‘They still have to get off the mountain,’ Razor commented.
The colonel gave him a withering look. ‘They will be long gone now. Back to their holes in the earth. The fucking mist,’ he said again, as if that explained everything.
The return journey began mournfully, with half the remaining company strength detailed to carry the dead, and matters continued to deteriorate. They were less than halfway to their destination when a series of distant explosions echoed up the valley. It didn’t take a genius to guess the source, and the remains of the four trucks were still smouldering when they reached the abandoned estate. The bodies of the two men left on guard were perched up against the old door of the estate office.
The Kaibiles settled down to wait for the summoned Chinooks, simmering with collective rage.
‘Round two to your pensioner,’ Chris murmured to Razor. ‘At this rate we could be here for ever.’
‘This bunch can lose battle after battle,’ Razor said. ‘My old man can’t afford to lose one.’
7
Hajrija spent the Monday morning wandering round the streets of Panajachel, looking at all the beautiful things for sale and enjoying the sunshine. She didn’t know whether it was the place, the baby growing inside her, or the long hours of sleep she was getting, but she felt almost unnaturally healthy, and capable of walking for hours without feeling at all tired.
Perhaps it had something to do with being on her own. Thinking back, she realized she hadn’t had more than a few hours to herself since her early student days in pre-war Sarajevo, which were now more than five years in the past. College had given way to a life in which she was constantly on call, first as a hospital nurse, and then as a member of the Anti-Sniper Unit. In the latter role all trace of privacy had vanished – the unit had fought together, lived together, slept together, like a bunch of sexless children on a particularly grim holiday. Since arriving in England she had lived with Razor, and not knowing anyone else had initially been more dependent on his company than was probably healthy.
She didn’t regret a moment of those five years, but she had to admit that it felt good to be on her own for a few days. Taking stock, working out where she was in her life, checking that the happiness she had grown accustomed to was real.
It seemed like it was. And the baby made it more so. My daughter, she told herself – she was already sure it was a girl. She hoped Razor wouldn’t be disappointed, and didn’t really think he would be. Despite his devotion to a predominantly male profession, he was a man who genuinely liked women. And these days it wasn’t so hard for girls to play football.
Life was good, she thought. The continuing tragedy of her homeland, and her enduring sense of guilt for leaving, might still cast a shadow over everything else, but it was a shadow that had lately grown faint, as if it was unable to hold back the joy of her new life. The blue skies of Guatemala were threatening to dispel it completely.
That afternoon she took a boat across the lake to Santiago Atitlán, a large village nestling between volcanoes on the southern shore. From the rickety wooden landing-stage she walked up another street lined with woven goods for sale, and populated by predatory children with the faces of angels. By the time she reached the top of the hill, and the bedlam of the food market, she felt in need of silence and a place to sit.
It was a need easily satisfied, for passing through a gap between buildings, she found herself in a wide and virtually empty square. There was a raised fountain at its centre, and on the far side a beautiful white church, complete with bell tower, colonnaded entrance and a turquoise balcony. She sat on the fountain’s steps, gazing at the church and the volcano which loomed behind it.
‘Another perfect day,’ she thought, just as a mobile sales force of six-year-olds erupted into the square.
It was late afternoon when the two Chinooks arrived back at the Uspantan base, and for most of the rest of that day the two SAS men kept to themselves, only venturing from the privacy of their room for a quick meal in the canteen.
Gómez also seemed keen to lower his profile. White-faced and silent for most of the morning and afternoon, he failed to even appear during the evening. At breakfast the following morning the two Englishmen looked for the lieutenant in vain, before deciding that they would walk down into the town without him. The guards on the gate were loath to let them go without either authorization or a chaperone, but a call to the colonel’s office provided them with the former.
In the town their reception seemed subtly different, the faces a little more friendly, which led Razor to wonder whether news of their good deed on the mountain had already reached Uspantan. He hoped to hell it had not, because he certainly didn’t fancy having to explain their quixotic gesture to Colonel Cabrera and Major Osorio.
