by Melissa Jane
“I have business to take care of across the border.”
“La Balsa?”
I paused, not knowing if revealing the truth could jeopardize the mission.
“Yes.”
“Relax.” A hint of a smile twitched his lips. “Zero informed me just enough, the rest I put together myself. It’s a terrible thing.” He said the last part with such stoicism it was hard to believe he had any level of empathy. “If you listen carefully, on the southerly winds, you can hear their cries, smell the smoke.”
I swallowed hard knowing each second I was here discussing the battle, more lives were being lost.
“Listen,” Enrique said, inhaling deeply. “Fact is, I have a long-standing relationship with Los Santos. Our business together has been a profitable venture on both sides. But…” he paused while pouring himself a shot of rum, “…that’s changed now. I do not tolerate liars and those so eager to deceive. As it stands, our relationship is crippled to the point where we are both all too happy to see the other dead.”
This was good news.
“So, Antonio.” He studied me hard. “You have your choice of arms with one condition.”
“And what’s that exactly?”
“You put an end to the Santos rule.”
“Done.”
Enrique laughed hard before downing the liquor. “Hold up American…” his face hardened, “…I want proof. Proof that Luis and Gabriel Santos are no longer breathing.”
“I can assure you, we have the same objectives. You want proof. I’ll happily provide it to you.”
La Balsa lay situated on the border of Colombia and Ecuador. The secluded town surrounded by a mountainous landscape is renowned for its difficult access—in and out. It was going to be quite the journey reaching it without being seen. Our taxi pulled to a stop in front of the makeshift Customs Office positioned on the side of road yards before the bridge. My stomach grew uneasy. It had been what seemed like a lifetime since I was last here. A lifetime of ignoring my heritage for the sake of living in…. civilization. My mother had traveled to La Balsa almost thirty years ago keen to capture the story of a rural coca farmer who was still using the product for purely medicinal purposes in a time when Europe and America had grown addicted to the liquid hit.
Julieta, a reporter, always willing to throw herself in the deep end, told her photographer to stay at home while she traveled along with a local guide who navigated her through the mountains, rivers, and rebel forces to get to the small community. She explained that when she met my father she was left speechless. La Balsa wasn’t in the slightest what she was expecting. What she had expected was a town so rural its inhabitants could still be called tribal. What she got instead was a self-sufficient established town with a local hospital, a school, performing arts center, small businesses and a strong foundation of community living.
And my father?
Was it love at first sight?
My mother never confirmed.
It had certainly been lust at first sight. She described him as having thick dark hair that would be slicked back in an Elvis style, deep caramel skin, and strong jawline. His hands were that of a working man. A man who had always used half of his earnings from the coca crop to build La Balsa from ground up. Her one week expected stay turned into a three-month venture. In that time, she immersed herself into the community, studying the people, their practices, and how they worked the land to keep them self-sufficient. Her face was always behind her camera as she documented anything and everything.
One beautiful clear blue day she captured a natural shot of my father just as he was turning around to take her hand. The sun blasts from behind him, its rays splaying out around his body. The lens snapped just in time to catch the twinkle in his eye in response to my mother’s playfulness. Five months after she returned to the States and I was born. My time was split between New York and La Balsa. My mother and father still shared the mutual bond and respect. Love for each other still shone in their eyes. But their lifestyles were vastly different and therefore couldn’t be shared.
On the way home after the third visit we were traveling upstream when we were confronted with rebel forces scouring the area looking for missing cartel runners. We were all forced off the boat, the local guide pleading in Spanish to release us. AK-47’s were pointed in our faces, and even though I was only thirteen at the time I remember the look in the rebel’s eyes. He would have killed us then and there and not lost any sleep that night.
