The DMZ Read online

  “Besides, they wanted my military training and my English—which was easily explained by my supposed education in Bogotá. They were happy to set me to work training recruits and translating material from American military Web sites off the Internet. After a month or so, I pushed to get transferred to Comandante Aguilera’s front in the demilitarized zone—again under the pretext of getting into the real action. Fortunately, there haven’t been any major engagements since I got here, so I haven’t actually had to prove my bloodthirsty inclinations.”

  He made it sound so matter-of-fact. What he was leaving out was the risk he was taking if his infiltration were uncovered, the unrelenting stress and terrible loneliness that had to come with being totally on your own in enemy territory. For the first time Julie began to concede that Rick’s position in that camp had been no less enviable than her own, and with it came a reluctant admiration and respect that tinged her tone as she asked, “What did you find out?”

  His arm brushed against hers as he shrugged. “Nothing much we didn’t already know. I was able to confirm the presence of Islamic terrorist groups among the guerrillas, including the delivery of several shipments of surface-to-air missiles from Syria. But not what they wanted in Colombia, other than a straightforward exchange of consultant services and arms for American dollars, of which the FARC had plenty from drug sales. If there was anything more, it was soon clear to me that the rank-and-file guerrillas knew nothing about it. Maybe not even most of the leadership.”

  Julie heard frustration in his even tone. “Yet there was something I couldn’t put my finger on. An unease and expectancy, as though everyone was waiting for something to happen but they just didn’t know what. Parts of the demilitarized zone where it was common knowledge in the camps that even the guerrillas didn’t venture into. And of course, once I’d seen the arms the FARC was getting in, I knew they had nothing that could have taken down that surveillance plane or the Black Hawk.

  “Then there was San Ignacio. Planes were coming in on that airstrip with passengers and cargo that never made it into town or into the guerrilla encampment. When they came in, nobody—but nobody—went near them, not even Aguilera or Manuel Flores. They had their own guards and did their own off-loading onto boats that came from downriver—always after dark. Most of the guerrillas assumed it was an exercise with some other guerrilla commander. The different fronts work in competition with each other as often as they run joint operations, and the handlers were dressed as Colombian guerrillas. But I recognized one of them—a rather well-known member of the Iranian Hezbollah movement. Or at least well-known in U.S. intel files.”

  “So this is related to Comandante Aguilera’s musulmanes friends. I knew it!” Julie exclaimed.

  “You knew it,” Rick repeated. “And just what could you know about Aguilera’s Middle Eastern connections?”

  Julie had forgotten that it was Tim, not Rick, to whom she had earlier related her theories. She repeated the conversation she had overheard while emerging from the truth drug at the first camp. “Back then I thought you were one of the voices I heard talking. Either way, doesn’t it sound like they were planning something big—and soon?”

  “Yes, it does.” Rick sounded grimmer than Julie had heard him yet. “I just wish I’d had this data three weeks ago. All this time—”

  He bit off what he was going to say, then went on in a more even tone. “In any case, our Iranian friend came afterward to speak—in private—to Aguilera and Flores. I had no chance to eavesdrop, but I knew I was getting close. Unfortunately, it was only a week later that we lost our next American asset in the zone.”

  “You mean, the three environmentalists?” Julie asked incredulously as he paused. “But—you don’t think that was related to the other attacks? I thought the autopsy came out that they died of some tropical disease.”

  “I know it was related,” Rick said flatly. “You see, I knew one of them—John, the photographer. Not personally, but I’d read his file. He was one of ours. Never mind what agency, but he was intel. He didn’t know who I was—fortunately, or I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you this right now. But Colonel Thornton tipped me off that he was in the zone. I was to be his backup if the guerrillas reneged on their safe passage. In any case, John was good, and he knew the jungle if the two civilians with him didn’t. Besides, he was carrying a GPS. There’s no way he got them lost out there for three full weeks.

  “So you think the FARC did kill them?” Julie asked.

  “No, I don’t. Aguilera signed their safe passage, and he was all for what they were doing. The guerrillas are big on keeping the multinational corporations out of their territory. Besides, I was there when they brought in the bodies. He was as shocked as anyone. No, I think they died because John found what I’ve been looking for. And I think, too, despite his protests of innocence, that Aguilera knows this was no natural death because he tried to cancel the press conference after he’d called it. Someone further up the chain of command ordered him to go ahead with it, but to limit any serious laboratory tests.”

  “But …” Julie’s forehead wrinkled in the dark. “That means whoever called Aguilera had to know what killed those guys and that a thorough autopsy would show it.”

  “That’s right,” Rick agreed. “Meaning that this mystery caller was most likely responsible in some way for their deaths. Problem was, we had no idea where John and the others ended up. We knew the location of the Indian village where John was last seen. What we don’t know is what the Indians told them or where they took them, because the whole village promptly disappeared. We know they headed downstream in dugout canoes—that much came from the pilot. Coincidentally, both the village and their canoe trip were in the same general direction as those cargo shipments I’d seen going downriver. My gut feeling is that John stumbled on the destination of that cargo … some kind of a terrorist camp or military training base, maybe.”

