Open Pit (12 page)

On his way off shift, Cristóbal lingers a moment, standing outside the door of the shed speaking quietly to Rita, who looks almost human as she leans gently towards him. Danielle notices that when they're together, Rita acts differently, less mean. They seem married, but how could that be? How could Cristóbal, Danielle's favourite, who seems utterly lacking in cruelty despite everything, with his gangly limbs, his caved-in chest and his goofy hat-over-ski-mask ensemble, choose Rita as a wife? Danielle wonders if there's more to this compact woman than she's letting them see.

As soon as Cristóbal leaves, though, the Rita Danielle has come to abhor returns. Steely. Hungry for conflict. It takes her five minutes to figure out how to start one of her games. The painted mouth in her ski mask turns up in a leer. She pulls a small
MP3
player from her pocket, tucks the earbuds under the mask and turns up the volume so loud it's audible throughout the shed. Danielle doesn't recognize the tune — she rarely listens to music — but when she looks over, Martin is glaring at Rita, his mouth forming the words “
One love. One love
.” Now Danielle remembers him handing the player over after they were yanked from the bus. The kidnappers took everything. Music, watches, nail clippers, keys. Access to these possessions is controlled by Pepe, who decides when they need everything from fresh underwear to a hairbrush.

Martin clearly wants his music back. He puts yet another cigarette in his mouth, unlit. Rita pretends not to notice. She bobs her head and hums out of tune like a teenager alone in her bedroom. Two songs in, when she must feel she's sufficiently agitated them, she puts the player away. She stands and saunters in her loosely tied boots over to Pierre and Tina, taking a seat on the far side of Pierre, dispersing hay dust. She knows a little English. More, anyway, than Danielle thought, because she starts talking to Pierre, keeping her voice at a whisper so that he has to lean in. This is meant to scare the rest of them, and it works.

When she's finished, Rita nods seriously at Pierre, who looks back intently, as if confirming something. Then she returns to the far wall, laying her rifle across her lap. “Stop looking at me, all of you,” she says in Spanish. Danielle doesn't need to translate. Everyone tries to find somewhere else to put their eyes. “And tell Pierre he's allowed to choose one person to whisper to,” Rita adds.

“Pierre,” says Danielle.

He nods without looking up.

“She says you can whisper what she said to one person.”

That gets his attention. Pierre shoots Danielle a questioning look then turns to Rita to verify. When she eggs him on with a nod, Pierre makes the obvious choice. Antoine, who's still holding his cards, puts them down slowly, like he thinks it's a set-up and he doesn't want to bite. Rita rolls her eyes. “
Vaya!
” she says, pointing to Pierre. Slowly, Antoine walks over to his friend. Looking a bit hurt, Tina trades places with him, sinking into his spot and twirling her hair around one finger, as she tends to do. Then Antoine pulls off Pierre's gag again and listens while his friend whispers in his ear. Afterwards, the gag back on, they sit staring at one another, exchanging secret meanings.

This is not funny. Something has happened. Danielle has nothing to go on except her profound distrust of Rita. Can she be involving these two in some plot? A product of her deranged mind?

Pierre might be susceptible to someone who would make him feel like the heroic young man of his dreams. Danielle was that way once too, so she knows how you can get taken in. Rita will use him. To mutiny? She tries to read Rita's eyes.

In response, Rita produces a feral grin.

Danielle switches to silently begging Pierre not to take anything this woman says seriously, explaining to him with her eyes that Pepe really will kill anyone who disobeys, while telling herself that Antoine is measured, reasonable. A bike mechanic. A good kid. Not someone to scheme or partake in risky plans, even for his oldest friend.

Pepe appears in the door. Everyone jumps like he's the dad and they've all been naughty. “
Daniela,
” he says, looking around suspiciously. He signals for her to come out.

Danielle's heart sinks. She wants to stay, to be like the others, not a conspirator. But she gets up, feeling all their faces turn, their eyes burrowing into her, but especially Pierre's, which, when she looks back, seem to be doing some very scary math.

2:40PM
. Outskirts, Los Pampanos, Morazán

Julia Rendita is in her church clothes when her husband is pushed through her door by two strangers and hits the dirt floor with a thud. Babbling and slobbering, he tries to prop himself up on his single arm but fails. As the strangers step over him, Julia registers that he's not the one they're after. She picks up her baby from the
cochón
and thrusts him into the arms of her second youngest, Ufemia, then advances to meet the men, giving her daughter her best chance to get out.

Each takes one of Julia's arms and pulls.

“
Perdóname!
” her husband calls, crying now, whimpering, as they drag her past him. “
Perdóname!
”

The stark afternoon light hurts Julia's eyes. The strangers shove her into the front of a truck. One of them has square shoulders like a rack, the other a thick beard. She screams and wiggles furiously, but they're too strong and pay her no attention. Julia's face ends up pressed into the dashboard beside a sticker with an image of a chunky fist holding a lock. Below it in block letters, a word: MAXSEGURO.

Some neighbours have come out to watch. What else can they do? Julia wishes desperately that she'd never been approached by that woman who offered her the money, that she had never agreed to go up the old trail.

The men get in and the truck starts up, driving for a long time. When it stops, one of them sticks a gun to Julia's belly and tells her she's going to lead them to the place where she met the kidnappers. Then she can go back to her children. Thinking of her baby threatens to make Julia's breasts leak, so she shakes the image of him away, concentrating on staying alive. She tells the men the truth: she never saw anyone. The men pull her roughly from the truck and make her walk anyway. Julia remembers her childhood in the refugee camp, how people tried to reason with the guards. Those soldiers never listened either.

