Where There's Smoke (66 page)

Sanchez said, "You are assisting the whore who unraveled your brother's political career.
 
I find that peculiar.
 
What would compel you to risk your life for her?"

"Not her.
 
Her daughter.
 
I believe she might have been my brother's child."

"Indeed?"
 
El Corazon removed a folded white handkerchief from the rear pocket of his trousers and blotted his forehead.
 
Even despots were victims of the jungle heat.

Key enjoyed knowing that the other man wasn't immune to discomfort.
 
It made his own aches and pains more bearable.
 
"Now that I know what happened to Ashley's body, I agree with Lara in her opinion of your country."

"Which is?"
 
Sanchez asked as he meticulously replaced the handkerchief in his pocket.

"Montesangre is a shithole and El Corazon del Diablo is the toilet paper.

With lightning speed, Ricardo whipped a pistol from the holster around his hips and aimed it at Key.
 
Languorously Sanchez raised his hand.

Ricardo lowered the pistol but glared at Key murderously.

"You are either very foolish or very brave," Sanchez said reflectively.

"I prefer to believe you are brave.
 
Only a brave man would have dared fly an airplane into my country without permission."
 
He smiled his chilling, reptilian grin.
 
"In spite of your clever piloting and the ridiculous charade enacted by you and the priest when my men stopped you on the road, we knew exactly where you landed your aircraft.
 
I haven't seen it for myself, but Picardo tells me that it is an excellent airplane.
 
Well equipped.
 
It will be useful as we continue our fight.
 
Thank you very much for contributing it to our cause."

Key looked at Lara.
 
When their eyes met, the best he could do was shrug helplessly.
 
He had no tricks up his sleeve.
 
Even if he could get to the Magnum pistol in the camera bag, he'd be gunned down before he could use it.
 
Then they would murder Lara, too, and her death might not be so mercifully quick.

"Untie their hands."

Considering the gravity of Key's thoughts, El Corazon's brusque order came as a surprise.
 
Ricardo voiced his objections, but Sanchez cut them short.
 
"We are not savages.
 
Give them water and something to eat."

Ricardo delegated the unwelcome responsibility to his subordinates, who roughly shoved Lara and Key to the ground.
 
With heartstopping ferocity and quickness, they severed the cords binding their hands.
 
Key's wrists had been chafed raw.
 
Lara's, he saw, were worse.

The skin had cracked opened and she was bleeding.

They were brought crude bowls of a stew comprised mostly of rice and beans.
 
The chunks of meat were scarce and unidentifiable.
 
Key figured he was better off not knowing what it was.
 
A young boy with a body as slender and tough as a jungle vine and eyes as hostile and flat as El Corazon's brought him a crockery pitcher of water.
 
He drank greedily.

When he lowered the pitcher, he became aware of the nearby scuftie.

Lara had dumped her portion of food onto the ground and was being jeered for pouring out the water that had been offered.

"How very childish, Mrs. Porter," El Corazon remarked.
 
Someone had brought a chair for him.
 
As he sat in the shade of the porch, two girls, one on either side, fanned him.
 
"It surprises me that you would be so demonstrative.
 
I remember you as a woman who displayed very little emotion."

"I would never accept your charity after what you did to Father Geraldo and Dr.
 
Soto."

"As you wish."

She looked at Key, her irritation with him plain.
 
He shrugged, knowing the insolent gesture would only increase her annoyance with him for eating and drinking what their captor had offered.
 
If they stood a ghost of a chance to escape, they would need physical strength.

He wasn't as principled as Lara, maybe, but he was a hell of a lot more practical.
 
Only moments before he'd been sympathetic to her physical discomfort.
 
Now he could easily have throttled her for squandering food and water, which she desperately needed.

At a signal from Sanchez, several guerrillas detached themselves and moved out of sight behind the hut.
 
Key finished his food and drank the remainder of the water.
 
As the empty utensils were being taken from him, the soldiers returned, leading a man and a woman.

Both had their hands tied behind their backs.

They were filthy.
 
The stench of body odor and excrement was overpowering, a threat to Key's full stomach.
 
The man had been beaten about his head.
 
His hair was matted with dried blood.
 
His features were so distorted by swelling, bruises, and abrasions that Key doubted his immediate family would have recognized him.

The woman had probably suffered more.
 
As she was shoved forward, several of the soldiers in the camp whistled and called out Spanish insults that Key had learned as a boy in Texas.
 
It was easy to conclude how she had been brutalized.
 
The trauma had rendered her insentient.
 
Her eyes were vacuous.
 
She didn't respond to anything going on around her.

Sanchez left his chair in the shade and moved to the edge of the porch, where he looked beyond the bedraggled pair and addressed Key and Lara.

"This man and woman were having sex while they were on watch.
 
As a result of their carelessness, troops loyal to Esca'ver raided one of our camps.
 
