Toward the Light

by Bonnar Spring

“Mexican stand-off then.” Richard held out his hand. “Give it back, Luz.” He was smiling, but his hand trembled.

  Luz squeezed the gun tighter and, for the first time, it became an extension of her hand. Richard’s contempt had removed the final obstacle. With her free hand, she yanked his jacket back and removed the remote detonator from his left pocket. Luz cranked open the small passenger-side window.

  “No,” Evan shouted. “Get rid of the explosives, not the remote.”

  She glanced at the fat cylinders now lying on the back seat. “Won’t fit. Have to open the door.”

  Angel whipped around, taking in the lumpy pockets protruding from the canvas. “Not the door,” he yelled. “We’re too high.” His hands tightened, then flexed on the controls. “Wait ’til we’re down.”

  Luz eyed Angel as she pocketed the remote. He’d gone all squirrelly when he saw the explosives, but she didn’t know if it would be sufficient to sway him to their side. “I’ve almost died several times today,” Luz said. “I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t matter—I absolutely do want to survive this. And I’m telling you, you’re flying into an ambush. I know because I set it up.”

  As Angel jerked his attention to Richard, Richard turned to face Luz.

  “You used me,” she said, looking at him directly for the first time. “You got me here to do your dirty work. You lied. You lied about so many things—for so many years—that I don’t know where to find the truth.”

  “Luz, put the damn gun down and tell me how you pulled it off.” Richard, genial, patient Richard of the State Department. Richard of the chuckle that proclaimed his solidarity with whatever stupid thing Luz had once done or said. Her friend.

  Her friend no more.

  “You tricked me into believing I was dying.”

  At Evan’s gasp of surprise, Luz called out, “Yes, that was a lie, Evan. I’m as healthy as you are. Richard made me believe I had nothing to live for, so he could manipulate me.”

  She turned back to Richard, but like the magical beings in the book she’d read to Dominga, Luz was also with Dr. Guzman—alive and showing her a photo of his grandchildren in Iowa, dead on a carpet discolored by his blood, covered with flies struggling to extract wings stuck in the viscous puddle. “He’s a liar and a murderer.” Luz was with Bobby in the stairwell, too, smiling as he promised to finish the assault he started. With Bobby and Richard laughing beside the helicopter.

  Luz slapped the side of Richard’s head with his gun. “He’s a coward who sends others to do his dirty work.”

  “Luz, you’ve got it all wrong.”

  Fury and overwhelming sadness met in her veins, then mingled, like a vicious cocktail of explosives. “No, you knew I’d been raised with hatred for Martin, knew that with my mother gone, all I needed was a push. How could I resist when I thought I had one last chance to right that wrong?”

  “Let me explain.”

  “I’m not listening to your lies. You brought me here because Martin Benavides stood in your way—yours and your partner in crime. You never meant to compromise Bobby. You’re working together. Although I’d say your relationship is somewhat lacking in trust.” Luz thunked him with the gun again. “Somehow you and Bobby persuaded Martin the guerrillas had taken over the drug network. And those questions about my reconnecting with Toño. Did you intend to put the idea into my head?”

  “Luz, no—”

  She talked over his protest. “But I intended to find my cousin from the start. Did you know my mother had begged me to bury her in the mountains? I expect you did.” Luz answered her own question. “She told me how to contact her aunt who kept in touch with the guerrillas. I bet you knew about that, too. After your first attack, they figured out someone had tracked me there, so they turned the tables on you.”

  Luz looked over to the pilot again. “The guerrillas aren’t camped where you’re going. It’s an ambush. I don’t know how long they’ll wait to open fire after they spot you in the area. Turn the helicopter around now.”

  Angel lifted his hands from the controls and rubbed his cheeks and chest. For a second, he appeared to capitulate. Then—abracadabra—a gun appeared in his hand.

  “Careful, lady. If you fire at me, I will shoot him.” He leveled the gun at Evan. “Señor Clement?” Angel didn’t sound so buddy-buddy now. “What do you think about her assertions?”

  “With the old man dead, these rebels are the only people standing in Bobby’s way,” said Richard.