  “And you think those Muslim terrorists or whoever is running the place killed them to cover it up,” Julie concluded. “But why return the bodies? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have them disappear altogether and avoid all this fuss?”

  “When VTPs disappear, there are search parties and questions. No, having them turn up—and a long way from where they were last seen—was the easiest way to put an end to it. Especially if they could convince the world of their ‘natural causes’ theory. Which didn’t work for me, of course, because I knew who John was.”

  Rick’s arm brushed against Julie’s again as he made a small shift in the position of the AK-47 on his lap. “Which is why I knew I had to retrace his steps, find out just where he’d gone and why, even if it meant waiting for the next plane and tracking its cargo upriver. When Aguilera decided instead to send me to Bogotá with Manuel Flores, I tried to talk him out of it. The last thing I needed was to have someone back at Fort Bragg or San José picking my ugly mug off the six o’clock news and asking why Rick Martini, 7th Special Operations Group, was standing on a platform translating for a guerrilla commander instead of on special assignment out West where I had ostensibly been reassigned. But I couldn’t talk too loudly. I was supposed to be their interpreter, and Aguilera is no different than any commanding officer when it comes to handing down orders and expecting them to be obeyed.”

  “So you think maybe someone recognized you?” Julie asked. “No—that wouldn’t work, or they wouldn’t have been so sure I was their spy. Unless—you don’t think that’s why they put that tracking device in your gun clip?”

  “No, I don’t,” Rick answered definitely. “It’s been weeks. If someone had recognized me and reported back to the FARC, they would have grabbed me long ago. Especially since we know now that they have a source in counter-narcotics. Whoever tipped Aguilera off yesterday that there was still a spy in camp didn’t know whether it was male or female and was still assuming it was one of the UN team. No, I think you hit the nail on the head—someone besides myself overheard you last night and figured your theor
y was worth checking out. With what just happened to be the worst of timing for me.

  “In any case, going back to where we were, right after the autopsy, Aguilera received a phone call. He has the only sat-phone in the zone. Another plane was coming in, and they wanted the UN team out of there before arrival. I hoped this might be the break I’d been waiting for. Unfortunately …”

  His voice turned wooden. “A half-hour later, he received another call with new orders. It seemed Aguilera’s mysterious contacts—whom we can assume now were these Middle Eastern friends of his—had received a tip that there was an American spy among the UN team, and they’d just made a positive ID. A certain Julie Baker had been seen sneaking out the gate.”

  Sondra Kharrazi, Julie thought hollowly, already knowing what was coming next.

  “You can fill in the blanks from there. As soon as Victor radioed that he had you and McAdams, Aguilera announced your kidnapping by the paramilitares. That reporter woman who was with you confirmed that you’d left the grounds voluntarily. You know the rest. The next morning, the UN team took off, Bill Shidler protesting every inch of the way. And I received new orders to accompany Aguilera, not to meet that incoming cargo plane as I’d hoped, but to interrogate their newest prisoner.”

  Rick didn’t allow even a hint of blame to creep into his brittle voice, but Julie felt tears prickle at the back of her throat and nose. No wonder he’d been so furious when he’d ridden into camp that day. And she had kept him chained to her side all these last weeks as well, when he could have been out looking for whatever it was that this John had found out there or at least at Comandante Aguilera’s side where something useful might have surfaced to complete his mission.

  He must really hate me, Julie thought.

  But none of that anger was in his voice as his head turned toward Julie in the dark. Instead, it was quiet and even apologetic. “For what it’s worth, Julie, leaving you—and McAdams—in that situation was the hardest call I’ve ever made. But I couldn’t stop that interrogation. It would have only gotten us both killed. And afterward—well, like I said, you were in no immediate danger. Sure, I had the radio. I could have called in a rescue mission. But the guerrillas are ready for that—as you saw! An all-out assault would have just gotten people killed—maybe even you. And it would have been the end of my mission.

  “Even if I’d just tried to get word out that you and Tim McAdams were alive and safe, it would have tipped the guerrillas off that they had a mole in the camp. I had to believe my primary mission was more urgent than your temporary comfort or even the men and equipment being expended to search for you.”

  Not to mention his life, if he were overheard communicating with someone outside the camp. “Couldn’t you at least have told me?” Julie asked. “If I’d known who you were and what you were doing, I’d have understood. At least I wouldn’t have been worrying myself sick, thinking I might be there for the rest of my life or … or killed!”

  “When?” Rick demanded. “We were never alone in that camp, you know that. Besides, what did I know about you? You’re a reporter, and you don’t exactly come across as a devious young woman, Julie Baker! How was I to know whether you could be trusted not to let slip who I really was? The smallest change of attitude on your part could have been fatal. No, I’m sorry I had to put you through all that, but I saw no other option.”

  He was so inflexible and so … so right, Julie thought bitterly.

  “Okay, maybe you are right,” she admitted aloud. “So the feelings of a couple of reporters dumb enough to get in the way don’t count much compared to this … this mission of yours. I can accept that. But my life too? Or did you just decide to write me off, like the expendable crewman in those old Star Trek episodes.”

  There was a short silence beside her. Then Rick asked coldly, “And what, exactly, do you mean by that?”

