Wiry, stooped Coyote was the best of Halcón’s soldiers, the sole revolutionary here with jungle skills, expert at slicing through the ferns and spiny shrubs and thick lianas. But life had dealt him a bad hand. According to Quetzal, he had been a squatter, turned embittered when the rural guard threw him and his family on the road with their pots and pans and soiled mattresses. His wife and children had gone off with another man. Afterwards, he had tried homesteading — until his shack was gutted by fire.
Though Halcón smoked a cigarette at every pause, he had better wind than his comrades. He never addressed his two captives, and had few words even for his mates. Maggie was intrigued by this laconic man, with his dark, darting eyes and military haircut. What secrets were hidden behind that blue kerchief? If Quetzal knew any of his history she didn’t share it. As for the mysterious Benito Madrigal, he was currently in a mental hospital: a radical politician who had once run for president. Quetzal, formerly his housemaid, claimed he was a visionary, a great orator, a man much misunderstood.
Halcón was matched in stamina only by his two captives, the complaisant Margaret Schneider and the snarling Gloria-May Walker — too proud to beg Halcón for a cigarette, she had quit smoking: good for the lungs, bad for an already nasty disposition. Glo had refused to carry a backpack, and between bouts of vituperation marched sullenly behind Tayra like a dog, a rope around her waist.
Glo had a particular distaste for Zorro, who leered at her whenever his wife was not watching. When Tayra caught him doing so, she severely dressed him down. Zorro endured Tayra’s complaints and insults silently, though with an edge of irritation. It worried Maggie that Halcón had entrusted him with their entire arsenal; the two submachine guns and five pistols were bundled in his pack.
Late on the third day of their forced march, they entered a cloud forest: giant trees so weighted with moss and ferns and epiphytes that many had collapsed. At times, the going became treacherous, as they scrambled over deadfalls, among branches where Coyote prodded for snakes, through an understory thick with large-leaf herbs and prickly shrubs that lacerated their legs through the fabric of their pants.
Finally, the path became easier, a serviceable animal track. Here, the terrain was relatively gentle, the forest floor carpeted with dead leaves, but they were moving slowly, Coyote warily stirring the leaves with his machete. He had an almost instinctive sense of where snakes might hide, but the several they encountered had simply slithered away.
Everyone froze at the sound of a helicopter, a distant chuffing that soon receded. They often heard search aircraft passing directly over them, unseen above the treetops. Maggie felt sure that somewhere to the south, a ground party was advancing. Expert followers would soon locate one of the trails they had made: machete cuts, boot prints in mud. In the meantime, until rescued or otherwise released, she would think positively: this was a unique adventure, inspiration for a gripping novel.
Coyote, his machete whispering through the undergrowth, was now leading them single file up a twenty-degree incline, followed by Halcón, then Maggie, and the tandem of Tayra and Glo, the five others straggling behind, fat Gordo at the rear, panting hard.
The column abruptly halted, closing like an accordion. “Matabuey,” Coyote said in a hoarse voice. He was shaking, stepping slowly back, then he started running down the hill, the others scampering after him, a chain reaction. Glo, tugged by Tayra’s rope, fell, and Maggie paused to help her to her feet.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“A bushmaster, matabuey,” Buho said in a trembling whisper. “This means bull killer.” He translated Coyote’s rapid-fire Spanish: “He says it is very fast, and will pursue.” Coyote had his machete at the ready. Zorro had retrieved an automatic pistol from his heavy pack.
Maggie had encountered rattlers on the prairies, but had not heard of snakes seeking human prey. Her curiosity overcame her qualms and she retraced her steps, climbing onto a high cradle formed by a twisting liana. From this perch, she spotted the diamond-backed snake, at least three metres long and only ten metres away. It yawned, showing a chilling set of fangs. Maggie would have bolted had she not seen a bulky protrusion in the area of its stomach.
“Qué pasa?” someone called.
“It’s not moving. I think it just ate.” As she spoke, the snake did begin to move, turning in a long, lazy spiral and winding slowly into the forest. She felt awed by its grace and savage beauty. “We’re okay,” she called. “It’s going.”
