The DMZ Read online

  Her workout was always followed by a trip to the river, and here again she was forced to bathe in full view of Linda or Marcela, who were always assigned this guard duty, as well as any other guerrillas who might saunter along the bank. Julie no longer bothered to hurry. To be stared at in the river or her caleta was all one. She kicked lazily in the cool water, making the most of the opportunity for further exercise, until her guard shouted at her to get out. To the guerrilla women’s derision, she continued to cover herself up as she bathed, trading her towel for the thin blanket she’d been provided, which she wrapped around her as a sari, then spread out on the roof of her caleta, where the heat would dry it by bedtime.

  Julie found Linda’s contemptuous scrutiny even more humiliating than that of the men. Still hostile, the guerrilla girl never seemed to lose a chance for a derisive remark, until Julie wished Victor had continued to prohibit conversation with the prisoner. One afternoon two weeks into her captivity, Linda yanked Julie’s blanket away as she emerged from the water, so that Julie had to scramble for her clothes.

  “Why you should worry so to hide yourself, I do not understand,” Linda sneered. “Even a gringo would not wish a woman as thin as you have become.”

  Julie bit back the sharp retort that rose to her tongue. An AK-47 was a great advantage in a cat fight. But it was true that she’d lost weight, a surprise since even with her walks and evening swim she was getting far less exercise than usual. But then, between the heat and her captivity, she’d had no appetite for the starchy, monotonous meals she was being served. She would give much for a piece of fruit or a green salad.

  Nights were the best, when the Coleman lamp was blown out and Julie could stretch out in the dark with the illusion of being alone, though eight other people breathed the night air around her and she could hear the quiet thud of the guard’s boots. Even that illusion of privacy, and her rest as well, were interrupted by the flashlight beam probing her shelter at regular intervals all night long.

  Still, the guerrillas weren’t unkind to her. Julie ate as well as the guerrillas themselves, and when Linda took her to the latrine each morning, she would return to find that Marcela had straightened and swept her caleta, even gathering up any belongings Julie had left strewn outside her knapsack until Julie, out of boredom as well as a wish to appease her captors, began doing it herself as soon as she got up.

  Marcela insisted on washing Julie’s uniform, presenting her with a clean one every third day, and if any dainty was prepared from the few supplies they had—tortas, a doughnutlike pastry, or Kool-Aid mixed up from a package—Julie was the first to be served. If companionship was lacking, at least her guards hadn’t raised a hand against her since that first horrible interrogation. As Enrique Martinez had said, and Comandante Aguilera after him, and even Carlos—these people weren’t butchers or savages. They were—what were they?

  With nothing else to do, Julie began spending more of her time watching and listening to the guerrillas. After that first day, they had separated themselves out into individuals, and with time began taking on personalities and backgrounds as distinct as their appearance.

  Jaime and Victor were both long-term, hard-boiled guerrilla fighters who had been with the cause since their teens. But where the camp leader was harsh and stern, easily exploding into anger even with his followers, Jaime was a stolid man who went about his responsibilities silently and buried his face in his pamphlets and books the rest of the time.

  Julie never found out where Linda had come from, nor did she dare ask. But Marcela answered her questions readily, if without detail. Like Carlos, she had been left without a family or home when a paramilitary attack wiped out her village. She had been with the guerrillas for two years, but this was her first assignment to active duty, she told Julie with pride before a glare from Linda shut her up.

  Alberto, in contrast, had been a university student in Bogotá before joining the guerrillas, and he never stopped lording his superior education over the others, especially Rafael, who with his peasant upbringing could hardly read and consequently never said much when Alberto and the others argued Marxist philosophy or politics over the campfire at night.

  Still, if there was anyone of whom Julie was afraid besides Victor himself, it was Rafael. Unlike Alberto, who would laugh and sing and flirt not just with his female comrades but also with Julie, Rafael never lost his sullen expression, and where Alberto bragged of his education and city contacts, Rafael would boast of the soldiers he had shot and the raids in which he’d participated. One night around the campfire, when Linda asked Rafael what he thought about the breakdown of the Soviet revolution, he answered simply, “I do not think. I just kill.”