My mother held me tight, her long nails digging into the soft skin of my upper arm. She was teary but wore a brave face. A heated argument broke out between the guide and the rebels, their gazes landing on my mother throughout the exchange. The guide turned ashen-faced to her and whispered something in her ear. She swallowed hard, eyes dropping to the ground, tears flicking off her eyelashes. She stood squeezing my hand and positioned me behind the guide. Cupping my cheeks she tilted my face and kissed my forehead five times before walking away with two of the three rebels. I watched confused, my heart pounding in my chest, my gut twisting knowing nothing good was coming out of this. I watched as they trudged through the river mud and up into the thick of trees. The rest of us waiting, a rifle pointed for extra assurance. No one said anything. No one dared look at each other. What felt like forever passed. The sounds of the river water lapping against the aluminum of the boat the only noise. And then they reappeared. I saw my mother first. She clutched her cream blouse around her breasts, the top three buttons lying somewhere on the jungle floor. Her loose hair was tousled, and blood mixed with dirt ran down her forearms and knees.
I made to run to her. She looked weak and defeated, and the men behind weren’t helping her as she struggled barefoot through the river bank’s slosh. The guide gripped my forearm with frightening urgency and yanked me back down on the skinny plank of wood masking as a seat. The rebel who had been guarding us now looked humored. His eyes were laughing and I didn’t know why. Not even when my mother told me we would never return to La Balsa did I know. It wasn’t until years later I understood what had happened that day and why the man had been laughing at me.
Eight years after our last visit to La Balsa, my mother died. For eight years, during a time when HIV was rife, my mother suffered from the disease. I suspected she knew. Her weakening condition, bruises, and sores were a giveaway something was wrong. She would dismiss her low days and celebrate her highs. And then one day she didn’t wake up. The men who took turns raping her would never know the almost decade-long struggle she faced. Or perhaps they did. Perhaps that’s why he was laughing at me, knowing that one day I would wake up to find my mother dead from HIV after they infected her.
A place that gave her the greatest love of her life had been the cause of her demise, and now it seemed, I was being called to save it.
“Where’d you go, bro?” Jase stared ahead at the blank wall. We were in the Customs Office waiting for our papers to be processed.
“Just trying to clear my head before things get fucked up.”
As if on cue, the customs officer glanced up from his clipboard and cast a suspicious look over both of us.
“Reason for entering through La Balsa?” The rotund officer with nicotine stained teeth stood in front of us waiting expectantly for a reply.
“I have family in La Balsa.”
His suspicious eyes narrowed further, his gaze studying my appearance.
“Too white.”
“My mother was American.”
He raised his eyebrows in distaste.
My skin was considerably lighter compared to the people of La Balsa who were predominately afro-Colombians.
Seemingly satisfied with my answer, he retreated back to his rickety desk and stamped our passports.
When the officer returned, he held out his hand, and I withdrew the package from my jacket’s internal pocket. His eyes flicked down to the duffels he had surreptitiously inspected. Fact of the matter was, he didn’t give a damn that arms wer
e leaving his country, only if they were coming in. And he certainly wasn’t going to pay any attention to it with the promise of half a year’s salary in his pocket. To us, it was nothing. To them, it was like striking gold.
“Here!” He handed back our documentation and pocketed the cash. “I don’t know how deep in La Balsa you’re traveling, but you should be careful. Word had spread this side of the border that rebel forces have taken a stronghold. But something tells me you already know that.”
“I know enough.”
“I bet you do. What you don’t know is the type of men leading this war.” His face screwed up in distaste. “Savages. People are saying they will do the same here. It’s only a matter of time.”
“They have no reason to.”
“They have every reason. They’re a cartel, amigo.” He flicked the thick wad of notes close to his nose and inhaled deeply. “The smell of money makes the sanest of men go crazy.”
Dusk was settling in casting an ominous glow over the land. Benito, the cab driver, took us as far over the border as he could go. The rest of the journey was up to us, and it wasn’t going to be easy. We were to approach via the back end of La Balsa. That involved navigating the mountainous terrain while avoiding the rebel forces playing sentry in the jungle.
Four hours into our on-foot journey we lowered our packs with an overwhelming relief.
