Betrayed (32 page)

Cesar shook his head again.

Vicki studied his expression with sudden comprehension. “You know where the girls might be, don’t you? At least you have some idea where they might be headed.”

With a glance at the crowd of villagers milling around the yard, Cesar said in a low voice, “It is feared the girls have returned home to their village—the one that was destroyed. They have been determined to go home. That this is not possible, Alicia and Gabriela have refused to believe.”

“But isn’t that good news? If you know where the girls were headed, it should be simple enough to follow the trail and look for them. Look, if it’s the distance, we can take the pickup. It’s four-wheel drive, right?” Vicki shot a challenging look at Joe, standing silently a pace away, watching, listening but contributing nothing. “Or we can still contact the base. If a ground vehicle can’t get in, maybe one of their helicopters can.”

“No, that is not possible. Where the village was, where they may have gone—” Cesar motioned toward the mountain range, now shrouded with rain clouds, rising behind the plateau—“is up there where it is prohibited for anyone to enter. If it is even discovered that Alicia and Gabriela have returned to their home,
los militares
will be very angry. It is felt . . .” He hesitated before saying carefully, “The consensus is that perhaps it is best to wait. To hope that the children will return of their own accord. When they are hungry enough, they will choose to come back.”

Vicki saw with disbelief that he was serious. Saw the fear on the faces around her. The nods of assent on bystanders who were listening. What volumes this spoke of the past that these people could still be so frightened of their authorities. But this wasn’t the past.

 “And if they get lost or hurt? Or fall down the mountain? Or if they do find their home and freak out over what happened?” Vicki took a deep breath as she tried to keep her tone patient. “All these environmental regulations were meant to protect the biosphere from erosion and poaching. Not to keep people from looking for a couple of lost kids. Do you really think the UPN or the army is going to come after you for something like that? Cesar, you work for the Ministry of Environment. So do I, for that matter. Even Joe here, if not technically. We have as much right up there as these UPN soldiers. I mean, this is ridiculous! What are they going to do? Shoot us for going in there to look for the girls?”

She’d spoken in Spanish, and her challenging glance was now for the whole group of villagers who’d fallen silent around her. No one contradicted her assertion, but neither was there any response in the stubborn blankness of their faces.

“I’ll prove you’re worried for nothing. Cesar, is there a road up that way?”

“There was a track market trucks and the army once used connected to what is now the nature trail,” Cesar admitted. “There are men here who could show the way. If you truly believe
los militares
will permit it.”

“We won’t ask them. What’s the saying—better to ask forgiveness than permission? If you don’t think the army base will help, then Joe here can drive us there, and we can at least take a look.”

Joe’s expression was as neutral as the villagers’, but he switched to English as he answered. “Vicki, I appreciate your motives for wanting to get involved. But my gut instinct tells me these guys are probably right. The military doesn’t take kindly to having their orders ignored, no matter what reason. May I recommend your earlier suggestion? If these people are afraid to get the army involved—and I’ve no doubt they’ve had good enough reasons—then contact the base yourself. See if you can get Alpiro to mobilize some resources. Or if you can get through to Camden, have him put the pressure on. I’d be happy to drive you over there myself.”

“And how long would that take?” Vicki cried out. “Nightfall? You know how slow everything moves around here. How about a compromise? Cesar?”

Vicki switched back to Spanish. She was undoubtedly being the stereotypical heavy-handed Ugly American. But she was feeling increasing urgency and exasperation. How long had those two precious little girls been without food, possibly even water? Vicki could almost feel the twisting of hunger in her own stomach. The chill of damp clothing. The fear and lostness. How could these people take such a serious affair so calmly? Especially since the sullen, dark clouds drifting down from the mountain heights had now settled low over the plateau, bringing with it the damp drizzle of the
chipi-chipi
. The heavy, cold tang of the breeze promised ground mists close behind. Once fog closed in, even without darkness a search would be impossible.

“If you have some men who could guide the way, why don’t we head over to the checkpoint where the nature trail starts? We can explain the situation to the UPN guards there. Have them contact their base to let them know we’re heading up to look for the girls. If they send for more help, all the better. Either way, we don’t lose more time, and everyone will be happy.” Vicki gave Joe a hard look. “Bill did say we could use the truck and you until dark?”

An eager lightening of hope on dark faces told Vicki she’d won. As did Joe’s shrug.

