by Caryl Ferey
“What are you doing?” his acolyte asked.
“I’m going to have her first,” El Toro replied.
Jana shivered on seeing his monstrous penis. El Toro had sodomized people by the dozens, especially male prisoners—there he went all out. The wags in the barracks had nicknamed him El Toro not so much for his bullish ways as for the size of his cock, a thick, veined log accompanied by testicles that hung like stillborns over his fat, hairy legs. Ten inches long, he’d measured it, of course. With that, there was no need to rape opponents with corncobs, the way Rosas’s police did: El Toro had what was needed in his pants. An engine of death. He had ripped apart the little tranny’s anus to make him speak, he had perforated his intestines as he was crying for mercy. Adrenaline. He was visibly thriving on it.
El Toro enjoyed the Indian woman’s fear as she lay tied to the table. An oily glee lit up his face when he stuck his engine of death between her legs.
“You’ll see,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re going to call for your mother, too.”
12
The source of the Paraná River was in Brazil, some 2,500 miles farther north. Carrying everything along with it as it went, it veined the delta before coming out on the Río de la Plata, where it flowed to sea.
A rhizome of water, mud, and jungle, with a surface almost as large as Uruguay, the El Tigre delta had hundreds of canals and as many islands, inhabited and uninhabited; sometimes these were moving islands consisting of the accumulated vegetation carried along by the currents. No vehicles other than motorboats were allowed in the ecological preserve; ports, luxury shops, hotels, residences, or bed-and-breakfasts, activity was concentrated around the city of El Tigre, but all you had to do was navigate a few miles for the houses and cabins to become few and far between. Then nature became luxuriant, wild, omnipresent.
From the back of the boat, Rubén was silently scrutinizing the bank. They passed alongside a thicket of brush, hardly disturbing the birds nesting there. Anita was in front with a detailed map of the region, and Oswaldo was at the helm.
Responding to the commotion she’d heard on the phone, Anita had rushed to Palermo and found Rubén in Jo Prat’s apartment, looking haggard. There was a body on the terrace of the neighbors, who were terrified and had called for help, and her childhood friend was in the living room, shattered. He was staring absently at the weapons sitting on the table, and hardly reacted when she arrived. Anita brought him out of his lethargy. His precious witness had been kidnapped in turn, but all was not lost: Gianni Del Piro had made a telephone call the preceding evening. According to the information she had just received, the pilot was currently in the El Tigre delta.
Oswaldo came to pick them up at the marina, where Rubén had asked him to meet them as soon as possible.
An old friend of his father’s, Oswaldo lived in a worm-eaten shack in the middle of the jungle: an ERP activist and a great book lover, Oswaldo had taken refuge in the delta after the first roundups in 1976, and had lived there ever since as a hermit, devoting himself to fishing and painting. Oswaldo had retained a phobia for the city and a savage hatred for anyone who wore a uniform. The old man guided the motorboat with a sure hand, his thick beard capturing the sea spray thrown up by the hull. Rubén had explained the situation to him without giving any details, and Oswaldo hadn’t asked for any: Daniel Calderón had never seen any of his paintings, Daniel’s son was a kind of nephew to him, and he knew the region like the back of his hand.
Del Piro’s phone call had been made from a point about twelve air miles from the port of El Tigre. There was no town on the map, just a simple telecommunications relay in the middle of nowhere. The pilot had called from one of the islands scattered along the canals. Rubén felt depressed among the jugs of water and gasoline. He had made a mistake by telling Isabel Campallo about her daughter’s pregnancy. She had informed her husband, who, in one way or another, had informed the killers. They had followed the trail back to Jo Prat and discovered the hideout. Jana. The idea that they might harm her revolted him. Die or go mad . . . No, he couldn’t go through the same nightmare a second time. And still less at this precise point in his life.
Palm and banana trees grew along the bank. His traveling bag was wedged under the seat where it would stay dry, filled with weapons. Oswaldo was navigating at reduced speed through the zigzagging part of the canal, avoiding the fallen trees and branches on the surface of the water. No one around, only the millions of insects buzzing in the sun.