Having used our NV goggles for much of the journey, we opted to continue wearing them instead of lighting our lanterns.
“You feel eyes watching us?” Jase was back to his normal nervous self whenever he became anxious about a job. Spreading out my sleeping bag, I watched his green figure do the same.
“No, I don’t.”
“It’s like they’re waiting for us to make the wrong move before they attack.”
“You’re letting paranoia get the better of you.”
Jase crawled into his sleeping bag, his gaze locked to the canopy of leaves. For a while we both laid silent, each contemplating our own haunted thoughts.
“You think old mate at the border has sent word we’re here?” Jase asked.
It was a possibility. The man worked in customs. He would have more connections than anyone.
“No, I don’t.”
He seemed legit in a non-legit ‘I’ll take your money’ kind of way.
“What’s our exit plan?”
“That I don’t know. I’m not sure what we’re about to walk into.” Time to change tact. Back to the topic what always proved the reliable distraction. “How’s Nessa?”
There was a pause. “Same. Same.”
“Does she know where you are?”
“Some of her things were gone.” He sounded distant, disheartened, having to cop his own error and misjudgment on the chin. “I assume she’s with him.”
“That’s your wife, Jase. When we make it back, you need to sort that shit out.”
“If... we make it back.”
I was in a white room, white ceiling, white walls, white tiles, watching my target. He didn’t have a face. I didn’t know what he looked like. But he was the man I was sent to kill. He too was wearing only white. There was pulsing dread smothering the room that felt like it was closing in on me. I stood my ground, finger on the trigger as I watched Luis Santos stroke the pin of the grenade. He held it like it was something precious, something of value. He was talking, but I could hear no words.
“Help us,” came my father’s strained voice, yet he was nowhere to be seen.
Santos laughed, snickering, the taunting sound echoing in the room. His finger slid over the metal one more time. I lunged at him, but I fell through his body like he was a ghost in haunting. And then, as he laughed some more—head falling back in amusement at my demise—he pulled the pin slowly from the grenade.
There was a noise. It wasn’t the sound of a grenade exploding. It wasn’t the sound of everything around me being destroyed by sheer force. It was simply the sound of a twig snapping. Clear and crisp under the weight of something heavy.
I left the dream, my eyes opening wide bringing me back into reality. Jase too was wide awake, his Glock fully loaded and ready to take a shot. It was dawn, the sun was starting to break through the jungle’s canopy, and the rustle of fauna could be heard around us. But the twig? Only a large animal or human could do that.
Jase, still with his NV’s on, pointed in the direction of the noise. I followed his line of sight with my own Glock.
Two legs, two arms, the shape of a man and the shadow of his rifle by his side appeared. He moved with a careless sway, possibly intoxicated. He walked a few feet, then stopped, only to recommence his journey. He wore loose fitting green army combats, the shirt unbuttoned revealing a sweat and grog stained white shirt.
I tapped Jase on the shoulder, who instantly broke watch to follow my silent instruction. We headed in opposite directions, our Glock’s now with silencers pointed at the lone man. Whether he was truly alone, I didn’t know. He had to of come from somewhere near, which meant we had camped too close within enemy lines.
The man’s crunching footsteps and grunts as he swiped angrily at leaves and branches in his way, was loud enough to drown out any noise from our stealth-like steps. Jase was closing in, so I picked up pace. His Spanish was too rusty, and I wanted to hear every word this man had to say. He came to a sudden stop and so did we. There was nothing about of interest that challenged his attention, only his apparent desperate need to relieve himself. The sound of urine hitting the leafy debris reached our ears. Jase’s eyes switched to mine, and I could tell he was smiling. We couldn’t very well interrupt a man during this process. Instead, we waited, guns still poised at the mystery jungle wanderer. What felt like a lifetime later he finally stuffed himself back in his pants and turned to leave. He made a full turn before facing the wrong end of my Glock. His eyes widened in horror and confusion. When he gathered his senses, he fumbled for his semi-auto hooked lazily over his shoulder.
