Betrayed (42 page)

Vicki nodded. Cesar was right. It was time to get out of here—and without being seen.

With those scythes, it looked like Castro II and his gang were winding down their operation. Had the harvest actually finished, or had yesterday’s intrusion into their territory spooked them? It would be easy enough to move on and start over. The biosphere was vast, and there were other abandoned settlements, if not so easily accessible. If they cleared out before Vicki could get some authority out here . . . no, she couldn’t let that happen. Not after all this.

If I had Holly’s digital camera for proof. It’ll just have to be my word. I hope that’s enough. I need to get to Guatemala City, get through to the right people at the embassy, make them believe
.

Time was the greatest urgency. Michael had offered transport, but she’d have to go through Alpiro to reach him. Her best option was the DHC-2. And Joe had seen those earlier plantings. He could vouch for her story. He might even have a camera, if he’d be willing to risk flying over this for some shots.

Vicki was now as anxious as Cesar to leave. But she still didn’t move. A new sentry, M-16 slung over a shoulder, had just emerged from behind the command tent and was sauntering through the camp. He faced Vicki and was less sloppy than the other guards, head raised under a floppy brim, scanning his surroundings. Vicki froze lest any movement pull his eyes up the slope.

The sentry disappeared between the Jeep and army transport, lingering long enough that Vicki had made up her mind to move when the binoculars caught him striding out the near side. To Vicki’s dismay, he was heading up the slope. She swung the binoculars to follow his movements—and swung too far. Frantically, she scouted to recover her target. She was panicking again when a slight movement against the greenery allowed her to freeze in on a recognizable pattern of mottled olive and green. Was the sentry coming in her direction?

He rested against a tree, the features under a floppy brim too shadowed to make out but turned away from Vicki.

She relaxed. But only until she focused in on the motionless figure. This wasn’t the same sentry after all. He had no M-16 slung over his shoulder, and the shadows obscuring his face proved to be a pair of binoculars that looked far more powerful than Vicki’s. He’d been looking toward the encampment, but now he turned to survey of his surroundings, and the relaxed ease of his stance held none of the carelessness of the men below.

Vicki’s first wild fancy was that her own earlier thoughts had conjured up the resemblance. There had to be others with such a tall, broad frame and muscular grace of movement. Then something caught the sentry’s attention, and the glasses came down. Vicki caught a strong profile she’d know anywhere even under the green and black of camouflage paint.

Joe Ericsson.

There has to be a mistake. Maybe . . . maybe I was right before, and he’s undercover, watching them like I am
.

Then Vicki spotted what had drawn Joe’s attention. Another man in camouflage fatigues was walking into her field of vision. The sentry who’d emerged from the camp. And he was expected because Joe stepped immediately forward to speak with him. It was only a brief exchange. Then the other sentry walked off, not back toward the camp but angling up the slope. The disappointment and betrayal was as sharp as a physical pain.
No! I won’t let it be true!

But now at last the thought that had been nagging Vicki all day burst to the surface. Holly’s last words. All of them. “
You were right—no, I was right
.” Vicki had been so focused on the first part, so sure some one of Holly’s Guatemalan colleagues had to be involved, as Vicki had sardonically suggested. But what had Holly retorted? “
Why not one of the American volunteers? Roger. Or Joe. Or even me?
”

Joe.

This then was what Vicki had sensed the handyman was hiding even when she’d been drawn to him. Why she’d found him on the mountain in hunter’s gear and weapon. A man her sister had trusted and admired. Maybe even been half in love with. Of whom she wouldn’t have wanted to believe any ill. And so would have held back from reporting him to any authority.

The thought of Holly was enough to burn away betrayal and disbelief in a flood of fury. Vicki’s grip tightened around the binoculars.
You won’t get away with this. Not if I have to find a way out of here and off this mountain and drag the proper authorities to arrest you all by myself
.

But Vicki’s movement had also tightened the liana she’d wrapped around her arm to balance herself. The snapping of it resounded in the quiet like the cracking of a whip. Frozen in horror, the binoculars still to her eyes, Vicki saw Joe spin around, his glasses coming up. For one instant, the two sets of field glasses locked on each other.

Then Joe’s binoculars fell, and from the cold ferocity of his expression, Vicki knew he’d seen her.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Joe wasn’t the only one to take notice. The snap of the vine was followed immediately by a shout from the encampment.

Vicki dropped into the cover of the underbrush. “Let’s go!” she mouthed.

She followed Cesar down from the outcropping.

Had they seen her?
Not that it matters
, she answered herself bitterly. Joe would let them know fast enough.

