Chapter 20

Finding one particular man in New York city without an address to go by would be a crapshoot. Finding a man with a box full of plutonium, who is known to associate with armed revolutionaries on the border between Mexico and Guatemala, may be dangerous in the extreme, but it can’t be considered odds-on impossible.

They crossed the border into Guatemala. They could tell by the signs and some token barbed wire, but not this wasn’t an official crossing point. The passage was dead easy. As they went on, they could see an occasional border patrol vehicle after the fact, but aside from that, not much effort was made to keep the local Indian citizenry from walking from here to there and back. Hell, people crossed from Mexico into California or Texas every day without documents. Why shouldn’t walking from Mexico into its nearest neighbor to the south be a simple matter, too?

Once in Guatemala, Helen and Garcia followed a series of Jeep tracks clearly etched in the dirt road from numerous passings. At the end of the path, where the tracks converged, they found the rebel outpost.

“The Guatemalan socialist rebel group is called the URNG,” Helen whispered as they lay in some half-dead scrub brush and peered across the flat and dusty terrain into the revolutionaries’ camp. “I read about it in Grenade. I wonder if Peno spent time networking between the URNG forces and the Zapatistas. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

“I hate politics. Don’t talk politics to me,” Garcia murmured back. “That’s all I ever heard as a kid. ‘Once we kick out Castro.’ Our ‘homeland’ was supposed to be heaven on earth. It’s all bullshit.”

They fell silent and squinted over the landscape. Suddenly, Helen remembered her spyglass and fished it out of her purse.

“What else have you got in there?” Garcia asked more from condemnation than curiosity.

Helen looked through the eyepiece and searched around, then handed it to Garcia so he could get the lay of the land as well.

“They don’t seem too badly equipped,” he remarked. “Two helicopters, tents, a field kitchen. Must be plenty of armaments.”

“They’re probably indebted to Avilla for at least some of it,” she guessed.

Garcia watched for a while, then Helen took the spyglass back and observed the movements of the “soldiers.” “What a game they play. Revolutionary soldier is a way to make your life seem important, I suppose,” she commented.

“If you don’t have anything, you don’t have anything to lose,” he refuted.

“I know. I know.” She took the thing from her eye and sighed. “I don’t see him down there.” A jeep drove up. She put the spyglass to her eye again. “There he is,” she whispered excitedly. “And the box is still with him. We want to be sure to take that with us, too.”

Garcia grabbed the glass from her and looked. “We’re not intervening,” he said. “We’re only reconnoitering.” She didn’t protest. He waited for her to do so. “Well?”

“I’m thinking. I’m trying to figure out exactly what Eric would do now.”

He glanced at her. “About what happened back there…” he began but didn’t continue. He was referring to the kiss.

She smiled. “He’d wait until the camp was nearly asleep, create a diversion, and run in and grab Avilla—and the plutonium.”

“All right,” Garcia relented. “If it’s what Eric would do. But we’re going to get ourselves killed doing it. Not to mention violating one or two international treaties.”

“I’m not sure what Eric would do,” Helen admitted. “That’s what they’d do on a television show, anyway. But I think the plan is as sound as any. Listen, we can’t leave Avilla here. It isn’t right.”

They fell silent again. He looked over at her. “You’re a weird girl,” he said after a minute.

They waited until after midnight then piled together some dried brush and set fire to it, using the lighter fluid she had with her and some matches. Then they parted and started off in separate directions with a point of convergence agreed upon.

Helen stooped and scuttled down to the camp as the soldiers ran toward the spot on the prairie where Helen and Garcia had been sitting only minutes before. The soldiers spoke excitedly among themselves as they hurried over to the fire.

A couple of guards remained at the camp’s circumference, but their eyes were on their companions’ advance, not searching for possible intruders. Helen scurried the last few feet to her appointed meeting place with Garcia and tried to catch her breath. She was breathing hard from fear, but in the military, she had learned to call fear ‘excitement.’ And excitement was life, the ability to move forward, the ability to succeed and survive.

She relaxed and the anxiety of the moment subsided, but when Garcia didn’t appear, the fear kicked up again. She bit her lip. Then she heard a scuffling behind her, turned, and there he was. She grabbed his arm and squeezed it in relief. They nodded at one another and headed to the tent Avilla was housed in. Apparently, Avilla wasn’t aware of the ruckus outside, or didn’t care, and hadn’t stepped out to see what it was all about.