They seemed uncertain at first, but Halcón prodded them forward. Maggie could not tell if, behind their kerchiefs, they appeared sheepish as they silently rejoined her. Glo was scornful: “The brave soldiers of the Fifth of May. No hablo cojones.” Her Spanish might have been flawed, but the message was reasonably clear.
As they recommenced their slow upward journey, rays of the lowering sun pierced the foliage above. Maggie was the first to see the quetzal — with its streaming green tail feathers, scarlet and snowy white beneath. The entire column stopped and watched as it snapped a lizard from a branch, then sailed into the mist.
Under more comfortable circumstances, Maggie might have been enraptured by this expedition: a diversion from her mundane world of hawking farm machinery or extolling the sizzling steaks at Spiro’s Eighth Street Grill. Coyote had shown them tracks of a jaguar and a tapir. Tanagers and trogons regularly darted past them, birds of such brilliant plumage that at each sighting Maggie felt a momentary lifting of gloom.
Maggie heard groans from the group ahead, who had reached a wide rocky ledge. She grasped a tree root, swung herself up beside them, and found herself looking down the rim of a forested ravine; distantly from below came the sound of rushing water, the upper reaches of the Savegre.
Halcón checked his compass, then drew a cigarette from his pack of Derbys. While he conferred with his team, Maggie sat beside Glo and whispered, “I don’t think we are where we’re supposed to be.”
“You can fucking definitely say that again. These yo-yos couldn’t follow the south end of a northbound mule.” She called, “Hey, you, Buho.”
The young man came over. “Can I be of help, señora?”
“I feel grubbier than a rat in a swamp — let’s carry on down to where there’s some water.”
“I am sorry, Halcón says we should camp here.”
“Look, you go over there and tell that son of a bitch to admit he’s got y’all completely lost. He’s leading you nowhere, Buho, so maybe it’s time for the rank and file to rise.”
“Do not underestimate our captain, señora.”
“Tell him my husband is going to have his love appendages hanging off a barbed-wire fence.” She said this loudly, intended for Halcón, who glanced her way. She shouted at him: “Fetch me some goddamn water so I can wash up. It’s no way to treat a lady, you lump of mule shit!”
Until now, Halcón had taken her abuse with an almost unsettling composure – but he finally reacted. He strode toward them and addressed Glo in clear English. “Be a lady, then I will treat you that way. This is not the Royal Plaza Hotel.” A deep voice but flat, without tone or emphasis. “But as you see, the sun, soon it will set. The river is half an hour. Here we will camp.”
Halcón turned to his comrades and issued quiet orders. Backpacks were shucked, tents removed. From this high vantage point, Maggie could see the hazy blue of the Pacific Ocean, the sun flattening on it like a bright orange egg. She watched solemnly until it was a pinprick of light; before dying it shot out an intense green spark that made her blink in surprise. It seemed a cryptic message, perhaps of hope.
The three men erecting the tents suddenly began a wild dance, lifting their legs, slapping at their ankles.
“Hormigas rojas!”
Fire ants — Maggie could see tiny forms swarming the men as they raced into the trees.
Zorro performed a feat of bravery, running to the tents, picking them up, hurrying to safety. Tayra bent and brushed the ants from his ankles: a rare mom
ent of caring interaction between them.
Glo called: “Where did you learn to pick a campsite, Halcón, the Boy Scouts?” He did not respond.
The site abandoned, they began filing down the ravine along a switchback animal path, a descent marked by much tripping and sliding and grasping at roots and branches. Darkness was settling upon them as they reached the edge of a fast-rushing creek, a quebrada, in Maggie’s growing Spanish lexicon.
Overlooking the stream was a rock bluff. Maggie’s eyes widened at the sight of an extraordinary object resting on it, a ten-ton granite cannonball, a spherical stone at least two metres in diameter and so symmetrical it had to be the work of man not nature. All but Coyote, who was leery of it, gathered around its perimeter, staring with awe, stroking it.
“This is a sign,” said Buho.
“Of what?” Maggie asked.
He frowned. “I am not sure.” But he explained the sphere was likely sculpted by the peoples of pre-Columbian times; many had been found in Costa Rica, though their purpose had never been determined.
