Six Minutes To Freedom

by John Gilstrap

  And so it went, for a solid ten minutes, the half-wit dodging and praying while Fatso worked himself into a lather—almost literally. Even other guards joined the festivities, watching and cheering the action until, finally, the prisoner apparently felt suitably atoned, and then he dissolved peacefully into the crowd. Kurt never saw him again and never heard what happened to him.

  From Kurt’s special vantage point, he could see much, and many could see him. Off in the distance, but frustratingly close, he could see the seventeenth hole of the golf course on Fort Amador, and just beyond that was the water tower across from Ancon Hill, where Blackhawk helicopters made their final approaches to land. He’d mentioned to Dr. Ruffer just the other day how much he enjoyed seeing that display of American strength, and since then, the chopper pilots had started makingtheir final approaches exclusively on the front side of the water tower, enabling a better view for their audience of one. In prison, it’s the littlest things that mean the most.

  Today, from his perch in his window, he was watching old friends from the Salvation Army pass out trinkets of mercy to the prisoners in the yard. He couldn’t see specifically what they were passing out, but it looked to be toiletries and maybe small gifts of food. All the faces from the Salvation Army were familiar to him. Only six months ago he’d been a member of their board of directors. In fact, it was at the opening of a new Salvation Army school for the blind that he and Tomás had first hatched their crazy scheme to use radios to destabilize a regime.

  God, those were good times. Not just the subversive stuff, but the days of good works through Rotary and the Salvation Army. Kurt missed those good works, missed the good feelings that they brought to his heart. Standing here like this, watching good works in progress, he felt oddly ashamed to be on the wrong side of the charitable efforts. Shame kept him from calling out to get their attention.

  His anonymity was short lived, however. The only other American in Modelo Prison—a young man named Dana Keith who was serving time for murdering his wife—spent part of his turn with the volunteer workers to point Kurt’s location out to them. The ladies’ gaze followed Dana’s arm, and when they saw Kurt, he gave a little wave and mouthed to them that he was okay.

  They started crying so hard that Kurt had to turn away.

  31

  The May elections in Panama brought unprecedented violence.Despite the best efforts of the international observers, fraud was rampant. PDF goons blatantly stopped vehicles and detained people who were on their way to polling places, even as they hijacked the ballotboxes on the way to the tallying stations. Armed thugs hovered over voters, watching where they cast their votes and overtly threateningthose who dared to vote the wrong way.

  Toward midday, as it became clear that Noriega was going to preventa fair referendum, the rightful president and vice president—Guillermo Endara and Billy Ford, respectively—led the people of Panama into the streets where thousands of anti-Noriega demonstratorscrowded the avenues and town squares, waving the white flags of the opposition and banging on pots and pans to express their anger.

  As the world condemned the elections as a sham, Noriega blamed the United States for meddling in the affairs of an independent nation and declared the results of the election—however they turned out—to be null and void.

  As the protestors became progressively more vocal, his goon squads moved into the streets, clubbing and gassing peaceful protestors and arresting anyone who did not instantly disperse when the order was given.

  When the would-be vice president, Billy Ford, attempted to intervenein a request for restraint and sanity, the clubs turned on him, creating what became the most enduring image worldwide in the struggle for justice in Panama. Time magazine and countless other periodicals around the globe placed on their covers the picture of a dazed and blood-soaked Billy Ford receiving assistance after his brutal beating at the hands of Noriega’s thugs.

  Powerful people in Foggy Bottom, Langley, and the Oval Office, and on Capitol Hill agreed that that photo, and the moment in history it depicted, was a primary pivot point for the United States’ tolerance of Noriega’s shenanigans. The Pineapple had ignored the indictments from the U.S. courts, thumbed his nose at justice and decency, done everything in his power to make life as uncomfortable as possible for U.S. troops, and now he was making a mockery of the democratic process in the same hemisphere where the very concept was born.

  Manuel Noriega could not be allowed to stay in power.

  Staff Sergeant Jim Nelson was the last guy you’d pick out of a crowd as one of the nation’s most elite warriors. He favored Hawaiian shirts and blue jeans as his duty “uniform” and his collar-length hair and scruffy beard made him look more like a college philosophy major than any kind of soldier. (Truth be told, the beard remained scruffy becausehe could never decide whether or not he wanted to keep it; thus, it stayed perpetually at the two-week’s-growth stage.) A thorough search of U.S. Army records would show no Jim Nelson on the rolls, but with the right clearances and an appropriate need to know, you’d find his complete military record in the secret Department of the Army Security Roster and see that he was entering his fifth year of service with the First Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta. The rest of the world referred to the supersecret fighting unit as Delta Force.

  On this beautiful May afternoon, as he navigated his vintage Mustangdown the back roads of Fort Bragg on his way to the Stockade, he wondered if this day at the office would bring what he was expecting.Having stayed up way too late watching the CNN coverage of the Panamanian polling fiasco, he had a sense that Panama would be back on the radar screen. And as a fluent Spanish speaker, he figured he’d be in on whatever the fallout might be.

  It hadn’t been that long since he’d engaged the Cubans in Grenada, and he figured that if Uncle Samuel would launch that kind of effort for a group of American medical students, then they’d have to do something about Noriega.