“This should be the right direction,” Anita commented, bent over her map.
Oswaldo grumbled. He didn’t like cops, even if they were blond and had big breasts. Pollen and petals were floating in the air as they made their way upstream. An odor of mud emanated from the cloudy water. They passed by the abandoned dock of a colonial house made of wood and adobe, a few stands of pine, and a sprawling willow that held back the alluvium. The last corrugated-iron shacks had disappeared; ahead, there was nothing but miles of dense jungle. Disturbed, an urutaü, a local species of owl, fluttered in the branches. Leaving the meandering channels, Oswaldo headed straight ahead and accelerated in the lagoon. The boat was no more than fifteen feet long, but the motor was powerful. Spray flew up from the prow without driving away the birds, who were the kings of the delta. Across from them lay an island like dozens of others. Then there was a quicksilver glint in the sunlight. Rubén looked through his binoculars and felt his heart swell: it was a reflection off a fuselage. A seaplane.
He put his hand on Oswaldo’s arm to make him slow down: they were there.
Anita was feverish in the front of the boat.
“Do you think they’ve seen us?”
They had made a loop to pass by at a distance from the island and were now doubling back through the canal on the other side. Rubén didn’t answer. He had his loaded gun, his pockets were full of bullets, a billy club, a fighting knife, a pair of pliers, a tear-gas bomb; and a thirty-five-year-old hatred was wringing his stomach. Hugging the shore, Oswaldo brought them upstream, facing the wind. It was growing hotter and hotter as noon approached. Rubén glanced at his cell phone: he had reception again. The closest police station was not far away, on the Paraná River.
“Call Ledesma,” he said. “Have him send a police patrol boat.”
“The Old Man?” Anita asked. “O.K., but . . . Shit, what do I tell him?”
“That we’ve found the people who killed María Campallo and the laundress in Peru Street. Tell him that I take full responsibility, and especially that he should get his ass in gear.”
Anita glanced at him from the prow of the boat, met his icy gaze, and typed in the police chief’s number on her phone. After a brief discussion, Anita was able to convince Ledesma and hung up, her hair flying in the breeze.
“It’s done,” she said. “He’s going to send a patrol boat. But you’re going to be on the hot seat if you’re wrong.”
Rubén wasn’t going to wait the three-quarters of an hour it would take the delta cops to get there. Too late? The island was getting closer as they approached through the wavelets, hardly a hundred yards away. A moorhen was paddling nearby, serene in the current. They passed alongside piles of branches washed up near the bank, a thick vegetation interlaced with vines: Oswaldo was navigating slowly, keeping an eye out for movements in the surroundings.
The seaplane they’d seen earlier through the binoculars was bobbing on the other side of the island. Then they saw a cleared area, logs piled up under the pine trees, and, farther on, in the hollow of a little sheltered creek, the façade of a pink house. Rubén signaled to Oswaldo to land. The hermit turned off the motor. Anita was ready, her service weapon loaded, peering into the shadows under the branches. The boat soon ran up on a pile of pebbles and mud with reeds growing in it; with one leap, they were on land.
“Hide the boat and wait for us here,” Rubén whispered. “And be ready to take off in a
hurry.”
“Don’t worry, son.”
Oswaldo gave them a reassuring wink and watched them move away through the forest. Anita followed Rubén under the shadow of the pines, more and more anxious. He moved forward, hunched over, noiselessly, and suddenly knelt down behind a thicket. There were two guards on the terrace of the house, a speedboat tied up at the dock, and another sentinel under the pines, about twenty-five yards away. A guy with a neck brace, behind logs of wood, sitting on a deck chair. Rubén had seen him in Colonia.
“Maybe we should wait until the police get here,” Anita whispered at his side.
Rubén shook his head. In an hour Jana would be dead. Tortured, raped, her skin burned off with electricity, her love scattered. She might already be dead.
