that much time?”

  “With these media pukes, any time is too long!”

  The two men were heading across the runway. Julie watched their receding backs with mingled indignation and amusement. It wasn’t the first time she’d come across the colonel’s attitude. All these military types seemed to have made up their minds that reporters were enemy agents bent on spying out all their activities and broadcasting them to where it could do the most harm. A premise, Julie thought, not totally without foundation.

  Colonel Thornton suddenly called out, “Hey! You over there! No cameras!”

  His harsh shout was directed at a TV crew setting up its equipment in front of the radar installation. Julie recognized Tom Chaney—his makeup artist even now was adding the last touches to his face. Colonel Thornton strode purposefully toward them. “I don’t give a rip who you are!” Julie heard a moment later.

  Collecting their gear, the news crew moved reluctantly toward the building where the rest of the passengers had disappeared, prompted along by an escort of Colombian soldiers who had appeared out of nowhere at the JTF colonel’s shout.

  Julie, her conscience clear since she’d left her camera on board with her knapsack, strolled over to the fence the others had just vacated. A sentry moved in her direction, but upon taking in her empty hands, he drifted away. Peering through the diamond links, Julie heard a whirring noise from the nearest radar, and the screen suddenly shifted position by several inches. What was it tracking up there in the sky?

  “Young lady, we’d appreciate it if you’d join the rest of your party inside. This area is off limits to civilians.”

  Recognizing the stern voice, Julie turned around to find her eyes level with Colonel Thornton’s lapel pocket. His expression was scarcely encouraging, but Julie had been on the news beat too long to be cowed by him.

  “I’m not taking any pictures,” she said quietly. With a smile that usually worked wonders on overbearing bureaucrats, she nodded toward the radar screens. “I was just wondering about your radar. Those are the TPS70s, right?”

  “Maybe.” Colonel Thornton showed no softening of expression, only a quick sharpening of his gaze. “Excuse me, young lady, but who did you say you were?”

  “I didn’t. Sorry!” Digging out her press badge, Julie showed it to the colonel. “Julie Baker. World Conservation Institute. I’m a staff writer with their magazine, Our Earth.”

  Lifting the badge from her fingers, Colonel Thornton studied both sides as though it might be a forgery. “And just what do you know about the TPS70, young lady?”

  Julie gritted her teeth, both at his tone and his form of address. How’d you like it if I started calling you “old chap”! In the higher interests of her profession, she kept her thoughts to herself.

  As another whir preceded a new shift in the direction of the radar screen, Julie turned her attention back to the fence.

  “Well, I know the TPS70s have a range of—what is it, two hundred nautical miles? They were very effective in operations Laser Strike and Green Clover, your counter-narcotics operations down here awhile back. But back then they were supplemented by air surveillance from Panama. Most of that evaporated when SouthCom relocated to Miami. And now with budget cuts, you’re down to just the three radar bases here in southern Colombia—this one and the ones over in Leticia and Vichada, right? And they’re a whole lot more than two hundred miles apart. So what I was wondering—what’s to keep drug smugglers from plotting your radar parameters and just flying right down the air corridors in between?”

  The silence that followed her last question was not friendly. Julie turned her head from the radar screens. There had been no shift in the colonel’s expression. It was how a law enforcement officer might look at a prisoner before reading his Miranda rights.

  “Young lady,” Colonel Thornton said grimly, “the information you have just given me is classified. May I ask where you got it?”

  “I—”

  “No, just one moment. If you would accompany me, please.”

  She had little choice without making a scene—as by some mysterious signal, another military escort materialized around them. She was led to the same building the other passengers had entered, but toward a different door. Outside it, another recruit jumped to attention, hastily pushing it open for them.

  The room inside was high-ceilinged with whitewashed walls and cement floor, but the equipment was that of any office. Seating herself in the chair to which Colonel Thornton waved her, Julie took in an enormous map of Colombia covering most of one wall. Red pins and miniature figures of airplanes dotted an area she recognized as the region around San José.

  The colonel followed the direction of her eyes with a grim expression. Taking his own seat behind a desk that occupied the center of the room, he said curtly, “Now, maybe you’d like to explain to me how a reporter from some”—he glanced again at Julie’s badge, which he still hadn’t returned—“two-cent tree-hugger periodical manages to get her hands on classified information concerning our operations in this region.”

  He looked dead serious and not at all friendly, and Julie, who at first had felt an impulse to laugh, for the first time appreciated how a suspect must feel sitting on the opposite side of an interrogation table. Only her own clear conscience allowed her to meet that gimlet gaze squarely.

  “I got it off the Internet. I was researching the region for this trip, and San José came up in some of the articles. I recognized the name, so I started digging a little further.”