  The cruel straight line of his mouth supported that claim, and his black eyes, narrowed always as though on the lookout for an enemy, had a flat, almost dead look that gave Julie the shivers. Especially as she began to find those eyes on her every time she turned around. The beam of his flashlight in her caleta when he was on night guard wasn’t merely checking that the prisoner was still there, but became a leisurely study of her body under the thin blanket. And several times as she was led back and forth from the latrine or river, he managed to come close enough to brush up against her. The insolence of his stare as he did so added a new fear to Julie’s life.

  Until Enrique caught him at it.

  Julie was returning from her afternoon swim, Linda at her heels, when Rafael stepped onto the path to block her way. Under Linda’s smirk, he ran a suggestive hand over Julie’s wet hair and down the side of her face and neck. Disgusted and furious as she was, Julie didn’t dare move, not with Linda’s assault rifle blocking her retreat and the look of sly amusement on the guerrilla woman’s face. Before his exploration could descend any farther, a hand shot out and grabbed Rafael by the arm. Twisting the offending limb behind Rafael’s back, Enrique spun the other guerrilla out of Julie’s way and off the path, his eyes blazing with such anger that even Julie shrank back.

  “You touch the prisoner again,” he told Rafael in low, furious tones, “and I will personally break both your arms!” With a final glare that took in Linda and unaccountably Julie herself, he released Rafael and strode away. Without a backward glance, Rafael stalked off in the other direction.

  Whether Enrique told Victor or the camp leader saw the scene for himself, Julie never knew. That evening around the campfire, Victor announced that any man caught molesting the prisoner would be taken out and shot. He spoke matter-of-factly and didn’t even glance at Rafael, but the guerrillas clearly knew their leader well enough to believe he meant it. Neither Rafael nor any of the others bothered Julie again.

  The imbalance of women was a source of discontent in the camp. Linda, the older guerrilla girl, was Jaime’s girlfriend—though what she saw in that withdrawn individual, Julie couldn’t imagine—and she shared his caleta at night. After the first night, Marcela joined Victor in his shelter—a fact that bothered Julie as much because of the guerilla girl’s tender age as because of the moral ramifications. Julie had overhead Victor mention to one of the other men that he had a wife and family “out there,” as they termed it.

  Though Alberto and Rafael in particular groused that this left them without a compañera, or companion, they all acted as though this were the normal privilege of a camp leader. Marcela herself seemed quite pleased at the arrangement and even found the courage to defy Linda when the older guerrilla girl kept pushing her to do the lion’s share of the camp chores. Hers was a plump prettiness that owed itself to the freshness of youth and wouldn’t last many years in this environment.

  Carlos too had that freshness of youth, and here in the camp where he was no longer a soldier on duty, that hardened look that had shocked Julie relaxed into the eager young lines of the boy he should have been. This reminder of the child she’d once known infuriated Julie, the more so as she saw his hero worship of the older guerrillas, especially when he hung on Rafael’s tales of the people he had killed and the villag
es and police outposts he had burned, pillaged, or in other graphic details obliterated.

  Can’t you see what they’re doing to your life? she wanted to cry out to her childhood friend.

  Then there was Enrique. The guerrilla interpreter was the only one of the unit who showed no signs of relaxing as the days went by. Once his responsibilities were completed, he prowled—that was the only word for it—pacing restlessly around the camp as though he could hardly contain himself within its boundaries, stalking to the edge of the jungle and peering into it or standing on the bank, watching downstream. When he wasn’t prowling around, he was sprawled out next to the transistor radio, listening to news bulletins until someone yelled at him to turn it to a music station.

  Is he in such a hurry to get back out and start killing people again? Julie thought bitterly. Yet once again, he had taken the trouble to intervene on her behalf. And there had been that astonishing declaration of faith in God. What a strange, complex, and yet not totally heartless man! Would he one day, with enough killing, be as single-mindedly cruel and hard as Rafael or Victor?