They stood on either side of the tent flap. Garcia had his gun in hand.

Garcia called a greeting in Spanish in a loud, conversational voice, scaring Helen out of her wits because she hadn’t expected it.

Avilla came out and Garcia stepped behind him, shoving the H&K pistol in his back. Helen hurried into the tent to retrieve the box of plutonium. A tough-looking hombre was seated inside at a table. She hadn’t counted on this. “Hi,” she said, startled.

“Hi,” the revolutionary responded. “Maybe I can help?” His English was good, but heavily accented. She grabbed for the box. “Sorry to disturb you,” she apologized.

The rebel stood and rushed to Helen’s side as she backed away hastily. He tried to grab her, but she dodged him, then slapped him on the elbow with the box. He gave a low-pitched shriek of pain and flashed his eyes at her. Helen had definitely aroused his ire.

Helen tried to slip out of the tent without further confrontation, but like a fast-draw artist from the old West, in one smooth motion, the rebel pulled a gun from a side holster. The weapon was an old-fashioned revolver that he cocked with a resounding click. “You can keep it,” she said, offering him the box back.

He rubbed his elbow without lowering the gun. “Step outside,” he ordered grimly.

She turned and exited the tent, still holding onto the plutonium.

Garcia was waiting for her with his weapon held firmly against Avilla’s side. He took in the situation at once and Helen could see that he was about to give up his gun. “No,” Helen warned him quickly. “Take Avilla. Otherwise, they’ll shoot us both. Go ahead. Do what we said,” she urged.

Still, Garcia hesitated.

“A gentleman would save the lady’s life,” advised the man with the revolver pointed at Helen’s head.

“Times have changed,” Helen asserted with energy. She nodded fiercely for Garcia to hurry off. Forcing Avilla ahead of him as a shield, Garcia did just that.

“The old values are gone,” commented the rebel, sadly.

“The old middle-class institutions exploited women,” argued Helen. She turned and looked up at him. He was tall and thick with muscle attained over years of striving.

The old leftist soldier smiled at her, and as he did, Helen brought her knee up between his legs with a savage force. The rebel was too astonished and pained to shoot her and she reached for his gun, pulling it swiftly out of his agony-loosened grip. He didn’t even try to stop her at that point. All he seemed to want to do was grunt and writhe in pain.

“Women are different now, too,” she called back as she ran. She had some specifics that she wanted to add but didn’t dare take the time.

She dashed to her agreed-upon meeting spot with Garcia—the helicopter landing pad—hearing the stricken revolutionary shout behind her and praying that the soldiers didn’t. Fat chance!

She didn’t see Garcia when she got there! Damn, that man was always late! But no, there he was inside the Chinook whirlybird with Avilla. She listened for a second for the sound of chasers, but the voices she heard were still at a distance. So she climbed on board and set the box down beside her.

“Thank God,” Garcia breathed, apparently relieved to see her. “Are you sure you can handle this thing?”

“It’s been a while,” she told him tensely. She was teasing. She grinned. “But it’s like riding a bicycle. I’m a chopper jock by inclination.” She examined the craft and prepared for departure. No check list, but not much time to spare, anyway, from the shouts coming closer.

She ran through the basics, got the craft going, then pulled her up. “Jets are easy. These things require concentration.” She concentrated, and they whipped around right over the camp. She could see that the troops had returned from fighting the fire—which had probably burned itself out fairly quickly.

A couple of guards looked up curiously as the Chinook passed overhead and Helen scooted out of there, lest they realize this was an unauthorized flight and try to shoot the helicopter down.

She flew in the general direction of the airfield in Mexico. “I don’t know where we can land,” she said. “It’s pretty rocky country out there. We could set down at the edge of the airstrip, but they’d be out after us in seconds.”

“Look what’s stashed in back here,” Garcia exclaimed, glancing around at the cargo. “A bunch of field artillery, including a slew of M16s. Wow, plenty of ammo.”

“I wouldn’t want to risk the hostages’ lives, but being armed is never a bad call,” Helen suggested mildly.

Garcia climbed toward the weapons.

Helen turned to address Avilla. “Something else I wanted to tell you, Robert. I said you aren’t so smart. That’s not entirely it. I wanted to add that a lot of other people are just as intelligent as you are. Being bright is no big deal, or even devious and cunning.” She looked at where she was flying, then back at him.

