The DMZ Read online

  “And the man? This Señor McAdams?”

  “He will stay with me. He has his own uses.” Aguilera leaned down from his horse to clap a hand on the younger guerrilla’s shoulder before gathering up the reins of his horse. “You are a good soldier, Enrique, and a loyal one. Rest assured that when the hour comes to fight, your skills will not be wasted on the sidelines. And it will not be long, that I promise you.”

  His superior’s assurance did little to improve Enrique’s mood. He nodded a curt agreement, but the black look was back on his face as Comandante Aguilera trotted away. The younger guerilla’s mouth thinned to a straight, angry line as he shouted for one of the women to bring Julie’s pack. Julie, who had dropped wearily onto a sawed-off stump during the frenzy of departure arrangements, wondered that they would speak so freely in her hearing until she realized the picture she must present, slumped down with her back to the two men, giving no indication that she was even aware of what was going on around her. These guys don’t watch enough TV. They should know someone’s always listening.

  All around Julie, the camp was coming down with astonishing speed. The plastic was coming off the walls of the huts, and as it was rolled up and stuffed into packs, the thatched roofs and trimmed-off limbs that supported them were pulled apart and scattered around the clearing. Comandante Aguilera, over by the supply table, was directing the loading of food sacks onto the horses’ backs.

  Julie’s pack appeared, and with it came Victor and Carlos and the other five guerrillas chosen for her guard detail. Two were women. One of these accompanied Julie to the outhouse, then pressed a bowl of rice and beans into her hands and watched her eat it, her hands still stiff and awkward as she handled the aluminum spoon.

  Each of her guard detail hoisted a pack on their backs and adjusted their arsenal of weapons. Assault rifles slung over one shoulder. Ammunition and grenades tucked into some ammo vests. Artillery belts jangling. A pistol holster at Victor’s hip and two others of the new men.

  Julie, who still found the world revolving around her if she moved too quickly, was relieved to see Enrique lead up a horse. His order to mount was curt, and he didn’t glance in her direction. But he wasn’t ungentle as he gave her a boost into the saddle and passed up her knapsack, and Julie was encouraged to ask a question that had been burning in her since she’d recovered consciousness.

  “Enrique, what about Tim? Why isn’t he coming with us? What … what are they going to do with him?”

  Julie was well aware they couldn’t afford to release him. Not if the guerrillas were to maintain their charade of paramilitary involvement in the two journalists’ disappearance. The other possibilities didn’t bear thinking about.

  It was the leader of the party, Victor, who, overhearing, answered brusquely. “He will be held as insurance for your behavior, and you for his. If you try to escape, we will shoot him. If he tries to escape, we will shoot you. He will be informed of this. Is this clear?”

  Julie nodded, wishing she hadn’t asked. No, it was better to know! At least that meant there were no immediate plans against Tim’s life either, and with that knowledge she could relax a fraction.

  The guerrillas began moving out, single file. Enrique gave Julie’s horse a slap on its hindquarters, and the animal joined the progression. Enrique closed in behind to take up the rear.

  Julie glanced back as the jungle trail swallowed up the guerrillas ahead of her. The plastic walls were being stripped from the radio hut, exposing the two army cots in the center of the dirt floor. Julie had just registered that they were both empty when she caught a glimpse of a tall form standing beside one of the posts, his broad frame hidden by the shadows, but the late afternoon sun glinting unmistakably off his blond hair.

  So Tim was alive and conscious. The sting of her eyes was a revelation of just how worried she had been.

  The vegetation closed around Julie, and the camp vanished from sight. Reluctantly turning her face forward, she settled herself more comfortably in the saddle. The trek was far different by daylight than it had been the night before, and under other circumstances, Julie would have enjoyed it. The broad fronds of palm trees closed in above the trail, their shade offering an illusion of coolness despite the actual steamy heat of the jungle day. Orchids in a myriad colors and shapes climbed tree trunks and dropped down vines into her face. Monkeys scampered overhead, and the jeweled plumage of macaws and toucans flitted among the green leaves. Heavy on the air was that unique rainforest scent of damp, musty decay and ancient vegetation that dinosaur exhibits the world over had sought in vain to duplicate.

