Atlanta Extreme (5 page)

Then they were out of the passes, and Hawker could see a fast clear river below, rushing through the lush tropical growth. The land was wild with bright flowers, gigantic mahogany and guanacaste trees, waterfalls.

“It looks like paradise,” said Hawker.

“It is paradise, James. On the south side of the river is Masagua, my country. Our army has been training on the north side of the river to avoid the government troops.”

“And how does the government of Guatemala feel about that?”

“I doubt if the government of Guatemala even knows that this valley exists. Very few know of it. That is why Colonel Curtis has chosen it for our training grounds. Like all Americans, you are surprised that places of beauty still exist in the world unknown to men and governments and builders. I find it comforting that in my country more is unknown than known.” The woman tapped the throttle and the plane decreased speed. “Hold on; the field—see it? That clearing. I'm going to circle once before landing. Please keep your eye open for soldiers.”

“Laurene, you've got to be kidding. An entire division could hide in that jungle without being seen.”

The woman reached back, picked up and threw a canvas covering on the floor. What had been beneath the canvas were several automatic weapons, a crate of ammunition, and a box of grenades. “I am not kidding—please look for soldiers. But, if they are there, we are ready. Okay?”

Hawker picked up one of the automatics. It was one of the early-model Uzi submachine guns. Its wooden stock made it stern-heavy, awkward. He slid in a full clip of 9-mm. parabellum cartridges. “Because I have no choice,” he said, “I'm ready.”

The woman dropped the plane lower, circling. “I see a jeep in the trees,” Hawker said. “There's a man standing beside it. He's wearing a wide-brimmed hat.”

“Yes,” said the woman. “That will be Mario. He has come to pick us up. Do you see anything else?”

“Trees; just a lot of trees—hey, and there's something … something climbing through the trees like crazy.”

The woman banked lower. She laughed. “Monkeys. They are frightened by the plane. See how they rush to escape to the highest branches?”

Hawker did not smile. “Right. The highest branches.” Hawker checked the safety tang of the old Uzi. Full automatic was two notches forward of safety.

The woman nosed the plane down easily, dropping it over the trees into the wind, touching the wheels onto the rough grass as the carriage of the plane creaked and rattled like an old car. She brought the plane to a stop at the end of the short runway as Mario, the tiny man in the wide hat, came driving out to meet them in a red Toyota Land Cruiser with no top.

“We'll unload the luggage and weapons, then tie down the plane and cover it with a camouflaged netting,” the woman said as they jumped down to the ground. “We have about a twenty-mile ride before we meet the horses.”

“Wellington Curtis will meet us there?”

“Colonel Curtis is with the troops. He never leaves them.”

“After that plane ride I don't blame him.”

Carrying the Uzi, Hawker grabbed his duffel. While the woman threw out her baggage and supplies Hawker kept his eye on the line of trees. He had never seen such huge trees—even in Venezuela. The trees were ancient, massive, black. Steam seemed to rise from the trees, and the elephant-ear-size leaves sagged in the stillness and the heat. The air was gaseous with the smell of vegetation, rot, black earth. In the distance there were the screams of birds and the chattering of monkeys. The sounds, the humid smell of jungle, the stillness, all touched some prehistoric nerve in Hawker, some chord he recognized but could not identify. He could feel the chord deep within him, a dark thing with catlike eyes and teeth of the carnivore, the chord of the beast. In that startling moment Hawker felt as if he should rip his clothes away, grab the woman by the hair, run her naked into the jungle to hunt, to rear offspring, to survive.

“James? Are you all right?”

“What? Oh, yeah, sure. I was just listening to the monkeys. They make quite a racket.” In his mind he reminded himself: Why would monkeys frightened by a plane escape to the highest limbs of the trees? “And I was just watching the line of trees,” he said. “You said to watch, didn't you?”

“Have you seen something?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“Not yet.”

Hawker and the woman helped the little man, Mario, load the supplies into the Land Cruiser. The woman kept up a rattling dialogue in Spanish. Hawker's Spanish was fair, but he had to concentrate if he wanted to understand. Now, though, he was concentrating on something else.

