Trial By Fire (64 page)

Suddenly, the situation was no longer a laughing matter. Lefleur and the Canadian went silent as they prepared to go for their weapons. Naranjo and his companions, however, noticed the change in attitude of the strangers.

They were ready when Lefleur’s driver reached under the seat for his weapon. Without warning, the man who had been covering the driver fired. Whether he did so because he was nervous or because he saw the driver’s weapon will never be known. But he did. When hit, the driver jerked upright, causing his hand to pull his submachine gun out and into the open where Naranjo, who was still covering Lefleur, saw it. As Naranjo shoved his rifle into Lefleur’s stomach, the third militiaman, who had been at the rear of the vehicle, put the muzzle of his rifle next to the Canadian’s ear.

For their efforts, Naranjo and the militiamen who had helped apprehend Lefleur were given the submachine guns that they found on their captives.

Not only would the modern weapon be useful when Naranjo led his men on future occasions, but it would provide proof of his feat to his son and grandchildren. The submachine gun, Naranjo knew, would become a family heirloom that was worthy to pass on to his son, just as the 1898

Mauser he carried had been passed on to him from his grandfather.

As important as this was, the gift Naranjo and his men presented Guajardo with was one beyond measure. With Lefleur, Guajardo had a key that, if used properly, would give him what he wanted most: Alaman.

What care I for their quarrels or whether the eagle I march under has one head or two?

—William Makepeace Thackeray,

Memoirs of Barry Lyndon

Mexico City, Mexico

1935 hours, 17 September

Sitting alone, at the end of a long table, Lefleur stared at the two Mexican soldiers at the door. Though the accommodations in the Mexican jail were far better than he had imagined, such thoughts did nothing to dispel his anger or embarrassment at having been caught by peasants. It had been such a stupid affair. A stupid and unnerving affair.

When there was a knock at the door, one of the soldiers turned and opened a small viewing window in the center of it to identify who was on the other side. Closing the viewing door, the soldier unbolted the door and opened it to allow the visitor in. As soon as the door began to open, the soldier returned to his position, but came to attention, shouting an order for the other guard to do likewise. Not having seen such a reaction from his guards before, Lefleur figured that he was about to meet someone important.

The Mexican Army colonel who entered, followed by a lieutenant, was tall and lean. Lefleur gave him the once-over. There were few ribbons on his chest, which meant that the colonel had done nothing to earn his rank, or else he was a modest man, something Lefleur doubted. It was not possible, he knew, to be a colonel and be modest. The colonel wore his hat with its brim pulled down so that his eyes were not visible. He was here, Lefleur decided, to intimidate him. He thought about that for a moment, then laughed to himself. What could a Mexican colonel possibly do to him that a good sergeant in the Legion, and half a dozen trained professionals after that, hadn’t already tried?

As he was studying the colonel, Lefleur did not notice that the lieutenant who accompanied the colonel had dismissed the guards, closing and bolting the door after they left. Taking up his station at the door, he nodded to the colonel that he was ready.

Taking off his hat, Guajardo placed it on the table, then slowly walked past Lefleur so that he was now behind him. Guajardo stood there for a moment before starting, as if he were pondering his first question. When he finally spoke, it was in English. “I already know what brings you to Mexico, Senior Lefleur, so we can dispense with many of the preliminaries.”

Lefleur,

without looking at Guajardo, decided to play with the colonel.

Folding his arms in front of his chest, Lefleur protested. “My name, senor colonel, is Perrault, Paul Perrault. I am a correspondent for the French National News Network. I have no idea why I am here and demand that I be allowed to see a member of the French embassy staff.”

Lefleur could hear the colonel heave a great sigh before he spoke again.

“Do not, Senior Lefleur, play the fool with me. Your friend the Canadian was most talkative.”

Unable to help himself, Lefleur quipped, “Well, if the Canadian was talkative, then you do not need me.”

There was a pause. Unable to see the colonel’s face, Lefleur did not know how his comment had gone over. The lieutenant at the door, still wearing his hat, betrayed no reaction. So Lefleur sat there, waiting.

“Ah, well, Senior Lefleur, as I said, your friend was most talkative.

But no more. Alas, he was not as hardy as we had thought. His physique was very deceptive. You see, your friend died an hour ago.”