The plan’s execution went as smoothly and quickly as she could have hoped. Four men—relatives of some sort, Vicki gathered—were chosen to accompany Cesar and the Americans. Hurrying indoors, Maria returned with a pile of handwoven blankets and a banana leaf wrapped around tortillas. “
Para las niñas
.”  “For the girls.” It was the first Spanish Vicki had heard her speak.

The Ladino pastor stepped up as the Guatemalans were climbing into the pickup bed. “May we pray for your success before you go?”

 “Why don’t you pray as we go?” Joe already had the engine running. “Vicki, far be it for me to push, but if we’re going to do this, we’re rather pressed for time.”

“Yes, please pray for us.” With a wave, Vicki hastily climbed in beside Joe. The pickup was spinning out of the yard before her door clicked shut.

Vicki’s satisfaction lasted as far as the checkpoint. “What do you mean, you won’t let us through? We’re with the center. We have clearance. We were here a couple of weeks ago with a tour, remember? Just call your base. Let me speak to your commanding officer.”

The sentries manning
la garita
, as the guard shack with its long pole across the road was called, numbered less than the pickup contingent. Just three in UPN uniforms. But each cradled an M-16 automatic rifle, and Vicki saw no yielding in those stony expressions.

“That is not necessary,” the guard leaning in Vicki’s rolled-down window answered brusquely. “Our orders are clear. No one is to enter the biosphere without authorization and an escort.”

“Then come with us! Please, you have to understand. There are two small children lost up there. We’re only asking to follow the track. You’re welcome to supervise that we don’t touch the animals or flowers.”

Vicki glanced in dismay past Joe to the metallic gray of a gun barrel thrust through his window. The third guard stood in front of the pole barring the road. They were not going to budge. It was raining in earnest now too, Cesar and his companions in the pickup bed hunkering down under woolen ponchos and Maria’s blankets. .

Vicki turned to Joe. “I guess we’re going to have to go to the base after all. But by the time we get through to anyone, much less get things moving, it’s going to be too dark to get a helicopter in the air. Or find them on the ground.”

She caught Joe checking his watch, and her anger and despair blazed high. “Are you still worried about your schedule when those two little girls are out there freezing? Don’t you get it? If they stay out in this all night, they could die! Or do you just not care?” She twisted cold fingers around each other. “Oh, if only Michael were here. Or Bill. There’s got to be something we can do.”

Joe turned his head, and Vicki was taken aback at the anger on his face. “You have no idea what you’re saying. But fine. You want something done—here goes.”

Ignoring the gun barrel in his face, Joe leaned out the window to say in polite Spanish, “Look,
sargento
—” an exaggeration as the sentry was at most a corporal—“we wouldn’t wish to be uncooperative. If you will contact your commanding officer, Colonel Alpiro, or the rescue center liaison for the Ministry of Environment, Señor Guillermo Taylor, whom you know, they will assure you we have proper authorization to enter the biosphere. Please inform your superiors of our present mission and that we will be happy to accept any escort they would like to send. Now if you could step back so that I might move this vehicle.”

Like I didn’t already try that
, Vicki refrained from saying aloud.

As the guards stepped back from the pickup, Joe smoothly slid the gear selector into reverse. The wheels skidded in the mud as he backed away from the checkpoint. The sentries lowered their weapons and headed back to their guard shack.

The pickup had reversed a dozen yards when Joe hit the brakes. But instead of reversing farther to turn back into the main road, he shifted to drive.

Then, gunning the engine, Joe floored the accelerator.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The sentries stood frozen in the trail, staring at the juggernaut of metal and rubber lumbering toward them. Vicki’s voice rose to a squeak as she braced herself for the impact. But the guards weren’t suicidal. They dived out of the way so that it was the pole that connected with the pickup’s front grille. With a screech of torn aluminum, it landed to one side of the track.

“Bill’s going to kill me for this,” Joe gritted between clenched teeth.

The guards were already back on their feet, M-16s coming up. The vehicle was in four-wheel drive, and with the muddy, rutted condition of the track, they were not going fast enough to possibly evade gunfire.

But it didn’t come. Through the rear cab window, Vicki saw the guards lower their weapons, reaching instead for hand radios. Then the pickup slid around a corner, leaving them out of sight.