When the Toyota was loaded, the camouflage netting staked down, Mario slid in behind the wheel, Laurene Catocamez took the passenger seat, and Hawker sat on the luggage, one hand on the roll bar, the other resting the little submachine gun against the side of his head. As they started out across the field toward the jungle, Hawker quietly opened the top of one of the crates. Six grenades sat within, like metal eggs in compartments.

He put two of the grenades at his feet and squatted down, waiting. If he was wrong, it would do no harm. If he was right, he wanted to be ready.

Unfortunately he was right.

The soldiers opened fire way too soon, when the Land Cruiser was two hundred meters from the line of trees. The first hail of fire slapped through the grass with a scything sound followed by the muted
poppa-pop
of the weapons.

Behind them the plane exploded in bright orange flames and black smoke.

Something hot splattered across Hawker's face as Mario, the driver, slumped sideways. The Land Cruiser veered wildly and the woman screamed. Hawker jumped into the front of the vehicle and saw, in a look, that the driver was dead. He rolled the corpse out into the grass, and grabbed the wheel, and turned sharply away from the fire.

“Get down!” Hawker yelled, shoving the woman roughly to the floor.

He began to drive a serpentine route across the field, gradually angling toward what appeared to be an opening in the forest. Slugs
ping-tinged
off the body of the vehicle, and Hawker knew that at any moment the Toyota could explode into flames.

“Who are they?” Hawker demanded.

The woman was in hysterics. “My God, they shot poor Mario! Why did you leave him? Answer me, damn it! Answer me!”

“Because he was dead! Who are those soldiers?”

“Oh, Mario. Poor, poor Mario.…”

Just ahead, fifty meters away behind some bushes, Hawker saw movement. He stood, his foot still on the accelerator, and opened fire. On full automatic, the Uzi shredded the bushes. One man in army khaki jumped to his feet, clawing at the black holes where his eyes once were. Two others tumbled out, their chests oozing red gore. Other men, he saw, climbed farther into the underbrush.

Hawker shoved the Uzi at the woman. “Stick a new clip in this. Did you hear me?! Reload this or we're all going to die!”

As the Land Cruiser careened past the dead soldiers Hawker pulled the pins of two grenades and tossed the grenades into the brush. They exploded behind the Toyota, and in the mirror Hawker saw two men stagger drunkenly into the clearing. The blast had sheared off one of the men's arms, and the stump that remained spurted blood.

“Is it reloaded yet?” Hawker demanded.

The woman thrust the Uzi at him. Her eyes were glazed with shock and rage. “Yes, damn it! But I want you to know right now that I hold you responsible for the loss of Mario!”

“He was dead, damn it!”

“Do you know that for sure? Are you a doctor? At least we could have carried him with us and given him a proper burial!”

“Christ, you act like he was your brother or something.”

“He
was
, you bastard. He was.…”

six

The next five minutes seemed like five hours.

The vigilante carried on a running gun-battle with soldiers. More than once he thought of abandoning the vehicle and the woman and striking out into the jungle alone.

Instead he clung stubbornly to the wheel with his left hand while holding the Uzi in his right.

What had looked to be an opening in the forest was really nothing more than a muddy logging path. The Land Cruiser roared down it, jumping and jolting through the potholes. Once they drove into what appeared to be a wide puddle. The puddle was so deep that water came up over the floorboards, yet the Land Cruiser continued to run.

Ahead, someone had dragged a tree across the trail. In the bushes on either side Hawker could see men waiting. He slid down into the seat, touched the brake, and made ready to shift into reverse. But in the rearview mirror he could see more soldiers running after them.

“Grab one of the automatics and put down some fire behind us,” Hawker ordered.

The woman wiped her eyes defiantly, but she took up a weapon, slid in a fresh clip, and began to fire. She fired tentatively at first. But then her anger took control, and she began to spray her little Uzi back and forth passionately, a look of sheer hatred on her face.

“You sons of whores!” she screamed, sobbing as she fired. “You cowards!”

Behind them, soldiers tumbled to the ground or dived for the trees, but there were still too many of them. Hawker realized that somehow he would have to get past the fallen tree and the soldiers, who waited in ambush ahead.

