Chapter 19

Up close, Helen could see that the “soldiers” weren’t soldiers in the real sense of the word. The uniforms they wore were mismatched selections from the military garments of more than one country’s army. Their weapons, however, were the most globally sought-after Soviet- and American-style military rifles. She supposed that Ernesto had brought them their splendid arms.

The revolutionaries herded the hostages into the single hanger that stood at the edge of the field. The children really fussed at this new turn of events and their mothers were overwrought with concern. While the group had served itself juice, milk, and meals during the night on the plane, they were ready now for the other comforts of civilization: a bath, their beds, even the soothing companionship of the television set. Without these simple but customary necessities, human equanimity, it seems, begins to break down.

Helen followed the others into the hanger, but before she was able to mix in with the group, Avilla seized her by the arm with a powerful grip. In his other hand, he carried his ominous metal box.

“You’ll come with me,” he informed her. “Maybe I’ll trade you a little further south for some hard cash or a cold beer.”

“You’ve gotten used to me by now, Robert,” she said. “If we were apart, you’d begin to miss me.” He continued to hold her arm so tightly that she knew bruises were forming. Finally, he turned and pulled her roughly behind him.

A voice called out in Spanish and they both turned to see who had shouted. Garcia hurried up to the two of them and took charge of Helen’s other arm, at the same time presumably telling Avilla why he should release her.

Avilla summoned the soldiers, also in Spanish, and two came toward them rapidly. “Let go, John,” Helen ordered coldly, but too late, because a soldier came up behind Garcia and hit him in the head with his rifle butt. Garcia crumbled, knocked unconscious.

Something inside of Helen turned around and around, like a ravening beast aroused from its sleep. If they had killed him, they would pay! Not only they, but Avilla as well. Especially Avilla!

Avilla dragged her after him, but she continued to gaze back at John lying on the ground as they walked away. She felt almost as if she herself was the one who had been struck. She was furiously upset, perhaps more upset than she had ever been in her life.

Then she thought she saw him moving a bit, regaining consciousness, just before Avilla gave her arm another yank and she was forced to direct her attention forward or fall flat on her face.

Although the soldiers must have conceived of Avilla as being on the same side that they were, they offered no special provision of transportation for him. Helen, in fact, was quite amazed when Avilla continued to stride right out into the semi-arid hill country, past several Zapatistas rolling the camouflage tarp down over the field again.

“Where are we going?” she asked abruptly.

“Guatemala,” he told her.

“We’re walking to Guatemala?” Good grief!

“It isn’t far.” They marched along a dirt road into the sort of landscape that one almost always drove through or flew over, but never met intimately. This wasn’t her type of country, really, she thought. The time of day was still early, and the air was quite cool, but by noon in the sun, the temperature was going to be at a high roast, that was almost guaranteed. She hoped they would be in a Guatemalan cantina by midday. Maybe she would sell Avilla for the price of a beer, if anyone was buying.

They walked. One thing about the land out here, it was dusty. Helen had trouble understanding that. Eric had talked about the Latin countries he had been in, and he always mentioned the horrors of the jungle. Not that she wanted to hack her way through green tentacles of undergrowth, but where the heck was it?

They kept walking. In one spot a little way back from the road, she saw a man hoeing his plot of land. She hoped it would rain in the afternoon. That would cool things off and afford his little garden patch the moisture needed for survival.

The man wore a hat. She wished she had one, too, for when the sun got a little bit higher. Further back—well behind the ground the man cultivated with such grave attention—was a shack, which at first Helen imagined was where the farmer kept his gardening tools. When a woman stepped out carrying a baby in her arms, Helen realized that this was their home.

As she and Avilla trekked on, she realized that she could smell herself, and she didn’t smell any too good. The last time she had actually washed was a couple of days before, at the hospital, while she was waiting to see if Joan was going to wake up again. But it wasn’t simply her body that was rank. Her clothing was beginning to have the odor of the seriously unclean. She still wore the sweat suit she had bought after Avilla had run off with her overnight bag in Yakima.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she told Avilla.

