Trial By Fire (11 page)

Once she was over the initial shock, Jan began to notice that, for all the misery that wracked the girl, she appeared to be well cared-for. Her hair, long and black like her sister’s, was neatly combed and arranged to either side of her head. Her nightgown, and the single sheet that covered the mattress, though frayed and threadbare in spots, were spotless.

“Her name is Angela. She is ten years old.” Jan, startled by Guajardo’s statement, turned away from the girl and looked at the colonel. To his right, in the doorway, stood the rest of her crew, Ted taping and Joe Bob listening to the quality of the sound recording and adjusting it as necessary.

Looking back at Angela, Jan asked what was wrong with her.

Guajardo grunted. “Mexico City, Ms. Fields, Mexico City and poverty.”

Jan

looked up again, first at Corporal Fares and his other daughter, both of whom were watching her intently, then at Guajardo. For the first time since entering the room, she noticed it was terribly hot and she was sweating. Except for the door, there was no other opening in the room.

The sun, on the exposed tarpaper on the roof, was turning the room into an oven. Guajardo was using her.

Though she knew in her heart that what was happening had not been a setup, Jan felt anger. She didn’t quite know why she was angry, let alone who she should be angry at. Was she angry because she was unable to handle the sights of poverty, sights that were part of the real world that was so much a part of her profession? Was she angry at the arrogant Mexican Army colonel for rubbing her nose in that poverty? Was she angry because she wasn’t in control of the situation? Was she angry that she was being manipulated so skillfully by the colonel? She didn’t know.

At that moment, surrounded by the grim reality of real life in Mexico, all she knew was that she was angry and had no one to lash out at. Determined to regain her mental balance and establish some degree of moral ascendency over the colonel, her retort was sharp, almost bitter.

“Cities do not kill children. Nor do governments. This poor creature has an illness that, I am sure, can be cured if properly cared for.”

Guajardo, in a very controlled and even voice, slowly responded, carefully picking his words for effect. “How naive you are, Ms. Fields.

Naive and arrogant. You come south, into Mexico, from your rich middle-class world in the north where everyone has an education and there is always an answer, always a solution to the problems of the poor.

Yet for all your sophistication and knowledge, you know so little. Or is it that you choose not to know the truth? Cities do kill people, Ms. Fields.

Just look about you, out there in the street, if you care to call it that. It is an open sewer, a dung heap. People and animals who live here leave their waste out there, day in and day out. In the heat of the day, human waste, uncovered, dries and flakes. Tiny microscopic flakes of feces are picked up by the wind, mixed with exhaust fumes from hundreds of thousands of cars, trucks, and buses that run on leaded gas and poor exhaust systems, and are carried about the city. These people, living in these slums, breathe this mix in, every day of their lives. Some, like Angela, aren’t strong enough to survive.”

Guajardo paused, looking away from Jan and at the frail figure on the mattress. “Perhaps she is the lucky one. Her lungs, corrupted beyond repair, will kill her before she becomes a woman. Death will save her from living in a hole like this, scratching out a living and raising a family where the children have no hope, no fantasies, no dreams. Angela will not have to watch her son stand on a corner and breathe fire to make a few dollars a day, killing himself as he does it. Angela will not have to watch her daughters become old and haggard before their time, scrubbing floors or doing laundry in the homes of the rich. And Angela will not have to be told that her husband, or son, was gunned down in the streets by the thugs of a rival drug lord.”

Turning, he began to walk away, but then stopped and looked back at Jan. As he spoke, Guajardo breathed in deeply, struggling to control his anger and tears. Between breaths, his choppy words hammered Jan like blows. “No, Ms. Fields, if you have tears to shed, shed them for Angela’s sister. She is a girl with no future. A child who cannot go to school because she must care for Angela while her mother earns two dollars a day scrubbing floors and her father serves in the military. It is the sister, not Angela, that I can save. And if I fail, if the old system is allowed to return, she will be condemned to live and die in a hole like this.”

