Leaving Anthony behind in the faint hope that he would not be found, we bounded into the tall grass. For a few seconds I thought of dragging Anthony with us, but moving him might kill him and us too. For the second time in minutes, survival was all.
Scurrying along in our path was a frightened native boy wearing nothing but knee shorts. “Can you lead us into the bush, to safety?” I said, stopping him: “We are Americans. We were attacked. We were unarmed. We won’t harm you.” With luck, this dark-skinned Amerindian boy would know every foot of the undergrowth within a mile or two of his home.
The urchin beckoned us to follow him into a deep shade that approached total darkness. At first the bush was simply thick, with tangled vines, fallen logs and a confusion of brush and brambles. The boy knifed easily through openings that thwarted us and sent us looking for easier paths. Soon he had pulled five to ten yards ahead of us.
“Slow down,” I called out in a hoarse whisper. “Come here.” He stopped and I pleaded, “Please take it slower.” He was expressionless, out of physical reach. In a few moments the distance grew wider.
The leafy floor had dropped to soggier ground. Old stumps and logs lay rotting in blackwater bogs. The moldy stench of decomposing vegetable matter pressed downward, trapped to the ground by an umbrella of branches that allowed not a ray of sunlight to warm the forest floor. Our shoes sank ankle-deep. As we pulled them free with loud sucking sounds, the boy scooted ahead, then vanished. We stopped. We were alone. We listened. Voices—men’s voices—rang out, but dozens of yards of greenery filtered out the accents and meaning. There was no telling if they were American or Guyanese, friend or executioner.
We crept a little deeper into the jungle, then squatted on a soggy log, listening. We needed to talk to each other, say anything, reassure one another. But the fear of missing the slightest noise caused us to hush, then fear of pursuers pushed us onward.
When the belt slipped off my wounds and the blood started flowing again, we were forced to stop. Once or twice Carol tried to help me fasten the belt, but the leather was saturated and too slick to work as a cinch any longer. The warm blood soaked through my corduroy pants and reached my skin. It turned surprisingly cold.
“Shhh.” I cocked my head to one side. “Listen.” We perked up our ears. For an instant, it sounded as if small airplanes, far off, were approaching. Then I looked at my arm and saw squadrons of mosquitoes homing in on my blood.
We had no handkerchief or bandanna, so Carol helped me wrap my arm with my shirt, then tie down the wad with a few turns of the belt. “Your dad asked me to help you out, and here you are helping me,” I said.
Inches above the muck, we huddled together on a stump. Carol’s pants were muddied and her shoes were soaked, and so were mine. The chill would cut to the bone once total darkness forced us to freeze our position. We had probably been in the jungle only a quarter hour, maybe not even that, yet it was too much already. It was entirely possible to become lost in there, permanently.
“I don’t know about you,” I said. “But I’d rather take my chances of getting shot....”
“I know what you mean,” Carol said.
We planned to work our way to a remote corner of the airstrip, then sneak out for a peek. Our slow steps, careful as they were, produced loud splashes. Snapping branches sent echoes far across the watery land. Each step deepened my fear that we might already have become lost and disoriented, or that we might be plunging once again into the gun barrels of our hunters.
Then suddenly a violent sound broke through the bush. An airplane engine! The engine of a small plane on the ground was revving. The pilot poured on throttle until it seemed the buzz would tear directly into us. Then white metal flashed overhead.
We looked at each other, terror-stricken. We had been left behind. “Let’s go,” I said. “Maybe it will circle back and we can wave it down.”
We ran for the strip. Tripping and half crawling, we pawed through vines and thorny growth along a twisting, random path. All at once we saw a bright spot ahead like an opening in a storm front. We burst toward it. The forest was breaking. The leaves turned from black to emerald to pale green in the space of a hundred feet. A short embankment, a four to five foot rise of grassy brush, blocked our path. We scaled it, digging knees and toes and fingers. We bounded across the last thirty to forty yards of brush.
