Guatemala – Journey into Evil

by David Monnery

  He thought he heard the scream again, but it was harder to tell with the TV at such a deafening pitch. He found himself hoping that they kept the volume up.

  The minutes stretched out, the night stayed clear. Chris watched the Great Bear slide slowly up into the northern sky, and played word games with himself to pass the time. The TV was still loud enough to mask all other sounds, but as far as he could tell there were few to mask. The lights in the admin block had been turned off, and there was no sign of any movement deeper inside the base. Chris could not see the occupied barracks from where he was, but whatever the soldiers were doing, they weren’t taking evening strolls.

  At half-past eleven he made his move, working his way along the wall in the direction of the gatehouse. The darkness here would probably have been deep enough on its own, but the contrast with the brightly lit area beyond the wall made it doubly so. Chris had no fear of being seen, and not much of being heard until the noise of the TV abruptly vanished, when even his own breathing seemed to echo in the unearthly silence.

  The sentry’s head appeared above the parapet, and Chris stopped in his tracks, crouching motionless for a minute and more until the man disappeared again. He inched across in front of the gate and worked his way around the outer wall of the gatehouse until he was almost underneath the guard tower, and only a metre or so from the bottom of the ladder.

  It was eleven forty-seven. From where he stood he could see the Guatemalan flag fluttering from its pole in front of the office building. He thought about the quetzal holding its olive branch, and decided a frigate-bird would have been a more appropriate national emblem. They had a habit of poking pelicans’ eyes out, and of forcibly drowning gulls in order to steal their catch.

  It was exactly eleven fifty-eight when he heard a door slam on the other side of the compound yard, and only a few seconds later when the first cries of the jaguar came echoing out of the distant trees. Emelia was good, Chris thought. Even knowing it had to be her, he found himself wondering if a real cat had put in a surprise appearance.

  He heard the guard stir in the tower above, heard the footsteps of his replacement coming across the yard, and took the knife from its sheath. He had killed three men in his career, but all with guns. He had been trained to do what he was about to do, but that was all.

  The man came nearer. Twenty metres, ten…Chris could hear him breathing, hear the chink of something like a key rattling as he walked. And then the silhouetted figure was in front of him, reaching for the ladder, and Chris was stepping forward, one arm snaking out to smother the mouth as it pulled back the head, the other slicing the blade across the open throat just as the jaguar’s cry split the silence.

  Chris lowered the dead man to the ground, retrieved his cap and put it on. He started up the ladder, almost letting the knife slip from his blood-drenched hand. He heard the man above him murmur ‘Es imposible’, and hesitated for a split-second before putting his head through the hole in the floor. This was the most dangerous moment of all – if the man had time to open fire, then they were probably finished.

  Emelia made the noise again, this time drawing it out to cover Chris’s emergence on to the platform. As they had hoped, the guard was staring out towards the forest, keen to get a glimpse of Guatemala’s most endangered species. ‘Dónde está …?’ he began to say, only to feel his head jerked back, glimpse the flash of the blade, know the instant in which the warmth of his life gushed away.

  Chris lowered the body into the seat, a collapsible aluminium beach chair with striped plastic upholstery, and fought back the urge to scream. He looked across the camp to the other occupied tower, and saw no indications of alarm. That guard was still sitting in his beach chair. That guard’s heart was still pumping blood.

  Later, he told himself. If at all.

  Three figures in uniform fatigues were running across the sea of light towards the gate. Chris hurried back down the ladder and into the gatehouse, where it didn’t take more than a few moments to find the gate controls. He pressed the open button and hoped the hum of the motor wasn’t really as loud as it sounded.

  Seconds later, with the others all inside, he showed Mariano the controls and pressed the close button. Under the guard tower, Chris gave the compañero the guard’s cap, and the Guatemalan headed straight up the ladder, whispering ‘Buena suerte’ over his shoulder as he went.