They were off the outcropping now, but to reach the path, they had to step into the open, and this time a chorus of shouts left no doubt they’d been seen. Men in fatigues fanned out down the slope to their left. Stealth was no longer an advantage, only speed. Vicki and Cesar reached the overgrown trail, twigs and vines grabbing at them as they waded through. A branch slapped Vicki in the face as she struggled to stay on Cesar’s heels. At least they had the path while the pursuit below was battering its way through untamed brush.

Then Vicki heard an engine roaring to life. Cesar tossed over his shoulder even as he pushed on faster, “They will know we must have came there from the village.”

He didn’t need to amplify. They had to reach their bikes before that racing engine cut them off. How far would the pursuit have to detour? Not far enough from the swiftness with which that transport had sped up the track after those villagers yesterday. Adrenaline redoubled Vicki’s speed.

The pursuit was still a distant rumble when Vicki stumbled after Cesar onto the track at the edge of the hamlet. Ahead was the open stretch of the village commons. And that orange grove on the far side was their hope. If they could lose themselves on the mountain bikes up in that maze of trails . . .

The jouncing of her knapsack and the knee-deep brush that had overtaken the commons were a distracting annoyance as Vicki ran. She resisted the impulse to look over her shoulder.

When the citrus trees were no more than ten meters ahead, she heard the engine roar into the open. A babble of shouts told Vicki their progress across the field had been spotted. She risked a glance back. The Jeep held at least a half dozen men. Joe wasn’t among them; she took time to catalog bitterly. The Jeep accelerated onto the field, the four-wheel drive making nothing of the brush. But they were too late. Two more strides would bring Cesar and Vicki to the cover of the orange trees. And their bikes.

Vicki had just ducked under a low-hanging branch when a crack of sound split the air and a ping nicked a piece of bark from the nearest tree trunk. The pursuit wasn’t waiting to overtake them. The single shot became a
rat-tat-tat
of automatic gunfire. The erratic jolting of the Jeep saved the two fugitives, deflecting the gunfire over their heads, a whistle of bullets tearing through leaves and smacking into wood. Then Cesar yanked Vicki beyond the first line of trees. The Jeep engine went dead as he scrabbled to lift their bikes. Thudding boots and hoarse calls replaced the indiscriminate gunfire. Cesar shoved Vicki ahead onto the trail as they mounted the bikes. Only when a fresh spray of gunfire broke out did Vicki register the selflessness of that gesture.

But the trail made an immediate bend so that the gunfire was wasted on oak and cypress. Pedaling furiously, she glanced over her shoulder to see Cesar close behind her and unhurt. Thrashing and shouts came from the undergrowth behind them but no more gunfire.

By the time Vicki reached the drinking spring, the sounds of pursuit were distant enough that she dared slow to ease her aching calf muscles and laboring lungs. They were safe—at least for the moment.

Vicki didn’t wait for Cesar to take the lead when she reached the first intersecting path but took the right fork unhesitatingly. Broken vegetation and tire marks were as clear a guide as a signpost. They would also be an open map to the pursuit, but she refused to linger on that. The men knew now that Vicki and Cesar were mounted. They’d have to be foolhardy to continue the chase on foot. But even when the last echo of pursuit was long gone, Vicki didn’t slow, pushing herself faster and harder than she ever had in her life, unerringly taking each turn of path over which they’d come, slowing only occasionally to check that Cesar was still with her. The burning anger in her chest gave her strength even after the first rush of adrenaline had ebbed.

Once a helicopter flew low overhead, but Vicki didn’t even break rhythm. Under this thick canopy, they were invisible from the air. Twice she fell when she was going too fast to see an obstruction. By the time she reached the steep zigzag where they’d first mounted the bikes, Vicki was dripping with sweat and itchy with dirt, face and arms stinging where leaves and vines and branches had lashed across them.

Here at the top of the ridge was less cover, and when Vicki heard the drone of a helicopter returning, she dismounted. Shoving the bike into the undergrowth, she dropped beside it, wrapping her arms around her knees as she tried to think. She’d tried to plan her next step while racing along, but there’d been room in her mind only for the next curve in the path. Now as she looked down over the plateau, she could no longer put it off.

Plan A—the night bus down the mountain—was out of the question. The Verapaz bus stop in the town plaza would be an automatic target of any search order.

Plan B—the DHC-2—was out too. Which was something else that didn’t make sense. The gunfire directed at the small plane on Vicki’s arrival had been real. Unhappiness lifted slightly until Vicki remembered what Joe had shouted at the soldiers.
The new plane and flight plan never got passed on to the right people. No wonder he was so furious. He must have been circling around to calculate their crop when they shot at us
.