  Except for his intervention with Rafael, Enrique rarely glanced in Julie’s direction, at least not that she could see, and since as second-in-command, he didn’t share in the guard shifts, there was little occasion for them to come in contact. Though Julie had hoped to turn their earlier, more friendly contact to her benefit, she was quickly disillusioned.

  From their exchange back at the airport, Julie knew Enrique had also been a university student. But he never paraded his superior education as Alberto did, and while he would join the others around the campfire at night or in the cambuche when it rained, he took little part in their heated discussions. It surprised Julie that Rafael and the others showed him such careful respect until one day, when the encampment was as finished as it was going to get, Victor ordered out the men of the unit for a session in unarmed combat.

  Enrique taught the session down on the open, sandy stretch of beach. From her caleta, Julie watched in astonishment as he laid each of the guerrilla men in turn, even Victor, on their backs in quick succession before demonstrating the move he was teaching in slow, deliberate steps. To Julie, who had begun to think of Enrique as one of the less dangerous of her captors, the display served as a fresh reminder that this man was a highly proficient killer. Any fantasies of attempted escape dwindled still further, and with it her frustration grew.

  Could she stand to live this way indefinitely? For years, maybe? Other hostages had done so, Julie knew. Still others had never been seen again—those the FARC considered political prisoners more often than kidnap victims. Soldiers and police officers captured in battle. As an alleged spy, Julie had to put herself into that camp, and despite the assurances of Enrique and Carlos, she could see no real reason why they should ever let her go. What happened to those people in the long run? Surely the guerrillas couldn’t be bothered to feed and house them forever.

  If you don’t find something to do besides think, you’re going to go stark raving mad, Julie told herself desperately. She began her thirty-seventh count of the mesh holes in her mosquito net—she had yet to tally the same number twice. When that failed as a distraction, she switched to tracing pictures in the patterns the dried palm fronds made on the ceiling of her caleta. Those two frond ends there with the fat-bodied stem in the middle could be her father’s Cessna lifting off. That banana-leaf curve looked like one of the fishermen’s canoes pulling out into the Ipa River.

  No, let’s not go there. Julie blinked away a sudden mist that blurred the palm-leaf ceiling. She would not think of the past, would not let the memories pressing in on her break through the careful barrier she had erected. Not with a camp full of eyes on her, watching eagerly for any hint of weakness. The mesh holes were safer. One. Two. Three.

  But by the next evening, Julie would have welcomed a return to her boredom.

  FIFTEEN

  MARCELA WAS JUST DELIVERING her breakfast when Julie heard the distant drone of an aircraft. After the last seven years in the city, where the rush of man-made machines was constant background noise, Julie didn’t at first register how out-of-place the sound was.

  The guerrillas were not so complacent. Julie snatched her coffee cup from Marcela’s hand just before the guerrilla girl let it fall. All activity in the camp ceased, and every eye turned upward, though there was little to see through the thick shield of the jungle canopy. Carlos was down by the river, filling an aluminum pot for washing dishes. At Victor’s shrill whistle, he snatched up the pot and sprinted back toward camp, water sloshing over his boots as he ran.

  The drone grew into a roar, then separated into the distinct throp-throp of propeller blades. Helicopters, and more than one. They were heading straight toward the camp.

  “Los militares!” Victor barked. “Break the camp—now!”

  The frozen stance of the guerrillas dissolved into frenzied activity. The shelters were kicked apart, the sticks and palm leaves of which they were made tossed back into the underbrush at the edge of the clearing. Julie snatched up her backpack as her caleta went down. Bedrolls, the cambuche’s plastic walls, and remaining supplies were bundled into packs at lightning speed. The rocks lining the fire pit were kicked away and dirt dumped over the smoldering coals. Within minutes, the clearing gave little sign that nine people had lived there for more than two weeks.

  And none too soon. The helicopters were coming in now, fast and loud.

