Authors: H. Ward
“Food chain?” Tomás queried.
Amber snorted a little; Tomás’ grasp of idiomatic English had not improved in the last few days. “It means he’s rising in the ranks of the leadership—you know, the top of the food chain is the predator that nothing else can eat.”
“Oh, yeah. Now I get it.”
He should get it, Amber thought; after all, he is a biologist. “So what’s your story, Paco? Go to college in the states?”
“Yeah, I’m an ecologist by training. I work for an expedition company that’s attached to an environmental non-profit. And I grew up in Pinogana; it’s the last real settlement until you get over the border.”
“So you know the jungle around here?”
Paco laughed without humor, “No one knows the jungle around here. There’s a reason the Pan-American Highway has only one ninety kilometer break between Alaska and Chile: it’s called the Darien Gap.”
“So what do you think their plan is?” Tomás asked.
“Probably go as far as possible by boat, then march us through the jungle.”
“For ninety kilometers?” Amber’s eyes widened in alarm with the thought.
“FARC isn’t known for being in a big hurry where hostages are concerned,” Paco added grimly.
“We must escape,” Tomás said, as if no one else would think of it.
“Clearly,” Amber said, “But I’m not so sure that’s going to be easy.”
“¡Cállate!” Mariana yelled at them.
“Seems she wants us to put a sock in it,” Amber whispered.
“Sock in what?” Tomás asked, puzzled.
Mariana stood up, a plastic bag of rice in one hand. She walked over and gave Tomás a kick. Turning to Amber, Mariana shook her finger at her, “You…
puta…
shut up! Or I kick you too.” Mariana squatted by the campfire, feeding it twigs, before putting two cheap aluminum pots filled with water over the fire to boil. Amber wondered if Mariana was just naturally mean, or whether something had happened to upset her. It occurred to her that perhaps the one thing she could do was to form a rapport with their guard, try to bond with her woman to woman…and then find out what was eating at her and exploit it.
“You must be very brave to be a guerilla,” Amber said as Mariana threw salt into one of the pots of water. Mariana twisted her mouth in a frown, but didn’t silence Amber. “Even though you are a revolutionary, still a man orders you around, though, yes?” Amber poked at her.
“Shut up! You know nothing. He is my commanding officer, a lieutenant. I am a sergeant, of course I take his orders.”
“But…” Amber started to speak, but Mariana cut her off.
“Shut up, you dumb
puta.
You know nothing about us. One more word, and I will…” she mimed tying a gag over her mouth, “now, shut up.”
Amber realized she had cut right to the bone, but she wondered how she could use this knowledge to their advantage. “I can help you, Mariana. Leave my feet tied, but if you untie my hands, I can help you cook…and wash. I’m a good cook. Really.”
Mariana looked at Amber suspiciously. “Why would you want to help me?”
Amber shrugged ambivalently, “Because it’s boring to do nothing. I would rather work.” Amber thought that was a more believable answer than giving her guard some bullshit about all women being sisters.
Marianna studied her for a moment, “Okay…but you do one thing I don’t like, it will be bad for you…and for them.” She gestured toward Tomás and Paco. Mariana brought her a bowl and a bag of dried beans. “Pick out the stones, then soak the beans.” Amber nodded, and industriously started doing as asked. She could tell that Tomás and Paco were trying to figure out the real reason behind her offer to help. She’d have to try to explain later that it was part of a long-term strategy. Before the lieutenant returned, though, Mariana tied Amber’s hands back together.
When the lieutenant returned, he had two more men with him, and Amber realized that now, the chance of executing any kind of escape plan had gone from slim to virtually none. They were three tied-up people versus four soldiers with guns—not very good odds. They did return to the camp with fish that they speared on sticks to grill over the fire.
After the guerillas ate, they untied the hands of the prisoners, and Mariana gave them each a banana leaf with a small mound of rice and some bits of fish on top. Their only choice was to eat with their hands, and they did so with two rifles trained on them the entire time. When they finished, they were handed a canteen of water to pass around, and then promptly tied up again.
The lieutenant had paid little heed to the hostages until after the meal was over. He sat with back against a tree trunk, tapping out a cigarette from a pack, and noticed Amber watching him.
“My vice…and my luxury. I get only one each day.” He smiled at her as he lit it, and then he took a long drag. The tip of the cigarette glowed red in the gloom of the jungle now that the sun was low in the sky. Holding up the cigarette, he looked at Amber and asked, “Would you like a drag?”
He was making a point of being nice to her, Amber thought. This was how Stockholm syndrome must begin; you are helpless and scared—and then your captor is kind. This was probably, too, how hostages ended up with babies. Amber tried to smile sweetly, “No thank you. I don’t smoke.”
He nodded thoughtfully as he drew on the cigarette again, “Yes, you Americans—you’re so health conscious.”
Amber tilted her head coyly, “Oh, we all have our vices.”
