Betrayed (48 page)

For the first time that day Vicki felt her tension ease. Michael steered her to a jump seat at the back of the cabin. She shrugged off her peasant disguise before allowing him to pull a shoulder harness down and fasten her in. She closed her eyes briefly to let out a quiet sigh of relief, then opened them to look around.

The only other seat in the cabin area was another jump seat beside hers, though the cockpit held both pilot and copilot. The two soldiers who’d pulled them aboard squatted on the floor, automatic rifles slung across their knees. Michael headed toward them.

It was the burlap sacks that first reawakened Vicki’s disquiet. They filled every available space of the cabin. Stacks of them carefully tied down against a sudden banking of the helicopter under heavy canvas netting. And their contents weren’t loose like sugar or grain but pressed against the sacking in rectangular lines like so many small postal packages.

A terrible dread was building in Vicki. Easing herself upright, she opened her mouth to call Michael’s name.

But just then the copilot turned to speak to the approaching attaché, his voice raised above the noise of engine and rotors. “This is the last shipment. But we will need to move quickly because my sources tell me
los antinarcóticos
have been alerted.”

With the side door closed, the Huey’s cabin offered little lighting, but a late afternoon sunbeam was angling through the windshield so that the copilot’s florid features, unkempt curls, and too-full beard were outlined in vivid technicolor.

It was Hernandez.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

There had to be some mistake.

Vicki called sharply in English, “Michael, that’s the man I saw in the jungle. The one who killed my parents—who’s dealing drugs!”

Michael shot her the indifferent glance of a stranger, then addressed the copilot in Spanish.  “Yes, I know it was
la americana
here who alerted them.”

“
¡La americana!
I told you she would be as much trouble as her sister. But you would be merciful. Have I not told you before that you
americanos
are too sentimental, too soft? You do not understand the hard decisions.”

“Yes, Raul, and you were right, unfortunately. But we’re clear now, and we’re about to find out how much damage she’s done.”

So this
was
Raul Hernandez, Alpiro’s cousin. The Guatemalan was looking at Vicki as he must have looked twenty years ago at Jeff and Victoria Craig. And at Holly. Not angry but with the indifferent brutality with which he might have considered swatting a persistent insect.

But Michael?

Vicki’s bewilderment was no longer
what
—that had just become appallingly clear—but
why
. She unsnapped her harness and rose, though what she hoped to accomplish hundreds of feet in the air in a helicopter full of hostile men, she hadn’t even formulated. This time in Spanish, she cried out, “Michael, what are you saying? This isn’t some war game. This . . . this
animal
killed my parents! And that village!”

The soldier in front of her didn’t even shift expression as he slammed the butt of his weapon into her stomach. A boot thrust her back into the seat. From the front of the cabin, Vicki heard the distinct click of a pistol being cocked and saw the metallic length of the barrel leveled at her over the back of the copilot’s seat.

“So—
la americana
speaks Spanish.” The brutality on Raul Hernandez’s face was no longer indifferent, the gun barrel actually shaking with eagerness.

Michael slapped the gun down. “Are you
loco
? You want to blow a hole in this?” He took out another much smaller gun from the small of his back, elbowed aside the soldier who’d struck Vicki, and knelt in front of her. His eyes were warm with a smile she had come to know well, and she knew then that she’d never really known what lay behind them. Vicki put up no fight as Michael snapped her back into her harness.

“Let’s not have any more problems, okay?” he announced in loud Spanish. “This Glock won’t make such a mess of the cabin as a .38.”

“Give it to her! Get it out of her, okay, hombre?” Hernandez called.

Michael switched to English, looking even regretful as he shook his head. “I really am sorry about this, Vicki. I like you. And I did my best to keep you out of this. To save your life, though you may not appreciate that right now.”

Vicki looked at the gun in his hand, then turned toward the copilot. “You said a .38. Wasn’t the gun that killed Holly a .38 police revolver?”

As Michael went still, she said, “Why are you of all people helping a bunch of drug dealers and murderers? Everything you are, everything you do at the embassy—why would you risk it for this? It can’t just be the money. And you believe in your country, believe in serving it. Whatever else, I know I wasn’t wrong about that.”

Then it hit her, and Vicki stared at him, stunned, before she breathed out, “Joe was right. You’re CIA too, aren’t you? Your DAO position—that’s just your cover. And Raul Hernandez—he’s
your
informant, not Bill’s. You’re his handler.”

“Embassy attaché is an overused device,” Michael agreed conversationally. “But useful and a lot more convenient for dealing with my kind of sources than the usual foreign businessman.”

“Like Bill Taylor. Then . . . then who is he?” Vicki demanded. “I thought he was working with this Raul guy and Alpiro. That he was CIA. No, I know he was—he admitted it. And Joe—who’s he?”

 “Actually, I was hoping you could tell me.” The jump seat was low enough that, even hunkered down, Michael loomed over Vicki, forearms propped up on his thighs, the Glock balanced loosely between them in his right hand. It was only the short distance between them that allowed Vicki to catch Michael’s words above the noise in the cabin, and she was reading his lips as much as hearing them. "DEA, maybe? They’re always meddling in our ops. Though I’d know if any official DEA postings were intruding in my territory. And I’ve got counternarcotics—U.S. and local—nicely sowed up with one of my UPN units hitting Raul’s Colombian competition up in the Petén rainforest. No, I checked out Ericsson myself. He’s just a drifter with a petty rap sheet Taylor must have hired for muscle. But Taylor—he’s been around these parts a long time, and he’s got a thing for that nature reserve. If he’s chosen to stick his nose in there—”

Michael’s tone hardened abruptly. “So what exactly did Taylor and Ericsson tell you?”