“That doesn’t interest me,” he said conclusively. He grabbed her arm again and pulled her forward. After a moment or two, he released his grip, and she continued to keep pace beside him.

She had peed right before they had landed, so she really didn’t have to go again, but walking to Guatemala with Avilla was not her idea of fun. She ought, instead, to return and help the hostages, or go somewhere and alert the authorities to their plight. Of course, the people in this section of the country might not be too prone to get word of an emergency to Mexican government officials—notwithstanding the change in the administration. From what she had heard, and even observed personally, the perpetual revolution was ongoing.

As she began to rummage through her purse, Avilla peered at her suspiciously. “I’m thirsty,” she said. “I think I have some throat lozenges. That’ll help.”

“You women are spoiled. You always want something else.” He looked ahead in the direction they were aiming toward, but he didn’t seem alarmed or unduly worried about where they were going, as a stranger to this area might be. He knew this road, somehow, had traveled it before. He must have been here with Peno. Maybe more than once.

Helen had found what she wanted and smiled to herself. Being prepared was always good. She glanced around to see if they were being observed, but no one was out here except for the two of them.

“Robert,” she called softly to the man at her side. She stopped walking, forcing him to stop and to turn toward her. He looked to see what she wanted from him, and she brought her hand up toward his eyes and squirted him with the tear gas pen she had taken from her handbag.

He put his hand over his face to protect his vision, but he was far too late. Unable to see anything, he stood groping blindly, trying to find her.

“Here I am,” she called loudly behind him, then darted away.

He brought his hand out of his pocket with his gun and turned around, trying to locate her by sound, but the ground beneath them absorbed the light rustle of her progression. She dropped into a crouch and ran because if he did shoot, she realized, he would do so at the level of where her heart ought to be.

About twenty yards away, she stood. “You’re not as smart as you think you are, Robert,” she called. She dropped again and sidestepped. He fired once and waited. She ran in a zigzag pattern away from the crazy blind man. She wanted to shout back again, to tell him what she thought of him, what she thought of the way he had spoiled his life and had ruined his son, but she knew very well her words would make no impact and would only get her shot.

She stopped and looked back. He was trying to collect himself and to recover his eyesight. She felt sorry for him for a moment, actually, alone and helpless in the middle of nowhere with a lead box full of nothing except for the most toxic metal known to man. His hair was mussed, and his shirt was streaked with the dirt of the road. He held on to the precious box as if to a lifeline. She walked back in the direction from which they had come. Surely a hacienda in this area had a teléfono.

But the way back was exactly similar to the way forward, and she was afraid to leave the path she knew and lose her bearings entirely. The only house along the road, she soon realized, was the hut she had mistaken for a tool shed. She decided to walk over and see if the people knew where she might find a phone or a homing pigeon service—if that was what they were given to out here in the back country.

She walked toward the man who tended his field, careful to avoid walking on the area he had hoed so that he would appreciate her sensitivity and do her a favor if he could. “Hi,” she said as she approached. “Amigo,” she told him, reassuringly. He looked at her blankly.

She regretted to think she probably seemed about as grimy as he did himself right about now. Perhaps a pond or lake was located around here that they used as a swimming hole, where she could wash before reporting to the proper authorities.

Helen tried talking to the man a while longer, but her feeble attempts at communication weren’t getting across. She heard the sound of a car out on the road and immediately dropped down so that she couldn’t be seen. The car might be driven by soldiers from the airfield or other allies of Avilla roaming around out here.

The vehicle passed. She stood and smiled somewhat embarrassedly at the farmer. Coming over to speak to him hadn’t been a particularly good idea. He could do nothing for her, and now, if the Zapatistas came searching for her, he might say that he had seen her. She smiled again and turned to go, but the peasant touched her arm and indicated she should come with him. All right, if he had an idea.

He led her toward his little house where he called to his wife, who came to the doorway. The farmer indicated that Helen should go inside, which she did. The man and women consulted with one another as to the next step. Soon, they offered her a cup of water poured from a bucket, hovering near her as if she were a rare and interesting creature, the care of which was mysterious to them. Helen refused the cup, and the man drank the water himself, thirstily. Who knew what hostile bacterium lurked in that innocent looking liquid? They wouldn’t have a can of soda, would they?

