Guatemala – Journey into Evil

by David Monnery

  ‘No one,’ he said laconically.

  ‘And before?’

  He looked around, as if uncertain whether he should be speaking to these gringos. ‘There was a finca here,’ he said, ‘a coffee plantation. The owner was killed…’ He shrugged.

  ‘Who by?’ Chris asked.

  ‘The guerrillas, of course,’ the Indian said, his face a mask.

  They walked on, reaching the vicinity of the village soon after two-thirty. The Indian led them round in a wide arc to a position high on the hillside, from which a watch could be kept over the whole valley. A binocular scan of the village, whose nearest dwellings were some three hundred metres away, revealed no movement. The village was either sleeping or empty.

  The first proof of the former came around three-thirty, when a baby started to cry. This noise was followed by others: something being dropped, a muffled shout, the scrape of something on the ground. Then a light briefly flared, and another. Through an open doorway Razor could see what looked like hanging torches, while silhouetted figures moved to and fro. Then a fire was lit, and another, and soon several thin columns of smoke were smudging the night sky.

  Two young women emerged from the house Razor was watching, and while one began washing something in a container – corn, it looked like – the other began scrubbing a grindstone. Soon both were at work grinding the corn, while a scrawny dog watched them, his tail wagging furiously.

  A man now emerged, and began working more noisily on another grindstone, sharpening first a hoe, then a machete, and finally an axe. He was not alone. As Razor shifted the binoculars he caught sight of at least four other males engaged in the same activity, and shutting his eyes for a moment, he could imagine the various sounds that were emanating from the village coalescing into a strange symphony.

  Soon the women were rolling the ground corn into balls for the tortillas, pans were heating on the fires, and the smell of cooking was wafting up from the village.

  There was something so elemental about the scene. The sounds and sights and smells of a community waking up. The process was utterly banal, probably varied hardly a whit from day to day, and yet Razor felt almost humbled by it. It all seemed so real, whatever the hell that meant.

  The sky above the watchers was showing the first hint of dawn. The families sat round in circles eating the tortillas, and drinking a steaming liquid from either clay jars or plastic cups. The dogs had already been fed what looked like scraps, but waited in hope regardless.

  Then, as if propelled by inner clocks, everyone but the eldest women and those with babies, gathered their farming implements and set out through the village, calling to their neighbours as they passed. Soon there were more than a hundred men, women and children making their way through the dawn twilight in the direction of the fields.

  So far there had been no sign of any strangers, let alone men wearing the olive-green uniforms of the guerrillas, and as the light gradually brightened Razor began to entertain a growing hope that their quarry had already escaped.

  The few women who stayed behind were busying themselves with a variety of tasks, attending to their babies, rolling more tortilla balls, sweeping out the houses. Most of the latter were low, two-storey affairs, with the ground floor reserved for living and the upper floor for storing corn. The walls were constructed from cane, the roofs from large palm leaves, and everything seemed tied together by plant fibres.

  These people don’t need any lessons in recycling, Razor thought wryly, just as something moving on the edge of his field of vision caused him to shift his view through the binoculars.

  Two men and a young woman had emerged from one of the larger dwellings at the far end of the village. One of the men was young – in his twenties, Razor guessed – with a compact body and a face which looked friendly even though it held a frown. He was the guerrilla with whom Razor had shared a long-distance sighting the previous week.

  The other man was much older. Razor had last seen him fifteen years before, walking away across the dew-soaked grass in Tikal’s Plaza of the Lost World.

  Both men were wearing olive-green uniforms, but neither seemed to be armed. They sat down side by side on a well-worn log while the woman poured them something from the tin kettle on the fire.

  ‘Is it him?’ Cabrera’s voice hissed in his ear.

  ‘I can’t tell from this distance,’ Razor lied. He found it hard to believe he was going to give this old man up to the tender mercies of the Kaibiles.