Avilla didn’t say anything, but stared out at the landscape, which was somewhat illuminated by the lights of the helicopter.

Helen smiled. “We can be devious and cunning, too,” she went on. “Maybe we’ll trade you for the hostages. Then, maybe we’ll get you back and fly you to the States for a trial by jury.”

Without a word and so fast that she didn’t have a moment to react, Avilla leaned over the side of the Chinook and threw himself out.

Helen gasped. “Oh, Christ,” she swore.

Garcia looked up. He jumped back to the front and gazed down. Helen circled the area where Avilla had departed the helicopter.

“We’re not all that high,” she said. “He could have survived. But even if he’s still alive, he’s hurting. Damn. I guess I shouldn’t have spoken to him so harshly.”

“I don’t think the problem was your words,” her friend disagreed. “Our actions were more the thing that disturbed him.”

“I can’t see him down there, and I don’t feel like flying this bird too long. I don’t know the mechanic who last worked on it. Or when a mechanic last worked on it.” She took off, out of the area.

“I thought we were in control,” Helen mused. “Just goes to show. Boy, I hope that teaches me a lesson.”

She found the airstrip because she knew one was there, but the installation was pretty well camouflaged, she noted, even the hanger. She flew over the hanger once. No sign of hostages, but a soldier ran out and looked up at the sky. Apparently satisfied that the flyers were on his team, he went back to his post.

She turned the Chinook and headed off for the dirt road—which was where she came to settle, for lack of a better spot. “This would be a traffic stopper, if they had any traffic” she said.

They disembarked and Garcia handed her an M16. “Know how to shoot one of these?” he asked.

“Point, aim, and pull the trigger?” she guessed.

“Sounds good to me,” he agreed. “But only if it’s really necessary.”

“You must think I’m quite a noodlehead.”

They got out off the road as quickly as possible. Now that night was upon them, the land had cooled dramatically, and Helen was glad of her heavy garb. She sniffed at her underarm. She still smelled though. Only a shower would help with that.

“You smell all right,” Garcia told her, observing her action.

“So do you.” She buried her head in his armpit in a playful action that he quickly rebuffed. “You’re stuffy, aren’t you?” she said. “You can come to my wedding, anyway.” She looked him in the eye. “I haven’t done anything disloyal to Eric. I’m a real person though. Not someone playing a role. Yeah, I’m in conflict over getting married. Mostly because I’m afraid I’m not going to be good enough as a wife. I know I’m sort of beautiful, but that isn’t the real me. I’m not the girl in the magazine. I’m a whacked-out flyer and bodyguard. I carry a gun alongside my tampons.”

The tarp on the runway gave them a hiding spot to crawl along without the probability of being observed. They went slowly, keeping under the heavy cover and speaking softly to one another from time to time. “So far things have been easy,” she confided into Garcia’s ear. “Now it gets tough.”

“Thanks for sharing that,” he whispered back.

They arrived at the far end of the tarp, nearest the hanger. “I’ll go,” she said. “A woman will seem less threatening to them. Keep the M16.”

Garcia grabbed her arm. “I’ll go. I speak Spanish.”

She shook him off, laid down the rifle, then ran out from under the tarp toward the hanger. She ran in and started speaking excitedly to the soldiers. “Robert Avilla. He’s out there. He wants you to come. Help him. Help. Help. Help. They’re out there. It’s trouble. Go get him.” She gesticulated wildly, pointing her finger out toward the end of the airfield.

The three soldiers on duty guarding the miserably weary and frightened hostages, mostly women and children, didn’t know how to react. One of them ran toward the front of the hanger and called to his fellows as he went. A second followed along behind, obviously instructing the third to stay and look after their charges. The first two raced away.

Helen clutched onto the third one, as if terrified, then kicked him in the shin with all her might. Stunned, he backed away from her and tripped, falling with a thud. She tore at the rifle he was holding. The two of them struggled for the weapon until Helen kicked him in the head and finally managed to gain control of it. She held the rifle on him. She had the upper hand now, and she was sorry that she had hurt him. Thank God she hadn’t broken his leg!

But the other two guards would return soon enough. That was a problem. She beckoned to the 747 co-pilot and handed him the rifle to hold on their former captor, then raced to the hanger entrance, trying to discover where the other two soldiers had gone. They were almost at the far end of the field. Christ! These people had no military discipline. Where was their training? Had no one warned them that some smart gringo might try to take advantage of their naiveté?

