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Hawker felt his stomach roll. “Why did we even bring weapons? I don't see any men down there.”

“Of course you don't. This is the time when the
rabalo negro
spawns, the black snook fish. The men are all out on the river near the sea netting them, to be dried later by the women. Our propaganda people, of course, will decide that the men that were not in the village were off fighting with government forces. The men that remained behind, heavily armed with the most modern weapons, fought like cowards, for they held no true faith in their cause.”

“But that's all a lie,” said Hawker.

“Have you not learned anything from the American journalists?” Curtis almost shouted. “Facts may be used any way one wishes to get one's point across. Besides, I do not deal in lies or in truth. I deal in only one thing, James—victory! Now, are you going to help us or not?”

Hawker got down off his horse, thinking,
How in the hell am I going to warn those villagers in time?
He said, “I came to help, Colonel. Just tell me what to do.”

“That's the spirit, man!” Curtis turned and called for his rebel troops to gather around him. “This,” he said in Spanish, “will be our plan of operation.…”

nine

A plan to murder fifty unarmed women, children, and old men doesn't have to be complex to be successful.

This one wasn't.

Curtis picked a squad of eight men to maneuver around to where the village backed up against the next hill. From there, upon a prearranged signal, the squad would open fire, driving the occupants out of their huts and into the village's center green. Beyond that was the small river where the women now washed clothes. Curtis knew that the women and children would try to cross the river to safety. Once they were slowed by the water, the rest of the troops would attack.

Curtis referred to the rest of the troops as the “machete brigade.”

Hawker realized that he had almost no chance of saving the villagers. But he did know that his only chance to escape might be during the confusion of the initial attack.

After that, Hawker was sure that Curtis would keep him closely guarded until he was absolutely certain that Hawker was on their side.

And James Hawker knew that that day would never come.

“Colonel Curtis,” Hawker said as the man dismissed his troops.

“Yes, Major Hawker—I think I can call you major now, don't you?”

“Ah, thank you very much, sir. But I wanted to ask a favor of you.”

Curtis looked at him shrewdly. “Oh?”

“Yeah. I was hoping you'd let me go with the eight-man strike force.”

Curtis thought for a moment. “You are that anxious to prove yourself to us?”

Hawker sensed a trap in the question. He shook his head. “I'm not going to bullshit you on this, Colonel. The truth is, I really can't see myself lopping off kids' heads. I mean, it may take a while for me to get used to that sort of thing. I don't mind being the first to attack the huts, though. It's possible that these people have the means to fight back. That makes it seem a little more fair, and it'll be easier on my conscience.” Hawker paused, as if he were a teenage boy asking his father's advice. “Does that make sense to you, sir? I'm not a coward, and you've convinced me that what you're about to do is necessary. But, damn it, I just don't want to do it. Not yet, anyway.”

Wellington Curtis smiled and wrapped his arm around Hawker. “I know exactly how you feel, boy. Hell, it took me nearly a year to get my mind on right. I thought that Pendleton and Greg Warren were animals at first, remember? You want to go with the attack force, you just go right on ahead. Sergeant Miles? Miles, get your ass over here!”

Sergeant Miles was one of the rawboned American men, little more than a teenager with blond hair, freckles, and light blue eyes. “Sergeant, we've got a little change in plans here.”

Standing at attention, Miles said mechanically, “Sir! Yes, sir!”

“Mr. Hawker will be going along with you. He has the acting rank of major, and you will treat him as a superior.”

“Sir! Yes, sir!”

“However, Sergeant, you already have your orders from me concerning our attack on the village, and those orders will stand. Understand?”

“Sir! Yes, sir!”

“Take good care of Major Hawker, Miles. If anything happens to him, it is your ass, boy. Questions?”

“No, sir. I understand, sir!”

Curtis smiled. “One more thing, Miles. See to it that Major Hawker is given a weapon that works. One of my subordinates insisted that he be given a dummy until we were sure of his intentions.”

Hawker felt the sweat bead on his forehead but said nothing. If he had actually tried to escape earlier, he would have been dead in a second, his head left to the vultures on the hill of skulls.

