Six Minutes To Freedom

by John Gilstrap

  Finally strapped into the seat, and with her helmet in place, Kimberlylooked up and saw that Carol, David, and Joey had also arrived and were being strapped into their seats. No helmets, though. Then there were others from the Provost who also climbed aboard. Two in particular, young and good looking with big smiles, sought out the kids first thing. They looked familiar to her.

  “I’m Antonio Martinez,” said the first one with the biggest smile. “You are Kimberly, right? And you’re Erik?”

  They nodded. Kimberly couldn’t help but return the smile. “This is Coronado Samaniego. You remember we went scuba diving with you and your father.”

  That was it. That was why they looked familiar. Kimberly and her dad loved to go scuba diving, and she could remember now that these two guys had been on one of the trips.

  “Sorry to see you in these circumstances,” Antonio went on.

  Kimberly nodded. Her throat felt thick with emotion.

  “We need everybody to plant their butts in a seat,” the crewman said, nudging them along.

  “But don’t you worry,” Coronado said. “Kurt’s a good man. He’s a hero. He’ll come out of this just fine. He’s too tough not to.”

  “Now, dammit,” the crewman barked.

  They had to move along. They took the seats next to the kids. “Don’t worry about a thing,” Antonio said. “We’ll get you through this.”

  Tears pressed hard from behind Kimberly’s eyes. It was the sudden kindness in the midst of so much madness. Finally, there was a connectionto someone who admired her father instead of berating him.

  As the Blackhawk powered up and the world banked away down below, Kimberly watched the cluttered, twisted landscape of the city of her birth spin away; she searched in vain to find her house among all the thousands of houses down there. It was one more unspoken good-bye,and the beginning of the journey that would change who she was.

  Back in West Palm, Annie was desperate for news. She wanted every detail, but would have settled for any detail. No one seemed to know anything after eighteen hours in limbo. No one knew where Kurt was, no one knew if her children were safe, and no one knew what the long-rangeplan was or even what it might be.

  All day long, she’d been pulling every string she could find, mostly through Suzanne Alexander at the Agency and Richard Dotson at the State Department, but they seemed to be getting as frustrated as she with all the runaround and shrugged shoulders.

  “Just tell me this,” Annie said to Suzanne, at the end of a very long conversation. “Is anybody doing anything at all, or are we just sitting around and doing a lot of thinking?”

  “Annie, I know you’re frustrated. I know how agonizing this must be, but these things are not simple. I’m sure Richard has probably told you the same thing. There is a lot of thinking that goes into an action that has been wholly unplanned, and I think it’s unreasonable for us not to acknowledge that.”

  Annie could hear the exhaustion in Suzanne’s voice, just as she could feel it in her own body. But God bless it, “I don’t know” just was not an acceptable answer when the stakes were this high. Somebody knew the details, and she intended to keep pressing until somebody eithercoughed them up, or they put her in contact with someone who could. She started to express this to her old friend when Suzanne started talking again.

  “You know, and there’s something else that you might want to consider,Annie. If and when a decision were to be made to implement some kind of plan, I really don’t think you’d want to know the details over an open phone line.”

  As Suzanne spoke, Annie felt a flutter in her stomach. The words she spoke made perfect sense; open phone lines were just that—anyone with the smallest amount of technical expertise could listen in at will. But it wasn’t the words that caught Annie’s attention so much as the way in which they were delivered. If she wasn’t mistaken, Suzanne was conveying a kind of subliminal message. Something was happening afterall.

  13

  A PDF lieutenant stormed into the tiny office that was servingas Kurt’s temporary prison and stopped abruptly, his chest just inches from Kurt’s face. He glared down, but said nothing. Unsure whether it was wise to stand, Kurt remained seated, staring at the floor.

  Finally, the lieutenant said, “Stand.”

  Kurt stood and then retreated to the corner of the room where the lieutenant was pointing. He had no idea what was happening, but there was a disturbing electricity in the room. Kurt sensed that whateverwas on the way was going to be big.

