by Rachel Lee
“So what’s the first step?”
“Now we play hide and seek.”
Guatemala City
Guatemalans had a lot of reasons to hate yanquis, but most of the people Miriam had so far met on the street seemed to be friendly and outgoing.
From a guidebook, she swiftly devoured what she could of local culture. The Guatemala highlands had once been home to one of the world’s most advanced cultures, a culture with a calendar so accurate that only lately had the rest of the world come close. The Maya remembered this, of course.
For whatever reason, they had chosen to abandon their cities in favor of subsistence farming. Some said it was prolonged drought, others had other explanations. No one was certain.
The rest of her information, Miriam acquired from other sources at the embassy. With the assistance of the late ambassador’s secretary, she was given access to historical evaluations of the country and current situation reports.
The Maya remained proud and kept many of their old ways, and quite frankly didn’t seem all that eager to become part of the modern world. They did, however, continue to bear a simmering resentment against the authorities. This simmering resentment often exploded into bouts of outright rebellion, sometimes in individual areas of the country, sometimes in more widespread ways. Peace was rare in Guatemala.
The Spanish invaders, who became the upper echelons of money and society in Guatemala, were of a very different attitude. They very much wanted to join the third millennium, but only as long as their power position could be upheld. The death of hundreds of thousands of Maya over nearly forty years of war had helped to do that. It had certainly put the Maya back at their subsistence level, mostly in small villages scattered through the mountains.
A random collection of photos taken accidentally by tourists around the time of the bombing lent credence to the fact that the perps were Mayan. And there was certainly a new civil war under way here, though it had not yet erupted into broad-based fighting.
The act had been one of terrorism. The likelihood of searching the rough terrain of Guatemala and finding the one man pictured here was small. Yet that was what she and the Guatemalan police were supposed to do.
The police force in Guatemala had been created as recently as 1996, as part of the peace accord signed between the government and the leftist guerillas after forty years of constant war. The police were required to be civilians, completely detached from the army.
The history of the fledgling force wasn’t completely stellar. Under Portillo, it appeared, they had even hidden evidence and delayed investigations. Then there had been the police-beating death of a thirteen year old that had managed to make its way into the international press.
Events like that, and a continuing rise in crime, had helped usher Portillo out of office. His replacement was working hard to turn matters around, and had even supported the police strongly enough that they had managed to solve some cold cases where witnesses had been threatened by the police themselves.
On the face of it, matters were improving.
Except that in most of the mountainous country the law enforcement units were small, incapable of controlling much of anything. Recently, when a thousand indios had attacked a police outpost over the murder of a local man, the officers and all government authority had simply been withdrawn from the region.
For the first time since arriving in this country, Miriam began to feel fear. If the killers had gone to ground among their own people—and they certainly had—then the police did not have the resources to find them. If the reward didn’t bring them the information they needed…she feared the army might be called in. And that would probably lead to even more war and perhaps to another round of ethnic cleansing, for machetes were no proof against modern weapons.
Conflict that had begun with CIA involvement in the overthrow of Guatemala’s democratic government still simmered, needing little more than a spark to reerupt.
Officially, the country would have it otherwise, at least as far as tourists were concerned. The power elite had no problem with showcasing Mayan ruins as tourist attractions, or ballyhooing Mayan handicrafts when the tourists arrived. But they weren’t as proud of this heritage as their pamphlets would indicate.
Quite simply, the Quechua had never been truly conquered. Some, of course, had made the transition to the way the world was now. Her driver was a good example. But the vast majority had made no real change at all. They lived as their ancestors had lived since they’d abandoned their great cities of stone. They might adhere to Christianity on Sunday, but on Wednesday they would have no qualms about visiting the local shaman for a cure, a foretelling or reassurance.
The civil war had done nothing at all to heal rifts. They had instead become as wide as the Gulf of Mexico.
Closing the folders she had been perusing, she made her decision about the situation, then picked up the phone and called Washington.
“Kevin? Miriam. I’ve reviewed the situation.”
“What’s your assessment?”
“That we keep a low profile on this. I recommend we encourage the police to treat it as a crime, not as an insurrection, and that we support them with whatever forensic tools we have. We’ve worked together with the Guatemalan police before, in that tourist killing. So far we haven’t left any hard feelings, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“So, for the sake of harmony, they’re in the lead?”
“Absolutely. Things here are touchy enough. If I find any reason to believe we need to do more, I’ll let you know immediately. But for right now, the smartest move we can make is to let the locals handle as much as they can. In fact, for the sake of stability in this country, we need to treat the police with the utmost respect.”
“That’s going to be…difficult to explain to some people.”
“Well, tell them to accept it. This place is a tinderbox on the edge of ignition, and I’d rather not have history record that the FBI set it off.”
“Has anyone suggested a motive yet?”
“Most of them are sticking to the notion that it’s just another expression of hatred for the U.S. over what the CIA did.”