  Cabrera looked disappointed, but gestured the two Englishmen to follow him down into the gully which lay just behind their observation point. ‘Where do you think we should go from here?’ he asked.

  He was still covering himself against the possibility of another fiasco, Razor thought.

  ‘Flush them out,’ Chris suggested. ‘From what I can see there’s only the one obvious path leading up into the mountains – if you send a few of your lads up the track from the valley then these two will make a run for it up that path. We can be waiting for them.’

  ‘And that’ll reduce the risk of any civilian casualties,’ Razor added.

  Cabrera looked unimpressed for a moment, but then his face brightened. ‘Flush them out,’ he repeated, ‘I like it. Flushing is what you do with shit, yes?’

  The colonel grinned at them, and Razor knew in that instant that he could not finger the old guerrilla and live with himself. Sooner or later the Guatemalans would give him a suitable corpse to identify, and then he would be able to say yes, but there was no way he was giving up a living prisoner to the Kaibiles.

  ‘Three men on the track, and the other five of us waiting on the path,’ Cabrera was saying, apparently to himself. ‘The three on the track can take some hostages in the fields, just in case these two decide to fight it out in the village.’

  He went to give the orders, leaving Razor and Chris looking at each other. ‘Ve vas only obeying orders,’ Chris said with a mock-German accent.

  ‘Maybe we can limit the damage,’ Razor said quietly. ‘Cabrera must have some notion of PR.’

  ‘Yeah, he thinks it stands for pillage and rape.’

  Razor smiled in spite of himself.

  Cabrera returned with two of the Kaibiles and the Indian, who once more led the way. They had only about five hundred metres to travel as the crow flew, but the actual journey, which involved crossing a high ridge and then circling back down across a wide forested slope, was about four times as long. Cabrera constantly urged greater speed, for fear that the two men would escape while they were en route.

  They reached the path at a point about half a kilometre above the village, and started looking for an ambush-friendly location. The trees, most of which seemed to be either pines or beeches, were far from densely packed, so they cautiously followed the direction of the village, looking for a sudden change in elevation which would offer concealment. They found it at the top of a small waterfall, where rough steps had been cut and kept by generations of village-dwellers. A man coming up them would see nothing of what was waiting at the top until it was too late.

  The five men took advantage of what cover the vegetation offered and settled down to wait. Razor could not see the village from his position, but he could see the rest of the valley stretching into a distant green haze. His mind replayed the scenes of the village waking up: the child fondling the dog’s ear, a woman squatting beside a fire with a flat pan full of tortillas, the man running his finger down the sharpened axe blade. And he thought about the SAS, and the rigours of the selection process they were all so proud of, and how they had been trained to endure conditions that would kill mere mortals.

  Such conceit. In these mountains life was an endurance course from the cradle to the grave, and the penalty for failure was death.

  He wished he was in the East Stand at White Hart Lane, twelve years old again, praying at the shrine of the great god Chivers for something as straightforward as a last-minute winner.

  The sun appeared above the ridge a
way to their left. Half an hour went by, then another fifteen minutes, and Razor could almost feel Cabrera’s frustration reaching out across the ten metres that separated them. But there had been no word on the walkie-talkie from the other group, so there was no reason to think anything had gone wrong.

  Maybe it had taken the three Kaibiles longer than expected to reach the track, Razor thought. Maybe they had stopped for a picnic, or defected to the guerrillas…

  The sound of panting emerged from the auditory background of the waterfall, growing louder with each few seconds. A head came into view, an old man’s head, with a deeply lined face and eyes that time and the wind had almost closed. He reached the top step and looked around, but either his eyesight was bad or the ambush was better concealed than Razor thought, because he showed no alarm. He was apparently unarmed.

  The younger man was. His rifle appeared before he did, clambering over the rim and taking a deep breath.

  ‘Drop the rifle,’ Cabrera said. ‘You are surrounded.’

  As if on cue the two Kaibil privates stepped out on either side of the two guerrillas, their sub-machine-guns raised.