  “The prisoner!” Victor barked.

  Rafael, who had been on guard duty when the aircraft were heard, grabbed Julie by the arm and yanked her back into the underbrush. A growth of elephant ears closed in overhead as he shoved her down flat to the ground, then squeezed in beside her.

  “Keep your head down and don’t make a sound!” he hissed. “If they see us, you die first!”

  The other guerrillas had melted into the underbrush as well, so silently that Julie could spot only Enrique, lying under the same patch of elephant ears a few feet to her other side. He met her gaze briefly, his own unreadable, then turned his attention back to the clearing, his eyes narrowed speculatively as he watched for the approaching aircraft.

  Two olive-green army helicopters came into sight, roaring down the stream bed.

  One raced on past the clearing. The other slowed to a hover, the wind of the blades stirring up a dust storm on the beach. It was so close Julie could see the huge gun mounted in the doorway, the soldiers in khaki crouched behind it. Was this just some routine counter-narcotics or anti-insurgency operation, or could it be they were looking for her? Had they noticed the signs of recent occupancy in the clearing? The stepping stones and swimming hole?

  Or could they even see through that sandstorm they were kicking up?

  An overwhelming impulse swept over Julie to jump to her feet and dash out there. If I could just make it to the beach, that gun would cover me.

  She caught Rafael’s black eyes on her, implacable and cold, his AK-47 braced and cocked against his shoulder. That he would kill her as he’d said, Julie didn’t doubt for an instant. Besides, in these camouflage fatigues, how would the soldiers know she was a hostage instead of one of the guerrillas? With the Colombian military’s well-known propensity for shooting first and asking questions later, it would be suicide to rush out there. It occurred to Julie that this was precisely the reason the guerrillas had supplied her with this clothing.

  Then her opportunity was gone. Rising from its hover so that the sandstorm began to subside, the helicopter continued on down the stream bed, picking up speed as it left the clearing. The guerrillas didn’t move until the drone of the aircraft had completely faded from hearing. Then they emerged from their hiding places. Sick with disappointment, Julie made no resistance as Rafael prodded her to her feet. Shouldering her knapsack, she obeyed Victor’s terse order to move out, taking her now customary position in the center of the single file.

  This time there was no boat waiting when they reached the river. Victor
led them upstream, not along the river edge where walking was easy but back under cover of the jungle canopy. The underbrush along the bank where the sun could reach was thick enough that the guerrillas had to resort to machetes to chop their way through. Even with this cover, the guerrillas were visibly on edge, starting at every rustle in the bush and stopping frequently to listen for aircraft. Once Julie heard the drone of the helicopters heading back in their direction. But it was at a distance and did not come closer.

  After the first hour, they left the river, following one game trail after another for the rest of the day, resting only once briefly to gobble down the arepas, cold now and hard as rocks, that Linda and Marcela had prepared for breakfast. Victor used the stop to set up the radio and call Comandante Aguilera about the change in their situation.

  It started raining shortly after they headed out again, adding mud and slippery footing and even an occasional rush of water across the trail, to their misery. Julie, who had spent much of the last two weeks sitting, wasn’t sure she could slog forward one more step when Victor finally called a halt.

  This wasn’t a campsite, just a knoll high enough above the surrounding terrain to keep the rainwater from collecting. After a scanty supper of boiled rice—beans took too long to cook—the band huddled together under the plastic salvaged from the cambuche and settled down to wait out the night. Julie, shivering in her wet clothes, was for once happy to have her captors close by, accepting with gratitude the body heat from Marcela on one side of her and Carlos on the other.

  The following day was a repeat of the last, though by the end of the morning, the rain had stopped. The rainforest into which they were now moving was much denser and taller than around their last camp, the trees massive, soaring hardwoods whose spreading branches kept any sunlight from filtering down to the forest floor so that the ground underfoot was at once spongy with decaying plant matter and at the same time almost bare of underbrush. This allowed Victor to pick up the pace, and by midafternoon, they had reached their next camp.