“Most? You sound dubious.”
“It might be that. It might be exactly that.”
“But?”
Miriam hesitated. “I get the feeling there might be something more going on. I’m going to put my ear to the ground.”
“Do that. And keep me up to date.”
Boise, Idaho
Renate Bächle certainly came prepared to deal with the issues. Before dawn, Tom was dressed in camouflage she had provided and riding with her in the direction of Wes Dixon’s ranch. He stifled a yawn, thinking that he really needed to get his biological clock off the L.A. rhythm it had developed: late nights, late sleep-ins.
Drug dealers, as a rule, weren’t an early bird lot.
“We will have to come down to the ranch from the mountains in the west,” Renate told him.
“Well, obviously we can’t just walk up to the front door and ask him if he’s running a mercenary training camp.”
She flashed him one of her cool smiles. He wasn’t sure how to read it.
“If my intelligence is correct,” she continued, “we should get a view from above the camp.”
“And if it’s not?”
Again that look, and this time he was quite sure she was thinking he was an idiot.
“Then we may have to do some hunting.”
Tom put one foot up on the dash of the battered old four-by-four Jeep they were in. It was a brilliant choice of vehicle, he admitted. It could be parked almost anywhere without drawing notice, even in the middle of the woods, unlike a rental. Score one, Renate.
Score two were the Remington rifles in the back, and the orange hunters’ vests. Claiming they were out for target practice was a good cover. He suspected, however, that the orange vests were likely to remain folded and unworn. At least he hoped they were. He wasn’t sure he wanted to w
alk into a mercenary training camp acting as if they’d stumbled into it by accident.
Because they might never get out of there…by accident.
But as time and the coffee in the foam cup drove the last of his need for sleep into the background, he began to ask questions.
“What’s the plan?”
“We observe what we can from a distance.”
“So you’re not planning to wander into the camp?”
She glanced at him. “Not on this trip.”
“It’s always good to know we’re reserving an option to get ourselves killed for later.”
She didn’t dignify that with an answer.
He pushed himself up higher in his seat and took another swig of coffee. “There’s one item that’s notably absent from our gear.”
“Which is?”
“A camera. No record of what we see.”
“If they find us, a camera would be hard to explain.”
“If they don’t find us, lack of proof is going to be hard to explain.”
She looked at him then, this time longer, icy eyes as expressionless as a glacier. “The point of this trip is for you to see. It is proof for you, and you alone. Then we decide what we will do.”
“Ah.”
He shut up. She was making sense, because he knew damn well he was sitting in this Jeep with a lot of questions and a healthy dose of skepticism. Especially since this woman had no background she chose to share with him.
For all he knew, some drug dealer in L.A. had hired her to take him into the woods and get rid of him.
But there was still her intriguing knowledge that Kevin had been going to take him off the case. How had she known that?
That, as much as anything, was pulling him along here, and before he was done with Renate, he was determined to learn who her source had been.
Just as the first sliver of sun poked up in the east, she pulled off the rutted dirt road they’d been traveling for the last ten miles and into a thick stand of woods.
“We’re here,” she said. “Ready?”
For a mountain goat hike to see something he wasn’t sure he believed existed? “Sure.”
He climbed out of the car, feeling the first surge of adrenaline. This could prove to be fascinating.
The one thing he knew for certain was that it wouldn’t be dull.
Guatemalan Highlands
Steve Lorenzo hadn’t slept well, so he watched the sun rise from the little porch of his thatched house. Like everyone else in this village, he lived in what some spoiled Americans referred to as “instant urban renewal.” They could not see the wisdom of structures that could be destroyed by a hurricane but rebuilt with minimal loss in a matter of days.
Steve recognized the wisdom, but then, he had lived in this village during more than one hurricane and had watched it come back from complete devastation in almost no time at all. Life returned to normal quickly when you lived at a very basic level.
But these thoughts were on the periphery of his mind. At the forefront were Miguel Ortiz and his sister Rita. If Rita was right about Miguel, then this village was about to face dire consequences.
He’d spent a lot of hours in prayer, begging God for some direction, for some idea how he could save these people.
God had remained silent, and Steve was feeling very alone.
Monsignor Veltroni had sent him here to find an ancient codex, but such a task seemed beyond the ability of one mere mortal, especially in a country where brushfire wars had a habit of breaking out at any time.
Nor had Veltroni given him the least guidance in how he was supposed to achieve this miracle.
And Miguel. His heart ached for Miguel, who had been such a warm and gentle child. The hanging of his father by the army must have twisted his spirit sadly. Steve wished he had been here to help the boy, but it was a vain wish. He had been yanked out of here beforehand, when the area had become contested, simply because he was an American. The archbishop had decided it would be better to insert a local priest.
The archbishop had probably been right. But that didn’t ease Steve’s feelings of guilt when he thought of Miguel.