  The two women were staring at the blood glistening on Chris’s hands, arms, face and chest.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Hajrija asked. The sight of him had brought it all back. She could almost smell the buildings burning in Sarajevo’s old town.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied. He could still feel the blood flooding through his fingers. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  They advanced across the edge of the yard, and waited a few seconds by the corner of the admin block before slipping on to the darkened veranda. The front doors were unlocked, as they had expected. Inside, a tiled area was separated off from a large office by a long reception counter. Opposite this, doors opened into smaller offices. Directly ahead of them another doorway gave on to a corridor which ran the length of the building. A few metres down, light shone out from under the door of the room they were looking for.

  It seemed to be the only light. Chris took a deep breath, pressed his hand down on the handle, swung the door open and stepped into the room. A soldier was half lying in a chair with his back to the door, his feet up on the radio desk, a comic in his lap. Hearing visitors, he tried to turn his head and take down his feet, but before either action could be completed Chris had rammed the barrel of the Browning into his left ear.

  The man’s eyes opened wide when he saw the blood all over the gun’s owner, and he started pleading, crossing himself frantically as he did so. The sight of the two women seemed to unnerve him even more, and he kept glancing over at them, as if unsure that they were for real.

  ‘Two of your comrades are already dead,’ Chris said, raising one bloody hand in proof, ‘so we have nothing to lose by killing you. But if you do everything we ask then I give you my word that you’ll be OK.’

  The man glanced at the two women again, and shuddered. ‘Tell me,’ he begged, ‘what do you want?’

  ‘OK,’ Chris said. ‘What’s the camp commandant’s name?’

  ‘Major Toriello, but…’ He stopped.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Well, Major Osorio is the ranking officer on base…’

  Chris smiled. ‘OK. I want you to pretend that Major Osorio has just fallen very ill. He has severe pains in the lower abdomen, and it looks like appendicitis. He needs treatment quickly. He needs to be flown to a hospital. Now, who do you call?’

  ‘Divisional headquarters in Chimaltenango. They will send a helicopter for him.’

  ‘And how long will that take to get here?’

  ‘Twenty minutes. Maybe twenty-five. Not much more.’

  Chris pulled his sketch map of the base out of his back pocket and spread it out in front of the man. ‘Now tell me where we can find the two majors.’

  The Guatemalan looked at the map for a few seconds and then pointed a finger at one of the connecting buildings. ‘This is where Major Osorio sleeps, but – I don’t know – he may still be in the Interrogation Room…’

  ‘Which is where?’

  The finger pointed.

  ‘And Toriello?’

  ‘The room next to Major Osorio’s.’

  Chris pulled the Uzi’s strap over his head and handed the gun to Hajrija. ‘OK?’

  She nodded and headed for the door, Emelia close behind her with the Uzi she had taken from the dead sentry.

  ‘Make the call,’ Chris told the radio operator as the door closed behind the two women. ‘And make it convincing,’ he added, perching himself on the edge of the desk, ‘unless you really want to die for the sake of a couple of gringos.’

  Already he was worrying about Hajrija and Emelia, and wishing once more that one of them had been fluent enough in Spanish to do th
e job that he was doing.

  Hajrija and Emelia set off down the corridor, past a row of apparently empty rooms. The passage turned left, and crossed to another building by means of a covered walkway. Here they heard snoring through a couple of closed doors, including one of the two at the far end of the corridor.

  Neither door was locked. The two women co-ordinated their entrances, but only Emelia struck gold, waking Major Toriello by pushing an Uzi barrel into his open mouth. His eyes jerked open, his mouth closed on the cold metal, and he was suddenly very still. ‘One sound and I will kill you,’ Emelia told him in a whisper, and the look in his eyes said he believed her. ‘Now get up,’ she said, withdrawing the gun and standing back.

  Hajrija appeared in the doorway. ‘Osorio’s not there,’ she said, ignoring the naked Toriello.