  “Martin Benavides is alive,” said Luz. Come on. She had to convince him pronto. Every second counted now.

  “She’s lying. You saw the destruction.”

  “Don’t take my word for it.” Dios mío, let me be right. “See for yourself.” Luz gestured to the control panel, a heart-shaped console with dozens of switches and round dials. “Can that thing receive commercial radio stations?”

  “Yes.” Wary.

  “How?”

  “You flip a lever to change the band.”

  “Show me where but don’t touch it.”

  Angel stretched his right hand to the instrument panel and pointed to a long slider near the center bottom.

  “Which way does it go?”

  “Push it two notches to the left for AM. It’s set to 820, Emisoras Unidas.” A news station, good. Angel was, if not exactly friendly, at least cooperative. Although the gun still pointed right at Evan.

  Luz clicked the switch. Once, twice. Dios, por favor.

  “… and it was clearly a result of a gas leak in the kitchen which, fortunately, occurred when the majority of the palace staff was home with their families. To recap, a Christmas miracle that there was no loss of life from the tremendous explosion that rocked the residence of former president Martin Benavides.”

  A male voice chimed in. “That was Angela Gonzalez’s exclusive interview with the fire marshal, live from Guatemala City.” The announcer continued, “In an emotional statement thirty minutes ago, Señor Benavides thanked God for his deliverance, crediting the quick thinking of a young staffer, one of the few remaining, who smelled gas and alerted security.”

  The pilot had already brought the copter into a tight turn that increased pressure in Luz’s ears. They were going to get down.

  “Too many questions,” said Angel. “I’m not letting go of my gun, but I won’t shoot unless provoked. We’ll head back until I get a few answers.” Indicating the control panel, he said, “I need to alert the others.”

  “Sure,” said Luz, “but for heaven’s sake, hurry.” Her hands gripping the weapon were slick with sweat. The dashboard clock now read 5:22, and it was almost fully dark.

  Richard reached out to yank Angel’s arm, but Evan took a step back and jerked Richard’s neck. Richard was still objecting when the cabin illuminated. A split-second later, a huge concussive force side-swiped the helicopter. They spun in half a circle and tilted almost ninety degrees. As Angel tried to regain control, another helicopter burst into flames, the canopy of the jungle lit up from beneath. More shooting erupted. Angel took them low at a steep angle.

  Richard was shouting, pointing out the side.

  “Sit down,” yelled Angel. “I’m trying to evade their fire.”

  Luz fell into a back seat when Angel swung the nose of the chopper, while Evan, still restraining Richard, struggled to remain upright. They zigzagged at tree level, now separated from the other copters. At least one of them had crashed. One must’ve still been operational because a blue-white beam above them probed the forest canopy. The trees whipped dizzyingly beneath them.

  All at once, the rear of their helicopter bucked. The back end pivoted straight up, throwing Luz from her seat. They swung to the right. Luz boomeranged across the cabin and crashed into the side wall. Evan lost his balance, his bound wrists came loose from Richard’s neck, and he collapsed on top of her. The thrum of the rotors stopped, and they began to fall.

  Luz threw her arms around Evan and held on tight. Their newborn life together would peri
sh before it drew its first deep breath. “I love you,” she said, not knowing if Evan could hear her over the scream of wind.

  Orange and gold flames engulfed the tail section. It became a weight dragging them down, down. The harsh light illuminated the sweat on Angel’s face. Richard sat immobile.

  A violent twist marked an end to their precipitous descending spiral. They’d hit the forest canopy. But as the flimsy upper branches gave way beneath them, their inexorable plunge continued, one bump at a time.

  Then the helicopter hit something solid, flipped onto its side. Vibrated. As Luz and Evan tumbled to the low side, the windshield shattered into a million tiny shards. Angel’s chest and neck disappeared as a large tree limb impaled him.

  Luz lay under Evan in a heap on the floor behind the pilot’s seat. Blood everywhere. The smell of hot metal with a bitter undercurrent of gasoline. Had they come down far enough to climb out to one of the trees supporting them? The helicopter lurched again, like a cranky elevator. The discarded circle of explosives rolled onto Evan’s legs.

