The DMZ Page 26

  Tim’s only response was the creak of a bench as he bumped into it, followed by a low mutter that could have been swearing were it not for who he was. There was no sign of the women who had accompanied her to the grave. Once again, they had vanished into the night, but this time Julie took no offense. She didn’t blame them for being afraid. She only wished them safely home.

  Feeling in the dark for the two-by-four that kept the heavy front doors of the church blocked shut from the inside, she lifted it from the metal hooks that held it in place. Leaning the beam against the wall, she pushed the doors open.

  “Come on,” she said impatiently, turning swiftly as Tim emerged to shove the doors shut behind them. “Let’s get you back before someone squeals to the guerrillas that their corralled sheep are going astray.”

  Her answer came as the soft clop of a hoof on the cobblestones. Then—from a different angle—she heard the gentle whoosh of a horse’s breath being released. Slowly, reluctantly, Julie turned around. The circle of riders, their faces hard, shadowed silhouettes under the moon, carried her horribly, terrifyingly back seven years.

  “I think it’s a little late for that,” came Tim McAdam’s American drawl from beside her, and for once there was no joviality in his tone.

  TEN

  THERE MUST HAVE BEEN A DOZEN of them—dark equine shapes differentiated only by the toss of a head or the glimmer of moonlight in a liquid eye, the dappled pattern of battle fatigues rendering the riders almost invisible against the night. Julie had just noted the empty saddles among them when wails broke out behind her, along with the guttural shouts of men.

  With despair, Julie turned to see the women stumble out the front door of the church, prodded forward by the deadly shape of assault rifles, then glanced over at Tim McAdams. He was so big, so blond, so … so gringo, standing there with the moonlight shining bright on his flaxen head! It seemed clear that what she’d feared had come to pass. Someone had spotted his tall, fair frame in the streets and reported him to the guerrillas who now passed as town authorities.

  Or was it me they saw? she wondered. If only I hadn’t come!

  Even if it was Tim the guerrillas had spotted, that too was her fault. If I hadn’t practically given him a green light to follow me! Still, how could she have known her impulsive act would endanger these old friends?

  Yes, friends. Julie could say that now. The realization sent a tendril of warmth through the chill in her veins, giving her courage to step forward toward the nearest horseman. “Look, I’m really sorry about this, but there’s been a mix-up. My friend and I are members of the United Nations mission over at the airport. I know we shouldn’t have been wandering around, but—we just wanted to see the town. We didn’t mean to cause any problems. If … if you will just take us back to the airport. Or we can make our own way….”

  The man on the horse ignored her. His fingers snapped loud in the night as he ordered, “Search them.”

  Two riders swung down from their mounts. Both were armed with assault rifles. Julie stood stiff with outrage as the nearest man confiscated her backpack, then proceeded to run his hands over her. The town women were being searched as well, and Julie forced herself to imitate their stoic posture, though her fingers curled angrily when the man’s hands lingered longer than necessary.

  As he finally stood back, Julie risked a glance sideways at Tim. He was taking this surprisingly well, she admitted grudgingly, not ranting or demanding his rights like a typical gringo but standing quietly, keeping his arms calmly in the air while the other horseman searched him even more thoroughly than Julie had been.

  Satisfied, the other horseman stepped back and shook his head. The men who had rounded up the town women signaled that they too had found nothing. “Bring them,” the speaker ordered curtly.

  As he started to wheel his horse around, Julie tried again. “Look, I’m sorry, but there really has been a mistake. My companion and I are reporters with the United Nations mission—I’m sure you’ve heard about it. We are here at the request of your own Comandante Raul Aguilera. If you don’t believe us, please just contact the airport. The comandante will confirm that we have been given safe passage. Or—or …”—Julie groped for other names—“or you may speak to Manuel Flores. Or Enrique Martinez.”

