The DMZ

  “Meaning?” Brad Johnson demanded, though the sinking sensation in his stomach was already responding to the answer.

  “It means that his radio has been compromised. So either Rick is doing just fine but his equipment has somehow been destroyed, or the guerrillas are on to him and have discovered the tracker. Or …”

  “Or?” the SouthCom commander prompted.

  “Or he’s dead, sir.”

  There was momentary silence on the other end of the transmission. “And the mission?”

  “Compromised. I’m afraid we have to assume it’s a total write-off.”

  “And we have no other assets in place?”

  “None that have produced results. Our communications surveillance hasn’t picked up so much as a whisper of anything going down in the zone. Nor have any of the Colombian informants. Whatever is happening, we don’t have a clue, and at the moment, I can’t offer any reasonable possibility of finding out—barring a miracle, sir.”

  The other end of the line was silent so long, Colonel Thornton thought the connection must have been severed. When the words did come, he couldn’t be sure if the SouthCom commander had voiced them or if it was his own unspoken thought. “Then God help us all!”

  * * *

  Taqi Nouri set the canister down to take the sat-phone an Iraqi soldier hurried over to hand to him.

  “Yes?” he snapped. He listened only briefly before breaking in. “What do you mean, you lost the girl? What … she had help! Are your people completely incompetent?”

  Comandante Aguilera’s voice on the other end was shrill with his own fury. “You and your friends have no need to be concerned. There is nothing this Enrique Martinez—nor any of my personnel—knows that could be of use to the americanos. I have not been so careless, as I am sure you have assured yourself. And if we have lost them, they too are lost, and I do not think we need to concern ourselves about them again. Those who go into that jungle do not often come back out.”

  “Perhaps,” Taqi Nouri said icily. “That does not mitigate the errors that permitted this to happen. If you wish us to continue our support of your cause, you need to do better in training your men.”

  He proceeded to give his Colombian ally a piece of his mind in harsh, precise terms. But when he had handed the phone back to the guard, he turned to his companion with less displeasure than he had indicated on the phone.

  “At least we have at last flushed out the true spy. It seems this Enrique Martinez was an informer for the Americans. He has escaped with the girl. One man is dead.” He snorted. “Incompetent natives!”

  “Should we advance our plans, then? Everything is here now—the men, the weapons, the supplies. We could move tonight if need be. The faster we finish and get out of this godforsaken country, the better for all of us.”

  “No!” Taqi Nouri waved the idea aside. “Aguilera is correct. Those who disappear into those jungles do not often find their way out. Not quickly, in any case. Besides, it is true they know nothing, and it is too late now for anyone to stop this.”

  Replacing the canister in the crate, Taqi Nouri pulled the wooden lid over it. “No, we will not be panicked into haste. The skies are not yet ripe. It is foolishness to make oneself invisible in the darkness, then risk a careless eye glancing upward in the wrong spot. We have been patient this long. Four days—five at the most, and it will be over. Our people will have their just revenge, and at last the Great Satan will be no more.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  JULIE MANAGED TO STAY AWAKE until the phosphorescent hands on her watch read 2:00 A.M. before she had to awaken Rick. Twice she caught a gleam of animal eyes in the woods beyond the campfire, and there had been an occasional rustle in the brush along with the usual serenade of frogs and insects. But these were all the normal sounds of a jungle night, and nothing transpired to alarm her as the slow, quiet hours passed.

  The dawn coolness had already burned off by the time Rick in turn shook Julie awake. They breakfasted off the remaining fish and palm heart, a far less appetizing repast now that it was cold. Then Rick kicked the caleta apart and buried the campfire in a pile of brush, though nothing could disguise the clearing they had made.

  They hiked along the river bank for the rest of the day. By noon, Julie was relieved to come across both wild limes and a grove of tall, spiky palms. The spikes were far too sharp to permit climbing, but at Julie’s direction, Rick climbed a tree close enough to one of the palms for him to reach over with his machete and slice through what looked like hanging ropes suspended from the palm fronds.

