Betrayed (34 page)

Once in the village Cesar leaned forward to give Michael directions. But not to Maria’s thatched hut. The church was bright with kerosene lanterns when Michael pulled into its earth courtyard. An audible prayer vigil going on inside broke up at the sound of engines.

Gabriela wriggled over the side into Maria’s arms before Vicki could lift her out. Cesar got out with Alicia. The two girls didn’t even look back at their rescuers as they were carried off to cries of delight and hugs and fussing. With any luck and the eager attention they were receiving, the nightmare of these last twenty-four hours would fade quickly and they would no longer feel the need to go searching for their old home. Vicki could only hope so. Up here there’d be no trauma counselors.

The pastor asked the question others were beginning to murmur. “But where are Ramon and Santiago and the others?”

Michael started the engine. “Let’s get out of here. Your vet friend can do the explaining. He seems familiar enough with these people. Taylor, your vehicle should be waiting.”

Cesar had indeed disappeared into a huddle with the pastor and other villagers. Vicki didn’t protest Michael pulling away since Cesar was unlikely to leave his small cousins tonight anyway. She was saving her ammunition for bigger issues.

Vicki spotted the green pickup before they even reached the checkpoint. She winced to see the front grille visibly crumpled. But the metal pole, not looking worse for the wear, was back in place across the road.

As they climbed down from the Jeep, the UPN driver exited the pickup and held the keys out to Joe. At Bill’s nod, he accepted the keys.

The troops who’d come down the mountain in the pickup were already squeezing into the second Jeep, perching on the tailgate and running boards to get everyone in. Their leader walked over for a brief exchange with Michael. Then they were pulled away, leaving only the four Americans and two vehicles.

Joe slid into the driver’s seat of the pickup. Bill walked over to lean in the open window as the engine rumbled to life. His words were too low for Vicki to decipher, but from Joe’s wooden expression, whatever he had to say wasn’t pleasant.

“I can take someone with me.” Michael glanced over at Vicki as he started for the driver’s seat of the Jeep.

Vicki didn’t even look his way. Striding over to the pickup, she caught Bill saying, “. . .this stunt! Alpiro’s talking revoking all privileges. After being so careful for so long . . . I can’t afford this;
you
can’t afford this! . . . If you’ve messed things up—”

“You think I planned this?” Joe’s low interruption was just as hard. “As for Alpiro—”

The two men stopped when Vicki leaned in the open passenger window. She was too full of her own furious thoughts to give any heed to their argument. “Mind if I ride in here?”

Joe reached over to open the passenger door. Bill stepped back from the driver’s side, and as Vicki slid in, he called out, “I’ll take you up on that offer, Camden. I’ve been curious for some time about your operations up here and the new UPN force. What did you say was your total capacity?”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Vicki sat rigidly beside Joe as he eased back onto the dirt track, not even looking out the windshield at their escort speeding away in front of them for fear she’d explode. The wind bit into her damp clothing, but she didn’t ask Joe to roll the windows up.

They’d left the last yellow gleam of village lights well behind when Joe spoke up. “You’d better let out your breath at least. I’m not prepared to handle a stroke here.”

His face turned to Vicki was only an indistinct outline, but his tone was mild enough that she might have imagined that earlier anger.

Her breath left her in a whoosh. “I just can’t believe it. I feel like I’ve stepped twenty years back in time into some nightmare where the army’s still steamrolling over anyone in sight, guilty or not.”

“Not army. UPN. A duly constituted civilian authority, as Camden would say.”

“What difference does that make? Do you think it matters to the villagers what uniform beats them up? As for Michael, I just can’t believe . . . I mean, after all that’s happened, how can our own people, our own embassy, be taking these guys’ word for who’s guilty and who isn’t? And without checking if they’re telling the truth. Even when they’re talking about people’s lives and freedom!” Vicki swallowed tears of disappointment and hurt, hoping Joe hadn’t noticed.

She changed the subject. “That photo—you recognized it, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I’ve seen it before. Though I wouldn’t have recognized Alpiro in the lineup without someone pointing him out.”

“Was it Holly who had the picture?”