  “Last night!” Julie cried out, and the anguished words fell so loud into the silence of the night that they startled her, as well as some small animal nearby that she heard scurrying away through the brush. She dropped her voice to a hiss. “They were going to kill me! You knew it, and you were going to let them! Carlos overheard the whole thing. You were the one who suggested pretending to take me to San Ignacio and then shooting me along the way. You were willing to let them kill me—maybe even shoot me yourself for all I know—just to protect your precious cover and this mission of yours!”

  “Now just hold it!” Rick’s tone was suddenly icy steel, and Julie broke off at the clipped harshness of his order. “I had a feeling something like this precipitated your little escape effort this morning. Well, you can rest assured I had no plans to sacrifice you to my cover or my mission, as you put it. On the contrary, last night I was doing my level best to save your life!”

  “But—”

  “Let me finish!” he went on inexorably. “Carlos was right. I was in on the discussion to kill you, and you can be glad I was, or Aguilera would have taken you out and shot you out-of-hand right there in the camp. Believe it or not, I’ve been bracing myself for this ever since they captured you, and I’ve never had any intention of just walking away, even if it meant blowing this mission once and for all. But there was no way I could intervene in the camp—there were just too many of them. My plan was simple and with a reasonably low risk factor. I’d get you out of camp and down the trail with Jaime and Victor.”

  Julie listened with unwilling fascination and a growing horror as his words punched at her out of the darkness. “When the time was right, I’d take the two of them out—no, not shoot them, unless I had to,” he responded to the small sound of revulsion in Julie’s throat. “Just get the jump on them and take them captive. They’d have been too valuable for intel to waste anyway. Then I planned to call in Colonel Thornton to airlift you—and them—out. With any luck, I might even have wangled a story that would get me back into camp—you’d escaped, and we’d split up to go after you, Victor and Jaime dropped out of radio contact, I’d searched for a day or two but couldn’t find them or you, so I headed back to camp. It might have worked—enough to save both you and my mission. But when morning came—”

  “We were gone,” Julie finished in a whisper. While Rick had narrated his rescue plan, she’d felt as though the very air were being pressed from her lungs, and now as the horrible realization sunk in, she felt physically sick. It hadn’t been Rick’s sins that had gotten Carlos killed; it had been hers!

  “Then Carlos—it was all unnecessary!” Julie dropped her head onto her knees, and her voice came out as a muffled groan, her hands clenching convulsively where she was resting her forehead on them as she fought to hold back the long shudders that were running through her. “We didn’t need to escape at all! I … I got him killed for nothing!”

  A tentative touch brushed across Julie’s hair, briefly rested on her shoulder before dropping away. “Don’t start blaming yourself,” Rick ordered harshly. “You couldn’t know—anymore than I could have guessed Carlos was out there listening to our plans and that he would risk his life to warn you before I could get to you. I’m not going to be able to live with that too easily myself. But you have nothing to blame yourself for. You made your decisions based on the data you had—and so did Carlos, and so did I. What came out of it was nobody’s fault—unless you want to blame the guerrillas. They’re the ones who killed Carlos, not you.”

  Julie couldn’t stop the sobs that were shaking her body, the tears pouring down her cheeks. That all of Carlos’s sacrifice, his turning his back on his new life and cause and comrades to help her, his violent death, had been unnecessary just seemed so … so cruel an irony.

  Julie didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until Rick said quietly, “Don’t denigrate Carlos’s sacrifice by calling it unnecessary, Julie. He knew exactly what he was doing—and it was a lot more than just helping you escape. He made a choice back there. A good one. And if it cost him his life, we don’t know that it was unnecessary—not for him, not for you. Not e
ven for me, because if Victor and Jaime really did have a suspicion I wasn’t who I claimed to be, they might have gotten the jump on me out there. In which case Carlos may have saved both our lives. Only God knows that, or where Carlos might have ended up if he hadn’t made that choice. On the casualty list of the next FARC raid for all we know. Or rotting in a Colombian jail cell like a lot of guerrillas. Carlos’s life—and death—were as much in God’s hands today as yours, and I think if you could ask him, he would say it was worth it even the way it turned out.”

  Yes, Carlos had felt it was worth it. Beyond belief, he had felt that she, Julie Baker, was worth it. That she had been sent by God to rescue him as he had rescued her. He’s with his family now—Don Ramon, Gabriela, all of them, Julie told herself and found comfort in the thought. And if there was a future Julie had wanted for him that the boy would never see, that too was God’s province, not hers.

  Okay, God, I can’t even figure out the whys of my own life. I’ll let You figure out Carlos. Julie would never forget the merry little boy who had grown into the hardened teenage guerrilla and then, in a bizarre twist of fate, redeemed himself and her with his life. But she could let him go now, and with him the sharpest edge of her grief, and as Julie made that conscious decision, an overwhelming weariness pressed in on her that she didn’t understand was the release of all the fear and sorrow and spent adrenaline of the past hours. With a last ragged sob, she let her eyelids droop shut, no longer fighting the waves of fatigue that swept over her, along with the soothing rise and fall of Rick’s quiet voice.