  “You recognized the name,” Colonel Thornton cut in expressionlessly. “You want to tell me why? San José isn’t exactly a standard social studies project for your average American citizen.”

  “I grew up around here,” Julie explained simply. “Well, actually, over in San Ignacio. My parents were missionaries there, and we visited San José when I was a kid. It was just a gravel airstrip back then for the local military police outpost, but the commander used to let my father land his Cessna. That was before they started growing coca around here, but even then, I remember the stories of how they’d take marijuana through here on river boats.”

  When the colonel didn�
��t interrupt, she went on. “Anyway, when I started cross-referencing San José, the counter-narcotics operations came up. Then I came across an article—I think it was from the Miami Herald—that mentioned the three radar bases and the problems with air surveillance since SouthCom moved to Miami. I got the specs on the radar from the Department of Defense Web site. It wasn’t hard. Just standard research techniques. If I can do it, so can anyone else.”

  The colonel was swearing steadily by the time she finished, but his fury no longer appeared to be directed at Julie.

  “Internet! You got it off the Internet! We run a highly sensitive military operation here, we do our best to keep a low profile, watch every communication, warn our people to keep their mouths shut. And some wet-behind-the-ears reporter waltzes in with our weakest points pieced together off the Internet!”

  Pushing back his chair with a force that slammed it into the wall, Colonel Thornton strode over to the wall map. “You see this! These pins … these planes. They’re real people, real problems. In case you didn’t notice, some of them died out there today—maybe not Americans, but men we know. Colonel Serano’s people are out there picking up the pieces right now. We’ve been sent down here to do a job. No, not a job—to fight a war. And it’s not a war we’re winning right now. This mission is hard enough without waking up to find everything we’re doing splashed across the front pages of the morning newspaper.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Julie apologized, even as she wondered why she should. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. If it makes you feel any better, I wasn’t planning on writing anything about your operation here. It has nothing to do with the story we’re covering anyway. I was just curious—”

  “Curious! Well, that does describe you media types. Like a bunch of weasels sniffing through the trash, looking for what garbage they can dig up. And not one of you gives a rip about the consequences of what you write.”

  He dropped back into his desk chair. “Excuse me, that was way out of line.”

  “No, that’s okay. I know what you mean,” Julie said in earnest. “Only, my godfather calls them polecats. I don’t practice that kind of journalism, really! Only, I was just wondering …”

  She caught the look in his eye and couldn’t help laughing. After a moment, the grim line of the colonel’s mouth relaxed into the barest hint of an answering smile. “Okay, young lady—excuse me, Julie Baker—just what is it you’re wondering?”

  “Well, if you say you’re losing the battle—and it does look like it from what I saw out there—why do you keep on? A lot of people are saying it’s the U.S. presence here in Colombia—not to mention all the military aid we’re giving these people—that’s keeping the whole thing stirred up. Not just the drugs, but the guerrillas too. Wouldn’t it be easier—and maybe better for both sides—if we just walked away? You know, concentrate on the drug war on our own side of the border?”

  The colonel’s brief affability evaporated instantly. “I couldn’t agree with you less! You’re right, a lot of people are saying just that. But you might as well ask why fight a forest fire when it just keeps blazing bigger. Of course you have to keep fighting it, or you’ll never get it under control.

  “And that goes for Colombia. The guerrillas and narcos aren’t going to just trot along home and be good little boys if we drop out of the picture. We’ve already seen what happened when Colombia’s military pulled out of the demilitarized zone. The FARC just stepped up their attacks and started clearing the jungle for coca. They’re not looking for peace, no matter what they claim. If for nothing else, we owe it to the people of this country who really want peace to win this fight!”

  “But there’s a lot of people who say the guerrillas will win,” Julie argued. “They compare Colombia to Vietnam. A lot of Americans are afraid that if we keep getting more involved down here, pretty soon we’re going to have a lot of American soldiers losing their lives here too. And for a war they can’t win.”

  The colonel snorted. “That, young lady, is what you get for listening to the press, if you don’t mind my saying so. The guerrillas are not winning. They’re just not losing—and that’s a big difference. It’s simple mathematics. Out of forty million Colombians, the guerrillas have maybe twenty thousand altogether—and that’s splintered between dozens of factions. Nor do the guerrillas have a popular base among the people, like the Vietcong did back in ’Nam. The Colombian people have already seen what the guerrillas have to offer, and they’ve just plain said no!

  “Oh, sure, it’s easy to keep the advantage when you’re attacking small, isolated police posts or unarmed villagers. But if the guerrillas actually seized any seat of government, they’d be as vulnerable as the Colombian government is now. You have to stay in one place to run a country, and then their numbers would tell against them.”

