Open Pit

by Marguerite Pigeon

  Pierre takes the information in without reaction, like Danielle’s words have seeped through his skin rather than being captured by his ears.

  “But PJA’s against the mine too,” says Martin, overhearing. “We’re on the same side?”

  “Sort of. He knows. But this still gives us something — we could convince him. Slowly. Or the mine meets his demands.”

  Pierre finally enters the exchange with two half-nods. The first signs of life. Then, in the lowest voice, like a faint whistle, he says, “It’s good that it’s not for money.”

  Tina and Martin both nod back. It’s a strangely beautiful moment, like a fragment of a eulogy. Everyone seems to analyze the nugget of information Danielle has passed on, along with Pierre’s comment on it, and to extract from these the same faint hope.

  An hour later, they leave and begin walking into the descending night. The moon is now nearly full, strong enough that the kidnappers haven’t bothered with the LEDs. Danielle follows Martin. She can see him clearly enough, the way his arms swing heavily, the outline of his hair.

  They seem to be on an actual trail, and for a time Danielle doesn’t have to concentrate as much as usual on her aching feet. Her mind wanders again to thoughts of Aida. Danielle tries to conceive of a plan, a concrete set of steps that will bring them closer. She is considering the words she should start with — something straightforward, “I missed you” or “I’m sorry” — when she hears a voice up ahead, somewhere off to the side.

  “Stop where you are,” yells a man, in Spanish.

  Martin’s swinging arms go rigid. Danielle looks into the dark black where the sound is coming from. Nothing. The moonlight can’t reach far enough into the trees. Maybe she’s fallen asleep standing up. But when she turns, there are Cristóbal and Tina, behind her, Cristóbal’s gun glinting, real as anything. He has his hand on Tina’s back, pushing her protectively towards the ground.

  Danielle turns towards Martin and chokes out the words “Get down!”

  “Pepe,” says the voice, urgent now. “I’m above you. In range. Put up the rifle. Your pistol too. Throw them in front of you. Same for the others.”

  Pepe. If this is the police, how do they know his name? She used “Enrique” in all her reports. And if they know his identity, why aren’t there more sounds? Helicopters? Troops moving through the trees? A torturous silence follows, each moment vibrating with unnerving, unanswerable questions like these, from hostages and kidnappers alike. Then the man’s voice comes again, eerie as it snaps the intensity like cutters through a wire. “Don’t move.”

  Danielle has visions of another member of her group being shot, of someone else not getting up the way Antoine did not. She fears it could be her. She hears herself promise to embrace Aida if she makes it out alive. Truly embrace her. She wishes she were young again, that it was 1980 and that she could start over. She would still come to this country. But she would do things differently. She would accept people as they are.

  “The photos will go out. I won’t stop them.” It’s Pepe, screaming back.

  The only photos Danielle can think of are those Pepe spoke of in his last report, the photos of his mentor selling secrets. But why mention these to the police?

  “They don’t matter to me anymore,” the man yells back.

  And then, after yet another strained silence, Pepe, who is ahead, as always, maybe twenty feet from Danielle, amazingly, raises both his weapons in the air and throws them to the ground. They barely clatter.

  He’s giving in. Danielle can’t quite believe it.

  “Primo, Delmi,” says Pepe.

  A noise makes Danielle turn. Tina is pressing herself into the base of a pine tree as Cristóbal, his ever-present hat on a slight tilt, starts walking forward. A metallic clunk as his gun comes into contact with Pepe’s.

  Delmi does the same, then goes to stand beside her brother-in-law, unarmed.

  Danielle hears a loud crash and snap as someone hurries towards them through the trees. And then he’s standing ahead of her, still in shadow, between the guns and the kidnappers. He has a rifle pointed at them. “Someone come here and pick these up.”

  At first Danielle can’t imagine doing it. She isn’t going to touch Pepe’s guns. But no one else moves. They haven’t understood the Spanish — or don’t want to. Danielle pushes herself up, pine needles stuck to her palms. Slowly, shakily, she walks past Martin, then Pierre, and finally Rita, who is standing stock still with her wrists tied. Danielle gets so close she can see the familiar guns clearly and Pepe’s eyes staring back at her. Delmi whimpers.