  It turned out that he was right; the first order of business this morningwas, indeed, about a mission to Panama, but he was surprised to learn the nature of it. This was an 0300 mission—a hostage recovery mission.

  The PC—the precious cargo—was some American spy named Kurt Muse.

  32

  By late afternoon on election day, all hell was breaking loose at Modelo Prison. The first inkling for Kurt was the increased vehiculartraffic out on the avenue between the prison and the neighboringComandancia. Pickup and cargo trucks arrived by the dozen, each of them packed with new prisoners, who were off-loaded and paraded into the bowels of the prison, where the rape rooms and dungeons were located.

  Kurt recognized some of the faces: local politicians and businessmenwho vocally campaigned against the Noriega regime, and who, it would later turn out, had successfully rallied the Panamanian people to fulfill the crusade that Kurt and his compatriots had launched three years ago. Noriega had undoubtedly lost the election, but the votes would never be counted, and in his panic the Pineapple was making sure that those who spoke against him would never do it again.

  Even from his perch in his cell, Kurt could plainly see the terror etched in these men’s faces. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to work. One of the great fallacies that Americans accept as truth is the deceptive simplicity of democracy. Americans presume that once the votes are counted, the government changes. As a politician, you take your best shot, and if you lose, you step aside and let the opposition slide behind the desk you used to occupy. Americans take it for granted because it was the way it has always been and presumably will always be in the future. In Panama, however, it’s the dream that never was, and the Pineapple successfully undermined the entire fantasy merely by refusing to leave office.

  And now people would pay with their lives for having dared to pursuechange.

  One of the politicians, a man Kurt recognized from social occasions,but whose name he couldn’t remember, panicked on his way to the prison door and tried to run. He was too old, too slow, and too fat t
o ever have had a chance. A PDF soldier—there were more soldiers than guards now, given the influx of prisoners—knocked the politician to the ground with a single punch.

  On the filthy concrete of the basketball court, the man lay there screaming for mercy, begging for them not to hurt him. He yelled about his wife, family, and business. He swore that he would forever be loyal to General Noriega, if only they would show him mercy. It was a displaythat turned Kurt’s stomach; not for the message, because it was a message driven by terror, but because of the glee the guards and soldierstook in beating this man. They swung their rubber truncheons as if they were axes, great overhand sweeping strokes that landed with the sound of pistol shots on the politician’s back, legs, shoulders, and belly as he rolled on the ground and screamed his pleas for mercy. By the time they were done, two, three dozen blows later, his shirt had been completely beaten off his body, and he lay sobbing on the concrete.

  They had to carry him into the prison.

  The beatings in the prison yard continued for hours, all through the day and into the night. Clearly aware that Kurt was watching, the soldiersand guards wrapped helpless dissenters in American flags and suspended them by their handcuffs from the basketball hoops as they beat them mercilessly with the truncheons. With bitter irony that chokes witnesses to this day, Kurt noted that from where he stood watching, the tortured men were perfectly framed by Manuel Noriega’smunificent view of justice on the left and by “Jesus Saves” on the right.

  When the beatings were done, the men were allowed to hang there, some conscious, some not, as the pressure from the metal bracelets broke their wrists and ruined the nerves and blood vessels in their hands.

  As darkness fell, the tortures moved indoors. All night long, the walls reverberated with the sound of screaming men. It was the sound of agony the likes of which Kurt had never heard, even from wounded animals. It was the sound of pummeled flesh and broken bones, the sound of hopeless lives and approaching deaths.

  Just before midnight a new face, Lieutenant Cáceres, a sadistic prick of a guard, paraded a blood spattered American flag in front of Kurt’s cell, wiping the floor with it. “Where is your government now, Mr. Muse?” he taunted.

  Kurt recognized the gold-fringed flag. He’d been there at Escuela Estados Unitos—Unites States School—when it was presented by the American Society of Panama, a charitable organization whose purpose included the improvement of education available to the residents of Chorrillo. “United States School” was just a name, not an affiliation. Other Panamanian schools carried the names of Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, and all of Panama’s international neighbors. But for Cáceres, mopping the floor, the school and its flag provided a cause.

  And the hated bastard asked a good question: Where the hell was Kurt’s government?

  33

  Kimberly Muse was impossibly lonely and desperately afraid for her father. She hated what he was going through, and hated that he had to be the brunt for so much anger and political rhetoric in Panama. He’d been trying to do the right thing, for crying out loud. How could the Panamanian papers say such terrible things about him? How could they think that there was anything evil in merely trying to state the truth?

  She understood how the Pineapple could think those things, but the newspapers disappointed her. Okay, sure, the editors and reporters were afraid of what might happen to them if they spoke out, but wasn’t that the point? Wasn’t that how the world changed—by people having the guts to step forward to say what’s on their minds? How could debate—honest, open debate—possibly be harmful?

  How could they keep her dad in prison without any charges and without any hope of being released, simply because he’d spoken up? It wasn’t right.