  C4 was stable, yes, detonating only in a combination of extreme heat and a shock wave. So … a helicopter crash, now a fire. They had to jettison the belt now—but with his wrists taped together, Evan couldn’t reach it. Luz, trapped under him, couldn’t get to it either. She pointed to a sharp fragment of metal near Evan’s head. He twisted around, pretzeled his arms above him, and sawed through the tape. Then, using one hand to raise himself, he hurled the explosive belt out the smashed windshield.

  As he tossed it, they dropped once more and banged hard. The pilot’s side door crumpled. Broken palmetto fronds and scrub grass invaded the cabin. They’d crashed all the way to the forest floor, coming to rest with the pilot’s side down. What remained of Angel lay crushed in the wreckage mingled with the broken tops of vegetation. The fire had spread from the tail section into the cabin and was licking at the packing materials behind the back seats.

  “Out! Out!” yelled Evan. “Before it explodes.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Jagged glass and a wall of tangled shrubbery blocked their exit through the nose of the helicopter. The pilot’s side lay smashed and twisted, half-buried in the ground. The fire in the rear burned hot. Their only way out was up, through the passenger door.

  Evan was tall enough to grasp and twist the door handle, but each time he flung the door out, it crashed back into place. He had to get closer, so he wedged one foot into the frame of Richard’s empty seat.

  Evan hoped Richard had been thrown from the wreckage, crumpled like a broken and discarded toy, but then he saw him, lying near Angel, dead or stunned. A fiery death wouldn’t be as satisfying as wrapping his hands around Richard’s throat again and throttling him until his last gasping breath, but he had to get Luz away before they were incinerated.

  Praying the fuel tanks were well forward, away from the fire, Evan braced himself between the edge of the seat and the center console. This time he was able to flip the door open. He lowered a hand to Luz, whose attention had been split between his balancing act and the encroaching fire.

  Richard rose at the same time Luz did.

  “Watch out!” she shouted.

  Richard held Angel’s long-barreled gun. Instantly, Evan grabbed the door’s rim with both hands. He kicked out with his feet and bashed Richard’s jaw. As Richard absorbed the blow, the gun flew toward the shattered windshield. For a second, it caught on a jagged spur. Richard extended his arm. He touched the glass, which fractured, spilling the weapon into the inky void.

  “Fuck.” Richard lunged toward the broken window but recovered in time to avoid impaling himself. The gun was gone.

  He glared at Evan, still swaying overhead. Richard’s fury and desperation in the flickering orange light gave him the pasty, inhuman look of a subterranean creature. He caught Evan’s leg and yanked.

  Evan kicked at him, but his left hand slipped. He dangled, trying to recover his grip. Richard got his arms around Evan’s knees and hung on.

  “Get away from him,” said Luz, pointing Richard’s own gun at his belly.

  Evan could barely hear her over the crackle of flames, which had now reached the back of the seat. Smoke filled the cabin. “Luz,” he called, “I can’t hold on. Shoot him.”

  The barrel of the gun wavered, pointed at the sky. A shot. Richard’s grip on Evan loosened. She’d only startled him, but that was enough. The pressure dragging him down abated. Evan got both hands back on the door. Once secure, he looked down. Richard crouched near the missing windscreen. The fire had jumped to the back seats; there was no time to waste. Since his upper body strength wasn’t sufficient to hoist both of them, Evan pushed himself up and out instead. His head cleared the edge of the chopper. A gulp of fresh air. Then he pivoted onto his stomach and reached his arms to Luz, who remained in a silent face-off with Richard.

  “Come on, Luz.”

  Luz’s eyes flicked to him, back to Richard, gauging distances, reaction times.

  “I’ll cover him,” Evan called.

  Luz nodded. She raised her hand. Evan swept the gun from her and trained it on Richard.

  “Let’s go,” Evan shouted. He gripped Luz with one hand, held the gun in the other. The fire now engulfed the back seats. As Evan hauled her up, Richard angled so Luz’s body was between him and the gun. He grabbed her legs, much as he had Evan’s, and used her body like a tree trunk. Hands to her thighs, knees clasped around her legs, reaching with a free hand, shimmying up.

