The DMZ Read online

  She broke off to look him over consideringly. “For that matter, why aren’t you? Why are they so sure I am this big spy they’re looking for, and they don’t even look at you?”

  “Are you kidding?” Tim’s eyebrows shot up, giving him a look of comic disbelief. “Hey, I’m not the one who can pass as a native! And sound like one too. I’m no big expert on this zone, either, and I sure don’t go around meeting locals in dark churches—or U.S. colonels in military bases.”

  Tim reached over and touched a gentle finger to her bruised cheek. “I’m really sorry about that, Julie—and even more that there was nothing I could do to stop it. Still, I have to say I can see where it would all look pretty suspicious to someone like Aguilera. Me—well, you said it. I stand out like a glow-in-the-dark torch, and all I have to do is open my mouth to announce that I’m an American. No one is going to take me for an undercover agent. Not unless these guys think the CIA—or whoever is supposed to be running some operation down here—are stupid enough to practically advertise they’ve got a spy around.”

  Yes, and maybe the CIA, or whoever, is smart enough to know that’s what they’d think.

  Julie didn’t push the argument. Tim was right. She could see, unfortunately, where her innocent actions could have been misread, and it wasn’t going to help anything to try to spread the blame around.

  Mollified, she asked, “So what did they ask you about?”

  Tim’s broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Oh, the usual. Who are you? What are your credentials? How can you prove you are who you say you are? Do you work for a government agency? What is your acquaintance with la señorita Julic Baker? And of course, are you a spy of the americanos?”

  “Right, the usual,” Julie said dryly. “Like being accused of being a spy is your average, everyday occurrence.” Her mouth curved in sudden irony. “Actually, that’s not so far off. When I was a kid, the missionaries were always being accused of being CIA. The leftist leaders never could figure out why Americans would be out in the jungle otherwise. The number of times I had to help scrub ‘Yanqui Go Home’ off the walls of our house! I remember one student union organizer who had come through town asking if I was CIA. I was fifteen! I told him I was just waiting until I reached recruitment age.”

  “And were you?”

  The question came so lightly, it didn’t register at first. Then Julie asked slowly. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Tim threw a glance at the guards, then lowered his voice. “Okay, look! Maybe it’s that journalistic nosiness you mentioned, and you have every right to tell me to take that nose elsewhere. But, well, I guess the puzzle pieces have just been clicking together in my head. If some government agency did want to investigate these murders—on the quiet, outside of Bill Shidler’s ‘official’ inquiry—then what better way than to slip someone of their own on that plane? Someone less conspicuous than those State Department types, someone who could do a little hands-on research of his—or her—own. Someone who maybe has his—or her—own grudge against these guerrillas.”

  He lifted his hands. “If it’s true, you’ve got no problem here. I’m in full agreement with what our government’s doing down here, and I can keep my mouth shut in the service of my country. I might even be of some assistance if you need it. But if we’re going to be in this together, it would be nice to know what’s going on.”

  Julie stared at him, both astounded and outraged.

  “Well, it’s not true!” she hissed when she could speak again. “Are you crazy? How could you think such a thing? For the last time, I am not a spy!”

  She bit her tongue as Enrique’s head shot up. Better keep in mind that he understood English. Dropping her voice to a whisper, Julie added forcibly, “I am not a government agent, I promise! Do you think I would lie about it?” Her voice quavered suddenly. “Do you think I’d really go to pieces like that if I was some trained government agent? I feel like such an idiot. I was so afraid … I felt like I would have done anything just to get them to leave me alone.”

  “Hey!” Tim put out a hand again, patting her on the shoulder, the sympathy deepening in the blue eyes. “You did just fine. Look, of course you were afraid. You would have been some kind of super-being if you weren’t. These guys are experts, remember? They know how to twist a hostage’s mind, get them to where they’re groveling with fear and will do anything to cooperate. You reacted like a normal human being, and that doesn’t make you a failure. In fact, I thought you kept your head admirably. They certainly didn’t get anything out of you that you didn’t want to give away.”