Vicki’s hands were trembling in her lap. She couldn’t imagine how the men in the back of the pickup must be shaking. “That wasn’t what I was asking. You could have gotten us killed. You
should
have!”

“Not likely.” Joe spun the pickup around another muddy curve.

Vicki glanced back again. Their Mayan companions were all still there, though they’d dropped flat into the bottom of the pickup bed.

“If you knew anything about guns, you’d know those M-16s weren’t loaded. And if you knew anything about law enforcement down here, you’d know they don’t normally trust low-level sentry duty with ammo. An empty weapon is effective enough, since the locals are as ignorant as you are. Right now they’ll be doing just what you wanted—calling their base for backup. Which will be showing up sooner or later, so I’d suggest finding those kids before that happens. I’m counting on you talking your way out of this with Alpiro and Camden, because trouble with the local law I don’t need.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take full responsibility,” Vicki said stiffly, then added, “And thank you. If we can just find the girls, I’m sure we can clear it up with base later.”

“Good. Then get one of those guys to tell me where I’m going.” Joe took several more bends of the trail at a too-fast slide before he stopped.

Vicki walked back to the pickup bed.

Cesar conferred with his companions, then assured Vicki, “It is far by walking. But in this vehicle, perhaps an hour. Though it may not be possible to drive the full way. The village is not on this road but farther down the mountain.”

That Vicki had already guessed since she’d seen nothing of the sort on her earlier excursion up here. A soft, steady drizzle fell on her as she looked around and above. Except for the brown ribbon of track, there was only a green tangle of trees and leaves and vines all around, so thick that even if they’d scrounged up that helicopter, it couldn’t have done much good through the canopy.

“Are you sure the girls will even be on this trail?” Vicki asked. “I mean, this all looks alike. Even if they were headed for their old home, they could have lost their way and be anywhere.”

Cesar shook his head. “They have been this way often. And they are old enough to know their way.”

Cesar detailed one of the four Mayan villagers to accompany Joe as guide in the cab. The rest stayed in the pickup bed to keep a watch for the two girls. Vicki insisted on joining them, one of Maria’s blankets wrapped around her shoulders. Her lashes blinked away water as she strained her eyes and ears for two brightly woven
huipiles
—or the UPN escort that was bound to catch up with them.

Vicki didn’t relish the inevitable explanation she was going to have to make to Colonel Alpiro. Surely he’d be reasonable, considering the circumstances. After all, he’d proved reasonable enough in the end on the airfield once Michael had showed up to explain. Still, a successful search would make it easier.

But whatever those angry guards were doing back down on the plateau, no sight or sound reached them except the rumble of the pickup’s engine and the long tunnel of the nature trail. Even the birds and monkeys huddled silent out of the weather. This was the trail Vicki had toured with the German team, and it would have been a delightful drive under other circumstances with occasional glimpses through the rain and mist of tumbling slopes, rearing peaks, a waterfall.

From one steep drop-off, Vicki spotted a circular pattern far below that looked like one of the clearings Joe had over-flown on her arrival. Though any blooming of white and purple and scarlet was gone, leaving only one more weed patch hacked out of the cloud forest. Catching a flicker of movement down in the valley, Vicki leaned forward. A herd of highland deer feeding in the clearing, dappled hides blending into the greens and browns of the background?

But a fresh tangle of vegetation cut off her view as the pickup rumbled on, and Vicki caught no other glimpse of human encroachment. Or two little girls.

It was almost exactly the hour Cesar had promised when the pickup stopped. Vicki could see no difference between this stretch of track and that ahead or behind. But the men were already climbing out of the truck. As she joined them by the side of the road, she saw there was indeed a narrow, overgrown track snaking downward from the nature trail. The men were clustered around indentations in the mud. Even Vicki’s inexpert eye could identify them as sandal prints. Small ones.

Joe bent down to touch one. “The girls have been here. And not long ago as the rain hasn’t yet washed these away. They may not have even made the village yet, depending on how far that is. Which I hope it isn’t, because this vehicle isn’t going down that track.”

It wasn’t, the Mayan highlanders assured in chorus.

“Good.” Joe looked up at a glimpse of gray between dripping leaves and vines and branches arched above the track. “If you can be back within the hour, we should make it down before dark. Barely.”