At the edge of the strip, gasping and wheezing, I looked to my right. The Cessna was gaining altitude as it soared toward Georgetown. Breathless, sweaty, my bare back and shoulders scratched, the frustration welled inside me. We were stuck. Stepping out from the brush, I took a gander to the left. Guyanese natives had gathered around the Otter and the bodies sprawled nearby. Some of our people stood at the edge of the strip. We were not alone after all—and the Temple gunmen had not returned.
As we approached, however, I could make out Larry Layton amid Dwyer, Dale Parks and some Guyanese men. They looked deadly serious and were pointing fingers. The last person I wanted to encounter now was Larry Layton, someone who still might be scouting for the killers.
My first inclination was to hang back, but my curiosity drew me forward. Dale Parks was accusing Layton of having tried to kill him, the pilot and several defectors in the small Cessna which had just taken off. A .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver with one unspent bullet was being shown around. Parks, a mild man, contended that Layton had started shooting as the death squad opened fire. He maintained that Layton had hit Monica Bagby and Vern Gosney—wounding them seriously—then missed the pilot, after which he turned his gun on Parks with a bang but no bullet. Surprised to be alive Parks had then struggled for the gun. Though an admittedly ineffectual fighter, he was twenty or thirty pounds heavier and a few inches taller than the weasellike Layton, and had managed to disarm him as they tumbled out of the plane. Parks then had tried to shoot his attacker, but the weapon would not fire, so he slugged him instead.
After a moment of discussion, a few Guyanese said, “We know how to take care of him,” and they led Layton off, presumably to the police station. The gun was entrusted to Dwyer after the diplomat had made a pronouncement about bringing Layton to American justice. Dwyer’s vow was pathetic under the circumstances: it was a long way to the nearest U.S. courtroom.
Nearby, Jackie Speier and Steve Sung were a few feet apart on the ground, calling to each other, entreating each other to hang on, to live. Steve was crying pitifully for his daughter and wife. “I love you,” he would moan. “I didn’t mean to do this to you. It was stupid. Stupid. Stupid.” He was no longer talking about losing his arm but digging in his heels for a bout against death. Two fist-sized chunks of flesh were missing from his arm and shoulder. He was cold and trembling and, with each onslaught of pain, his boot heels cut deeper trenches in the ground. “Hang on, Steve,” Jackie would call, and Steve would call back, “Hang on, Jackie baby. We’re gonna make it.”
“I’m cold,” Jackie cried, so I fished a pair of pants from my pack and draped them over her. Flies and mosquitos had discovered the raw flesh, so we tried to fan them away. Local people stood by, offering suggestions, sending children for water and rum.
A wave of dizziness caused me to drop to my back for a minute. My pack under my head, I stared at the sky. Through the grass to one side I could see the bodies scattered round the plane; to the other side I could see the agonies of the wounded. My own wounds were paltry by comparison; I regained my feet.
A tape recorder—my tape recorder—was on the ground near Jackie. Krause said something about recording her in case something happened to us. “No,” I said. “We’ve got better things to do.” There seemed to be no point in demoralizing ourselves by preparing to die. A little later, however, Jackie did tape a message to her parents, to be delivered if she perished, along with the will she had prepared just before leaving the United States.
Two Guyanese men—one with a gallon cooler of water and one with a bottle of rum—came up to me. A long draft of water settled my bilious stomach and spinni
ng head a little. The loss of blood and sweating had drained my body fluids. My thirst was overwhelming. “Take a big drink of this too,” said the other Guyanese, handing out the golden rum. “Then we’ll disinfect your arm.”
The amber liquor went down like honey. I loosened my bindings, and they doused my wounds with rum. The burning had stopped by the time Carol found some bandages and taped my arm.
Dwyer, wounded in the buttock but ambulatory, soon was taking down a list of the casualties on a clipboard. Javers, Krause and I helped him account for the various people. We counted five dead, five severely injured, five ambulatory injured, including Krause with what looked like a gravel scratch on one hip. A half-dozen people were missing, in unknown condition.