  Her only answer was a sudden stab of pain in the base of her spine. Whirling around, she realized that the horseman who had searched her had just jabbed her with the barrel of his assault rifle. Another sharp prod sent her stumbling into the street. To her right, Doña Nina and the other women were being herded forward as well. They made no resistance. Experience had taught them the futility of that. But the hopeless slump of their shoulders twisted at Julie’s heart.

  “Please—at least let the women go!” she called to the hindquarters of the horse, now moving away from her at a slow clop-clop. “They have nothing to do with us. They’re just townspeople we met!”

  I might as well be talking to a brick wall, Julie thought despairingly as two of the armed men started the group of women down the street on foot while the others swung back into their saddles. Were these guerrillas also under orders not to speak to their hostages?

  Or was it possible they weren’t guerrillas after all? Paramilitaries, maybe, sweeping through the town on a raid to round up suspected guerrilla sympathizers. Maybe this had nothing to do with Julie and Tim, and they had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But paramilitaries, though they committed even more massacres than the guerrillas, didn’t generally practice the kidnapping of foreigners. They were too busy presenting themselves as the allies of law and order.

  Julie shook her head as one of the other horsemen led up a riderless horse.

  “No, thanks,” she said. “If you’re going to take us, I’d rather walk with my friends.”

  The upraised gun barrel was so unexpected, Julie didn’t even have time to flinch. But before it could come down, a large hand reached out past Julie to block it.

  “There’s no need for violence,” Tim McAdams told her guard mildly in Spanish that was reasonably fluent if strongly accented. “We’ll cooperate.”

  To Julie’s astonishment, the man made no retaliation but simply motioned with his gun barrel toward the horse. With an effortless motion that made nothing of her 120 pounds, Tim boosted Julie to its broad back.

  “Look, I know you’re concerned about your friends,” he told Julie in a low voice as he swung himself into another empty saddle. “But you’re not doing them any favor advertising your relationship there. These guys are just following standard procedure—separate you from your local contacts before you can compare stories or pass on a message or something.”

  “But they’re not my contacts!” Julie wailed softly. “They’re just people I ran into. I didn’t even know they’d be there.” It was useless. If a fellow journalist like Tim had jumped to the conclusion that she was out here rooting around for a story, how much less would the guerrillas—or whoever they were—accept the truth!

  At a gesture from her guard, Julie nudged her horse into a slow trot down the street. Tim brought his mount up alongside hers with an ease that showed he was no novice on horseback.

  “Anyway, thank you for back there,” she whispered, nodding toward the horseman who had struck at her, now trotting along on her other side. “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”

  Julie caught Tim’s raised eyebrow in the moonlight. “I told you I’ve been knocking around these parts for a while. I’ll never pass myself as a native, but I’ve learned enough to get by.”

  Julie eyed him with new appreciation and some envy. He was riding easy and relaxed in the saddle, his handsome features as calm and untroubled as though the two of them were embarking on a moonlit outing instead of possibly being kidnapped and taken into captivity. Despite what Tim’s intrusion into her evening had likely precipitated, Julie had to admit that his large presence beside her was comforting.

  “So what does it take to shake you up—an earthquake?
” she asked, trying to infuse some humor into her tone. “I … I was terrified back there, and you—I didn’t see you so much as blink an eye! Or maybe run-ins with Marxist guerrillas are all in a day’s work for you. Or …”—Julie’s whisper turned suddenly sober, and her eyebrows drew together in the middle of her forehead. “Or you just have more faith than I do that we’re going to walk away from this.”

  Tim reached forward to adjust his reins before he answered, the corner of his mouth curving wryly.

  “I hadn’t realized I was giving such an impression of having it all together. An erroneous one, I’m afraid. But yes, I suppose I do have the confidence that everything will work out, however bleak our present circumstances. After all, the Scriptures tell us that God is more than powerful enough to keep His children from harm. If an Almighty God can open wide the waters of the Red Sea or muzzle the mouths of lions, He can certainly handle our present situation.”