  Only the mosquitoes spoiled the tranquility of the jungle afternoon. Julie, slapping at a fresh welt on her bare arms, finally dug her repellant from her knapsack. As she slathered it on, she caught one of the guerrilla women, striding just ahead of her horse’s front hooves, watching the process over her shoulder. She had brought Julie’s pack and food, and Julie, wanting to return the courtesy, held out the bottle to her. But at her action, hostility slammed down instantly over the interest Julie had glimpsed in the woman’s eyes. Whirling around, she turned her attention back to the trail in front of her.

  Without the other prisoners or the obstacles of night and rain, the party reached the river in far less time than the trek had taken the day before. This time no riverboat waited; instead, Julie saw one of the long dugout canoes that were still the most common transportation in the jungle. Two guerrillas were waiting in it when they arrived. One came up the bank to take Julie’s horse, swinging into the saddle as she dismounted and heading back down the trail toward camp. The other started an outboard motor attached to the stern of the canoe.

  The two women took over as guards as the men loaded the packs into the canoe. Julie had learned their names as they spoke back and forth. The older woman—if twenty or so could be termed “older”—was Linda. The other, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old, was Marcela. Linda ordered Julie to climb in and lie down, throwing a burlap sack over her as they pushed off from the bank.

  Some time later, Julie heard Victor’s warning call, then the rumble of another motor. The guerrillas didn’t want any local fishermen spotting their hostage. But it was sweltering hot and airless under the sacking, and by the time the canoe bumped against solid ground and the sacking was pulled back, Julie was drenched with sweat, her hair plastered to her head.

  Clambering out, she found that they had docked at another isolated river landing. Up the bank lay another jungle trail. Already the guerrillas were hauling their packs from the canoe and putting them on. Once they were all on the bank, the man who had navigated the canoe pushed off, and at an order from Victor, the party started out again.

  This time the trek wasn’t so pleasant. The afternoon had been well advanced when they left the first camp, and twilight was now setting in, leaving the trail under the dense jungle canopy little less dark than at full night. Julie, still suffering under the lingering effects of the truth drug, couldn’t keep up with the trail-hardened pace of the guerrillas, which earned her a steady stream of caustic comments from her personal guard until Victor finally swung around and shouted, “Shut up, Linda! If the gringa, can’t keep up, take her pack and carry it yourself! We do not have all night!”

  Linda—an ironic name, as it meant “beautiful” in Spanish—shot Julie a dirty look as she added Julie’s knapsack to her own load, but she did keep quiet. Happily, only a few minutes later they stumbled into another clearing. Julie was allowed to sink wearily to the ground, her knapsack tossed into her lap, while the guerrillas set to work building a campfire and preparing places to sleep.

  These were not the bigger huts of the last camp; instead, they were little more than individual sleeping pallets built up off the ground by piling branches and twigs about a foot high, then covering them with a bed of palm leaves. Mattress pads even thinner than a sleeping bag came out of the packs and went on top. An individual frame was built above each bed, and mosquito netting was suspended ove
r it. A plastic tarp thrown over the whole thing kept out the rain, theoretically.

  The clearing must have been used before as a camp. There were plenty of machete-trimmed lengths of wood scattered around on the ground that were snatched up and put to use. Enrique and Carlos were already hammering together a rough table. Victor sent two of the guerrillas to dig a latrine. The two girls started a campfire and pulled aluminum pots from the packs to boil coffee, rice, and lentils. A Coleman lamp hissed into yellow flame and was suspended from a tree branch above the cook area. Julie, hugging her knapsack on her lap as she watched, was astonished at the speed and efficiency with which they all moved, like a well-rehearsed military operation. By the time supper was ready, so was the camp.

