Betrayed (51 page)

I’m drowning
. Surely there should be emotion in the thought. But no feeling was left in Vicki at all but deep, biting cold. Then as consciousness drifted away, she was no longer cold but almost warm.
Into Thy hands I commit my spirit
. From what long-ago Sunday school lesson had that come?
Holly? Mama? Papa?

When a sharp pain at the roots of her hair yanked her back to consciousness, she could almost feel resentment. An iron grip tugged at her clothing, a steel arm tight around her waist. Vaguely, Vicki felt an upward thrust of long limbs against her. Then a final powerful surge tossed her head and shoulders out of the water before she splashed down limp against wet cloth that was rock-solid and supporting. Warmth covered her cold lips, breathed life into her lungs.

Coughing and sputtering up lake water, Vicki opened her eyes. “Joe!” She didn’t know whether the wetness in her eyes was from the lake or tears. “Oh, Joe!”

“It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Turning her head against his shoulder, Vicki saw the DHC-2 circling above, the open cargo door under the wing from which he’d dived into the water. A life ring landed close by with a splash. Beyond it, a Black Hawk hovered only a scant few meters above the water.

Joe grabbed the life ring and balanced Vicki’s head and shoulder against it while a knife appeared in his other hand. Painful life returned to her wrists as he sawed at the plastic cuffs. As they fell free, Vicki threw her arms around Joe’s neck with a fierce relief that swept them both underwater before Joe’s strong kick brought them back to the surface.

Embarrassed, Vicki pulled away, but Joe didn’t loosen his tight grip. Two of the Black Hawk’s crew were now in the water, pulling in the line of the life ring. Taking a firmer grip on the ring, Joe let the rescue team haul them in, his arm still around Vicki. The beat of his heart, quickened from exertion, was strong beneath her ear, his drawl as gentle as to a hurt child. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be all right. You’re safe now.”

This time Vicki believed it.

Chapter Forty

It had been five days since Joe lifted Vicki from the waters of Lake Izabal into the safety of the Black Hawk. Five days of chaos and conferences and camera flashes and more media attention than Vicki hoped to have again for the rest of her life.

The Huey had been recovered, Raul Hernandez and the pilot still strapped in their seats. One of the soldiers had made it out of the sinking helicopter; the other had drowned. The one who’d made it turned out to be the guard who’d struck Vicki in the stomach, who’d shot at the Black Hawk. Vicki didn’t dwell on that. As Raul Hernandez had finally discovered, the Creator of the universe had His own way of exacting justice when the right time came. The opium strapped in its cargo netting was hauled up and placed into evidence.

Michael hadn’t been found. Lake Izabal was vast and deep with strong currents so he had been presumed drowned.

Meanwhile, counternarcotics troops were swarming around the biosphere. How Bill and Joe had managed to summon the cavalry just in the nick of time was still a little hazy to Vicki, though it would seem only her rescue was spur-of-the-moment. The Black Hawks had been heading in to raid the encampment when Bill and Joe’s frantic SOS detoured two of them.

The remaining force, another Black Hawk and three Hueys, had reached the plateau in time to catch Hernandez’s transport truck and Jeep coming down the nature trail. Their contents were suggestive with the camp and harvest paraphernalia, but as Raul had assured Michael, hardly incriminating without that air-lifted opium. Vicki still didn’t have those details either, since the minute they’d all landed back in Guatemala City Bill and Joe had disappeared into a madhouse of American DEA and local counter-narcotics meetings, which had been to the accompaniment of a media barrage. Unfortunately the air show over Lake Izabal had not gone unnoticed.

Vicki had again made multiple statements in English and Spanish. Early in the proceedings Evelyn showed up, bringing with her a change of clothing. Vicki's knapsack and Holly's PDA were somewhere at the bottom of Lake Izabal. Except for the occasional summons to embassy or police station, Vicki had stayed at Casa de Esperanza until yesterday when a DEA fact-gathering team heading to the biosphere allowed her to hop their Black Hawk to pick up her belongings.

Vicki had found the center noisy with the Australians. Their own  arrival in the middle of that counternarcotics raid had proved rather anticlimactic with their hosts in hysterics over the Black Hawks and Hueys and an AWOL camp cook. But Maria had returned by that evening, and within two days, Rosario and Beatriz were gone.

Alpiro, shrewdly sequestering himself in his office during the counternarcotics raid, had gotten off with a slap on the wrist and a demotion, swearing that he’d simply done a relative the small favor of ignoring his presence in the biosphere. But a treasury police raid of home and bank accounts had confirmed Vicki’s suspicions that he was also using his UPN position to funnel black market wildlife from the biosphere through Rosario and Beatriz.

Vicki had little doubt the couple’s own superior, the minister of environment, along with the zoo administrator, had been Rosario and Beatriz’s Guatemala City receivers. But those two, more cautious in their accounting, managed to escape with only slightly dusty hands, while the media was satisfied with the scapegoats offered. At least there’d be a stronger scrutiny now on the two men’s activities.

 Of greater interest to Vicki was the news that Cesar would be taking Rosario and Beatriz’s place as center administrator. The refuge would finally have a director more interested in its future than city lights and comforts. Vicki had arrived in time for Alison’s announcement at dinner last night and was the first to congratulate the Mayan vet with a hug and kiss.

Vicki knew Cesar too well to think of offering him aid, but she’d pressed into his hand a thick stack of quetzals she’d changed in Guatemala City. “To rebuild the church, my friend. After all, it was my doing that it burned.”

“No, it was your doing that saved Alicia and Gabriela. It was the doing of
los malvados
—the evil ones—that burned it.” But Cesar had accepted the gift. “For God and the people of Verapaz.
Que Dios te bendiga
. And you will come again to visit us?”

