Betrayed (2 page)

Prologue

Sierra de las Minas, Guatemala

“
This is my Father’s world. . .
.”

The crooning chimed with the screeching of macaws and the chitter of monkeys in the cloud forest canopy. Still, in the green hiding place made snug by wide, drooping fronds, curling ferns, and what had been a thick bed of moss, the singer checked herself, a raised finger hushing her companions. They’d never wandered this far or long without an adult hauling them back, and she was not ready to be dragged from this delightful new game.

There were three in all, two girls and a boy. The girls did not look like siblings. The singer was small with nut-brown hair and thin, sun-browned features. Her younger sister, hardly more than a toddler, was flaxen blonde with skin pale enough to trace the blue of her veins. An oddity that fascinated the boy, whose black hair and round, bronze features marked him as a native of these Central American highlands.

At the moment there was little distinction because all three were supremely dirty. Sharpened sticks had churned the firm springiness of the moss bed into a quagmire of loamy mud. The same mud caked woolen leggings and hand-woven sweaters, plastering light heads and dark to an identical red-brown.

Their demolition was not without purpose. They were building a house, small hands industriously shoving bamboo canes into the mud, layering banana fronds and elephant ears across the top, patiently starting over again each time the structure overbalanced.

They were also extremely happy, as children will be with reasonable food and warmth, the security of adults in the background, and all of nature as their toy. At some point a crackling of thunder had presaged a storm, but when an exit from their hideaway confirmed blue sky between the thick branches of the forest canopy, they had returned to their labors.

They were blissfully unaware of the pit viper, green as the fern around which it coiled, just above their heads. Or the jaguar watching curiously from under a fern patch for a moment until it rose silently and wandered off.

Or the difference between rapid weapon fire and thunder.

The illusion of tranquility was so complete that the youngest ventured a low, contented humming as she patted and scooped. It was the same lullaby her sister had been singing.

Abandoning her caution, the older girl took up the words. “ ‘
This is my Father’s world
. . . .’ ” Forgetting the rest of the line, she too dropped to a hum.

The Mayan boy had heard the tune often enough to add his own off-key whistle, while overhead the macaws set up a screeching counterpoint.

Yes, this was her father’s world. And now he’d brought them along to this remote, secret paradise that was the most wonderful of any her short, varied life had yet known.

But even freedom palls in time.

After the corn tamales they’d provisioned for their adventure had been licked clean from their banana-leaf wrappings and the youngest child’s hum subsided to a whimper, the older girl wondered why their escape had not yet been overtaken. Crawling out of their shelter, she was startled to see pink and orange through the breaks in the cloud forest canopy.

Back inside, she put her head close together with the Mayan boy who was both playmate and guide. Even though they spoke no word of the same language, they understood each other well enough. Taking her little sister’s hand, the older girl coaxed her to follow the Mayan boy’s lead.

Out on the trail, the humidity that dripped from every leaf and frond soaked through mud-caked wool. For the first time the older girl questioned if they should have wandered so long and far. Papa and Mama were the loving bedrock of her small universe, but their displeasure could be as shattering as that earlier thunder.

But her young mind was not capable of guilt or worry for long. If the trail seemed much longer than their outward wandering, there was still much to delight. White wisps of a mountain mist curled through the trees, laying cool fingers against flushed cheeks. A flash of red overhead was the tail feathers of a quetzal bird. Orchids coiling down over the trail looked so much like tiny, peering faces that the youngest child giggled. With a handful of foraged bananas to quiet rumbling stomachs, the children let their tired legs lag while the sky paled to green and the first stars sprang out.

Only when they smelled smoke ahead and heard the raised voices did the older girl tug impatiently at her little sister. Smoke meant cook fires, and if a search party had to interrupt the evening meal, there would be more than just a scolding waiting for them.

It wasn’t until they stepped out into the clearing that she realized the smoke was all wrong, the flames leaping high against a backdrop that was no longer the quiet hamlet from which the children had slipped away. She did not understand this noisy invasion of strange men and vehicles. What were they doing? Why were they stacking human beings like sacks of potatoes?