They walked right through the town and out on to the valley road, enjoying the air and the exercise. About half a kilometre down, they found a path leading up into the hills and took it, climbing steadily up the partly wooded slopes for an hour or so, until the town and base were both spread out below, shrunken by the majesty of their surroundings. Razor was reminded again of Tolkien, and almost imagined he could detect a brooding cloud of uncertainty hanging above the military base.
But Mordor had been an ugly land, and this was far from that. He remembered something Jamie Docherty had said in Bosnia: the more beautiful a country, the more ugliness it seemed to bring out in people’s souls. And he remembered his own answer: ‘So how come there are so few saints in Birmingham?’
‘What are you grinning about?’ Chris asked.
Razor told him.
The East Anglian smiled, but only for a moment. ‘Makes me wonder why it brings out the ugliness in some people’s souls and not others,’ he said.
On the way back through the town they stopped at the Guatel office, and after half an hour of trying the operator managed to connect Razor with Hajrija’s hotel in Panajachel. She was out, so he left a message saying he would call again at six that evening.
Back at the base several of the Kaibiles were enjoying a kick-around on the parade ground, and Razor asked if he could join in. Chris looked at him as if he was mad, and disappeared in the direction of their room.
The Kaibiles were only too pleased to show the gringo how football should be played, and he had to admit that they did a pretty job of it. They certainly took no prisoners on the field, and at the end of an hour Razor felt like he’d been on a pitch with a dozen Ladino Vinny Joneses. Nursing his bruised shins in their room, he decided better them than Indian heads.
At five-thirty they set out for the town again, this time in the company of a quiet Lieutenant Gómez, who strolled round the darkening square with Chris as Razor talked on the phone. It seemed an age of waiting while the hotel receptionist went to find Hajrija, but then she was there, her voice full of everything he was missing.
‘And how is my lover?’ she asked.
‘OK, considering.’
‘Considering what?’
She sounded anxious. ‘Considering I haven’t seen you for a whole seven days,’ he said, determined not to worry her.
‘I know. I count them too.’
‘But you’re having a good time, right?’ He could tell from her voice that she was, and discovered, almost to his own surprise, that he felt no resentment of the fact that she could do so without him.
‘Yes, I am,’ she admitted. ‘But I wish you were having it with me.’
‘So do I,’ he said from the heart.
‘Is it really bad?’ she asked.
‘I guess not. We’re eating OK, sleeping OK. The place is beautiful. And we haven’t been in any danger,’ he added, with only slight exaggeration.
‘How much longer – do you know?’
‘Nope.’
‘I have to change my hotel,’ she told him, ‘after tonight this one is full of tour parties. But I have a reservation in another.’
He wrote down the number she gave him, little realizing how important it w
ould be.
They talked for another five minutes, and reluctantly said their goodbyes. Razor walked back across the square to join the others, just as a Chinook skimmed noisily above the town en route to the base. He remembered Chris wondering whether the plane above the square in Guatemala City had been a simple reminder of who held the real power, and the absurd thought crossed his mind that this helicopter had been sent to cast a shadow across his happiness with Hajrija.
As the sun sank beneath the rim of mountains to the west Tomás and the Old Man finished saying their goodbyes and started off down the trail. They had about twenty kilometres to walk before morning.
Tomás was sad to be leaving the compa camp. The victory over the Kaibiles had engendered a euphoric mood among the guerrillas, all of whom had seen enough in the way of hard times to really appreciate a few days of celebration. The sight of smiles on one another’s faces for a few days would go a long way towards sustaining them all though the difficult months to come.