  The lieutenant kicked Kurt’s chair out of the way and it flew toward the opposite corner with a metallic clang. As a continuation of the same motion, he beckoned to the door. On cue, three enormous PDF noncoms dragged a terrified man into the room and made him stand on the spot where Kurt had been sitting. They got right down to business.

  “You are selling drugs on our streets.”

  The prisoner’s eyes grew huge. “No!” he insisted in a heavy accent that Kurt instantly recognized as Colombian. “I am no such thing. I am a—”

  Before he could complete his sentence, the lieutenant delivered a backhanded slap that knocked the prisoner off his feet. The suddennessand effectiveness of the blow reminded Kurt of a rattlesnake strike, and he could not help but take a step back. He watched as the thug who’d brought the prisoner lifted him back to his feet. Again, they all just stood there.

  Confused, Kurt turned his eyes toward the lieutenant, who was staring back at him with the intensity of a welding arc. The officer smiled just a little, then nodded toward the hulking noncoms.

  They, too, moved with alarming speed, bum-rushing the prisoner face-first into the block wall. Kurt winced at the sharp crack of breakingteeth as fragile facial structures battled with unyielding concrete.

  The soldiers moved in unison from here, as if what followed was a choreographed routine. With the Colombian’s face mashed ever harder against the wall, one soldier wrenched the prisoner’s right arm around and behind his back, the way countless schoolyard bullies subdue their prey every day, while the second soldier brought the left arm over the prisoner’s head and likewise behind his back. The Colombian howled at the unbearable tension in his shoulders as they placed one bracelet of a pair of handcuffs on the right wrist. The howl turned to a scream, though, when the guards yanked in unison to make his wrists meet betweenhis shoulder blades, where the remaining bracelet was applied. When they pulled back on the hands, and both shoulders popped free of their sockets, the sound from the man’s throat transformed into something that Kurt had never heard from a human being and that no decent person would tolerate from an animal without putting it out of its misery.

  Kurt’s stomach flipped, and he looked away to avoid vomiting; but the lieutenant barked in Spanish, “No! You watch. This is your future.”

  The guards spun their prisoner back around so Kurt could see the blood flowing from his nose and mouth, the impossible angles of his dislocated arms, and Kurt felt a new breed of fear shoot through his bloodstream, this one white hot. This was a demonstration to show him what they were capable of, designed to make him fearful of his life, and it was working like a charm.

  But they weren’t done. As their victim stood there off balance, moaning helplessly, one of the noncoms launched a full-force, steel-toedkick to the Colombian’s testicles, causing the man to crumple like a marionette.

  Kurt recoiled in horror.

  From there it turned into a frenzy of violence. The choreography was gone, replaced with the savagery of a street beating. As the Colombian fought desperately to cover himself up with his knees, and by rolling from side to side, he begged them to stop, pleading in the names of God and his family. He had children to support, he wailed. Please, he didn’t know why they were doing this to him. Each hard consonant was punctuated with a bloody spray from his nose and mouth.

  They kicked him ceaselessly for what had to be over a minute, the heavy boots landing with sickening, heavy thuds in his ribs, his gut, his extremities, his kidn
eys, his groin. As horrifying as it was, Kurt couldn’t force himself to look away. He was witnessing a man’s murder,and as awful as that was, he sensed that he owed this stranger an unblinking audience.

  They rolled the poor man onto his back—onto his pinioned arms—and started in on his face, grinding the heels of their shoes into the flesh of his nose and his eyes, their hard rubber soles mercilessly tearingflesh.

  When the guards were finally done, they were soaked with sweat, and the noise of their labored breathing was louder than the diminishingmoans of their victim. Kurt had heard of this kind of brutality from the PDF, but until he’d seen it for himself here in this squalid little officethat now reeked of sweat and blood, he’d not been able to wrap his mind around what it really meant. These were the same men—whether literally or by association—who had dismembered and mutilatedHugo Spadafora before they finally released him to the peace of death, but until you see the pleasure these goons took in inflicting that kind of agony, you never really understood the face of evil.