  His voice actually changes when he talks like that, Julie noted, bemused. Deeper, graver, beautifully sonorous with that warm, velvet tone. A preacher’s voice. His eyes, dark in the moonlight, held Julie’s as he spoke, gentle, compelling. Julie had to swallow hard before she could comment dryly, “Yes, and sometimes God allows bad things to happen to good people, remember?”

  “Ssst!”

  The menacing hiss cut short their whispered exchange. The dusty lane was silent and dark as they passed through it, even the glimmer of lit windows gone as shutters had been hastily bolted at the first sound of hoofbeats. Their progress was slow, dictated by the pace of the other captives, and it infuriated Julie to see Doña Nina and the other women scuttling ahead on foot while their captors kept the horses breathing down their necks and hemming them in so close that they stumbled repeatedly.

  This was not about having enough mounts for all the prisoners. This was about power and humiliation and the intimidation of guards and weapons looming above and all around, so that by the time they reached their destination, the prisoners would be too cowed to offer resistance.

  The creeps are enjoying this!

  The trek wasn’t long. Once beyond the outskirts of San Ignacio, the whole party turned onto a wide dirt track with deep ruts that showed the passage of motorized vehicles as well as horses and carts. They followed this only a few hundred meters before they came to the river. A long wooden dock extended out over the water. Rocking lazily beside it was a riverboat with its flat, barge-like bottom and a canvas awning that made an open cabin in the center of the deck.

  The horsemen were already swinging to the ground. Dismounting, Julie found herself separated from Tim as a gun barrel in the small of her back prodded her forward onto the dock. Nor far upriver, she could see a twinkle of lights that had to be the San Ignacio airport, but the only light here was a flashlight with which the original spokesman of the horse party was motioning the prisoners onto the boat. Herded momentarily together with the other women, Julie snatched the opportunity to whisper, “Oh, Doña Nina, Tia Carmen, I’m so sorry!”

  Doña Nina fumbled to squeeze Julie’s hand in the dark, her fingers dry and bony and incredibly frail under Julie’s own. “Hija—daughter—do not blame yourself. That which happens is God’s will. He is with us, do not ever let yourself doubt.” The old woman’s soft murmur cracked treacherously on the last words, and yet somehow Julie found them more reassuring than all of Tim’s velvet-toned homilies. O God, please, just let them go! You have me, just let them go!

  Then the guards were between them, roughly shoving Julie away from the others. “You—back there!” the man with the flashlight instructed harshly, and with that order, two of the guards began prodding the other women forward toward the stern.

  “And you—over here!” The man flashed his light on a pile of burlap bags to the left of the enormous spoked wheel that navigated the riverboat. His curt orders identified him as the leader of this raiding party, and as Julie obediently moved where he directed, she tried once more.

  “Look, I think there really has been a mistake. If you will just take us to the airport there”—she gestured toward the twinkle of lights upriver, a beacon of warmth and welcome in the darkness—“you will see. Comandante Raul Aguilera—”

  The flashlight beam shifted abruptly, illuminating his dark, broad features. “There is no mistake,” he said coldly. “You are an American spy, and for that crime, under the direct mandate of the command council of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, you have been placed under arrest!”

  Then they were guerrillas! And FARC at that. But what in the—?

  Stunned, Julie made no further attempt to argue. As the raid leader strode over to the wheel, she sank down onto the pile of sacking. The other women huddled together at the far end of the riverboat. Looking around for Tim, Julie found him sprawled comfortably against a mound of sacked rice on the opposite side of the deck, a guard crouched down on either side of him, the outlines of their assault rifles barely visible against the dark night. Only half of the raiding party had boarded with the prisoners. The others, taking up the reins of the extra mounts, wheeled away from the dock as the riverboat’s engine sputtered to life. From across the deck, Tim caught Julie’s eyes on him and gave her a thumbs-up. Julie forced an uncertain smile in response.

  It’s got to be a mistake! she reassured herself.