The comrades were still talking about Emelia’s marksmanship and her incredible encounter with the strange gringos. Everyone had a different theory as to who they were and why they were with the Kaibiles, ranging from Jorge’s belief that they were mentally retarded Americans to Alicia’s that they were human rights monitors sent by the UN to observe the Army’s behaviour. But there was nothing on the radio to substantiate the latter theory, and Emelia herself pooh-poohed the former. They hadn’t spoken like Americans, she said, and they hadn’t seemed stupid.
There was a down side to the euphoria, of course – an almost dangerous leap in confidence. Tomás privately considered the UN theory a typical example of wishful thinking, and he wasn’t at all sure that the Old Man’s decision to visit his sister’s family’s village – ‘while the bastards are still running around like headless chickens’ – was a wise one. At the very least, he had argued, the Old Man should take someone with him.
The Old Man had agreed, and chosen Tomás. Which, Emelia had said with a laugh, served him right.
Heading down the hill, the Old Man in front of him setting a pace which belied his seventy-odd years, Tomás found himself wondering again about his sister’s reaction to killing half a dozen men. Or more to the point, her lack of reaction. It was strange, the way he felt about this: he didn’t want her to suffer for doing her duty, but neither did he want her to walk away completely unscathed. A death should never be taken lightly, not even the death of a Kaibil.
It was around ten in the evening, at the close of a long and boring Wednesday, when Gomez came to inform Razor and Chris that Colonel Cabrera wanted to see them in his office.
‘Any idea what about?’ Razor asked.
‘None,’ Gómez said. He had been monosyllabic all day, as if the lengthening separation from Guatemala City and his family was weakening his ability to string sentences together.
The three men walked across the floodlit parade ground in silence. A mixture of murmured conversation, angry shouts and raucous laughter floated across from the Kaibil barracks. In the space between the lights a thin crescent moon could be seen rising up behind the whale-like humps of the mountains.
Cabrera was standing behind his desk, leaning forward over the map which was spread across it. ‘We may have found him,’ he said, looking up at the Englishmen. He pointed at the map. ‘Tziaca – a small village about twenty kilometres north-east of here, on the other side of the Cuchumatanes. We have word that two guerrillas arrived there this morning, one of them an old man.’
‘Is this source reliable?’ Razor asked. He hardly needed to add that the last two had not been.
‘We think so. He has a lot to lose if he’s lying to us.’
‘So did that man the other day, but it didn’t stop him.’
Cabrera nodded. ‘Some of these men are fanatics. But…what can I say? There is never one hundred per cent certainty in these matters.’
‘What makes you think the two men are still there now?’ Chris asked.
‘They may not be. But the older man’s sister is ill, maybe dying, so there is a good chance they have taken a risk and stayed. And perhaps they are feeling a little full of themselves too, after their good fortune on the mountain. Anyway, we can lose nothing by taking a look.’
‘OK,’ Razor agreed.
‘Good. This time, I do not intend to use the roads. Instead, a small group of eight men – including myself and both of you – will be inserted by helicopter around ten kilometres south of Tziaca. We will then move across country and establish an observation point outside the village before it wakes. If the two men are there we shall simply arrest them. If there are more subversivos, then I shall call in the rest of the company, which will be on stand-by here in the Chinooks.’ He looked at the two SAS men in turn. ‘How does that sound?’
Razor examined the map, wondering why Cabrera was being so accommodating. Fear of a third failure, perhaps. ‘What’s the terrain like around this village?’ he asked.
‘It’s a small valley. The flat ground and the lower slopes have been cleared, but the upper slopes are forested. The only track runs north, down into this valley’ – he pointed it out with his pen – ‘but the obvious escape route is south. There is a path that leads up into these mountains, which are heavily forested and full of hidden valleys which these people know like the back of their hand. That’s why I can’t risk an airborne assault,’ he added. ‘Give them a few minutes’ warning and everyone in the village will disappear into thin air.’
‘Do you have anyone who knows the village well?’
‘Someone who used to live there.’