  Slowly, reluctantly, the two men raised their hands above their heads. The young one was looking angrily at the Indian guide, but there was no anger in the Old Man’s expression, just a resigned twist of amusement.

  One of the Kaibiles yanked the pistol from the younger man’s belt, picked up the rifle, and retreated a few steps.

  Razor became aware of Cabrera’s expectant look, and took a mental deep breath. He had to sound convincing…

  ‘We meet again, Englishman,’ the Old Man said conversationally, pulling the rug out from under his own feet.

  ‘So it seems,’ Razor said, his heart sinking.

  ‘It is him,’ Cabrera exclaimed triumphantly. He looked at Razor, and the look said: ‘You knew, and you weren’t going to tell me.’ He walked forward until he was only a metre or so from the Old Man, looked him over from head to toe, and burst out laughing. ‘Keeping you alive is going to be the real challenge,’ he said.

  He walked away, still shaking his head with amusement, and stood for several moments looking down at the village from the top of the waterfall. Then he spun abruptly round. ‘Call in the company,’ he told the Kaibil with the radio equipment.

  ‘What for?’ Razor growled. ‘Those people haven’t done anything.’

  Cabrera stared at him for what seemed a long time before deigning to reply. ‘They have harboured terrorists,’ he said coldly, ‘but that is no concern of yours. You have done your job – and now you can go home. Galvez,’ he said, addressing the other Kaibil, ‘you will escort our guests back to the helicopter.’

  Razor stood his ground. ‘For every village you destroy there will be another fifty guerrillas in the mountains.’

  ‘And how do you work that out?’ Cabrera asked, as if he was humouring a child.

  ‘That’s what has happened in every war like this for the last fifty years.’ He glared at the Kaibil colonel. ‘And the British Government was assured that this operation would be conducted with due…’

  ‘Fuck the British Government,’ Cabrera said contemptuously. ‘That operation is over,’ he added. ‘Finito.’

  ‘You’re nothing but a fucking butcher,’ Razor told him.

  Cabrera’s face reddened with rage. ‘No one kills seventeen of my men and gets away with it,’ he hissed. ‘If I had my way I’d kill every Indian man, woman and child in this fucking province. And then I’d move on to the next one.’ He turned on the hapless private. ‘Send the message,’ he ordered.

  Razor looked at the ground, mental pictures of the villages above Zavik crowding his mind. The pile of charred remains inside the ruined church, the villagers crucified on the wall of the barn. Hajrija’s Bosnia, someone else’s Guatemala. He could either walk away or…or what? There was only one way to stop Cabrera – anything less drastic would probably end with Chris and him being thrown out of the Huey on the way home. It was all or nothing.

  But where, he wondered, could they run to?

  Sometimes you just had to make it up as you went along.

  The Kaibil had the radio set up for transmission – there didn’t seem to be time for mapping out possible consequences. Razor took a deep breath, and looked across at Chris. Finding what he hoped was acquiescence in his partner’s eyes, he took a great leap into the unknown, bringing up the stubby barrel of the Uzi and pulling the trigger in one smooth motion.

  Colonel Cabrera’s mouth was still opening when the first bullet crashed through his front teeth and out through the back of his head, toppling him, straight as a plank, back over the lip of the waterfall. There were several thuds as his body bounced down the fall, ending with a large splash as it landed in the small pool below.

  The two Kaibil soldiers were still staring after him, their faces drawn in identical lines of astonishment, as if their colonel had been suddenly summoned to the underworld by some supernatural force.

  The two guerrillas looked no less surprised, though something like a smile was breaking out on the Old Man’s weathered face.

  Chris shook his head. ‘Another fine mess you’ve got me into,’ he muttered.

  Razor looked at him, a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach. Hajrija, he thought. How was he going to reach her?

  8

  The waterfall sounded louder in the silence.

  ‘This is the third time in five years I’ve suddenly found myself persona non grata in someone else’s country,’ Chris observed.