  That bleeding prisoner at their feet was a human being, for God’s sake. Someone’s son, who had a life and responsibilities and people who loved him, but to his torturers—to Kurt’s captors—he was nothingmore than an object of perverse, twisted pleasure.

  And the crooked smile on the lieutenant’s face confirmed it. Still sharply pressed from having merely observed the beating, he eyed Kurt with open amusement, nodding to the guards to lift the prisoner to his feet. The Colombian barely made a sound as they lifted him by his dislocatedarms and propped him up against a wall. When the prisoner raised his head, he looked directly at Kurt, as if to ask for help.

  Kurt looked away.

  The lieutenant wandered to a file cabinet in the corner, stooped, and withdrew from the space between the cabinet and the wall a long-handledlug wrench that might have come from the trunk of somebody’scar. As the Colombian’s head lolled against his chest, the lieutenant brought the lug wrench to Kurt and made sure that he got a good look.

  “Have you been watching?” the lieutenant asked in a tone so soft that Kurt could barely hear it over the sound of his pounding heart and the roar of blood in his ears. “This is your future.” He held the smile for a long moment, long enough to make Kurt look away, but only for a few seconds.

  The lieutenant shifted his grip on the lug wrench so that he was now holding it like a baseball bat, and the smile broadened.

  Kurt braced for the blow that he knew was coming.

  But for today, Kurt would be spared. The Colombian would not.

  The lieutenant turned back to the pitiful prisoner, and, issuing a guttural growl that seemed to muster all of his strength, the lieutenant delivered a home-run swing to the center of the prisoner’s chest. The Colombian collapsed on the spot and never moved.

  Clearly pleased with his work, the lieutenant handed the lug wrench to one of the noncoms and nodded for them to take the carcassout of the room. As they dragged the body, the lieutenant recoveredthe folding chair he’d kicked into the corner and set it up again in the same spot where it had been before.

  “Have a seat,” he said to his prisoner. “Relax. We’ll be back for you later.”

  14

  It had been hours since they’d first lifted off the parade field at Fort Clayton. That flight had lasted only a few minutes, barely long enough to gain altitude before descending again onto the tarmac of a pristine airfield on what Kimberly would later learn was Howard Air Force Base; still in Panama, but a few miles away from the center of Panama City.

  They were on the ground for maybe twenty minutes at that first stop, just long enough to use the bathroom and pick up boxed lunches that someone had stacked up on the kind of folding table she had seen in movies from the States that featured cafeterias. She and Erik were still the dirty ones, it seemed, the ones that no one wanted to talk to. Even the soldiers were silent here. And they were much better armed than Ski and his friends had been.

  The lunches had been stacked in the great open space of an aircraft hangar that seemed even larger than it was because there was no aircraftin it. Erik, ever the fan of all things military, thought that this was about as cool as you could get. For her part, Kimberly wondered how people could possibly come to work in such a dingy place day after day after day.

  With her bladder empty and her stomach not quite settled enough for food, Kimberly passed the time watching the angst and anger that was spreading like spilled oil among her Panamanian counterparts. Honest to God she tried not to eavesdrop—at least not too closely—but the hangar was such an echoey place that she’d have had to be deaf not to overhear a lot of it. The gist of it was this: The men had been working with her father, doing whatever it was that got him arrested, and the women and children had had no inkling that any such thing had been going on. Now, from what she could tell, they were all facinga choice between death and exile, and they were holding their husbandsand fathers responsible.

  Seemed reasonable, she supposed. A little harsh, but reasonable. Not unlike the situation with her own family.

  After just a little while in the hangar, an American soldier who, Kimberly noticed, had no branch or unit markings on his jungle fatigues(thus making him just a generic soldier), gathered them together in a cluster and instructed them in Spanish on what they were to do next. They were to join hands—no, not in a circle as if they were goingto pray, but in a long chain—and stay together as he led them to their next destination. When someone asked where that destination was, the mysterious soldier pretended that he hadn’t heard the question.