“You can count on it,” Vicki promised.

Though Bill or Joe had been there at every interrogation, she hadn’t seen either alone since those terrible moments in the safe room. But she’d known they were back because she’d seen the DHC-2 bank its stubby wings above the ridge the afternoon before, and Cesar had told Vicki that Señor Taylor and the tall gringo had returned to the plantation house.

Vicki had walked over to Bill’s house. But the guard—a new one—had informed Vicki that the two Americans were in the biosphere with the Americano DEA. It was after supper when Alison brought Vicki the message that the DHC-2 would be able to give her a lift back to Guatemala City the next morning. Vicki’s ticket was already booked on an afternoon flight back to Washington, DC.

Vicki had set her alarm to before sunrise. She didn’t want a crowd around when she made her good-byes to the center and plateau and the Sierra de las Minas mountains. Mist swirled across the gravel path as Vicki made her way through the animal cages, the sky above the oak branches just paling to gray. The
chipi-chipi
brushed her face with a cool mist, a fern laying beads of dew across one arm.

But when Vicki emerged on the rock outcropping above
Pozo Azul
, the last stars were fading from a cloudless sky over Lake Izabal, a shiver of pale jade and pink above the jungle canopy across the lake promising a perfect sunrise for her farewell.

From this distance the lake water looked flat and calm, its gray already tingeing to blue. The night orchestra of frogs and cicadas was giving way to dawn’s symphony of bird songs, parrot caws, and the chatter of monkeys rousing from slumber, all to the glorious bass thunder of the falls. Settling herself on the damp stone so she could wrap her arms around her knees, Vicki watched the sky lighten over the lake, listened to the morning song around her in speechless delight. Below her, mist pooled white and thick above the hot spring, the spray of the cascade as it churned down into it catching at the early light to create the faintest soap-bubble glimmer of a rainbow.

 It was as though the mountains and cloud forests and very animal life around her had gathered to offer Vicki a magnificent farewell. Their joyous serenity stole into her mind and heart, seeped peace through the very muscles of her body. She didn’t even turn her head when she heard firm footsteps on the rock behind her. They were part of this perfect morning, and she knew them immediately.

Vicki waited as Joe settled himself down beside her, stretching out his legs. In his hands he held a small knapsack, and this he set carefully down on the rock at his side before leaning back to rest on his hands. Together they watched the jade and pink of the horizon brighten to orange and reds.

Only after a comfortable silence did Vicki turn her head to ask the question that had been burning in her for days. “So who are you really? DEA?”

Even as she spoke, Vicki was blinking in sudden unfamiliarity. Then she took in what made her companion look so different. Joe had cut his hair. Not short like Bill’s but shaped and trimmed well above his shoulders. Instead of his wild Hawaiian look, he wore a thin polo sweater and jeans. With a fresh-shaven jawline, he looked almost . . . respectable.

The irony on Joe’s face told Vicki that he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. How did you guess?”

“It seemed logical with everything’s that happened, especially the DEA showing up so conveniently. Then you
were
working for some government agency when I asked you that day?”
You were lying to me?
Her disappointment hung unspoken in the air.

Joe held Vicki’s gaze, irony darkening to intensity. “I may not have told you everything I wanted to, but I have never lied to you. Not about my job, my faith, anything.”

Clearing his throat, Joe looked out across the treetops. “I’ve been with the DEA since I got out of the army five years ago. They offer a lot more leeway for a maverick like me. Especially the undercover work I’ve been doing most of that time. But these last months with Taylor wasn’t for them. That was private. A crusade, you might say.”

“How in the world did
you
get involved in all this?”

He looked at Vicki again. “It’s a bit of a long story.”

Vicki wrinkled her nose at him. “We’ve got until my plane leaves. So long as the pilot has no objection.”

Joe grinned. “So be it. But first, I want you to understand about Bill. You know what happened that night twenty years ago. But afterward . . . well, Bill never really quite forgave himself, firm believer though he was in what they were doing down here. Especially when it became evident over the next years what a monster they’d let walk that night in Raul Hernandez. Taylor had been with the agency for a long time. But within five years of your parents’ death, he was out of the CIA. Before he left, he warned the agency that Hernandez was out of control and too dangerous to keep using.

"Anyway, when things calmed down a bit, Bill bought his land and did what he could to help the people create jobs, establish the center. If he couldn’t make up for that past miscarriage of justice, at least he could make a difference for the future. But then things started getting uneasy again. Alpiro was moving in with that UPN handover coming up. His units had already taken over biosphere security. When the massacre happened, Bill didn’t know what was going on. Certainly not that Raul Hernandez was back in town. He just knew it was all beginning again.

“Unfortunately, the biosphere was under Alpiro’s jurisdiction, and Alpiro had a lot of clout. His UPN unit was raking up a lot of successful ops. Bill had no proof, and he was in no condition to mount any serious investigation. So he called an old friend.”

 “You?” Vicki asked.

“No—my father.”

"Then your father’s still alive?” Why had Vicki assumed Joe was as alone as she? Because of the drifter persona he projected?

“Alive and kicking, though long retired from the military. I hope you can meet him sometime. You’d like him. He’s a lot more respectable than his son.” A ghost of a smile.

Joe was silent for a moment before going on slowly. “You see, he was the third American in those pictures. For him it was different. As a Special Forces instructor, he’d come down, train these guys, and leave. He was horrified to walk in on what his latest graduate had done with that training. Funny thing is, the only reason my father and the others were there was because Raul Hernandez, the highest ranking of their new recruits, wanted to show off to his American buddies—and maybe show them how much they were indebted to him. It never occurred to him that his new allies might have any problem with his tactics for eliminating guerrilla sympathizers. Including some bleeding-heart expat journalist.