  Evan’s shoulder failed to absorb the extra weight, and he dropped lower, almost toppling back into the cabin. He tried to get off a shot, but Richard and Luz were entwined.

  Sweating and weakened, Luz slipped from Evan’s grip—as Richard’s hands grabbed the rim of the open door.

  Evan stomped on his fingers. Hard. Richard dropped.

  “Hurry, Luz. Let’s get out of here.”

  Before Richard could recover, Luz leveraged her weight onto the seat again and, with added momentum from Evan’s pull, vaulted up and out the door. Another second and they scrambled to the edge of the chopper. Ten feet to the ground. They jumped.

  Without any sense of purpose beyond gaining distance from the blaze, they sprinted away from the burning hunk of metal. When the explosion came, it filled the air with light and concussion and debris.

  They’d ducked behind a large fallen log that formed a natural barrier a hundred feet from the now furiously burning helicopter. The air cleared. Fire crackled. The metal skeleton writhed.

  A dark shadow emerged from behind a tree to their left. Richard.

  Evan stood, and Richard immediately raised an arm in greeting. The asshole had escaped.

  Richard ambled closer. “Whew,” he said, a whistle of relief. “That was close.”

  Richard couldn’t possibly think Evan would disregard his violent frenzy in the wreckage. Besides, now Evan knew Richard’s part in the rest of Luz’s story. There was no turning back. “Tell Luz about you and her father,” said Evan.

  Richard’s head inscribed an erratic whiplash arc, and he whirled a half-circle, like he was going to charge off into the jungle. Instead, he clenched his hands into tight fists and spoke directly to Luz. “You should be grateful to me for getting you to the States, you know, instead of turning against me. What kind of life was that, always on the move—”

  “It was my life,” Luz screamed.

  At her outburst, Evan hiked the gun level with Richard’s chest. “I’m going to kill you, you murdering son of a bitch.”

  “Don’t, Evan,” said Luz.

  Without taking his eyes off Richard, Evan called back to her. “He’s responsible for decades of corruption and violence. He cheated you out of your childhood. And he would’ve killed both of us today.”

  “Don’t listen to him.” Richard swept away the accusations with a flick of his wrists.

  “What you don’t know is that he is directly responsible for your father’s murder.”

  Luz’s f
ootfalls popped in the underbrush like rifle shots as she walked toward Richard. Evan followed. He would pull her away before she got close enough for Richard to grab her and use her as a shield, but she stopped outside his reach.

  “How?” Luz asked.

  “Tell her,” said Evan again.

  “I loved him like a brother,” said Richard. “I gave him everything. And then I asked him for a favor—something he’d done for me already, only on a larger scale.”

  “What did you want him to do?” Luz asked with dangerous calm.

  “He’d been keeping my supply lines open.” Richard shrugged. “For a price, Luz. A hefty price that had bought the FPL lots of weapons, lots of ammo. The fighting in the mountains was screwing up everything for me. All I wanted was for him to put armed guards on our deliveries, and the asshole gets religion—‘Oh, no, Pelirrojo.’” Richard fluttered a hand at his chest and went soprano. “‘Oh, no, I’m not going to get more involved.’ So I had to find someone who would.”

  “You killed my father.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  You killed my father. That lament had poisoned her life for decades. Now, like finding the last clue in a crossword puzzle that makes sense of a whole row of words, Luz filled in the blanks she’d never questioned.

  Why her father had periodically disappeared, returning to the camp, grim, but with much-needed supplies. Why Richard had so patiently, so steadfastly maintained a relationship with her mother. But mainly, why the big helicopter was idling in the clearing that night. Pelirrojo—or his accomplices—airlifted Martin Benavides and his men to the mountains and let them slaughter their rivals.

  If only she’d put all the pieces together sooner.

  Luz came to Guatemala to kill, to right the wrong done to her and restore order to her universe. She found instead a lonely boy, a broken old man with one dead son and another who’d wrecked his life. She found Evan, who loved her, and together they unraveled the sordid double-cross that had ruined so many lives.

  Heroes and villains? They were just men, some of whom had chosen badly. The heroes tried to atone for their mistakes. The villains tried to make others pay.