David Monnery - Guatemala – Journey into Evil

DAVID MONNERY

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by 22 Books/Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1996

Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1996

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015

Cover photograph © Collaboration JS / Arcangel Images

David Monnery asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008155452

Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780008155469

Version: 2015-11-04

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by 22 Books/Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1996 Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing plc 1996 Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015 Cover photograph © Collaboration JS / Arcangel Images David Monnery asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008155452 Ebook Edition © December 2015 ISBN: 9780008155469 Version: 2015-11-04

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

OTHER TITLES IN THE SAS OPERATION SERIES

About the Publisher

Tomás Xicay reached out a hand to shake his sister by the shoulder, then hesitated for several seconds, reluctant to disturb the rare serenity of her face. In the thin wash of moonlight seeping down through the forest canopy she looked almost a child once more, and seeing her like that he felt threatened by an avalanche of memories. Emelia was now a woman of twenty-two, but she had been only eight, and he fourteen, when both had been orphaned by their mother’s murder, and Tomás doubted whether he would ever shake the sense of paternal love and obligation which he still felt for his sister.

He smiled to himself and shook Emelia’s shoulder. Her eyes opened at once, and her head lifted off the Spanish grammar she had been using as a pillow. The condition of the book’s cover, streaked with layers of dirt and warped by damp, suggested that this was far from the first time that it had been pressed into such service.

‘It’s time,’ he whispered.

‘Right.’ She pulled herself into a sitting position, conscious of the activity in the shadows around her. She felt hungry, but that was nothing unusual.

As if in response to the feeling, Tomás handed her a peanut-butter cracker. ‘There’s only two more left,’ he said.

‘I can’t wait for breakfast,’ she replied wryly, easing herself on to her haunches and nibbling at the cracker.

He grinned, ruffled her hair, and moved on to check out the rest of the unit. ‘Ready?’ he asked each compañero and compañera . Some grunted assent, some offered a nervous ‘yes’, some gave him only a grim smile.

Two minutes later the column of thirteen was on the move, threading its way down through the trees. Each ‘ compa ’ concentrated on keeping the correct distance behind whomever he or she was following, short enough not to lose contact in the dark, long enough to maximize the number of survivors if the unit walked into an ambush. All around them the forest lay in virtual silence – there was no breeze to stir the branches, and most of the wildlife was holding its breath while the humans went by. Only the bats seemed indifferent to the guerrillas’ passage, and every now and then Emelia could hear the dry rustle of wings or see a dark shape glide across a small patch of moonlit sky. She loved times like this, when the natural world seemed to reach out and embrace her with its wonders.

Fifty metres further down the trail, Tomás was thinking about what awaited them in the small town of Tubiala, some six kilometres and ninety minutes away. He had every confidence in the Old Man’s abilities as a tactician and a strategist, but his own experience over the past five years had prepared him to expect the unexpected, which could be anything from a sprained ankle to the loss of half a unit.

The threat of sudden death was hardly inviting, but what Tomás dreaded far more was that his sister should be taken alive, and should suffer before death in the terrible way that their mother had suffered. Sometimes this fear would wake him with a dreadful start in the forest, and he would only just stop himself crying out. At such moments he would want to take Emelia back across the mountains and into Mexico, away from this land which had already brought their family such pain. But the sunrise always brought hope to set against the fear, and in any case he knew she would never agree to leave. This land was their home, to live or die for.

The unit marched on, down the long, forested slope to where the trail joined one of the many icy streams that tumbled down from the Cuchumatanes mountains. Stretches of their path were now open to the sky, but the moon had already set behind the peaks across the valley, and the darkness was deepening by the minute. For the next few hours they would be as invisible as any group of fighters could hope to be.

It was shortly after eleven when Tomás rounded a bend in the trail and saw Tubiala spread out in the valley below. There were only a handful of dim lights still burning in the small town, but the yellow glow from the illuminated military camp on the nearby rise seemed to suffuse the whole valley. He allowed the column to close up, so that each man and woman would have the chance to bring together the maps in their minds with the reality below.

After a final exchange of encouraging smiles and embraces the column moved off downhill again. The first small group to split off from the main body comprised Geraldo and Alicia, who had been entrusted with the unit’s only heavy weapon, an old but still efficient Israeli mortar which had been captured from the Army a couple of years earlier. Their task was to target the military camp, but to open fire only in the event of a general alarm being raised.