  Colonel Thornton tilted back in his desk chair. “No, their winning is an illusion, and the guerrillas know it, if no one else does. They control huge chunks of countryside only because there’s no local population or police force to stand against them. But they can’t touch the cities, and that’s where the government is. The only reason they haven’t lost already is that the rest of the Colombians won’t unite against them. They don’t have the will to get tough. Like you media types, they bleat that someone will get hurt if they actually go after these guys, and ignore the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are getting hurt because they don’t!”

  “So why do the guerrillas keep fighting,” Julie asked, “if they know they can’t win?”

  “I’m danged if I know! They’re idealists, heavily indoctrinated in Marxist socialism. Or maybe, for all their talk of peace and political convictions, they simply don’t want to give up the power they enjoy right now. It has to be a heady feeling to be ipso facto rulers of almost half their national territory, uninhabited jungle though most of it is. Personally, I think there’s more to it than meets the …”

  He broke off. “Of course, everything I’ve said is strictly off the record,” he informed Julie severely.

  Julie kept her smile inside as she murmured agreement. Colonel Thornton knew, and he must know she knew, that it’s too late to say “off the record” after the fact. But he need not worry; she would be discreet—not because of any legal obligation, but because as a patriotic American who cared as deeply about this country as her own, she would do nothing to cause trouble for those striving to bring about a fragile chance of peace.

  “No problem. Like I said, San José isn’t part of my story.” Julie glanced at her watch. “Oh, no! Has it been that long? I’d better get back to the plane, or they’re going to take off without me.”

  “Hey, no hurry, you’ve still got a few minutes.” Colonel Thornton’s swift strides beat Julie to the door. “I’m waiting for the last two planes and their escorts to touch down just about now.” To Julie’s surprise, he offered her a wry smile as he pushed open the door ahead of her. “And that you can print! Goodbye, Julie Baker.”

  “Goodbye, Colonel Thornton. And I really will keep what you’ve said off the record. All of it.”

  * * *

  Julie sprinted out onto the airstrip. But as Colonel Thornton had said, the DC4 showed no signs of readying for takeoff. There was, in fact, a new group standing in the shade of its fuselage. Julie picked out the green-and-brown fatigues of the two guerrillas. The shorter FARC spokesman was gesturing enthusiastically as he addressed two men in white coats. The heat must have driven them out of the plane.

  Julie felt her own curls tighten with perspiration as the reflection of the sun’s rays from the asphalt hit her in sweltering, almost visible waves. She slowed to a trudge. The military contingent of the base didn’t appear too enthusiastic about having a pair of their traditional enemies standing free on their territory, UN mission or not. An added detail of soldiers had closed in unobtrusively around the two FARC representatives and the rest of the UN team.

  Others of the news crews were trickling back to the DC4 as well.
At the far end of the runway, another crop duster was coming in, one of the planes for which Colonel Thornton had been waiting.

  Julie stopped short in the middle of the airstrip, staring at a dark smudge against the blue sky above the crop duster. It was smoke, ominous black billows of it boiling up around the fuselage.

  She wasn’t the only one to notice. The fire truck was already moving out, and soldiers boiled onto the runway as the plane dropped down above the asphalt. Julie watched, transfixed. The plane was coming in too fast, too low.

  Then, miraculously, it was down, the fixed wings tilting wildly from side to side; the pilot seemed unable to touch both wheels to the pavement at the same time. The fire truck sped forward. Julie let out her breath in relief—only to catch it again. Why wasn’t the pilot braking? The fire truck swerved out of the way as the crop duster raced full speed down the airstrip. On its present course, it would plow right into the DC4.

  The pilot clearly recognized his danger, altering his course to a zigzag pattern that seemed to slow the plane down only fractionally. The fixed wings wobbled more wildly than before.

  Julie could see the stitching of bullet holes along the plane’s side. Flames were licking through the smoke on one wing. Now it was tilting over so far onto one wheel, it seemed sure to keel over.

  The left wing touched the asphalt, and Julie heard the screech of tortured metal. Pieces of fiberglass and metal cartwheeled across the runway as the wing shredded away from the body of the plane. Then, somehow, the plane had righted itself, slamming down hard onto both wheels.

  Not until the shouts began behind her did Julie realize her danger. Her eyes widened unbelievingly as she saw the triangle of ripped fiberglass cartwheeling toward her, black smoke and flames still streaming from its jagged edges. Move! her mind screamed, but her breath was still caught in her throat, and her feet felt glued to the asphalt. Like some giant boomerang intent on cutting her down, the broken wingtip swelled to fill her plane of vision. There was no way she could escape its path in time.