  “That’s because there wasn’t anything to give away!” Julie retorted. “And I sure didn’t notice you doing any groveling.”

  His words, true or not, eased her humiliation a little. “Anyway, I told you—and them—what happened and how I got here. If you don’t believe me, that’s your problem. As for the State Department or CIA or whoever, if they have some undercover guy sneaking around, he’s probably still at the airport doing his job. At least maybe we’re doing some good by taking some of the heat off his back. If there really is such a person.”

  “Señorita Baker? Señor McAdams? You will come with me.” Enrique’s tone was formal and courteous and gave no indication of having been eavesdropping on their conversation, but the tension that had been slowly seeping from Julie’s muscles tightened again as she stumbled obediently to her feet.

  “Wh—what do you want?” she asked apprehensively.

  Motioning with his assault rifle barrel for them to move, Enrique answered brusquely, “The comandante wishes to question the two of you again. Come quickly. He does not like to be kept waiting.”

  Julie felt the sickness return to the pit of her stomach as they crossed the camp. The side of her face was throbbing painfully, and she wished she’d taken time for the outhouse—to throw up, if nothing else. Please, not again! I don’t think I can even pretend to be brave if they hit me again.

  As the two guerrillas ushered their charges into the communications hut, Julie immediately spotted the group of women huddled against the far wall. Doña Nina looked exhausted, even older and more frail than Julie remembered, her dark eyes sunk deep into their sockets, and the baker’s wife’s face was swollen with crying. Hadn’t she had small children when Julie was last in San Ignacio? If so, she must be frantic with worry. But the whole group stood quietly and unresisting, their eyes lowered to the ground with the stoicism of the Colombian campesinos who have long experience in bracing themselves against the fresh disaster any day might bring.

  Julie tried to emulate their submission as Enrique and Carlos herded their two prisoners forward into the center of the hut, her eyelids lowered to hide her fear. Comandante Aguilera stood behind the table. Her laptop and Tim’s briefcase were still sitting on the table itself, the latter standing open. Julie eyed with longing the sat-phone equipment inside. At the end of that signal was help—no farther away than San José, in fact. Would Colonel Thornton come for them if they could somehow get a message out?

  Or would he consider the disappearance of two reporters a small loss? Neither the American nor Colombian governments had a track record, after all, of coming to the rescue of Colombia’s thousands of kidnap victims, American or otherwise.

  Comandante Aguilera snapped the briefcase shut. Again he ignored Tim, addressing himself to Julie. “I have interrogated these women and spoken by radio with San Ignacio. Their story agrees with you. It seems you are indeed the daughter of the americano foreigners who lived many years in San Ignacio, now deceased these seven years.”

  The guerrilla commander’s glance was indifferent, and with it, Julie’s shoulders slumped with relief. Then this nightmare was all over, and they were all about to be released. But with his next words, his tone chilled to solid ice, and Julie’s stomach with it.

  “That does not alter the other charges against you, Julie Baker. You have little reason to love our cause or our people, is this not true? Why should we believ
e that you would return here unless it was to spy? And your parents, this Dr. Ricardo and his woman, Elizabet? Is it not true that they too were spies? That they came into our lands under the pretext of bringing aid only to spread the imperialistic empire of the americanos and to deceive our people with their fascist schemes? Is it not true that they were agents of the se—eee—ahh?” The Spanish pronunciation of the U.S. intelligence agency practically spat itself from the guerrilla leader. So this man too had heard that old accusation. And it was clear he believed it.

  Julie had to swallow hard before she could speak through lips that were as stiff with sudden panic and resentment. “My parents were not spies! They were missionaries—doctors, health workers. They … they did a lot for the people of San Ignacio, as your … your communications must have told you. And they never worked for any American agency except their mission organization.”

  Julie made a hopeless gesture with her hand as she tried to keep her voice from quavering. “Please, can’t you see? All … all they ever did—all they ever wanted to do—was to help and … and to love the Colombian people.”

