Betrayed (41 page)

For their hamlet, the villagers had cleared a fairly level shelf of land partway up the mountain flank. From the orange grove where Cesar and Vicki had dropped their bikes, the mountain rose steeply to the spring and on up to the ridge they’d followed.

Cesar led Vicki the opposite direction across the village commons onto the dirt road. He turned off almost immediately onto a trail leading past the ruins of Vicki’s childhood home. Like the path to the spring, its firmness indicated a well-used walking path, though by its overgrown state, it had been months since anyone passed through. Vicki followed Cesar through leaves and vines for only a few minutes before the mountainside dropped away to offer a panorama of the valley below. The waterfall was now directly opposite them, the valley floor no more than a hundred meters below.

The path wound downward, but Vicki had found what she wanted. An outcropping of rock a few meters off the path. Tapping Cesar on the arm, she scrambled into the brush. The rock surface was flat enough for Vicki to worm in on her stomach, scooting up to where she could see the whole valley with its abandoned clearings. There were more than she’d seen before, more than Joe had had time to scout out before that blast of gunfire, not only on the valley floor but climbing the slope below them. How many hectares in all? Dozens at least.

Cesar scooted in beside her as Vicki dug the binoculars out of her pack. Though small enough to fit into her palm, the magnification was excellent with the zoom capacity of a good camera, and the distance no longer great. It was what Vicki had braced herself to see. Without the multicolored petals, the flower stalks in the closest clearing were identical enough to be seen now as a crop. They were at least a meter tall, each ending in several bulbs like green pomegranates. Vicki increased the magnification to its maximum. Though fuzzy, she could make out scores sliced down the side of the bulbs, streaks that might have been brown gum.

Vicki let out the quietest of sighs. This had to be why Holly had died, what she had come across in her unsanctioned wanderings through the biosphere. Unlike Cesar, Holly had known what she saw and had in the end asked too many questions. The sheer extent of those poppy fields represented more processed heroin than Vicki could contemplate. They would have had to be seeded here months ago, neatly camouflaged among wild corn and weeds, left to spread their beauty until the bulbs were ripe and the falling of petals signaled the harvest.

Was that what had once again doomed the village? Had its new residents moved back in, built fresh homes on the rotted remains of the old, then set out to plant their crops, thinking nothing of the strange flowers that had invaded the abandoned clearings? It must have been a shock for the caretakers watching over their prospective fortune.

But just who was responsible? Alpiro for sure had to be in it up to his teeth. Who else could ensure the opium growers were left undisturbed? Or that certain parts of the biosphere weren’t included in any “training operations”?  

And who else? That obsequious and unhelpful minister of environment under whose province the biosphere fell? “You were right,” Holly had managed to get out as she died. And what exactly had Vicki warned her about? Only the possible corruption of Holly’s high-living local colleagues.

No, it all fit. Vicki’s tumultuous thoughts jumped to the U.S. drug czar who’d been dining at the airport on her arrival. How had this big an undertaking been kept from Alpiro’s American advisors and outfitters? She considered the pride with which Michael had recounted his counter-narcotics victories. However angry his support of Alpiro had made her, Vicki couldn’t have mistaken the sincerity with which the embassy staffer had spoken of his duty and commitment to country and mission. And he’d been decorated for wiping out countless drug trafficking operations just like this. So how had they kept him in the dark about this one?

The same way they’ve done it for decades. By lying and deceit and ensuring that foreigners like Michael get just enough small “victories” to report back to DC that their dirty double-dealing in other areas doesn’t even raise a red flag.
At least now maybe Michael will listen to me about Alpiro
.

There had to be others involved too, because Vicki had learned in Myanmar how much labor the opium trade entailed, supplying work to far too many Burmese peasants. Once the petals fell off, each bulb had to be scored as night fell, the opium gum oozing out scraped off at dawn, not once but several times, the dried sap molded into brown blocks of raw opium. If the poppies were finishing their bloom when Vicki arrived at the center—
then these last couple of weeks someone’s been harvesting the opium
.

No wonder Alpiro had forbidden over-flights of the biosphere. And she could bet the gunmen who’d shot at the DHC-2 had been caretakers of the crop. Though from the lack of life Vicki was seeing below, the harvest looked to be finished. What exactly had Holly stumbled onto out here? And who had been responsible for her death?

Though it didn’t even really matter. If Vicki could bring this to authorities who could actually
do
something about it, then she could strike the blow for the biosphere and against this illicit drug empire that Holly must have been after. Even if she never found out who’d actually pulled the trigger, these last weeks would not have been fruitless.

“
Do what is right and do not give way to fear
.”

Is this why I’m here, Father God?

At a tap on her arm, Vicki turned to meet Cesar’s anxious glance. “We’ll go in just a minute,” she whispered.

She got to her feet, looping the binocular strap for safekeeping around her neck as she balanced at the rock edge. Standing, she could see considerably farther, including another handful of clearings down the valley the undergrowth around her had masked. Vicki’s survey had reached the far left of the valley floor, and she’d actually begun to drop the binoculars when movement registered in her field of vision. Though she’d relayed Michael’s assurance that Alpiro’s men had abandoned their biosphere operation, it had still been with caution and stealth that Vicki and Cesar started out on this expedition. But the passing of hours without any other human life, the silence and emptiness of the landscape below, had lulled her into the careless assumption that their caution had been needless.