So the vigilante followed Sergeant Miles and seven other American soldiers through the jungle on the two-mile journey to the other side of the hill. As they chopped their way through the bush, one scene stuck in Hawker's mind, a scene that had taken place just before they had left. Curtis had called Laurene Catacomez to his side. Then, with a glance as if to make sure that Hawker was watching, he pulled the woman roughly to him and kissed her brutally on the lips while his meaty left hand pulled the buttons of her blouse away, found her bare breast, and massaged it roughly.

Hawker expected the woman to recoil, if only briefly. She did not. Her eyes immediately rolled back, her face went slack, and her hips lifted to meet Curtis's. She was not shocked, not surprised. This, Hawker could tell, had happened before. Maybe it was a pre-battle ritual. A quickie in the bushes with his slave troops watching, just before the slaughter started. There was something wild, feral, in the demonstration: the bull male joining with the most desirable female to prove his dominance, to prove that he controlled the herd. And the woman was all for it.

The colonel's whore, she had called herself. She had not been lying. She was the colonel's property, body and soul. She had loaned herself to Hawker as an amusement.

Now convinced that it had been Laurene who insisted that he be given a dummy weapon, the vigilante turned away grimly, determined to do whatever he had to do to escape this band of savages.

As they made their way to the back of the village, halfway to the next hill, Sergeant Miles dropped back to the end of the line beside Hawker. An awkward, wary silence built between them before Miles finally spoke.

“So you're joining us?”

“Looks like it,” Hawker said simply.

More silence.

“I'm kind of surprised, really,” Miles said in a softer voice.

Hawker looked at him carefully. “Why's that?”

“It's just that I can't see why any outsider, especially from America where this kind of shit doesn't go on, would want to get involved.”

There was something in the man's voice that interested Hawker. “You're fighting for a good cause, aren't you?”

The man shrugged. “If you call killing women and kids a good cause, yeah.”

“You don't approve, Sergeant?”

“I don't approve or disapprove. I'm a soldier—or was. Marines, a chopper pilot. I came over here to fight communism. Turns out I'm fighting nothing but women, kids, and dirt farmers. But I still keep my weapon clean and do as I'm told.”

Hawker slowed to let the other seven men draw ahead. He decided to take a chance. “Do you want to know what I really think, Sergeant? I think Wellington Curtis has gone totally insane. He's not a soldier, he's a butcher. And someone needs to stop him.”

Miles stopped cold. “I could shoot you for saying that. In fact, that's exactly what Curtis told me to do. He said he didn't trust you. He said to feel you out, find out what you really thought.”

Hawker's hand grew tighter on his M16. Was this another trap? Had they given him another dummy weapon?

“So what are you going to do, Sergeant?”

Miles thought for a moment, then began to walk again. “I think the two of us are going to get the hell out of here. Together.”

“Just like that?”

“Two men could make it, Mr. Hawker. You don't know how many nights I've lain awake thinking about it. About exactly how to do it. One man wouldn't have much of a chance. But two men would. Two men could leap-frog their way into Masagua, covering each other's asses. Curtis would sure as hell send a hit team, and one man couldn't stay awake long enough to outlast them. Then maybe steal a canoe or something and paddle down the Rio Espiritu. It's supposed to have a couple of rough sets of rapids, and one man alone wouldn't fare too well. That river goes through some pretty remote shit too. Headhunter country, I hear. Little dark men who tie their dicks to their stomachs and use blowguns. No way you want those little bastards to catch you sleeping. The Espiritu comes within fifteen miles of Masagua City. There's a shitty little jetport there, and we could buy ourselves through customs onto a plane to Guatemala City or Bogota, then Miami. But we need money. Good American money. I don't have a cent. Curtis took it all when I arrived. That's another reason I need a partner.”

Hidden in his belt Hawker always kept ten one-hundred-dollar bills. In his pocket, in traveler's checks, he had another five hundred plus change. “Yeah,” said the vigilante, “I've got money.”

The sergeant stopped walking again and faced the vigilante. “What do you say, Mr. Hawker? You want to give it a try?”