  “You lie!” The fury of the words was like a blow. Startled into raising her eyes, Julie saw with another sickening jolt of her stomach that the guerrilla commander’s cool demeanor had cracked. His black eyes burned with the same fanaticism she’d seen during his ranting on the platform back at the San Ignacio airport, and the narrow, sculpted features were flushed even darker than their normal deep bronze with the rage that twisted the thin line of his mouth.

  He hates us! Julie realized with what should not have been shock. He really hates us—the Americans. He hates me!

  Striding out from behind the desk, Aguilera walked up to Julie until his face was only inches from hers, the taste of his breath in her mouth as overpowering as his hate.

  “The American imperialists do not come here without ulterior motives!” he hissed. “No, they come to steal our resources for themselves. To impose their capitalistic ways on us for the benefit of their own markets. To poison our crops with their pesticides and brainwash our children with their foreign ways of thinking. Your parents and you—you were never asked to come to Colombia—to San Ignacio! What business was it of yours to thrust your ways … your religion on us here? Are we so incompetent that we cannot help our own people, teach our own people, without your intervention?”

  Julie stood literally frozen with terror, her gaze trapped in the fury of his so that she couldn’t pull it away. The FARC commander was so angry that she could feel the vibration of his body, the heat of his rage in the words he spat into her face.

  But you haven’t helped your people! she wanted to cry out. None of you have! You don’t care about these people—not unless someone else comes along and tries to care about them. If it wasn’t for my parents, no one would have helped them at all!

  “You will admit this now!” the guerrilla leader hissed again, his face coming so close, Julie couldn’t help flinching under the moisture of his saliva. “You had no business coming here. Not you … not your parents … not any of you imperialist capitalist American pigs who arrogantly assume you know more of what is best for the Colombian people than we, their brothers and comrades!”

  There had to be something pacifying she could say, but her mind was blank of all but that torrent of anger and hate boring down on her. “I … I,” she stammered.

  With one furious movement, the guerrilla leader flung himself away from her. Before Julie could even breathe out her sobbing relief, it turned to horror as Comandante Aguilera’s quick strides carried him over to the huddled party of women. He hesitated only long enough to run a cold eye over the group. Then he grabbed Doña Nina by the arm and jerked her forward. Julie froze in fresh terror as he slid his pistol from his belt. It was a long-barreled weapon, shiny and gray and deadly looking, and the metallic click as he cocked it hung loud in the air.

  “You will admit this, or I will shoot this traitor who calls herself your friend.”

  The silence that followed his ultimatum was so complete that Julie could hear the rattle of tin dishes somewhere outside the plastic walls. Every eye was fixed on her, she saw with despair—the frightened, desperate ones of the women, the furious glare of the comandante, the impassive gaze of Enrique and Victor and the other guerrillas within her range of vision. She didn’t dare glance across at Tim.

  So what am I supposed to say? No, they didn’t have any business here? They had no business trying to make a difference in one podunk little town in a Third World banana republic? They had no business wasting their careers for a bunch of peasants who had no real desire to change themselves or their country? They had no business pouring out their lives for people who didn’t want them or appreciate their sacrifice?

  Julie’s heart turned over inside her chest as her eyes met Doña Nina’s and she read in those sunken sockets an outpouring of love and concern and forgiveness along with the fear that all the old woman’s quiet dignity couldn’t totally disguise.

  Yes, there had been some who cared. The evidence was in these very hostages. That carefully, lovingly tended grave.

  Though what difference did even that revelation make in the end? It was still all for nothing, a futile investment of two lives with the good guys losing, leaving nothing but a grassy mound and the fond memories of a few old friends.

  Dropping her head, Julie let out a sob that was no longer relief. “Yes, you’re right,” she said dully. “My parents had no business coming here. They had no business in Colombia. They had no business in San Ignacio. None of us did.”

