Blessed are the Peacemakers

by Kristi Belcamino

  She wanted to slap him but didn’t have the energy. Instead she glared.

  He surprised her by laughing.

  But then his face grew somber and he straightened up, grabbing her hand.

  “Come on, we’re almost there.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Holding Gabriella’s hand, Nico stopped at a large tree. He examined the trunk for a minute and then led her off the dirt animal path and through thick bushes and trees. After about five minutes a small thatched hut came into view in a small clearing.

  “Hurry.” He ran ahead and moved aside a large board hung across the door. He held it open. “Inside.”

  For a second, Gabriella froze. Why should she trust him? Who knows what he’d do once he had her in an enclosed space. But then she saw the frightened look in his eyes as he glanced over her shoulder and knew he was on her side.

  She ran inside and he quickly followed, pulling the door behind him.

  The interior was dim with greenish light filtering through dirty windows. Gabriella was grateful for the chance to catch her breath and panted with her hands on her knees while she waited for Nico to say something. The damp interior of the hut sent a shiver through her and down her sweat-soaked body.

  After a few seconds, she heard the spark of a match. Nico lit half a dozen candles that were on a small wood table. The light revealed a small room with a fireplace, cot with quilts pushed up against a wall and the small table. A crate nailed to one wall served as a pantry with several canned items. A small hot plate rested on the table.

  “What is this place?”

  “A safe house for drug runners. I saw it on a map in El Loro’s office.”

  Nico lifted the lid of a small chest tucked under the table. He pulled out a gallon of water. He opened it, took a slug, passed it to Gabriella and then pulled up a chair at the table.

  Gabriella lifted the water bottle and gulped for several seconds before handing it back.

  “Thanks.”

  Nico kicked out the other chair for her to sit, but she wasn’t ready yet. She was still on guard, still ready to flee, still on high alert.

  “Why are you helping me?” Gabriella asked.

  He shook his head. “You really don’t know?”

  She didn’t answer.

  He gave a big sigh, his expression tough to see in the dim light. “I couldn’t do it.”

  “Do what?” She gritted the words.

  “Betray you.”

  “What are you talking about?” She clenched her fists. The time for games was over.

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Obviously not or I wouldn’t be asking.” She stood stock still, not taking her eyes off his.

  “How I feel about you?”

  She drew back.

  He looked at her then and she saw it in his eyes, but she still said, “I don’t believe you.”

  Nico shrugged.

  Gabriella pulled up a chair and looked Nico right in the eye.

  “Maybe if you start telling me the truth I’ll believe something you say. Until then, as far as I’m concerned everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie.”

  He stared back for a second and then nodded. “Fair enough.”

  He leaned back and grimaced. “Shortly before we met in Guatemala, they kidnapped my son. His name is Alejandro. He is seven.

  “They sent a message to me that I was to cooperate in making sure you ended up at El Loro’s ranch or my son would die. I, of course, agreed to whatever they said.”

  “Of course.” Gabriella nodded reaching for the water bottle.

  Nico paused then realized Gabriella was not being sarcastic.

  “They wanted me to use you to find out if you knew the identity of the spy they are looking for.”

  “What spy?”

  Nico shook his head.

  “I never knew all the details. They let me talk to my son once a week to make sure he was okay.”

  Gabriella realized that when she’d caught him on the phone in the office, he’d been talking to his son’s captors.

  “Meanwhile,” Nico continued. “My job was to keep an eye on you. To gain your trust to see if your husband had told you anything important before his plane crashed and he lost his memory. When you escaped this morning, I was given orders to kill you. But I couldn’t do it. My feelings for you— “

  “They wanted you to kill me?” Gabriella cut him off. She didn’t want to hear about his feelings.

  “Yes. But I am weak. I must get to my son. If they find out you live, I worry they will kill him.”

  “I don’t understand,” Gabriella stood so abruptly her chair tipped over. “Once you found out that I didn’t know anything—that my husband hadn’t told me anything about a spy—why was I kept alive?”

  Nico closed his eyes.

  It sent a shock of fear through Gabriella. “What? What aren’t you telling me? Good God, what aren’t you saying?”

  Nico opened his mouth but the sound of a helicopter right above their heads drowned out anything he was about to say. Instead, he grabbed her hand and raced to the door. Along with the chopping sound of the helicopter, Gabriella heard popping noises and realized that small holes were appearing in the roof. They were being shot at. Nico tugged, pulling her out the door and into the jungle. Within seconds they were back in dense woods.

  The helicopter hovered, but couldn’t follow them into the dense jungle. It tracked their progress, staying as low as it could as they ran.

  Nico held tight to her hand and began zigzagging through the trees. She understood why when she saw a bullet pierce a tree trunk beside them. Finally, they managed to go so deep into the jungle that the helicopter had to climb higher until it was above the canopy and couldn’t get a clear shot of them.

  Nico continued leading her, sometimes doubling back the way they came until the sound of the helicopter all but disappeared.

  They ran until the jungle began to break up a little.

  As they followed the winding path at times the shouting behind them grew louder, at times fainter.