Then her instincts had been as right about Joe as they’d been about a stranger lurking behind Michael’s handsome face and charming smile.
I should have trusted my heart, not my eyes
. With death staring at her through a sleek, metallic barrel, Vicki should have been terrified, but her mind and heart had room right now only for elation.
Whatever Joe is, he isn’t a drug dealer. He isn’t a murderer
.

Then why hadn’t he even tried to stop her hysterics, to explain?
Because I wasn't listening! Because I said such terrible things!
Joe had simply tuned Vicki out and gone off to do what he could to stop this thing—because Vicki had no doubt now, though it still didn’t make sense, that this was the reason for Joe’s presence in the woods. He’d left Vicki stashed safely away where she wouldn’t be hurt and couldn’t interfere. Except that once again, Vicki had messed things up so badly.
If only I could say I was sorry
.

Meanwhile, what damage had her interference done? Michael certainly seemed confident he had nothing to worry about. And there were still those photos, and Bill’s own confession.

Michael stared at her, and Vicki realized he was still waiting for her answer. Well, there was nothing she could say that she hadn’t already given away.

“I already told you. They locked me up and said they couldn’t let me warn you. And something about getting to the plane before they could be stopped.” Vicki glanced at the burlap stacks around her. “I assumed they meant to get the opium out.”

Michael spat out a stream of unpleasant phrases she’d never expected to hear from him. “If Taylor had Ericsson snooping around out there for him, we’ve got to assume they’ve made me and Alpiro and probably have a whole video production of the camp. If they reached the right ear for home movie night, that place is going to be swarming with law enforcement. I hate cleanup! It always means someone’s messed up bad.”

He called up to the front of the helicopter, “Raul, are you sure you’ve got the sierra emptied out?”

Vicki couldn’t hear the response over the noise of the rotors.

“They’re bringing the trucks down now? . . . No,
los campesinos
don’t matter anymore. But you won’t be able to take this load into Guatemala City for processing. They may have
antinarcóticos
alerted at the airport. Head for the coast instead. You have ships on call. See who can meet us in the Gulf.”

This time Raul’s turned head allowed Vicki to make out his words. “As you wish. And do not worry about the
antinarcóticos
. My cousin is second-in-command there. He will delay any mobilization until it is too late.”

More of the
hermandad
—blood or otherwise.

Michael faced Vicki. “At least you’ve got your wish to save your
campesino
buddies. We sentimental Americans.”

It was again a dichotomy that made no sense. “I don’t get it,” Vicki burst out. “How can you deal with a killer like Raul Hernandez, then turn around and intercede for a bunch of
campesinos
?”

“Because Americans don’t take out civilians,” Michael responded curtly. “Not when it can be avoided.”

“No, you just work with psychopaths who do,” Vicki said. “Just tell me why. That Hernandez creep can’t be holding those pictures over you like he did with Bill Taylor and those other Americans. And that’s another thing. Bill Taylor practically admitted he was CIA and involved in recruiting Raul and the others in his unit. So how come you didn’t know who he was? And how come Alpiro didn’t recognize him?”

“Good question.” Michael seemed willing enough to keep talking, maybe because it was the easiest way to keep a prisoner quiescent.

For Vicki it was preferable to letting her own terror engulf her.
If I die, at least let me finally make sense out of this
. The thought was such a stereotypical last wish of a die-hard investigative journalist, she could almost smile.

“For one, it shows he’s higher placed than I could have hoped. Somewhere no doubt there’s a sealed file I don’t currently have access to. But I know exactly who Taylor is—or was—if he’s one of the Americans in Raul’s blackmail archive. Though that wasn’t the name he used back then. See, you’re mistaken about one thing. Taylor wasn’t Raul or Alpiro’s recruiter. There were two others who headed up the training of that particular unit. One was the Special Forces training liaison—a Green Beret with Vietnam under his belt. The other was . . . well, let’s just say he was an embassy attaché with additional responsibilities.”

“CIA, you mean.”

“Fine—CIA.” Except for the roar of the helicopter and three weapons angled her direction, Michael might have been simply entertaining Vicki with stories of his work as he’d done so often back at the center.

“This guy’s mission was to bond with the trainees, recruit them if he could, build a country network for the future. Taylor was
his
handler. His Langley supervisor, to be precise, in Guatemala for the graduation and to evaluate the new intel assets. He must have been fuming when
el generalísimo
in charge of the ceremonies pulled him into a photo shoot. Like any well-trained operative, he at least managed to keep his face out of the papers. The only other time Alpiro would have seen Taylor was in the aftermath of a battlefield, and I doubt he was cataloging features.”

“The massacre, you mean,” Vicki accused.

“Whatever.” Michael shrugged. “In any case, twenty years later when a UPN unit showed up at Taylor’s retirement pad, there’s no reason Alpiro would know the difference. I’m guessing Taylor did recognize him, since Raul Hernandez, area commander on the day in question, made sure Taylor and the other two Americans had a full set of the photos his officers managed to take before their American advisors could stop them.”