  “Hand them out,” the man says, this time in good English. And Danielle looks more carefully at who’s talking, who has come here to rescue them. He wears fatigues and a cap over his thick hair. She recognizes something. The stance, or the shape of him. She picks up a gun, which is much heavier than she expected, then moves backwards, still facing the man, until she’s reached Pierre. He grabs it from her with eager hands and she returns to the pile. She does the same twice more, giving Tina one and Martin two, keeping only Pepe’s handgun for herself. All the while Danielle has the sensation of floating above the scene, like it isn’t for real. Soon, she will be riding the subway to Aida and Antoine’s imaginary wedding.

  When the group is armed and Pepe and his crew stand defenseless, the man steps up, the moonlight illuminating his features.

  “Hola, Daniela.”

  “Adrian.”

  “Carlos,” he corrects her, warily. “We must walk.”

  THURSDAY

  APRIL 14

  12:30 AM. 7 KM northeast of the hamlet of Zarcero, Morazán

  They head downhill, gravity finally on their side, kidnappers in the lead, followed by Pierre and Martin, who hold their guns the way the man named Carlos has showed them, except badly. Pierre’s face is set in hatred, his gun up high as if he will shoot at the slightest provocation. Martin follows, hauling his two weapons more tentatively. Then comes Tina, who lets her rifle hang loosely on its strap across her back. She doesn’t look like someone who’s been so ill. She has untied her long hair and it swings in thick sections. If they’re confused about how Danielle knows Carlos, how Carlos knows Pepe, none of them asks. They’re afraid of upsetting the balance of things. Danielle, a few steps behind Tina, knows the questions will come later. Right now, Carlos is at her side, walking in step.

  “I don’t understand,” she finally gets the courage to say.

  “He blackmailed me. But it’s not important. We need to walk to —”

  “Why?”

  “I hurt him.” Carlos is older, of course. But still handsome. And the same. Truly the same. Danielle feels a sexual energy begin to take hold, despite herself. She tries to focus on what Carlos is saying. And then, what must have been floating in her mind as a possibility for some time clarifies: Carlos was Pepe’s mentor, the one who sentenced him to his life after the war. All of which happened long after Danielle was sent home, but nonetheless involves her, involves everyone here. The sexual energy seeps away and Danielle is left with a hollow feeling and the knowledge that she will never be able to make this man understand what he did to her, to Pepe, or to Antoine.

  Nor can she bring herself to admit to Adrian — Carlos — that he was the real object of her return to El Salvador, that she’d long fantasized about a cathartic encounter in which she would tell him exactly how he’d ruined her. She cannot find her voice to say that he fathered her child. The imaginary version of these revelations, of the confrontation she’d pictured, dies so suddenly she has to struggle to find any words at all. “Why did you do this? Intervene this way?”

  “I had to.”

  Danielle considers his meaning. “You’re the one who took my reports. On the phone. You’re the contact. Did you know where we were? How did you know?”

  “I had a signal, yes.” Carlos is walking briskly, slightly ahead of her now, as if trying to get away.

  A signal. Danielle sees the blood pooling around A
ntoine’s body. It was preventable. She remembers the top popping abruptly off Pepe’s satellite phone. Was there a bug in there after all?

  “From the video camera,” Carlos adds, answering her silent question. He holds up a device Danielle doesn’t recognize, but which she presumes is the gadget that reads the bug’s position. “He needed good gear. I had access to police equipment. The bug was insurance for me. I had not planned to use it.”

  “You were going to let us die,” she says, putting it together. “Even after you knew I was one of the hostages. My name — it was out there, in the newspapers. The video — you saw me.”

  Carlos just keeps walking.

  What changed? Danielle thinks she knows: the phone calls. Pepe’s stories got to Carlos. He felt guilty. “You were the only person Pepe ever trusted. You tried to get him killed, in the war, to save your own skin.”