A brief discussion concluded that the four village men who knew the area would follow the sandal tracks while the center personnel waited with the pickup. With no pursuit in evidence, the Mayan villagers had relaxed visibly. Taking with them blankets and the tortillas in their banana leaf wrapping, they disappeared at an easy lope into the brush of the overgrown trail. This time Vicki made no protest to go along. She couldn’t begin to keep up with the speed and stamina with which these highlanders clambered around their mountain home.

Climbing instead into the cab, Vicki tucked the blanket tight against the chill. Joe joined Cesar outside. Through the rear window, Vicki could see them siphoning gas from a fuel drum into the pickup tank. The heavy weave of the blanket held in Vicki’s body heat so that her damp clothing was steaming and she felt almost warm. No wonder the locals preferred their own handiwork to store-bought synthetics.

At least with all this rain, the girls wouldn’t lack water. And those small sandal prints proved this mad expedition up here hadn’t been so crazy. Surely even Colonel Alpiro with his cold gaze and unbending regulations would admit they’d been right to come before the children were caught in the rain and cold and dark of another night.
I’ll happily pay for another pole and any dents in Bill’s truck. Please, God, just let them find Alicia and Gabriela alive and well
.

Vicki must have dozed off because she was confused and lost and frightened, and all around was the screaming of engines and angry shouts. She sat up with a start. It wasn’t a dream. A
throp-throp
of helicopter rotors was directly overhead. The roar of a ground vehicle wasn’t the one she sat in. Pushing aside the blanket, Vicki jumped out of the pickup—into the very confusion of which she’d been dreaming.

Men in uniforms ran toward her, automatic rifles unslung. Others were snaking down lines between leaves and branches of the forest canopy. As boots hit the ground, Vicki glimpsed the sleek, gray-green underbelly and runners of a Huey. More men were dropping down from a second helicopter to the rear. Then the ground vehicle she’d heard came into sight. Not from behind but around the next bend on the track ahead. It was an army Jeep, so splattered with mud the camouflage fatigues of its occupants were the only real identification. If Colonel Alpiro had dispatched it from down on the plateau, they certainly hadn’t reached here by the track the pickup had followed.

Vicki looked frantically around for her companions. Joe stood in the middle of the track, hands in the air as he revolved slowly to show himself to the men racing toward him. “We’re unarmed. We’re unarmed,” he shouted.

Vicki didn’t need the ominous click of a slide along a machine gun barrel to know these weapons were not missing ammunition.

Then a rifle butt slammed Joe against the pickup. Hands pushed Vicki to join him, patting her down. She caught sight of Cesar facedown on the ground, a boot in the middle of his back.
Not again!

Restraining her impulse to strike away those groping hands, Vicki called out, “We’re friends of Colonel Alpiro.” A minor exaggeration. “And Michael Camden. We work for the Ministry of Environment. We have every right to be here.”

The names had an immediate impact. Or the discovery that they were as unarmed as Joe had announced. Hands dropped, if weapons didn’t. Joe straightened. From the corner of her eye, Vicki saw the boot removed, and Cesar staggered to his feet.

“We work for the Ministry of Environment. This is a rescue mission looking for two lost children. We have every authorization to be here.” Vicki chose to repeat her announcement to the man who’d swung down from the army Jeep, the purposefulness of his march identifying him as leader. At first, she actually mistook him for Colonel Alpiro, the UPN commander. But as he walked closer, Vicki realized it was only the Castro-style beard that created the illusion. This man was older and fleshier, gray streaking his beard and hair under an army cap, self-indulgence straining the buttons of his fatigue jacket.

“We’re so glad you were able to catch up with us. We were hoping Colonel Alpiro received the distress notice we left to be communicated to him. This has been an emergency situation, and we had difficulty contacting your base. But Coronel Alpiro and Señor My-kole Camden, from la embajada americana, can confirm who we are and that we have a right to be here.” If Vicki could just repeat those two names long and loudly enough.

The camouflage fatigues of the Jeep passengers offered no identification, but the troops who’d rappelled down from the helicopters wore UPN uniforms, and Vicki was sure some of them looked familiar.

Beside her, Joe said nothing, his expression stony. Well, he’d said any confrontation would be on Vicki’s shoulders.

“We have two children who’ve been lost up here at least twenty-four hours. We’ve been very concerned to find them before nightfall. . . .” Vicki’s bright babble faltered as Castro II reached her.

His cold expression offered no reaction to her explanation. And was that rum along with other unpleasant odors on his breath and fatigues?