  ‘Move,’ Emelia told the major, prodding him in the back. They walked back through the silent buildings to the communications room, where they bound the wrists and ankles of both Toriello and the radio operator with lengths of rope they had brought for that purpose. Toriello was also gagged, but the other man was not – they might still need him to talk with the world outside the camp. ‘Less than fifteen minutes,’ Chris told the two women as they left the office for the second time.

  This time they slipped out on to the dark veranda and made their way around the outside of the building to where the lines of barracks stretched away towards the western wall. They walked down the side of the first, and then turned right down the pathless space between the barrack ends, their boots rustling in the dry grass. At the end of the row they stopped and examined the long, low building which stood between them and the helipad. After his morning exercise the previous day, Razor had been returned to this building.

  The windows in the end doors showed a dim light.

  The two women walked quickly across the space, and Hajrija put a careful eye to the dirty window. Another bare corridor stretched into the distance, regularly spaced doors on either side. About ten metres down, a uniformed guard sat on an upright chair, a sub-machine-gun in his lap. He looked at least half asleep, but Hajrija didn’t fancy finding out that he wasn’t. One burst of automatic fire and the chances of their getting away would take a nosedive.

  It suddenly occurred to her that the man was probably sitting opposite Razor’s cell. She took another look through the window and counted five doors, then, gesturing Emelia to follow, edged around the corner of the building and started counting windows. The fifth one along had recently received new steel bars.

  She put her hand through them and tapped lightly on the wire grille. Seconds later a familiar face loomed through the mesh, and the feeling of joy almost took her breath away.

  Later, she told herself, later. First they had to get him out of there, and to do that they needed to distract the guard. She searched through her English vocabulary for the right words and came up empty. ‘Make noise,’ she mouthed silently, and when Razor looked bemused, waved both hands in the air and mimed someone shouting. He grinned back at her, raised a thumb in acknowledgement, and then a single finger.

  She started counting seconds, and turned to find Emelia smiling at her performance.

  They crept back to the doors, feeling hyper-aware of the barracks only thirty metres away, and the more than twenty soldiers who were, hopefully, sleeping in them. Hajrija’s mental count had reached fifty-four when they heard Razor rattling his door and calling out to the guard. Seeing the guard get up, she gently pulled the door open, praying that a sudden draught would not give them away.

  It didn’t. She crept forward, knowing that Emelia was taking aim behind her. If the worst came to the worst there would only be one shot…

  She was still five metres away when the man suddenly jerked his head around, and the hand that had been leaning against the wall seemed to twitch towards the sub-machine-gun hanging from his shoulder. Emelia didn’t know how she held her finger steady on the trigger, but she did, and Hajrija quickly stepped forward to cover the guard with the Uzi. He looked more stunned than frightened, which she supposed was fair enough. The Guatemalan Army probably didn’t get many visits from all-woman guerrilla units.

  Emelia moved up to relieve the man of his weapon.

  ‘Open the door,’ Hajrija told him.

  He obliged, and she pushed him past her grinning husband and into the cell, taking one of the lengths of cloth from her pocket as she did so. ‘For gagging him,’ she told Razor.

  While he did the honours she quickly filled him in on what was supposed to be happening next. ‘Osorio is still our best bet for an easy exit,’ she said, repeating word for word what Chris had told her. ‘Do you know where the Interrogation Room is?’

  ‘Unfortunately yes,’ Razor said, putting an arm round her neck and pulling her gently towards him. The smell of her hair was just as he remembered it, and the feel of her lips on his. ‘I missed you,’ he said, pulling away with a smile and picking up the guard’s gun.

  The man looked beseechingly up at him.

  ‘Keep nice and quiet and you may live through the night,’ Razor told him reassuringly. ‘Let’s go,’ he told the others.

  He had done this trip several times now, though since that first occasion they had done him no physical harm. But over the days he had heard the distant screams, seen the fresh stains on the floor, imagined the rest.

  Now, approaching the closed door, he heard a soft moaning noise, and felt the hairs on the back of his hands rising up in protest. It was the sound of someone enduring things that no human being, no living creature, should ever have to endure.