“No es buena idea,” I warned, letting him know his instincts to fight were not the brightest of ideas. “Give.”
He stilled, nostrils flaring.
“Last warning.”
Reluctantly, and without breaking eye contact, the man handed over his weapon. He was sobering up fast.
“You speak English?”
He held out his hand and waved it to say ‘so-so.’
He was a rebel soldier, who while often secluded away from high populated areas, targeted tourists who were mostly of English-speaking origin. That meant, most if not all rebels, possessed a decent level of English.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, so far demonstrating a sound knowledge.
“That’s not your concern right now.”
He flinched feeling the barrel of a Glock pressed into his back.
“Take a walk with us,” Jase instructed.
Weaponless and without choice, he walked with us back to camp. He sat opposite, waiting, observing us, not with the hatred I expected, but more with curiosity.
“I have some questions for you,” I began.
His face became void of any tell-tale emotion.
“Who are you working for?”
Silence.
I allowed thirty seconds grace. When he still didn’t answer, Jase rounded on him, hooking his left arm around the man’s neck, squeezing tight. Immediately, his face reddened, eyes wide in desperation. He kicked out and bucked until Jase finally loosened his hold.
“Who are you working for?” I asked again.
“The rebels.” He looked confused like I should know the answer already. I did. But I had a point.
“Where is the rebel camp?”
“Over the ridge.” His accent was thick.
“You’re a bit far from home.”
“I’m west bank sentry.”
“You alone?”
“Yes.”
“Telling me the truth aren’t you?”
He nodded slowly identifying the threat in my tone.
“I have another question for you, and this time, I want the truth.”
He swallowed hard.
“Are the rebels currently supporting Los Santos cartel in La Balsa.”
He looked dead into my eyes, and I watched, surprised when they turned sad. His face dropped, a single tear running down his dirty cheek. Jase and I exchanged curious glances while we waited for the man to gather his composure.
“Are the rebels currently supporting Los Santos cartel in La Balsa?” I repeated knowing the man’s reaction to my question probably didn’t have a positive response.
Still looking at the ground, his hands anxiously wringing, he nodded. A slow, remorseful nod.
“My sister is married to a man from La Balsa,” he finally spoke. “I hear stories. They gloat and laugh about what’s happening to the women there. That’s why I am on sentry, far away from the town. They don’t trust me to be too close.”
He was one of them, but he was also a victim, forced to fight for a cause he didn’t believe in. A cause that had repercussions throughout their own families.
“What’s your name?”
“Alejandro.”
“Well, Alejandro… this is our current situation. If we release you and you report us to your superiors you’ll blow our mission. So, therefore, the likelihood of that happening is slim. Or, you use this opportunity to change your wrongs into rights, and hopefully save your sister from a fate that would surely end in death.”
His head lifted high, hope in his eyes now replacing the sadness from earlier.
“She has a small child. I don’t know if either is still alive, but I must try.”
“And your allegiance to the Rebels?” Jase’s eyes narrowed
His eyes narrowed with a vehemence I wasn’t expecting. “When we were told we would be invading La Balsa, I took my superior aside. I told him about my sister and my nephew and I pleaded with him not to destroy the town. But then, he asked me what she looked like.” He pulled a tattered photo from his pocket and handed it to me. It had a family of five all posing together, but he pointed to the middle young woman. “I gave him this photo so he would know that she was my family.” Again, he looked to the ground and crunched a dry leaf between his fingers. “And then he looked from the photo to me and a slow smile spread over his face, and he said, ‘I’ll personally show her our hospitality.’ I knew then that he would rape her. After they had attacked the town on the first night, he returned to camp and for the next hour he told a story to the men about how he had… fucked a woman while she screamed and begged for her life. The whole time he was describing her and what he did, he was looking at me. It was my fault. I should never have shown him the picture. I put a target on her head.” Revenge glimmered from his eyes. “So you see, I have no allegiance. Not to the Colonel. Not to Los Santos. No one.”