  Gabriella panted, unsure she could run anymore. Her legs and lungs ached. The only thing that kept her going was the image of hugging her mother and Grace.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  They continued to run until they hit the estuary.

  “We can follow this to the sea,” Nico said as they paused to catch their breath. “It’s the only way I know to get out of here. I’m very turned around now from trying to get away from the helicopter. What I do know is that the helicopter has notified everyone on the ground of where we were spotted. We don’t have much time.”

  Gabriella was too out of breath to answer, so she just nodded.

  They raced along the banks of the river for another ten minutes and then Gabriella heard an unfamiliar sound above the clattering and clamoring of the jungle noise.

  An engine.

  As the sound grew louder, Gabriella realized, too late, it was a boat.

  It rounded the corner right when Nico pushed her down on the ground.

  She collapsed in a heap, her mouth wide open with surprise.

  “You bitch!” Nico shouted, his back to the boat, which had killed the engine and was gliding toward the shore. “You thought you could get away. You were wrong.”

  Gabriella saw the boat crawl closer. Two men inside pointed guns at them. Nico’s eyes met hers. The message was clear: Play along.

  “Fuck you,” she shouted and tried to stand.

  He put his foot on her and she acted as if he kicked her back down. All the while, she eyed the men in the boat. Meanwhile, Nico continued to scream at her.

  “Tell us who the spy is?” he said. “This is your last chance. We have no more use for you. Tell us before you die?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she cried, meaning every word.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the men moor the boat and hop onto the shore.

  Nico very slowly rea
ched into his jacket pocket and withdrew a handgun. Gabriella, who was on her knees, shrunk back in horror.

  The men were right behind Nico now and said something in Spanish. He nodded and replied in a clipped voice. He reached down, the gun pointing toward her forehead. It seemed he was about to shoot her when he whirled and in two quick bursts shot the men behind him. The first right in the face, the second in the neck. Both men toppled.

  As they fell, she caught sight of a third gunman who had crept up on the path behind them. The man reached for his gun. In seemingly slow motion, Gabriella watched as he held it up, pointing directly at her. Their eyes met as he squeezed the trigger. All she could see was the man’s eyes and the gun. Before she could hear the blast, the man disappeared, Nico’s body thrust between them. The blast of the gun sent him flying backward. He landed in her lap. She heard more gunshots but didn’t even look up.

  Instead, she held Nico.

  “My son.” Nico said closing his eyes for a second as if wincing in pain.

  He tried to sit up and clutched at her hands. Gabriella could tell he was growing weaker. His grip was fading on her hands.

  She squeezed his hand. “We’ll get your son. We’ll find him.”

  “Promise me you will take care of him.”

  “I don’t know if I can promise that.” Without looking up, she heard voices nearby. She was not going to look away from Nico in his last few seconds, even if it meant a bullet to her head. This was all she had to give him—some measure of comfort during his last moments of life.

  He gave the slightest nod.

  She squeezed his hand again. “I promise I will try.”

  Nico’s eyes met hers and he smiled right before the light left them.

  Her vision became blurry with tears. She was half in shock, half exhausted. She couldn’t run anymore. If they killed her now, that was how it was supposed to be. She didn’t have any more fight in her. This man had just died in her arms. For her. She held him until she noticed somebody standing over her.

  As the shadow fell across Nico’s face, she looked up, expecting to meet her death.

  What she saw sent her reeling.

  Donovan.

  He was alive. She started to get up, words strangled in her throat, but something stopped her. It was the look on his face—a potent mixture of rage and love and disgust.

  She knew him like she knew herself. Immediately she knew he was taking in the scene before him and it was breaking his heart. She was weeping and tenderly holding another man. A dead man, but a man she had made love to. Donovan looked at her as if he knew all of this in a glance.

  So many emotions ran through her—ecstatic joy and shock that Donovan was alive, shame that she was a married woman and yet felt love for the dead man in her arms, and horror that Nico had died for her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Donovan felt stiff in Gabriella’s arms. She was hugging him as if she’d never let go and he was barely responding. She wondered what he had seen and gone through to make him this way. Maybe he’d been tortured and had suffered psychological damage. Whatever it was, she’d be there to help him through it.

  All around them in the deep jungle, seemingly from out of nowhere, a half dozen men in black pants and tee-shirts appeared, talking on radios, covering up bodies and picking up fallen tree branches in a nearby clearing to make way for a helicopter that was landing to pick them up. They were speaking English. They were American.

  Finally, they were being rescued. But Gabriella only took it in distantly—she couldn’t take her eyes off Donovan.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said.

  He scowled as if he didn’t believe her.

  “They told us that.” She swallowed. Why did she have to justify herself? He turned away frowning.

  “Who told you that?”

  “The DEA.”

  He whirled, his face suddenly filled with horror. “Does Grace think that? That I’m dead?”

  Gabriella nodded, fighting back tears. “She thinks I’m dead, too.”

  Donovan stormed off and grabbed one of the men in black by the collar of his shirt, almost lifting him up from the ground.

