He scanned the rapt faces, nodding silently.
“La venganza es la justicia,” he said quietly.
“La venganza es la justicia,” Lita said, thumping the area just above her heart with the ball of her fist.
The group roared the same.
Vengeance is justice.
~~~
Cain requested candidates for the mission. The challenge seemed to be turning down the many volunteers. Maggie eyed her backpack leaning against a tree. Lita had placed it there during the meeting. While Cain, Lita, and several others crouched around a map on the ground, Maggie wandered over to the tree. As the unselected volunteers filtered off, Maggie swept up her backpack, stole off into the bushes with it. She went around a toppled tree, out of sight, undid the top button of her jeans, sat down and fired up her MacBook, quickly plugging in the network card. Although she’d charged it last night in Coca, the machine was already down to 81 percent booting up and getting onto the IKON network.
She turned on the IP masker, logged onto Frenesi, and opened her messages. She continued to be a hit with middle-aged digital stalkers proclaiming they had open marriages. Then she saw it, a message from PerroRabioso. Rabid Dog. Maybe it was John Rae, finally out of prison in Bogotá.
It wasn’t.
In cryptic slang Quechua, Achic informed her that Yalu and Ernesto had been moved to another location. That was a relief. But still no word from John Rae. Achic was hoping to rejoin the operation once Maggie got to Quito.
She checked her email from the Fed. One from Ed.
“Maggs:
Just so you understand, you are treading on some thin ice. Really need to talk to you. Our friendship is in jeopardy, to be perfectly honest. Unless you contact me on my cell phone by end of day. This is no joke.”
She connected the capital letters. JR OUT. And she suddenly felt a whole lot better.
She responded to Ed’s email, using a simple Perl script and SMTP protocol to create a mail header, plugging in a fake “from” address and other properties to resemble a message from a popular U.S. free email domain. That’s where it would look like her email originated.
“Hey Ed –
I’m so, so sorry. Something came up, with Seb, if you can believe it. Yeah, you probably can. ☺ I know, I know, I really have to get my personal life under control. I promise I will sync up with you tomorrow. I’m going to take care of things. I’ll be at Moshi’s for dinner the way we planned. I’m so sorry.
Maggs.”
Ed would know she was headed to Quito and should be there by tomorrow. She started up Iggy.
Magdalena: no time to chat, ami, - i need a trace on a couple of phone numbers – if poss
Enzo99: k, go
Maggie got out Abraham’s phone that she had liberated in Coca, and gave Enzo Cain’s number, as well as Yalu’s.
Enzo99: cn tll u rite now, num 1 blocked
Cain was blocked. Figured.
Enzo99: bt 2nd on nother srvc, cn b snffd
Yalu’s number was traceable with Enzo’s sniffer.
Magdalena: do it, plz
Maggie started as she heard boots marching through the tall grass toward her hidden spot.
Magdalena: gtg
She pulled the USB network card and powered down quickly, slipping her MacBook into her knapsack while it was still grinding. She got up, fastening her jeans, making a show of it, and pretended to just notice Lita streaming toward her, an ugly look across her face.
“What are you doing here?” Lita growled.
“What does it look like?”
Lita stormed around the tree, saw Maggie’s knapsack on the ground, gave her an angry stare.
“You think I’m going to let it out of my sight?” Maggie said. “The authorizations, the transfer, none of that will happen without this laptop.”
“You were not to use it until the time came.”
“And I didn’t. But you left it sitting against a tree. While you were waxing poetic over the People’s Fight. Besides, I needed these.” Maggie held up the packet of Wet Ones. “Some of us are into hygiene. Call me decadent.”
Lita eyed Maggie coldly. She put her hand out. “Give me the backpack.”
The cheeping of cicada bugs filled the air.
Maggie picked up the backpack, held it out. Lita took it, put it down to one side. She turned away, then spun back at Maggie, her arm coiled like a spring. A punch flew like an incoming rocket.