Joe was silent for a minute. “Yes, that would have been where I saw it. Holly had a copy.”

“Well, I’ve seen it at least three times now, not counting the archives where Holly got her copy.” Vicki explained quickly. “Am I supposed to believe it’s some kind of coincidence that the chief of police, minister of environment, zoo administrator, and now the head of this new environmental police unit
all
happened to be part of the same group trained by Americans way back when? Or that they’ve all ended up in related positions? There has to be some connection. And a reason why Holly was so interested in them. The environmental movement is certainly a strong connecting thread.”

Again, Joe didn’t answer immediately, giving time for the center’s high barrier of vegetation to loom ahead. With the perverse variability of the mountain weather, the
chipi-chipi
had at last chosen to stop. Though mist was settling like gray snowdrifts across the coffee fields, the sky had cleared, and Vicki could make out an uneven black horizon that was the top of the cloud forest canopy.

“I know where you’re going with this, Vicki, and I’m not sure I want to encourage it. I’ve no doubt you’re right Holly had that photo because she’d seen it on these guys’ walls too. But connection doesn’t equate conspiracy. Guatemala isn’t a big country, and the military leadership is—and was—a tight community. A group that’s trained together at that level forms a lifetime bond.
Hermandad
, they call it here. A brotherhood. Say you and Holly are both right. These guys are one big, connected network. They’re all involved in helping each other find cushy post–peace accord positions. High-paying jobs have to be tough to find these days for former military officers. That may be nepotism of sorts but not conspiracy. You’ve been in these kinds of places enough to know that.”

He’s right—again
, Vicki admitted, deflated. Except for one stubborn reality. Holly was dead. And if this were just another straw, didn’t enough straws add up to make bricks?

“So you’re saying there’s no connection between Holly’s death and having that picture with—what is it . . . two, three, no, four, of these guys in it?”

“Not at all. I’ve no intel one way or another. I’m just saying you don’t have enough to run with it. You might want to talk to Camden and see what he’s got on it. He seems to be tight enough with that bunch.”

Vicki didn’t respond immediately. The last person with whom she wanted to discuss Michael was her present companion, whose bias, whatever the reason, had been made abundantly clear.

But the words burst out of her. “That’s what I don’t get. I couldn’t care less if the whole Guatemalan army is scratching each other’s backs. What matters is that they—Alpiro—arrested four innocent men. They’ve got the village scared to death. They have
me
scared to death. This is supposed to be the new, peaceful Guatemala. But I’m seeing the same tactics that were around twenty years ago. And we know what happened then right under our noses. Two hundred thousand dead at the hands of forces we trained and supplied.

“So why is—?” Vicki couldn’t say Michael’s name. “Why is our embassy back to training and supplying them? Or believing whatever they say about who’s an enemy and who’s guilty without ever checking the facts? Or even insisting they use different tactics?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Joe snorted. “Where do you think Alpiro and his like
got
the tactics they’re using? The reason we were invited here to start with was because their military and aristocracy didn’t have the muscle to stamp out a popular uprising. We gave them the muscle and the tactics right out of our own Special Forces handbook. Scorched earth campaigns so the locals have to turn to the army or starve. Strategic hamlets or model villages, if that sounds better, so the army can control the civilian population. Holding a village responsible for any enemy activity in the zone and wiping man, woman, and child out, so the next village will choose to cooperate. Organizing civil patrols and paid informants to divide the locals against each other. Targeted elimination—no, call it what it is, assassination—of opposition leaders.

“All taught these goons by ‘advisors’ like the Green Berets in that picture who’d learned those lessons well over in Vietnam. And of course it wasn’t just the Guatemalan army who got the benefit of our experience over there. Forget small matters like justice and human rights if we can make these third world militaries more efficient. We spread it around from the Shah’s SAVAK Secret Police to the Nicaraguan contras, Colombian paramilitaries, Saddam Hussein himself when he was still our ally. Anywhere we felt our national interests or business profits might be threatened. Except there never was any outside enemy on the receiving end. Just local peasants and democratic opposition.”