  This time there was no radio or chatting around the fire after supper. Linda, still sulky from Victor’s scolding, brought Julie a basin of water to wash up with, then sullenly produced a flashlight for a trip through the underbrush to the latrine—no walls this time, Julie discovered with a grimace, but a pit with a board for each foot propped across it and a roll of green toilet paper threaded onto a small branch.

  Julie crawled into the bed to which the woman led her and tucked in the mosquito netting. It was beginning to drizzle, and the male guerrillas retired almost immediately to the shelter of their own pallets, leaving the two women to clear away the meal. Enrique had taken the shelter next to Julie’s. Through the mosquito netting, she could see the long silhouette of his body, stretched out with his arms folded behind his head in a way that should have looked relaxed but didn’t. Hoping I’ll talk in my sleep!

  Still, better Enrique next-door than some of the others. Perhaps because he had already twice shown her a quixotic chivalry, Julie felt fractionally safer with his dour presence stretched out between her and some of those other men.

  Kitchen duties finished, the women—or rather, girls—crawled into their pallets, and the Coleman lantern winked out. Only Carlos, who was taking the first watch, remained outside. The camp had no chair, so he was forced to stay on his feet, pacing slowly back and forth in front of her shelter. The young guerrilla had hauled a piece of the same plastic used as tarps over his shoulders, and he had his assault rifle underneath its folds to keep it dry.

  Julie, tugging on a thin blanket in a fruitless attempt to cover her shoulders and feet at the same time, listened to the thud of Carlos’s boots as they marched back and forth. It still seemed incredible that this tough-looking young man with the hard, sullen expression could be the merry little boy who had once tagged at her heels. Ever since she’d first recognized Carlos, she’d wanted to speak to him, ask him how he’d ended up here, where his family was. Maybe now was her chance.

  She sat up on her pallet. As last night’s experience had taught her, the movement immediately drew the beam of a flashlight. As it rested on her face, Julie whispered, “Carlos.”

  The frame of the shelter was high enough that he didn’t have to stoop far to look inside. Above the light, Julie caught the glimmer of her reflection in his dark eyes.

  “Carlos, you really do remember me?”

  His nod was barely perceptible. Julie drew in a deep breath, then whispered her most pressing question. “Doña Nina, Doña Carmen, the others—what have they done with them?”

  The beam of light held steady on her face. “You do not need to be afraid on their behalf,” Carlos said softly. “They have been released. That is why we broke camp—so they might be set free to return to San Ignacio. And also because no camp is used for long. The women will not speak of what they have seen. They know too well the consequences to their families. But Comandante Aguilera is not a butcher. He would not hurt without need those who have given him faithful service.”

  Julie’s relief came out in an exhaled sob. “Thank you, Carlos! And—what about you? Your family? Gabriela? Where are they?”

  There was a hesitation, the beam of light wavering on her face. Then his toneless reply. “They are dead.”

  “Carlos, you will not speak to the prisoner!”

  The harsh order was Victor’s. Carlos straightened up hastily. Switching off the flashlight, he resumed his tedious march. Lying back down, Julie rolled over and buried her face in her arms. The tears of relief she had refused to release under that searching beam now stung her eyes. They were safe—Doña Nina and Tía Carmen and the others. At least they wouldn’t suffer further for her stupidity and Tim’s. If Carlos was telling the truth.

  But then, why would he lie? The women came from families well-known in San Ignacio. Between them all, they were probably blood relatives to half the town. It made sense that Comandante Aguilera wouldn’t stir up his own nest any more than he had to. No, she would choose to believe that Carlos was right and that these women who had touched both her past and her present were on their way back to home and safety.

  And herself?

  Julie stirred to slap at a whining mosquito that had slipped inside the netting and was feasting on her cheek. High above in the canopy, the breeze had dropped, stilling the restless sighing of the trees. The parrots and other feathered life had fallen silent. Julie knew, though she couldn’t see them, that their heads were tucked under their wings for the night. The monkeys had found a tree fork in which to curl up, for they too were silent.