Outside the vehicle, there is nothing in sight except trees. But as she steadies herself, Julia distinguishes a familiar hilly landscape to her left. She points her feet instinctively towards them.

When, nearly four hours later, Julia reaches the bottom of the shelf of rock she rose to that day, she mumbles that this is it — where they left the envelope. The men snap at her to shut up, forcing her into a crouch. One keeps Julia there, a hand cupped over her mouth, as the other moves ahead. Eventually, he returns, looking frustrated. Obviously, whoever left the package for her to pick up is long gone. She could've told them that.

The men make a joke about Julia being a stupid
campesina
and push her back and forth like a ball until she falls. Their game is unnerving and demeaning. Julia considers the excitement she felt retrieving the envelope, counting out the money, and the thrill of travelling to the capital to leave the tiny memory card at the newspaper office the woman had given her directions to. Except for the refugee camp, Julia has rarely left Los Pampanos. Now she wonders if she'll die for those experiences.

One of the men takes her by the waist, pressing one of her arms to her side. The other, with the big shoulders, takes her free arm and forces it back until Julia hears a crack. Her knees buckle. Her mouth fills with saliva. “Now you match your husband,” the man says, matter-of-factly, and in Julia's mind, the pain blossoms into a clear image of these two men entering the bar where her husband always goes to meet his old war buddies on the days she travels to town to pray. He bragged to them, made a spectacle of himself. If only she'd been able to hide the money.

The one with the beard steps off to make a call on a heavy-looking phone. Julia doesn't care who he's calling or why, but the other shoves her out of earshot at gunpoint, telling her they'll be back to cut off her breasts and kill her children if she tells anyone about where she's been. For good measure, he fires a shot near her feet.

Julia cradles her injured arm. She moves so fast her lungs seize and it becomes difficult to breathe. But she presses on, trees streaming by, night eventually overtaking the sky. Julia runs so long and hard that she enters a terrain of memories from her early life, before the war, when she collected herbs in this area with her grandmother, so that when she gets back onto the familiar trail, free to return home, she feels almost happy.

“We're close,
Jefe,
” says the man, wind creating sucking noises around him.

“How close?” Sobero shifts the receiver to his other hand.

“We'll find them. Soon.”

Sobero is in his office, facing a bank of security cameras. On one black-and-white screen, he can see Mitch Wall moving along a corridor followed by that public relations flack, Barraza. Both men are agitated, talking with their hands. Finally, Wall is beginning to show signs of genuine concern. He's understanding that this incident will not be wished away.

“I chose you because I know your skills, but you have achieved nothing,” Sobero says into the phone. “I am only so patient.”

“
Sí, Jefe
. We'll find them.”

Sobero hangs up angrily. It's boring to have to threaten such negligible elements, but so far they are the only weapons in his arsenal. He remains seated a moment longer, watching Wall. Sobero knows his employer has tended to see this abduction only in the narrowest terms. Wall isn't aware of its broader implications, either politically or for Sobero's own status. Sobero experiences a sharp prick of irritation at this: he must always consider Wall's interests, while Wall will never consider his. The irritation passes, though. Sobero decided long ago that ultimately Wall's ignorance is advantageous. He picks up his phone again. If his trackers are moving this slowly, he will need to explore other avenues.

4:45PM
. Morazán

When Danielle has taken down all his words, and Pepe has given her, as he did last night, about an hour to turn them into a coherent text, he comes back. Danielle is still scribbling, but Pepe swipes the paper from under the pen. He ignores her dirty look and sits across from her to read silently.

At that time, most people in the countryside were hungry. They never were. Enrique's father was on good terms with the local
patrón,
so the
guardia
didn't bother them. For these reasons, his family was considered well off.

His mother was religious. She's the one who'd gone to meetings organized by the priests who were teaching people to use the Bible to think about oppression.

Someone found out about it and made a list. That's what Enrique thinks happened. The military came into town a few times to scare people. After that, like some other men, his father took the family to sleep every night in the bush above Ixtán, on the slopes of El Pico, to avoid a night raid.

But there were a lot of spies then. People needed the money. The military played on old rivalries. Someone must have told.

One night, Enrique had to go to the bathroom. He didn't wake anyone up and went off by himself, making a game of it, pretending to explore the mountain. He felt grown up. There was no moon and he got a bit lost. He'd just sighted the outline of that big tree when he heard the noise. People were coming.

His mother yelled. Enrique stayed where he was, behind a rock that was nearly as tall as him, trying to figure out a way to save her — all of them. He had a younger sister, Liliana. She was fat and funny and stronger than a boy, and they were always together. But he was so scared. If he stood up on his toes and looked over the rock, he could see figures moving in and out of flashlight beams.

For the next hour he listened to the soldiers taunt his father, saying he was a subversive, that his wife and daughters were whores. They must've done something else too because Enrique heard his mother scream in pain. Enrique started running towards her, but an arm grabbed him by the waist. A second soldier put a gun to his chest and laughed, said he'd caught one. One to keep.

Enrique howled for his family. And his mother yelled back until the men stuffed something into his mouth and took him away. That's when he started his life as a soldier.

But his family didn't go anywhere. To this day, he believes they're still at El Pico. Exactly how they fell when they were shot, probably in a shallow hole. He knows because this is how the military did it in those days, how he was trained to do it.

Since then, no one has ever agreed to acknowledge them. After the Ixtán evictions, the mine controlled the land and it was impossible to —