No, Vicki didn’t even want to think of Joe. That any possibility of Michael’s involvement in this had been little more than a distasteful thought while Joe’s betrayal still stabbed like a physical pain was something else she wouldn’t let herself probe.

Going back to the center was out as well. Rosario and Beatriz were no friends.

And Michael? Vicki’s earlier anger over the missing villagers no longer seemed such a priority, and he had given her until afternoon to change her plans. But his transportation was a UPN helicopter, and whatever Alpiro’s involvement in this biosphere narco-scam, she’d bet he had his own forces on high alert by now. She’d be walking into the lion’s den to try to reach Michael.

Despair was growing in her when Vicki’s eye fell on a red tiled roof raised on a knoll in the middle of the coffee fields. A green pickup sat in the driveway, and at the sight of it, Vicki straightened with what was perilously close to a sob of relief.

Of course! Bill had told Vicki to come to him if she ever needed anything. This wasn’t what he’d have had in mind, but if she could trust him with her parents’ identity, she could trust him with this. Better yet, Bill had embassy contacts. And his own radio setup. He’d know what to do.

Besides, Vicki reminded herself with a fresh stab of betrayal, she’d an obligation to let him know just what the employee he’d treated so generously had been up to. Had Bill some inkling of what kind of man Joe really was? Was that why he’d warned Vicki to stay away from him?

Vicki pushed down that renewed unhappiness as hard breathing alerted her that Cesar had overtaken her. He flung himself from his bike and hunkered down beside her.

Vicki raised her head to meet his gaze. Cesar had every right to blame her. He hadn’t wanted to come and had warned her from the start. Now who knew what kind of trouble she’d landed him in. He, But she saw no hint of condemnation in his eyes, only urgency.

“Come! We must get to the village before
los militares
.”

Vicki looked at him blankly. “The village? They can’t help us. We need to reach Señor Taylor. He has a radio and contacts with
la embajada
.”

“No! There is no time for that,” Cesar answered. “Do you not see,
los narcotraficantes
will not know who we are, only that we have invaded their territory. They’ll think we are from the village, that we came to spy out their
narcotráfico
.”

Joe at least knew exactly who’d been on that rock outcropping. But Cesar hadn’t seen him, and Vicki didn’t waste time raising the point. “Then the village is the last place we should go. They’ll be looking for us there.”

Cesar shook his head as he said harshly, “They will not care which villager it is—only that we have disobeyed their command. No,
los narcotraficantes
will come back to carry out their threat. The villagers must be given warning to escape to the hills. And do not think the authorities will stop them. Were not
los militares
with
los narcotraficantes
when we found Alicia and Gabriela? Do you think this has happened in
la reserva
without their knowledge?”

By what arrogance had Vicki somehow assumed Cesar couldn’t add two and two as easily as she had? Or that she was the natural leader here? In fact, his life had faced far more of such situations than hers.

“Then go,” Vicki said. “Go do what you have to—and don’t come back to the center until it’s safe. I’ll get to Señor Taylor. He’ll make everything right. I’ll be fine now by myself. Your family, your people need you.”

Cesar's dark gaze on her face seemed to weigh whether she meant what she said. Then he took off down the mountainside, bike slung over his back.

Vicki didn’t immediately follow. Her binoculars had remained around her neck on that mad trek back, and she lifted them to study the slope between her and Bill’s coffee plantation below. The path Cesar had followed was out since it dead-ended at the center, and she didn’t know Cesar’s detours. But up here at least the undergrowth was scant, and if she worked her way through it, she could angle down to come out directly behind the plantation house.

Avoiding guards and laborers was more complicated. There were no coffee plantings within a fifty meter radius of the knoll, only smooth, trimmed lawn. The closest laborers Vicki spotted through the field glasses were on the far side of the road. But the usual sentry was in the guard shack at the front gate, and the binoculars zoomed in on a man in a sombrero on Bill’s front veranda. The guard Joe had chewed out after Vicki’s last unsolicited visit? And any of those laborers out there could be a
soplón
for Alpiro.

With no path, there was no advantage in the mountain bike, so Vicki left it in the brush. It took longer than she’d hoped to work her way to Bill’s fields, though she stayed high on the ridge until she was directly behind the plantation house. By the time she slid through the brush to where Bill’s back veranda was directly across from her, she’d added rips to her shirt and cargo pants.

To Vicki’s disappointment, the veranda guard had drifted around to the back where he was smoking a cigarette. Crouching in the underbrush, she didn’t dare even reach for her canteen for fear the movement might be spotted. She considered throwing herself on the guard’s mercy to call his employer when he flicked the cigarette to the veranda floor, ground it out under his boot, and walked around the side of the house.