Running from the Devil (10 page)

Emma sighed. “I know. They must be marching the passengers to a ransom point with some sort of modern communication and food. They need to eat just like the rest of us, and their packs are getting emptier each day, right along with mine.”

Gladys nodded. “That’s right. You’re not afraid?” Her warm eyes filled a little.

Emma patted her on the arm. “I won’t lie to you, I’ve been a mess this past year, but I’m not about to give up. I’m going to dog their tracks, leave markings all over the trail, and with any luck get both of us out of this situation.”

Gladys clapped her hands. “Good girl! I like a woman who knows what she wants.”

Emma smiled. “Come on. Back on your feet. A village could be right around the corner. You should walk as far as you can. It’ll be good for you.”

Gladys heaved to her feet. “You sound just like my doctor. ‘Gladys, quit smoking, Gladys, quit eating.’”

“Gladys, start walking,” Emma said.

Gladys rolled her eyes and started to move.

The path opened up into a green expanse at the base of the mountain. Emma gasped at the beauty of the little field, surrounded on three edges by jungle, with the mountain rising from the far end. Neat rows of bushes that looked like vines in a vineyard stretched almost a quarter mile on the small, flat expanse. The cultivated rows of crop ran in perfect parallel lines. The plants rippled in a slight breeze, and flashes of sunlight sparkled off the green leaves.

“Emma, look at this crop. There must be a farmer somewhere nearby. We’ve been saved!” Gladys clutched Emma’s arm in a death grip. Her breathing hitched.

“Calm down. You’re going to make yourself sick. Sit a moment.” Emma lowered her down onto a nearby boulder next to a tree. She bent down and checked the crop.

Coca. The narrow leaves looked like any other wild weed. Emma found it hard to believe that such a harmless and unassuming-looking plant could cause such misery and heartache the world over.

She straightened up and shaded her eyes against the sun. No farmer worked the fields, for which she was thankful. Whoever owned this field would not be the sort that Emma would want to meet up close and personal.

“Gladys, this is coca,” Emma said.

Gladys’s face turned grim. “So not a nice farmer.”

“No,” Emma said. She saw a glint of light off to her right. A tin roof flashed in the sun. She pulled the remaining foxglove out of her pocket.

“Take these. There’s a hut off to the right. I’m going to check it out.”

Gladys shoved the leaves into her pocket. “Be careful. Don’t let them see you. Oh, dear.” She pulled her rosary out of her other pocket and started rubbing the beads like mad.

“Saying a prayer for me, are you?” Emma said.

Gladys nodded. “Always, dear girl.”

Emma gave her a swift kiss on the cheek. “Just stay put,” she said. She patted Gladys on the arm and moved away. She skirted the tree line, doing her best to stay in cover.

The field showed signs of being newly plowed. A cash crop, lovingly tended. The sound of a truck engine shattered the peace. Emma jogged back to the tree line and made her way over to Gladys. The sound of the approaching engine grew louder. She ran faster, stumbling over roots jutting out of the earth near the tree line. She’d left Gladys all alone, and the engine sounds were coming from that direction.

She was too late. At thirty feet from the little area where Gladys sat, two men, both dressed in gray T-shirts and both carrying assault weapons, stood next to a battered truck with wooden slats for sidewalls on the bed. Gladys stood facing them. She stood at an angle from where Emma hid, which gave Emma a good view of her profile. She talked to the men, punctuating her words with elaborate hand gestures. She mimed smoking a cigarette.

One of the men snorted, grinned at the other, and pulled a crushed pack of Marlboros from his front pocket. He shook out a cigarette and offered the box to Gladys. She snagged it and wasted no time placing it between her lips. The other man stepped forward with a cheap plastic lighter and lit the cigarette. Gladys inhaled, deep. Emma moved closer.

“Thank you, boys, you have no idea how much better that makes me feel,” Gladys said.

The man with the cigarettes chattered at Gladys in Spanish. Gladys gave an elaborate shrug.

“Bogotá? I’ll pay mucho dinero,” Gladys said.

The cigarette man shook his head. “No Bogotá.” He barked out a name. Gladys cocked her head. “I know about that town. It’s one dangerous place, señor. Mucho dangeroso!” Gladys’s Spanish was a disaster, but the man seemed to understand her. He pointed his weapon at her.

“Whoa!” Gladys said. She bent forward in a fit of coughing.