By virtue of his title and experience in Guyana, Dwyer was gradually assuming the role of battlefield commander. He was the United States for all of us. A tall, graying fellow with lead now in his behind, he moved ponderously. A clipboard and khaki clothing were his only symbols of authority. He peered through his glasses, his brow wrinkling in worry. We asked: Had word reached Georgetown yet? When would help arrive? Dwyer said that the Otter pilot had sent a message during the shooting, but that did not console me; it seemed unlikely that a grounded plane could communicate through such jungle over such a long distance. Most upsetting was that the two pilots, for some reason, had taken only one of the seriously injured with them—Monica Bagby. We cursed them.
Apparently, the commotion at the other end of the strip had been a false alarm; the Temple gunmen had not returned to finish us. But, I found out, they had behaved curiously as they fled the strip, taking the time to circle the Cessna once with the tractor. Although they had shot out one of the Otter’s engines, they did not touch the Cessna, nor harm its pilot, who foolishly stood by his plane asking what on earth was happening. They probably had ignored the pilot because Jones did not wish to harm any Guyanese. But why had the plane remained untouched? Did they hope to use it later? Would they come back?
As Dwyer spoke, I glanced over my shoulder at the Otter, which was listing toward its flattened left wheel. There was blood on the top boarding step; the luggage compartment where Krause and Jackie Speier had hidden after the initial assault was wide open. “Actually,” Dwyer said, “I wouldn’t count on anyone getting in here tonight for us.” Our quizzical looks caused him to add, “I know the country well enough.”
While Dwyer left to speak with local officials and soldiers, I stood alone for a moment, smoking a borrowed cigarette, in a cloud of disbelief. A dozen or more Guyanese moved about the plane, horrified, shaking their heads, bending over to look at the dead. A group of them came over to me. All were black or Amerindian men; most were in their twenties and thirties except for a hoary little man in a watch cap. Clearly, he was a respected elder.
A man in his mid-thirties, a stout-boned Afro of six feet one or so, asked me about the condition of my arm. “It’ll be all right,” I said. “The photographer with me was not so lucky.”
They nodded sadly. They had seen Greg’s body, and their sympathetic murmurings were extended to me. “Why? Why?” the elder cried. “What happened to you?”
It was the first of many times I would be asked to recount the attack, to reexperience the suddenness, the fear, the helplessness and ruthlessness. My breath was short, my emotions swelling in my chest, pushing the air from my lungs. “The Peoples Temple attacked us,” I told him. “We were unarmed. We were here because of allegations about conditions at the Peoples Temple mission. We had been told there were beatings and that people were not free to leave.”
My audience nodded, some quite solemnly as though they had heard or suspected the same.
“It’s horrible,” said the little man, throwing up his arms. “Why would they do this to you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.” The frustration of not understanding clenched my fists, but curiously, I felt no bitterness or anger, just incomprehension.
“We were told that you, the group with the congressman, were CIA and were heavily armed,” said one of the men.
So, Temple members had apparently told townspeople that we were an armed force of U.S. imperialists. Rather than scoff at this ridiculous notion, I took pains to project my sincerity. This was not a time to be silent, misidentified or misunderstood.
“I am a reporter,” I explained. “I write stories.” I don’t carry a gun. I came here to find out whether the accusations about beatings and imprisonment and other inhumane practices at the mission were true. I am not CIA.
“And look at these people with me. Some are Temple members who wanted to escape. Others are relatives of Temple members. They simply came to assure themselves and their families that their loved ones were alive and well. Wouldn’t you do the same for your brothers and sisters, and parents and children?”
These men in tired sandals and high-topped sneakers nodded understanding. Then, however, the tall, outspoken one—a certain Patrick McDonald Luke—pulled from his pocket a worn paperback about foreign intrigue and the CIA. Though my recollection of the conversation is imperfect, the exchange took on surreal and somewhat discomfiting overtones.
“Your government has not spoken out adequately against the governments of South Africa and Rhodesia,” Luke said.
The request to justify U.S. foreign policy made my head swim all the more. “This is true,” I agreed. “And not all of us agree with all of our government’s positions and actions. In my short time in your country, I’ve seen that the same holds true here.”