Vicki stared at the indistinct outline of his profile. “How do you know all this? You keep saying ‘
we
,’ like you’ve been out there. I thought you said you’d never been in the military.”

 “By ‘
we
,’ I meant our American government policy. But I never said I’d never been in the military.”

Still staring at him, Vicki took in what she’d never bothered to notice before. What even the night could not completely disguise. The relaxed tension of that muscled body she’d personally witnessed blurring into action. The narrowed watchfulness of green eyes, now a glint in the headlights as he turned his head. That peculiar catlike walk so like Michael’s she should have registered the resemblance long ago.

“And just what were you? Special Forces?”

“For a while.”  Stars disappeared as the center’s untrimmed canopy closed above the pickup. “Like I said, I didn’t care for the spit and polish. Or the regulations. As you can see, I don’t exactly fit into a box. And that’s what the army requires. Nice, neat box shapes that can be easily stacked in a warehouse and shuffled around the world. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking those who do. I’ve got nothing but respect for our military, who are for the most part just doing their part to keep America safe. Following orders and all that.”

Joe’s glance shifted past Vicki. “Right, Camden?”

The center generator hadn’t been turned on, so it was only when Joe eased the pickup to a halt that Vicki realized the tail-lights ahead had blinked out, caught the crunch of gravel outside her window.  Michael yanked Vicki’s door open.

 “What do you know about following orders, Ericsson? Let’s go, Vicki. Now that we’re out of earshot of half the country, I’ve got something to say to you.
All
of you.”

His grip was not gentle as he helped Vicki from the cab, but his glare was directed toward Joe. “Vicki, far be it from me to criticize your choice of associates. I’m doing my best to use language appropriate to a lady, so let’s just say tonight was not the wisest course of action. Alpiro had every legal right to lock all of you up and throw away the key. If Ericsson wanted to take a joyride through a restricted zone, he could at least have had the decency not to get you involved.”

Joe’s only response was to switch off the ignition.

“But it wasn’t Joe—”

Michael interrupted Vicki’s protest. “It’s not that I don’t understand your motives. As usual, you were only trying to help. But this could have been handled another way. If you’d approached Alpiro instead of going it on your own, all this could have been avoided, including these arrests that have you so upset. Not to mention, you’d have had Alpiro’s resources at your back instead of against you.”

“But—” Vicki stopped. The worst was that she herself had suggested exactly what Michael was saying. And from the swift response she’d witnessed, maybe there really had been time to get official help before dark. But could they—should they—have counted on it? How could she explain the fear and distrust and desperation that had impelled their decision? They’d done the best they could at the time. Didn’t that count for something?

“I’m not blaming you, Vicki. You couldn’t have known.” Michael’s tone turned acid as a shadow loomed in front of them. “But if you haven’t been here long enough to understand the local situation, Ericsson certainly has.”

The darkness was so complete that Vicki wasn’t sure where the buildings lay around them until a blue-white flame sprang to light. Its glimmer reflected off wood and thatch, then revealed weathered features and gnarled hands as Bill Taylor lifted a Coleman lantern onto a hook just up the steps of the community shelter.

It was a signal Michael had been waiting for because he immediately steered Vicki in that direction. “I don’t know what kind of twisted nonsense Ericsson has been filling you with—”

“Actually—” the crunch of Joe’s boots fell into step beside Vicki, and he sounded not at all chastised as he cut into Michael’s icy speech—“I was just explaining to Vicki where your goons inherited the tactics we saw them use tonight. Tell me, Camden, are you all still using that Vietnam-era training manual? Sure looked like it.”

“So you’re beating that dead horse,” Michael said. “Maybe you have no respect for law and order, judging by tonight’s stunt. But don’t you be pointing your finger at better men than you for doing a job they were trained and ordered to do.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t think of it,” Joe agreed. “Like you said, they were just following orders. I’m sure they had no control over what was done with the excellent training they handed out. You’ll excuse me if I’m a little less generous to those who actually formulated the policies of who received our military aid. Or those high enough to know good and well to what use it was being put. Oh yes—that would be your department over at the embassy, wouldn’t it, Camden? Your predecessors, of course. Not you personally.”