  She and Tim had been caught stupidly wandering out of bounds, and they were now paying the penalty. But the guerrillas undoubtedly operated on preset orders for these situations, she reasoned, and sooner or later these men would have to report the detention of two gringos to their own superiors, and then it would all be straightened out soon enough. As Julie had explained to Sondra Kharrazi and the others, Comandante Raul Aguilera and the FARC leadership had too much at stake with this mission to risk its success by indulging in random kidnapping.

  In the meantime, it would be best—both for herself and Tim and for the women she’d inadvertently pulled into this mess—not to make anymore waves. Julie settled herself among the scratchy, fish-smelling burlap sacks and set herself to wait. Her belongings hadn’t been returned to her, but she could see her knapsack tossed next to the wheel along with the rectangular shape of Tim’s briefcase. At least her notes were safe.

  Once away from the dock, the raid leader extinguished his flashlight. After that, the only light came from moon and stars, the river a ribbon of black sliding past the side of the boat, broken only by the occasional splash of a fish.

  ***

  Julie had long since lost track of time and was dozing off, her head bumping against the hard wood of the gunwale, when the engine died. A cold muzzle against the hollow of her throat prodded her awake. Stumbling to her feet, she saw blearily that they were no longer on the Ipa River but on a much smaller stream. Here there was no dock, just a muddy bank and a narrow trail leading from the river edge into the jungle. Again, the guerrilla band divided. Two of the men started up the engine and steered the boat away from shore once the others had herded the prisoners up the bank.

  Julie’s heart sank as the raid leader’s sharp orders moved them out single file onto the jungle trail. The farther they went, the more difficult it would be to get back to San Ignacio, and they had a flight leaving in just a few hours!

  Julie was slogging along between two of the guerrillas. The stars and moon had disappeared, and though the leader of the column had his flashlight on, Julie was far back where no glimmer of light could reach, and she stumbled constantly over unseen roots and stones. How was poor old Doña Nina possibly handling this?

  To make things worse, it began to rain. The thick canopy provided a partial shield against the downpour, but Julie was soaked through by the time they stumbled into the open.

  A campfire burned in front of them, and lanterns hung from tree branches. The yellow glow revealed that underbrush and smaller saplings had been hacked back from the base of a grove of the biggest mango trees Julie had ever seen. Spreading branches closed in high above them to hide the encamp
ment from any curious eyes, human or electronic, that might pass overhead.

  Nearby were four makeshift huts constructed by thrusting stripped saplings into the ground to mark four corners, then wrapping heavy plastic around three sides as walls. The plastic was a light blue of the type sold in huge rolls for awnings or tarps or even an improvised rain poncho. Palm and elephant leaves piled across a latticework of branches made a thatched roof.

  Through the open side of the nearest hut, she saw cots of the fold-up, army type. In another, she spotted a UHF radio perched on a wooden table. So there was communication to the outside world.

  The huts were arranged around an open center. Here, along with the campfire, a rusty metal drum had been fashioned into a crude stove. A tarp stretched across several branches overhead kept rain from putting out the fire beneath the makeshift burners. Another tarp sheltered a table laden with cooking supplies. Bags of rice. Beans. A five-gallon container of oil. Scattered around the campfire were aluminum pots and tin plates and cups.

  Behind the nearest hut was another structure, this one with solid walls, though it was no larger than a telephone booth. An outhouse? One thing was certain: This was no temporary campsite. The guerrillas had held kidnap victims here before.

  As the raiding party leader herded his captives into the encampment, other guerrillas stood up from around the campfire or slipped out of hammocks strung between branches. They retrieved their weapons as they got to their feet, the low murmur of their Spanish a soft music as they mingled with their arriving companions. They weren’t all male. Julie spotted several slighter figures and pulled-back ponytails under the camouflage fatigues and combat hats.

  Julie was too tired to protest when she was again cut out of the knot of prisoners. The townswomen were herded inside one of the plastic-sided enclosures while she was led to another. She was exhausted enough to feel only gratitude when, in response to her awkward question, her guide, one of the female guerrillas, silently led her to the telephone-booth structure. An outhouse, as Julie had hoped, though inside the walls there was nothing more than a few planks balanced over a pit in the ground.