  ‘You must be doing something right then,’ Razor said absent-mindedly. His mind was racing through the problems created by Cabrera’s sudden demise, looking for solutions, establishing priorities. One, how were they going to deal with the three Kaibiles in the village below? Two, how were they going to get out of the immediate area? Three, how were they going to get out of the goddamn country? Four, how was Hajrija going to get out of the goddamn country?

  If they were going to find answers for three and four they would need help from the guerrillas.

  For their part, Tomás and the Old Man were still recovering from the double shock. One moment they had been happily on their way home to a triumphant unit, the next confronting certain torture and death. And then, before this terrible sentence had even begun to sink in, they had been granted a sudden reprieve by the mystery gringos.

  It was the Old Man who recovered first. ‘How many Kaibiles are there in the village?’ he asked.

  ‘Three,’ Razor told him. ‘And there’s another eighty waiting on the helipad at Uspantan.’

  ‘The three down there will have heard the shot,’ Chris added.

  ‘Are they in contact with Uspantan?’ Tomás asked.

  It sounded to Razor as if they were discussing a game. ‘No,’ he said. He walked across to the Kaibil with the walkie-talkie, who was standing almost rigid with fear, and relieved him of his recoilless rifle. ‘I want you to talk to your sergeant,’ he told the man. ‘Tell him you have captured the guerrillas – sorry, subversivos – but that Colonel Cabrera has been wounded. Get them up here, pronto.’

  The Kaibil took a deep breath and nodded.

  ‘No heroics,’ Razor told him.

  The man did well, considering. Razor herded him across to join the other Kaibil, who had been disarmed by Chris, and told both men to lie face down in the grass.

  ‘What about chummy here?’ Chris asked, indicating the Indian guide, who was sitting with his head in his hands.

  The Old Man spoke to him in a language the Englishman could not understand, eliciting a long reply which seemed half defiant, half resigned. ‘They have his sister in the city,’ the Old Man eventually translated. ‘He says his sister will die now, which makes him sad, but he is glad you shot the Kaibil colonel.’

  Christ almighty, Razor thought.

  ‘Speaking of the devil, we’d better get his body back up here,’ Chris said.

  ‘Yeah, but what do we do with this guy?’ Ra
zor asked, looking at the guide.

  ‘We will take him with us,’ the Old Man said.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I will help you,’ Tomás told Chris. The two men disappeared down the steps, leaving Razor and the Old Man to watch the prisoners.

  ‘The eighty men at Uspantan, they will come eventually,’ the Old Man said. ‘We have to warn the village.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Razor breathed out noisily, possibilities jostling each other in his mind.

  Chris and Tomás reappeared, hauling Cabrera’s corpse by the ankles, and dragged it another twenty metres further up the path. They then transferred the two Kaibil prisoners and the guide to the same location.

  ‘I’ll look after them,’ the Old Man volunteered.

  The other three took up their ambush positions, each grateful for the chance to get their thoughts back in some sort of order.

  Razor was already struggling to suppress an insidious sense of panic. He was pretty certain that he and Chris could simply walk their way out of the country. They couldn’t be much more than a hundred kilometres from the border, and the terrain in between was wild enough to hide an army. The two of them knew how to live off the land. Three nights and they would be in Mexico. But Hajrija was in a town fifty kilometres to the south. There was no way he or Chris could travel on the roads or survive in the towns without help. Both of them were too tall, and Chris was too fair-haired. And every policeman and soldier in Guatemala would be looking for them.

  Razor hoped the guerrillas were feeling grateful.

  Ten metres away Chris was wondering why he felt so calm. Because his subconscious had been expecting it, was the answer that came to mind. They had been on a collision course with their Guatemalan hosts since day one, and here was the collision. In some strange way he felt they had vindicated themselves. No doubt the men in London would see things differently, but this was the way his SAS was supposed to operate. They might not always fight on the side of the angels, but they weren’t supposed to serve as auxiliaries to the scum of the earth.