  As the soldier talked, Erik moved in closer to lay claim to Kimberly’sleft hand. Judging from the grip, he had no intention of being pried free. He looked scared to death. Kimberly wished she had words that could somehow make some of this easier, but those words hadn’t been invented.

  “Didn’t they say we were going to the States?” Erik asked her softly, pulling her attention away from the camouflaged soldier.

  “That’s what they said.”

  He stewed for a moment. “They’re gonna make us walk the whole way? Holding hands?”

  The look in her little brother’s face, combined with the images his question conjured, made her laugh. She explained that they couldn’t possibly walk the whole way. There were rivers to cross. And when he still didn’t look convinced, she added, “They can’t make me walk too far. I don’t have any shoes.” That was the logic that seemed to settle him down.

  And then it was time to walk. Twenty-four men, women, and childrenjoined hands in one continuous line and started walking, one behindthe other, following the mysterious soldier out into the setting sun. As it turned out, Kimberly and Erik were numbers one and two in the line—no accident, because the soldier had called out their names (just their names, as if the others in the group mattered less) and told them to lead the way.

  It took some effort at first to get the line moving without pulling or getting their feet tangled, but soon they were on their way. In the distance,out on a runway, a C-130 cargo plane sat on the tarmac with its propellers turning and its enormous back door open.

  “Look at the C-130,” Erik said, trying to point but abandoning the effort when Kimberly clamped tighter on his hand. “Think that’s where we’re going?” His eyes glowed with excitement. “How cool is that?”

  That was exactly where they were going, and Kimberly didn’t think it was the least bit cool. It was stupid. And scary. Didn’t Erik realize that there was never any going back from a trip like this? What about school? What about their friends?

  What about Daddy?

  Inside, the C-130 was as no-frills as it could get. The plane’s skeletonwas clearly visible where there should have been walls, and the seats, such as they were, weren’t seats at all, but rather just strips of nylon webbing that had been stretched across metal tubing. Packages and luggage lay stacked in an unruly pile on the ground outside the aircraft, testament to the fact that this flight had originally been designated
for others, who now would have to make alternative arrangementsto get wherever they were going.

  The unknown soldier handed them off to another soldier who introducedhimself as Air Force Sergeant Somebody-or-Other, the loadmasteron the aircraft, and therefore the one and only person they should listen to for the duration of the flight. No, he would not tell them where they were going, and no, he would not share with them any details of anything other than this speech he was making. They would sit where they were told, stand when they were told, and otherwisesuit his every whim or else they could get off of his airplane and walk.

  “I understand that you’ve already had a chance to use the bathroom,”he concluded, “but if the urge strikes in the middle of the flight, we do have facilities available.” He pointed to a chemical toilet toward the rear of the aircraft whose version of privacy was an olive-drabshower curtain that didn’t even reach the floor.

  They’d taken off from Howard hours ago, and for the entire flight, no one had said a thing to anyone else. No one but Antonio and Coronado,that is, who both seemed very interested in making sure that Kimberly and Erik felt like they had friends. For them, this all seemed like a great adventure. It made sense for Antonio, she supposed, who was here by himself, and seemed to have no one else to worry about. But that wasn’t true of Coronado. He had a wife and a little baby to be worried about.

  But after a while, even they seemed to grow weary of the façade of happiness and they turned inward to themselves.

  In retrospect, Kimberly wasn’t sure how she’d spent the long hours of the flight. She supposed she must have slept, but it was equally possiblethat she just stared forward, out into the miles of space that separatedher from the only world she’d ever known.

  Something changed. Something happened. In an instant, everyone at once seemed to be aware that the world was different, yet no one seemed immediately to know why. It took Kimberly a few seconds to realize that it was the propellers. After hours and hours of a single monotone drone, the pitch had changed, and they had begun to descend.Even without windows it was easy to tell; there’s that lightness in your stomach, and the constant popping in your ears.