  Carlos stops and turns. His eyes are stern. “Our war was unwin-nable. The Americans were going to fund the military indefinitely. It would’ve been easier for us to trap people in endless warfare.”

  In another situation, with distance, Danielle would laugh heartily at this level of self-justification. Here, close up, with her former lover, it stuns her into silence.

  “The war was a world unto itself,” Carlos goes on, as if she didn’t hear the first time. “There were many intrigues. Many. Some ended badly for us. I can’t hold even a portion of them in my conscious mind.” He puts up two fingers and pinches them together, as if measuring what little he can hold. “I did what I did because our country was being transformed, and we were the ones transforming it.”

  Danielle accepts that beyond coming here Carlos will never own up to his betrayals. She wonders if he even remembers that boy, the one he killed, whose death changed the course of her life. Even if he does, Carlos has probably filed it away with the other “intrigues.” If she had the misfortune to witness that one, if Carlos had to make sure she didn’t write about it, he was probably left long before now with just the general impression that he did it for the greater good, for the struggle.

  Carlos looks at her impatiently. “We have to hurry,” he says, taking Danielle by the arm and pulling her forward.

  She violently shakes herself free.

  “The nearest hamlet is more than an hour away,” he pleads. “Who is the weakest among you?”

  Danielle looks over at her fellow hostage. Tina is walking forward in big confident strides. “Her. But I think she’ll make it.”

  “I’ll take her backpack.” And then Carlos looks at Danielle once more. He dares to reach out and touch her arm again.

  She doesn’t know what to expect. A denial? An apology? She isn’t convinced that she prefers to be under the power of this manipulator and murderer than under Pepe’s.

  “Daniela, you should know that Aida is in the country. She’s with Marta Ramos. She’s fine. Now, really,” he says, tightening his hold of her arm and pulling her back to walking speed, leading the way, as he always did. This time, Danielle is too dumbfounded to resist. Her elbow feels like jelly.

  “Where is the other one?” Carlos asks. “The other hostage?”

  “Antoine,” Danielle mumbles, trying to understand: Aida has come to El Salvador. For her. And Carlos knows. Does he know? That she’s his? She tries to picture Carlos and Aida together, but the idea is too far-fetched for an image to form. “Antoine’s dead,” she says flatly, feeling faint.

  Carlos stops.

  So, Pepe has not informed his untrustworthy accomplice of Antoine’s death.

  “His parents are also in San Salvador,” Carlos says. And then he gently lets go of Danielle and hurries ahead to relieve Tina of her backpack.

  Danielle steadies herself, controlling her shock, her breathing. She watches as Tina refuses at first, thinking Carlos is asking her to give over her weapon, putting a hand protectively to the strap on her shoulder. Danielle has the exact opposite instinct. She walks up to them and hands Carlos Pepe’s handgun without a word, not wanting anything more to do with firearms, and then drops back again to walk alone and think her way through this strange night. By sunrise, the members of the group are beyond exhausted, but exhilarated too, while Pepe, up front, walks as if being pulled along by an invisible thread he can’t resist but does not acknowledge, followed by Cristóbal and Rita. At some point Cristóbal asks Carlos if Rita’s hands can be untied, to which he agrees, and so she and Cristóbal walk side by side, occasionally touching hands, Delmi not far behind them.

  As far as Danielle knows, there hasn’t been any direct contact between Pepe and Carlos, even during bathroom break, when Pepe avoided everyone. She nearly decided to approach him then. She wanted to acknowledge something, if only the truth of his stories. She doesn’t feel the same compulsion towards Carlos. He has his reasons for coming, and even whatever Pepe has blackmailed him with — likely those CIA photos from the war — hasn’t stopped him. He’s risked his reputation to be here, and she knows that’s significant for a man like him. He has physically travelled all this way, even bringing news of Aida. Danielle is grateful for all of it. But she feels nothing more. Maybe Aida had something to do with him coming. Danielle won’t ask. She’ll find out from her daughter, as soon as she gets out of here.