  Julie collected the palm nuts as they dropped to the ground. Like an elongated green tomato in appearance, they were hard as rocks and inedible raw. But they could be cooked up like a potato, and for supper she roasted them in the coals along with an unwary turtle she’d spotted crawling up the bank from the river and which she cooked with a squeeze of lime juice in its own shell.

  That first day set a pattern for the next several. Rainy season seemed to have given its last gasp; it didn’t rain, other than an occasional afternoon drizzle. Though the days were hot, they weren’t unbearably so, as long as Rick and Julie kept to the shade of the jungle edge. And if the heavy vegetation there meant Rick had to keep his AK-47 in one hand while wielding the machete in the other, they made steady progress downstream nonetheless. Julie found more of the fragrant grasses that served as a natural repellent, so that the mosquitoes and gnats dancing in clouds above the river’s brown surface were no longer such a pestilence.

  They stopped each afternoon in time to build a caleta and campfire before dark. Food, as Julie had predicted, was no longer a problem. There were fruit trees and palm nuts and fruit-bearing vines in abundance along the river, and Julie gathered in turn coconuts and passion fruit, papaya and cantaloupe-sized avocados.

  There was guanábana too, a large green fruit with a soft, lumpy shell and a custardy, seed-studded flesh inside that was as white as vanilla ice cream and more delicious than a hot-house strawberry. They didn’t take the time to hunt larger, faster game, but there was never a shortage of turtles and frogs and the strong-tasting piranha if they tired of those. Once, as he chopped back the brush, Rick startled an iguana curled up around the base of a mango tree. It hissed at them like a miniature dragon as they tried to pass. Rick clubbed it with his machete, and that night Julie roasted the tail, its white meat richer than any chicken breast.

  They saw no further sign of the guerrillas, and Julie gradually stopped looking back for them. Nor did they come across any evidence of other human existence. There was only the wide, placid river with the caimans drawn up on its beaches, the tall, green wall of the jungle on both sides, and arching overhead, the deep, tranquil blue of the open sky. Almost, they might have been Adam and Eve, alone in a primeval wilderness that had known no other human step.

  Well, not quite, Julie dismissed ironically.

  Though they might yet be reduced to wearing skins or less if they continued out here too long. Her own wardrobe, with its various changes of clothing, was holding up fairly well, but Rick had only the combat fatigues he was wearing. They couldn’t wash in the caiman-infested river or even use its water for drinking. But they came sporadically to other, cleaner streams tumbling down into it, and as Rick and Julie forded them, they took time to fill Rick’s canteen and occasionally to bathe as well.

  Rick scrubbed his fatigues along with his body and put the clothing back on, wrung out but still damp. The heat was so intense that the fatigues dried on him within the hour, providing in the meantime a welcome air-conditioning that tempted Julie to follow suit. But her soap bar was now reduced to a sliver, and her small bottle of shampoo was almost gone. Soon they would be forced to look for alternatives.

  Her shoes were another difficulty. A reversal of the clothing situation, Rick’s army boots were tough enough to endure weeks—even months—of slogging through jungle rivers and swamps. Julie’s sneakers were already rotting through, with a hole worn in the heel of
her right shoe and the sides beginning to separate from the soles in several spots. They were always damp, never quite drying overnight from the previous day, so that her feet also stayed damp and grew increasingly sore from the wet leather rubbing against them.

  Still, despite the inconveniences and the hardship of the trek, there were moments—the delight of two baby monkeys playing hide-and-seek overhead, the flash of jeweled wings across the trail, a perfect sunset over the river—when Julie could almost forget the urgency and danger of their situation. Though Rick had said, and she’d agreed, that they must push aside all thoughts but survival if they were to survive, Julie wouldn’t have thought it possible to banish the terrors of the past weeks, as well as fears for the future, from her mind.

