Payback

71

Lieutenant Gomez told Lia that he had been pursuing the guerrillas through the rugged territory for weeks. The people who had gathered initially were from the local village and probably had a great deal of information about the guerrillas, he added.

“But these people never tell,” he complained bitterly. “As if it is a matter of honor for them. They are Indians, ignorant natives. What can you do?”

The lieutenant was convinced that the guerrillas had shot down Lia’s helicopter with a rocket grenade. The Art Room experts tentatively agreed when Lia surreptitiously fed them some pictures using the camera attachment on the PDA.

The UN had not announced the flight beforehand, and it seemed unlikely that the helicopter had been specifically targeted by the rebels — though given everything else that they had said and done over the past few weeks, it couldn’t entirely be ruled out. The lieutenant said that he thought the guerrillas believed the helicopter was ferrying chemical company workers, who had occasionally been threatened in the past.

Impressed by her connection with the UN election commission, the lieutenant told her that there was a small settlement about a mile down the slope. If she went with one of his men, she would find food there and a telephone, as well as a small contingent of his men. They would consult his company commander and see what could be done about arranging transportation and alerting the UN. Lia thanked him and started to go.

“Stop. The rifles. You must leave them.”

“Why?”

“They were the guerrillas’. We have a system,” said the lieutenant.

“He gets a kickback for each gun he turns in,” Rockman explained.

“I want to hold on to this weapon,” said Lia. She held it up; two of the soldiers near the lieutenant interpreted this as a threatening gesture and snapped up their own guns. Frowning, she handed the AK-47 over.

The soldier detailed to escort her was a good-looking twenty-year-old who had a gold filling in a front tooth. Speaking in Spanish, he told her a story about how he used to kill chickens on his grandmother’s farm by wringing their necks. Lia couldn’t decide whether he was trying to repulse her or impress her; both seemed equally plausible from his expression.

The trail from the cliff led to a hard-packed road barely wide enough for a motorcycle, let alone a truck. After about a quarter of a mile they crossed a much wider asphalt road cut into the mountainside. On the other side of the road they found another trail, this one strewn with rocks. It zigzagged through a series of cuts before leveling off in a brush-filled plain. Then it meandered through the vegetation for twenty yards or so before funneling down another series of cuts. Stairs had been carved into the stones in a few places, their treads worn at the center by the shuffling feet of centuries of travelers. Lia felt as if she might come across a Spanish conquistador at every turn.

“What do the people in the village here do?” she asked the soldier, as much to stop his narrative of dying chickens as to satisfy her curiosity.

“Nothing.” he told her. “They are just country people. Backward. Old Indians lost in a daze.”

Lia would have laughed at the idea of a chicken killer calling other people backward, but at that moment a hail of bullets rained down from above. She dove to the ground, sliding on the briefcase for a few feet as if it were a sled. A shower of lead, dirt, and rock splinters pelted the narrow pass behind her. She managed to half-crawl, half-slide out of the gunfire. But when she raised her head to get her bearings, a fresh fusillade of bullets pelted the dirt above her.

“Lia!” said Rockman in her ear. “What’s going on?”

“Gunfire. Automatic weapons.” She glanced to her right, looking for her escort — or better, his gun. But he was nowhere to be seen.

As the gunfire relented, Lia looked around the stone cut where she had taken shelter. The angle of the path made it difficult to see above — a good thing actually, as it kept her out of the line of fire. The ledge opposite her was bare.

“How far am I from the village?” she asked Rockman.

“Another half mile by air. I’m looking at a satellite photo of the area from a few days ago. The trail zigs down to the north, then flattens out. We have a U-2 en route to your area; he’s no more than five minutes away.”

Lia took out her pistol and began backing down the trail in the direction of the village, dragging her briefcase behind her. She got about twenty feet when a fresh spray of gunfire percolated the mountainside, the rocks magnifying the guns’ pop and making it difficult to determine exactly where they were. Lia froze and turned slowly, making sure the way she was going was still clear.

It wasn’t. Shadows appeared near the bend, and she heard footsteps clattering nearby. She was surrounded.

“If you are a soldier,” shouted a voice in Spanish, “surrender and join us or you will be killed.”

“I’m not a soldier,” she yelled in Spanish.

She leaned forward, peering back toward the cut she had just come down. She could see the noses of two AK-47s, their owners hidden behind the rocks.

“Surrender, miss,” said a voice somewhere above her. “You are a prisoner of Sendero Nuevo, the New Path for Peru. We will treat you with kindness if you come peacefully, and show no mercy if you resist.”