The man left, gesturing that Helen should stay with the wife. Perhaps he was going to find someone who could speak English. She watched him warily, hoping he wasn’t going to get the “soldiers” and turn her in for a few pesos. She stood in the doorway, looking out after him, but all he did was return to his hoeing of the little field.

Helen glanced at the wife, who smiled shyly at her, so she smiled back. The farmer and his wife weren’t just rustics, Helen decided. They were such small, mahogany people, they must be Indians.

What she ought to do now, she couldn’t figure, but the day was getting on to the hour of extreme heat, too extreme for a North American like her. She looked around. The floor of the small “house” was hard-packed dirt. She’d love to lie down and rest until the sun had dropped a little and she could continue on her way—whatever her way turned out to be. She couldn’t get herself much dirtier than she already was.

She stooped to lie on the floor, but the woman stopped her and offered her the couple’s bed—some sort of padding covered with a “sheet” of rough fabric. Well, that was kind. Helen lay down and began to drift off a little almost at once. She heard a baby cry and peeked her eyes open. The woman picked her offspring up out of a basket on the floor. Helen had forgotten about the baby. She smiled and fell fast asleep.

She awoke to the sound of men’s voices. The time couldn’t have been more than an hour or two later, because the sun was still high in the sky. She sat up and grabbed for her purse, trying to think what defensive weapons she had remaining to her. Focusing nervously on the conversation, she could tell the communication wasn’t smooth. Both voices spoke a foreign language—foreign to her at least—but the dialogues didn’t seem to mesh.

She glanced across at the woman sitting on a rude chair holding her baby in her arms. Gosh, Helen was taking up the best seat in the house. The woman, too, seemed worried by the men’s voices, so Helen rose and went to the door. She’d give herself up. She saw no sense in risking the lives of these lovely people to save herself a little trouble. She was in a pretty pickle either way.

She walked outside where John Garcia stood, talking to the peasant farmer. “Hi,” she said to John, vastly relieved to see him. “You must have one hell of a headache.”

“Awful,” he agreed. She smiled at him and at her host.

“How did you get away from Avilla?” he asked her.

“People sometimes find me too abrasive a companion. I can give you two aspirins, if you’re able to swallow them without water.” She searched in her purse and came up with a small tin and handed it to him. The farmer went into the house, probably to check on his wife and baby.

“These people are terribly nice,” Helen said. “Did you ask him the way to the nearest town?”

Garcia laughed. “Asking wouldn’t be nearly good enough. I’d have to ask in his own language, which I don’t speak.”

“You do speak Spanish, don’t you?”

“I do. He doesn’t.”

She was amazed. “But what is his language?”

“Mexican, I guess.”

“Mexican is Spanish,” Helen insisted.

“No, Mexican is an Indian dialect. These people don’t speak Spanish at all. That’s part of their problem with the Mexican government. For one thing, the schools teach the children in Spanish—a language that none of them understands. Consequently, they never learn to read or write. That’s part of what keeps them a permanent underclass.”

“Gee, maybe we should help the revolutionaries.” Was that little baby in there doomed to hoe his father’s small plot when he grew up, as the totality of his future? The patch of land was probably rented, too.

Garcia smiled. “Too bad we can’t solve all the problems of the world, isn’t it?”

“Maybe we can do something for these two people. Do you have any cash?”

“I gave it all to the guards in order to escape and try to find you. Anyway, these peasants would be in trouble if they showed up in the marketplace with American dollars.”

“Maybe we can send something for the baby, later,” she murmured. Did the couple have an address? Did they get mail? Maybe they picked their mail up in the village. Surely a village must be nearby somewhere.

Helen knocked gently on the door of the house to get the couple’s attention. They smiled up at her and she walked in, gesturing for Garcia to follow. “They’re so nice,” she repeated. “Much too trusting.” She was afraid for them, out here in a remote region with brutal soldiers nearby and no weapons to protect themselves, not even a sharpened survival instinct.