For the first time, Lefleur felt a twinge of fear. Though he tried not to, he stiffened slightly at the news of the Canadian’s death. For a minute, Lefleur tried to convince himself that the Mexican colonel was bluffing.

They would not beat or torture a man to death. They were professional soldiers. Yet, in the back of his mind, he knew it was true. He had no idea who this colonel was or what he wanted. But he did know that Mexico was a country in the middle of a revolution and at war with the United States. Given those circumstances, and if what the colonel said was true, Lefleur realized that anything was possible. It was time to start cooperating, a little. “What is it, Colonel, that you want?”

Without hesitation, the colonel responded. “I want Alaman.”

Lefleur hesitated. The Canadian had talked a lot. Still not ready to roll over, Lefleur shrugged and threw his hands out to his side. “I am sorry, Colonel. I cannot help you. I do not know a person by the name of Alaman.”

Though he had expected the Frenchman to play games with him, Guajardo was still angered by the man’s manner and arrogance. Looking over to his side, Guajardo snapped, “Juan, your pistol.”

Marching from his post at the door, past Lefleur, Juan came up to Guajardo, unholstered his pistol, and handed it to Guajardo. The sound of the pistol’s slide being pulled back and released, an action that chambered a round, caused Lefieur to flinch. Lefleur could hear the lieutenant pivot and begin to head back to the door, where he resumed his post. Lefleur noticed that there was a slight smile on his face. It was a wicked smile, a smile that increased Lefleur’s apprehension. Whatever was going on, Lefleur realized, had been planned and rehearsed.

“Senior Lefleur, if you would be so kind as to place both hands on the table, palms down and fingers aprt, we can continue our conversation.”

Having no idea what was going on, Lefleur complied. He could feel the sweat begin to bead up on his forehead as he placed his hands on the table.

Without a word, without a warning, the pistol flashed past the right side of Lefleur’s head. Before he could react, Guajardo placed the muzzle of the pistol on the lower knuckle of the right-hand pinkie and pulled the trigger.

Expecting a violent reaction, Guajardo pulled away and to one side as Lefleur pushed himself away from the table, howling like an injured animal. Guajardo, seeing the chair begin to slide back, stuck his foot behind its rear leg, stopping it from sliding any farther, and causing it to tip over. The chair tilted back, then toppled, sending Lefleur sprawling on the floor, blood squirting out of the nub on his right hand where a finger had once been. .

. Once he was able to recover from the shock and surprise of being shot, Lefleur grabbed his right wrist with his left hand and looked at the nub.

As he was studying the damage, he began panting, almost unable to breathe. Guajardo, who had taken a step back, looked down at Lefleur and smiled. “Senior Lefleur, you may, if you choose, continue to be stubborn. But I must warn you, I will surely outlast you. You see, I have fourteen bullets left. You, only nine fingers.”

Lefleur had had enough. He was, after all, only a mercenary. There was no honor in dying for Alaman. There was nothing worth throwing his life away for. It was not in his own interest to continue with this insanity.

As soon as he had composed himself, he blurted that he didn’t know where Alaman was. He was, he explained, only one of many mercenaries.

Guajardo

walked over and looked down at Lefleur. “Yes, that may be true. But you are going to take me to the man who does know where Alaman is. You will, my friend, lead me to Senior Delapos and deliver him to me. For if you do not, I will personally see that your death is a slow and painful one, the kind where the victim’s voice gives out from incessant screaming days before the body dies. Do we understand each other, senor?”

Headquarters, 16th Armored Division, Sabinas Hidalgo, Mexico 0635 hours, 18 September

The calm that Dixon tried to feign fooled no one. Though he was far from being a basket case, Big Al considered putting him on furlough for a week, maybe two. Big Al, however, appreciated that such a move would only serve to magnify Dixon’s sense of loss. So long as he continued to function and perform his duties, the division commander would leave Dixon be. In his own time, in his own way, Big Al knew that Dixon would finally come to grips with the loss of Jan Fields.