A breeze whispered through the trees. Coyote backed away several metres from the sphere, muttering anxiously.
“He says he can hear their voices, they are warning us of danger.” Buho shrugged. “We must forgive Coyote; he comes from a tradition of false beliefs, of superstition.”
Gordo seemed less concerned, insisting that his fellows boost him onto the stone, where he rose to his full five feet and four inches and raised a fist. “Viva Benito Madrigal,” he said. Of all the guerrillas, he seemed their hero’s staunchest fan.
The bluff was a natural campsite, hidden under vine-entangled trees, and Halcón, dismissing Coyote’s objections, ordered the tents be raised near the sphere. Maggie, as usual, took charge of the task, gathering stones to weigh down the tents. She listened for the warning voices of ancient aboriginal spirits but heard only the haunting call of a bird: poo-oor me, it seemed to say.
The stoves were lit for the gallo pinto. The plain daily fare — rice and beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner – was putting Maggie’s taste buds to sleep. She had passed up chances to vary the diet: Coyote occasionally caught crawfish and river shrimp and even trout, using berries to lure them to the point of his machete. On their second day, he had snared a turkey-sized bird, a curassow, but she had picked the bits of meat away from her arroz con curassow.
The stars were out by the time the camp was set up. Maggie found Glo by her tent; her bindings had been released and she was pulling off her boots, which parted from her feet with a sucking sound. She turned them upside down to dry and shouted at Gordo, who was standing guard, “Get me some hot water!”
“Glo, I think you might be better turning on the charm.”
“I’d throw up.”
“Try it, Glo. You might not have to spend all day at the end of a rope.”
Maggie found her way in the darkness to the glow of the stoves. She joined Quetzal, picked up a wooden spoon, and began stirring the beans. The young woman, who had already removed her kerchief, smiled at her.
She called Maggie valiente because she had not fled from the snake. Maggie shrugged off the compliment: Quetzal, too, was brave, to have joined this revolutionary commando. Quetzal said she had been inspired to do so by the words and deeds of her former patrón, Benito Madrigal.
Her boyfriend, Perezoso, had enlisted in Madrigal’s movimiento by a different route. While canvassing as a Jehovah’s Witness, he had been invited into his house, where Quetzal was staying. “For him and me, was love at first sight.” Abandoning religion, blinded by his passion for Quetzal, Perezoso joined the revolution. His parents were middle class, but Quetzal was an orphan raised by the church.
In the near darkness, Maggie worked her way through the campsite to fetch Glo to dinner. Halcón was in his tent — she could hear his short-wave, the news in Spanish, too muffled to be made out. She had a vision of her family gathered at the farm around the radio, listening for hopeful news. If only she could get word to them …
Below, illumined under the stars at the edge of the stream, she glimpsed a bare rising leg, Glo’s contorted torso. Maggie descended from the ledge.
“Haven’t you been getting enough exercise?”
Glo carried on, twisting, bending. “You’ll never have a problem, you’re so naturally wiry. This is where the muscles start to waste.” As her hand caressed her inner thigh it was caught in the beam of a flashlight aimed from the ledge above. Maggie heard a thick-throated gasp.
“Shut that off!” Glo shouted.
The flashlight continued to play on Glo’s legs, and she picked up a stone and sent it spinning at the beam. The flashlight fell; a shout of pain: “Puta!” – the high-pitched voice of Zorro. And now he was scrambling down toward them.
In the glow of the fallen flashlight, Maggie made out his unmasked face: narrow-jawed, his moustache so thin it seemed stencilled on. He shoved his way past Maggie and made a futile grab for Glo’s shirt. She sidestepped him, swung her fist, and struck him in the face. He stumbled backward and fell into the creek.
Now others were arriving: more flashlights, exclamations. Glo was yelling at the fallen Zorro: “You touch me again I’ll knock your teeth out, you Tico trash, you peeping Tom!”
“Ya basta!” Halcón shouted, and the gabble around them ceased. He was the only one wearing a kerchief — even at night he rarely removed it. He spoke to Glo, “What happened?”