  “Who the fuck is in charge around here? Get me a satellite phone now before I break some motherfucking heads in.”

  Gabriella rushed over and put her hand on his arm. “It’s not their fault, Sean.”

  He shook her hand off, glared at her, opened his mouth as if to say something and then closed his lips together and stormed into the clearing where he began throwing logs around helping the other men.

  It was going to take some time. Whatever had happened over the past three months was not going to just disappear in a few moments.

  She looked back at Nico’s body. Instead of seeing his dark hair and long black eyelashes resting on his cheeks, he was now a lifeless lump inside a black plastic body bag.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Although Gabriella didn’t want to let Donovan out of her reach, he sat across from her in the military helicopter. He looked away every time her eyes met his.

  Gabriella’s stomach felt like acid.

  Soldiers of some sort surrounded them. The sound inside the chopper was deafening, so even if she’d wanted to talk to him, it would have been difficult.

  After a few minutes of avoiding her gaze, Donovan leaned his head back against the metal interior and closed his eyes.

  Gabriella’s uneasiness turned to fear. Her husband was alive. He sat there right in front of her, but the Donovan she knew was nowhere around. That man was gone. She just hoped that she could bring that man back again.

  When they landed and disembarked, Donovan walked ahead without a backward glance. She caught up and put her hand in his, squeezing. He didn’t brush her hand away. So far so good.

  They were inside a military camp. The area was still in the jungle but surrounded by barbed wire fences with camouflage netting strung on them. She’d seen as they landed that the few squat beige buildings also had camouflage netting on their roofs.

  A man in a beige uniform stood in front of one of the buildings, his hands clasped behind his back until they got closer. He stepped forward and stuck his hand out for Donovan to shake.

  “Colonel Ryan Runge.”

  “Nice to meet you, sir.”

  “We’re relieved to find you alive, Special Agent Donovan.”

  Donovan nodded.

  Runge peered behind him. “Mrs. Donovan.”

  Gabriella didn’t bother correcting him, but Donovan spoke up. “Mrs. Giovanni.”

  The colonel looked from one to the other and nodded. “My apologies.”

  Gabriella felt a small flicker of anger light deep inside her. She knew Donovan had basically been a prisoner of war—a drug war—but that didn’t mean she was going to let him treat her like shit.

  She stepped forward.

  “My husband has been through a lot, sir.” She put on her most charming smile. “If you don’t mind terribly, can we get this started with so we can get home to our daughter and my mother? As you might imagine, we are both worried sick about them.”

  Donovan shot her a glance, raising an eyebrow. He didn’t even know her mother was dying.

  “We need to call her. Right now she thinks her mother and father are dead. I’m not talking to anyone until I talk to my daughter and my mother.”

  She hoped what she said was true. Her mother had to still be alive. She refused to accept any other alternative.

  For a second the man paused but then nodded. “Understood. This way please.”

  They went into a small office that was bare except a desk, chairs and a filing cabinet. No pictures or personal items. Runge dialed some numbers and pushed the satellite phone’s receiver toward Donovan.

  He reached for it and then his hand paused above it. He turned to Gabriella. “I think you need to start first.”

  Gabriella nodded and grabbed the phone. When she heard her mother’s voice answer the phone, she burst in
to tears.

  “Mama? Oh my God, mama,” she couldn’t speak for a second.

  “Dios mio. Gabriella? We’ve been waiting to hear from you. They told us you were alive.” Who had called her? And when?

  “Mama, are you okay?”

  “Of course.” Her mother’s voice was no nonsense.

  Gabriella took a deep breath. “We found him. Donovan. He’s alive.”

  For a few seconds it was completely silent. Then, Maria choked out her words, “Grazie al Signore.”

  Her mother was then quickly apologizing. “They found your daddy, he’s alive, Grace. He’s alive.”

  Gabriella’s face was wet with tears. She didn’t bother wiping them away and they dripped into her lap.

  “Mama?” It was Grace’s little voice. “You and daddy are alive?”

  “Yes,” Gabriella chocked out the word. “Do you want to talk to him?”

  She didn’t wait for her daughter to answer. Wordlessly, Gabriella handed Donovan the receiver.

  Tears were streaming down his face. She handed him the phone and he reached for her with his other arm, wrapping her in his arms, pressing her face to his shirt.

  It was going to be okay. They’d survive this like they’d survived everything else they’d been through.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Shortly after they spoke to Grace, Donovan and Gabriella were taken to separate areas to shower and dress in clean clothes. The khaki military fatigues were baggy on Gabriella, but at least they were clean—not seeped in Nico’s blood.

  Waiting in the small room by the clothes was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and potato chips. Gabriella ate them in less than two minutes.

  Then a soldier knocked on her door. Donovan stood behind him in similar clothes to hers. His hair was wet. He had a small speck of peanut butter near his lip that she gently wiped away, but he seemed to draw back from her touch. He walked ahead, catching up to the solider leading them back to Col. Runge’s office. Two men she didn’t recognize were already waiting in the office chairs. One man, wearing a nondescript navy pinstriped suit and light blue tie, stood and held out his hand.