It was not that anyone had given up. On the contrary, the president, under pressure from Congress and the media, and fueled by Amanda Lewis’s agitation, was making every effort to find out what had happened to Congressman Ed Lewis, Jan, and her crew. From the branch of the Red Cross that dealt with prisoners of war, to the United Nations, representatives of the United States were demanding that the Mexican government stop denying any knowledge of the incident and surrender the hostages immediately. The Mexican government, for their part, denied that it had any part in or any knowledge of the incident.

The
CIA
, working inside Mexico, could not find any evidence that they were lying. On the contrary, their agents reported that several Mexican intelligence and police agencies were also involved in trying to find Congressman Lewis and party. Though some believed that the efforts by the Mexican intelligence agencies were a sham, created to back the Mexican government’s claim that it had no knowledge of the incident, it could not be ignored.

Within the 16th Division’s sector, ground and air patrols, starting at the site of the abduction and spreading out in ever-widening circles, continued to search for the raiders and for Lewis and party, or for any clue as to where they might have disappeared to. That Lewis and the members of his party might be dead was not discounted by anyone. Included in the instructions of all patrols involved was to keep an eye open for anything that resembled freshly dug graves.

Though Big Al favored these actions, he was concerned that his soldiers, incensed over what the media were calling the brutal murder of the MPs and Lewis’s military escort, might seek revenge on innocent Mexicans.

Already there had be.en two incidents in which nervous guards, already on edge due to the sporadic guerrilla attacks that were becoming more and more numerous, had fired on civilians. If this were allowed to continue, Big Al could face a situation that would compel him to quit the area that his division had paid so much to take.

Cerro walked into the current-operations van, ready to relieve his counterpart from the night shift, Captain Mark Grumpf. Cerro was about to slap Grumpf on the back when he noticed Dixon, sitting at a field table in the corner. Alone, his head propped up with his right hand, Dixon was poring through the duty log, reading every entry and report. Cerro leaned over and whispered in Grumpf’s ear, “How long has he been here?”

Grumpf looked over at Dixon, then to Cerro. “He left at oh-two hundred this morning and was back in at oh-five thirty.”

Cerro stood up and looked at Dixon for a moment. He felt sorry for the man. A few years before, Dixon had lost his wife in a bombing while he was assigned to the Middle East. Though Cerro had been told that they were estranged, the loss had to have been hard on him. Now, in the middle of a war, he had lost his …

Cerro paused. He didn’t quite know what to call Jan Fields. What was Jan Fields to Dixon anyway? A lover? A friend? A roommate? It was a strange relationship, at least for the military, which prided itself as being the last great bastion of conservative values and such. No one talked about Jan and Dixon’s relationship, but it was one that meant a grpat deal to Dixon, and one that he never tried to hide or apologize for. To be sure, Jan was good-looking, for an older woman. And she had a great personality. In many ways, she matched Dixon perfectly.

Still, Cerro couldn’t figure out what to call the relationship between them. Perhaps there wasn’t a name for it. Perhaps, Cerro thought, the relationship they had was like Dixon’s military career, one of those things that simply defied definition and refused to be classified.

Shaking

his head, Cerro was about to join Grumpf, who had moved to the map in preparation for giving Cerro a quick update, when the division G2 came rushing into the van. “Scotty, we’ve got ‘em.”

Startled, Dixon looked up at the G2 with blurry eyes. “Got who?”

“Remember me telling you that I thought it was strange that there were no weapons missing from the MP or Lewis ambush sites?’’

Not really remembering, Dixon nevertheless nodded his head in order to get the G2 to make his point a little faster.

Continuing, the G2 pointed a finger toward Dixon to emphasize his points. “In every other ambush, those that we know were made by units of the Mexican Army or guerrilla units led by Mexican Army officers, every piece of equipment and weapon that looked like it would be of value was missing. Even when they didn’t overrun the unit under attack, the Mexican guerrillas were reported to take what commanders in the field considered extraordinary risks to collect whatever they could before withdrawing. You see, the Mexican Army, especially guerrilla units, are still quite poor when it comes to weapons and equipment r and they refuse to miss an opportunity to make up that deficiency.” The G2 was talking too fast for Dixon to follow, but Dixon didn’t stop him. He was too tired and only wanted the G2 to finish. “In addition, in the two cases where prisoners have been taken by the Mexicans, the International Red Cross had the full name, rank, and Social Security number of the prisoners within twenty-four hours.”