  Yet as the hours and days slipped by, she found the world from which they had so narrowly escaped and even the world to which they fled, becoming increasingly remote until the guerrilla camp and Carlos’s death, Tim McAdams’s fate, and whatever crises were assaulting the rest of the planet seemed infinitely distant, like an image seen through the wrong end of a telescope. All that was real was the next lazy curve of the river ahead, the next meal to gather and campsite to find, and her companion striding one pace ahead of her along the bank.

  Her companion …

  Julie’s relationship with Captain Rick Martini, 7th Special Operations Group, a.k.a. Enrique Martinez, guerrilla fighter, had hardly gotten off to a propitious start, and Julie couldn’t rid herself of the lingering feeling that he considered her both frivolous and, however courteous his denial, heavily to blame for their present situation.

  Yet it was perhaps inevitable—as their world closed in, holding just the two of them in that endless circle of river and sky and jungle—that a certain curious intimacy should spring up between them. To call it friendship would have been too much. The Special Forces officer could be abrupt, and he was certainly bossy. If he had stopped looking constantly over his shoulder, he continued to treat every stop like a covert stakeout, and Julie felt he still forgot at times that she wasn’t some subordinate on one of his reconnaissance units.

  It was more as though with the passing of days, the two of them were coming to know each other’s thoughts and actions so well there was no longer a need to voice them aloud. Julie found herself anticipating Rick’s next movement without even consciously having to think about it. More than once, she discovered Rick’s canteen in her hand when she had just begun to realize how much she needed a drink. And when Rick handed Julie his machete so he could level the AK-47 on a bushmaster, that most deadly snake of the Amazon Basin, Julie found herself already reaching for it without even wondering that she’d known he would pass it to her.

  And if Rick took it for granted that Julie would be right at his heels, no matter the pace he set, he also had an uncanny knack for knowing just when she did need a hand over a bad spot. There were even times—when they had negotiated a particularly difficult scramble across a ravine or when Julie had faced down an irate wild pig that crashed into their path—that Julie surprised what might have been a look of approval in those narrowed brown eyes.

  Nor was Rick silent any longer. Not that he allowed more than the most strictly necessary conversation as they hiked along—more of his stringent field discipline. Julie hardly needed to raise her voice above a whisper for him to come down on her. But he relaxed that curt directive once camp was built each evening. And if he had indeed forgotten how to communicate during his months alone with the guerrillas, he learned again quickly, or perhaps he too felt some of Julie’s own need of human companionship, because once darkness fell and they were alone around the campfire, he showed no further reluctance to talk. Julie, used to the tight-lipped Enrique of the guerrilla camp, was at once astounded and bemused at the articulate—and opinionated—man who had taken his place.

  At Julie’s prompting, Rick told in greater detail of growing up on the streets of inner-city LA, some of his stories so unbelievable, Julie couldn’t help wondering if he was making them up. He even answered with reasonable tolerance her numerous questions about his Special Forces training, laconically recounting fifty-kilometer marches, rappelling 150 feet from a hovering Black Hawk, and night-op parachute jumps into remote wildernesses until Julie, listening with eyes grown wide in the light of the campfire, no longer wondered at the don’t-sweat-it air of competence oozing out of him.

  In turn, Julie found herself telling Rick far more about growing up in San Ignacio than she had any other acquaintance over the last seven years. They discussed books and musical tastes and politics, arguing in a desultory fashion when they disagreed. By the second day, Julie had noticed that their disagreements were invariably about politics—Colombian politics.

  “I don’t see why we have to send all these troops and combat helicopters down here or encourage the Colombians to do it either,” Julie argued one evening. “Why can’t we just concentrate on making it economically feasible for the campesinos to grow something else so they won’t feel they have to grow coca or heroin to feed their families? Just think of all the roads and clinics and schools we could have built with the money the U.S. has poured into military intervention down here. A good alternative development program would be a lot more peaceful and a whole lot less destructive of the environment.”

  Rick snorted audibly. “That’s just the kind of thinking that has led to a lot of the mess down here. Do you think you’re the first to come up with that solution? For your information, the U.S. has spent literally billions of dollars in alternative development down here in South America. Peace Corps. UNICEF. Agricultural projects. Education. Health. You name it—we’ve paid for it.”