She reached out to hold the baby and the woman handed the child over to her. The little thing began to cry as soon as he was out of his mother’s arms and Helen bounced him up and down. She knew the rudiments. She had nephews. Helen kissed the baby’s cheek and examined his small hand. She offered him up to Garcia for his admiration.

“Very nice,” said the ATF agent warily. “I suppose you and Eric are going to want one or two of those.”

She frowned. “I don’t seem suitable mother material, do I?” she asked. Immediately, she gave the baby back to his own mother. “If only we could send him a savings bond or something,” she said. “We ought to leave, so we don’t get them in trouble. That’s probably the best gift we could give them.”

“Now you’re thinking,” he agreed.

She petted the baby’s chubby little arm and she and Garcia backed out of the hut. She smiled yet again. “Thank you,” she said. They must know a few words of English. Everyone did. She waved good-bye.

They had decided to hole up closer to the hills during the day and travel at night. “Where are we going?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we help the hostages? But we really ought not to let Avilla disappear from view, either. Shouldn’t we bring him to justice?”

“Bring him to justice? A pretty grand concept.” They sat on a stony shelf inside the entry to a canyon, at the foot of one of the steep inclines into the hill country. They had shade where they were, and the air was downright cool. She realized that spring in the U.S. meant fall here.

“We shouldn’t just let him go,” Helen persisted. “He conspired with Peno in murder and skyjackings. He skyjacked a whole 747 himself—not to mention other things like stealing nuclear materials from the Department of Energy.”

“We aren’t in Kansas anymore,” countered Garcia. “Or New York or Washington State. I don’t have any jurisdiction here, and if Avilla has walked across the border into Guatemala, I don’t have any jurisdiction there, either. All we can do is report this in Mexico city and Washington.”

“Don’t be silly,” she disagreed, frowning. “By then, we’ll simply be too late. We need to bring him in now and then go to the government. That’s the way we have to do it, if we really want to see him tried for his crimes.”

Garcia put his head in his hands and rested his elbows on his knees.

“Are you still in pain? He whacked you good. Would you like some more aspirin?” She reached over and touched his head gently, letting her fingers rest on his hair.

She thought briefly of Eric and pulled her fingers away, as if she had touched something burning hot.

Garcia raised his head again. “I’m all right,” he answered. “Or maybe I am concussed, because I’m almost tempted to go along with you. I’m not saying we should try to take Avilla into custody, mind you, but we might want to scout out where he’s gotten to. Otherwise, if days go by, we’ve lost precious ground in picking up the trail. We do have a problem though. One tiny thing.” He paused and she waited expectantly. “We don’t have any idea in hell where we are or where he is.”

“Where we are doesn’t matter,” she assured him. “I do have a detailed map of Mexico that I bought for my last flight down, but I don’t think that will help at all. The important thing is finding Avilla and then finding our way back to the hostages.”

“I suppose so,” he agreed somewhat grudgingly. He looked into her eyes.

“I’m terribly dirty, I know.” She was self-conscious.

“When are you and Eric getting married, anyway? I forgot.”

“You and Eric aren’t exactly the best of friends, are you?” she asked.

“He invited me to the wedding.”

“Oh. It’s August 6th.” So, they were good friends.

“I’m engaged too, you know,” Garcia added.

“No, I didn’t know.” That possibility had never even occurred to her.

“We should rest here a while. Maybe only a couple of hours more, then try to find Avilla.”

They continued to gaze at one another with some curiosity. She hardly dared breathe. Then when he moved his face toward hers, she thought for a moment she was imagining his intentions. His hands took hold of her shoulders and they kissed, delicately at first, then with a growing passion.

Neither pulled away, but eventually they simply let go of one another. His eyes burned into hers. “Try to fall sleep,” he said. “I’ll stay awake and watch out for trouble.”

“I slept before for an hour or two. You sleep. I’ll wake you if anything happens.” She smiled.

He reached down under his pants leg and pulled out his H&K backup pistol. “You’re the boss,” he told her. “Hold on to this.”