Luke, as he called himself, went on to a new topic, but I stopped him, not wanting to leave the wrong impression. Some of their questions were probing at the issue of racism. Again, I wondered whether the Temple had planted some accusations.
“Wait,” I said, rising to my feet. “You asked me about South Africa and Rhodesia. I can’t speak for all of the U.S. or the government or these people with me. But I can speak for myself. Those governments should be condemned. They shouldn’t be allowed to stand on white minority rule. I believe in democracy. Regardless of color, a man should be free to go where he pleases and do what he pleases. His vote should be as valuable as the next man’s. We are all human beings.”
At that, the little man spoke his emotions. “We are with you. We will protect you. My God ... how can they do this? We are all human beings.” He was speaking on behalf of these compassionate men with barefoot children.
“Anything we can do, anything, will be done,” he declared, jabbing with his index finger. “We can’t stand by and do nothing when they have done this to you. We are in this together. Our families live so near.” He pointed toward the simple houses on stilts dotting the jungle near the strip. “They are frightened of Peoples Temple.”
At this offer, I felt as though I had just negotiated a Middle East peace treaty. We still were wounded, defenseless and frightened in the hinterlands, but we had allies, people who empathized with us enough to say, “We will fight to protect you if necessary.”
His eyes flashing with fiery commitment, the elder offered his hand and I grasped it with both of mine and thanked him profusely. The others shook hands on our pact too. These people could have taken to the road for Matthews Ridge with their families; they could have huddled in relative safety in their houses. Brave or foolhardy as it may have been, they had chosen to stay and fight.
“Do you have any weapons?” I asked, not wanting to be caught defenseless again.
Their faces dropped. “There are a couple of shotguns,” the elder said. “We will hide you. We must get you away from here. If the Peoples Temple returns, they will find you. Each one of you can be concealed in a different house.”
“I think we’d prefer to stay together,” I said, knowing we would feel even less secure in separate locations.
Pondering a moment, the elder said, “I see your point.” Then he suggested that “the rum shop,” a disco like Mike and Son’s, would be the most suitable place. Lights and voices would
arouse no suspicions there, and there would be plenty of refreshments and space.
Darkness cloaked the airfield, hiding us from snipers—and snipers from us. We had only one flashlight, and Dwyer had taken it. I joined a group at the metal shack where locals and others had moved most of our belongings. Ron Javers and I sat with our backs against the metal front wall, our butts on piles of gear. We wondered aloud why no help had arrived. At least a couple of hours had elapsed since the ambush; Dwyer had reported that the pilots had radioed ahead. And a local who called himself airport manager and closely guarded our rum supply told us repeatedly that he had radioed for help too. Assuming even the slowest scenario—that our rescuers had not been mobilized until after the Cessna reached Georgetown—some relief, some reinforcements, some message should have reached us by now.
We sadly lapsed into talk about Greg, the injustice of his death, the wastefulness. We still were mired in incredulity. “Hey, that won’t help things,” Bob Flick said. We changed the subject.
Rock-jawed and boulder-shouldered, Flick smoked feverishly. His forehead was knit even tighter than usual. He had lost two members of his crew—two friends—and the third was seriously wounded. He paced alone, a numb, sorrowful expression on his face. He was pessimistic about our chances of getting help in time.
Within fifteen uneasy minutes, Dwyer returned with a plan. The most severely injured would spend the night in the army tent with the four soldiers, near the disabled military plane. Since the soldiers were unwilling to defend the rest of us, we would hide at the rum shop, the nearby disco at the edge of town.
Using metal bedsprings as litters, some of our Guyanese friends carried the severely wounded toward the tent. Others hefted our gear. In the dark, I located Greg’s camera bag beneath some baggage alongside the shed. I resolved to take out his equipment even if I could not bring out his body; his family would want it.
At a careful pace, we dragged ourselves down the field in darkness. Our local friends guided us, saying, “Come this way. This way,” to keep us from straying into puddles. Suddenly from our right came a feline snarl and a creature—somewhat larger than a house cat—catapulted through our midst. No doubt, we had interrupted its nocturnal wanderings toward the nearby river.
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