The lieutenant pursed his lips slightly, trying to suppress a smile. “I see.”
“Do you have a name, or should I just call you Lieutenant?” Amber asked, an edge of flirtation seeping into her voice.
“You may call me Lieutenant, or Lieutenant Márquez, or ‘that son-of-a-bitch’ for all I care.” He smiled seductively at her, “But my name is Victor.”
“Victor the victorious, no?”
“Si. Victor the victorious,” he said it casually, “and Victor the vicious.” His eyes sparkled with a deadly heat as he said it.
Amber knew that if she let him make her afraid, he would lose all respect for her, and then he might indeed be vicious. “I’m not afraid. I think we can learn to be
very
nice to each other.” Amber puckered her lips slightly, and the lieutenant laughed softly.
Mariana had had enough of this interchange; she stood up, walked over, and kicked Amber in the leg. Not to hurt Amber so much as to get her attention, “Show some respect,
puta.
This is an important man. He has no time for your silly games.”
“Sit down Mariana,” Victor snapped, switching back to Spanish. “I don’t need you to protect me from some worthless
perra
.”
Amber switched to Spanish, too. “I’m not a
puta
or a
perra,
thank you. I don’t know who you think I am, but I could help you more as your friend, rather than your hostage.”
Victor scratched at his beard, “I’m listening.”
Knowing that their captors had no idea that she knew Tomás pre-kidnapping, she decided to play on that ignorance. No big rewards without big risks, Amber thought. She had nothing to lose for trying.
“Do you know Hector?”
Victor played dumb, “Hector who?”
Amber rolled her eyes at him, “You’re going to make me spell it out?”
“Okay, yes, Hector.” He stubbed out his cigarette.
She sighed in relief. Since she didn’t know Hector’s last name it would have blown her bluff. “He will give you a lot of money for those two,” Amber tried to gesture toward Tomás and Paco with her bound hands. “The Hungarians aren’t like the Americans. They’ll pay for hostages to be released.”
She had no idea if that were true or not, but it sounded good and she thought Victor probably wouldn’t know either. Tomás stared at Amber like she was insane, but didn’t dare interrupt her play. He knew she had some kind of card up her sleeve. “The Americans think you are terrorists, not revolutionaries, and they will never negotiate with you. I’m worthless to you as a hostage, but there are other ways in which I can be useful.”
Only the slightest arch of his eyebrow gave Amber any indication that Victor was considering what she had said. The lieutenant swatted at a mosquito trying to land on his nose, his eyes flicking over to appraise Mariana’s reaction. The sergeant was pretending to ignore Victor’s interaction with Amber while she ate a banana. They were a couple, Amber decided, or perhaps former lovers, or maybe they were on the verge of getting it on. At any rate, they were definitely more than just a lieutenant and his sergeant.
A couple. Suddenly, thoughts of Cal overwhelmed Amber; she felt her throat thicken. Why had they been fighting? It had all been so stupid. It was no time to be crying, though. Amber felt like there would be plenty of opportunity for tears, soon enough. And Cal would depend on her to be smart, and to be brave. The one thing that Cal had, amazingly, been completely right about was the fact that no one expected her to have a gun. And somehow, so far, no one had discovered the gun in her bra holster because no had searched her. After all, she was just wearing a t-shirt and shorts.
“You tell Hector you know who’s laundering the money that’s made from the FARC coca.”
“And who would that be?” Victor asked Amber.
“Me.”
“You?” Victor chuckled, “You must take me for a fool.”
“No,
you
take me for a tourist. Do you know whose house you took me from?” Victor started to fidget, a little unsure what to believe. Amber pressed on, “The man who lives there is a pilot who works for the cartel trading your coca for those guns.” She tipped her head in the direction of the rifle lying next to him. “And I take the money and clean it through casinos by buying and selling chips. So, in a way, FARC is my meal ticket. I don’t have any quarrel with you guys.”
Victor looked a little confused; as if maybe he’d be in trouble if the wrong people found out he’d snatched a girl who wasn’t just a tourist.
“What were you and the sergeant doing in La Palma—so far over the border, anyway?” Amber asked. “Not many tourists coming to the Parc Nationale anymore, are there? And anyway, when my pilot friend tells his cartel buddies that FARC took me, well…they might decide to cut off the guns—and do business with the right wing paramilitary forces instead. I’m guessing that won’t make your leaders too happy.”
“So this pilot, he’s your boyfriend?” Victor asked.
Amber gave him a ‘don’t be stupid’ look. “If he was my boyfriend, do you think I would have been sleeping in the hammock?” She blinked slowly at Victor, trying to reel him in. “We can fix this. We can have Hector chasing his tail, all you have to do is give him the Hungarian and his friend; you get money for them by using me as a bargaining chip.”
“How’s that work?” Victor’s eyes dropped to Amber’s boobs, and she didn’t know if he as checking out her tits, or had caught an outline that made him suspicious.