“Wait for me here,” he said in a low voice.
Oscar Frei was battling mosquitoes, glued to his chair, an automatic weapon under his armpit. He didn’t see the shadow crawling up to the woodpile. The guard sensed a presence behind him, but sunk in his neck brace and his deck chair, he turned around too late: the billy club struck his temple violently. A hand was held over his mouth as he faltered. Frei fell out of the chair, his head full of stars as he was being dragged toward the logs. He tried to stand up, but the sharp point of a knife slipped under his eyelid, slicing the thin skin.
“One move or a word and I’ll cut out your eye and your fucking brain too.”
Lying on his cottony body, Calderón stared at him with crazy eyes.
“How many of them are there inside the house?” he murmured, very close to the man’s face.
The knifepoint was piercing the lower eyelid. On the terrace, Pina and Gómez had seen nothing.
“A dozen,” Frei replied, pinned to the ground. “I don’t know exactly.”
“Are they all armed?”
“No . . . There’s a civilian . . . a doctor.”
“Is the Indian woman there?”
Frei nodded.
“Where is she? In which room?”
“I don’t know . . . I’m on guard . . . I didn’t see anything.”
Rubén raised his head and quickly assessed the topography of the place. The two guys were killing time on the terrace, which could hardly be seen through the branches. It was an old house of painted wood, built on pilings, with tall paned windows. Frei made the mistake of thinking that Calderón was distracted: he grabbed the detective’s wrist, intending to wrestle with him on the needle-covered ground, but the blade immediately sank in. A sudden blow, struck with all the weight of Rubén’s body. Frei groaned in Rubén’s hand, which was still held tightly over his mouth to muffle the sound. The steel slipped under his eye as if it were butter, pouring out a continuous red flow, before it reached the brain. The man jerked a last time and died.
Rubén was breathing unevenly. He wiped the blade on the dead man’s jacket, left the body behind the pile of logs, and crawled back to Anita, his adrenaline pumping full tilt: terrible cries were heard coming from the house.
The blonde was peering through the foliage, watching for him to return.
“Well?”
“There are a dozen of them. You’re going to go behind,” he told her. “Go around the house through the jungle and be ready. How many cartridge clips do you have?”
“Three,” she replied.
“O.K. As soon as you hear the first shots, attack them from behind and shoot into the house.”
Anita grimaced.
“Is that it, your plan?”
“They’re torturing her,” Rubén growled. “Create a diversion, I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Don’t you want to kiss me before I die?” Anita asked.
“You won’t die.”
“Just in case.”
She smiled with all her strength but her hands were trembling. Rubén kissed her on the lips.
“You’re not going to die, O.K.?”
“O.K. What if they kill you?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Then we’ll have failed completely.”
The blonde with the asymmetrical face blew away her hair. The stress had weakened her muscles; her uniform was soaked with sweat. Rubén looked at his watch.
“You’ve got five minutes, querida.”
Anita stifled the fear that was paralyzing her, gave the man she loved one last look, and without another word took off stealthily.
Rubén sneaked up on the house. The guards seemed to be talking on the shady terrace. The pines were too far away from the house for him to be able to hide behind trunks or thickets. Anita would have a better chance behind the house—the jungle probably extended as far as the other bank, where the sea-plane was waiting. Three minutes had passed. A new scream came from the left wing of the house, drowning out the buzzing of the insects. Rubén took a firmer grip on the handle of his revolver. At least ten armed men; attacking the house in broad daylight was madness.
Sitting on a garden chair, Gómez was watching the dead branches float by, his submachine gun on his lap. The screams in the bedroom had stopped—the prisoners were having no fun. Pina left to listen to the radio inside. They were signaling to each other through the French doors—yeah, they wanted to get out of this Goddamned mosquito nest. Gómez was settling back on his folding chair when splinters of wood exploded a few inches from his head. An explosion that came from the left. He jumped up, pointed his automatic and retreated toward the house—fuck, they were being fired on! and received the impact right in the chest.