Maggie deflected the punch, but caught the next one and went down with a buzzing jaw. Lita piled on top of her, kicking and punching like a demon. Maggie was no match for a battle-hardened guerilla. It was all she could do to cover her face from taking too much damage.
“If you’re planning something against him!” Lita bellowed, punching systematically. “Well, you’ll have to deal with me!”
“We have an arrangement!” Maggie gasped, fending off blows. “What’s the matter with you?”
Lita seized Maggie by the collar with both hands, straddling her. “If you so much as think of hurting him, I will kill you with my own hands. And it will be a pleasure. Do you hear me?”
“He’s all yours, sister,” Maggie panted. “Lighten the hell up!”
“What is going on over there?” Several pairs of boots came running through the grass. Thank God, Maggie thought.
“Whatever you’ve heard,” Lita said to Maggie. “It’s lies. All lies.”
Numerous faces peered over the fallen tree at Lita on top of Maggie. One was Cain’s.
“What the hell is going on?” Cain’s voice was one of surprise more than anger, almost apologetic.
“Nothing.” Lita threw Maggie down with a thump, getting up, wiping her hands on her shorts. “A disagreement over the backpack.” She picked it up. “She was not to touch it.”
“You left it against a goddamn tree,” Maggie said, sitting up, feeling her jaw.
“We need to be on our way,” Cain said, looking at Lita, then Maggie, then back at Lita.
Maggie stood up, brushing herself off. Her jaw throbbed.
“We’re ready to leave for Quito,” Cain said. “The funds will be ready?”
“Ready. And Beltran?”
“He’ll be in Quito. We’ll make the trade there.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
“We need to make one stop before we leave the Yasuni.”
“This mission you were talking about?” Maggie said apprehensively. “At the meeting?” She had enough to deal with.
Cain gave a curt nod. “You’re coming along. Then we’ll go make the transfer.” He turned and left.
-27-
They moved ahead, silently, Lita leading the way through night jungle. The other guerillas followed, Maggie and Cain at the end of the line. In the darkness Maggie had to focus to keep up with a tall man lugging a large knapsack in front of her.
“Where are we going?” she asked Cain.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“No flashlights?”
“There are patrols.”
Her nerves ratcheted up. The incessant squealing of cicada bugs was broken from time to time by the hoot of an owl. They pressed on until they got to the kapok tree Maggie had climbed earlier that day. Her muscles were still sore.
Just past the tree, the group stopped in the clearing where tall grass waved in the moonlight. Two small green disks of light appeared as Lita brought a pair of night-vision binoculars up to her face. Lowering the field glasses, she turned to the group and made a cranking motion with her hand. All clear.
They crept across the field, the thick grass brushing their legs. More dense rainforest lay ahead. Maggie’s eyes had finally adjusted to the light.
A gap in the darkness appeared, filled with moonlight: the road that had been carved out by heavy equipment, slicing into the Yasuni. Lita turned to the group, her left arm extended in front of her body, her right hand toward her chest, then away, in a repeated motion.
Fan out.
Lita made a V sign, motioning for the rest of the group to stop, then proceeded ahead, silhouetted against the ambient light from the road. She stopped, raised the field glasses to her face again. She turned and turned a thumb down.
Enemy seen.
Sounds of weapons being racked into firing position echoed through the trees. Maggie’s heart rate quickened. A tap on her shoulder made her start.
Cain motioned for Maggie to stay put, giving her a stern look.
Where would she go? In the middle of the jungle at night?
Cain caught up to Lita, on the edge of the trees. The other guerillas followed, guns ready. Maggie tailed them, despite Cain’s warning.
Through the trees, she saw the bulldozer that had had such a difficult time getting started earlier that day at the lake. Attached to it was a trailer laden down with sections of three-foot-thick oil pipe. The equipment was most likely left there to continue the next day, rather than slogging back to the village. A crisscrossed stack of pipe stood by the side of the road.
