“I’ll get it,” she said.
Emma shouldered the ladder, swaying with the ungainly size of it. She felt it steady. She looked up to see the young woman holding the far end. Now she looked more determined than sad.
They lowered the ladder into the hole. The woman below crawled up it with surprising agility. The leg irons clanked against the wooden slats. Emma grabbed her hand and helped her climb the last four steps. They stepped out into the sunlight.
The woman was tall, taller than Emma’s five foot eight. Her clothes hung on her frame and her face was hollowed out. Her hair was matted and her fingernails caked with dirt. She stared around her, blinking in the sunlight.
“What is your name?” Emma said.
The prisoner turned her head slowly at Emma’s question. She stared at Emma, but it appeared as though she was trying to remember her name. She took a deep breath that she exhaled on a sigh.
“The sun is beautiful,” she said.
Emma nodded.
“And the air is warm. So nice. There were times that I thought I would never be dry again.”
“Your name?” Emma prodded gently.
“Vivian Callenoute. I’m the daughter of a Colombian, raised in France. I was visiting relatives in Colombia to celebrate my twenty-first birthday. They kidnapped me at an espresso bar in Bogotá. I insisted that I would only be a minute, and urged my driver to wait in the car. For the past two years I have regretted that cup of coffee.” She covered her face with her hands.
The sun shone, the trees swayed in a soft breeze, and the birds sang. Emma looked at the woman crying in front of her and wondered at the contrasting beauty and devastation that was Colombia. She reached out and touched Vivian’s arm.
“I’m Emma Caldridge. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but we need to get out of here. Now. I’m being chased by a paramilitary group. I need to find my friend and get the hell out of Colombia.”
Emma turned to the young village woman. “Can you unlock the leg irons?”
The young woman turned to Vivian, who spoke to her in rapid Spanish.
The young woman snapped an order to a young boy, about eleven. He took off running.
Vivian turned back. “She sent Oliver to get the key to the leg irons.”
“What is her name?” Emma said.
“Maria.” Vivian said.
“Where are the other women and the men?”
Vivian spoke to Maria again. Maria gave a short explanation.
“The village is small. The men are on a three-day trip to the fields to gather the coca. The women are with them. They help with the camp and collect seeds and herbs. Maria was left behind to watch the children.”
Emma turned to Maria. “Do you and the children want to come with us? Will you be in trouble when the men return and find their captive gone?”
Once again, Vivian translated. The two talked back and forth. Emma waited, but grew increasingly nervous. Finally they finished, and Vivian turned to Emma.
“She says she will be fine. She believes that the man who kidnapped me was killed yesterday by the Cartone cartel. She said she saw the watchtower at his camp burning. He terrorized the village, but if he is truly dead, then she will be free.”
“What was his name?” Emma said.
“Luis Rodrigo.”
Emma went cold. “Does he come here often?”
Vivian translated. Maria shook her head and chattered in Spanish.
“She says he comes every month, on a Friday, for one night. He checks on me, then he leaves,” Vivian said.
“What day is it?” Emma said.
“I apologize, I don’t know.”
Vivian asked Maria the question before turning back to Emma.
“I am sorry to say, today is Friday.”
41
IT WAS DAWN WHEN MIGUEL LED THE PASSENGERS DOWN THE path to the location where the extraction helicopters would land. Boris went first, Miguel second, and Kohl and the rest fanned out behind.
They didn’t see the ambush until it was too late.
One minute Boris was loping down the path, the next he was on the ground, growling.
“Down!” Miguel dropped and rolled. His quick thinking was the only thing that saved him. Bullets hammered into the ground in front of him.
Boris took off into the jungle. The soldiers scattered, throwing themselves into the foliage, some dragging passengers with them. The passengers flowed into the trees in all directions, making it impossible for the soldiers to return fire for fear of hitting one.
Twenty men appeared out of the jungle, guns drawn. Each was dressed in military fatigues, and each held a passenger in front of him, using them as human shields.
“Come out of your hiding place!” A guerrilla in filthy pants and a black shirt put a gun to the head of the passenger held by the man next to him. “If you don’t, I kill the first hostage!”
The passenger was about eighty, with white hair and watery blue eyes. His back curved in a hunch, but anger blazed from him. His clothes were stained and dirty.