Pina sprayed the yard with bullets as he sounded the alarm. Other shots now crackled, coming from the other side of the house. They were surrounded. Parise was the first to burst into the kitchen, and gave curt orders to his men who rushed out of the bedroom.
“Get a move on, for God’s sake!”
El Picador and El Toro posted themselves at the windows and fired a few shots at random while Parise was evacuating the general toward the bathroom. El Toro was swearing between his teeth, crouched down under the window—he hadn’t even had time to stick it to the Indian woman. He’d left her there with her pussy bare, his dick still hard. Etcheverry looked out the little window in the vestibule and saw the silhouette of a cop a dozen yards away, hiding behind the oak that bordered the house. The shots she was firing were passing through the windows and the door and whistling into the kitchen. A lethal trajectory. Pina groaned with pain and bent over his thigh, which was spurting scarlet blood. Parise assessed the situation. The cop was going to shoot them like rabbits if they went out the back door. They had to try to make a counterattack on the east side. Etcheverry hunched down and signaled to the bald man who was firing salvos haphazardly, his body braced under the window. The cop stopped firing for an instant. Parise snorted. She was reloading.
“Vamos!” he yelled to his men. “Vamos!”
El Toro and his buddy burst out the door that gave on the yard. They were about to riddle the great oak with the submachine gun when they saw something that stopped them cold. The policewoman was kneeling on the ground, her hands behind her neck, and Del Piro’s Glock was pressed against her blond hair. The pilot had taken her from behind.
Rubén had run toward the west wing of the house as soon as the firing started. He reached the French doors without being fired on, broke the lock with a kick, swept aside the rods and curtains, and pointed his Colt around the room, his brain white-hot. First he saw Miguel’s body, a strange banderilla stuck in his back, and then Jana, spread-eagled on the table. She was naked, her face smeared with blood, but alive.
“Rubén . . . ”
Her nose was broken, her body was sticky, but she was alive. He took out his knife and, keeping his revolver pointed at the door and an eye on the corridor, he cut her bonds with four furious slashes that set her free. The explosions in the adjoining rooms had stopped; Rubén grabbed Jana like a bouquet of fear, and put h
er on her feet.
“Can you run?”
Her limbs were stiff and numb, and she could hardly stand up.
“Yes . . . Yes.”
“Get going, then,” he whispered. “Go quickly.”
Their hearts were beating as if they were at the muzzle of a gun. A head appeared in the hall, at the corner of the wall next to the torture chamber: Dr. Fillol, obviously disoriented by the gun battle.
“Look out!” a voice behind him shouted.
Fillol immediately put his hand to his mouth, but he no longer had a mouth, half his lower jaw had been torn away by the Colt’s bullet, pulverizing his teeth. His finger on the trigger, Rubén pushed Jana toward the broken-in door.
“There’s a boat three hundred yards away, on the shore,” he told her feverishly. “Hurry, I’ll meet you there.”
Jana was naked, had no weapon, and a stream of blood was flowing from her broken nose. Rubén picked up her jumpsuit and T-shirt, which were lying on the floor, and put them in her hands.
“Damn it, Jana, GET OUT OF HERE!”
A shot was fired near them that perforated the wall. The Mapuche met his electric glance one more time, then disappeared through the curtains that a draft was blowing inward. Rubén fired three times into the hall to cover her escape, saw Jana running like a fawn through the pines, and regained hope. A smell of gunpowder hovered in the room. He backed up over the glass fragments and was getting ready to run toward the yard himself when a woman’s scream stopped him.
“Rubén! Rubén!”
It was Anita’s voice.
“Drop your gun,” thundered a voice from the hall. “Drop your gun or I’ll snuff her!”
The killers had taken her hostage. The detective swore between his teeth, his hand clutching the Colt .45. One of them was trying to negotiate while the others went around the house. No more cover, no way out: it was a matter of seconds.