A lone figure sitting in the open cab took Maggie by surprise when it moved, turning to stare into the trees where Lita and the others hid. “Who goes there?” A guard. A soldier.
He climbed out from under the metal awning over the driver’s seat, picked up a hand-held radio. Looking around, he stepped down onto the metal track.
He flinched as Lita, armed with a pistol, and two terrucos charged out into the road, their automatic rifles pointed at him.
“Drop the radio!” Lita barked.
The guard’s head jerked from side to side. He saw he was outnumbered and tossed the radio off the earthmover into the mud. His hands rose into the air.
“Don’t shoot!” he said. “Don’t shoot!”
He was the same guard who had checked Maggie’s passport.
Cain strolled out into the dirt road.
Lita brandished her pistol. “Down from the vehicle.”
The soldier jumped down, staggered, caught his balance, arms out.
“Hands up.”
His hands went back up, trembling.
Lita swaggered up, struck the soldier across the side of the head with the butt of her gun. He yelled and went down into the mud.
“Was that necessary?” Maggie shouted, dashing out from the trees.
“On your knees!” Lita shouted at the soldier. “Close your eyes.”
“I want no trouble.” The soldier climbed to his knees in the mud, clamping his eyes shut. “No trouble.”
Lita kicked him in the side and he grunted, falling over, throwing his arms out to break his fall.
“What the hell are your people doing?” Maggie said to Cain.
Cain turned. “You thought we were playing games? That all we wanted was money?”
“I never thought that at all. But this is not part of any deal. It ends now.”
Cain’s teeth showed as he spoke, “Now that you understand what I am capable of, perhaps you’ll think twice before trying anything besides making that transfer.”
“Why would I want to try anything?” she said. “I came here alone.”
“Lackey!” Lita roared. “Hands on the back of your head.”
The guard obeyed. Lita stood with the gun pointed at the back of his head. She nodded at the tall guerilla with the backpack.
The lanky man moved to the bulldozer, slipping off the pack, setting it gingerly on the ground. He unfastened the top, got out a large coil roll of what appeared to be electrical wire, followed by rolls of duct tape, and a box that, once opened, produced a dozen sticks of what had to be explosive. He unsheathed a knife, cut off a strip of tape, and fastened two sticks underneath one of the sections of tread on the bulldozer’s continuous track. He attached wire to the charges, unrolled the spool a couple of meters, looking up at the other grunts. “You two,” he said. “Give me a hand.”
The two guerillas slung their weapons and went about assisting him, although it was clear they were reticent working with explosives. In minutes, the bulldozer and stack of pipe were wired with multiple charges. The tall man ran wire to a safe point in the trees, joined every ten meters or so with blasting caps.
“A wall of fire,” one of the guerillas called it.
Lita had taped the soldier’s hands behind his back and his ankles together. He lay face down in the road.
“No,” Maggie said to Cain. “I will not allow this.”
Cain ignored her. “Everybody back into the trees.” They all drew back into the jungle, all except for Maggie. The guard lay struggling on the ground.
“My grandmother was Quechua,” he gasped.
Maggie marched over to the soldier, the sludge sucking at her Doc Martens. She turned to Cain, by the trees. “He’ll be blown to pieces.”
“As will you,” Cain said. “If you don’t get to safety.”
“I understand your anger, Cain,” she said. “But let me tell you something—and you best listen. If you’re going to blow up a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of equipment to prove you have muscle and can push Commerce Oil around, there’s not much I can do about it. But if you think you’re going to kill this man in cold blood, you can forget our deal. Commerce Oil is not going to have this murder on their hands.”
Cain walked over to Maggie. “Even though they have the murders of thousands of our people on their hands already? Through the black death they leach into the ground?”
“Let me rephrase that,” Maggie said. “I’m not going to have this man’s murder on my hands.” Her eyes locked with Cain’s.
“You’re in no position to bargain.”
She placed her hands on her hips. “Actually, I’m in a pretty damn good position. I have your precious money.”