  “But that’s impossible!” Julie broke off her sharp retort, hesitating. “At least—well, sure, I remember a few Peace Corps volunteers coming through San Ignacio when I was a kid. But there’s no billions of dollars in alternative development out here. Not anywhere near. In fact, there’s more drug dealing than there’s ever been.”

  “Precisely my point,” Rick retorted. “You see, there’s one major flaw with the idea of paying people to quit drug production. It assumes that these people are tripping over themselves to trade growing coca or heroin for legitimate crops like rice and bananas. And it assumes that the locals who end up with these funds are more eager to see the peasants get ahead than to line their own pockets—which has unfortunately been the case only too often with these programs. The wealthy get wealthier—and a few new ones rake in a fortune—while the campesinos stay as poor as ever.

  “And even that trickle of money that does make it down to the farmers—well, too many of them have simply surrendered their coca crop or poppy field, taken those new tools, cash, seeds, whatever, and moved farther into the jungle to plant another drug crop—compounding that environmental problem of yours.”

  “That isn’t fair!” Julie said stiffly. “You make it sound like all the Colombian campesinos support the drug dealing. They aren’t all like that. I knew plenty of honest farmers when we lived in San Ignacio.”

  “Sure, but they aren’t the ones the programs are designed to help. Did you know you can’t even get AD aid unless you’re involved in growing drug material? Which means that if you’re an honest farmer and want to get involved in the program, you actually have to plant yourself some coca in order to qualify.

  “And what do you think the narcos or the guerrillas would have to say if all the campesinos walked away from growing their drug material? They’re making billions here. They’re not going to give up that kind of money without a fight. And let me tell you, their methods of dealing with campesinos who won’t cooperate aren’t pretty. Don’t kid yourself. If we walked out of here tomorrow and handed the locals a blank check to switch to food crops, you wouldn’t get either peace or fewer drugs. You just can’t give handouts without corresponding accountability. And unfortunately, in these parts it seems that accountability doesn’t come without a solid show of military force. The reality is that they will alw
ays be able to make more money drug dealing than planting legitimate crops. So why should they change unless someone actually makes them?”

  Julie was silent. Rick threw her a challenging glance through his long eyelashes. “You disagree? You might as well spit out what you’re thinking. I can see you’re dying to!”

  Julie shook her head. “It just seems like you military types always think in terms of fighting without even considering other solutions! It’s like they say—violence never settles anything. So what’s wrong with looking for an alternative?”

  Rick’s expression hardened instantly in the light of the campfire. “Now if that isn’t a naive thing to say!” he retorted bitingly. “Though what I might have expected from a member of your profession. For your information, violence has settled more things than anything else in human history. Just ask all those nations steamrolled by the Babylonians or the Assyrians or the Romans later on if violence settled anything. It sure settled their futures. You civilians are all the same—especially Americans. You’ve got this naive idea that everybody out there really wants to be good, and that they’re only fighting because they don’t have their fair share of the pie. So if you give them enough money and send in some Peace Corps volunteers, you can pat everyone on the head, send all the soldiers home, and everyone will be happy.”

  “That’s not what I meant—” Julie protested.

  Rick cut in ruthlessly. “The problem is that everyone doesn’t want to be good and never has. There are real bad guys out there who are corrupt and greedy and just plain evil, and they don’t care who they hurt to get what they want. And some of those guys run countries. You want to talk quotes. How about ‘nature abhors a vacuum’? Or bad guys do! They see a weakness, and they’ll step in and exploit it. And you saying, ‘Hey, we don’t want to fight’ isn’t going to make them go home and say, ‘Sure, let’s not have a war today.’ They’ll just smile and say, ‘Good, this will be over real quick!’ If someone wants a war and the other side doesn’t show up, like the old Vietnam slogan, the side that shows up wins and wipes out everyone else.”