The vigilante jammed the Land Cruiser into four-wheel-drive low, then upshifted into second, gaining speed.

“Hold on!” he yelled. “Reload and get ready to fire ahead of us.”

Hawker sat crouched behind the wheel, headed straight for the fallen tree. Then, at the last moment, he swung the wheel to the left just as the soldiers stood to open fire. He could see the looks on their faces clearly as the red vehicle bore down on them, could see their eyes grow wide as they realized that the Toyota was going to run them down.

The first soldier they hit flew up onto the hood of the jeep, a glazed look in his eyes. Hawker tipped his submachine gun over the windshield and squeezed off a quick burst. The 9-mm. slugs knocked the soldier away, into the grass.

The woman was laying a sheet of heavy fire off to the right, and Hawker grabbed another grenade and tossed it overhand to his left.

Behind them was an explosion and more screams of agony.

Then, unexpectedly, there was silence, silence but for the roaring whine of the four-by-four as it strained against its gears. Silence but for the sobbing of the woman as she reached for still another fresh clip.

Hawker took her wrist. “It's okay,” he said soothingly. “I think that's it. I think we've made it.”

The woman tore her hand away and jammed in a fresh clip, anyway. “You do not know them!” she snapped. “They are not men, they are animals! Now that they have found us they will not give up. They will never stop!”

“Fine,” he said, “just stay ready, then. But don't fire unless you need to. The sound of a weapon carries a lot farther than the sound of this jeep.”

“Bastards!” she shouted at the trees.

Hawker turned his concentration to driving, dodging potholes, taking the best route through the gloom of the rain forest. He drove silently for many minutes before the woman beside him sighed, then settled back into the seat. She lit a cigarette with shaking hands.

“I'm sorry about your brother,” Hawker said softly. “If I had known, I wouldn't have shoved his body out. But he was dead. There's no doubt about that. But he was killed instantly. He probably didn't feel a thing. He didn't suffer.”

It was so long before she responded that Hawker thought she hadn't heard him. “He suffered enough in his life,” she said finally. “I'm glad he didn't suffer in death. The way I acted back there, I am sorry. It was my way of mourning for him. I will miss my little Mario, but he is dead now, and there is nothing I can do about it. He is gone.”

“You didn't tell me you had a brother.”

“There are many things I did not tell you about me. Mario was my youngest brother. There was a sister too. I raised them both, from the time I was thirteen when we were left alone. I was, in many ways, their mother. It was very difficult for all of us. We were much too young to be on our own.”

“Your sister? Is she … still with you?”

Laurene Catacomez shrugged. “I do not know. When she was fourteen, I was sixteen. A man from Guatemala City came to our village. He was very fat, very rich. He had a gold tooth. My sister was very beautiful with the body of a woman despite her age. He took her away. He said he wanted her to be his wife, but I felt he took her away to sell her on the street. I told her this, but she would not listen. She was a dreamy thing, our little Limona. She liked pretty dresses and bright ribbons. The man promised her an automobile. Nothing could stop her from going. So then it was just Mario and I. He was a good brother, and when I became interested in the rebel cause, he followed along, not because he believed in the cause but because he did not want to be alone. He had not the heart for fighting, so Colonel Curtis allowed him to do the cooking and other chores for the camp. I felt sure that I would die by violence before my dear Mario.”

“Laurene, the soldiers who attacked us, were they Guatemalan?”

“No. I do not think so. I am sure they were government forces from Masagua.”

“Yet they crossed the river into Guatemala? Weren't they taking a serious risk?”

The woman's laugh was sarcastic. “The borders are not so well drawn in Central America, nor are they so well respected. The government forces live only to kill. It does not matter to them where they kill.”

“Then they must know where your rebel army trains. If that's true, doesn't it seem reasonable to expect them to attack as soon as they regroup?”

“Yes,” she said, “it does seem reasonable.” Looking at Hawker, she added, “My poor Americano. You came here for a brief meeting, yet you have landed in the middle of a war. Let us hope you get out alive.”