Finished, Guajardo took another deep breath, held it for a moment as he looked back at Jan, then left the room, brushing aside Ted and Joe Bob as he did so. Seeing the colonel leave, Corporal Fares quickly bent down, told his daughter something, gave her quick hug, then followed Guajardo out the door.

For a moment, Jan stood at the foot of the mattress, at a loss. Her anger began to swell up in her again. Needing to do something to dissipate this anger, to give it a name and a target, Jan ran out the door after Guajardo, practically running him down.

“And what about you, Colonel? What makes you any different? You knew about that girl. You are a man who is obviously well off, who has the power to help that girl. Why have you done nothing to save Angela?”

To Jan’s surprise, Guajardo’s response was neither hurried nor angered.

On the contrary, at first, he smiled and merely shook his head. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “I see. Your solution is to save one child. If I do that, I suppose, I can rest in peace, just like you yanquis do.”

Jan, her anger still unchecked by Guajardo’s calm demeanor, asked him why that was such a bad thing.

“I remember, Ms. Fields, when I attended a course in Kansas, I was taken to a restaurant in town that had a small container shaped like a loaf of bread next to the cash register. The sign behind that loaf of bread claimed that a fifty-cent donation could feed a hungry child in a poor country for two days. I looked at that sign and became quite angry at my host and his countrymen. I could not understand a people who could so easily dispose of the poor and hungry of the world and, for such a small amount, create the impression that they had done a good, meaningful deed. For just fifty cents, they could feel good for a whole week, maybe a month, and go back to their homes with their fat children who wanted for nothing and would never know the agony of hunger.”

Stopping for a moment, Guajardo looked about him before he continued.

Jan did likewise. “No, Ms. Fields, we are playing for much bigger stakes, as you would say up north. I will not rest until not only all of this is gone, but the system that created this is gone as well.”

As he looked at Jan, Guajardo’s face suddenly became cold, his eyes narrowing into there slits. “Yes, you are right! I could save Angela. I could go back there, right now, and take that girl away from here and save her. But who would save the others like her? You, Ms. Fields, with a fifty-cent donation? No, because the screams of hunger or Angela’s pain do not reach far enough north for you to hear. We are fighting for the very soul and existence of Mexico. We want nothing less than you want; freedom, security, and a life worth living. That, Ms. Fields, is well worth fighting for and, if necessary, dying for.”

Finished, Guajardo walked past Jan toward the sedan, brushing her aside as he did so. The interview had finally ended. But the anger and confusion that Jan felt hadn’t. For the longest time, she stood there, letting his words, mixed with the sights, sounds, and smells of the barrio, hammer away at her. By the time Joe Bob reached her, Jan was able to begin to think clearly. Guajardo was right. He knew it. And so did she.

Now all that remained was for her to figure out what to do with that revelation.

He who risks nothing gets nothing. —French proverb.

North of Mexico City, Mexico

0335 hours, 30 June

With nothing to do while they waited their turn to be inspected by their platoon leader, the men designated Group D, for “Distrito Federal,”

shuffled, yawned, and stretched as they stood in the ranks. From across the dilapidated hangar, Guajardo occasionally glanced up from the maps and diagrams laid out before him on a rickety table, watching the inspection with the same detached interest as the men undergoing it displayed.

As of yet, only the captain who was serving as their platoon leader knew where they were going and what their objective was. Even the majority of the helicopter crewmen who would be moving Group D as well as three other groups, did not know where they would be going.

Looking back down at his charts, maps, and diagrams, Guajardo wondered if his intricate scheme of deceptions and precautions had been necessary or effective. At times, during the planning process, even he had experienced difficulty remembering what was deception and what was actual. The need for tight security was not imaginary, since the target was one of the most effective and cunning criminals in Mexico. Referred to as El Dueno, or “the Manager,” Senior Hector Alaman had created an empire that spread across the entire Caribbean and included in its ranks politicians, police officials, judges, and officers in the armed forces of every country in the region, including the United States.

Alamein did not directly involve himself in the growing, transporting, or marketing of drugs. Instead, he provided services to those who did.