Gladys, stay calm. Emma almost said the words out loud. She could tell that Gladys’s heart was racing. Nevertheless, the woman finished with her coughing fit and took another huge drag off the cigarette.

“Hospital?” Gladys said.

The man shook his head. He pointed to the truck’s bed. It was clear he wanted Gladys to get in. He grabbed her arm. Gladys yanked out of his grasp.

“Okay!” She held up her hands in surrender. The cigarette jutted out from her index and middle fingers. Emma watched the smoke rise into the air. Gladys never relinquished her grasp on the cigarette. She turned her head in the direction of the field and dropped to her knees. She clasped her hands together, as if to pray. Instead, she threw her head back and yelled to the sky.

“Emma, if you can hear me, I’m going with them, but you stay put. The second man here was at the airstrip with the killer in shirtsleeves. He’s taking me to a town controlled by the paramilitary. But I need to ride, I just can’t walk anymore.”

The man yelled at Gladys and grabbed her by the arm. This time he didn’t let go until she was directly in front of the flatbed. He shoved her toward it.

“Okay, keep your shirt on,” Gladys said. She waved at the back and mimed opening the hatch. “Can you lower it?”

The man made an irritated sound and lowered the back door. Gladys heaved her bulk onto the flatbed, never relinquishing her hold on the cigarette. The man slammed the hatch closed, waved at his buddy, and crawled into the truck’s cab.

Emma heard the gears grind as the engine turned over. She felt tears gather in her eyes. Gladys leaned out of the back of the flatbed. In her hand was her beloved rosary. The truck wheels spun on the soft earth. The rosary swung in the sudden movement. Gladys dropped it on the ground.

“For you, Emma!” she yelled into the air. “It will give you the strength to continue. Don’t give up, dear girl. I’ll pray for you every day.” Gladys waved, and Emma waved back, even though she knew Gladys couldn’t see her. Emma watched the truck disappear in a swirl of dust and smoke. Gladys continued to wave as it drove out of sight.

Emma wiped her eyes, walked over, and retrieved the rosary. The cross sparkled in the sun as it swung from side to side. Despite her anger at the omnipotent being the rosary represented, she felt like it was a talisman. She shoved it in the cargo pocket of her pants and started across the field.

Emma plodded down the rows, keeping her eyes lowered, taking care not to smash the plants with her feet. The ever-present sun beat on her head, and little puffs of dirt rose around her feet with each step. She heard the distant roar of a small airplane. She craned her neck to look into the sky. The roar got louder. The plane was flying low.

Drug plane or rescue team? she thought. The plane came into view. In one second she heard the roar but saw nothing. In the next the plane was upon her. It flew so low that it seemed to touch the treetops. As soon as it cleared the jungle it descended even lower, while a mass of black dust poured from a tank in back.

Emma’s heart did a flip. “Hey! Over here!”

She screamed and waved her arms. The plane flew right at her. She threw herself down as it roared over her head. The chemicals landed on her in a huge, choking cloud. Her throat closed in protest and water streamed from her eyes. She heaved a breath and then started to cough. The chemical scorched her mucous membranes, and the inside of her mouth was on fire. It sprinkled into her hair and layered over the cut that she’d gotten on her head during the plane crash. The cut burned as the chemical chewed into her skin.

The plane turned around and flew back at her. The dust poured again, covering the entire coca field in black sediment. It passed over Emma, once again enveloping her in a cloud of chemicals. Her lungs burned. She opened her mouth to breathe. She sucked in the harsh chemical, and her stomach rebelled. She retched, but nothing came up, thanks to the meager rations she’d eaten. She dry-heaved over and over.

The plane flew away.

The dust cloud cleared. The field of coca, previously so green, now looked black. Emma sat up and shook the black granules off her skin. She plucked a leaf off a nearby coca plant. She shook some of the herbicide off the leaves onto her palm, and took a closer look at it.

The granules looked like glyphosate, a typical herbicide used in agricultural applications, but it was mixed with a surfactant of some sort. Emma couldn’t identify it. The surfactant would assist the herbicide to penetrate the waxy surface of the leaves. It would also turn the EPA-approved herbicide into a concoction deadly to humans, plants, and animals. The coca would die, but so would everything else in the jungle.

“Asshole!” Emma yelled into the air. “Kill everything, why don’t you?”