‘Then it sounds like a good plan,’ Razor said. Maybe the Kaibiles would make it third time lucky, he thought without enthusiasm. Still, at least that would get Chris and himself out of this damn country. ‘When do we leave?’ he asked.
Cabrera looked at his watch. ‘In twenty-seven minutes.’
The SAS men went to make their preparations.
‘Another fiasco, do you reckon?’ Chris asked, as they sat side by side on the lower bunk checking the Uzis and Brownings.
A wide grin split Razor’s darkened face. ‘Fuck knows. I quite enjoyed the last two.’ He sighed. ‘But I can’t say as I fancy spending the next ten years going on op after op with this bunch of incompetent psychos. Sooner or later someone will put a bullet in me.’
‘Those bastards in London can’t expect us to stay here for ever, can they?’
Razor shrugged. ‘They’ve probably forgotten they sent us by now.’
‘The CO won’t have.’
‘Yeah, let’s send him a postcard next time we pass a souvenir shop.’
Chris turned to look at him. ‘This is really getting to you, isn’t it?’
‘Isn’t it getting to you?’
‘I suppose so. I guess I’ve been assuming that since we don’t have any real options, there’s not much point in worrying about things.’ He sighed. ‘But yeah, I guess just about anywhere else would be an improvement.’
The helicopter was a Bell 212, otherwise known as the UH1N variant of the Huey Iroquois. Razor was pleased to see it wasn’t one of the more common UH1Hs, which lacked an all-weather capability. A night flight through Guatemala’s misty mountains was going to be pretty hairy as it was.
The two-man crew seemed cheerful enough, if not overly so. In Razor’s experience most British military pilots were certifiable, and if these two Guatemalans were anything to go by then the condition was generic rather than national.
He and Chris joined a Kaibil NCO, four privates and an Indian civilian in the passenger space. The Kaibil soldiers all grinned at them, though not perhaps with quite the same enthusiasm as on their first meeting. They reminded Chris of his mother’s dog after a scolding – eager to please, but still not quite certain what it had done wrong.
The Indian did not grin at them, but simply nodded his acknowledgement of their presence. He was wearing a straw hat, woven shirt, loose trousers and battered leather
sandals. He seemed outwardly calm, but Razor thought he detected anger simmering beneath the surface. Or maybe not. Maybe he just expected Indians in this country to be angry.
Outside on the landing-pad Colonel Cabrera was giving an earnest Major Osorio his final instructions. The Chinooks he had mentioned had not yet arrived, but were no doubt on their way.
The colonel climbed aboard the Huey, the rotor drone hit a higher note, and the helicopter lifted off into the night sky. For the next few minutes they flew up through thick mist, and then the view dramatically cleared, and for the rest of the flight they were treated to the dark shapes of mountains and a starry sky. The landing was one of the softest the two Englishmen had experienced, and the group of eight jumped down into a mountain meadow.
Cutting off the helicopter’s engine only emphasized how loud it had been, and it was hard to believe that anyone in this part of the mountains had not been alerted to their presence. But the distance such sounds carried had been well researched by the Americans, first in Vietnam and then elsewhere, and these days all any competent commander needed to do was factor in terrain type, altitude, humidity and all the other variables, then read off the exact distance at which any particular model of plane or helicopter would be audible. If Cabrera hadn’t done as much, then this probably would turn into another fiasco.
And this time, Razor thought, they would also be outnumbered, at least for the half hour required for the Chinooks to put in an appearance. And on this side of the mountains there seemed to be no mist to hide in either.
Who dares wins, he thought. Who dares needs his fucking head examined.
They set off, the Indian in the lead, along a fairly well worn track. The crescent moon, high in the sky by this time, offered enough light to make the walking infinitely easier than it had been on the two previous operations. Much of the ground had been cleared of trees, and every once in a while they saw evidence of former occupation. At one rest-stop, beside a stream noisy enough to cover the sound of conversation, Chris asked the Indian who lived on this land.
Guatemala – Journey into Evil Page 12