These services included planning, coordinating, and orchestrating all aspects of the business for his clients. With a vast data base that tracked the demand and flow of drugs like those of any commodities market, Alaman and his advisors could provide information to both growers and shippers as to what product would be most profitable and where the best price could be had. Additionally, for a little extra, Alaman’s banking associates provided the growers and shippers with a wide variety of financial services for moving and investing profits and business expenses from their illegal marketplace into legitimate banks, institutions, and markets. He even provided insurance policies, either long-term, which were quite expensive, or for single events, such as a shipment. Alaman’s insurance, which was nothing more than an elaborate system of bribes, allowed his clients to operate their business free of official interference.

The network of contacts and “employees” needed to ensure that operations and shipments were not interfered with was created through a variety of methods that ranged from simple bribery to terrorism. Using an intelligence network that provided timely and accurate information on threats and potential threats to the industry from any quarter, Alaman and the members of his ‘ ‘Action department’’ sought to neutralize them.

When possible, the people who generated the threats were encouraged not only to change their minds, but were actively recruited by Alaman. When they could not be swayed, they were eliminated in a manner that would serve as a warning to anyone wishing to follow in their footsteps. Guajardo himself had experienced Alaman’s power.

Alaman ran these operations from a villa located in the state of Tamaulipas, where Guajardo served as the military zone commander. Under Guajardo’s very eyes, and those of the police and the government of the state, Alaman had built a fortress twenty-two kilometers southwest of Ciudad Victoria. The fortress, named Chinampas, was manned by a staff of experts and advisors in every imaginable field, most of whom had PhDs and years of practical experience in banking, trade, intelligence, transportation, law enforcement, and other disciplines needed to make the drug industry profitable, efficient, and safe. This staff, supported by a computer and communications system that put the one possessed by the Mexican Army to shame, lacked nothing, especially security. Protection was provided by a garrison of fifty well-trained mercenaries recruited from the best agencies, armed with the best weapons money could buy, and backed up by a security system similar to that used to protect Israel’s nuclear-weapons depots. Chinampas, with walls that could resist a direct hit by a 105mm tank cannon, represented a formidable challenge to anyone who might consider testing its defenses.

Not that anyone ever thought that such an event would become a reality. Chinampas’s best defenses came from the benevolent, well-paid, and well-tended judiciary at both state and national level. It would have been bad enough, in Guajardo’s eyes, had government and state officials simply been unwilling to consider initiating an investigation of Alamn and his operations. Guajardo could have accepted the excuse that perhaps the government and police officials being bribed didn’t fully understand what Alaman was about. The openness, however, with which Alaman associated with and entertained those officials made such a defense unsupportable.

Even before Chinampas was finished, Guajardo had watched a parade of officials whisked away to Alaman’s paradise for weekends and vacations. Tending to every need, legal and illegal, of local, state, and national government and police officials provided Alaman security that most men in the shadow world of the international drug trade could only dream of.

Only a man of Guajardo’s temper and conviction could conceive of such a mission. The destruction of Chinampas, however, had become more than a task for the professional soldier; it had become a quest. When the existence of Chinampas came to Guajardo’s attention, he had conducted an unauthorized reconnaissance of the site accompanied by one of his trusted captains. Though it had still been under construction during his first visit, Guajardo had understood its potential. He saw it as a tumor that had to be removed before it grew and killed the state which he was responsible for. Foolishly, Guajardo had gone to the governor of Tamaulipas with his findings and a recommendation that the growing fortress be destroyed immediately. The governor reacted with a controlled sincerity that Guajardo naively believed. Thanking him for his concern, the governor dismissed Guajardo, assuring him that appropriate steps would be taken.

For a month, Guajardo had heard nothing more on the subject. Then, one morning, he had discovered what those steps were. Opening the front door of his home to leave for work, he found the naked body of the captain who had accompanied him on the unauthorized recon of Chinampas nailed, upside down, to his front door. The severity of the corruption that permeated the government was hammered home when the head of the state’s police force came into Guajardo’s office the next day and personally advised the colonel to leave Chinampas alone. At first, Guajardo could not understand why the captain, and not he, the man who had led the recon and recommended action against Chinampas, had been murdered.