All of them died in the ensuing fight, but not before they killed two of my finest soldiers."

"Por favor," the man blubbered through swollen, discolored lips.

"El Corazdn, lo siento mucho.
 
Lo siento."
 
He repeatedly muttered the apology.
 
She was his betrothed, he said.
 
They had loved each other since they were children.
 
Having explained that, he acknowledged that they were wrong to have jeopardized the lives of their comrades.

"She's a whore," Sanchez calmly countered.
 
"She lay with fifty men last night."

The man sobbed but didn't argue.
 
He begged for mercy, swearing on the graves of his mother and father that he would never be so negligent in his duties again.
 
He dropped to his knees and crawled forward until he was inches from the toes of Sanchez's polished boots, appealing to his commander to grant them forgiveness and mercy.

"You admit that it was lust which cost the lives of your comrades?

You are weak.
 
A stupid lecher, a slave to your selfish passions.
 
She is a whore, a bitch in heat who would offer herself to anyone."

"Sh, si."
 
The accused bobbed his head rapidly.

"The liberation of Montesangre is the only thing for which one should feel such unrestrainable ardor.
 
We must all be willing to make personal sacrifices."

"Sh, ElCorazon, sh."

"I could have you castrated."

The sly, softly spoken threat sent the man into a paroxysm of pleading and promising, spoken in such rapid Spanish that Key had difficulty following it.

"Very well, I will not emasculate you."
 
The man began to cry and whimper with relief, croaking elaborate accolades to El Corazon's greatness.
 
"But such carelessness cannot go unpunished."

As a surgeon would extend his hand for a scalpel, Sanchez thrust out his hand.
 
Ricardo slapped a pistol into his palm.
 
El Corazon leaned forward, pressed the barrel of the gun against the groveling man s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

The woman jumped reflexively at the sudden racket but seemed impervious to the splattering of her fiance's blood and brain matter.

At a signal from El Corazon, Ricardo stepped off the porch and moved behind her.
 
He lifted her head by her long hair and, with a deft motion of his arm, cut her throat with a wicked-looking knife.

When he released her hair, she crumpled to the ground beside her slain lover.

Key cut his eyes to Lara.
 
She sat unmoving and silent.
 
He admired her stoicism.
 
This sideshow was for their benefit, but, like him, she refused to give El Corazon the satisfaction of seeing her react with revulsion and fear.

I might be next, Key thought, but the tightassed little bastard won't see me 071 my knees begging for my life.

A hush of expectation fell over the camp.
 
Activity was suspended.

Key guessed that the anticipation had nothing to do with the two grisly corpses being dragged away, but rather with what would be his and Lara's fate.
 
Executions of enemies and traitors like those they'd just witnessed were probably commonplace, daily occurrences to enforce discipline and discourage disobedience.
 
The camp followers, even the children, were inured to them.
 
But having two American citizens to punish was a unique diversion that had captured everyone's imagination.

It was Lara, however, who began the offensive.

"You were an intelligent young man, Emilio Sanchez Peron."
 
Her voice was soft with fatigue, but it carried to every ear in the camp.

"You could have become a great man, an excellent leader, the leader who could have boosted Montesangre out of its rut of poverty and antiquity and into the twenty-first century.
 
Instead you have regressed to what you accused me of being a child.
 
A petulant, cowardly, self-serving brat.

"You talk about freedom from oppression," she continued.
 
Scornfully her eyes swept the camp.
 
"This community is the most oppressed I've seen in Montesangre.
 
You aren't a leader, you're a bully.
 
One of these days one of your followers is going to tire of your bullying and show you no mercy.
 
You're not to be feared but pitied."

Those who understood English gasped at her temerity.
 
Those who didn't could accurately interpret the expression on El Corazon's face.

It became suffused with color.
 
His eyes glinted malevolently.

"I am not a coward," he said stiffly.
 
"I killed General Perez because his resolve was weakening."

"I'll be damned," Key whispered.
 
Sanchez was the usurper to whom Father Geraldo had referred.
 
He was the soldier who'd murdered his own commander in order to seize control of the rebel forces.

"Yes, Mrs.
 
Porter," Sanchez was saying.
 
"I see you are surprised.

I want you to understand how determined I am to become the undisputed leader of my country.
 
I will do whatever is necessary, although sometimes the tasks are unpleasant."
 
He glanced down at the fresh blood drying in the sun.

"Like shooting your own man point-blank?"

"Yes."
 
He broke a smile that was so confident, so smug, that it was actually more bone-chilling than the brutal act had been.
 
"Like that.

And like organizing the ambush on Ambassador Porter's car."

Lara's body jerked.
 
She blanched.
 
Even her lips turned white.

"You?"

"Under General Perez's orders I coordinated the operation because I was familiar with the ambassador's agenda.
 
You were not scheduled to attend the birthday party.
 
You and Ambassador Porter quarreled over it.
 
He insisted that you go with him.