“You won’t die for oil.”
“It has nothing to do with oil,” she said, dropping her voice so only Cain could hear. “But if this man dies, I can’t vouch for your son’s safety.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“You willing to take that chance?”
“Do you really think you can tell us what to do?” Cain said. “You Americans think you own the world. Well, not this part.”
“Call my bluff,” she said. “See where it gets you.”
“Leave her, Comrade,” Lita said, coming up on them. “We don’t need their filthy money. We never did.”
Cain frowned then. Perhaps he thought she would buckle. But revolution didn’t run on spirit alone. It needed cash. And if Cain had any human feelings, his son might factor in as well, although Maggie was beginning to question that.
Not even thirty and possibly about to die. Well, there wasn’t much she regretted. Except for not reconciling with her father. Her damn father.
“Let the oil company see what we can do to her, Comrade,” Lita hissed. “Their precious little doll. That will make them think twice.”
“Be quiet,” Cain said.
Maggie’s saw Lita balk with anger—and a trace of hurt. But her gamble had to pay off. Had to.
Cain and Maggie stared at each other.
“Let him go,” Cain finally said to Lita.
“What? Are you serious, Comrade?”
“Another death doesn’t further our cause right now.”
“It delivers vengeance!” Lita said. “Vengeance is justice—or do you forget your own words?”
It was then that Maggie saw the tightrope Cain walked. One between appeasing the madmen he needed to follow him and those with the money to advance his mission.
“Let him go, Lita,” Cain said. “He’s a simple soldier. Like you or I.”
“Are you becoming ambitious?” Lita said. “Are you going to move to Quito and be a politician now?”
Cain jerked his head toward Lita. His pistol, holstered by his side, rested an inch from his hand. “And do you forget who is in charge, Comrade?”
A howler monkey bellowed up in the tree canopy.
Lita was firs
t to look away. “Very well, Comrade,” she whispered, her voice devoid of its passion. She drew a knife from the scabbard on her belt, stepped over in the slurping mud, cut the soldier loose, roughly, staring Maggie in the eye.
Freed, the soldier rolled over, scrambled to his feet, winded with relief. His uniform was caked with muck.
Cain spoke, “Tell the others how I let you go,” he said. “How I showed mercy. Tell them it’s not too late to join the people’s fight.”
“Yes,” he panted. “Thank you. Thank you.”
“Off you go now,” Cain said. Turning, he headed back into the trees.
The soldier turned to Maggie, his wet eyes connecting with hers. “And you most of all.” He spun and ran down the road, lopsided and breathless as he headed toward the village.
The blade of Lita’s knife suddenly glinted in front of Maggie’s face. Maggie lurched back.
Lita smiled, put her knife away. She turned, marched angrily back into the trees as well, but stood away from Cain.
Shaking out her nerves, Maggie joined the guerillas in the trees.
The tall man picked up the wires that had been bunched together, their bare ends twisted collectively into two points. He dug into his bag and came out with a large square nine-volt battery. He touched the ends of the wires to the terminals. One. Then the other.
The flash of the blasting caps popped down the wires, a chain reaction, toward the earthmover.
Thunderous explosions hurled the track off one side, followed by billowing orange blossoms of flame and the clanking of heavy metal. The engine compartment flared white, ripping open like tin foil, before the bulldozer blew over on its side, dozens of tons of steel groaning. A meter-long section of tread came heaving down into the road, smacking into the mud at the spot where the soldier had lain. Smaller pieces of track followed, clanging off the earthmover. A section of pipe flew through the air like a missile and snapped a palm tree in half, mid-trunk.
Through the trees birds squawked. Monkeys thrashed and screeched.
The guerillas jumped, hooted, slapped each other’s hands in a victory dance—all except for Lita, who simply hoisted Maggie’s backpack onto her shoulders, turned, and trudged back into the darkness of the jungle, head down.
The Cain File Page 24