So it was with a jolt of adrenaline that Vicki snatched the binoculars back to her eyes. She adjusted the magnification. No, it had been too much to hope that she was mistaken. Nor were the shapes in that field some feeding herd of deer. They were human. Vicki counted four in the mottled green and olive of camouflage fatigues, automatic rifles in their hands. The rest wore the cheap clothing of peasant laborers. Scythes in their hands mowed the tall poppy stalks as though it were grass. Vicki’s thoughts flashed to the “deer herd” she’d glimpsed yesterday. Another clean-up crew?

Because that’s what it had to be. The harvest must be over, and now the evidence was being eradicated. Those peasants under the gun barrels were the grunt labor Vicki had expected.

Grabbing at a nearby liana to steady herself, Vicki stood on tiptoe to focus the binoculars in on one of the uniforms. It was not UPN but the unmarked camouflage last night’s ground patrol had worn. Was she wrong again? Was there yet another group operating in this rain forest? Some rogue military unit or even guerrilla band that had staked out its own kingdom in the biosphere?

Either way Alpiro has to know about it. Just look at how his goons showed up last night
.

Just then a worker stepped into the binocular’s field of vision in front of the uniform, a scythe in his hand. After an hour together in the back of a pickup, Vicki recognized the dark, Mayan features instantly. So this was where yesterday’s seized volunteers had ended up.

Then as Vicki shifted her focus, the binoculars caught another uniformed man leaving the clearing. She panicked as he started climbing the slope in her direction. But when she dropped the binoculars, Vicki realized he was so far away she wouldn’t have even spotted the green and olive of his fatigues if she hadn’t known he was there. Without field glasses, he couldn’t possibly make out the beige shirt and cargo pants Vicki had chosen for this expedition.

Finding him again in the binoculars, Vicki turned perilously on tiptoe to follow his progress. Twice she had to readjust the focus closer, and she was considering a prudent drop to cover when he vanished. Vicki twisted farther to scan the mountain slope to her left. All that appeared was a mass of greenery. Where had he gone?

Vicki adjusted the focus even closer—and almost lost her hold on the liana. She’d missed the encampment because it wasn’t down in the valley, but up the slope only slightly below her and not more than fifty meters to her left.  Camouflage nets explained how they’d escaped notice when Joe had circled in overhead. Why hadn’t they just used the old village site? Then Vicki recalled that pervasive odor of death. Besides, from here they could keep watch over their treasure without bestirring themselves.

A number of army tents were tucked among trees. Vicki had a clear line of vision into the largest. Inside she could make out a table and radio equipment. She stiffened as her binoculars moved across a canvas lawn chair, its occupant lounging with a bottle of gold liquid as though enjoying a day at the beach. It was yesterday’s ground patrol leader who’d loomed out of the night. Castro II.

Releasing the liana, Vicki used that hand to scrabble in the top of her knapsack. She tugged loose the group photo that had trailed her across Guatemala. Yes, Castro II at least had changed little over the years. There he was right next to Alpiro, without the peppering of gray but curls and beard just as luxuriant, his florid face as smug.
He looks so much like Alpiro; they’ve got to be blood relatives
.

Which would explain the involvement of a high-ranking law enforcement officer like Alpiro. And how he could keep something this big from leaking out. He wouldn’t need more manpower than Castro II and his band of merry men with their conscripted peasant labor. Alpiro’s own UPN troops need know only their legitimate mission of protecting the biosphere. They might even have been told some kind of training mission was going on in here. That would explain the cooperation Vicki had witnessed last night.

Vicki’s plans of immediate departure evaporated instantly. Instead she shifted her focus to study the camp. At the nearest perimeter under its own netting, She noticed the Jeep Castro II had been driving last night and beside it the army transport. Just beyond was a rutted track. That would be how they’d emerged to intercept the pickup. And that radio in the tent would be how they’d known Vicki and the others were coming.

The camp held a number of the unidentified camouflage fatigues. Two ambled around with unslung weapons. If they’d looked up the slope, they might have spotted Vicki, but they seemed more interested in the other activities than their sentry duties. Under a square canvas pavilion, its side walls rolled up, two more men in fatigues scraped a brown rubbery substance from a metal basin into fist-size balls. The congealed opium gum scraped from the poppy bulbs. Two others were working with a press that turned out brick-size blocks. Another was wrapping the bricks in brown wrapping paper.

Vicki’s arms ached with the effort of holding both binoculars and liana. She let the glasses drop on their strap to adjust her balance.

As she did so, Cesar took the binoculars from her hand and turned the glasses to where he’d seen her attention focused. Almost immediately, he dropped them with a furious hiss. “Señorita Vee-kee, that man—the one in the chair. He was the one who directed the burning of our church. Who are these men? What are they doing?”

Why am I not surprised?
At least that cleared Michael’s UPN troops, if their
comandante
was undoubtedly involved.

“
¡Narcotraficantes!
” Vicki answered as she took back the binoculars. It was all the explanation necessary. If heroin was a new industry for Guatemala, drug trafficking was an ancient problem.

Vicki heard Cesar gasp. Then he tugged at her arm in fresh urgency for them to leave.