  Life here on the mainland United States sucked. You had to drive everywhere,and if you hadn’t known someone since the day you were born, there was no way to ever make a friend. It didn’t help that the Muses weren’t allowed to say anything to anyone about who they really were.

  Things with Mom were a little rocky, too. Not that she didn’t love her and respect her for everything that she was doing, but Mom was so damned intent on being strong that she never made it okay to be weak sometimes. Kimberly wanted to cry and sensed that her mom did, too, but crying just wasn’t accepted in the Muse house. Not now. They had to stay focused on the goal, and that goal was to get Daddy home as soon as possible.

  Kimberly had tried to be hopeful on that note. She’d set milestones in her mind when she might see her dad again. Next week. Three weeks from tomorrow. Within the month. But over and over again, those deadlineshad expired, and Dad was still wasting away in that awful place.

  Waiting sucked. Florida sucked. Everything about this whole mess sucked. And from what she could tell, there wasn’t any change on the horizon.

  Everything in and about Panama changed with news of the stolen electionsand the violence that followed. Marcos Ostrander brought word to Annie of increasing tensions throughout the country, even as her friends confirmed it all through letters of their own. Time and again, the U.S. military and the PDF would go nose to nose in face-offs that hadn’t yet resulted in gunfire, but undoubtedly would, sooner or later.

  What was bad before was now many times worse, with CNN and the broadcast news outlets filled every night with footage of Panamanianstreets packed with demonstrators waving the white flags of the resistance,only to be inevitably broken up by packs of Noriega’s elite Dobermen and his so-called dignity battalion whose job it was to bully the innocent for stating their beliefs.

  For Annie’s part, now that the kids were out of school and Aunt Elsa had finally passed on, she remained focused like a laser beam on writing as many letters and making as many telephone calls to as many people as possible to win her husband’s release. In July, when it finally became clear that Kurt was irrevocably a political prisoner, not a criminalone, she made the decision, with the urging of Marcos Ostrander and the concurrence of Father Frank, to move with the kids to the Washington, D.C., area, where she could have quicker access to the political power brokers and to be closer to her father and stepmother.

  On the down side, Annie feared that a move north would weaken the unbreakable bond that had formed between her and Kurt’s coconspirators.Through April, May, and June, the group had made a point to see each other at least every other week, providing support, guidance,and love as together and separately they all tried to navigate treacherous, uncharted waters.

  She’d grown particularly close to Tomás, with whom she spoke more often than the others. She had come to realize that Tomás in particularhad been financially ruined by his ordeal. When it became clear to the PDF that Tomás was involved, they’d raided his business and stolen whatever was of value before destroying the rest. Annie had likewise learned that much of her own property had been seized and divvied up among the PDF elites. Their Volvo, in fact, was now the personal vehicle of Carlos Villalaz, the Panamanian attorney general.

  The move to Washington—actually, to the quiet suburb of Burke, Virginia—was also prompted by the promise of occasional telephone calls to Kurt, managed out of the Pentagon. They’d actually been able to complete one call, but between having to pause to say “over” after every statement and knowing that every word was being recorded, the conversation was stilted and ultimately unsatisfying. Kurt had sent word through Marcos that he did not want to do that again. Emotionally,it took Kurt to places he did not want to venture in the presence of his captors. Every perceived weakness could be a weapon to be used against him.

  Annie had heard, again through Marcos, that Nana and Papi had eventually been forced to leave Panama for asylum in the States. Apparently,they’d stayed with Major Mansfield for a week or so, but it became clear as Kurt’s ordeal deepened rather than resolved that significantdanger remained for them in Panama and they were forced to leave the country. Nana had come first, followed a week later by Papi.

  Annie had exchanged some very brief letters with them, but there ha
d been no effort at a physical reunion. Frankly, she wondered if that wasn’t just as well. This was not the time to open up old wounds.

  Richard Dotson continued to be Annie’s standard bearer in Foggy Bottom, earning himself an official reprimand from his superiors for continuing to champion a cause that they were not especially interestedin pursuing. In Langley, after years of being on the wrong side of Panamanian politics, the CIA was finally taking an interest in the ouster of Manuel Noriega.

  Suzanne Alexander, Annie’s contact at the Agency, was as much a source of worry for the Muses as she was a source of hope. Even after she’d been transferred to Langley, she’d continued to be so emotionallyinvested in what Kurt had been doing that she’d developed physicalsymptoms of stress, manifested by the total loss of her voice. Even though she’d begun to recover, Annie made a concerted effort to keep the pressure off of her.

  And Annie was not working alone. Kurt’s cousin, Greg Williams, heard of the situation and talked his boss, Senator Connie Mack of Florida, into including a visit to Modelo Prison during his mission as part of the official delegation to observe the Panamanian elections. While there, Senator Mack had managed to whisper to Kurt that he had not been forgotten. Of course, that had been over a month ago now, and reasonable people might begin to wonder after that kind of delay what the difference between forgotten and not forgotten really meant when, at the end of the day, Kurt was still in prison.

  Annie forced herself to be reasonable about these things. She told herself that at any given moment there had to be at least a thousand things on the plates of every senior government official and that it would be unreasonable to expect them to just drop everything to concentrateon one political prisoner.