Emma staggered into the jungle. She needed to get the herbicide off her skin before it entered her system through her pores. The mud she’d spread all over would act as a temporary barrier, but the surfactant would eat its way through it soon enough. She watched the sky. It had rained daily since her ordeal began, so she hoped that it would again, and soon. She felt her panic rising as she used a stick to scrape the mud off her. She felt terrible dropping the herbicide on the ground where it would poison the dirt, but she had no choice.

An hour later, the rain came. Emma stood naked in the pounding water, and washed the mud and chemical off her skin and hair. Her clothes were draped on a nearby boulder. The rain pummeled everything, including the coca field. The herbicide sluiced off the plants and mingled into the muddy dirt below, turning the ground into a chemical wasteland. When everything was soaked, she collected her things and hiked back to the trail.

Emma felt clean for the first time in days. She hated to replace the mud. She decided to get away from the herbicide area before reapplying it. She hiked for half an hour but couldn’t take much more. The mosquitoes feasted on her fresh skin as if it were a gourmet meal. She sat on a boulder and counted her bites. One hundred twenty. Sixty on each arm. She sighed. She found some wet earth at the base of a tree and smeared the mud on.

14

LUIS GNAWED ON A PIECE OF BONE-DRY BEEF AND BARKED orders at the guerrillas. He washed the beef down with a swig of burned coffee. He’d woken up in a very bad mood. One of his sentries was missing. Desertions were common, but each time it happened it set Luis on edge. He viewed each as a failure of his ability to frighten the men into total obedience.

Alvarado snapped out orders as well. Luis heard his voice grow hoarse with the yelling. Only the passengers were quiet. Most had entered the depressed, somnolent state that Luis knew was a sign of despair. He kept them hungry and tired, and made sure that one was beaten every day while the others watched. Nothing commanded more obedience than the fear of pain.

Luis sipped his coffee and eyed the tall man. He’d hollowed out some in the last days due to dehydration, but he still maintained a watchful stillness that bothered Luis. He’d proven invaluable, however, helping to lift fallen logs or other obstacles that needed to be moved as the group progressed, and he still walked with a fluid stride. Luis decided that the man would be the one beaten today. Perhaps then he would see the fear in the man’s eyes that signaled respect.

A small group of soldiers stood next to the tied passengers. They waved their arms excitedly and gathered in a semicircle at the edge of the clearing.

“Shit,” Luis said. He spit the coffee onto the ground.

Alvarado stepped out of the circle of guerrillas and waved him over.

“We found Juan.” Alvarado’s eyes held a grim look.

Luis grabbed a machete and strolled over to the circle of men. They moved aside as he approached. Luis enjoyed the anticipation of the moments before he would come eye to eye with the man he intended to kill.

In the center sat Juan. His head bled from a huge gash above his ear and his clothes were soaked with blood. Luis noted that his eyes, always red from the crack he smoked, looked like two neon lights.

“Where have you been?” Luis spoke in a conversational tone of voice that belied the ticking time bomb of rage that was building in him.

“I was attacked in the forest! By El Chupacabra!”

The circle of men fell silent. Two made a rapid sign of the cross.

Luis did his best to hide his surprise. He’d expected a long tale of woe from Juan, but not this. The men peered around them with uneasy expressions on their faces. Luis stared hard at Juan, trying to buy time while he decided how to deal with the wild claim. The last thing he needed was a bunch of drug-addicted, drunken men believing they were seeing bloodsucking creatures with red eyes, green skin, and spines running up and down their backs.

Luis snorted. “El Chupacabra is a myth. There is no such thing.” He waved a hand in the air, as if such myths were not worth mentioning.

One of the guerrillas, a farmer named Manzillo, stepped forward. “No, Rodrigo, it is not a myth. I have seen one with my own eyes. It killed three of my goats and six chickens. It sucked the blood right out of their bodies.” The men all muttered to one another and several eyed the trees worriedly. Manzillo’s insistence surprised Luis. He was a farmer forced into service by the FFOC. He’d never shown a spine as long as Luis had known him.

“We have been in these hills for years, Manzillo. Why would the animal be attacking us now?” Luis spoke in what he hoped was a calm, reasonable voice. It was not a voice he usually employed, so he was not sure if he sounded convincing. Especially when what he really wanted to do was grab both Juan and Manzillo and shake the shit out of them.