And why was her family’s neat, thatched home now a blazing torch? Why were their treasured possessions piled carelessly on the dusty ground for the invaders to ransack?

Above all, why were the most important people in her lifenot here to banish her terror and bewilderment? “Papa! Mama!”

Tall figures were striding toward the children, and the shifting patterns of shadow and firelight could not hide that they were strangers. Behind these men, the flames blazed higher, their ugly, red glare falling across the growing mound.

The girl caught sight of lighter strands among the black. Pale, familiar features that looked still and asleep. Tossed, sprawling shapes filthy with stains that were not mud. “Papa! Mama!”

She hardly heard her playmate’s anguished screams as he hurled himself across the clearing. Her sister, still tight in her grip, was screaming too, but the older girl made no move or sound. Perhaps if she shut her eyes, this would all go away, like the bad dreams her father’s strong arms and her mother’s kisses so easily wiped away. “
This is my Father’s world. . . .
"

Papa! Mama!

She did not immediately recognize the furious voices as a language she knew.

“No witnesses. Those are the orders.”

“Are you out of your mind? They’re children—babies! Haven’t your goons butchered enough for one day?”

“My goons? You think this madness is our doing?”

“No, just our enabling.”

Rough hands pushed aside the older girl’s matted curls, wiping at the mud on her face. “Hey, take a look at this. These kids aren’t locals.”

“You’re telling me they belong to—well, if this isn’t . . . Hey, get away from those cameras! No records. Do I have to spell it out? ¿
Qué hacen? ¡Muévense!
”

Heavy footsteps moved away, the harsh shouts no longer intelligible. Then she was being carried to one of the strange vehicles, her sister’s shivering small body settled into her arms.

“Don’t cry, sweethearts,” a deep voice whispered. “Everything’s going to be all right. You’re safe now.”

Young though she was, the girl knew it to be a lie.

She would never feel safe again.

Twenty Years Later

So the rumors were true.

The stillness alerted the patrol even before their army Jeep jolted to a stop in the middle of the scuffed-dirt open space that was all this mountain hamlet boasted for a plaza.

There were no chickens or pigs rooting through the unpaved lanes. No women grinding maize or bent over the cooking pits. No shrill shouts of children’s play. The patrol leader paused to dig at an ominously dark stain with his boot as his unit fanned out through the village, using automatic rifle butts to smash in rudely-constructed bamboo doors.

“¡Capitán!
Over here.”

A box shape of cinderblocks roofed with galvanized tin across the village commons was the hamlet’s only solid construction. The patrol leader strode over to where two of his squad had already battered in the door. A single blackboard and the wooden benches tumbled across the concrete floor identified the community schoolhouse/town hall/storm shelter.

And morgue.

The patrol leader snapped his fingers. “Tell the gringo we have found them.”

His aide had no difficulty with the order. The army contingent was young, dark-skinned, with the stunted growth and wiry leanness of the chronically underfed. Peasant conscripts too poor to buy their way out of military service.

The only exception stood under a nearby thatched cooking shelter, his height as conspicuous as the lightness of his hair and eyes. The recruit interpreted the thoughtful expression as the foreigner poked a stick into a pot of beans sitting on a burned-out cook fire. No villager would purposely abandon good food.

“Señor,
el capitán
requests your presence.”

The gringo’s long strides outpaced the recruit.  As he reached the broken-down door, the patrol leader thrust out an arm. “It is not necessary to enter. There is nothing now to be done.”

But the foreigner was already shouldering past. Crowding into the doorway behind him, the patrol leader and his recruits watched the gringo stop abruptly as his boots met the puddled stickiness that was everywhere across the concrete floor.

No one had been spared. The men of the village showed no signs of resistance, had perhaps not even known what was coming. Splayed half-sitting against the far wall or sprawled like tossed dolls on the concrete floor, they lay in an oddly tidy row where the rapid-fire of machine guns had mowed them down. The women had not been allowed to die so quickly.

And the children . . .

Stooping, the foreigner ran a swift hand to close an empty stare of a boy not yet school age. When he swung around to face the soldiers, the cold implacability of his expression was surpassed only by the ice chips of his gaze.  “So . . . it begins again!”