Sighing as the light at last overcame the darkness completely, he went inside to put on his cassock and begin the day with a heavy heart.
God, he asked, why do you put these, your children, through so much?
The silence in his heart was the only answer he got.
So he stepped out his door and began to walk through the village greeting people. And from time to time, he asked if anyone had inquired about an ancient, hidden text.
He was trusted here. If anyone had heard anything, they would tell him.
Which was more than God seemed to be doing.
14
Boise, Idaho
The hike through the woods, though at times over challenging terrain, was just a hike. He and Renate made good time, Tom thought, considering that once or twice they had to play mountain goat on an outcropping.
The rifle he carried was irritating, however. He wasn’t used to hiking around with one dangling from his shoulder, and no matter how he placed it, it annoyed him. Renate, on the other hand, was moving forward as if she was quite used to having a rifle slung over hers.
“Military background?” he asked her when they paused for a drink and a quick breather after a particularly rough patch.
“Who?” she asked.
“You.”
She shrugged. “It’s not relevant.”
Closed as a clam. Boy, did that inspire trust. It was, however, a distraction from all the anger and sorrow he’d been feeling lately. And, remembering how he’d just recently wanted to bang his head on his desk with frustration over the impossibility of proving his theory, he decided hiking through the woods with a two-legged clam was actually a step up in life.
Hell, was he getting his sense of humor back?
They had hiked for another half hour over easier terrain when she suddenly turned to him and put her finger to her lips. He froze.
Carefully, she stepped back toward him and whispered, “Another quarter mile, if that. I don’t know if they’re bothering to keep sentries or if they’ve set up trip alarms.”
“Talk about an oversight. I thought you were omniscient.”
Her expression never changed. This woman needed a serious injection of personality.
But he took her warning to heart. Their movements became stealthier, easy enough on pine needles, which were the world’s earliest soundproofing.
The thick pine forest helped in other ways, too, for there was almost no undergrowth to hide anything, including sentries and trip wires. At last he could see the light of a clearing ahead; as they approached it, ferns and other concealing undergrowth increased.
Finally Renate signaled that they should get down and belly crawl. This was something Tom hadn’t had to do since his training days at Quantico, but at least he knew how to do it—and with a rifle. Slinging the weapon across his back, he squirmed after Renate through thick brush, aware that their progress was leaving a trail anyone could follow.
But after only a few minutes, her reasoning became clear. She stopped inching forward and signaled him to come up beside her. Gently parting the next foot of yellowed grasses, she showed him.
They were above whatever was going on at the camp. Well above. Sort of a hawk’s-eye view without the hawk’s eyes.
But it was clear enough for them to see a collection of hollow building shells, a target range and an obstacle course. And there was no mistaking the number of men who were down there. This was no five-member militia.
There were four teams down there, being led through their paces by men who appeared—to Tom’s eyes, anyway—to be drill instructors. In only a few minutes it became very, very clear that this was paramilitary urban warfare training, not the ragtag band of bored soldier wanna-bes and their dogs that the FBI report had implied.
“Christ,” he said under his breath, watching intently. Twenty-
five to thirty trainees, he estimated. They kept moving too much for an accurate count, but it was clear as crystal they were undergoing unit training, the kind of thing that welded men together.
Renate pulled a pair of binoculars out of her hip pocket and passed them to him. Moments later he was looking close up at AR-7s, or…he revised that as a rattle of fire came from the range. Fully automatic M-16s.
And…cripes, was that man carrying an Uzi?
Then Tom began to scan the area and liked even less what he was seeing. A section was marked off with a sign that bore a skull and crossbones over the word Mines. There was also evidence of demolitions training.
Finally he rolled onto his back and passed the binoculars back to Renate. “Houston,” he muttered, looking up into a deep blue sky, “we have a problem.”
Watermill, Long Island
No answers. Edward Morgan absolutely, positively hated it when there were no answers. How could the FBI have no idea where one of its agents was, suspended or not? But his source in the Bureau said only that Lawton had gone fishing.
Morgan no more believed that than he believed the sky was going to fall at midnight. Now he had begun to doubt the information he was receiving from the same source that said Lawton had found nothing whatsoever of interest during the few days he’d researched radical domestic groups.
And it bugged him even more that Lawton’s best friend had been sent to Guatemala, the seat of all present problems in Edward’s life.
He poured himself another drink and decided he was going to call in sick to work in the morning. He needed to pool some resources, and he couldn’t do it from the office. He needed backup information, and he needed it fast.
His hand hovered over the telephone for a few moments; then he glanced at the clock and realized it was still early in Idaho. Wes probably wouldn’t be back at the ranch house for an hour or more. Edward could call his sister, of course, chat with her for a few, then ask her to have Wes call him.
But he didn’t feel like chatting with his sister right now, and he loathed having to wait for phone calls.