  It was like watching a mask slide over the guerrilla leader’s face. The controlled, indifferent mask of a professional soldier. But Julie had now glimpsed the passion and hate that seethed underneath that impassive expression and no longer wondered that an obviously educated, civilized man could join a crusade of murder and destruction. What terrible story lay buried there?

  Abruptly, Comandante Aguilera released Doña Nina to scurry back to the other women. Reholstering his pistol, he strode back to Julie.

  “So! You will lie even to your own cost. The mark of a good agent. But you will not lie to the expense of others. That has always been a weakness of the Americans, not a strength, Señorita Baker, as you will learn. But we have no more time for this. There are faster ways to find out who you are and what it is that you have been doing over these past seven years.”

  Snapping his fingers at the guerrillas who were guarding the group of townswomen, he ordered curtly, “Take the women out of here. Victor, bring the chairs.”

  The wooden chair Comandante Aguilera had been using was still behind the table. The raid leader brought over another chair that hadn’t been there earlier. Julie was exhausted enough to obey without protest when he ordered her to sit.

  Enrique brought the other chair, and Tim lowered his large frame carefully into it. It creaked ominously under his weight, and as the back legs began to sink into the soft dirt of the floor, the guerrillas and even Julie herself paused to watch. But the slow tilt leveled off before it had sunk more than half an inch, and when the chair looked to be holding up to Tim’s bulk, Comandante Aguilera gave another signal.

  Pulling Julie’s arms roughly behind the back of the chair, Victor began to wrap a cord around them. Like Enrique, he seemed to be a fairly senior officer in whatever hierarchy these guerrillas had. Tears of pain sprang again to Julie’s eyes as the man tugged at the cords until they bit viciously into her wrists.

  Of anger as well. No one was shoving Tim around like this! Even the guerrilla who was tying his hands behind his back was doing so gingerly and under cover of a gun barrel thrust right in his face, as though they were all afraid to venture within arm’s reach.

  Tim caught her eyes on him and gave a short nod, an encouraging smile touching his lips before he turned his face straight ahead, his eyes closing under the tug of the ropes as though in thought—or prayer. Is his faith really so much stronger than mine? Julie wond
ered disbelievingly.

  God, I believe in You! I believe You know I’m here and even that You know what You’re doing! I’ve prayed! But I’m still scared to death, God! So how can Tim sit there as calm as if he were in his own living room? And I—I’m completely losing it.

  The not knowing was the worst. Julie had seen movies, read books, even news releases, of the tortures and brutal interrogations other hostages had endured at the hands of terrorist organizations. Possessing none of the information they wanted only worsened her situation. Julie felt the bile rise into her throat as Comandante Aguilera picked up an instrument—a knife? a scalpel?—from the table and strode toward her.

  Stopping in front of her chair, Comandante Aguilera held up the object in his hand. It was a syringe. Julie watched with unwilling interest as the guerrilla leader depressed the plunger until a single droplet of liquid quivered at the end of the needle.

  “What … what’s in it?” she heard herself say, and the absurdity of the question at a time like this actually lightened some of her fear. You just can’t stop being a journalist, can you?

  To her surprise, Aguilera took her question seriously. “I do not know what is in it, only what it does. A gift from our musulmanes allies.”

  The guerrilla leader stepped behind Julie as he spoke. The prick in her forearm was no worse than the sting of a bee. “Perhaps it is not as effective as those drugs the Americans are said to have. But it will serve. You will tell the truth, whether you want to or not.”

  Some kind of truth drug, then.

  Musulmanes. That was a Spanish term with which Julie wasn’t familiar. “Muslim,” she translated in her mind. Unusual friends for Marxist guerrillas to be having. To the Islamic fanatics, the tenets of communism and Marxism were as much a heresy as capitalism and independent thought. Still, hadn’t there been something in all that Internet material about Islamic terrorist groups hiring out as consultants to South American guerrillas? Something Middle Eastern—Islamic Jihad … and the Hishbo … Hezbo …