  As he stood outside the door he could hear the velvet sneer of Osorio’s voice.

  He used hand signals to indicate that he would open the door and move quickly to the right. Hajrija should follow him in and move swiftly to the left, leaving Emelia covering the room from the doorway. The two women nodded, and Razor yanked down on the handle, pushed it wide and strode into the room, his eyes taking in the scene, his hands bringing the sub-machine-gun to bear on its prime target.

  Romeo Osorio was straddling an upright chair, arms crossed on its high back, smoking a cigarette. His penis was hanging out of his trousers, a drop of semen clinging to its end. On the floor in front of him a naked man was curled up like a foetus, the capucha hood loose over his head. As Osorio’s head turned to investigate the intrusion his expression went from rage to fear in the blink of an eye.

  Lieutenant Goicouria was crouching down on the other side of his victim, his forearms bathed in blood, a thin and bloody blade in his right hand. In his eyes there seemed to be nothing, not even pleasure.

  On the table by the wall three fingers had been stood in a row, like trophies. None of them had nails.

  There were no other guards, and the only weapon in sight were Osorio’s holstered pistol and Goicouria’s knife. The twosome had merely been amusing themselves.

  For the second time in his life Razor felt an almost overwhelming desire to kill, and Osorio seemed to sense it, flinching at the slight movement of the SAS man’s finger on the Uzi’s trigger.

  ‘Drop the knife,’ Razor said, walking towards Goicouria, and it clattered on to the cement floor.

  ‘The helicopter,’ Emelia said from the doorway, and a few moments later everyone else could hear it too.

  ‘You remember how the Nazis used to think of everything,’ Razor said brightly. ‘Well, so do this bunch.’ He nodded towards the stretcher leaning up against one wall. ‘Just in case you can’t make it back to your cell on your feet.’ He yanked the torturer to his feet and almost threw him back against the wall. ‘How many other prisoners are there here?’

  Goicouria looked at him as if he didn’t understand the question.

  Razor grabbed the man’s right hand, rammed it back against the wall, and drove the blade of the knife through the palm and into the whitewashed plaster. A single high-pitched screech came from the torturer’s mouth.

  ‘How many?’ Razor asked again, almo
st hoping the man wouldn’t tell him.

  ‘Three. This one and two others. That is all.’

  The helicopter seemed to be almost overhead.

  The sound of its approach had also reached Chris in the communications room. After gagging the radio operator and dragging him across to the goose-pimpled Toriello, he tied the two men together at the wrist and threw another loop around their necks and a leg of the desk. Turning his attention to the radio, he disabled it as best he could without making too much noise. There were probably others on the base, but there was no point in making life easy for the enemy. ‘Adiós,’ he murmured to the four staring eyes, then turned the light out and closed the door behind him.

  The drone of the Huey was much louder now, and as Chris emerged from the building he could see it slowly sinking down towards the helipad on the far side of the base. It was another UH-1N, as they had hoped. Enough capacity, enough range, and with any luck it would also be carrying enough fuel.

  The guard tower in front of him looked empty, as it was supposed to be – Mariano should have let himself out through the gates at the first sound of the approaching chopper. Chris turned the other way, around the back of the admin block, and broke into a run.

  The pilot of the Huey was still a few metres from the tarmac when he saw the two figures emerging from the lighted doorway with a loaded stretcher. It was not going to be an all-nighter, he thought gratefully, and didn’t bother to cut the engine on landing. Stepping out to open up the passenger hatch, he found the ugly nose of an Uzi pointing at his stomach.

  The army doctor who had accompanied him was receiving a similar greeting on the other side. Both were hustled into the passenger hatch by a young woman in uniform, and after several seconds the penny dropped – these people were not who they were supposed to be.

  The stretcher and its apparently unconscious occupant were shoved into the dark space after them, and a male voice told them silence was not only golden – it was also their best chance of surviving the next ten minutes.