She tried to get Garcia’s attention from the doorway, but finally had to run out to where he was and pull the tarp up, startling him. “Hurry,” she hissed. She grabbed her M16 and the plutonium box and turned at once to trot back to the hanger. She looked around to make sure that he was following.

She entered the prefabricated structure and was pleased to see that the soldier was still under the co-pilot’s control. Not much challenge really, as this guy was a baby, and now he looked scared. She glowered and threatened him with her M16 just to keep him in line. No problem. She posted Garcia at the door to watch out for the two who would be returning. “Why are you the one giving orders?” he objected.

A couple of the hostages had come over to the front of the hanger. “All right,” Helen agreed. “Rank should prevail. I’ll defer to the 747 captain. I’m sorry, Captain, we were never formally introduced. I’m Lieutenant Helen Robbins, U.S. Air Force, former, that is.”

“I’m Burt Delman,” the captain of the skyjacked 747 began. A startled expression came over his face. His hand went to his chest. “My arm,” he exclaimed.

He paused and tried to breathe, as everyone around him watched in suspense. Delman turned a ghostly white. “I think I’m having a heart attack,” he said slowly. The observers looked grim and chalky themselves. If Delman were having a heart attack, who would fly them back to the arms of their loved ones?

A flight attendant and the flight engineer helped to lower Delman to the floor. The small, bedraggled group stood around uncertainly, not knowing what to do. “We’ll have to airlift him to the nearest hospital with the Chinook,” Helen determined. Garcia wandered over to check out the situation and put in his two cents.

“We have a Chinook? Who can fly it?” the co-pilot asked.

“I’ll fly it,” Helen said calmly. She thought fleetingly, with regret, of that beauty of a Cessna business jet, buried somewhere nearby under the tarp. That baby still wasn’t hers to fly home today.

“I thought you would help us fly the 747 back,” the co-pilot said quietly. She looked at him in surprise. Delman was the emergency. The rest of them would simply have to wait.

“You take control here,” she snapped. “Two M16s and this thing,” she indicated the soldier’s carbine rifle. “You can hold them off forever. If I don’t get Delman to a hospital, he could be in trouble.” She unfolded her map of Mexico dotted with tons of tiny towns and villages with more letters in their names than they had inhabitants. “Guatemala city,” she decided.

She leaned down to Delman and took his hand. “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “You’re going to be fine.” Oh God, she hoped she was telling the truth.

She headed toward the entrance to the hanger. “I’ll get the Chinook and fly it back here.”

Delman’s co-pilot caught up with her and put his hand on her shoulder, stopping her. “And what about the rest of us?” he demanded.

She looked at him coldly. “There’s you and the flight engineer. Don’t tell me you can’t make it to Mexico city.” She pointed at Garcia. “He’ll help you out.”

Garcia glanced up, doubt and reluctance written all over his face. He looked at the women and children. “All right,” he concurred.

“I’ll be back in twenty minutes with the Chinook,” said Helen, handing the flight engineer her M16 and starting off at a trot. She prayed that the helicopter was still planted firmly on the highway and hadn’t been dragged away by some irate motorist or flown back to Guatemala by some ticked-off revolutionary.

Helen was a few feet down what would be the runway if and when the tarp was removed, when she came to a dead stop. Her blood ran hot and then cold, flushing her with fever and causing her to shiver simultaneously. She wouldn’t be going anywhere right at this moment, she realized. Three men approached her and, although their minds were not on her primarily, one motioned at her with his rifle, indicating for her to return inside the hanger.

The two men helped the third and the sight of this one was what had made her stomach spasm. Robert Avilla was being carried between the two soldiers she had sent off down the road using the magic signal of his name.

And here he was, broken, between them, limbs seeming to dangle helplessly without efforts of their own. His breathing was shallow, and his face full of blood. Yet, as the men approached her and she retreated ever so slowly, Avilla’s one open eye met both of hers. As their glances collided, a force as evil as that which the devil himself might exude pulsated out from Avilla’s single working orb, involuntarily terrifying her.

Helen mentally shook herself to regain her equilibrium and backed up toward the hanger from which she had just emerged. Torn between pity for the ravaged thing that was Avilla and an unreasoned fear of him, she entered the space she had exited only seconds before as if it were a location completely unknown to her. Delman was moaning quietly. She stared down at the pilot. Oh yes, she had intended to save this man’s life. Now what was she going to do about that?