  But the night was not quiet, for now the amphibian choir had begun its evening concert. The piping soprano of the sticky, bright-green tree frogs. The croaking baritone of the toads that grew in these parts to the size of a dinner plate. And a booming rhythmic bass that sounded as though its proprietor must be platter-sized but which came, in actuality, from a tiny frog whose throat swelled up to a bladder as large as itself. Above their chorus whined the shrill violin of the cicadas and the sharp piccolo of the mosquitoes.

  As a child, Julie had been able to shut out the jungle’s nightly serenade as a city child blocks out the roar of traffic. But now it seemed unbearably loud. Never in her life—not after her parents’ death, not in the long years of boarding school and college—had she ever felt so alone. Until now, the very shock of what had happened, the adrenaline of fear and anger, the worry about her fellow hostages—the certainty that it was all some kind of mistake!—had carried her along, given her strength of will to show some measure of courage in front of these people, however little she felt it.

  That courage was fast ebbing into the solitude of the night, the knowledge that not a single other human being who was not an enemy or a guard lay between her and the vastness of the wilderness into which she had been dropped like one small and inconsequential seed.

  “Unless a kernel of wheat falls … whoever loses his life …”

  The verse had been referenced on her parents’ tombstone. But now it was she who was fallen, lost, alone. And for all Carlos’s assurances and Enrique’s before him, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t lose her life as well. There had been too many hostages far better than herself—missionaries, pastors—who had been taken by the guerrillas and the paramilitaries and never seen again. Why not her? Why not Tim?

  God, are You out there?

  It was a stupid question, all her theology told her. Of course God was out there, running the universe, weaving together His ultimate plan despite the stubbornness and stupidity of the creatures with whom He had to work.

  Did He notice her enough to intervene on her behalf? Enough to make her prayers a worthwhile investment of either God’s time or hers? Was there any good—any “fruit,” as the Scripture inscribed on her parents’ grave affirmed—that could possibly come out of this bizarre situation? Or would she, like her parents, be left trampled into the ground as a horse’s hoof might carelessly trample a flower that dared lift its head from the earth in which it sprouted? Would anyone back home ever even find out what had become of her? Of Tim, lying right now, if the guerrillas were telling the truth, in another such shelter in another jungle camp?

  Would anyone care?

  A sob rose unbidden to Julie’s throat. Oddly, it wasn’t of
herself she was thinking. It was of a gruff old man, sitting in a grimy, smoke-choked office, waiting for her to return home. Yes, Uncle Norm would care—how much she was only now beginning to admit! He had stormed down to Colombia when her parents had found themselves in trouble, and though she had allowed his sternness and crusty exterior to blind her all these years, Julie knew with sudden conviction that he would storm Washington itself when he discovered she was gone.

  Worse, he would blame himself for having let her go. And so was added another person to the list of those her stubborn self-will had hurt.

  Tears fell hot and heavy, but Julie stifled them against her thin mattress so her captors would not hear.

  * * *

  They watched.

  These intruders thought themselves alone, hidden, not perceiving that in the jungle one is never alone. Always, by day and even more so by night, there are eyes and ears—soaring overhead on the wing. Hunters marking the intrusion of another predator into their territory but not showing themselves, in turn, unless threatened. The small creatures and insects underfoot to whom the intruders were but the thunder of a giant passing overhead.

  And other dwellers of the forest whose danger-sharpened senses made it easy to spy unseen on these noisy, clumsy trespassers.

  The watchers heard the sounds of the girl’s tears.

  * * *

  The three members of the UN forensic team chose to share a cab from New York’s La Guardia airport. They would normally have headed in opposite directions to their homes, but their flight from Bogotá had run an hour late, and the pathology conference they were scheduled to attend that evening was due to start in less than an hour, so Dr. Kristin Gustofferson curtly ordered the driver to take all three of them directly to the conference location. She was still fuming as the cab left the airport behind.