“Why didn't you pick one of your buddies to try this plan on, Miles? You don't know me. Curtis could have stuck me in here as a plant.”

“That's right, he could have. But I feel a hell of a lot safer risking the idea on a stranger than on the guys here. Curtis has most of them brainwashed. Hell, they're as crazy as he is. Nobody trusts anybody else around here. Everybody is a spy.
Everybody
. You fuck up in Curtis's camp, friend, and public whipping is the best thing that can happen to you. That punishment covers everything up to slouching in the chow line. You do anything worse than slouch and the next punishment is public beheading. I don't know about you, Mr. Hawker, but crawling around in the dirt while my neck squirts blood ain't my idea of a dreamy way to die. I mean, this place really sucks, but why take unnecessary risks? I think there're probably other guys in camp who feel like I do. They'd love to get the hell away. I mean, I
can't
be the only one who wants to puke when I think about the … the women and kids I've killed. But everyone is afraid to discuss it, even when we're alone, for fear somebody will squeal.”

“Yeah. I see what you mean, Miles. So when would you want to go? Tomorrow? Next week?”

“Next week? Shit, we need to get the fuck out of here
now
, Mr. Hawker. I mean, immediately. I wasn't kidding when I said that Curtis doesn't trust you. He told me so himself. That lady of his, Laurene, we call her the black fucking widow. See the way Curtis took her into the bushes back there and started humping her? They do that before every battle. Right out in the open. Curtis taps her on the head, and her fucking pants fall down, man. She gets off on blood and violence and shit like that. Never misses a beheading, that bitch doesn't. Probably gets her jeans all wet just thinking about it. She's the one who told Curtis not to trust you. You can bet on that.”

Hawker tried to reconcile the tender moments he had had with Laurene Catacomez and the picture of her Miles now painted. He couldn't. He said, “We're not particularly well prepared for a long trip through the jungle, Sergeant. Between us we have two canteens of water, and that's all.” The vigilante watched Miles carefully to see how he reacted, to see how serious he was about escaping.

The sergeant's face became animated. “We don't need anything else, Mr. Hawker. Hell, I've got my survival knife. And we've both got weapons. Curtis trained us on how to survive in the jungle. Shit, he may be as nutty as Ma Brown's muffins, but that old fuck knows his business when it comes to guerrilla fighting and survival. It should only take us about three days to get to Masagua City, and we'd have no trouble at all living out there for three years. There's food and water every place you look, man.”

Hawker nodded. “Okay, Sergeant, you're on. We escape. Today.”

“Not just today, Mr. Hawker,
now
.”

The vigilante shook his head. “Leave, knowing that Curtis is going to butcher the people in that village? No thanks, Miles.”

“But there's no way you can stop them, Mr. Hawker. Not and survive, anyway.”

“Aren't you in charge of this squad?”

“Well, yeah, but I've already had my orders from Curtis.”

“Did your men hear the orders?”

“No.…”

“Sergeant, Curtis's orders just changed.…”

ten

From beneath the giant guanacaste trees on the hillside Hawker could look down into the village. They were much closer now, only three hundred yards away, and he could see the people clearly. In the center of the village a clatter of boys, all ages, played a game with sticks and a leather ball. They shouted and wrestled and laughed. Naked toddlers, brown as the earth, scampered after the gang, not quite fast enough to keep up. Hawker could smell the wood smoke from the cooking fires, and women sat in the shade weaving or tending the food or carrying buckets to and from the river.

Sergeant Miles said to the seven men crouched around Hawker, “Gentlemen, this is Colonel Curtis's friend, Major Hawker. He is now in command of this mission. You will obey him as you would obey the colonel. Is that clear?”

“Why didn't Colonel Curtis tell us that,” shot back a dour, weasel-faced American. Hawker had noticed the man before: greasy black hair, ragged battle dress, swastika tattoo on right forearm; a dope smoker who didn't even try to hide the cigar-size joint he toked on during the hike. The vigilante glared into the man's glazed, dark eyes. “Since when does Colonel Curtis need to clear his orders with you, mister?”