  Danielle plods on. How did Aida pay for her trip? Certainly not with her savings for Paris! But the means, as amazing as they are, pale beside the question of Aida’s motive. Was it pity after all — over her letters? Danielle refuses to believe it. She lets herself incline instead towards something purer. She visualizes Aida with an eraser working the border between them to nothing.

  They take a second, longer rest. Using a map that he’s brought, Carlos explains in English what he’s planning. “We will walk to this hamlet here, where I know some people, and I will call in help.”

  Danielle is only slightly disheartened to see proof that they are so near an actual human community and to the road Carlos has used to get here. Pepe has simply steered them away from it all like blinded pack horses. But the young members of the group don’t register this. They listen eagerly, their weapons laid across their laps. They could be inexperienced guerrillas, Danielle thinks, getting to know life in the mountains, learning from the master.

  “Once you are all safely out, I will stay behind, with them.” Carlos motions towards Pepe and his crew. “Then, I will call the police. Drink your water and let’s go.”

  Cristóbal is sitting beside his cousin when Carlos approaches. The hostages are talking excitedly to one another nearby. Cristóbal can see how happy they are to speak so openly, like they’re trying out new voices, little birds sing-songing.

  Carlos addresses Pepe. “I am not going to call the police. I’ll make up a story that you escaped.”

  Cristóbal has known of Pepe’s loss of trust during the war. But he never asked about the person who was responsible for it. Now he is looking at that man, face to face, someone he has detested out of loyalty for a long time. Yet Carlos says he’ll let them go. Cristóbal can’t make sense of the concession. Nor can he figure out why Carlos has not forced them to remove their masks in front of the group, which also seems confusingly decent.

  “But only if you have the photos destroyed and give me the negatives,” Carlos adds. His eyes never leave Pepe.

  Pepe makes no move to indicate one way or the other that he has even heard this request, let alone what he’ll do about it. Cris-tóbal stares at the ground, just as his cousin does, but he hopes Pepe will agree to whatever condition is being discussed, because he has already decided to forgive Rita, and he knows their only chance is to leave across the border together. Today.

  “You can think about it,” Carlos says, and the familiarity in the way he says this, like Pepe is close, practically family, takes Cristóbal aback. “By the time we get to Zarcero, though, I need to know.”

  Cristóbal sees his cousin watch as Carlos turns from them and walks off, the satellite phone bulging from the pocket of his pants. The little
birds take his place, approaching with wobbly guns up.

  11:20 AM. 2 KM east of the hamlet of Zarcero, Morazán

  The man with the beard and his fellow tracker, whose arms droop heavily from the rack of his shoulders, were happy enough to receive the GPS coordinates from their boss, despite the abuse Sobero heaped upon them over the phone for not finding the group on their own and therefore requiring him to do all the work he’s been paying them to do.

  The man with the beard knew better than to say aloud what he knew: that the Americans’ drone coordinates, already more than twenty-four hours old, were practically useless. After the call, he plotted them on his maps amid all the other locations where they’d found evidence of the fugitives. The pattern he saw emerge was not reassuring. He and his colleague both understood that there was nothing more to go on except instinct.

  Not long after the call from Reverte, they’d come across a nearly overgrown trail running north and south, likely unused since the war. They’d decided it was unrealistic that the kidnappers would follow any known trail system.

  This morning, the man with the beard rechecked that logic. Probably by now the fugitives are tired. One has diarrhea. They will be more eager than before to reach the Honduran border. They won’t be so quick to bypass a shortcut. The trackers both agreed to double back and follow that trail.

  They move silently and steadily uphill, keeping their thoughts to themselves about the consequences of returning to Sobero empty-handed. The man with the big shoulders clasps his hands and makes a foothold, heaving his bearded companion up a particularly steep section of trail, where they stop for several minutes to drink water. They have just picked up the pace again and are rounding a corner when they stumble into a man of medium but bulky build, wearing a facemask, at the head of a long line of people going downhill.