“That little toad tried to attack me.”
“Zorro, qué pasó?”
Zorro seemed dazed, still sitting in the water as he offered his version – Maggie gathered he was explaining he had been assigned to guard her, and was struck by a stone for doing his duty. “No la molesté!” he cried.
Halcón turned to Maggie. “What is the truth?”
She said bluntly, “Molesté, si. That’s exactly what he tried to do to her.”
Buho and Coyote helped Zorro from the water, and in the crossing light beams, Maggie could make them out: Buho with a long, pitted face, protruding upper teeth; Coyote with the tired, lined expression of a man constantly burdened. Also nearby was Tayra; her features seemed more American aboriginal than African: sharp nose, high cheekbones. She was holding a frying pan in one hand, a soapy cloth in the other. Gordo, also standing by, had the nondescript look of an overweight clerk.
Halcón insisted on hearing the details. When Maggie told him how Zorro had trained a light on Glo during an innocent but intimate moment, Tayra glared at Zorro and said something sharp. When he was brought dripping into their circle, Tayra hefted the frying pan. He cursed and stalked away.
Halcón turned to Maggie and simply nodded, as if to say that the matter had been satisfactorily concluded: the offender’s spouse would mete out appropriate punishment. His dark eyes remained on her, and she felt her pulse quicken; those eyes were magnetic. He disappeared into the gloom, and Maggie sat and tucked into her pinto and allowed her thoughts to tempt her into the realm of the forbidden.
A whisper in her ear disturbed her from her sleep: “Go in freedom, Maggie, you have won my heart.” But the image was a fleeting one. Where was Jacques when Fiona needed him? He was the only man who knew the Savegre …
After dinner, Halcón — as if to make up for Zorro’s rudeness — personally delivered a stewing pot filled with warm water, along with a bar of soap and two towels.
“Aren’t you such a gentleman,” Glo said, still snide and imperious. “Now, how about building us a fire so we can dry some of these wet things.”
“A small fire,” Halcón said. His acquiescence surprised Maggie: fires were forbidden under clear skies; they could be seen from the air.
“And I need a tampon, okay?”
This reference to women’s needs seemed to fluster Halcón. He hesitated, put out his cigarette, and pocketed the butt: even such minor items of litter were packed out with the garbage. Quetzal soon came by with a tampon for Glo, and by then Maggie could hear machetes hacking at bran
ches for kindling.
After their sponge bath, Maggie and Glo sat near their tents, wrapped in their sleeping bags. A few metres away, a bonfire crackled and clothing had been spread to dry. The men huddled there, weary, grimy, each with a week’s growth of whiskers. Halcón was by the fire, too, his hands gesturing relentlessly as he talked to his compatriots. Buho was strumming his guitar and humming sad Latin tunes. Near him Quetzal and Perezoso cuddled. Glo had taken to calling them Romeo and Juliet.
The ambience was eerily romantic, calming, further dissuading Maggie from the harrowing notion of escape — her present peril seemed far less frightening than the dark offerings of the jungle. But danger could come from anywhere: a botched rescue attempt, a gun battle, a stray bullet from an itchy-fingered gunslinger on a SWAT squad. Or Glo might engineer a dangerous escapade that could result in them being injured, even killed.
Glo swatted a mosquito. “I’m going in. Buenas nachos.”
Left alone, Maggie watched a blur of moths dancing near the flames, listened to the guitar and the gurgle of the creek — and to a haunting repeated sound: a night bird or insect. “Plink,” came the one-note liquid tune, “plink, plink.” She was reminded of water dripping on tin.
She felt regret that she was without tools to write. But how could she compose romantic escapism when life at its rawest was in her face? And what a sad tale her novel seemed in comparison to this harrowing adventure. Fiona Wardell was little more than a blur for her now. Maggie could not decide if her heroine, faced with this plight, would allow herself to be as co-opted as her creator – or would she be tough and spunky like Maggie’s real-life companion? Gloria-May constantly amazed her: the lack of fear, the tartness. An interesting past, the loose fast life of Las Vegas, had emboldened her.
The Laughing Falcon Page 14