“Ignore them, whoever you are! They are scum and will kill us anyway.” The man spoke in Spanish. He turned to the guerrilla and looked into the muzzle of the gun, now pointed four inches from his face. “I am Colombian! You are an abomination!”
The guerrilla started to squeeze the trigger. Miguel watched, helpless. He couldn’t risk firing and revealing his location as long as there was a chance, however small, of saving the rest of the passengers.
A gunshot rang out, somewhere to the front and right of Miguel. Blood spurted out of the guerrilla’s neck. The shot was a real feat. Whoever did it had found a three-inch space between the old man’s head and the guerrilla’s neck. The guerrilla fell in place, taking the old man down with him. The other guerrillas scrambled off the path, dragging their human shields with them.
Silence again reigned in the jungle.
“Was that you, sir?” Miguel heard Kohl whisper somewhere behind him.
“Not me. One of ours?”
“I think they’re all dead.” Kohl’s voice broke on the word dead.
“Then stay hidden. Whoever did that is one hell of a shot.”
“I’m sure am glad he’s on our side, whoever he is.”
“Don’t be too sure. Just because he’s against them doesn’t mean he’s for us.”
Miguel stared into the jungle. He couldn’t see a thing. He strained his ears to listen for the telltale rustling of leaves. He heard the wind moving through, making a continuous, soothing noise, but nothing that sounded like a footfall.
“Let’s move to the right. I want to outflank them,” Miguel said.
He pulled himself backward, one tiny inch at a time. His elbows sank in the soft earth below him. His real concern was that he would be outflanked before he could achieve a location of relative safety. The guerrillas knew this jungle as only a native could. Miguel and his men were at a huge disadvantage, and this problem was compounded by the existence of the unknown sniper. Miguel figured that the sniper was moving through the jungle as well. The question was: which way? Miguel had no desire to meet the man who could shoot like that on any other terms than his own.
Miguel kept his eyes glued on the far side of the path while he crawled. After ten feet, his view was blocked, so he moved sideways. He heard Kohl behind him. Kohl was doing a good job moving in stealth, but there was a certain amount of rustling that couldn’t be avoided.
The noise of a helicopter drowned out any sound Kohl could have made. Miguel looked up to see it hovering over the path. He got a mental picture of the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. As a child they had scared the hell out of him, and this helicopter was doing the same. He watched while a man perched in the open door and fired round after round into the forest below.
Miguel heard men screaming. The helicopter flew low. Guns mounted on the side rained fire down on the hapless soldiers and anyone else in their path.
Another helicopter joined in the fray, this one filled with guerrillas. Miguel watched as one pulled the pin on a grenade. Miguel took aim and shot him. The man died instantly, but the grenade fell out of his hand anyway, dropping to the path below and exploding. Miguel heard more screams and watched as a gun flew ten feet into the air.
Return fire erupted from a location ten feet forward of the sniper’s previous location. The sniper didn’t waste bullets by laying down sweeping fire. Instead, he shot repeatedly into the area revealed by the fire bursts.
The helicopters hovered over them. The rotor’s downwash bent the trees and forced the leaves aside, leaving the guerrillas in the open as they knelt on the passengers’ backs. The nearest guerrilla tried to rise, but before he could, the sniper shot him right in the center of his forehead. He dropped like a stone.
Damn, that man can shoot, Miguel thought. He used the opportunity afforded by the helicopters’ downwash to take out another guerrilla who’d had the bad luck to be exposed by the swaying vegetation. He heard Kohl’s gun discharge to his right and watched yet another guerrilla fall backward.
The sniper shot twice more. Miguel wanted to see the result in order to assess the remaining force, but assistance came from an unexpected place when the men in the helicopter leveled the playing field and started firing on the guerrillas.
I’m in a gang war in the middle of the jungle, Miguel thought. He watched the helicopter fire into the vegetation below.
Now the tables had turned and the kneeling guerrillas were acting as human shields for the passengers below them. They took the brunt of the helicopter fire that rained down from above. Screams joined the cacophony. Some guerrillas were quick enough to jump up and run into the bush, leaving their hostages behind in their desire to save themselves.
The sniper fired a grenade at one of the helicopters. It flew into the open door and exploded. Bits of metal and chunks of fire fell into the jungle while the copter pitched sideways. It flew horizontally for a few seconds before landing in the jungle below. The second veered off, following the retreating guerrillas, peppering them with shot as it did.
42
“FORWARD,” MIGUEL SAID TO KOHL, WHO APPEARED AT HIS SIDE. They laid fire as they walked toward the path. A passenger, still dazed from the horrific scene and disoriented, staggered in front of them.
“Get back down! Now!” Miguel yelled at him. The man dropped and froze. Miguel snorted in exasperation. The fool was lying directly in the center of the path. If a stray guerrilla didn’t shoot him, the sniper might. Miguel continued sweeping the area with shot. He aimed high, hoping to spare any other passengers who thought to get up and walk around. When he reached the man on the path, he knelt down, still firing, and tapped on his shoulder.
“Crawl past me into the bushes behind and stay there until I tell you to move,” he said. The man nodded and scrambled across the path and into the bushes. When the sniper didn’t fire on him, Miguel decided to take the risk and send more passengers that way.
The next two were young, in their twenties, and moved with lightning speed. Miguel reached the far end of the path and knelt next to the old man who had shouted his defiance. He was still, his eyes closed, the dead guerrilla on top of him. When Miguel touched his back, he opened his eyes.
“I’m faking death. Is it safe to move?” the man said.
“Only if you can move as fast as those two just did,” Miguel whispered to him in Spanish.
“They are youngsters with flexible bones. I will wait until you tell me to move.” The man closed his eyes again.
By the time Miguel reached the far side of the path, silence once again greeted him. Silence was not a friendly sound in the jungle. It occurred only when a predator, either four-legged or two-legged, roamed.
He rooted around, looking for his soldiers. He found two, dead. Two others lay in the bush, wounded, but not critically. He pantomimed to them to stay put. Four were missing. Miguel suspected they were hiding, and he hoped they continued to stay concealed. The guerrillas had retreated toward them. Now was not the time to move.
Miguel continued to collect the passengers and sent them crawling. The sniper stayed hidden and allowed them to pass. Kohl sat in a depression next to a verdant palm and waved the passengers into a group behind him as they crossed to him. After they were settled, Miguel went back and got the old man.
“Time to move, sir,” he said.
“And here I was just planning a catnap.”
Miguel admired the old man’s attempt at humor. “Plenty of time to nap on the other side of the path.”
“And the shooter in the trees? The one who is silent now?”
“He’s had plenty of opportunity to hit us, but hasn’t. I don’t think he’s a risk to us.”
The old man rose and straightened his back with a wince.
After the passengers, Miguel turned his attention to the wounded men. One had a bullet in his thigh, the other in his right arm. He pointed to the one with the injured leg.
“Did you get a look at the sniper? He must be in those trees on the far side.” Miguel couldn’t remember the soldier’s name. He was a black man, about twenty-one, from the hills of Tennessee. This was his first special forces assignment. Miguel liked him, and was glad to see he’d survived the gunfight.
The man shook his head. “I could see his muzzle fire, but not him. He’s in the trees, about even with that twisted palm.” The man pointed to a palm at the side of the path and about twenty yards away. Vines covered every branch, pulling the palm sideways. “He has a perfect view of the path, not that he needs it. Jesus! That dude could shoot, couldn’t he? Did you see that grenade go right over those guys’ heads into the copter?”
Miguel nodded. “Not a man to mess with.”
“Who is he?”
“I have no idea. Problem is, he could be a cartel junkie not happy with the guerrillas infiltrating his neighborhood, a northern paramilitary guy, also unhappy, or a member of the secret police.”
“If he’s police, why don’t he come out and introduce himself?”
Miguel shook his head. “There’s a rumor that some have contacts with the paramilitary groups. He could be moonlighting for them and may not want us to know who he is in case we meet him during his ‘day’ job.”
“Ain’t nothing easy here, is there?” the man said.
“Not a thing,” Miguel replied.
43
EMMA LOOKED AT THE SKY. “I’D SAY IT’S ABOUT FOUR O’CLOCK. Ask Maria if Rodrigo comes in the night, and does he come alone.”
Vivian nodded. “He comes only at night, and usually with his lieutenant, a man called Alvarado. They check on me, and sleep in that hut.” She pointed to a hut located dead center in the semicircle.
“Tell Maria that Rodrigo is injured, but I don’t think he is dead.”
Vivian translated.
Maria sucked in her breath. She spoke to Vivian in rapid Spanish, punctuating her words with arm gestures. Her agitation was clear.
